The CMP Review — Week of April 10
April 10, 2023
“Truly parents are happy people—to have God’s children lent to them.” (The Story of Charlotte Mason, p. 7)
@tessakeath
April 11, 2023
Many of us think of Easter as a single day, but the Church Calendar assigns an entire season to the contemplation of Resurrection. In 1926, Easter Sunday fell on April 4. The front page of the April issue of The Parents’ Review heralded an article by Essex Cholmondeley in which she invited readers to reflect on the meaning of the Resurrection in their own lives.
Nowadays Essex Cholmondeley is mostly remembered as the biographer of Charlotte Mason, but in 1926 she was serving as Secretary to the Parents’ Union School. She has also been remembered as someone “serious and spiritual” who “probably understood Miss Mason’s quest for holiness better than anyone.”
What Easter message did this serious and spiritual student of Charlotte Mason wish to share with the world nearly 100 years ago? It’s a message that is uplifting and encouraging today. Read or listen to how we all can be “Partakers of His Resurrection.”
@artmiddlekauff
April 12, 2023
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady first alerted me to the fact that there are different types of wood sorrel than the dainty yellow Oxalis stricta we feasted on as kids.
The wood sorrel captured by Edith Holden is white with pink stripes—Oxalis acetosella. Yesterday, I was delighted to find Oxalis purpurea yesterday while hiking in NE Tennessee. Zoom in for a closer look at the purple-pink rosette.
What types of wood sorrel are in your neck of the woods?
@rbaburina
April 13, 2023
“Many have a favourite poet for a year or two, to be discarded for another and another,” wrote Charlotte Mason. “Some are happy enough to find the poet of their lifetime in Spenser, Wordsworth, Browning, for example…”
Right, I would think as I read those lines. Maybe in her day.
It was about as realistic to me as the story of the “the little girl of nine who pined every day because the poems of Tennyson which she loved best were not to be found” at the house she was visiting. Or the boy of ten who read all of Southey’s poems on his Easter holiday. Maybe in those days. Or maybe it’s just fantasy.
But we faithfully followed our poetry rotation. And we followed our time table, complete with a (digitized) bell. One afternoon before dinner the chime sounded. I left the room to help to set the table. Several minutes later I saw my son still comfortably reading on the couch. “You can be done now,” I offered. “The bell rang.”
He did not look up as he spoke. “Dad, it’s not a chore when it’s Longfellow.”
Moments like that make me think that perhaps it’s not all made up, what Charlotte Mason wrote. Maybe it’s all true.
@artmiddlekauff
April 14, 2023
Serafina sewed a doll outfit as a gift for her friend. An apron, a bonnet, and a little purse. She made it with repurposed thrifted fabrics she had squirrel away in her fabric bin(s).
Aren’t these pieces just the sweetest?
@antonella.f.greco
April 15, 2023
Here’s a flip-through of Nature’s Palette—first published as Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours in 1814 and then expanded with further description and swatches in 1821 by Patrick Syme. Called “the ideal illustrated reference book for artists, naturalists, and anyone who is captivated by color.”
This copy was a gift from colleagues/friends who know and love me well. I think it’s the most beautiful reference book I’ve ever seen.
@rbaburina
April 16, 2023
“God is the author of light,” writes St. Ambrose, “and the place and cause of darkness is the world. But the good Author uttered the word light so that he might reveal the world by infusing brightness therein and thus make its aspect beautiful. Suddenly then, the air became bright and darkness shrank in terror from the brilliance of the novel brightness.”
In today’s poem Charlotte Mason celebrates the first day of Creation and all the glory that light brings. But then evening comes, and it is dark again. So Charlotte Mason commences her remarkable series of poems on the Light of the World. Read or hear the beginning here.
@artmiddlekauff