Nom de Plume

Three full years of managing to keep a blog somewhat current. Six different names, 10 different templates, and two different platforms (Blogger and WordPress). Ah, the halcyon days of yore.

And may I just point out that the people who used to make fun of me for blogging now have blogs of their own?

I’ve been reading a lot about Poetry Friday on the blogs lately, in which bloggers post a poem written by someone else. How about Poetry Wednesday, in which we post a poem we wrote? Hey, there’s got to be some use for all the really bad poetry I’ve written that’s languishing on my hard drive. So I’ll start. Here goes:

The Last Trip

We hurtle to the coast
so a fierce tide
can pound transgressions
into something
fine and powdered
we can let glitter
through our fingers
tomorrow,
laughing in our castle—

its windows
freshly-washed.

Your hands
are steady on the wheel,
my eyes fixed
on scrubbed sandstone
until darkness washes us to
a silent shore,
where—in moonlit abeyance –
we pad past
salt-rippled sand,
crusted seaweed
trusting our breaths will hold
under the weight of
in-crashing waves—

their shimmering
collapse.

I couldn’t wait through the 345 holds at the library, so I went out and bought this–and then devoured it in a single (albeit late) night. I love Ann Tyler. She delves so deep into her characters that we end her novels feeling as though they are our friends, perhaps even our families. In Digging to America, she explores the relationships between the families of two couples who have adopted Korean babies. One is your quintessentially American family; the other is an Iranian family, who is, of course, quintessentially American in its own right. And that is the theme of the book. Although set in her usual Baltimore, this novel felt larger, more spacious than most of her other works. (This is an observation only, neither good nor bad.) As always, highly recommend.

This is probably the only kid’s fantasy book I haven’t read. I was feeling moderately guilty about it. But S and I just saw the movie, and the story was beyond terrible.

As you well know, I have an obsession with Japanese shin hanga and sosaku hanga woodblock prints. And I finally got my hands on a copy of Helen Merritt’s book, Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years, which puts 20th century woodblocks into historical perspective. The second part of the book is a bit more boring — short artist bios — but the first section is amazing. If you have any interest at all in Japanese art of any kind, read this.

The town of Winthrop needs a new name, so they call in a “nomenclature consultant”–the unnamed hero of Colson’s farcical novel. What follows is a well-written, very clever exploration of modern culture and our obsession with the superficial. Nonetheless, I hated it.

Benjamin Ziskind is lonely and depressed. He has an unfulfilling job as a question writer for a TV show, his wife has just left him, and his twin sister is now pregnant. With nothing to lose, it’s no suprise that when he goes to a Chagall exhibition and sees the painting that was stolen from his family, he is enraged. And he does what any normal person would do: Take it off the wall, tuck it under his arm, and go home.

But rather than being the end of the story, this scene is just the beginning. As Ben and his sister Sara try to figure out whether the original is actually a forgery (and Sara creates a forgery of her own), they are forced to sift through the history of the painting — both their own, and their parents. And these stories within stories are just amazing, a combination of history, mythology, and folklore. Highly, highly recommend.

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous weighs in on the wonders of Susan Cooper, and reminds me to reread the set for myself this season. We did, however, buy the boxed Dark is Rising set for Steve’s nephew last Saturday. It was a hard decision for Steve. You see, he’s always been the ultra cool uncle–especially after he gave Ben the very expensive skateboard he was riding when he busted his Achilles heel tendon. It’s hard to top that gift.

“He doesn’t like to read,” Steve protested. We were standing in Elliott Bay Books.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s a problem.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t get him books then.”

“No, we should. I meant that not liking to read is a problem. We need to fix that.”

Which may sound snotty, but really, I do believe in foisting books on kids. At the worst, the books sit unread on shelves. At the best, they read them and discover wonderful new worlds.

I’m not above bribery either. We slipped in a note that said, “Don’t let your mom catch you reading the dirty parts.”

It didn’t start auspiciously, that I can tell you.

I opened an etrade account a week ago. Wow, I thought, this is great! I can transfer funds automatically. Tweedle dee, tweedle da, I blithely linked up my bank account and transferred a thousand bucks. Done. Easy as pie.

Come to find out that if you type 1,000 with a comma, as any civilized person would do, the etrade system reads aforementioned comma as a 0. And suddenly, that carefree transfer becomes a harbinger of doom. It sucks $10,000 out of your bank account, defaulting into your savings where you had been storing your tax money. Sadly, you are now going to be late paying your quarterly taxes.

It takes five full business days to clear. Poof! The money seems to be gone; it’s not in your bank account, nor is it in your etrade account. It has seemingly … vanished. Where does it go? Into a high-yield escrow account? Probably.

But finally, you have the money wired back into your bank account. All is well. Uncle Sam is happy. You are happy. Etrade is happy because you just bought three probably completely worthless penny stocks that are environmentally friendly.

Anyone have any good tips?

I have read every single book in this series, but I have to say: my interest is waning. The younger Rei was edgy and interesting, the Japanese antiques world was fascinating, the cultural tensions delicious. Rei is now a contractor for the CIA and goes undercover in a Japanese department store. She has the hots for her boss, who of course, has the hots for her too. But the Japan Rei now inhabits is bland and colorless–that is, except for the never-ending description of Japanese haute couture she succumbs to as a salesgirl.

Even more distressing is what a prig she has become. Specifically, she has become a health Nazi. It’s very difficult to take seriously anyone who, when doughnuts are being passed around, observes that she just hates eating empty calories, especially in the morning. Or who has at least three people say to her, “You look like you work out.” Or talks incessently about triceps, her arm muscles, and how she always does several sets of push-ups before she goes sleeveless.

It’s a shame.

Or rather, soapmaking is back.

After making 20 batches in a 2-month period, I got tired of it. But my soap stock has been severely depleted. My mother wanted soap to give away — so I sent her about 60 bars. I’ve given about 40 more bars away since then. And Geoff came over the other night to lend me a rolling pin, and I loaded him up with more. “I just love your soap,” he gushed.

Well, what’s a girl to do in the face of that fulsome praise?

Go back up to Zenith Supplies, that’s what. Last night I made a new batch of 60’s Porn Star — this time with nothing other than melted amber resin and a lot of it too.* (And by the way you sick folks, you may think that you and your little Google searches are alone in a dark room with the curtains drawn but my stats know who you are. That would be you, Mr. 76.1.200.154.)

The best thing is that I’m feeling inspired again. Ix-nay on the fragrance oils, nothing but pure essentials from here on out. And here’s my challenge: to come up with five new soaps using no other scents than my depleted essential oil stock. This should be interesting. Tonight? Lemon fennel.

* 252g oo, 252g palm, 252g coil, 108g lye, 8 oz water, 56g light amber melted with the oils

via Making it Up As I Go

The original instructions are to highlight in red the ones you’ve read, highlight in green the ones you might read, leave the ones you won’t read in black, italicize the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

Colors are way too much of a pain, and frankly, I have no idea what’s on my shelf. So my modified instructions are to bold those I’ve read, do nothing to those I haven’t, italicize those I have zero interest in reading, and put parens around those I’ve never heard of. Whew! But what fun on a morning that I’m baking gingerbread men!

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audry Niffenegger
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1984 by George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaba by J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
(Crytonomicon by Neal Stephenson)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (I tried to read this after enjoying her previous novel, but couldn’t for some reason)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement by Ian McEwan
(The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zago)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Dune by Frank Herbert
The History of Love by Nichole Krauss

Huge windstorm on Thursday night, 1 million houses without power. We’re back up power-wise, but no cable, which means no Internet. So here I am at Starbucks, feeding the need.

This is a wonderfully gothic trilogy that follows Fern Capel, witch extraordinaire, from her teenage years through her late twenties. Although Siegel borders on trite fantasy themes, her masterful writing, erudition, and amazing imagination shine through. The first in the trilogy, Prospero’s Children, is by far the best, but the others still have much to recommend them–including a stunning, and completely unexpected end.

What a great idea! List 10 books that you want to give away and earn points to mooch books from others. Link

It was fine. It was nice. But despite the decent food and the freeflowing booze, you know what the best part was? Taking off those three and a half inch heels. What was I thinking?

via pages turned

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate. Egg nog is just gross.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? We don’t really do the present thing so much anymore, although the mothers do. When I was a kid, Santa wrapped. So did the cat, the dog, and whatever undead goldfish I had at the time. Strangely, the gift tags all bore my mother’s handwriting.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Our neighbor Adam accused me not too long ago of “having to do everything differently.” It’s not intentional. We had white lights up last year, liked them so much we never took them down, and then they died. So no lights at all this year.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? I would if I weren’t so lazy. The thought of kissing Steve senseless under it appeals. He, no doubt, would shudder in horror.

5. When do you put your decorations up? What decorations?

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Roast beef with yorkshire pudding.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Trimming the tree. Every year. I loved it. Taking the tree down? Not so much.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? It was more of a slow dawning realization. As I said, Santa’s writing resembled my mother’s.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No, but we always opened stocking presents before breakfast. My stocking was WONDERFUL. It was enormous. It finally broke under the accumulated weight of years of overloading. One of the great sadnesses of my life.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? I’m so proud; we managed to get a tree this year. No ornaments in sight; I stuck hair accoutrements on it instead.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? LOVE!

12. Can you ice skate? Not for years.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Hmmm. Not really.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Staying away from families–always traumatic.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? I have no idea.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? The music

17. What tops your tree? This year? A big pink hair clampy thing. Hey, there was nothing else.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I’ve been trying to get away from the holiday gift-giving for years. It all seems so silly; people rushing around buying crap that no one wants or needs. This year, I’m giving away soap (shock), and also flocks of geese to families in developing nations in person x’s name.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Not really a song, but The Messiah. The whole darn thing. It’s just not Christmas unless you’re sick and tired of it.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? It’s sugar, so yum.

Jasper Merian is freed from bondage. It’s the end of the 17th century, and he hews out a farm in the wilds of the Carolinas, battling a demon for dominion. He takes a wife and has a son, Purchase. Well after he tries to buy his first wife and son out of slavery (and fails), his first son Marcus appears. And all of a sudden, he is the patriarch of a thriving farm, Stonehouses, and the generations that come after him. Through Jasper, both his sons, and the grandson Caleum, Dominion tracks the lives of the Merian family through the generations, until Caleum must defeat the same demon his grandfather did years before.

I wasn’t sure about this one at first. The prose seemed inflated, with drawn-out arcane language and pseudo-historical conceits. Two pages, five pages, the first chapter … they were a little irritating. Suddenly, it all fell into place. It worked. Baker’s tale is rich in mythology; indeed, his characters have the weighty authority of legend while still alive. As Americans, we all live with a mythology of those who settled this land and carved out an existence. Baker adds yet another dimension; hokey as it sounds, he manages to interweave diversity into history without making it the entire story. And this is what I found so compelling; while Edward P Jones (who we all know I hate) talks about slavery, Baker talks about context. The result is a wonderfully compelling read that will make you relearn your early American history, and perhaps even infuse it with a magic that wasn’t there before. Highly, highly recommend.

Elizabeth just wrote about getting into the holiday season with trees and ornaments and all that jazz. She says she had a little mailbox that she used to write letters to Santa for all her pets. Our letter-writing routine was that I wrote a letter and then we burned it in the fireplace. My mother claimed that the charred bits flew to the North Pole and reassembled in Santa’s hands. I think there was something about the fireplace purifying the letter so only the nice kids’ letters made it.

At the time, this seemed normal.

But what I want to know is whether anyone else had this same tradition. You see, my mother really had a lot of fun screwing with my head when I was a kid.

Take the Easter Bunny, for example. According to Mom, the Easter Bunny was actually a woman. Every Easter, before she went off to work, she would deliver eggs to households around the world. And being a successful, entrepreneurial sort, she delivered them in style: from her green and yellow briefcase. There were vague mumblings about an unemployed Mr. Easter Bunny.

Then there were the supermarket seeds. Noting that grocery stores seemed to appear out of nowhere, she claimed there were supermarket seeds. Grocery store owners would buy a seed, plop it into the ground and –sproing!–the very next day, there would be a brand-new supermarket. (The sproing! was her very word, BTW, and was accompanied by a throwing up of the hands.) I think I was 10 or so before I realized this wasn’t true. I casually mentioned supermarket seeds to a friend. She stared at me wordlessly, and then cracked up. I never lived it down. She sproinged! in front of all the kids at recess for months.

And of course, I shouldn’t neglect to mention that my mother had me so well-trained at five that she would trot me out at cocktail parties just so she could ask me what my purpose in life was in front of amused guests. “To support you in your old age, Mommy,” I would chirp. Then the kicker: “In the style to which you would like to become accustomed.”

You have to hand it to her; getting a five-year old to say that last convoluted bit is no mean feat.

I’d like to think that I’m not terribly warped by all this, but who knows? So back to the original question. How did you get letters to Santa–and was she screwing with my mind there too?

Great blog.