Abide With Me

Abide With Me, what a beautiful song. There's no date, going on the condition of the paper, I would guess somewhere around the 1930's or 40's. The words above the verses say "the immortal anthem original with the original 8 verses." The man who wrote Abide With Me was Henry Francis Lyte. He was born in Scotland in 1793 and studied at Trinity College in Dublin. He took Anglican holy orders in 1815. He was also a hymn writer and a poet.

Abide With Me is his best known hymn, and according to a traditional story, Lyte wrote it a few hours after conducting the final service at his church, which was probably September 5, 1847. More likely the hymn was written in July or August of that year.  Lyte himself created for the hymn what his biographer has disparaged as "a dull tune." When Hymns Ancient and Modern was published in 1861, the editor, William H. Monk—whose three-year-old daughter had just died, composed his own tune, "Eventide," for Lyte's Poem.

A couple cool things about the song, it was said to be on the lips of Edith Cavell when she faced a German firing squad. It also has been sung at the The Football Association Challenge Cup, or FA Cup, finals since 1927. Pretty cool. 

This is one of my favorite hymns. It doesn't matter what you believe, or what you think about religion, this is a beautiful song.

Mussolini visits Berlin

The caption says Mussolini will visit Berlin as Adolf Hitlers guest - and celebrated as triumph of.  Yeah, I'm hearing ya. That last part lacks the correct English translation, blame it on Google Translate, not yours truly. I am trying people, I promise.

This is actually really quite small, 5 inches in length and 3 inches wide. I cannot express how much I love finding things from WWII. And here is the news, the now today, look who's going to Berlin, news. Amazing.

Bringing up WWII with me could take pages of pages of my waxing on about battles, books, theories, changes in the world and, and, and.... So I am not going to go there. We all know the history. And here is a piece of it, laying on the table, right next to me. Serious geeking out moment for me, in case you hadn't noticed.

Sad Little Flower

Barely there. Practically a glorified twig. And yet someone placed it between the pages of a book. Perhaps sentimental value? Given by a lover or friend? It's really quite small, about 8 inches in length, but so thin and brittle. You can see some of the color coming through, some yellows and oranges. Where is ET when you need him? Remember that scene where ET reaches out and touches the flowers in the pot and brings them back to life? I bet these sad little flowers would bloom beautifully with some extraterrestrial help.

Danish Stamps July 1957

Stamps!  I do adore finding stamps. I love all the boats and ships on these, and they are decently old, 1957. Nothing that will have stamps collectors around the world begging for me to sell them away for millions of dollars, but they are in very good condition. If I just hold on to them, perhaps my great-great-great grandchild will thank me someday.

I honestly never saw the joy in collecting stamps until I started finding them in my books. Now each stamp is a small work of art for me to enjoy. Some of them are down right beautiful. I even enjoy the silly ones. I have also learned so much about Denmark and the royalty by looking up who's face adorns the stamps I find.

I do sometimes feel a twinge of sadness for the person who placed them in a book for safe keeping. I am only hopeful that they will be grateful that the stamps will be appreciated by their new owner. I solemnly swear to not put these stamps in a book and forget about them. They will be well preserved for the future generations. So let it be written, so let it be done. Yup, I'm quoting Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments. I have mentioned him before, but you can't say enough about a man who can rock a skirt.

Lieutenant Henrik Hans Nikolaj Haar - Warrior

This is what looks like an obituary for one Lieutenant Henrik Hans Nikolaj Harr. The first line in it refers to a warrior showing up. Our dear Henrik was only 28 years old. How many of these types of obituaries have we had through history? Men and women who serve their countries in the military, never making it back home again? They truly are warriors.

I tried to find out how our young warrior passed away and started my search for wars that may have been happening in 1865. Here is the depressing thing. There are so many wars going on throughout the world at that time, how would I know which one he may or may not have been in? I found a website that literally has you scroll down, year by year, showing every war, who was fighting, who won, and who lost. So many wars! I guess just the biggies get put in the history books, because I haven't heard of even half of these. How depressing. There is always a chance our Henrik died of some other cause, not in a battle of sorts. No matter how our warrior died, he went far too soon.

 I have this crazy concept of heaven, why not spill it here as Henrik has reminded me he is there. I won't give you the full version, that would be far too much information. Suffice it to say, in my heaven we have art classes from Rembrandt, listen to Plato and Einstein lecture, travel to any time and place and see what we missed. Eat, and never get fat. Hear about historical events from the people who were actually there. Snap your fingers and you're on the beach, snap again and you're having a crepe on the streets in Paris. Eat, and never get fat.  See all of your family and friends, and make new ones. Meet the people in your family tree from the beginning of time! Pretty cool, right?  That's it in a nutshell, but I think you get the idea.

Fall Flowers Bookmark

I called this fall flowers, but truth is, I'm not entirely sure what these are. I want to call them leaves, but those brown, stem like things...they have me guessing. The brown curly lines and the white lines are actually little beads. The back is kind of silky, soft, and starting to fray. It's about 5 inches long and 1.5 wide.

I always feel kind of obligated to blog about the bookmarks. Someone put time and effort into it, seems a shame to just stuff it away and not appreciate it. Every time I see one I just wonder what their lives must have been like to have the time, patience, and enthusiasm to make these bookmarks. There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley, they are all laying around in the parlor doing a lot of nothing. It's right before Bingley shows up to...well, I hate to ruin it, but if you know, you know.

These are the scenes that pop into my mind when I find a bookmark such as this. Bunch of girls, no TV, no Internet, no jobs, and no school. Just time to paint, read, and stitch things together. And yes, I have seen and own the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. I've seen Greer Garson version from 1940 with Laurence Olivier, hello gorgeous. And I have read the book. More than once.