dual personalities

What with moving office, making a quick trip to Burlington, VT, and starting the last two days of my digital history workshop, I’ve had a busy week. Despite the activity, I don’t have much to report. Although the Vermont countryside was lovely, Burlington was way too crowded and built up. The heavy traffic did not make me feel adventurous, but I did manage to visit a couple of antique stores, and at one called (fittingly) Rusty Relics I found a little trinket tray that matches the heart-shaped box my Aunt Susanne gave me decades ago.

When I needed a break from heaving books around and driving across the state, I started re-reading a young adult novel from 1959 called Master of Morgana that I gave to one of my sons years ago.

The book is set on the Isle of Skye and involves a sixteen year old boy’s efforts to find out what caused his sure-footed brother to fall into a gorge. As the brother languishes in a coma, our hero takes over his job among the fishermen, at least one of whom must be to blame for the ‘accident’. Perilous adventures ensue. No one writes this type of book anymore. The protagonist is intelligent, resourceful and upright, but not superhuman, and although the villains are bad, they are not psychotic or perverted. High-tech gadgetry and physics-defying stunts do not figure at all; coastal salmon fishing and smuggling do. The story unfolds at a reasonable pace and all the characters and events seem plausible and real. I’m enjoying the book so much that I ordered Storm over Skye by the same author, and I am really looking forward to its arrival.

Not bad for a busy week…

*Andrew Lang, “Lone Places of the Deer”

Well, I’m in kind of a funk today. Sometimes it feels like certain things should be easier. You know, like paying a social media platform to advertise. Or buying furniture. But no. And sometimes, on top of all that, you get emails like this.

We can all just assume that Nordstrom’s algorithm is way off and NOT that they’ve heard me making jokes about how sweatpants are all that fit me right now. Right? Sigh.

Did you get my reference? Because at work, I’m always making Mean Girls references and no one gets them. To the point that I get emails like this from out of state program partners during conference calls.

In other news, this happened yesterday.

We are all so lucky to have local news that send push alerts like this.

To update on my mother’s blog post from Monday, I did eventually get my new bed put together. And I got rid of my old bed on Facebook Marketplace in less than an hour. I also got a new rug for my room. It brings me joy–even if the upholstery color isn’t quite what I expected on the bed and so I’m not quite sure the two go together.

It’s all still a work in progress–but aren’t we all.

Once again, on Monday, my mother had a quote from Freddy B on the blog and so last night, I took one of my Buechner books off the shelf and settled in for a little insight into my soul.

“And God knows we have all had our wilderness and our temptations too–not the temptation to work evil probably, because by grace or by luck we don’t have what it takes for more than momentary longings in that direction, but the temptation to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worse one–to settle for niceness and usefulness and busyness instead of holiness; to settle for plausibility and eloquence instead of for truth.”

Frederick Buechner, The Two Stories

As usual, it didn’t disappoint.

After 20+ years in a second floor office, I am moving down to the first floor. I’ll spare you the details about why I’m doing this; suffice it to say that I volunteered because no one else would. I went to work yesterday to prepare for the move only to discover that I — old lady that I am — have to move everything except the furniture by myself. Reader, that includes a career’s accumulated books! I don’t have any current photos of my office, but let’s look at this one from 2013. Notice the large bookcase to the right of the desk

A couple of years later, I added a matching one to the left of the desk to replace to the little one. Those two bookcases are in addition to the five, similarly sized sections of floor to ceiling shelves built in to the wall opposite the desk.

In total I’m moving the contents of seven, floor-to-ceiling bookcases plus sundry belongings. Lest you think I’m a hoarder, know that I am discarding as many books as possible along the way. I am well aware that one day, like my DP, I will retire, and when I do, I will have to find room somewhere at home for all the stuff in my office.

On the whole, I’m facing the task cheerfully and with determination. Yesterday, armed with a small video cart, I schlepped all the books from the built-in shelves and loaded them onto the shelves in the new office. Admittedly, by the end of the day I could barely move, and I feel stiff this morning, but today, I will tackle the two free-standing cases and the contents of the filing cabinets. (The maintenance people claim they can only move empty filing cabinets, which is hogwash but what can a girl do?)

Anyway, here are a couple of lessons to learn from my experience: (1) do not volunteer to do something unless you know in advance how it will be carried out; (2) it may feel as if good deeds get punished, but we don’t do them for reward, so don’t complain; (3) undertake every task cheerfully and remember that “in hard work there is always something gained” (Proverbs 14:23).

Well, I have to say that my mother’s review of the weekend was excellent–but it did put one thing a tad lightly. Yes, it was a super fun weekend, full of super fun things. But she said the arrival of the twins cranked up the pace of our adventures 100%. I would go further and say 1000%. I never cease to be amazed by their energy.

At one point after dinner, we were attempting to listen to music and Lottie was feeling disappointed in me because I wouldn’t play with her (I was hosting) and so she and Wheeler Boy started taking books and DVDs off the bookshelves in the sunroom. I didn’t mind–it entertained them and I don’t have a giant bag of Beanie Babies like Mamu.

When they started going for the yearbooks, though, I had to step in and say no, those needed to stay on the shelf. This prompted Lottie to ask me to read to her, offering me this book.

The twins are clearly very sophisticated. I had to say no, not today. Perhaps in 15 years. I’ve written about Joan before (and of course, so has my mother) and my post had many funny lines (okay two) about people who like Joan. But today, when I was paging through, I couldn’t help thinking that she’d be cancelled so hard these days. Clearly, all of her fans haven’t actually read much, if any, of her work.

“Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible comforts.”

On Self-Respect, 1961

The essay goes on to reference Indians being “hostile” and the idea that there will always be hostile Indians. Four years later she wrote:

“Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.”

On Morality, 1965

I mean, hello. She wore cool sunglasses, though, so I guess it’s okay.

PS the title comes from “On Self-Respect.”