Chapbook entry

From "The Guest" (Albert Camus):

:: Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust.

:: Towns sprang up, flourished, then disappeared; men came by, loved one another or fought bitterly, then died. No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them, Daru knew, could have really lived.

:: Men who share the same rooms, soldiers or prisoners, develop a strange alliance as if, having cast off their armor with their clothing, they fraternized every evening, over and above their differences, in the ancient community of dream and fatigue.

Perrine reminds us:

Beginning readers need to remember that most stories operate almost wholly at the literal level and that, even in highly symbolic stories, the majority of the details are purely literal. A story should not be made the excuse for an exercise in ingenuity. It is better, indeed, to miss the symbolic meanings of a story than to pervert its meaning by discovering symbols that are non-existent. Better to miss the boat than to jump wildly for it and drown.

Amen.

Why a physicist dropped everything for paper folding

From "The origami lab" (The New Yorker, 2/19/2007):

Something about origami’s simplicity and its apparently endless possibilities appeals to people. In 2003, the Mingei International Museum, in San Diego, mounted an exhibition called “Origami Masterworks,” which included several of Lang’s pieces. It was supposed to run six months, but attendance was so robust that the show was extended for six months, then for eight more. In Japan, the “Survivor”-style show “TV Champion” has often featured contestants engaging in extreme origami—folding with their hands in a box, or while balanced on stools with the paper suspended above them, or while snorkelling in a fishtank. A surprising number of countries have origami organizations; the Origami Society of the Netherlands has more than fifteen hundred members—probably the highest per-capita membership in the world. There is a soothing element in the monotony of folding and unfolding. In fact, origami as therapy has its proponents: in 1991, at the Conference on Origami in Education and Therapy, a mental-health professional presented a paper detailing her origami work with prisoners. “The most rewarding of experiences,” she wrote, “was that of observing the effect that Origami had on psychopathic killers.”

"There are five people in my family..."

And there's not one of 'em I'd swap.
[...]
Oh, five is such a pretty number!
I'm awfully glad that I've five people in my family --
One, two, three, four, five.

If you can sing that song, I know roughly how old you are. (You already know that I will be forty-three this year.)
___________________

Twenty-two years ago today, Mr. M-mv gave me an engagement ring. I was surprised about how and when he proposed, yes, but the idea of marriage? No surprises there. He had already told me that we would be getting married. He announced this about two weeks after our first date.

Silly boy.

I can only imagine how annoyed his parents must have been when he declared his intentions to them over supper one early-spring night in 1982. He was a just junior in high school at the time. Our own son is now about the same age Mr. M-mv was then, and if Master arrived home this evening and said, "I'm going to marry so-n-so," why, I think Mr. M-mv might choke on his bowl of oatmeal!

It would be all right, though. The choking, I mean. Like his father was when he was seventeen, Master is certified in CPR and first aid.

Heh, heh, heh.

So, yes, I have been by Mr. M-mv's side since March 1982, which means that I have been with him -- and he with me -- for a quarter of a century.

And there are now five people in our family.

I love that man. Not always as well as he deserves, not always as well as he loves me -- but always I love that man.

Happy anniversary to us, then. May our son grow up to be as good a man as his father. May our daughters find partners who love them as much and as well as their father loves their mother.

And may we live long enough to tell our children's children stories about their parents.

On the nightstand

It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I haven't time for a lengthy review of all I've been reading, so here's the stack closest to my laptop.

:: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Richard Hofstadter).
How it ended up on the stack: Margaret made me do it, whether she realizes it or not. And how did I miss this one, anyway?
Excerpt:

Intellect, on the other hand, is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole. Intelligence can be praised as a quality in animals; intellect, being a unique manifestation of human dignity, it is both praised and assailed as a quality in men. When the difference is so defined, it becomes easier to understand why we sometimes say that a mind of admittedly penetrating intelligence is relatively unintellectual; and why, by the same token, we see among minds that are unmistakably intellectual a considerable range of intelligence.

:: The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings).
How it ended up on the stack: I wrote about this uncorrected proof / advance reader copy here.

:: Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You (Clare Walker Leslie).
How it ended up on the stack: As I mentioned here, I have Cindy to thank for this one.
Excerpt:

The overwhelming majority of people who become good naturalists don't gain their knowledge from formal schooling. They get it in the field, by devoting themselves to direct observation and spending time with other largely self-taught naturalists. Nature journaling is a process that fosters self-learning, challenging the observer to combine intellect with experience.

:: Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises (Charles-Louis Hanon; edited by Allan Small).
How it ended up on the stack: I have no idea what the image in the Amazon entry for this book is all about, but it does not look like that, at all.

I begin Exercise 2 next week, as it turns out. The second Hanon exercise taught in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1 is not the "real" second exercise, so my teacher had me purchase the comb-bound Hanon book with the instruction to keep working on the first exercise and my two-octave scales until next Saturday.

Progress report, then: As of today, I have worked through page 84 ("Lavender's Blue") in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1. During this week, I will work on my scales (C and G, both hands, two octaves) and Hanon Exercise 1, a review of my work to date, "Lavender's Blue," "Ach, Du Lieber Augustine" in Alfred's Basic Adult All-Time Favorites, and the first page of a three-page, easy arrangement of "Moonlight Sonata." It didn't take much to persuade my instructor these latter two pieces were a better use of my time (and hers, for that matter) than the next tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1 -- "My Heart Will Go On." She did, however, seem momentarily surprised to have a student more willing to work on Hanon than on insipid movie themes. I simply cannot be the only student attracted to scales and exercises, though. Doesn't anyone else love the march up and down the keyboard as I do? So many of the beginner pieces confine one to the center of the keyboard. With scales and exercises, I can almost pretend that I am a real piano player, at ease with all of the keys, tinkling up and down the board as if I had been doing this all my life instead of just since October.

Well. Maybe that's just me.

:: The Best of the Most Relaxing Classical Music in the Universe.
How it ended up on the stack: This is in the CD player right now. I purchased it a couple of weeks ago with a gift card to [insert retailer here]. My husband collects such cards as incentives from happy managers and clients.

Aside: I love that man. His work may not involve slaying dragons, but he does what he does with excellence and integrity. And he brings home the bacon (enough of it that I can work from home as a writer -- in a room of my own, with a full stomach), and while his son and I fry that bacon in a pan, my husband does the laundry and listens to the stories his daughters have written and illustrated that day. Life is good. And I love that man.

You know, of course, why I chose this CD, don't you? Yes, "Gymnopedie No.1" is my "Traumerei." (If you don't know what I mean by this and if you love the piano, get yourself a copy of Noah Adams' Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures. Today. Right now.)

And "Claire de Lune" is just, well, the most beautiful piece of music. Ever. As anyone who has seen Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune can tell you. (Searching for an image for this play, I stumbled on a review of a Broadway revival starring Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci. Gosh, but I would have liked to see that.)

So, Tracks 3 and 5 of this CD are perfect, and the rest is quite lovely, too.

:: Marty.
How it ended up on the stack: Semicolon gave me the idea to pick this up for tonight's movie night.

:: David Copperfield (Charles Dickens).
How it ended up on the stack: As I mentioned here, the family book club is reading this sloooowly -- we're tackling a chapter a day every weekday for thirteen weeks. We were motivated by the idea of reading Dickens the way he often published -- serially.

And that's all for now, folks.

Read. Think. Learn.

Hey, and examine, ponder, wonder, theorize, criticize, and imagine, too, okay? Use your intellect, no matter what they say.

Hey! Have you visited our bookshop?

Fine Art Friday

Miss M-mv(ii) (1997-)
"Portrait of an autodidact as an old(er) woman" (June 2004)

When I grow old...

I will wear a green hat with a flower in its crown.

And I will fix my face in a bemused arrangement that is as much a smile as it is a frown.

And I will write my children letters.
________________________

Read. Think. Learn.

Hey, and be excellent.

Members only

If you enjoyed this even half as much as we did and if you live in or near the greatest city in the world, you'll likely be as delighted as I was to learn that the Field Museum will be increasing public access to the World’s Columbian Exposition collections, most of which have been kept in the museum's vaults.

Read more here.

And mark your calendars now, members: April 4 and 5. (More here.)

Speaking of leis and Hawaii...

Listen: "'kay. This one's for Gabby."

Read: "Hawaii, he sang of thee -- and people listened" (San Francisco Chronicle, March 9, 2005).

Israel leans into the microphone, says: "Kay, this one's for Gabby," and begins gently strumming the uke. His beautiful voice comes in, a lilting "Oooooo," then slips into the opening words of "Over the Rainbow," from "The Wizard of Oz." Bertosa listens behind the glass, and within the first few bars knows it's something very special. He spends most of his time recording lousy dance music. This is otherworldly. An incredibly fat man, elegantly caressing a Hollywood show tune, breaking it down to its roots, so sad and poignant, yet full of hope and possibility. Halfway through the tune, Israel spirals off into "What a Wonderful World," the George David Weiss/Bob Thiele hit made famous by Louis Armstrong, then melts back into "Over the Rainbow." He flubs a lyric, and tosses in a new chord change, but it doesn't matter. It feels seamless, chilling. Israel plays five songs in a row, then turns to de Mello and says, "I'm tired and I'm going home." "Gets up and walks out," says de Mello. "Ukulele and a vocal, one take. Over." Israel never played the song again.

Get: Facing Future (Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole).

Hey! The UPS man brought me a lei!

Well, not really. But a lei was tucked into the package from Random House, which the UPS man brought to my door. And now an uncorrected proof/advance reader copy of The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings) has been added to my knapsack. Scheduled for release May 15, 2007, The Descendants, a coming of age story set in Hawaii, is described as the ultimate beach read. After the month I've had work-wise? I could use a good beach read.

Hey, happy Fat Tuesday, folks.

"I'm cute! I'm cute! She thinks I'm cute!"

I just received the most wonderful compliment about my work -- in writing, no less. I feel like Rudolph leaping into flight.

I'm good! I'm good! They think I'm good!

Yes, sometimes, even the most curmudgeonly among us need to hear that we're all right.

Still marching toward that deadline, though. See you on the other side.

Added just a little later: To give you some idea of how hard I work in the interstices parenting and teaching permit (and this is most assuredly not a bid for sympathy; simply a pictorial anecdote) --

Yes, it's a many-mugs-of-coffee sort of day.

Saturday

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. I know I'm a broken record on this, but I am so enjoying my work and play at the keyboard. I'm working on "The Amazing Aerobics of Hanon" (p. 78 and 79 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1) and will offer a polished "Edelweiss" (the second tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1) to my teacher this morning, after which we will begin "My Heart Will Go On" (the third). I think I will show her some of the sheet music Mr. M-mv gave me for Valentine's Day to see if I am ready to begin studying them. I'm not as fond of the idea of spending two or three weeks working on an insipid movie theme now that I have a beginner version of "Claire de lune" in my music sack. (The Satie, while an "easier" version, is definitely hovering in "advanced intermediate" territory.)

Oh, and the library book sale! We're going for an hour before lessons. Rumor has it that they have sheet music.

Watching: Yes, birds, again. Tomorrow and Monday morning for Project FeederWatch, all weekend for the 10th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count.

Reading: David Copperfield (Do you want to join us?), Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (Arthur Loesser), and Playing the Piano for Pleasure (Charles Cooke).

Working: Four thousand words by tomorrow night. Fell a little behind, but that's okay. I have some terrific topics this weekend.

"[E]ducation as a crucial factor in graceful aging"

Well, duh.

Fine Art Friday

Pablo Picasso, "Piano"

From Playing the Piano for Pleasure (Charles Cooke):

I believe in quality rather than quantity in piano practice -- an hour of concentrated, efficient work rather than a longer period during which the mind, though the fingers continue to drum, goes hazy if not blank. Don't misconstrue my harping on one hour as meaning that sixty minutes a day, however well planned and commendably carried through, are all you should spend at the keyboard. I am referring to one daily hour of work -- if you can give the name of work to the spectacle of a hobbyist blissfully riding his hobby. Naturally, the more you also play -- for yourself, for others, with others -- the better. The goal of your daily hour should be this and only this: to play the piano better and better from month to month and year to year.

[...]

The place of music in the life of the amateur pianist should be, as I see it, important but not all-important: a source of pleasure in the work done and in the results achieved; above all, a constantly expanding source of beauty and of what can best be called "fineness."

Read. Think. Learn.

Play.

Count for the Birds

Participate in the 10th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count, February 16 - 19. You can couple your Project Feederwatch efforts this weekend with the GBBC.

Postscript: Do you know what this autodidact is getting for her birthday? This!

From the archives: February 14, 2006

"Be mine."

He said.

He said, "Thanks for being my Valentine, yet again."

He said, with you, I never feel old or get tired.

He said, with you, I don't get discouraged or disappointed.

He said, I love you.

And I said, "I love you."

And I know.

And I know.

And you're welcome.

I said.

"I am. I already was. I always will be."

Forget flowers and frills!

If they read M-mv, this is what they really want. Immediate delivery. Complete satisfaction. Oh, and then they can spend it in their all-together right here.

Chapbook entry

I first read The Children of Men (P.D. James) nearly fourteen years ago. On rereading it with Master M-mv last month, I realized that the book's power, for me, resides in its bleak view of man's future -- which is another way of saying that the writing did not bear a second (close) reading well.

I had not read a lot of science-/futuristic fiction, when Children arrived on my doorstep all those years ago, so it played as a seemingly original idea (although I remember that I slipped it onto the same mental bookshelf as Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke); Master, who read the Clarke last week, actually preferred End to Children).

No, I haven't seen the movie. Call it a product of my creeping case of modern monasticism, but I just can't abide a movie theater. Oh, the noise! The noise, noise, noise, NOISE! And the germs. And the smell. And then there are the people. Ergh. I'll wait for the DVD, thanks.

___________________________

p. 39
Why, Theo wondered, did he and his like come week after week to seek this masochistic pleasure? The could listen to the recorded voices of children perfectly well at home, so why did it have to be here, where past and present fused in beauty and candlelight to reinforce regret? Why did he himself come? But he knew the answer to that question. Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

p. 44
To be selected from the crowd is always gratifying to self-esteem; one feels the need to make some return, a fact which accounts for a number of otherwise surprising marriages.

p. 44–45
"... If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations. For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal, and the most selfish section of society. Now, for the rest of our lives, we're going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced, so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed...."

p. 47
She had been a formidable academic in her day, cleverer, people said, than her husband, her sharp tongue venomous in his defense. After her marriage she taught and published less, talent and personality diminished by the appalling subservience of love.

p. 66
"Because I like to visit it occasionally and the attendant is used to seeing me. Because it provides a number of accessible hiding places. Mainly because it's convenient for me. Nothing else about this enterprise is."

p. 97
Xan said: "It never was. Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future."

p.98
"You are a historian. You know what evils have been perpetrated though the ages to ensure the survival of nations, sects, religions, even of individual families. Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that he has been formed by history, that his life-span is brief, uncertain, insubstantial, but that there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe. That hope has finally gone out except in the minds of fools and fanatics. Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast...."

p. 101
"... I could never bear to watch someone doing badly what I knew I could do well...."

p. 158
Could ever aims and means have been so mismatched? Had there ever been an enterprise of such immense importance embarked upon by such frail and pathetically inadequate adventurers?

It's no secret, after all.

I sort my M&Ms.

I have a thing for stuffed simians... and all things bearing them, like these and these and these.

I allow, nay, encourage the occasional television binge.

Yeah, I read Entertainment Weekly.

And I trim my own bangs, too. I think they turned out all right.

Read. Think. Learn.

And, folks? Relax. A little, anyway. Sometimes. It's all good.

Praiseworthy

From Po Bronson's article "How Not to Talk to Your Kids" (New York, The Magazine, February 19, 2007):

Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Out of our children’s lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day—We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.

In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments. We expect so much of them, but we hide our expectations behind constant glowing praise. The duplicity became glaring to me.

Eventually, in my final stage of praise withdrawal, I realized that not telling my son he was smart meant I was leaving it up to him to make his own conclusion about his intelligence. Jumping in with praise is like jumping in too soon with the answer to a homework problem—it robs him of the chance to make the deduction himself.

M-mv entries on Bronson
On the nightstand (1.14.2006)
Po Bronson (1.15.2006)
Debra Pickett interviewed Po Bronson (1.30.2006)
Chapbook entry (2.03.2006)

"I am born."

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the family book club is reading David Copperfield sloooowly. Beginning today, we'll tackle a chapter a day every weekday for thirteen weeks. We were motivated by the idea of reading Dickens the way he often published -- serially.

Care to join us?

The aging autodidact

Yesterday Mr. M-mv took a photo of me on the way to music class, and as I downloaded it to send to Aunt M-mv, I realized that it so perfectly captured the way I feel that it was, in fact, me -- much more so than, say, the photo in the "About" section of M-mv, for example.

My wrinkles, silvery "Pony hairs," and all. This is what I look like.

So the next time you're wondering just who is recommending this book, that movie, or another thought-provoking article, think of an aging autodidact in "cheaters" and a handmade scarf.

Fine Art Friday

Maurice Sendak (1928-)

Synthesis and serendipity at work in my reading, thinking, learning, working, teaching lives:

Alternately mystified and, well, charmed by the unusual and child-like cover illustration of Sonnets (which I received on Wednesday), I finally flipped the new disc over to learn that, yes, the Sonnets are read by Sir John Gielgud, but also that the liner notes were penned by none other than Harold Bloom and that the cover illustration is by Maurice Sendak, who apparently provided cover art for the complete Shakespeare on Compact Disc series.

I was able to find six images from this series. They're remarkable.

During his accomplished career, Sendak created -- among a cast of memorable characters (including Micky In the Night Kitchen; aren't the illustrations above reminiscent of dear Micky?) -- Really Rosie, for which Carole King composed and performed the music. And, yes, Really Rosie is the primary reason I purchased The Collection: Really Rosie/Music/Tapestry (which also arrived Wednesday). "Screaming and Yelling" underscored my discoveries of the fine threads that have now and forever linked Shakespeare, Gielgud, Bloom, Sendak, and King in one of the extended families that people the rooms, houses, and landscapes of my imagination.

Link of interest: A Conversation with Maurice Sendak (NPR, June 4, 2005)

Other stuff
Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating tomorrow.

My music studies are still going well. I'm working on "Standing in the Need of Prayer" (p. 77 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1) and "Edelweiss" (the second tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1). With "Standing," I'm actually working a little ahead. Why? Well, I loathe sightreading. See, each Saturday, I'll play the tunes and scales I've practiced all week, our teacher will make her remarks, corrections, and suggestions, and then, inevitably, she'll say, "Okay, then. Let's turn the page and see what's next." I know I should look ahead, but, damn, most weeks, it takes. every. single. practice minute to prepare the lesson that's actually due. So when she "Let's turn the page"s me, I become fat thumbs and faltering rhythm.

Because I stink at sightreading.

This week, though? I looked ahead, oh, yes, I did. So when she says, "Okay, then," I'll be ready for her, maybe even dazzle her with my seemingly sprouted-over-the-week sightreading skills.

Then again, maybe I'll play "Standing in the Need of Prayer," and she'll give me a knowing sidelong glance and say, "So. You had time to look ahead this week, did you?"

My work is going well, too. I had thought that I only had three thousand words due by Monday, though, and it's actually thirty-seven hundred by Tuesday, so I'll likely be scarce here until I'm done.

As for Project FeederWatch, we're scheduled to watch Sunday and Monday mornings.

Hey! Have you visited our bookshop?

If I've said it once, I've said it six hundred times...

It can't all be Shakespeare, Latin, and Bach. Into every life must creep some Junie B. Jones, some My Little Pony fun, a free day, some takeout, and, yes, some "Baywatch."

Related entry: "Guard."

You've got to get up every morning
with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You're gonna find, yes, you will
That you're beautiful as you feel.

~ Carol King, "Beautiful," Tapestry

Is that the UPS truck I hear?

A short list of things that make me happy

The Amazon.com Associates program
An Amazon.com Prime trial period
The rattle-rumble of the UPS truck coming down our street
A very large package carried in by a tall man-boy

An inventory

The books:
The Physics of Superheroes (James Kakalios)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
How to Read a Poem (Terry Eagleton)
The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (Will Durant)
The Street of Crocodiles (Bruno Schulz; thanks, SFP)
The Story of Art: Pocket Edition (E.H. Gombrich; now Master has his own copy)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (E.L. Konigsburg)
The Chronicles of Narnia CD Box Set (C. S. Lewis)
Cliffs Notes on Shakespeare's Sonnets (Carl Senna)
Sonnets (Caedmon Shakespeare; read by John Gielgud (!))
The Best American Essays 2006 (Lauren Slater)
Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You (Clare Walker Leslie; thanks, Cindy)

The films (Now I own them! Yay!):
Twelfth Night
Richard III
The Merchant of Venice
The Lion in Winter

The music:
The Collection: Really Rosie/Music/Tapestry (Carole King)

A note of thanks

Affiliate programs have become ubiquitous; everyone and her mother now feature links and subtle (or not so) requests that visitors buy using said links. That is the nature of business, of course. My only recourse is to thank you, again and again, for your business and your loyalty.

A fond adieu

Another three thousand polished words to submit by next Monday. Three songs to learn by Saturday. And a mountain of books to climb. See you on the other side (or after I finish today's bit, anyway). Until then...

Read. Think. Learn.

Hey, and make time, okay?

A quiz!? Has she lost her mind?

Nah. I just thought this one, like the nerd score in the sidebar, was spot on.

What Kind of Reader Are You?

Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm

You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.

What kind of reader are you?

From the archives: February 25, 2004

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a mommy story. Not a myth. No, this is an all-true account. Lean in a little closer. I want to be sure you're listening this time.

There.

Now.

"Mom, I love these brownies you made!"

Yes, folks. By 9 a.m. yesterday, the beds were made; the floors swept and vacuumed; two breakfast-type meals were prepared, served, and consumed; and a load of wash was swish-swishing through its cycles. This writer-teacher-parent had sent off a query letter to one editor and a follow-up note to another and made adjustments to the weekly family calendar to accommodate a new writing project.

And I had made brownies. Delicious brownies.

Not from scratch, of course. I've heard this can be done. In fact, my son showed me how to do it when he was eight.

But I favor a Duncan Hines mix, myself. Sprinkle a large bag of Nestle semi-sweet morsels atop the batter before popping it in the oven. Serve the brownies warm and the milk ice cold from the fridge. Read aloud while the kids help themselves (and you!) to seconds... and thirds.

Voila! One can improve on a good thing.
______________________

This year I will celebrate a benchmark birthday. The years have conferred on me a little wisdom and a lot of experience. Simply put, while moments of the parenting gig can and have made me squirm with discomfort and doubt (especially when said moments coincide with my, erm, cycle), I generally don't spend much time stuck in the muck. It takes more precious time and energy to complain about the tedious nature of daily chores, for example, than to develop a rhythm in which to complete said chores and to dance to it. Doing so opens up fields and golden fields of time and energy — time to read, to think, to learn, to write, of course. But also time in which to cope with the unexpected — a death in the family, a neighbor's crisis, illness, accident; or, far less worrisome, an unplanned excursion to a new gallery or the lucky, lucky news that you've won tickets to the opening of an acclaimed play.

So, with the exception of the query letter and the brownies, today by 9 a.m., I had dispensed with the same chores as yesterday. Which leaves me fields and golden fields of time and energy.

This is not self-congratulatory narration. This is life. In my little corner of the world, like the corners in which many of you find yourselves, beds must be made. Shelves must be dusted. Dishes must soak. Diapers must be changed. Meals must be prepared. Clothes must be washed. Little Johnny must be driven here. Little Jenny must be picked up there. Today. Tomorrow. Tuesday.

So what?

Just do it.

Quickly. Efficiently. Without much complaining (especially of the cliché-ridden, woe-is-me variety, please). And then get on with life. With your spouse. With your children. With brownies. With a walk through the neighborhood to see the birds flitting from bare tree to bare bush and back. (We've already been out and back. Beautiful out there, folks.) A trip to the library for more read-aloud adventures. An adventure on the el to visit friends for lunch. A nap this afternoon to chase away a cold. A science experiment after dinner.

It's. Just. Not. That. Hard.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The recommended daily allowance

George Bush's Washington is not threatening, as Washington was under Nixon. Nor is it dangerously ludicrous, as it was under Reagan. Instead, it's like half-cooked candy before it reaches the "soft ball" stage -- you can get it together, but it's just mush; it has no form, no shape, no coherence. Since Bush is not venal, mean, nor nearly as daffy as Reagan, the American people, notoriously tolerant when it comes to their presidents, may be ready to cut the guy slack. "Well, he doesn't look great so far, but let's give him a chance" is the common line. "Wait until we see him face a real crisis," they say in D.C. But as Chekhov once observed, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out." We have just graduated from an eight-year course in the inadvisability of doing nothing while social problems fester. We're about to discover that inaction in the face of unraveling disaster is just as bad when it's the result of indecision as it is when it's the result of ideology.

Mother Jones, February 1990

"Molly Ivins made us laugh, but she also made us think" (Houston Chronicle, February 3, 2007).

"Fearless columnist told it like it is" (Chicago Sun-Times, February 4, 2007).

"A burr under apathy's saddle" (Chicago Tribune, February 4, 2007).

From Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures (Noah Adams):

It was a pretty loud voice inside my mind. Surely, I'd made an awful, expensive mistake. I figure I've only got an extra twenty minutes a day in which I can pay any attention at all to anything not connected with work or with keeping the house from falling down. Once Neenah and I went through an entire year refusing to realize that our car's windshield wipers were broken and wouldn't turn on.

My spare twenty minutes come right after dinner, twenty minutes before I fall asleep in a chair trying to read. Usually I'll struggle with it for a while; then I'll take a hot bath and get in bed, where suddenly I'm awake again. Seven or so books wait on the table by the bed. One will be by an author I'm soon to interview, the others are interesting-looking books that I probably should read, and another will be something that's already past its story-potential time, to read just for pleasure, a few pages a night.

The Saturday Review of Books

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. My studies are still going well. We resume lessons this week (after being out of town for Shrew last weekend). Today I'll play "Alpine Melody (p. 69 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1, for those who are following my laborious but merry progress along the keyboard) and continue work on "Edelweiss" (the second tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1).

Watching: Yes, birds, again. Tomorrow and Monday morning for Project FeederWatch.

Working: Three thousand words by tomorrow night.

Fine Art Friday

Fernando Botero (1932-)
"Naturaleza muerta con libros" (1999)

We discovered Botero in the summer of 1994, when an exhibit of his sculptures was arranged along Michigan Avenue just north of Art Institute. My first thought: "Boy, he gives 'capacious bottom' a whole new meaning!" My second: "Golly, but this is wonderful stuff!"

(Speaking of capacious bottoms, if nudes trouble you, skip the "comical" link below (although, I'll let you in on a secret: It's my favorite of Botero's paintings).)

While it is Botero's whimsical images of the corpulent and comical that most appeal to me, Latin America's most celebrated living artist has recently used his work to explore compelling contemporary issues, like "the brutal, drug-fueled guerrilla war that has been going on for 40 years in Colombia" (registration to read the NYT online is free) and abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Two books to read aloud... today

I'll admit that I think Sara Pennypacker borrows heavily from Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest (the section in which Clementine reminds the principal that she still hasn't received a gift even though she's in the gifted math class smelled suspiciously of Ramona sitting "here for the present," no?) and Barbara Park's grammar-impaired Junie B. Jones ("I think"). Still, it passed an afternoon in laughter. And that's a good thing.

Similarly, Barbara Caudill's simple tale, first published in 1961, passed a trip to piano lessons one recent Saturday (with a couple of sentimental tears: "They all wish they had brought their very favorite dolls with them now, don't they?").

These are mashed-potatoes-and-gravy sorts of books -- soft, comforting, tasty, filling, simple, homey.

Enjoy them. We sure did.

Watch the eagles soar!

Celebrate bald eagle wintering along the Illinois River: Travel to Havana, IL, this Saturday for Eagle Days Festival. Events include many eagle-watching opportunities and presentations featuring live raptors by the Illinois Raptor Center. (Havana is about two hundred miles from O'Hare.)

The recommended daily allowance

Do you know what tomorrow is? Then you already know my recommendation.

Groundhog Day.

Phil: Well, it's Groundhog Day. Again.


Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.


Phil: Do you know what today is?
Rita: No, what?
Phil: Today is tomorrow. It happened.


Phil: I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over?