$1.25 Investment

A woman says to a security officer, "Have you seen a balding man with a red purse and a dark-haired girl?" The officer responded, "Actually, I have".

Family day to the fundraising library sale gave my mother this anecdote. We each scored several book finds for the bargain price of 25 cents each.

My additions:

1965 reprint of More's Utopia (Saint Thomas More)

1962 copy of Lanterns and Lances (James Thurber)

1938 edition of How to Organize and Conduct a Meeting (W.H. Henry & Dr. L Seeley)

1960 printing of The Compassionate Tiger (Hunton Downs)

and finally, the pièce de résistance

Cooking for One is Fun (Henry Lewis Creel) from 1979.

Happy weekend reading.

My Baby Wrote Me a Letter

There are two types of packages on the doorstep which make my list of awesomeness: shoes and books.

I was a lucky girl this week and have received one box of each. When I ordered My Faraway One, I neglected to check the weight so I underestimated the amount of arm strength necessary to pick up the brown box while carrying work bag, yoga mat, purse, new Pumas (see above), coffee mug and water bottle. At 4.4 pounds, it will test your balance.

Last night I started reading the work in no particular order. With only a few editorial updates (as apparently O'Keefe was a terrible speller), the letters I read examined the mundane, their respective arts, the locales, and that emerging affection which made this collection possible.

Have Passport. Will Travel.

A reader can move through Yoga for People Who Can't be Bothered to Do It very quickly. We do things as travelers which seem very logical at the time [negotiate the cheapest boat and captain in Bangkok] only to realize during the journey that perhaps the strategy adopted was not the best one [cheapest boat = cheapest overhead which may mean a hole or two in the vessel]. My travels essays would certainly include said Bangkok boat, an Alaskan sea captain on a Gilligan's Island Tour, and a complete chapter devoted to the Shanghai taxi. While I cannot connect with each of Dyer's anecdotes, there is certainly enough empathy to have an enjoyable read. I would not recommend moving straight through the novel in typical fashion but take a chapter or two with a pause. This also gives you the opportunity to have sufficient coffee to invoke a portion of Dyer's Parisian experience.

Won't You Write Me a Letter, Won't You Give Me a Call?

"All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us."

- Alfred Stieglitz

As several of you know, I am a romantic. I am also a fan of posted mail and enjoy writing the occasional letter. As a teen, I sent bi-weekly notes to the "love" of my life and waited each day to see if I would receive a brown envelope in return. As an adult, I have had only one other experience where note writing was abundant and felt urgent and necessary.

In 31 years, Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stiegliz exchanged letters over 5,000 times. A total of 25,000 pages existed and a portion of these has just been released in My Faraway One, Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stiegliz: Volume 1, 1913-1933. The above quotation was taken from one of those letters in 1918. Sarah Greenough is due credit as editor for this edition (which I will be ordering in just a few short moments in hard cover as Kindle just does not seem appropriate).

While waiting for delivery, perhaps I will make time to write a few letters and listen to the artist from whom I've taken the title, John Prine.