Pure delight

You know the sort of book that compels a body repeatedly to interrupt the other reader in the room and say, "Hahahaha! Listen to this! This is really good stuff!" and then not even care that the listening you command from the other reader in the room is preceded by a slightly exasperated sigh? That's what kind of book this is.

I was going to link it to Amazon, but I found a hit from the title that led to an interview at NPR. So here's the link to that instead. You can hear the author read an excerpt from this book of "familiar essays" -- writing so delightful to read that your husband the other reader in the room may never get to read his silly history of the Hundred Years War! (He's on page 270 something, and the fight just started, so I wasn't worried that he'd lose his place in the narrative.)

Veiling

Lent.

Again.

Already.

So ready.

I am so ready.

Lent is a strange and horrible and wonderful and beautiful thing, and that it should be here again so soon is slightly dizzying. The first time our children saw the purple draping on the images (fourteen years ago in Passiontide at the end of Lent, when we enter deepest mourning), they looked ill at the sight. Our youngest wanted to know how long the purple stuff was staying there - he didn't like it. Once again, the children were the clerestory windows into the church's truth. Separation - which is the proper name of Death - is a horrid and sick-making thing, and to be separated from the good Lord himself is the worst kind of death there is.

Yet this way healing comes.

Lent starts in ashes and does not refuse to walk through the darkness of the cleansing fire. Lent chooses. I choose. Lent begins this Wednesday, and now I walk into the mouth of the darkness again because I believe. This death is a veil I can see through. The purple veiling holds Life.

I love Carol Gold, The Prisoner, and Stinky Cheese

Aaaaahhhhh......

The contented sigh you hear all around you everywhere in the world today is the sound of a perfectly and absolutely relaxing week at the beach. Perfect weather. Perfect food. Perfect wine. Perfect movies - and the entire series (plus bonus footage and interviews, thank you very much) of The Prisoner on the newly purchased DVD's brought along by The Great Husband - a man obsessed with The Prisoner.

The GH, it seems, has committed yet another act of conversion on his hapless wife. I've followed him again, apparently. This campaign of corruption began with Monty Python 25 years ago, and continues to this day. He is determined to enjoy very odd and disorienting cinema, and he is determined to have his enjoyment with company - my company. (His one spectacular failure was the three stooges. See that? I did not even capitalize the title. I cannot like the three stooges.) The Prisoner is such a psychological puzzle and such an of-the-moment commentary that it's impossible to think in enough directions at once for encompassing it all in one go -- and this makes for much thought and conversation -- conversation helped along by good wine and stinky cheese. (Shoulda taken one more seeded baguette, though. We ran out and had to content ourselves with Safeway bread.)

Perfectly happily relaxingly married life. The best possible way to head into Lent this year, and it feels great.

Bronze Coast Gallery had to be a part of my week, of course. I went in and stayed awhile this time -- on our first day -- whilst the GH had his Vacation Headache Coma. It only takes a day, so this time I took the coma day to walk and gallery gaze -- and be stunned at the sheer numbers of people who were at Cannon Beach in February!

Don Dahlke was my first love in the Bronze Coast, but Carol Gold calls me too, and either she keeps getting better and better or I am getting better eyes to see with. It is a little hard to see in these pictures, but Carol Gold forms bronze so amazingly that these very simple lines and this very heavy cast metal radiates such weightlessness and movement and emotion that's almost indescribable. It draws my hand out - I need to touch these sculptures. Need to move them and turn them and run my fingers along their ridges and slopes.

She has some I've never seen before -- and they're far, far out of my reach for now. But I'll buy something of hers one of these days. I'll spend "earned it myself by my writing" money on one. That's suitable, don't you think?

I really liked this couple. They are staying within the bounds of their own eternal circle, and they do not find it confining or constrictive. It's a dance for them. They tango, but independently. They watch each other. They step in synchronized unity, in equal and opposite attraction, and find a fluid counterpoint in this sort of movement. They are the same and different. They do not touch, but they maintain contact. I stood in the gallery and turned this piece around and around and around, gazing and gazing at it. Its name is "Circle."

And then there's the beautiful "Baile." Isn't she wonderful?

Tomorrow Tomorrow I love ya, Tomorrow

At last! We get a whole week this time!

Starting tomorrow, we get some stinky cheese, and some gallery walking, and some movie viewing, and some walks (all bundled up, of course) on the beach. This beach. OUR beach.

Five links in one paragraph. All our links lead to the beach. That's where he said "I love you" for the first time, and that's where we spent most of our honeymoon. The beach is where the air soaks deeply into my pores and cells and breath and reminds me of the all Norse lands I've never seen. Childhood's happiness and cousin laughter and windy afternoons and scratchy sunburns wash up on the sand and whisper to me. The pounding surf does a kind of CPR on my lungs and sternum. At the beach, I come back to life.

Wow.

I really need this vacation apparently.

Now more than ever?

200 years ago, on February 12, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born. Yeah - both of 'em. On the same date. I saw that and thought to myself how short-sighted we are - in two directions! Humans are always more ready to believe gloom and doom predictions than to believe that things are good and happy, or that they might become so. And we are also very willing to believe that Now More Than Ever there are pressures and troubles and a fast paced world and more innovations and blah blah blah ... Now More Than Ever.

But think. What was the world to people 200 years ago? What changes and innovations were on the horizon then? How fast was everything expanding? How dire did things seem? What opportunities? What global crises and what problems to be solved?

Thus it has ever been, ebbing and flowing, contracting and expanding, the whole of the universe of human experience is what it was ... and is what it never was because it cannot be. There are humans involved.

Two hundred years ago, two women had baby boys in the dark of a February day, and no one could tell then whether those boys would live to adulthood (because we never know that). No one could tell what changes would come to the world because those two boys did become men. I wonder who was born today. Two hundred years from now, when people say that Now More Than Ever the world has changed, what babies will be part of the reason?

Pink snow

Outside my window tonight - chilly, but it sure is pretty.

Name that category

Okay, players ... for the grand prize, your partner will give you this final list, and you will name the category all these things belong to.

Remember, nothing but your own levels of irritation and pleasure will be determined here and you will win no money.

Ready, players? Here we go. Start the clocks!

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Things purporting to be cake,

individually wrapped in air-sealed packaging.







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A large variety of specialized cleaning products

individually packaged and marketed

sold as helpful

yet easily replaced with a few biodegradable, non-toxic and

inexpensive alternatives

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sporks (especially for soup eaters)











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ill-advised and hilariously silly kitchen gadgets





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online courses for college credit from serious academic institutions that expect the students to actually EARN respectable degrees

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self-employment business "opportunities"

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Time's up.

Players --- category please.

And the category for the grand prize is ....

THINGS THAT ATTRACT YOU BY BEING "CONVENIENT"

I'm just sayin

February in Mrs. Seal's class

It is the ninth day of the dreary month of February ... for years I have hated February. All kinds of bad things have happened in February, and it just seemed like it was bound to be a horrid month every year. But this year, for some odd reason, it feels like third grade.

In the third grade, Mrs. Seal (the "meanest teacher in the school") started every morning with a pledge to the flag and a patriotic song. I'm nearly fifty years old now, and I wonder in amazement at the fact that Mrs. Seal had not gone deaf in self-defense. Oh, we children could sing all right. But some of us also took piano lessons. There was always a student accompanist for the patriotic song. I remember because I was one of them.

There was a calendar in Mrs. Seal's class. A big one. It was on the wall across the room from the big windows, and every month there was a new one. The students took turns putting the date (a number on a construction paper circle) onto the calendar each morning. This special privilege entailed the use of rubber cement. I adore rubber cement. Have you ever used it? Nothing else smells like rubber cement, and nothing else does that particular kind of gluey, stringy, stickiness. The lid has a brush on its underside, so you have to lift out the brush, all heavy with the wonder of the stickiness, and you have to break the string - like getting honey out of the honey pot and onto your toast. Then you paint the circle (on the back), and then you put it in the next square on the calendar (right side up), and it sticks. There is it, in all its red circle-y perfection. The next day in February.

February used to have three big days in it. There was Valentine's Day (admittedly a bit confusing, but there were cookies) and there was President Lincoln and President Washington. The presidents have black construction paper silhouettes for the calendar instead of numbers on a circle. And we had to put those up early - we weren't in school on those days.

How odd that third grade's February was the month of patriotic songs, rubber cement, and Presidents' Days. I do not remember gloomy weather, rain and sogginess, or trudging back up the hill to go home in it. I remember the red circles and black silhouettes on the calendar. I remember Mrs. Seal - the meanest teacher in the school. I remember how horrified I was on the first day of school to discover that I had to be in her class (everyone knew she was the meanest teacher, and my mother simply did not care!), and I remember a hundred things about being her student that year. I remember order, and calm, and creativity in music and drawing and even square dancing, and I remember my reading book. Today, while I look out my window at the bare tress and the chilly, soggy mud underlying everything, all at once I've got the urge to find some construction paper and open a pot of rubber cement.

Cure

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

Isak Dinesen

Now that's what I call a library patron!

Most Americans take their library privileges seriously. A recent Zogby poll found just six out of a hundred people confessed to not returning library books. KPCC’s Special Correspondent Kitty Felde found one library patron who’s more conscientious than most.

Kitty Felde: Chesley Sullenberger has a problem. He borrowed a book from the Danville Library – and it’s overdue. To complicate matters, the book was an interlibrary loan from Fresno State.

Sullenberger contacted librarians and asked for an extension on the loan and a waiver on the overdue fine. The reason? The book is in the cargo hold of the US Airways plane that made an emergency landing last month in New York’s Hudson River. Sullenberger is the pilot who made that landing. No one was seriously injured.

Fresno State library officials were impressed with Sullenberger’s sense of responsibility… and waived all fines and fees, even the one for losing the book. The library’s going one step further: when the replacement book goes up on the shelf, it will have a special template in front, dedicating it to Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

Oh, by the way. The topic of that book? Professional ethics.

Caesura

She knew there was something ahead. Something to look forward to. There would be another flash. There would be another moment of glory and purest light. She knew it would happen.

So, looking out, she went on.

She climbed. She scrambled. She fell and scratched herself on the brambles, and she skipped willy-nilly down the sides of the slopes. She forded streams and crossed bridges, and even burnt a few.

She fell in love with another traveler, and they bore children and taught them to climb and splash and run and navigate by way of the stars. And looking out, they went on.

The children grew tall. They set off for other slopes and vistas, and still she climbed.

And all at once, she stopped. She looked. Looking out, she stopped stock still and wondered what to do.

Caesura.

Caesurae.

An audible pause in the poetry.

Stop.

There are two types of caesurae: masculine and feminine. Two of us in our caesura. He could not stop. Did not stop. But he saw it too. She had stopped.

Shouldn't she be doing something? Going somewhere? Shouldn't she be moving? But what do I do with this? Where do I go? How do I do it? Shouldn't I know?

Just be quiet, he told her. Wait a minute. Catch your breath. You will know it when you see it. Look around. Recover. Wait here.

Stop.

The fog cleared, and the sound was the surf. The flash came again. And again. The sun began to glitter on the edges of the waves, and the breeze blew salty tears across her face.

And looking out, she went on.

Sweet heart

Every once in awhile, after a quarter century of marriage, The Great Husband says something to me so utterly perfect that it's actually better than chocolate. This weekend it happened again. It was one of those "remember that?" conversations, and mostly it was about how little of "this" we could have predicted "then."

The Great Husband told me that he agrees with C. K. Dexter Haven. I can be whatever I want. I'm his "redhead." (I don't have red hair, but I knew what he meant.)

(From the Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn movie The Philadelphia Story)

She's in a jam. Her ex-husband proposes marriage to her because she's finally figured out how to have "the one essential: an understanding heart. And without that you might just as well be made of bronze." She still loves him, of course. Her better self always did. But she knows what she has been - so she asks him:

Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter you're not doing it just to soften the blow?

C. K. Dexter Haven: No.

Tracy Lord: Nor to save my face?

C. K. Dexter Haven: Oh, it's a nice little face.

Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now, I promise to be yar.

C. K. Dexter Haven: Be whatever you like, you're my redhead.