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.