a book with a view

Top Love Poem of All Time

2011-02-14T08:59:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's a big claim to make, that one can select the top poem on a subject that has been written about more than any other. But I believe I can make a good case that I have done it here.

Speaking of love, the love between a mother is daughter is often complicated.
For all that you gave me, Mom, thank you.
For my short comings and failures, I'm sorry.
I'm glad you're with the Lord finally, but the space you leave behind will never be filled.
I loved you.

Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death."

So ends 14 days celebrating love and poetry. I hope you've enjoyed reading them. I'll return later with more normal posts.

Sonnet 29

2011-02-13T21:05:00.001-06:00

This atypical love poem is truly one of the world's best. Truly Shakespeare the poet at his finest.

"When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

Tomorrow, the world's greatest love poem.

Shall I Compare Thee...

2011-02-12T11:32:00.000-06:00

Today we have one of the best love poems ever written in the English language, Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

The Dueling Poets: Marlowe vs Shakespeare

2011-02-11T11:59:00.001-06:00

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were both born in 1564. But Marlowe was a product of the educated upper class, a university trained classic scholar and translator. The darling of the disaffected elite of his time, he rose to dominate England's literary and dramatic scene. Shakespeare, on the other hand, was forced to withdraw from school at the age of 14, when his father's fortunes began to fail. Though most scholars deny the claim that Marlowe actually wrote the plays we attribute to William Shakespeare, there's no doubt that Christopher Marlowe was a brilliant writer. Among other works, he gave us one of the most memorable love poems of all time. After reading it you will find one of Shakespeare's many great love sonnets. Compare them for yourself, dear reader.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

-- Christopher Marlowe

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-- William Shakespeare

Read Well, Friend

I found another version of the fourth line of Marlowe listed several times online. In fact, one site published it both ways. Bartlett online uses the version I printed above, and that is the most common. But a few sources say "And all the craggy mountains yield," instead.

She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways

2011-02-09T17:21:00.000-06:00

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mosy tone

Half hidden from the eye!
---Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!"

-- William Wordsworth

love in lower case

2011-02-08T10:41:00.000-06:00

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"

-- E. E. Cummings

Love that Spans the Ages

2011-02-07T09:56:00.002-06:00

One of the most poignant love poems ever written, William Yeats When You are Old and Grey.

"When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

Enjoy those beautiful words, then when you're ready move on to consider a different kind of young lover, by A. E. Housman.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Read Well, Friend

Jenny Kissed Me -- More Than Once

2011-02-06T11:05:00.010-06:00

"Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!"

-- Jenny Kissed Me, Leigh Hunt

There's a fun story -- actually there are two -- behind this cute poem. Hunt was a neighbor of poet and author, Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane, aka Jenny. One story says that when Hunt visited to tell them he would publish one of Thomas Carlyle's poems, Carlyle's wife, in a very uncharacteristic move, jumped up and kissed him.

The other story is that one winter Hunt was ill for so long that when he finally recovered and went to visit, Jane jumped up and kissed him as soon as he appeared. A few days later one of the Hunt servants delivered a note, "From Mr. Hunt to Mrs. Carlyle." It contained the poem, "Jenny Kissed Me."

Oddly enough, someone wrote a song based on this poem, which seems to have been recorded by several crooners in the 1050's. You can see Eddie Albert sing it, and hear him recite the poem itself, here. There's a different version by a High School ensemble here. Finally, watch this recitation of the poem only here. As interesting as these versions are, I think I prefer just reading it myself. How about you?

Read Well, Friend

There are also numerous written parodies available on the web. Clearly this poem strikes a favorable chord with many.

She Walks in Beauty

2011-02-05T16:45:00.001-06:00

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!"

And another still by Byron:
"There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like Thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charméd ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean."

-- Lord Byron

Read Well, Friend

A Poem for Betsy

2011-02-04T09:21:00.001-06:00

Today I wish my beautiful, amazing daughter Happy Birthday. Every year she grows more special to me, and I'm so proud to be part of her life! In honor of her, I present here a poem she enjoyed as a child -- a tale of love and adventure. Happy Birthday, Betsy!

The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear

I
"The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II
Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III
'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon."

Runcible is a word coined by Lear. If you've read his poetry you know that he uses it to describe various items, like a hat, a rat, and a goose. In the

illustrations to another poem drawn by Lear himself, a runcible spoon looks like a ladle. Despite that, dictionaries today usually define it as a three-pronged curved fork.

Read Well, Friend

For more Lear click here.

Poems for Young Love

2011-02-03T09:17:00.003-06:00

"O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty;
Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure."
-- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III

As I finished reading this my mind immediately went to...

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry."
-- Robert Herrick, To Virgins to Make the Most of Time

Finally, speaking of roses we have A Red, Red Rose by Burns.

"O my luve's like a red, red rose.
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a'the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o'life shall run.

And fare thee weel my only Luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!"

Read Well, Friend

Love Poem #1

2011-02-01T23:31:00.003-06:00

"If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile her look her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of ease on such a day'
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity."

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese #14

This is the first of what I hope will be fourteen love poems for fourteen days.

Read Well, Friend

Winnie-the-Pooh Day

2011-01-18T16:33:00.003-06:00

Today, according to the A Kids Book-a-Day Almanac, is officially Winnie-the-Pooh day. In honor of the august occasion, (but it's January, not August, Pooh grumbles. Yes, I know that, I tell him...), anyway, in honor of the occasion, I will present you with a few of Pooh's thoughts on education, spelling, and other brainy stuff.

I will admit, first, to being a Pooh snob, and thus only using quotes he actually said, as reported by Mr. Milne. Those other people have no business putting words in his mouth. (Actually, he says, his mouth is empty right now, and he wouldn't mind a bit of honey or condensed milk, but never mind the bread.)

So, Pooh on reading:
"I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."

Spelling:
"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."

"You can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY," (speaking about Owl), "even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."

And here's one from Eyore:
"This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."

Pooh on thinking:
"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."
I know what you mean, Pooh, I often feel the same way when it's time to write on my blog. (You do? he asks. I assure him I do. Then might we have a little something to help us feel better? Perhaps, I say.)

In the mean time, here's a little winter poem for you, from my good friend, Winnie-the-Pooh.
"The more it snows (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
On snowing. And nobody knows (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
Are growing."

Good-bye and keep warm.

Read Well, Friend

Teaching, Reading, and Workshops: Or is The Book Whisperer Enough?

2010-12-13T11:28:00.001-06:00

Because I'm hoping to get back into teaching soon, I've been reading a lot about education lately. It's been a long time since I was surrounded by teachers, and times, and methods, have evolved. Of course, all the new governmental regulation is changing the face of education yet again -- for better or worse. But those are conversations for another day. For now, I've been reading, marking up, and taking notes on about a dozen books, mostly about language arts. Specifically, I've recently read four books about teaching reading. Yesterday I read The Book Whisperer by Miller, and today I'm into The Art of Teaching Reading, by Calkins.

Miller is a woman after my own heart. Bring them into a classroom rich with wonderful books, and have them read, she says. Time spent reading makes readers better, and the best readers are the best writers, communicators, students, and test-takers. But Miller teaches 6th grade Language Arts and Social Studies, so students are coming to her with at least some rudimentary ability to read. She doesn't need to wrestle with phonemes or phonics, letter formation or spelling sight words. What would she do differently if she taught Kindergarten or First Grade, I wonder? Has she ever had a student who can't read or write? I'd like to know how she would deal with the need to provide appropriate books and support to a non-reader who had already been held back once or twice, or a foreign student with no English. Perhaps these situations haven't come before her. If they have, I wish she'd write about them. (I know she has a website, but I haven't visited it yet.)

Two of the books I purchased, (see below), are specifically about Reading Workshop, a method of organizing reading instruction with a large group lesson, small groups, mini/strategy lessons, book partnerships, book clubs, reading journals, individual conferences and independent reading. (As you can imagine, not a small part of these books is spent discussing planning and organization.) At the center of a Reading Workshop is supposed to be the child, reading a book of their own choosing, hopefully at their independent reading level. We know from many studies that when kids have plenty of time to read books they want, they become better readers. But looking at sample schedules, I see that of a 90 minute block, independent reading is often only 20-25 minutes, and kids are being pulled out of it for small groups and one-on-one conferences with the teacher. Also, while they're reading, they are often armed with sticky notes reminding them to stop and predict, question, or record their reactions to something they've read. So I wonder, how much time are these students actually spending inside their books? Are they able to get caught up in the story, knowing that at any moment they might be called for a meeting, interrupted to discuss theme or strategies to sound out words they don't know? Again, grade level matters here. Twenty five minutes focusing on books is quite a while for a five year old who may not have had any experience with books before coming to school, but perhaps not enough when you're eleven and desperate to finish Harry Potter. Miller's contrasting attitude, leave them alone and let them read, is appealing. She relies on a weekly response journal, and talking with her kids about books to gauge comprehension. They also do occasional book commercials and recommendations. I just wish I knew more about the level of the students who come into her room.

Calkins also advocates the workshop approach. "During independent reading, teachers confer with children individually and in partnerships. A teacher may also gather a cluster of children together for a strategy lesson around a shared text.... A teacher may also gather a small group for a guided reading session.” p73. I can’t help but wonder what message this sends our kids about reading -- that it’s something to do to stay busy till the teacher is ready for you? Yet I totally understand the fact that teachers are dealing with a limited amount of time to teach, a great number of demands on that time, and a wide range of abilities within one classroom. When I was in school, (back in the old days...) we had USSR or DEAR, Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading, or Drop Everything and Read, in which even the secretaries and janitors were encouraged to curl up with a book for 20-30 minutes every day. Now we seem to have Read Until Some Thing Interrupts, (RUSTI?)

Any decent teacher will tell you that instruction depends on grade level and the individual needs of the students. I know that. But I can’t help but wonder, as I read these books on reading instruction, how much of what we do to teach reading is still based on what we think kids need, as opposed to what will actually help them become better readers, writers, and thinkers. I wish I knew. I guess I’ll keep reading, in hopes of finding out.

Read Well, Friend

The Art of Teaching Reading, Lucy McCormick Calkins
Making the Most of Small Groups, Debbie Diller
The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller
Teaching Reading in Small Groups, Jennifer Serravallo

In Flanders Field

2010-11-07T09:16:00.001-06:00

Ypres, 1915
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, Canadian Major John McCrae became overwhelmed by his experience in his 17 days as a surgeon near Ypres, Belgium. He later wrote of it:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

While there he scribbled these lines:

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."

-- Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

I salute those who have lived, and died, for their country.

More Edu-speak

2010-11-02T15:42:00.001-05:00

"Show me a kid who understands that he is 'synthesizing, analyzing and evaluating the validity and reliability of information from multiple sources,' and I’ll show you a wise, old owl, aka curriculum writer."
- Melinda Ehrlich, in response to this article in Education Next, Data-Driven and Off Course.

More on it later. Until then,

Vote and Read Well, Friend

This is Teaching?

2010-11-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

I know I've been out of education-speak for a while, but what does this mean? "...a constructivist design process should be concerned with designing environments which support the construction of knowledge, which...provides an Intellectual Toolkit to Facilitate an Internal Negotiation Necessary for Building Mental Models"? I posted this lovely bit of edu-speak on Facebook a while back. I'm studying to take a Principles of Learning and Teaching (Praxis II) test to get re-certified to teach, and found this "explanation" on a university website.

Why do college professors and researchers, (and politicians, I might add), so often think that big words and complicated phrases are a sign of big intelligence? I know that special areas of knowledge need specialized vocabulary, but shouldn't that vocabulary help clarify, not obscure, meaning? To what degree does language like this serve as some sort of group marker -- "If you can talk like this you're one of us and if you can't you're obviously not, you inferior, teeny-brained life form."

What particularly kills me about this is that it's taken from a site designed to help explain these topics to education students. I got my degree 30 years ago, so I've been out of the "research talk" loop for a long time, and I'm not surprised at finding myself needing to make an effort to wrap my head around some of the vocabulary again. But if someone who claims to be a teacher can't explain their point more clearly than this, I think there's a problem. What is teaching but, on some level, the quest to make the currently unknown knowable to our students? If those who teach our teachers can't or won't do this, then why are we so surprised that people aren't learning?

Communication should be the foundation of teaching. If I have the background needed, and the desire to learn, and you can't explain it in a way that makes sense to me, then guess what? Maybe YOU'RE NOT A VERY GOOD TEACHER! That goes for my college Calculus teacher who thought writing the answers to the practice problems on the board and then walking out of the room was teaching. And to my Tae-Kwan-Do teacher who kept telling me I wasn't holding the baton-thingy wrong, but wouldn't tell me how to correct it. If you can't explain constructivism to me in a way I can grasp and apply, then there's a problem. Maybe you don't really understand it yourself. Maybe it's a very vague concept, and thus probably not all that useful to some fourth grade teacher in a real classroom anyway. Or perhaps you're not really trying, but using lazy thinking and regurgitated phrases. But it's also possible that you're not good at explaining things so others can understand them. In that case, perhaps you shouldn't be teaching, and certainly not teaching those who will be teaching our young. If you can't lead by example, then maybe it's time for you to get out of the classroom and let in people who can.

Back to the flash cards. "Constructivism is a theory of learning based on the idea that..."

Read Well, Friend

It's All Moot Anyway

2010-10-21T11:12:00.001-05:00

It came up first on Says You!, that PBS radio game of "words and whimsy, bluff and bluster" that's always entertaining. When they asked their panelists to define the word moot, you just knew there had to be a catch. It means not worth talking about, right, a moot point being something that's already been decided? Not exactly. It turns out moot is a bit like inflammable -- it does and it doesn't, if you get my meaning. Yes, one definition of it is "of no legal significance," probably because it's already been decided. I always thought that's what a moot court was -- law students sitting around arguing cases that had already been decided, just for the practice. But it turns out that the word moot is also defined as "arguable or open to debate, as in 'that's a moot question.'"

It got worse when I turned to Merriam-Webster online for help. There it's considered perfectly fine to use moot as a verb meaning to bring up for discussion, i.e. "broach", but it's obsolete to use it in terms of a legal debate, though a moot court is still one in which law students argue hypothetical cases. Oh well. Glancing further down I see that Merriam-Webster thinks that the words moot and mute rhyme, which they clearly do not, so I now feel justified in throwing their opinion out all together. The baby and the bathwater approach works just fine for me, thank you. However, I still have two pretty contradictory definitions using moot as a adjective -- 1. Debatable or 2. Not worth debating because it's already settled or has no meaning.

By the way, the word moot comes from the Ole English gemot which was a meeting of freemen where various affairs and legal issues were discussed. That comes from the Germanic word motam, also meeting. So though the word-pure among us consider that moot actually means worthy of holding a meeting and discussing, it seems we in the US, at least, have taken the legal idea of a hypothetical debate, and turned moot into a word not worth talking about. Thus my frustration while watching Law and Order: SVU yesterday when I informed the actors, "Who cares who gets jurisdiction, you just proved he was insane at the time of the crime so it's a m--t point!" Help! I obviously need a new word for the second meaning of moot. Any suggestions? I suppose I could say hypothetical, but it just “ain’t got that swing,” you know?

Oh, and if you’re looking for some help rhyming, please don’t turn to Merriam-Webster. Moot and mute, indeed.

Read Well, Friend

Rules for the Aspiring Detective, Part Two

2010-10-12T10:51:00.002-05:00

Here are the last five of Robert Knox’s 10 Rules for Detective Fiction from the Golden Age of Mysteries.

Rule #6. “No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.” Personally I don’t mind the occasional accident helping to unmask a killer. After all, bizarre events do happen in real life. (Just ask me about my last two years, for example...) I’ll also accept some intuition, mostly in amateur female sleuths. We’re rather known for it, after all. But it must be born out by the facts of the story, which the detective must unearth before the end. What I personally don’t like is smugness on the part of the detective who has a perfectly good reason for suspecting someone, but refuses to reveal it. That's is another reason Sherlock Holmes will never be my favorite guy, though I like some of the stories about him a lot. The Speckled Band, for example. Come to think of it, there is a kind of a secret passage in that story, and another favorite, Hound of the Baskervilles, appears to have a supernatural element to it, (rules #2 and 3.) There may be a trend here...

Rule #7. “The detective himself must not commit the crime.” I like this rule, because it keeps me from feeling the need to peek to the end of the book, just to be sure I can trust what I'm reading. I did once read a book where the criminal turned out to be the sleuth, and I was thoroughly disgusted when I realized I had been tricked that way. Without trust between the writer and audience, reading becomes too much of a mine field for me to enjoy. I’ve never been a big fan of the kind of speculative fiction that keeps me off balance while I’m reading. Too much like real life, perhaps? No, part of the appeal of a mystery is the sense of write and wrong in these stories. Just like in a real western, there must at least one good guy, and I want to know who he is.

Rule #8. “The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.” No more scenes of the detective slowly unfolding a piece of paper, turning it to the light to read it more clearly, then -- folding it back up and sticking it in his pocket. A real man, or woman, shares his clues!

Rule #9. “The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.” Now these are Robert Knox’s words, not mine. But let’s admit it, Watson can be very dense sometimes. I used to worry about his patients, wondering if a man as slow as he was could really be a decent doctor. Fortunately, his physician/neighbor spends so much time covering for him, is patients were probably pretty safe.

Rule #10. “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.” Or even then. I mean, really. What kind of self respecting mystery writer relies on a body double, twin, or long-lost relative to make their case? In the same vein I dislike undisclosed marriages, innocent looking people who turn out to have worked for the SS or MI-5, and secret wills. In Ngaio Marsh’s The Final Curtain, Sir Henry Ancred has the details of his new will read aloud. When his subsequent death is explained by the existence of a quite different version he had drawn up at the same time, I always cry “Foul.” Mysteries are supposed to be full of lies, cheats, and trickery -- but that’s supposed to be the criminal, not the writer or the sleuth. After all, it can be a scary world out there, and a girl needs to have someone she can trust.

Read Well, Friend

Visit My New Blog

2010-10-11T15:15:00.004-05:00

I get frustrated sometimes at only being able to post snippets of poems on this blog. I don't want to overwhelm my posts, and a sidebar can only hold so much. So I've taken advantage of the the ease of designing new blogs in blogger and added another one -- A Few Reasonable Words. It will contain the full text of poems I reference on A Book With a View, and probably other bits and pieces that strike my fancy, too. You can get to it from my sidebar, or with this link -- A Few Reasonable Words.

The title comes from this quote, "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." Goethe

Stop by for a visit, please.

Read Well, Friend

Rules for the Aspiring Detective, Part One

2010-10-10T22:50:00.005-05:00

The 1920s and 30s, commonly known as the Golden Age of Detective Stories, saw the rise of many of our most famous mystery writers. Among them were Agatha Christie, GK Chesterton, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, Ellery Queen, Josephine Tey and Raymond Chandler. Mysteries moved from primarily being the sphere of the short story to novel length, and different styles developed. The cozy mystery, the English country house, hard -- boiled, and locked room stories emerged, for example. It was during this period that, in a preface to Best Detective Stories of 1928-29, priest, mystery writer and editor Robert Knox laid down the 10 Rules for Detective Fiction. These rules are often referred to as the corner stone of mystery writing in the Golden Age of Detective Stories. Did he mean them to be taken completely seriously, or were they given tongue -- in -- cheek? Honestly, I can't tell. It's very hard to assign motive and intent to something done years ago. Whatever his attitude, the rules do promote the idea of fair play between the writer and reader, something many of us still appreciate today. Here, with my thoughts added, are those 10 rules.

Rule #1. "The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know." Thus the innocent sounding narrator can't turn out to be the murderer in disguise. The inverted mystery is an exception to this rule. In this type of story we know who did it, how and why. The fun is in watching the detective unravel the clues and track the miscreant down. For some reason, I think these inversions work better when seen than read. Examplers are TV’s Columbo and Law and Order: CI. Is there anyone who doesn't get a secret thrill every time Columbo turns to the bad guy and says, "Oh, just one more question..."

Rule #2. "All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course." This eliminates Gothic novels, generally defined as a combination of horror, mystery, and romance, which is fine by me. I'm not a fan of them, I don't even like Jane Eyre. (Sorry, April.) While I generally prefer to avoid anything smacking of the supernatural in my stories, Knox only asks that any such elements eventually be explained by rational means. Georgette Heyer's Footsteps in the Dark is one such book that I do enjoy; it's long been one of my favorites. A husband and wife, brother, sister and their aunt all move into the Priory, where strange noises and a ghostly monk soon begin to unnerve some of them. I like the common sense attitude of the other characters, the descriptions of the house, the humor, and the relationships between the everyone in this book. The final explanation may stretch my credulity a bit, but I still enjoy every reread.

Rule #3. "Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable." Alas for Nancy Drew! I'm certain she broke this rule many times, and I so glad. I grew up in a very straightforward farmhouse -- no secret passages there. Even Grandma's old Victorian only ran to a damp cellar and a few oddly shaped closets. I think there's something enticing about a house with hidden panels and winding passageways. Come to think of it, Footsteps in the Dark has some of those, too. Even C. S. Lewis used this idea for the wardrobe in his Narnia books -- not mysteries, I know -- but if it's good enough for Aslan it's good enough for me. (Is the tesseract in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time the modern equivalent the old fashioned secret passageway? It's something to ponder...)

Rule #4. "No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end." How about nixing any ending which requires a long drawn out explanation? I love Christie’s What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw, but it does bog down a bit when Miss Marple begins to explain the railway timetable, curves in the track, and exactly how dear Elsa McG. saw what she did. On the other hand, I should be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t really care exactly how it happened, and I always just skip that part of the story, since I’m willing to take it on faith. She sat in one moving train and saw the murder being done on a different one, all right? Who cares how British rail allowed it to happen.

Rule #5 "No Chinaman must figure in the story."
This reference to a Chinamen really alludes to any of the mysterious foreigners equipped with weird, often animal like powers that could be found skulking around many mysteries of the age. I wish Conan Doyle had obeyed this last point. In my opinion The Sign of the Four is ruined in part by his interjection of a mysterious aborigine climbing up drain pipes, hiding in the attic, and shooting poisoned darts with his blow pipe. The unfortunately bizarre and unhuman characterizations of these foreigners is often embarrassingly bigoted to today’s readers. In fairness it should be pointed out that this rule does not, of course, apply to mysteries actually set in China, Chinatown, or a foreign country. In that case Knox would presumably rule out mysterious bands of Englishmen instead.

These are the first five of Robert Knox's rules. What do you think of them, in reference to your favorite mysteries, or any other books for that matter?
The rest of his list will be in my next post. In the meantime...

Read Well, Friend

You Call This Cozy?

2010-10-08T13:17:00.006-05:00

I was sitting innocently in my living room,
a PBS Masterpiece Mystery video spinning away in the DVD player, when Diana Rigg said something that shocked me. She introduced an episode of Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series as a "cozy mystery", based somehow on the idea that it took place in an English country house. At first I was prepared to defer to Dame Diana and the experts at PBS, who surely must know their mysteries. However, the more I watched the more my mind rebeled at calling Inspector Lynley, Superintendent Havers and the many miscreants they've uncovered "cozy".

I've tried off and on over the years to enjoy Elizabeth George's novels and never succeeded. They are mysteries, which I do like. And she sets all of them in England, a country I've visited and love reading about. They're also thick books, well-researched, and the Lynley ones at least follow a set of ever evolving characters -- all characteristics that I look forward to in books. Still, I've never managed to become a fan, and it's purely a matter of taste, not a comment on her skill as writer. I just found the books I tried too dark and too convoluted. So much so, in fact, that I'm glad I didn't realize this series was based on her books, because I might not have bothered to watch them. Perhaps because I often wrestle with my own psychological demons, I've never enjoyed taken much pleasure in such books or movies. Instead I'm an admitted sucker for an uplifting, feel good story. It's one of the reasons I enjoy cozy mysteries -- at least I thought it was. Yet here we have Lynley -- and George -- with stories about incest, abandonment, child stealing, suicides real and faked, school bullying, drug use... well, you get the idea... all gathered under the "cozy" umbrella simply because a man died in a country home. It just didn't sit right, Dame Rigg, CBE, DBE, or not.

So, what IS a cozy mystery?

Cozies, it appears, date from the Golden Age of Mystery, those halcyon years between the two World Wars. It may not be an accident that the three detective fiction writers most often called the greatest of this period are all women -- Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh, (the first two are considered cozy writers,) as cozies seem to be closely associated with females. I even found one definition that specifically said that cozy mysteries are intended for "intelligent women” readers. Well, how could I quibble with that? It's not true, though, that women are the only fans of cozies. I think that misconception arises from the idea that men will only read books written by men, with males as the main characters. But that doesn't have to be the case. The three writers mentioned above, along with a number of other women of the period like Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey, were widely read and respected by men. However that may be, here, after some fun hours spent browsing mystery websites, blogs, and books about mystery writing, is my compilation of what makes a mystery "cozy":

#1. Don't Quit Your Day Job
Miss Marple knits baby layettes as she listens to the local gossip, and Lord Peter Whimsey goggles through his eyepiece while tracking down miscreants. Other cozy detectives may work very hard as caterers, journalists, art history experts, store owners and actors, but none of them make their livings chasing down criminals. Inspector Lynley and Superintendent Havers work for Scotland Yard, about as professional as a sleuth can get.

#2. Mystery Lite
Light on the violence and psychological torment, that is. People may get murdered in cozies, but it usually happens off the page, frequently before the book opens. Subsequent deaths aren't described in detail, brains don't get splattered on walls, and no self respecting cozy sleuth would ever attend an autopsy. If incest, kidnapping or suicides figure into the story, they also take place out of sight and are barely referred to. George's books, on the other hand, seem to me to revel in the psychological torment of her characters.

#3. It's All in the Game
The puzzle is everything in a cozy, or at least it should be. Unfortunately, too many times when I've picked up a recently published book, I've found myself identifying the villain right away. Several times I knew who did it before anyone had even been killed, once I identified the killer and victim on page two, based solely on a conversation other people had about them. This is a great disservice to the cozy, which should always puzzle the reader as long as possible. Christie could spin out so many possible solutions you needed a chart to keep track of all the suspects and red herrings. At least when I'm watching the Lynley series, I'm never sure who did it until the very end.

#4. It's a Small World
PBS got it wrong. Country House mysteries and cozies are not identical genres. But cozies do usually take place in a local setting, probably because Lord Peter is one of the few amateur detectives with the resources to fly off to France or motor down to the city at the drop of a hat. Cozy stories benefit from an interesting but limited cast of characters, and they make great series stories, bringing back again and again all the crazy friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors of the sleuth who've yet to be knocked off or sent to prison. Jane Marple, surely the undisputed doyenne of the group, sometimes solved mysteries without leaving her house, depending on her maid, nephew, or old friend Sir Henry Clithering to gather the facts.

#5. It's Called Cozy for a Reason
Though the heyday came in the early 20th century, the term was coined much later, when mystery writers began to return to the ideas of Golden Age writers. Defined as "enjoying or affording comforting warmth and shelter especially in a small space," the name describes the genre well. "Snug, comfortable, easy, chatty, sociable, familiar," cozy is seen as "fostering a warm or friendly atmosphere." While one may quibble about other defining characteristics, let's at least agree that these books should reflect "the happy innocence, the purity and confidence of purpose, which was its true hallmark" of the Golden Age. Sorry, Dame Diana, as much as I'm enjoying Inspector Lynley, it definitely doesn't qualify.

Alistaire Cooke would have gotten it right.

Read Well, Friend

(Ending quote from Robert Knox, known for The 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction. 1929.)

And Ladybugs?

2010-03-12T20:37:00.018-06:00

For all the mysteries, engines, instruments, wherewith the world is filled, which we are able to frame and use to thy glory.

For all the trades, variety of operations, cities, temples, streets, bridges, mariner's compass, admirable picture, sculpture, writing, printing, songs and music; wherewith the world is beautified and adorned.

Much more for the regent life,

And power of perception,

Which rules within.

That secret depth of fathomless consideration

That receives the information

Of all our senses,

That makes our centre equal to the heavens,

And comprehendeth in itself the magnitude of the world;

The involv’d mysteries

Of our common sense;

The inaccessible secret

Of perceptive fancy;

The repository and treasury

Of things that are past;

The presentation of things to come;

Thy name be glorified

For evermore.

O miracle

Of divine goodness!

O fire! O flame of zeal, and love, and joy!

Ev’n for our earthly bodies, hast thou created all things.

{ visible

All things { material

{ sensible

Animals,

Vegetables,

Minerals,

Bodies celestial,

Bodies terrestrial,

The four elements,

Volatile spirits,

Trees, herbs, and flowers,

The influences of heaven,

Clouds, vapors, wind,

Dew, rain, hail and snow,

Light and darkness, night and day,

The seasons of the year.

Springs, rivers, fountains, oceans,

Gold, silver, and precious stones.

Corn, wine, and oil,

The sun, moon, and stars,

Cities, nations, kingdoms.

And the bodies of men, the greatest treasures of all,

For each other.

What then, O Lord, hast thou intended for our

Souls, who givest to our bodies such glorious things!

A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God by Thomas Trahern

For the reference in my title, see the next post.

Read Well, Friend

(I read this on PoetryFoundation.org, and found it so fascinating I decided to share it with you. He is considered a Metaphysical post and writer, living in the late 1600's in England. Pathetical could mean inferior and ineffective, or arousing strong emotion. What do you think?)

"Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home"

2010-03-08T19:53:00.005-06:00

I woke to a perfect morning. For the first time in quite a few days the night temps had stayed in the 40s, and today -- high of 71, or better. (Better, as it turned out. I’m sitting outside right now enjoying a breezy 74.) The light and heat of the sun streamed into my bedroom as I woke. Stretching, savoring warmth on my skin, I opened my eyes to the morning, gazing toward the window seeing -- Ladybugs? Ladybugs filled the top half of my window, crawling over glass and curtain. The swarmed around the wall beside the window, and over the ceiling. Twenty, maybe thirty small, round, black and orange bugs, greeting the morning sun. Just like me. Unfortunately.

I have always been a fan of ladybugs. Even when I was really little and creeped out by almost anything that had more than four legs or moved unpredictably. Still, I was a farm girl, with one of those obnoxious older brothers who wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, and never let me forget it. So I faked it, accepting spiders, frogs, crawdads and an innumerable parade of crawling, jumping, bizarre creatures. I don’t know if I ever fooled anyone -- my brother, I was sure, saw through me. Fortunately I didn’t have to fake it when it came to ladybugs. Easily identifiable, ladybugs seldom flew around you trying to get into you face or hair. They didn’t have long appendages sticking out in odd places, and they never, never jumped out of nowhere into your mouth. You may laugh, but we had three to four inch long grasshoppers. I kid you not. Some of them were probably longer, and they weren’t skinny little guys, but husky, well equipped with thighs that could fling them from a weed a yard or more away directly into you face or hair. And they were everywhere, leaping on me from all directions, clinging to my clothes and skin. Taking the nightly scraps to the compost heap was my own personal nightmare. I understood why locusts were a Biblical plague, even if they hadn’t eat anything.

Ladybugs, however, deserved their name. Lady-like one and all, they carefully walked onto my hand. Brightly colored, they actually made the flowers in the beds prettier. Add to that the sad story of a house fire, with “poor little Ann,” who had "crept under the frying pan." I decided ladybugs deserved protection. My kids learned to carefully carry them outside and place them on a leaf or flower. Spiders in the house? Stomp on them. Ladybugs? Man the door, rescue in progress! In those halcyon days of bug-love there were things I didn’t know about my tiny friends. Not until we retired in W. TN did I learn these sweet looking, aphid-eating darlings had a dark side.

It happened the first spring after we bought our house in a deceptively quiet looking hamlet, on a short, wooded street. Bright spring sun shone on the south-facing front of our yellow home. Spring here can be chilly, wet and gray for weeks at a time. But now blue skies had arrived, and the front of the house grew warmer almost by the hour. Stepping onto the porch, I noticed ladybugs crawling on the siding by the front door. OK by me, I knew my new roses would have plenty of protection from aphids. As they say in those gothic novels, “Had I but known…” These visitors are not Hippodamia convergens, the aphid eater of my childhood, but the infamous and invasive Harmonia axyridis. A native of Eastern Asia, they were introduced to the US to help control aphids, and happily settled in and began multiplying -- the insect world’s version of kudzu. They are beneficial, saving everything from pecans to soybeans from serious aphid infestations. But they’re also registered in some states as a minor agricultural pest, and have become despised by home dwellers around the South.
"Your house is on fire, your children all gone."

Most sources on Harmonia axyridis control tell me to collect the bugs, perhaps by vacuuming them into a fresh bag padded with paper towels; then immediately take them outside and set them free. An option is to set peeled apples in the rooms, collect the bugs that swarm on the fruit, and carry them outside. Presumably I’ll have to keep these apples sitting around my house for four to six weeks, fall and spring. Aphids won’t be they only thing in my homer attracted to rotting apples, believe me. And that's only if I can keep the dogs from eating the bait. What these do-gooders fail to realized is that these bugs have excellent eyesight, and will actually travel back to the place they were removed from. They also eat native ladybugs, the good guys I’d like to save. As for letting them loose somewhere else, believe me, no one else around here wants my pests. So I have declared war. Yes, I vacuum them up, but without one worry about the softness of their fall. Then I rubber-band a cloth over the end of the hose so they can't crawl back to their favorite hangout, my bedroom. After their version of spring break slows down, I empty the bag and toss them, dirt and all. After that I find smashing them with an old magazine and tossing them into the trash is quite gratifying. Especially accompanied by several rousing rounds of "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home." To Japan. Please.

Read Well, Friend

Carpe Diem, Lovers

2010-02-12T19:50:00.009-06:00

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
-- Andrew Marvel

This is one of my favorite love poems. That makes me strange, I know, but I don't care. This will be my second Valentine's Day without my husband, Bill. We did our best to "make him run."

Read Well, Friend

Almost a Masterpiece

2010-02-02T14:51:00.004-06:00

Why would an accomplished artist enter the Nat’l Gallery, pass by one exhibit after another, only to suddenly pull out a knife and attempt to destroy a beautiful painting? That’s the question put before psychiatrist and amateur artist Andrew Marlow. Who is the mysterious dark haired woman Robert Oliver draws compulsively, and will finding her identity help Marlow heal his patient?

The Swan Thieves moves seamlessly from the age of early impressionist painting to the modern psychiatric hospital, from the New York art scene to a small North Carolina college.
I expected a sweeping saga of famous names and extravagant actions. Instead, Elizabeth Kostova has given us a tightly controlled look at the development of one artistic mind, and another’s attempt to understand it. The fact that she accomplishes this without Robert Oliver speaking more than a few words demonstrates her great understanding of the craft of writing. In less able hands the silent Robert Oliver would come across as merely a contrived plot devise, with Dr. Marlow just another amateur sleuth. Instead, the reader searches page after page looking for answers, wanting to understand for oneself who this man is and what he has done.

For me The Swan Thieves has one weakness -- the voice of Oliver’s ex-wife, Kate. At first refusing to speak about him at all, when this monosyllabic woman finally sits down with Dr. Marlow she is immediately using phrases like “I didn’t want to venture further into the store” and “the hat trees, each of which blossomed with pale or bright colors.” I never believed in Kate’s voice, so unfortunately I never believed in her. For me this took The Swan Thieves from what could have been a great book to a merely good one. I was left with the sense of having viewed a potentially great, but slightly flawed, work of art. Still, I'm glad I took the time to read this, and I'll definitely go back and pick up her first, too.

Read Well, Friend

(I occasionally publish reviews of a book I think my reader's might find interesting. I received this book without charge in exchange for a review. I don’t review books that I wouldn’t consider reading anyway, and don’t give special consideration to books I receive for free. All opinions are my own. Honestly.)

Big Brother is Watching

2010-01-28T16:29:00.008-06:00

I just finished rereading Sense and Sensibility. John Dashwood, the eldest brother who, in his greed, impoverishes his stepmother and sisters got me to thinking. Of all the men I’ve encountered in my reading, which ones would I actually choose to call big brother?

The hero Ulysses is my idea of a great older brother -- much older. The amazing gifts he would bring on his infrequent trips home! His stories of exotic locations and fantastic adventures would fuel one’s dreams. I can see him -- huge, well-muscled, rough and unshaven -- sitting back to the fire, weaving tales of his adventures for a crowd of listeners. There he is, trapped in a cave by the huge Cyclops Polyphemus. The cleverness and daring by which Ulysses and his remaining men escape would make him a larger-than life hero for any girl to worship. From afar. He’d be much too wild and out-of-control to live with day in and out.

If you had a biggest brother like Ulysses you'd want someone steadier to stay home and watch over your interests. A responsible older man with good judgment. Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice comes to mind first, or Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. (Until he married Marianne. She’d be a tough pill to swallow as sister-in-law, while Elizabeth Bennett would be a slam dunk.) But those are the easy choices. What about Sir Percy Blakeney, otherwise known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, dashing, intelligent, organized, with a tremendous capacity for compassion? He’d do whatever necessary, even risking his own life, to rescue you from trouble; going out on any proverbial limb when you needed help. Maybe sometimes he’d go TOO far, though. Were his amazing cleverness and luck to fail him he could end up losing his head to Le Madame Guillotine. Where would we be then? What a difficult choice.

I don’t see myself going to Mr. Darcy for advice on love. Here you need an older brother who knows his way around the dating world -- knows who to consider marriage worthy and which men you’d better not follow into a dark corner or empty carriage. He'd have to be a young man who's familiar with all the tricks, (probably because he’s used them himself at one time or another.) Young Laurie Laurence from Little Women might do. Brought up strictly, with a rebellious streak that got him into some real trouble, he knew the vices young people could fall into. He expected better from the four girls next door, however. That protective streak led him to scold Meg during her one foray into the world of society. Her dress was cut too low, there was rouge on her cheeks, and what would her Mother or sisters think of her now? A bit hypocritical, yes, but his heart was good, and you could trust him to keep you on the straight and narrow. (Assuming that was where you wanted be.)

On a more modern vein, John Farrel is a roguish international spy who always manages to take good care of Mrs. Pollifax, be it in Albania or South Africa. He’d be a useful big brother if your romantic adventures tended to result in you being kidnapped or held at gunpoint.

Finally, no ideal family could be complete without the typical trouble maker for a brother. He’s the one who cracks a bad joke when things get too tense at the dinner table and keeps all of you, including your dates, from taking yourselves too seriously. Not Tom Sawyer, though he’s the first scamp to come to mind. Actually, I can’t think of anyone to fit the bill in the classics. I have to go with Fred and George Weasley. Life is just more interesting with them around. Seldom malicious, their practical jokes are doled out equally, no one person exempted or immune. Genuinely affectionate and fond of their family, they can be counted on to come through in a pinch. And isn’t that what a real family is about?

So here are my choices, a motley crew of literary guys I’d like to put in my family. Now that I look at them all together though, I suspect I’ve assembled a group of brothers guaranteed to drive any girl crazy. I may have to revisit this list. What do you think?

Read Well, Friend

Sense and Sensibility insight edition, Jane Austin, Bethany House
The Odyssey, Homer
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, Dorothy Gilman
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling

Medieval History/Mystery Hash

2010-01-23T17:24:00.007-06:00

As far as nouns go, I’m not certain of the definition of mush, but it sounds noxious and unappealing. Mash, in the same form, makes me think of whiskey, (sour), or the leftover scraps of food used to swill pigs. So I’m using the word hash in my title, as I certainly don’t mean to imply repugnancy, only something mixed together, unordered, messy.

My mystery/history hash began in the Newport News, VA airport. I usually can’t read books in crowded planes or noisy airports, but I knew I might have to wait an hour or so to be picked up on the Memphis end of my trip, and trust me on this, the Memphis airport at 9:00 pm is as deserted as they come. So I picked up a book. Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwall. I love his Sharpe books, love history, and knew nothing about Agincourt. (I’ve never even read Henry V.) I thought it was a no brainer. It turned out to be quite the opposite.

Agincourt revolves around Nicholas Hook, an archer of exceptional skill. It seems that archers were the deciding factor in the small English army’s victory against a much larger French force in that battle in 1415 France. Those archers didn’t use just any bow, but the famous war bow, known today as the longbow. That rang a bell. I remember the longbow because my Granddad Richards was from Wales, and the Welsh were known to be the best longbow archers in the British Isles. (I read this somewhere, so it must be true.) According to Cornwall, the longbow was widely used in the 1300-1400s in certain parts of Britain. What we commonly call medieval times.

Agincourt reminded me of another book I’d been wanting to re-read, set in the same time period, The Apothecary Rose by Candace Robb. It’s the first in a series of mysteries about Owen Archer, a Welsh bowman turned spy. He too shot the longbow. It turns out, these books are set in the 1360’s, about 50 years before Agincourt. I decided to check if Brother Cadfael, a Welsh soldier turned monk, was solving his cases at the same time. But, no. Ellis Peters set her books over two hundred years earlier. That surprised me, because I'd always imagined that when Owen Archer was out of York, unable to consult apothecary Lucy Wilton or Brother Wulfstan for a salve to soothe his disfiguring scar, he might turn to Brother Cadfael instead. That idea was blown, since neither of these novels include time travel.

I realized I had made hash, Medieval History/Mystery Hash -- a confused, messed up understanding of British history gained from assuming all medieval mysteries covered basically the same time period. I did study British history in college about uh-hum decades ago, but obviously things have gotten murky since then. This was driven home when I compared dates from other books on my shelf. Sister Fidelma -- mid 600s. Ursula Blanchard -- 1560. Brother Athelstan -- 1360s. Robin Hood I knew was earlier -- last half of the 1150s, Sister Frevisse -- 1430s. Robin Hood and Cadfael reference the Crusades, others allude to various kings, queens, and factions. But besides knowing Edward III had to have been born sometime after Edward II, that didn’t help me much. And, oh yes, where does Braveheart fit in? It includes a King Edward, as do the Owen Archer books. The same one, perhaps?

Now I’ve made hash a couple of times. I don’t care for finely dicing all the roast beef and veggies to get what is basically a pot roast with fixings. But sometimes I just crave an excuse to pour ketchup over everything and be done with it. So I have made it. On purpose. This most recent hash I had made inadvertently and it didn’t please me at all. When was the medieval period, anyway? And what about the so-called Dark Ages? Where in the world do my mysteries fit in?????

It didn’t surprise me that there are no hard and fast rules for when those historical time periods are considered to begin and end. History is fluid and rarely fits into neat boxes. It turns out medieval and Middle Ages are the same; the Dark Ages may or may not be included. (Merriam-Webster doesn't capitalize medieval, BTW.) In Britain the Dark Ages generally run from about 476 to 1066. The 1066 is obvious -- William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion of England, against which all British history may be measured. England’s 1776, if you will. But 476? Of course, my daughter said, wasn’t that the fall of the Roman empire? She was right. Show-off. So that means the Middle Ages begin roughly at 1066, but when do they end and the Renaissance begin? That depends. It depends on what country you’re looking at, for one thing. After that, take your pick. Perhaps it ends with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, or the end of the Hundred Years’ War, both 1453. You might prefer citing Gutenberg’s movable type, 1455, Columbus and 1492 or the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. To name a few. Oddly, the end of the Middle Ages in England is often cited quite specifically, August 22, 1485, at the Battle of Bosworth. Richard III is killed and the Tudors take control of the throne. Cool. Now I know exactly where Richard III fits, at least.

So how was Cadfael’s England different from Brother Athelstan’s or Nicholas Hook’s? I’ve decided to make a timeline using each historical mystery series I read to help me get a clearer picture of what happened when. I expect that to take me a while, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Read Well, Friend

Main Character and Author --
Dark Ages
Sister Fidelma, Peter Tremayne
Middle Ages/medieval
Robin Hood, Howard Pyle first and foremost
Brother Cadfael, Ellis Peters
(Braveheart)
Brother Athelstan, Paul Harding
Owen Archer, Candace Robb
Nicholas Hook, Bernard Carnwall
Sister Frevisse, Margaret Frazer
Richard III in Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Renaissance
Ursula Blanchard, Fiona Buckley
(Anyone know where I can find a good book about the Battle of Bosworth? I don’t know anything about it, either.)

Welcome To The World!

2010-01-13T20:33:00.009-06:00

William Lauren Kelsey
1/13/2010 @ 2:01 pm
8lb 9oz, 20.5"
Langley AF Base hospital
Newport News, VA

Congratulations Calvin and April
Aunt Betsy
Great Aunts Sue and Beth
Grandma Teri Kelsey (That's me!!)
Great Grandparents Don and Jean Kelsey
and Joan Quiggle
And all the rest of the family

And Thank You, Lord, for Your Grace and Blessing on our Lives.

What in the World is Going On Here?

2010-01-11T20:34:00.001-06:00

One of the best books ever written in the English language is Dickens’ story of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities. You can disagree with me if you want, but you'll never persuade me to change my mind. I first read it in 6th grade, horrified by Madame Defarge, seated at the foot of the guillotine, knitting and knitting, splashed over and over in blood and gore from decapitated heads rolling at her feet, day after day endlessly knitting a secret list of those doomed to die as traitors of the French people. My heart broke at the cruelty of a young child run over by an aristocrat’s racing carriage. The only reaction --he cursed the boy for being in his way. The sweet, delicate nature of Lucie Manette blew like a rose-scented breeze over the squalid atmosphere. Is it any surprise Charles Darnay became the hero of my young dreams? Or that Sydney Carton’s final sacrifice and dying utterance thrilled me for years? (OK. It still does.)

The thing is, other than the gruesome details and high romance of those few characters, I really had no idea what was going on. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were vaguely familiar, but didn’t interest me one bit. I skipped huge portions of text while searching for the names of my favorite characters so I could just read those parts. So I missed a lot -- I did know that A Tale of Two Cities was a sweeping adventure full of pathos, tragedy and romance. And I knew I wanted to read it again. The next time I picked up Dickens’ tale I had the basic plot down so I understood more of what was happening, read more slowly and picked some of the subtleties. By the third reading the phrases were coming alive, and the depth and scope of the book became clear. But it definitely took time.

My summer between seventh and eighth grade I picked a two volume set of Les Miserables from Grandad’s shelves. Don’t ask me why. I think I was impressed by the size and red leather binding. Not to mention the mysterious title. It was definitely a grown-up book. And, oh, poor Jean Valjean, suffering for 17 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. Fortunately he’s taken in by a kindly bishop, who lies to keep him from returning to prison for stealing again. He promises to go straight, and go straight he does, becoming an inventor and the mayor of Montreuil, rescuing Fantine from imprisonment for prostitution and saving her daughter Cosette from abuse. During all of this time, the relentless Inspector Javert doggedly pursues Valjean for theft. All of that, and I still had another volume to go!

I wanted to ‘get’ this book, but it was too much for me. Part way through the first volume Valjean changed his name and went into hiding. His new name? Madeleine. My brain turned to mush trying to remember that no, Madeleine and Montreuil were not women, nor was Fantine someone’s last name. To top it all off, by the end of the first volume it seemed that almost all of the characters I’d been following were dead. I read half-heartedly to the end, unable when I finished to give any but the most basic explanation of plot. Who could blame me -- Les Miserables is hardly Middle School reading. When I heard they’d made a musical of it, I was flabbergasted. Singing bishops and police officers? Betrayed women and dying prostitutes? I couldn’t imagine how in the world could they hope to portray that sprawling story in a stage play. I still don’t know because I haven’t seen it yet. At least I’ll have some idea what’s going on, though, having waded through it once. And I have put Les Miserables on my read-again list. I just need to find it in bigger print!

Those Middle School years -- we called it Junior High back in the old days -- were a time of adventurous reading for me. The Three Musketeers, Wuthering Heights, The Leatherstocking Tales, everything by Sir Walter Scott I could get my hands on …. I know I didn’t understand all I was reading. I raced through one story to get to another. But you know what? I don’t think that was a bad thing. I developed a taste for great literature -- good writing, real characters and excellent plotting. I learned not to be afraid of thick books, or writers with names I couldn’t pronounce. Most of all, every time I encountered these books somewhere else they were already friends. I didn’t have to figure out who was who and what in the world they were talking about at the same time I took true/false and short answer tests too. I got the chance to fall in love first. Even if I didn’t know what was going on.

Read Well, Friend

Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
The Leatherstocking Tales, James Fenimore Cooper

Book Goals, 2010

2010-01-04T20:59:00.021-06:00

Forget diets and exercise and keeping in touch with Uncle Morty. Here are the resolutions that really matter....

1. Discover one new-to-me great mystery series.
    For years mysteries were my favorite genre. I was introduced to them by some Agatha Christies at Grandad G’s house. He was an avid, very intelligent, serious reader, and his library was the gateway to many fantastic writers: Sir Walter Scott, Thoreau and Emerson, Dickens, Coleridge, classic poets, etc. The Christies were the only genre books I ever saw on his shelves. Reading them introduced me to a long line of detectives. like Lord Peter Whimsey, Albert Campion, Roderick Alleyn, and Ellery Queen. Over the years I’ve found new writers to enjoy. Anne Perry, for example, and J. D. Robb. As I read, historical and cozy mysteries became my favorites. Unfortunately, the new series books I’ve read in the last few years have disappointed me. In some of them I knew who the killer was in the first few pages -- before anyone had even been killed. (I‘m serious.) Speaking in generalities, it seems that all a cozy needs these days is a weird hook -- and recipes. They no longer require plot, characterization, or an actual puzzle. I can only re-read so many books before I go crazy, so I’m on the prowl to discover a truly good mystery series writer, not a one-hit-wonder or someone who’s all gimmick and no substance. Any suggestions?

2. Read something new by Charles Dickens.
     I’m ashamed to admit I’ve really only read A Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities and The Pickwick Papers all the way through. This year I’m determined to read at least one more. The problem is, I don’t like books with cruelty in them, and his bad guys are really really bad.

3. Memorize a poem a month.
     I love poetry -- you may have guessed that already. But my memory’s lousy these days. I want to work on it and enjoy some of my favorite poems, so a-memorizing I go! I haven’t decided what to start with.

4. Read a non-fiction book a month.
     I love non-fiction, I adore non-fiction, and there’s a long list of books I want to read. The problem is, I tend to not pick them up. I’m not sure why. However, I just bought The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester, subtitled The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name. I don’t usually spring for hardbacks, they’re too expensive and take up too much room on my shelves. I broke my rule for this one, though. I love history, I love maps, I love gorgeous antique style books with deckled edges. How could I resist? I'm eager to get at it.

5. Continue to build up my collection of Newbery award winners and read the ones that are new to me.
    (Truth to be told, I'll probably re-read all my favorites as well. Fortunately I'm a fast reader.) I recently started adding to my personal Newbery winners collection. I want to build up a library of great young peoples books for my grandkids to read when they come to visit. (As my first grandchild isn’t born yet, I should have some time to work on it.) Or maybe I'll read them out loud. One of life’s best pleasures is reading wonderful books to those you love. As I’m collecting them, I’m realizing how many I never read, and I want to correct that.
BTW -- I’m making the same collection of Caldecott winners which are harder to find and thus more expensive. But it hardly takes any time at all to read them!

6. Blog twice a week.
    This will be the hardest resolution to keep, as time slips by me. I always seem to be about 10 days behind everyone else, which is why I miss hair appointments, and church training meetings (oh, what a pity), and occasionally birthdays. Also, this blog is fun tro write, but sometimes pretty challenging. There are days when it's a lot easier to think about what I read than to write about it! I definitely want to keep it up, though. To be honest, I need this blog for me. I appreciate that so many folks have decided to follow it, and I hope I don’t waste your time, and I love comments and conversations, but really I write here for me -- my very own personal reading journal on-line for all to see. Go figure.

7. Keep track of how many books I read next year.
    This is for my own enlightenment, not as part of a challenge or anything. I’m just curious to see when I read the most, and how many books it will really add up to. This will be hard, too, as I tend to put things off, thinking I’ll do it later. Then I forget, of course. (see #6)

So, this is my list of book resolutions for the new year. What about yours? I'd love to see them.

Read Well, Friend

Click this for link to reading classics.
This site even lists mystery series by character name. Let's see, who did write those books about...
Read Dickens for free.
All the Newbery and Caldecott books are here.

Welcome Elie Wagner!!

2010-01-01T11:20:00.011-06:00

Welcome to the World, Elie Jane Wagner.
Born today, Jan. 1, at 9:02 am. 5lb 4.2oz.
Congratulations to Mom and Dad, Brad and Julie, and Lucy and Joshua.

"You formed my inward parts; you wove me together in my mother's womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made...
My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret...
Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed."
Psalm 139;13-14
(Brad is my husband's nephew.)

Beginnings for a New Year -- Part Two

2009-12-31T12:23:00.004-06:00

A baker's dozen of first lines to inspire your reading list in 2010, cont.
A guest post by Betsy Jordan.

"'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug." I grew up reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and went on to enjoy many of her other books as well. In my opinion, though, Little Women is her opus - an enduring gem worth treasuring. Also check out the 1994 movie version for a terrific screen adaptation.

"The nurse walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Mrs. Pollifax looked at the doctor and he in turn looked at her." After finding out that there is nothing at all wrong with her except for a middle-age-crisis, Mrs. Pollifax decides to follow through on a lifelong dream - she walks into the CIA and announces that she wants to be a spy. Dorothy Gilman's The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax takes women's mysteries to a whole new level. This book (and the subsequent series) is highly recommended to someone who is looking for something new to fall in love with in the new year.

"It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends." Maud Hart Lovelace wrote an amazing series about three childhood friends. The first few books start out short and written for a somewhat younger audience, but they age (and lengthen) along with the characters. Betsy-Tacy is the first book in the series that culminates with Betsy's Wedding. While the books will probably be most appreciated by girls, there is no reason that an adult can't fall in love with these books as well. (And yes, just in case anyone wondered, I was named after the main character in this series and was even given Betsy's Wedding as a wedding gift.)

"Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs." This is another one of those books that I think everybody should read. They're not just for girls, either - my father enjoyed them a lot and even read this series out loud to us as children. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods is full of memorable moments, great characters, and a family that I always wished was my own. No offense, Mom!!
(None taken. :) )

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin." A. A. Milne's original Winnie-The-Pooh, before it was turned into a children's cult classic, will actually be enjoyed more by adults than by children. While it is about certainly about a child and his toys, its many inside jokes and humorous incidents will endear it to any grown up looking to recapture their own childhood.

"This is not the way to spend a beautiful spring morning! Elena Klovis thought, as she peered around the pile of bandboxes in her arms." So begins Mercedes Lackey's fantastic retelling of the classic Cinderella story in The Fairy Godmother. NOT a children's book, this is a great journey into the mythical world of the Five Hundred Kingdoms where fairy tales are lived out every day, from a master in the art of writing great fantasies. If you're familiar with Lackey's Valdemar series, you'll know what to expect in terms of great characters, amazing depth and detail, and the extensive worlds the author creates. If you're not, try this book and you may have a new favorite author on your shelf.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Whether you are a religious person or not, I don't think anyone can deny the impact that the Bible has had on the world over the past 2,000 years. No other book has been printed more or banned more often. No other book has inspired such dedication and such controversy. So, if you haven't read it yourself, find a nice readable version (New International Version, The Message, Young Readers Version, etc.) and see what all the fuss is about.

I hope you enjoyed this look into some of my favorite books, and that it inspires you to find some new books for the new year!

Read Well, Friend

More about Mrs. Polifax here -- http://abookwithaview.blogspot.com/2009/08/dear-mrs-pollifax.html
To see the first half of this post, scroll down or click here -- http://abookwithaview.blogspot.com/2009/12/beginnings-for-new-year.html
Another review by Betsy -- http://abookwithaview.blogspot.com/2009/09/oh-to-be-ordinary.html

A Quick Book Look -- Pain and Loss

2009-12-31T00:10:00.004-06:00

I occasionally receive free books to read and review. I will be bringing you these reviews, some in more depth than others. I hope they're helpful to you.

Having recently placed my Mom in a seniors' home and lost both my father and husband, I feel qualified to comment on the book Finding Purpose Beyond our Pain, by Paul Meyer and David Henderson, both Christian psychiatrists. The book is divided into sections of four chapters each, one section devoted to each of seven issues: injustice, rejection, loneliness, loss, failure, discipline, death. According to the authors these are life’s most common struggles; I suspect they are correct in that. At the end of each section there are several pages of practical steps to take, points to remember, and questions to contemplate. I always appreciate a self-help book with a feature like this. By the time you’ve studied several chapters on a topic, it’s easy to lose track of the forest for the trees.

Of course, I was especially interested to read the authors’ take on the subject of loss. Interestingly, it deals with several kinds of loss, including time, significance and control. They go on to look at what we can gain through the experience of losing something important. I was a bit surprised, but pleased, to see they also discussed the issue of whether what can be gained is worth the suffering. Most writers, especially Christian ones, would automatically assume it is, but even the strongest person can find themselves asking “Is it really worth it?” during tough times.

Each topic is treated with this same thoroughness and honesty. The complete, if brief, coverage of topics here makes this book useful for those who work with or know someone who is struggling with the problem of pain. The honesty makes it a book that challenges but never condemns. While it is a christian book, it doesn't push religion until the final section on fear of death, so it could be used by non-Christians, too. All in all, I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic. It should be useful to individuals, and would make an excellent resource for those who deal with people, whether as a counselor, pastor, or friend.

Beginnings for a New Year

2009-12-29T11:38:00.009-06:00

A baker's dozen of first lines to inspire your reading list in 2010.
A guest post by Betsy Jordan.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Honestly, if you haven't read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, I don't think you can say that you are a reader at all! This is the classic book that laid the foundation for the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's much more approachable than LOTR, so if you haven't yet read it - do yourself a favor. Read it!!

"They didn't say anything about this in the books, I thought, as the snow blew in through the gaping doorway and settled on my naked back." Thus begins the account of the daily life of a new veterinarian in rural England. James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small is a fascinating - and often hilarious - memoir written by a man whose arm is up a cow. Literally.

"It was raining. A soft, silvery drizzle sifted down out of the night sky and wreathed around the blocky watchtowers of the city of Cimmura, hissing in the torches on each side of the broad gate and making the stones of the road leading up to the city shiny and black." I love this book! And the series that followed it. The Diamond Throne by David Eddings is full of well developed characters, intricate plot lines, and incredible readability that should put this delightful fantasy at the top of anyone's reading list.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is definitely one of my favorite books. It can be difficult to read at first though, as she has so many characters. So, feel free to watch the A&E miniseries of the same name for a great intro to this classic. Then, go tackle the book. You won't regret it!

"'Elnora Comstock, have you lost your senses?' demanded the angry voice of Katharine Comstock while she glared at her daughter.'" A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter is over 100 years old now, but has lost none of its charm. A coming-of-age tale about a young girl and her mother, it follows Elnora through high school and into womanhood against the fascinating backdrop of the Indiana woods.

"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17-- and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow Inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof." This may well be one of the longest first lines ever, and it does demonstrate Robert Louis Stevenson's wordy writing style, but Treasure Island should not be discounted because of it. It's a grand adventure that is just as much fun read aloud as it is read privately.

Read Well, Friend

She's good, isn't she? Tune in soon for the rest of Betsy's list. In the mean time, read another review by Betsy here. http://abookwithaview.blogspot.com/2009/09/oh-to-be-ordinary.html

More "Can't-Miss" After Christmas Reading

2009-12-25T16:49:00.007-06:00

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.” So begins the magic that is Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Originally written as a radio play, he later published it as a story. This short piece isn’t about any particular holiday, but the memories of many magical Christmases as recounted to a young child.

The narrator clearly remembers the overwhelming joy of his childhood holidays, and his young listener responds enthusiastically. There are stories of pelting cats with snowballs and the dining room catching on fire. “Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, ‘A fine Christmas!’ and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.” The only presents our narrator ever received, it seems, were “useless” sweaters, mufflers, and “And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.”

Every year I look forward to the childish joy in both narrator and listener, particularly the insistence that it always snowed at Christmas, and the snow was infinitely better than the kind that falls now. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss …” Now that I think of it, the same is true of the snows from my childhood Christmases. Thomas’ story ends with the magical sleep of the night after Christmas. “I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

Merry Christmas, Friend

Some “Can’t Miss” After Christmas Reading

2009-12-21T17:12:00.007-06:00

Here are my choices for great post-Christmas reading, when there's finally time to pick up a book again!

We all have Christmas traditions, and some of them are so important it wouldn’t be Christmas without them. When I was a girl the youngest in our family always read Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. Since I was always the youngest, it didn’t take me long to begin saying it from memory every year. When Bill and I married, we began our own annual reading, taking turns reading aloud from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Later we added The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson. These are my first two recommendations for your holiday reading. It would be especially cozy to enjoy them by the fire with a mug of apple cider or hot cocoa. However, I’ve never had a fireplace, so I can vouch for their value wherever you are.

“The Herdman’s were absolutely the worst kids in the world.” Meet the six Herdman kids of Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever-- so wild and mean that their own mother would rather work at a shoe factory that stay home with them, and every teacher passes them from one grade to the next just because there’s another one coming. First they steal a chemistry set, mix all the chemicals together to see what happens, burn down a shed, and then scarf all the donuts sent to the men putting out the fire. Personally, I love the description of them walking their cat on a length of chain. The local mailman insists it’s not a regular cat at all, but a bobcat. “’Oh, I don’t think you can tame a wild bobcat,’ my father said. ‘I’m sure you can’t,’ said the mailman. ‘They’d never try to tame it; they’d just try to make it wilder than it was to begin with.’” Take one church Christmas program, throw in six wild kids, and you get smiles, chuckles, and a fresh look at the Christmas story. The ending has stuck with me since the first time I read it. “And I thought of the angel of the Lord -- Gladys, with her skinny legs and her duty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling to all of us, everywhere: ‘Hey! Unto you a child is born!’”

“Marley was dead to begin with.” He wasn’t the only one, though. That Ebenezer Scrooge was spiritually and emotionally dead is established from the very beginning of Charles Dickens famous novel. “The cold within him froze his features, nipped his nose, shriveled his cheek, made his thin nose blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. He carried his own low temperature always about him, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.” How many versions of A Christmas Carol do you think you’ve seen? From classic black and white movies, through the Muppets, dogs, George C. Scott, the Jetson’s and Mr Magoo, to Disney’s new version with Jim Carey, it’s been interpreted so many times we know it by heart. But have you read the book? If you do, you’ll see that it’s more than a fun story of ghosts, Tiny Tim, and the softening of a hard heart. From the beginning Scrooge’s attitude is contrasted with his nephew’s, “What reason do you have to be merry? Your poor enough,” he tells his nephew. “What reason do you have to be dismal? You’re rich enough,” is the reply. So is established one of Dicken’s themes, the emptiness of a life lived only for material gain. Ebenezer despises carolers, men collecting contributions for the poor, even innocents who merely wish him a merry Christmas. For me, one of the most chilling statements in literature comes when Scrooge castigates men asking for money to help the poor. “Are there no poorhouses?“ he asks. Told that many would rather die than go there, he declares they should be allowed to die, and “decrease the surplus population.”

As much as I love some of the dramatic versions of A Christmas Carol, I think the impact is more profound in the written story -- especially when it’s read aloud. Even when the same passages are used in plays, they tend to fly by, lost in the visual effects and dialogue. When you read you can contemplate. And there’s much worthy of contemplation here. “’There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’” "It is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done.” "‘It is required of every man,’ the ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.’ So many passages like this, as well as Dicken’s own words telling the story, make A Christmas Carol worthy of rereading every year.

"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

Read Well, Friend

Tune in tomorrow for two more books to enjoy this holiday season.
I hope all of you have a blessed Christmas/Holiday season, wherever you are and whatever your beliefs. And peace on earth, good will to men. Teri K.

A True Story in Song

2009-12-14T12:56:00.005-06:00

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free; from our sins and fears release us; let us find our rest in Thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the world Thou art; dear desire of every nation, enter every waiting heart. Born thy people to deliver, born a Child and yet a King; born to reign in us forever, now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appears. O come, thou root of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny; from depths of hell Thy people save and give them victory over the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

Lo, how a rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung! Of Jesse’s lineage coming as men of old have sung. It came, a flower bright, amid the cold of winter, when half-spent was the night. Isaiah ‘twas foretold it, the Rose I have in mind; with Mary we behold it, the virgin mother kind. To show God’s love a-right she bore to us a Savior, when half-spent was the night.
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see Thee lie! Above the deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by; yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. For Christ is born of Mary; and gathered all above, while mortals sleep the angels keep their watch of wondering love. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessing of His heaven.
Silent night! Holy night! All is calm, all is bright ‘round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night! Holy night! Son of God, love’s pure light radiant beams from Thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at Thy birth, Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head; the stars in the sky looked down where He lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
What Child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping? Whom angels greet with anthem sweet while shepherds watch are keeping? Why lies He in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding? Good Christian, fear for sinners here the silent Word is pleading. This, this is Christ the King whom shepherds guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring Him laud, the Babe, the son of Mary.

Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains, and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains. GLORIA, GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!
The first Noel the angel did say, was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay keeping their sheep, on a cold winter’s night that was so deep. “Noel, Noel, born is the king of Israel.”
While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, the angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around. “Fear not!” said he, for heavy dread had seized their troubled mind, “Glad tidings of great joy I bring to you and all mankind. To you, in David’s town this day, is born in David’s line, the Savior, who is Christ the Lord, and this shall be the sign: the heavenly Babe you there shall find to human view displayed, all meanly wrapped in swathing bands and in a manger laid. All glory be to God on high, and to the earth be peace; Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men begin and never cease.”
Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light, and usher in the morning; ye shepherds shrink not from affright, but heed the angels warning. This child, now weak in infancy, our confidence and joy shall be, the power of Satan breaking, our peace eternal making. He comes, a Child, from realms on high; He comes the heaven’s adoring; He comes to earth to live and die, a broken race restoring. Although the King of kings is He, He comes in deep humility, His people to deliver, and reign in us forever.
Hark! The herald angel’s sing, glory to the newborn king!

Bring a torch Jeanette, Isabella, bring a torch, come hurry and run. It is Jesus, good folk of the village, Christ is born and Mary’s calling. Ah, ah, beautiful is the mother; ah, ah, beautiful is the Child.
O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye to Bethlehem; come and behold Him born the King of angels. O come let us adore Him. Yea, Lord we greet Thee, born this happy morning. Jesus, to Thee be all glory given; Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing; O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come; let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing. Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns; let men their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy. No more let sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found. He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love.
Good Christian men, rejoice with heart and soul and voice! Give ye heed to what we say, Jesus Christ is born today! Man and beast before him bow, and He is in the manger now; Christ is born today, Christ is born today!

Merry Christmas to All!

A Conflation of Screevers

2009-11-23T16:27:00.004-06:00

I love words. You probably do, too, or this site would bore you to death. I was going to say it’s a side effect of loving to read, but maybe not. Maybe loving words comes first, like a love of beets leads to a love of beet and fennel soufflé served with pureed bitter greens and a sprinkling of asiago cheese and pomegranate seeds. (I just made that up. I don’t know why. Don’t ask.) Either way, one of the delights of reading is the new words you meet, usually absorbing their meaning effortlessly, if not always with great accuracy, from the context. I believe that what we read has a significant effect on what we see, understand, and learn, beyond the facts and ideas presented. I used the word vitriolic in a Sunday School class recently, and one of the ladies didn’t know what it meant. It made me wonder if knowing the meaning of the word makes me more aware of that type of speech. If I didn’t, would I wish for a word to describe it, or would I just call it mean spirited and go on? I guess I think that we tend to see more clearly what we can name. If you know a petiole from a sepal from a stigma, don’t you tend to study a flower more carefully and be more aware of each of these parts than if you only know petal and stem? (The opposite is also true, and deciding which is more prevalent would make a great research project or debate. As long as it didn’t get vitriolic, of course.)

However it works, I love discovering new words, even if I don’t remember them all. That’s one reason I enjoy the PBS radio show Says You so much. It revolves around fascinating bits of knowledge and obscure words. That’s where I learned the word moot doesn’t only mean previously decided and therefore not worth arguing, but also open to argument or debate, (supposedly what “it’s a moot point” means). Don’t you just love English? It’s always full of surprises. Says You also taught me the very useful word omphaloskepsis, which means navel-gazing. I hope to have reason to use it someday. That brings me to one of the natural benefits of being well read -- showing off. Not that I’d ever even want to do that. Not me. Still, it’s an ego booster when the six erudite members of the show’s panel get stumped by words that seem simple to me. Screever, for example. I can only guess that none of them were ever fans of Mary Poppins; my friend Linda Ketchum and I saw the movie every day it played in our little town. “Today I’m a screever, and as you can see, a screever’s an artist of highest degree,” Burt sang as he drew pictures in chalk on the sidewalk. I knew that, but none of them did. So don’t ever say movies are a waste of time.

I learn new words reading blogs, too. My latest discovery is conflation, found on a comment about Pride and Prejudice. (I do find fans of Jane Austin tend to have better than average vocabularies. Is that because they learn new words by reading the books, or they enjoy the books because the have the vocabulary to read them? Another chicken-or-the-egg debate, if you are so minded.) The word in question is conflation. The writer used it while discussing Mr. Darcy, admitting she was “conflating both of the movies.” I thought it was a typo at first. I couldn’t figure out what word they meant to use, so I wondered if the writer had made it up. (What’s the word for a made-up word?) I tried to deduce the meaning from the roots, but got nowhere so I decided to look it up. Sure enough, it was a real word, meaning to bring together, meld or confuse two or more individuals, concepts, or places, until there seems to be only one identity and the differences are lost. Awesome.

Fromage is a word you and I already know from cooking, as it’s French for cheese. When it was used as part of a French phrase in a movie review I did a double take. I don’t know the language, but a lot of times you can winkle out the meaning by finding word parts you do know. (Winkle: to pry, force or displace from a position, often used with out.) It didn’t occur to me to change cheese to cheesy, which is indeed another use of the word. The other word that stumped in context came up recently. I’ve been reading Mari Strachan’s debut novel The Earth Hums in B Flat. I picked it up because of the title and was drawn in immediately, then thrown back out upon reading that Jones the Butcher had his faggots cooking outside, intended for consumption by all the families in town. Were the people in town so poor they’d been reduced to consuming bundles of sticks? Or military men? Old women? It made no sense, so I ignored it until it came up two more times. What in the world were they eating? If I knew more about my roots, I would have understood immediately, as Faggots (Ffagodau) are a Welsh meatball made from minced pig liver, onions, breadcrumbs, and lots of pepper. Their name is based on the word meaning a mixture or combination. There are recipes available on the web if you need something for dinner tonight. Or you could try Welsh Rabbit, a conflation of fromage served over toast. Bon appetite.

Read Well, Friend

BTW -- NEOLOGISM is the word for a newly invented word or phrase.

For All the Books I've Never Read...

2009-11-07T18:36:00.010-06:00

I like to think of myself as a honest person. Honestly. But there are some deceptions from my past that cannot be ignored on this blog. Fortunately, I’ve reached an age when I don’t have to worry about my High School English teacher discovering my perfidy on line. I can see her yellow hair and hear her firm voice saying, “I’m very disappointed to hear that. I expected more from you, Teresa.” So, with my apologies to all my wonderful English teachers, here is my list of…

Books I Only Pretended to Read.

The first book I remember lying about was The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. It happened in my freshman year, when our class was presented with several books to read as groups. I’d read all of the others, and hated the idea of reading a ‘war story for boys’. So when my English teacher asked which group I wanted to be in, I told her I’d read them all. I remember the moment, I was sitting just right of center in the second row, Sharon Parrish was next to me, and I had just lied to Mrs. Gilliland -- right out loud. No one in the room questioned me, since I usually had read everything. I regret lying, but managed to graduate with straight As without reading Lord of the Flies, only skimming through The Scarlet Letter, and giving up on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene not long into it. Now that I think about it I realize I’ve ‘not read’ The Faerie Queene three times. Mrs. T’s Senior class was just the beginning.

It happened again my freshman year of college. Not realizing I didn’t have to take all the bonehead classes they suggested for new students, I signed up for Intro to World Lit. It turned out that I’d already studied everything we covered in that class except for, you go it, The Faerie Queene. I resolved to finish it this time, but of course this excerpt was longer, and I failed again. After that I had no illusions. When it appeared on the syllabus of yet a third class, I admitted to some fellow students that I’d never finished the selections, and wasn’t looking forward to trying again. The one boy who had actually read it before told me not to bother, it wasn’t worth it. We generally agreed on literature so I happily took his advice. Joseph, wherever you are, the third time's on you. The same class brought me to my literary knees again. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Byron was introduced as not being as great as the book said. According to my Professor it had sections of great beauty ruined by many difficult, awkward, and boring passages. He was right. I started with great gusto but never finished. Both of these poems are written in Spenserian stanzas. Is it possible I’m simply allergic to that form? I’d like to think so.

In my search for ever more interesting lit classes, I signed up my sophomore year for Modern American Drama, number 400 and something. No problem, until I arrived and found that all the other students knew each other. They were very friendly when I came in, but seemed to be regarding me as an unusual specimen of fish. When the teacher showed up he looked surprised to see me, too. It turned out that this class was actually required for graduate drama students, but was listed in the 400s because the department didn’t have enough undergrad classes to meet their quota. I was offered a chance to switch, but declined. It became one of my favorite classes, I learned so much, and they treated me like an equal. Here I studied plays by Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, and others. And for the first time I admitted to my teacher that I had deliberately not finished something. The play was Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and I hated it. Unfortunately, one of the required essays on the Final meant I had to compare it with two other plays we’d read. Falling on my sword I admitted that I’d found it very distasteful, and had stopped reading it. Therefore, I explained with what I hoped would read as dignified humility, I would be comparing and contrasting the other two plays only. I got an A on the paper and the class, perhaps more for my guts than anything.

You might be wondering by now if I’ve gone back and read the books I skipped in school. I will tell no more lies, I have not. The Faerie Queene, the longest poem in the English language, has been described as allegorical and allusive. Just pondering that can give me a headache. As for Childe Harold and his Pilgrimage, quite a few of the experts agree with my professor. I still enjoy reading short pieces of it occasionally, though. I don’t think I need Lord of the Flies to show me what depravity man can sink to, and I read the Cliff Notes so I know how it ends. Strindberg doesn't tempt me, while not reading The Red Badge of Courage has become such a tradition, I’m almost afraid to pick it up. I actually think I might upset the great balance of the Cosmos. Or something.

Sometimes, just like a fisherman, I find myself thinking about the ones that got away. Then I pick my current book and read on. It is possible to lead a full and rich life without understanding The Faerie Queene. Fortunately.

Read Well, Friend.

A Note from Teri

2009-10-27T15:29:00.003-05:00

Written by Betsy Jordan.

As I am sure many of you have no doubt noticed, Teri (my mom) has been AWOL for awhile. She has been experiencing a myriad of computer problems that my husband and I have been unable to fix for her. She is going to be sending her computer into the company to be repaired (it seems to be an issue with the internal modem - why on earth is she still using dial-up anyway???!!) , so hopefully it will not be too much longer before she is up and running again. In the meantime, I leave you with this to ponder...

Oh, how could this be?!

Never thought it would happen to me!

My life has been smashed ...

this dang computer crashed!

It was just my luck

a bolt of lightening struck!

And without a sign

I was knocked right off line!

It wasn't a glitch

for it was dark as pitch.

with just one zap

my online life was over in a snap!

I sit here in the dark

with no modem, not even a spark.

I just sat and cried ...

online friends will think I died!

The repair man I cannot call

no 24hour emergencies at all.

My files long gone ...

Oh, where did I go wrong?

If down for a long period of time,

I may actually find

myself having to do housework again!!

And oh, what a pain!!

Now there's no more fun

for the computer has won.

As I sit in the dark and wait,

I just wish I had hold of that Bill Gates!

"Computer Crash" Written by Barbara LaBarbera
http://opossumsal.homestead.com/Computers/ComputerCrash.html

Read well, friends.

We Interrupt our Regular Schedule to Bring You… October

2009-10-03T20:39:00.018-05:00

Months change, my calendar pages often remaining unturned, seasons subtly sneaking up on me until I realize time has moved on and I have not. Then I begin my on-line search for new author birthdays, new literary events, new quotations to lace the pages of A Book With a View with those bits of humor, wisdom, trivia or poetry that tickle me, if no one else. Not all months arrive unnoticed, however. Some pounce on me cat-like from a well hidden spot, sharp claws scraping my bare ankles for attention. “I’m here, I’m here! Look at me. Come and play!” So October attacked me today. Week after week we'd seen so much rain we’d stopped tracking days or seasons, and only thought of gray or grayer. Then, sudden and unexpected, we had one perfect fall day; but of course it would turn gray and rainy the next. Only it didn’t and we actually had two such days, before the rains would fall again. But they didn’t fall, and summer’s heat and humidity have gone, too. Perhaps my brain had gotten soggy and just now dried out, for today while I sat by an open window enjoying the air, it hit me. Every morning has become a blessing that I can see and reach out and touch -- the sun’s warmth toasts my skin, cool air whipping through my hair as I drive with the sun roof open and car windows down along curved gravel roads, slipping into the shade of mature maple, oak, and cottonwoods, then turning sharply into bright sunlight again. The trees haven’t started turning here, they’re a little behind schedule, but with such days as today any autumn color might overwhelm, squeezing me tightly till tears flowed for reasons I couldn’t explain or understand, except that my heart is too full and it is October.

October -- the month of too much, leaving too soon. “The month of carnival of all the year, When Nature lets the wild earth go its way, And spend whole seasons on a single day. The spring-time holds her white and purple dear; October, lavish, flaunts them far and near.” My birthday is in October so I’ve always had some proprietary interest in it. I thought Lowell a fool for writing “What is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.” I approved, instead, of Helen Hunt Jackson for saying “O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather.” It‘s true that “bright blue weather” might not be a description worthy of great poetry, but it was accurate, so I turned up my nose at British summer days, championing my beloved Colorado’s autumn instead. (And I’m still willing to put the blue of a fall Colorado sky up against any other in the world. There is nothing like it. Trust me, I know.)

October is hard to define. Writer’s often infuse it with a sense of melancholy, for the year is dying soon, and so are we, they enjoy reminding us. William Cullen Bryant's October, says it is “When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief And the year smiles as it draws near its death.” Frost, in another poem of the same name, begins “O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all.” But there’s much more of life left in this month than that. October is the home of Halloween after all, the don’t be a fraidy-cat, “trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat,” candy stuffed old holiday, "and the goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!" It’s the month of high school football games, popcorn and candied apples, cider and sweaters. It used to be the season for TV programs, too. Every show started in September and by October you knew which ones your family was watching, and what nights you had to hurry through chores and piano lessons to catch your favorites. (These days I can’t even find a good show until one week before the finale, which for some reason is in July or August.) Halloween and television may never be the same, but still these October nights I hear my neighborhood kids playing outside in the dark, till someone calls them in for dinner. I smell wood smoke most evenings, and some mornings, too, if I happen to be near an open window. It might not be cool enough for me to wear sweaters yet, but I can leave the windows open day and night now, which is a blessing not everyone understands, and I get keep an extra blanket on my bed, just in case. After all...

"They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here--
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossom on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the sir's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
It's the pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock--
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock."

Read Well, Friend

(A Calendar of Sonnets: October written by Helen Hunt Jackson; What is so Rare as a Day in June, James Russell Lowell; October's Bright, Blue Weather, H. H. Jackson; Little Orphan Annie and When the Frost..., poems by James Whitcomb Riley.)

Cookbooks Aren’t Just for Cooking

2009-09-29T13:29:00.006-05:00

I wish I’d saved the comment. It’s one of those things you think about later -- when the light bulb goes on but it’s too late. I’m talking, as some of you have guessed by the title, about the person who, several months ago, sarcastically said something like “This would only interest people who actually read cookbooks. If there are any such people.” I was tempted to reply “Yes, Virginia (or Virgil), there are such people, and I am one of them.” I come by it honestly. My Mom read cookbooks to find new uses for overabundant crops from the garden. Rhubarb, for instance. We had plenty every year. We ate it in tart pies red and shiny as rubies, and in the rhubarb tapioca that my brother and I especially loved. (We were pretty excited to find it among Mom’s recipes when we cleared out the house.) But some years there was just too much of the stuff, so the hunt was on for new ways to use it. Rhubarb fluff was ruled out after it took me five hours to make and used less than one cup of fruit. Blueberry/Rhubarb Jam was a success. We still make it, and it still delights people with it’s unusual combination of flavors. Who knew? So, cookbooks can be read simply to find a another use for an ordinary ingredient, to use up an over supply or find a new dish to put on the table tomorrow night. And that is no small thing.

Some cookbooks are designed to be read. They intend to Instruct You in something, like how to become a vegetarian or purchase and fire up your grill without singeing your eyebrows. I remember reading Recipe for a Small Planet, written by Ellen Ewald, in college. I learned about incomplete proteins and how to combine them cheaply and efficiently to make a complete protein. I also gained a tomato soup recipe that is out of this world. A few years later as a new bride on a tight budget I discovered food writer Jane Brody’s Good Food Book. It, too, discussed combing incomplete proteins so I didn’t have to buy expensive meats as often. Going beyond that, it included sections with titles like “Milling, the Rape of the Wheat Berry,” “Oats: Neigh for Horses, Yeah for Us,” and “Garlic: a Clove for All Seasons,” providing interesting reading for quite some time. Being a farmer’s daughter I was familiar with most of what she said, but I couldn’t recall anyone saying, as she did, that millet wasn’t just for the birds. In the next section of her book I learned that a cutting board, sharp knives and kitchen timer are essential items for a cook. I had to agree. The cheese cloth, corkscrew, mortar and pestle, and melon baller seemed less essential, (though I do have a melon baller now). With so many interesting ideas packed into Ms Brody's Good Food Book, I read it over and over for days, and I still read and cook from it. Her carrot cake recipe is super, and a little doctoring of the black bean soup with cumin created a perfect dish.

Jeff Smith, aka the Frugal Gourmet, is another great cook and food writer. He's especially known for authoring cookbooks that blend recipes and history. Want an interesting introduction to Greek, Roman and Chinese history, with some good eating included? Read The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines. Another of my favorites, The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors, looks into their history -- the countries they left, their experiences here, and the recipes they brought with them. He doesn’t just cover the usual countries, though. Going alphabetically, Smith opens his book with Armenia and a recipe for double stuffed meatballs that I’m finally going to make now that I have a reliable source of lamb. He continues with the Basques and Cambodia, working his way through Latvia and Lebanon. Quite a few Lebanese settled in my town, so I‘m going to check his recipes against theirs. This cookbook concludes with Wales and Yugoslavia. Since my maternal grandfather was Welsh, I always enjoy this section, despite the fact that Smith writes “The cooks of Wales have never gained international fame… and, to be honest with you, I suppose they don’t deserve it.” How embarrassing. He does commend them for their love of hymn singing, probably passed down from John Wesley‘s many visits to the coal miners. I may never become a fan of Welsh cold pork pie, but hours of hymn singing I definitely enjoy. That's something, at least, that I got that from my Welsh ancestors. It’s probably a good thing, though, that my recipes were passed down from the German side of my family. No one ever said they can’t cook.

Tune in next time for more cookbook reading. In the mean time…

Read Well, Friend

Oh, to be Ordinary!

2009-09-03T16:49:00.009-05:00

A guest post by Betsy Jordan, who just happens to be my best and favorite daughter, who is not, and has never been, ordinary. Enjoy.

"Long and long ago, when Oberon was king of the fairies, there reigned over the fair country of Phantasmorania a monarch who had six beautiful daughters." So begins one of my favorite childhood books - The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye. I actually have lots of "favorite childhood books," and frequently have trouble figuring out exactly which one is my true favorite at any given moment. But lately, I've been feeling nostalgic and have rediscovered the joys of Princess Amy - actually, Her Serene and Royal Highness Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne.

Poor Princess Amy. You see, she was the seventh princess born to her parents. When her fairy godmother came to the christening she took pity on the little baby surrounded by such a perfectly lovely royal family and gave her a unique gift. Her proclamation - "You shall be Ordinary." Not ravishingly beautiful, wonderfully clever, prodigiously musical, or even the possessor of a great personality. Nope. She would be ordinary. And as Princess Amy grew up, the ramifications of her "gift" became obvious - mousy brown hair that wouldn't curl, freckles, and a turned up nose would be hers. I kind of knew how she felt, too. I had always wanted to be a princess, but they were so... so... unachievable. Breathtakingly beautiful with perfect complexions, beautiful hair and teeth, sweet natured with little musical laughs, etc. You know what I mean. Finally - finally! - I had found a princess that felt a lot like me.

Although she was still very much loved by her family, Princess Amy was pretty much left up to her own devices. She discovered at a young age that she could climb down a wisteria outside her window and run off into the forest to play anytime she wished. I always wanted to be able to do that very same thing, but there were never any big trees outside my first-floor bedroom, nor any forests full of "dappled deer, the frolicsome rabbits, and little gentle woodland creatures" to run off into. One thing I did have, however, was a vivid imagination. So I would run off with Princess Amy and together we would "do such exciting things" and pity her six perfect sisters ("oh! what a lot of fun they miss by not being me," Amy would say).

Over time, Amy and I grew up. Her sisters all got married and it was her turn, except that no one was interested in Amy. "One after another, after their first shocked look at the Ordinary Princess, they hurriedly remembered previous engagements. They apologized for having to make such a brief stay and said that if they should ever happen to be passing that way again they would of course drop in. After which they would pack their luggage and hurry away the very next morning." The suitor situation got so desperate, her father even considered hiring a dragon to lay waste to the country so they could marry Princess Amy off to whoever vanquished the dragon. Once again, Amy and I seemed to be kindred spirits. My friends and family were all getting married, having children, and going on to their own happily-ever-afters. While no one was offering to hire a dragon to help ME out, neither Princess Amy nor I would have been too happy with that solution. You see, Amy ran away. And oh, how I wished I could go with her!

Amy and I discovered the joys and pains of that four-letter-word all ordinary people become intimately acquainted with - w.o.r.k. We both learned that single girls don't make much, and that it can be kind of lonely on your own. I envied Amy her two new friends - a squirrel named Mr. Pemberthy and a crow, Peter Aurelious. MY landlord didn't allow pets.

And, in time, Amy and I both found what we had really been looking for all along - our prince. Mine came in the guise of a business customer at the bank where I was working, and Amy's, well, that's her story. Needless to say, both our stories turned out well, and our princes sound remarkably similar... "And indeed a more ordinary person...you could not wish to see. His velvet doublet was stained with moss and rather torn where he had caught it on a branch while climbing an oak tree to pick acorns. His hair was very ruffled and full of bits of bark, and he had a smudge on his nose." Amy's prince built her a little cottage in the woods, and my prince and I are saving up for ours.

I guess that, in the end, Princess Amy says it best. "'This has been quite the nicest day of my life,' thought the Ordinary Princess. And she thought, too, that the nice young man was easily the nicest person she had ever met. 'It's because he is an ordinary sort of person - like me,' she decided."

Here's to being ordinary!

Read Well, Friend

Happy Birthday Alan J. Lerner

2009-08-30T21:08:00.008-05:00

You know Alan Lerner -- of course you do. You must have heard of Lerner and Lowe. Brigadoon, Camelot, My Fair Lady, Paint your Wagon, Gigi? They did some other musicals, and later adapted them to the movies, but these are their best.

Born August 31, 1918, Alan Lerner is member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He received an Academy Award for Gigi, both the score and the title song. Can anyone forget hearing Maurice Chevalier croon "Thank heaven for little girls, for little girls get bigger every day, Thank heaven for little girls, they grow up in the most delightful way!" Lerner also received an Academy Award for writing the screenplay of An American in Paris, though George Gershwin composed the music.

One of the first live plays I ever saw was My Fair Lady, and I loved it. In fact, I convinced my mother, who had taken my brother and me to Nebraska with her while she worked on her MA, that I needed to see My Fair Lady -- every single night. I think it ran two weeks, and I never tired of Eliza Doolittle or Professor 'Iggins. From "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" and "All I want is a room somewhere, Far away from the cold night air. With one enormous chair, Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?" through the rain in Spain staying mainly in the plain, (finally) and "I could have danced all night," we arrive at the finale "I've grown accustomed to her face. She almost makes the day begin. I've grown accustomed to the tune that She whistles night and noon. Her smiles, her frowns, Her ups, her downs Are second nature to me now; Like breathing out and breathing in." When I later read Pygmalion I understood, even approved of, the ending. But I secretly rejoiced that I had already experienced it differently.

So today I take a little time to salute a special kind of writer, one who could write "Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwing it away," then give us "The mist of May is in the gloamin', and all the clouds are holdin' still. So take my hand and let's go roamin' through the heather on the hill." and finally this 1965 Grammy winner.

"On a clear day
Rise and look around you
And you'll see who you are.
On a clear day
How it will astound you
That the glow of your being outshines ev'ry star.

You'll feel part of ev'ry mountain sea and shore.
You can hear, from far and near,
A world you've never heard before.
And on a clear day...
On that clear day...
You can see forever and ever more!"

Thanks to you, Alan J. Lerner

Read Well, Friend

(Pygmalion, written by George Bernard Shaw.)

Dear Mrs. Pollifax,

2009-08-28T18:47:00.022-05:00

Or my Adventures with One Feisty Old Lady

I’m sorry, Mrs. P., I know you prefer not to be referred to as old, but what else could I say? Elderly is even worse, and Senior just doesn’t describe you at all. I can only hope I’ve known you long enough to get away with a little cheek. I hear that you are unofficially retiring from our organization, which you never officially worked for to begin with. I shall have to miss the lovely garden party, and seeing your Cyrus beaming over you like a benevolent guardian Cyclops, only Cyrus has both his eyes. (I was trying to think of someone very tall and strong -- oh well, if you don’t know what I mean after all these years and all we’ve been through, well, shame on you.) Of course this is a time to look back, and funnily enough my first memory of you, Emily, isn’t a memory at all. It’s that check-up you told me about during that cold, frightening night we were locked with Hafez in Castle de Chillon. The check-up where that pathetic young doctor ask you if there wasn’t something you always wanted to do with your life, and when you told him he laughed in your face. I like to think he’s a lonely old doctor by now, thinking of the dreams he once had and how sorry he is that he didn’t take them more seriously. (Don’t say that’s unkind of me, I know it is but I wish it anyway; you’re much more lady like than I.) I feel like I knew you then, but of course I didn‘t see you until you stepped off the bus, walked into the office, and offered your services. You realize, I’m sure, that everyone else thought you were nuts, but I understood your logic. You said you’d lived a full life, you were in excellent health, and our country could better afford to lose you than a young person. (You were wrong there.) I guess I understood even though I was much younger than you. (Why do I feel much closer in age to you now? You just get younger all the time.) At that point my life seemed destined to be, to my great disappointment, kind of ‘samey’ and safe. Because you took courage in hand and stepped in Headquarters, both our lives drastically changed, dear friend, and I am so thankful! You deserve to ‘retire’ but oh how I shall hate not working with you again.

I am looking forward to having you over when you get back from Sofia. Make sure Cyrus keeps you out of trouble, I should hate to miss out on any last minute escapades you might fall into. Have you talked about driving around the little square one more time? No one could justify the Panchevsky ‘Institute’ as a tourist site, except maybe those of us who helped Phillip and the others escape. Do you know what I wish? That somehow I’d managed to hold on to the list you made at our planning meeting-- the one where you recorded all our assets: geese, one pistol, fireworks, knots, motorcycle, bow and arrow. Can you believe we actually got everyone out of that prison fortress, toppled General Ignatov and managed to get that nasty Nikki in trouble, too, with only those assets, and your refusal to give up? So much has changed in Bulgaria since then, I wonder if any of the rest of them are still alive? Bishop says there’s no way to tell, and he would know. I’m sure you’ll go by the government cemetery while you’re there. Please leave a token for ‘Tsanko’. For me.

You were right about being married to Bishop, you know. He spends all day at work organizing people’s lives to protect the free world, and then he tries to organize and protect me. If you asked him who I need to be protected from, I’m afraid he might say you. But don’t worry, when he gets too bothersome I suggest a nice excursion to Mexico, perhaps a visit to a bookshop where we can look for a copy of a certain book. He starts muttering about Albania and Ferrell, and gets very pale. Personally I don’t think you can be persona non grata in a country you never officially entered and from which you escaped as quickly and quietly as you possibly could. But you know how he worries, so it works every time. I once tried to blackmail him by offering to travel back to Turkey and introduce him to Anyeta and the other gypsies. He thought it sounded like fun, so if you get a postcard of a caravan from us some day, you’ll know he took me up on it. Speaking of the gypsies, Cyrus would just adore them, and if we could arrange another love-in, well, can you imagine watching him dancing with flowers in his hair, if he had any, with all the lovely Turkish girls? There are so many fond memories of that mission I can almost forget finding Magda drugged and held prisoner in the house of Dr. Belleaux, the man who was supposed to be helping us. I learned what courage is when you and Colin dragged her down the main staircase and out the front door in the sight of him and all his important guests. Not to mention Magda, Colin, you and I hurling ourselves into the police helicopter while they chased and shot at us. I’ve always felt one of your crowning moments, Emily, was when Magda asked you if you knew how to fly a helicopter. You said “Of course not!” and proceeded to do it anyway. How many cars did you take out on the way to the Kayseri Airport? I’ve forgotten.

There is so much more to talk about, but my plane from Hong Kong is about to leave. I’ll take a bit of a nap -- or sleep like the dead, as Bishop insists -- and write more tomorrow, my dear Mrs. P. (as you will always be to me.)

Your Friend in Adventure.

Read Well, Friend

Hear about Mrs. Pollifax on NPR by clicking here.

(Books referred to in this post are The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax, The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, and The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax, some of the series written by Dorothy Gilman.)

534 Miles, 18 Hours, 19 Boxes, and 197 Books

2009-08-21T22:23:00.020-05:00

It was going to be an ordinary day, until my daughter, browsing through Craig’s list, cried “Eureka”! Well maybe not quite that, something more along the lines of drawling “That’s interesting,” which is pretty much the same as eureka, coming from her. It turns out that “interesting” referred to the offer of 197 Heritage Press books for $400. At two dollars each for books easily sold for $10 or more depending on condition, this was quite a find, especially for a collector preparing to open her own online book business. A perfect opportunity to gain stock -- except we live in TN and the books were in Chicago. Even if the seller were willing to ship them to us, the cost of postage on 197 books is simply too scary to think about. Betsy’s husband works incredibly long hours and makes last minute trips to other cities, so the possibility of a spur of the moment romantic second honeymoon to the fascinating city of Chicago was also out. I, however, wake up each morning practically begging for something interesting to happen, so the very next day Thelma and Louise, or maybe Hope and Crosby, cleaned out the trunk of the Corolla and headed up north. Steppenwolf would have been proud of us.
”Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way…”
(Born to be Wild)

Born to be wild or not, nine hours of construction on 1-40, construction on I-55, and, you guessed it, construction on I-57 makes for a long, not so exciting day. As much as we enjoy each others company, if we hadn't had the books to talk about -- which ones would be there, what kind of condition would they be in, how would she get the extra shelf space -- the nine hours would have seemed a whole lot longer. Thanks to our GPS we made it to the pick up point with some time to spare. There we found an angel of books waiting for us in her garage. The Garage, filled with books, “hundreds of books, thousands of books, millions and billions and…,” oh all right, it was just those 197 books, the ones that her co-workers had urged her to throw away. Instead they were neatly tucked in 19 boxes, each box numbered with a matching list of contents. We’d had visions of lugging all those books up narrow stairs from a dank, poorly lit basement, through the house out to the street -- one armload at a time. Instead, Sue had a cart to load the boxes on and helped us tote all nineteen to our car, thrilled that someone wanted her parents castoffs. That night we loaded the hotel’s luggage cart with some of the boxes, lined them up between our two beds, opened them and plunged in. What would we find? A Shropshire Lad, Nicholas Nickleby, The Compleat Angler, Homer’s Odyssey, The Tales of Hoffman, or William Tell?

In case you don’t know, (because I sure didn’t), Heritage Books released about 1000 titles between the 1930's -- 60’s. An imprint of George Macy Companies, they were reprints of the exclusive Limited Editions Club. The idea was to offer the same special volumes, though less luxurious, to people who couldn't afford to be one of the 1500 subscribers to the special editions. Each volume was treated as an individual release, its size, cover and shape chosen to suit that title. Tucked inside is an informative, sometimes amusing, pamphlet called The Sandglass, and every volume is fitted into a matching slipcase. One surprising feature of Heritage Press books are the illustrators. Imagine, Picasso's sketches interpret Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata. Francisco Goya’s works illustrate a novel about him, This is the Hour. Norman Rockwell did Poor Richard: The Almanac, and the childrens classic The Wind in the Willows illustrator is, of course, the incomparable Author Rackham. Who else? Because of the illustrations you can't just pull out the books you recognize; you have to open every single one to see what's inside. You might find full page paintings, an occasional small woodcutting, or colorful border decorations on each page. Eager to look at our plunder, we loaded the hotel’s luggage cart with boxes of books, then lined them up in the aisle between our beds to easily share the wealth. We ooh’d and aah’d for some time until Betsy, exhausted from all the driving, fell asleep. I fondled Walden, dipped into Elegy, renewed my friendship with Paul Bunyan, and honestly goggled at the brilliantly colored, intricately Middle Eastern-style decorations on every other page of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam until, exhausted, I couldn't hold it upright any longer.

It's always faster driving home. I don't know if it's because the impatience created by anticipation is gone, or because I begin to recognize the landmarks while still hundreds of miles from home. This way to St. Louis; here's that lousy construction stopping traffic again; 22 miles to Lambert's, Home of the Throwed Rolls. Yep, we're almost home. (Yes, they really do throw the rolls to their customers, sometimes. Mostly it's a pig out on all the Southern food you want place to eat.) Eventually we turned into the driveway, greeted the dogs, and toted in boxes of books. The driver, not surprisingly, was exhausted. The passenger, me, was energized and ready to do something. We excavated a few more boxes, then Betsy picked up one of her old favorites, one of those books you've loved for years but somehow misplaced, and settled in to read. I pulled out books only to replace them. I carried stacks to the sofa, read a bit here and there, then carefully put them back into the correctly numbered box. Darn that book fairy lady! If she hadn't been so helpful I could be alphabetizing and recording each book, matching up the sets and noting the publication dates. Instead I was left with nothing to do but read. Betsy finished The Mysterious Island and eagerly began The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan. No, not Ali Baba, though he and Hajji might be cousins I suppose. And don't assume, as I did, that Hajji Baba is a book only someone who double majored in History and Middle Eastern Studies would look forward to reading. It turns out to be a classic romantic comedy offering a true portrayal of Persia of that time. Watching her happily immersed in her second book, something dawned on me. Trying to take on 197 new books has created a type of reader’s overload in my brain, a dog pile of choices that makes it impossible for me to single anything out of the crowd. Walden Pond? Longfellow's poetry? The Brothers Karamazov? Something, please? My eyes glaze over just looking at the boxes. I've stopped peering inside them, stopped studying the six page list. Should I read an old favorite or something I've never heard of before? Maybe I'll pick the shortest one and read it really fast, and have it over with. I could pick a number or close my eyes and point, like people do when they want help from the Bible but have no idea how to find it. It's been almost a week since our drive to Chicago, and I'm still bookless, unable to find a way to force myself to make a choice. I haven't a clue how long this deadlock will go on, but if I ever manage to actually read anything, trust me, you'll be the first to know.

Read Well, Friend

"Hundreds of books" paraphrased from Millions of Cats, written by Wanda Gag.

In Love with American Names

2009-08-17T14:00:00.008-05:00

“I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,”
(Steven Vincent Benet)

I, too, am I love with American names, and the maps that show me those names. What better time to meditate on the great variety of our country's names then on a 'quick' drive to Chicago and back with my daughter at the wheel. Two nine-hour days of interstate, our only Chicago sightings Wrigley field and the airport. A pity really, as Chicago is a city to spend a week in, at least. Still, even super fast road trips needn't be all bad. The best part of traveling, besides arriving where you want to be, or maybe getting home from some place you didn’t want to be, is the scenery and the names of the towns you pass. Since you can’t always count on the scenery -- I-70 through Kansas, anyone -- I rely on maps and road signs for inspiration. Probably we've all joked about the oddity of travel in America. For example, on the way to Chicago we found our selves passing signs to Manhattan, which got Betsy pretty excited. The Statue of Liberty, Broadway shows! Unfortunately our deadline kept us from that detour. I did point out that it might take us on a much shorter trip to Manhattan, Kansas. But that plainly didn’t interest her at all. It seems our family has driven through Kansas way too many times already. (No offense to Kansans intended.)

In the same way, from my own little corner of the country I can travel quite easily to Egypt. Memphis and the pyramid are just a few minutes away. A little over an hour takes me to Cuba Landing where, presumably, refugees regularly sneak ashore under cover of night. I don’t begrudge them. I do, however resent our proximity to Paris. After I save up all my quarters and finally visit France I'll come back proudly sporting my Eiffel Tower T-shirt and carrying my Gay Paree hand bag and no one will even notice. They’ll just assume I spent a few days in Paris, TN. How deflating! The same would be true of Milan, Moscow, London, Hayti, (sic) and Belfast. Kind of makes you wonder why we Americans bother going overseas at all, doesn’t it?

Leaving aside the towns named by people either homesick or completely lacking in imagination, I prefer the Illinois towns of Eureka, Goodfield, Sweetwater, and Fidelity. What treasure made the towns people cry Eureka? How special is that good field, really? If I swing by Sweetwater for a quick drink will it taste better than the freezing cold, uncontaminated water coming straight from a Rocky Mountain stream? Is that even possible? Could it taste sweeter than the natural artesian that comes out of my taps everyday? I’ve drunk a lot of water from a lot of places around the world, and some of it was nasty. If all that water was lined up side by side would Sweetwater's win? I’d like to think so, but I have my doubts... As interesting as the town’s I’ve just named are, the one that intrigues me the most is Fidelity. Just think of it --Fidelity. Did the women of the town get to pick the name? Or the preachers? Is naming a town Fidelity a warning to any riff raff to keep moving? What happens to fools who don’t live up to the name? Puzzles like this give one something to think about on those long car rides.

My home state of Colorado is blessed with strong sounding town names that describe its history and terrain. Copper Mountain, Leadville, Marble, Gypsum, Granite and Silverton speak to our mining past. It’s no surprise, then, to learn that high in the Rockies one finds the National Mining Hall of Fame. Well, alright, so it did surprise me. Obviously I need to brush up on my Colorado maps. With towns called Aspen, Snowmass, Evergreen, Crested Butte and Elk Springs, who needs a glossy tourist brochure? Add Gem Village, Whitewater, Grand Lake, and my personal favorite, Tin Cup, and I’m not sure why I ever left. Personally, I think Colorado has the best town names anywhere, but I’m forced to admit some people believe the honors should go elsewhere. One of those people is a certain southern governor’s wife. Meeting a television producer who had several successful shows set in the South, the governor’s wife encouraged him to research the names in her state for the setting of his next project. And why not? Choosing from Apple Spur, Lone Sassafras, Pickles Gap and Tomato, Flippin and Toad Suck, (please don’t lick the toads, they’re hallucinogenic), Violet Hill, Frog Town and Tulip can’t be easy. One wonders how he made that decision. Why, soon after that meeting, was the television world introduced to Burt Reynolds and Marilu Henner in Evening Shade, Arkansas? What do you think of the choice? Better yet, what would Stephen Vincent Benet say? You decide.

"You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee."

Read Well, Friend

Let me know what you think, share some of you favorite place names with the rest of us, or nominate your favorite state for the honor of Best Names.

Also, I want to thank you for your patience and support during this difficult time. I am doing a little better, and I hope to be up to full speed again soon.

In Memory of My Beloved Bill... 29 Years are Not Enough.

2009-08-12T12:22:00.011-05:00

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

William Lauren Kelsey
April 15, 1958 -- August 12, 2008

(Abide with Me composed by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847.)

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2009-08-10T14:59:00.018-05:00

Last night I picked up the book my daughter has been urging me to read for several weeks, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Burrows. At what I hope will turn out to be one of the most difficult points in life (there are worse things than approaching the one year mark of the early and unexpected death of your spouse, but I pray I’ll never experience them), I lay in a strange bed at a friend’s, literally unable to endure night in my own home. Consumed by emotions I’m completely at loss to identify or explain, I finally opened the pages of the book, and began to read.

I could tell as I read that Mary Ann Shaffer was a lover of books. (Annie Barrows is her niece and a childrens author. She stepped in at her aunt’s invitation to complete revisions when Mrs. Shaffer became to ill to finish them herself.) Mary Ann had worked as a bookseller, librarian and editor. A marvelous story teller, she also wrote prolifically, but never managed to produce something that satisfied her. Her standards, it seems, were high. The Guernsey Literary… Society, set in a post WWII Channel Island, began in 1967 (according to her obituary) or 1980 (her publisher), as a biography of the wife of polar explorer Robert Scott. Disappointed by a research dead end in Cambridge, she took a side trip to Guernsey. Socked in at the airport by dense fog, she did what any sensible person would do, and looked for something to read. Here a bit more mystery arises. Was there, as her obituary relates, a library at the airfield, or was it simply a bookstore, as her publisher claims? I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I really hope it was a library. In the literary society’s Guernsey a branch library would have been installed to benefit all who passed through. Mrs. Maugery would have insisted. Whatever the source of Jersey Under the Jack Boot, it and other books on the Nazi Invasion of the Channel Islands fascinated her. That interest eventually allowed her to fulfill her lifelong ambition to “Write a book that someone would like enough to publish.” When her book club convinced her to do just that she started to write seriously. She was about 70 at the time.

To some reviewers Dawsey Adams and rest of the accidental literary society seem far-fetched, too quirky to be true. I didn’t find them strange, maybe because I grew up in a rather remote, rural area myself. Ingenuity, mutual reliance and eccentricity are almost required in a small isolated society. Shared hardships seem to makes those qualities stronger. My grandmother’s family made soup out of straw during the great famine that eventually drove them from the Ukraine to NE Colorado. In similar circumstances Potato Peel Pie sounds pretty clever to me. Had she known of it, Great Grandma Bauder might have asked for the recipe.

The deprivations people suffer in the book were very real in England and Europe during WWII. The tiny island in the English Channel actually was occupied, and their children were evacuated before the invasion, some never to be reunited with their families. One book reviewer mockingly asked if no one on Guernsey at that time ever read a trashy novel. I don’t imagine they did. Books would have been burned for fuel soon after the wood supply ran out. Guernsey’s bookseller, we are told, boarded up his shop because people are buying up his treasures to use as fuel. Only a book valued highly by its owner might have been saved, and only by someone as strong minded as Amelia Maugery, the supplier of the society's books. Before she wrote her novel, Mrs. Shaffer spent years researching the Nazi occupation of the Channels and corresponding with many of its survivors. Whether created by the author’s imagination or drawn from documented facts, Guernsey and it’s people are real to me. Maybe because of what they lived through the literary society member’s letters don’t just portray facts, but truths as well. “’When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein…’” Amelia Maugery writes, “‘visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on.’”

It’s true that The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is endearing, charming, smart and joyful, as critics have said. If that’s all it were it would be enough. We could use more well written books like that to lift our spirits and make us smile, couldn’t we? It was more than that for me last night, though. It didn’t just lift my spirits, it comforted me, gave me some confidence and a bit of hope. My daughter said the she felt that, too, when she read it. I don’t want to sound mystical, or somehow imply that The Guernsey Literary… Society is a profound work. It isn’t and I’m glad. But when a book can tell its story honestly, with real characters and situations that feel true, it gives us more than a great read. It gives a piece of life. Why that means so much to me at this moment, I honestly don’t know. But it does.

Read, and sleep, well, Friend

Zombie Haiku

2009-08-08T21:45:00.011-05:00

While I'm waiting to figure out what's going on with my computer, I thought I'd make sure you've heard about the poetry contest taking place at The Bookshelf Muse. I'm not much of a poet and I know next to nothing about zombies, but I'm sure there are a few of you out there who do, and you know who you are. There's a link on my sidebar to take you directly to the blog, if you like. At the very least check out what's been submitted so far. There were a couple I found quite... tasty. I was afraid to ask what the prize for the best poem is, you'll just have to ask yourself.

Oh, and by the way, don't forget today is National Book Lovers Day.

Read Well, Friend

Gratitude to Old Teachers

2009-08-05T13:01:00.020-05:00

Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then- holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness."

Henry Bly, Gratitude to Old Teachers
- In honor of all those returning back to school this month: students, teachers, administrators and every one who supports education.

Read well, Friend

The Trouble with Bookstores

2009-08-03T22:09:00.017-05:00

It started innocently enough. Now that I’m home again I don’t have access to WiFi, and my kids assure me I have the slowest dial-up in the country. They might just be right, so yesterday I spent quite a while in a local WiFi restaurant with my computer. After an hour or so I decided the chair was just too uncomfortable and adjourned to Starbucks, with their lovely stuffed chairs that are better than the ones I have at home. On my way there, my eye was caught by shelves of books in the store next door. Ah, yes, Applegarth's Books, the new used bookstore. I’d never stopped in there, I owed it a visit. To my surprise it was big. It was clean. It was well-lit and well organized. I was in love. The problem, as you may know, with falling in love with a new bookstore is that then you fall in love with the books in them, probably a lot of the books. And that means you'll spend the money you were going to use on a venti iced Chai Latte with extra cinnamon. Also, you now have to find space on a shelf, or a table, or the floor, or someplace to put them. You also have to give up all the other things you wanted to do today, like vacuuming the coils behind your refrigerator. Is it worth it, you ask yourself? Do I even have to answer?

It was bookstore love at first sight. I managed to control myself, however. I showed great restraint. I put back books I really wanted, really needed. Eventually I narrowed it down to eight. I found my first volume right inside the door. A cloth bound hardback with green printing on a cream spine caught my eye immediately. My favorite colors. The Near Woods by Millard C. Davis needed a look. I passionate about books on natural history, especially if they’re about trees and woods. A few peeks inside convinced me it should be mine. Thank you, Murrey David Goldberg, for passing it on to me. It was a steal. Around the corner I found several shelves of books about writing. They yielded Novel Ideas, (Cute title, no?), in which ‘Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process‘. Two of my favorite things to read, essays and books about writing. Definitely a keeper. In the same section I found What’s in a Word?, one of those books about the source of common sayings and names. Opening it randomly I was taken aback to see bassinet in the military section. As a grandmother to be, I had to read on. It seems the term started in the Middle Ages when the French developed a bowl shaped helmet. As it resembled a basin they christened it bassinet. Somehow, passing down from French soldiers to Sir Walter Scott, folks decided the similarly shaped baskets their infants slept in should also be called bassinets. If you don’t find that fascinating, well I just don’t know what to do with you.

The most exciting find of the day was a beautifully preserved, probably never even taken off the shelf, copy of How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. A classic first published in 1940, I’ve wanted it for years, but for some reason I never actually bought it. Now I know why. This absolutely perfect copy, published in 1972, has been waiting for me. It’s pristine, feels absolutely right in my hands, and cost me 6 dollars. It doesn’t get any better than this. The next books I picked out are two old favorites -- The Count of Monte Cristo, (Dumas), and Howard Pile’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. Pile's is the version I grew up with, a big green cloth-bound book with occasional color illustrations, all managing to make men in tights look pretty good. Actually, I didn’t pay too much attention to that part; I was much more interested in joining Robin and Friar Tuck and Allen a Dale. We would all live outside in Sherwood Forest, hunting and cooking, singing songs and telling stories. We’d wash our clothes in the river, and play tricks on rich, pompous travelers. What a grand life! I’d been camping in the Rockies, and I knew camping could be dirty and smelly, but this was Sherwood Forest. It would be perfect.

I bought Jude the Obscure because my daughter-in-law told me to. That's not quite like it sounds. I’d just spent 8 weeks there, and we both love reading, writing, and talking about them both. (We both love my son, too, but that’s neither here nor there.) I mentioned at some point that I’d never managed to finish anything by Thomas Hardy because his books seemed soooo depressing. She recommended Jude; she was even pretty sure I’d actually like it, so I’ll give it a whirl. Just for her. I made myself stop shopping then. I had enough books to keep me reading for a while, and I'd spent as much as I could afford to help the store survive. I was done. Then something magical happened to me on the way to the register. My eye was drawn away by a familiar black and orange binding. The boldly lettered title jumped out at me. The Power and the Glory. It had been so long, too long in fact, since I’d thought of the whiskey priest and his struggle with organized religion, God, and most of all, himself. That’s why I ended up walking out of the store with nine books and no regrets. I’ll find space on a shelf, probably by taking some not so worthy books to the store and trading them in. For more books of course. It could be worse. I could collect bassinets. Imagine how much space I'd need then.

Read Well, Friend

( Novel Ideas by Shoup and Denman, What's in a Word? by Garrison, and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2009-08-01T11:39:00.034-05:00

"The rain is raining all around, it falls on field and tree, it rains on the umbrellas here and on the ships at sea." And it is raining. My front door was open, airing out the house that had been shut for a month, the big trees in the yard filling the screen with deep shades of rich green. Then I glanced up to see steady stripes of rain falling straight to the ground. As Thoreau wrote, "The scattered drops are falling fast and thin," so quietly I almost missed them. Now it's coming more heavily, accompanied by occasional thunder. It is the perfect summer downpour. Once it's finished the humidity will probably be even higher, but right now I don't care. I love rain.

I love a late summer shower, like the one that even now is silently polishing leaves and grass to a lighter green. Birds love them, too. They sing through the bits of thunder and momentary downpours. I expect they love the rain even more than I do. To them it means fresh water and worms crawling out of the soggy soil, offering themselves as a tasty banquet on the grass and driveway. Frogs love the rain. The fat one who lives under one side of my little garden pond croaks his appreciation of the fresh water flowing into his pool, the one he shares with some small lilies and a brass frog. The frog is a fancy of mine. It has a little valve in it's mouth that water is supposed to flow out of, and a slightly obscene one on the other end that the kids tease me about. I just nestle him into a flower and say no more. It's not his fault he was created that way. He's meant to spit water, of course, but I chose him for his size and shape. I don't know what my real frog considers him -- some kind of weirdo neighbor perhaps. The kind best ignored. I do know that they sit out during rain showers, apparently enjoying themselves. Rain is so wonderful, who doesn't love it?

I don't. I hate the rain, especially the long drawn out ones in October and November. They fall day after day, graying out the sun, making us drive with our wipers on perpetual swish-swish. They soak the ground, saturating it and clashing with the already high water table, a battle of two unalterable forces. Every day there is more. It makes permanent puddles on our lawns, rivers in our driveways, and turns the deep drainage gully by the street into a canal. The heavy clay that masquerades as soil in my yard becomes a slippery, sloppy goo that permanently stains my sneakers and socks. My porch fills up with pots of perennials, tiny trees desperate to get into ground and start growing, and my beloved shrubs. Digging and planting are impossible. Seeds will wash away, and the dirt can't be moved or even walked on, as that turns the clay into an adobe-like brick. So I watch the rain and complain. Every spring and every fall it torments us with it's capriciousness. I've never read a poem in which a gardener laments the rain, rails about the unfairness of its timing, curses the way it willfully keeps him from his planting and tending. No poet appears to have tackled the subject. Perhaps thats because gardeners are too busy to write poetry; they're all inside planning the minute details of next year's vegetable gardens or their new, expensive irrigation systems. As for poets, their gardens probably die in the first heatwave. Who can remember to tend the herbs when one is tending the muse instead?

Yes, I definitely hate the rain. Longfellow knows what I feel. "The day is cold, and dark, and dreary, it rains, and the wind is never weary... Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary." Farmers hate the rain, too, rather like gardeners. Most of the year they pray for it but when fall arrives, with the approaching harvests ripening, they swear at weather forecasters who even dare say 'precipitation'. Every tiny cloud is examined and discussed in minutest detail. The space shuttle could be cleared for take-off, but crops at harvest time are much more demanding. A bit of rain can spoil a year's hard work. Too many ruined crops and another family loses their land. Technological advances aside, farmers are still at the mercy of weather. But let's not forget about the biggest haters of rain -- children. One of the first chants they learn pleads "Rain, rain, go away." How they wish it would! Enough to spend an entire day by the window, imploring endlessly.

Then again, I do love the rain. "I thought I had forgotten, but it all came back again to-night with the first ... thunder in a rush of rain." (Spring Rain by Sara Teasdale.) I hope I'm never so far gone that I grouse about summertime rain. Here in the SE it can make a day livable. The low gray clouds stop the burning sun. Rain drives temperatures down. Even a few extra degrees of coolness are appreciated, especially at night, when I stand on my back deck watching the storm clouds forced in by northwest winds. The a/c won't have to be turned down quite so far tonight, and the house may be a little cooler in the morning when I get up. It's no secret that farmers love rain. It saves them from having to irrigate. It fills wells, replenishes aquifers and rinses the grit from their skin as they ride their tractors. Everyone knows children love the rain, too, don't they? They open their mouths to it, jump in its puddles, fling mud at each other, and become drenched to their bones. I like to do those things, too. Even rain gear is fun to wear, as A. A. Milne knows. "John had Great Big Waterproof Boots on; John had a Great Big Waterproof Hat." The name of the poem? Happiness. It's there right now -- outside my door waiting for me. A lovely August rain, and something even better -- happiness. Who knew?

Read Well, Friend

(Rain, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Summer Rain by Thoreau; A Rainy Day by Longfellow.)

Taking a Second Look at Poetry

2009-07-28T12:51:00.041-05:00

People don't like poetry. Not only don't they read it, they make fun of those who do; shaking their heads at them in a pitying sort of way, as if poetry lovers were slightly off-balanced. I don't judge them. After all, I don't get the appeal of muscular guys tossing each other around in carefully choreographed moves while pretending it's all real. I have, at least, tried watching such shows in an effort to understand. I wish the poetry haters and ignorers and disparagers would do the same.

I think most of the problem is in the way poetry is introduced to us. People often meet their first grown-up poems in school, where they're faced with titles like Thanatopsis or Il Penseroso. That's enough to put anyone off. If they do get past the title they may find such welcoming first lines as "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!" and "Hence, vain deluding Joys." I kid you not, we read all of these in my rural high school. And while I appreciate, even love them now, (except for Il Penseroso; it's what one might call a downer), I struggled through them back then. Because of these bad experiences, I have my own ideas of how to approach the subject. It goes beyond choosing poems that fit one's reading and comprehension level. Why not introduce poetry as mini-stories, a sort of text message on any topic imaginable?

If you crave adventure filled with unusual places and people, how about a beginning like this -- "I met a traveler from an antique land, who said; Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert." Interested? You won't find it in National Geographic. Try Ozymandias by P. B. Shelley, instead. It's pretty short, so for a slightly longer tale I suggest this opening, "'Courage!' he said, and pointed toward the land, 'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.'" (The Lotus-Eaters, Tennyson.) At the very least it might hold you until the next Patrick O'Brian novel comes out. Finally, what armchair traveler could resist learning more about Xanadu, where "Kubla Khan (did) a stately pleasure-dome decree"? Not to mention the sacred river Alph running through "canyons measureless to man down to a sunless sea." (Kubla Khan, Coleridge)

Probably everyone associates poems with love. Adolescents sigh over them, quote them, sometimes even write them. When we grow up many of us read romances, go to romantic movies, and long for long-stemmed roses and flowery words. Will "O my love is like a red red rose, that's newly sprung in June;" do? In a different vein, even I might be tempted by a book that opens "Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove..." Be warned, it's definitely not PG, and the movie version could turn out quite racy. (Robert Burns and Christopher Marlowe, respectively.)

Bookstore sell a lot of mysteries. I know I have shelves full of my favorites, and I'm not alone. For many, the discovery of a new book is cause for celebration -- and maybe an all night read-a-thon. Fortunately poetry isn't lacking here. A favorite from my childhood catches attention with these opening lines; "'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler, knocking on the moonlit door." Who is this man referred to only as the Traveler? Why is he knocking on a stranger's door in the middle of the night? Is there anyone there, and if so who, or worse yet, what? I still feel a creepy sense of foreboding when I read those lines. They're not by Lovecraft, King, or Holmes, but Walter de la Mare. It's called The Listener. Don't miss it. For more mysterious goings on try ""He disappeared in the dead of winter;" or "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind." Go ahead and take a chance -- read a poem and have an adventure.
(W. H. Auden, then Francis Thompson.)

Poetry debates philosophy and ideas like reality and free will; it frequently muses on the meaning of life, not always at first glance. Poems can be probed forever and never quite comprehended, or they may mean absolutely nothing. They sing, warn, complain, chide, and lift our spirits. They also tell stories. Stories about people. Stories that begin like this; "That's my last duchess on the wall, looking as if she were still alive." (Robert Browning's Last Duchess.) "He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him," Robert Frost tells us in Home
Burial. And Walt Whitman tempts the reader with a story where, "on the beach at night, stands a child with her father, watching the east," in his piece of the same name. Trust me, there really is a wealth of wonderful poetry out there waiting to be discovered. Maybe next time "When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles" you'll consider turning off the TV, reclaiming your favorite chair from the cat, and curling up with a good book. Of Poetry, of course.

Read Well, Friend

(In the first paragraph the poems are by John Milton, W. C Bryant, Byron's Sonnet on Chillion, and Il Penseroso again. Final quote from Love Among the Ruins by Robert Browning.)

Home Comforts

2009-07-24T10:48:00.041-05:00

I'm not much of a housekeeper. If I qualify as a 'yo-yo' dieter, (and I do), I should be the mascot of the Yo-Yo Housekeeping Club. So feel free to be as shocked as my Mother would to know I have a book about housekeeping on my shelf. A very large, 884 page book, called Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. While I could reasonably be expected to but a book on art, and occasionally science, a book subtitled The Art and Science of Keeping House isn't my usual fare. It's not your usual cleaning-up book, either. In some ways a cross between Alexandra Stoddard and the instruction manual that came with your washing machine, it's also much more. (The fact that I long ago lost the manual from my washing machine was one of the reasons I bought it. Being on sale was another.) Thus several years ago I found myself the proud owner of a book with 72 chapters on cleaning my house. In the spirit of sharing the wealth I bought one for each of my kids, too.

Doing exactly what this type of book discourages, I started reading straight through from page vii to the end. The second chapter looked promising. Easing Into a Routine is just my style. Save time! Shorten housekeeping! Keep lists! I was primed. (I love lists, having at one time kept a master list of my lists.) I read on. Daily schedules sure, but weekly, monthly, semiannually and annually? This was more than I'd bargained for. Weekly laundering chores followed. It seemed that throwing towels and sheets in once a week, and washing my clothes when I ran out of clean underwear, just wasn't the thing. Not my idea of easing in, but it wouldn't stop me. I read on.

I breezed through the section on food and kitchens. My grandmothers and mother may not have spent a lot time instructing me on the finer points of dusting, but thanks to them I know my way around a kitchen, and food. If Mendelson ever adds a chapter on cooking and baking, I'm her woman. I'll even clean up after myself. I was fascinated by the idea of keeping a separate rag bag for each of the several types and sizes of rags I should have. I learned how to sweep the floor with a broom -- it seems I have been doing that correctly. However, I didn't realize there are people who go over their floors on their hands and knees with a dust cloth after vacuuming, just to be sure. It shouldn't have surprised me, having once known two women who weekly scrubbed their baseboards with a toothbrush. While each raising several small children to boot. I don't know where they are now, but I'll wager they still have the most sparkling baseboards in their neighborhoods. Or arthritic knees -- take your pick.

It's not fair, though, to dismiss Home Comforts as another of those self-improvement books that invariably leave you feeling more out of control and depressed than before. In fact, after a quick glance, both of my kids insisted on being given their copies immediately. I'd been thinking about keeping the books until they went to college or got married. But, as one of them pointed out, by that time I probably wouldn't be able to find them. What caught the kids' interest was the way almost arcane bits of information, like caring for daguerreotypes and tintypes, co-existed with detailed explanations on fiber composition, care and cleaning.Very detailed information. The section on removing stains is more complete than anything my washing machine manufacturer ever dreamed of.

The author made her book more than a compendium of tips on folding fitted sheets and maintaining your drains, or even calculating the efficiency of light bulbs. In the name of cleaning science she spoke to many industry insiders and experts at obscure governmental departments. (I like to imagine that in the process she made some usually ignored people people very happy.) The result of of her zealous research is a book even the most skeptical can trust. If a co-worker spills coffee on her blouse and reaches for the hand cleanser, you can tell her that the tannins in coffee could be permanently set by the soap, and, by the way, the hair spray she keeps in her purse isn't a good cleaner for ball point pen marks. The alcohol may get the mark out, but the guns and lacquers left behind can be just as hard to remove. This is not an old wives' tale. You learned it from an expert.

As for myself, I've decided this book has earned it's place on the bookshelf, taking up the last three precious inches of space between Granddad's copy of Edger Guest, (It takes a heap o' living to make a house a home."), and the end of the shelf. It's a fitting place, I think. After all, Home Comforts does contain an entire chapter on taking care of books. A short chapter it may be, running not much more than four pages including illustrations. But it is an entire chapter, with enough information to make my second grade teacher and my husband happy. My teacher, because of the detailed instructions on opening a book for the first time. Lay the book open, keeping the pages upright. Then carefully open the pages a few at a time, alternating from front to back. One never opens a new book from the center. Miss Ethredge knew that. My husband would have appreciated the general air of reverence shown here, and the wisdom imparted in the opening sentence, "The best way to preserve a book is to read it." But then he didn't need anyone to tell him that. Neither do you.

Read Well, Friend

Written on the Wind

2009-07-21T09:43:00.026-05:00

"On the planet the winds are blowing: ... The pampero blows, and the tramontane and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger, feel the now." ( Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Dillard.) I can't read a passage like this without wanting to fly off to a strange place, lift up my arms to heaven and feel the sirocco, the polar easterlies, the chinook she writes about. So many names for nothing more than the easily explained movement of air over the surface of our world. Each name stands for a different experience, a unique place, direction and power. I want to know them all.

The Chinook, for example. I always thought I would have to go to Alaska to feel it. Now I discover that it's any warm wind blowing East from the Rocky Mountains. I grew up a few hundred miles east of those mountains. Just think, Eskimos, black bears, salmon, and me -- all enjoying a chinook! Then there's the exotic sounding tramontane. I confess I was disappointed to learn that one definition says it's any wind blowing from the opposite side of the speaker; the classic meaning is simply a north wind. A bit of a let down, really. Still, that's two down and a lot more to go.

The sirocco. Ahhh, that's definitely exotic. Desert, sheiks, and caravans with camels, right? Sorry, but no. Technically, any dust or sand storm qualifies, though I refuse to accept that. I've been in enough of those to know there's nothing exotic about them. You just swallow a lot of dirt and it gets up your nose; grit fills your eyes and your lids are plastered shut. No, thanks. As far as I'm concerned just any old sandstorm doesn't count. I insist on going through mine on a camel in the desert of Morocco. (My parents, though, would have been tickled to know they hadn't just lived through the Dust Bowl, but a whole bunch of siroccos. Sounds like a lot more fun.)

Some winds are pretty specific. A sweater wind, for instance, can melt up to two feet of snow in a day. Of course that presumes that you have at least two feet of snow in the first place. Yet another good reason for me to leave Tennessee and return to Colorado. I don't think much of my chances of getting a sweater wind otherwise. In that vein, it's a good thing I'm determined to visit Greece some day, for only there can I stand in both the gregate, which blows NE from Greece, and the etesian, his contrary twin going NW. The pampero, as I should have guessed, blows in Argentina and Uruguay. The counterpart to our north wind, it brings cold fronts in from the S or SW. While you're in the area, don't miss the Boro. You will find the tribe in NE India. Presumably, you can also pick up the wind there as it's passing from Europe to Turkey.

There are a lot more winds out there, as you might have guessed. But before I blow off for now, (sorry, couldn't resist), I must mention three more. One is called the levanter, which I initially confused with a catalog with a similar name where my husband liked to drool over, and occasionally purchase, very expensive pens. Poor levanter, it's really done nothing to offend me, spending it's time puffing along from the western Mediterranean across the Straits of Gibraltar. In the same way I always despised the mistral, which I somehow thought a feeble spring wind in France, greatly enamored of by bodice-ripper romance writers. (They use it a lot in the titles. Otherwise, how would I know?) In reality the mistral is a cold, dry, often violent wind that scours the Rhone Valley in winter and early spring. Now that's more my type. Finally, for the wind most likely to disappoint, I give you chocolatero, which blows sand around in the Gulf. That's it, no tiny little Reese's cups or dark chocolate Dove squares, just sand. How sad.

I just might become a collector of winds -- by definition and experience. I've been in plenty of them; they weren't exactly lacking in my childhood in NE Colorado. Since then they've blown on me with near hurricane strength in Florida, as near-miss typhoons in Japan, and very real tornadoes in Tennessee and Nebraska. I'm not unique. There can't possibly be anyone in this world who doesn't know how wind feels, except the children who have to live in those plastic bubbles and may never feel air moving tenderly across their cheeks or struggle to keep their balance as it tries to send them to their knees. The rest of us, the vast majority of us, know it in some form, by some name. Whether suhaili, garigliano, turnagain, or chergui, bayamo or Cockeyed Bob, it blows on us all. You could even say all of us have inherited the wind. We might as well enjoy it.

Read Well, Friend

Ho-Hum Potter and the Luke-Warm Prince?

2009-07-19T10:19:00.019-05:00

(Spoiler Alert!! This book-to-movie review is written by April Kelsey, a delightful writer much more qualified than I to discuss this topic. It does contain spoilers. You have been warned. Fair disclosure -- April is my favorite daughter in law. Her own unique blog can be found at http://penitustemplum.blogspot.com)

On Thursday, I finally got the opportunity to do something I had talked about doing for almost a solid year: I watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the big screen. A year is an awfully long time to wait for anything it seems, especially to see one of the most anticipated films of the year. But since the book is my absolute favorite in J. K. Rowling's entire series--and since the other novel-to-film adaptations had been so dazzlingly executed--I figured the movie-going experience would mark a high point in my otherwise humdrum existence.

What I had forgotten since I last closed the cover on The Half-Blood Prince is just how dense and complex the book really is. Along with the main storyline (Tom Riddle's harrowing past, Draco's recruitment into the Death Eaters, Harry's discovery of the Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore's search for the Horcruxes, etc.), the book also details the evolving intricate relationships between the characters. And while avid readers of the series salivated over every last juicy consonant on the page, the big-screen result is...well...not quite so titillating. At this point in the game, moviegoers expect more Advra Kadavra for their money.

To give the movie's writers and director credit, they did a fair job bringing The Half-Blood Prince to life. In two and a half hours, they cover the main plot well and devote a fair share of time to exploring the relationships that matter most in the series. After all, anyone who has read the series would agree that Ron and Hermione's deepening affections play an integral part in the story's dynamics--not in the least because they lend the story dimension and depth where needed. But fans of the series should be prepared for some disappointment: Lupin and Tonks barely make even a cameo appearance in the film, as do Fred and George Weasley, Professor McGonagall, and a few other favorites--including the vicious Lord Voldemort.

However, the movie's only real deficiency is the manner in which some aspects of the main story were handled. For instance, my favorite scene in the book is when Narcissa Malfoy begs Severus Snape to protect Draco as he carries out the Dark Lord's wishes. Rowling portrays Narcissa as a once proud woman who has become desperate and remorseful; she falls to weeping at Snape's feet, begging for his assistance. The movie version of this scene, however, couldn't be more different. Narcissa remains the proud woman, head held high, tears just barely glittering at the corners of her cold eyes. Convincing Snape to perform the favor is almost too easy; in fact, the whole scene feels rushed, as if the actors were running late for another taping. Snape seems almost eager to pacify Bellatrix, which is hardly the case in the book. As a result, the scene lost much of its poignancy in the adaptation, which may come back to bite the director sometime in the next two films when Snape's precarious double-agent status is revealed.

Also, the movie does a poor job of introducing one of the book's most fearsome characters: Fenrir Grayback, the vile and bloodthirsty werewolf of Voldemort's crew. Fenrir gets a fair share of press in the book; out of all the Death Eaters who escape Azkaban, Fenrir is considered the most dangerous. You'd think, at the very least, Emma Watson (Hermione) would be given a line in the film to say, "Oh, wow, do you know who that is?" But she isn't, as is nobody else. The most moviegoers learn about Fenrir is contained on a hard-to-read wanted poster stuck to a wall in a dark alley; blink, and you miss it. Moviegoers who have never read Rowling's series (like my best friend, for instance) won't know who Fenrir is or why they should find him sufficiently terrifying. As is, Fenrir only makes three short appearances in the film and utters maybe two lines. The director probably could have left Fenrir out of the movie altogether and no one, except the most die-hard fans of the book, might have noticed.

Of course, very rarely in movie-making history has a film trumped its print counterpart in storytelling quality, and The Half-Blood Prince is no exception. That's why readers continue to read for entertainment. What goes on in the theater of the mind exceeds anything that can be portrayed on a screen, no matter how far CG effects have evolved. But moviegoers expecting the nail-biting action and dazzling whimsy of the last five Harry Potter films should be prepared for a different kind of experience, as should the series's devoted readers. While the film's makers did a fair job of bringing The Half-Blood Prince to the screen, they obviously had to straddle that everlasting fence between staying true to the novel and treating moviegoers to a good time--no easy feat where such a rich and complex book is involved.

Read Well, Friend

Sea Fever

2009-07-18T22:13:00.022-05:00

Sullivan's Island beach was perfect this evening. The narrow ridge of black sand curved between the receding tide and a scruffy band of coastal weeds and wildflowers. Knowable and intimate, it was the perfect place to stroll barefoot along the water's edge, alternately watching two sailboats and the fishermen wrestling every so often with the small sharks that inhabit the tidal area. After a few minutes I found myself quietly humming about barges with treasures in their hold. The old Girl Scout camp song fit my dreamy mood, but eventually I felt a need to move on to something else. (In my mind, any experience, no matter how sublime, always becomes better with the right musical accompaniment. Preferably sung quietly. Your idea of ideal background music might not be mine.) The trouble was, I couldn't think of anything else. There must be hundreds of songs about the ocean, beach, and tides. Not one of them came to mind. I decided to move on to poetry. The results were a little better.

John Masefield's Sea Fever immediately came to mind. An obvious choice, but definitely appropriate. I was, after all, enjoying a "windy day with the white clouds flying, and the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying." (There actually weren't any seagulls flying or crying, but the pelicans were having fun.) Crossing the Bar flowed out next. This poem has always fascinated me. My maternal grandfather, I'm told, was a short, tough, hard cussing Welshman with a real temper. I only know two more things about him, and one of them is that Crossing the Bar was read at his funeral and quoted on his tombstone. At his request. What makes a Nebraska rancher who employed and cared for men dying from black lung disease until they passed, a horse trader, the man who publicly denounced the local KKK -- what makes a man like that request that poetry be read at his funeral? How many more 'civilized' people do that today? And why would he choose this piece of poetry? Sure, it's about more than the ocean, that's merely the metaphor Masefield uses to talk about the inevitability of death with the hope of a salvation at the end. But why a poem at all? I've always associated the love of poetry with a sweet nature, a sensitive and gentle personality. Don't we all? Yet my tough ol' Granddad Richards seems to have loved poetry -- and the sea.

My Mother grew up in an age where poetry was considered necessary for an educated person, even if you did live on a ranch a 'fur piece' from anywhere. They were required to recite it often at school, and she spoke of how she and her older sister entertained themselves while washing dishes by seeing who could memorize their poem first. The one she mentioned most frequently was also her father's favorite -- The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver W. Holmes. "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul," she recited, her eyes drifting dreamily out of focus. What was she seeing, I still wonder. Was she remembering the warm kitchen, the two sisters passing dishes from one to the other, sharing poetry and secrets? Or was it the nautilus itself, lying on some sandy beach, washed gently by the flow of the tide? I never asked her.

And what of my Granddad, the man I never met. What am I to make of his love of these two poems? Statisticians would say it means nothing at all. Two pieces of anecdotal information aren't enough to allow me to draw a conclusion. But I don't have the soul, or the attention to detail, of a good statistician. Whatever type of soul I do have, there must be a little of the poet in it. And the beach comber, too. For despite the sunburn, sweat and sand, I really enjoyed splashing along the edge of the water this evening, looking at the ocean, birds and sky. Maybe I inherited it from my Grandfather. Maybe I was just born that way.

--Read Well, Friend

First Crushes

2009-07-17T13:54:00.020-05:00

Do you remember your first crush? I do. His name was John and he moved to our town about third grade, and... Actually, I intended to write about books, but John just got in the way somehow. After all, I've fallen in love at first sight with a lot more books than I have men. My first crush's name was The Poky Little Puppy. I loved that puppy because he was round, curious, stubborn, and just a little bit bad. Not too bad. I didn't like to hear about really bad children -- or puppies. For instance, Peter Rabbit was much too scary for me. He purposely disobeyed his Mother, and that was very wrong indeed. Poky just enjoyed what he found in nature a little too much, and I understood that. He may have missed out on the chocolate pudding, but got the strawberry shortcake. My idea of a happy ending.

I third grade I fell head over heels for Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Well, I wasn't so crazy about Amy, another willful character, and spoiled. She obviously didn't deserve her sisters! Still, in the pages of Little Women I immediately acquired four sisters who argued, loved and had a lot of fun together. More fun than I was convinced I'd ever have. I lived in their world for a long time, writing plays and inserting myself in their adventures. I was even convinced they would love me more than Amy, because I would never be spoiled.

I imagine children having been surreptitiously reading under the covers since lights were invented. Being a disgustingly obedient child, I never did -- until someone handed me Christy by Catherine Marshall. At last I'd found the girl I was meant to be -- brave, adventurous, she was even a teacher like I planned to be. Her curiosity and courage led her into the strange life of a poor, superstitious Appalachian people. Staggered by their ignorance, Christy's struggles and triumphs became mine. I read until the last word of the last sentence. At 4 AM.

My family rarely drove the four hours to Denver. There was no reason to except for the fresh seafood restaurants. On one of these rare trips I bought a book titled Pride and Prejudice. Still in grade school, I'd never even heard of Jane Austin; it just appealed to me. From the first line "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man possessed of a good fortune must be in want of a wife", to Elizabeth and Darcy's happily forever after -- sans mother -- I couldn't stop reading. Light was fading and I read quickly. Soon the the city then suburb lights faded, leaving only the occasional lights of the Interstate. I read on desperately, holding my book open, my finger on the exact word I had just read, determined to get through as many lines as I could in the brief moments of light afforded me. Suddenly towns I'd ignored as useless became the most important things in my life. I knew in my heart that no town could ever bore me again, not if the inhabitants of that book could go with me.

They say there's no love like your first, and I believe it. I've fallen in love with lots of books since then, met characters who invaded my life and lived in my brain for a long time. We're also told that most first loves fade, that later we look back wondering what we saw in them in the first place. That may be true for some, but not me. I still return to my first loves. They captured me in my childhood and never loosened their grasp. I remember that poky puppy fondly, as do my children, and I look forward to soon introducing him to my grandchild. The others I would take to the proverbial desert island without question. They've been to college, around the US and to Japan with me. But the real power of a first crush is that it lives on in your mind forever, something that helped shape who you are and will always be a part of you.

--Read Well, Friend

Pileated Woodpeckers at Tinker Creek

2009-07-15T22:20:00.015-05:00

It was inevitable, I suppose, that I developed an obsession with Pileated Woodpeckers. First of all, between my mother and grandmother, I spent hours standing at our dining room windows with binoculars, studying birds and relaying information about them. Was the underside of that wing black or gray and was the ring around the vireo's eye white? Trying to tell someone else exactly where a small bird has perched is hard enough. But I'll swear in court that we once spent a week, maybe more, trying to see if the very tiny spur curving off the foot of a very tiny sparrow was orange or just the same color as any ordinary sparrow's would be. I think that if it did have the requisite orange spur, it would be a real feather in Mom and Grandma's bird list. So to speak.

It didn't help that my Dad had specifically designed that side of our house with windows so large they had to be special ordered. The view was marvelous -- different kinds of trees, a creek, grass and flower beds. We watched deer eat the daylilies, and turtles carefully pick off strawberries one by one. Trees dropped their leaves, then budded, and soon new ones of green and silver blew in the hard NE Colorado winds. We watched it all, never failing to notice and remark on it. But mostly, we watched the birds. And studied bird identification manuals. Not content with our regulars or the occasional stranger that wandered in, we scanned the tiny colored pictures, dreaming of pelicans and ruby-throated hummingbirds. Together we mourned the supposed passing of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Just one more bird we would never see.

That was about the time Dad became fixated on Pileated Woodpickers. I think the word Pileated had something to do with it. It's such a fun word to say. Pileated. Even if you know what it means, and I didn't, a name like that must belong to a very special bird, wouldn't you agree? Then there's its look - basic black slashed with white around the throat. Add the long curved bill and that ridiculous fire engine red cockade, and you realize God created something special. A bird guarenteed to stop you in its tracks screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" Also it's true that it lived so far away finding one would require a very special miracle. All of that just made the Pileated Woodpecker more fun.

One day when we came home from school to find him sitting at the big windows with binoculars and a birdbook, one of us asked him what he was doing. "Not much. Just keeping a look out for Pileated Woodpeckers." Had he found any, we asked playfully. "Not yet," he said. The same words were repeated quite a few times over the next few years. Pileated Woodpeckers became our personal Scarlet Pimpernel. We sought them here, we sought them there -- but never found them anywhere. Then I married a Navy man, and the landscapes outside my window turned to identical houses set in small yards of grass. But my Dad never forgot. He followed all our moves in Peterson's, as we called it.

"You're in Pileated Woodpecker territory," he'd report. "Let me know when you see one." And I looked. I looked because he would probably never really see one, but I could see it for him. I took my camera kayaking and camping. I visited the most likely places to find them -- the places where they'd been sighted just yesterday or the day before. I never managed to find one. Then, on a camping trip to Reelfoot Lake with my family, it happened. My husband decided to take the kids to a small playground near our campsite. They begged me to go along, maybe sensing that I was tired and dispirited. But I stayed behind to enjoy the quiet. Like me, the bird I sought preferred stillness. My camera was in my hand, ready for the moment. I just sat and waited.

The woodpecker was sighted that day -- by my husband and kids. At first I thought it was an elaborate tease set up by my husband. I questioned the kids in detail, asking them about its size, markings, bill, everything I could think of. It was true. They had seen the long sought bird, my Dad's ornithological Holy Grail. I still haven't seen one, so I never got to take that picture for my Dad.

What does any of this have to do with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? On page 70 Anne Dillard says "I found a Pileated Woodpecker in the sky by its giant shadows flapping blue on the white ice below." As far as I know she never mentions one again. But it's enough to take me back, enough for a reminder of the power of the written word -- and memories.

--Read Well, Friend

How Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Broadened my Mind

2009-07-15T15:39:00.021-05:00

Sometimes I just need to go back to the comforts of my youth, and re-reading books is a favorite way to do this. In college I discovered Anne Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I picked it up because I grew up on a Colorado farm with trees, a creek, beaver ponds -- even a great horned owl woods. I knew the birds, trees, flowers and grasses around me. An introspective child, I thought myself a deep thinker, wise beyond my years. (Which clearly proves that I wasn't.) But once I began reading Pilgrim I entered a world both more detailed and much broader than I had known. I remember thinking with astonishment "I didn't know you could look at the world that way!"

What is it that causes our minds to suddenly take leaps in new directions? While backpacking in the Rockies I'd learned to identify conifers, mushrooms, and the botanical parts of flowers. At the farm I loved to sit by our creek or under the trees, absorbing the sight, sound, feel and scent of life. The power of God and his creation surrounded me, and I savored it, drinking in my surroundings as deeply as I could. But for all that, it was Anne Dillard who showed me a new way of looking about, a new way of thinking.

Growing up I had a great need to control everything -- even my thoughts -- so I divided knowledge into individual pieces. Philosophy, science, experience--all my learning--went into separate files; mixing them would have created chaos. And chaos was what I feared most. But in her book Dillard showed me a very messy way of thinking. Information about blind people who had recovered their sight followed pages on stargazing, with van Gogh and Galileo thrown casually in. Long, flowery inner musings sat side by side with the eating habits of the praying mantis. (Did you know they can eat garter snakes, mice and hummingbirds? How do they get them to hold still long enough?) Honestly, there's not much neat or tidy about Tinker Creek.

I suppose I was nicely poised for change when I read Pilgrim. I'd left my high school class of 36 to go to a much larger university, mostly because no one else from my town was there. I chose to study engineering , clearly all wrong for my interests and personality. I was looking for a chance to be a different person, one I knew was locked inside of me. (Of course I thought this made me unique.) I wanted to discover new worlds, within and without. Instead, I stumbled on a new way to see the old one. I realized it was time to get rid of my neat categories and let my mind get messy.

If Thomas Wolfe was right when he wrote You Can't Go Home Again, maybe it's because he had tried to recreate his youth by re-reading his favorite books. Honestly, I don't want to go back to the past, I'm too curious about my future for that. But sometimes I like to stop and think about how I got where I am , and the books that helped me get here.

Read Well, Friend