Hooray for Thomas Newman!

Yeah, Sarah! One of your guesses was correct. Thomas Newman wrote the music for "A Series of Unfortunate Events," which is what plays under Elder Busche. Listen to something else beautiful he wrote...



I know it's a bit long. Just put it on as background music. This song makes me cry. It's too beautiful. Comes from "Meet Joe Black." (I'm not endorsing this movie. But you can ask me what I think of it, if you want to know.) Enjoy!

Love a particular Austen hero?

My friend is doing a poll on favorite Jane Austen heroes. You can vote for as many as you'd like. It's a fund discussion. Check it out.

http://austenknowsbest.blogspot.com/

(I voted for Henry Tilney. He's the only one with a sense of humor.)

Elder Busche

After I got married, several people asked me if we were related to Elder Busche. I vaguely knew who he was. (We're not, by the way.) I learned more about him and was very impressed. My friend sent this link to me. It's seven minutes of some of the best advice I've ever heard. I listen to this almost every other day. And usually when I watch it, I watch it twice. :)

(By the way, can you guess who composed the music? Or at least another movie done by the same composer? I'll tell you in the next post.)

Please the Eye and Gladden the Heart 2

Here are some beautiful pictures I took of things that please my eye and gladden my heart.

Isn't Florida beautiful?

Love these green plants.

Obviously this isn't quite in the wild. But it's pretty!

Wow! Isn't this water gorgeous? And I love the waterfall.

Another pretty waterfall and lovely flowers.

Look! A duck! (Sorry about the blurs.)

More flowers.

I love these purple leaves.

This tree is gorgeous!

Wait a second. Oh. Did I mention that all of these were taken at Sea World?

This sea lion gladdens my heart.

Bushes made into manatees. Too cute!

This is my favorite moment in this show. I didn't catch the dive at the coolest spot, but my camera is slow. Oh, well.

What gladdens your heart?

Please the Eye and Gladden the Heart

Morgan and I are reading "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," by Bill Bryson. (A favorite author of ours.) Here's a little snippet:

In autumn, as you will recall from your school biology classes (or, failing that, from "Mr. Wizard"), trees prepare for their long winter's slumber by ceasing to manufacture chlorophyll, the chemical that makes their leaves green. The absence of chlorophyll allows other pigments, called carotenoids,which have been present in the leaves all along, to show off a bit. The carotenoids are what account for the yellow an gold of birches, hickories, beeches, and some oaks, among others. Now here is where it gets interesting. To allow these golden colors to thrive, the trees must continue to feed the leaves even though the leaves are not actually doing anything useful except hangin there looking pretty. Just at a time when a tree ought to be storing up all its energy for use the following spring, it is instead expending a great deal of effort feeding a pigment that brings joy to the hearts of simple folk like me but doesn't do anything for the tree.
What is even more mysterious is tht some species of trees go a step further and, at considerable cost to themselves, manufacture another tye of chemical called anthocycanins, which result in the spectacular oranges and scarlets that are so charactersitic of New England. It isn't that the trees of New England manufacture more of these anthocyanins, but rather that the New England climate and soil provide exactly the right conditions for these colors to bloom in style. In climates that are wetter or warmer, the trees still go to all this trouble--have done for years--but it doesn't come to anything. No one knows why the trees make this immense effort when they get nothing evident in return.

Interesting, don't you think? My first though led me to D&C 59:18. "Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and use of the man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart."

Let me share with you...

Since I have impeccable taste, I am going to share a few beautiful things I've found. (And, of course, because of my impeccable taste, I just know you're going to love them!)



My sister Kira introduced me to the Like the Scriptures series. She showed us "David and Goliath" and thus I first heard this song. I could listen to this song a million times and not get sick of it. Daniel Beck sings the king's part. Isn't he amazing? And Spencer Forsey as David isn't so bad either. Thanks, Kira!

The next thing I wanted to (possibly) introduce you to was Il Divo's version of Amazing Grace. YouTube won't let me embed it here. (There's a note in that area.) But the url is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtrnB4FZ-yc

Go listen to it. Now! I'm serious. You won't regret it. Mom and I discovered this last week, fell in love, and bought the CD. Have you heard anything so beautiful. If you're still reading this, I'm serious. Go watch it now! Aren't those bagpipes gorgeous?! (And for those of you who are stilling reading and haven't listened to it yet, they're only in there for a short while. Just go listen and you'll know what we're talking about.)

Speaking of bagpipes, I know a lot of people don't like their sound, but I love them. I melt when I hear bagpipes. Mom says it's got to be in our blood.

Okay. I won't share all of my favorites at one time. You don't have the time and I want to have something to talk about later. :) I hope you've enjoyed these beautiful songs. Let me know what you think.

Thank you, YouTube, for supporting my ability to discover new and beautiful things and share them with others.

Betsy-Tacy

A couple people guessed about which books my literary crushes came from. (I get a kick out of saying that. I had a literary crush.) :) Joe Willard is from the Betsy Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. This is the cover that I grew up seeing. Too cute, no? The drawings in the first few books are by Lois Lenski. The later books were illustrated by Vera Neville. (Top picture.)

My mom read the series when she was little and introduced me when I was pretty young. I was hooked. I read the first several books several times as a child and I think I've read the series about once every two years since I was 10 or 12.

Growing up, I felt like Betsy and Tacy were two of my best friends. I was never as adventurous as they were, so I guess I lived vicariously through fictional characters as they went begging, cut each others' hair, rode in a horseless carriage for the first time, went to the library and the theater.

And then Betsy met Joe. He was reading a book and eating an apple. A man after my own heart. Sigh. He was funny, independent, intelligent...

In one of the last books, Betsy tours Europe practically by herself. She went to Munich, Venice, Oberammergau, Paris and London. (With a stop or two in between.)

All in all, I suppose I could trace a lot of things back to reading these books: my love of German, desire to go to Europe, and (according to my mom) my temptation for coffee.

Are you dying to read these books? I am. Wait! I am reading these books. It's that time again. This time, Morgan is reading them to me as I fall asleep at night. (Don't hate me because my husband's perfect.) I love it when he laughs out loud at some of their antics.

I hope you pick one up, if you get the chance.

Welcoming myself to the Blogging World

I've been talking about starting a blog for a year and a half. Here I am. Welcome, SaraLyn, to the blogging world.

I named myself "The Brambler" because I'm a Busch and I ramble a lot. Well, I thought it was funny. I decided that for my first blog I'll do one of those 25 random things about yourself things so y'all can maybe get a feel for me and my life right now.

1. I went to Time Out for Women yesterday. LOVED it. I recommend all of you who will be near one this year to go. (http://deseretbook.com/time-out/)
2. I went to North Carolina this week to hang out with my brother's family. Had a wonderful time!
3. I don't mind packing for a trip, but I hate to unpack. I still have bags all over our floor.
   
4. I've had "Dancing through Life" from "Wicked" stuck in my head for the past nine days.
   
5. I hate spiders more than I hate cockroaches. (But not by very much.)
6. I can't stand the texture of laundry fresh out of the dryer.
7. Speaking of texture, texture is more important to me than taste when it comes to food.
   
8. I dated my husband for 13 days. (That's Morgan, by the way. You'll probably hear a lot about him.)
   
9. I go to sleep on my left side.
10. It takes me 17 strokes to type "ambulatory implementation management involvement" when I'm typing in Word on my computer. (I do transcriptionist work.)
11. My handwriting became messy on purpose because I dislike people reading over my shoulder. I guess I did a good job because many people have told me my writing is illegible.
    
12. I love spell-check.
13. I take yarn to movies so I can crochet afghans. It gives my hands something to do and keeps me warm.
14. I had literary crushes on Joe Willard, Mac Campbell, and Sherlock Holmes. (Can anyone name the books the first two are from?)
15. My husband resembles none of those men. (Boys?)
16. Despite playing the piano for about 24 years, I have five songs memorized on the piano. (And that's only if you count songs like "Heart and Soul" and "Chopsticks.")
17. I can use three different kinds of keyboards.
    
18. I saw an owl catch an eat a mouse three feet from where I stood on a sidewalk. (Okay, he actually ate it about 10 feet away from me, but caught it three feet away!)
19. I believe in using "he" as an all-purpose, general third person singular pronoun. None of this he/she silliness for me. I know that's politically incorrect, but I figure since I'm a woman, I can get away with it.
20. When I heard people talking about Madonna for the first time, I thought they were talking about my aunt.
    
21. I wanted to be a library page but was once turned down from the job for being too highly educated. I was kind of annoyed about that.
22. I drank orange juice nine parts water to one part OJ until sometime in college.
23. I enjoy grammar classes (I think I took 16 grammar-related classes in college), but bad grammar almost never bothers me. I use it all the time myself! (It does kind of drive me crazy when people hypercorrect and say things like "He gave it to him and I." That would be "to him and me," folks.) :)
24. I love the smell of coffee.
25. I'm sick of writing about myself.