Speaking of dialects

I've been thinking about how much I love listening to and practicing accents. I think that some people are good at dialects and some aren't. I think it's a right brain/left brain thing, something along those lines. Just as some people can draw and some people can't.

A few Thanksgivings ago, my sister got down my book of Uncle Remus stories. I know they're politically incorrect now, but I remember my mother reading them to me in the afternoons after Lunch, before Nap, and I like the tales, so I keep the thing on the shelf.

When I was little and we lived on the farm that my grandmother's grandfather had built, there was an old old wicker wheelchair in the barn. The wicker back and seat were all broken and curled outward, and it had been a long time since the axle had received any attention. One summer we dug it out and spent what seems like weeks wheeling each other around in it. I got way more rides than my sister did because she was bigger and I was too weak to make the thing move forward empty, almost, never mind with her in it. It was a rough ride, and I was little. I remember holding on for dear life so I wouldn't bounce out as my sister rolled me across the yard. Sometimes it felt as if she wanted me to bounce out.

Imagine sitting in that antique wheelchair. 
Now . . . make the wheels square instead of round. 
Imagine yourself sitting in that broken out seat while someone, perhaps a brutish older sister, pushes you across uneven ground. 
Can you feel that?

That's what it sounded like when my sister read aloud, to all of us, from The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus.

***

I wrote this post and then left to go to the store. On the way there, I heard a radio program about Sarah Jones and her one-woman show wherein she becomes many different women, at least to the ear. Sometimes I think ideas float around in the atmosphere and land in different places at the same time. How else to explain that particular coincidence?

Miscellaneous thoughts

The 7/6/2013 Quote of the day was Thor Heyerdahl's, "For every minute, the future is becoming the past."
I remember having that thought when I was very young. Even to think "Now!" takes a second that will never come back. When people finish something unpleasant and say, "Well, there's an hour of my life I'll never get back!" I know exactly what they mean.

I have a book on my shelf called, "Living Through Breast Cancer." Every single time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, I think "Better Living Through Breast Cancer," and smile to myself at the silliness of the thought.

For me, lying on the grass with my dog is like yoga. I feel my spine click around, feel my shoulder and neck muscles relax... I become aware that my skin is an organ of my body, and I pay attention to its messages. All that is among the reasons I like warm weather. It isn't as much fun lying on crusty snow with an icy wind blowing over me. I have tried it and I know.

I read the other day that everybody in Europe is genetically related to every other European, as close as cousins. I can't now find the article but it didn't surprise me. It's about the same as the village I work for: if you start counting through people you know, you'll shortly come to a relative of the person you're speaking to. Europe's the same way, just bigger. It's a "six degrees from Kevin Bacon" thing. We are all related. Depending on one's feeling for Family, that's either good or bad.

Perfectionists learn to take time to do a thing properly. I always used to think I was a perfectionist because I was always frustrated with my mistakes. I have, however, always hurried through chores because I wanted to get to the "sitting and reading" part of my life. Morning job and observing Morning Boss have begun to teach me that it's all right to take a little more time to make sure I'm on the right course.  Removes a lot of the tension from any task.

I wish I liked myself better. I have accused so many people of thinking I'm not good enough, when, really, it is I who has no use for myself. (Should that be "I who have no use...?") 

The really good thing about mowing the lawn on the tractor is that I'm creating my own breeze while I'm accomplishing something that needs to be done.

Oh, don't read this.

Joe asked what I've been up to.
Not much.

Spring came out and went back indoors again. If she comes back I won't trust her. What a thing, to be unable to trust even spring.

Peep is a good and pretty girl. She comes when called . . . a high screechy Peeep! Her own voice is so small that she is almost inaudible. She's working on learning hunting, but she isn't very good at it, except with pieces of gravel and half-dead flies. She's pretty good at catching those. She holds the gravel in her paws and stands up on her haunches and twists her body this way and that way and then throws the gravel and runs like a wild cat, her tail twisting behind her. The flies are disposed of much less histrionically.

My nephew's daughter has been born and celebrated. 
I was the fifth person to hold her on the day she was born, as if we were passing her along the branches of the family tree.
She is able to lift her head at the tender age of six weeks. Clearly, she is an exemplary child: no doubt she will cure cancer, rid the world of war, and feed all the poor. 

Husband and I are being murdered by taxes. As is my wont, I shoulder into my Duty mode, hunker down and stow away money each paycheck like a Christmas Club so that when the bills come I can haul it all out and give it away. The assessor says we've been undervalued for years, and only now are we equitably assessed. If equity is the goal, then why is our valuation the same as somebody with three times as much land, a six-bedroom house and nine outbuildings? 
Husband hunkers down too, but he vents, scaring me. 
"We won't be able to afford a pet!" 
"I'd rather live in the city and pay lower taxes!"
I shrink down inside and wait, quiet.

Robert Benchley died before I was born, and James Thurber passed away in 1961, the same year as my father. I've been rereading them both. Their humor is timeless. They make me laugh out loud.

Signed up for Netflix and we're working our way through our free first month. So many movies I haven't seen! I couldn't watch movies while the poodle boyz were still alive: they would bicker and fight and I'd have to take them out of the room. I'm queuing up movies that Husband has already seen, but he doesn't mind, bless his little heart. Saturday evening is movie night. Husband says, "Don't call it that. All the kids at work have Game Night and Movie Night and Margarita Night. I can't stand to have Nights." 

Peep among the books

Peep continues to find Perfect Cat Cubbyholes. The testing for toeholds, that she did on her first afternoon here, has finally been remembered and put to use. Here is the girl, striking a pose.

Random thoughts early on a Saturday morning

I am horrified and incensed at the number of people who seem intelligent and engaged with the world who do not vote. 
Ever.
I know somebody who was running for local office (she lost) and her list of eligible voters revealed that an alarming number of people are not even registered to vote, and that many registered voters never vote. I just can't believe it. With all the brouhaha that goes on about politics . . . everybody I meet seems to have an opinion and why wouldn't they all since opinions are like that other thing that everybody has . . . and a lot of these yahoos don't step foot into their local polling places. 


Woolly bear caterpillars are apparently more of a weather predictor than I ever imagined. I used to work with a man who knew how to read them, or said he did. He would look at one and say, "See? It's going to be an early winter!"
And I'd look and say, "Hunh!"
I don't remember if the following winter turned out to be early or not.
I can't remember two months ago. 
I just remember that I love the light and warm months and I'm sleepy in the dark and cold months and that's how I go on. I might as well be a prehistoric woman. 
Except that I vote. 
Every time.


A friend of mine, years ago, told a bunch of mutual friends that I had not repaid a small debt to her. I had repaid the debt, not an hour, not a half hour, after having incurred it. You know . . . that slander bothers me so much that I think about it in the middle of the night. When I learned of it, it was a long time after the event . . . so long that I didn't know what in the world she was talking about. By the time I remembered, so much more time had elapsed that it seems small of me to be so bothered by it. Let it go, I tell myself, but here I am.


Husband traveled for a good part of last week. I loved it. I made noise in the middle of the night, I ate odd combinations of food, I slept and rose at odd (even odder than usual) hours. Right up until he drove in the driveway I was thinking how nice it would be to have a husband who paid the bills and dropped in once every week or so. The minute he was home, the air felt more comfortable, colors seemed to have more depth, my body felt more comfortable. Everything got . . . right . . . and I hadn't even known I was off kilter.


There is a slight coating of snow on the stone wall, on the picnic table in the front yard. It's supposed to be a sunny Saturday, so it will go away. And Sunday's forecast is "mostly sunny," so that's good. And then the whole week falls apart into gray wet mush. I need to get my snow tires on before the gray wet mush becomes white fluffy mush.


I am reading Sarum and enjoying it. It is so long that it might be the last book I ever read. And the print in the 1100+ page paperback is so small that I might lose my sight before the last page. But it's a story that rolls right along. It reminds me of a social studies book I had when I was in fourth grade. It was about the Piedmont region of the US and was narrated by the children of a family who lived there. My sister ridiculed it: "My social studies books are history books, not storybooks like that one!" I'll bet I remember more about the contents of my "storybook" than she does of her dry old histories of which she was so proud. I do just fine learning my history from stories: nearly all of what I know of World War II is from having read The Winds of War.

John Chancellor Makes Me Cry

In addition to avoiding celebrity bios, I'm really not much into non-fiction in general: so much of what I have sampled has been dry and completely without artistic imagery. But I have enjoyed every Anne Rivers Siddons book I've ever read . . . which is to say, all of them except her newest, Burnt Mountain, so I tried her very first published book (of essays), John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. And loved it. I laughed out loud and found phrases and descriptions worthy of underlining on nearly every page. I liked that in a couple of the essays, ARS revealed some pretty disagreeable aspects of her own personality; it isn't everybody who'd do that.


I seem to be in Book Review mode lately, so this is my recommendation for today:

I believe it's out of print, so a used book store or eBay, or, of course, the library, is the way to get it.

"Me" by Katharine Hepburn

Floridagirl said she was disappointed with it.
I was too. I kept reading and reading and waiting for some revelation of . . . something. The most touching part was, I think, the last chapter wherein KH wrote about Spencer Tracy dying. It was touching, but not exactly revelatory.
I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read it while it was new, while KH was still alive, while I still revered her. There is no question that the writing is her voice, her cadence, her style.
The fault is mine for waiting so long to read it.


I don't read many celebrity autobiographies. They always seem to wilt into a listing of what famous people were where when. In my squirrel-like gathering of used books I picked up Beverly and now I'm afraid to read it.

Sleep, dream, cat, book, and a good deed

It is October: the Dark Time is closing in. I have begun to indulge my seasonal urge to go to bed very early, knowing that I'll have that first sleep/second sleep break at about this hour. Last night I was in bed by 7:30, ostensibly to read a recently-bought book that I've wanted to read since its 1992 publication.  (When the flood rendered the local library unworkable, I began again to scurry about snatching up used books at ridiculously low prices. I gather the library has reopened now, and I need to return the four books that I've been holding onto since their late August due date. Not only is it a matter of conscience, but the librarian is no longer so taken up with refurbing the building, the shelves, the plumbing and heating systems and the computers, that she cannot take a moment to email an overdue notice. I hadn't wanted to take them back and add to her burden, you see, so I just kept them here . . . but she's onto me. The fines should amount to a generous donation to the rebuilding fund.) Anyway, the book I'm reading is Katharine Hepburn's "Me." I love the Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movies and general mystique, but it's taking Kate a long time to get to Spencer. I think we're almost there now. I read a few pages, in which she repeats many times how well she and Mr. (Louis B./Metro-Goldwyn-) Mayer like each other, and when I got to where she's just made her first movie with Spencer, "Woman of the Year," I was satisfied that we'd be getting to the good stuff soon, and turned out the light.


At midnight *ping!* eyes wide open. The pleasant fuzzy, warm, sinking-back-to-sleep feeling receded like the tide going out. Fifteen minutes later I thought about having a lovely toasted  bagel, so I turned on the light and sat up on the edge of the bed. The dark makes perfect mirrors of the unshaded bedroom windows. I looked at my reflection in the black window and thought, "Oh good God, I look like that toy!" 

I spent an uncomfortably long minute at my image, finally thought, "Well, if I'm that far gone, one more middle-of-the-night bagel won't make much difference," got up and bumbled down the stairs. 


What woke me up was a dream. Naturally. It was something about updating a framed photograph at work. All the previous photographs were still in the frame so that it made a sort of historical archive, and the new one, a picture of a young woman, was to go in front of all of the old ones. I had the job all done, was ready to hang it back on the lobby wall, when somebody came in and asked what I was doing. I took it all apart to illustrate the history contained within the photo frame, and dropped the entire collection of pictures on the floor . . . and could not find the newest photo that was supposed to be displayed. I continued to look, with no success, so I woke up instead. If my dreams take me to another dimension, people there with whom I interact must be continually surprised at my disappearance when stressed. "She was here a minute ago . . . where'd she go?!?!"


When I got home last night, there was a black cat crouched in the sunny, wind-blown tall grass along the driveway. I stopped the car and we looked at each other. I opened the window on his side of the car and said softly, "Kittykittykitty?" He looked at me. Thinking to myself, "What are you doing???" I got out of the car with a plan to approach him, knowing that if I touched him I'd have crossed a line which should not be crossed. Fortunately for me, for MiMau and the rest of the household, as soon as he saw that I was coming to him, he turned and ran away as fast as ever I have seen a cat run. He's a pretty cat with emerald eyes. A little ratty, as you might expect. He's living a wild life, not the Best of All Possible Worlds life that fluffy soft MiMau leads. Apparently he prefers it to human companionship and care. Husband said, when I told him the story, that he'd seen the same cat as he came home. The cat was three quarters of a mile away. Big territory: good for him!
10/22/2011 ~ Early this afternoon I saw the little cat again, even farther from here. Between the two sightings is a nice barn full of warm cows, so I think I will not worry about the little cat during the cold winter. 


I can afford this little mid-sleep break tonight because I need not rise early for work. I'm taking a vacation day to ferry a friend to and from her colonoscopy. A Good Deed . . . and a day off from work to begin the weekend.

True [and other] crime

A news story:

A 13-year-old local boy admitted in Family Court on Tuesday that he accidentally shot his friend to death last winter. The boy also said, when questioned by the county judge, that he understood why a loaded handgun is dangerous. The prosecutor said that he, the boy and his attorney, and the boy's parents had reached a plea bargain and the boy would be sentenced to nothing more restrictive than probation. The victim was visiting his friend’s home at the time of the shooting. The boys were alone in the house and found a handgun and ammunition owned by the defendant’s father. They started playing with the gun, loading it and unloading it several times, until it went off, police said. The dead boy's mother said not only is her son dead as a result of the incident, but her father as well. In January he visited his grandson's grave and, disoriented by grief, wandered into a highway and was hit and killed. The father of the defendant faces a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

I read stories like this and usually stop and think for a few minutes about the sadness of it all. Maybe I mutter to myself a little bit about the parents' lack of foresight and how so many lives are ruined now. But I don't think about how the ripples from the act of a single moment spread to change circumstances so far beyond the original event. 

Think about the defendant's parents as they move through the local store on a regular grocery shopping trip. 

The boy will get probation, so he's lucky. But he'll be in school. He'll be the kid who killed his friend. For the rest of his life, no matter if he moves away, no matter if people around him know it or not.

Think about the truck driver who killed the grandfather. Is that guy having nightmares? Did the accident impact his employment? ...his marriage?

I recently read two novels, in the space of two or three days, that gripped and froze me in the experience of being close to tragic crimes. I recommend both of these, but include this caveat: have a happy book in reserve to follow!

Aftermath

Cage of Stars

A Day of Miracles

Saturday was a day of miracles for me.

I set off on my Saturday rounds.
Got to the supermarket, couldn't find my list. I called myself rude names and decided I'd have to make the best of it. I tried to remember everything as I went through the store.

Got to the library, picked up the two books I had with me to return, and there on the car seat was the grocery list. I had bought everything on it . . . except lemon juice. I think I have a couple of spare lemons to use for juice before they dry into golf balls . . . enough for my purposes. 

Got inside the library and couldn't remember the name of the author who'd been recommended to me. I stared at the Bs for a while, sure that the last name began with B. Nothing tripped a memory so I wandered elsewhere. Some title reminded me . . .  Coben! and I have in my possession, for two weeks, the recommended novel: Harlan Coben's "Gone for Good."
As I checked out my books, I told Cathy, the librarian, about my Day of Miracles. 
She sat back and folded her hands. "Oh good! Tell me!"
I detailed my triumphs. "And the day isn't over yet!" I cried.
"You're breathing." she said.


Good enough. 
If trouble comes in threes, then three miracles are enough for one day.

Better days are coming. I have seen proof!

I wasn't ready to be out and about this morning when it was time to leave for a hair appointment. I needed more coffee. But strong and hardy as I am I forged ahead with the chores: having my head washed and cut and dried; returning library books (and despite my best intentions, bringing home yet more! when I have a dozen unread on my shelves); grocery shopping.

On the next-to-last lap homeward I saw proof that spring intends to come this year: three hen turkeys crossed the road and clambered up the brushy, snowy bank. I stopped the car to watch them. It's been a long time since I saw anything other than crows and hawks alive and moving outdoors, and I just needed to look.  The poor girl in the lead was traveling (or not) about as well as I do in deep snow. With every step her feet sank down to her knees and she made poor progress. She appeared to rethink the route and turned toward the road again, but her sisters were in her way. They were in consultation when I went on; I didn't need to be part of their problem.

I guess I lied when I said it's been a long time...

Yesterday morning on the way down the hill, a deer, much smaller than it should be at this time of year, hurried a quarter mile ahead of me. Instead of heading off into the woods on either side, it loped straight down the road: odd. I got a little closer and saw it wasn't a deer; it was a young coyote, small as one of its western cousins, its coat not fully fluffy and brushy. 

photo from Wolf in Coyote's Clothing

The little guy stayed right on the road to the bottom of the hill and then made a left to travel east on the paved two-lane state route. It's coyote breeding season. I'm thinking he had moved a little far afield from home in search of Love, and was taking the most direct route back . . . or to the next willing female. 

Sure, it's sleeting right now . . . but it's all the way up to thirty-one degrees! ...and if the animals know spring will come, I will trust them.

Crow sounds and hawk sightings

In a book I read recently, The Truth of the Matter, crows were described as always sad-sounding. That stopped me cold, and it might be an example of why I didn't enjoy the book much. The author and I didn't see eye to eye on that. I don't think crows ever sound sad. They sound, to me, mostly like cavorting children: loud, jeering, rambunctious. 


Every morning last week I was tantalized by the pale flash of the underside of a hawk's wings as I drove down the hill road.  Somebody has parked a deer rib cage upright on a fence post there, for whatever reason, and I surmise that the hawk is shrewdly loitering and waiting for easy meals of whatever might dine upon the carcass.  My first thought was "Red-Tail!" because they are so common. One morning, however, he settled in a tree near enough the road that I could stop and watch him for as many minutes as I could spare in my early commute, and he looked so big ("...about nineteen inches tall, weighs two and a half pounds, and has a wingspread of around four feet."), his beak so ferocious, that I thought it must be a bigger member of that family. I'm so used to seeing Red-Tailed Hawks way up in the sky that I have, apparently, forgotten how they are constructed and that they are, most definitely, predators.  Yesterday he did me the favor of tipping his rusty red tail feathers at me. It's a dead giveaway. 

photo from Hawk Migration Notes

There in the tree thirty feet from me he looked gigantic and ominous as a bald eagle!
My respect for the familiar bird is renewed. 

A book, a bus, and an aqua robe

I began reading a new book last night. 
New to me. You knew that. It's called That Old Cape Magic, and I think I'm going to like it.
It's always in the first few pages that I taste the flavor of the words and catch the mood. After that, I'm all too tied up (one hopes) in the story to remark upon each turn of phrase. 
So. 
In this story, something "hove into view." I hardly ever read anybody writing about things heaving, into view or otherwise, and "hove" is a word that caught my eye. I had to stop and think of what it was the past tense; that's how long it's been. 
So that's all about that. 

When I was twelve I rode the school bus every day from the village to the town, to the central school. The last leg of the journey took us through a residential development. At the time the houses were new-ish, certainly newer in style than any house I'd ever lived in. One house in particular, a corner house, with odd exterior angles and irregularly-shaped and -placed windows, interested me. 

And one day, as the bus passed that house, I saw . . . a woman, sitting at the kitchen table, her arms raised to hold a widely-spread newspaper. It was a sunny morning, and the warm September light flowed through the big window onto her table, onto her arms and the paper. The windowsill was low, nearly floor-level, and I saw that she relaxed in her chair, her legs crossed. Here's the detail that has become iconic to me: she wore a long, silky, aqua-colored robe and matching slippers. I made up a whole life for that woman, based on having seen her relaxing at her new house kitchen table at 7:40am on a weekday, having a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper, and wearing a long aqua robe. 
She would be mother to someone my age, wife to a handsome, kind, and financially successful man. She would be in complete comfortable control of her home and her schedule . . . which would not be overly demanding . . . lots of hair appointments. After she finished the newspaper she would swipe a sponge along her spotless kitchen counter, float off to take a bath and dress in tidy tailored casual slacks and sweater, and telephone her friends to laugh lightheartedly over the small news of their days and talk about what they would serve for dinner. She would have a coterie of other similarly wealthy and well-housed and -heeled friends and they would share stories of their family's successes. It was obvious to me that anybody who wore a silky long aqua nightgown in a big window in her kitchen in the broad morning light must be hugely confident and secure in every way, living a perfectly comfortable life. Nothing bad had ever, or would ever, happen to her.
Of course I  never knew the woman, and I can't even remember, now, the name of the road. I could find it again, and I could look at that house again, if I wanted to. I bet it would seem dated and shabby to me now. And now I know that nobody lives a life such as I imagined for her.
But I still want a long, silky, aqua-colored robe and matching slippers.

The Year Grows Old

I have entered my October personality phase.
There are lots of people who just love October, and I have, some years, too. This October I'm drifting into my alternate personality again. That old hibernation urge is becoming strong again. My synapses have slowed, my thoughts have turned inward, my confusion grows: How to survive until Light and Warmth return? The only reassurance I have that it will happen is that I have done it so many times.


MiMau and I have this in common: We associate eating and affection. 
In her case, she requires petting to eat. Inversely, the less petting I receive, the more I eat. 


The last three books I have read:
A Dog's Purpose
I read about it at The 7 MSN Ranch, got my hands on it as quickly as I could. It's a great dog story, with more dog's-point-of-view understanding and less sappy sentimentality than other books it brings to mind (The Art of Racing in the Rain, Marley & Me).
The Silent Miaow
Forty-five years ago my closest friend recommended it to me. A few weeks ago somebody was packing up her mother-in-law's belongings and asked me if I wanted some of the books. The Silent Miaow was in there and I grabbed it. (Note to L:  Thanks for the recommendation. If you have any other books you think I should read you'd better tell me now: I doubt I have another forty-five years to follow through.)
Messages
Lent to me by a friend who watches her DVD of Under the Tuscan Sun over and over again, and who rushed to buy Eat, Pray, Love. 
I got it in the first fifty pages. The rest of the book made me sad: How come I'm not finding dimes and pennies and how come my lights aren't flickering when I think of dead loved ones? Am/Was I less loved than the people whose stories fill the book?


As an antidote to Messages, yesterday I was able to retrieve my requested Packing for Mars from the library. Lots of information, lots of wit. The chapter on space-sickness, which I read last night, seemed a little more extensive and in-depth than previous chapters. Or maybe it just seemed that way because the author writes so descriptively . . . I began to feel a little green and had to take a break.


Things I used to do before I acquired two poodles:

• Knit
• Read more than two pages at a time
• Bake goodies
• Be able to follow recipes
• Had a maximum attention span > that of a gnat
• Walk in a straight line, farther than five feet, without stopping. I seem to recall being able to put away clean laundry without doing the hesitation step (to allow the pack to dis- and re-assemble) the whole way.
• Polish more than three fingernails without stopping 

Next Saturday I'll be sitting for another civil service exam. Same title as my current title, new candidate list needed. I'll be there with my No. 2 pencils and my silent handheld calculator and my picture ID. I expect the county needs the list to fill school secretary positions. Hm. Pine-oil-cleaner-and-chalk smell of school, piping child sounds, the constant need for carefully considered language... Not a perfect fit for me, but if it got me away from the political shenanigans in Small Pond, and through three more years to retirement age, I might could do it.


Oh. 
My. 
Husband was just outdoors and says there is ice where there was water yesterday. I believe this is the first frost. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay - When The Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember When the year grows old— October—November— How she disliked the cold! She used to watch the swallows Go down across the sky, And turn from the window With a little sharp sigh. And often when the brown leaves Were brittle on the ground, And the wind in the chimney Made a melancholy sound, She had a look about her That I wish I could forget— The look of a scared thing Sitting in a net! Oh, beautiful at nightfall The soft spitting snow! And beautiful the bare boughs Rubbing to and fro! But the roaring of the fire, And the warmth of fur, And the boiling of the kettle Were beautiful to her! I cannot but remember When the year grows old — October — November — How she disliked the cold!

Unrelated thoughts and stories

I shouldn't have made that promise in the last post. Ever since, I've been feeling unpleasantly pressured to present something worthy of the buildup. 

I have grown worn out with typing thoughts not my own, what with the tape recordings to catch up on.  There were two meetings at work during the two weeks I was out of the office. I prepared for my absence by buying (from my own pocket, mind you, a recent local political debacle involving tape recordings making it inadvisable to submit a purchase order for such a thing) a Dictaphone. The nights that I was at home while the meetings were being held, I sighed with contentment: "There's a board meeting going on right now. And I am not there taking notes."  Yes, but then I had to live through those meetings in real time to get the meeting minutes finished. 

The notes and inspirations mentioned in that most recent post were random impressions that floated into my mind as I sat on the porch admiring a sunny afternoon. They appeared as twinkling sparks worthy of enlargement. Upon these several days' reflection I see that they, perhaps, are neither twinkling and sparky nor worthy of enlargement. But now I need to get something out there, so I can get beyond this and back into the routine of noticing what's going on in my own head.




MiMau and the Lazarus chipmunk
One late outdoors afternoon, MiMau came toward me from the tall grass. Her mouth looked funny. I squinted. She was carrying a chipmunk the size of her head. Having regained her good health she is now working at obtaining another parasite with which to endanger it. But that's what cats do: so be it.  She sat in the driveway facing me, put the chipmunk down. I warmly thanked her for her good hunting skills. I thought the 'munk was dead until she patted at it with one paw, then the other. One hind leg made a feeble up-and-down motion. Ah: not dead yet then. Husband emerged from the barn and MiMau proudly stalked toward him, accepted her praise and lay down fifteen feet from her prize to bask in sunshine and her family's admiration. I went back to my book. A few minutes later, a sudden turn of MiMau's head caught the corner of my eye. Astonishment in every hair of her face, she saw the dead chipmunk roll over, get up, and run for the stone wall. She pursued, but the 'munk reached the rocks first. MiMau sat for half an hour on top of the stone wall, hyperattentively listening, but the 'munk had gone deep.  I feel as if everybody won that one.



I recently read Jean Harris' Five Quarters of the Orange.  
It's set on the Loire in the late 1930s and there are frequent mentions of eels. It reminded me of my father-in-law's story about watching a farm wife he had known beheading eels: "Hold still! I'm only gonna kill ya!" He would laugh as he told the story, laugh so hard he could barely speak.


I have heard that beheaded eels writhe and flop and bang inside freezers for hours and hours when any other creature would have accepted its demise. 
All of it horrifies me. 


The story reminded me of many things, not many of them pleasant. I thought it was a darkish, but intensely absorbing, book. 


I am, at last, past the stage of having to wear the chest girdle, for which I thank the stars above, my Higher Power, all things great and small, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all saints 'round.  A fact of which many of you will be blissfully unaware: Wearing a girdle on one's chest is even less comfortable than wearing a girdle on one's abdomen. 
Nothing, however is bad or good, but thinking makes it so.  The fine thing about the chest girdle was that, using my mirror that showed me only my upper body, I appeared thin as an eight-year-old. 
I always thought that a woman never looked fat unless her stomach stuck out past her chest. I'm in trouble there now. But if I never again look in a full-length mirror, I'll be a happy woman.


Language: Some people can't say "sausage." 
This is one of those memories from my waitress days. 
Canadians always asked for pizza "all dress," ate heartily (and tipped penuriously). I always loved it when Canadians asked for olives noir, because I was the only waitress who knew what that was.  Some Canadians asked for sah'-oo-saj'.
"Sausage" was problematic for several ethnic groups; more often than not some people-from-down-in-the-heart-of-the-city asked for shaw'sheej. So much work of jaws and lips for two seemingly simple syllables.
I understand that Asian-speaking people have no "l" (or is it "r" sound?) and therefore cannot hear the difference. That's why there are jokes about the interchanging of those sounds when they learn English, for which they have my utmost admiration, as a second language. 
It has to do with synapses. 


I have mentioned previously that I like sparkly things, things that dazzle me with color. If I can get both characteristics in one item, I am (see above) A Happy Woman. Imagine my delight, then, at having won this shiny colorful item on eBay:

Look. I know it's crap, but it didn't cost four dollars. And it's pretty. Goes with everything. Reminds me of sunrises and sunsets and the iridescent insides of shells, and just thinking about it lifts my spirits. I figure this giving in to low-class highly-colored jewelry is one of the rights I have gained by having reached . . . let's call it Late Middle Age. It's my right and I'm going to enjoy it. And enjoy it I do. 

Here's a question, a poll, if you like: 

Dare I wear that bracelet with this blouse? 

I vote yes!

The public library

I revel in my membership in the public library system.  

I have a vivid memory of one perfect Library Day when I was seven years old. One of our regular family Saturday stops was the local library. It was a rainy gray day in the spring or the fall, cool enough to need a jacket but not too cool for comfort.  I had gathered all the books I was allowed to check out, and hurried back to the car. As soon as I settled in the seat, I dove in and went away. That day it was a book about dinosaurs.  I was mesmerized by the idea of dinosaurs (a common fascination for children, I think).  I probably made my parents crazy with questions: How long is eighty feet? How wide is forty feet? And then I'd look around at whatever they used to show me those measurements and marvel at the idea of an animal that huge.  In those days, previous readers' names and due dates were hand-written (by Miss Feeney, the prototypical 1950s librarian) on the cards in the sleeves inside the back covers. Those cards were interesting too. Who else, I wondered, touched these pages and read these words, and what did they think? Did they marvel too?

For a few years I had stopped visiting the library and I can't remember why. The need for immersion in book air was satisfied by plundering used bookstores (piles of books for $10!) but I began to accumulate far too many books and ended up donating two lawn-and-leaf bags of books to the Literacy Volunteers for their book sale so I could regain some shelf space at home.

Every time I walk into the old place that is my current local library, I stop for a minute and look around with quiet glee. All the hours and hours of pleasure, in one building, for free! My local library is the perfect library building (although any building is good if it has books in it). I prefer old house conversions over modern perfectly-styled-for-library-use buildings. 

The house was built in 1866 by Jacob Miers, who ran a Dry Goods store on Main Street...  It has two fireplaces made of Italian marble inlaid with gold.  The front newel post is not original to the building; it came from an unknown structure on the grounds of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.  The property was inherited by Jacob's only child, Hattie Miers and passed through several more owners before being acquired by the Library.

I have always loved creaky-floored libraries all redolent of book-scent; I like some history and character around me as I pore over the titles, all wrapped in their crackly mylar coverings.  I love that I need the battered old stepstool to reach the uppermost shelves near the ten-foot ceiling.  I love that there's an old round oak claw-foot table with mismatched chairs where I can sit to review my choices, and a needlepoint-seated rocker near the fireplace. Oh, comfort! Oh, atmosphere!

I was there just yesterday. I stopped on my way home from work to retrieve a couple of books that I'd ordered online from other locations in the library system. The best library trips are the ones that send me home with an armload, and yesterday was one of those; more of my online orders had arrived since the email notification had reached me. A wonderful thing, this online browsing of every book in the whole regional system. Click a check-box and know that a book is on its way to me from thirty miles away. For free. Other modern improvements . . .  the free internet access and the DVDs for lending are good, but for me, it's all about the books.

As I checked out, I said to the clerk, "Oh boy. And it's Friday!"

No Miss Feeney, this pierced young lady, but a bibliophile all the same, she responded with that particular pleasure, "Yeah! The whole weekend for books!"

Mrs. Demming and the Mythical Beast

Twenty-five years ago I read a library copy of Mrs. Demming and the Mythical Beast and I have remembered phrases of it through all this time. I have dogeared so many pages for the wonderful descriptive phrasing:

"...in the alleyway where there was always a gathering of sparrows, the cheerful lower class of bird society."

"...an imposing three-story Victorian, heavily adorned with gingerbread, stained glass, and treillage, and towering over the village like a dowager empress over a tea table. High on the slope it sat, looking out over streets and river. From the cupola, Daisy said you could see 1893 and the retreating figure of Grover Cleveland."

"Turning, I walked away as if I were being played by Bette Davis."

Wonderful "paint-by-word pictures" as my friend Lord Wellbourne would say.


A few weeks ago I spied it in my favorite used bookstore, and scuttled home with it, placing it on my-books-to-read section of the bookshelves.  I let it stay there, beaming at me with a warm and friendly anticipatory glow, and I finally cracked it a few days ago.  I'm enjoying it more than I did the first time. 

For one thing, the protagonist is fifty years old and at this age I can understand her a little more easily and in greater depth than I could at thirty-something. The main appeal, though, is the writing.

I am down to the last few pages; I will finish the book tonight. 

And I don't want it to end.

Folk tale? Fairytale? Little Red Hen? What?!?!

I'm trying to find an old children's story about some industrious creature (I keep thinking Little Red Hen, but I can't find a LRH story like it) making a goody cake. 
It was a written story, not one that somebody made up and told me.  All the characters were animals who wanted to put in only "goody" things, and the protagonist told them that you can't make a cake with just goodies in it....there have to be eggs and flour too. The denouement was that they all ate the cake and realized to their surprise that it was delicious and were much educated.


Google never heard of it; various fairy- and folktale listings don't show me anything like it.


Did I dream this story?
If so, I'd better write it down and peddle it!