Quote du jour/Lilias Folan

The great teachers of the past said that when you close your outer eyes, your inner eyes open.
Lilias Folan

Mrs Bale sings along

Short story hiatus

I'm taking a little break from short stories because I have started two really good books, and I want to spend my reading time on them. See sidebar for titles. :<)

Today's cd/Grey's Anatomy Original Soundtrack Volume 2

Grey's Anatomy Original Soundtrack Volume 2/2006

Here is the companion piece to the first season soundtrack, and it is just as wonderful. Again the cd introduced me to many wonderful artists. Great music, ending with the song from the oh, so sad last scene of the second season, Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

It's the little things/Mileage milestone

Mrs Bale cries uncle and aunt and cousin

I'm not going to post any more pictures of snow. We have snow; it is snowing. That is all.

Today's Short Story by Sheila Kaye-Smith

The story I chose today is A Day In A Woman's Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith. One of the benefits of this little short story scheme is discovering new authors from earlier times. This woman was very famous, and maybe still is in some circles, but I had never heard of her. There is a Sheila Kaye-Smith Society which was formed twenty years ago "to stimulate and widen interest in her work." She co-authored a book on Jane Austen. Her books and stories are set in her home area of Sussex, England. A little sidenote I found online is that members of the band I enjoy, Keane, used to live in the same town as she did. As I searched the internet, I saw articles and stories in Time and Harper's. In fact, this story first appeared in Harper's in January, 1923. How do these writers get lost? How do we bring them back to the attention of today's readers? If I ran a library or owned a bookstore, this would be my campaign. I would be always on the search for writers who aren't read anymore.

This story is sixteen pages long, and is in a Modern Library Anthology of Famous British Stories. It is divided into morning, afternoon, and evening. For the most part this story is the inner ruminations of a woman's mind. A boyfriend hasn't been in touch about a scheduled lunchtime meeting. It brings up all the other instances when she has felt mistreated by him. He says he "can't" marry her. She has already forgiven him once for unfaithfulness. She is always making excuses for his neglectful behavior. She decides to drive over to meet him, and on the way makes up her mind (mostly) that she is going to break it off. The woman is annoying in her dependence on his every action, but it didn't really seem dated, because this is much of what we read in modern fiction or see on television or movies or hear in songs: should I stay or should I go? Good story which really takes the reader into the woman's heart and mind.

Today's Short Story by Craig Rice

Today I read Beyond The Shadow Of A Dream, a 1955 story by Craig Rice. It was in the January 2006 issue of Ellery Queen Magazine.

A star of such magnitude that her picture appeared 60 years ago this January (1946) on the cover of Time magazine, Craig Rice is seldom reprinted today. The name (the best-known pseudonym of Georgianna Ann Randolph) has all but dropped from readers' awareness.

Jeffrey Marks has written a book about her which I'd like to read.



Who Was That Lady?
Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery
by Jeffrey Marks

Craig Rice, the author of fourteen novels, countless short stories, and a number of true crime pieces, once rivaled Agatha Christie in sales. She was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1946. However, the past fifty years have seen her fall into relative obscurity. Rice made for an interesting subject for a biography because nearly every identification point about the author was in dispute: her birth, her real name, her number of marriages, number of children, her canon of fiction, and the cause of her early death. Marks had to wade through years of research to come up with the answers to those questions. Following a trail that went from Venice, Italy to Venice Beach, CA, he talked to a number of her contemporaries, her family, and friends to come up with an engaging book that reminds readers why Rice remains the undisputed queen of the comedic mystery.

I own one of her books called Home Sweet Homicide published by the Rue Morgue Press, which is pretty much single-handedly bringing back into print the old mysteries from what is known as "the Golden Age of Detective Fiction."

This thirteen page story was such a good one. Tight, well-told, and had me guessing till the end. A psychiatrist visits a lawyer friend and tells him he is having dreams about murdering people. It turns out that after the dreams, the newspaper has stories about those very murders. Of course, once it was explained, I thought oh, of course. :<) I couldn't ask for more from a mystery tale.

Today's picture/Patio furniture

Quote du jour/Fran Lebowitz

If someone said to me, how did you spend your life? I'd have to say, lying on the sofa reading.
Fran Lebowitz

Today's Short Story by John O'Hara

Today's story is Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly by John O'Hara. It is in a book my childhood friend's mother gave me years ago, called Read With Me, A personal anthology of memorable reading, selected and introduced by Thomas B. Costain. A man comes to borrow money from his very successful brother. It is really an age-old story of (some) brothers; one rich, one down-and-out, a state usually brought on by himself; one kind, one mean; one in the limelight for good work, the other in that same limelight for bad deeds. How often we see this, even in our Presidents and their brothers. Through the words he uses, in the way he talks to employees of his brother's company, the reader sees the kind of man he is. We learn about the other brother through his story which he recites. Well written, interesting, though it wasn't such pleasant reading.

Today's cd/Stabat Mater

Pergolesi, Stabat Mater/Vivaldi, Motet, and Stabat Mater/1994

The selection now playing is the Vivaldi Stabat Mater.



On Good Friday a few years ago, I heard this on a classical music program. I was so moved by the music that I bought it and play it each year on this day. It is the saddest, yet most beautiful music I think I've ever heard. It matches the subject closer than any music I know. The title is an abbreviation of Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which means The Sorrowful Mother Was Standing. Whether one is a Christian believer or not, those of us who are mothers can feel this sadness, this worst of all griefs. A few of the words:

Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?

Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?

Tools of the trade/Waffles

The 2007 Maple Syrup is available! We bought some today from a place down the road, where we buy our pumpkins in the fall. What a taste! There's nothing like it. So tonight we're having waffles made in the super duper waffle maker our son gave us for Christmas a couple years back. The recipe comes from Mrs. Whaley Entertains. Do you know about her books? The first one is Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden. She is no longer living, but thank goodness she wrote these wonderful books.



Mrs. Whaley's Waffles

1 1/4 cups flour (I use 3/4 c. whole wheat pastry and 1/2 c. white)
4 t. baking powder (I use 3)
1 t. salt
1 T. sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 cups milk
8 T. (1 stick) melted butter

Sift together dry ingredients. In another bowl, combine eggs, milk, and cooled butter. Add to dry mixture slowly, beating well after each addition. You don't want lumpy batter. Have waffle iron hot and greased.

Today's cd/Sympathique

Pink Martini/Sympathique/1997

Well, here's another Pink Martini album for you! This is their first one. So, 1997, 2004; may we expect the next one in 2011? I sure hope it is sooner. If you (Laura and Marcia - the fans do!) live near any of the places on their upcoming tour, I'd get tickets. I bet they are just wonderful in person. I saw on the tour list that there is a "record release" concert in Portland, Oregon in May, so it looks like we don't have to wait another three years. Hooray.

The song playing is Brazil.

Then - tomorrow was another day
the morning found us miles away
with still a million things to say

Today's Short Story by Gladys Taber

I have read quite a few of Gladys Taber's non-fiction books, but very, very little of her fiction. The new Friends Of Gladys Taber publication has one of her short stories, and it is my choice for today, But Wait Till You See Glenna! It was first published in the February 1945 issue of Woman's Home Companion magazine. It is six pages long.

We associate Gladys Taber so much with her homes in Connecticut and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that we might forget that she lived and worked in New York City for quite a while. This story is set there. Two young "career girls" as they used to be called, share an apartment in Greenwich Village. One, Glenna, is beautiful, fashionable, and:

...was the kind of girl a girl like Frances always rooms with. She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her, like too much sun or too many roses on one stem, or moonlight over a dark sea.

The other girl, Frances, is a "plain girl." Glenna tries to set Frances up with boys, but they all like Glenna best. One day Frances gets a phone call at her work and she answers in a whimsical way. The fellow on the other end joins right in and after a delightful little conversation, he asks that they meet for a cup of tea. The reader can guess what will happen, but it is still lovely reading about how their friendship grows and how they really are meant for one another.

Quote du jour/Mrs Bale

So, this is April??
Mrs Bale



Mrs Bale says this isn't a good drying day.




But it is a very good day to wrestle in the snow.



Photos courtesy of the teacher-with-a-snow-day.

Today's Short Story by Rudyard Kipling

I was born on a Wednesday, and as a child I never liked the rhyme:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

What an awful thing for a child born on a Wednesday to carry around with her. Well, honestly, it didn't affect me very much, but I still think it's a mean little rhyme. :<) Because I was born on a Wednesday, I'm going to designate that day of the week for a children's story. Today's is How The Whale Got His Throat by Rudyard Kipling from his Just So Stories.

This three page story was originally published in 1902. Do you think children at the beginning of the twentieth century would have known what the phrase "infinite resource and sagacity" meant? I'm not sure they would now. I love how the narrator keeps referring to his "Best Beloved," surely a loving name for the child being read to. How nice for a child to hear as part of a story. This story is in a book we bought for our son when he was seven. Sadly, it is not a 1902 edition, but a 1987 edition. The illustrations are ridiculous. The Mariner is portrayed as an old, wiry man, while the words tell that it is alright with his "Mummy" to "paddle" his feet in the water. And when he gets out of the whale's throat, he goes home to his mother, gets married and lives happily ever after. I might just search out the old edition someday.

Book Report/Home Cooking

As I began reading Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin, I could feel an ache in my heart. This is a particular form of ache, one that happens only when I read an author for the first time, an author whose work I love and to whom I feel a deep affinity, and this author is dead. I want Laurie Colwin to be alive. I want to email her or call her up and tell her that I think we could be friends. I also want to tell her that things have changed since 1988, and so many thoughts she had about food have now become the norm, popular, even fashionable.

I think I knew I was going to feel this way, and so have avoided reading her all these years. I heard about her, read snippets of her work, and just knew I would love the writing. I also knew she was dead, had died young (her heart stopped in her sleep when she was 48 years old in 1992), and that she was adored by her readers. But when I read Marcia's review of Happy All The Time, a novel, I decided to buck up and start reading her books. I began with her first book of essays, and have ordered the second one, More Home Cooking. In fact, I just called up my local bookstore yesterday and told the woman who answered, who is a friend, to just order me a bunch of titles. I didn't really care which. I will eventually own all her books.

In a chapter called English Food, she writes about tea in London:

We sat down to tea and I was in heaven. This was the fulfillment of a childhood filled with English children's books. It seemed a wonderful feast to me as a child and now that I am grown up tea is my favorite meal.

Put before us was a plate of bread and butter, a seed cake and a dish of little cakes made with candied cherries. I felt I would never be as happy again as I was that afternoon.

I want to tell Laurie Colwin that she would feel so at home in the internet world. She would find people simpatico with her views on food and home life. I'm sure she would be a blogger, sharing her recipes and funny stories about preparing meals.

From the first words in her introduction, I was nodding my head in recognition.

Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home. This may be caused by laziness, anxiety or xenophobia, and in the days when my friends were happily traveling to Bolivia and Nepal, I was ashamed to admit that what I liked best was hanging around the house.

I am probably not much fun as a traveler, either. My idea of a good time abroad is to visit someone's house and hang out, poking into their cupboards if they will let me. One summer I spent some time in a farmhouse on the island of Minorca. This was my idea of bliss: a vacation at home (even if it wasn't my home). I could wake up in the morning, make the coffee and wander outside to pick apricots for breakfast. I could wander around markets figuring out that night's dinner. In foreign countries I am drawn into grocery shops, supermarkets and kitchen supply houses. I explain this by reminding my friends that, as I was taught in my Introduction To Anthropology, it is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

Since her death, we have had a (little) explosion of works about home-life, and "real" cooking, by such authors as Rosamunde Pilcher, Maeve Binchy, Raffaela Barker, and Jan Karon; and a revived interest in "domestic" writers from the past, like the much-beloved Gladys Taber. We have magazines about cozy homes, with rooms and kitchens that welcome us. Even in this time of "trophy houses", we have little cottages springing up with little cottage gardens. Inside we are baking bread and cookies. We love Mary Engelbreit, and Susan Branch, and Mary Jane Butters. We want to live a life that isn't just rushing around, working outside the home for too many hours. And if we do have to live that life, we want our homes to be there as a beacon, a comfort, a place that is calm with good smells coming from the kitchen.

Even the editor of such an upscale magazine as House & Garden, Dominique Browning, is writing books about the joys of the home and the garden; how they can support us in hard times, and help heal the troubles we feel. I once wrote about Paths of Desire:

I was struck part way through that she is a modern day Gladys Taber. She writes of her home and her garden with an affection and almost reverence which Gladys Taber felt. One is a suburban woman with a high power job, who writes books and columns about her life, and the other was a country woman who wrote articles and books about her life. They share that commitment to their homes.

Laurie Colwin, too, would be nodding in recognition. What a loss for her, and for all of us.

Today's Short Story by Mavis Gallant

Today's short story comes from a book I was given by my parents on my 19th birthday. It is called Sometimes Magic, and is a collection of stories chosen to appeal to teen girls. Yesterday's story, The Nightingales Sing is one of the offerings. Some are excerpts from novels and others are short stories.

My choice today is One Morning In June by Mavis Gallant. It comes from The Other Paris, collected stories published in 1956.



It concerns two young people, a girl of sixteen and a boy a little older, who are on a picnic at the suggestion of her aunt. Both are in France for a time. The reader sees both their points of view as they spend the afternoon together. Neither knows what they want to do in the future. He is abroad discovering if he has any artistic talent, and she is spending a year with her aunt after failing in high school. They don't really communicate; rather they seem to talk at one another. He says something, she says something, but neither says what they really feel. I wonder if teen girls today could relate at all to the girl in this story. I doubt the slow pace, the fact that nothing really seems to happen would appeal to girls who are already reading about serious, current subjects in junior high school. I did enjoy it, but that may be because I can remember those awkward encounters, and also because I like the details, the post-war feel to the locale, and that slow pace.

This was a very well-written story by an author whose name I first read in Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast by Bill Richardson. She is on a list of "Favourite Authors For The Bath."

A bath should have something of the elegant about it, and I can think of no writing more stylish than that of Montreal-born, Paris-based Mavis Gallant. As someone who has never lived elsewhere, I enjoy reading the works of a happy expatriate who feels the strong tug of home.

Today's poem - An April Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In honor of the Longfellow stamp, and in honor of April, today's poem is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (1807-1882)

I love the lines,
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
The drooping tree revives.
As do we all.

An April Day

When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.

From the earth's loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide
Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.

Sweet April! many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life's golden fruit is shed.