So daughter #1 is coming home tomorrow for a little flyover R&R. She is also celebrating a big birthday.
Good times ahead.
P.S. We must note that Joan Rivers has died, but I couldn’t say it better than daughter #1 did on her blog. RIP, Joan.
“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.”
–Michael Cunningham, The Hours
This is so true, don’t you think? The Hours, which I read over the weekend, is full of such truth. I liked it very much.
I remember going to see the movie when it came out back in 2002 and liking it very much. There was some major mis-casting, but I liked Meryl Streep as Clarissa a lot.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
Not surprisingly, I liked the book better.
Indeed, there are not many instances where the movie is an improvement over the book. Ben-Hur (1959) comes to mind.
Some movies actually measure up to the book: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) does. And although the author did not think so, I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) is as good as the book.
This would make an interesting blogpost topic no doubt, but…back to what I’m reading.
I picked up Malcolm Cowley’s And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade off a shelf at home–I think it was my father’s copy from 1977–and started that. I like reading about writers. Cowley is one of those guys who knew everybody and has a lot to say about them. He spent most of his career as a literary critic and editor and never really made it as a fiction writer himself. He did win a National Book Award for this book, writing about other writers.
I seem to remember thinking that he had a little chip on his shoulder, that he always managed to cast some aspersion on whomever he is writing about, that he makes himself more important than he probably was. But I have not found that to be the case reading this book now. Perhaps I am thinking of Exiles Return which he wrote in 1933 and then revised in 1951. Perhaps he had mellowed by 1977 when he wrote And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade. We do tend to do that, don’t we?
So what are you reading?
As if you didn’t already know, I’ll remind you that on this day in 1802 William Wordsworth composed the sonnet titled “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”.
Westminster Bridge as it appeared in 1808 by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832)
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Now you’ll have something to discuss at the water cooler! Do they still have water coolers?
Joseph Nicholls 1742
Daniel Turner
Henry Pether 1862
In honor of Labor Day, some wisdom from Frederick Buechner:
IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
—Wishful Thinking
Discuss among yourselves.
Sigh. August is over and with it goes the summer. School starts and we begin that snowball slide to Christmas and the end of the year.
Well, I did meet some of my August goals.
I (almost) finished my rehab of an upstairs bathroom. The painting is done. It is nearly impossible to take a picture in a bathroom, but perhaps this gives you an idea. I am pleased.
I caught up with several old pals for a few meals and conversation this month. (Once school gets underway, lunch out is impossible.)
Not much to check off the list I suppose, but meanwhile work and home continue to run fairly smoothly. Meals are made (such as they are), sheets are changed and new rolls of toilet paper appear. Sometimes that is all we can aspire to I think.
It’s time to appreciate/enjoy the last blooms of summer before those oak leaves begin to fall in earnest. Oy.
Enjoy your day off if you have one today! Appropriate movies to watch might be: Norma Rae, How Green Was My Valley, The Molly Maguires, Silkwood, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront.
Well, appropriate maybe, but I can’t say I’m in the mood. Any suggestions?
* “September Song” by Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill
dual personalities 