A couple of things:
Doesn't this look like fun?:
I am adding this bike tour to my bucket list. Well, I am starting a bucket list today and putting this on it, near the top.
In other news, I have commenced tweeting. Je tweet donc je suis. Doesn't it seem like that's how it is these days? I resisted that whole thing for a long time but having stepped over the threshhold I find Twitter an interesting place.
My other new favorite thing, about which I have tweeted you'll be pleased to know, is the Ronna and Beverly podcast. I guess this won't be for everyone - but I think it's gorgeous and I'm addicted. Because there are one or two nice people who come by here, people who in their guilelessness don't expect to be fooled by the internet, I'll forwarn you that Ronna and Beverly are actually actresses. They are so good I thought they were as represented and then felt very silly. I hope you will love them too.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Stand and Deliver
Wah Wah, Your Money or Your Life!
= Adam and the Ants, 1981
I think about this all the time - standing and delivering, that is. It occurs to me every time life throws some challenge up at me - so, more or less daily. Never without hearing Adam Ant. I'm that age.
This particular imperative didn't begin with him, or end with the movie of the same name about the calculus teacher in the bad Los Angeles neighborhood. It was originally associated with highwaymen - back when crime had a little elan: flint lock pistols, silk kerchiefs - dukes shaken down for guineas and gold watches that sort of thing - no vaulting the counter between the scratch-offs and the dog treats and making a grab for the cash drawer - but I digress. (Adam Ant did look particularly fetching in his highwayman outift, q.v.)
When Shackleton was in kindergarten his class put on "The GingerBread Man". One little girl came to the front to say her line and crumpled. I know how she felt. We all do, but withering at your kindergarten debut bodes ill. The standing and delivering has only just begun. Poor thing.
I have been thinking of this lately - how our lives are defined (largely) by our accumulated responses to these stand and deliver events. I wonder what my personal statistics are. 50-50? Probably not so good. I got through childbirth twice so that's something - if ever there was a stand and deliver - well, lay down and get an epidural - event, that's it. But I have quailed too often. You know that line from Crosby, Stills and Nash "We never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do"? It always goes right through me. But of course, CSN didn't always fail. ("Our House" anyone?). (I suppose David Crosby has some special experience that informs that line...) There's an important follow up here - summed up in from a line in another line, what song? "Take it easy on yourself."
Chapter two to this little Sunday meditation will have to wait. I think it's to do with grace.
= Adam and the Ants, 1981
I think about this all the time - standing and delivering, that is. It occurs to me every time life throws some challenge up at me - so, more or less daily. Never without hearing Adam Ant. I'm that age.
This particular imperative didn't begin with him, or end with the movie of the same name about the calculus teacher in the bad Los Angeles neighborhood. It was originally associated with highwaymen - back when crime had a little elan: flint lock pistols, silk kerchiefs - dukes shaken down for guineas and gold watches that sort of thing - no vaulting the counter between the scratch-offs and the dog treats and making a grab for the cash drawer - but I digress. (Adam Ant did look particularly fetching in his highwayman outift, q.v.)
When Shackleton was in kindergarten his class put on "The GingerBread Man". One little girl came to the front to say her line and crumpled. I know how she felt. We all do, but withering at your kindergarten debut bodes ill. The standing and delivering has only just begun. Poor thing.
I have been thinking of this lately - how our lives are defined (largely) by our accumulated responses to these stand and deliver events. I wonder what my personal statistics are. 50-50? Probably not so good. I got through childbirth twice so that's something - if ever there was a stand and deliver - well, lay down and get an epidural - event, that's it. But I have quailed too often. You know that line from Crosby, Stills and Nash "We never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do"? It always goes right through me. But of course, CSN didn't always fail. ("Our House" anyone?). (I suppose David Crosby has some special experience that informs that line...) There's an important follow up here - summed up in from a line in another line, what song? "Take it easy on yourself."
Chapter two to this little Sunday meditation will have to wait. I think it's to do with grace.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Hi! And Can I Share a Paragraph?
If anybody's still out there, and I am not sure why you would be, here I am again to say hello and to share a paragraph. Not one of mine, you may be grateful to hear. I picked up Edith Wharton's famous book, The Age of Innocence at a library sale a year or so ago and just got around to it the other day. I read this passage last night before bed and it got me wondering where in our house we might have room for a little shrine to Edith Wharton.
It is a description of the elderly doyenne of 1870's New York society: Mrs. Manson Mingott:
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.
I wish I could do that.
It is a description of the elderly doyenne of 1870's New York society: Mrs. Manson Mingott:
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.
I wish I could do that.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Shack, Again
Shackleton asked me to get him some cereal the other day (I think at nearly 11 he's getting a little old to be treating me as the waitress around here - note to self). Anyway, as per my instinct to serve him food on demand, I asked where the cereal might be found.
Shack: "It's in the Lazy Betty."
Me: "You mean, "'Lazy Susan.'"
Shack: "Susan, Betty, whatever. They're all lazy."
Saturday, February 04, 2012
February Is Better Than January
At least today. We had some fresh snow - just a dusting to cover the ice and the icy snow, and then some sun. Winter's perfect combination. The sun is different now, gathering a little strength. I dragged Shackleton out to the hill behind the farm house for a little flexible flying. Here's the most epic run yet - all the way from the back of the barn to the bottom of the field where the stream runs!
In other (utterly unrelated) news, I rented "The Haunting" from Netflix a week or two ago and sat down to watch it last night. I remembered seeing it as a teenager, and it made an impression. As I was racking my brain at my Netflix queue one day it popped back into my mind. No wonder I remembered it. It was directed by Robert Wise from a story by Shirley Jackson (none of this would have registered on me at 16). As the opening credits rolled I caught one that noted "Claire Bloom's Wardrobe by Mary Quant."
What a promising start, I thought. It is a fun movie - despite the frantic performance by Julie Harris, but she had a hard part to play - all coming apart at the seams and frustrated spinster and all.
Claire looked really cool in a black turtle neck, gold necklace, pegged pants and heels:
The creepy statue was a weak point. It looked like papier mache. The scary house was otherwise pretty effective - at least as photographed by Wise.
You can see why I tagged this post as "nothing really." Thanks for stopping by, though.
In other (utterly unrelated) news, I rented "The Haunting" from Netflix a week or two ago and sat down to watch it last night. I remembered seeing it as a teenager, and it made an impression. As I was racking my brain at my Netflix queue one day it popped back into my mind. No wonder I remembered it. It was directed by Robert Wise from a story by Shirley Jackson (none of this would have registered on me at 16). As the opening credits rolled I caught one that noted "Claire Bloom's Wardrobe by Mary Quant."
What a promising start, I thought. It is a fun movie - despite the frantic performance by Julie Harris, but she had a hard part to play - all coming apart at the seams and frustrated spinster and all.
Claire looked really cool in a black turtle neck, gold necklace, pegged pants and heels:
The creepy statue was a weak point. It looked like papier mache. The scary house was otherwise pretty effective - at least as photographed by Wise.
You can see why I tagged this post as "nothing really." Thanks for stopping by, though.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Not Dead Yet...
In case you were wondering. Still upright and breathing if not blogging or reading blogs much. There's that pesky big project still dogging me! I wanted to stop in today just to wiggle my toes at anybody who dared (or chanced) in here to lift the sheet. It's not pretty but no putrefaction yet...
For the kind souls who held up their hands as potential book critics, I am revising away. Since it will cost about $50 for each copy of the manuscript I'm only going to print a few and maybe try to circulate them to more than one reader.
January is doing its thing around here. Today's banner is not, alas, a recent picture. We have had a few blue sky days but nothing as good as this lately. Lots of freezing rain and up and down temperatures that have turned all the snow that got compacted in driveways and parking lots into smooth ice... More treacherous as one ages.
Here's one little Shackletonism that I have been meaning to record. (A reward, I hope, for those who got this far). We were driving to the town dump when Adele's new release, "Set Fire to the Rain" came on the radio. You know I'm a fan, so I turned it up. Shack shouted from the back.
"You couldn't set fire to the rain unless it had some gas or something in it! And do you know how many people you would kill if you did set fire to the rain? Including yourself? Do you know how much property damage you would cause?"
(Well, it was funny at the time).
A few days earlier the song from the new Twilight movie came on - the chorus is "I Will Love You for A Thousand Years" (That might be the title too. Whatever). Anyway, Shack shouted out after a time or two through the chorus.
"A thousand years and that's it. Then we are through. It's a thousand years and not one minute more!"
For the kind souls who held up their hands as potential book critics, I am revising away. Since it will cost about $50 for each copy of the manuscript I'm only going to print a few and maybe try to circulate them to more than one reader.
January is doing its thing around here. Today's banner is not, alas, a recent picture. We have had a few blue sky days but nothing as good as this lately. Lots of freezing rain and up and down temperatures that have turned all the snow that got compacted in driveways and parking lots into smooth ice... More treacherous as one ages.
Here's one little Shackletonism that I have been meaning to record. (A reward, I hope, for those who got this far). We were driving to the town dump when Adele's new release, "Set Fire to the Rain" came on the radio. You know I'm a fan, so I turned it up. Shack shouted from the back.
"You couldn't set fire to the rain unless it had some gas or something in it! And do you know how many people you would kill if you did set fire to the rain? Including yourself? Do you know how much property damage you would cause?"
(Well, it was funny at the time).
A few days earlier the song from the new Twilight movie came on - the chorus is "I Will Love You for A Thousand Years" (That might be the title too. Whatever). Anyway, Shack shouted out after a time or two through the chorus.
"A thousand years and that's it. Then we are through. It's a thousand years and not one minute more!"
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Shackleton Speaks Again
Watching TV en famille. The same ad seems to appear at each break: "America runs on Dunkin'!"
Shack: "Poor Duncan."
Bwah ha ha.
*Warning*
A few of you regular stoppers-in (OK, there are only a few people who fit that category so if you're reading this you're probably in my crosshairs.) I have been scribbling away for a few years (yes, years) on a book - a story book. I have thought from the beginning that my book was what they call "YA" in the book trade (young adult) but I think as I polish it up that it's more like, LHB (literate human beings - probably older than six). Probably this means it is also MP (marketplace poison) but I am trying to make it good in hopes that I won't be the only person ever to read it. I know that could still happen,and, statistically, at least, is likely to happen. But I am pressing forward and that means I may be looking to you brilliant, faithful few in the weeks ahead - after the holidays I promise - to advise me about it. That is, not to beat around the bush, to read some or all of it and tell me what you think. I know this is a delicate thing I won't twist any arms, but I am telling you now so you can think about it. You don't have to say anything now. But consider yourselves warned. In the meantime, a blessing on all your heads.
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