So daughter #1 is coming home tomorrow for a little flyover R&R. She is also celebrating a big birthday.
Good times ahead.
P.S. We must note that Joan Rivers has died, but I couldn’t say it better than daughter #1 did on her blog. RIP, Joan.
“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.”
–Michael Cunningham, The Hours
This is so true, don’t you think? The Hours, which I read over the weekend, is full of such truth. I liked it very much.
I remember going to see the movie when it came out back in 2002 and liking it very much. There was some major mis-casting, but I liked Meryl Streep as Clarissa a lot.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
Not surprisingly, I liked the book better.
Indeed, there are not many instances where the movie is an improvement over the book. Ben-Hur (1959) comes to mind.
Some movies actually measure up to the book: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) does. And although the author did not think so, I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) is as good as the book.
This would make an interesting blogpost topic no doubt, but…back to what I’m reading.
I picked up Malcolm Cowley’s And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade off a shelf at home–I think it was my father’s copy from 1977–and started that. I like reading about writers. Cowley is one of those guys who knew everybody and has a lot to say about them. He spent most of his career as a literary critic and editor and never really made it as a fiction writer himself. He did win a National Book Award for this book, writing about other writers.
I seem to remember thinking that he had a little chip on his shoulder, that he always managed to cast some aspersion on whomever he is writing about, that he makes himself more important than he probably was. But I have not found that to be the case reading this book now. Perhaps I am thinking of Exiles Return which he wrote in 1933 and then revised in 1951. Perhaps he had mellowed by 1977 when he wrote And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade. We do tend to do that, don’t we?
So what are you reading?
As if you didn’t already know, I’ll remind you that on this day in 1802 William Wordsworth composed the sonnet titled “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”.
Westminster Bridge as it appeared in 1808 by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832)
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Now you’ll have something to discuss at the water cooler! Do they still have water coolers?
Joseph Nicholls 1742
Daniel Turner
Henry Pether 1862
In honor of Labor Day, some wisdom from Frederick Buechner:
IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
—Wishful Thinking
Discuss among yourselves.
Sigh. August is over and with it goes the summer. School starts and we begin that snowball slide to Christmas and the end of the year.
Well, I did meet some of my August goals.
I (almost) finished my rehab of an upstairs bathroom. The painting is done. It is nearly impossible to take a picture in a bathroom, but perhaps this gives you an idea. I am pleased.
I caught up with several old pals for a few meals and conversation this month. (Once school gets underway, lunch out is impossible.)
Not much to check off the list I suppose, but meanwhile work and home continue to run fairly smoothly. Meals are made (such as they are), sheets are changed and new rolls of toilet paper appear. Sometimes that is all we can aspire to I think.
It’s time to appreciate/enjoy the last blooms of summer before those oak leaves begin to fall in earnest. Oy.
Enjoy your day off if you have one today! Appropriate movies to watch might be: Norma Rae, How Green Was My Valley, The Molly Maguires, Silkwood, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront.
Well, appropriate maybe, but I can’t say I’m in the mood. Any suggestions?
* “September Song” by Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill
Jane Austen was so right. In fact, home is so nice that I could easily become a recluse. I love my house, especially now that the painters have almost finished making it look shiny white and new!
They did trample my hostas almost to extinction. And one of my spruce bushes got so butchered that we just had to take it away completely. I think the one pictured here will follow and then we’ll start all over again. But that’s fine with me…because they’ve done a bonza job.
The picture above shows the dining room window — a very large spruce bush used to obscure it.
The painters had a lot of cool equipment, including this bucket truck to get them up to the top of the house. It made me feel much better about those heights, but it left huge furrows in our front lawn, which will now be a real adventure to mow. But, hey, who cares? The house looks young again and its appreciation is almost palpable. I swear it’s almost smiling.
Meanwhile, on the inside I continue my fight against ‘stuff’ and dirt. I’ve been washing my grimy, boy-hand-printed upstairs hall walls with a trusty Mr. Clean magic eraser and a sponge. No kidding, those magic erasers are really magic, but do be careful about what surface you use them on as they contain formaldehyde.
The newest weapon in my arsenal is a Hoover carpet shampooer. Yep, I took the plunge. I figure that if I have one of my own, I’ll likely use it at least once a year and even if it’s not perfect, it ought to remove the worst of the dirt and spilled tea smell. So today, I’m going to attempt to use the carpet cleaner. Keep your fingers crossed!
Home improvement is so satisfying — you can tell from the (slightly forced) smile, right?
Taken in July during the bathroom re-paint
So I’m not exactly “Little Green Notebook” as a do-it-yourself blogger. I’m more the “if this incompetent can do it, anyone can” type. But that’s just it. Anyone can! The trick is knowing when to hire someone else to do the job. I think my dual personality has it down pat — as usual, I’m just following in her footsteps.
Have a lovely weekend and think of me toiling away happily with my carpet monster.
I deserved a treat, so I ordered Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 2010 CD The Age of Miracles.
I am one of her oldest fans (and I mean that both ways)–although we are contemporaries after all, so never mind. Anyway, she never disappoints. It is a very good album and there is one song which really spoke to me. Listen, fellow introverts, and enjoy!
And, oh boy, the weekend is upon us once again! The painting in my bathroom is finished (thank you, Gary!) and so my project is to put the room back together.
I will also be readying the house for daughter # 1 who arrives home in a week for a birthday visit. Lots to do–but all fun stuff.
Hope your weekend is full of fun stuff too!
P.S. Today is Joseph Cotton day on TCM–so nothing thrilling to report there. He was in some classic movies, including Citizen Kane and The Third Man, but I am not a big fan of his. With a few notable exceptions like Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), he made a career of playing the second lead, the good guy who is kind of boring and makes the lead look sexy and dangerous in comparison. In that genre, TCM will be showing Duel in the Sun (1947) which, even though it stars a hot young Gregory Peck playing Cotton’s bad younger brother, is a pretty terrible movie. I liked it as a child though, mostly because of the ethereal Lillian Gish who plays the aging southern belle who had a thing a long time ago for her reckless creole cousin and so takes in his half-breed daughter, played by the terrible actress Jennifer Jones. Whenever Gish is in a scene, “Beautiful Dreamer” plays in the background and follows her around eerily. I’m sure I had no idea what was actually going on, i.e. rape, wreckage and ruin. King Vidor directed it all with a heavy hand, but it does have a rousing musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin.
So watch it if you’re in the mood for a bad melodramatic western–and I’ll admit, sometimes I am. But I really don’t like Gregory Peck as a bad guy.
Today, in honor of Tasha Tudor’s birthday, I present this corgi gif:
Just because. I mean, why wouldn’t I?
The famous illustrator/author was a big fan of the diminutive dogs
and they are present throughout her books and artwork.
And here’s the best for last: James Bond, the Queen and her corgis…
So happy birthday to the late, great Tasha Tudor! Corgis rule.
Woodcut by Rockwell Kent
And, as you know, I agree.
Here’s what Dylan Thomas said about books:
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.
Maybe I have too many books in my house.
This is a pile of books I backed into and fell over when talking to daughter #1 on the phone recently. No, I’m not kidding.
And I do move books out of my house–just not as quickly as they move in.
I was reminded recently that Herman Melville dedicated Pierre: or, The Ambiguities to a particular mountain, which I saw every day when I was a student at Williams College. I climbed Mt. Greylock one Saturday with members of the Mountain Club and enjoyed the view which encompasses five states.
It was always in the background of all our shenanigans.
Kite flying in the spring of 1977 with Spud and Emmett
I miss those mountains, and I suppose those big-hearted football players.
Anyway, here is Melville’s most gracious dedication:
To Greylock’s Most Excellent Majesty
In old times authors were proud of the privilege of dedicating their works to Majesty. A right noble custom, which we of Berkshire must revive. For whether we will or no, Majesty is all around us here in Berkshire, sitting as in a grand Congress of Vienna of majestical hill-tops, and eternally challenging homage.
But since the majestic mountain, Greylock–my own more immediate sovereign lord and king–hath now, for innumerable ages, been the one grand dedicatee of the earliest rays of all the Berkshire mornings, I know not how his Imperial Purple Majesty (royal born: Porphyrogenitus) will receive the dedication of my own poor solitary ray.
Nevertheless, forasmuch as I, dwelling with my loyal neighbours, the Maples and the Beeches, in the amphitheatre over which his central majesty presides, have received his most bounteous and unstinted fertilisations, it is but meet, that I here devoutly kneel, and render up my gratitude, whether, thereto, The Most Excellent Purple Majesty of Greylock benignantly incline his hoary crown or no.
Don’t you just love old Herman? I mean really.
