I just did my favorite six reads of the second half of 2007, and earlier this year, I did my favorites of the first half, but I’ve included some favorites for specific categories here.
Total number of titles read: 62
Total number aborted after reading at least 30 pages: 4 (I loved Ghost Story when I started it, but happened to misplace it for too long a period of time just to pick it up and read it again without starting over – it’s possible to do that with some books, but not with this one with all its many different characters and stories to keep track of -- so I will read it all the way through one day, perhaps next Halloween season. That is, if I don’t misplace it again. Maybe I didn’t really misplace it. Maybe some ghost wanted a little reading of his or her own. 326 pages of Jane Fonda’s My Life So Far, which I read for a book discussion book, was enough to get the picture, so I didn’t think it was necessary to read the other 200+ pages. I was fascinated at first, but it began to get old when it was too much about her movies and not enough about the personal stuff that really intrigued me. I didn’t manage to finish Theodore Dreiser’s Hoosier Holiday before it was due back at the library, but I will buy it and finish it one day, too. It’s something to be read slowly and savored. Karen Armstrong’s A History of God had too many sweeping generalizations and inaccuracies picked up on by someone who recently attended seminary vicariously through her husband, and it’s the one book I didn’t finish that I really just didn’t want to read at all after 34 pages. It’s a shame, because I was mesmerized by her The Spiral Staircase.)
Total number of pages read: 23,706 (Yes, I’m actually anal enough to keep track of page numbers and to look up page counts of recorded books to include them as well. I'm well ahead of last year's 17K or so -- too lazy to go look up the exact number right now -- in this category.)
Number of books written by women: 24 (Overall favorite was Gone with the Wind.)
Number of books written by men: 37 (Overall favorite was Old School. I thought I was going to be pretty even between men and women, but obviously not. I'm going to blame it on all those of you who've been posting about books written by male authors that end up on my TBR list, because, of course, it can't possibly be my fault.)
Number of books written by multiple authors: 1 (It happens to have been written by a man and a woman. This was a Christmas read called God Rest Ye Grumpy Scroogey Men, which was cute, but I was a little distracted by trying to figure out exactly what sorts of “Christians” the authors were, a problem I seem to have whenever I read something with a Christian slant.)
Number of books written pre-16th century: 5
Number of books written in the 16th and 17th centuries: 0
Number of books written in the 18th century: 0
Number of books written in the 19th century: 7 (Favorite was The Lady of the Lake.)
Number of books that were written in the first half of the 20th century: 9 (Favorite was Gone with the Wind.)
Number of books that were written in the second half of the 20th century: 22 (Favorite was Lolita.)
Number of books that were written in the 21st century: 19 (Favorite was The Time Traveler’s Wife.)
Number of books of poetry: 1 (Lady of the Lake was the only one. I must remedy that in 2008. Recommendations gladly accepted.)
Number of drama: 4 (Favorite was Prometheus Bound.)
Number of children’s books: 15 (Favorite was The Wizard of Oz.)
Number of books written by American authors: 41
Number of books written by non-American authors: 21 (Favorite was Things Fall Apart.)
Number of collected works that included both male and female authors, as well as works from various centuries: 0 (This is obviously a category left over from last year. I think I’d like, in 2008, to remedy my lack of books read in this category as well. Again, recommendations gladly accepted.)
Number that were listened to as opposed to being read: 10 (One of which was finished by reading it. Favorite was Dracula. If you haven’t listened to The Recorded Books version of this, do. It’s brilliantly done. For terrific effect, I highly recommend listening to it while running through the woods, heart rate accelerated, when it’s just a little too close to dusk for comfort. A close second was Lolita.)
Number of re-reads: 8 (Five of these were actually first-time-listens of re-reads, which I’ve actually discovered is a great way to re-read a book: Lolita, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Lords of Discipline, and The Turn of the Screw.)
Some sort of goals for 2008, besides the ones already mentioned:
Read some contemporary drama
Read more 16th-17th-and 18th-century works
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Cooking, Composing, and Reeling from Disbelief
Cooking for me is a truly enjoyable and creative pastime. When I’m not tuned into my iPod, either listening to a book, or trying to keep from chopping off my fingers while dancing to Van Morrison, I often find myself separating eggs or stirring white sauce while composing bits and pieces of stories and blog posts in my head. I did a lot of cooking over Christmas, and two separate, but similarly-themed posts took root during this period. They both centered around blogging.
The first post was one in which I was embracing the reader in me. My reader, who is really nothing more than a sneaky, voyeuristic writer in disguise, is one who can’t seem to read anything without having one of three thoughts: a. that was absolutely horrible. Why did I waste my time with it? Certainly, I could easily have taken that [story, point, theme, etc.] and written something so much better. b. This is a good thing to read, because there’s absolutely no way on earth I’d ever attempt to write something like this, and it’s so awe-inspiring. and c. I think I’ll go kill myself now. This is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to write, but this author is so far superior in every way that my measly little attempts ought to be used for nothing more than lining the bottom of the litter box. Here are some prime examples to help you understand what I mean: a. Jackie Collins and Michael Crichton b. Leo Tolstoy and Margaret Atwood. c. David Sedaris and Susan Jane Gilman.
I don’t really like being this sort of a reader. Besides being extremely narcissistic, it can somewhat dampen the enjoyment of reading. However, if I can embrace it, perhaps I can rein it in and move past it, or at least stick it in some fenced-in area somewhere that it isn’t so likely to go galloping wildly about, leaving hoof prints and ripped pages between the covers of my books.
I’m not doing a very good job of reining it in, though. As a matter of fact, it’s found a new field in which to run and muck about: the blogosphere. If you take a look at the links on my blog, each and every one that is another blog, falls into one of these reading categories. Those that fall into the “a” category are the ones that are noticeably absent. These would be things like celebrity blogs, certain political blogs, and certainly many religious blogs. I waste enough time blogging. No need to waste my time with these.
So, now we get to the Tolstoys and the Atwoods of my links. I can happily read blogs like Book World, The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, Loose Baggy Monster, Tales from the Reading Room, Cam’s Commentary, Striped Armchair, The Library Ladder, Of Books and Bicycles, and So Many Books, because all of those authors are extraordinarily well-read and are doing things that I’m not attempting to do: writing extremely eloquently about books (or books and bicycling). Sometimes they write about other things (and sometimes I write about books), but for the most part they are literary critics and book reviewers, and I am not. Charlotte’s Web and Bloglily both fall into a sort of “iffy” category, but I will pretend I can happily read them, because they write about cooking (well, with the exception of today) and baking and being a mother, as well as their own eloquent thoughts on books, and I’m not writing about those things, either. Jew Eat Yet is what I would want to write if I knew half as much about the Jewish faith and culture or about film and other areas of pop culture, but I don’t, so it’s another one that can be happily read and enjoyed, knowing I’d never attempt to create such a blog. The Havens is mostly about gardening, and I’m a complete brown thumb, so I can enjoy reading her and sometimes wish she would come create a beautiful garden for me, but again, I would never try to write about gardening, not even my own disastrous attempts at it. She says to “come in and rest a while,” and I most certainly do. Mandarine is also in a category of his own, a scientist and (as I once noted) 21st-century Renaissance man, and reading his blog is very much like browsing through some of my favorite nonfiction sections of the library where I would never dream of trying to have a book of my own. Marissa’s blog is something different, as well: it’s more a reflection of her as a photographer, marking significant events in her life and enjoying her family and friends, not as a writer.
But now we come to the David Sedarises and the Susan Jane Gilmans, those who are doing exactly what I want to do and who make me feel, on a regular basis, that I ought just to close down this little blog and do nothing but spend time with them. These would be, Everything Inbetween (which is really The Public, The Private, and Everything Inbetween), Ian’s Blog, Make Tea Not War, Feminine Feminist, Froshty Mugs (well, when those two actually write), Musings from the Sofa, QC Report, and the Alternate Side Parking Reader. They’re funny. They’re ironic. They see the world the way I do (especially, for some reason, Ian and Froshty), and they are so damn talented at putting words together to describe that world.
The second post I composed while mashing potatoes, making gravy, and checking on the Yorkshire pudding was one in which I was thinking about my part in the blogosphere. It was all about my feeling so lucky to be hanging out with all these talented writers out here, wondering how I’ve managed to fall into this world and have been so accepted. I was comparing myself to someone who might have sat at places like the Algonquin Round Table as just some welcomed non-writer, someone’s little sister, maybe, living vicariously through all that talent. Or maybe I’m like Mrs. Strickland in Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, which I’ve been reading. When asked by one novelist (worried he ought to know and doesn’t) of another novelist who Mrs. Strickland is, the other novelist says, “She gives luncheon parties. You only have to roar a little, and she’ll ask you.” (Maugham, W. S., The Moon and Sixpence, New York: The Modern Library, 1919, p. 22). Am I the one “giving luncheon parties to a bunch of artists?”
This was all before New Year’s Day. Then New Year’s Day arrived, and what did I do? I checked Cam’s Commentary to discover that not only did someone list my blog as a daily read in her survey of favorites but actually included me in the same sentence as QC Report. Well, to tell you that this alone would have convinced me that 2008 is going to be a much better year than 2007 would be the absolute truth. But then, later in the day, I happened to wander over to Litlove’s new blog The Best of New Writing on the Web and was completely awed to discover I’d made it into this very first issue. I’d say 2008 is going to be a banner year with this sort of a start! So, maybe I’m the one everyone’s coming to sit with at the round table, and maybe my luncheons are so popular because people just can’t get enough of me? I find that hard to believe, but I do want to say thank you so very much to whomever it was who nominated and voted for me for these two humbling spots.
The first post was one in which I was embracing the reader in me. My reader, who is really nothing more than a sneaky, voyeuristic writer in disguise, is one who can’t seem to read anything without having one of three thoughts: a. that was absolutely horrible. Why did I waste my time with it? Certainly, I could easily have taken that [story, point, theme, etc.] and written something so much better. b. This is a good thing to read, because there’s absolutely no way on earth I’d ever attempt to write something like this, and it’s so awe-inspiring. and c. I think I’ll go kill myself now. This is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to write, but this author is so far superior in every way that my measly little attempts ought to be used for nothing more than lining the bottom of the litter box. Here are some prime examples to help you understand what I mean: a. Jackie Collins and Michael Crichton b. Leo Tolstoy and Margaret Atwood. c. David Sedaris and Susan Jane Gilman.
I don’t really like being this sort of a reader. Besides being extremely narcissistic, it can somewhat dampen the enjoyment of reading. However, if I can embrace it, perhaps I can rein it in and move past it, or at least stick it in some fenced-in area somewhere that it isn’t so likely to go galloping wildly about, leaving hoof prints and ripped pages between the covers of my books.
I’m not doing a very good job of reining it in, though. As a matter of fact, it’s found a new field in which to run and muck about: the blogosphere. If you take a look at the links on my blog, each and every one that is another blog, falls into one of these reading categories. Those that fall into the “a” category are the ones that are noticeably absent. These would be things like celebrity blogs, certain political blogs, and certainly many religious blogs. I waste enough time blogging. No need to waste my time with these.
So, now we get to the Tolstoys and the Atwoods of my links. I can happily read blogs like Book World, The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, Loose Baggy Monster, Tales from the Reading Room, Cam’s Commentary, Striped Armchair, The Library Ladder, Of Books and Bicycles, and So Many Books, because all of those authors are extraordinarily well-read and are doing things that I’m not attempting to do: writing extremely eloquently about books (or books and bicycling). Sometimes they write about other things (and sometimes I write about books), but for the most part they are literary critics and book reviewers, and I am not. Charlotte’s Web and Bloglily both fall into a sort of “iffy” category, but I will pretend I can happily read them, because they write about cooking (well, with the exception of today) and baking and being a mother, as well as their own eloquent thoughts on books, and I’m not writing about those things, either. Jew Eat Yet is what I would want to write if I knew half as much about the Jewish faith and culture or about film and other areas of pop culture, but I don’t, so it’s another one that can be happily read and enjoyed, knowing I’d never attempt to create such a blog. The Havens is mostly about gardening, and I’m a complete brown thumb, so I can enjoy reading her and sometimes wish she would come create a beautiful garden for me, but again, I would never try to write about gardening, not even my own disastrous attempts at it. She says to “come in and rest a while,” and I most certainly do. Mandarine is also in a category of his own, a scientist and (as I once noted) 21st-century Renaissance man, and reading his blog is very much like browsing through some of my favorite nonfiction sections of the library where I would never dream of trying to have a book of my own. Marissa’s blog is something different, as well: it’s more a reflection of her as a photographer, marking significant events in her life and enjoying her family and friends, not as a writer.
But now we come to the David Sedarises and the Susan Jane Gilmans, those who are doing exactly what I want to do and who make me feel, on a regular basis, that I ought just to close down this little blog and do nothing but spend time with them. These would be, Everything Inbetween (which is really The Public, The Private, and Everything Inbetween), Ian’s Blog, Make Tea Not War, Feminine Feminist, Froshty Mugs (well, when those two actually write), Musings from the Sofa, QC Report, and the Alternate Side Parking Reader. They’re funny. They’re ironic. They see the world the way I do (especially, for some reason, Ian and Froshty), and they are so damn talented at putting words together to describe that world.
The second post I composed while mashing potatoes, making gravy, and checking on the Yorkshire pudding was one in which I was thinking about my part in the blogosphere. It was all about my feeling so lucky to be hanging out with all these talented writers out here, wondering how I’ve managed to fall into this world and have been so accepted. I was comparing myself to someone who might have sat at places like the Algonquin Round Table as just some welcomed non-writer, someone’s little sister, maybe, living vicariously through all that talent. Or maybe I’m like Mrs. Strickland in Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, which I’ve been reading. When asked by one novelist (worried he ought to know and doesn’t) of another novelist who Mrs. Strickland is, the other novelist says, “She gives luncheon parties. You only have to roar a little, and she’ll ask you.” (Maugham, W. S., The Moon and Sixpence, New York: The Modern Library, 1919, p. 22). Am I the one “giving luncheon parties to a bunch of artists?”
This was all before New Year’s Day. Then New Year’s Day arrived, and what did I do? I checked Cam’s Commentary to discover that not only did someone list my blog as a daily read in her survey of favorites but actually included me in the same sentence as QC Report. Well, to tell you that this alone would have convinced me that 2008 is going to be a much better year than 2007 would be the absolute truth. But then, later in the day, I happened to wander over to Litlove’s new blog The Best of New Writing on the Web and was completely awed to discover I’d made it into this very first issue. I’d say 2008 is going to be a banner year with this sort of a start! So, maybe I’m the one everyone’s coming to sit with at the round table, and maybe my luncheons are so popular because people just can’t get enough of me? I find that hard to believe, but I do want to say thank you so very much to whomever it was who nominated and voted for me for these two humbling spots.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Favorite Reads of the Second Half of 2007
(This is supposed to be a Francis Friday -- photo and commentary from Francis first Friday of every month. However, I am having difficulties with the camera battery -- seems I probably ought to go buy a re-chargable battery -- so that will have to wait. Meanwhile, I give you this poor substitute instead.)
So, here are my six favorite reads for the second half of 2007.
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffennegger
Every so often, I pick up a contemporary novel and am able to lose myself in it without criticizing every gimmick the author seems to think it’s necessary to embrace in order to be published these days (half the time, the author is right about that, so I can’t really blame the author. I need to blame the publishing industry, I’m sure). This one falls into that category. Those of you who know me already know how charmed I was by this love story, as it seems for a while there, I was mentioning it practically on a daily basis either on my own blog or in comments on others’. Just a flat-out fantastic read from beginning to end. If you haven’t read it yet, I wish I were you and had it to read for the first time all over again.
The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
If you only know the movie version, and if you happen to love that, read this. Ten times more ironic and insightful than the movie. Oh yes, and ten times better than Harry Potter (I promise). And all kinds of interesting things that never made it to the movie version. I loved it and plan to read more Oz books in ’08.
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
I can’t believe it took me this long in life finally to get around to reading such a fabulous book. I’m pretty sure one of the reasons I liked it so much is that I wasn’t really expecting I would. I saw the movie in college, wasn’t all that impressed, and thought both Scarlett and Rhett were pretty ridiculous. I didn’t think I was going to be able to conjure up an ounce of sympathy for either one of them and thought I’d have to find other things to appreciate about the book. Oh how very wrong I was! Margaret Mitchell did a brilliant job on both a micro and macro level of portraying complete loss and the struggle to rebuild something new.
Babycakes – Armistead Maupin
This was actually my favorite of the Maupins I read this year. So funny, but so devastating. Maupin certainly develops as he goes along with these Tales of the City books. The ones written in the 1980s are quite different (and better, I think) from those written in the 1970s.
The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
You may have recently read my take on this one. What a wonderful gem of a book. Thank you to the Outmoded Authors challenge, which is just what I needed to get me to read it.
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
I got past the fact I couldn’t finish Stern Men. I got past the hideous title of this book. I listened to all those of you out there who’ve been reading it and raving about it. Conclusion? You were all right! Although I had my quibbles, I enjoyed it immensely. But how come I don’t remember any of you saying it’s fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing funny? I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on that before I started reading it. If you've missed it, you can read some more detailed thoughts inspired by this book here.
So, here are my six favorite reads for the second half of 2007.
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffennegger
Every so often, I pick up a contemporary novel and am able to lose myself in it without criticizing every gimmick the author seems to think it’s necessary to embrace in order to be published these days (half the time, the author is right about that, so I can’t really blame the author. I need to blame the publishing industry, I’m sure). This one falls into that category. Those of you who know me already know how charmed I was by this love story, as it seems for a while there, I was mentioning it practically on a daily basis either on my own blog or in comments on others’. Just a flat-out fantastic read from beginning to end. If you haven’t read it yet, I wish I were you and had it to read for the first time all over again.
The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
If you only know the movie version, and if you happen to love that, read this. Ten times more ironic and insightful than the movie. Oh yes, and ten times better than Harry Potter (I promise). And all kinds of interesting things that never made it to the movie version. I loved it and plan to read more Oz books in ’08.
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
I can’t believe it took me this long in life finally to get around to reading such a fabulous book. I’m pretty sure one of the reasons I liked it so much is that I wasn’t really expecting I would. I saw the movie in college, wasn’t all that impressed, and thought both Scarlett and Rhett were pretty ridiculous. I didn’t think I was going to be able to conjure up an ounce of sympathy for either one of them and thought I’d have to find other things to appreciate about the book. Oh how very wrong I was! Margaret Mitchell did a brilliant job on both a micro and macro level of portraying complete loss and the struggle to rebuild something new.
Babycakes – Armistead Maupin
This was actually my favorite of the Maupins I read this year. So funny, but so devastating. Maupin certainly develops as he goes along with these Tales of the City books. The ones written in the 1980s are quite different (and better, I think) from those written in the 1970s.
The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
You may have recently read my take on this one. What a wonderful gem of a book. Thank you to the Outmoded Authors challenge, which is just what I needed to get me to read it.
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
I got past the fact I couldn’t finish Stern Men. I got past the hideous title of this book. I listened to all those of you out there who’ve been reading it and raving about it. Conclusion? You were all right! Although I had my quibbles, I enjoyed it immensely. But how come I don’t remember any of you saying it’s fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing funny? I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on that before I started reading it. If you've missed it, you can read some more detailed thoughts inspired by this book here.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
First Lines Meme with a Twist and Resolutions
I like this meme, which I think I first saw over at Dorr’s. What better way to start the new year than with a look back at the previous year’s blogging adventures. I’m even going to make this fun for you. You see, in going back over this year’s posts, I realized just how bad my senility already is. There’s so much I did, and so much I wrote about that I never would have remembered if it weren’t all right there for me to see (and I thought it was bad that I’d forgotten things from twelve years ago that I found in my attic). Does anyone else out there scroll through his or her blog and think “I wrote/did that?” How could I have forgotten so much that happened just this past year? So, here’s the fun part for you. Let’s see if any of you, without searching through my blog, can better remember some of the inane things that I decided to address in 2007. In appropriate places, I’ll prompt you with questions, and then you’ll have the chance to win a prize.
January
Happy New Year, everyone!
(Well, that was a very original way to start the year, wasn’t it?)
February
It was not a dark (well, maybe it was a little bit dark) and stormy night. But I was accompanied by a Hobgoblin.
(Question #1 for you: What mischievous trick did the Hobgoblin perform that night, according to my story?)
March
Hobs has requested that we all write about the meaninglessness of the phrase “Support our troops,” which I am all too happy to do. We live in an age of meaningless words and phrases.
(Dorr, I promise I’m not having an affair with your husband, despite the fact he showed up in the first post of the month two months in a row.)
April
I wish when “givens” were being passed out to babies the year I was born, I’d been at the front of the fast-moving line.
(Question #3: What is one of the “givens” I’ve been stuck with all my life?)
May
Right now, it seems, Bob and I probably have three choices.
(Question #4: What were those three choices, and which one did we choose?)
June
The first thing I always do when The New Yorker arrives in the mail is search the table of contents for either David Sedaris or Paul Rudnick.
(No, I’m not a “fag hag.” Then again, maybe I am. I’ve always loved gay men.)
July
It finally happened to me.
(Question #5: What happened to me? Hint: I was in an airport.)
August
Okay, by popular demand (all right, all right: by two requests, but don’t say I don’t listen), I’ve decided to select two stories from My Story Book, written when I was nine or ten or so.
(Question #6: Who was Smarty Larty?)
September
I'm afraid those of you who may have become accustomed to a thrice-weekly or so dose of Telecommuter Talk are going to have to seek out some sort of generic substitute for the next few weeks, as moving, work, and ordination (did you know that planning an ordination is like planning a wedding? Neither did I until now!) obligations monopolize my time.
(And then I never did get back to thrice-weekly posting, but I plan to make up for that in 2008.)
October
Actually, I would have been back yesterday, but I guess Blogger decided to punish me for my long absence or something and wouldn't let me log onto its site.
(Question #7: And when I finally came back on the scene, with what meme did I present everyone?)
November
Well, the chains haven't really started rattling much yet, but they've sort of moved onto the scene over here today.
(Question #8: What was I shamelessly plugging here?)
December
Here are just a few of the things that drive me nuts on a regular basis.
(Question #9 – an easy one for everyone: What were two of these things?)
A free book goes to the person who gets the most answers correct. You get to choose which book I wrote about in 2007 that you’d like to add to your collection, and I’ll send you a copy (this may take a while if it’s something that’s out of print, but I promise I’ll do my best to find whatever you choose). You’re on your honor not to go back and research the answers to the questions. Besides, I just might send a second book to the person who comes up with the most creative answers. In the event of a tie, I will put the names in a hat and draw a winner. If you want to play, leave a comment here and then email your answers to me (so nobody can cheat and steal your answers) at emilymb95 AT gmail DOT com. You have until January 15th to submit your answers.
And now for my New Year's resolutions, of which I have only two:
1. Stop playing around with old ghost stories and write five new ones
2. Get back into my old blogging rhythm
And finally: here's to a great New Year full of books, laughter, and lots of interesting thoughts and ideas with all of you. Cheers!
January
Happy New Year, everyone!
(Well, that was a very original way to start the year, wasn’t it?)
February
It was not a dark (well, maybe it was a little bit dark) and stormy night. But I was accompanied by a Hobgoblin.
(Question #1 for you: What mischievous trick did the Hobgoblin perform that night, according to my story?)
March
Hobs has requested that we all write about the meaninglessness of the phrase “Support our troops,” which I am all too happy to do. We live in an age of meaningless words and phrases.
(Dorr, I promise I’m not having an affair with your husband, despite the fact he showed up in the first post of the month two months in a row.)
April
I wish when “givens” were being passed out to babies the year I was born, I’d been at the front of the fast-moving line.
(Question #3: What is one of the “givens” I’ve been stuck with all my life?)
May
Right now, it seems, Bob and I probably have three choices.
(Question #4: What were those three choices, and which one did we choose?)
June
The first thing I always do when The New Yorker arrives in the mail is search the table of contents for either David Sedaris or Paul Rudnick.
(No, I’m not a “fag hag.” Then again, maybe I am. I’ve always loved gay men.)
July
It finally happened to me.
(Question #5: What happened to me? Hint: I was in an airport.)
August
Okay, by popular demand (all right, all right: by two requests, but don’t say I don’t listen), I’ve decided to select two stories from My Story Book, written when I was nine or ten or so.
(Question #6: Who was Smarty Larty?)
September
I'm afraid those of you who may have become accustomed to a thrice-weekly or so dose of Telecommuter Talk are going to have to seek out some sort of generic substitute for the next few weeks, as moving, work, and ordination (did you know that planning an ordination is like planning a wedding? Neither did I until now!) obligations monopolize my time.
(And then I never did get back to thrice-weekly posting, but I plan to make up for that in 2008.)
October
Actually, I would have been back yesterday, but I guess Blogger decided to punish me for my long absence or something and wouldn't let me log onto its site.
(Question #7: And when I finally came back on the scene, with what meme did I present everyone?)
November
Well, the chains haven't really started rattling much yet, but they've sort of moved onto the scene over here today.
(Question #8: What was I shamelessly plugging here?)
December
Here are just a few of the things that drive me nuts on a regular basis.
(Question #9 – an easy one for everyone: What were two of these things?)
A free book goes to the person who gets the most answers correct. You get to choose which book I wrote about in 2007 that you’d like to add to your collection, and I’ll send you a copy (this may take a while if it’s something that’s out of print, but I promise I’ll do my best to find whatever you choose). You’re on your honor not to go back and research the answers to the questions. Besides, I just might send a second book to the person who comes up with the most creative answers. In the event of a tie, I will put the names in a hat and draw a winner. If you want to play, leave a comment here and then email your answers to me (so nobody can cheat and steal your answers) at emilymb95 AT gmail DOT com. You have until January 15th to submit your answers.
And now for my New Year's resolutions, of which I have only two:
1. Stop playing around with old ghost stories and write five new ones
2. Get back into my old blogging rhythm
And finally: here's to a great New Year full of books, laughter, and lots of interesting thoughts and ideas with all of you. Cheers!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Joan Didion's Salvador
(This was the fifth book I read for the Nonfiction Five challenge. The more astute among you may be wondering what happened to the fourth book. Never fear: a post on The Math Gene will be coming in January. I just happened to be more in the mood to post on this one.)
I was a teenager in the early 1980s, preoccupied with my unrequited loves of the moment and counting down the days till I could go to college and get out of the house where I was treated so unfairly (because, you know, my parents had the audacity to want to know where I was at 11:30 p.m.). I was vaguely aware of the fact that a bloody war was being fought in a place called El Salvador (somewhere south of us in that area of the world that didn’t seem to exist if my social studies textbooks were any indication. Apparently, it’s still a country that ranks right up there in the memories of more “enlightened” areas of the world. We subscribe to The Economist and recently received its 2008 edition of Pocket World Figures. I decided to look up El Salvador. Guess what. It isn’t there. Neither is Guatemala. These countries must not be part of our world. Maybe one needs a subtle knife to reach them). I had heard of the Freedom Fighters but would have been far more interested in them had they been a New Age band or something during that period of my life.
Meanwhile, as I was busy writing “This is boring” in as many different “artsy” ways as possible all over my Spanish notebook, Joan Didion was in El Salvador, during the height of this bloody civil war. She was immersed in a place that was daily demonstrating how amazing the human capacity for denial actually is, daily demonstrating what folly it is for Americans to go marching arrogantly onto foreign soil, thinking we can possibly understand the people who are living there, thinking that if they just adopt our ways of being (while scratching our backs a little, because, you know, there’s no point unless we can benefit somehow), all will be well with their world. It is also a place where Didion took her own notebook to a shopping center to jot down her observations about such things as the muzak playing (“American Pie”), the shoppers buying beach towels with North American slogans on them, and fashionably-dressed young mothers juxtaposed with guards who were checking everyone for weapons as they walked through the doors of the supermarket. It is a country where Didion had been frightened one evening while eating at a restaurant near the Mexican embassy and noted, “I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instant demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of Terror.” (Didion, Joan. Salvador. New York: Vintage International, p. 26).
I was first smitten with Didion when I was in college. We read A Book of Common Prayer for my literature of the Americas course (a great class, incidentally, in which I was introduced to Gabriel Garcia Marquez whom Didion quotes a few times in this book as she comes to understand him as a social realist. I know of no other American who has read Garcia Marquez who would refer to him as such, but that’s just another testimony to the ways her time in El Salvador affected her). As was typical when I was in college, I loved her book but was too busy keeping up with all my other assignments to read anything else by her. Twenty years later, I rediscovered her when my former boss made his own discovery and began lending (and then giving) me her books. I fell in love with her all over again. She’s a stark writer, never mincing words, with a beautiful and brilliant sense of the ironic. She’ll make you laugh and then sock you in the solar plexus just to make sure you’re really paying attention to the devastating state of all of which she so desperately writes. Then she will challenge you to think. Really, really hard. About things you’ve never once considered, or at least, not considered in that way, the way to which only she could have led you.
I was expecting her note-taking in the shopping center to result in some of her signature comments with ironic twists. Instead, I got this:
This was a shopping center that embodied the future for which El Salvador was presumably being saved, and I wrote it down dutifully, this being the kind of “color” I knew how to interpret, the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illuminate the story. As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details, that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was perhaps even less a story than a true noche obscura. As I waited to cross back over the Boulevard de los Heroes to the Camino Real [her hotel] I noticed soldiers herding a young civilian into a van, their guns at the boy’s back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all. (p. 36)
It’s a testament to the horrors of the place that someone like Didion is left speechless, so to speak (but hasn’t she captured the nightmarish reality beautifully here?). Nonetheless, through her shocked senses, she remembers she has a book to write, and she plods on. Despite her horror, her keen eye for the ironic does not go into hiding, but instead reveals itself time and again. For instance, she seems almost eager to tell us that during the big earthquake in June of 1982, the one building that suffers severe damage is one that was specifically designed to withstand such an earthquake: the American embassy. She then points out that other buildings like the Hotel Camino Real
…which would appear to have been thrown together in the insouciant tradition of most tropical construction, did a considerable amount of rolling (I recall crouching under a door frame in my room on the seventh floor and watching, through the window, the San Salvador volcano appear to rock from left to right), but when the wrenching stopped and candles were found and everyone got downstairs nothing was broken, not even the glasses behind the bar. (pp. 59-60)
This, of course, is also a metaphor that is not lost on her.
If you’ve never read Joan Didion but have The Year of Magical Thinking on your TBR list/pile as your starting point, please don’t start there. My fear is that it’s the main work for which she is going to be remembered. It’s a book worthy in its own right, a beautiful classic, but it isn’t the best starting point for classic Didion. If you want a real taste of Joan Didion, want to understand how she writes when she’s not in the throes of magical thinking, start with this one. It’s a short little piece that will rock your world. Then you can move onto such joys (a word, illogically, that is both appropriate and inappropriate here, but that’s Didion for you) as Political Fictions, A Book of Common Prayer, and yes, The Year of Magical Thinking.
While you’re busy sampling your first morsels, I’ll be sitting here wishing Didion were stationed elsewhere in the world, working on a short little piece entitled Iraq. I know that’s an awful lot to ask of a 73-year-old who’s recently lost her beloved husband and daughter. However, I’m absolutely positive she’s up to the task and that nobody could do a better job.
I was a teenager in the early 1980s, preoccupied with my unrequited loves of the moment and counting down the days till I could go to college and get out of the house where I was treated so unfairly (because, you know, my parents had the audacity to want to know where I was at 11:30 p.m.). I was vaguely aware of the fact that a bloody war was being fought in a place called El Salvador (somewhere south of us in that area of the world that didn’t seem to exist if my social studies textbooks were any indication. Apparently, it’s still a country that ranks right up there in the memories of more “enlightened” areas of the world. We subscribe to The Economist and recently received its 2008 edition of Pocket World Figures. I decided to look up El Salvador. Guess what. It isn’t there. Neither is Guatemala. These countries must not be part of our world. Maybe one needs a subtle knife to reach them). I had heard of the Freedom Fighters but would have been far more interested in them had they been a New Age band or something during that period of my life.
Meanwhile, as I was busy writing “This is boring” in as many different “artsy” ways as possible all over my Spanish notebook, Joan Didion was in El Salvador, during the height of this bloody civil war. She was immersed in a place that was daily demonstrating how amazing the human capacity for denial actually is, daily demonstrating what folly it is for Americans to go marching arrogantly onto foreign soil, thinking we can possibly understand the people who are living there, thinking that if they just adopt our ways of being (while scratching our backs a little, because, you know, there’s no point unless we can benefit somehow), all will be well with their world. It is also a place where Didion took her own notebook to a shopping center to jot down her observations about such things as the muzak playing (“American Pie”), the shoppers buying beach towels with North American slogans on them, and fashionably-dressed young mothers juxtaposed with guards who were checking everyone for weapons as they walked through the doors of the supermarket. It is a country where Didion had been frightened one evening while eating at a restaurant near the Mexican embassy and noted, “I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instant demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of Terror.” (Didion, Joan. Salvador. New York: Vintage International, p. 26).
I was first smitten with Didion when I was in college. We read A Book of Common Prayer for my literature of the Americas course (a great class, incidentally, in which I was introduced to Gabriel Garcia Marquez whom Didion quotes a few times in this book as she comes to understand him as a social realist. I know of no other American who has read Garcia Marquez who would refer to him as such, but that’s just another testimony to the ways her time in El Salvador affected her). As was typical when I was in college, I loved her book but was too busy keeping up with all my other assignments to read anything else by her. Twenty years later, I rediscovered her when my former boss made his own discovery and began lending (and then giving) me her books. I fell in love with her all over again. She’s a stark writer, never mincing words, with a beautiful and brilliant sense of the ironic. She’ll make you laugh and then sock you in the solar plexus just to make sure you’re really paying attention to the devastating state of all of which she so desperately writes. Then she will challenge you to think. Really, really hard. About things you’ve never once considered, or at least, not considered in that way, the way to which only she could have led you.
I was expecting her note-taking in the shopping center to result in some of her signature comments with ironic twists. Instead, I got this:
This was a shopping center that embodied the future for which El Salvador was presumably being saved, and I wrote it down dutifully, this being the kind of “color” I knew how to interpret, the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illuminate the story. As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details, that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was perhaps even less a story than a true noche obscura. As I waited to cross back over the Boulevard de los Heroes to the Camino Real [her hotel] I noticed soldiers herding a young civilian into a van, their guns at the boy’s back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all. (p. 36)
It’s a testament to the horrors of the place that someone like Didion is left speechless, so to speak (but hasn’t she captured the nightmarish reality beautifully here?). Nonetheless, through her shocked senses, she remembers she has a book to write, and she plods on. Despite her horror, her keen eye for the ironic does not go into hiding, but instead reveals itself time and again. For instance, she seems almost eager to tell us that during the big earthquake in June of 1982, the one building that suffers severe damage is one that was specifically designed to withstand such an earthquake: the American embassy. She then points out that other buildings like the Hotel Camino Real
…which would appear to have been thrown together in the insouciant tradition of most tropical construction, did a considerable amount of rolling (I recall crouching under a door frame in my room on the seventh floor and watching, through the window, the San Salvador volcano appear to rock from left to right), but when the wrenching stopped and candles were found and everyone got downstairs nothing was broken, not even the glasses behind the bar. (pp. 59-60)
This, of course, is also a metaphor that is not lost on her.
If you’ve never read Joan Didion but have The Year of Magical Thinking on your TBR list/pile as your starting point, please don’t start there. My fear is that it’s the main work for which she is going to be remembered. It’s a book worthy in its own right, a beautiful classic, but it isn’t the best starting point for classic Didion. If you want a real taste of Joan Didion, want to understand how she writes when she’s not in the throes of magical thinking, start with this one. It’s a short little piece that will rock your world. Then you can move onto such joys (a word, illogically, that is both appropriate and inappropriate here, but that’s Didion for you) as Political Fictions, A Book of Common Prayer, and yes, The Year of Magical Thinking.
While you’re busy sampling your first morsels, I’ll be sitting here wishing Didion were stationed elsewhere in the world, working on a short little piece entitled Iraq. I know that’s an awful lot to ask of a 73-year-old who’s recently lost her beloved husband and daughter. However, I’m absolutely positive she’s up to the task and that nobody could do a better job.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Graphic Novels Challenge
Back in the days when I worked in the library world, I sort of frowned on the notion of graphic novels. I was appalled when kids would come into the library looking for “comic book” versions of the classics. However, I am nothing if I’m not contradictory, and although I was alarmed by the thought of things like “King Lear in 50 Easy Frames,” I was somewhat intrigued by the notion of original novels written in comic strip fashion. I’m still intrigued, having come to accept the graphic novel as a genre in its own right, and I’ve been known to browse the “graphic novels” sections at libraries. This is not to say, though, that I have ever actually picked one up and read it cover-to-cover.I was toying with the idea of creating a graphics novel challenge for 2008 (suspecting from comments left on others’ blogs that I’m not alone in being someone who’s never read one) when I discovered Dewey has conveniently already done all the work to get one going, even providing some lists for those of us who may be a little (shall we say?) graphic-novel-challenged. Thus, I’m embarking on my first challenge of ’08, because despite what seems to be an inability to complete challenges, I’m always ready to take on one that seems like fun (especially when it’s the beginning of the year, and I’ve got the whole year ahead of me to complete it).
One thing I’ve discovered about choosing graphic novels is that it’s like choosing picture books or audiobooks. There’s more to consider than just the story. With audiobooks, the narrator/reader is very important. With picture books, the illustrator is key. I turned down many a good story when I was a kid, because I didn’t like the illustrations presented. I’m afraid to say I’m still quite picky about that. Thank goodness for Amazon’s “search inside the book” feature, which helped me choose books with illustrators that appealed. Here’s the list of novels I’ve chosen:
Fun Home – Allison Bechdel (discovered browsing the shelves at the Philadelphia library one day)
Beowulf – Gareth Hinds (you know, “Beowulf in 50 Easy Frames”)
[Rex Libris]: I, Librarian – James Turner (discovered over at Stef’s)
Blankets – Craig Thompson (discovered through one of Dewey’s helpful links)
It Rhymes with Lust – Arnold Drake (I think I first discovered this one at Wikipedia, of all places and was intrigued by the description. The graphic novel seems like the perfect format for noir.)
Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth – Chris Ware (another from one of Dewey’s links)
So, stay tuned for my thoughts and reflections on each of these (we hope) in 2008.
Friday, December 28, 2007
12 Ways I Did Christmas Right
1.Went Christmas caroling to shut-ins and those who have been recently widowed or lost other loved-ones. It’s good to remind myself that I don’t have any REAL reasons to be depressed at Christmas time and also to discover how easy it is to bring a little joy into others’ lives.
2. Went to a Moravian love feast service, something I haven’t done in well over fifteen years. What a beautiful, beautiful service it was.
3. Went to see Fiddler on the Roof at The Fulton Opera House. Nothing like a terrific performance of a favorite musical in a historical setting to help one forget all the worst things the Christmas season offers.
4. Volunteered to help serve dinner (including Christmas cookies, of course) at the center for disadvantaged and troubled youth right down the street from where I live. They may be troubled, but they certainly were polite, happy, and appreciative when they came to get their food.
5. Took the three children in a family whose father has been out of work for sometime shopping for Christmas presents for their parents. We did this with money that was donated by a tour guide who refused to take the tip money from the people on his tour and instead gave it to a friend of mine to do something “better” with it. She brought it back and gave it to Bob and me for this purpose.
6. Attended the holiday luncheon hosted by the oldest (and certainly sweetest and cutest, although I’m sure they’d be appalled to hear that) members of our church. This is where I realized that popular Christmas songs are generational (don’t know why I never realized this before). They didn’t know the words to “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” Bob and I didn’t know the words to “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.”
7. Started a new tradition of “re-gifting” between Bob and me. One thing moving taught us is that we have a lot of stuff and that we’ve given each other some wonderful gifts over the years. This year, we decided to go around the house and choose gifts to give to each other all over again to join new ones under the tree. Try it. I promise you, it’s great fun (choosing, trying to figure out what might have been chosen, and opening them a second time around). Next year, our hope is to start choosing them about three months before Christmas and to see if either of us notices what’s “gone missing.”
8. Decided I wasn’t going to feel the least bit guilty for buying Christmas cards that never got sent. After all, I was spending time doing all this other stuff. Maybe they'll go out next year.
9. Didn’t set foot in a mall to do any Christmas shopping at all. All right, I will admit that, despite swearing I wouldn’t, I did visit a couple of stores at the outlet shopping centers (that damn cardigan my brother-in-law wanted was just impossible to find at quaint little shops in quaint little PA towns).
10. Went to both of Bob’s Christmas Eve services, even though I’d threatened to skip one of them. I’m so glad I didn’t, especially the 11:00 service, which was probably one of the most magnificent Christmas Eve services I’ve ever attended.
11. Took a two-hour-long nap on Christmas Eve afternoon.
12. Made my great-great grandmother’s infamous eggnog anyway, despite the fact we didn’t have a party and the only ones to drink it were Bob, his brother, and me.
2. Went to a Moravian love feast service, something I haven’t done in well over fifteen years. What a beautiful, beautiful service it was.
3. Went to see Fiddler on the Roof at The Fulton Opera House. Nothing like a terrific performance of a favorite musical in a historical setting to help one forget all the worst things the Christmas season offers.
4. Volunteered to help serve dinner (including Christmas cookies, of course) at the center for disadvantaged and troubled youth right down the street from where I live. They may be troubled, but they certainly were polite, happy, and appreciative when they came to get their food.
5. Took the three children in a family whose father has been out of work for sometime shopping for Christmas presents for their parents. We did this with money that was donated by a tour guide who refused to take the tip money from the people on his tour and instead gave it to a friend of mine to do something “better” with it. She brought it back and gave it to Bob and me for this purpose.
6. Attended the holiday luncheon hosted by the oldest (and certainly sweetest and cutest, although I’m sure they’d be appalled to hear that) members of our church. This is where I realized that popular Christmas songs are generational (don’t know why I never realized this before). They didn’t know the words to “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” Bob and I didn’t know the words to “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.”
7. Started a new tradition of “re-gifting” between Bob and me. One thing moving taught us is that we have a lot of stuff and that we’ve given each other some wonderful gifts over the years. This year, we decided to go around the house and choose gifts to give to each other all over again to join new ones under the tree. Try it. I promise you, it’s great fun (choosing, trying to figure out what might have been chosen, and opening them a second time around). Next year, our hope is to start choosing them about three months before Christmas and to see if either of us notices what’s “gone missing.”
8. Decided I wasn’t going to feel the least bit guilty for buying Christmas cards that never got sent. After all, I was spending time doing all this other stuff. Maybe they'll go out next year.
9. Didn’t set foot in a mall to do any Christmas shopping at all. All right, I will admit that, despite swearing I wouldn’t, I did visit a couple of stores at the outlet shopping centers (that damn cardigan my brother-in-law wanted was just impossible to find at quaint little shops in quaint little PA towns).
10. Went to both of Bob’s Christmas Eve services, even though I’d threatened to skip one of them. I’m so glad I didn’t, especially the 11:00 service, which was probably one of the most magnificent Christmas Eve services I’ve ever attended.
11. Took a two-hour-long nap on Christmas Eve afternoon.
12. Made my great-great grandmother’s infamous eggnog anyway, despite the fact we didn’t have a party and the only ones to drink it were Bob, his brother, and me.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Read, Think, Marvel
By now, it’s no secret that when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I dabbled with expanding my mind through the use of illegal substances. Being the control freak that I am (oh, wait a minute, I’m not), this experimentation was accompanied by long lists of rules and regulations I’d created. I was, after all, a psychology major. On the weekends, like-minded friends and I may have been seeking out the special rooms in fraternity houses where we could get something more interesting than cheap beer from a keg tap or rot-gut punch from a metal trashcan. During the week, however, I was reading about how heroin addicts could o.d. if they took their normal “dose” in unfamiliar surroundings. Heroin terrified me, as did cocaine (because people told me once you were on it, you just wanted more, because you felt so good, you never wanted to come down), and LSD (because some guys in one of my psych courses decided to do an oral presentation on their one-time experiment with LSD, which had been fine for them, but the other friend who’d joined them had had a horrific trip, freaking out and terrifying both of them). I was also reading about the difference between drug experimentation and addiction. I wanted to make sure I stayed in the former camp.
So, LSD, cocaine, and heroin were out. However, marijuana, mushrooms, and ecstasy were all okay. If you really must know, these were my stupid rationalizations: marijuana and mushrooms were natural – as if hemlock isn’t. Ecstasy had been a “feel-good” drug prescribed by psychiatrists and had only recently (at that time anyway) become an illegal substance – as if popping illegal Prozac, should it one day be taken off the prescription-drug market would be far safer than licking a tab of acid.
Sometime during this period, I discovered Andrew Weil. Before Weil became the nutrition god he is today, he’d co-authored From Chocolate to Morphine, every druggie’s Bible, and had written other books like The Natural Mind and Marriage of Sun and Moon: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Consciousness. I read these books and was particularly interested in the latter two. Weil had a theory that all humans have an innate need to alter consciousness (manifested, according to him, by watching how even very young children will spin themselves around until they’re dizzy and disoriented). He claimed that many of us turn to drugs as a quick and easy way to accomplish these different states of mind but that the pure route is through meditation, which if one is patient, can lead to the highest form of altered consciousness: an out-of-body experience.
I read all this and thought, “True. True. We all need to experience different states of mind. Reading is probably a way of doing that. I bet that’s why amusement park rides are so popular. Meditation is so hard, though. Someone pass me a joint, please.” Even so, I was fascinated and read quite a lot about meditation after that, never forgetting Weil’s theories. I decided to give up all illegal drugs before I was thirty. I can’t possibly condemn anyone who chooses this easy route to other states of mind, especially since I’m still known to alter my consciousness with caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and an occasional prescription sleep aid (although I’m so terrified of the possibility of becoming addicted to them and never again being able to sleep without them, as well as what they might be doing to my brain, that they’ve actually been known to make my insomnia worse, not better). I just found that this easy route no longer satisfied me, and the other long-term repercussions for my health and brain were worrisome. (Obviously, I was getting older.)
Then, a few years ago, I read a book called They Speak with Other Tongues by John L. Sherrill. John was an Episcopalian when he wrote that book (sometime in the fifties, I think. I don’t know anything about him and don’t know if he’s still an Episcopalian, or even if he's still alive, although I’ve discovered this book, that I had a hell of a time finding when I read it, having to wait ages for an inter-library loan from some obscure seminary, has now been reprinted). He didn’t believe in the notion of being overtaken by the Holy Spirit, and he set out to prove that the Pentecostals and others who claimed to speak in tongues were faking it. By the end of his period of research, he was having “spiritual possessions” of his own, if you will. He wasn’t exactly converted to Pentecostalism, but he was definitely converted to a belief in a spiritual possession. I’ve wanted, ever since, to attend a Pentecostal church, but I never have.
You see, I long for this sort of episode. I want a mind-altering experience that brings me out of my body, and I don’t want to take any drugs to get there. I believe in the power of the mind. I believe the statistic that we only use 10% of our brains. There must be so much more this powerful, powerful machine of ours can do. Why shouldn’t it be able to provide us with such experiences if we only allow it to do so?
For years, though, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m just not one of those people, for whatever reason, who can do it (just like I’m not one of those people who can successfully play any team sport that involves a ball). I don’t know why this is, but when I think about it, I explain to myself and others that I’m just not a “feely” sort of person, and that this is something that seems to come easily to “feely” sorts of people, but not to those of us who are “thinking” sorts, you know, those of us who are probably better known as skeptics.
I can’t quiet my brain. I feel ridiculous when I try. Believe me, you don’t want to be inside my head during one of those periods when I decide, yet again, I’m going to try to learn to meditate. My brain resembles a television set with 500 channels perched in front of a classroom full of A.D.H.D. kids, each holding individual remote controls. I’ve had discussions with many friends of mine in which we’ve admitted that when it comes to our faith, we’re not the types who ever feel overcome by the Holy Spirit, are truly skeptical when we hear others talk this way.
So, then I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book I avoided forever for two reasons: 1. I didn’t like Gilbert’s Stern Men when I tried to read it a few years ago and 2. The title was a real turn-off (I’m such a WASP at heart. Despite being married to a minister, I cringe at anything that so blatantly announces some sort of religious belief). However, I’d read rave reviews of it out here in the blogosphere, as well as had it recommended to me by other friends, so I suggested we read it for our book discussion group at work.
Suddenly, halfway through the book in the Indian ashram with Gilbert, I was beginning to feel I could no longer claim I’m not the sort of person who can have spiritual experiences. Gilbert’s mind seems to work just like mine. She thinks too much. She dwells on her short-comings and failures. She blames herself for things that aren’t her fault. I’ve never heard anyone voice so well my own thoughts about why I never really wanted to have children. And yet, here she was, disbelieving as much as I do and suddenly finding herself in true meditative states. To say I’m jealous is to say India is a slightly impoverished country. If you were to picture me wondering if there are any Indian gurus in rural Pennsylvania and whether or not Bob ought to take his first study leave from church at an ashram and take me along, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
But then something really eerie happened. I found myself thinking about Eugene Callender. The Rev. Dr. Eugene Callender was, so to speak, a spiritual guru of Bob’s. When Bob was in seminary, he met and worked with “Rev,” as we all call him, in Harlem. We were extremely honored to have him preach the sermon at Bob’s ordination service. Rev grew up a Pentecostal, who did fake it when he began speaking in tongues as a boy. That is, he faked it until suddenly, one day, he woke up from a trance-like state and didn’t remember what had happened. He went on to attend seminary and to become an ordained Presbyterian minister, despite his parents' wishes that he become a doctor. He was a Civil Rights leader, a friend to both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. He worked with people like Mario Cuomo, and he helped found The Harlem Academies, schools that have since closed, but that were supported by businesses and that helped pave the way for many Harlem youth, getting them off the streets and allowing them to become successful themselves. Rev’s one of the most well-rounded people I’ve ever met, able to engage you in an extremely exciting intellectual debate while emanating love and an inner peace that are magical. And he’s a magnificent storyteller.
I was thinking about Rev’s Pentecostal roots and how he later discovered meditation. He followed a guru to India, and meditation is now a part of who he is. I was observing how there must be a link between that Pentecostal upbringing and the ashram he visits in India. He’s one of those people who has the kind of brain I wish I had: a perfect combination of both thinking and feeling.
So, I’m busy thinking about meditation and Elizabeth Gilbert and how maybe I’m like her and how maybe an out-of-body experience isn’t beyond my reach after all. I’m also thinking about the Rev and how we ought to call him and see how he’s doing (see? You don’t need any more proof than this to understand why quieting my mind is so difficult), when I get to Gilbert’s description of “Swamji,” her guru’s master and what he was like. I was happy to see her compare him to St. Francis of Assissi, one of Bob’s and my spiritual heroes. Then I read a little further and came to this:
My favorite passage in the Bible is “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). It’s times like these when I feel my unbelief being helped. Now, to book a trip to India…
*He was actually at St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem at the time this book was written (a mistake that didn’t get past this editor).
So, LSD, cocaine, and heroin were out. However, marijuana, mushrooms, and ecstasy were all okay. If you really must know, these were my stupid rationalizations: marijuana and mushrooms were natural – as if hemlock isn’t. Ecstasy had been a “feel-good” drug prescribed by psychiatrists and had only recently (at that time anyway) become an illegal substance – as if popping illegal Prozac, should it one day be taken off the prescription-drug market would be far safer than licking a tab of acid.
Sometime during this period, I discovered Andrew Weil. Before Weil became the nutrition god he is today, he’d co-authored From Chocolate to Morphine, every druggie’s Bible, and had written other books like The Natural Mind and Marriage of Sun and Moon: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Consciousness. I read these books and was particularly interested in the latter two. Weil had a theory that all humans have an innate need to alter consciousness (manifested, according to him, by watching how even very young children will spin themselves around until they’re dizzy and disoriented). He claimed that many of us turn to drugs as a quick and easy way to accomplish these different states of mind but that the pure route is through meditation, which if one is patient, can lead to the highest form of altered consciousness: an out-of-body experience.
I read all this and thought, “True. True. We all need to experience different states of mind. Reading is probably a way of doing that. I bet that’s why amusement park rides are so popular. Meditation is so hard, though. Someone pass me a joint, please.” Even so, I was fascinated and read quite a lot about meditation after that, never forgetting Weil’s theories. I decided to give up all illegal drugs before I was thirty. I can’t possibly condemn anyone who chooses this easy route to other states of mind, especially since I’m still known to alter my consciousness with caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and an occasional prescription sleep aid (although I’m so terrified of the possibility of becoming addicted to them and never again being able to sleep without them, as well as what they might be doing to my brain, that they’ve actually been known to make my insomnia worse, not better). I just found that this easy route no longer satisfied me, and the other long-term repercussions for my health and brain were worrisome. (Obviously, I was getting older.)
Then, a few years ago, I read a book called They Speak with Other Tongues by John L. Sherrill. John was an Episcopalian when he wrote that book (sometime in the fifties, I think. I don’t know anything about him and don’t know if he’s still an Episcopalian, or even if he's still alive, although I’ve discovered this book, that I had a hell of a time finding when I read it, having to wait ages for an inter-library loan from some obscure seminary, has now been reprinted). He didn’t believe in the notion of being overtaken by the Holy Spirit, and he set out to prove that the Pentecostals and others who claimed to speak in tongues were faking it. By the end of his period of research, he was having “spiritual possessions” of his own, if you will. He wasn’t exactly converted to Pentecostalism, but he was definitely converted to a belief in a spiritual possession. I’ve wanted, ever since, to attend a Pentecostal church, but I never have.
You see, I long for this sort of episode. I want a mind-altering experience that brings me out of my body, and I don’t want to take any drugs to get there. I believe in the power of the mind. I believe the statistic that we only use 10% of our brains. There must be so much more this powerful, powerful machine of ours can do. Why shouldn’t it be able to provide us with such experiences if we only allow it to do so?
For years, though, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m just not one of those people, for whatever reason, who can do it (just like I’m not one of those people who can successfully play any team sport that involves a ball). I don’t know why this is, but when I think about it, I explain to myself and others that I’m just not a “feely” sort of person, and that this is something that seems to come easily to “feely” sorts of people, but not to those of us who are “thinking” sorts, you know, those of us who are probably better known as skeptics.
I can’t quiet my brain. I feel ridiculous when I try. Believe me, you don’t want to be inside my head during one of those periods when I decide, yet again, I’m going to try to learn to meditate. My brain resembles a television set with 500 channels perched in front of a classroom full of A.D.H.D. kids, each holding individual remote controls. I’ve had discussions with many friends of mine in which we’ve admitted that when it comes to our faith, we’re not the types who ever feel overcome by the Holy Spirit, are truly skeptical when we hear others talk this way.
So, then I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book I avoided forever for two reasons: 1. I didn’t like Gilbert’s Stern Men when I tried to read it a few years ago and 2. The title was a real turn-off (I’m such a WASP at heart. Despite being married to a minister, I cringe at anything that so blatantly announces some sort of religious belief). However, I’d read rave reviews of it out here in the blogosphere, as well as had it recommended to me by other friends, so I suggested we read it for our book discussion group at work.
Suddenly, halfway through the book in the Indian ashram with Gilbert, I was beginning to feel I could no longer claim I’m not the sort of person who can have spiritual experiences. Gilbert’s mind seems to work just like mine. She thinks too much. She dwells on her short-comings and failures. She blames herself for things that aren’t her fault. I’ve never heard anyone voice so well my own thoughts about why I never really wanted to have children. And yet, here she was, disbelieving as much as I do and suddenly finding herself in true meditative states. To say I’m jealous is to say India is a slightly impoverished country. If you were to picture me wondering if there are any Indian gurus in rural Pennsylvania and whether or not Bob ought to take his first study leave from church at an ashram and take me along, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
But then something really eerie happened. I found myself thinking about Eugene Callender. The Rev. Dr. Eugene Callender was, so to speak, a spiritual guru of Bob’s. When Bob was in seminary, he met and worked with “Rev,” as we all call him, in Harlem. We were extremely honored to have him preach the sermon at Bob’s ordination service. Rev grew up a Pentecostal, who did fake it when he began speaking in tongues as a boy. That is, he faked it until suddenly, one day, he woke up from a trance-like state and didn’t remember what had happened. He went on to attend seminary and to become an ordained Presbyterian minister, despite his parents' wishes that he become a doctor. He was a Civil Rights leader, a friend to both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. He worked with people like Mario Cuomo, and he helped found The Harlem Academies, schools that have since closed, but that were supported by businesses and that helped pave the way for many Harlem youth, getting them off the streets and allowing them to become successful themselves. Rev’s one of the most well-rounded people I’ve ever met, able to engage you in an extremely exciting intellectual debate while emanating love and an inner peace that are magical. And he’s a magnificent storyteller.
I was thinking about Rev’s Pentecostal roots and how he later discovered meditation. He followed a guru to India, and meditation is now a part of who he is. I was observing how there must be a link between that Pentecostal upbringing and the ashram he visits in India. He’s one of those people who has the kind of brain I wish I had: a perfect combination of both thinking and feeling.
So, I’m busy thinking about meditation and Elizabeth Gilbert and how maybe I’m like her and how maybe an out-of-body experience isn’t beyond my reach after all. I’m also thinking about the Rev and how we ought to call him and see how he’s doing (see? You don’t need any more proof than this to understand why quieting my mind is so difficult), when I get to Gilbert’s description of “Swamji,” her guru’s master and what he was like. I was happy to see her compare him to St. Francis of Assissi, one of Bob’s and my spiritual heroes. Then I read a little further and came to this:
He [Swamji] came to America in 1970 and blew everybody’s mind. He gave divine
initiation – shaktipat – to hundreds and thousands of people a day. He
had a power that was immediate and transformative. The Reverend Eugene Callender
(a respected Civil Rights leader, a colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. and
still the pastor of a Baptist* church in Harlem) remembers meeting Swamji in the
1970s and dropping on his knees before the Indian man in amazement and thinking
to himself, “There’s no time for shuckin’ and jivin’ now, this is it…this man
knows everything there is to know about you.” (Gilbert, Elizabeth.; Eat,
Pray, Love; New York: Viking., 2006, p.165-66)
My favorite passage in the Bible is “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). It’s times like these when I feel my unbelief being helped. Now, to book a trip to India…
*He was actually at St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem at the time this book was written (a mistake that didn’t get past this editor).
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
2007: A Bit of a Challenging Year
Okay, I’m somewhat of a loser when it comes to my 2007 challenges. Of course, two of them weren’t official challenges. They were just challenges I created for myself that I then went and posted: 13 adult classics and 13 children’s classics. Despite revising the adult one half way through the year, I still failed to complete either one.
However, it’s not as though I wasn’t busy reading classics. After all, I read Gone with the Wind this year. Its length rivals War and Peace, the book that seems to be best known for its length than anything else. Surely, Gone with the Wind should count for at least three classics, being over 1000 pages long. I listened to Lolita. Everyone knows that listening to a book takes much longer than reading it, so that ought to count for at least two classics. On top of that, I also listened to Dracula (2 more), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (okay, okay. That one is so short, it really shouldn’t be allowed to count as two), and The Turn of the Screw (ditto Jekyll and Hyde). I would bet that everyone else who’s read The Man Who Was Thursday for the outmoded authors challenge would agree that it’s a classic. Rose Macaulay’s They Were Defeated, which I also read, is most absolutely a classic (who cares if it’s nearly impossible to find in this country?). According to these numbers, I definitely surpassed my goal of thirteen classics for the year. I merely fooled everyone into thinking I was going to be reading different classics. Just call me a magician.
Magician that I am, I also managed to make everyone think that I had 13 children’s classics on my list to read. Actually, there were only six, and I read every last one of them. They were all excellent, and in 2008 I just might have to read, oh, I don’t, seven more sounds like a good number, huh? But then, I probably don’t need to bother with another children’s classics challenge, since I succeeded so well this year.
The other two challenges I took on in 2007 were the nonfiction five and the outmoded authors ones. Outmoded authors continues into 2008, and I’ve already read and posted on two. I’m halfway through the third, so this one just might make it. I’ve read and posted on three of my nonfiction five. I’ve read the fourth and will be posting on it soon. The fifth will be finished by the end of the year, but its post just might have to wait until 2008. We’ll see…(it’s the holiday season and all, you know). However, even if I don’t post on all five this year, I will actually have read 17 nonfiction books by the end of the year (not counting manuscripts for work, which would tip that number to well over 25). That should count for something, right?
So, you be the judge. Did I live up to my blogging goal of not being so afraid of challenges this year? Stay tuned for 2008, when I just might create a challenge of my own for everyone that I will, I’m sure, complete with flying colors.
However, it’s not as though I wasn’t busy reading classics. After all, I read Gone with the Wind this year. Its length rivals War and Peace, the book that seems to be best known for its length than anything else. Surely, Gone with the Wind should count for at least three classics, being over 1000 pages long. I listened to Lolita. Everyone knows that listening to a book takes much longer than reading it, so that ought to count for at least two classics. On top of that, I also listened to Dracula (2 more), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (okay, okay. That one is so short, it really shouldn’t be allowed to count as two), and The Turn of the Screw (ditto Jekyll and Hyde). I would bet that everyone else who’s read The Man Who Was Thursday for the outmoded authors challenge would agree that it’s a classic. Rose Macaulay’s They Were Defeated, which I also read, is most absolutely a classic (who cares if it’s nearly impossible to find in this country?). According to these numbers, I definitely surpassed my goal of thirteen classics for the year. I merely fooled everyone into thinking I was going to be reading different classics. Just call me a magician.
Magician that I am, I also managed to make everyone think that I had 13 children’s classics on my list to read. Actually, there were only six, and I read every last one of them. They were all excellent, and in 2008 I just might have to read, oh, I don’t, seven more sounds like a good number, huh? But then, I probably don’t need to bother with another children’s classics challenge, since I succeeded so well this year.
The other two challenges I took on in 2007 were the nonfiction five and the outmoded authors ones. Outmoded authors continues into 2008, and I’ve already read and posted on two. I’m halfway through the third, so this one just might make it. I’ve read and posted on three of my nonfiction five. I’ve read the fourth and will be posting on it soon. The fifth will be finished by the end of the year, but its post just might have to wait until 2008. We’ll see…(it’s the holiday season and all, you know). However, even if I don’t post on all five this year, I will actually have read 17 nonfiction books by the end of the year (not counting manuscripts for work, which would tip that number to well over 25). That should count for something, right?
So, you be the judge. Did I live up to my blogging goal of not being so afraid of challenges this year? Stay tuned for 2008, when I just might create a challenge of my own for everyone that I will, I’m sure, complete with flying colors.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
I Was Kinda Hoping for Cilantro
Maybe this is why I get drunk after only one martini? I'm already intoxicated before I even start.
Your Score: Juniper Berries
You scored 100% intoxication, 25% hotness, 100% complexity, and 75% craziness!
You are Juniper Berries! You're a drunk. No, really. Cool it with the hooch. Just kidding. You're really good at adding flavour to boring old life. You can be astringent at times, but once the harshness passes, you're quite relaxing. And you smell good, too.
| Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Friday, December 14, 2007
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and
ragged
as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout, its
sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the
outburst of a builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture
sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne. (Chesteron, G.K., The Man
Who Was Thursday (1908; repr., New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1935, p.1)
How can one not immediately be drawn into a book that begins so deliciously? I’ve rarely encountered an author who can expertly plop me right down in the middle of his setting and make me so want to find out what’s going to happen in this interesting little spot. As a matter of fact, I’m not one who is typically all that conscious of setting, often annoyed if an author goes on and on trying to paint every little line of a place for me. The subtitle of this book is “A Nightmare,” and from the very first, Chesterton’s book enchants and surprises with its dream-like imagery. (I just love that “sunset side of London,” so much dreamier than “the west side.”)
This is a difficult book to discuss without including any spoilers, but I’m going to attempt to do so. First, I’ll give you a string of adjectives that would have my twelfth-grade creative writing teacher cringing, red pen poised to write “be more specific.” Funny, delightful, nightmarish, philosophical, in other words, “un-put-downable” for someone like me. But, let’s be “more specific.”
I didn’t know what to expect from this book except that I’ve been told for some time by people who know me that I ought to read it. It’s funny that it should be the first book for which I chose to do something I’ve never done, both downloading the audio version from Librivox.org and pulling the print version from the shelf. My thought had been to read the book in print form, and when I had other stuff to do (walking, cooking, unpacking, folding laundry…), I’d listen to it. Librivox recordings are especially good for this sort of plan, because they’re downloaded chapter-by-chapter.
Here’s the testament to this book’s “un-put-downable-ness.” I was out walking one evening with my iPod when I finished The Turn of the Screw. The Turn of the Screw is a favorite fall read of mine, and it’s difficult to find something good enough to follow that. However, I still had quite a way to go on my walk, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to music, so I decided to start listening to this one. For three consecutive days, it became my walking companion. I loved the voice of the guy reading it (he can come over and read to me anytime), loved the walking companion (especially when I started my walk a bit late one evening and had to walk around the cemetery to stay off the roads where it was too dark. It’s a great book for cemetery listening), but ultimately had to pick up the book and finish it after that third evening, because the audiobook was too slow, and I could no longer wait to find out what was going to happen.
By funny, I don’t necessarily mean it’s laugh-out-loud-Nick-Hornby funny (although the scene with the chase and the elephant was). It’s more, “think-about-it-in-retrospect-and-smile-in-amusement-and-admiration" funny. It’s funny, because in true parody fashion, the reader just doesn’t know what to expect. As Stefanie noted when she read it, nobody is what he seems to be, and the characters wind up in the oddest of places, doing the oddest of things, like dueling in France to keep someone from catching a train or being an imposter who is voted more realistic than the person he’s pretending to be.
It’s nightmarish and delightful for exactly the same reasons it’s funny and surprising. What’s funny in retrospect is certainly nightmarish for those who are experiencing it. Imagine no one you encounter being whom or what you think he is. Imagine people pretending to be anarchists who aren’t and how dangerous and scary that could be. Imagine pursuing someone and thinking you’ve been led into some wild jungle or something full of roaring, howling, and screeching beasts when you haven’t been.
The book is philosophical from the very beginning when the two “poets” are arguing over who is the real poet. It goes on to present characters who discuss such matters as “truth,” “belief,” “morality,” etc. One of the final chapters is called “The Six Philosophers.” I have to admit I was tempted to do a little research on this book before writing this post, so I could learn more about the philosophy behind the book, as well as Chesterton’s own philosophical leanings, but I didn’t. (It’s obvious by the end of the book that Chesterton was a religious man, something I already knew before I started it.) I was trying to identify each man with his particular philosophy but couldn’t really and came to think that was Chesterton’s whole philosophical point, that reason, ultimately, falls short. If so, it’s a philosophy to which I can very easily relate.
One last thing I will say about this book: it’s probably better in print rather than audiobook form. Some of the writing is so subtle, it really must be read in order to be appreciated. I noticed skimming through the parts I’d listened to that I’d managed to miss quite a lot. (Then again, that may just be due to the fact that I’m more a visual than an auditory learner.) Regardless of format, though, this one definitely gets two very enthusiastic thumbs-up from me. I’m now looking forward to Father Brown.
Cross-posted: Outmoded Authors
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Answers
All right, for all those of you who have been waiting patiently for the answers, you need wait no longer. Here they are.
1. Schools here are closed the Monday after Thanksgiving, because:
b. It's opening day of the deer hunting season (you know, since it's much more important for kindergartners to be out there with guns than learning how to read and write. Some of my more astute colleagues guessed that maybe it was for the kids' safety, that hunters might be too trigger happy on the first day and mistake that third-grader's, oh-so-stylish, day-glo pink coat for a deer tail. After hypothesizing -- and picturing Ma, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie waiting for Pa's return with this winter's venison-- that maybe it came from some old tradition back in the days when people around here got most of their food from hunting, I learned the truth from Bob -- who asked someone rather than hypothesizing: it turned out so many kids were out of school that day that the school systems caved and decided just to close).
2. Lawmakers in the state of Pennsylvania recently defeated a bill that would have:
a. Limited handgun purchases to one per month (because it's highly probable that when you're protecting your house in its gated community from all those -- most likely, illegal alien --intruders that everyone in the family is going to need a gun for each hand. But you could have guessed any of the answers I gave for this question and been somewhat right, because in Pennsylvania, there's no waiting period for hand-gun purchases, no background checks, and buyers do not have to take any sort of safety course before purchasing guns).
3. Which one of the following is not the name of a town in Pennsylvania?
d.Yellow Cat (yes, Francis provided the inspiration for that answer. Who knows, though? There just might be a Yellow Cat, PA, because I didn't check, and as well as those I named, we also have places such as Bird-in-Hand, Virginville, and Kuttstown).
4. Which of the following is not a sign I've seen along the side of the road?
b. Free eggs (Dorr's right. No one's giving away their eggs around here, although you can get delicious farm-fresh eggs practically right out of the nest for peanuts compared to what they cost in the stores back in Connecticut. Meanwhile, I'm embarrassed to say that until two months ago, I had no idea what "fill" is. When Bob -- who spent a summer in Kansas working on a farm when he was a teenager -- told me, my incredulous response, once he convinced me he wasn't teasing me and was really telling the truth was "people pay to buy dirt? How big are these holes they need to fill?" Can anyone tell me why on earth someone would buy deer antlers? Mightn't they get shot carrying around something like that?).
5. What is a mud sale?
a. A time to buy cheap fencing for your pigs (yes, I'm lying, but I was particularly proud of coming up with that one. It's a much better answer than the real one: c. A spring auction event).
6. Which of the following is not something one eats in Pennsylvania?
c. Greenies (a whoopie pie is not a pie at all, but rather something that resembles a big Oreo cookie. However, instead of hard cookies, the two "cookies" are like cake (and can come in any flavor, not just chocolate. Whoopie pies aren't double-stuffed with a cream filling; they're triple-stuffed with it. They're delicious. A shoo-fly pie is a pie. I remember reading about shoo-fly pie in a Lois Lenski book when I was a child and wanting one. Good thing I didn't get it. It should really be called brown sugar pie, which would be a much more fitting name. I don't like it; it's way too sweet -- of course, I don't mind the super-sweet whoopie pie. Go figure. If you don't know what scrapple is, you don't want to know).
1. Schools here are closed the Monday after Thanksgiving, because:
b. It's opening day of the deer hunting season (you know, since it's much more important for kindergartners to be out there with guns than learning how to read and write. Some of my more astute colleagues guessed that maybe it was for the kids' safety, that hunters might be too trigger happy on the first day and mistake that third-grader's, oh-so-stylish, day-glo pink coat for a deer tail. After hypothesizing -- and picturing Ma, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie waiting for Pa's return with this winter's venison-- that maybe it came from some old tradition back in the days when people around here got most of their food from hunting, I learned the truth from Bob -- who asked someone rather than hypothesizing: it turned out so many kids were out of school that day that the school systems caved and decided just to close).
2. Lawmakers in the state of Pennsylvania recently defeated a bill that would have:
a. Limited handgun purchases to one per month (because it's highly probable that when you're protecting your house in its gated community from all those -- most likely, illegal alien --intruders that everyone in the family is going to need a gun for each hand. But you could have guessed any of the answers I gave for this question and been somewhat right, because in Pennsylvania, there's no waiting period for hand-gun purchases, no background checks, and buyers do not have to take any sort of safety course before purchasing guns).
3. Which one of the following is not the name of a town in Pennsylvania?
d.Yellow Cat (yes, Francis provided the inspiration for that answer. Who knows, though? There just might be a Yellow Cat, PA, because I didn't check, and as well as those I named, we also have places such as Bird-in-Hand, Virginville, and Kuttstown).
4. Which of the following is not a sign I've seen along the side of the road?
b. Free eggs (Dorr's right. No one's giving away their eggs around here, although you can get delicious farm-fresh eggs practically right out of the nest for peanuts compared to what they cost in the stores back in Connecticut. Meanwhile, I'm embarrassed to say that until two months ago, I had no idea what "fill" is. When Bob -- who spent a summer in Kansas working on a farm when he was a teenager -- told me, my incredulous response, once he convinced me he wasn't teasing me and was really telling the truth was "people pay to buy dirt? How big are these holes they need to fill?" Can anyone tell me why on earth someone would buy deer antlers? Mightn't they get shot carrying around something like that?).
5. What is a mud sale?
a. A time to buy cheap fencing for your pigs (yes, I'm lying, but I was particularly proud of coming up with that one. It's a much better answer than the real one: c. A spring auction event).
6. Which of the following is not something one eats in Pennsylvania?
c. Greenies (a whoopie pie is not a pie at all, but rather something that resembles a big Oreo cookie. However, instead of hard cookies, the two "cookies" are like cake (and can come in any flavor, not just chocolate. Whoopie pies aren't double-stuffed with a cream filling; they're triple-stuffed with it. They're delicious. A shoo-fly pie is a pie. I remember reading about shoo-fly pie in a Lois Lenski book when I was a child and wanting one. Good thing I didn't get it. It should really be called brown sugar pie, which would be a much more fitting name. I don't like it; it's way too sweet -- of course, I don't mind the super-sweet whoopie pie. Go figure. If you don't know what scrapple is, you don't want to know).
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Toto, We ARE in Kansas
I sent an email with the title of this post as the subject line to all my colleagues when I found out the reason all the public schools were closed here the Monday after Thanksgiving (which, incidentally, garnered more responses from my colleagues than any other email I've ever sent). Silly me: it seemed odd to me that schools would be closed right after the Thanksgiving holiday, a holiday in which, traditionally, kids get two days off from school, Thursday and Black Friday, but wait till I tell you why. I should have known. It just verifies my feeling that I'm living in a somewhat foreign land, and not only because I see adults and children commuting by vehicles that are a combination bicycle and scooter or by horse and buggy.
When I first announced I was moving to Pennsylvania, a friend of mine who lives in Colorado (and really shouldn't be talking) told me that he had a friend who once lived in Pittsburgh. His friend had informed him that in Pennsylvania we have Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and in between is Alabama. I've since heard people around here say that in between is Arkansas, and I say Kansas, but you get the gist. Make no mistake about it: I'm beginning to find out exactly who's going to be voting for the likes of Huckabee next year.
Actually, it's kind of encouraging. Having lived in Connecticut and New York for the past twenty years, every election year I was absolutely convinced that the Democratic candidate was going to win the Presidential election, because I hardly knew anyone who didn't support him, and those I knew who didn't were the ones who were constantly having to defend themselves against all our teasing and ragging. Maybe during the next election, I'll be convinced Guiliani is going to win and will be pleasantly surprised when he loses.
One wouldn't think I'd be so surprised by what I've encountered thus far living here. After all, I grew up in North Carolina, during the era when Jesse Helms rose to power and then reigned supreme. My siblings, friends, and I spent our youth identifying rednecks and steering clear of (and I'm ashamed to say, making fun of) them. I was one of three children in my class whose parents voted for McGovern not Nixon during the first election I can remember. You would think living in a place like this would be a piece of cake for someone with that kind of background, but it's not. And I think I'm beginning to realize the reason it's not. Winston-Salem, N.C., as much as I might want to complain about it, is a city full of people who've moved there from all over the country (and even the world). Those people travel. They think nothing of driving to Raleigh, say, two hours away. They have family members they visit all over the country. They may not get to New York City or Washington, D.C., or Boston very often, but they get there, and their children move there.
Now where am I? It's truly rural America. I may live on a busy highway, and there may be huge outlet shopping centers five miles up that highway, but on my morning and evening walks, behind my house, I see nothing but farms and the animals who live on them. These are family-owned-and-run farms. My town's population is 1500. People don't really move away. Grandparents, parents, and siblings all live relatively close. Our church is full of adult brothers and sisters (and one very prominent family who all own a farm together. Bob and I joke now with everyone we meet: "You're a B., aren't you?). People aren't exposed to all that much, except what they see on TV or read in the local paper (The New York Times it ain't). We live only about two hours from New York City, but no one ever goes there. We are what in Connecticut would be considered a normal commuting distance from Philadelphia; yet to talk to people around here about Philly, you'd think we were talking about San Francisco. I haven't met a soul who works in Philadelphia. So, yes, this has been a bit of an adjustment.
I thought maybe the best way to prove to you that I really am a stranger in a strange land would be to give you a little quiz. (And I'm trusting you not to cheat. I know you can easily look up most of the answers online.)
1. Schools here are closed the Monday after Thanksgiving, because:
a. It's an Amish religious holiday
b. It's opening day of the deer hunting season
c. Black Monday rather than Black Friday is the big pre-Christmas shopping day
d. It's the big cow race festival
2. Lawmakers in the state of Pennsylvania recently defeated a bill that would have:
a. Limited handgun purchases to one per month
b. Required a waiting period before buying a gun
c. Required background checks on those buying guns
d. Required handgun buyers to complete safety training
3. Which one of the following is not the name of a town in Pennsylvania?
a. Paradise
b. Blue Ball
c. Intercourse
d. Yellow Cat
4. Which of the following is not a sign I've seen along the side of the road?
a. Fill for sale
b. Free eggs
c. Deer antlers for sale
d. Water for horses
5. What is a mud sale?
a. A time to buy cheap fencing for your pigs
b. What others in the country might call a garage sale
c. A spring auction event
d. A bad deal on hay
6. Which of the following is not something one eats in Pennsylvania?
a. Whoopie Pie
b. Shoo-fly Pie
c. Greenies
d. Scrapple
Answers and my reactions to them to follow in my next post.
When I first announced I was moving to Pennsylvania, a friend of mine who lives in Colorado (and really shouldn't be talking) told me that he had a friend who once lived in Pittsburgh. His friend had informed him that in Pennsylvania we have Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and in between is Alabama. I've since heard people around here say that in between is Arkansas, and I say Kansas, but you get the gist. Make no mistake about it: I'm beginning to find out exactly who's going to be voting for the likes of Huckabee next year.
Actually, it's kind of encouraging. Having lived in Connecticut and New York for the past twenty years, every election year I was absolutely convinced that the Democratic candidate was going to win the Presidential election, because I hardly knew anyone who didn't support him, and those I knew who didn't were the ones who were constantly having to defend themselves against all our teasing and ragging. Maybe during the next election, I'll be convinced Guiliani is going to win and will be pleasantly surprised when he loses.
One wouldn't think I'd be so surprised by what I've encountered thus far living here. After all, I grew up in North Carolina, during the era when Jesse Helms rose to power and then reigned supreme. My siblings, friends, and I spent our youth identifying rednecks and steering clear of (and I'm ashamed to say, making fun of) them. I was one of three children in my class whose parents voted for McGovern not Nixon during the first election I can remember. You would think living in a place like this would be a piece of cake for someone with that kind of background, but it's not. And I think I'm beginning to realize the reason it's not. Winston-Salem, N.C., as much as I might want to complain about it, is a city full of people who've moved there from all over the country (and even the world). Those people travel. They think nothing of driving to Raleigh, say, two hours away. They have family members they visit all over the country. They may not get to New York City or Washington, D.C., or Boston very often, but they get there, and their children move there.
Now where am I? It's truly rural America. I may live on a busy highway, and there may be huge outlet shopping centers five miles up that highway, but on my morning and evening walks, behind my house, I see nothing but farms and the animals who live on them. These are family-owned-and-run farms. My town's population is 1500. People don't really move away. Grandparents, parents, and siblings all live relatively close. Our church is full of adult brothers and sisters (and one very prominent family who all own a farm together. Bob and I joke now with everyone we meet: "You're a B., aren't you?). People aren't exposed to all that much, except what they see on TV or read in the local paper (The New York Times it ain't). We live only about two hours from New York City, but no one ever goes there. We are what in Connecticut would be considered a normal commuting distance from Philadelphia; yet to talk to people around here about Philly, you'd think we were talking about San Francisco. I haven't met a soul who works in Philadelphia. So, yes, this has been a bit of an adjustment.
I thought maybe the best way to prove to you that I really am a stranger in a strange land would be to give you a little quiz. (And I'm trusting you not to cheat. I know you can easily look up most of the answers online.)
1. Schools here are closed the Monday after Thanksgiving, because:
a. It's an Amish religious holiday
b. It's opening day of the deer hunting season
c. Black Monday rather than Black Friday is the big pre-Christmas shopping day
d. It's the big cow race festival
2. Lawmakers in the state of Pennsylvania recently defeated a bill that would have:
a. Limited handgun purchases to one per month
b. Required a waiting period before buying a gun
c. Required background checks on those buying guns
d. Required handgun buyers to complete safety training
3. Which one of the following is not the name of a town in Pennsylvania?
a. Paradise
b. Blue Ball
c. Intercourse
d. Yellow Cat
4. Which of the following is not a sign I've seen along the side of the road?
a. Fill for sale
b. Free eggs
c. Deer antlers for sale
d. Water for horses
5. What is a mud sale?
a. A time to buy cheap fencing for your pigs
b. What others in the country might call a garage sale
c. A spring auction event
d. A bad deal on hay
6. Which of the following is not something one eats in Pennsylvania?
a. Whoopie Pie
b. Shoo-fly Pie
c. Greenies
d. Scrapple
Answers and my reactions to them to follow in my next post.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Francis Friday
I had told Mandarine that once I got a cat, I'd post his or her picture once a month. Since Mandarine posts his the first Monday of every month, it seems appropriate to post Francis the first Friday of every month. This is where he likes to sit while I'm working. My desk is to the right of this old couch, which is probably going to need to be re-stuffed as he gets bigger and bigger and that back cushion becomes more and more crushed. The other day it snowed, and he sat up on that windowsill behind him and watched the mysterious white stuff coming from the sky for hours.
THE REAL STORY
Hey look, the smaller of the Huge Food Dispensers (HFD from here on out) has finally left the fascinating flashing screen open and abandoned, and with a picture ME nonetheless. But what slander. I knew perfectly well I was looking at snow. Everyone told me when I was out in the Big World that it would be best to find shelter before the snow came. It's just pretty to watch. Anyway, normally when I try to jump on HFD's lap when she's playing with the fascinating flashing screen, she won't let me paw at or walk across the black buttons, but now that I've got it all to myself, I thought it was about high time you heard my side of the story.
Oh, hold on a minute. There's an evil dust ball peeking out from under the desk. I've got to go pounce on it and bat it around a bit before it takes over the whole house. I'll be right back...
Phew! I'm back, but that was a close call. You see that dust ball was merely a decoy for the PAPER CLIP that thought it could sneak by while the dust ball was distracting me. I showed it. Honestly, I don't know how these HFDs managed to survive in this house full of menacing creatures before I arrived. The tassels are some of the worst. Tassels everywhere: their pillows, their carpets, their lampshades...Luckily, the HFDs weren't here too long before I came to save the day.
I didn't mean to terrify you, though, with mention of such things as tassels and paper clips, and I won't say anything about my brave adventures with the horrible pajama tie that broke off the smaller HFD's pajamas. Rest assured, I'm taking care of it all now, so you need not fear for the HFDs. Now, back to my story.
When I was out in the Big World, working hard for my food, but valiantly carrying on, my fellow kinsmen and other friendly folk would talk of the HFDs. To tell you the truth, I wasn't sure I believed they really existed. I mean, they seemed pretty unbelievable, these giants who walk on two legs, live in enclosed spaces, choosing to trap themselves in these enclosed spaces with all of the most terrifying and threatening monsters known to the world. You name it, they lock themselves in with it: ribbons! buttons! cords! wrapping paper! shoelaces! They actually wear those buttons dangerously close to their hearts, of all the stupid things to do.
The word on the street, though, was "don't laugh at them. Try to find some that will let you live with them. They may be stupid, wandering around, barely managing to escape death each day, but they dispense food twice a day." This food is amazing. They put it in a little round trap that obviously subdues it so that it just sits there and lets you eat it. You don't have to track it down. You don't have to chase after it. Pretty unbelievable, huh?
Well, I thought so. I also thought that the way to capture an HFD of my very own sounded like something straight out of Edith Hamilton. Starve yourself, arrive looking pitiful, cuddle up to them and purr if they pick you up? Except for the starving part, it seemed way too easy. I was told the best target was a kitten HFD who would immediately go running to any adult HFDs nearby to announce my existence, guaranteeing my acceptance into their enclosed space.
I'm here to tell you it's no myth. I found a bunch of kitten HFDs, dangerously hitting a light sphere with a light stick, but I had so successfully starved myself, I didn't have the strength to protect them. All I could do was creep pitifully out of the bushes, which is when they immediately did as predicted and raced inside to tell the adults. Before I knew it, I was being passed around from one HFD to another. And I promise you, it's no lie. The biggest sucker is easy to smell. I knew it from the instant he held me to his chest where I spotted the hideous buttons that proved how badly he needed me.
That, my friends, is how I came to live in this enclosed space where, in exchange for keeping pens and pencils on the floor, trapped behind couches and chairs, I never have to worry about a juicy meal that gets away. I'd say, it's a rather fair exchange.
Oh my! Look at the time! It's 10:00 p.m. I'd better hurry up, or I'm going to be late for the dance-pounce-and-scamper-about hours of the day. Can you believe those dumb HFDs think this time of day is meant for sleep?
Monday, December 03, 2007
Planning My Plan
All right, this must be some sort of a sign, huh? Last week, feeling suicidially overhelmed, Bob and I made a desperate attempt to get ourselves organized by working on weekly schedules, putting them all into nice charts and tables. We decided we'd give these schedules a try beginning the first week in December. Lo and behold, I'd barely finished mapping out this plan of mine, when good old Bloglily starts posting about planning. Not only does she post about it, but then she tags me (she must think I have some sort of alter-ego who is extremely well-organized or something) to come up with a plan of my own. The plan follows (although cutting and pasting a Word table into Blogger is beyond my capabilities, so you'll just have to imagine this whole thing in a nice table format).
You'll note that each day of the week has some rooms/household chores attached to it. Those are the chores and rooms to be tidied/mopped/vacuumed etc. that Bob and I will attack on that particular day each week. (Sometime, in the not-too-distant future I hope, we're going to be hiring some wonderful Amish person, who will be a far better housekeeper than either of us can ever hope to be, to do this for us, but until then, this is our plan). In case you're wondering, I often do two or three of these sorts of things in ten-minute breaks when I'm working throughout the day. You'd be amazed what ten minutes of vigorously sweeping a kitchen floor will do to calm me down before responding to an author whose email proves s/he just doesn't get it. Likewise, if I'm puzzling through how to convince Dr. Big Name Math to write a book for us, I'm better at composing an email in my head while folding laundry first, rather than trying to tackle it while sitting at the computer. Offices ought to let their employees do janitorial work. Then again, I can't tackle bathrooms while working, and it seems bathrooms might be a major part of office janitorial work. I despise cleaning bathrooms, and my authors would wonder who this monster is if they happened to call just after I'd been struggling to get that damn strand of hair to quit acting as though I'm trying to drag it away from the love of its life the bathtub.
You'll note I have my day starting at the very early hour of 5:30 a.m. That's free time, though, which means sleep if I need it. I'm often awake by 5:30 a.m., but not always (especially during the cold, dark winter months). And a 9:30 bedtime just means crawling in bed to read. If I'm reading something really good, and have to stay up till 1:00 a.m. to finish it, well, then all bets are off as to keeping on schedule the next day.
So far, on the first Monday of this plan, things are sort of going as planned. I'm about fifteen minutes off schedule and will be heading out for a walk soon. Problem is, I have to get to the library to return books and to pick up something from a friend who works there, and I've got a couple of boxes in our own library I want to unpack. Oh yes, and I haven't done any laundry at all. Looks like those dreaded bathrooms might have to be put on hold (or maybe I can just make Bob do both of them. Oh no, wait a minute, he had to spend time putting all the storm windows in today instead). You can see this is going to be very interesting...
I'll let everyone know what happens after a month of experimentation. (Oh yes, and lest you think we're lushes, Bob and I have this wonderful routine based on the old-fashioned cocktail hour of sitting down with a drink and a snack before dinner. Sometimes that drink is tea, sometimes it's something non-alcoholic, sometimes it's wine, and sometimes it's a martini or a mai tai -- all depends on what our days have been like.)
Emily’s Weekly Schedule
Free = time to write, do household things, run errands, etc. (in other words, non-work-or-church-related activities) OR to rest. This time is flexible.
Rest = R-E-S-T (play games, watch movies, read fun stuff, listen to music, watch TV, etc.) Rest time is sacrosanct; no tasks allowed
Depending on the friends and the event, visiting friends is either rest or a free time activity
MONDAY = Bathrooms, Laundry
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
TUESDAY = Kitchen, dining room, Santa Fe room
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Free
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
WEDNESDAY = living room, library, pay bills
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
THURSDAY = bedroom, guest bedroom
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Free
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
FRIDAY= office, t.v. room
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Telecommuting
2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
SATURDAY = hallways, grocery shopping
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Rest
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Walk, breakfast, shower
10:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Free
1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Free
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink and snack and make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Night meditation with Bob and rest
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
SUNDAY = rest
Time Block
Activity
6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Rest and breakfast
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Shower
9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Sunday school and church
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Rest
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink and snack and make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Rest
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
You'll note that each day of the week has some rooms/household chores attached to it. Those are the chores and rooms to be tidied/mopped/vacuumed etc. that Bob and I will attack on that particular day each week. (Sometime, in the not-too-distant future I hope, we're going to be hiring some wonderful Amish person, who will be a far better housekeeper than either of us can ever hope to be, to do this for us, but until then, this is our plan). In case you're wondering, I often do two or three of these sorts of things in ten-minute breaks when I'm working throughout the day. You'd be amazed what ten minutes of vigorously sweeping a kitchen floor will do to calm me down before responding to an author whose email proves s/he just doesn't get it. Likewise, if I'm puzzling through how to convince Dr. Big Name Math to write a book for us, I'm better at composing an email in my head while folding laundry first, rather than trying to tackle it while sitting at the computer. Offices ought to let their employees do janitorial work. Then again, I can't tackle bathrooms while working, and it seems bathrooms might be a major part of office janitorial work. I despise cleaning bathrooms, and my authors would wonder who this monster is if they happened to call just after I'd been struggling to get that damn strand of hair to quit acting as though I'm trying to drag it away from the love of its life the bathtub.
You'll note I have my day starting at the very early hour of 5:30 a.m. That's free time, though, which means sleep if I need it. I'm often awake by 5:30 a.m., but not always (especially during the cold, dark winter months). And a 9:30 bedtime just means crawling in bed to read. If I'm reading something really good, and have to stay up till 1:00 a.m. to finish it, well, then all bets are off as to keeping on schedule the next day.
So far, on the first Monday of this plan, things are sort of going as planned. I'm about fifteen minutes off schedule and will be heading out for a walk soon. Problem is, I have to get to the library to return books and to pick up something from a friend who works there, and I've got a couple of boxes in our own library I want to unpack. Oh yes, and I haven't done any laundry at all. Looks like those dreaded bathrooms might have to be put on hold (or maybe I can just make Bob do both of them. Oh no, wait a minute, he had to spend time putting all the storm windows in today instead). You can see this is going to be very interesting...
I'll let everyone know what happens after a month of experimentation. (Oh yes, and lest you think we're lushes, Bob and I have this wonderful routine based on the old-fashioned cocktail hour of sitting down with a drink and a snack before dinner. Sometimes that drink is tea, sometimes it's something non-alcoholic, sometimes it's wine, and sometimes it's a martini or a mai tai -- all depends on what our days have been like.)
Emily’s Weekly Schedule
Free = time to write, do household things, run errands, etc. (in other words, non-work-or-church-related activities) OR to rest. This time is flexible.
Rest = R-E-S-T (play games, watch movies, read fun stuff, listen to music, watch TV, etc.) Rest time is sacrosanct; no tasks allowed
Depending on the friends and the event, visiting friends is either rest or a free time activity
MONDAY = Bathrooms, Laundry
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
TUESDAY = Kitchen, dining room, Santa Fe room
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Free
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
WEDNESDAY = living room, library, pay bills
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
THURSDAY = bedroom, guest bedroom
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Telecommuting
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Walk
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Free
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
FRIDAY= office, t.v. room
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.
Free, get dressed
6:30 a.m. – 7:30 a.m.
Telecommuting
7:30 a.m. – 8:15 a.m.
Walk, breakfast
8:15 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Telecommuting
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Telecommuting
2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Free
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Evening meditation with Bob
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink, snack, make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Free
9:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Bath/shower
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
SATURDAY = hallways, grocery shopping
Time Block
Activity
5:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Rest
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Walk, breakfast, shower
10:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Free
1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Free
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink and snack and make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Night meditation with Bob and rest
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
SUNDAY = rest
Time Block
Activity
6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Rest and breakfast
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Shower
9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Sunday school and church
12:00 noon – 12:30 p.m.
Lunch
12:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Rest
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Drink and snack and make dinner
7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Rest
9:30 p.m.
Bedtime
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Some Really, Really Annoying Things (or It Must Be The Wild Greed and Materialism Christmas Season, Because I'm Really, Really Grumpy)
Here are just a few of the things that drive me nuts on a regular basis.
Rachael Ray. Is she not the most friggin’ annoying woman in America? So perky. I hate perky. Enjoyment of food and cooking shouldn’t be about perky. And why is she, rather than The Barefoot Contessa or Nigella Lawson, on the cooking channel 18 out of every 24 hours? And why can’t I get away from her even when I’m not tuned into the cooking channel? She’s now there smiling on boxes of my favorite crackers, causing me to be unable to bring myself to buy them. She’s on the radio making me pat myself on the back for the fact that the only doughnuts I ever buy are Krispy Kreme. She seems to take up the entire cooking section at Borders. Can we please, please get rid of her?
Christmas music in November. I had to drive down to Baltimore the other day, and I very stupidly forgot to bring any CDs. NPR has the same problem in Pennsylvania and Maryland that it had in Connecticut, and when driving a car, I can’t position the radio and make sure I’m standing in the right spot, at the right angle, in order to keep it coming in loud and clear. Thus, I was stuck with the browse feature on my radio. You know what came in loud and clear? About 500 Christmas radio stations that pop up this time of year, the way dandelions pop up all over my old lawn in Connecticut every spring, choking out anything else that might be trying to grow. I wouldn’t mind so much if a. it had been December, which it wasn’t yet or b. they were playing something like choral arrangements from St. Paul’s Cathedral or The Vienna Boys’ Choir singing carols or some cool dulcimer and fiddle versions from the Smokey Mountains, but no. I’m wondering just how many sappy, sappy, way-too-many-strings versions of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” are out there. Likewise, perky “Winter Wonderlands.” And please tell me, does anybody still think/did anybody ever think “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” is actually funny or want “Feliz Navidad” to be salsa-ing around in their brains from now until January 2nd?
Indestructible plastic wrapping. Please take me back to the good old days when one could open, say, a bag of Fritos with her bare hands instead of having to order some special cutting tool for the purpose. Oh, and I have such fond memories of those days of yore when aluminum wrapping was used to line cereal boxes, wrapping that could be easily opened, and then, wonder-of-wonders folded back down to re-seal, so the cereal would last more than two days before going stale. It’s so easy to forget what it was like to get an opening in the inner-lining of a cereal box that was predictable, one meant for pouring a bowlful of cereal, one that was neither so small a single corn flake can’t fit through it, nor so big a gallon-sized bucket is needed to catch all the cereal when one tilts the box to pour it. Now, I know, I know. We can’t be too vigilant about making sure things are wrapped and sealed as tightly as possible after that poisoning-the-unsealed-Tylenol scare back in the 1980’s. Better to sell something that can’t be opened and eaten than to risk that again. And, while we’re at it, let’s make extra indestructible plastic wrapping for such things as cell phones and digital camera memory chips, because, well, you never know. Someone might break open the packaging on those things and shake a little Anthrax into them or something.
People who have neither read the book nor seen the movie declaring that it’s dangerous and is going to turn everyone into an atheist. Remember when it was The Last Temptation of Christ (a novel that deepened my faith more than any other I’ve ever read)? Then Harry Potter had his day (despite the clear-cut messages of good triumphing over evil). This season’s example: The Golden Compass. I read the book. I have to admit, it was quite, quite difficult after reading that book not to wonder what I was doing married to a minister. I began to doubt my belief in God in a way all the trappings of living in a greedy, capitalistic society have never made me do. It plagued me. I didn’t once just consider it to be nothing but a frolicking good fantasy. I mean, it was so evident from beginning to end that my false belief in God could do nothing but lead to evil. Oh yes, I had to save myself by turning to the Bible, which has never once made me question God’s existence or my faith or others’ faith. I still maintain that if A Pilgrim’s Progress had not been published until today, people would be bellowing about what an atheistic and dangerous work it is. Reminds me of the poor soul who informed me when I was in high school that the only music her church allowed her to listen to were hymns and gospel, because everything else was sinful. I think Handel might have turned over a couple of times in his grave when her preacher made that pronouncement.
Trucks. I despise them. They’re too big. They’re too noisy, and drivers tend to drive them way too fast, especially around here, where they seem to pay absolutely no attention to the fact that there are Amish walking, riding scooters, and driving horses and buggies everywhere on state highways. It seems I can’t travel a major interstate anymore without encountering some sort of accident involving a tractor trailer that ties up traffic for hours. I say, let’s take them off the interstates, hook them all together, attach a huge engine to them, and put them on two rails called tracks, where they can whiz along, unimpeded to arrive safely at their destinations.
Books with tons of typos/grammatical errors. I know, I’m being a hypocrite again, because my blog is not exactly typo/grammatical error free. But, as far as I know, I’m not being copyedited and proofread by at least three people who are being paid to do so before I go to print. I have no problems with authors making their own errors (we’re all human), but when others are paid to catch all their errors and don’t, and then my inner-editor has to face them while I’m trying to enjoy a relaxing evening of reading, well, I think I ought to get some sort of refund for each error I find in any book I buy. Check out a book published sixty years ago. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single typo in it, and if you do find them, any given book rarely has more than three. Now, check out the last book you bought. Did you not find at least ten?
People who’ve already got all their Christmas shopping done and love to announce the fact. Need I say more about that? I also hate those who keep asking, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” Don’t ask me. Basically, I have not been “ready for Christmas” since I was about twelve. I’m not, nor will I ever be. Maybe if Christmas came once every ten years, but even then, I probably wouldn’t be.
Unpacking boxes. We've been living here for nearly two months, and I'm still unpacking boxes. Naturally, none of them ever contains the few things I've actually remembered I have, want to use, and can't find. Will I ever get through them all and find those few things?
Rachael Ray. Is she not the most friggin’ annoying woman in America? So perky. I hate perky. Enjoyment of food and cooking shouldn’t be about perky. And why is she, rather than The Barefoot Contessa or Nigella Lawson, on the cooking channel 18 out of every 24 hours? And why can’t I get away from her even when I’m not tuned into the cooking channel? She’s now there smiling on boxes of my favorite crackers, causing me to be unable to bring myself to buy them. She’s on the radio making me pat myself on the back for the fact that the only doughnuts I ever buy are Krispy Kreme. She seems to take up the entire cooking section at Borders. Can we please, please get rid of her?
Christmas music in November. I had to drive down to Baltimore the other day, and I very stupidly forgot to bring any CDs. NPR has the same problem in Pennsylvania and Maryland that it had in Connecticut, and when driving a car, I can’t position the radio and make sure I’m standing in the right spot, at the right angle, in order to keep it coming in loud and clear. Thus, I was stuck with the browse feature on my radio. You know what came in loud and clear? About 500 Christmas radio stations that pop up this time of year, the way dandelions pop up all over my old lawn in Connecticut every spring, choking out anything else that might be trying to grow. I wouldn’t mind so much if a. it had been December, which it wasn’t yet or b. they were playing something like choral arrangements from St. Paul’s Cathedral or The Vienna Boys’ Choir singing carols or some cool dulcimer and fiddle versions from the Smokey Mountains, but no. I’m wondering just how many sappy, sappy, way-too-many-strings versions of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” are out there. Likewise, perky “Winter Wonderlands.” And please tell me, does anybody still think/did anybody ever think “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” is actually funny or want “Feliz Navidad” to be salsa-ing around in their brains from now until January 2nd?
Indestructible plastic wrapping. Please take me back to the good old days when one could open, say, a bag of Fritos with her bare hands instead of having to order some special cutting tool for the purpose. Oh, and I have such fond memories of those days of yore when aluminum wrapping was used to line cereal boxes, wrapping that could be easily opened, and then, wonder-of-wonders folded back down to re-seal, so the cereal would last more than two days before going stale. It’s so easy to forget what it was like to get an opening in the inner-lining of a cereal box that was predictable, one meant for pouring a bowlful of cereal, one that was neither so small a single corn flake can’t fit through it, nor so big a gallon-sized bucket is needed to catch all the cereal when one tilts the box to pour it. Now, I know, I know. We can’t be too vigilant about making sure things are wrapped and sealed as tightly as possible after that poisoning-the-unsealed-Tylenol scare back in the 1980’s. Better to sell something that can’t be opened and eaten than to risk that again. And, while we’re at it, let’s make extra indestructible plastic wrapping for such things as cell phones and digital camera memory chips, because, well, you never know. Someone might break open the packaging on those things and shake a little Anthrax into them or something.
People who have neither read the book nor seen the movie declaring that it’s dangerous and is going to turn everyone into an atheist. Remember when it was The Last Temptation of Christ (a novel that deepened my faith more than any other I’ve ever read)? Then Harry Potter had his day (despite the clear-cut messages of good triumphing over evil). This season’s example: The Golden Compass. I read the book. I have to admit, it was quite, quite difficult after reading that book not to wonder what I was doing married to a minister. I began to doubt my belief in God in a way all the trappings of living in a greedy, capitalistic society have never made me do. It plagued me. I didn’t once just consider it to be nothing but a frolicking good fantasy. I mean, it was so evident from beginning to end that my false belief in God could do nothing but lead to evil. Oh yes, I had to save myself by turning to the Bible, which has never once made me question God’s existence or my faith or others’ faith. I still maintain that if A Pilgrim’s Progress had not been published until today, people would be bellowing about what an atheistic and dangerous work it is. Reminds me of the poor soul who informed me when I was in high school that the only music her church allowed her to listen to were hymns and gospel, because everything else was sinful. I think Handel might have turned over a couple of times in his grave when her preacher made that pronouncement.
Trucks. I despise them. They’re too big. They’re too noisy, and drivers tend to drive them way too fast, especially around here, where they seem to pay absolutely no attention to the fact that there are Amish walking, riding scooters, and driving horses and buggies everywhere on state highways. It seems I can’t travel a major interstate anymore without encountering some sort of accident involving a tractor trailer that ties up traffic for hours. I say, let’s take them off the interstates, hook them all together, attach a huge engine to them, and put them on two rails called tracks, where they can whiz along, unimpeded to arrive safely at their destinations.
Books with tons of typos/grammatical errors. I know, I’m being a hypocrite again, because my blog is not exactly typo/grammatical error free. But, as far as I know, I’m not being copyedited and proofread by at least three people who are being paid to do so before I go to print. I have no problems with authors making their own errors (we’re all human), but when others are paid to catch all their errors and don’t, and then my inner-editor has to face them while I’m trying to enjoy a relaxing evening of reading, well, I think I ought to get some sort of refund for each error I find in any book I buy. Check out a book published sixty years ago. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single typo in it, and if you do find them, any given book rarely has more than three. Now, check out the last book you bought. Did you not find at least ten?
People who’ve already got all their Christmas shopping done and love to announce the fact. Need I say more about that? I also hate those who keep asking, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” Don’t ask me. Basically, I have not been “ready for Christmas” since I was about twelve. I’m not, nor will I ever be. Maybe if Christmas came once every ten years, but even then, I probably wouldn’t be.
Unpacking boxes. We've been living here for nearly two months, and I'm still unpacking boxes. Naturally, none of them ever contains the few things I've actually remembered I have, want to use, and can't find. Will I ever get through them all and find those few things?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Six Guilty Pleasures Meme
Thank you, Becky, for tagging me for this one.
A. Six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having:
1. I’ll never forget the day my former boss said to me, “When have you ever been to a baseball game?” and I left him speechless by responding, “I go to Yankee Stadium at least once a year.” I guess no one would suspect me of enjoying the fun of an afternoon eating hot dogs, drinking beer, and keeping score. And I’m happy now to be living basically equidistant from two ball parks: Philly and Baltimore.
2. Listening to (really, really loud) music and singing along (really, really badly) while driving (really, really fast) on empty country roads. I can’t indulge this one too much around here, though, because despite having tons of country roads, I have to worry too much about the Amish horses and buggies.
B. Six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge:
1. Quitting my job to backpack around some exotic country for a year. I’ll never do it, though, because I’m perfectly aware that it sounds wonderfully romantic and adventuresome, but that I’d be whining like a baby with the first blister, and I’d be suicidal over something like dysentery. And I’d ruin it after six months by spending every day of the next six worrying about whether or not I’d ever get another good job once I returned home.
2. Quitting my job to travel around the world on freighter ships for a year. Wouldn’t have to worry about the blisters, then, nor the dysentery (most likely, if I kept to eating the food on the ship), but that worry over getting a job when I got back would still be a problem.
3. More than two cups of coffee per day and drinking it after 2:00 p.m. My fear of insomnia (being way too familiar with long, sleepless nights) is just too strong, despite the fact I absolutely love coffee.
4. Hot chocolate or hot Ovaltine topped with real whipped cream to accompany my Eggs Benedict or pancakes every morning for breakfast. First, I’d need to hire a full-time cook, because I’m not about to do so much as even whip cream every single morning, and, second, I don’t particularly want to become the Goodyear blimp within a year’s time.
5. Homemade dessert every night. Same problems (need to hire a cook and weight gain) as having my ideal breakfast every morning.
6. Taking a nap in the middle of a work day. I wrote about this once; I still can’t bring myself to do it (although I have once or twice when I was sick).
C. Six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now made peace with:
1. Taking a taxi instead of the subway in New York (although the subway is often more interesting to thevoyeur writer in me)
2. Staying in a hotel that is quite a few steps above a Microtel
3. Custom-made bookshelves (Bob is still incredibly guilty as we wait six weeks for the Amish man we hired to do this to complete them. I’m not the least bit so and can't wait to get them into our library)
4. Buying whatever food I want with no regard to price
5. An occasional night of Doritos with French onion dip for dinner and ice cream for dessert
6. Spending an evening all alone with a good book while slowly sipping a glass or two of good sherry
If you haven't done this one yet, I'm tagging you (you know who you are).
A. Six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having:
1. I’ll never forget the day my former boss said to me, “When have you ever been to a baseball game?” and I left him speechless by responding, “I go to Yankee Stadium at least once a year.” I guess no one would suspect me of enjoying the fun of an afternoon eating hot dogs, drinking beer, and keeping score. And I’m happy now to be living basically equidistant from two ball parks: Philly and Baltimore.
2. Listening to (really, really loud) music and singing along (really, really badly) while driving (really, really fast) on empty country roads. I can’t indulge this one too much around here, though, because despite having tons of country roads, I have to worry too much about the Amish horses and buggies.
3. Speaking of music: country music. I hated it growing up, but now I like to listen to it, because of its story-telling quality. I prefer old-timers like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, but Garth Brooks is fun, too, and I adore The Dixie Chicks for many, many reasons. I’m mad at those who have adopted country music the way the American flag has been adopted to represent a false, meaningless patriotism.
4. Doritos with French onion dip. You wouldn’t think I, Ms. Organic, would love something so false and junky, would you? So, so bad for so, so many reasons, but just so, so good.
5. Obscenely expensive soaps and bubble baths. I know there are people in this world who could probably feed themselves for two months on what I’ve been known to spend on these items. Sometimes, I feel (ever-so-slightly) guilty about that when I’m settling down in a tub full of organic, lavender bubbles poured from a fancy glass bottle and later washing them away with organic lavender and oatmeal soap, but not for very long.
6. Obscenely expensive and silky lingerie. I guess I love contrasts, but I don’t think there’s anything that can make a woman feel more sexy than to wear something really, really nice under a pair of comfortable old blue jeans and a soft, faded t-shirt (especially at a baseball game, after showering with obscenely expensive soap). I loved that part in Eat, Pray, Love when she’s in Italy and buys all that lingerie.
B. Six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge:
1. Quitting my job to backpack around some exotic country for a year. I’ll never do it, though, because I’m perfectly aware that it sounds wonderfully romantic and adventuresome, but that I’d be whining like a baby with the first blister, and I’d be suicidal over something like dysentery. And I’d ruin it after six months by spending every day of the next six worrying about whether or not I’d ever get another good job once I returned home.
2. Quitting my job to travel around the world on freighter ships for a year. Wouldn’t have to worry about the blisters, then, nor the dysentery (most likely, if I kept to eating the food on the ship), but that worry over getting a job when I got back would still be a problem.
3. More than two cups of coffee per day and drinking it after 2:00 p.m. My fear of insomnia (being way too familiar with long, sleepless nights) is just too strong, despite the fact I absolutely love coffee.
4. Hot chocolate or hot Ovaltine topped with real whipped cream to accompany my Eggs Benedict or pancakes every morning for breakfast. First, I’d need to hire a full-time cook, because I’m not about to do so much as even whip cream every single morning, and, second, I don’t particularly want to become the Goodyear blimp within a year’s time.
5. Homemade dessert every night. Same problems (need to hire a cook and weight gain) as having my ideal breakfast every morning.
6. Taking a nap in the middle of a work day. I wrote about this once; I still can’t bring myself to do it (although I have once or twice when I was sick).
C. Six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now made peace with:
1. Taking a taxi instead of the subway in New York (although the subway is often more interesting to the
2. Staying in a hotel that is quite a few steps above a Microtel
3. Custom-made bookshelves (Bob is still incredibly guilty as we wait six weeks for the Amish man we hired to do this to complete them. I’m not the least bit so and can't wait to get them into our library)
4. Buying whatever food I want with no regard to price
5. An occasional night of Doritos with French onion dip for dinner and ice cream for dessert
6. Spending an evening all alone with a good book while slowly sipping a glass or two of good sherry
If you haven't done this one yet, I'm tagging you (you know who you are).
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Beowulf and Cholera
Every so often, I marvel at the (I don't even know what to call it: audacity? stupidity? madness?) of Hollywood. I mean, sometimes I really wish I could have been there when some group of people happened to be sitting around, shooting the breeze, and someone suddenly said, "I've got it! Let's make ____________ into a movie!" Actually, it's a good thing I've never been a member of one of these discussions (well, at least, during the over thirteen years since I last took a hit off a joint. Before then, who knows? Maybe I, too, would have been leaping at the chance to make Sally, Dick, and Jane or something into a movie). My response would be, "Are you out of your friggin' mind?!" (Thus, maybe "madness" is the appropriate word).
I can't believe that this Christmas season, we've got not one, but two movies that fit this bill, neither of which you'll catch me racing to the theaters to see. The first of these is Beowulf, with none other than Angelina Jolie starring as Grendel's mother. Yes, I am sure it's uncanny how many people read the epic poem for the first time to be haunted by Jolie-like images of Grendel's mother. Tell me the truth now. She's exactly what your imagination conjured up, isn't she? Nothing more ferocious to a bunch of Medieval heroes than the woman who's toting around hundreds of adopted children while keeping pretty boy Brad Pitt on a short leash these days. As my sister Lindsay so aptly put it the other day, "I'm so glad Beowulf is finally out" (thus proving that my sarcastic nature runs in the family).
Beowulf is one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature. Granted, I haven't read it since I was twenty-one, and it's high time for a re-read, but between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, I read it three times (twice for school and once for fun). I don't know about you, but I found my high school English classes to be extraordinarily boring, full of Shakespeare I was too young and inexperienced to understand and appreciate (come on. Why teach Romeo and Juliet to someone who has yet to experience the madness of her first requited love?); the worst, rather than the best, of the likes of Mark Twain and Edgar Alan Poe; and unimaginative textbooks and teachers who had no idea how to make these works relevant to sixteen-year-olds. To this day, I can tell you that only four other things that I had to read in my American high school (my English high school was a different story. I loved my English class there) were things that I truly enjoyed reading at the time: Spoon River Anthology; The Good Earth, Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and A Clockwork Orange. (By the way, I once had a friend of mine say to me when I narrated this list to him, "Were you schizophrenic in high school?")
Beowulf definitely stood out among the crowd here. We read it senior year, and up until that point, I'd never been exposed to anything like it. Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I must have been a knight in one of my previous lives, my fascination with castles and dragons being what it is. Although I couldn't read it, the Old English language grabbed my attention, as well. Till then, I'd never thought much about the evolution of language. I was intrigued from the moment our teacher began to introduce it to us. Then I started to read it. To say the twentieth century disappeared like a mere mortal in Grendel's mother's lair would be an understatement.
The magic of Beowulf, though, is that it's just that: magic. We are left up to our own devices, our own subconscious interpretations to bring it to life. Grendel is my very own monster, and I know what he looks like, but I'm sure he isn't yours. His mother is worse than the worst mama bear protecting her cubs. My dragon is bleak with a sad fury, not the type you see baring teeth and dancing in a Chinese New Year parade, as he might be for someone else. How dare anyone ruin my pictures of them by committing them to film? It's sacrilege, pure and simple.
Speaking of magic, anyone ever heard of magical realism? Any others of you stupid enough to have watched that pathetic excuse for a film version of a book The House of the Spirits, like I was? I hope, like I, after that experience, you saw the light and weren't the least bit tempted to see the film version of the oh-so-wonderful Corelli's Mandolin. After all, you'd realized that, despite the fact film seems like the perfect medium for magical realism, some things, once again, are best left up to the imagination. So, why on earth would anyone take Love in the Time of Cholera and make it into a movie? Granted, it's not One Hundred Years of Solitude, the grandfather of magical realism, but still.
I don't need to go see the movie to have a pretty good idea of what those in the film industry will have done to my favorite Garcia Marquez novel (another one, coincidentally, I've read three times) in order to try to make millions off it. I can just picture all the sex and the seductive whores and a complete missing of the boat when it comes to capturing the complexity of the novel and its exploration of all the many types of love we humans experience. Even People has trashed this one.
I have a confession to make now, though. I'm being very hypocritical. I'm the person who has always said, "Don't tell me how awful an author is unless you've read him or her." I obviously haven't seen either one of these movies. Maybe I should. Maybe Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother will add a whole new dimension to the text. Maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez should have started with films rather than with novels. Then again, if this is what the merging of film and literature has led to, maybe I shouldn't have given up smoking pot all those years ago.
I can't believe that this Christmas season, we've got not one, but two movies that fit this bill, neither of which you'll catch me racing to the theaters to see. The first of these is Beowulf, with none other than Angelina Jolie starring as Grendel's mother. Yes, I am sure it's uncanny how many people read the epic poem for the first time to be haunted by Jolie-like images of Grendel's mother. Tell me the truth now. She's exactly what your imagination conjured up, isn't she? Nothing more ferocious to a bunch of Medieval heroes than the woman who's toting around hundreds of adopted children while keeping pretty boy Brad Pitt on a short leash these days. As my sister Lindsay so aptly put it the other day, "I'm so glad Beowulf is finally out" (thus proving that my sarcastic nature runs in the family).
Beowulf is one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature. Granted, I haven't read it since I was twenty-one, and it's high time for a re-read, but between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, I read it three times (twice for school and once for fun). I don't know about you, but I found my high school English classes to be extraordinarily boring, full of Shakespeare I was too young and inexperienced to understand and appreciate (come on. Why teach Romeo and Juliet to someone who has yet to experience the madness of her first requited love?); the worst, rather than the best, of the likes of Mark Twain and Edgar Alan Poe; and unimaginative textbooks and teachers who had no idea how to make these works relevant to sixteen-year-olds. To this day, I can tell you that only four other things that I had to read in my American high school (my English high school was a different story. I loved my English class there) were things that I truly enjoyed reading at the time: Spoon River Anthology; The Good Earth, Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and A Clockwork Orange. (By the way, I once had a friend of mine say to me when I narrated this list to him, "Were you schizophrenic in high school?")
Beowulf definitely stood out among the crowd here. We read it senior year, and up until that point, I'd never been exposed to anything like it. Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I must have been a knight in one of my previous lives, my fascination with castles and dragons being what it is. Although I couldn't read it, the Old English language grabbed my attention, as well. Till then, I'd never thought much about the evolution of language. I was intrigued from the moment our teacher began to introduce it to us. Then I started to read it. To say the twentieth century disappeared like a mere mortal in Grendel's mother's lair would be an understatement.
The magic of Beowulf, though, is that it's just that: magic. We are left up to our own devices, our own subconscious interpretations to bring it to life. Grendel is my very own monster, and I know what he looks like, but I'm sure he isn't yours. His mother is worse than the worst mama bear protecting her cubs. My dragon is bleak with a sad fury, not the type you see baring teeth and dancing in a Chinese New Year parade, as he might be for someone else. How dare anyone ruin my pictures of them by committing them to film? It's sacrilege, pure and simple.
Speaking of magic, anyone ever heard of magical realism? Any others of you stupid enough to have watched that pathetic excuse for a film version of a book The House of the Spirits, like I was? I hope, like I, after that experience, you saw the light and weren't the least bit tempted to see the film version of the oh-so-wonderful Corelli's Mandolin. After all, you'd realized that, despite the fact film seems like the perfect medium for magical realism, some things, once again, are best left up to the imagination. So, why on earth would anyone take Love in the Time of Cholera and make it into a movie? Granted, it's not One Hundred Years of Solitude, the grandfather of magical realism, but still.
I don't need to go see the movie to have a pretty good idea of what those in the film industry will have done to my favorite Garcia Marquez novel (another one, coincidentally, I've read three times) in order to try to make millions off it. I can just picture all the sex and the seductive whores and a complete missing of the boat when it comes to capturing the complexity of the novel and its exploration of all the many types of love we humans experience. Even People has trashed this one.
I have a confession to make now, though. I'm being very hypocritical. I'm the person who has always said, "Don't tell me how awful an author is unless you've read him or her." I obviously haven't seen either one of these movies. Maybe I should. Maybe Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother will add a whole new dimension to the text. Maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez should have started with films rather than with novels. Then again, if this is what the merging of film and literature has led to, maybe I shouldn't have given up smoking pot all those years ago.
Friday, November 23, 2007
A Photo Entry
Fall finally came to Lancaster, and I managed to get a few shots before the huge winds and drastic drop in temperature took it away. This is the tree in our front yard. Before we moved here, we were told it was beautiful in the fall. Until about ten days ago, I was beginning to have my doubts, but I see I need to work on having a little more faith in what others tell me.
This is the same tree and the front of the manse. That window in the peak just begs to have a mysterious figure standing in it and then disappearing, doesn't it? I'll have to see what I can do about that.
This is the side and back of the manse. We're so popular, we have a parking lot in our back yard.
This is the church. Bob's in there somewhere.
These are our neighbors. No one's invited me out to play yet, but they don't mind when I go wandering around on their property.
So, here I am, proud of myself for getting pictures on my blog, and then I discover Ian's been busy making his own YouTube videos. Nothing like being put to shame by your little brother.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)