Monthly Archives: April 2012

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 27th April

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  • Ralph Waldo Emerson died on 4/27/1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”

  • Hart Crane died on 4/27/1932.  “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

A Year in Books/Day 115: Pompeii The Living City

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  • Title: Pompeii The Living City
  • Authors: Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence
  • Year Published: 2005 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: History should be a living, breathing, laughing, squirming thing. Alive, thought-provoking, uncomfortable, enlightening. Not boring or stilted. When presented in book form, you shouldn’t want to skip ahead to find the good bits; it should all be good bits. Fortunately, Butterworth and Laurence agree. Their Pompeii The Living City is as vivid, varied and fast-paced as the subject itself. The result is an indelibly engaging volume that pulls on your senses until it feels-almost, if only in the back of the mind-like a real-time experience.
  • Motivation: I’ve loved ancient history since I was a kid and dreamed big dreams of being an anthropologist or archaeologist when I grew up. Well, kind of; I never seriously wanted to do anything but write. Kid me envisioned the anthropologist/archaeologist thing as kind of a side-line or hobby. Ah, youth!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 130: “In all respects, the beauty industry was big business in Pompeii. Affluent women struggled to emulate the idealised femininity of the frescoes on their walls, who stared into polished bronze or silver mirrors with justified self-regard, their dressing tables bare of any artificial means of enhancement. Yet the great range of ingeniously wrought bottles that have been found testifies to the lengths to which some women in the real world would go to preserve or improve their looks.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy

    House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Accidentally shot out of cannon
  • Overdosed on pillows
  • Backed over self with car
  • Heavily armed, highly unstable mime
  • Questioned religious doctrine of Kirk Cameron to his face
  • A little hard work did, in fact, kill you
  • Carnivorous gerbil
  • Visited exploding cousin
  • Caught between Inky and Clyde
  • Set on fire by very confused protesting monk
  • Proud winner of kerosene-drinking contest

[Intermezzo] Happy Birthday, Momma! Or, This is Where I Review My Mother’s Job Performance…..

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I’m taking a break from my work to wish my sweet, lovely mom, Kay, a Happy Birthday! I started by searching the web for appropriate “mom/mothering” quotes. I came up empty. Oh, there are thousands on the Internet. Most of them are quite nice, inspiring even. Perfectly appropriate. Unfortunately, they just seemed…hollow. Not right. Then it occurred to me. “Duh! You’re a writer. Doing a ventriloquist act with someone else’s words is not good enough for your mother. Do it yourself.”

So here I am, feebly attempting to explain how wonderful she is in (almost) every way. I decided to add that ‘almost’ qualifier because no one is perfect. Not even my mom. That’s alright, because even her imperfection is inspiring. When I was growing up, her humanity empowered me. It still does. She’s stronger than she knows, more beautiful. She grew up at a time when suburban assimilation was expected; she raised me to be my weird, larger-than-life self. To revel in my uniqueness, because that uniqueness was my ticket to an interesting life.

She’s always been fun (and funny!) and open. She’s adventurous but won’t admit it, even when she’s in the middle of doing something totally awe-inspiring. She’s wickedly creative when it comes to this thing called life; always has been, always will be. She’s shy, like me, but passionate and vocal about her convictions (hmm, also like me). She gave me my love of reading and tea and art and half of the other important, beautiful things I hold so dear. My mom, this woman named Kay, has made it possible for me to look in the mirror and say, “I like who I am.” It’s true: I like who I am. But I love her. Mom, you are the best: the best parent, the best friend, the best role model I could ever hope for. You still inspire me. Happy Birthday!

Why, yes, it was the 1970s!

Why, yes, it was the 1970s!

 

Also born on 25 April: Al Pacino, Ella Fitzgerald, Oliver Cromwell, Edward R. Murrow, Renee Zellweger, William J. Brennan, Jr., Edward II and Guglielmo Marconi (which is odd, because I was born on Tesla’s birthday).

A Year in Books/Day 114: Camille Pissarro Letters to His Son Lucien

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  • Title: Camille Pissarro Letters to His Son Lucien
  • Edited by: John Rewald
  • Year Published: 1943/This Edition: 2002 (MFA Publications)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: Half Price Books
  • About: Camille Pissarro, the “father of Impressionism”, was the heart and soul of that loose collective of friends and acquaintances. Every week for twenty years, he wrote his son Lucien a letter. Read together, they are better than any art history class on Impressionism could ever be. His intelligence, dedication, humour and wisdom burst from every page. He was a quiet rebel who deliberately chose to live outside the bounds of acceptable society, knew everyone within the art community that there was to know, was never complacent in his search for artistic growth- all while remaining a rock for his (slightly) younger artist friends. The landscape of art history (ha!) would be entirely different without his very serious contributions.
  • Motivation: Starting when I was a girl-very young, just a few years-I would spend hours flipping through my Mom’s books. My favourite was a handsome folio of Impressionist paintings. It was then that I formed a connection to the work of Camille Pissarro that has never waned. He remains the only Impressionist painter whose work I truly love. Bonus: We share a birthday.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 132: “I had a long conversation with Renoir. He admitted to me that everybody, Durand and his former collectors attacked him, deploring his attempts to go beyond his romantic period. He seems to be very sensitive to what we think of his show; I told him that for us the search for unity was the end towards which every intelligent artist must bend his efforts, and even with great faults it was more intelligent and more artistic to do this than to remain enclosed in romanticism. Well, now he doesn’t get any more portraits to do.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Landscape at Pontoise, 1874

    Landscape at Pontoise, 1874 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 113: Maria Callas

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  • Title: Maria Callas an Intimate Biography
  • Author: Anne Edwards
  • Year Published: 2001 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: I’m always skeptical about any biography with the word ‘intimate’ in the title. It holds scuzzy connotations for me, as if I’m about to read the unnecessarily shameful details of a dead person’s life. If you’ve been following my Project 366, you know that I love, love, love a good biography; just not the sordid kind. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about: there is no enumeration of distressing personal habits or focus on gross minutiae. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to celebrate either. This book is entirely middle-of-the road. It is neither offensive nor illuminating. It’s a quick, surface study of the great singer. If you don’t know much about Callas , it’s probably a perfectly utilitarian introduction. The photo section is the best part.

    Publicity photo of Maria Callas (December 2, 1...

    Publicity photo of Maria Callas (December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) as Violetta in La Traviata by Houston Rogers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Motivation: I needed 7 or 8 books for a long vacation. I bought this to round out the more intellectual fare I’d already purchased. This was my “easy, fun” read. Maria Callas was a diva when being a diva was something more complex and less hollow than it is now: talented, dynamic, demanding, always-changing, never boring. A great subject for the dull leg of a long car trip.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 53: “Maria knew no one on this boat, or the SS Stockholm, and had not yet learned where her father or Dr Lantzounis lived. She could think of no one else to contact in New York. In her purse were $100, her entire personal wealth. Yet she felt free for the first time in eight years. She was saying goodbye to Maria Kalogeropoulou. As her American passport stated, she was now Maria Callas.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

Some Book Recommendations for When You are Stuck in a Car for Way Too Long

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The lovely Elisa of Fun & Fabulousness-she of the impeccable eye-asked if I could recommend some books appropriate to read on a looong car ride. Specifically, five. Five books, so she can choose one for her trip.

Painting by Carl von Steuben

(Painting by Carl von Steuben)

I’m honored; naturally, I said yes! I promptly got to work. It was all downhill from there. What happened? Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 112: Louise Bogan A Portrait

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  • Title: Louise Bogan A Portrait
  • Author: Elizabeth Frank
  • Year Published: 1985 (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Year Purchased: 2000
  • Source: The Book Harbor, Westerville, Ohio
  • About: Louise Bogan was the fourth Poet Laureate of the United States. That’s probably news to all but the most passionate poetry fans. This needs to change*; although more than a quarter century old, this biography is a fine start for anyone wanting to learn more. This fascinating, meticulous study was my crash course on the life and work of the New England poet. Prior to that, she was merely a name and a footnote to the more famous greats of twentieth century literature. Whatever your approach to the subject-as a fan of poetry, literary or social culture, history, women’s studies-you will find much to admire in the sad yet triumphant voice and life of this too-neglected talent.
  • Motivation: At the time I bought this book, I was just beginning to write about one of my now-favourite subjects: female wordsmiths of the first half of the last century.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 5: “In 1884, when May was only nineteen, a son, Charles Joseph, was born. The years between his birth and Louise’s are a blank, except that in between there was a second boy, named Edward, born nobody knows what year, who died at the age of four or five months.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Louise Bogan (1897–1970), US-american Poet

    Louise Bogan (1897–1970), US-american Poet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    *Nameberry.com recently listed their choices for the best poet-based names for 2012 babies. First on the list? Bogan.