In honor of the last weekend in August, here is a picture of our dear mother in a bathing cap in the water of Damariscotta Lake, Maine sometime in the 1950s. At least that is where I always thought this photo was taken. There is no writing on the back. I might be wrong.
I wish I was there now.
*Goodbye to Summer by Louis Armstrong
This picture of our mother circa 1930 at “The Farm” in New Hampshire should bring a smile to your face.
And we could all use that, right?
“I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.”
―Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
My scholarly dual personality is too modest to tell you that her book has just been published!
It was six years in the making, but now it is out!
Gregory Urwin of the University of Oklahoma Press writes:
I am pleased to announce the release of Volume 55 in the Campaigns and Commanders Series that I edit for the University of Oklahoma Press — The Campaigns of Sargon II: King of Assyria, 721-705 B.C. by Sarah C. Melville.
If you think you know the Assyrians from fleeting references in the Old Testament, think again. Melville has plunged deep into the sources, which are more extensive than most of us would think. She mastered Akkaidian, the language of the Assyrians, so she could read the clay, gold, silver, copper, lead, and lapis lazuli tablets on which these people recorded their history, along with inscriptions on freestanding steles, natural rock formations, walls, doors, thresholds, and bull colossi of palaces. She also deciphered palace reliefs, consulted archaeological studies, and reviewed the documentation left by the Assyrians’ enemies.
The result is a history that depicts the Assyrians as a much more complex race of warriors. They could be cruel in war, but they devised much more sophisticated means to hold their empire together than beheading defeated warriors and sending conquered peoples into exile. I found the brand of geo-politics that Sargon II practiced to be surprisingly modern.
At a time when ISIS fanatics are attempting to obliterate the pre-Muslim history of the Middle East and south Asia, the appearance of Sarah Melville’s book could not be more timely. Impeccable research and a lively writing style makes this the definitive look at the Assyrian way of war.
It is with no little pride that I see this volume take its place in my series. Part of that pride rests on the fact that Sarah is also the first woman historian to publish with Campaigns Commanders. It was about high time that happened…
So get your copy of The Campaigns of Sargon II today! I have mine and I look forward to finding out all about Sargon II.
On the fiction side of things, I finished the Grantchester book this weekend and also re-read Olive Kitteridge, the wonderful novel by Elizabeth Strout. If you have not read this great book, I highly recommend it.
Enjoy your Wednesday!
Last night we went to the see the Cardinals play. It was seriously the most boring game ever.
We left at the end of the 7th inning. When we got home we learned that the Cards came back in the 9th and won 5-4! So typical. Oh we of little faith.
Now the younguns are heading back to Maryland. Sad face. 😦
Daughter #2 and Nate arrive today for a long weekend of celebrating in flyover country. We even have tickets to the Cardinals game on Monday night! It’s my flyover university’s first ever Night at the Ballpark–should be very interesting.
I hope Fred Bird makes an appearance and that he dances with our chancellor! I mean, how great would that be?
The weather isn’t even going to be that bad.
Meanwhile my friend Gary has finished stripping the wallpaper off the front hall, stairway and upstairs hall and painting it all. It looks fantastic. He even hung up my pictures so the OM would not have to engage in a battle of hammering to do so.
I will also note that Saturday is the birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Poet Laureate of Great Britain. You might spend some time this weekend brushing up on your Tennyson poetry. It is pretty great. Here’s a section of “Ulysses” to get you started:
I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fadesFor ever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains: but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Go ahead: follow knowledge like a sinking star! Shine in use! Use it or lose it! Have a good weekend!
*The Carpenters, “Close to You”
Friday again. What are your plans? This weekend I will be finishing Mr. Churchill’s Secretary written by Elizabeth Nel in 1958. She was one of Winston Churchill’s secretaries during WWII working tirelessly behind the scenes from 1941-45.
A friend at work loaned it to me and I have been enjoying it very much. It is full of intimate details only a woman would notice.
It was a new experience to travel in a battleship. It seemed like a floating city, and we were glad to see notices for our benefit: THIS WAY FORWARD, TO THE WARDROOM, etc., which must have infuriated the proper denizens. Ham and I shared a vast cabin astern; it seemed right over the propellers, and the shaking and roaring was continuous. The office was a little farther forward, but the Prime Minister’s quarters were just under the bridge and miles on toward the bow. To walk there took at least ten minutes. Four flights of steps had to be mounted, and the continual updraft was an embarrassment to one’s skirts, particularly as Royal Marines were stationed on duty at every turn.
Times have changed so much since this hard-working, patriotic young women worked so diligently for her country and for a man who liked to work in his pajamas in bed in the morning. She didn’t begrudge him this eccentricity because she knew how hard he worked. She thought nothing of it. And, of course, there was nothing to think about it.
I also have to pick out wallpaper for my dining room–an exciting prospect!
Obviously, I am leaning toward the chinoiserie…
Also, I forgot (!) to wish the boy and daughter #3 a happy 4th anniversary! A belated happy anniversary to a lovely couple!
And, hey, another lovely couple is getting hitched–daughter #2 and Nate! Date TBA, but probably a year from now.
Yippeeee! Lots of good things to look forward to in the months to come.
There is a funny new online Total Lacrosse video starring the boy. (Your mom thinks you’re cool.) Check it out!
I laughed out loud. But then, I am easily amused.
Enjoy your Tuesday!
We return to Fat Baby Friday with a baby who was always quite a skinny-pants, but whatever. This photo was taken twenty-five years ago in the summer of 1991 when daughter #2 was learning to walk with the aid of her ever-helpful siblings. She is pretty excited.
And what about those Black-eyed Susans?
So do you have plans for the weekend? I am venturing to scenic Arrow Rock, MO, a village in Saline County, Missouri which has been designated a National Historic Landmark because of its association with Westward Expansion, the Santa Fe Trail and the artist George Caleb Bingham.
I am going with my adventurous friends Becky and Carla and we have tickets to see a play at the historic Lyceum Theater, a professional repertory theater that has been producing “Broadway-caliber plays and musicals” since 1960.
We should have a super fun time, if the heat doesn’t deflate us too much. But what am I saying? We are flyover natives and we do not let a little heat stop us from having fun!
Here is a nostalgic mid-week look back at our grandfather Bunker Cameron holding a garpike in the 1920s. Bunker liked nothing better than fishing and he was quite accomplished. He was a member of a private club on North Hero Island (or was it South Hero?) on Lake Champlain and spent a lot of time there over the years. He went to Florida and did some deep sea fishing, but his heart was always in his home state of Vermont.
Although I do not fish, I would like nothing better than to be on North Hero Island in Vermont right now. However, I am in hot and sticky flyover country–C’est la vie!
Par for the course.
And apropos of something: “It is better to sit in a boat thinking about God than to sit in church thinking about fishing.” As someone (not Thoreau) somewhere said.
*Henry David Thoreau
All my weekend plans were dashed, because Southwest Airlines canceled daughter #1’s flight and there was nothing else available until Sunday night that didn’t cost $1500.
I tried to rally myself, but was pretty unsuccessful. The OM and I ventured out to Franklin County to stock up on fireworks, which we did, but it was in a rainstorm, so, not much fun.
In fact, the whole weekend was a washout, literally and figuratively. Indeed, it rained all weekend.
Saturday night I watched 21 Jump Street AND 22 Jump Street in a sad attempt to amuse myself.
Channing Tatum did the trick, but the effects were fleeting. Sunday night I tried again with My Blue Heaven (1990) and Uncle Buck (1989).
Sigh. Monday morning I got up to watch the V.P. 4th of July Parade on television, only to find out that it had taken place on Saturday morning. Oops.
Thank goodness the boy and daughter #3 came over for the obligatory 4th of July bar-b-que.
We ate burgers and watermelon and then we drove over to the high school to watch the local flyover fireworks display.
When we got home we shot off the fireworks we had bought on Saturday. I felt much better–alls well that ends well, as they say.
And you know what else they say:
Depression is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.*
Now it is Tuesday and the work week has begun. Oh joy.
*The quote is from the poem “The Fury of Rain Storms” by Anne Sexton.
dual personalities 