Chicken Saltimbocca

"Salt 'im morra" might have been a better name. It was pretty good, but sort of short on taste. Seemed like it needed a bit of cheese, or maybe sour cream.

My elbow sort of went through the back of one of those caned-back chairs today. The cane in another of the chairs has a hole in it from long ago. I think I'm going to make some pads for the backs, and just attach them through the cane holes. I really like the chairs, and they're very comfortable. Of course, if I pad the backs, I'll have to recover the seats, too. Maybe I'll use this fabric that I've had about forever; when I bought it, the store only had 4 yards. If I had a couple of bolts, I'd probably put it all over the house.

Happy Something Day To Me!

One of my Amazon Soapbox friends is going out of business, and today I received a boxful of books from her, 18 books, all but a couple of them looking brand new, although some were published as far back as 1966. I checked on Amazon, and they're listed for an average of about $10 per book, with several over $30. Krista paid $37 to mail the box express, so of course I'm going to send her the postage. She is one cool lady.

I've got the stuffed chicken meal thawing in the refrigerator, to cook tomorrow. Meanwhile, today I'm pigging out on fruit, plus a rare hotdog (not as rare as they should be, though).

I regret to admit that Monday I made an orange cake from a Duncan Hines mix, with a pineapple glaze. There's still about a third of it left, which will probably get thrown out. But 2/3 of a cake probably put 5 pounds on me this week (I'm afraid to get on the scale).

Wednesday again

Yesterday I talked with Cookie Fields on the phone, about the poetry readers' group meeting. She told me all about her illness, and about Gail Whitten's illness and recovery. Then that evening I went to the meeting at the Arts Council, and was happy to see Gail and Joe, and Cookie herself, seemingly fully recovered. Joe seemed to have gained a lot of weight. I read some of the old Alabama limericks, and the new Old Head poem. India came to the meeting, also, and read a new poem, then later stopped by my house to use my printer for a project.

Sherry Whisenhunt came with a limp and a cane. After the meeting I asked her what happened, and she sort of snapped a word at me, then started talking to someone else, but I didn't understand what she said. I don't mean that she snapped at me: that's just the way she talks. Cookie had read a poem about a man with a peg leg, and I had told about Mr. Gallons with his wooden leg, and I guess that was still on my mind, because while Sherry was talking, I carefully looked at her feet (in strappy sandals) and counted her toes, just to make sure.

While I was gone to the meeting, I got a book sale on Amazon, only the 7th sale this month. That's so odd: One month I'll sell 3-4 books a week, then another month not many more than that all month. It's a conspiracy. Ho hum.

Poem for Sunday, Jessye Norman, and other wonders

Southern Arts
(Haiku Sequence: Sight, Scent and Sound)
Roses full-blown, pale
old-fashioned blooms, fragile as
lovely grandmothers

Twilight, a charmed hour,
hushed and heavy with incense
from the magnolia

Night bird far away,
floating notes of silver song
on golden moonlight

(by JRC, May 1975, May 1975, Jan. 1998)

***

Concerning that song from The Bohemian Girl: Jessye Norman looks kind of like a scary giant (on Youtube). I remember seeing her on TV back in the 70s or 80s; she looked big, but still like a woman, and was so beautiful. Or maybe so ugly that you had to think she was beautiful.
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches too great to count, and could boast
Of a high ancestral name—
But I also dreamt, which please me most,
That you loved me still the same.

I dreamt that suitors sought my hand,
That knights upon bended knee
With words that no maiden’s heart could withstand,
They pledged their love to me;
And I dreamt that one of that noble host
Came forth my hand to claim—
But I also dreamt, which charmed me most,
That you loved me still the same.
I've always been stuck between jealously and awe at people who are so fascinating to look at, that your fingers itch to paint them, but you know you could never capture that look.
If memory serves, the only beautiful person I ever painted was Jenny, and the result was disastrous. That's like the reason I don't like E. Manet's paintings: He painted Berthe Morisot into so many pictures, yet in all but one she just looks like a blob. And the one that looks like a real human, is like an unfinished sketch.

For Trois

Great-Grandfather Mullins

I haven't found the Dovie/Rilla photo yet.

This family has the most beautiful girls in the South.

This could be a still from an old Garbo movie.






All that's missing is/are a picture hat and a flower garden.

Another perfect angel.

Thank you, Lord, for all our lovely daughters. Especially mine, the one who has gone on.




Had to pause to post the picture of Buffy from her mom's email. Then I thought, shoot, I want to look at our other girls, too.

After all these years, I can at last look at pictures of Jenny and feel joy instead of grief.

Telephone Notice(s)

If you're The Birmingham News, the Shakespeare Oxford Society, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, or ASPS, don't call me--I've renewed all I'm going to this year.
If you're a bill-collector, don't call me--they're all paid.
If you're a hungry cat, go eat some Meow Mix and lemme alone!

Because, tomorrow I'm writing full-time. That is, 8 to 4, 5 out of 7. I've got 3+1/2 novels to rewrite, and no telling how many stories and poems that have to get written or finished, or just mooned over.

Beats breakfast in bed!

Asian-style pork loin with the most super-scrumptious sauce you ever put in your whole mouth! With all the trimmin's. And guess who cooked my lunch on Mother's Day?

That's right: Atlanta's Own (or my own) James D. Cage, Ph.C-for cooking. He also brought me a new DVD player, which nudged me to clean out my TV cabinet, whereafter he hooked up all the little cables and wires so I can watch my favorite movies whenever I like.

Not to mention his good company for the special day, from late Saturday afternoon until late this afternoon. Among other conversational accomplishments, we decided who's going to be the next U.S. president and who-all are impossible for consideration as vice-president. I have to say, that's the biggest job we've ever started and finished in one 24-hour period just by talking.

All in all, one of the best Mother's Days of all time, in my opinion.

After much rain

The driveway is dry, the back yard drained OK the day after the heavy rain (yesterday, I think). I think we should have extended the French drain all the way across the west side of the yard to the property line; this would drain the low place quicker, and would also probably drain Mark's back yard, if one likes to do good to neighbors. Or even if one doesn't.

On her blog yesterday, Susan posted a link to a list of "1001 books you must read before you die," heavily weighted on the 1950-2008 end. Here's my list of ten on her list that I hope to read over the next ten months:

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Contact, by Carl Sagan
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell (sp?) Hammett
Jacob's Room, by Virginia Woolf
The Shadow Line, by Joseph Conrad
The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James
The Master of Ballantrae, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I believe I've read some of them before, but don't remember them. "The Shadow Line," by Conrad, may be one of his short stories; if so, I've read it.

I'm tempted to make my own list of 1001 books you might want to read, or choose from to read. I guess I'd get bogged down in my comments, though. I would recommend Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, only in contrast to the greatness of Wuthering Heights.

Nevermore

This is my project that I did yesterday. It looks really neat. I'm waiting for a big rain; it's supposed to rain here Thursday and Friday, according to TV. If the water stands on the driveway, I can always remove the bricks, but I don't think they'll affect the draining that much. They're not stuck together or stuck to the driveway.

This morning, Jerry next door was painting his house, when a bunch of crows attacked another crow. Jerry shooed them away, and the victim perched on top of his rose trellis. Perched, and sat, and nothing more. It sat there all day. He tried to shoo it away, and it wouldn't shoo. When I went out there, he even had a stick prodding it in the rear, trying to make it go away. It simply flew a little distance, then perched back on the trellis and refused to move again.

We decided it might be sick, and maybe that was why the other crows attacked it. I called the Health Dept. and asked if you were supposed to report sick or injured birds. The HD person said they used to want people to report sick birds, during the bird flu scare, but they no longer investigated birds. When I got back from the post office at 4:30, the "raven still was sitting, still was sitting." A couple of hours later, however, it was gone. Maybe it just took all day to get over the shock of being attacked. Crows aren't afraid of people, anyway, or anything else.

Picture it:

Leeds, 2008: Mo on the chair with the cushion, Wilder on the bench, me on the computer. One Amazon.com sale, after turkey-pickle-mustard-on-rye. After a glass of iced whatever, after an hour in-and-out-of the sun, working on a project.

I was careful to avoid all the little black spiders, but when I turned my back, all of them must have jumped up under my clothes. Because I still feel like 300,000 of them are biting me all over. That's what the sun does to moi. Don't want to take a shower now, because I'm going back for another hour or so. This time I'm going to attach the (open) umbrella to the back of my neck. Somehow.

5:20 p.m. The second bout lasted a bit longer, and there was more shade to work in. I've been inside for half an hour, but the drops of perspiration are still dripping from my head onto my shoulders and arms. I guess my thick bushy hair holds the heat for a while.

Good books I didn't choose for Book Club

I read China Court, by Rumer Godden, in the 1960's, and goodness-knows-how-many times since then. It's a lovely romance about young people. It's a heart-breaker about an old lady. It's a funny/sad tale about children. It's a book about books. It's a hunt for "buried" treasure. It's about a funeral and a wedding. All in ~300 pages of wide-spaced 12-point print.

Every time I've hosted the Bookmarkers reading group, I've thought about/wanted to choose China Court to discuss. The reason I haven't done so is that I'm afraid someone won't like it. You have to read it 2-3 times just to get all the characters arranged in your head, so you'll remember who everyone is. When I read Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, I thought about Rumer Godden; she could write a story about anything--like Chekov, who said, "I could write a story about an ashtray," and proved it.

Another book I wanted to but didn't choose for Book Club is Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey (Elizabeth Mackintosh). This one is about horses, mistaken identity, fratricide and retribution. I guaran-dam-tee that if you read this one, you'll want to read it again. That is, if you like a whopping-good tale.

And, my favorite Shirley Jackson shiverer, The Bird's Nest, about a hole-in-the-floor that touched off a set of multiple personalities. Moreover, The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, one of the best (and longest) books you'll ever read.

These are simply good fiction and are aside from all the great non-fiction books I've read over and over--The Life and Times of Chaucer, by John Gardner. Balzac, a biography by Stefan Zweig (the movie, with Dupardieu and Jeanne Moreau, is better than the book). The Fall of Saxon England, by Richard Humble. Wildflowers of Alabama and Adjoining States, by Mason, Dean and Thomas. The Annotated Mother Goose, by the Baring-Goulds. U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition, by Bruce Catton. Down the Garden Path, by Beverley Nichols... and... and...