Sadie’s CD

Sadie turned 16 yesterday. The same Sadie who used to earnestly tell us stories with “uh” inserted between every syllable. The same Sadie who would sit in the rocking chair in our living room and rock violently while listening to Phil Keaggy’s “True Believers” over and over and over and over. The very same Sadie who didn’t take one step before 18 months because she just didn’t want to and now we can’t get her to slow down. Ever. She’s always the first out to the car, the first back in the house, the first to be ready for anything anytime and even the first to go to bed each night. She knows what she wants and she does it with gusto. Lately, she has spent most of her free time (and some of her time that should be spent doing other things) learning how to play all different kinds of instruments and all different kinds of songs. The joy that her music brings to our house is indescribable. Last November, she used money in her savings account that she had been saving since the third grade to buy time at our good friends’ recording studio and record her very own album. I linked to the song that she did with her sisters in an earlier post. Now she would like to try to make a little money back that she spent on the recording studio to try to save up more money for her next album. Below is the link to the song that she sang at her school talent show last year (pictured above). If you would like to buy a copy of her cd, message me. It’s $5 if she can hand it to you in person, $7 if we need to put it in the mail. (However, if you live in another country, the shipping might be a tad more.)

Sadie – Fix You

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday by Louis Untermeyer : The Poetry Foundation.

Ash Wednesday
By Louis Untermeyer 1885–1977

(Vienna)

I

Shut out the light or let it filter through
These frowning aisles as penitentially
As though it walked in sackcloth. Let it be
Laid at the feet of all that ever grew
Twisted and false, like this rococo shrine
Where cupids smirk from candy clouds and where
The Lord, with polished nails and perfumed hair,
Performs a parody of the divine.

The candles hiss; the organ-pedals storm;
Writhing and dark, the columns leave the earth
To find a lonelier and darker height.
The church grows dingy while the human swarm
Struggles against the impenitent body’s mirth.
Ashes to ashes. . . . Go. . . . Shut out the light.

(Hinterbrühl)

II

And so the light runs laughing from the town,
Pulling the sun with him along the roads
That shed their muddy rivers as he goads
Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down.
At every empty bush he stops to fling
Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats;
While even the hens, uncertain of their notes,
Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing.

He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds
And throws an olive blush on naked hills
That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white.
Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads
A carnival of color, gladly spills
His blood: the resurrection—and the light.