Quote du jour/May Sarton

A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless.
May Sarton

If this is true, and I feel it is, then my house is as soulful as a house can be! I have six chairs - four in the living room, and two in the kitchen by the wood stove. Each one of them is worn, and exceedingly comfy.

And to Raya, the most comfortable of all is a big box filled with newspaper.

Turning to the Christmas books

It's that time of year when I begin thinking of Christmas books. After I finish my current book, I'm going to do just holiday reading until the end of December. The books in this photo are the ones I am going to focus on. Two will be rereads - Dave Barry's The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog which I wrote about in the very early days of the blog, and The Story of Holly & Ivy by Rumer Godden and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, a favorite which I read every year to the kids when they were little.

A few are new-to-me books which I haven't read yet - Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl Buck, Comfort & Joy by India Knight, The Night Before Christmas by Alice Taylor, Christmas on the Farm, A Collection of Favorite Recipes, Stories, Gift Ideas, and Decorating Tips from The Farmer's Wife a gift from my friend Les, All Aboard for Christmas by Christopher Jennison which I bought for Tom ages ago, and neither of us has read yet, and a book that isn't strictly about Christmas but features the holiday, Winter - Five Windows on the Season by Adam Gopnik which I'll be reading for the Canadian Book Challenge because even though the author was born in the US, he was raised in Canada.

The last book is one I've had for a long time but have read only snippets from it - Robert Benchley's A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas. Benchley is one of my favorite people both as a writer and an actor. If you don't know him, you may go to YouTube and type in his name to see examples of his work in the movies.

Addendum - some people have mentioned that it is a little early for them to begin with Christmas books, but I'm quite a slow reader and if I wait till after Thanksgiving to begin my Christmas reading, I won't get much done. :<)

Addendum 2 - I gave up on Comfort & Joy. Though it is well-written, and though I really enjoyed her book, My Life on a Plate, I found I just wasn't that interested in the subject.
Also, I added a book to my collection called Happy Times in Norway by Sigrid Undset.

August reading

50. The Black Camel - book 4 in the Charlie Chan series
by Earl Derr Biggers
mystery, 1929
Kindle book
finished 8/31/13

49. Behind That Curtain - book 3 in the Charlie Chan series
by Earl Derr Biggers
mystery, 1928
Kindle book
finished 8/25/13

48. Up, Back, and Away
by K. Velk
fiction, 2013
finished 8/18/13

47. The Chinese Parrot - book 2 in the Charlie Chan series

by Earl Derr Biggers
mystery, 1926
Kindle book
finished 8/17/13

46. The House Without a Key - book 1 in the Charlie Chan series
by Earl Derr Biggers
mystery, 1925
Kindle book
finished 8/11/13

45. Remembering the Bones
by Frances Itani
fiction, 2007
library book
finished 8/8/13

44. The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree - book 4 in the Hildegarde Withers series
by Stuart Palmer
mystery, 1933
Kindle book
finished 8/4/13

This month I fell in love with both Charlie Chan and the series in which he stars. For years I've had this sense that the books were racist, but having read them I don't believe it is so. When racism rears its ugly head, Charlie is right there to confront it. In an instance in The Black Camel when someone criticizes a Chinese cook for having “all the worst qualities of a heathen race,” Charlie responds

“A heathen race,” repeated Charlie gravely, “that was busy inventing the art of printing at moment when gentlemen in Great Britain were still beating one another over head with spiked clubs.”

I find it quite remarkable that Earl Derr Biggers, in the 1920s, chose to have a Chinese main character, whom he presented as a man who was greatly admired. Everyone who works with Charlie comes away believing he is a genius at his job of detection. I’ve spent a fair bit of time wincing over displays of racism in early detective fiction. Even Hercule Poirot was often belittled for being foreign. In fact, ‘foreign’ is a much used derogatory adjective in many of those old books. I think Biggers did a great service in educating his readers, whom I imagine in those early days were predominantly (only?) white, without much knowledge of the Chinese people. Those readers learned a great deal about their virtues and culture through Charlie’s occasional pronouncements, and the way he lives his life.

Perhaps from watching the old movies, we are familiar with Charlie's speech patterns, but I found in the books that he makes only the grammatical mistakes we all make when learning a new language. As the books go on, he speaks less and less that way, just as one would as he gets more proficient in the language.

Charlie Chan’s home is Hawaii, and for me the only sadness with the series is that he doesn’t spend every book there with his wife and children on Punchbowl Hill. The reason is that not much crime happens in 1920s Hawaii! The House Without a Key is set there; and then he travels to the desert of California in The Chinese Parrot, San Francisco in Behind That Curtain, and comes back home for The Black Camel. On his first literary appearance, he says of himself, 

“I am kamaaina - old timer. I have been twenty-five years in the Islands.”

In each of the Hawaii books Biggers writes of it as a paradise. 

… one great gorgeous garden set in an amphitheater of mountains

 For this, after all, was the time she loved Waikiki best. So brief, this tropic dusk, so quick the coming of the soft alluring night. The carpet of the waters, apple-green by day, crimson and gold at sunset, was a deep purple now.

In that sheltered spot a brisk rain was falling, as is usually the case, though the sun was shining brightly. … “liquid sunshine” the people of Hawaii call such rain, and pay no attention to it. Half a dozen rainbows added to the beauty 

... he was conscious of the black velvet of a tropic night. He caught the odor of ginger blossoms and plumeria, a croton hedge gave way to one of hibiscus, topped with pale pink flowers.

 There is some irritation on the part of Hawaiians that

“Only about one person out of a thousand in this country [US] knows that Hawaii is a part of the United States, and the fact annoys us deeply over in the Islands.”

A note in my book said that 

Biggers had always been interested in mystery fiction, but his interest in Hawaii clearly stems from a 1919 vacation in Honolulu. While there, he read a newspaper article on a Chinese detective named Chang Apana. Apana would become the model for Charlie Chan.

After reading these first four Charlie Chan books, I bought a copy of the 2011 nonfiction book called Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang. I look forward to learning about this most interesting character.

I wrote in previous posts about the other three books read in August. If you wish, you may click titles to read the book reports.

Quote du jour/Gladys Taber

And while I love the old things, and the quaintness of the past, I myself shall never be pinched in at the waist and padded out with a bustle. I am greatly disillusioned by the current victory of the designers over women. I have a fatal tendency to speculate, when I see one of those vast sweeping skirts,

on how many small starving children could be dressed in the excess material. I dare say they wouldn't be, but why not?

Banquets are the same kind of flaunting of riches over need. Suppose every banquet for a year were merely a normal meal and all the extra courses were packed in boxes and shipped abroad? How much food would we send?

Here in the country, we feel easier about food when we raise every bit we can, and when we freeze or put up the whole year's supplies. We may not quite see how that extra row of carrots which we do not buy is going to get to Europe [remember, this is post World War Two], but we feel it is helping somehow.

Gladys Taber

Stillmeadow Seasons 1950

Today's picture/Deer in garden

This little deer is happy we waited to clean up the summer gardens.

Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg

52. Old City Hall - book 1 in the Old City Hall series  by Robert Rotenberg
mystery, 2009
Kindle book
finished 9/8/13

The Old City Hall of the title is a

Gothic building that years ago was converted from Toronto's city hall into the city's main criminal courthouse. … Known affectionately as just "the Hall" by everyone who used it - cops, criminals, Crown Attorneys, defense lawyers, court reporters, judges, interpreters, clerks, and journalists - it was the only building in the downtown core that was elevated above the street, making it stand out above the surrounding sidewalks like a judge's dais looking down on a courtroom.

The book goes on to describe the inside and outside in great detail. This detail is a hallmark of Old City Hall - from the courthouse to the outskirts of the city, from the homes of the rich to the homes of the not-so-rich, and the work that all the characters do. The reader comes away with an incredibly strong sense of Toronto, Canada and its people, particularly its multiculturalism. The latest statistics I found are from three years before Old City Hall was published. You may read them all here. A sampling: 

*Toronto, with a population of 2.79 million people (5.5 million in the GTA - Greater Toronto Area) is heralded as one of the most multicultural cities in the world and is ranked as the safest large metropolitan area in North America by Places Rated Almanac. Over 140 languages and dialects are spoken here, and just over 30 per cent of Toronto residents speak a language other than English or French at home.

*Half of Toronto's population (1,237,720) was born outside of Canada, up from 48 per cent in 1996.

*The top five visible minority groups in Toronto were:

South Asian at 298,372 or 12.0 per cent of our population;
Chinese at 283,075 or 11.4 per cent;
Black at 208,555 or 8.4 per cent;
Filipino at 102,555 or 4.1 per cent;
Latin American at 64,860 or 2.6 per cent

In Robert Rotenberg's first book in the Old City Hall series, the spotlight moves around and shines on several characters - lawyers, journalists, police. I am assuming, and I hope, that many of these are continuing characters in the series. Each person in Old City Hall is well-defined and not one-dimensional at all. The reader gets to know each of them as individuals.

Daniel Kennicott used to be a lawyer, but when police couldn't find the killer of his brother he felt compelled to quit the law and become a policeman. Now he works with the detective who headed up the investigation of his brother's murder, Ari Greene. The murder of Daniel's brother is his only unsolved case. Ari's father is a Polish Jew who survived the horrors of World War ll but lost his daughter in that war.

Jo Summers works for the Crown, the prosecuting attorneys. Her father is a judge who is described as having a bad case of "judgitis" - a term meaning that the job has gone to his head and that he is "pompous and rude." She lives "on the Islands."

Toronto  was originally chosen as a townsite by the early British settlers because a chain of islands about half a mile offshore formed a perfect natural harbor. The Islands, as they were known, had been a cottage destination for wealthy Torontonians at the start of the twentieth century, then were turned primarily into parkland in the 1940s. In the sixties a group of adventurers took over a number of the dilapidated old homes and, after years of fighting with the city council, established a freestanding community across the water from the most expensive real estate in the country.

I first learned of this book from a series on NPR called Crime in the City. You may read the excellent article here. And there's a site where Robert Rotenberg talks about setting his books in the Toronto he knows so well. 

What is the book about? What is the mystery? I think I'll let the author himself tell you.

For me, I'll just say that I loved this book - the story, the characters, and the city of Toronto. 

I read this book for the 7th Canadian Book Challenge.

Quote du jour/John Harrigan

The landscape is tired and needs a rest.     

John Harrigan

This is just how I feel come October. I am tired and need a rest. We pack a lot of activity into our short span of summer weather, and by now I am ready to sit in my chair by the wood stove and read a good book. I'm tired of traveling and talking and eating out and gardening. I think I'd be really uncomfortable in a climate that allowed such hustle and bustle all year long. What I wonder is does the landscape create the personality or does the personality choose its landscape. I've talked about this other times in my letters, and it is a perpetual contemplation for me. What I do know for sure is that this climate of short summers and long autumns suits me perfectly. 

Up, Back, and Away by K. Velk

48. Up, Back, and Away
by K. Velk
fiction, 2013
finished 8/18/13

I think we are living in a golden time of writing about, and for, children. Although Up, Back, and Away isn't labeled as a children's book per se, it could be read and enjoyed by the same young person who loves the new books by the Meloy siblings: Wildwood and Under Wildwood by Colin, and The Apothecary and The Apprentices by Maile; and The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall. Each of these books offers strong characters in adventuresome circumstances. They don't feature the all-too-common sad and/or abusive family situations. These books will make the reader feel good, not bad. They show that kids (and adults) can have interests that are not like everyone else's. These are the books I would have loved at 12, and 16, and 40, and now at 65.

In Up, Back, and Away we meet 15-year-old Miles McTavish from Dallas, Texas. He is in Vermont on vacation with his parents. But there is something he is supposed to do while he's there, something which is very important to an older friend of his at home. Professor Davies has had a heart attack, but he still manages to tell Miles

"I was out on my morning ride as usual, when she stopped me," the Professor had explained in a breathy whisper at the hospital, with a heart monitor beeping just above his head, "I had never seen her myself, but of course my father had told me about her in his last letter."

This woman, 'The Gypsy' 

had ordained that Miles was to go up Ashburton Mountain in northern Vemont. Once there, he was to find the English Boy trail and its Birch Gate. He was to put the little stone that the Professor had given him into the cylinder-shaped handlebar bag. Then he was to ride the Sunbeam down through the Gate.

The Sunbeam is a wonderful old bicycle which you may read more about here

When Miles travels through the gate he will go back in time to 1928, and proceed with the mission he has been given

to find a girl with a gift, a girl born out of her time, and uncover a secret that was not meant to be. After he had collected them both, he was to return home with them through another Gate on the other side.

I can only imagine how hard it would be to end up in another time and search for an unknown person - to meet this girl and that girl and wonder which is 'the one.' Every step of the way is fraught with nervousness. 

The place Miles is to go is called Quarter Sessions. 

The prospect of asking for a job at the great estate was almost as frightening as staring down the English Boy trail had been. Truth be told, he had no skills and wasn't particularly good at anything, assuming model railroading and being good at movie and music trivia of his own day were not much in demand here.

 Back at home Miles had built a model railroad English village he called Dibden. When Miles first arrives back in time in Tipton, England here is his reaction.

Miles had a gratifying sense of deja vu as the car putt-putted up Tipton High Street. They passed the butcher shop, the milliner's, the bridge over the river Hawls, the sweet shop, and so forth. Each establishment presented itself almost exactly as he had laid it out in his model Dibden. How? He wondered. How could he have known? And who, or what, had inspired him - driven him really - to build his Dibden? Something, obviously, had been working on Miles for a long time. He had been prepared, somehow, marked for this journey, and long ago. Thinking about all this made him uneasy. There were apparently forces at work in his life that he had never before sensed or even guessed at. What did that mean about what was happening to him now? Or what would happen next? Was he in charge of his own destiny, or was he just being moved around in time and space like some kind of chess piece? He had been drafted to serve in this bizarre role, that much was clear - but by whom or what, and why him?

When I wrote about Tom's Midnight Garden, I offered a quote from Zilpha Keatley Snyder about what makes a good fantasy novel. The groundwork must be built on details that are true. The reader must believe, and this reader absolutely believed in Up, Back, and Away.

There is a great blog just for the book with lots of interesting tidbits. 

Addendum: A few readers wondered where they had heard of this book. It may have been from me back in June here.

Letting Ricky Ricardo tell you the news

There is big, big news in my family. Margaret and Estée, Michael's fiancée, are both pregnant, due about seven weeks apart - Margaret in February and Estée in April. Also, Matthew proposed to Margaret on August 18th, and Michael proposed to Estée on August 26th. Estée didn't know she was pregnant at the time of the proposal. Both weddings are going on the back burner. There's enough to think about with babies coming! And it will be so much fun to have babies at the weddings! Margaret's sonogram says 'girl!' Estee hasn't had one yet.

Thought you might enjoy this fun photo Estée's mother took of me taking a picture of Margaret and Estée.

Quote du jour/Gladys Taber

How much art there can be in all the small ways of living. Sometimes we get lazy, but I think the effort spent in putting an ironstone bowl of pine branches on the table is well spent. And getting out the fragile grandmother china is worth it too. Often we do not bother to use the small gracious touches, and it is a pity. For no matter what heaven may be like, there is no use just waiting for it. I'll take mine now, with an open fire and apples toasting on a stick and good friends gathered around the hearth. Bowls of popcorn, and nuts to crack while the talk is merry.

Gladys Taber

Stillmeadow Seasons 1950

Today's song/'Tis Autumn - Zoot Sims

Death of the author of a much-loved series

Much of my most memorable reading in the late 1990s into the 2000s was written by the late Elizabeth Peters. I love the Amelia Peabody series and am quite sure that in some parallel universe Amelia, Emerson, Ramses, and Nefret are living out their lives. I suspect that some of their quality of 'realness' is due to the narrator Barbara Rosenblat. I listened to all the books, in the days when I'd rent tapes from Recorded Books. I'd listen before bed, and upon awakening during the night, and I'd listen in the car. I wrote about my feelings quite extensively in a book report on A River in the Sky; and I jotted down a few notes when I reread Crocodile on the Sandbank last summer. I learned so much about Egypt and the world of archeology because of the author's great knowledge.

There was a period of time when the lives of Ramses, David, and Nefret paralled those of my own children. Elizabeth Peters began an ingenious device as the children in her books grew older. She offered their points of view of the same events that Amelia had told us about. If you've ever been a parent of teenagers, you will understand it was quite harrowing to read just how different those experiences were. While Amelia thought all was fine, the kids would be leaving a boat and swimming to shore in the wee hours, or disguising themselves and getting into all sorts of trouble. It was reassuring, but fear-inducing at the same time, as I wondered about how much I really knew of my own children's lives in those worrisome years.

The author wrote other series under different names, but this is the only one I read. Her real name was Barbara Mertz, and I was so saddened to read of her death last month. It felt like a friend had left my world.

There's a wonderful pdf here of the celebration of her last birthday. Also, the official website is a font of information. 

Barbara Mertz Dead: Mystery Writer Dies At 85

NEW YORK — Barbara Mertz, a best-selling mystery writer who wrote dozens of novels under two pen names, has died. She was 85.

Mertz died Thursday morning at her home, in Frederick, Md., her daughter Elizabeth told her publisher HarperCollins.

Mertz wrote more than 35 mysteries under the name Elizabeth Peters, including her most popular series about a daring Victorian archaeologist named Amelia Peabody. She also wrote 29 suspense novels under the pen name Barbara Michaels, and under her own name, she wrote nonfiction books about ancient Egypt.

Born Barbara Louise Gross, Mertz grew up in small-town Illinois during the Depression and went to the University of Chicago on scholarship, where she wrote on her website, "I was supposed to be preparing myself to teach – a nice, sensible career for a woman."

But her true love was archaeology, and she soon found herself drawn to the department of Egyptology. She received a Ph.D. at the age of 23.

In the post-World War II era, she wasn't encouraged to enter the field. "I recall overhearing one of my professors say to another, `At least we don't have to worry about finding a job for her. She'll get married,'" she wrote.

She did, and while raising two children, she decided to try her hand at mystery writing. It wasn't until the family moved to Germany – and had the luxury of household help – that she wrote something that attracted an agent. She wrote two nonfiction books about Egypt under her own name before having her first fiction published, "The Master of Blacktower," under the Michaels name.

"When my agent called to say I'd sold a novel, after I calmed down, she told me, `You'll need a pen name,'" Mertz told The Associated Press in 1998. Barbara Michaels became her pseudonym for a series of books in the supernatural, Victorian gothic genre.

"When I wrote a different kind, the publisher said I'd need another pseudonym," she says. "There's always the notion people are going to use the nasty word prolific about you."

Under the Peters name – a combination of her children's first names – she produced several mystery series, including 19 books about Peabody. When the series began, with "Crocodile on the Sandbank" in 1975, Amelia pursued her adventures while pregnant. The series continued until her son, Ramses, was grown.

"Between Amelia Peabody and Indiana Jones, it's Amelia – in wit and daring – by a landslide," Paul Theroux wrote in a New York Times appreciation.

Mertz described the character to the AP as a sentimental woman who solved mysteries by guessing but nonetheless thought of herself as logical: "I want to kick her sometimes."

As she wrote about her forceful heroine, Peters said she became more like her. Once, she said, "I was mealy mouthed, timid, never spoke up, let people push me around."

She divorced in the 1970s, but continued her fiction writing despite financial concerns.

In 1998, Mertz received the grandmaster lifetime achievement award from the Mystery Writers of America, the top award from the mystery writers group.

"It has taken me over a quarter of a century to realize that I love to write, and that this is what I should have focused on from the beginning," she wrote on her website.

Mertz is survived by her children, Elizabeth and Peter, and six grandchildren.

Today's picture/September morning sun and shadow

Today's song/Shine on Harvest Moon

Today's poem by Ruth Bavetta

Cold-Pressed Extra Virgin

My mother says I’m lucky.
When she was sixty
her crows’ feet had spread
until it looked like crows
had walked all over her face.

"Your skin comes
from your father’s side of the family,"
she says, "the Italian side.
They don’t get wrinkles.
It’s all that olive oil.

"Look at your Aunt Rosa.
Her skin was so smooth
the mortician didn’t even need to use makeup,
but he did, of course,
they all do, heaven knows why.
Who wants to look like a madam
when they’re dead?
Don’t let them do it to me."

Ruth Bavetta
First published in Ilya’s Honey Spring 2004 and Nerve Cowboy Spring 2006.

Quote du jour/Lucy Maud Montgomery

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.
Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

These words perfectly describe the way I feel about people I have met via the internet.

Quote du jour/Mrs Bale

When Mrs Bale is asked to be on a television show, she says no and explains:

You see, I lead a quiet life and I rather like it that way. Having your handprints in cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theater may be some people's idea of enjoyment but I'm far happier with a good book and the shipping forecast. But I am rather pleased to learn that I have a Plantagenet face.
Mrs Bale played by Janet Henfrey on As Time Goes By

Today's short story/ Meals-On-Wheels by Bailey White

Meals-On-Wheels
first story in the collection Nothing with Strings
by Bailey White
published 2008
16 pages long




Off and on for over thirty years, I volunteered for Meals on Wheels. This government program brings a daily meal to the elderly in their homes. I knew that in some cases, I might be the only person they would see that day, and I took my visits very seriously. I didn't just put the meal on the table or into the person's hands. I would linger a while, chatting and checking in on them. I learned early on that these visits are much more than just dropping off food. It is the personal contact which is important. I was aware though that not everyone did it the way I did. The program actually didn't 'encourage' us to stay too long.

There was one memorable day when I visited the turquoise trailer on a lonely hill as I did every week. This day, no one answered the door. I walked around, peering into the windows and saw the old man lying on the floor. It turned out that he was dead.

I remember a former professor who came out to greet me each time in a suit and tie. And the cheery wife of a man who couldn't walk anymore. There was a highly educated woman whose living room had upholstered chairs with antimacassars who taught me something every time I stopped by. There was a woman who used to work in the Connecticut tobacco fields.

I was reminded of my work as I read Bailey White's story. We meet Ida in her house where the morning glories have begun 'nosing in between the screen and the window frame.' They have fairly taken over the living room leaving purple stains on the furniture when the flowers drop off. 

"Why don't you just cut them off at the window and drag the vines away?" said the Meals-On-Wheels girl. "This purple will never wash out of your slipcovers." The Meals-On-Wheels girl irritated Ida sometimes with these thorough and practical suggestions. "Why don't you just …" with the just implying that it would be the simplest thing in the world for any person of even the most meager intelligence, and only an old fool would not know what to do when Heavenly Blue morning glories came into the house and stained the furniture purple.

Sadly, I think we all know, or know of, people who are condescending to the elderly in this manner. The only other person with whom Ida is in contact is her daughter Judy who calls every day, and says,

"How was your day?" just like she always did. All Judy really wanted to know was if Ida was still alive and well enough to answer the telephone. There was always a sigh of relief from California after Ida's hello, and the "How was your day?" was just extra talk really.

Ida tells her daughter

 'a little story about Mr. Rice down at the birdseed store, so Judy could hear that her mind was still sharp and her speech not slurred.'

In just the first two pages I knew a lot about Ida's lonesome life. The only person she sees isn't particularly nice, and the only person who calls her isn't really interested in her as a human being. Achingly sad, but all too common I thought. And then comes a paragraph that shocks the reader. Apparently Richard Nixon regularly shows up in the kitchen making scrambled eggs. The action puzzles Ida and she tells herself it is 'only that Richard Nixon dream again.'

Then another person comes into her life - a new Meals-On-Wheels girl. She brings life and conversation and activity and interest into Ida's world. She really talks with Ida, not at her. She looks upon the morning glories and thinks they are beautiful. She doesn't just set down the meal with the enclosed plastic cutlery. She opens the cupboard and gets one of Ida's own plates, which I suppose haven't been used in a very long time. Ida is delighted to see the old dishes again. One day the girl brings her a homemade cake.

"Just because you are old, that doesn't mean you should have to eat this goop," she said, and threw the Meals-On-Wheels Jell-O into the garbage. 

She sits down with Ida while she eats, and tells her own story of how she used to cook for prisoners, and baked them their own individual cakes. When Ida tells her daughter, Judy responds just as you might expect.

"She sounds like a nice little friend for you, Mama."

Well, she is that and so much more. She makes Ida feel that she isn't crazy. Her answer to the Richard Nixon visits is

"You couldn't pay me to eat an egg cooked by Richard Nixon!"

As the story went on I kept feeling happier and happier for Ida. One day when the girl polishes Ida's silver for her, she asks Ida to sit down and 'keep me company.'

It had been a long time since Ida had kept anyone company. It felt good to sit and talk about just anything at all.

And then the old Meals-On-Wheels girl returns after her months-long illness.

Bailey White is one of the most compassionate writers I've read. She is never unkind toward her characters regardless of their status in life or their degree of eccentricity. I have loved her books Quite a Year for Plums, Sleeping at the Starlite Motel, and Mama Makes Up Her Mind. She tells an annual Thanksgiving story on NPR, and you may listen to them if you go to the site and type 'Bailey White' into the search bar.

I came upon a simply wonderful video of an interview with Bailey White. If you don't know her work, this is a great introduction and if you already love her writing, you will so enjoy this conversation with her.

As the world turns

When I was a little girl, my mother and I always watched an afternoon television soap opera called As The World Turns. The phrase came into my mind today after I read that Mia in Norway was thinking of giving up her blog. You may read her words and all 153! (so far) comments here. She has brought up a subject the world is talking about these days - does blogging have a future in light of all the new ways to communicate. I was recently told by a twenty-something friend that blogs were old school, and that I should get an Instagram account. I quietly defended my choice to stay with blogging. 

In my comment to Mia, I said

It is clear from all your comments that many, many people love your blog. It is a meaningful oasis in this busy, busy internet world. All the things you mentioned FB, Twitter, etc. are flash, are quick, are easy. But they aren't deep. Blogging is for the deeper life- the thoughtful, slow approach. There is a place for both in the world, and it will sadden me if bloggers give up their blogs. There is so much clutter on the internet, and blogs such as yours offer a refuge. A quiet place of beauty. I do not read blogs on a reader so can't comment on that. I just come over as if I were visiting a friend. Sometimes I leave a note, often I don't. But I am refreshed and renewed when I see your photos and read your words.

The blogs that I read, and there are a lot of them, are works of art. Really. They are also works of passion. Sometimes that passion is about gardening. Sometimes it is about old mysteries. Sometimes it is about food or family or knitting. Whatever the blog is about, it is written with care. The reader can tell that thought and time has been put into the writing.

There's a place for a quick picture, and heaven knows I have lots of posts with just a photo or two, but there's also a place for considered writing. Thoughts that come out after being pondered for a while. I like the deliberate pace of a blog. I like slow food, and I like slow living. I may be out of step with a world that is becoming increasing frenetic but I think that perhaps readers, introverts, alternative people are never quite in step. Ever since the world began there have been books or songs bemoaning the fast pace of that current world. I get great solace from old songs and novels because I often see how very little life has changed. There is always a new thing. There is always a flashier car or house to covet. I see maturity as the ability to accept the new without necessarily giving up the old. I'm no Luddite but I don't embrace every new technology that comes along. I guess what I should say is that I may embrace it, but I don't let go of the old simply because it isn't new. I do have a smart phone which I adore. I do not have an iPod. I listen to my music on CDs or burned CDs from my iTunes or on my turntable. I have a computer but not a laptop or iPad. I have Apple TV but no 'regular' TV anymore. I love my Kindle and my print books. I don't like an either/or world. People may be on Facebook and Instagram and also keep a blog. There is room for it all, and it is up to the individual which gets the most emphasis. 

I'd love to hear your feelings about this subject.

Today's poem by Victoria Redel

I've paid tribute to my mother a couple times in my letters - once with a birthday remembrance, and again with a poem by Philip Larkin. On what would have been her 100th birthday, I offer a wonderful poem by Victoria Redel.  

Getting Close

Because my mother loved pocketbooks

I come alive at the opening click or close of a metal clasp.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, a faux crocodile handle makes me weep.

Breathy clearing of throat, a smooth arm, heels on pavement, she lingers, sound tattoos.

I go to the thrift store to feel for bobby pins caught in the pocket seam
of a camel hair coat.

I hinge a satin handbag in the crease of my arm. I buy a little change purse with its
curled and fitted snap.

My mother bought this for me. This was my mother’s.

I buy and then I buy and then, another day, I buy something else.

In Paris she had a dog, Bijou, and when they fled Paris in 1942 they left the dog behind.

When my mother died on February 9, 1983, she left me.

Now, thirty years later and I am exactly her age.

I tell my husband I will probably die by the end of today and all day he says, Are you
getting close, Sweetheart? And late in the afternoon, he asks if he should buy enough filet
of sole for two.

From a blue velvet clutch I take out a mirror and behold my lips in the small rectangle.

Put on something nice. Let him splurge and take you out for dinner, my mother whispers
on the glass. 

About this poem:

"This was a poem written as I tried to write another poem. My mother often shows up this way, pushing up in the cracks and lapses of other poems. I am always surprised by the way my mother lives in me and how much—30 years after her death—I am still talking to her, inventing her, feeling her shape me."

Victoria Redel