Angels

Music is so divine that people like to think of angels making it. The instrument pictured, with the cherub musicians, is named after the Greek goddess Calliope, one of the muses, a daughter of Zeus. Two religions are involved already, in that 19th century steam-powered music machine. Also, it having been made in the late 19th century, it was an engineering situation involving the latest technologies. I couldn't decide whether to link this to Connections or to Mechanical Music, so here are both links. The green and flowery French Calliope down on that page is a video I made, and I went around the back to show the punch card that plays the particular song. The one pictured above works that way, too. You can go exploring from home!

photo by Sandra Dodd

The motion of their own spheres

Looking out at our offspring, they are aligned in a certain way from our perspective, but they're not paused and gazing back. They are in the full motion of their own harmonic and intersecting spheres, spinning ever further away from us, and we marvel to see the celestial show.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow
photo by Heather Booth, who wrote "My holiday window dream come true."

Frosty

Life produces some fragile, fleeting things.

Cass Kotrba photographed frost so beautifully that you can see the individual ice crystals that formed on the grass, in northern Colorado.

Some people live where this doesn't happen.

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You can click it for a larger image you can zoom in on better.
some other fleeting things
photo by Cass Kotrba
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I do believe...

Here's a fairy door. That is clearly what it is.

Are fairies real? We all know that word, and there's that door.

"What aspect of some particular subject involves objective truth? What is folklore or mythology? What literature or fantasy has come about based on that subject or item? Consider dragons, or India, or snakes, or rainbows. Checklist Abe Lincoln, the discovery of fire, or the depths of Lake Superior. Plot WWII, Japan, electric guitars, or Egypt."

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Rosie Todd
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Restricting knowledge

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Many parents think they know their children. But the more they restrict, the less they know their children and the more they know how their children are under restrictions. Restrictions say I don't trust you. Restrictions say that thing is more powerful than you are. Restrictions give children reasons not to be trusted.

—Joyce Fetteroll

(the topic was video games)
photo by Lydia Koltai

Your eyes can't see everything.

I think it helps to see it through the child's eyes to find out what they're enjoying about it rather than viewing it through our own eyes.

—Joyce Fetteroll

(the topic was video games)
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a roadrunner in the front yard
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Proud

Sometimes I "feel proud" of something my child has done, but it's too much ownership and I back down.

If I think of it as happy relief that I didn't prevent that success or achievement, then I can be a little proud of myself, and impressed with my offspring.

Maybe the best way I've found is to feel it as gratitude that I lived long enough to be able to see successes in my now-grown children. Gratitude is good. Joy is good.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd
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