Letters from a Hill Farm

Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie

2012-02-01T12:24:00.004-05:00

6. Sleeping Murder
by Agatha Christie
mystery, 1976
Kindle book, 4
finished 2/1/12

This was published posthumously, and is referred to as 'Miss Marple's Last Case,' though happily for the reader she is not infirm, nor does she die. In fact, I thought her more sensitive, and sharper than I've seen her before.

The beginning of the book is rather like one of those movies that starts off bright and sunny, when quite suddenly a feeling of unease creeps in. Though it doesn't get as scary and bizarre, I was reminded a bit of Rosemary's Baby in the first section. Gwenda and Giles have just gotten married in New Zealand. Gwenda has come to England to find them a house, while Giles will come later. She finds the ideal home. She feels completely comfortable, and though it needs some work, it is the perfect place. One of the areas that needs work is the garden path. The steps and walkway off it are in the wrong place. Instead of approaching the sea view directly, it is off to the side. Where the center walk should be there is a bramble of bushes. Odd, but not startling.

When Gwenda wants to go from one room to the other, she gets up from her seat and without thinking heads right toward a wall rather than a less conveniently placed door. After this happens a few times, she tells the workmen to cut a hole in that wall since it is clearly the place a door should be. When they get working, they tell her the door used to be there.

She has a specific wallpaper in mind for a bedroom, poppies and cornflowers. When a painted-in closet is opened up, she finds that exact wallpaper on the interior wall.

So, the reader begins to get little shivers. What on earth is going on here? One evening she is invited up to London by the Wests, Miss Marple's nephew Raymond and his wife Joan. Along with Jane Marple, they attend a performance of The Duchess of Malfi. All is fine until the words, 'Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young' are spoken. Gwenda screams and runs off. She tells the kindly Miss Marple that when she heard the words, she saw in her mind's eye, as if she were looking through a banister, a woman named Helen being strangled by a man speaking those very words. Miss Marple finds the word 'through' to be most instructive. That means that Gwenda was a little girl who wasn't tall enough to look over, but had to look through.

So, did Gwenda witness a murder when she was little? Why is this house so well-known to her if she believes she has never been to England before? When Giles arrives, he and his wife and Miss Marple begin looking into the situation. The title is a play on the words, 'let sleeping dogs lie.' In Miss Marple's view it might be better to let it be, to not investigate because it could lead to terrible truths which have been kept secret for almost twenty years.

I loved this. Miss Marple had a really strong role which she doesn't always. Her mind is as clear at the end of her cases as it was at the start. Gwenda and Giles are a sweet young couple, and the reader roots for them to come through the horrors that are unveiled without losing their youthful love for each other and love for life. They do.

According to Agatha Christie At Home, in 1940,

Agatha began two books as insurance for Max and Rosalind, later assigning to Max the copyright of the final case for Miss Marple, Sleeping Murder, and to Rosalind the final case for Poirot, Curtain.

I find that incredibly endearing, and also amazing in that she thought her husband and daughter would need an 'insurance' book. Of course, she couldn't look into the future and know she would be one of the top best-selling authors of all time.

Today's picture/Chicken and Duck Eggs

2012-01-31T13:21:00.003-05:00

Matt and Margaret's ducks have been laying a lot of eggs lately, as have our chickens.

January with Gladys and Rachel

2012-01-29T16:21:00.002-05:00

To learn more about this yearlong adventure with Gladys Taber and Rachel Peden, you may scroll down to 'letter topics' and click 'A Year with Gladys and Rachel.'

I don't believe I've laughed as much in the other months as I did while reading Gladys' January entry. She has mentioned in other books that she isn't fond of the telephone, and indeed has a 'phobia.' I know people all these years later who have much the same thing. Her descriptions of the phone service in her area, and her experiences were so funny. They were rather like a literary slapstick comedy.

Well, much has been written about the country telephone. Ours rings apparently without reason, and with nobody on the other end. If we try to call anyone, we get five people in odd places who are justly annoyed at being summoned when we do not want to talk to them anyway. If I get called to the phone, I always hear another conversation going on, and I get so bemused listening to that that I never hear my own. …
After being on a nine-party line for years, we graduated to a two-party line. We felt elated, but it was a short-time elation. For now we only have a sort of dual conversation with the other party on at the same time. And if I get on, as I rarely do, I always hear this clear clipped voice saying, "is this the New York Medical Center?" …
My telephoning is hampered anyway by the fact that I can never understand anybody's name over it or what they want. I hear a dull glug glu and then I say brightly, "Oh yes?"

When her friend Faith Baldwin calls, Gladys is amazed by her telephoning abilities.

The phone is no hazard to her. She can chat over it. I am lost in admiration, in fact so lost that I often miss part of what she says.
She can do a whole novelette in five minutes and all I have to do is say OH. Or, in a great burst of inspiration, YES.

And apparently, the phone company in her area used to change the phone numbers 'every little while'

and our former number invariably goes to some week-end shack by the river. Any misguided soul who tries to call us gets an empty shack. … The phone rings a great deal, but of course it isn't our number but the number of someone else who has now another number!

In writing about getting sick in January, she reminisces about her parents' ways of dealing with illness.

I can well remember how Father always diagnosed his own and told the doctor what it was and what kind of medicine he needed. That settled that. Then he would add some of his own medicines from the big black case he had carried in the Mexican mountains in the early days. He believed if one pill was good, five were bound to work quicker.
Also, he mixed the pills. First he would take what he had ordered the doctor to give him, then add some Rhinitis or aconite or a spoonful of some early remedy of mine. A glass of Bromo Seltzer helped out and a little later a raw onion sliced and placed between two slices of bread, well buttered, salted and peppered was a final sovereign remedy.
It may be, as well, that he was the healthiest man that ever lived, so he never got upset by any of his health measures. Mama on the other hand never took so much as an aspirin. She felt one should just keep a stiff upper lip and throw it off.

As she wrote about her Irish setter, Hollyberry's adventures in obedience training, this dog lover was smiling with delight.

when it comes to the Long Down, she is overcome with melancholy. The Irish almost never care about lying down. So she turns to jelly, rolls weakly on her back and holds sad paws up in the air.

Another Irish setter, Daphne, disrupts the Sit Stay, running off after a pheasant and it took all the other owners an hour to catch her.

Doesn't it seem like every generation remembers winters as longer, the snow deeper, the temperatures colder than now? Just this morning I emailed some friends saying I remembered walking to school in -20 weather. Did I really? It sure seems so to me, but am I suffering from that same memory lapse which afflicts all adults? Gladys says

We do not have as many terrible blizzards as we had twenty years ago. This makes me believe in the men who say our climate is getting milder.

This in a 1955 book!

Tom was loading wood onto the terrace this afternoon, and rushed in to get the camera so he could photograph the bird tracks he saw under the lilac bush. As I read along in Stillmeadow Daybook and Rural Free today, I was so hoping one of them would write about birds so I could include Tom's pictures (click for a better view). Gladys mentioned getting the bird feeders full by the end of the day so there would be food first thing in the morning, but nothing specifically about tracks. You may imagine my joy when the very last essay in Rachel's January entry was entitled Footprints in the Snow.

On the snowy path up to the barn this morning I read again the unintentional autographs of several small creatures that share this farm with us. In the thin snow on the back steps and below them were the scanty, scriptlike tracks of birds. They are shaped like a Y, with three prongs in front, one in the back.

Tom put his hand in the photo to give a sense of the size of the bird tracks.

After noting a few others like those of a rabbit and a mouse, she closes her month with

The birds' autographs were my favorites. With a pancake turner and great care, I managed to get up one whole unbroken autograph and put it in the freezer, to read again, I hope, next July.

Though we didn't do this, I just love it that Rachel Peden did so.

Many of her musings were really like prose poems, whether writing of a barn interior or an icy few days.

Unless a bitter wind is blowing, or rain is beating in through the empty windows, the barn is a snug place on a winter morning. When Dick called me up there this morning, the barn was full of a dusty atmosphere of abundance and content. The cattle are shaggy-coated and fat. The hay they were eating had a pleasant odor, reminiscent of summer. When they opened their mouths for a refill, their fragrant breath came out in a crooked, wafted column, like steam.

The ice show began on Friday, and for three days we lived in a glass world.
Early Friday morning sleet was fall in a rasping, hurried whisper against walks and windows and into treetops. By daylight you could already see what had been accomplished. The bent-over peach tree was a glass tree; the maple branches, dotted with reddish brown buds, were glass-dipped and sung softly as if about to break into tinkling music. The whole farmscape was a wonderland of glass, wet and shining. …
The next day the sun came out, making the ice dramatic. Now the stiff trees turned to silver. The still air had the shine of silver from earth to sky, and every little insignificant weed and bush had been silver-plated. …
On the third day there was no sun. The brilliance dimmed to a gleam. Trees glowed softly under a dull, blue-gray sky. Many were enclosed, separately by a strange pale-gray halo. In the garden, old weeds were transformed into lace, spun delicately like foam. …
That night the moonlight was clear and deep on the crusty snow. Trees stood white and silent, as if they knew what was to happen. Then rain came, melting the glass and silver burdens.

There's a whimsical section which arises from her daughter's school work.

Carol read the health lesson aloud while I washed the dishes in the kitchen, and thus we both learned that the human body is 90 per cent water. To me this sounded like understatement. There are times when a farmwife's body can believe that she is 90 per cent dishwater alone. Add another 5 per cent for laundry, some for washing potatoes and fruits before cooking, and a panful for scrubbing the linoleums in muddy winter weather, and it wouldn't be surprising if the total came out somewhere nearer 135 per cent.

When I finished the monthly readings of Gladys Taber and Rachel Peden, I told Tom that these are some of the most enjoyable times of my month. I look forward to them, I enjoy them completely as I read, and then I have the added pleasure of sharing the words of these two wonderful women with my readers.

There's Gold In Them Hills/Ron Sexsmith

2012-01-28T22:04:00.003-05:00

I heard There's Gold In Them Hills at the end of an episode of Royal Pains, and wanted to share this wonderful song by Ron Sexsmith

I know it doesn't seem that way
But maybe it's the perfect day
Even though the bills are piling
And maybe Lady Luck ain't smiling

But if we'd only open our eyes
We'd see the blessings in disguise
That all the rain clouds are fountains
Though our troubles seem like mountains

There's gold in them hills
There's gold in them hills
So don't lose heart
Give the day a chance to start

Every now and then life says
Where do you think you're going so fast
We're apt to think it cruel but sometimes
It's a case of cruel to be kind

And if we'd get up off our knees
Why then we'd see the forest for the trees
And we'd see the new sun rising
Over the hills on the horizon

There's gold in them hills
There's gold in them hills
So don't lose faith
Give the world a chance to say...

A word or two, my friend
There's no telling how the day might end
And we'll never know until we see
That there's gold in them hills

There's gold in them hills
So don't lose heart
Give the day a chance to start

There's gold in them hills
There's gold in them hills

Quote du jour/Mortimer Adler

2012-01-26T21:08:00.002-05:00

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001)

Today's essay by Virginia Woolf

2012-01-25T13:40:00.006-05:00

In January, the month of Virginia Woolf's birth, I like to read something by, or about, her. This year I decided to read one of her essays, since I've joined the Essay Reading Challenge. I perused both The Common Reader, and The Second Common Reader and decided upon the last essay in the latter book. Its title was irresistible - How Should One Read A Book? She begins by stressing the importance of the 'note of interrogation at the end of my title.'

Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess.

She recommends that we begin a book with an open mind.

Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read.

She discusses the varieties of reading, what she calls, 'classes,' specifically fiction, biography, and poetry. She notes that when we read fiction:

It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person - Defoe, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy - but that we are living in a different world.

Biographies offer to 'satisfy the curiosity' we feel as we walk down a street at night and

we linger in front of a house where the lights are lit and the blinds not yet drawn, and each floor of the house shows us a different section of human life...

And about poetry, Virginia Woolf says,

The impact of poetry is so hard and direct that for the moment there is no other sensation except that of the poem itself. What profound depths we visit then - how sudden and complete our immersion!

These are but a few examples of the wisdom expressed in the eleven pages of this essay. I can't imagine a reader who will not come away with a sense of companionship with the author, who conveys so much of what we feel inside yet possibly have never expressed to another soul, or even to ourselves. She ends with the idea of a Day of Judgment when

great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards ... the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."

Please do read this essay. It may change your life in a small, or not-so-small way. It is available online here.

Virginia Woolf at Monks House in 1931, a year before The Second Common Reader was published. Today is the 130th anniversary of her birth.

This is my first essay read for the Essay Reading Challenge - 2012.

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo

2012-01-24T11:58:00.006-05:00

5. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure
The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
by Matthew Algeo
nonfiction, 2009
Kindle book, 3
second book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012
finished, 1/24/12

Just look at those two! Don't they seem like the happiest couple ever?! When Harry Truman was once offered the opportunity of seeing a private screening of the (then) new Marilyn Monroe movie, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Harry declined saying that "real gentlemen prefer gray hair." Some difference from these days when women 'of a certain age' do everything possible to look younger. Bess Truman was often described with an adjective rarely used now, 'matronly,' defined in the dictionary as

like or characteristic of a matron, esp. in being dignified and staid and typically associated with having a large or plump build

Not many women today would appreciate such a description, let alone be satisfied looking that way. Bess was a woman who was comfortable in her own skin, and much loved by her adoring husband. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Matthew Algeo tells us in the preface that

Harry Truman was the last president to leave the White House and return to something resembling a normal life. And in the summer of 1953 he did something millions of ordinary Americans do all the time, but something no former president had ever done before - and none has done since. He took a road trip, unaccompanied by Secret Service agents, bodyguards, or attendants of any kind. Truman and his wife, Bess, drove from their home in Independence, Missouri to the East Coast and back again. Harry was behind the wheel. Bess rode shotgun. The trip lasted nearly three weeks.

Sometimes they were recognized and other times they weren't. They stayed in public motels or hotels, and ate in the sorts of places all tourists frequent. When at all possible, the author has followed them in their travels, finding some buildings still there, and others gone forever. He was able to talk with people (or their family members) Harry had talked to almost sixty years ago. Matthew Algeo also discusses the times, and how they were different from now. We learn about many American cities and historical events.

Perhaps the most startling fact is that Harry Truman, who became president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, and was then elected in 1948 for another four years, was in quite dire straits monetarily when his presidency was over. In those days, the only income he had was 'a small army pension,' which amounted to $111.96 a month.

He had no government-provided office space, staff, or security detail. Shortly before leaving office, he'd had to take out a loan from a Washington bank to help make ends meet.

When he went home to Independence, he had an office with two assistants whose salaries he paid himself. He answered the huge amount of mail he received, and paid for all the postage, which in the first year cost him ten thousand dollars. After he left office, 'out of respect for the presidency,' Truman wouldn't accept a position on any organization's board of directors. He didn't believe in 'commercializing' the presidency.

The author offers some comparisons with modern day ex-presidents, which as he says must have had Harry 'spinning in his grave.'

By the early 1980s, Ford was raking in more than a million dollars a year.
Bill Clinton earned more than ten million in speaking fees alone.

An ex-president gets a yearly pension of around $190,000. He also gets money for all those office expenses Harry Truman had to pay for himself, which can now amount to a million a year.

In 2008 the rent on Bill Clinton's office in Harlem alone was more than $500,000. (Carter's in Atlanta was $102,000. The elder Bush's in Houston was $175,000).
The total amount of money the federal government spends on its ex-presidents has risen from $160,000 in 1959 to an estimated $2.5 million in 2008. ... not counting Secret Service protection, which, in 2000, when four formers were living, cost nearly twenty-six million dollars altogether.

It is statistics like these, sprinkled throughout the book which make for fascinating reading. The book is really three-tiered: Harry and Bess' trip, Matthew Algeo's trip, and the wealth of information the author gives the reader. For instance, he visits the Princess Restaurant on Main Street in Frostburg, Maryland which is the only one of the 'small mom-and-pop businesses that the Trumans are known to have patronized ... that has survived, more or less intact, in the same family.' It was so sad to read that when they were there in 1953, 'Main Street positively bustled with businesses' and now they are all gone except for the Princess.

Just a year before Harry and Bess took their trip, my parents went on their own three-week road trip to Florida with another couple. My mother kept a little scrapbook which I treasure. I expect that Harry and Bess saw many of the same kinds of motels and restaurants during their travels.

Wouldn't you like to know what that pie was?

A pilgrimage for all Red Sox fans heading south, then and now.

That price has gone up a bit!

Enjoy that beer as you drive along!

This is wonderful book. It makes for reading that is informative and also great, great fun. I loved it. There's a website devoted to the book and the trip here. And if you'd like to learn more about Harry Truman, I highly recommend David McCullough's Truman.

This is my second book read for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012.

The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan

2012-01-23T12:19:00.004-05:00

4. The Circus Fire
by Stewart O'Nan
nonfiction, 2000
library book
first book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012
finished, 1/19/12

I first heard of this book at Lynne's Book Reviews, and knew I wanted to read it for a couple reasons. One is because I was so impressed by the author's writing in Emily, Alone that I want to read everything he has written. And two is because of a jackknife.

The Circus Fire is out of his usual realm of fiction. It is a record of a fire at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut in 1944. Stewart O'Nan explains in the foreword why he wrote it. When he moved to Hartford and went to the library looking for a 'good history' of the fire

They didn't have one.
Maybe another library around town?
No, what they meant was, there wasn't one.
I thought that was wrong. The circus fire was the biggest disaster in the history of the state, and such a strange one. So many people had died [167], I couldn't believe no one had commemorated the event, set it in words for later generations. ... I started asking people around town what they knew about it.
Everyone had a friend or neighbor who had been there that day, a grandmother or a cousin. Everyone had a story. People of that generation knew exactly where they were that afternoon, just as, later, they could recall what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot. The fire had that great of an impact on the city.

There is no one better to tell the story of the circus fire than Stewart O'Nan. The compassionate empathy toward people which was so evident in Emily, Alone comes through again in his telling of this sad, sad tale. When he describes a scene and we wince, we know that he is wincing as well.

Years ago Tom's mother gave me a jackknife to keep in my purse. She was continuing a tradition begun because of this very fire. She was sixteen and her sister fourteen when the circus fire happened. They lived in Connecticut. Her mother gave both girls a knife so that if they were ever in a burning circus tent, they could cut their way out. We gave her The Circus Fire for her anniversary this year.

Thirteen-year-old Donald Anderson … had a fishing knife with him, with a good sharp blade. … He stuck the knife into the middle of the wall and worked it down, sawing the tough canvas until he had a fair-sized slit. Left and right at the bottom, left and right at the top, and it was a door big enough for him to get out.

All around the tent, fathers slashed at the canvas with penknives, boys wearing HiJacks paratrooper boots whipped miniature jackknifes out of their scabbards, and people dashed out into the cool air.

While the rest of the world forgets, the circus fire remains the property of the survivors. To this day, Timothy Burns of South Windsor carries a small pocket knife. At his father's wake, he slipped his dad's knife into his jacket pocket, as if he might use it in another life.

The book is filled with sometimes unbearable tension, as we read of little events and words that are so meaningful in hindsight. A man lounging around the morning of the circus 'precariously on the porch rail' is scolded by his mother

"You don't get off of that thing, I'll send you home in a coffin."

Two families planned to go to the circus together, but one girl had a summer cold and her mother stayed home to take care of her.

One girl woke up the night before the circus

and saw a man standing on the steps to their parents' room. The man looked at her and said, "Don't be afraid," then disappeared. When she described the man, her father knew who it was - his father, long dead.

A wife and mother was afraid of heights, and when she found the family circus seats were way up high,

the usher managed to squeeze her into the front row of the section, down on the ground, right by the railing.

Stewart O'Nan tells us many such stories of people and families. We get to know them a bit, feeling a sense of dread in the knowledge that some will die in this fire - on what was to be a happy, carefree day. We read of heroic deeds, and not-so-heroic actions. We read in amazement that there was no fire-retardant on the tent roof, and in fact it was treated with a combination of paraffin and gasoline to make it impermeable to rain. There are documents and photographs, and accounts given by people involved, circus goers, policemen, firemen, and political figures, as well as the circus people and owners.

When asked why he didn't 'just write a novel' about the fire, the author said that he felt

it deserved only the most stringent, very best intentions of nonfiction, the idea being to tell the truth about an event that changed the lives of tens of thousands of people. I suppose I thought I might cheapen the fire by fictionalizing it.
As I dug deeper into the research, I discovered my choice of nonfiction was right for a simpler reason: the fact that truth really is stranger than fiction. Not merely weirder, but packed with coincidences, gaps and lapses that well-made fiction can't tolerate.

The story of the circus fire couldn't possibly have been more gripping, and if it had been fiction, the reader would indeed have said, 'oh, right, that couldn't happen.' What did happen on July 6, 1944, and the events which occurred before it and for many years afterward make for an excellent book. Not an easy book, but still I read on as Stewart O'Nan transported me to a time and place so long ago. It is a masterpiece of nonfiction writing.

There is a blurb on the back of the book by Rick Bragg, my own personal favorite nonfiction writer. He says

The Circus Fire is terrifying, compelling, and absolutely readable - because it is real. It happened in 1944, but Stewart O'Nan brings it to life again, along with its heroes and villains, and makes you feel like you're inside the big top as it starts to burn.

There is a website devoted to the fire here.

Addendum: I am grateful to my blogging friend Sprite for directing me to a song by Mark Erelli about this fire.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://markerelli.bandcamp.com/track/hartfordtown-1944"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Hartfordtown 1944 by Mark Erelli&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

This is my first book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012.

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

2012-01-22T11:45:00.005-05:00

3. Lady Audley's Secret
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
fiction, 1862
Kindle book, 2
finished, 1/18/12

This is an illustration from a magazine serial of Lady Audley's Secret. Wolff Collection.

May I whisper that I think Lady Audley's Secret is better than either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, and on a par with much of Thomas Hardy's work? Where has Mary Elizabeth Braddon been all my reading life? Why wasn't she taught in my English lit classes at Boston University?

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915)

The story begins in a quite straightforward manner, with pages of description about an English estate, but soon after we meet the characters little questions and doubts creep into the reader's mind. Is Lady Audley avoiding someone on purpose? Whose lock of hair do the maid and her boyfriend find? And whatever happened to a certain man?

Lady Audley's Secret is nearly 500 pages long, and I was constantly amazed at how it held my attention. I wasn't bored for a minute. In fact, there was one part so riveting that I went to the end of the book to check if certain people were okay, and I never do that. The book could be categorized as fiction, mystery, suspense, but I would call it by a term I first read in the much beloved, now defunct publication A Common Reader, 'a thumping good read!'

For me this book was a pure reading experience. I began Lady Audley's Secret knowing not one thing about it or the author. I really don't want to say any more about it, hoping that you may also have this experience. It is rare, and in this case so satisfying. I've already 'bought' for 0¢ another book by Mary Elizabeth Braddon called The Doctor's Wife, and there are many more available. In my view, this is the best thing about e-books, the opportunity to read really old, and perhaps forgotten books.

There is some information about this very prolific author at the Sensation Press site. Lady Audley's Secret is being discussed at Cornflower Books, and I intend to go visit. I'm delighted that this author is now being read. Perhaps a young woman studying English literature in the future will be offered the opportunity of a course on Mary Elizabeth Braddon and others like her.

Mrs Bale reports on an open winter

2012-01-19T13:03:00.004-05:00

A third of the way through winter, and so far it has been what we call an 'open winter.' I've read a definition of open winter as one without frost, but around here it means without much snow. It has been plenty cold and cloudy. There has been some snow, some sleet, some freezing rain, but we haven't had big snowstorms yet.

I can still see brown grass out in the north pasture.

There's only a couple inches of snow on the ground.

Today at 1 pm - the north side barn thermometer

What this means to those of us who spend most of our time inside is that it is colder. We count on the snowbanks to insulate our houses and when they aren't there, it takes more fuel to keep the house warm. As I've mentioned, our tv is now in the kitchen, as are two reading/tv chairs so we aren't turning on the oil heat very much. We set it at 58º F. Only if someone is coming to visit and we sit in the living room, or if I'm going to be at my desk in the study for a while do we turn it up. The temps in the living room and study are anywhere from 58º F. to maybe 52º. But in the kitchen, where we spend most of our time it is roasty-toasty as can be.

Today's picture/Cozy January afternoon

2012-01-18T13:58:00.006-05:00

Nice warm wood stove.
A gripping book - The Circus Fire, nonfiction by Stewart O'Nan.
Raya, the cat.
Sadie, the dog.

Essay Reading Challenge - 2012

2012-01-15T12:13:00.004-05:00

For someone who proclaims to love essays, I sure don't read many (any). In fact, a year ago this month I wrote:

I want to read more essays. I have many books of them, and they sit unread year after year.

So what better way to encourage myself than to join an essay challenge.

If you’re an avid essay reader, or just want to expand your reading horizons a bit, this is the challenge for you. If you’re thinking, “What would I read?” – stay tuned: I’ll have a post up with suggestions later in the week.

~ This challenge runs from January 1, 2012 through November 30, 2012.

~ If you read a book of essays, that book can also apply to any other challenges you are working on.

~ Choose a goal of reading 10, 20, or 30 essays...

~You don’t have to list your essays ahead of time – just have fun reading throughout the year.

Addendum~ Everyone who completes the challenge and writes at least one review will be eligible for the giveaway prize: A copy of Best American Essays 2012.

I'm excited about this. My goal is a small one, 10 essays, but if I read that many, I'll be 10 ahead of any other year.

How Should One Read A Book? by Virginia Woolf - read January 25.

The Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012

2012-01-13T12:54:00.002-05:00

Because of my great love for nonfiction, and my hope to read more, I'm joining this year's Dewey Decimal Challenge. I enjoyed last year's and read four books for it.

Here are the details:

The Challenge: Read any non-fiction book(s), adult or young adult. That's it. You can choose anything. Poetry? Yes. Memoirs? Yes. History? Yes. Travel? Yes. You get the idea? Absolutely anything that is classified as non-fiction counts for this challenge.

I always like levels in my challenges, so here are mine:

Dilettante--Read 1-5 non-fiction books

Explorer--Read 6-10

Seeker--Read 11-15

Master--Read 16-20

This challenge will last from January 1 to December 31, 2012. You can sign up anytime throughout the year.

I am not limiting the challenge to bloggers. You can also link to a review you wrote on another site, such as GoodReads or LibraryThing.

I am going to be bold and sign up for the Seeker level. You wouldn't believe how many nonfiction books I own. As much as I enjoy good fiction stories, what I really love are true stories, and there are enough on my shelves to last for many years!

You may sign up here.

Books read:
The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan - finished January 19.
Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo - finished January 24.

The Roses at the End of the Road by Pat Leuchtman

2012-01-12T16:05:00.005-05:00

2. The Roses at the End of the Road
by Pat Leuchtman
nonfiction, 2011
finished, 1/12/12

My blogging friend, Pat sent me an email a while ago asking if I'd like a copy of her new book, and I wrote back with resounding 'yes!' From the very first sentence, I knew this was a book I was going to love. It is one of my favorite kinds of books, those about gardening lives. Though her book isn't a month-by-month account, it is in the same category as those I highlighted in this posting almost five years ago. I've also written about two specifically: Dear Friend & Gardener by Beth Chatto & Christopher Lloyd and Tottering in My Garden by Midge Ellis Keeble. And now The Roses At The End Of The Road becomes a welcome, and loved addition to my collection.

This is the perfect book to read in January when spring in our neck of the woods seems very far off. I read it in a chair by the woodstove with outdoor temperatures in the twenties.

My first experience with gardening was not following my mother or grandmother around a garden. I didn't know anyone who had a flower garden when I was growing up. Oh, everyone had a few flowers, usually growing up against the house, but they weren't passionate about their gardens. As a young city dweller with hippie dreams of living in the country, my first teacher was the marvelous Thalassa Cruso.

She had a sense of humor and a no-nonsense approach to gardening. I think I've modeled myself pretty well after her, and all these years later it is her voice I hear in my head as I go about my gardening life. Her obituary in the New York Times does a great job in explaining this woman to those who may not have ever seen her on Public Television or read her books. I used her words as a quote du jour last year. There's a lovely piece about her here.

In Pat Leuchtman, I have found another Thalassa - a Thalassa of roses! Pat is also a cheerful, no-nonsense kind of gardener. Hers is not a stuffy gardening book which makes the reader feel hopeless to even begin. No, Pat is a woman like us. She may have eighty roses, but

I have probably killed at least half that many.

When she writes of her perennial (flowers which come up each year) bed, she says that

it was never weeded sufficiently, partly because I often had trouble telling the difference between real weeds and the plants that self-seeded with abandon.

I love her take on the short season of roses.

The rugosas begin blooming at the beginning of June, but by mid-July most of the roses, including the albas and gallicas, are done. Some consider this a flaw; I like to look at it like eating strawberries in season. The brevity of the season makes their loveliness and perfume that much more precious.

This is an example of what I think of as the gardener philosopher. It seems to me that working alone amongst the flowers and vegetables gives one the quiet time necessary to think about life. Her daughter's wedding, which takes place in Pat's garden, inspires the author to make connections between the garden and marriage.

Gardens don't always turn out as expected. There are inexplicable failures. … Fortunately there are also those unexpected joys and bonuses. … Sun and rain. Brilliant day and darkest night. All inevitable. All necessary.

What I want from a book about gardens is a belief that I can achieve what the author has done. Pat Leuchtman inspires. And encourages. With her down-to-earth approach and her generously offered information, I'm going to look into planting a couple roses next spring, and maybe some delphiniums, and maybe a new lilac. I shall be referring to this lovely little book for as long as I have a garden.

You may purchase your own copy here.

Short Stories on Wednesdays - The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2012-01-11T12:19:00.009-05:00

The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
first published in New-England Magazine, 1835, and later collected in the second volume of Twice-Told Tales, 1837. The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains which contains The Ambitious Guest and other stories of the region was published in 1889.
9 pages long.

Hawthorne actually died while on a trip to the White Mountains, in Plymouth a town some miles south.

If it had not been true, the tale of the Willey family could have been a short story. It certainly has a twist worthy of the master, O. Henry. This is the account of what happened on an August night in 1826 in Crawford Notch in the state of New Hampshire.

During the fall of 1825 Samuel Willey, Jr. of Bartlett moved into a small house in the heart of Crawford Notch with his wife, five children, and two hired men. The first year the three men enlarged and improved the house which the family operated as an inn to accommodate travelers through the mountains on the desolate notch road. The little cluster of buildings was situated in the shadow of what is now called Mount Willey. In June, following a heavy rain, the Willeys were terrified when they witnessed a great mass of soil and vegetation, torn loose from the mountainside across the river, slide in a path of destruction to the valley floor. As a result, Mr. Willey built a cave-like shelter a short distance above the house to which the family could flee if a slide threatened their side of the valley. During the night of August 28, 1826, after a long drought which had dried the mountain soil to an unusual depth, came one of the most violent and destructive rain storms ever known in the White Mountains. The Saco River rose twenty feet overnight. Livestock was carried off, farms set afloat, and great gorges were cut in the mountains. Two days after the storm, anxious friends and relatives penetrated the debris-strewn valley to learn the fate of the Willey family. They found the house unharmed, but the surrounding fields were covered with debris. Huge boulders, trees, and masses of soil had been swept from Mt. Willey's newly bared slopes. The house had escaped damage because it was apparently situated just below a ledge that divided the major slide into two streams. The split caused the slide to pass by the house on both sides leaving it untouched. Inside, beds appeared to have been left hurriedly, a Bible lay on the table, and the dog howled mournfully. Mr. and Mrs. Willey, two children, and both hired men were found nearby, crushed in the wreckage of the slide. The bodies were buried near the house and later moved to Conway. Three children were never found. The true story of the tragedy will never be known. Poets and writers have conjectured many possibilities. Perhaps the family, awakened by a threatening rumble, fled from the house to their cave, and were caught in one stream of the slide. It seems more likely the Willeys started to climb the slope of the mountain to escape the rising floods and were caught in the landslide. Whatever the circumstances of the tragedy, it has endowed this part of the White Mountains with a legend enhanced by the awesome crags which rise as guardians over the site of the former Willey home. Following the tragedy, an addition was built onto the house which was operated as an inn until it burned in 1898.

There is more about the Willey House, including pictures, here.

Painting of Crawford Notch by Thomas Cole, 1839, just 13 years after the storm.

Information reproduced from the Web site White Mountain Art & Artists authored by John J. Henderson and Roger E. Belson. Visit their Web site at http://whitemountainart.com/.

One writer who wrote his own version of the Willey family tragedy is Nathaniel Hawthorne.

You may read The Ambitious Guest at The Library of America webpage, and if you scroll down to the end of the page, there is a place where you may sign up for the 'story of the week.' This is a wonderful opportunity to read short stories, and other short pieces by a wide range of authors.

Every Monday The Library of America will feature a free Story of the Week. It could be anything: a short work of fiction, a character sketch, an essay, a journalist's dispatch, a poem.

Our story begins with a traveler who stops for the night at a little house on a mountain. It is both a family home and a wayside inn. He feels so much at home among these people that he begins to tell of what is in his heart. He fears that he will die unknown and unremembered by the world. In the course of the conversation the man who owns the house tells of his own yearning, to have a farm in the countryside off the mountain, for this family lives in an uneasy relationship with this mountain which

towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides, and startle them at midnight.

The family has even built

a sure place of refuge, hard by, if he [the mountain] should be coming in good earnest.

Well, you know what happens, but the story is riveting and most interesting all the same. The conversations, the descriptions of the wind outside and the cozy fireside within, and a couple possible premonitions make The Ambitious Guest very appealing. I've not read a lot of Hawthorne, but if you have and haven't cared for his writing much, I think you'll still like this story.

If you are interested in Hawthorne and don't know too much about the man, may I suggest the wonderful American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. I wrote about it in May 2007, and read it again in 2010 and liked it just as well. In fact, I've thought of reading it again this year. It really is that good. I think it would be a great college course, and reading experience, to begin with American Bloomsbury, and then read biographies of the writers and their works. I did start The Peabody Sisters (one of whom married Hawthorne) by Megan Marshall but didn't finish. I really should go back to it.

Short Stories on Wednesdays is hosted by Risa at Breadcrumb Reads.

Quote du jour/George Holbrook Jackson

2012-01-09T11:27:00.004-05:00

The time to read is now, not hereafter. We must make time or miss our joy.
George Holbrook Jackson
1874-1948

I've been thinking about these words a lot lately. Years ago they used to be on my sidebar. Now I believe they need to be in my heart and in my actions. I love reading but I let other activities take up too much of my reading time; other activities that I love, or that are necessary and important. I must find a better balance between them and reading. I miss sitting down for an hour or more at a time completely absorbed in a story. Beginning today, I'm going to remedy that situation. I'm at a time in my life when I'm home. My children are grown. I don't have an outside job. I can pretty much determine my own schedule. I must 'make time' or I shall indeed miss my 'joy.'

On what would have been his 77th birthday, my favorite Elvis song

2012-01-08T15:47:00.001-05:00

Today's poem by Maxine Kumin

2012-01-06T13:19:00.003-05:00

My Father's Neckties

Last night my color-blind chain-smoking father
who has been dead for fourteen years
stepped up out of a basement tie shop
downtown and did not recognize me.

The number he was wearing was as terrible
as any from my girlhood, a time of
ugly ties and acrimony; six or seven
blue lightning bolts outlined in yellow.

Although this was my home town it was tacky
and unfamiliar, it was Rabat or Gibraltar
Daddy smoking his habitual
square-in-the-mouth cigarette and coughing
ashes down the lightning jags. He was
my age exactly, it was wordless, a window
opening on an interior we both knew
where we had loved each other, keeping it quiet.

Why do I wait years and years to dream this outcome?
My brothers, in whose dreams he must as surely
turn up wearing rep ties or polka dots clumsily
knotted, do not speak of their encounters.

When we die, all four of us, in
whatever sequence, the designs
will fall off like face masks
and the rayon ravel from this hazy version
of a man who wore hard colors recklessly
and hid out in the foreign
bargain basements of his feelings.

by Maxine Kumin
from Selected Poems 1960-1990

Thinking, not talking

2012-01-04T13:45:00.002-05:00

In an age when it seems that everyone feels the need to express their opinions, these words from my current book, A Voice From Old New York by Louis Auchincloss stopped me in my tracks:

Once, when I pointed out to my older brother that I found his group in Newport on the stuffy side, he replied that their dinners were good and their guests on time and never inebriated. I retorted that he would have been happy with the formality and regularity of the court of Versailles, and he did not deny it. For a long time it seemed to me that this propriety was inconsistent with a serious life, that such an attitude must indicate a certain triviality of spirit or even of heart. I was wrong.
My brother, you see, needed only himself for an intellectual companion. He was a deep reader and thinker, and a conscientious liberal in a rigidly conservative society to whose tenets he paid no attention but never took the trouble to contradict.

A 'reader and thinker' rather than a talker. Do such people still exist?

Latte Trouble by Cleo Coyle

2012-01-03T12:44:00.007-05:00

1. Latte Trouble - book 3 in the Coffeehouse Mystery series
by Cleo Coyle
mystery, 2005
first book for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge 2012
Kindle book, 1
finished, 1/1/12

I really love the Coffeehouse Mystery series, and I think it has something for everyone. There is coffee talk, and some food talk, for foodies. There is a bit of romance for fans of romance. There is always a good mystery for fans of mystery fiction. And there is fine writing for all readers. Clare Cosi is a great character. She's bold, and funny, and intelligent.

The mystery in this book comes when a man dies from a poisoned cup of coffee at a private party for 'fashionistas' in town for Fashion Week, and the police arrest Clare's barista, Tucker who made it. He was actually making it as a request for Lottie Harmon, a designer whose collection of 'Java Jewelry' was inspired by coffee drinks she'd had at the Village Blend. On his way to deliver her cup, a former boyfriend of Tucker's snatches it off the tray. When he drinks it and dies, the supposition is that Tucker killed him. And even though it was meant for Lottie, Tucker is arrested.

Clare knows he didn't do it, and tries to find out why someone may have wanted Lottie dead; Lottie who was a big success in the 1980s, and then dropped out of sight, only to return to great acclaim.

Although I am reading the books in order, this is one series where I don't think it is necessary. Cleo Coyle does a great job of bringing the reader up to date with Clare's life. In fact, I think she does it better than any series writer I've read. As Clare is the narrator, she will just include a fact from her past in connection with something else she's saying. She doesn't do a litany at the beginning of the book telling us how she got to where she is now. The main characters are the people who work at the Village Blend, her ex-mother-in-law, her ex-husband, a policeman, and her 20-year old daughter.

Locale is very important to me, and Cleo Coyle brings New York City alive to readers. I enjoy learning about the different areas, and events that occur there. She offers many details about parks and routes and people who frequent certain places. In Latte Trouble, for instance, I learned of the Meatpacking District, Bryant Park, and Rikers Island jail. These books are a little like a NYC guidebook, only much more fun. This is a great series.

This is my first book for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge.

Quote du jour/Bridget Jones

2012-01-02T11:38:00.003-05:00

But then I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since, because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system. Also dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.
The character Bridget Jones
in Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Books Read in 2012

2012-01-01T10:13:00.009-05:00

This is just a collecting post.

Clicking on titles will bring you to the book report or book notes.

February -

6. Sleeping Murder
by Agatha Christie
mystery, 1976
Kindle book, 4
finished 2/1/12

January - 5

5. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure

The True Story of a Great American Road Trip

by Matthew Algeo

nonfiction, 2009

Kindle book, 3

second book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012

finished, 1/24/12

4. The Circus Fire
by Stewart O'Nan
nonfiction, 2000
library book
first book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge 2012
finished, 1/19/12

3. Lady Audley's Secret
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
fiction, 1862
Kindle book, 2
finished, 1/18/12

2. The Roses at the End of the Road

by Pat Leuchtman

nonfiction, 2011

finished, 1/12/12

1. Latte Trouble - book 3 in the Coffeehouse Mystery series
by Cleo Coyle
mystery, 2005
first book for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge 2012
Kindle book, 1
finished, 1/1/12

Today's poem by William Cullen Bryant

2011-12-31T18:06:00.004-05:00

A Song for New Year's Eve

Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay—
Stay till the good old year,
So long companion of our way,
Shakes hands, and leaves us here.
Oh stay, oh stay,
One little hour, and then away.

The year, whose hopes were high and strong,
Has now no hopes to wake;
Yet one hour more of jest and song
For his familiar sake.
Oh stay, oh stay,
One mirthful hour, and then away.

The kindly year, his liberal hands
Have lavished all his store.
And shall we turn from where he stands,
Because he gives no more?
Oh stay, oh stay,
One grateful hour, and then away.

Days brightly came and calmly went,
While yet he was our guest;
How cheerfully the week was spent!
How sweet the seventh day's rest!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One golden hour, and then away.

Dear friends were with us, some who sleep
Beneath the coffin-lid:
What pleasant memories we keep
Of all they said and did!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One tender hour, and then away.

Even while we sing, he smiles his last,
And leaves our sphere behind.
The good old year is with the past;
Oh be the new as kind!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One parting strain, and then away.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), 1864

December with Gladys and Rachel

2011-12-30T18:42:00.007-05:00

To learn more about this yearlong adventure with Gladys Taber and Rachel Peden, you may scroll down to the 'letter topics' and click A Year with Gladys and Rachel.

Gladys begins her December entry with these words

The first snowfall is worth having winter for.

And ends with

My last words on each and every Christmas for over twenty years have been spoken from the heart to all the world, and they are simple, but heartfelt.
God rest you, merry, Gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.

In between these marvelous words is a delightful meditation on what many of us feel is the most wonderful month in the year. Even if one isn't a practicing Christian, is there any time so dedicated to thinking of others? Every present we buy, each cookie we bake, the meals we cook are all for others. Not for ourselves.

Gladys writes

I think most mothers get tired during the Christmas rush. I do. There is always a low moment when I fervently wish it were just over and I could SIT DOWN. I wish it were August. And nothing at all going on.
And yet, when the children say, "Thank you for a wonderful Christmas, best we ever had," and one child whispers, "this was just all I wanted - how did you know?" and one child curls up to read the book you have chosen so carefully, and one says, "we never had such a Christmas," suddenly then all the tiredness ebbs away, and a pure happiness floods in.
For in spite of the tinsel and wrappings and struggle over presents, we still have an idea, after all, that Christmas means giving some special joy, an unusual joy to someone. And that compensates for the commercialism which sometimes seems to threaten to engulf Christmas entirely.

And this in 1955!

In addition to the Christmas bustle, there is talk of feeding birds and using herbs and spices, each quotidian subject leading her to higher thoughts.

It is as with much of life, I suspect, the richness is there, if one opens one's eyes to see it, and one's ears to hear it.

[Herbs and spices make] my meal getting romantic. For the whole world comes into the kitchen with saffron and sesame seed, chili powder, curry, basil and bay.

Rachel begins with burning brush on the farm. As her husband monitors this chore, his mind runs free.

his thoughts have gone on a wide, evaluating tour, which is the bliss of brush-burning.
From his field he can see the neighbors' farms and some of their barns and houses. It is a pleasant closeness, without trespass. The farmer reviews the local, unprinted news and his winter work plans.

She then goes on to say that

if he doesn't get back that winter, or for several winters, the brush pile will make a brushy, safe home for rabbits and a few birds, and some other small animals that need homes. It is really better for such use if the brush pile is near a hedgerow; but a brush pile out in the field makes a good oasis for small animals that have to cross from home to hunting ground and do not like to risk their small, important lives traversing too great an expanse of unprotected open space.

When I read this aloud to Tom, it was a completely fresh idea to him. Something he had never thought of before, and now fully intends to implement. It is Rachel's work which I read most often to him because though Windy Poplars does not support us, he is himself a farmer, working with fields and fencing, animals and chickens.

You may recall a letter I wrote about calendars a while back. Well, Rachel has the most wonderful essay called 'Here come the new calendars.' She was writing in much the same time as my mother's calendars.

Calendars come in a variety of sizes, and by diverse ways. Some come by mail, in odd-sized envelopes or rolled up in a tight wrapper. Some are handed out by salesmen at the door or in stores. Some come importantly in cardboard tubes. Some come naked from the press. They have one common purpose, to perpetuate in kindness the memory of the donor in time of money expenditures.

She goes on to tell how each one sits on the kitchen wall as she tries them out in this month before they are needed, and ends

The one that remains the longest on the wall is the one with wide-open spaces around the dates so that memoranda can be written on it. Its white spaces fill up with notes of dental appointments and Fair Board meetings, who called about baling; with telephone numbers, grocery lists, addresses, recipes taken down over the phone, and important farm news such as "barn swallows returned" or "paid on tractor." … When this calendar is used up, it is too valuable to throw away. It belongs with the farm records and receipts and will be called on to help fill out income tax blanks. It's a diary, a volume of family history.

Rachel offers tales of hogs eating coats, an apology from a new neighbor, the description of a growing boy's footprints in the snow, and the poignancy of a children's Christmas show rehearsal.

In just a few pages each month, these women's words fill me with deep wonder and pleasure.

Last book notes of 2011

2011-12-29T20:01:00.002-05:00

77. Penny Plain
by O. Douglas
fiction, 1920
Kindle book, 46
finished, 11/29/11

penny plain
adjectiveBrit.
plain and simple

I imagine the 1920 audience for O. Douglas' book knew exactly what the title referred to, while this reader ninety years on had to look it up. Jean, the heroine of the book is indeed this kind of person - she is 'plain and simple' with no airs about her. She is honest and forthright. She is the older sister of three young boys; two of whom are biologically related while the youngest one has a rather complicated connection. They all love him to pieces. Since the death of their aunt, Jean has been older sister and mother to the boys. She devotes herself to them without complaint. The book is a chronicle of daily life in her beloved Priorsford; the people who come into the town and into her life, and the people who are the inhabitants of the town. It is sweet and kindly and really everything you might want in a book when you are a wee bit tired of the news, or the pace of modern life. This is not to say that the characters have perfect or easy lives. Not by any means. There is for example a mother whose sons were all killed in what they called then, the Great War.

I came upon three wonderful writings about Penny Plain, and you may read them here, and here, and here.

78. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
by Agatha Christie
mystery - short story collection, 1960
Kindle book, 47
finished, 12/15/11

I wrote about The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding here, and then went on to read the rest of them. I didn't think any of them were quite as good as that one, though with any Agatha story there is always some appeal. There's an intriguing death in The Mystery of the Spanish Chest, which Poirot solves by using his excellent powers of observation, which also come into play in the story Four and Twenty Blackbirds. I guess I would say this collection was 'okay' but not particularly excellent or that memorable.

New books

2011-12-27T12:30:00.005-05:00

These are the books that came into the house on Christmas day. Two others arrived earlier; Christmas on the Farm, and Journey into Christmas, both of which I plan to read and write about next year. I expect this week to be quite a bookish one here on the blog with end of the year book notes, book facts, and book lists.

The pillowcases were hung...

2011-12-24T11:20:00.004-05:00

This year I had what I consider my best idea ever. Before I tell you, I'll explain the situation. We have beautiful, hand-knit Christmas stockings.

As you may imagine, I love these stockings beyond words ... except for one thing. They are rather small, especially at the openings. When the kids were little, Santa Claus brought little gifts so the stockings bulged on Christmas morning in a most satisfactory way. As the children grew older, however, the presents also grew - from matchbox cars and kaleidoscopes to books, and cds, and video tapes, and later dvds, none of which fit. So Santa struggled to find smaller, age-appropriate gifts to go inside the stockings, although there were always a fair amount of presents lined up beside them to be discovered on Christmas morning. It drove Mrs. Claus mad choosing presents and arranging them.

But this year, as I looked through the wonderful Garnet Hill catalogue, I saw exceptionally nice flannel pillowcases, and the lightbulb went on above my head. Pillowcases have great big openings plus lots of space for bigger gifts. I bought five sets, each one different. Just for this year everyone's new 'stocking' will contain the mate to their pillowcase. The fillable ones will live here, just as the stockings always have.

If the family grows, it will be easy to just buy another set of wintery/Christmasy pillowcases. Garnet Hill offers new designs each year so I won't have to worry about duplicates. I'm not putting names on them, but after this year everyone will know which one is theirs.

I am inordinately, incredibly, fantastically excited by this new scheme. And here they are, in alphabetical order.

Margaret

Matthew

Michael

Nan

Tom

Aren't they just beautiful?! And so, so soft.

A wonderful Advent gift

2011-12-23T10:28:00.005-05:00

Years ago, a dear friend, who knew how much we loved England, sent us the most amazing, amazing e-card we had ever seen. It was an English country cottage, complete with dog and cat.

We played it over and over again. It was the very beginning of Jacquie Lawson cards. Since then the company has grown, and it offers the most beautiful cards on the internet. There is a small charge for a year's membership. You have your own address book, reminders of special days if you wish, and choice after choice of very special cards. Now they have added note cards and letters as well.

Last year for the first time, an Advent calendar was offered. It was a little English village.

We bought it, and enjoyed each day. This year that same one is available, as well as one of London.

The company has outdone itself! There is an information center with 'brochures' about the places visited each day. What I've done is go to the information pamphlet first, and then the day. It is one of the most magical experiences I've ever had. And it isn't too late. In fact, I think it would be wonderful to buy it now, and go back and see each day. For three dollars, it is the finest gift you could buy yourself or someone you love this Advent season. And it's yours forever after.

Here is the website.

Click on 'The Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar' for details.

The demo is here.

And here is the original card.

The Old Peabody Pew by Kate Douglas Wiggin

2011-12-22T11:54:00.009-05:00

81. The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
fiction, 1907
third book for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge
Kindle book, 49
finished, 12/22/11

Because I read this on the Kindle, my 'copy' doesn't have this old cover, but isn't it wonderful!

I read perhaps her most famous book seven years ago, and jotted down these words.

'Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm 1903
By Kate Douglas Wiggin
Recorded Books read by Barbara Caruso
Fiction A

This was wonderful and as fresh as if it were just written. It felt a bit like Anne Of Green Gables, and Pollyanna. Rebecca's family is very poor, and she is given the chance for an education by going to live with two old maiden aunts. The young girl has a wonderful, cheerful outlook on life. I have a sense that all these books were written about a girl who could be an example to the reader. She isn't without troubles and problems, yet she remains steadfast and optimistic. Even as a grown woman, I found myself learning from her. Well written with memorable, real characters.'

I found The Old Peabody Pew to be equally so. It is a lovely, enjoyable Christmas romance. We meet the Dorcas Society, a group of 'excellent women' as Barbara Pym would have described them. They care for the material needs of the church, the Tory Hill Meeting-House in Edgewood, Maine, doing as much of the work themselves as possible, and getting a few excellent men to do what they cannot. Kate Douglas Wiggin founded The Dorcas Society of Hollis & Buxton Maine, and was its first Honorary President. There is a short article about it here. The Old Peabody Pew is performed as a fundraiser each year in the very church named in the story, the Tory Hill Church. I'd love to attend this annual event.

The pre-Christmas project in our story is cleaning the pews and putting in as much carpet as they could afford. They put in a stretch of rug down the aisle, and then go to work on their own family pews. They talk as they go about their work, and the reader gets to know the various personalities, and some of the town stories. Kate Douglas Wiggin doesn't turn her writer's eye away from the sadnesses of life, but she also offers humorous aspects. Mrs. Burbank notes that

"indeed, most of those who once owned the pews or sat in them seemed to be dead, or gone away to live in busier places."

To which Lobelia Brewster replies:

"I've no patience with 'em, gallivantin' over the earth. I shouldn't want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood … We wash and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin' Sundays. I don't hardly see how they can do any more 'n that in Chicago!"

We also learn that Lobelia 'would not have considered matrimony a blessing, even under the most favourable conditions.' But the Widow Buzzell sees life quite differently. Speaking of her late husband she says,

I used to think Tom was poor company and complain I couldn't have any conversation with him, but land, I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that. And I could pick up after him! Now every room in my house is clean, and every closet and bureau drawer, too.

The Peabodys of the title are all dead now, except the son Justin, who is one of those who moved away looking for more opportunity. Mrs. Burbank has recently sent him a request for a contribution for church repairs at an address in Detroit. Justin tried to live in Edgewood. He worked the farm and though he did everything right, he 'could not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them.' He had a terrible time with crows and various insects.

The women have spoken of him as being weak, by offering this information, the reader learns that he did make an honest attempt before heading west. Yet even there, after he's earned some money, he invests it and loses it, showing us that maybe there really is something called bad luck and that it happens even to good people who try. The news is full of people in our own time who have worked all their lives and now have no job or house.

Our heroine is Nancy Wentworth, a thirty-five year old schoolteacher; a kindly, cheerful person with a hidden melancholy, for she is in love with Justin. The descriptions of their relationship from ten years earlier show readers that we are in a very different time and place. Love was expressed quite modestly and innocently in such a society in those days. Nancy recalls a time when she sat in the Peabody pew with her friend, Justin's sister Esther.

Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with pleasure at the nearness. Was there not a summer morning when his hand touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together?

And after his two years of trouble with the farm, when he was downtrodden and leaving Edgewood, he says upon parting.

"You'll see me back when my luck turns, Nancy."

And to her these words were 'a promise, simply because there was a choking sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes.' Nancy 'lived for' this phrase all the years since. Then she receives two anonymous letters listing meaningful verses from the Bible which raise her hopes that they might be from Justin.

Nancy tells the women that she will clean and carpet the Peabody pew rather than her own because it is more visible in the church, and also in honor of her friend, Esther. She comes back after her supper, and does her work alone in the church. At least she believes she is alone.

I dearly loved this book. You may read it online here.
Many of her books are also available here, as well as on Kindle.

This is my third (adult) book for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge.

Short Stories on Wednesdays - Christmas Every Day and Other Stories by William Dean Howells (plus a poem)

2011-12-21T10:23:00.007-05:00

80. Christmas Every Day and Other Stories
Told For Children
by William Dean Howells
juvenile fiction - short story collection, 1892

third children's book for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge
Kindle book, 48
finished, 12/20/11

Not every story in this most delightful collection is about Christmas but each one is a little Christmas present.

I 'bought' (it was free) this for the Kindle, on a whim, thinking it would be nice to read some old stories. Well, they may be old but they are fresh, and great fun to read. There's nothing stuffy about the way Mr. Howells tells a story. Usually the narrator is a father, or an uncle begged by one or more children to tell a story.

... the little girl had snuggled in his lap into just the right shape for listening.

Don't you just love that line?

These children are very funny. They are impertinent, demanding, and they 'pound' our kindly storyteller when he tells about pigs, or pretends to forget, or makes a bad joke. The reader is able to sense the great love between the teller of tales and his young listeners. I was reminded of the wonderful Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Children's Hour.

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Along with the warmth, there is a great deal of wit and humor in these tales, with a quiet, little moral, if he is able to slip it in without the children being aware, for they hate morals to stories. Christmas Every Day tells what life would be like if it were Christmas all year long. I know that even I, grownup that I am, feel a sadness to let December go. I love the bustle and the lights and really, every single thing about these days coming up to Christmas. In fact I just told someone that I wish there were two Decembers in the year. But would I really be happy if it were Christmas every single day of the year? In the story, as the days go by, everyone gets 'crosser,' and

at the end of a week's time so many people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers anywhere; they perfectly strewed the ground. Even when people tried to recover their tempers they usually got someone else's, and it made the most dreadful mix.

All the shopkeepers got rich, while the buyers got poorer and poorer, and had to go to the 'poor-house.' Care isn't being taken anymore in wrapping and labeling gifts.

people didn't carry around presents nicely any more. They flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything. ... Nearly everyone had built barns to hold their presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere.

And because all the best story times between parent and child involve conversations, the little girl says:

"I thought you said everybody had gone to the poor-house."
"They did go, at first," said her papa; "but after a while the poor-houses got so full that they had to send the people back to their own houses."

And on it goes, until the little girl is perfectly content with the ending.

The participation of the children continues in a tale called Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly. There are orphan twins, a prince and princess, and one child remembers which name belongs to the prince, and the other to the princess, so that when the uncle reads along, one of them pipes up with the proper name.

I hope that you can see from these little examples the joy and fun and cleverness of the stories. I can well imagine that a child of 2011 would enjoy them as much as did a child in 1892. I enjoyed them so much that I am going to buy a print copy with illustrations. This is a book I'll happily read over and over again.

I've added several more books by Howells to my Kindle library, including one for the Venice in February challenge called Venetian Life.

Short Stories on Wednesdays is hosted by Breadcrumb Reads.

This lovely book is offered for the Visions of Sugarplums section of The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge.

The Christmas Village by Melissa Ann Goodwin

2011-12-20T14:34:00.006-05:00

79. The Christmas Village
by Melissa Ann Goodwin
juvenile fiction, 2011
library book
second children's book for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge
finished, 12/16/11

Jamie Reynolds and his mother are heading off from their home in Virginia to her parents' home in Vermont for the holidays. They simply must get away from the gossip and unkind treatment they have received because of Mr. Reynolds' monetary misdeed, and his subsequent disappearance.

So off they go to the country, where Jamie begins to relax a bit.

It felt good to be outside, and to be here in Bell's Crossing, where no one knew about his dad or what he had done. …
The warmth of the house and the smells of coffee and freshly-baked biscuits instantly embraced him.

But soon enough, Jamie realizes that even people here know about what happened, and from overhearing his grandparents' conversation learns how depressed his mother is about the whole situation. He himself has had some terrible nightmares about being chased. It thus becomes very natural for the poor boy to want to escape, and that escape takes the form of a little Christmas village his grandmother sets up. Jamie imagined how good life would be in a perfect little village like 1932 Canterbury. His heart ached to live in such a place, where nothing ever changed. "I wish I could live in Canterbury," he whispered. As the days go on, Jamie daydreams about the inhabitants, and his mother tells him stories about them.

"I wonder which house they live in."
"Who?" Mom asked.
"The boy and girl on the skating pond. Do you think they are friends, or brother and sister?"
Mom hesitated, then played along. "Oh! You mean Kelly and Christopher! They're brother and sister. He's twelve years old like you, and Kelly is ten. They live in that big house up on the hill - the blue Victorian with the fancy porch and gingerbread trim."

Well, that's all I needed to draw me right into the story. I think many of us might admit that we imagine lives lived in Christmas villages or dollhouses. I know that Tom and I delight in setting up our London Christmas village each year. He places the buildings and I place the people. I decide which ones are heading home with the Christmas tree, which ones have just come out of the bookstore with packages, and which ones are caroling or going off to church. Jamie is awakened by the clock striking midnight. He hears whispers and then laughter coming from the direction of the Christmas village. He walks over and watches mesmerized as the brother and sister skate on the pond.

Jamie realized that he was holding his breath. It occurred to him that if he reached out, he could pick up the pocket-sized Kelly and Christopher with his fingers … Jamie stayed perfectly still, barely even breathing, afraid that if he moved or made a sound, he would break what seemed to be a spell that had made the village of Canterbury magically come to life.

After watching them for a while, his eyes move over to Miss Ida's Boarding House and he listens to the talk going on there until he hears a crack of the ice and a cry from Kelly. She has fallen through and is drowning. Jamie reaches across the table and grasps Kelly's hand, and is brought right into the scene. From then onward, Jamie is a living participant in the life of this place so many years ago.

The Christmas Village is reminiscent of two of my favorite children's books, The Indian in the Cupboard which I haven't written about in my letters, and Tom's Midnight Garden which I reported on here. I wondered if the author may possibly have meant The Christmas Village as a sort of homage to Tom's Midnight Garden. There are a few charming connections between the two books.

The tale is beautifully told. There is friendship and kindness, but there is also treachery and suspense in the new life Jamie literally falls into. And for him there is the added question of how can he get back to his 2007 life. This book has a particularly satisfying ending. I absolutely loved the way Melissa Ann Goodwin connected these two places and times. When I wrote to the library and asked if they could get it through Inter Library Loan, the librarian wrote back and said she thought it sounded so good that she was going to buy it for the library. And I enjoyed it so much that I am going to buy my own copy to read again during some other Decembers. I highly recommend it for you and for any child in your life.

I read this for the Visions of Sugar Plums section of The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge, and in fact, the Christmas Spirit blog is where I first heard of the book. Please go over and visit, and meet the author in this interview.

The writer's blog is here, and a blog dedicated just to The Christmas Village is here.