Girl Detective

Sung to the tune of Sesame Streets “The L Song” which is covered by Barenaked Ladies on a CD we have, For the Kids.

Woo. Is anyone else out there feeling that burn of metaphorical friction as we’re whipped through the busy-ness that is high summer? I think the earth is telling us to work, work, work, even if we’re not working the earth.

Swim lessons, day camp, laundry, doctor appts, calls to return, mold in the basement, earwigs, ants, lunches to pack, car in the shop (AGAIN), vegetables to cook before they go bad, weeds to pull, land line not working…

Breathe. And do the next thing. And try not to lose my mind. That is all.

I won a copy of Laurie Hertzel’s News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist (book trailer here) last year on my friend Amy’s blog, New Century Reading, after leaving a comment about one of my own accidental job choices.*

I felt bad because there has been little or no free reading time in the months since I’ve started a book group, in addition to the two I already attend. But when I finished through both Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours, I thought, it’s finally time. And what a joy it was to find the time.

I was eleven or twelve when I decided that journalism was my future. I loved to write, I loved to snoop, I always wanted to know everything first. Those are pretty much the only qualifications, when you get right down to it.

Hertzel started working in the newsroom of the Duluth paper(s) in the seventies, and got shoved out of copy editing into reporting at one point. Reading the book is like sitting down with a smart funny friend who tells great stories. I loved hearing about the old school days of newspapers along with the many and various personalities of the newsroom, which reminded me pleasantly of The Imperfectionists. She also has a fascinating tale of how Duluth came to have a sister city in Russia full of Finns, and the strange and wonderful coincidences that followed from there.

This is a great book for those who love writing, are interested in newspaper history/evolution, the Northern Midwest U.S., or the emigration of Finns during the Great Depression. That’s a terrible sentence, and a good copy editor would fix it.

*Edited to add: my accidental job experience happened in the fall of my sophomore year of college. My roommate was reading the campus newsletter and said, “Didn’t you have good SAT scores? This ad says you can earn $15/hour for The Princeton Review.” I went to an interview, got called back, then trained, then taught classes, then trained some more, then got a management position, and then an executive management position, then got sick of marketing, nearly eight years after that initial interview, and went to grad school to study religion on a scholarship I got largely due to GRE scores higher than they would’ve been if I hadn’t worked for a test-prep company for eight years. I have found ways to sneak in teaching and presenting in many ways since then, even if those have not been officially my “job.”

I was surprised and delighted again when I watched Billy Wilder’s The Apartment for a second time at a revival with a friend. The Dairy Queen chocolate/caramel sundae didn’t hurt, either. Jack Lemmon is a mid-level schmoe at a gigantic insurance company. He distinguishes himself by lending out the key to his cozy, nearby apartment to executives for extramarital affairs. His neighbors think he’s a lush and lothario, but really he’s just that guy, you know the sweet, kinda funny, kinda sad one. He has a crush on Miss Kubilick, played by an impossibly young looking Shirley Maclaine who sports an adorable pixie cut and sweet smile. When personnel, in the form of Fred MacMurray, figures out what’s going on, it looks like Lemmon’s in trouble. He is, but not in the way he thought. If you’re a fan of the show Mad Men, with its pitiless eye on the sexual power politics of the time, this is another window on that world. The Apartment the last black-and-white movie to win the Best Picture Oscar, is a sweet little gem, and if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. Also, the group of executives is a cornucopia of “hey, it’s that guy” guys that those of us who watched TV and movies in the 70’s and 80’s will recognize.

As part of my reading of Norse myths and Gaiman after my re-read of American Gods, I read Odd and the Frost Giants aloud to my boys, nearly 8yo Drake and 5yuo Guppy. Read aloud to my boys after reading Gaiman’s American Gods last month. It’s a story (or myth, if you will) based on characters from Norse mythology. In short, a young man named Odd leaves his village and goes into the wilderness. Strange things happen when he encounters a fox, bear and eagle. My appreciation of it was heightened by having recently read D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths, which explained a certain joke about a mare among other details. Guppy said he liked it “medium” but Drake really enjoyed it, as I continue to struggle with figuring out age-appropriate read-alouds for these two.

Now that I’d finally read Mrs Dalloway, it was clearly time to read Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, an homage to Woolf’s classic novel. Cunningham alternates among three women. Clarissa Vaughan is “Mrs Dalloway” a 50 something woman in NYC preparing for a party for a friend who calls her by the name of Woolf’s famous character. Mrs. Brown is a 50’s housewife in California, married to a recently returned decorated soldier of WWII. And Mrs. Woolf is Virginia, in the process of conceiving and beginning her famous novel.

I believe this book would be good even if you hadn’t read Mrs Dalloway. Yet reading them together was dizzying, in a good way, with echoes and enhancements as each made the other a much richer reading experience. I hesitate to watch the film of The Hours in case it might negatively influence my very happy experience with these books.

I started a book discussion group earlier this year, and several selections have been heavily father/son themed: Gilead, The Road, Lamb, and American Gods. I selected Mrs Dalloway because I thought it would be an interesting mother/daughter contrast, though I’d not yet read it. Once I did, I found that the mother/daughter theme indeed present, but one among many intriguing things to discuss.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning–fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark, what a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a little squeak of hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged into Bourton into the open air.

Clarissa, the Mrs of the title, is preparing for a party. She’s also juggling memories of the past with senses of the present, and moving in and out of complex encounters with her husband, daughter, and a former suitor. Her character, and the beauty and fortune that goes with it, is mirrored darkly in that of Septimus Warren Smith, a decorated veteran of the Great War as he struggles to navigate life and London, which Clarissa does with apparent ease and skill.

This is a short novel, not difficult to read, but deceptively complex and thought provoking. With its suddenly shifting points of view and intertwined narratives, it reminded me of films like Crash and Babel, deploying now in film what was once an daring experiment in writing back when a novel was written, not written to be filmed, as so many are today. I followed this with Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which I enjoyed both on its own and as it helped illuminate Mrs Dalloway, to which it is an homage.

I borrowed D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths from the library to read along with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I remembered had a great number of references I wasn’t familiar with. I don’t recall reading the D’Aulaire’s Norse Myths as a child, though their Book of Greek Myths was one of my favorites. The new edition of the Norse myths has an introduction by Michael Chabon (which is also collected in his Maps and Legends) and was such an engaging, fantastically illustrated book with great stories that I went out and bought a copy for our home library. I don’t remember having this growing up, but I want my kids to. It indeed contributed to my enjoyment of Gaiman’s American Gods, as well as his Odd and the Frost Giants, which I just finished reading aloud to my two boys.

American Gods was my pick for the discussion group I’ve started on novels with themes of myth and religion. I’d been thinking about it before I became aware that its 10th anniversary was pending, that Neil Gaiman was going to appear as part of the Wits series at the Fitzgerald, and that it had been picked up by Tom Hanks’ production company as a series for HBO. It soon became clean that a July American Gods synchronicity was going on. I hadn’t read the book since it was released in 2001; I read it before September of that year, when the term American suddenly became more complex and problematic. I was more than ready for a re-reading.

The novel is an answer to a question Gaiman puts up front in the introductory epigraph:

One that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands.” (Richard Dorson, “A Theory for American Folklore”)

The main character, and the everyday person the reader is supposed to use as the lens into the world Gaiman has created, is Shadow, a man serving time for a crime never detailed. Shadow is less an everyman, though, and more a traditional noir hero, a hapless, goodish guy who is at the mercy of various femme fatales and manipulative bosses. Part of the novel is a travelogue through some of the weirder tourist spots of the U.S., like the House on the Rock and Rock City. There’s also a substory set in Lakeside, an idyllic Wisconsin town.

This is involving, intriguing stuff, though I found it sometimes too sprawling especially in the war of the gods storyline. I liked much better the interactions of Shadow with other mortals, and with mortal incarnations of various gods and legends. Here, an interview with Gaiman by John Moe that took place recently at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, which I was fortunate enough to attend.

While there wasn’t universal love for the book at the recent discussion of it for my book group, yet it did generate a fascinating and deep conversation, so I think it was a very good pick.

After I finished reading The Mouse and his Child to 5yo Guppy and nearly 8yo Drake, I cast about for another book, and when I said “Narnia” Drake perked right up. I was torn between reading them in the order I read them growing up, which was chronological by publishing date. But I have a hardcover set that puts them in order by the events of the story. Since Drake can be a stickler for things like that, and I didn’t feel like arguing, we started with the book labeled 1, The Magician’s Nephew; the story takes place before that in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

A young boy named Digory moves to his aunt and uncle’s house in London when his mother falls ill. He makes friends with Polly, the girl who lives next door, and they discover that Digory’s uncle is trying to find ways to travel among worlds. The uncle tricks the children into exploring for him, and their adventures include a dying world, a wicked witch, a just-created world, talking animals and much more. Christian allegory, which I didn’t recognize so clearly when I read this as a child, abounds. It is a solid adventure story featuring interesting child protagonists confronted with a variety of moral and ethical dilemmas. There is some humor, but it was more apparent to me, the adult reading the book, than to my young children who listened to it. I enjoyed revisiting the book. Their verdicts? Drake said he liked it and was interested in the next book. Guppy was grumpy, and said he did not, so I may have picked a(nother) book he’s not yet ready for. I’ll keep trying. Next up is Neil Gaiman’s Odd and the Frost Giants.

I’ve bought a lot of books lately. Starting my own book group has meant I need to buy copies of things I want to audition, right? Plus there are my other two book groups. And thus, this tower.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (because I want to read his second, and thus want to read his first, first.)
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor (someone recommended it for my religion/mythic fiction book group)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (ditto above)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie (because a friend said she loved it)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (rec. for book group)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (because my recent reads of Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse made me want to re-read this)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (because I’m reading Mrs. Dalloway for the upcoming myth/religion book group)
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (rec for book group, local author)
Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie (next selection of my women’s book group)
The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov, ed. Burgin and O’Connor (likely the November myth book group book. This translation was the one that seemed to have the most love)
Lonely Polygamist by Bradley Udall (for Books and Bars)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Foer (September pick for myth book group)
Jane Eyre by Bronte, Penguin edition with cover by Ruben Toledo. (I collect editions of this, and loved this one so much I couldn’t leave the store without it.) Details of this one below.

(sorry no links; too tired. maybe later)

Because I’ve been writing other places about food, I don’t write so much about it here. And a few people mentioned that they missed it, plus I’ve been lax about blogging, so this is me killing two birds with one stick. I think that must’ve been a combo of “killing two birds with one stone” and “getting off the stick.” I don’t even really know if that last one means what I think it does. Anyway.

Here is what may very well be my favorite recipe. It’s easy, it’s tasty, it’s healthful, and it’s useful. By now, I’d think I’d have it memorized and wouldn’t have to pull out my broken-spined Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison every time I make it. Which I do. I’ve written about this recipe before. Here on Girl Detective (hey, apparently Guppy used to say, Chickpeas with Tomatoes and Tomatoes), and at Simple Good and Tasty. What I love about it is that it can be made year ’round, it’s adaptable (today I stretched the recipe with a 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes, a half-pint of local new potatoes, 2 cups of broth rather than 1/2 cup, and bunch of absolutely beautiful carrots.) I can be precise (by peeling the carrots and potatoes and measuring) or play fast and loose, leaving skins on and throwing in whatever’s on hand. Also, I sometimes (gasp!) do not rinse the beans, but just pour in the whole can, Which goes against foodie practice, but I can’t find anything anywhere that says it’s anything other than a matter of taste/appearance, which don’t impact this stew.

Chickpeas with Potatoes and Tomatoes, adapted from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

1/3 c. extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 red potatoes, peeled and diced into cubes about the size of chickpeas
2 carrots, cut into 1/2-in. rounds
3-4 stalks celery, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 pinch dried red pepper flakes
2 plump garlic cloves mashed with 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 c. diced tomatoes
3 c. chickpeas, cooked, or 2 15-oz. cans, rinsed
salt and pepper
1/2 c. water, broth or wine
1/2 c. chopped parsley
garnish with lemon slices and kalamata olives (it really is very tasty with these) and sliced pita bread

Heat the oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it’s lightly colored, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Add the potatoes, carrots, chile and garlic and cook for 5 minbutes more. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas, season with 1 teaspoon salt and a few twists from the pepper mill, and add the water. Cover and simmer gently until the potatoes are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Taste for salt, remove from heat and stir in parsley.

(Another photo should go here, but something isn’t working, and telling the system administrator, who’s sitting next to me, hasn’t helped.)

I wanted to re-read Sarah Vowell’s Wordy Shipmates in the wake of Marilynne Robinson’s passionate defense of Calvinism and Puritanism in The Death of Adam, and Margaret Atwood’s dim view of Puritans, on whom she based the theocracy in her dystopic Handmaid’s Tale. Who was right, Robinson or Atwood? I figured I’d read Vowell and see if her book on the Puritans shed any light on the disagreement. And it did.

Vowell writes in a breezy, funny voice that is all the more interesting given the amount of historical fact and the depth of empathy she brings to her subjects, here the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony after departing England in 1630. She quotes Puritan scholar Perry Miller, one of the Handmaid’s Tale dedicatees, as she details who these people were based on their journals and recorded sermons and more. She is writes mainly of Governor John Winthrop, the author of the phrase “we shall be as a city on a hill,” based on a biblical verse in the book of Matthew, but also of Roger Williams, an early proponent of separation of church and state and the founder of Rhode Island, and Anne Hutchinson, who so exasperated the Massachusetts Bay Puritans that they put her on trial and banished her to Rhode Island.

Vowell quotes original texts and scholarship to present a complicated, engaging, and very human portrait of these historical figures. Reading this helped me determine that Atwood is talking about Plymouth puritans, while Robinson is quoting her own translations of John Calvin’s works, centuries before either of these groups. Are the Puritans good or bad? Robinson says good; Atwood says bad; Vowell says, “it’s complicated.” I’m with Vowell.

I picked up Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover at my local comic shop on a recent Wednesday. I’d enjoyed Coover’s art on Banana Sunday, a book about magical monkeys that my elder, 7yo Drake, also enjoyed. This one is decidedly not for the kiddoes, though.

26yo Annah Billips is a comic-book Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She’s cute, bisexual (so there’s a brooding girl- AND boyfriend), and she thinks she has a lab-grown clone sister of herself named Ginger running around in the world, which may or may not be a psychological coping mechanism she developed as a girl during her parents divorce. The book is narrated by a stream of characters, including the boyfriend, girlfriend, a pigeon (looking awfully similar to Mo Willems’ famous creation) and a bulldog. The art is clever and charming, but the story felt a bit twee. I didn’t care enough about Annah to be invested in whether her missing sister might be real or not. I felt similarly uncharmed about the film 500 Days of Summer, which also has the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, so perhaps that’s what I don’t engage with.

My family recently drove to Ohio and back. Packing well is the key to making it, which includes both packing food and packing for the trip. The last time we took the car, I thought, “Hey, we have the car! Let’s bring the boys’ scooters, and helmets, and…” The car was full, we could never find anything, and I think we forgot several things when we left. This time, I packed sparingly. Five outfits for 9 days for each of us. No wheeled vehicles. I put a couple dozen CDs is a holder, and did the same with DVDs for the player we got for the boys. And the ride went great. Except for traffic around Chicago, which seems to be a level of hell on earth. On the way out, we went 60 miles in 3 hours. Excruciating. We stopped once about every 2 hours, but never for long. I’d packed enough sandwiches and snacks and filled all our refillable water bottles; we didn’t buy any food going out or back. This is good, because when I get hungry and am traveling, my food consciousness goes missing and I think something like, “Mini can of pringles, grape gatorade and snickers ice cream bar. Awesome!” It’s like I’m flashing back one of the few (no, really) times in my feckless youth that I “ate a sandwich.” Apparently when I travel, I get off my local-organic high horse and put her in the stable while I’m away.

Here, in no order, are a few things I learned (or was reminded of)

1. Ask the kids if they need to relieve themselves BEFORE we pass the rest stop. Nothing like passing the sign and thinking, “Heh, we’ll totally make it another 47 miles.” only to hear a voice from the back seat declare otherwise.

2. Traffic around Chicago is just dreadful. I don’t know what savvy people do to avoid it, as we were driving mid day both ways, but I’m going to research it before we do that drive again.

3. Toft’s ice cream is really, really good.

4. Not a lot of people from North Dakota on the road. Way more people from the south and east coast traveling west. Also, stupid license plate frames make some plates hard to see. We had to look up Great Faces, Great Places on my husband’s smart phone.

5. When I get back to writing fiction (which is supposed to be this fall when Guppy starts kindergarten) and if I ever need to make up character names, I need only consult a map or go on a road trip. The exit-name pairings are a goldmine: Constantine Middlebury, Madison and Dane DeForest, Clayton Trotwood, Phillip Greenville, though some, like Brice Reynolds and Kirk Baltimore, sound like they might have a future in adult films. I may have to do a post just on these, which entertained me greatly.

6. I am unable to see signs for Menomonie WI without singing Mahna Mahna.

7. I am unable to see signs for Rockford IL without humming the Rockford Files theme song.

8. Car dvd players are amazing pieces of technology. I can only imagine how much less pleasant the trip would have been without them for the boys. But I’m so glad I listened to a friend’s advice: put off taking them out as long as possible, or even that magic wears thin.

Pretty. Cool. Even if the movie isn’t supposed to be good. I’ll be finding out myself soon enough, I’m sure.

via http://blog.thewisdomofpixar.com/2011/03/cars-2-vintage-world-grand-prix-posters.html

Inspired by the reading lists at The Algonquin Books Blog, (via The Morning News) I am updating my summer reading plan. Remember how I wrote I was going to do a summer reading project, going through Lizzie Skurnick’s book Shelf Discovery, and reading a bunch of the books she mentioned in it?

Yeah, that’s not going to happen. For good reason, though. I continue to read in preparation for the book group I started, on fiction with themes of myth and religion. Our June book was Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (I look forward to the day I no longer have to type that title all the time). It made me want to go back to Love Medicine and read everything she’s written, though I’m not going to right now.

The July book is American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which coincides nicely with its 10th anniversary (will I be able to resist buying the 10th anniversary edition, as I already own a signed HC and a MMPB?) and the recent announcement that it’s getting the HBO treatment. Related reading I hope to do along with American Gods is the sequel, Anansi Boys, and Douglas Adams’ Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, which my husband says is very like it. (Does that mean reading Dirk Gently again?) Possibly also D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths.

The August book is Mrs. Dalloway, and I picked up a copy of The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, so I hope to make it through that. Related reading with be Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, I hope.

Right now I’m re-reading Warren Ellis’ Planetary, that ended last year. I didn’t want to read the final issue until I re-read from the beginning, so here I am. I also plan to do this with the crime series 100 Bullets. And I mentioned recently that I’m interested in going back to the beginning of Carla Speed McNeil’s series Finder and re-reading up to the present.

So I’ve got an ambitious reading list, though the only Musts are American Gods and Mrs. Dalloway.

I am trying not to attend to the voice inside my head that says she wants to re-read Game of Thrones. There will be plenty of time for that. If I’m smart, I’ll wait till he finishes the series (no jokes or snarking allowed), see how folks like the ending, then decide whether to give it a go.

What do you hope to read this summer?

After watching Season 1 of Slings and Arrows, it was natural to want to watch a production of Hamlet. We recently watched, and didn’t love, the David Tennant one, which was an unpleasant hybrid of a stage production and a film. We watched Branagh’s completist Hamlet a few years ago. That one bugs me more than a little, as I don’t think the unedited, Frankenstein-ian full text was ever meant to be, or should be, produced in its entirety. And so we settled on, please don’t judge us, the 2000 film with Ethan Hawke. And we really enjoyed it. This modern-media overload version of Hamlet made some interesting choices, and ones that played to the strength of film, rather than just filming a stage-type production. Hawke was fine as Hamlet, as were Gertrude and Claudius. It is a rare production that portrays Gertrude as more than a pawn. I thought Julia Stiles did a fine modern Ophelia, and the casting of Bill Murray as Polonius was interesting, given his comedic past and dramatic present. Most memorable, though, was Liev Schreiber as Laertes. Often Laertes is portrayed simply as a weakling or fool. Not so, here. Schreiber brings a physical presence and palpable sense of menace to the role. Worthwhile if you are a fan of the play, and at less than two hours, a decent expenditure of time.

My husband has become increasingly enamored of local band Cloud Cult, so we snapped up a used copy of the documentary, No One Said It Would Be Easy. It’s charming, but slow and a little meandering at first, rather like the lead singer/songwriter Craig Minowa. But as the documentary continues, and the several band members and associates contribute their memories, art and interpretations, the documentary becomes rather like one of their songs–layered, auditory, visual, weird, beautiful and touching. There is one particularly sad part of the band’s history I won’t spoil here. Another coda to the dvd is that cellist Sara Young and her husband Adrian, their manager, chose to leave the band after the documentary was completed. On screen, theirs was a compelling story, as they talked about and were shown through the process of having two children while playing and touring with the band. It must have been a difficult change, as Sara had been with Craig through all the permutations of the band, yet I’m sure her work/life split will be far more balanced.

If you haven’t heard Cloud Cult before, give them a listen.

For a family film, I took 7yo Drake and 5yo Guppy to see Rio, no relation to the Angry Birds game. We saw it at the Riverview, a discount theater with delicious popcorn topped with real butter, and that was the best part of the experience for me. I was glad not to have paid full price or even standard matinee price. I didn’t feel bad about napping for the last 30 minutes or so of the film. Here’s a good guide to whether you would like the film:

Does the lost bird get found? He can’t fly at the beginning of the movie; can he fly by the end? Do the geeky scientist and awkward librarian fall in love? Do the male and female birds end up together? Does the villain have dark skin? Do the actors who voice the comic relief have dark skin, as opposed to those who voice the central characters?

If you hesitate over any of these questions, then you might not be as bored by Rio as I was. But the boys were delighted, and it was a fine way to spend a rainy afternoon on the cheap.

After the dust settled in the Batman universe last year, I bade farewell to the last superhero titles I was reading. I mostly enjoyed Grant Morrison’s take on Batman et al, but once Batman Incorporated started I lost interest in the reboot.

Then I saw the Batwoman: Elegy graphic novel collection, by Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams III, with an introduction by Rachel Maddow, featuring an ass-kicking redhead. I knew that book was coming home with me. It did not disappoint.

Like her namesake, Batwoman is a vigilante in a mask with a secret identity: Kate Kane, a former West Point cadet. We are soon shown she’s a lesbian (the most prominent gay character in the DC universe), which matters in her personal life. Behind the mask, though, she seeks to confront a new villain coming to town who will be head of Gotham City’s many covens.

The contrasts of personal and private life, painted and penciled art, plus easy-access introduction to a new, compelling character and villain made this a fast, enjoyable read, and a welcome return for me to the DC universe.

I’m reading about Louise Erdrich as I prepare to discuss The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse tomorrow. In an interview she did with Bill Moyers, she includes this piece she wrote to herself as an encouragement to keep writing:

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew in a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls under the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzle
or the doll’s tiny shoes, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic.
Go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementoes.
Don’t sort the paperclips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience.

A Canadian television series now available on DVD, Slings and Arrows was recommended at Mental Multivitamin. My thoughtful husband got it for me immediately, and then (as so often happens) it languished on our shelf, gathering dust.

(Oh, my, has it really be over THREE YEARS since that recommendation, and likely that long it’s been on the shelf?)

Last week we pulled it out, and went through the first season’s 6 episodes in quick succession. It’s about a Shakespeare festival theater in Canada, its struggles to make survive and put on a credible version of Hamlet. Oliver is the fussy director, Ellen is the aging actress, Geoffrey is the former-star-who-had-a-famous-breakdown, and Rachel McAdams plays a likable ingenue. It’s mostly funny, with some tragedy and romance thrown in for good measure. The cast is enormously engaging, as is the play within the show. I look forward to Season 2, which I’m waiting for from the library.