Pass the Biscuits, Miranda!

"Shootin' gives a man an appetite!"

Well, I had biscuits and ham for lunch. They were pretty good. Started out with Susan's recipe, then switched to the recipe on the White Lily bag because all I had was 5 pounds of self-rising flour. Ate two while they were hot, froze 8 for later, and saved a couple to see if I can bite them when they get cool. Dang it, I didn't have any orange marmalade.

From the Bookins swap site the other day, I received M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio, and started reading it yesterday. It's a fascinating story, in which the author, an Australian, seeks to amend somewhat the centuries-old impression that Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio, Italy, was a crook and a murderer. It's aggravating reading, however, because the author attempts to be what in the '60s would be called hip. Uses words (or non-words) like "sus" (apparently an adjective) and "yakka" (a very dirty noun). His favorite contraction, judging by its frequent appearance, is "they'd" for "they had" or "they would." I expect any paragraph to see "they'd've."

A peculiarity that this author points out, and illustrates with lots of details from Caravaggio's paintings, is that many of his men and some of his women are self-portraits, even the severed heads of Goliath and Holofernes.

Added at 6:30 p.m.: For dinner I had roasted squash and the couple of biscuits, which were still very good. And I did find some orange marmalade, about half a jar hidden in the refrigerator; I ate a little of it with a biscuit and didn't die right away, so I guess it wasn't too old to eat. What I wonder is why am I eating all this cooked food suddenly? Just got tired of sandwiches and canned spinach and microwaved eggs, I reckon. I have cooked a lot of cornbread lately to eat with the spinach. I bought a hunk of sliced ham yesterday, thinking I was craving meat, but didn't like it much. Next time I cook dried beans, though, it'll be good with them.

The Devil Made Me Do It...

About the time I was supposed to be going to the poetry reading at Leeds Arts Center, I just happened to slip a VHS into the slot, and it caught me and wouldn't turn me loose. Which means I haven't done anything remotely useful today.

Pie, Motley, and a Tortoise Shell

I'm so gratified that there's still a slice of Hershey pie in the freezer. I made it Thursday, with the troubling thought that I would probably eat it all before Friday. But discipline prevailed, for once.

I have just finished reading A Damned Serious Business, written by Rex Harrison, who was still putting the finishing touches on it when he died in 1990 at the age of 82. The finest comedy actor of the twentieth century, in my opinion, he made me laugh without resorting to farce.

Here's Wilder. See how pretty and stout he has grown, a far cry from the poor bones with the inverted funnel-shaped tail that I thought for a while was a large rat when he first started zipping out the pet door when I would walk toward the kitchen. Now he lets me pet him while he's eating, and he wasn't a bit fazed by the camera, possibly because it didn't make any noise. Noise is his nemesis, and still makes him dive through the pet door and fly down the stairs.

Autumn Skies

"Well, children," as Sojourner used to begin her talks, I have to tell you:

The heavens declare the Glory of God,
And the firmament showeth His handiwork,
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge;
There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard...

There's no speech nor language to describe the sky this afternoon. I don't believe I've ever seen anything else that beautiful in all my life. It almost made me cry.

Here's a book I received a few days ago from the publisher, because it has half of one of my poems in it. The poem was a linked sonnet, which means two sonnets, but they only published one. Oh, well.

After working on my books this morning, I went to the Post Office, of course, then to the library sale to do my volunteer hours taking money, and found they had added a lot of yard sale items. I came away with one book, and a beautiful Christmas tablecloth still sealed in its original plastic cover.

Speaking of skies and books, below is a book of mine that I wouldn't part with, mainly because of the beautiful cover.

As a final word about skies, I think this is the best poem I've written.

~

Clouds with wings of gold

enfolded pale blue morning,

that a moment died,

rose up white noon, and oh

bright cumulus flung clear around

my unsuspecting stratosphere!

~

How can even God

behold this gleaming day,

yet stay in place, while higher

every mile the sky grows! I

would tumble treeward, rumbling,

"See My wonders! See Creation glowing!

Hear My thunder!"

~

I myself, although

no god or wing-blessed being,

must fling my senses somehow high enough

to reach and reel among

those sun-dipped fields of light,

dance there, cling there,

or of sheer worship

die!

Book Bargains!

At the Friends of the Library sale Thursday evening, I didn't guess very well in picking books. But today I went by there coming back from the P.O. I bought 7 books for 6 bucks. When I got home, I found that one had listings up to $50+, so I listed mine for $30.00. Another one had only one listing on Amazon for $35.00, so I matched that price. BUT, a third book was listed nowhere, but based on a little research of some similar later books, I priced mine at $195.00! Listed two more of the books I bought at more ordinary prices (under ten dollars), and will return the other two for them to sell again.

Makes me feel a little bit guilty, but not much. But to sort of make up, tomorrow I'm taking them a big bagfull of nearly new books to add to the sale. I also signed up to "sit and sell" next Thursday evening, the penultimate sale day.

Two of the books I bought Thursday night are biographies of Sojourner Truth. I read one of them. Surprised to learn that she was a northern slave, not southern; she was born Isabel Van Wegener, and later renamed herself. All her slave years were spent in New York state. She met a lot of famous people, including President Abraham Lincoln who autographed one of her books for her. Apparently it was easier for slaves to gain their freedom in NY than in a lot of other states, maybe because slavery there grew out of the original Dutch settlers' custom of having indentured servants who worked for a certain period of time and then were free. After awhile, finding they could get away with it, the Dutch started keeping people as slaves, but it was still possible to make a "freedom deal" in rare cases. Sojourner and her parents and siblings had to speak Dutch; she didn't learn English until various slave-owners scolded, cajoled, or beat it into her. She never learned to read and write; she dictated her books and other papers.

Purple Crows

I looked out the back door at a "murder of crows," actually only four, pecking around in the wet grass. Among bows and flows of gray and white clouds, the sun suddenly blazed out and shone on the crows, turning their flat black plumage to a rainbow of peacock colors as if they had been dipped in an oil spill. Then they all rose and flew away, the hues converging to deep purple as long as they were in the sun.

The Book Club meeting was well attended and very noisy. All three Ramey sisters were there: Susan didn't go to Atlanta, Pat decided to stop by there after all, and I didn't sleep quite all morning. The highlight of Nell's table was an apple spice cake with good thick caramel icing, which I understood her husband Bill made. Mary Anne told all about her two weeks in Greece, making me wish I could at least go to Italy and take that Adriatic cruise among the islands. Betty White mentioned that one of the possible side effects of the cholesterol medications could be memory loss. Alopecia and absentmindedness, dang! I'm cutting that flat rose-madder tablet out of my pill diet until I see the doctor next month, at which time I may just blister some of the black porcupine quills off his head, if I feel like talking or if he says "O-KAY?" one too many times.

Mary Undeutsch and Barbara were also at the meeting, and the elegant Jean Mock came late and left early. Neither Jean, Pat nor Barbara had read the book (My Sister's Keeper), so the rest of us talked about everything but the ending, so as not to spoil it for them when they read it.

When I came home, after resting and changing clothes, I had to go to CVS for cat food, and then I finished reading Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith. I was tempted to give it four stars, but it really wasn't as good as Gorky Park. Mighty good book, though. It tied up a couple of loose ends from the other books, i.e., Irina (she and Arkady had been reunited somehow after their sudden traumatic parting, had been together, maybe married for a time, until Irina was accidentally killed by a nurse); and the fate of Sergei Pribluda.

Note above: I think the cruise I was looking at while we were in England was around/among the Aegean islands, instead of the Adriatic. The Aegean sea is the one between Greece and Turkey, I think.

Coming Attractions

Wednesday, September 12, 2007. How did it get so late so soon? How did I get so old, so young?

The Friends of the Library are having our preview party tomorrow evening. I feel guilty for not volunteering to do more than sit and collect money for a day, during the sale. I can't use age as an excuse, as some of the movers and shakers are--I won't say older than dirt, but at least older than I am. Anyway, I hope I can pick up a few books worth listing.

Then Friday is book club day. The meeting is at Nell's, and the book is Wish You Well, which I read some time ago. [Added at 6:20 p.m.: Susan posted a correction--the book is My Sister's Keeper. Wish You Well was last month, which we didn't attend.]

Every morning, Mo and I open the deck door and breathe a little to see how hot it is outside. Of course, September is heave-a-sigh-of-relief month, after the August inferno. "Thank You, Lord, for letting me make it through another summer" month. Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, when the People stand before the Almighty to ask for another year, after their preparation month of Elul, when they contemplate what they'll do with the coming year if it's granted. Which is good.

And I've got five, count them, (5), books to pack and mail before 5:00 p.m., so I've got to get packing.

A Few Russians

I finished reading Polar Star today. I liked all the Martin Cruz Smith books I read, but Gorky Park is still my favorite. There were characters in it, besides Renko, that I cared about. Seems the other two books weren't as suspenseful as GP, I guess partly because I knew by the time I read them that Arkady would survive.

I like books about Russia and Russians. Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov are two of my favorites.

Goodbye To All That

Because I never had a brother, in the 1970s I decided to "adopt" Elvis and Luciano Pavarotti. We were all born within a year of each other, first me, then Elvis, then Luciano. If I'd had the voice, I would have been a singer, too, but I learned in the 8th grade "glee club" that my voice was in the very restricted mezzo range. This broke my heart into little pieces, but I sort of got over it.

I'm glad that I never saw either of the "brothers" in person, though I was once invited to a sort of party where Elvis was staying; I was stuck at the University with no way to travel, but if getting there had been possible, I wouldn't have gone.

No more fantasy brothers. In the fifty or so years I've got left down here, I'll make do with reality. The wonderful real folks who like me, even though I continue to sing like a scratchy 78 whose crank wasn't wound tight enough.

"...if thou wast not granted to sing, thou would'st surely die." --Walt Whitman

All about books

I had two orders for books Tuesday and three Wednesday, so yesterday I went to the P.O., then to the grocery store for a few things. No orders yesterday or today. They come in flurries.

I'm still reading Stalin's Ghost. I stopped to read Gorky Park, because I thought, since the same protagonist was in both, that GP would immediately precede SG, which is right, but a lot seems to have happened in between.

Today I received an email request to mail Elie Wiesel's book, Night, to a Bookins member. Bookins is a swap site. When you mail a book, you print the postage-paid label from an online site, and the postage is charged to the recipient's credit card. I received the book from a Bookins person just a few days ago, and since it has only 120 pages, I sat down and read it, just now finished it. A protracted nightmare. I remember my uncle, Alfred Satterfield, saying that the group he was with liberated one of the concentration camps; I couldn't remember if he said Auschwitz or Buchenwald. It had to be the latter, as the Russians were the first to arrive at Auschwitz, from which most of the prisoners, including Wiesel and his father, had been force-marched by the SS to Buchenwald, during which march many of them died.

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Great Performances at the Met L'Elisir D'Amore - Sunday, September 09, 2007 at 3:30 PM, Alabama Public Television pays tribute to the life of Luciano Pavarotti, who died on September 6, 2007, with an encore performance of one of his most treasured roles, Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir D'Amore (The Elixir of Love). The two-and-one-half-hour, two-act opera was originally broadcast on PBS stations from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on March 2, 1981. A highlight of the telecast is Pavarotti's stunning rendition of "Una Furtiva Lagrima," an aria he made his own in his illustrious career. Charlie Rose introduces the In Memoriam broadcast. This special broadcast will replace the first episode of BROADWAY: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL originally scheduled for Sunday.

Ciao, Luciano.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

Luciano Pavarotti died yesterday.

Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night...

A White Lion?

Look at this old darling. Don't you want to just reach out and hug him! I found the picture on a free site on the internet--or best I could understand, it was free.

I'm reading Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith. Very good writing, sort of interesting story. Little boy in it is a chess genius, but the book is very different from Searching for Bobby Fischer.

I sold one book today. I think I'm going to have to put off the daily story-writing thing until October. I started to cheat by using a couple that I patched up from old ideas, but I'm still 2 days behind. So I'll just do this in October instead of Sept.

A Good Holiday Weekend

Jed arrived Thursday evening and stayed until this afternoon. We really had a good visit. Made one shopping tour over at Costco, and covered Food World at Moody, Wal-Mart, Chili's in Trussville and the good old Cracker Barrel before the weekend was over. I probably gained 10 pounds--I'm afraid to get on the scale.