The Gryphon's Feather Studio

Be a Looky Lou- Video

 

 

heart song tonight

Touching my heart as I sing to the baby:

 

Simple Gifts" was written by Elder Joseph Brackett .   He wrote the music when he first joined the Shakers at Gorham, Maine, when his father's farm helped to form the nucleus of a new Shaker settlement. He later wrote the lyrics while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848. 

These are the lyrics to his one-verse song:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

 

Several Shaker manuscripts indicate that this is a "Dancing Song" or a "Quick Dance." The references to "turning" in the last two lines have been identified as dance instructions.

The song was largely unknown outside of Shaker communities, until it became world famous- thanks to its use in Aaron Copland's score for Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring, first performed in 1944.

And tonight, as I sat in the quiet dark, singing along to the lullabies on the cd in the player in Sunny's room, Simple Gifts came round and was just right.

Sent from my iPhone

Blessings

Today I am counting my blessings!  Thanksgiving is headed our way here in the US, and while it hasn't ever been my favorite holiday, I am a big fan of gratitude as a way of improving my outlook on life. 

My favorite holiday movie of all time, White Christmas, has a song I love and actually sing to my littlest at night when she is struggling to find her way to sleep.

 

 

One of my blessings this year has been the great response to my online class offerings. I thank everyone who is joining in the fun! In gratitude, I am giving my November class an extra week of information.  (five weeks of November's fun.)

Here's what we are working on this week:

  

Cupped in my hands are my blessings- my family- my husband and my three littles.  

Feel free to join us. You have plenty of time. I still have people signing on to the first class I had in October as well as joing us in November. I am renaming October's class to Point & Shoot: One, and November's class will become Point & Shoot: Two.  They will remain available.  And, yes, they are different from each other. 

We will keep going in December with Point & Shoot: Three.  I will be adding in special options for working art journal pages around the holidays because we take lots of photos at those times. Also to come will be the much asked about painted papers class- I'll be teaching every way I can of applying paint, print and pattern to pages with acrylics and some other supplies.  In that class, I'll be including a couple of sets of bookbinding instructions.  It will run mid December through January.  More about the new classes soon. 

Teesha has a journal-making video up

GO here and look!