“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” John Ames. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson I am sometimes asked where I find the time to write a blog and to read blogs. I think, in this life, that you have to try to find the time to do the [...]
Archive for January, 2011
Gilead
Posted in Books, tagged Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize book on Monday, January 31, 2011 | 14 Comments »
Friendships
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Year With Emerson: A Daybook selected & edited by Richard Grossman, Ralph Waldo Emerson on Sunday, January 30, 2011 | 8 Comments »
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest things we know. Ralph Waldo Emerson Above is the January 30 entry in A Year With Emerson, a beautiful daybook I received in a contest hosted late last [...]
Shop talk.
Posted in Family and friends, tagged Lucky Lee's Kid's Heaven, The Good Old Summertime, The Shop Around the Corner, You've Got Mail on Saturday, January 29, 2011 | 13 Comments »
“Auntie, what does it mean that ‘it’s a steal’?” (overheard being uttered by a little girl at the checkout counter of a department store while Christmas shopping) Have you ever seen “The Shop Around the Corner”? It was the first of three movies over a period of time, followed by “In the Good Old [...]
Duck . . .
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged duck and cover, Sputnik on Friday, January 28, 2011 | 19 Comments »
. . . and cover. Do any of you remember this? By the time I was in second or third grade, I was pretty certain that in a nuclear attack, this pose wasn’t going to save me. I’ve been thinking about this recently. I suppose the media attention lately to the space program and [...]
Insights from across a big pond
Posted in Children's books, Nature/animals, tagged Berta and Elmer Hader, The Big Snow on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Kate’s provocative post on geese yesterday reminded me of some words I was holding in a draft folder about these great migrators. I read her fascinating post with interesting information about geese and about the ships that carried convicted men to Australia. Her posts are well-written and well-researched and, since I’m on “w”, witty and [...]
Since You Went Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Claudette Colbert, Since You Went Away on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 | 8 Comments »
Along with making chicken dumpling soup and watching the Chicago Bears lose to Green Bay on Sunday, I also watched one of my favorite movies, an oldie, about the war years and keeping up the home front. It was a wonderful afternoon for the evocative black and white film of Anne Hilton, wife of Tim, [...]
Dumplings and Bears
Posted in Uncategorized on Monday, January 24, 2011 | 14 Comments »
Sunday was another very cold day. Snow flurries had dusted the icy pavement the night before. The “Big Game” was on and I’d promised Tom I would watch it with him. He knew I was humoring him. It is no secret that I do not enjoy football. Archrivals, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay [...]
Slip Sliding Away
Posted in music, tagged Simon & Garfunkel, Sliding Away, Slip on Sunday, January 23, 2011 | 9 Comments »
All this slipping and sliding I was writing about yesterday reminded me of a song I once knew. How about you? Here’s a little Simon and Garfunkel to pass the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuISQ71-uh8
Step, step, slide
Posted in Adventure on Saturday, January 22, 2011 | 12 Comments »
I saw him out of the corner of my eye as I was approaching a stop sign. I was driving on a well-travelled street in town. A smaller, but active, business district of Elmhurst. The street was dry, cleared of snow, but the sidewalks were glistening sheets of ice. The snow, then the rain, [...]
The King’s Speech
Posted in Historical, movies, tagged Colin Firth, Georffrey Rush, King George VI, Lionel Logue, The King's Speech on Thursday, January 20, 2011 | 16 Comments »
Remarkable speeches came out of World War II. It was a time of gifted orators. Speakers who could capture the emotions of a people, whether good or bad. Hitler. Stalin. Theirs were the cadence and rhythm and fiery words that brought forth history’s most dastardly atrocities. Churchill and Roosevelt. Contemporaries that we, on both sides [...]
