Today's cd/Hopes and Fears

Keane/Hopes and Fears/2004

Truth be told, I could happily play this cd every single day, and never, ever tire of it.

Recently a local radio station asked listeners to send in their top ten favorite albums of all time. A very daunting endeavor. Some results were very important historically, but my choices were strictly personal loves. The newest one on my list was Hopes and Fears. If you are wondering about the others, here they are in alphabetical order:

Barenaked Ladies - Gordon
The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night
Keane - Hopes and Fears
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Legend
Van Morrison - Days Like This
Van Morrison & The Chieftains - Irish Heartbeat
Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory
Paul Simon - Graceland
Zoot Sims Quartet - That Old Feeling
Bruce Springsteen - Born In The USA

Anyway, back to Keane. I sometimes describe music as "achingly beautiful" and the description fits here. I love this album.



The song playing is Everybody's Changing.

Literary characters as friends

Janet over at Joyful Jottings: http://joyfuljottings-janet.blogspot.com/

made a list of literary characters she'd like as friends for her Thursday Thirteen offering yesterday. I'm hoping a lot of people will follow her example and post their own lists. I'm not going to wait till next Thursday. I'll call mine Friday favorites.

These are not in any particular order.

1. Beth in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

2. Emily Pollifax in the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman

3. Horace Rumpole in the Rumpole series by John Mortimer

4. Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse

5. Archie Goodwin in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries

6. Mrs. Dalloway in the book of the same name by Virginia Woolf

7. Mrs. Miniver in the book of the same name by Jan Struther

8. Venetia in Hens Dancing, and Summertime by Raffaela Barker

9. Isabel Dalhousie in the Sunday Philosophy Club series by Alexander McCall Smith

10. Mma Ramotswe in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith

11. Dave in Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe stories

12. Morley in Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe stories

13. Rob Fleming in High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Today's cd/One More For The Road

Toots Thielemans/One More For The Road/2006

Recently I heard a song on a late night jazz show, a rendition of One For My Baby, and I thought, wait a minute that's Jamie Cullum, but who is playing the harmonica? When the dj announced it was Toots Thielemans, I realized how much I still have to learn about jazz. I've done some reading since, and of course I bought the cd, and have done a lot of listening. He is utterly fantastic. And this cd is perfect. You may get a taste of it here.

I'll be buying a lot more of Toots Thielemans.

Quote du jour/John Mortimer

People have suggested that I'm a little overweight. They've hinted that from time to time. But do I let it worry me? Do I decline the mashed spuds or the fried slice with my breakfast bacon? I do not! I let such remarks slide off me like water off a duck's back.
Horace Rumpole
in Rumpole and the Angel of Death by John Mortimer

Thursday Thirteen/Favorite Books of 2006

For a few days, I've been trying to think of how I wanted to go about making a list of favorite books for last year. Do I choose ten for a top ten list? Do I list all my A+ books (31), which must mean they were my favorites?

So then I thought I would use the Thursday Thirteen format. I reviewed those thirty-one books to see which of them created a perfect reading experience for me: a book I hated to put down, a book I thought about while I wasn't reading it, a book I couldn't wait to get back to, a book I was totally absorbed in. And these are the thirteen I came up with.

[A funny, completely unrelated, musical sidenote - The two numbers make me think of the Offspring song, Pretty Fly (For a White Guy):
Now, he’s getting a tattoo, yeah, he’s gettin’ ink done
He asked for a 13, but they drew a 31]

My thirteen favorite books of 2006, in alphabetical order by author:

1. The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog by Dave Barry, 2006, fiction

2. The Quiet Hills by Iris Bromige, 1967, fiction

3. The Day The World Came To Town
9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede, 2002, non-fiction

4. Christmas Remembered by Tomie DePaola, 2006, non-fiction

5. The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman, 1971, fiction

6. Evenings At Five by Gail Godwin, 2003, fiction

7. A Common Life by Jan Karon, 2001, fiction

8. Light From Heaven by Jan Karon, 2005, fiction

9. Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters From A Nantucket Garden by Laura Simon, 1998, non-fiction

10. Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith, 2005, fiction

11. The Right Attitude To Rain by Alexander McCall Smith, 2006, fiction

12. Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster, 1953, non-fiction

13. A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas, 2006, non-fiction

Seeds of hope

Yesterday I spent the day perusing online catalogues and ordering my seeds for the coming growing season. The above images come from one of my favorite sources, Renee's Garden. From there, I ordered a favorite we grew last summer for the first time, Ronde de Nice squash.


I also ordered from Seeds of Change, High Mowing Seeds, and Johnny's.

Every year we have gardened, we've sown old favorites, and new choices. This year I am really excited to grow a squash I saw for the first time this summer at the farmer's market, called Zephyr. In addition to an excellent taste, it is so beautiful to look at.


Last year we tried two new (to us) tomato varieties, and liked them so much, we'll probably always grow them. The cherry is called Peacevine, and the full size are St. Pierre.



Hope for the future is at the heart of all gardening.
Marina Schinz

Today's cd/$hake Your Money Maker

The Black Crowes/$hake Your Money Maker/1990

One night a few years ago we were out at a local nightspot listening to our future son-in-law's band, and suddenly they played a song that really caught my attention. I loved the pace, the music, the words. He told me it was Seeing Things by The Black Crowes. You may hear a bit of it at Amazon.

I find it hard to shed a tear
You brought it all on yourself my dear
Wrong, yes I may be
Don't leave a light on for me
'Cause I ain't comin' home
It hurts me baby to be alone
Yes, it hurts me baby

A hundred years will never ease
Hearing things I won't believe
I saw it with my own two eyes
All the pain that I can't hide

And this pain starts in my heart
And this love tears us apart
You won't find me bent down on my knees
Ain't bendin' over backwards baby
Not to please

'Cause I'm seeing things for the first time
I'm seeing things for the first time, oh yeah
I'm seeing things for the first time
In my life, in my life

I used to dream
Of better days that never came
Sorry ain't nothin' to me
I'm gone and that's the way it must be
So please I've done my time
Lovin' you is such a crime
You won't find me down on, on my knees
Won't find me over backwards baby
Just to please

'Cause I'm seeing things for the first time
I'm seeing things for the first time
Seeing things for the first time
Oh I'm seeing things for the first time
Yeah, seeing things for the first time
I'm seeing things for the first time
Yeah, I'm seeing things for the first time
In my life, in my life


The song playing is Hard To Handle, the old Otis Redding number. The (16!!) year old lead singer does this in the movie, The Commitments. It is one of my personal all time favorite songs.



I'm new to The Black Crowes, but now I'm a big fan.

What's in bloom

The kalanchoe was a Christmas gift and should be in bloom for a while.




The clivia is one of my treasured plants. This is the second time it has bloomed in six months. What color!

My January TBR Challenge choice

For my January book, I've chosen Dandelions in a Jelly Jar by Traci DePree.

Today's cd/Songs for Swingin' Lovers

Frank Sinatra/Songs for Swingin' Lovers/1955

I can't think of a better way to spend the first day of the New Year than listening to Sinatra! Many of his great love songs are here: You Make Me Feel So Young, Too Marvelous For Words, I Thought About You, How About You. I'm a huge Frank Sinatra fan, and this is a wonderful cd. The photo is from Amazon since I bought this one at iTunes.

The song playing is You Make Me Feel So Young.

Quote du jour/Gladys Taber

My New Year's resolutions are simple. I resolve to be more patient, less selfish, cherish my friends, and in my small way help whoever needs help. I cannot conceivably influence the world's destiny, but I can make my own life more worthwhile. I can give some help to some people; that is not vital to all the world's problems and yet, I think if everyone did just that, we might see quite a world in our time!
Gladys Taber
Stillmeadow Sampler, 1959

Today's cd/On and On

Jack Johnson/On and On/2003

When I'm feeling rattled, or the world seems a little noisy or worrisome, I put one of my Jack Johnson cds on the player, and I feel the tension going away. His voice and music are like a mantra; listening to him is like a meditation. He calms me down. His words aren't all cheery, but there is an optimism, a sense of hope and peace that his music promotes.

As I take down Christmas decorations on the last day of 2006, this cd is the perfect musical companion.



The song playing is the first track on the cd.

"in times like these
in times like those
what will be will be
and so it goes"

"and there's always been laughing, crying, birth, and dying
boys and girls with hearts that take and give and break
and heal and grow and recreate and raise and nurture"

The world is a better place because we have Jack Johnson's music.

Today's cd/Hang On Little Tomato

Pink Martini/Hang On Little Tomato/2004

How could I not buy this cd? The band name and title are irresistible, as is the album cover. And the music is just as delightful and fun as the names suggest. If they are new to you, you may read more here.

I was so surprised to find them at radioblogclub.



The song playing is the title track.

"So I hold on to this advice
When change is hard and not so nice
If you listen to your heart the whole night through
Your sunny someday will come one day soon to you"

Quote du jour/Nell Newman

Every little thing you do makes a difference.
Nell Newman

Baking-Powder Biscuits

I was given a delightful cookbook for Christmas by a wonderful friend. In addition to terrific "receipts", Tasha Tudor offers family stories and her famous illustrations. One of my favorites is this one:



I love the homey feel it evokes with the happy children and food in the old fashioned "butt'ry".

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to make something my husband and I have always called "warm and buttery", so I looked through my new cookbook and found these biscuits. I have tried many, many biscuit recipes and these are the best I've ever tasted.



I'm going to include the author's words about the biscuits.

Baking Powder Biscuits

I serve these hot from the oven with fresh creamery butter and homemade raspberry preserves that I have bottled myself from my own raspberry patch. Occasionally, I like to add a grated sharp cheese, such as Vermont cheddar, to the dough as I mix it together.

1 farm-fresh egg, at room temperature
1/2 to 3/4 cup milk
2 cups unbleached flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening

Preheat the oven to 475º F. and grease a cookie sheet.

Crack the egg into a 1-cup glass measure.
Mix well with a fork.
Add milk to the 3/4-cup mark and mix well again.

In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Lightly mix in the shortening with your fingers.
Stir in the milk mixture, taking care not to overwork the dough.
On a lightly floured surface, roll or pat the dough to 1/2 inch thickness and cut with
2 1/4-inch floured biscuit cutter.
Place the rounds 1 inch apart on the baking sheet.

Bake the biscuits in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes, until nicely browned.

My notes:
I used butter (I ALWAYS use butter).
The flour was half white and half whole wheat pastry.
I mixed in the butter with two knives.
I don't know what size my cutters are but the recipe made 14 biscuits.
And I didn't dare to put the oven at 475º so I baked them at 450º and they were done in a bit over five minutes. I would say to keep a close eye on them to be sure they don't burn.
We did indeed eat them hot from the oven with butter and jam.
Delicious with a cold glass of milk.

Today's cd/Chocolat soundtrack

Rachel Portman/Chocolat/2000

Something very rare happened with Chocolat - the book by Joanne Harris, the movie, and the soundtrack are all excellent.

The music on this cd was written by Rachel Portman, except for Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grappelli, and Caravan by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol. It is perfectly suited to the film, and is lovely to listen to completely separate from the movie. Great music.

Thursday Thirteen/Resolutions

For my Thursday Thirteen in between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, I thought I'd post my resolutions for 2007. They aren't in any particular order, and are just some things to work on in the coming year.

1. Get outdoors every day, even if only for a little while.
2. Spend more time reading.
3. Spend more of this reading time on my own books, and borrow fewer from the library.
4. Exercise every day.
5. Visit elderly friends more often.
6. Write more letters.
7. Spend less time on the computer.
8. Go to more movies at the movie theatre.
9. Lose about five pounds.
10. Call friends more often.
11. Clear out the cellar.
12. Clear out the barn loft.
13. Try to live by this wonderful Swedish proverb:
Fear less, hope more;
Eat less, chew more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Love more, and all good things will be yours.

Today's cd/Nocturne

Charlie Haden/Nocturne/2001

There are five instrumental jazz albums which I play most often, and this is one of them. The others are James Carter's The Real Quietstorm, and Chasin' The Gypsy, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, and the Zoot Sims Quartet's That Old Feeling.

Each time I hear Nocturne, I am amazed at the beauty of the music. I love every song. You may listen to (and buy) the cd here.

Leonardo Acosta writes in the liner notes:

...we should go back to the definition that Bird one day gave to bop, and it was no simple joke: he called it a "search for the pretty notes." In this new introspective voyage through time and the musical space of the Americas, which Charlie Haden undertakes in very healthy company, we can be certain at every instant that we are meeting beauty, elegance, and the peace that has always defined this great artist with so much constancy.

On this quiet, snowy and sometimes sunny day, we plan to do some reading, and Nocturne is the perfect musical companion.

Quote du jour/Kenneth Grahame

It's never the wrong time to call on Toad. Early or late he's always the same fellow. Always good-tempered, always glad to see you, always sorry when you go!

Rat, in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Book of the month

A Three Dog Life a memoir by Abigail Thomas/2006

The author quotes Wikipedia for the phrase, Three Dog Night.
Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a "three dog night."

Sometimes when a book is over, I sigh; sometimes I smile. When I finished this book, I said, "wow" right out loud. That doesn't happen very often, if indeed it has ever happened.

This is a book of essays written by a woman whose husband has been hit by a car, and suffered extensive brain damage. He can still talk. He still knows her. But he lives right now. There is no past, there is no future.

We envisioned an old age on a front porch somewhere, each other's comfort, companions for life. But life takes twists and turns. There is good luck and bad.

"Good things happen slowly," said a doctor in the ICU months ago, "and bad things happen fast."

Her husband, Rich, says truly amazing things. It makes one marvel at the brain, and all we don't understand. He misses out on the "normal" world, but has a knowledge that is unavailable to us. He has a way of phrasing his thoughts that is remarkable.

One day he doesn't smile when she comes to see him. She asks what is wrong:

"We're divorced," he said, as if I were an imbecile. "We're married, Rich," I told him. "We've been married fourteen years. You're my husband," I said, touching his arm, "I'm your wife." He looked at me coldly. "Transparent windowlike words." He doesn't believe in his brain injury, so he has come up with an explanation for my absence: I have left him. "I'm alone," he says, waving his arm down the hall. "Hundreds of single beds," he says, "hundreds of single beds with old men lying in them with their boots on."

"You squeezed all those colors from fruit," Rich observed the other day. I was knitting a scarf out of red and purple wool.

She writes of her dogs:

But my dogs make me laugh, and they comfort me, and I'm never bored with them. When Rosie's head lies on my shoulder, Harry crams himself into my left side, and Carolina curls up like something folded by a Chinese laundry, impossibly small and neat, I am perfectly happy. We are the peaceable kingdom on a double bed. This is what it must have been like before the apple, when everything had a name but there wasn't so much discussion. I once asked my eldest daughter, Sarah, the mother of five, what it was about dogs that made loving them so easy. "They don't talk," she said.

The author devotes an essay to a kind of psychic quality to her husband's life now. There's the story about her friend who gets a Doberman puppy and brings it over to her place where all the dogs run around together.

I remember thinking how Rich would have hated the chaos. The phone rang. It was a nurse from the facility where Rich was living telling me my husband wouldn't come out of his room. He was certain Dobermans were outside his door, waiting to attack him.
Her husband knew nothing of the puppy in their apartment.

Another time, she and a friend were in Mexico. She called her husband, hollering into the receiver, intent on making him hear me, willing him not to let the phone slide away from his ear. I was staring at a tile on the counter as I shouted, "Rich? Rich? Can you hear me?"
"Hello," he said, somewhat cautiously.
"How are you?" I shouted, my eyes still drilling into the terra-cotta square.
"Fine," he answered.
"What have you been doing?" I shouted. There was a pause.
"We made some tiles today," he said.
When I got back I checked. I even talked to the person in charge of art and recreation. Nobody had made tiles, not that week, not ever.

Another example of the wonder of his words:

Rich and I don't make conversation; we exchange tidbits, how well we've slept, what was for breakfast. We are stripped down to our most basic selves, no static, no irony, no nuance. Once in a while Rich says something that takes my breath away: "I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes."

Abigail Thomas shares a truth that is so hard for all of us to grasp.

The future was also the place where the bad stuff waited in ambush. My children were embarking on their futures in fragile vessels, and I trembled. I wanted to remove obstacles, smooth their way, I wanted to change their childhoods. I needed to be right all the time, I wanted them to listen to me, learn from my mistakes, and save themselves a lot of grief. Well, now I know I can control my tongue, my temper, and my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic, or luck. I can't make good things happen. I can't keep everybody safe. I can't influence the future and I can't fix up the past.

What a relief.

And I say, "what a book!"