October 2010
25 posts
October 29, 2010
A FAREWELL TO MARY
Tomorrow, I’ll head for the garden store one last time before winter sets in. I’ve discovered a gap, a vacant corner that wants filling with a small shrub, possibly one with color in the fall. Like nature, I abhor a vacuum. A garden should be a place of irrational exuberance.
My visit to the nursery at the close of the season is always nostalgic. I see plants that didn’t find...
October 28, 2010
THOUGHTS ON PRUNING
Several years ago, when I gardened on my own, I took a half day workshop on how to prune plants and shrubs and even trees at our local Japanese Garden. What I took away with me was the word “prudhoe” which is probably not how it’s spelled but which means to stump or blunt cut a branch without regard to its growing habits. A prudhoe cut is probably among the most heinous...
October 27, 2010
THOUGHTS ON WALDEN POND
I never read Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden Pond” when I was in college. The book was part of the curriculum, but I skipped it. At 19 studying the words of a guy who spent his time observing ants didn’t mean much to me. I was absorbing ideas from my classmates who came from all parts of the country and the world. I recall sitting in one young man’s dormitory...
October 26, 2010
EDUCATION IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG
A friend dropped by for tea a few days ago. He’s not retired. He came to visit on his lunch hour. I serve as his surrogate mother as his died when he was young. He spends the time bringing me up-to-date on his family —a wife, three daughters (ages 10 – 16) and a dog.
At the moment, he’s concerned about oldest girl who will be dating soon. He recited the...
For Nancy (Young) McKay
Gosh, thank you for those nice words! Was wonderful to have you attend the book reading. Hope you stay in touch. Any questions or comments, I’m glad to oblige.
Carolline
Just finished Heartland and Gothic Spring - What a joy! Thank you! So great to see you last Tuesday at your reading. - Nancy (Young) McKay
October 25, 2010
RUMINATIONS ON EMILY DICKINSON AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Many critics note that Emily Dickinson (1830-886) had a preoccupation with death but I’d say privacy was pretty high on her list, as well:
The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door
On her divine majority
...
October 22, 2010
THOUGHTS ON CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
I read in the news that a billionaire in India has built himself a seven story building which he plans to use as his private residence. My first reaction was, “Wait a minute, isn’t this the same India where “Slum Dog Millionaire” exposed the extreme poverty of many of its people?
What I asked was a rhetorical question; but I was so stunned, I asked...
October 21, 2010
THOUGHTS ON A LONG BLOOMING SEASON
My garden this October is in full color, more so than in the spring. Last fall I added some plants that have done well by me as winter approaches. Not only are some of them turning the amber and red colors of the season, but an audacious few have come into bloom. The Japanese Japonica is one. I have two of them, one white and one pink providing a riot of color...
October 20, 2010
THOUGHTS ON CLEOPATRA’S SALAD DAYS
On October 3, Julian Slade died. Slade is the man who wrote the music for “Salad Days,” a show which began in the 1950s and was the longest running musical in England until Oliver. I saw the production in London in the early 1960s and “Oliver” not long after it. I loved both plays and though “Oliver” was based on Charles...
October 19, 2010
THOUGHTS ON TRUST
Last week, I celebrated a good medical checkup with a trip to the Mall for a soft yogurt. The facility has a large ice rink and as I sat beside it, I noticed 5 children between the ages of 5 and 6 being given their first skating lessons. What courage these youngsters showed as they followed their new teacher on to the ice. They slipped and slid and clung to her with up tilted...
October 18, 2010
MORE HALLOWEEN THOUGHTS
I watched an exposé on a woman spiritualist a few days ago which didn’t amount to much. The TV personality debunked her gift by pointing out her questions drew more information from her subjects than she returned. What’s more her readings were non-specific.
The critic was right about her lack of detail but possibly wrong in his charge the woman was a charlatan. I’d...
October 15, 2010
TALKING BACK TO THE GENIUS, PHILLIP ROTH
I felt as if an arrow had pierced my heart when I read an interview on Phillip Roth in the November edition of “Vanity Fair.” His new book, “Nemesis” is out this year and he was discussing it and the fate of literature in America. The article states that:
“He believes the readership of serious literature will...
October 14, 2010
THOUGHTS OF EDITORS AND FRIENDSHIPS
I’ve just finished the fifth draft of my fourth novel, “The Necromancer.” I think I like it, but I’m not certain whether I’ve done what I intended because I’ve had my nose pressed hard against the computer for the last several months. I’ve lost the distance objectivity requires. I’ll send the draft to the woman who will read it critically and she’ll give me...
October 13, 2010
A LESSON IN BUBBLES
Saturday, it was raining when I left for my walk in the park, neither a gentle rain nor a downpour. The drops were hard enough to form bubbles in the puddles and I stood for a while watching them expand then burst and form again in what seemed a never ending pattern. One bubble grew to enormous size and I marveled that Nature seemed to take no pride in her work but allowed it...
October 12, 2010
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
Last week, I got the scare of my life. A friend, back from a wine tour of France, sent me an e-mail saying he needed a liver transplant. I gasped. He was so much younger than I, how was that possible? I called him at his home at once, though the hour was unseemly. He laughed when he heard my concern and told me what he’d written was a joke. It was his way of saying he’d had...
October 11, 2010
SHORT TERM VERSUS LONG TERM INTERESTS
A friend of mine brought a book with her when we met for coffee, “The Geography of Bliss” by Eric Weiner. She was impressed by it and read a passage to me, an aphorism the author discovered while traveling in Bhutan: “When the last tree is cut, when the last river is emptied, when the last fish is caught, only then will Man realize that he...
October 8, 2010
THE RING OF TRUTH
My friend who moved to Palm Springs sent me a letter via snail mail the other day. It contained real estate listings of homes he thought might interest me. Also included were brief descriptions of each property. I’m amazed at how many adjectives can be crammed into these ads: cute, cozy, darling, adorable, well-loved, easy access and fixer-upper don’t begin to encompass the...
October 7, 2010
NEW BEGINNINGS WITH OLD THEMES
This morning I started my annual clean up of the basement. It’s a job I do every year and one I devoutly hate. Mostly, I dislike confronting the daddy longlegs spiders that have made a cozy place for themselves near the windows. They are harmless, fragile creatures and I hate to destroy their habitat, much less them. Those I can save, I do, and to those I can’t, I...
October 6, 2010
ART FOR ART’S SAKE? BAH, HUMBUG
Didn’t P. T. Barnum say, “There’s a sucker born every minute?” I don’t wish to be that judgmental, but sometimes I do wonder why people do the things they do. As I ate my oatmeal this morning, I read an article about a new trend in New York art galleries: a visual art that doesn’t create salable objects but is more like theater. One exhibit, for example, puts an...
October 5, 2010
THE NEWS VERSUS WINNiE THE POOH
Given the speed with which information or disinformation travels through the internet and the media, I sometimes find it hard to keep my chin up. This past week, I’ve been subjected to enough horror stories, both fact and fiction, to turn my grey hair white. Hillary Clinton has apologized to Guatemala for experiments performed in the 1940s on mentally ill patients...
October 4, 2010
I’M SORRY
On Saturday, I had brunch with a group of friends, two of them who served as former staff members when I was in politics, and all of them still working at their careers. We are a group of nine and I am the senior citizen, retired and separated from the youngest member by 14 years. It’s a gathering of people who take an active interest in politics and is well read. Our conversations run...
October 1, 2010
THAT IS THAT
On Thursday, I wrote a blog which celebrated a writer’s non-judgmental analysis of the world, an attitude I thought the rest of the population might emulate. Today, I’ve read an article which debunks my point of view (Blog 9/30/2010). It was an interview with Pakistani author, Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Benazir Bhutto, assassinated leader of that country and daughter of Murtaza...
