Sunday Quote

The best lunch partners are upbeat and convivial. That leaves out poets, liberals and Republicans.
- Garrison Keillor, Salon article

Oh, another fine one...

She might as well be dead, and yet she goes on living, shopping at delicatessens, seeing her analysts, consuming a novel every night, putting on her girdle… I love her, I find her unimaginably brave.”
J.D. Salinger. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.

There was a time in my younger life, like so many others, I devoured every word. A fiercely private man, a good writer with a telling heart.

magic, please

Can't you just hear this discussion going on beneath these trees?

Full of reality checks and trying to think like an adult and all such tedium lately. Need some winter magic to blow through my hair and shake the cobwebs out.

Birthdays remembered

Robert Burns, of course, Happy Birthday to Scotland's most famous poet. My heart is leaning towards my Mom, passed five years this June. I think of her every day. This is a sketch I did when I was around 11 of my mom at the beach. Happy Birthday, Mom. Maybe she and my Dad are hanging out with RB having a wee dram of something to celebrate.

Sunday Quote

Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.
Bidden or unbidden, God is present.

-Desiderius Erasmus

and the rest

a window to spring

Windows to be precise. The first grade children's reading program starts early and ends by the time real flowers start to bloom. Spent the day putting up the windows, a touch of spring even though winter still has a long way to go...

Kate McGarrigle

One of the things I liked best about her was that wonderful sprawling musical artistic family or the myth of it, it turns out it was not the always Waltons-with-music life but more the complicated reality of families, careers, art, priorities. - Still - singing with her sister, the cousins, the children, yes. I grew up singing around a piano and breaking into a tune at the drop of a hat (although the only musical one now is cello-playing James). Her creative life was not just the songs but the whole of it, her family, the reality of it, a woman of my generation.

What do you keep?

Really like this question posed by another Susan in this interesting photography series. If I had to pick just one thing. My first thought is photographs But there are so many and I treasure them all. Writings? Not at the expense of photos and kid art. Clothes? Could care less. Certainly not china or finery, not that sort of gal. But books? Most I could find again. My signed copy of A Wrinkle in Time is a good memory scrawled on a page. I love so many things and everything I love is sentimental. I am sentimental. So maybe I'd pick my big tin fish because my husband hated it and I loved it when we were in South Carolina - and he turned the car around and went back for it because I could not get it out of my head. I love the man, I do. And I really love that fish. He would know immediately what he would keep, I think. This big reedy plant that has moved everywhere with us, summers outdoors, winters within, weighs a million pounds - we have seen the like of it only in North Carolina and in a very strange giant plant domed thing at a Vermont rest stop. I guess that's a marriage - you love each other even though there's a plant and a fish.

Sunday Quote

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-Martin Luther King Jr

Another reason why I love the Internet

Because I can find sites like this one. I have a bucket list, long time, although prior to movie of same name it was just called my life list, or stuff I want to do before I die list. One of these things was to get to Virginia and hunt down the town called Susan. Being a Susan, I would like to get a snapshot of myself next to the town "welcome to Susan" sign. Assuming there is a sign saying that. (What a disappointment if there is no such sign, huh?).
I've been through VA a few times but Susan is nowhere near the major highways and byways (leave it to a Susan to be difficult). I think there is just going to have to be a drive to Susan as the entire point of the trip deal at some point.
Meanwhile. Anyone ever been? (I wrote "passed through Susan, drove through Susan", and other variations and got quite tee-hee giddy. Apparently besides being a total bucket list geek, I also possess the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy).

I don't know about you...

but I could really use some Spring right now.

Sunday Quote

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book!
A message to us from the dead, - from human souls whom we never saw,
who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; and yet these,
on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us,
open their hearts to us as brothers.

- Charles Kingsley

Loved "UP"

I heard good things about this movie so as it finally was our turn on the interlibrary-loan line-up (yes, you can get movies out from your public library for free!), we watched it tonight. Just terrific - poignant and comical, life-affirming and surprisingly moving. Don't miss this one.

Welcome to the world!

At 9:59 this morning, Juliet Marie M. was born - and I could not be a happier great-aunt. Welcome to the world, Juliet! And welcome, Christy and Joe, elated parents, to a world of hugs and kisses, worries and wonders, I love you scribbled cards and Mommy I don't feel so good middle of the night announcements. I cannot think of anything more life-changing, profound, terrifying and astonishing than parenthood, and I know these two will be brilliant at it.

Thank you God for this gift to our family.

Just one more

I Love This Face. If he hadn't been a giant rocker bear (like a rocking horse), this guy would have come home with me.

and, of course, Saks and Tiffany's

and a little FAO

The polar bears talked, the soldier was made out of candy, the Statue of Liberty was constructed from squishy organic gunk, the stuffed animals were engaging, the little boy more so, the joint was jumping, what more do you want from a store?

Post Holiday scenes from Manhattan

from our post-Christmas jaunt last Wednesday - the tree - with an angel, of course, St. Patrick's where we lit a candle, the star smack dab in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and a shot from the front seat of a taxi - a real cabdriver's view although I think he hurtled a little less fast since I was in the front with my little camera :)

Sunday Quote

This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!

— Julia Child, My Life in France