Messiah 1: Overture

The first movement of Messiah is an instrumental overture, so it has no text.

Messiah Countdown

Tomorrow I am starting a Messiah quote-a-day countdown till Christmas. I thought you would like to know a little about the Messiah. It starts with prophecies of Jesus' first coming, and then his birth and ministry, followed by his death and resurrection. Then it talks about the preaching of God's Word, and ends with prophecies of Jesus second coming.

The Messiah was an oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frederick Handel. Charles Jennens selected the text from the King James Bible, and another version common at the time. The first performance was on April 13, 1742 in Dublin. It was well received there, but it was not as popular in London for quite a while.

The text of the Messiah is entirely from the Bible. Sometimes when I am reading the Bible, I come across verses that I know from the Messiah, and the music starts running through my head. I was reading the Revelation Record recently and it mentioned a lot of the verses were familiar to me from the Messiah.

I really hope you like it. The posts will go up once a day, but I will still keep up on my regular posting as well.

Source: "Handel" Encyclopædia Britannica ("First Published in 1768 by A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland"), the 1968 bicentennial edition.

Polyhedrons and Hawks

Yesterday I was making polyhedrons out of paper to help me with my math. I made an icosahedron, and it turned out pretty nice so I thought I would post it.

Then today I was looking out the window, and I saw a hawk! It didn't look like any hawk we'd ever seen before, as it had yellow legs, and was rather small. Benedick took a bunch of pictures of him, so here are some.

The hawk.

I thought this one showed his chest nicely.

Here he is on our chaise lounge.

Mom thought this one was a nice silhouette. 

San Diego Master Chorale

Mom was given two tickets to the San Diego Master Chorale, and she took me with her when she went last Saturday. My favorite piece was 'Under the Willow Tree' by Samuel Barber. I was lots of fun and I took my pets with me. I hope I can go again sometime.

Tabby

Laddy

The program

Tabby and Laddy enjoying the program.

My Petco Adventure

Mom took me to Petco earlier today, and while we were there we saw two cats up for adoption that were kind of an apricot/golden color. They are brothers that seemed to get along very well, because when we were looking at them they were laying snuggled together with their paws around each other. There was also a cat that Mom said looked like a cat her family had when she was younger. Then we looked at the parakeets, and there was one green one that was hanging upside down on the roof of the cage. It looked like it wanted to get down, but it didn't want to fly. It made its way to the side of the cage where there was a thermostat kind of thing, and tried to perch on it, but it only came out about a half inch from the wall so he had one foot holding onto the thermostat, and the other one holding onto the roof. Then he gave up on perching on it, and went back totally to the roof. Then he finally flew down to the floor of the cage. We tried to spot him among the other twenty or so parakeets, but almost all of them were green so we couldn't be sure which one was him. Then we saw one that looked like him, and acted like him, so we figured that that one was it. I hope that someday I can get a parakeet.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Happy one month birthday, dear blog. I was so surprised one month ago when Mara asked me if I would like to have a blog. Then before I knew it, you came into my life. Even though it was rather surprising at the time, I have had a lot of fun with you, composing posts, improving my writing, and of course, receiving comments. I am looking forward to having lots more fun together.

Rainbows and Rice Pudding

We saw this really pretty rainbow last Thursday. It was so big Mom couldn't take a picture of the whole thing, but we still got a really nice picture.

I also made rice pudding all by myself yesterday. It was so good that this is what it looked like 10 minutes after it came out of the oven.