Photo Friday: Spiral

My offering for today's Photo Friday theme, spiral:

Click here to see photo full size, then use

your back arrow to return to this blog post.

The location of this shot is inside the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City -- but in the "back of the house" part of the basilica, not the main area where pilgrims and tourists go. It's not all ornate back there; there's mainly just your basic practical painted concrete walls and everyday tile floors. I was in that section once and only once in my life (in contrast to the public area, where I went probably at least a couple of hundred times during my 20+ years of residence in that city) -- in May of 2002, when I participated in a recital of Marian poetry composed by one of the Basilica's priests.

Though I only had a few seconds to get this picture (taken with my little Kodak DC3200 digital camera), I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph the spiral staircase that went down many floors through the heart of the building. Don't get me started on the possible spiritual allegories here; they'd be numerous and wind round and round like the staircases in the photo ...

Quotes about Books

I love good quotations -- but maybe you knew that from the long list of them on the side bar of this blog. :-D

Well, the first quote below showed up in my inbox today in the very nice newsletter from Quote of the Day that I subscribe to; it got me thinking about good quotations about books, and I searched around and found the others. There must be a gazillion more out there, so if you know of a pithy quote, quip, or saying about books, please share it with us in a comment!

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
-Franz Kafka

The covers of this book are too far apart.
-Ambrose Bierce

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in, but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
-Bert Williams

A book is a garden carried in the pocket.
-Chinese proverb

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
-Clifton Fadiman

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
-Moses Hadas

German Chocolate Cake Sandwich Cookies

My mother makes really good German chocolate cake from scratch. I mean really good. It's a complicated and many-stepped process, and she does it superbly. So it is with a touch of shame and embarrassment that I confess to never having made that particular kind of cake from scratch. I have made it from a purchased cake mix; in fact, I made a German chocolate cake from mix this past Memorial Day for a pitch-in and got some enthusiastic compliments on it. And, though it will never reach the glory of Mom's scratch recipe, my little mix cake (with purchased coconut pecan frosting, as well) did turn out pretty darn good. I was pleasantly surprised at the great texture (quite soft) and excellent flavor of the cake.

And since I had purchased two boxes of it on that occasion and only prepared one, I had an extra box of German chocolate cake mix lying around, and yesterday I decided I wanted to make some cookies out of it. I found several recipes online, most of which included chocolate chips and/or raisins -- and while I like both of these things, I did not want them in these particular cookies. I decided to use the recipe that follows, and I am glad I did. These cookies were super easy to make and so good. We will be making these again and again in this house.

Easy German Chocolate Cake Sandwich Cookies

1 (18.25 oz.) package German chocolate cake mix

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup shortening

1 (16 oz.) container coconut pecan frosting

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (175 C) and grease your cookie sheets.

Place cake mix, eggs, and shortening in a large bowl and mix until well combined.

Roll dough into balls of approximately 1 inch in diameter. Place them about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet and bake 8 to 10 minutes.

Let cookies cool 4 or 5 minutes on sheet before removing to wire rack to cool completely.

Place a generous spoonful of frosting on the bottom of one cookie, then place another cookie on top of frosting to make a sandwich.

Refrigerate any cookies not eaten the day they are made.

Yield: about 2 dozen sandwich cookies.

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(I'm going to try this with butter next time instead of shortening, due to the whole "trans fat" thing.)

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See a few more of my recipes.

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Cemetery Crosses

Last Sunday dear hubby Eddie and I went out for an exploratory drive, something we have been wont to do lately. On this occasion we drove to another nearby Chicago suburb, Des Plaines. Now, it used to be that the pronunciation of this town ("dess planes"; that is, both of the letters s are pronounced) bugged me, since the name so obviously is French. However, once I realized that trying to prounounce it in the French way but with an American accent would produce something that sounds like what Tatu used to say in the series Fantasy Island as the aircraft carrying their new guests approached ("Deh plane, deh plane!"), I came to accept the Midwestern pronunciation of the town, and I'm even starting to become fond of it, actually.

So one of the things we discovered on this drive was the All Saints Catholic Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois. (Funny how the s in Illinois is silent.) Visiting graveyards is something Eddie and I enjoy occasionally; they are usually very peaceful, and it's interesting to read the names and wonder what all these people did when alive -- and it's kind of fun to think we will meet a lot of them in Heaven one day.

At this particular graveyard it seems that cross-shaped headstones are the dominant style. We were intrigued, as we have a small cross collection (mainly wall crosses) of different types at home. There are crosses in this cemetery of all sizes and styles (though not of all shapes, since they are cross-shaped, after all, heh heh). I'd never seen anything quite like this in any other burial ground, and I took some photos so you, gentle blog reader, could get the gist of what it is like.

This last picture is a shot of the door to one of the mausoleums at that cemetery, which I found quite beautiful.

Baseball Movies ... and Magic

I have this "thing" about baseball movies: I love them!

The thing is, I'm not a huge baseball fan. I've never been to a professional game; don't know if I've been to any games, actually, since my dad dropped out of his softball league when I was a small child. I currently live in a metropolitan area that is home to two major league baseball teams, and yet I don't particularly support either one of them. Okay, if hard pressed I'd probably choose the Cubs, since I do have a couple of uncles over in Indiana who love the Cubbies and no relatives (that I am aware of) who root for the White Sox. But I follow about as much baseball in the news as I do any other sport -- which is to say, none.

So what's the deal with me and baseball movies? In the last couple of years I have seen and enjoyed a bunch of them, and we now own three: 61*, Field of Dreams, and A League of Their Own. (Okay, I confess, I don't actually own that last one yet, but I do have it on order from my used dvd swapping club and hope to hold it in my sweaty little paws very soon.) Our dvd collection at home is not at all large, and I don't believe there is any other theme on which we actually have three films. Why baseball? It's a mystery.

What made me reflect on this was that I watched Field of Dreams again last night, after having seen it for the first time a couple of years ago. A marvelous movie! It got me thinking about magic -- the good kind, the kind that leaves you tingling with wonder -- and about how we as adults are so quick to scoff at even the idea of such a thing. And how, thinking it silly, we stop thinking about it at all, and then we stop noticing it happening ... and pretty soon we are complaining about the dullness of life in general. Hm. Maybe I'll start trying to remember to look for a little more magic during my day. I'm pretty sure it's happening all the time, all around me.

In the meantime, if there are any baseball-themed movies you'd like to recommend, don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Play ball!

Linkity Links

Today I will share with you some miscellaneous web sites I've encountered lately. Enjoy your surf!

If you ever doubted that a television ad could make you think about something important (and I certainly would have scoffed at such an idea), this awesome commercial might very well change your mind. So, what's your excuse?

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks shows everyday examples of overuse of this punctuation mark. Some of the captions are quite humorous.

Celestial Seasons Coloring Pages are line drawings of the illustrations on their boxes of tea. You can print them out to color or whatever. It's ostensibly for kids, but only a big "kid" would probably get into coloring these.

I'm not a math type. I thought this math game would stress me out, but I had to try it anyway -- if only to prove how unmathly I am. Surprise! It was fun, and apparently I'm not as dumb as I used to be.

The Life Expectancy Calculator will estimate the age you will live to, based on your answers to questions about your habits, etc.

At Haagen Dazs's Help the Honeybees you can learn about the honeybee crisis (happening now in the USA) as well as create and send your own animated bee.

and

The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time has a description of exactly what the name says. Just in time for tomorrow!

He is risen!

Happy Easter!

In the Eastern church, the traditional greeting during the Easter season is "Christ is risen!" To which the other person replies, "He is risen indeed!" Wouldn't it be fabulous if people would respond in that way when they hear that greeting today?


The original of this image (sans text) came from www.reelworship.com .

I found a couple of pages of lists of this Paschal greeting in many different languages; look here and here.

And look here for my post on Easter two years ago. I'd forgotten all about that beautiful Via Matrix service.

Good Friday

In honor of this day, a couple of shots I took a few years ago of the famous (at least locally) and very traditional Good Friday events in Iztapalapa, a section of Mexico City.






And this is the link to my Good Friday post two years ago.

Palm Sunday 2008

Happy Palm Sunday! Dh Eddie and I went to church this morning, of course, and are ready for all the special events of Holy Week. I love this time of year! One of the things I really, really love about being Catholic is the wonderful build-up to Easter, beginning with Ash Wednesday, all through Lent, intensifying during Holy Week and peaking at the Triduum. Christmas is, of course, a larger commercial and folk festival, but I thoroughly enjoy the solemnity and devotions of Holy Week and Easter, the most important time, liturgically, in the Church.

I wrote and posted pictures about this day a couple of years ago, too. We were living in Mexico City at the time. Have a look:

Palm Sunday 2006

Eclipse

The night before last I stood out in the parking lot of our apartment building and marveled at the moon: a total lunar eclipse. The temperatures were in the single digits, and dh Eddie went inside before it got to the totality stage, but I hung around until the eclipse was complete. It was beautiful!

I saw a total eclipse of the sun once, in Mexico City in 1991. It was so gorgeous it actually made me gasp. This lunar eclipse was much less flashy, but equally lovely in a low key, heartwarming sort of way. It made me reflect on how our ancestors must have felt about the heavenly bodies. They had no way of knowing, like we do today, that the moon is basically a big, floating rock. How mysterious and awe-inspiring it must have been to see round objects in the sky

I noticed that the moon looks quite two-dimensional to my naked eye, but seen through binoculars it is much more spherical -- and more real. How much closer can a pair of cheap binoculars actually get you to the moon? Not much -- and yet, even that small amount makes a big difference in perception. That was something I wasn't expecting at all

And the eclipse, like many natural events, made me think once again about the endlessness of God's imagination. Ladybugs and lilies, DNA and diamonds, chlorophyll and caverns and cats' whiskers ... and satellites that turn blood red when eclipsed by the earth; and to think we haven't even scratched the surface of what exists in the universe.

Wow.

God, you seriously rock!

[The following are some good photos of the eclipse I found on the web.]

One photo of eclipse / Several photos of eclipse / More photos of eclipse

Vote Early, Vote Often

I'm afraid I didn't. Vote early, I mean, or often. Which I guess makes me a breaker of Chicagoland tradition. I am a disgrace to Cook County, Illinois! LOL

I did vote, though -- just once, and at about 3:3o p.m My assigned polling place, a building currently used as a church for the deaf, is only about 50 yards away from home. One other man was there voting at the time. I was offered a choice between a paper ballot and voting by touchscreen; I chose the computer. It was all very easy and over in less than 5 minutes.


Click to enlarge photo.

Dh Eddie went with me to take the photos. Hey, this is only the second time I have voted and the first time that I've done it in person, so it was a big deal! The only other time I had exercised this civic duty was in the 2004 presidential election, where I participated by a mail-in absentee ballot, as I lived in Mexico at the time.

The object I am holding in my hand in the picture below is a sticker that says "I voted!" I have my head covered because it was raining, lightly, at the time.

Click to enlarge photo.

So who did I vote for in this 2008 Primary? I chose to participate using the Republican ballot-- a fact, I understand, which is a matter of public record. More specific than that, I'm not tellin'!

Least Wanted

Yesterday dh Eddie and I visited one of my favorite museums, Intuit. One of the current exhibits (they change what they are showing about 3 times a year) is entitled Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, The Mark Michaelson Collection, and consists of old photographs taken of people "booked" at police stations across the country.



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These are unknown, everyday folks; no big criminals or other celebrities are shown. Some are funny looking, a few are kind of pathetic, and many, many of them are, well, ordinary-looking enough that they could be me ...


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The most recent photos in the exhibit date back to the 1960s, and as I looked I began wondering what had happened to these people after they were booked. Where did they end up? What became of their lives? Are any of them still living? Did they have children? What happened to their children and grandchildren? Alas, we will never know. But each one of those people, just like each and every person we come into contact with in our daily lives, has a story, regardless of whether we ever hear it or not -- which, while an obvious fact, can be quite startling to remember.


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If you have a chance to see the exhibit, do so. I highly recommend this museum in general: it's very small, highly funky, and appealing to both high brows and low. Every time I have visited the place I have come away delighted, enchanted, refreshed. [End of testimonial]

We couldn't use flash on the photos we took there, so the pictures didn't turn out as sharp as we wanted -- but I think that somehow the slight fuzziness adds interest to these photos.

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Reindeer Car

Okay, so one of my plans for 2008 is to update this blog at least twice a week. Here it is January 5th already, and this is just my first post ... buy hey, I'm here! Huffing and puffing and coming in the door at the very last minute, but I am here.

Beginning about a month before Christmas, dh Eddie and I started seeing a car that had little reindeer antlers and a bright red nose affixed to it. We figured its owners must live around here, since we saw it several times. It was the only car like that that we'd ever seen. The originality and whimsy of the thing gave me joy, but I didn't really think too much about the reindeer car until ...

... one day, about a week before Christmas, I was in Walgreen's and found they had some of these "car costumes" (as I later learned they are called) for sale -- and they were 50% off! They must not have been selling like hot cakes if they were on sale, but I snatched one up immediately, literally clasping it to my breast like a treasure while I waited in the check-out line. We put the antlers and red nose on the car a couple of days later and drove around like that until after New Year's. Call me silly, call me goofy, call me tacky, call me over the intercom, but riding in The Reindeer Car was exhiliarating. I feel very lucky to have a husband who not only isn't too embarrassed to have such a thing on the car, but actually enjoys it.

Here's a picture. The antlers would have shown up better against a less-busy background, but hey. (That's Eddie on the right.)