I will be forty-two soon.

I will be forty-two soon, which is one year older than my father was when he died. The photo above was taken when I was not quite one, when my father was twenty-three.

Twenty-three.

My son, his namesake (and my father-in-law's, too), will be twenty-three in seven years.

Seven years.

I was seven years old when the photo on the right was taken.

When I was seven, forty-two seemed old.

No, forty-two seemed ancient.

And now I am nearly forty-two.

And now I am nearly forty-two, and it feels as without time and date as the grass on Pop's front lawn, the shells along the beach, the weeds and butterflies in the old lady's field.

And now I am nearly forty-two, and it feels as off-the-clock-and-calendar as cardigan sweaters and and beaded hats and fuzzy baby heads and branches against impossibly blue skies.

And now I am nearly forty-two, and it feels as old as overdue library books and jeans that tug at the hips and comfortable shoes.

And now I am nearly forty-two, and it feels as young as dandelions and unopened presents and a new straw hat.

Happy.

Birthday.

Someone asked...

"If you had two weeks with no kids, what would you do?"

My reply, which, of course, presupposes that said kids are happily in the care of Aunt M-mv, follows.
___________________________

We were married for four years before we had our first child. We married right out of college. In fact, we both graduated early in order to marry sooner. We had good (as in "satisfying" and "related to our studies," not necessarily "well paid") jobs and dear friends within biking distance.

On our days off, we would sleep late. Oh, so late. We'd... well, you know. We'd take long showers. Tidy up the joint. Walk to the store for all the papers. (Once upon a time ago, we read three or more papers every weekend.) Bring them home. Hop in the car and head to the Bread Factory for carb-rich twists and knots and decadent breads. (Once upon a time ago, we were thin.) We'd eat bread and read newspapers in bed. And nap. And... well, you know.

We'd get dressed up and go to dinner with friends. Play board games and discuss books into the wee morning hours.

Then we'd go home. Sleep late. Oh, so late. We'd... well, you know. We'd take long showers....

Twenty years of marriage and three children later. Our anniversary is only a couple of weeks away, and I don't dream of Paris or a cruise, anniversary rings or fancy cars. No, I want nothing more than the rhythms that define our relationship, then and now.

So... if I had two weeks with my husband, sans children?

We'd sleep late. Oh, so late. We'd... well, you know. We'd take long showers. Tidy up the joint. Walk to the store for all the papers. Bring them home. Hop in the car and head to the Bread Factory for carb-rich twists and knots and decadent breads. We'd eat bread and read newspapers in bed. And nap. And... well, you know.

We'd get dressed up and go to dinner. Play board games and discuss books into the wee morning hours.

Then we'd go to bed. Sleep late. Oh, so late. We'd... well, you know. We'd take long showers....

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Calling from the office to the bird room. Less incredulity and more gentle guidance, sir.

Speaker 2: Well, incredulity is my preferred method, kind lady.

Speaker 1 walks into the bird room.

Speaker 3: What's "incredulity," guys? Sarcasm? 'cause Boy-boy's doing a great job, Mom. I just guessed on that answer.

Speaker 2 has the decency to smooth his smile into a mask of filial respect.

Speaker 1: Shooting Speaker 2 a stern look. While it doesn't mean sarcasm, exactly, (turning gaze on Speaker 3) I would say that Boy-boy's incredulity was laced with sarcasm. But, hey, if it's working for the two of you--

Speaker 3: It's working for me, Mom. Honest. And I'm almost done, so I can go out in the yard.

Speaker 2 laughs aloud. Speaker 4 enters the bird room.

Speaker 4: What's this about The Incredibles?

April 26: To Mr. M-mv

I've said before. I will say it again.

You're the one I want to read in bed with. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Every night until there is only night.

Yes, this autodidact is too weary to produce more than this.

Mea culpa.

Via Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant: A Blog in Tenebrous Standing.

Review the following list of books. Boldface the books you've read, italicize those you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, put an asterisk beside the ones on your bookshelves, and place brackets around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

* The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
* The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
* The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
* To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
* His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)
* Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling)
* The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
* Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (George Orwell)
* Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
* The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon)
* Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
* Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
* 1984 (George Orwell)
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J. K. Rowling)
* One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
* The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
* Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
* The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
* Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
* The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
* Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
* Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
* Atonement (Ian McEwan)
[The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)]
* The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
* The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
* The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
* Dune (Frank Herbert)
* Sula (Toni Morrison)
* Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)
* The Alchemist (Paulo Coehlo)
* White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
* The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)

I've spent twelve minutes trying to decide what this exercise says about me. I've come up with two things:

(1) I may be the only book-blogger who has read (and/or refuses to apologize for having done so) The DaVinci Code.
(2) I own a lot of books.

Hmmm. That's about as insightful as it's going to get this morning.

"This area requires you to authenticate yourself."

In the interstices that parenting, teaching, and happy-dancing (Master M-mv accepted a summer lifeguarding gig with our town this morning!) permitted, I worked today, researching and writing about Tolstoy and Chekhov. (I know, I know -- some autodidacts have all the luck.)

While clicking around for virtual resources on the latter, I stumbled onto a password-protected site that led me to a page that was blank, save the admonition in this post's title.

This area requires you to authenticate yourself.

Authenticate. Prove or show to be true or genuine.

Hmmm. I'm thinking, "Wow. They don't come more 'true' or 'genuine' than me, hon."

"Authenticate yourself," indeed.

Heh, heh, heh.

A couple of days late

Happy (belated) birthday, Bill! There's a chance I might make it to your party, after all. Until then, a humble tribute.
___________________________________

"Shakespeare is hard," asserts Fintan O'Toole in his book of the same title, "but so is life, and so long as you can see that there's a lot of life in Shakespeare, then the effort begins to make sense."

Now, I adore O'Toole's provocative, irreverent take on the bard, but I also have some fairly strong convictions about the "Shakespeare is, well, pretty easy, actually" camp.

At summer sessions for teachers, Peggy O'Brien, Ph.D., formerly of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute (Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.), would distribute a "Shakespeare Laundry List" to her students. Top on the list? "Everyone — all levels of society — went to see Shakespeare's plays. There weren't many other forms of entertainment... People went to the bear-baiting ring for a thrill, they went to a public execution of two — and they went to the theatre."

Bear-baiting. An execution or two. The theater. Anyone seeing, oh, I don't know, horse-racing, Court TV, and the theater? (And that's theater with an "er," please; "re" is an affectation, and I'll bet O'Brien knew it, but Ph.D.s, well... let's just say they come with their own academic baggage.) The point is that it was the "beloved groundlings" to whom Shakespeare and company played. To us. The Mountain Dew-swigging, overalls-wearing, pun-loving, regular folk.

Shakespeare can be hard, yeah. But he needn't be. Honestly, is there any doubt about his message in this passage from As You Like It, for example:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

You've got it — the seven stages of man.
________________________

Seventh on O'Brien's "Laundry List" is a much uttered rarely heeded bit o' wisdom: "Reading Shakespeare is hard. [His] plays were written to be performed — acted and seen on a stage."

Ayup. It is cold water on... okay, you're with me... to have Mrs. Grimm the English teacher pass out a musty copy of Julius Caesar or Macbeth and say, "Read Act I. Be ready for a quiz tomorrow."

*SHUDDER*

With all of the productions now available on DVD and video, why would any teacher turn her students loose without a hint of what the beloved groundlings once knew (i.e., that Shakespeare's play must be seen and heard)? If you're wondering, by the way, Norrie Epstein's The Friendly Shakespeare is a good place to begin for viewing recommendations because there is no comparison between, say, Mel Gibson's Hamlet and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.
________________________

In The Shakespeare Book of Lists, Michael LoMonico notes, "Unlike many, I didn't fall in love with Shakespeare in high school or college. No, my passion began some 30 years ago, when I first heard lines from Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello coming from the mouths of my students."

Ditto, Michael.

I took the requisite courses, both undergrad and grad. I attended if not acclaimed then certainly decent productions of the plays, oh, yes. I appreciated Shakespeare, for sure. But I didn't fall in love until my son decided that this was the "coolest" writing he had heard in his then eleven years:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

And when my daughters dressed their dolls as a princesses and their brother's long forgotten G.I. Joes as kings and enacted the wooing scene from Henry V ("O Kate! Nice customs curtsey to great kings"), I made a long-term commitment to ol' Bill.

And here we are. Writing about him again. Hoping someone else will see what we see: That there's something in Shakespeare's plays for all of us. And asserting that, no, Fintan, Shakespeare isn't all that hard; at least, he doesn't have to be. Visit the Folger Shakespeare Library site. It's not about Shakespeare's inaccessibility, is it?
________________________

Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is a frequently consulted book in our house, so much so that my son has ordered his own copy. That said, let me hastily add that I don't think our tastes are necessarily "snobbish" (yeah, there's that word again) or even particularly high-brow. Remember? Mountain Dew? Overalls? Beloved groundlings? But Bloom's love of Shakespeare is heady stuff, his fervor infectious:

Bardolatry, the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is. The plays remain the outward limit of human achievement: aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even spiritually. They abide beyond the end of the mind's reach; we cannot catch up to them. Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part because he invented us....

Amen.
________________________

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this,—and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend;
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
___________________________________

The material in this post originally appeared in our 4.4.2004 RDA.

The recommended daily allowance

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

This is the thirtieth "On the Nightstand" entry. (Or, "On the newly spray-painted milk can." Whatever.) This time out, I will focus primarily on recent acquisitions. I'll turn to page twenty-eight of each of the featured books, locate the fourth complete sentence on that page, and include it (or its reasonable approximation) with the title, author, and a brief note on how it ended up on the stack.

Let's begin, then, because the trails, the sun, and our walking sticks are calling to my favorite people in all the world and me.

:: The Piano Book (Larry Fine)
These are very time-consuming and expensive to produce, and show scratches very easily, but, in my opinion, look much less artificial than their polyester counterparts.
How it ended up on the stack: Well, Mr. M-mv was going to give me a piano for our anniversary. As it turns out, though, what he's giving me is a piano-sized allocation for private lessons... on the violin. (Long story, happy ending; I'll spare my readers the details.) An aside: I actually borrowed this from the library, but the copy was outdated and smelly; hence, a trip to the bookstore.

:: The Colony (John Tayman)
The board renewed its search for a suitably isolated location.
How it ended up on the stack: This history of the American leprosy settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai and the people who lived there appeared in one or another book catalogue or column.

:: Breakfast with Tiffany (Edwin John Wintle)
"You'll certainly have more of an understanding of what it's like to be a parent very soon," she said.
How it ended up on the stack: Again, this attracted my eye in a book catalogue or column earlier this year; I decided to hold out for the early trade paperback edition, which Quality Paperback Book Club now offers.

:: The City of Falling Angels (John Berendt)
"Otherwise, there's no telling whose pocket it might end up in."
How it ended up on the stack: Quite simply, years and years ago, I adored Berendt's other book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

:: Hoot (Carl Hiaasen)
"The other young man, however, has a broken nose."
How it ended up on the stack: According to the back-of-the-book bio, Hiaasen "has been writing about Florida since his father gave him a typewriter at age six." Hoot is Hiaasen's first novel for younger readers. 'seemed like a good choice for this poor flyer to clutch while en route to "the screwy state of Florida," no?

:: The History of Love (Nicole Krauss)
I studied it for a few minutes. It wasn't right. I added another word.
How it ended up on the stack: Again, this attracted my eye in a book catalogue or column earlier this year; I decided to hold out for the early trade paperback edition, which Quality Paperback Book Club now offers.

:: The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Andrew Sean Greer)
My parents had begun to argue in whispers--I learned later that it was something about whether it would be too much for Father to buy me something so exotic as a banana wrapped in foil--and so weren't paying attention to my predicament.
How it ended up on the stack: It should be rather obvious that most of these recent acquisitions were about identifying the perfect book(s) for vacation.

:: The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
The metaphor of the page for the gene starts to break down here.
How it ended up on the stack: Bryson has made me believe I can read any science text. First published in 1976, The Selfish Gene requires intellectual vigor without demanding technical expertise. This is not a vacation book. Heh, heh, heh.

:: Philosophy for Kids (David A. White)
And for Kant, we are also damaging ourselves if we lie.
~ and ~
:: The Examined Life: Advanced Philosophy for Kids (David A. White)
After explaining the logical concept of begging the question--a basic rule guiding correct argumentation--I then defend Augustine's position against all comers with, I confess, a certain measure of quasi-malicious glee.
How it ended up on the stack: Just feeding the minds of my budding philosophers. If interested, you may wish to order directly from Prufrock Press for the promptest service.

:: Birds of Chicago (Chris C. Fisher, David B. Johnson)
When all the siblings have leapt into the waiting world, they follow their mother through the dense underbrush to the nearest water.
How it ended up on the stack: Regular readers already know how much we enjoy watching the birds, ordinary and extraordinary, that fly into our lives.

What we've seen this month:

Great Blue Heron
Canada Goose
Mallard
Turkey Vulture
Cooper's Hawk*
Kildeer
Ring-billed Gull
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove*
Red-bellied Woodpecker*
Downy Woodpecker*
Northern Flicker*
Tree Swallow
Blue Jay*
American Crow*
Black-capped Chickadee*
White-breasted Nuthatch*
House Wren*
American Robin*
European Starling*
Brown Thrasher*
White-throated Sparrow*
Dark-eyed Junco*
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle*
Brown-headed Cowbird*
House Finch*
American Goldfinch*
Northern Cardinal*
House Sparrow*

* Indicates birds found in our yards.

Oh, and Apples to Apples? R.T. recommended it elsewhere. Found it on sale in a shop on Navy Pier last week.

Yes, you can get your own Mr. Sock Monkey here.

And that's a wrap.

Click here for the "On the nightstand" archives.

It's that time again.

TV Turnoff 2006.

TV Turnoff Week is like a finger-wagging lecture delivered by some ancient coot. It is founded on the absurdly out-of-date idea that TV is inherently a bad influence and, really, we'd all be better off without it. It's an absurd, snobbish idea and as risible as the notion that people should be discouraged from reading or going to the movies or the theatre for a week.

Ayup. Read more here.

(Note: The following material was culled from an entry made during TV Turnoff Week 2004.)

This may surprise M-mv readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, but I'm not at all in favor of extinguishing the Great American Campfire. On the contrary, in fact: TV Turnoff leaves me cold, and I don't even watch much.

"Take a seven-day break from TV and reclaim time to talk, play, read, exercise, create, dream — and live!" exhorts the TV Turnoff Network. Um, hello? I talk, play, read, exercise, create, dream, "and live!" plenty, thanks. Oh, and I still manage to catch new episodes of "Law & Order." It can be done, folks.

But then the TV Turnoff propaganda isn't really directed at readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, is it?

Yeah, I know. The surveys and studies say that kids are growing fat, violent, and/or stupid in front of television sets around the country. Of course, my best guess is that their parents are either (a) out of the picture for most of their day or (b) obese, violent, and/or stupid themselves. Either way, TV Turnoff will do nothing more than irritate said parents and worry said kids.

A related (if in what may first appear a seemingly obscure way) anecdote: When I was in elementary school, the school nurse and my (presumably) well meaning teacher trotted out graphic pictures of the human lung in the final stages of cancer, allegedly from years of smoking. We were drafted by the then young "Smoke-Free" movement (which has since begotten the huddles of professionals who dwell about the entrances of office buildings around the country, the four or five worst tables in every restaurant ("Oh, non-smoking, please. Does anyone with a brain smoke anymore?"), and clear-air bars coming to a city near you).

Thirty years ago, my parents, who were known to light one cigarette with the near-butt of another cigarette, were unfazed by my pleas to stop smoking. They remained unmoved by the picture of the blackened lung and my tearful concerns. ("But I don't want your lungs to get blaaaaack!") Their logic amounted to something on the order of, "Um, thanks [INHALE], sweetie, but we'll worry about our own lungs. [SMOKEY EXHALE] Okay?"

Okay.

But in the three decades since, the personal decision to smoke transmogrified into a social issue of epic proportions (i.e., your decision to smoke is costing the rest of us big time!) and has been legislated accordingly.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not necessarily complaining. I'm not a smoker, hate smoking, in fact — the odor, the headaches from other people's smoke, etc. On the other hand, that smoking (like wearing seatbelts, for example) is now legislated, policed with such vigor, makes me wonder a bit about TV Turnoff Week, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the long-ago annual presentation of the blackened lung and the "homework assignment" to "Go home and tell your parents how worried you are about smoking."

Am I the only one to have observed the similarities?

This TV Turnoff Week Family M-mv is actually going to do watch more than we usually do. We're going to follow the advice of a wise professor of mass media and its influences: We're going to take a spin around the dial (that's "remote" to you youngsters) and see what sorts of shows are being presented to viewers. One need not watch every second of every episode of every show. Sample here, sample there. Take notes. Observe trends. Look for novelties. Think about the messages behind the programming and the commercials. How have they changed? Stayed the same? What moves you? Leaves you cold? Why? If you watch as actively as you read and learn, then television becomes as useful a commentary on your own culture as any scholarly article. Watch and learn!

Thanks, Mr. R., wherever you are.

Articles of interest

Survived the '60s? You may want to try this game (originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2006)

Risk of depression rises as menopause nears (Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 2006)

Did someone else help kill boys in '55? (Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 2006)

Fermilab's rite of spring: baby bison (Chicago Sun-Times, April 17, 2006)

Visitors are welcome to view the bison herd at Fermilab in Batavia seven days a week between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Directions: Enter on Pine Street at Kirk Road, show a driver's license to the guard and continue past Wilson Hall to the bison pasture.

Art Institute to start charging (Chicago Sun-Times, April 18, 2006)

Hunter Turns Rufus the Turkey Into Dinner (April 18, 2006)

The recommended daily allowance

Wladyslaw Szpilman: I don't know how to thank you.
Captain Wilm Hosenfeld: Thank God, not me. He wants us to survive. Well, that's what we have to believe.

On the prairie

In the woods

"We are what we do."

J.B. sent this message over the weekend:

I read your post about your Good Friday reading yesterday and it has lingered, especially the remark by the priest that things needed to be toned down for future Good Fridays.

[I confess that it reminded me of the old line, "No sex, please, we're British."]

And it caused me to, once again, ponder a strange distinction. Too many who profess themselves Christians (and that priest sounds like he might be one of them) focus so intently on the death and resurrection that the life -- the profound teachings and extraordinary example-- is shoved aside. Thus, Jesus's acknowledgement of his mother is just fluff, something to push out of the way so we can get to the "real stuff."

This isn't a trivial shift in focus. This focus on the sacrificial lamb as "it" and the only "it" means that one can hate [fill in current favorites here: Jews, African-Americans, Gays, etc.] and wage war [fill in any country that begins with "I"] and still believe that one is practicising the mystery of Christianity. "I believe," therefore I am "saved."

The thing about Christianity is that it is very hard. And it takes place minute by minute, day by day.

One must really love one's enemies, forgive more times than I can count, love everyone regardless of condition or background, and have an unshakeable faith in oneself as a co-creator of God's universe (else how does one love everyone else in the same way one loves one's self?)

It is too hard for me, but it isn't too hard for me to try, though I never tell people I'm a Christian. Too often, it seems like a bad neighborhood these days. I rest secure in my favorite verse, "Let your light so shine forth before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven."

(Oh, how the grammarian in me wishes that was a "who").

We are what we do.

Thank you to J.B. and to all who wrote in to remark on that entry. Many thanks, too, to the folks who linked it.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater

On Navy Pier. It was awesome.

Daffodils

"Happy Good Friday!" *

Every year of my seven-year working relationship with the man whose initial signature was "JOB," he greeted me such on this day in the Triduum. The first time it staggered me. Happy Good Friday? Even in my child-like understanding of the Roman Catholic tradition, I couldn't reconcile "Happy" with "Good Friday."

"It's the beginning of the greatest mystery of our faith," he explained. "He dies, but we know how the story ends. He rises. It is a celebration, the greatest celebration in our tradition. Happy Good Friday."

Happy Good Friday.

[Mrs. M-mv now issues an advisory that some regular readers may wish to click away.]

Once upon a time ago...
I was a lector in one of the city's large Catholic parishes. I am a great reader-aloud (this is not self-congratulation, just a statement about one of my skills), and the stories on the liturgical calendar are among the greatest ever told, aren't they? Whether you believe or not, the stories inspire awe. And it is this reader's opinion that they should not be thundered or mumbled or chanted. The stories simply must be told. Read. With expression, not affectation. Oh, and I loved sharing those stories as much as I love reading aloud to my own children.

It happened, then, that the Triduum schedule was drafted. The liturgical director "scripted" the Passion readings for the evening Good Friday mass, breaking them into parts that five lectors would share. I was one of the lectors asked to read.

When I took my place at the lectern for the third time that Good Friday evening, it was to read the passages concerning Christ's crucifixion and death.

Regular M-mv readers (those who have not already clicked away) know that I am the sort of writer or storyteller who affects no false drama -- I laugh when it's funny, cry when it's sad. There can be no pretense. Artificiality is the death of narrative. Heck, it's the slow death of feeling, of everything, isn't it?

So it happened that, arriving at the sentences in which Jesus acknowledges his mother, my throat closed with tears, and that at "Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit," I was reading through tears. Usually one to look my fellow parishioners in the eye while lectoring, I simply couldn't see anymore. I chose, then, to keep looking at the page. I can't tell you what I thought or observed in the long moment that followed my last word and my move away from the lectern to take my place among the other lectors. I knew only that these were among the most profound passages in perhaps the greatest narrative ever written, and that they overcame me. (Later, I realized that, believer or no, if these words do not arouse in one overwhelming emotion, then one simply isn't human.)

I stood with the other lectors and, as they say, collected myself. Writers know that these moments arrange themselves and occur far more quickly than we can possibly describe. As regular awareness returned to me, though, I realized that silence was an immense roar in my ears. That "what comes next" had not begun, seemed unlikely to begin. That the hundreds of people crowded into that large, darkened church, the priests on the altar, the Eucharistic ministers behind me... we were, all of us, spellbound.

Of course, at some point, the liturgy did continue, in its power and the promise of hope and renewal.

But, for a few moments, we were, that Good Friday night, aware of terrible sorrow, the ineffable sadness that precedes a renewal or realization of a hopeful promise.
_______________

What wise man said that we must look at Christ and not Christians because Christians disappoint but Jesus himself never does? If we were spellbound, then the spell did not last nearly long enough. Many parishioners felt compelled to talk with me afterward, about how this was the first time they had actually heard the words, felt them, been moved by them. A hundred, two hundred, and more thank-yous and hugs and tears. My legendary personal space issues had been lifted from me for this one evening, and I began to understand the meaning of "a community of faith."

On the Monday after Easter, however, I learned that a young new priest was disturbed by the "drama" of the Good Friday liturgical celebration and was vehemently recommending a more traditional approach -- notably a "straight read-through" delivered by priests or deacons, not members of the lay ministry.

My faith is usually strong, but my religion? A fragile thing in a glass menagerie.

It shattered that day.

Christ is in my heart, I think, in the hearts of anyone who can even begin to sense the enormity of his narrative. And today, he acknowledges his mother, giving her to his trusted friend. And today, he dies. Again. Because it is only in the repetition of the narrative that we humans. get. it. He will die every year. And he will be born every year.

It's a story that perhaps mothers see most clearly.

And it makes us weep.

And that's not drama, you foolish priest.

It's life. And, perhaps, the promise of something beyond it.

Happy Good Friday.

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* Yes, another recycled entry.

Galsworthy and the writing life

British author John Galsworthy received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."

Galsworthy embarked on his writing career when he was twenty-eight, publishing his early works -- a collection of short stories, From the Four Winds (1897), and a novel, The Island Pharisees (1904) -- under the pseudonym John Sinjohn. These two books sold so poorly that Galsworthy later noted that for "eleven years, I made not one penny out of what I, but practically no others, counted as my profession."

While researching and writing about Galsworthy last weekend, that admission -- "I made not one penny out of what I, but practically no others, counted as my profession" -- lodged in my head as a profound truth about the writing life.

What conviction he must have had about his work, that son of a wealthy family, educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, and called to the bar in 1890, what vision he must have maintained to pursue a career crafting prose, when he received neither compensation nor recognition for more than a decade.

Galsworthy went on to pen one hundred seventy-three short stories, twenty-seven plays, twenty novels, three collections of poetry, five collections of essays, seven hundred letters, and many sketches and miscellaneous works. He is, of course, best known for the three volumes published between 1906 and 1920 and collected as The Forsyte Saga.

But for the first eleven years of his distinguished career, Galsworthy made not one penny out of what he, but practically no others, counted as his profession.

Remarkable.

Verb-ing

Click images for links.

Reading

Watching

So what's his story? He looks kind of... dying.

Discussing (and sending as a gift)

Researching and writing about

Ray Bradbury

Singing along with

Anticipating

Crouching*

Crouching -- or more accurately, squatting (that is, hunkering down, folding one's body close to see what's at one's feet) is valuable skill. If you haven't done it lately, do. Bring your reading, thinking, learning self close to the squishy spring earth. No cheating. Keep your feet flat. Don't wobble on tiptoes. There. Now your hands are free to point to new flowers, poke at small worms, and pick up tiny treasures. Things look different from this height. They smell different, too. More like soil and emerging buds and wet leaves and animal trails.

We did our fair share of crouching in Chicago. At the Nature Center. On the Lake Michigan's beaches. At the parks. Out in front of our building. But here at our little house in the tiny woods on the prairie, we've become reacquainted with the most fundamental reason for crouching: It's the most comfortable position from which to play with mud.

Life is that simple, folks. It's we humans who make it angsty. Set aside the drama. Grab a stick and play in the mud. It'll do wonders for your perspective.
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* Yes, a recycled entry.

You said it, bucky.

"Well, I can't imagine anything more encouraging than having someone buy your work."

Truman Capote in The Paris Review, 1957. (Complete interview here.)

Do you know what this is?

A 1949 steam-powered Leslie rotary snowplow. Sort of scary, huh?

Admission to the grounds of the Illinois Railway Museum is free on April Saturdays, beginning today.

Has it really been a year since we last heard the clang of the bells, the rattle of the wheels, the conversation of train enthusiasts? I guess so.

Well, it was wonderful. The sun, the prairie sounds, the spring birds' many songs, and the magic of the silent trains.

Well, now, shucks.

It appears that I've misled M-mv readers and (virtual) friends. No, it is not yet my birthday yet. But the presents have started trickling in. In fact, more arrived yesterday: three large Yankee candles -- Macintosh, Sage & Cucumber, and Juicy Orange.

Many thanks for all of the birthday wishes.

The recommended daily allowance

Classic Poetry: An Illustrated Collection (selected by Michael Rosen)

You don't need a plan or a permission slip to enjoy poetry with your family. Simply pull down a collection of poems and read. Play with the language. Take turns delighting in silly poems. Teach one another the importance of old favorites. Recite from memory the poems you've learned. Let favorite pieces become part of the pattern of your family's secret language, like lines from favorite books and films.

Love of language and learning does not grow from lists or lesson plans.

It blossoms in the place where children hear:

To fling my arms wide,
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done,
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark, like me --
That is my dream!

and can imagine the speaker, draw him, talk to him, and know what he'd say next.

Look. You don't need a plan. You need a passion for this work. And the maturity to work.

Each and every day.

No matter what.

From How to Read a Poem (Edward Hirsch):

Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture — the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. I think of Malebranche's maxim, "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul." This maxim, beloved by Simone Weil and Paul Celan, quoted by Walter Benjamin in his magisterial essay on Franz Kafka can stand as a writer's credo. It also serves for readers.

More about poetry: Patterns in Poetry: Recognizing and Analyzing Poetic Form and Meter (Greg Roza).

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The material in this entry originally appeared in our The recommended daily allowance (9.10.2004) and On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.) (5.28.2005) entries.

Presents

Birthday presents have been trickling in. Oh, how I do love presents!

The above are similar but not the same as the Sam & Libby heather brown slides Aunt M-mv sent. Too cute for words.


From my favorite Geek Man, Mr. M-mv. He (the monkey, not Mr.mv) complements my Nick & Nora sock monkey 'jamas, which I wrote about here.


Um, no further explanation required, right? Although I'll add that we bought ol' Will here as we headed out of Chicago last weekend.


A gift from me to myself.

And I'll tell you a secret. I know this next item will be here when I return from Florida. Dreamy, no?

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

Yes, yes. I just did this. But then I noticed several books I had neglected to mention.

:: The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
and
:: Writing Down the Bones (Natalie Goldberg)

I picked these two up as part of the "3 for 2" deal that yielded I Am Charlotte Simmons. (For more on Simmons, see this entry.) The former had been praised by M., an original and card-carrying member of M-mv's best and perfect audience; the latter? Well, I haven't been able to find my own copy since the last relo.

:: Fodor's Exploring Florida

"What if there are no shells when we arrive?"

"Huh?"

"On the day we choose to spend at the beach. What if there are no shells?"

Discussion of tides and Florida's tourist industry ensues.

"Yeah, but, still, what if there aren't any shells worth picking?"

"I'll go to the dollar store, buy bags of shells, and sprinkle them along the beach for you to find."

Pish. Posh. Problem solved.

:: The Young Reader's Shakespeare: Macbeth (Adam McKeown)
and
:: Shakespeare and Macbeth: The Story behind the Play (Stewart Ross)

Yes, I'm further preparing the two youngest for this. Is it any surprise that three Little Ponies have been cloaked in scraps of this and that and positioned around a small, black IKEA mug?

Maaaac-beth! Maaaac-beth!

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair. / Hover through the fog and filthy air."

Ayup. The Misses M-mv fancy the witches' scenes.

:: Baby Bird Portraits by George Miksch Sutton: Watercolors in the Field Museum (Paul A. Johnsgard)

Last Thursday night, I chose this from the gift shop. All of us agree: just. perfect.

If you're wondering... they're young Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis).
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Check out the "On the nightstand" archives.

The 14th Carnival of Homeschooling

~ Hosted by Why Homeschool ~

Third Carnival of Children’s Literature

~ Hosted by M-mv favorite Semicolon ~

Let the wild rumpus start!

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

:: 1001 Books You Must Read before You Die (Peter Boxall, ed.)

Each novel is a work that you must read before you die, and while death is always a distant prospect, it is also always imminent, lurking in the shadows of every instant. Something you must do before you die might feel like a lazy aspiration, ut ut us also something you have to do in a hurry, or even now.

Apparently, this mammoth book has not received particularly complimentary reviews, but, golly, did I have fun poring over the choices, mentally commending Boxall on this choice and tsk-tsking him on that. Illustrations, photographs, and artwork complement most entries, so it's a pretty book, too. At the very least, have a look the next time you're at the library.

:: The Bedside Companion of Birds: An Avian Miscellany (Graeme Gibson)

I came to the birds relatively late in life.

As did I. At forty years and two months, I came to the birds.

Humans developed as a species in a world full of birds... Somewhere along the way we identified ourselves with them, and came to associate birds with the realm of spirits... Perhaps for this reason there is an abundance of intriguing material about birds, from all times and all cultures.

This is one of the most interesting and beautiful books with which I've ever whiled away a pot of coffee at dawn.

:: Mean Girls Grown Up: Adult Women Who Are Still Queen Bees, Middle Bees, and Afraid-to-Bees (Cheryl Dellasega)
and
:: Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads: Dealing with the Parents, Teachers, Coaches, and Counselors Who Can Make--or Break--Your Child's Future (Rosalind Wiseman and Elizabeth Rapoport)

Mildly intrigued by this article (which I believe was linked here several weeks ago (and if you don't already have Arts & Letters bookmarked, I'll wait while you do so)), I borrowed these books from the library. I was alternately bemused and bewildered by the idea that folks actually cast adult relationships and interactions in the terms of...

junior high and high school.

?

Thinking people don't describe each other as "queen bees," "wannabees," "floaters," etc., though, right?

Three words came to mind as I skimmed: Oh. Grow. Up.

:: Mommy Wars (Leslie Morgan Steiner)

Over the years, I've watched friends I know to be loving, unselfish mothers return to work for reasons ranging from their own sanity to financial need, and seen at-home mothers try to live as if they don't have kids. It finally dawned on me that I'd been judging the wrong thing all along... A good mother is a good mother, working or not, just as a crummy one is crummy whether she's home all the time or hardly at all.

That bit is from Catherine Clifford's essay, "Mother Superior."

:: The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking (Stephen Law)

I believe that those who have never taken a step back -- who have lived wholly unexamined lives -- are not only rather shallow, they're potentially dangerous. One great lesson of the twentieth century is that human beings, no matter how "civilised," tend to be moral sheep.

Ayup.

(An aside: Here are a few M-mv entries about philosophy: here, here, here, here, and here.)

:: I Am Charlotte Simmons (Tom Wolfe)

Writing in the April 2006 Atlantic, Mark Bowden observes of Wolfe's third novel:

Many young critics resented being made fun of by a septuagenarian in a fusty suit, and some dismissed Wolfe as a scold. Reviewers with children or students (or both) the same age as those in the novel reacted defensively. They stuck up for the modern student and the quality of thought at modern universities, and found Wolfe's take on campus life to be shallow, prudish, inaccurate, and unfair.

He continues:

The assault [...], I suspect, owes something to the contemptuous treatment Wolfe received a few years ago from several of his esteemed contemporaries—notably John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving. Their attacks are best summed up in one deliciously bitchy sentence from Updike's otherwise flattering New Yorker review of A Man in Full, in which the celebrated author and critic assessed Wolfe as a writer of "entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form." Thus did a high priest of the novel brand Wolfe a pretender, and grant dispensation to the herd to have at him.

Wolfe is a favorite of mine, but I did not race out to purchase the hardcover when it was released. Bowden's review, however, which goes on to describe all of the strengths of Wolfe's writing ("brilliant, wicked, true, and, like everything Wolfe writes, thematically coherent, cunningly well plotted, and delightfully told") inspired me to grab the paperback two weekends ago.

I do not at all regret the purchase.

Read Bowden's review here.

Hey, and set the clocks ahead this evening, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts.
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Check out the "On the nightstand" archives.