6/28: a beautiful use
...of 3rd and 1st person pronouns in the opening paragraphs of Mary Stewart's Rose Cottage.
6/27: spending part of the day
...thinking about some of my favorite novels: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Framley Parsonage, and A Room with a View. They are part of Pamela Regis' discussion in A Natural History of the Romance Novel, and it was fun to see them all brought into contact/conversation with one another.
6/25: reading
...a novel whose main character is named Penelope; hoping that the name is supposed to have some Homeric resonance; reaching a section which mentions the Odyssey explicitly.
6/24: smoother
My outbound trip to Pennsylvania had some glitches: stressfully short layovers and delayed luggage. My inbound trip back to Arkansas was smoother: a shorter travel-day overall yet still including time for a leisurely lunch with beer in the Atlanta airport.
6/23: cock crow
Early this morning I took a final-for-now walk through the estate gardens and stood under a gigantic weeping beech as the roosters crowed.
6/22: morning & evening
My mother and I walked from Ebensburg to Revloc on the Ghost Town Trail in the morning. And in the evening we sat under her weeping willow tree, watching fireflies and drinking elderflower cordial.
6/21: company
One of my mother's cats has been enjoying keeping me company when I read on the sofa in the living room. Years and years ago, when I was in high school, one of the family cats would often sit with me when I read in the same place.
6/19: talking
...with Chris on the phone while sitting on the little island in Lake St. Francis, a special spot from my childhood.
6/18: trying a variation
...of a favorite card game with friends, based on teams instead of individual players.
6/16: playing around
...with ideas for book-bindings and settling on one that will work for a project this week.
6/15: picking
...pink elderflowers to make a cordial. And as I was sorting through the flowers I found this glittering be-pollened spider:
6/10: meeting
...nice people. I took a very small plane from Pittsburgh to Johnstown, and the one other passenger as well as the gate attendant were so fun to talk with.
6/6: in person
A weird thing happened with our state income tax this year: we owed some money so sent it in with our tax form in April--but the state sent us a check back refunding the money and then later sent a notice saying that we hadn't paid our taxes and owed the money plus a penalty and interest. I called the revenue office twice to try to sort it out, but both times the people I talked with on the phone weren't helpful (at all). So we decided to go to the office in person, and the people we met with immediately understood the problem, acknowledged it was an error on their end, and waived the penalty and interest. I'm glad it's straightened out (knock on wood), and I feel lucky that we have the flexibility in our summer schedule to do that sort of thing.
6/5: near and far
Good things today included two close-up and two from farther away:
- Simon the Cat cuddling with us
- Chris and I choosing a book to read together
- playing Words with Friends with my childhood friend
- receiving a note from a mail-friend whose contact and kind words I was especially grateful for today.
- Simon the Cat cuddling with us
- Chris and I choosing a book to read together
- playing Words with Friends with my childhood friend
- receiving a note from a mail-friend whose contact and kind words I was especially grateful for today.
6/4: a wild chapter
I was listening to Tess of the d'Urbervilles as I walked this morning, and I got to the part where Angel carries Tess in his sleep. I did not see that coming. And it was a moment when Thomas Hardy felt like Wilkie Collins.
6/3: doing things
Some days I seem to spin my wheels. Today, not so much. I read, wrote notes (both for business and pleasure), worked on Heron Tree stuff, touched base at school with someone retiring this week, ran errands, made cookies, and did some cleaning.
6/2: waterfalls
In Artforum this morning I saw a picture of one of Pat Steir's paintings for the Silent Secret Waterfalls series. And then I spent some time taking pictures at the cascades at Woolly Hollow.
6/1: while I was drinking tea
...this butterfly was hanging out upside down on the other side of the window. (With thanks to Chris for pointing it out to me!)
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