Summertime Goodness

 And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,

just as things grow in fast movies,

I had that familiar conviction that life was

beginning over again with the summer.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's full-fledged summer. In fact, you might almost say that summer is dieing off. I rather wish it would... despite my adoration of river-swimming, sun-bathing, and iced-chai-tea-latte-drinking habits, I can't help but desire my lovely autumn days in October.
However, I have enjoyed this summer a great deal more than past summers. Things have been delightfully laid back. I have enjoyed my Starbucks ice cream, loads of books, swimming, stormy afternoons, and even my schoolwork a great deal. Things have been a lovely shade of sepia with all the heat, but it's quite lovely. I love watching God's artistry throughout the year, and summer is quite beautiful.
I suppose this summer has been more beautiful than past summers, to me, because I have actually engaged myself in doing things that seem summerish. My first act was to go swimming with a few of my buddies and jump off of what seemed like a ridiculously tall tree into a ridiculously terrifying river (of which I have footage, but alas cannot find the cord to my old camera to upload it to my computer). I have gone to the river a couple more times, and honestly I can't say many other things in life make me more happy. Going to a river to swim seems like the epitome of summer activities. Besides, I'm doing it with my favorite people, so why shouldn't I be perfectly, splendidly happy?
I have also spent a great deal of time this summer being productive. In my past summers, I've been completely lazy and spent most of my time on the computer doing unproductive things. But I decided this summer that I would be at least slightly productive some of the time. I have rediscovered my love and adoration of reading. Honestly, the past year I haven't had time or desire to read. After Winston died last summer, I had a hard time taking interest in most things for a long time. When I did, I found myself slapped in the face with the realization that I had to begin studying for APs and the SAT. Really life? But I have begun to read again, and I have decided this is an activity I'm not apt to give up again any time soon.
I've also purposed myself to begin writing a great deal. I have been journaling more than I have in over a year, and have enjoyed it a great deal. I've also begun the rumblings of a story, but we'll see if that ever finishes itself. In any case, I have enjoyed writing a great deal. (and in fact, I would have written more on this blog had my laptop not given up the ghost, causing me to rely nearly solely on an iPad, on which it is nearly impossible to type)
Most of all, I have spent a great deal of time with my family and friends, which is more important to me than anything. Along with river swimming, I've gone to a frozen yogurt place with my mom several times, gotten chai tea lattes from Starbucks nearly every Sunday (and been greeted by the same awesome guy who asks me about Algebra 2 nearly every Sunday), watched fireworks with my friends, spent entire days tramping around in the woods and creek with my boyfriend while discussing deep and intellectual topics, talking about books and fashion with my best friends, talking with my soon-to-be-off-to-college brother until three in the morning, and other such pleasantries. I dearly love doing anything with my friends. And coming to the realization that four of my favorite people are soon to be off to college is indeed a daunting idea, and one that scares me and saddens me a great deal. My brother and cousin will soon be off two hours away doing their college-y things. Thus, watching She's the Man in my cousin's back yard at midnight with just a couple of sleeping bags or cutting up politically correct fruit salad with her is not exactly a strange or rare thing.
As you can see, summer to me means relaxing. It means enjoying God's beauty that He made for His glory to the full extent. It means laughing with my friends and watching my brother's face light up in a ridiculously luminescent way when he talks about The Dark Knight Rises. It means floating in tubes down a river and jumping off fifteen foot high trees into the murky water and mud below. It means pouring over a book while sitting on my bed, listening to the rain slapping and jumping off the leaves outside my window. It means playing on a playground and getting soaked with a hose while jumping on the blazing, colorful apparatus displayed out there. It means taping mustaches to my face with one of my best friends and taking stupid pictures that make us look like female versions of Poirot. It means sitting at my best friends' house with the power out, reading one liners from books in a circle and making everyone crack up.
It means summer.
Summer perfection.

Summer Ambitions

That's right, summer. That inexpressibly beautiful time of year when everything seems as if it should be vintage. Lovely 70s-like pictures from the beach, retro Volkswagen vans, Wayfarers, and droll summer light dancing on the ground. Summer is also comprised of good books on rainy days when you read by the lamp light, stormy nights when the power goes out and you only have hurricane lamps and flash lights to see things with. Gardens with beans hanging drowsily from the stems and tomatoes smiling with their beautiful red faces.
Yes, summer is a lovely time. And for me, it's always been a lazy time. A time to relax and prepare for the next school year. However, this year, I have no choice but to be industrious. As much as I would love to spend my afternoons looking at retro pictures from the 60s on Pinterest or watching sweet summer flicks like The Last Song, I have no choice this summer but to spend my time well. And quite honestly, I'm glad. My senior year is approaching and I need to be used to having a strict schedule that I follow daily.
My main goal this summer is to spend my time preparing for what I'm planning on majoring in in college. If my plans stay the same, I will be double majoring in Art History and English and minoring in photography. Because of these plans, I want to make my summer revolve around art, literature, and photography. Although I do have other plans, I'm trying to prepare myself for what lies ahead. I'm trying to build my skills up so that I will be prepared for college when I leave.
So without further adieu, here is a list of things I want to do this summer:

1. Spend one day a week doing four to five hours of school and spend at least three other days out of the week doing one to two hours of school.
The reason I have to do this is I have to complete two more maths before I graduate (or I want to), and I can't do it all in one year. Also, I want to complete chemistry and possibly start on economics this summer so that I can take more dual enrolled classes next year at my local community college.
2. Develop a quiet time each morning.
I will admit, with quite a bit of shame, that I have been quite slack in spending time with God this school year. As many excuses as I could give, they're not good enough, as God should always be first in my life. I know I'll be in college soon, and I'll be solely responsible for my spiritual life. I want to focus on spending time with God this summer. Facebook and Pinterest can wait until later.
3. Spend at least one hour a day doing photography and art.
As I said, I want to focus on my art this summer. I have never been a natural artist - I don't draw well, I can't paint to save my life, and I can't imagine that I'd be terribly talented with pastels or charcoal, or really any other medium for that matter. But I believe I can develop those, and I'd at least like to try to, since I'll have to take at least one or two studio art classes in college and I don't want to humiliate myself. Besides, these are my passions, and I believe God has placed these loves in my heart for a reason.
4. Translate Latin two to four days a week.
I'm taking my last Latin class next year, which will be my fourth year in Latin. And not only will it be Latin, but it will be AP Latin. Yes, I'm taking an AP Latin class and taking the AP test for it. I'm insane. I know. But since I will be doing that, I want to keep the grammar and vocabulary fresh in my mind. In order to keep it all in mind, I will be translating Winnie the Pooh from Latin. Oh yeah. I'm just that freaking awesome.
5. Read at least one or two hours a day. Complete 20-40 books.
I have been terribly slack on my reading this past year, and I miss it. I absolutely adore reading, especially some good 'ol depressing books like Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and such lovely books as those. *wink* Okay, so I do enjoy other books. I'm game for anything by Dickens, Austen, Montgomery, Alcott, Lowry, Bronte, Shakespeare, Lewis.... okay, so I'm game for a lot of books. I want to build up a great reading list to submit to any colleges that may want to see one. I'll be putting a list below my goals for this summer of books that I'm considering reading.
6. Learn at least one or two George Winston songs.
So... not many people know this yet, but I quit taking piano lessons. I haven't really enjoyed taking lessons for quite a while now. I don't like it that I have to practice. I'd rather decide when and what I want to play. Even though I quit taking lessons, I want to keep playing at least some, because I do enjoy playing the piano. I'm planning on learning a few songs this summer to add to my repertoire so that if someone begs me to play, I'll have something to play for them.

And those are my main goals for the summer! I have a few more that I may or may not do, depending on how much time I end up having after completing all of those things.

As for books that I want to read this summer, here is a list I have compiled. I may end up reading other books, these are just some ideas that I had:
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
The Christian Mind - Harry Blamires
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
What is Art? - Leo Tolstoy
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
Freckles - Gene Stratton-Porter
State of the Arts - Gene Edward Veith
The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
The Purpose of Man - A.W. Tozer
Number the Stars - Lois Lowry
The Story Girl - L.M. Montgomery
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte
The Law of Kindness - Mary Beeke
Eight Cousins - Louisa May Alcott
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Messenger - Lois Lowry
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Miracles - C.S. Lewis
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Foundling - Charlotte Bronte
The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
The Last of the Mohicans - James Cooper
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
1984 - George Orwell
The Pearl - John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Counterfeit Gods - Timothy Keller
Shadow of the Almighty - Elisabeth Elliot
Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo

Obviously I will not be reading all of these books, but I thought it worth my while to write out a long list anyway. I'm still in the process of finishing a few books before the summer begins, and I have a little less than a week to do so. But we'll see how that goes.

Our home school graduation is on Saturday, and my brother, cousin, and one of my best friends are graduating! Can't believe it. I'll most likely be doing a post on that sometime next week, though you may not be able to expect it until sometime after Tuesday, as I have an AP to prep for. After that, it will be summer time, and you will most likely expect more from me.

Hope you all have lovely evenings! Cheerio!

Don't be a stranger

I was standing in Barnes & Noble this evening looking at journals. I've nearly finished a journal that I've been using all year, and I was on a quest to find that perfect journal. I'm very adamant about a particular way that my journals must look. They need to be the perfect size, material, style, etc. It's nearly a journey for me to find the perfect journal. I had nabbed up several of them. Two or three with owls. One with a scene of Paris. One with Jane Austen quotes in it. One with the Beatles on it. There were so many choices. Eventually I snagged the perfect one - it's made out of natural materials, the paper is handmade, and the bookmark has a button on the end. Schnazzy, artsy, perfect for me.
Even though I had already decided which one I wanted, I still stood in the section wishing I had the money to buy all the journals in there. As I was standing there, a girl looking about my age walked up. Expecting the usual "I'm better than you" attitude I usually get from teenage girls, I pretty much ignored her and continued looking at the beautiful shelves stacked one on top of the other filled with empty pages meant to be written on. But as I continued looking, I heard a voice next to me say, "I like that journal." I looked over at the girl standing next to me, and I agreed with her. Even this unusual human contact with a stranger who was a teenage girl, I expected that to be the only thing she said. I gave kind of a long reply saying that I really enjoyed journals and had been journaling since I was eight. She expressed an interest and said, "Oh me too!" I was surprised she gave much of a response. Usually small talk you have with people ends up being only a few sentences.
But before I knew it, we were deep in conversation. Stemming from our conversation on journals, she asked me what I was interested in doing when I went to college, and I said I wanted to major in English. She excitedly replied she did too. We went on to talk about college, where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do after college. Then we started talking about books, our favorite authors and books, etc. She also told me she was on a retreat with her youth group, and we talked about Christianity, our churches, and we even talked about how we had both been going through some tough things lately, and how different circumstances in our lives were helping us get through that. I was very impressed with her openness about her faith - most people, especially teenagers usually don't strike up a conversation and immediately start talking about their faith. Before I knew it, a 20 or 30 minute conversation had occurred and I felt like we were friends.
One thing that I love is meeting strangers. I'm not usually one to strike up a conversation with a stranger, unless it's a bit of small talk. But when someone does it with me, I love just talking with a stranger. Meeting someone new. As Walt Whitman once said, "Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" It's just an interesting thought that the person you're standing next to in the bookstore, the person sitting behind you in a coffee shop, the person waiting next to you at the stoplight - all of these people could be so similar to you. In fact, they could be a future good friend of yours. One of my biggest pet peeves is people's tendency to hide away from other humans. To never open up. To act superior and to walk with their noses in the air to hide a sense of insecurity about them. Even I have a tendency to do that sometimes. I wish people would open up sometimes - try to meet new people and interact with others. You never know what you could do for a stranger by doing so.
Don't be a stranger!

"A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet."

-Will Rogers

For the Love of Old Books

Recently I was shopping in a conference for some good finds on books, and in the very back of this conference, there was a little nookish looking booth that sold old books. There was everything from rare, expensive first editions of books to newer books. Mostly there were in between books. But there were some rare finds that I only wished I had the money for. There were some rare old editions of Pride and Prejudice from 1909 for about $45. I only wished I had the money to buy the precious books containing one of the most beloved stories of all time. There was also a first American edition of Til We Have Faces, by Lewis, but if I recall, that one was $60 or so. But even though I didn't have the money to buy the old, rare books, there was something about just holding them. You could hold them, and feel the crackle of the binding and feel the rough old pages rubbing against your fingers. There is something about just feeling a book that seems to bring you back to the first person who once held the book. I love to think of a little Victorian girl primly and properly holding the book sitting up politely in a chair in a sitting room or sitting out on a big lawn drinking in the words of the books. And who knows who have held the books and where the books have been since they were first printed and sold to where they were then: sitting on a shelf just waiting to be taken up by a new owner to be read and loved.
As for myself, I found a few treasures. Not many, but oh the joy of finding even a few to put on your shelf and to pick out and read over and over again. I bought three older books and then one newer book. But the newer book seems just as delightful as the older ones; it's a Robert Frost poetry book, but it's not just any Robert Frost book. Inside it there are the poems along with beautiful black and white photos of landscapes, people, animals... many of the pictures have snow in them, and most of them appear to have been taken in New England. It's a beautiful, beautiful book that I have a feeling will be a favorite of mine. The older books not only have the treasures of the stories in them, but the inscriptions in the front cover are the best. One of the ones that I think will probably be my favorite out of the three is called The Scottish Chiefs. On the inside there is a beautiful, cursive inscription that reads, "Christmas Present From Marl and Minnie to Their Father 1902" Apparently it's a relatively scarce and early edition of the book. It's about William Wallace, and I can say with great certainty that Scotland is my favorite country in the world, so I know I will enjoy the story. There's something almost romantic about the old Scottish people, who were seen as barbaric but were so filled with patriotism. Just looking at the book I can imagine myself getting lost in the words of the story and being transported back to the time of Wallace. Because it's not just a story or any book. It's an old book, which seems to transport me back in time in the first place. Another book I found is entitled Riley Songs of Friendship. It appeared to be a rather random book, but it's really very neat. It's by an Indiana poet, but the pictures and poems inside are beautiful, and I absolutely adored the simple, clean words. The inscription on the front cover of this book says, "To Stuart from Laura Christmas 1916" This book was beautiful, and I couldn't pass it up. The other book I bought was The Screwtape Letters. Okay, yeah, it's a relatively common book, but the inscription and the little treasure that was in it was incredibly delightful and honestly had me nearly giggling I was so excited. Not only is the inscription absolutely the sweetest thing ever.... it's in French. Does it get much better? In the front it says "Madeline [what appears to be] Parlier Hill from [a French name I can't read] avec toute ma tendresse December 28, 1949" And the French inscription means "with all my tenderness." Cute much? Gah. Old books. And then in the middle of the book I found the treasure. This is what I truly loves about old books - you find little things in between the pages you never would have expected. In the middle I found a Beatrix Potter post card from Britain, and then on the back there is a note written in French. It appears that it says something like, "Have a good time in Meadows ---" The last word I can't tell what it says because it's so smudged up. And the book itself just has a nice feel to it. The fact that it's a relatively early edition of a C.S. Lewis book makes me dreadfully delighted, as he is definitely one of my top authors.
What I love about older books is they're all different. When you walk into a Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million, all the books are the same. They're all new. None of them have had an owner, and they're all brand new and barely touched. But old books - they all carry a different story. They seem to walk a path of life all their own. No, books can't think, feel, or anything of the like. But the book seems to carry two stories - one, which is the obvious - the story it tells. The second, not so obvious, the story it has "lived." Books have been so many different places, been held by so many different people. Some of the books could have lost their owner by being lent out, or by being left in an airport, or some other strange circumstance; and then was picked up by a new owner. They've probably been held by hundreds of people. And then you have to wonder - what made the person, the very first owner, buy the book in the first place? When I start thinking about all these stories, it makes me feel special not only to have these old books, but also to own new books from the bookstore. Because I'm the person starting the story of all of these books, and these books could last for centuries, and one day end up being sold for a hundred dollars because they're rare. And that thought is indeed an intriguing one.
And after typing this all out, I feel like going down to the coffee shop and sitting down on one of the couches in a little cranny and reading one of these books from cover to cover. The things that books will do to you....

"Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop?
That's the reader.
They can never resist smelling the pages,
especially when they are yellow."
{excerpt from The Monica Bird}