December 21, 2011
- Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
“For these ports I could not draw a route on the map or set a date for the landing. At times all I need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of light in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them. If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while we speak, it is rising, scattered, within the confines of your empire; you can hunt for it, but only in the way I have said.”
- The Prince – Niccolò Machiavelli
There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.
- Gertrude McFuzz – Dr. Seuss
- Curious Incident of a Dog in Nighttime – Mark Haddon
- The Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
- Hunger – Knut Hamsun
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
- The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
- The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
- The Space Trilogy – C.S. Lewis
- The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorn
- 100 Love Sonnets – Pablo Neruda
December 17, 2011
(Excerpt from The City In Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee)
Stack in me the unaccountable fire,
bring on me the iron leaf, but tenderly.
Folded one hundred times and
creased, I’ll not crack.
Threshed to excellence, I’ll achieve you.
but in the city
in which I love you,
no one comes, no one
meets me in the brick clefts;
in the wedged dark,
Urban Dare – Tatiana
no finger touches me secretly, no mouth
tastes my flawless salt,
no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the humming
in the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;
December 3, 2011
My daughter and her husband are living with his mom while they pay off student loans and he finishes grad school. It’s a great situation for everyone and I was happy to see how well it was working. When considerate and thoughtful people combine households the results can be financially and personally rewarding.
So when I visited my daughter, I was also visiting her mother-in-law, who it turns out is a pretty awesome person. While there I had a chance to read several books, re-watch Anne of Green Gables and do a little shopping. I also got to photograph them assembling and decorating a very Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Every ornament had a story, from years spent in Hawaii and Sweden, to Sesame street characters chosen by Brian when he was a little boy.
The past few years I haven’t even been home when the tree goes up at my house. My Holiday decorations have been wheedled down from eight or ten boxes to three, two of which hold our tree. I only have about 10 percent of the keepsake ornaments I purchased over the years because most have been broken, lost or are now hanging in my children’s homes on their trees. I came home determined that this year it would be different, even if I had to buy new ornaments or even make them.
Yesterday, with two of daughters here with their families, I got out the tree, put on a Christmas album and poured myself some mocha coffee. I had to do some repairs on the tree stand and get out the glue gun for a few minor ornament repairs but those were the only glitches. My son-in-law, started reminiscing about setting up the tree when he was young. “My Dad always played ‘Christmas with the Chipmunks’ on our old record player. I loved it!” I walked over to to my Zenith and leafed through the albums I had set out. Two minutes later I was playing an album that was deemed “close enough” and my son-in-law was laughing while he hung more ornaments on the tree.
Later I decided it was time to create some more keepsakes for my tree, so I got out the sculpey and went to work.
Okay, so my idea of keepsake is not so cultured but I love my angry birds and I’ve had lots of fun playing it with my 5 year old grandson so he thought they were cool! I haven’t really used Sculpey and I made a lot of mistakes but I learned a lot and all in all I’m happy with how they look on the tree.
I am feeling the Holiday Spirit!
November 28, 2011
“You don’t beat the grim reaper by living longer; you beat the grim reaper by living better.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
November 25, 2011
One of These Nights – Eagles
Puccini: La Bohème -Che Gelida Manina -Plácido Domingo
Somebody That I Used to Know – Gotye and Kimra
Here With Me – Dido
Jennifer Nettles Band – Story of My Bones
If I Die Young – The Band Perry
Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers
Only You – The Platters
Over the Rainbow – Doris Day
Bring Him Home – Les Miserables
Boston – Augustana
Please Come to Boston – Dave Loggins
Killing Me Softly With His Song – Fugees
November 25, 2011
It’s true that I named two of my children after characters from C.S. Lewis books. My oldest son is named for Ransom, in The Space Trilogy and my second daughter after Lucy Pevensie of the Chronicles of Narnia. My oldest daughter, although technically named after my Lebanese Grandmother, Just happens to have both the names of the first queen of Narnia. That just happened to be a pleasant coincidence.
The books are heavy in Christian overtones which I usually don’t care for but Lewis is such a masterful and insightful storyteller that I can easily overlook his obvious allegory. He continually presents his characters with choices that mirror those faced in every person’s life, and in the Chronicles he never underestimates the powerful spirits of children who are faced with insurmountable tasks or unimaginable choices. He empowers them to fight against the evil in their lives and he makes it cool to be noble and honest and loyal. He does this while still allowing the characters to be flawed and sometimes annoyingly childish.
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.” (The Magician’s Nephew, The Chronicles of Narnia)
What you have made me see," answered the Lady, "is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before – that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished, if it were possible to wish – you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other. (Perelandra, The Space Trilogy)
November 24, 2011
Earlier this year I set up an RSS feed on a craigslist search for record players for sale in my area. It took about 4 months to find one in excellent condition and in my price range. In fact, I considered it a great deal at $110.00. When I began the search I also began looking for the vinyl to play on it so when it arrived, I already had 100 or so albums.
Many of the albums I purchases were a dollar or less, some were in sets and cost as much as $6. Disney songs, musicals, classical music and Doris Day. The warm sound of the needle gliding through the vinyl grooves and the not so perfect speakers was nostalgic. The first time dropped a record onto the turntable I was transported back to the late sixties to my grandmother’s garage listening to the Beatles on my uncle’s portable record player. “Do you hear it?” My uncle would say as he played Revolution backwards over and over again. “It means that Paul McCartney is dead.” There in that garage, I realized that not all secret messages had any merit and that I loved the sound of vinyl.
Not long after I got my Zenith player, my daughter bought me a copy of Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. She paid a whopping 10 cents for it from the Goodwill Outlet. It quickly became my favorite album to play.
Then last week, I went to the outlet myself and rummaged through albums scattered in enormous bins. The outlet is an experience that most people forego because of it’s chaotic and disorganized bins. I’ve known people who walk in and quickly walk back out, never to return. I had never been there until this year and I found it a bit shocking. My kids say it is a civilized form of dumpster diving. Not quite but it is an experience you won’t forget.
My trip there paid off. I found Kenny Rogers- The Gambler, Disney Children’s Classics and Children’s Lullabys. Then I noticed what looked like an almost white slipcover containing two albums, I pulled it out from the bottom of a pile of Christmas decorations. And there it was, “Any Day Now – Joan Baez sings Bob Dylan”. I couldn’t believe my luck. I put it in my cart and when I went to checkout it rang up at only 10 cents. When I got home I cleaned the records and played them. Ahhhh, the distinctive rich voice of Joan Baez on vinyl…
November 23, 2011
Our dog who is wearing a leash for fun, but who otherwise is never leashed or chained. He has free range of twenty acres, yet never strays more than 50 yards from the house.
November 23, 2011
“What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from the ocean siege or October breeze.” ― Paul Harding, Tinkers
November 20, 2011
Some photos of my two youngest sons. Both were 2011 HS graduates. G-il was his HS’s Athlete of the Year and J-ed was the youngest to ever graduate from his HS (he was 15).
