When morning gilds the sky.....

and the tops of the hills are touched with light


Mornings at five, and all's right with the world.

In a little while the sun shines, the breeze is cool and refreshing, the day passes, and the evening bids a gentle farewell..........


The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night. Alexander Smith

Sweet repose...

Post Script.....
And the night passed, and morning came again.

Somebody up there was making beds (is there a housekeeping angel in charge) - shook out the pillows too vigorously and scattered the sky with goose feathers.

It is early in the morning.

I have awakened about five, done the usual morning ablutions, slipped on some clothes, and am met at the bedroom door by the little dog, with his legs crossed. So I make a detour around by the coffee pot and punch the start button, slip the leash over the little dog's eager head, and off we go.

The sky has a faint rosy blush, but it will be another hour or so before the sun stretches up over the mountain tops. We go leisurely on this little business trip, stopping here and there to accomplish the purpose of the venture. The little dog is full of energy this morning, and proceeds me down the road, right to the bottom where the lane turns left to the big house. He doesn't see much, but he investigates lots until I have said 'time to go back' and then he is anxious to make a bee line for home.

We are going at a nice clip, with the orchard to our right. My eyes are on the sky and the cloud formations, when suddenly I feel a presence. I look into the orchard, and there, at the edge of the apple trees, is one of the baby skunks, stopped on his journey across the road as if at a red light. Eyeing us cautiously, very polite, but with his tail raised like a warning flag. Little dog does not see, and apparently doesn't sense the little one's presence.



I say a quiet good morning, and we quicken our pace somewhat. When I have gone a little way I turn and look and his little bushy tail is just disappearing into the neighbour's lumber pile.

This was not the first time we had met. Late in the evening, a few nights before, Callie the cat, Caspar and I were out on the same mission. We stopped at the end of the road while I admired Jupiter, and the animals clustered around my feet. I looked down and suddenly realized that there were more animals there than I had started out with, and the little strange one was a black shadow with a gleaming white stripe. It was a friendly little conclave, but I wasn't about to chance one of the domestic animals causing any stress for this little country version of Pepe le Pew.

We withdrew quietly, with small goodnight murmurs and hurried footsteps. You will notice that I am mighty polite to this little nocturnal neighbour.....

Big Clean-up in the Garden this morning, as summer catches its second breath and the roses return for an encore.


Whilst out with the snippers, doing a job on the last of the Shasta's and bagging all the volunteer poppy seed heads to assure that they dance careless through the garden nodding their scarlet mopheads, I came upon a surprise lily hiding behind some Sea Holly.



The Sea Holly has lost control this year, staggering and stumbling through the outside perimeter of the garden,and falling all over itself. I didn't know this flower when I planted it and the first year it behaved with great decorum, but it has become quite wild and unruly and probably needs a bed of its own up against a fence.



This wandering seems endemic, - the pretty yellow pansies that last year graced the border in such a neat and proper row this year are turning up as bedfellows to the sweet allysum, underneath the peonies, and even a few cosied up to the Turtle plant (about to bloom). The Sweet Allysum and the yarrow keep trying to take over the garden path and of course the borage would spread it's beautiful blue starry eyed blooms all over the garden, trying to establish a monopoly on bees.

They have stiff competition from the Lamb's Ears which continue to be a favoured spot for all the busy honey bees. I would dearly love to tidy them up, but besides the honey bees who call this home there is a Mama Quail who has a nest in the little jungle of mint and sage beside the Lamb's Ears, and I do disturb her and make her frantic if I come too close.

The first bloom of White Phlox lends a cool and pristine aura to a busy corner.



And right smack dab in the middle of the garden the barn flowers wave their golden heads at the sky. Next year they are destined for the new area between the side of the garage and the fence where they will be well corralled but free to wander wherever they will within the confines....





Here is a pretty cosmos, and next to it a summering amaryllis who mistook the season and is in full bloom!


You may think that I was just languishing in the garden, but when the camera wasn't snapping the clippers were snipping and I took two wheelbarrowsful of debris away. And this included the poor hollyhocks who have lost the battle with the hollyhock weevil, at least for this year. We will continue the war on the wascally weevil........so all who thought the hollyhock gone from the garden will live to see another year's bloom.

That's all from the garden - the loom came up to reside in the trailer-cum-loomroom this morning, just squeezing in through the narrow door. Thanks to Husband, # 3 Son and a dear muscular Grandson.

Made my day, - thanks guys...

The Crepe de Chine Parfum has arrived!!!

It smells heavenly, and the fragrance floats a raft of memories....

But I'm here to tell you there are no miracles - I don't feel twenty again, - or even twenty-nine!

Sigh....

Silent Sunday, Summer Skies and a little Ragtime.

The Garden changes day by day - imperceptibly- as roses fade and retire to rest before their next summer flush, and the bulbs lie buried with no limp stems to reveal their hideaway. Even the Shastas, which a week ago were fresh and vigorous are now badly in need of deadheading.

The zinnias that I was late in planting are about to take over in the slim borders, and every day the tomatoes and the cucumbers grow a little larger.

The bright yellow season of July and August begins to brighten up the perimeter of the garden as the first sunflowers break forth their beauteous smile and the barn flower reaches skyward with its cheery yellow blossoms.

But the faithful flax, sweet and strong and sturdy, early every morning opens those lovely blue eyes to whisper good day - all summer long.


They remind me of the summer congregation at church who rise for early morning service...



And all along the front border the volunteer lambs ears graze and provide a busy little factory for a million and five honey bees....


Latest news on Crepe de Chine -thoughtful grandson who is more adept than I at surfing the net, has provided me with a site to order the Long Lost Perfume....what a guy!

Crepe de Chine

Last night, as I sleepily reached to turn off the overhead bedlamp, my eye caught the tender, wrinkly folds of skin that sag (a little) from my underarm. Yikes.....

Immediately there sprang into my mind the words, 'Crepe de Chine'. It's not that I haven't noticed this disgusting phenomenon before, but it's the first time I had looked upon it with some favour and had the wit to associate it with a dearly loved fabric, and a precious perfume.



In the ancient days, when Husband wired his arrival from Overseas in New York Harbour, and we set a wedding day for twelve days hence, I was full of romantic yearnings for lovely, extravagant lingerie to grace my trousseau. My Mother's commonsense prevailed (you will be living on a farm) and my lingerie was plain jane and durable.

However, shortly after our marriage I guiltily bought myself an elegant black dress (for $25.00 - extravagant on our budget in those days) to please Husband and myself.

And I wore Crepe de Chine Eau de Toilette by Millot - always. Until some years later it was discontinued, to my great chagrin.

This quick bedtime glimpse of the vulnerable underarm, with its soft wrinkles, awakened nostalgic memories of the days when the underarm was firm and shapely. (I am not given to often examining this mostly hidden part of my anatomy.....)

And I thought how nice it would be if I could find some Crepe de Chine Eau de Toilette to waft through the last years on its lovely fragrance.

An online search took me to the website of Irma Shorell, who has the North American license for producing this Long Lost perfume, but alas, when I placed it reverently in the cart and tried to go through the check-out I could find no place to put my Canadian address.

To find the information about its qualities and the products that blend together so classically was only tantalizing. The base of the perfume is made up of Benzoin, Labdanum, Musk, Oakmoss, Patchouli and vetiver. The middle scents are Carnation, Jasmin, Lilac, Rose, and Ylang,Ylang. The top is a light Fruit Notes, Lemon, Neroli and Orange.

There are other perfumes that are forty percent similar, but none with the delightful middle that combines the fragrance of Carnation, Jasmin, Lilac, Rose and Ylang Ylang - makes me just want to swoon at the thought of being able to wear this lilting scent again - and feel young and surrounded by memories of those early years..

I have not given up the search. And perhaps I should include in my searching exercises to banish my own personal crepe de chine.......

Going to town

Tuesday the library opens at 10:00 a.m., while the air is still cool and before the noontime sun drives me indoors.

So Tuesday was the day to combine a visit to the library with a bit of grocery shopping, - half an hour, I told husband, when I took him his mid-morning coffee. I should be back in half an hour......

Since #1 Son opened to us the mysteries of the CD player in the new machine we have been enjoying Scott Joplin, and off I went with the music escaping through the open windows, - with my Josephine Tey to return to the library and a smallish grocery list.

The library was a cinch - a new person behind the desk with whom I did the pleasantries in a brisk and timely fashion. I left with The Daughters of Time, another Josephine Tey Mystery/Novel.

When I came out of the library a good friend was coming up the lane, and we stopped to talk. A little gossip about a motorcycle accident, a few comments about the situation at the church, - the weather and recent visitors. Eventually I put my book into the car, and before driving off to the grocery store it occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to pop in and see daughter-in-law at her store, and to get up to date on her role as New Grandma and the state of things with Granddaughter and the new Great Grandson.

Just for a minute.....or two....

DIL has some beautiful clothes in her store, and it has been in the back of my mind for some days that I really need a short dress, - something that slips on easily, is cool and casual. How could I not stop and look????

What an elegant variety, - but this one is too young for me, and this one too frilly. And the polka dot with the shirred back is, alas, not the right size. These are really beautiful clothes that people come from other towns to shop for, and midst such a variety it took me more than a minute (or two) to make up my mind.

Eventually I found an enchanting sea green drip dry, - the kind that you crinkle up when it is wet and it slides on and swirls around your slim body, if you are lucky, - or else covers up a multitude of bumps and humps and hollows if you are past the stage of being young and lucky...

Time was passing, and I had still not had the news from Grandma, who is so thrilled with her new role. Latest news, - the dear little boy slept until six a.m. and Maw and Paw were gratefully ecstatic.

In due course I found my way to the grocery store where I vowed I would hurry, when I glanced at my watch and noontime loomed.

Well, I did hurry, but there is this one to talk to, and how can you pass that one with just a short nod or hello. And there were questions to ask the clerk at the till about how her daughter was doing, and a friend I ran into on the way to the car. Ah well. I had stopped at the Deli and bought lunch, so I was not coming home late and empty handed.

Another stop for the mail, and I arrived home just as the hands of my watch passed twelve.

Full of news and gossip to entertain Husband at lunch, and glad to be home!

What small things it takes to make a day pleasant as life thins out, duties lessen and pleasures increase, and all is right with the world. And how absolutely delightful it is to live in a small town, where a trip to town can be so friendly.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD

by: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

LOWERS preach to us if we will hear:--

The rose saith in the dewy morn:

I am most fair;

Yet all my loveliness is born

Upon a thorn.

The poppy saith amid the corn:

Let but my scarlet head appear

And I am held in scorn;

Yet juice of subtle virtue lies

Within my cup of curious dyes.

The lilies say: Behold how we

Preach without words of purity.

The violets whisper from the shade

Which their own leaves have made:

Men scent our fragrance on the air,

Yet take no heed

Of humble lessons we would read.

But not alone the fairest flowers:

The merest grass

Along the roadside where we pass,

Lichen and moss and sturdy weed,

Tell of His love who sends the dew,

The rain and sunshine too,

To nourish one small seed.

A fleeting beauty, - they express themselves in one great passionate show, and then lily time is past for another year. Still one more beautifully fragrant Regal lily to bloom, and I watch the buds swell with sweet anticipation.

Lily time is also Cherry time, and the voice of the itinerant cherry picker is heard in the land as they fill their buckets with luscious fruit, chatting all the time.

Before the time of miniature trees, in ancient days, I would have said they call from branch to branch as they run up and down ladders to empty their buckets.

In even more ancient times, when Husband was young the cherry trees on their orchard were 30 to 40 feet high. The ladders were elongated to reach the tops by tying two twenty foot ladders together in the centre of the tree. And the buckets of cherries were passed down by pulley. Once you were up reaching for the heavens you were there for the day..... It was a matter of pride that not even one cherry remain unpicked, no matter how far out on a limb it was. A wonder it was not a matter of great catapulting from the top of the ladder, or a great thud as you reached too far out on a limb and went swooshing through the branches.

Here is Husband's father, and it looks to me as if he could be standing on the top of a ladder in a cherry tree.... with cheerful insouciance. No need to sally forth and look for adventure if you lived on an orchard with challenges like this...



I await the Montmorency or the Morello to make a mouth watering tart sour cherry pie - we had sour cherries on the farm, and they were part and parcel of July's treasures, but now they are as scarce as hen's teeth as cherished varieties disappear and the orchards mesmerize into vineyards

The camera was busy in June.

A lovely month in the garden. The roses responded so generously to the cool June days. The hills turned green. The sky was by turns benign and gloriously wild.

Two anniversaries, four birthdays, a baby shower, an afternoon tea at the Care Home, visits from family.....and another special birthday today. Many happy returns to my sister, with love.

A fully satisfying month.

There is a call from the back door...

'Maw - I'm going out back with my bucket and tractor.....'

'Alright, you darling boy. Don't be late for lunch.'

This is a literary contrivance - he never tells me where he's going, or calls me Maw - and I have never before this called him 'my darling boy" unless the moment was much more passionate than this exchange.

Nevertheless, in due time the bucket swings and there are tractor noises from the nether regions of the yard.

Inside the house cookies get made and the music of Gottschalk swells and diminishes in graceful trills and arpeggios.

Eventually it is time for lunch....



"Is it really that time already???? " (he has never had a good sense of time, and now, at this late date, he has broken his watch strap and so has a perfectly good reason for 'never knowing what time it is..')
"I will just be a few moments" (translation, - give me half an hour or so).

Is that a fourth finger salute? If so, what does it mean? Did he get his fingers mixed up, or is he really pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose? And is he smirking???

Life's little mysteries, - best ignored....

But there, when all is said and done, Husband and his tractor are priceless and non-expendable.

My Summer Project

Occasionally the idea of doing something creative will be charged by seeing a photo, talking to someone about a new way of doing things or reading about innovative projects. A small germ of interest soon grows into a full blown desire to jump right in and start creating...

Not so with this summer's activity, - the germ has been around for a long time. Ten years at least since I started collecting beautiful jewel coloured silk shirts with the idea of using them in some splendidly sensuous recycling adventure.

I bought them at the Bargain Centre, - people saved them for me, - I would receive small parcels of beautiful silken garments (silk shorts for men, fancy blouses and shirts, the odd skirt or pair of trousers.) I treasured them all, and here is part of the magnificent stash I have accumulated.


In the last few years it has grown increasingly embarrassing when friends inquire about the status of the silken stash, and I have to admit that although it is growing, the time is just not right to commence the weaving process. Research, - oh yes. Lots of dreams and nebulous plans, but no action as of now.

As Mary Todd Lincoln has been quoted, "my evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry til a more convenient season"

On the other hand, Mark Twain (ever wise and practical) has said "twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the Trade Wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

It was the 'twenty years' that brought me up short. Twenty years from now I expect that weaving up a great stash of silk ribbons will be far beyond me, and if they are not to be an eternal embarrassment to me it is high time I quit dreaming and "wove the straw into gold" to paraphrase Rumpelstiltskin.

First, of course, there is the Research. A dangerous delight in itself. It can so easily turn into a project all on its own.

I have some lovely ideas. Bags, small rugs, cushion covers, some twice woven silk chenille, finely woven coverlets, or vests....the list is endless, but the details have not yet taken form.

I find a picture of a lovely silk durry and upon examination I envision the width of the silken ribbons I must cut from these slippery silk garments... It inspires me to the point where I am not discouraged about the task, and am moved to go and find the cloth pad and cutter which my sister once gave me (somehow foreseeing this special need for it...)

If you stick around or drop in occasionally I will let you know how goes the battle between Inspiration and Procrastination. What better time to face the foe and end up with some gorgeous Christmas gifts and a quiet conscience.

Reading Josephine Tey,

It has been a long time since I read the Daughters of Time. Josephine Tey first came into my life when I was in my twenties, and she, alas, was nearing the end of her life.

Elizabeth Mackintosh, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Josephine Tey and Gordon Deviot, died when she was only fifty-six. As I look back I think - one is so much in their prime at fifty-six. Well, looking back (despondently) even seventy seems young (sigh)

I am enjoying re-reading her mystery novels, and find the hero of these stories, Inspector Alan Grant, so charming he would steal as many literary hearts as Inspector Morse has wooed with his television series. I confess to not having read any of the Deviot plays, not being particularly drawn to this genre because of my love for descriptive writing.

The Tey novels are a wonderful mixture of mystery, characterization and beautiful literary pictures of the English and Scottish countrysides.

A sentence from The Singing Sands, wherein Inspector Grant has met up with Wee Archie, a pseudo revolutionist in sagging kilt and derelict bonnet, possessor of a thin and reedy voice, - as Archie departs from this chance meeting.

"And the dragonfly creature with its mosquito voice went away in the brown distance."

And here, from The Man in the Queue...

"A light rain fell across the window-pane with stealthy fingers. The end of the good weather, thought Grant. A silence followed, dark and absolute. It was as if an advance guard, a scout, had spied out the land and gone away to report. There was the long, far-away sigh of the wind that had been asleep for days. Then the first blast of the fighting battalions of the rain struck the window in a wild rattle. The wind tore and raved behind them, hounding them to suicidal deeds of valour. And presently the drip, drip from the roof began a constant gentle monotone beneath the wild symphony, intimate and soothing as the tick of a clock. Grant's eyes closed to it, and before the squall had retreated, muttering in the distance, he was asleep."

The far-away sigh of the wind, the muttering in retreat, and in between the wildness of the storm. Beautifully expressed.... A wonderful little paragraph that paints a picture, tells a story and provides background music all at the same time through the creative use of words. A plus to the endearing qualities of the stories she tells. Tey's work is scattered throughout with such delightful phrases, sentences and paragraphs. What a shame that we lost her so early.

I pass these books on to Husband, to share the pleasure.

Hot weather and the garden is spreading out in all directions, with total abandon.

The roses have finished their first flush and the delphiniums appear a little shabby, but the lilies are coming into their own, along with great swathes of shasta daisies.....

I spent an hour making lavender bottles today, - felt quite frivolous after all the toing and frowing of the go-fering job. Big Smiles.....inside and out.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS - REALLY, REALLY. ARE YOU SURE?

When we first began to hear about the one hundred and fiftieth birthday celebration of the Province of British Columbia Husband and I looked at each other in disbelief.....

Can this really be?

It seems like only a decade or so ago that we attended the Centennial Ball in Victoria, - surely fifty years can not have passed while our eyes twinkled and our feet danced and our children grew up and life went on.

Is it because we are no longer young that this celebration doesn't seem to have the spontaneity and excitement of the 1958 Centennial? Or is it a more sophisticated age and community is no longer of great importance?

This was a time Before Television, - whose advent (and our pernicious use of the media) is, in my opinion, responsible for a lack of interaction between people, a loss of neighbourhood and the push that started us on the slippery slope in the proverbial handcart.

It was the golden years of the Fifties when kids still played outside, creatively, dinner at night was a family affair, - just before we slid into the Sixties and the world turned sideways, at least.

It was a time when people didn't stay home to watch the Simpson's or the Sopranos but instead plunged into the Real Life where Real People were doing things.

All over the Province there were Centennial Committees with marvelous ideas that drew people together. Plans were made, projects were started, books were written and a exciting and celebratory time was had by all.

On June 26th, 1958, in the little village of Cawston where we farmed (five miles down the valley from where I now sit) there was a splendid summer day set aside to honour the pioneers of the District with a special luncheon. There was dancing, and music, a gymkhana and much merry making.

Alas, when in my mind's eye I picture the members of that Committee it comes to me with sadness and nostalgia that Husband is the only one left . He was probably the youngest, and the Chairman.

For which he got a nice award of merit

.

And we got t0 dress up and go to a Centennial Ball in Victoria.

Lovely memories....

While out gathering a posy or two to bring some elegance to the bathroom...Husband in charge of snapping these pictures of 'a wild woman in her wild, wild garden' - and I quote.

Saturday night and we are at the end of a week in which I advanced my career as go-fer/swamper/shoveler and an oft bewildered passer of tools as I try to divine what Husband is mouthing at me from the Boss's seat on the Tractor.

I am very green at this job. How does one know that when one reaches the 'ancient' years there will be this totally splendid dependence on one another - this marvelous togetherness that at once brings Contentment and Frustration.

I have one more week at this apprenticeship and then I do declare a Holiday.

The lazy, hazy days of summer will soon be upon us, - days to relax and read and sip cold drinks in the coolness of the porch.

The time to rise early to tend to the flowers and linger leisurely in the shade of the evening.

And all this spring enthusiasm that has stirred Husband and his Tractor (and his apprentice) will shower blessings upon us and keep us content through the long hot lazy summer when nothing of any consequence should be initiated after 10:00 a.m.

Sweet dreams (sigh)

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen

It is June, 1995, and Husband and I are on a poignant journey from a gravesite in France to a gravesite in Holland.

We have just spent a few days around Brettville sur Laiz where Tom is buried, and now we are driving up the coast of France to Njimagen, to visit the military cemetery where Gordon lies.

As we drive through Picardy Husband and I sing softly, the refrain to 'Roses of Picardy' and think of my father, another soldier from the First World War. We don't remember the verse, but we are old enough that the refrain is familiar to us.

Roses are shining in Picardy
In the hush of the silver dew
Roses are flowering in Picardy
But there's never a rose like you
And the roses will die with the summer time
And our roads may be far apart
But there's one rose that dies not in Picardy
'Tis the rose that I keep in my heart

I think nostalgically of that day as I deadhead the roses in the garden. This cool spring has been so kind to them, and they have flourished beyond belief.

This evening the sky gently reflects the colours of the garden, and it is all tenderness and contentment.




Slowly it fades, - the flowers shine dimly in the dusk and I go into the house to collect the little dog for his evening walk and wait for the full moon to rise. A few days ago it was pale and porcelain in the fading light. Tonight it will be dark when it rises and it will flood the valley like a splendid lantern.

Ever grateful to be surrounded with such loveliness.....

The garden in June is a lovely mix of Monet colours. Early in the spring yellow and gold seems to predominate. In July and August the colours are more flamboyant while Autumn mixes its subtle earthy colours with the flaming scarlets of the maple and the sumac.

This little garden of ours is not big enough for all my wishes. It is now in its third year, and is bursting with vitality, - the green force pushes the plants to their most gorgeous limits. I walk down the pathway that divides the two beds, and find that my version of an English Garden is turning into a small jungle. Even though I have banished the sunflowers to the outer edges where they grow surreptitiously under the delphinium and the curly willow.

But at every step I find a treasure, - a rose, just opening; the blue flax reflecting the sky in the early morning; the lavender that wafts a sweet perfume as I brush by; the poppies, beautiful and blowsy, and almost transparent in the morning sun.

I try to capture each precious fragment of beauty, - when the petals fall they find a resting place in a big basket of potpourri. The camera is my friend and companion on our early morning visits when the sweet light prevails.

Vista has not been kind or cooperative, but here is a small video of the garden in June. If there are duplicate pictures you will know they have been added by the little green men who have invaded the PC......although I can't honestly hold them responsible for the snow on the mountains we wakened to a few days ago. Is this chilly June what they mean by climate warming????

Music by Gottschalk - Printemps d'amour. Cut off a little before it should have been by the little green men, - who else?

Will Durant

His words......

"It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts - between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks".

Elsewhere Will Durant speaks of his weariness with reading of the destructive side of history, and his determination to present the creative history of the race.

As I gained a little maturity, I eventually purchased all the volumes of the Durant's "Story of Civilization" (his wife, Ariel, co-authored some of the books, starting with the eighth) and their short, concise "Lessons of History".

What a Story it is - presented as a fascinating and gripping history of the glories and failures of the myriad civilizations that have succeeded each other in the last 5,000 years. Such a short little breath in the timelessness of the earth....

He speaks of Religions and Civilizations, and the tensions between them which mark the highest stages of every civilization, and I paraphrase his words.......

Religion offers guidance to bewildered men, and it culminates by establishing a unity of morals and belief which assists in reaching the pinnacle of their relationship. However, as knowledge and technology grow or alter they clash with mythology and theology, and intellectual history takes on the character of a 'conflict between science and religion'.

The relationship ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past.

When the intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and the moral code allied with it then conduct, deprived of its religious support, deteriorates into 'epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith,' becomes burdensome to all.

In the end 'society and its religion tend to fail together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile, among the oppressed, another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization'.

What a mixture of pessimism and optimism - technology and science abound whilst conduct and morality fall into disarray, but there is always the Phoenix which arises in the form of new order and creativity.

I find it hopeful and encouraging to have this perspective of the whole of history, - it gives faint hope to my dismay with the moral code which, on the whole, seems to be making inroads into our society, and I can carry on life on the banks of the stream, - gentle, ordinary, striving and loving.

Ah, I do fall into these philosophical fits now and then, but when I received the Durant Foundation Newsletter today I abandoned my struggle with Vista and took consolation in Will and Ariel Durant's wonderful life together and their combined contribution to knowledge and wisdom....

You won't be sorry if you follow the link and visit the site.