“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
A new calendar page:
crazy weather:
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
– Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926
It was just days ago that these were under 12″ of snow!
spring cleaning and DIY projects:
flowers on my desk at work from spring gardens:
birthdays:
New spring dresses:
April is Laurence Olivier month on TCM. His movies are featured every Wednesday this month.
Set your DVR tomorrow for Sleuth (1972), A Little Romance (1979) and Clash of the Titans (1981).
And, of course, April is this:
Hope your April is off to a good start!
It is Monday morning. Need some morning inspiration? Here is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing Richard Strauss’ “Beim Schlafengehen” from “Vier Letzte Lieder”. It is one of those pieces that is impossible to hear without choking up (as I did this morning). But it is inspiring and beautiful. Listen to the whole thing.
Remember Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in Peter Weir’s great movie The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)? Billy listens to this music obsessively during an important juncture of the story. I remember buying the Strauss LP after seeing the movie and listening to it over and over. Yes. Nerd. C’est la vie.
Lately I’ve been itching to do something creative and when I came across this lovely (small and easy) sampler by Charlotte Lyons,
which I found via one of my favorite blogs, Soulemama , I just knew I had the perfect project. You can find the sampler pictured above and other designs at Ms. Lyons’ Etsy shop. Everything is very reasonably priced.
My current plan is to choose embroidery silk colors to match my downstairs bathroom wallpaper, which you will recall looks like this,
and eventually hang the framed embroidery there. The blogosphere is full of amazing, dynamic and crafty women who produce incredible things at the speed of light. I represent the other side of the coin — those who are slow, untalented, and disorganized, but who nevertheless appreciate beautiful things and love the idea of having a perfect house even if the reality eludes us. And I’m going to start with my little sampler — just as soon as I get around to it!
Fat Baby Friday returns! Here’s a picture of my life partner circa 1955. Poor kid looks like a turtle trying to right himself.
Here he is a year or so later bright-eyed and ready for boarding school. Sunrise, sunset. Where do the years go?
Have a great weekend!
I have always loved this illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith (1863 – 1935). I love the cranky little girl who has been sent to her room. I can relate. Her body language. Her droopy socks and carelessly dropped books. She is not a happy camper. And I am right there with that doll in time out. And isn’t that a wonderful wicker chair and pillow?
Smith was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Good Housekeeping and the Ladies’ Home Journal. She also illustrated many books, notably A Child’s Garden of Verses and The Seven Ages of Childhood.
Here is a selection of her wonderful pictures on Pinterest. Funnily enough, my favorite is not included, but aren’t they great?
Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth.
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;And she was a courtezan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.
–Ezra Pound
Yesterday was the birthday of the late great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune (April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo.
Who doesn’t love him as a samurai warrior? He is indeed the Best.
But I like him as well in the 1949 Japanese police procedural film noir classic, Stray Dog. He is so young and handsome!
He also stole the show as Toranaga in the 1980 miniseries Shogun.
So when you are trying to think of something to watch this week, think of old Toshiro Mifune.
Easter turned out to be a lovely day in our flyover town. Warm and sunny. The boy and his bride joined us at church. We were surrounded by small children. They were adorable in their Women’s Exchange finery, but very distracting. I didn’t get a whole lot out of the service, but oh well. It was nice just to be in a (full) church with my family (such as it is with the daughters so far away).
The boy’s Best Man was in town with his girlfriend and they were also at church.
After church we went to Easter brunch at the boy’s in-laws. I brought the dollar rolls and the sticky buns. I did not give the boy a basket this year since he is all grown up, but I had to give him some of these:
I worked in the yard a little when I got home, but since I hurt my back last weekend shoveling snow(!), I couldn’t do much. But it was nice to be outside, soaking up the vitamin D.
I spent a good part of this Easter weekend watching Ben Hur. My husband surprised me with the fancy 50th Anniversary boxed set (on super sale since that was 4 years ago!) Blu-Ray edition of the film–complete with a book about the making of the movie, a facsimile of Charlton Heston’s diary and a whole disc of special features.
Never since the old Lord of the Rings days have I felt like such a nerd. But a happy nerd.
How was your weekend?
Here is the King’s College Cambridge version of one of my favorite Easter hymns which we never sing at church.. It does not include verse 4–my favorite–but I could not find the Radney Foster rendition.
although as my dual personality can corroborate, I’ve never been able to resist an Easter basket for long. Back in the day I tended to finish my basket in a day or two. You can see in this picture
Easter 1964
that I probably had a stomach ache from too much chocolate. By contrast, my sister took weeks to finish her candy and sometimes never did (especially if the dog got it first). That’s why she grew up to look like this:
Katie circa 1974
and, well, why I didn’t. Despite the sweet tooth, as a child I took Easter very seriously. It was my favorite holiday in part because of the movie, “King of Kings,” which I thought was awesome. It was a big shock when in college I discovered how bad it really is, but when I saw the movie for the first time, I was smitten — it was the music that really got to me. I was so afraid I would forget the main theme that I hummed it constantly for days until I was sure I wouldn’t forget. It worked. I know it by heart the way I know old phone numbers or the poems I had to memorize for school. And if the movie itself didn’t stand the test of time, the music still moves. I had trouble finding exactly the right bit, but you’ll get the idea.
I leave you with a beautiful passage from Frederick Buechner, to whose brilliant insights my dual personality introduced my many years ago.
There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?
― Frederick Buechner
Happy Easter!!
