Tiny dogs

I had a friend who had a pug named Banshee. She was wild. Banshee always got so excited when he came home, that she would start running circles around the living room, gaining speed until she was hurtling herself from sofa to chair to floor to fireplace and back round again. Eventually wearing herself out, she would collapse on his lap and remain inert for a little while. We could pet her then, without her going deliriously nuts with joy from the attention.

Here's an animated short about the "cruel but really adorable world of underground pug fighting":

To glove or not to glove

I went through a spell in elementary school where I wore a glove on one hand, copying Michael Jackson. It looked a little funny for me to be signing with one bare hand and one covered hand, and my teachers tried to get me to take it off. I refused--one has to suffer for fashion, you know.

Flowers out back

We planted some flowers around the deck in the backyard. J. and I wanted native plants, tenacious flowers that can fend for themselves once they've been established. We started small, so the border around the deck looks scraggly. Each plant looks lonely, swimming in a sea of bare earth.

I go and look at them frequently every day, leaning on the deck and peering down at them from above. I count the new blooms on the coneflowers and examine the asters which seem to be stuck in time. Bumblebees bump among the blooms of the bee balm, their happy drone drifting on the breeze.

Grow, I want to say, as if all my desire for growth can be encapsulated in a little word that, when directed their way, will impart the force of life. Instead, I just look at them a lot.

What's past is past

Things we've done lately:

• cooked hobo sandwiches in embers from J.'s perpetual woodburning in the back (we have a pile of deadwood to get rid of)

• planted coneflowers, coreoposis, asters, bee balm, and "oranges and cream" (not sure what the real name is)

• painted the living room

• saw the movie "Up," which is really, really good

• shared a pasta arrabiata dish and chocolate souffle at Bella Notte

• watched the cats pounce each other

• started reading "Atonement" (just me)

• competed in a bike race in the Red River Gorge (where J. was disqualified for doing something that protected him and the other riders: classic case of disobeying the letter of the law, but fulfilling the spirit of the law)

The relationship between math and free beer

Last night, J. and I came home via the meandering Rte 25, rather than the interstate. As we approached Old Clay's Ferry Bridge, a narrow bridge eclipsed by the newer bridge towering far overhead, we saw a group of foolhardy young men wearing lifejackets and swimming trunks. Apparently, Riptide Bar and Restaurant had offered free beer to anyone stupid enough to jump off the bridge, and these guys were stupid enough (and tipsy enough) to volunteer.

We pulled over to watch. One by one, they stepped off the bridge and plunged inelegantly into the brown water below. I think one guy was unfortunate enough to smack full-body onto the surface of the river (I'm sure this has happened to all of us at least once when we were kids and learned through painful experience that water actually has surface tension).

Never one to pass up an educational moment, Jon calculated the approximate distance between the bridge and the river, using the formula:

p = p₀ + v₀t + ½ at²

He knew several of the variables. Every second a body accelerates with gravity, it increases its speed by 32 feet per second, ignoring air resistance and our trivial distance above sea level. This number is a. We also assumed that each guy's initial velocity relative to our reference point (the bridge, p₀) was 0--in other words, they were just stepping off the bridge, not jumping up or down. This number is v_0. We knew that it took each guy approximately 1.5 seconds to embrace the water, so we used that for t.*

p = 0ft + 0fts^-1*1.5s + ½ 32fts^-2*1.5s²

Which gives us the answer 36, so we can make an educated guess that the bridge is between 30 and 40 feet above the water.

Now you've learned something for the day.

*J. helped me write this paragraph

Another one joins the fold

Hearty congratulations to my friends who have just welcomed a baby girl into the world. I have been eagerly anticipating this event ever since I saw 4 crows on a tree in Asheville, NC a week ago.

One for sorrow: two for mirth: three for a wedding: four for a birth: five for silver: six for gold: seven for a secret, not to be told: eight for heaven: nine for hell: and ten for the devil's own sel [self].
[1846 M. A. Denham Proverbs relating to Seasons, &c. 35]

How nice to be able to do nothing but be a baby, and bring such joy to your parents and their family and friends. I think they remind us of the joy of being alive.

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
--G.K. Chesterton

Books in time

I tend to have odd associations between places I've been and the books I was reading while I was in those places.

Most recently, when Jon and I were getting onto the interstate after a time trial just outside Shelbyville, KY, I had an intense recollection of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I had been reading the last time we were in Shelbyville for a bike race. We were on the merge lane, a scrappy bit of pavement with humps of broken asphalt littering the shoulder. I glanced at the grass and scrubby bushes bordering the lane, and the black and green cover of American Gods popped to mind, down to the part of the book I had been in the last time we were on this merge lane (the protoganist had died and was making his way through the underworld before being called back).

Here are some other associations I have:

Whenever I pick up my tattered, yellowed 1970s paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, I am mindful of my parents' family room: the beige walls, nubby carpet, couch with the faintly plaid pattern. The window by the couch is covered with green ivy, and what light comes through is pale, weak with rain.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes hand in hand with our old living room from South Broadway Park. I remember tracking the progress of the sunlight across the hardwood floor every time I looked up from the book when I was reading it for the first time, and so this book comes with connotations of hardwood warmed with light, patterned by the shadows of leaves.

That's all I can remember for now. Until I pick up the next book.

The things we wear

Jon has forbidden me from wearing the following:

• fanny packs

• elastic waisted pants, aka "mom jeans": check out SNL's spoof
• tube socks with white sneakers

The mouse takes the cheese

Sometimes I wonder about the origin of events, especially for the oddball ones, like the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake held every year near Gloucestershire, England. Do people sit around bored and come up with these ideas, or was there some wacky once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (like someone accidentally dropping a round of cheese down a steep hill) that made someone think: "Hey! Wouldn't it be absolutely hilarious to get a bunch of dumb daredevil people to chase a piece of cheese? Wouldn't it be even more funny if they chased it down a really steep hill?"

I think this particular race is even more compelling because the objective is cheese. Cheese has the enviable quality of rousing even the most sensible person into doing something he might never condescend to do otherwise. I guess it depends on the cheese. Not Kraft cheese squares, or those ubiquitous blocks of cheddar cheese lining the grocery store shelves, but cheese with names that fill your mouth: camembert, gorgonzola, boursin. Cheese with flavors that evoke pleasure or disgust--so intense as to leave no room for ambivalence.

My perception of the conference that I'm currently at in Asheville, North Carolina skyrocketed a million notches when I saw that they were serving good cheese at the opening night reception. Not those little squares of cheddar, swiss, and colby jack, but giant hunks of rich cheese (I think one was a kind of blue cheese) that you were free to cut into. I had to restrain myself from carving off fistfuls of cheese.

It's cheese. What else is there to say?

Representations of humanity milling around a furniture store

J. and I stopped at IKEA on our way to his race in southeastern Ohio. IKEA is great for people watching. You see the older couples walking slowly through the bookcases, pondering ways to organize all the stuff they've accumulated over the years. There's also tons of expecting couples (why do all the girls seem to be 8 months pregnant every time I go to IKEA?) who walk around with very serious expressions, quietly debating the merits of this or that piece of furniture. The guy usually looks a little frazzled, while the girl is peacefully serene, off in whatever la-la land they go to when the baby is imminent. Then there's the college aged kids, who come to look and look, but rarely buy anything.

A few people jumped out at me:
--a nun buying blue potholders that perfectly matched her dress
--a group of young German Baptists girls, wearing smart white caps and perfectly handmade dresses in a variety of calico prints
--a wannabe Sid Vicious who graciously looked after his grandmother

Water everywhere

Jon and I had a character-building adventure this weekend. We were in south-eastern Ohio for a race. Rather than stay in a hotel, we decided to check out the campground at Lake Alma State Park. We set up the tarp at the edge of the RV city and settled in for the night, cozy atop our blow-up airbed (hey, why not? we didn't have to carry it).

Then the thunderstorm rolled in. Normally, while we're out hiking, we stay pretty dry when it rains, since we can pick spots on elevated terrain, and the ground will absorb the rain. Not so in this campground. The earth was packed so hard, it was like concrete. The rain had nowhere to go, and so the paths through the campground turned into streams, and the campsites turned into little ponds.

We stayed dry on top of the airbed, even as the water started to stream over the plastic tarp on the ground beneath us. It came so quickly, we didn't have a chance to move our bags to safer ground. So our clothes got wet, and our shoes soaked through.

At least it was a warm day, so no worries about catching a chill.

Stepping into a painting

The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke, by Richard Dadd

This painting makes you feel as if you are part of the action, peering through the foliage at the fairies, who are unaware of your presence.

Food and bookcovers

I've just finished reading Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table, and am determined to try out some of the recipes she includes. First up is "Doron's Turkey Meatballs with Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts," which you can see for yourself at her blog Orangette, which is the basis for this book.

This is a thoroughly domestic book. A little bit of memoir (no navel-gazing, d., thankfully) leavens this book about food and eating, with a collection of recipes that span the thoroughly homey (potato salad) to the truly unique (salad with chocolate). The cover alone caught my eye (how you can resist such a charming lineup of teacups and glassware?), but the writing snared me.

J.'s mom asked how I find such interesting books. For this one, I came across it using Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought..." feature while looking up another book, Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life.

Eyes have it all

I am a very visual person--a visual learner, if you will, to use education terminology. My auditory senses and I have an uneasy truce (obviously), but I can rely wholeheartedly on my eyes for a visual feast.

When I was a child, I used to play one of those tormenting either/or games and ask myself: "Would I rather be blind or deaf?" After serious consideration, I would always decide that I would prefer deafness over blindness. I'm not sure if already being hard of hearing gives me an unfair advantage since I already know what it's like not to hear (though not what it's like to be profoundly, stone cold deaf), but the thought of not being able to see trees or people's eyes or the shape of letters on the page or the artwork of James McNeill Whistler or a trail snaking round the bend makes me cold to the bone.

Over the past year, I've come across a few blogs for which the visual element is an integral part of their makeup:

And the Pursuit of Happiness, by Maria Kalman
Posie Gets Cozy, by Alicia Paulson
3191 Miles Apart, by Stephanie and Mav

These bloggers have a way of focusing on visual details, whether mundane or profound, that makes the experience or story they describe more palpable, more real. I like them very much.

Bikes and antiques

J. and I were in the Springfield, Ohio vicinity this past weekend. He had a race in Yellow Springs, which is a hippie-ish little town with lots of bike trails and charming older homes. When I saw that the huge Springfield Antiques and Flea Market Extravaganza was taking place that weekend, we invited his parents to come along and make a mini-vacation of it: bike-racing (or, in our case, bike-race-watching) and antiquing.

Some highlights from the trip:

• J. placed second in the race
• We discovered Grinnell Mill, a restored mill turned into a bed-and-breakfast with a neat open layout inside, with a door in the middle of each of the 3 floors of the mill
  
• A set of 8 solid wood chairs found a new home
  

The flea market was overwhelming. J.'s mom and I stopped at the edge of the monstrous sprawl of booths and looked at each other, a little dumbfounded. It seemed that every corner you turned, several new paths unfolded before you. There were a few interesting booths in the middle of all the typical antiques and collectibles. One booth had a selection of architectural salvage--elegant porch posts, doorjambs, and archways, which were curiously arresting all by their lonesome, apart from a house. Another booth had what seemed to be the entire contents of an old sewing factory--wooden spools of all shapes and sizes to shelves full of huge spools of thread spanning the colors of the rainbow.

We also spent some time on the one of the bike trails in Miami Valley, where they've converted railroad rights of way to bike trails. I wish Kentucky had a similar extensive system of "rails to trails."

Of course, a visit to this part of Ohio was not complete without a stop at the Historic Clifton Mill for one of their plate-sized pancakes.

I came home feeling like we'd had a week-long vacation.

By the sweat of your brow

J.'s mom and I were admiring J.'s legs the other day. She said, "If I had pretty legs like J.'s, I'd wear skirts more often."

I agreed, then said, "Would you be willing to put in the amount of time that J. does on his bike to get pretty legs?"*

We both agreed it'd be quite nice to just wake up one day to find that our legs had transformed overnight.

*I estimate that J. puts in, on average, 10-15 hours a week on his bike.

Library at night*

Here's where I work. This is a shot of the modern addition on the library.

Here is the where the old and new parts of the library meet:


Another view of the same area:


They've turned this space into a cafe and meeting spot for the campus. People on the upper floors can take a break from their studies and look over the railing at people's heads below, maybe drop things on them. Just kidding.

*The inspiration for this title comes from Alberto Manguel's book The Library at Night.

It's raining cats

Meet Sasha, the latest addition to the household. Yes, she's always this cute. She headbutts you with her cuteness, always ready for a petting.


Pope isn't too sure about her yet.

Face that launched a thousand ships

Got a kick out of D.'s blog post for today.

Oh, to be in Greece where the gods walked!

What's in name

Worldcat Identities provides summary information about every name indexed in Worldcat (authors, people, groups, etc.). Look up the name of someone, and you'll see a list of works written by and about him/her/them/it, as well as information about what other names are associated with them, how their names are translated into othe languages, and all the subject headings associated with them. It's fascinating in a way.

Some examples:

Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (Spirit)
Madeleine L'Engle
Beatles

For the mothers

Happy mother's day to my mother, whose love and patience continue to amaze me even today.

Happy mother's day to my mother-in-law, whose warm heart envelopes everyone around her.

Sorry for the Hallmark expressions, but sometimes those are the best.

It's so common

Why Common Grounds was so attractive to us when we were in college:

"At the height of their popularity, the coffeehouses of 19^th-century Vienna, Warsaw, or Budapest were famously frequented by people who didn't live in particularly lush apartments and therefore preferred to spend their time in rooms decorated like the salons of the upper classes. Hence the association of coffeehouses with poets, literati, revolutionaries, and other assorted riffraff. Hence the attraction for students today."--Anne Appalbaum (read more here)

There was a sort of allure about that coffeehouse when we first started going. It began with the directions: "Get lost, and when you see Kinko's, you'll know it's nearby." Then it continued with the wonderful coffee and the cozy atmosphere, and the loads of artsy students from the huge university in town (quite different from our tiny hamlet outside the city). And I met my husband there.

The mystique didn't last: it became as comfortable as a pair of sneakers.

Stories that included gathering dandelions for salad and ants for protein

When I was little, I wrote stories. They were usually adventure stories, long and drawn out accounts of kids trapped in the wilderness, usually being pursued by criminals or madmen. Not surprisingly, the main protagonists looked and acted a lot like me and my two best friends (also my cousins). We (oops, I meant they) were resourceful and brave in the face of danger, clear-headed and cool when it was time to make life-or-death decisions. Of course, the stories weren't complete without a cute boy or two.

The usual backdrop for these stories was the death of the parents of one of the protagonists (me), which meant she had to go live with her two cousins (my cousins), and thus the adventures could begin.

My mother would always ask me, half-jokingly, why her parents had to die. I didn't have an answer at the time, except to roll my eyes and retort, "It's just make-believe, Mom!"

Here's an article from the Guardian: "Ryan Gibley on the importance of taking kids to scary movies," which says "while children require the stability of a caring parental environment, they need also to fantasise about losing or destroying it." Experiencing the fear of such an event actually occurring is essential to their emotional development.

So there you go, Mom. I was maturing my emotions while writing those silly stories.

Down into the dirt

We have dandelions in our yard. Their fluffy white heads sway merrily in the breeze and new ones keep popping up out of thin air to join the party. It's the only party on our street, and I think that's what's drawing them to our house. A vicious circle.

I spent some time uprooting a couple along the house, and you would think I was trying to pull a log out of the ground. Innocent little plants, delicate leaves the size of my thumb, yet harboring thick, wormy roots that burrowed deep into the soil. Some of the tiny plants I uprooted had roots longer than the length of my hand. They dangled like worms.

I can't get out!

I was asked by a lady today how to get out of the library.

After the briefest of pauses (did I really hear that?) I told her.

Maybe I should have given her more complicated directions, sent her on a roundabout by way of the books on the 3rd and 4th floors, and a detour through the archives in the basement.

Too short

Thanks to my folks for putting up with a disordered house and even more disordered hosts. Hopefully, the next time will be more restful!

At least my library was partially up. Mom and Dad made frequent trips into that room, so it was nice to see it being used. Mom suggested setting up the library shelves in rows, rather than against the wall, for more of a library effect. I'd do it, just to see what it's like, if it weren't for the weight of books.

As always, their visits are too short.

So much depends on...

The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

besides the white
chickens.

~William Carlos Williams

We bought a red wheelbarrow yesterday.

A new place

We've moved.

Our old place looks alien without our furniture. It's just a collection of empty rooms now. When we returned to pick up some boxes, after the movers had done their job hauling the heavy stuff, my heart lurched at the emptiness. I was homesick for that tiny 4 room apartment, with its solid wood doors and crown molding, proximity to Magee's Bakery, and view of the backyard that gave us occasional glimpses of the obese corgi (when we first saw it, we thought it was a pot-bellied pig) that lived beneath us.

Our new place is vast in comparison. I keep forgetting we have an upstairs. The eating area looks out onto the backyard and past that to the field bordering it. We have to seek each other out, rather than just call out. Pope doesn't know what to do with himself in all this space.

Marriage is never boring

While prattling on about how I'd like to get a few chickens and get some heirloom varieties of vegetables to start our garden in the back, I noticed Jon raising his eyebrows at me as he smiled that exasperating hidden smile of his.

"What?" I demanded.

He started off with a story from this morning, in which he overheard two female teachers in the copier room talking. One of them messed something up in the copier, and the other one, rather than saying, "I can fix it," instead said something soothing, "Yeah, that's happened to me, too. How frustrating." Whereas, Jon would have immediately zeroed in on how he could fix the problem, not wasting time on empathizing or affirming the other lady's feelings.

Jon continued, "So, I understand that you're just talking about chickens and veggies for the future, that you're not expecting to do it right away, but my brain is hardwired to immediately start thinking of what needs to be done in order to accomplish these things. And I can't do that. I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance."

Does anyone else have a spouse that says things like this?

Pascha

I've been trying to think of ways to verbalize why I'm so moved by Alvin Ailey's "Wade in the Water" sequence. It's almost like my experience reading R.S. Thomas' "Via Negativa"--how do you explain the way poetry reaches deep into you? I'm moved because I think of the African slaves in America and the small consolation they got from the Gospels, from the Exodus narrative. I'm moved because I think of the baptismal moment, that scary point of life where the initiate publicly declares her devotion to God. I'm moved because I think of the ecstatic joy that comes so briefly, so rarely, from those moments where one has an encounter with the 'Other'. This dance sums up all those experiences and spills it out in a blazing tangle of conflicting emotions, joy and sorrow, grief over the wrongs of history, exhilaration at being alive.

The song is based on one of many versions of the slave song. Here's one: "Wade in the Water." It's believed that this kind of song was a code of sorts that notified slaves trying to escape that they should take to water to flee their pursuers. To read a little more about Alvin Ailey's dance itself, look at pages 10 & 11 of the book Dancing Revelations, by Thomas F. DeFrantz.

In keeping with the joy exhibited by the initiates in the "Wade in the Water" dance, I wish a happy Easter to everyone. Here's an icon of the Anastasis, roughly translated as the "harrowing of hell." This is the image the Eastern Orthodox Christians associate with Easter, as compared with the images of the Crucifixion or the empty tombs that Western Christianity employs. Christ is shown in all his glory, standing on the shattered doors of Sheol, hell, or, more simply, the void of death. He is lifting Adam and Eve, the progenitors of the human race, out of death and into life. And the world was changed, for believer and unbeliever alike, for good and for worse. I would hope the good outweighs the bad, but there are plenty who would disagree. Here's a previous post of mine that some of you may appreciate.

Obsessions of a feline nature

This is Pope, who is fascinated with the ends of things (tip of the string is just barely out of the picture):

This is Bea, who is fascinated with the tops of things:

I don't have a picture of Mojo, who was fascinated with the insides of things.

Buses and tulips

Last weekend, Jon and I went to Asheville, North Carolina. Our friends have a cousin who owns a condo located in one of the many ritzy exclusive neighborhoods dotting the mountains around Asheville. Here is the view from the porch:

Jon and his buddy did some bike riding. I lounged around the condo with his wife and kids. Quite thoroughly relaxing. I knocked out a book while there, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County.

We went into Asheville twice. It's such an enjoyable little city, even if it tends towards being overwhelmingly trendy and enthusiastically hippie-ish in some enclaves. We stuck to the downtown area, near Haywood Street and Biltmore Avenue. There's tons of shops and interesting restaurants to check out. We ate at Salsa's, a Mexican Caribbean fusion place, and just about died from the deliciousness of the food. I got a wild mushroom enchilada, which came smothered in herbed goat cheese, accompanied with a spicy veggie/salsa mix (it was neither quite one nor the other), with a base of yummy black beans. Oh, if only Lexington had something similar!

We made sure to swing by Wall Street, which has some whimsical statues of cats and a rat. We didn't notice the rat until a passerby pointed it out, sneaking by on the other side of the balcony:


For dessert, we went to the Chocolate Lounge, where we each got liquid truffles, flavored with cayenne and cinnamon. After the first sip, we looked at each other and grinned. We knew we had made a good choice for dessert.

The second day we went to Asheville, Jon dropped me off and I walked around some more while he was off riding his bike close to Mt. Mitchell. I stopped in Woolworth Walk, thinking I would be politely interested in the arts and crafts exhibited therein. An hour later, I emerged, a little dazed by the incredible talent I saw. I memorized Susan Luke's name, planning to return and purchase one of her still-life paintings (the examples in the link aren't the best ones). When I saw the Double Decker Bus Cafe, I couldn't resist ducking in. The photo below is on the second floor.


This is the closest we got to the Biltmore Estate:

A very relaxing and pleasant weekend!

Jon in places

My series of Jon in restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina:

Malaprop's, bookstore

Salsa's, a Mexican Caribbean restaurant

Rosetta's Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant

Chocolate Lounge, yummy chocolates

More photos from our trip can be found at my flickr. You'll have to dig through some other photos to get to them - can't figure out how to sort them.

One house among the rest

Here's what we've signed our life away on.

Jon is already hard at work fixing the garage up for all his stuff. There's a spare room off the dining area, a converted porch that we're setting up as the library. We're also going to plot a garden in the back.

Wars long past

Daniel Waldo, a Revolutionary War veteran. This photograph was taken in 1864, when he was 101 years old.

Isn't it amazing what you can find on the internet?

Picture found here

Jon and his bike

I think Jon is determined to cover his face with scars, emblems of the hold his bike has on him. He and his friend went out for a short ride in the North Carolina mountains, and he missed a turn (didn't see it coming). Rather than go over the side of the road (which would have been quite a drop, considering what it was winding through), he forced the back wheel to lock up and promptly fell over.

Perhaps it's an art, a useful ability to have, to force your bike to "fall over". But it always seems that, no matter how hard you try, it's the face that bears the brunt of impact. In this case, as in the previous incident (the run-in with the van), his helmet strap cut into his chin.

We decided he didn't need stitches. Instead of a band-aid, we applied super-glue. Instead of a wound, it looks like he has a deformity, a cluster of cancerous skin cells.

Making a home

I almost wish we had bought an old house that had an attic jammed full of random junk and treasures. It's one of my deepest pleasures, rooting through old things and imagining the stories behind them. Our new house is mostly bare, full of echoes, but imagine my surprise when we found that the previous owner was not returning for the things she had left behind.

Treasures:

• good clay pots--tons of them, large and small: I can already envision tomatoes and herbs
• a huge oriental rug (at least 8 by 12 feet)
• a cast iron decorative table on the deck
• flower boxes

Junk:

• 2 boxes of Christmas lights
• a child-sized foam mattress
• a beat-up basketball hoop

Dubious value:

• a multi-purpose weight machine
• eighties-style sconces (saved from the junk list because their function is useful)
• a creaky outdoor playset
  

Reversing the trend

We've bought a house.

Jon and I are still a little dazed. We look at each other sometimes and just smile (not that we don't already do that, but this is different). We have to, otherwise we'd descend into the tyranny of second-thoughts and doubts.

The other day, Jon said, "You know, for the amount of money we forked over, we could have hiked the entire Appalachian Trail" (which usually takes around six months).

And I countered, "We could have taken a long and leisurely backpacking trip around Europe."

Instead, we're rooting ourselves in Kentucky, thinking about lawn mowers, roof repairs, paint chips, gardens, a room of her own (an actual library)...

Dancing

I watched this clip from an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre performance. I had no prior knowledge of what the dance was about, nor what the song was. Yet, I somehow grasped the meaning of this performance, and not because of any innate understanding of dance. What is it about the choreography, the costumes, the props, the dancers themselves, that opened my eyes?



I'll post my thoughts on this in a later post.

Moving away

We are about to move into a house outside of Lexington. We are ready, but even so....here is what I will miss:

• hot almond croissants from Magee's
• being able to walk to places
• Central Library with its three levels of books (the county library where we will be just doesn't compare)
• the cats sleeping in the window displays at Decoratifs
• walking past the twisted trees in Woodland Park at dusk
• seeing grungy UK students, particularly that one that walks everywhere with a flowery umbrella and one pant leg rolled up (the emblem of the fixed gear crowd)
• driving through downtown Lexington on our way home
• living amongst bungalows
• Good Foods buffet
• the lights at Triangle Park
• the old man at the YMCA who faithfully works out on the recumbent bike with all the speed of a turtle

That's all I can think of for now.

Sunday morning

"To see the world, to see ourselves in the light of the resurrection, means that Christians cannot help but discover that our language is inadequate for the task. That is why poetry is so important for the work of theology. For the poet is in an ongoing struggle to find the words necessary to say what cannot be said."
--Stanley Hauerwas, Image, issue 60.

Poetry speaks to the soul in ways that sermons and essays cannot. Why is it that R.S. Thomas' "Via Negativa" says so much in such a conservative amount of words? I got to thinking about chapel at Asbury. 3 1/2 years of attending chapel 3 times a week, and I can count on one hand the number of sermons that stuck with me. This isn't a polemic against chapel--it had its place on campus, as important for fellowship (perhaps more so) than a way to drill sermons into flighty students' heads--just a curious observation that I got more out of R.S. Thomas, Madeleine L'Engle, even Emily Dickinson, than I ever did out of sermons.

Via Negativa (by R.S. Thomas)

Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

When I read this poem, I remember how sometimes when I go home to visit my folks, I would walk into Grandma's house, half-expecting to see Grandpa sitting in the TV room, wearing his typical plaid short-sleeve shirt and faded jeans, eating pickles while watching TV, waiting for his grandkids to burst in for a scratchy kiss (he always had a thick mustache). He has been gone for almost 16 years, but the ache of missing him remains. This poem calls up that ache, so powerful I feel as if I am at Grandma's, standing in the living room, not wanting to look into the other room because as long as I don't, I can entertain the thought that Grandpa is there.

What does missing Grandpa have to do with a poem musing on the perceived absence of God? Well, not much, besides the uncanny ability of poetry to evoke associations and summon memories, bypassing logic to touch the core of our being, using what we know to help us understand what the poem is suggesting.

Poetry is a way of saying what cannot be said.

Ugly Bat Boy

Itsy bitsy spider

Yesterday morning I woke up to a tiny spider hovering several feet above my face. I laid there, thinking it looked as though it was clambering up the molecules of air, or some invisible ladder, when it abruptly dropped a foot. I moved quicker than I thought possible, and Pope leaped into the fray.

It reminded me of a time in chapel at Asbury College. I was sitting on the main floor, with nearly two stories of open space above my head, when I noticed (along with a good chunk of the student body in the section I was in) a fat spider slowly, methodically lowering itself from the ceiling (I remind you that said ceiling was nearly two stories above). It landed on a student's shoulder several rows ahead of me (which should give you an idea of just how large said spider was, that I could spot it with my naked eye). We all watched with bated breath as someone tapped this student's other shoulder. Since it was a guy, he just casually brushed the spider off his shoulder and resumed listening to the sermon. It was rather anti-climatic, and I always wondered what would have happened if it had been a girl.

A dog for many things

I think I need a hearing ear dog. According to Dogs for the Deaf, they are trained to alert you to sounds such as the telephone, a door knock, oven timer, even a baby's cry. Just think, I could have a dog to keep me company at work. He could nudge my knee whenever the phone rings, or tug my sleeve whenever someone comes over to talk to me...

Not that my own animals are inept. Pope always perks up whenever someone comes to the door, or when the phone rings. My old dog would bark and pace in front of the door. I didn't even have to train them for this.

I won't grow up

One of the unexpected results of my hair-cut, and the flashy (or old-man comb-over style, whichever way you think of it) part has been the discovery of grey hairs. They seem to be clustered in one spot, buried somewhere on the left side of my head, only recently exposed by the extreme part that my hairstylist artfully insists on giving me, and which I can never maintain.

My cousin discovered the first one. "My goodness, Laura! You've got a grey hair!!"

I had a curious sense of mingled confusion and pride. On the one hand, I've never felt like I really grew up, like I'm still stuck in some vague young adult land, and I've only just recently left behind my teenage/undergrad years. I think part of this stems from the fact that I've only just gotten a "real" job and can seriously consider looking for a house, accept the dawning possibility of kids, and notice how my folks are getting older. So here was proof that I'm really nearly a third of a century old, that I'm actually an adult.

I just wish my grey hairs were up front, so I could grow them out like Rogue from X-Men.

Thinking on the beast

One of the dangerous things about blogs is the sometimes uneven quality of thinking that goes into posts. The emphasis on being current sometimes suppresses the need for carefully thinking out what you want to say before you write.

Case in point: my musings on Beauty and the Beast below. Someone mentioned to me how they read the poem differently than I did, and when I went back to re-read my thoughts, I realized how I didn't make myself clear (or maybe I didn't need to, since there isn't a right or wrong way to read a poem?)

Much of this blog is inspired by random moments in my life, sparks of ideas, grains of feelings that nag my brain until they emerge, either as splinters I've finally forced out, or pearls of inspiration. It's usually more like splinters, since I tend to write as I go and rarely revise...just wanting to get the idea out before I forget about it.

I think I was pursuing two different ideas with the poem La Belle et la Bete. One was the question of why the Beast needed to shed his ugliness. This question would make more sense if one has seen the movie this poem is based on. The movie ends with the Prince enveloping Beauty in his arms and saying, with a patronizing tone, "Oh, my silly Belle!" as they soar upwards towards wherever the kingdom in the clouds is.

The other idea was simply how powerfully the poem captures the sense of that moment of transformation. For me, it evoked the memory of falling in love--not that romantic "head over heels" feeling, but that moment when I realized that Jon had become part of my life, as deeply woven in as my family. It was an odd moment of joy and pain, for I realized that I couldn't go home again even as I realized that I was beginning to form a new home.

I end my post here with my thoughts mostly out, but still needing to be expanded. Such is the dilemma.

Beautiful ugly

The muses work in labyrinthine ways, and creativity spirals in and yet out of itself like a nautilus.

I found a poem by Mark Doty that was inspired by Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et la Bete, which was in turn inspired by who knows what version of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.

He captures that nagging sense of unease over the Beast's transformation into the prince, even as we are all awaiting that pivot point, anxiously waiting to hear Beauty proclaim her love and thus enable the Beast to shed his so-called ugliness and prove himself worthy of her love (...but didn't he already do that?) No one remembers the prince, but the

"...heady onrush
of the transformation...

...the moments
disruptive and lush, before the breaking through

...not to the kingdom itself, where nothing happens,
but the approach to the kingdom:
everything, the coming to love."
(from La Belle et la Bete - read it here)

What do you think?

Kings and chaperones

Jon has been appointed to the prom committee at the school where he teaches. He had no say in the matter.

I couldn't help but laugh.

Then he said, "If I have to be a chaperone at this prom, you're keeping me company!"

And here I thought I had gotten out of going to the prom when I was in school.

Fourscore and seven years ago

Most of the time when you help someone with their research, you have no idea how much you've helped them. Sure, there's the smiles and "thank yous", bobs of the head and hand-shaking, but then the person you've helped (or so you hope) turns and walks away, and you never see them again.

But sometimes you gain a glimpse of your contribution to someone's research, however small or monumental (I'll never forget how I helped a visibly distraught person dealing with their cancer diagnosis--the mere act of showing this person where concrete information could be found soothed their trembling limbs and wiped the tears from their eyes).

I got this brilliant glimpse the other day when I saw this New York Times book review of Charles Bracelyn Flood's new book 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History. I actually helped do a miniscule bit of research for this man, the library's resident historian, a year or two ago. It was something to do with searching for primary sources from Lincoln's times. I didn't think much of it at the time, just thought it was so cool to read articles written while Lincoln was alive. I make no claims here other than the astonishment of my proximity, however negligible, to this book.

If you're curious to see these articles, just go to the New York Times archives, which go all the way back to 1851.

Something wicked this way comes

Jon and I had the pleasure of watching Coraline in 3D, complete with goofy glasses and a theater full of squirmy kids. It's based on the book by the same name, written by Neil Gaiman, a famous fantasy author. I was never interested in his work until I picked up this book several years ago. Sinister and sometimes creepy, this modern day fairy tale (I mean here a fairy tale like the original fairy tales, not the Disneyfied ones) demonstrates the deep reserves of courage and determination we all have within us.

Reading Coraline, I began to understand for the first time what a fairy tale is. Life rarely goes the way you would like it to, and it's up to you to overcome the obstacles that come your way--sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don't. Fairy tales demonstrate this basic truth in a very dark, but ultimately inspiring way.

Why clone your pet?

This is an example of anthropormorphic taxidermy.

Yes, those are real felines.

I came across this at work while dealing with the journal "Victorian Literature and Culture" and noticing an article included in volume 35:2 (2007) titled "Anthropomorphic taxidermy and the death of nature: the curious case of Hermann Plocquet, Walter Potter, and Charles Waterton," by Michelle Henning. It's illustrated, too.

Working in a library is never boring.

No wonder kids are afraid of the dentist

I have very vague memories of my own experiences being drugged at the dentist. I remember the strange experience of coming to and still feeling as though I were dreaming and trying to communicate with my limbs through a fog thicker than cotton candy. All I remember of my surroundings are legs and arms supporting me and a voice at my ear, and a distant awe at a doorway flooded with light.
Looking at that description, it almost seems as if I had visited the tunnel of light.

Marring the books

I frequent used bookstores. A lot. I have a set of authors (Charles De Lint, Samantha Hunt, Brian McLaren, Frederick Buechner, R.S. Thomas, etc.) and subjects (theology, faery, goats, Regency England, Romania, etc.) that I'm always on the lookout for, and I just like looking at books.

One of the unique pleasures of acquiring used books is observing the occasional mark of the previous owner. Besides the typical name or birthday wish scribbled in the front of the book, sometimes you get to be privy to the inner recesses of that previous owner's mind as you read through the book and encounter his/her notes scrawled in the margins, usually accompanying the abstract art of lines and stars highlighting certain parts of the book that s/he found especially arresting. It's even more interesting when the notes and highlighted sections make no sense.

I just got a cheap paperback titled "Faery!" Whoever owned this book was a happy highlighter. On page 115, under the story The Seekers of Dreams, by Felix Marti-Ibanez, the words "vice versa" are underlined. On the page opposite, the sentence "I was afraid to quit the security of my prison" is underlined, with a careful circle around "I," with a tiny note to the left "& me?"

In other stories, phrases like these are underlined: "the faint glow of magic, like infant dragon fire," "one who had lived as long as the rivers and mountains, and possessed the knowledge of death for every day of it," "he loved her in desperation and silence," and "Chinese unicorn."

Our happy highlighter was also only too happy to add commas and dashes and semicolons, and even insert words here and there, as though the authors of the stories had been careless in their writing. In the first sentence of the story "Touk's house," by Robin McKinley: "There was a witch who had a garden," our self-made editor inserted "once" between 'was' and 'a' so that the sentence would read "There was once a witch who had a garden."

While this person did not indulge in too much marginalia, it was still amusing to see such liberal use of underlining, particularly in a collection of fantasy stories published in a cheap paperback.

Public libraries

Economic woes are affecting libraries, especially public libraries that rely on taxes and other sources of revenue to serve their regions.

Here's a sobering read: Country's oldest public library could close this year.

Obviously, I'm biased, being a librarian, but I find news of libraries being shuttered disheartening, especially as these are times when people utilize the library even more--not just for free entertainment in the form of books and DVDs--but for assistance in their job-hunting. Where else can you go for free access to computers where you can search for jobs, type up a resume, and learn new computer skills in an attempt to stay current with technology?

The problems of being the weaker sex

Last weekend I watched The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes, two of my favorite thespians.

I think a lot of girls will love the movie for its fashion and crazy hairdos--it's certainly interesting to see how the rich threw their money away. But it reminded me again of why I would never want to travel back in time (besides the knowledge that I would be considered quite dumb because of my hearing loss): women had very little say over their circumstances. They married, and tried to marry well, because that was often the only way to avoid poverty, even if they were born into well-to-do families. Love was usually not a consideration for the matchmakers, only strategic alliances and keeping the family name pure.

The more I learn about the history of marriage, the more I understand the prevalence of affairs among the aristocracy. If you marry a man who is only interested in producing a male heir, and continues his dalliances with his maids, and eventually takes up with your own best friend, in your own house (The Duchesss is based on the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire), is it any wonder that you would fall in love with a man (Charles Grey) who actually appears to fancy you too?

What I found touching in the movie: Georgiana gives up Charles Grey to stay with her children (the Duke of Devonshire may have had no problems being a philanderer, but did not want it known that his wife was stepping out on him and told her she would never see her children again if she continued her dalliance with Mr. Grey).

Terror of all terrors

If I could write a poem like William Butler Yeat's "The Mother of God," I would die happy:

The Mother Of God
by William Butler Yeats

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart’s blood stop
Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

Not because of the religious connections, though I don't deny they are there, but because of how the poem combines the sacred and mundane to make the experience more palpable. For another example of this juxtaposition, see my friend D.'s post on an experience he had while at Monemvasia in Greece.

I saw the White Witch's domain

Cabin fever drove us out of our apartment to Jon's folks in Lincoln County. The drive home was eye-opening. It was like driving through a war-zone, in some parts. Branches were scattered everywhere. Entire trees leaned over the roads, creating obstacle courses that the truck weaved around in its rumbly way. Ice clinked against the windows when the truck nudged ice-encrusted branches.

Some houses looked pretty, others were completely obscured by all the branches that had come down in the yard and on top of them--it looked like a winter jungle. We passed one house, a stately white manor house with black shutters, surrounded by trees groaning under the weight of ice and snow, but not one had surrendered yet. They no longer looked like trees, but statutes. Black trunks punctuated the startlingly white scene, interspersed with the cold glitter of ice, and the house itself looked ghostly, as if it was barely hanging on to its semblance. It made me think of the White Witch's lair (don't tell the owners that).

I told Jon, "It's like Narnia: always winter, never Christmas."

Before there were bookmobiles

My friend Abbi wrote about a unique take on the bookmobile: the biblioburro. This made me think in turn of Kentucky's version: the pack horse librarians.

These determined lady librarians and their horses delivered books and other materials to remote homes in eastern Kentucky between 1933 and 1943. Popular books included Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Robinson Crusoe, and popular magazines included National Geographic and Popular Mechanics. Demand for reading material outstripped the number of books available, so the librarians began clipping newspaper articles and recipes, and other odds and ends, to create scrapbooks to loan to the greedy readers. What I found especially moving: the patrons themselves started creating scrapbooks detailing their own recipes and family history and local stories so that these, too, could circulate among their fellow eastern Kentuckians.

The statistics from 1939 tell us that 30 packhorse libraries served 48,195 families on a monthly basis. The libraries had a total of 154,846 books which circulated 889,694 times. This is amazing, considering how remote eastern Kentucky was (and still is).

You can read more about Kentucky's pack librarians at KDLA's website: The "Book Women" of Eastern Kentucky: W.P.A.'s Pack Horse Librarians

A day in the life of ice

Once again we have been slammed by an ice storm, nearly on the scale of the one in 2003. Jon and I have been holed up in our apartment, enjoying electricity, and Pope is confused by this break in his routine, doing a random hop-skip here, a frenzied gallop into the other room, instead of his normal day-long naps.

I have not been to work since Monday, and will not be back until next Monday. They have already closed campus for the rest of the week. Jon has been off since the beginning of the week, and most likely will be off through the rest of the week.

A big tree branch fell in front of our house onto Jon's car. The funny thing is, we don't think the car is damaged, due to its inch-thick coat of ice.

This morning, we walked to Starbucks for coffee. It was raining, water pooling on top of already-icy roads and sidewalks, slowly freezing. We made the 1/2 mile trek there safely, sans any fall (not for lack of trying on the ice's part). We stayed there for an hour or so, enjoying the warmth, hot coffee, listening to other people chatter about the storm. The rain changed to snow--snowflakes as fat as your thumb tumbling out of the sky--and the temperature dropped noticeably. Believe me, though, it's much better walking in snow than rain.

All the trees along Ashland were drooping with the combined weight of ice and snow. Their heavy branches obstructed the sidewalk, and branches littered the road. We saw more than one homeowner standing in their front yard, staring stupidly at the masses of branches covering their yards or leaning against their houses. It is so white, our camera is confused.

We're starting to go a little stir-crazy in our small apartment. Jon has conquered half of Europe in his "Total War" computer game, or whatever it is. I have already read a book and started another one. The TV has been on non-stop, either for the news or House reruns.

This is one thing about Kentucky I have never grown accustomed to: this propensity for freezing rain and ice.

Circling over the earth

Satellites took some interesting images of the inauguration. The people look like ants. How funny, considering the magnitude of this event in human terms.

Manifesto for the hour

I hope people enjoyed my post about 21 random things, and I hope it makes you think about what you would write if you were tagged (and at least one person reading this has been-you know who you are). Lately, I've been feeling self-conscious about writing blog posts because they're usually about me (obviously). This makes for mostly one-sided conversation, with the exception of comments from mostly one person who lives on the other side of the world, and whose blog I follow and sometimes comment on. While I don't mind writing about myself (I started this blog as a way to let my parents know what's going on with me 8 hours south of them), sometimes I begin to wonder how self-centered I am becoming, how banal my topics, which in turn affects my inspiration. Which is why I have not been posting as much as I would like (my goal was to write at least a little something everyday).

But I hope to turn a new leaf today, in part because I need to keep writing. It keeps the senses sharp.

21 random things

I've been tagged by somebody on Facebook to write 21 random things about myself.

1. I can move my nostrils without moving my face.
2. One of my traditions with my dad is to go see a really bad action/adventure movie, in the hopes of finding one that will dethrone Anaconda as the worst movie ever made.
3. Once I saw the alpacas in the field in front of Maple Hill Manor, I knew I had found the place to have our wedding.
4. Making up for lost time, I devour all the fantasy young adult books I can find. (Yes, I have read Twilight, but, no I am not in love with Edward)
5. I can pronounce "Nicolae Ceausescu" properly, having been to Romania.
6. I dislocated my jaw while eating a baguette beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and my jaw has never healed properly-a constant reminder of my time in France (how awful, I know).
7. I know more about professional cycling, bikes, bike gear, training for the bike, than I ever thought I would, and I don't ride a bike (thanks to Ann Kazee for this!)
8. I have hiked over 30 miles in one weekend.
9. I have a blue t-shirt of my grandpa's that I've been wearing since I was 13 (it's worn quite soft, with a few holes at the collar), and it's one of my most valued possessions, in addition to his old sweater that I nabbed from my parents' shop
10. I've joined the genealogy craze, and I'm barely past one quarter of a century old.
11. Someday, I want to raise goats. Seriously.
12. I never realize how much I rely on lip-reading until I'm talking to people at night.
13. When I go home, I like to snoop through my grandma's stuff and hear her stories about them (she secretly enjoys my nosiness).
14. I couldn't get into Lord of the Rings the first time I tried reading it. Now it's one of my favorite books.
15. I love cheese--the more pungent, the better.
16. There was a time when I thought the Archie comics accurately represented school life.
17. I am an intense homebody, and seriously wish that I could apparate home frequently.
18. Some of my favorite movies include Pride & Prejudice and Die Hard.
19. I wear a machine that cost over $3,000. Besides collecting earwax, it maximizes what little hearing I have left.
20. Being married doesn't keep me from being a cat lady.
21. One of the simplest pleasures in life is sitting with a cup of coffee and reading a good book.

Some grave matters tonight

I've been going through some of my old writings tonight. Here's a poem I wrote while at Asbury (I was inspired by Anna Akhmatova's poem Cleopatra) :

"The Song of Cleopatra"

The asp
is my lover;
his fangs
the gates to paradise.

Outside
the sandy sea
stretches away;
I can almost hear
the ocean.

Inside
the stones
rise high and higher;
surely the ceiling
grazes the stars.

The smell of Death
is perfume.
I can hear him
around the corner.

The last of my lovers,
he is my match,
for even my allure
he can destroy,
with power greater
than my own.

(Asbury Review, Spring 2002)

Cheetah looking up - Cincinnati Zoo

Cheetah looking up - Cincinnati Zoo
Originally uploaded by ozimanndias8

This cheetah is looking right at me. I was mewing, and she responded. Their meows do not match their size--they sound like housecats!

I'm sure she thought I was another stupid person making noises at her, but at least she looked right at me. She ignored everybody else making a ruckus.

When I saw the photograph below in the March 2008 Smithsonian, a memory of a daydream was reawakened. I have it clipped and stuck in a journal. Isn't it strange how daydreams can be, sneaking up on you out of the blue, out of the years, fading away, and returning with the force of the tide? One of my strong memories, and ones that I look forward to making, are walks with my dog(s) (plural for the dogs that we have not yet gotten, but will--they are already named, too: Mitzpah and King George), so seeing this picture of a lady and her cheetah evoked not only my daydream of walking with wild things, but the more domestic memories of my old dog Bear. Daydream and memory fused.

Reader, I married him

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader   You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

According to this quiz I am not an obsessive-compulsive bookworm, though I think my family and friends would disagree. When the last Harry Potter book came out, I told Jon that I would not exist for the period of time that I was reading that book. He grinned and said, "Sure." I think that's one of the signs that I married well.
If "Settlin' In" is reading this, I am curious to know whether she picked up on the title of this post, given the book that she recently blogged about.

One point in time.

The library where I work invited the campus to watch the inauguration of Obama at the library throughout the day on Tuesday January 20th. The TVs in the lobby were tuned to NBC's coverage of the events, the babble of reporters mingling with the sound of students chattering as they entered the library. In the auditorium, the big screen was lit up with live coverage of the proceedings through CNET.

I ducked in a little before noon to watch Obama as he was sworn in and gave his inagugural speech. The seats were mostly full with students and faculty. The students snickered here and there when the closed-captioning on the screen misspelled words (I pitied the poor people writing the captioning since they were doing it live), so "Barak" sometimes showed up as "rock" or "hindu" was "due", while the faculty were quiet. The room became quite still when Yo-Yo Ma and other musicians performed John Williams' "Air and Simple Gifts" and I noticed for the first time in my life how achingly beautiful a cello sounds, melancholy and inspiring at the same time. We all clapped when Obama finished his oath, and I noticed that no one snickered when the closed-captioning mangled some of Obama's words.

This was a unique experience. We were not physically at the inauguration, yet the sense of community in that room was palpable. Together, we watched history unfold, knowing that we were active participants in the transition of presidential power.

Random observation

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amusing that James Bond, Billy Elliot, and Sabretooth are roughing it in the woods together in the movie Defiance?

Jon on bike

Jon on bike
Originally uploaded by ozimanndias8

Jon took this neat shot of himself on the bike.

Your very own Mr. Darcy

You can purchase the portrait of Mr. Darcy used in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice.

It's kind of like a high-art version of those heart-throb photos I used to tear out of those teeny-bopper magazines back in middle school.

Sand cat (maybe) - Cincinnati Zoo

Sand cat (maybe) - Cincinnati Zoo
Originally uploaded by ozimanndias8

Does this look like it belongs in the zoo?

To give you perspective, this cat is the same size as a housecat.

House-hunting

Jon and I looked at a house that has a butler's pantry. It was nestled in the hallway next to the kitchen, with glass-fronted cabinet doors, drawers with glass knobs, a small counter to set bowls of artfully placed fruit.

This house also had a dark wood banister that ended in a spiral at the bottom, a 9 ft. high foyer with a beautiful entryway, built-in fireplaces, retro bathrooms with subway tiles, and what appeared to have been the original kitchen stove (very cool in its retro-ness, but definitely something to replace).

We're enjoying this aspect of house-hunting, enjoying the pretty details of houses before setting our minds on all the negative features.

NO WANDERING

NO WANDERING
Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

I have been guilty of "excessive wandering" through the library.

What on earth is this rule about? The only thing I can think of is bored teenagers or the steady stream of homeless folks in the library. But most of the ones I see usually just sit in a corner and read the newspaper or look out the window, enjoying the warmth and safety of the library.

In the library

I spent some time in the university library on the Saturday after all the students were gone, and the campus was virtually deserted. It was a strange experience walking the stacks, knowing I was probably the only person on the entire fourth floor of the library.

I walked between bookshelves and past bookshelves. I saw the sunlight stream through the arched windows of the fourth floor; it fell on vacant study tables. I paused in the history section, looking for Harry Caudill's Night comes to the Cumberlands and tarried there, distracted by the other books there. The silence was absolute, except for the shuffle of papers as I opened a book, a cough, the whisk of my pants as I walked.

The silence was absolute, but the volume of books filled that gap.

Something to do in your spare time

Do you have any idea the amount of strength it takes to dance like this? Especially the squatting kicks?

Jon and I tried last night. The results were hilarious, however horribly executed.

New Year's Resolutions

Read.

This is the only one I'm sure to keep.

It's always books

One of my few accomplishments for 2008 : I read over 100 books.

My number one favorite: The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt

Some other unexpected pleasures:
Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff
Passionate Nomad : the life of Freya Stark, by Jane Geniesse
Entering the Stone : On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark, by Barbara Hurd
Rapture Ready : Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, by Daniel Radosh
Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card

New favorite author:
Charles De Lint