Isn’t it nice to receive snail mail thank you notes after Christmas?
The world these days is often a cold, harsh, impersonal place, and a hand-written note on a lovely letterpress card sure makes my day. Don’t you agree? My goal for the week is to send out a few notes, thereby practicing what I preach.
Time for some old-school desk work.
When daughter #2 was home over the Christmas holiday she made a concerted effort to read some contemporary fiction. (You can read about it here.) I told her I would read The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach so we could talk about it, and, always the good mother, I did just that.
Well, I tried to read The Art of Fielding. I really did. I read at least 60 pages before I threw it across the room (metaphorically) and gave up. It is just pretentious showing off in the worst sophomoric way. For instance he gives his characters stupid names: Skrimshander and Starblind and Affenlight. Okay, we get it; you read Moby Dick. And I just couldn’t take the way he always writes “freshperson” instead of “freshman”, as in “freshperson year”. Please. The characters and story were not enough to overlook these minor irritations I’m afraid. Life is too short for this drivel. And, hey, baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life has been done many times before, and by far better writers.
Sorry, daughter #2. I tried (but not very hard).
Luckily, I took the advice of my niece Ellen and sent away for The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. What a find! This is beautiful prose at its best…and about Wyoming! It is a deep and true and pitch-perfect observation of Life. How could I not love a book by someone who writes, “I met my husband at a John Wayne film festival in Cody, Wyoming”?
Gretel Ehrlich is a writer from California, who went to Bennington, UCLA film school and the School for Social Research in NYC. But she left all that baggage behind when she went to Wyoming looking for solace and discovered that “true solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere.” She is no sophomore.
Meanwhile, my Saturday estate-sale-ing turned up no Big Finds, but some good books.
Have a great week and happy reading!
Like my dual personality I love my office — it contains most of my favorite books and many of my cherished belongings (at least the ones that can find no appropriate place at home). It’s not perfect and it’s certainly messy, but it’s my space. I recently rearranged portions of the wall art because I got a really cool poster for Christmas:
In a miniscule font, the text of “The Iliad” creates the images of fighting warriors. I love this. After teaching “the Iliad” I’ve become a huge fan — it’s simply wonderful and right up there with the Bible and Shakespeare (and probably Emerson, Whitman, and Melville, too!). I put the poster above my bulletin board as that really was the only open space large enough that would work, and here is how it looks:
Note my Assyrian relief, a long-ago gift from my parents, leaning up against the desk and bookcase. A closer view of the poster:
On my bulletin board I put up choice quotes and pictures that inspire me. From niece, Susie, I borrowed the Walt Whitman that she blogged about earlier this year here and I love to look at family photos and beautiful landscapes such as this magical English wood:
The dual personalities value the aesthetically pleasing work space — and we’d love to know how you make yours inspiring. How do you decorate your office?
Yesterday I drove #2 son to the airport in Burlington VT to send him off to London for the semester. Here’s the intrepid traveler after checking his luggage
Channeling Dean Winchester
Note that his carry-on included a large backpack, violin, and box of Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins (courtesy of girlfriend Nicole), of which he had already consumed a goodly portion. I don’t suppose any of them made it to England.
Burlington airport is a wonderful place. It’s small, navigable, and the people who work there seem delighted to have someone to serve. Really. In this day and age! Here is the jocular TSA guy greeting Chris as he goes through security.
I know he was ‘jocular’ because Chris told me so on the phone later and because I could see them all laughing. I gather that the other security people were just as willing to crack jokes. I bet it wasn’t like that at JFK.
After I bid him adieu and wiped away a tear or two (well, not quite), I drove to Barnes and Noble and bought the Lumineers CD to listen to on the long, lonely drive home. The music definitely helped keep my spirits up through the choppy ferry ride and the pouring rain. Thanks to my dual personality for introducing me to the Lumineers!
The winter ferry crossing sometimes makes one feel like Shackleton. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite like this yesterday — it was choppier and raining
Though I don’t have an empty nest, the house has that after-the-holidays, back-to-the-grind feeling now. Imagine my delight this morning when I booted up the computer to discover a nice email from the traveler, who has arrived safely in London:
The flight wasn’t too bad, though someone did throw up on me just a little bit. I feel ok and have the whole day off, and the only thing I have tomorrow is cocktails with with Cowser [the program head]. My hosts are lovely people, an older couple, two kids, one out in the real world, one at college. My room is large and comfy and I have excess shelf and drawer space, so I’ll just have to buy lots of stuff.
I’ll have to remind him that however large the furnishings, the suitcases stay the same size. Do you have any advice for him?
This has been my first full week back at work since the holidays ended and my daughters returned to their far-flung homes on the east coast. I have half-heartedly assumed my usual routine–and I am a routine person–but it is always hard to get back into the swing of things after an extended time off with my girls.
I try to keep in mind what Emerson wrote:
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
So I do my best to own the day!
Did I mention that it rained all day yesterday? Thank goodness it was in the 50s, so no snow. Today they say it may get up to 66-degrees. Hello. Carpe diem.
I am obsessed with this song: “Stubborn Love”. And, yes, I am 15 again. No apologies.
And by the way:
“Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.”
Virginia Woolf, Montaigne
I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open fields, and the sky had a new appearance. I stepped along more buoyantly. There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stood over it. And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! There is no account of the blue sky in history. Before I walked in the ruts of travel; now I adventured.
Henry David Thoreau, Journals, Jan. 7, 1851
Oh so many books to read (and re-read) in 2013! Do you have a pile of new books to read in January?
As if you didn’t know, Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer, actor and cultural icon. Today is his birthday, so I thought I ought to give him a shout out.
Elvis in a green shirt
Because we had a tendency to laugh at practically everything when I was growing up, we laughed at Elvis. But my mother (of all people) always defended him and gave him credit for really being able to sing. She was also, truth be told, kind of fond of his movies, as am I. If there was an Elvis movie on TV, you better believe we watched it. My favorite is Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret, his perfect (if you ask me) partner.
Over the years I have come to appreciate Elvis as a cultural icon/entertainer and I would never laugh at him now. Back in the 1990s when the boy’s junior choir went to sing in Memphis, our family went along as “chaperones”–mostly so we could go to Graceland, which is really a very nice home (atrociously decorated).
When I worked at a private school in Richmond, Va in 1979, I had an occasion to go to a party at the boarding department secretary’s home. She and her husband were big Elvis fans and had turned one room into something like a shrine to their hero. (Remember–this was just two years after Elvis had died.) They were perfectly serious and the wound was fresh. I would never have laughed at them.
Anyway, some years after that I saw the classic episode about Elvis on Designing Women, where the ladies, talked into going by Charlene, make the trek to Graceland and Julia hears a sad story from a trucker named Vern. It reminded me of the Charlene-like secretary.
I know now that Elvis was just a broken human being like the rest of us, who liked to sing hymns and eat peanut butter sandwiches and who was awfully good-looking and had amazing hair. And, by the way, E.P. phone home!
TCM is showing Elvis movies all day today, including the aforementioned Viva Las Vegas at 1:15. Unfortunately, I will be at work, but maybe I’ll manage to see a little of Love Me Tender when I get home. The schedule is here.
P.S. Roll, Tide, roll!
Yesterday at Grace we had a Lessons and Carols with Holy Eucharist for Epiphany service complete with three little boys decked out in glittery kingly garb bringing gifts for the Christ child (see picture above sans boys). The only problem was, as usual, no one had bothered to tell the assigned lay readers that there was a change in the service which would affect them. I was a lay reader and this annoyed me, which in turn made me feel like a grumpy old lady, which contrary to popular opinion, I do not enjoy.
Once I recovered from my initial consternation, however, I was able to enjoy the service, which is a treat reserved, I guess, for when Epiphany actually lands on a Sunday. Anyway, it included the singing of many of my favorite hymns: We Three Kings, In the Bleak Midwinter, As With Gladness Men of Old, and The First Nowell. Also the wee bairns in the training choir sang and they are always adorable.
I was the first reader and read the first lesson:
I love being a lay reader, because I love the scripture. This is what keeps me going to church despite constant reservations and disagreements with all forms of organized religion. Also it was good to go to church on Epiphany and be reminded that epiphanies happen every day. Our task is not to MISS them!
It was also a great lead in to watching 3 Godfathers (finally).
This movie never disappoints. I was also reminded of the time back in the day when daughter #1 and the boy were shepherds in the “Christmas in St. Louis” parade. They rode on the float with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus and some sheep. That year there were also three wise men on real camels! One of the kings was our new daughter-in-law’s grandfather who was right out of central casting in the part of king/wise man. I wish I had a picture of him on his camel, but I’ll have to make due with this one of my children.
Little did that King on a camel know that his granddaughter would marry that little shepherd one day. Well, wise man or shepherd, we try to do our part.
We try to give Him our heart.
Super Chris! Guardian of babies
Son #2 is off to London for the semester at the end of this week, so the adorable children whom he “guards” on Sundays in the church nursery bought him a cake to celebrate his last Sunday. We were oh, so proud…
if slightly bemused, and very soon, full of sugar. We were also a little tired from last night’s “farewell to Chris” dinner at which I crammed nine people into my small house.
Here are a couple shots of the living room ready for visitors, although we had to move in some additional chairs (not pictured here) after the guests arrived.
In this picture you can see just how long the dining room table got — the end chair is almost touching the 1820s tufted chair, which we had to push further into the living room to allow easy access between the rooms (the tufted chair usually it sits back a bit more).
Inside the dining room (and yes, that is a folding chair in the middle):
We added both extra leaves to the table and scrambled to find both chairs and a table cloth that would fit (which it did just barely), but in the end we all fit comfortably and had a really nice dinner of Moussaka, salad, and rolls followed by a chocolate tort with whipped cream and mixed berry topping.
Now, keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds so that Super Chris makes all his flights and arrives safely in London! God save the Queen and all that…
