Next up: Which books will make it into the knapsack and suitcase bound for NYC? And on what will I spend the gift card to the bookstore that must not be named? Stay tuned.

Birthday books

:: The Children of Green Knowe (L. M. Boston)

:: Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot (Eddi Fiegel)

:: Caw of the Wild (Barb Kirpluk)

:: The Keep (Jennifer Egan)

:: In the Company of Crows and Ravens (John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell)

Is that the UPS truck I hear?

Amended: No! It was the mail carrier who brought:

:: The Art of Looking Sideways (Alan Fletcher)
I first wrote about this here, after test-driving it. Now I will have my own copy.

:: The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop (John Marchese)
My abiding affection for the violin is no secret to regular M-mv readers. For more about the book, read this article.

:: The Children of Hurin (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Again, for regular M-mv readers, no explanation needed.

:: Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge: A Deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again (Will Pearson, editor)
As you know, we've long been fans of flossing.

What's still on its way:

:: Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists (Fred A. Wolf)
Because no one here puts Science in a corner. Heh, heh, heh.

Thank you!
As I've said before, 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.

We have a very busy schedule --

At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend

From 8 to 9 daydreaming.
From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.
From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.
From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.
From 11:30 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.
From 1:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.
From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.
From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.
From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.
From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.
From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.
From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done.
_____________________________

If you don't recognize the above, get you hands on The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster). On Friday morning, when the Misses M-mv met Milo, that passage made me laugh again, just as it did ten years ago when I read it aloud for the first time -- to Master M-mv. I hope it made you giggle, too.

Many thanks for all of the virtual birthday wishes! No time for photos today, but here's a link to one of my gifts. Awesome, no?

Get M-mv gear here, here, or here.

Folks, Fine Art Friday will return May 11.

I will be forty-three soon.

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

When I was seven, forty-three seemed old.

No, forty-three seemed ancient.

And now I am nearly forty-three.

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

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

Happy.

Birthday.

To me.

Seemingly irreconcilable differences

In my musical whims, that is. How else to explain this in the car Saturday, this in the stereo Tuesday, and this on the computer today?

The anthem won't explain it.

From the archives: Interviewed

In an October 2005 email message, the incomparable R.T. posed some questions about my book-buying habits. She's been on my mind, so I was delighted to see her name in my virtual Inbox this week. Here's what we were talking about two years ago.

RT: Would you consider talking about what leads you to buy (rather than borrow) a particular book?
MFS: Sure. Mostly because you asked, R.T.

I realize there are budget and space considerations to which most of us are constrained; but aside from that, in your home, what makes the cut?
Just a few years ago, had you asked me this, I would have been able to respond, "Anything that interests me." If a title in Bas Bleu or A Common Reader [R.I.P.] made my reader's heart quicken, it was off to the bookstore (or to my computer to place an Amazon order).

But an honest assessment of, yes, my budget, my financial goals, and, of course, my finite space has prompted me to become (much) more discriminating.

Do you impulse buy?
Much, much less than I once did, although it is impulse purchasing that led me to Forty Words for Sorrow, for example, and The Lovely Bones and Bee Season and The Archivist, all of which gave me great pleasure and insight and readerly joy. Yes, even The Lovely Bones. You know how I avoid and resist books that "everyone" is reading. If everyone is reading them, I reason, then they must not present much of a challenge... at least, not in these days of Grisham, Patterson, Oprah, the Literary Guild, and chick lit. I was never so glad to be wrong than I was on finishing The Lovely Bones. Make no mistake, though. I still believe that in most cases, if everyone is indeed reading it, it's generally not going to be the sort of reading experience that will enliven me as a reader. Maybe this is all somehow related to my (your?) reaction to Golding's article: I may not be a grade-one thinker, but, damn it all, I will resist until my death being a grade-three thinker. And bestseller lists tend to represent a whole passel of grade-three thinking, no?

Or do you carefully think out your purchases?
Much more than I once did.

I exhorted someone who expressed interest in recent M-mv recommendations to avoid clunkers by test-driving them at the library first. While, say, How to Be Idle may interest me, it may annoy or disappoint someone else.

Test-drive. That's my latest book-buying strategy.

Of course, this wasn't always a reasonable option for me, this strategy of test-driving.

You would think, I know, that the monolith that is the Chicago Public Library system would have afforded me many test-driving opportunities during my decade in the city, when, in fact, it was often difficult to get my hands on new or obscure books. Budget constraints (theirs), a too-slow interlibrary system, and a user-unfriendly database and catalogue system often compelled me to buy rather than borrow.

Now, the squat library in the little town on the prairie, on the other hand, staffed as it is by people who assert that Ordinary People was Joyce Carol Oates' best book (I'll give you a minute here...) and that Alex Cross is a modern-day Holmes (again, I'll give you a minute...), has actually produced every. single. book I've requested. Within a week. Yes, every one. Some before I even realized I wanted them.

What a splendid and frugal way to satisfy my urgent need to have and to hold immediately (RIGHT NOW!) every book that interests me!

It didn't take more than an evening with the likes of Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1 and Volume 2, to realize, "Another two for the permanent collection," and twenty minutes with The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories to conclude that I could wait for the trade-paperback edition and two pages of The Historian to decide, "Bleah, bleah, bleah."

You see? Test-driving saves me money and shelf space while satiating my inner (and outer!) bibliophile.

So, while I still enjoy a little wanton book purchasing at the Friends of the Library sales, I am quite choosy about my new purchases these days. And to save money, I use coupons, fill my Amazon cart in anticipation of my associate's gift certificate each quarter [now each month -- yay!], ask for gift cards to bookstores when reminded about birthdays or Christmas, and wait for trade-paperback editions when possible. Much less of my actual household budget went to books this year than in any year over the last two decades. Yet... I am happy.

Of course, I may have reached a saturation point, too. My to-be-read holdings outnumber my read holdings by approximately 2.5 to 1. [Oh, dear. This is now about 4 to 1, in spite of all of my budgeting and test-driving. Well, there are worse things. No. Really. There are.] It feels a little irresponsible to slip another volume onto the shelves when its neighbors are crying, "Hey! Remember me? Purchased at Waterstone's in 1996? How could you possibly need another book when I sit here unread?" or "Yo! What's with the new guy? I'm a partially read friend from 2003. Finish me, woman!"

Heh, heh, heh.

Yes, it's true: Book buying and book collecting (at least the way I tended to practice these arts) are addictions, but I won't be attending any meetings, bound as they are to be full of people who will preface each of their remarks with, "Well, I feel," or "It seems to me."

I'll just keep a stash in the bathroom. And the kitchen. And the van. And figure, "Hey, there are worse things."

Do you prefer hardback? Softback? A certain print size or paper quality?
I have become fussier about editions, preferring nearly always the hardcover of, say, the latest Atwood, Irving, Oates, Smiley, Didion, Tyler, Updike, and Vonnegut (if there ever is another one) [and, of course, now there won't be], preferring it being too soft an expression, I think.

Coveting it.

Being the first in line to purchase it the morning of its release.

Ah, better.

About "classics": As reasonable as those Dover editions are, I find them difficult to read. Typeface is a language, and the way the Dovers are usually set sighs, "Ho, hum. I may be one of the finest novels ever written, but you'd never know it." Ditto with many Signet editions. I lean toward Penguin editions or comfortable trade paperback editions that feel good in my hand.

I know you know what I mean.

The difference between the mass paperback edition of The House of Mirth and the quality (or trade) paperback edition is the difference between a slightly labored reading experience and a rich courtship with a memorable book.

I try to ensure that my students always have comfortable editions of texts for just this reason. It is foolish to dismiss the visual appeal of the page, to tsk-tsk about a good book being a good book no matter the edition. It may be a good book, but if the edition isn't welcoming, well, it's a failure of sorts. It's worth the extra dollars to ensure that the reader is welcomed by the text, that he or she is challenged by its premise and promise, not by its typeface and leading.

On a related note: I wear reading glasses now [my prescription has gone up, I learned yesterday], another reason to avoid an edition in which the type is small and packed too tightly. The page must breathe a little. I find that I need to make this call more often in my used book purchases. Older editions of the classics, even some older Penguin editions, are almost painfully difficult to read. So, even at a quarter or a buck, it's not a good investment.
______________________

At some point, I became enamored of omnibus editions. Now, of course, I barely recognize the personal librarian who would have traded those delicious trade paperbacks of T.S. Eliot's letters and poetry collections for a hardcover omnibus edition. So heavy! So hard to tumble into bed with! Ditto with my leatherbound Bronte collections. Oh, how I sometimes yearn for my old Penguin paperbacks with my cramped marginalia littering the pages!
______________________

I avoid book club hardcover editions of books I just know are bound for the permanent collection (i.e., the thousand or so with which I could never part — at least not willingly). The bookclub editions are generally not as sturdy.

Classics, history, genre, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, religion, dance, and so many others; do they all joust equally for space on your shelves?
Yes, they do. They joust and tussle and fight, and the ones that earn a spot in the permanent collection are usually so very, very good.

What kind of input do other family members have, if any? Do they have their own allowances for book purchases?
All of us test-drive now. On any given day, we may have a hundred or more library books in the house. Given that we've all adopted this strategy, the general purchasing rule is If we're at the bookstore, you can probably buy a book. Make it a good one.

By now, they all know what I mean by "a good one." The quick and dirty definition? A good one usually feels like a familiar companion before you even arrive at the counter.

I'd be curious to know how you go through the process, or if you just keep buying until the money runs out, stacking them until space runs out, and then waiting until you can beef up the piggy bank again, only to start all over?
Would it be melodramatic to intone, "The money ran out a long time ago"? Heh, heh, heh. I guess so.

We've got enough room for about five hundred more volumes as it stands right now. [That has, of course, changed. We've added many more than five hundred volumes since R.T. first asked, and we have reorganized our holdings, so we could take on another eight hundred volumes, no problem. After that? We'd need to move... or graduate one of the girls early. Very early. Heh, heh, heh.] But we've also been going through a massive weeding effort, moving books we've outgrown to a holding place downstairs and donating them to the Friends of the Library book sale each quarter. Or sending mysteries, beach reads, and the like (yes, each of us has an occasional yen for what amounts to television-like books now and again) on to family or friends who might enjoy them.

Owning so many books is an expensive undertaking. The shelving, the books... and the insurance (replacement value) on those shelves and books. It's staggering to think that it would cost nearly as much to replace the books as it would to buy a condo out here in the little town on the prairie.

That said, as I've written elsewhere, sitting in my living room or at my desk is not unlike sitting on a throne, surveying a vast kingdom. The books are, at once, subjects and companions, jesters and servants, neighbors and courtiers.

Thank you for asking me about my kingdom.

Twenty-five cedar waxwings...

alighted in the tall bushes and wise-old tree that border our front side yard. And my children knew these friends by name -- common and Latin (Bombycilla cedrorum). Two of them are now drawing the tree and the visitors. The third has returned to his reading.

He is reading, and he is conversing with the book's author in the margins.

And every once in a while he steals a glance at the twenty-five cedar waxwings that alighted in the tall bushes and wise-old tree that border our front side yard.

And he smiles.

And now I remember -- all over again -- why I simply don't care if your students are ahead of or behind mine.

We do what we do with joy and confidence and laughter and love.

And, as it turns out, by all of the conventional standards (e.g., the ACT, college acceptance, advancement in work, success on teams, and more), what we do -- whether it is more than what you do or less -- is, in fact, more than enough.
______________________

When I read the much-linked article about Joshua Bell's experiment in the DC train station, in which he offered harried morning commuters the precious jewels of his performance and was all but ignored, I realized in a flash, "If I've done nothing else here, I've parented and taught three young people who would know -- intuitively -- to stop and listen."

This realization did more for my parent-teacher's heart than my son's solid ACT scores and my daughters' progress in music.

They stop to look at cedar waxwings. They stop to hear the music at O'Hare. They "talk" to the authors of the books they read. They think before they speak. They write to see what they think, and then write it better the second or third or tenth time.

They do this because they have had the space-time to stop and look at the twenty-five cedar waxwings alighting in the tall bushes and wise-old tree that border our front side yard.

And when they do, it means something to them.

Added later
I've been called an elitist and an academic snob, particularly when I launch into one of my tirades against mediocrity. I am, after all, one of those parents who was motivated to home-educate in order to ensure a standard of academic excellence I didn't see at work in either the public or private schools to which we had access.

But a pursuit of excellence need not preclude a deep appreciation of everything else. Folks become alternately discouraged or, curiously, triumphant about standards when the conventional wisdom is challenged, and sometimes, well, they lose sight of the cedar waxwings.
______________________

As I've said before, the fact that we homeschool is the very last thing I share with people because I don't want my children to labor under the stereotypes -- socially ill-adept, unevenly educated, zealously religious, etc. -- currently associated with homeschoolers. We could argue all day about the veracity of the stereotypes, but they do exist; therefore, I think that I have a responsibility to ensure that my children are not only well educated but also that they can comfortably function in the society and culture to which they belong. In other words, I think that it's my job to ensure that they not only meet the vision of the well educated conversational partner I carry in my head but also that they meet conventional standards of achievement and success.

In short, I've failed them if they can't pass the same tests their similarly skilled peers do -- whether those peers are educated in a conventional classroom or not.

I repeat myself when I say that we need to dispel the myth that simply because we homeschool we're doing a better job than our classroom counterparts.

We're not.

Not all of us, anyway.

And the ones who aren't make it hell for the rest of us. The ones who aren't make the admissions counselor think twice about my son's application. We're lucky that he thought the same thing the second time, but still -- someone else prepared her son poorly; now my son's credentials are more carefully scrutinized.

That said, though, I still don't think it's my business to prescribe what other homeschoolers or public schoolers should be doing, any more that it's theirs to prescribe what mine do.
______________________

The short story is this: Academic excellence and joy are not mutually exclusive concepts (any more than a clean home and well educated children are).

We can teach them to read and to look; to watch and to learn; to think and to speak. We might even throw in some science and math, eh? Heh, heh, heh.

I want it all for my students, which is why I work so hard to provide it.

We'll let you know how it turns out.

"I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks."

Roger Ebert writes in today's Sun-Times:

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the festival for anything!

P.S. to gossip rags: I have some back pain, and to make it easier for me to sit through screenings, the festival has installed my very own La-Z-Boy chair.

Photos of me in the chair should be captioned “La-Z-Critic.”

Read the complete piece here.

I know I disparaged the manual, but I do rather fancy my new camera. As I've already mentioned, I don't need a hobby, and I'm not interested in the technical aspects of digital photography. At. All. I just want to point, shoot, download, and post. Really. That's it.

And I say, "Not bad. Not bad at all," to this camera's ability to be pointed, pressed, downloaded, and posted.

We'll see how it does on vacation, then, shall we?

A vacation I have no right to even think about let alone wantonly buy new clothes for (although that was fun!) until I meet one last deadline: twenty-three hundred words by midnight.

Sing it with me: "You can do it! We know you can! If you can't do it... No one can!"

With copious amounts of caffeine, I can do it.

See you on the other side.

Postscript: What is this flower? I think during my first spring here in the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie I asked the same thing. MargaretWV, are you reading? Was it you who identified this lovely flower?

Loving Will

Happy birthday, Mr. Shakespeare!

For a complete Bardolatry experience, visit the archive.
___________________________________

"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.

It's that time again.

TV Turnoff 2007.

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. In honor of Earth Day, it has been recycled three times now.)

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.

"Turning off the television gives us a chance to think, read, create, and do. To connect with our families and engage in our communities. To turn off TV and turn on life," 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 "House" and "Lost." 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.

A murder of crows

Do you think that maybe the man who sent me these books as an (early) birthday gift knows me well? He certainly does!

:: Caw of the Wild (Barb Kirpluk)

:: In the Company of Crows and Ravens (John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell)

In the knapsack

:: David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
Comments: Yes. Still.

:: Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)
Comments: It arrived over the weekend. O'Connor notes here and here.

:: The Habit of Being (Flannery O'Connor)
Comments: Mentioned here.
Quotable bit: Like the old lady, I don't know what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. (From a letter dated July 21, 1948.)

:: Dream a Little Dream of Me (Eddi Fiegel)
Comments: Love Cass Elliot. Saw this somewhere over the last week... was it the Sun-Times or the WSJ? 'can't find the clip now; 'can't find a link. Anyway, borrowed it from our town's tiny library to "test-drive" before adding it to my birthday wishlist. Consider it added.

:: The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
Comments: None needed, really.

:: Ivy Briefs (Martha Kimes)
Comments: Review copy.

:: Fieldwork (Mischa Berlinski)
Comments: Review copy. See this entry, too.

Fahrenheit 451

There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't just stay for nothing.

Bury a book

When I first posted this entry, no link was available. Now one is: "How to Bury a Book."

A review copy of the book King discusses is en route to the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. Will it earn a spot in my suitcase in two weeks?

Or will the review copy of this, which is also en route?

Maybe they will both fit. We'll see.

Speaking of review copies...
Shortly after posting this, I heard from the author, Kevin Davis, which delighted me. I liked the book, and I was happy to get the word out.

Related aside
When I was at the bookstore that must not be named on Satuday (buying Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions for $2.99 (!)), I saw Defending the Damned and Heartstopper side by side (inexplicably) on one of the "Look at me! Look at me!" tables at the entrance of the store. Nineteen Minutes (see this entry) had its own display. Something about seeing books that I had read (with great interest in the case of Damned and Minutes) waaaay before the folks studying the tables that afternoon delighted me as much as Davis's email message.

And here, of course, my inexperience shows.

-- As if my literary foibles weren't already on display, right? Entertainment Weekly. The Sun-Times. Putting Bloom and King in the same post without disparaging the latter. Oh, yeah. I'm a book-blog poseur. Really. Nevermind my abiding affection for Shakespeare and the deep-wide reading lists. I'm not serious enough. No, it's true. You know how you can tell? I adored -- over-the-top, shout-it-from-the-blog-posts loved -- The Thirteenth Tale. Oh, and I take my Camus, Kafka, Sartre, Tolstoy, and Cervantes in -- Shhh! --- translation.

Heh, heh, heh. --

Seriously, since I am not a reviewer by profession or hobby but rather am a recipient of review and advance reader copies by happy accident of this blog, I am still deeply in love with the promise each package from a publisher holds. Will it renew my pleasure in reading for the sake of reading, as The Thirteenth Tale did? Will it teach me something while making me laugh, as Flushed did? Will it dovetail with other books I've been reading, as Nineteen Minutes did? Will it remind me -- even if just for a moment -- of a favorite author, as Mergers and Acquistions did? Will it make me wonder if I missed my calling (marketing), as the arrival of The Descendents did? Will it make me glad that I'm still on nodding terms with the young reader I once was, as Loving Will did?

And so on.

So much promise.

So, yeah, seeing those books for sale this weekend, even the one I didn't care for, delighted me, made me glad to be a reader.

All. Over. Again.

To the poseurs, then. To the unwashed, unlettered, germ-laden interlopers at the literary feast. May we always see the promise in the unopened book. May we never lie about what we like or don't like. May we never take ourselves too seriously. May we always have a book with us when we leave the house and room on our credit card when we visit Amazon.

Amen.
________________

Our review policy.

Seven thousand words by next Tuesday

You didn't peg me for a streak of procrastination, did you? Yet, there it is. I begin the cycle with all sorts of general ideas about how to nibble at the project and end by grabbing it with both hands and noshing at it hungrily.

Heh, heh, heh.

So, work and practice, oh, and David. There's my week, right there.

Generosos animos labor nutrit.

Maybe, eh? Maybe. We'd like to think so, anyway.

"[R]ational discourse was not on the test."

File this under "Why we homeschool." Virtual nod to the
always interesting Book Moot.

Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don't think about thinking. It's not on the test.

Yes!

The Saturday Review of Books

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

Thinking. Blogging.
At a Hen's Place nominated M-mv for yet another Thinking Blogger Award, as did Coffee Tea Books and Me. Many thanks.

Per the award program instructions, I selected my five nominees first go-'round. You'll find the entry here.

By the way, if you're taking this (or any other) virtual award too seriously, take a look at this post by Rurality: "So, to sum up: Nice results from possibly scammy origins. How often does that happen?!" Good question. Still inclined to imbue all of this with any real meaning? Take a look at Quiet Life's award. Heh, heh, heh.

May I add, in non-award news, that Margaret said nice things about me? That and the email confirming that a review copy of Fieldwork (see this entry) is winging its way here just about made my day.

Fine Art Friday

"Cocktail Party," 1992
Sandy Skoglund, 1946-

American artist Sandy Skoglund taught herself photography in order to document her installations--art in which a particular site is utterly transformed, as in "Cocktail Party." Blending sculpture and installation art, the real and the surreal, Skoglund's pieces often feature everyday items such as food, plastic bags, and aluminum foil employed in unusual roles.

As I learned about Skoglund this week, and looked at images of her work, I detected a dark but playful humor, a commentary on middle-class values. Do you? Anyway, it reminded me that I had never posted my chapbook entry on Social Studies.

Chapbook entry
From Social Studies, collected in The Fran Lebowitz Reader.* More about Lebowitz here. An early M-mv entry on Lebowitz here.

p. 16
The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met.

p. 29
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion-picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.

p. 31
Make every effort to avoid ostentatiously Biblical names. Nothing will show your hand more.

p. 32
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

p. 34
Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself -- a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.

p. 119
Coming from a family where literary tradition runs largely toward the picture postcard, it is not surprising that I have never really succeeded in explaining to my grandmother exactly what it is that I do. It is not that my grandmother is unintelligent; quite the contrary. It is simply that so firmly implanted are her roots in retail furniture that she cannor help but view all other occupations from this rather limited vantage point.

p. 150
Despite whatever touch of color and caprice they might indeed impart, I will never, never, never embellish my personal written correspondence with droll little crayoned drawings.

* The page numbers in this entry refer to this edition of Social Studies.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

From our post "Revealing" (9.08.2005):

Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
I read this during my final semester as an undergraduate. Mr. R. insisted. It is heresy, I know, to mention these two books in the same entry, let alone the same sentence, but, like The Mists of Avalon, Slaughterhouse Five sent me on a journey of discovery that, again, filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.

Years later, while in grad school, I spent the day with Vonnegut. I was a grad assistant in a small liberal arts school where he offered two workshops for the English department and a ninety-minute address followed by a book-signing for the general college population. By then, I had read everything of his that was in print. My assignment that day was to help usher him from here to there. Trust me, faculty members vied for his attention, and my services proved non-critical.

But I sat beside him for both workshops. "And this is enough," I thought. "To know that he is a real person who grows impatient and smells old and loses his train of thought sometimes. This writer is real."

Perhaps that is the essence of my reading and writing life: discerning what is real and true for me and recommitting to it periodically.

Updike and Vonnegut: Uneasy Neighbors (5.17.2004)

The recommended daily allowance (9.08.2004)

The recommended daily allowance (2.05.2004)

The recommended daily allowance (12.23.2005; director Henning Carlsen on filming Vonnegut's Jailbird)

Why I read book blogs (11.27.2006)

And from today's New York Times: "Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies."

"[A]nd I have had no indication that they are very bright."

From a letter to Paul Engle from Flannery O'Connor, dated April 7, 1949:

To develope at at all as a writer I have to develope in my own way. The 108 pages are very angular and awkward but a great deal of that can be corrected when I have finished the rest of it -- and only then. I will not be hurried or directed by Rinehart. I think they are interested in the conventional and I have had no indication that they are very bright.

(Note: According to editor Sally Fitzgerald's introduction to this volume, "Flannery's sometimes bizarre spelling and punctuation have in general been respected." Indeed.) As I mentioned here and, more recently, here, Master and I have been spending time with Ms. O'Connor. I am extending my stay with the letters and Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, which is winging its way here. (Is that the UPS truck I hear?)

I think they are interested in the conventional and I have had no indication that they are very bright.

Yeah. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

Also in last night's stack: the ever-at-hand David Copperfield and Terry Eagleton's How to Read a Poem.
_______________________

It's snowing here. Like mad. The grim determination of the goldfinches' clutch on the thistle sack makes the gray semi-darkness feel hard and wrong.

And the daffodils are dying before they lived because April cruelly withdrew its promise of warmth and light. No explanation. No warning.

Read. Think. Learn.

Keep warm.

The 67th Carnival of Homeschooling

~ Hosted by Apollos Academy ~

The recommended daily allowance

Presented chapbook-style: The Best Poems of the English Language from Chaucer through Frost (selected and with commentary by Harold Bloom).

p. 1
Poetry is essentially a figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative.

p. 3
One of the secrets of poetic rhetoric in English is to romance the etonym (as it were), to renew what Walter Pater called the "finer edges" of words.

p. 5
Greatness in poetry depends upon splendor of figurative language and on cognitive power, or what Emerson termed "meter-making argument." Shakespeare is first among poets at representing thought, which pragmatically does not differ from thinking in poetry, a process not yet fully adumbrated. Angus Fletcher's Colors of the Mind can be recommended for its "conjectures on thinking in literature," which is the book's subtitle.

p. 13
What makes one poem better than another? The question, always central to the art of reading poetry, is more crucial today than ever before, since extrapoetic considerations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and assorted ideologies increasingly constitute the grounds for judgment in the educational institutions and the media of the English-speaking world.

p. 29
The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists of ourselves. Even Shakespeare cannot make me into Falstaff or Hamlet, but all great poetry asks us to be possessed by it. To possess it by memory is a start, and to augment our consciousness is the goal. The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.
__________________

Bloom's introduction to this book, "The Art of Reading Poetry," is available as a separate volume, but the complete project, which includes the poems he recommends and his commentary, is the better value.

More poetry recommendations here.

Puzzling

Puzzles are a decidedly winter-ish pursuit, no? And calendar be damned! It's decidedly winter-ish weather. Flurries. Temps in the thirties. This week's puzzle? State Birds and Flowers 1,000-Piece Puzzle.

Pearls before...
Myrtle writes, "One of the greatest violinists in the world plays in the DC Metro as if he were a street musician. Think anyone noticed? Actually two people did. Great article... It is both cynical and strangely uplifting at the same time."

From "Pearls Before Breakfast" (Washington Post, April 8, 2007):

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.

On the nightstand

I'm going to squeeze a bird walk, three thousand words (work), and a movie (either this or this) out of this day, so it's straight to the books sans small talk this time.

:: Birds of Illinois (Sheryl Devore)
How it ended up on the stack: I have already discussed that here and here. Most recently, we consulted it during a discussion of the differences between the Black-Capped Chickadee and the Carolina Chickadee. Essentially, making an identification based on plummage alone is all but impossible.

:: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee)
How it ended up on the stack: Theater envy, plain and simple. The Broadway revival of Albee's less than flattering portrayal of marriage (complete with original star Kathleen Turner) arrived in Chicago in March. The run ended yesterday. No, this autodidact and former Chicagoan did not attend a performance. [Insert heavy, dramatic sigh.] Review. Article. Article.

:: The manual for my new Canon PowerShot A550
How it ended up on the stack: I mentioned my recent purchase here. I'll be frank: I don't need a new hobby. I'm not interested in the technical aspects of digital photography. I just want to point, shoot, download, and post. Really. That's it. This puppy is still set to the factory defaults, and I'm not sure when, precisely, I will muster the time and inclination to employ even a tenth this camera's capabilities. The manual's text dissolves before my eyes. Just drips like a Dali painting. Blah, blah, blah, setting. Blah, blah, drip, menu. Drip, blah, sensor. And so on. I love the camera, folks. The manual? Eh, not so much.

:: The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo (Lt. Col. J.H. Patterson)
How it ended up on the stack: I picked it up on Wednesday. Unfamiliar with the story? Start here.

:: The Best Old Movies for Families (Ty Burr)
How it ended up on the stack: I test-drove the library's copy and determined that I must have my own. Just as young readers need exposure to Great, Very Good, and Good books, they need exposure to Great, Very Good, and Good films. A highly recommended resource.

:: The Banquet Years (Roger Shattuck)
How it ended up on the stack: Knowing that Satie's "Gymnopedie No.1" is my "Traumerei" (see this entry for explanation), someone recommended Banquet -- without even knowing that I already admire Shattuck. Good stuff.

:: Mergers & Acquisitions (Dana Vachon)
How it ended up on the stack: This is a review copy. You know, the first chapter reminded me -- fleetingly -- of my beloved Tom Wolfe. Newsweek noted the similarity, too. Then, in the middle of the second chapter... the book began to feel a little like my new camera manual. (See above.) A quick Google search yielded this article, for those interested in learning more about Vachon. I'll admit that the demands of meeting my March deadline may have rendered me unfit for reviewing, so I'll give this another go. It has, therefore, earned a spot in my knapsack.

:: David Copperfield (Charles Dickens).
How it ended up on the stack: As I have mentioned, the family book club is reading this sloooowly -- motivated by the idea of reading Dickens the way he published this novel (i.e., serially), we're tackling a chapter a day every weekday. After some fits and starts, we're slated to finish our reading and ongoing discussions by the end of the month.

Visit our "On the nightstand" archive.

Chapbook entry

Fiction presents the reader with significant and therefore durable insights into life. But these insights represent something more than mere intellectual comprehension... Fiction derives its unique value from its power to give felt insights. Its truths take a deeper hold on our minds because they are conveyed through our feelings. (Laurence Perrine in Structure, Sound, and Sense )

In the last "On the nightstand" entry, I mentioned that Master M-mv and I were reading Flannery O'Connor's short stories. As with so many of our studies, an omnipresent desire to link this to that and the delight of synthesis guided our reading.

Flannery O'Connor
"Greenleaf"
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"Good Country People"
"Everything That Rises Must Converge"

William Faulkner
"A Rose for Miss Emily"
"That Evening Sun"

Eudora Welty
"Why I Live at the P.O."

Truman Capote
"My Side of the Matter"
"A Christmas Memory"

You can see it at work, can't you? A discussion of grotesquerie and "Southern gothic" led from O'Connor to Faulkner. Southern writers? 'can't neglect Welty. Oh, unreliable narrator, is it? Well, what about Capote's "My Side of the Matter"? (Thanks, Susan.) Loved Capote? Well, then, don't miss "A Christmas Memory" -- which brings us back to O'Connor because "A Christmas Memory" and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" are among the most exquisitely wrought short stories. Ever.

An aside: The most exquisitely wrought short story ever? "The Dead," which I've recommended many, many times. And, yes, synthesis is now playfully tugging at our literary sleeves again: Consider O'Connor's presentation of Catholicism... and then Joyce's.

This week's adventures in fiction (short form) juxtaposed stories built on contrived emotion (terror, humor, pathos) and stories in which terror, humor, and pathos were evoked naturally, as that which is true about the nature of being human unfolded. Master commented that the case for contrivance read an awful lot like the stories on "When Radio Was," a program we listen to some nights -- he on the large radio/CD player beside the all-but-too-small bed in his large room downstairs and I on a transistor nestled between my pillow and Mr. M-mv's. Heh, heh, heh. Master M-mv has a point. The first set of stories did read a bit like radio scripts.

The case for contrivance:

"Two Bottles of Relish" (Lord Dunsany)
"The Storm" (McKnight Malmar)
"The Catbird Seat" (James Thurber)
"Alma Mater" (O.F. Lewis)
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" (Bill Adams)

The case for interpretative fiction:

"That Evening Sun" (William Faulkner)
"The Drunkard" (Frank O'Connor)
"Young Man Axelbrod" (Sinclair Lewis)
"A Christmas Memory" (Truman Capote)

An aside: Since I adore Thurber, I rather resent his appearance as a case of contrivance. I think there is an underappreciated middle-class rage at work in his stories and illustrations that certainly doesn't shout, "Contrived!" at me.

Pressed into my chapbook
From "A Christmas Memory":

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but at a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown himself. That things as they are" -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone -- "just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

From "Everything That Rises Must Converge":

He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.

Fine Art Friday

Emil Nolde, 1867-1956
"Crucifixion," 1912

From the Artchive entry on Nolde:

Emil Nolde added a special, mystical dimension to German Expressionism, and his career illustrates a number of the moral dilemmas which faced German Modernists of the first generation, since his instincts were nationalist and conservative even though his art was regarded as experimental.

From the archives
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.

And again!

Wow! The Thinking Mother nominated M-mv for its third Thinking Blogger Award. (In her note advising me of the nomination, Christine writes that this is M-mv's fourth nomination. If so, I've missed one of them, but many thanks.)

Per the award program instructions, I selected my five nominees first go-'round. You'll find the entry here. Many thanks, Christine.

Behind the scenes at the museum:Members only

The Field Museum's 56th Annual Members' Nights program concludes tonight.

As I wrote last year and two years before that, this behind-the-scenes event is a "Christmas-comes-but-once-a-year" affair. Members and their guests are granted access into the Field equivalent of Santa's workshops and inner sanctum when they board the creaky freight elevator to trundle past the upper level and up, up to the Museum's third and fourth levels or board another elevator and swing down, down to the Collections Resource Center.

Consider this: More than nine-tenths of the Field Museum's holdings are housed in the restricted areas. What we see in a typical visit to the Field is staggering. Now reflect on a collection ten times (or more!) larger.

Are you a member? Get there, if you can.

From Stephen King's column in the April 6 issue of, yes, Entertainment Weekly:

It occurs to me that publishers may confuse "selling" with "pimping." If so, here's a flash: They're not the same. Sell this one, and you make it possible for this guy to write the next one. You're doing him a mitzvah. And not just him. What about the ordinary reader? In case you forgot, guys, we are your friends, not unwashed, unlettered, germ-laden interlopers at the literary feast.

You don't want to do your job? Okay, I'll do it.

Under the drab title and the drab cover, there's a story that cooks like a mother. It's called Fieldwork.

The recommended daily allowance

(Yes, this RDA was dragged up from the archives.)

I'm going out on a bit of a limb with this recommendation, but, well, it's my site, so I'll recommend whatever I want, right? Today's RDA, then: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

From the editorial review over at Amazon.com:

While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial) account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that Christopher Moore presents a funny, lighthearted satire of the life of Christ — from his childhood days up to his crucifixion — in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.

That last bit bears repeating:

This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.

The some to whom such a novel is blasphemy should simply avoid today's RDA. The rest of you — this is not a perfect novel, nor a particularly "difficult" one, but, man, it will make you laugh until you cry. It may even make you cry until you laugh.

Oh, hush. You know you want one. So go make it.

From the archives:"Here's your sign!"

Mr. M-mv and I are up late tonight. Working. We're scheduled for a holiday, so, of course, someone at work is experiencing a crisis. You know how it goes. Over pizza and large mugs of coffee, we manned our dueling laptops and shared stories of how we ended up in this place at 10:46 p.m. on the eve of our short vacation. Both stories end the same:

"Here's your sign."

Nothing like saying that in a merry voice when someone else's act of sheer stupidity would otherwise reduce us to tears of woe for the fate of mankind.

"Here's your sign."

Surely you've heard the Bill Engvall schtickl. No? Oh, sit back, honey. This one is funny.

Stupid people should have to wear signs that just say, "I'm stupid." That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me...oops...never mind. 'didn't see your sign."

It's like before my wife and I moved. Our house was full of boxes and there was a U-Haul truck in our driveway. My neighbor comes over and says, "Hey, you moving?"

"Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week to see how many boxes it takes. Here's your sign."

A couple of months ago, I went fishing with a buddy of mine. We pulled his boat into the dock, I lifted up this big ol' stringer of bass, and this idiot on the dock goes, "Hey, y'all catch all them fish?"

"Nope. Talked 'em into giving up. Here's your sign."

I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel. There was a guy inventing a shark-bite suit, and there's only one way to test it. "All right, Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good. They want you to jump into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you."

"Well, all right, but hold my sign. I don't wanna lose it."

Last time I had a flat tire, I pulled my truck into one of those side-of-the-road gas stations. The attendant walks out, looks at my truck, looks at me, and I SWEAR he said, "Tire go flat?" I couldn't resist. I said, "Nope. I was driving around and those other three just swelled right up on me. Here's your sign."

We were trying to sell our car about a year ago. A guy came over to the house and drove the car around for about 45 minutes. We get back to the house, he gets out of the car, reaches down and grabs the exhaust pipe, then says, "Darn that's hot!" See, if he'd been wearing his sign, I could have stopped him.

I learned to drive an 18-wheeler in my days of adventure. Wouldn't you know, I misjudged the height of a bridge. The truck got stuck, and I couldn't get it out, no matter how I tried. I radioed in for help, and eventually a local cop shows up to take the report. He went through his basic questioning. Okay. No problem. I thought for sure he was clear of needing a sign...until he asked, "So, is your truck stuck?" I couldn't help myself! I looked at him, looked back at the rig and then back to him, and said, "No, I'm delivering a bridge. Here's your sign."

I stayed late at work one night and a co-worker looked at me and said, "Are you still here?" I replied, "No. I left about 10 minutes ago. Here's your sign."

Anybody you know need a sign today?

The next time someone says something stupid, ask her where her sign is.

We're willing to print them up some new ones.

Every morning. Like clockwork.

Of course, I must have one: The Voco Clock featuring the voice of Stephen Fry. Girl Detective sent me the link.

I believe it is the rotation of the earth that is to blame, sir.

Indeed.

From the archives:"I'm Hans Christian Andersen!"

On this date in 1805, Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark.

From "Great Dane" (Harold Bloom's April 20, 2005, piece at the WSJ):

Many Americans still read Andersen's tales, whether as children or to their children, but tend to confound him with the amiable dreamer played by Danny Kaye in a not very adequate film biography. The actual [Hans Christian] Andersen composed an extraordinary range of stories, as much addressed to older readers as to children.

"Not very adequate"? Well, we like it, anyway.

Later:

I myself see no distinction between children's literature and good or great writing for extremely intelligent children of all ages. J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are equally bad writers, appropriate titans of our new Dark Age of the Screens: computer, motion pictures, TV. One goes on urging children of all ages to read and reread Andersen and Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, rather than Ms. Rowling and Mr. King. Sometimes when I say that in public I am asked: Is it not better to read Ms. Rowling and Mr. King, and then go on to Andersen, Dickens, Carroll and Lear? The answer is pragmatic: Our time here is limited. You necessarily read and reread at the expense of other books. [Emphasis added.]

Heh, heh, heh.

Read.

Watch.

Learn.

The recommended daily allowance

The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories
(Anchor Folktale Library)

Poetry

From the website of the Academy of American poets:

What is National Poetry Month? National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture. National Poetry Month has been successful beyond all anticipation and has grown over the years into the largest literary celebration in the world.

Who designated it? The Academy of American Poets has led this initiative from its inception in 1996 and along the way has enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help.

When is National Poetry Month? April. Every year since 1996.

Why was April chosen for National Poetry Month? With input from booksellers, librarians, poets, and teachers, the Academy chose a month during the school year so that schools and students could participate fully. February is Black History Month and March is Women's History Month, so April seemed a logical choice. Also, there are many wonderful poetic references to April:

T. S. Eliot wrote, "April is the cruelest month." It is our hope that National Poetry Month lessens that effect.
______________________________

As I've said several times before, 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.

A selection of M-mv poetry entries

The recommended daily allowance (12.20.2006)

Russian lit (3.12.2006)

"Not waving but drowning"

"The Gift Outright" (1.20.2006)

Czeslaw Milosz (12.02.2005)

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening (11.25.2004)

At some point, I'll post a list of some of the favorites among the many poetry books on our shelves. Until then, though, don't miss this one (first mentioned in our 8.26.2006 "On the nightstand") or this one (found in "Writing warm-up" from 3.26.2006).

* From the poem "Dream Variations" by Langston Hughes