Earth my likeness

Walt Whitman was a wild soul. His love of wild nature and the sensual experiences of life are felt in everything he wrote. ...The beauty of Roderick MacIver's... watercolors creates a grand tribute to this sensitive soul.

As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat

on her nest in the briers hatching her brood.

I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paus’d to hear him near at hand

inflating his throat and joyfully singing.

And while I paus’d it came to me that what

he really sang for was not there only,

or for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,

But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,

a charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

— Walt Whitman

Picture and text from Heron Dance, A Pause for Beauty 321, Oct. 1, 2009

Painting: Autumn Portage, by Roderick MacIver

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Added about 9:15 p.m. - Curiouser and Curiouser

On HGTV, there's a program called "If Walls Could Talk." I watched it last night, and part of it was very strange. The featured homeowners had bought a house formerly owned by astrologer Linda Goodman, in Cripple Creek, Colorado. The house still had all of Goodman's furniture and furnishings, drafts of all her manuscripts, personal possessions. Weird.

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The couple who bought the house said that the reason the house was left "as is" and eventually put up for sale was that Linda disappeared. Wikipedia says she died in 1995 from complications of diabetes, but that she had a daughter who disappeared in 1973. I couldn't find any details online about her later life and the circumstances of her death, but apparently she was born in 1925.

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When my children were teenagers, we enjoyed reading Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, and I have read (and own a copy of) Linda Goodman's Relationship Signs, published posthumously and edited by Crystal Bush. The latter book says that she died in 1995, that Crystal Bush and Carolyn Reynolds worked with Goodman until shortly before her death.

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The whole house is decorated with the theme of Alice in Wonderland. It has stained glass windows with scenes from Alice, decks of cards with scenes from Alice on the backs, plates with Alice scenes (a la the Tenniel drawings). All the furniture in the house is antique, and a lot of the pieces are rather funny-looking antiques.

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I don't believe that astrology can predict anything or "foretell the future." But the types of people born under the signs of the zodiac do seem to match the astrological descriptions.

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Sometimes my blog won't leave spaces between paragraphs. I put asterisks between paragraphs when this is happening.

The Brontes

I had never liked Charlotte Bronte, probably because some biographer had said she destroyed Emily's unpublished writings after the latter's death. Even J. Barker's previous biography of the family hardly redeemed her in my opinion; it was more positive in presenting poor Branwell Bronte and their father, Patrick, in more favorable lights than had previous biographers. However, as I remember, it failed to show the closeness of the sisters and how much Charlotte depended on Emily, though having to handle her with kid gloves, as the only person with whom she was totally open and thoroughly "bleshed," until long after Emily's death. Emily was a difficult person if anyone intruded into her space; well, she was difficult, anyway. Wild.
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Today I finished reading this volume of letters to, by and about Charlotte. Of course, anyone who ever received a letter from Currer Bell/Charlotte Bronte kept it for posterity, and Barker succeeded in digging up a 400-page book's worth of them--not all from Charlotte, but also those she received from relatives, close friends and her publishers.
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What that woman suffered, what she knew and what she accomplished, makes me decide that I would trust her judgment in anything concerning that family. She only spoke coldly of her brother Branwell when his alcoholism had totally destroyed any hope he had of a decent future, and before he fell dead of the illness (tuberculosis) which none of them had known he had.
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In September of 1848, Branwell died suddenly, fell in the street and was dead 24 hours later. In December of that same year, Emily died of tuberculosis. In May of 1849, the youngest sister, Anne, was so ill that Charlotte took her to a beach resort, where she died and was buried, as Charlotte couldn't manage getting the body back to Haworth, Yorkshire.
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In one letter, after Branwell had died and Emily and Anne were both ill, Charlotte wrote that she couldn't stand to think of the past or of the future. She felt she was crossing an abyss on a narrow plank, and if she ever looked back or to the side, she would lose her grip on reality.
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Still she survived, and wrote another book. Emily had written Wuthering Heights and was working on another novel until she fell ill. Anne had written Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall--which, by the way, I consider as good a novel as Jane Eyre. Charlotte's third published novel was Vilette, which I've never read. Before her siblings' deaths, she had written The Professor, which was refused by the publishers; Jane Eyre, and Shirley--which was the name of a place, not of a person.
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Of all their books, I still think Wuthering Heights is the only great novel. It isn't pretty or sweet, but it's great.
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Charlotte could have married at least three times before she finally married her father's curate, Arthur Nicholls. And so she got pregnant, and literally vomited herself to death after less than a year of marriage, a month short of her 39th birthday.


Charlotte Bronte, 21 April 1816-31 Mar. 1855 (Zodiac sign Taurus)
Patrick Branwell Bronte, 26 June 1817-24 Sept. 1848 (Cancer)
Emily Jane Bronte, 30 July 1818-19 Dec. 1848 (Leo)
Anne Bronte, 17 Jan. 1820-28 May 1849 (Capricorn)

Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

I've started reading Contact, by Carl Sagan. But a few minutes ago I received an order for Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing, so I'm going to try to re-read it before Monday. It's a wonderful book, about a wonderful bunch of guys.

Yesterday I made a resolution to complete and wrap one Christmas present a day until I get all the mostly ready-made gifts done, then concentrate on finishing the "projects." But today I've only wrapped Jesse's birthday gift--I mean Reed's.

Oh, well, the day is--not young, but middle-aged.

Happy Birthday to Reed, and Vann, and Me, and any other December people. Reed and Vann are lovely Sagittarii, but my birthday is much later, and I'm just an old nanny Goat.