dual personalities

We made it home after our weekend away! I took a long nap on Sunday afternoon and couldn’t help but laugh that I really need to relax after my 3.5 days of relaxing. But of course, sleeping in other beds and gallivanting about always wears one out. We kept things very low key, but I had mis-assessed just how low-key museum-going and antique shopping would feel. All that standing and walking is really actually medium-key at least.

Museum District BnB — we recommend!

We stayed in a BnB right across from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, because the VMFA was really our main attraction. We caught the last days of an Edward Hopper exhibit and spent the whole day there on Friday. I’ll write more about Hopper on Thursday, but overall we had a lovely day. We took a long lunch break in the café to hang out with an old professor of mine, and it was just a wonderful way to break up wandering through the galleries.

We ate two really delicious dinners out at restaurants around town — DN always plans ahead and makes reservations. Sometimes (lately) I have a hard time with meals because I really need big snacks every 1-2 hours, so a big heavy dinner is a lot, and then I’m still liable to get hungry a couple hours later. Well, I did my best on Friday night — a lighter entree of scallops followed by dessert. Have you ever had an affogato? It is ice cream in espresso. When it melts, it basically becomes a coffee milkshake. I was very happy.

Fondue was another story. Delicious, but filling… I had to hobble to the car after this!

As I mentioned, we went to Fredericksburg on Saturday. I went to 5 antique stores (with a lunch break in between) and only bought something at the very last one! But it was still fun to poke around and take it easy in a small town that I love. We continued our routine of taking an afternoon siesta from 3-5 p.m. or so. What a life!

An inspiring selection of vintage Pyrex

Back to the salt mines this week. I will be very, very busy at work for the rest of Spring, as we are in the midst of recruitment season for the next class of freshmen, as well as hiring season for our next cohort of faculty. Whew. I’ll survive one day at a time… and maybe have an affogato when I need one.

It’s still winter here. I know other people in other states are still just as cold and snow-bound, so I’m not complaining. I’m just explaining why I haven’t done anything notable for the last week. I subscribe to Kenneth Graham’s wise statement in The Wind in the Willows,

“No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”

Staying home in winter seems eminently sensible to me. So, aside from the requirements of work, I haven’t done much but read, fool around on the internet, and flip channels. It’s still winter alright.

My computer surfing did uncover a few interesting sites. For example, this post about Jimmy Stewart’s military career is quite wonderful. We could use a few more men like him right now. Speaking of men, please read this mother’s plea to stop teaching boys that they are toxic. She’s right! I also found this handy site where you can find links to free e-books, photos, movies and online courses. They seem to have quite a good selection, although I have not had the opportunity to make use of their offerings yet. Incidentally, while looking for an illustration for my Wind in the Willows quote, I came across this sensible post decrying a new, abridged edition that leaves the certain chapters out of the book. Indeed, there ought to be a law against messing with the works of authors who are dead and cannot defend themselves!

I try to avoid politics like the plague, but while reading the second installment of Imogen Robertson’s Westerman and Crowther series set in 1781 London, I came across a couple of sentences that forcibly reminded me of our current crop of politicians, both male and female: “He was one of those strange hollow men. I do not think he existed in his own self at all. He was all light reflected.” Naturally, that reminded me of T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad and before long I was digging out “The Hollow Men” and Heart of Darkness, and contemplating watching Apocalypse Now.

And THAT got me thinking about how fortunate I am to have been educated in the humanities, despite its being under siege from STEM (and subject also to treachery from within). I’d have to agree with Philip Roth:

“In my parents’ day and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it’s the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it’s the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can’t learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions.”  (The Human Stain)

Whew! This is quite the meandering post. Please indulge me. This is what happens in winter and when we give our minds free range. Try it!

This morning, DN and I are starting off for a long weekend away from work to take it easy. We will spend two nights in Richmond, VA and a night in Fredericksburg, VA on our way back.

Here we are in 2017, the last time we visited RVA:

We think it is the perfect quick getaway… just a couple hours’ drive, with plenty to do in a low-key setting. This time, we are upgrading from an AirBnB to a real BnB, so I’m looking forward to the nicer touches. I decided my “condition” merits such comforts.

Well, we cant drive south on I-95 without doing some antiquing, so we will spend Saturday in Fredericksburg. I’ve been several times, and I always find lots of good treasures. I will report back on Monday!

Well, guess who had Monday off and forgot that today was Wednesday, not Tuesday? That’s right, Daughter #1. So apologies for the late-in-the-day post. I hope that logging on to the internet and finding no fresh post didn’t set your day off on a downward trend.

As you may know, I was in Washington, DC last week for a work-related conference. The first two days I was in town, it was lovely and sunny and the city looked nice and bustling. The second two days featured rain and cold winds and had the opposite effect.

The fancy event of the conference was held at the Museum of Women in the Arts, which was filled with lots of important art including Frida Kahlo’s self portrait dedicated to Trotsky and the below:

The joke is too obvious. Maybe that’s the point?

The best part of the trip (and one of the main reasons I wanted to go at all) was getting to see my sister, DN, and their lovely apartment. Sleeping in a guest room (!) and not on an air mattress in the living room was a major upgrade and much appreciated. They are wonderful hosts and it was a delight to spend time with them on their turf.

Of course after almost four full days in the nation’s capital, I was ready to return to Missouri’s small-town capital, the land of no traffic and open skies. We may not have copious farm-to-table restaurant options, but we do have two Burger Kings.

*Simpsons Reference. 

As expected, we kept our Valentine’s Day simple. I purchased pink tapers at the hardware store (very romantic — DN asked if they were Advent candles, haha) and he picked up fancy cheeses and tulips at the grocery store. I made an easy but showy dessert, the recipe for which is perfectly portioned for two. And I ironed my tablecloth that has the most red and pink in it.

All in all, we had a lovely evening that centered on enjoying one another’s company. How nice!

The rest of the weekend mostly featured reading and lounging about. I recently picked up The Scarlet Letter and have just started re-reading it, starting with its prefatory “The Custom-House” sketch. While I do love the genius of Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne is, by contrast, appealingly easy to read. Hawthorne feels like a kindred spirit.

From a trip to Salem, MA in 2013

I just loved how he describes getting an office job after several years of co-mingling with the New England literature gang:

It contributes greatly toward a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. . . . I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreary brethren of Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtile influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearth-stone; — it was time, at length, that I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto little appetite. Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott.

Poor Bronson Alcott–ouch! (But also LOL.)

Hawthorne also writes about later losing his job at the Custom-House after Zachary Taylor was elected President (and subsequently fired a number of political appointees).

But who can see an inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell!

The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom, or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident that has befallen him.

Always a good reminder, eh? Hawthorne’s “making the best” is that he returned to the literary scene and wrote The Scarlet Letter, and we should be very glad for it. I’m only a bit into the novel proper, but I have a feeling it will “hit a little different,” as they say, than it did in college. Hester Prynne is quite the woman.

*All quotes from “The Custom-House”

I had a hellish week full of interminable, stressful meetings. By Thursday night I was exhausted and on the verge of quitting all my community and work-related obligations (I may yet do so). Then my sweet DH gave me this little gem of a book for Valentine’s Day and my equanimity has been restored.

After working as a harassed GP in Glasgow for several years, Dr. Alexander moves his family (at that point a wife and four young boys) to Eday, a small island in the Orkneys off the northeast tip of Scotland. It is a beautiful, barren and windswept island of peat bogs, fields and scattered farms.

On sunny days it is the most benign place on earth, but when a gale blows, winds can reach 125 mph and the waves pummel the shore with ferocious force!

Everyone knows everyone else and pitches in to do whatever is necessary. With no support staff, hospital or even a pharmacy on the island, and the nearest help a plane-ride away in Kirkwall, Dr. Alexander quickly learns to improvise. In typical Scottish fashion, he soon finds himself not only treating the Island’s inhabitants and sometimes their animals, but leading church services, because the minister, who serves several parishes on different islands, cannot make the trip in the winter. Who more qualified than the doctor to replace him?

I’m about halfway through and I must say that this book is as good as a vacation. It is such a relief to read something low-key about nice people being decent to each other. It also brings back fond memories of my own trip to the Orkneys back in the early 1980s. I visited the main island and saw such sites as the ruined Earl’s palace at Kirkwall,

the Ring of Brodgar standing stones,

and Skara Brae, the Neolithic village.

It was a cool trip. Come Monday I will still have to face micromanaging administrators and unhappy colleagues but I will do it with a renewed sense of perspective. Not everyone in the world is crazy or looking to control what other people do. Be comforted!

*Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

None of the photos are my own. I retrieved them all via Google image.

I have always been a Sally Brown type — prone to a bit of mushiness. This year, DN and I do not have any big plans for Valentine’s Day, but I might make a special dessert or something. Maybe we will light the tapers on the dining room table. I will probably tell him I think he’s cute.

Of course, Valentine’s Day need not be for lovey-dovey couples only! I remember growing up we’d have Valentine’s Day parties at home. Well before I had a beau, my mother would decorate the dinner table and give us little gifts to celebrate. It was something fun and festive in the middle of a dreary month.

In retrospect, I think that motherly attention went a long way. I always felt loved. Well, whatever the source, I hope everyone catches a little bit of mushiness this weekend! ❤