Pin the Tale

"Mapping Emotions in Victorian London" ranks near the top of recent internet finds.  This project is a child of the Stanford Literary Lab and used crowd-sourcing to give emotional context to varied passages citing London places.

Books + data + visualization = you could lose yourself for hours (well, not technically, since there's a map...but I think you get my point).

A Fly By

"It is a lovely language,but it takes a very long time to say anything in it,unless it is worth taking a long time to say,and to listen to." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Towers from a Cab
Toronto, July 2014

Hope your Friday is a great one!

Climb Every Mountain

Humphrey's Peak, AZ
June 2012

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

― John Muir, The Mountains of California

I Didn't Hear a Peep

"For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while." 

- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt

Author's note: I had a fried egg on a Friday.  I think I'll think about it for a little while.

Mirror, Mirror, You're the Wall

Sometimes when you travel, you get upgraded to a corner room.  In that room might be the most enormous wall mirror you've ever seen (which makes you ponder that "upgrade").  But on the mirror, there's a quote.  And you take a picture because you want to remember it.  You won't be able to post the picture because in order to get the quote, it's at a slightly awkward angle (and it's your room).  So for Monday, in its original formatting (ALL CAPS) from the ceiling to the floor:

IF

TRAVEL

IS

LIKE

LOVE,

IT

IS,

IN

THE END,

MOSTLY

BECAUSE

IT'S

A

HEIGHTENED

STATE

OF

AWARENESS,

IN

WHICH

WE

ARE

MINDFUL,

RECEPTIVE,

UNDIMMED

BY

FAMILIARITY

AND

READY

TO

BE

TRANSFORMED.

THAT

IS

WHY

THE

BEST

TRIPS,

LIKE

THE

BEST

LOVE

AFFAIRS,

NEVER

REALLY

END.

-

PICO

IYER

des bérets, s'il vous plaît

With a space-time continuum challenge each month, I look forward to the meeting recap.  GBC Carole (Not the Singer) had a great summary of this month's meet, and with her permission I wanted to include it for you.  [A few names and two sentences have been omitted for the privacy of the attendees.]

What a chummy, cozy evening we had on Tuesday! Book club is always such a warm, welcoming place, but even more so when it’s so chilly outside. Thank you, Nancy and Susan S., for a repast worthy of that ultimate Francophile, Julia C.  We filled our bellies with creamy cheeses and fresh radishes, an elegant salad, crusty bread, to-die-for boeuf bourguignon. The wine was free-flowing (much of it French, thanks to Marcia’s suggestion) and there was plenty of book discussion (leading to many a tangent… a parallel perhaps to Ernest and Hadley’s peripatetic lifestyle?)

Dessert was tempting in triplicate. Why have just one when you could indulge in a fruit tart piled high with a kaleidoscope of colorful berries, a flourless (but decadent nonetheless) chocolate cake and a lemony tart, too!

Bill arrived wearing a beret (but, of course!) and Marcia reported that many of cafes, clubs and hotels mentioned in The Paris Wife were still standing, still operating today.

Love Hemingway or not, he always makes for great discussion. There’s Hemingway the author. Hemingway the not-so-great husband. Hemingway the legend. The Paris Wife did not disappoint, except maybe the cover art. Hadley may not have been the most stylish woman on the left bank but she definitely did not wear shoulder pads in the early twenties. (And the Germantown “Ain’t We Got Fun” Book Club knows its 20’s!)

Oh, and several members did indeed dance with the green fairy at the after-party. The Absinthe After-Party. (See what happens when you put your coat on and skedaddle on home too early?) ’m not sure there were any hallucinations going on, but as a completely sober bystander I saw things even Toulouse-Lautrec couldn’t dream up. Or get out of my head. (OMG, the faces!) Anyway, Hem said it was good.

Those that couldn’t make it… we missed you! Hope to see you in the flesh next month at my house. Now bundle up with a good book, mes amies/copains and stay warm!

I Do Not Think it Means What you Think it Means

The last thing I expected to do on a Saturday night is get into a serious discussion about Sun Tzu's The Art of War.  [Aside:  bookcases can be quite the conversation starter.]  Truth be told, I have not picked up this book (except to move it four times) since 2006.  It was required reading for one of my strategy classes and I had opted to scan just the necessary passage instead of the entire book as I was working full time, studying 20 hours a week, running, yoga-ing, and working my way through a Tammy Wynette spelling song.

It was busy.

Also, judging from the small slips of paper inside, I was more concerned in 2006 with using this book as a good place to tuck away the tire size to a 1988 Pontiac and various scheduling routines.

So there I was, trying to remember something about it while suppressing the Edwin Starr song which was trying to present itself like an accompanying soundtrack in my head.  For the most part I could just listen, but debate, I could not.  It's now a book that's been re-added to the reading list but as a life strategy, I'm sticking with Vizzini's suggestion:  "never get involved in a land war in Asia."

Russian Away

The travel urge is kicking in and I've been a bit nostalgic about some of the places I've been and wondering what should be included on the list for 2014.

Here's a look back to St. Petersburg around 2006 and a nod to traditional black and white film photography.  I can't recall the name of this building in the city centre.

"You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved."

- Ansel Adams (sourced GoodReads)



St. Petersburg, Russia

Following the Stars to a New Year

Little did I know that the next day after finishing Don't Go Where I Can't Follow a loved one would enter the hospital.  By the time I would arrive, the drawing of all the connections on page #74 was my reality (though I was spared 4 of the 9 attachments).  Prior to this time, I could not have described the feeling of helplessness and exhaustion that comes with sitting bedside.  I actually don't know that I could now, but the experience made me appreciate the book even more, and I have given considerable thought the last two weeks of the simple beauty of holding another's hand.

I had downloaded a few books in anticipation of a scheduled trip that had to be canceled.  During my visit, I started The Fault in Our Stars, not remembering the topic, and then about 30 pages in decided 1) it's not a good idea to read a story about life and cancer back to back and 2) if you need a good cry from your hold-it-together-hospital-day at night, read a story about life and cancer back to back.

But it's unfair to say the books can be lumped into three words "life and cancer".  There is an abundance of beauty around us and sometimes it takes a measure of pain to see more of it.  One of my favorite excerpts from The Fault in Our Stars was: "We made the story funny.  You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice."

If you asked me about my holiday, I would probably tell you about the crazy ambulance ride with the driver complaining about bad brakes while we listened to Black Sabbath or the nurse who got a sub for the IV because the last time she left a pool of blood in the patient's lap.  [I told her it was good she knew her strengths.]

Despite these moments of time standing still, life goes on and there's a weird sort of funny amazement in it.  To that end, here's to a year of discovering beauty and gratitude in unexpected places.

African Queen

I have had Katharine Hepburn at the front of my mind this evening.  It began with my late evening task of selecting a suitable reading water for my frozen entree.  (Monday at its finest.)

She has a host of memorable quotes from her Me:  The Stories of My Life.  I'm opting for this one for my Monday:

“Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.”
― Katharine Hepburn

A close second:

“If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.”
- Katharine Hepburn

The Look, the Feel

Cotton Field, Alabama
October 2013

"behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself"

- Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being (p.17)

Genre Alley

I visited the library in high school nearly every day.  Some of the time, it was a through-way to the photography lab where I could develop photos with a could-have-been-a-cousin-to-Bill Nye chemist, but most of the time, it was so I could swap out a book.  I had the stereotypical librarian:  lots of cats (LOTS!) and the sweater over skirt with the rimmed glasses look.  She was kind.  I remember the color of her lipstick and the way that she was very particular about random items in her space.  (I'm sure I'll have these same tendencies as I age though I do hope I select a different shade.)

I found this segment about "Libraries Leading Roles" on NPR to be a lot of fun.  The Keith Richard quote about churches and libraries sums my childhood brilliantly.  [Things I never expected to say.]  Incidentally, I've just added Keith Richard's Life  to my booklist.

I wonder if everyone has a favorite librarian.

I Go Out Walking After Midnight

I've had a small hiatus from writing.  During that time I was reading, traveling, and walking in the woods.  Between trains and planes, I devoured four books over the journey.  (More to come later on those).  For now, the memories I'm holding onto are my walks in the woods.

For hours, I'd follow small trails, hoping I was on the right path and eager to see the small yellow signs which had my destination village.  These signs also had a small snowman on them which I never quite managed to make out.  I didn't see any snowmen.

Since returning, I've had Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and Thoreau's Walden mulling around in my brain.  The item which sticks with me most:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life..."

- Henry David Thoreau

Don't Panic

25 June 2013

Dear Banana Republic,

I am a big fan of your Non-Iron Fitted Long Sleeve Cotton Shirt.  For the 2014 Spring Collection, might I suggest that you consider including a water absorbent option for the career-minded female who after an eleven and a half hour day would head to the pool for her Endurance workout only to discover that she was not quite equipped for her long swim session?  I think this would be a very big seller, particularly in pink.

Sincerely,

A voracious reader who was clever enough to reference Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy to a forum of 107 yogis under a rocket but didn't manage to remember her towel*

*"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"  http://www.towel.org.uk/

Quotable Interview for a Monday

"Avoid those who say: 'I will go no further." - the inscription by Paulo Coelho in a book for Stuart Jeffries.

This interview with the author of several of our GBC books including The Witch of Portabello and The Alchemist (at least I think we read the latter as a group) which appeared yesterday's Guardian is a good read.  Jeffries scans a number of topics with Coelho and selects several nice quotes to highlight.  The above and the capture for the first photo in the article are my favorites.

Be a Part of It

"I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people in the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie."

- Nora Ephron on New York from Esquire

New York Through a Gate
February 2013

It's one of my favorite cities.  Hope your Friday is a great one!

To Be there in Velvet..to Give 'em a Smile

With the news that King Richard III has been found, I pulled my volume of Four Great Historical Plays by Shakespeare for a few words.

This monologue was taken from Act I, Scene II (pg 327) with Richard was still known as "Duke of Gloucester":

...
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marvellous [sic] proper man.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain some score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some cost.
But first I'll turn yon fellow in his grave;
And then return lamenting to my love.
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

Beguiling a Stone

Tuesday, post stay-up-late to watch a sporting event that did not exactly go my way.  I have a gigantic mug of coffee to combat weariness and the melody for "Irish Eyes Are Smiling" stuck in my head.  As a small nod to my alma mater, I wanted a bit of Irish inspiration (and a new song to hum please, but I'll deal with that next).  Frank McCourt was on my mind so we'll use his words from Angela's Ashes as a bit of a mantra:

“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale."

Hope your day is a great one!

Oh Rumi, Don't Take Your Love to Town

This morning's inspiration from Rumi in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edited by Peter Washington.  It's not complete as I rather favor the beginning more than the ending.

If You Don't Have*
        - Rumi

if you don't have
enough madness in you
go and rehabilitate yourself

if you've lost a hundred times
the chess game of this life
be prepared to lose one more

if you're the wounded string
of a harp on this stage
play once more then resonate no more

if you're that exhausted bird
fighting a falcon for too long
make a comeback and be strong

you've carved a wooden horse
riding and calling it real
fooling yourself in life

though only a wooden horse
ride it again my friend
and gallop to the next post

* The last two stanzas are a bit more dire so they've been omitted.

Stormy Night

October is turning out to be the month of quotes and poems.  This morning, the news reminded me what it was like to arrive back to my house two days after the flood, and then two years later, arrive to my apartment the day after the tornado.  The aftermath can be as overwhelming as the event.  Eleanor Roosevelt was on my mind, so for Tuesday inspiration:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
       - Eleanor Roosevelt
       You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
       Source: GoodReads

I'm a fan.  Good luck to you facing big fears and post-storm waters today.