The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
This. Is. Awesome.
And I decided to test my new “pro account” by checking to see if I can finally embed video:
A Mercy, by Toni Morrison
Book 43
A Mercy was a pick for One Book One Chicago awhile back. I pulled it off the shelf when I found an audio version, read by the author.
The setting is Virginia, 1680. a seven-year-old slave is sold away from her mother and brother – at her mother’s request. The family she lands with is not the worst, but slavery is slavery. Morrison illustrates beautifully the attachments and detachments and dependence upon the kindness of strangers that is inherent in the institution.
The story is told in multiple voices and doesn’t maintain a linear timeline – which made it harder to follow in audio. But Morrison seemed to be going for less plot and more.. sensibility.
If there is a main thread, it follows Florens – the seven-year-old now a teenager – who is sent on an errand to find the blacksmith (who is also her lover) who seems to have some secret for curing smallpox. It has already killed the master of the house and is now taking down the mistress. The feeling of what the hell will happen to all of these people if she dies is pretty profound.
SPOILER ALERT: Also profound is the when the blacksmith tells Florens that he doesn’t want to be with her because she will always be a slave. Emotionally, he meant.
Finally, the las chapter of the book is in the voice of Florens’ mother. Explaining herself. On one hand, I wish the plot of the story had held together better. On the other, this fractured short novel probably conveyed more depth of feeling than it could have with twice the length in a single narrative.
Blankets 56 – 64 2012
I took the pictures, I washed the blankets, I even delivered them to Project Linus and I forgot to post the pics.
This one started with the grey pieces. I had planned to quilt them together over a year ago with a yarn that was..blue. Or plum. Don’t remember, but it was too dark. So I tossed the finished pieces into the back of my closet and forgot about them. I just pulled them out and bought some new yarn and this is how it turned out:
You can expect to see at least one more just like it. I’m not out of grey pieces yet. Lion Brand Vanna Yarn in Pink, White and ..some kind of grey
This is the Took For Freakin’ Ever Blanket
Which is what happens when you want to fully crochet something large. Caron Simply Soft in Country Blue and Heather Grey.
And now on to the fleece.
See that one in the middle? Solid camel colored fleece. The horses were sewn on by another volunteer from some leftover fleece pieces. I used a cream colored yarn – Red Heart, probably – and it turned out nicely. And we have more Disney princesses, with Caron white yarn. I also used Caron yarn with the awesome lizards, but I don’t remember the name of the blue.
Finally, the bugs and the nursery animals used those same Caron yarns. The pirates had Red Heart’s cherry red and the dogs have..I don’t remember the name. Michael’s house yarn in some variety of pink.
Nine in one month seems like a lot, but the two fully crocheted had been in progress forever and a couple of the fleece pieces were baby blankets.
Wright-Way Rescue’s Run for Shelter 5K
I have posted about two charity walks that I have done with Fiona, and on Friday I registered for a third. This time, because Wright-Way is the shelter that brought me Gibbs, I set up a fundraising account. This is the picture they first posted that made my mother say, “I want to adopt that dog and name him after Mark Harmon”:
Why, you ask, am I taking Fiona instead of Gibbs to the charity walk for his rescue? Because Gibbs gets anxious in new situations and around new people and anyway, his leash manners are terrible. Fiona can’t be trusted for five minutes in her own back yard, but put her on a leash and take her freakin’ anywhere and she is golden. Gratuitous Fiona pic:
Anyway. I may have mentioned that Wright-Way is a rescue based downstate that specializes in scooping up puppies and pregnant mamas that are dumped in rural shelters. When they are ready, they are vetted and most are adopted out of a facility in suburban Chicago. But Wright-Way is losing its local lease and is trying to raise funds to purchase a permanent facility.
When I registered, I used the tools to plaster the links all over my social media sites. The next morning, I checked my work e-mail and found a message from a colleague saying he’d be glad to donate and I should stop by his office on Monday. A couple of hours after that, I received an e-mail from firstgiving.com saying that my boss had made a donation.
That is two people from my office donating before even my mother. I love my job.
The event is October 6. If there are any locals who like to join in, I’d be glad to have you there. If not, Fiona and I have no trouble walking in by ourselves and meeting people. And of course, I will be thrilled with any donations you may be inclined to make. You can find my page here.
Gibbs thanks you.
Hamlet at Writers’ Theatre
So. Writers’ kicked off the season with Hamlet. Pretty bold.
I had a copy of the old Lawrence Olivier version and watched it for the first time a week or so ago – just to try and get Kenneth Brannagh out of my head. It reminded me of two things:
- One of the really interesting things when comparing interpretations of Hamlet is..because it is so bloody long..what the director chooses to leave out. For example, the Olivier version entirely dropped the characters of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.
- I cannot stand Polonius. Seriously. If I were to make a Top 10 List of most heinous fictional characters of all time, Polonius would most certainly make the cut.
I wonder what it says about a production of Hamlet when the actor playing Polonius (Ross Lehman) steals the damn show?
One easy place to judge is how they pull off the scenes with the ghost. Is it believably creepy and intimidating or a cheeseball mess? Larry Yando and some particularly effective audio and lighting made it work very well.
Shannon Cochran, a regular at Writers’, played Gertrude with some attitude of the eye-rolling variety that I rather enjoyed. (I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say, “Dude, seriously. He is grievingfor his father.”) Michael Canavan as Claudius was not quite as..slithery as some I have seen. Made several scenes easier to take, actually. Kareem Bandealy rocked playing Horatio – probably my favorite character – as there were many sniffles to be heard during the final scene.
Which leaves us with Scott Parkinson as Hamlet himself. He has been at Writers’ Theatre before and I enjoy his work. The odd thing is I think much of what I noticed in his performance were director Michael Halberstam’s fingerprints. For example, the distinctive interpretive thing that I saw was the progression of the “madness”. I am no scholar of Shakespeare, (and Halberstam most definitely is) but my sense is that Hamlet begins in grief, has a “crazy like a fox” thing going for a bit, and then somewhere along the way loses the line between feigning madness and going mad. Some of the subtlety was lost on me and Hamlet looked freakin’ nuts very early on. Also, I wasn’t really feeling the love between Hamlet and Ophelia. (However, I may be overly-influenced by Brannagh’s full-frontal-assault version of the affair.) Having said that, Parkinson played the laughs to perfection, which can’t be easy, and he nailed the final scene.
As always, Writers’ took an epic and played it so well that you forget the small space and just live in it for a bit. I was particularly glad during the fencing not to be sitting in the front row.
So, yeah. This was a good one.
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Book 42
When I saw that Jeremy Irons did the audio reading, I snapped it up from the library. I’d listen to that guy read the phone book. And I must say that he did the voice of an old man on his death bed so well that it was creepy.
So. Charles Ryder, meets Sebastian Flyte, second son of a Marquess, their first year at Oxford. Soon they are inseparable and Ryder spends a whole lot of time with the crazy Flyte family. Sebastian’s drinking habit spirals out of control, everyone is angry with Charles about it and he leaves. Close first act.
Years go by, marriages, children..when Charles meets up with the sister, Julia, on a trans-atlantic ship. Begin affair. Will they divorce their spouses and end up together?
While most of the story is set between the two World Wars (clearly Downton Abbey borrows a great deal from here), this felt to me like it was less about the decline and fall of the British aristocracy and more about life in and outside the Catholic faith. Very compelling.
Why New Orleans Matters, by Tom Piazza
Book 41
Another post-Katrina memoir of a New Orleans transplant making the case for for why the people saying Let it Sink Into the Gulf are wrong and totally suck.
He talks about his first visit and falling in love with the town. About the couple of years where he saved up his pennies to be at Jazz Fest for all ten days. And finally making it his home. That is good stuff.
The brief section on the actual hurricane was pretty awesome. He wrote it the way I would have read it anyway – flashes of illustrations interjected abruptly with feelings interspersed with, “Who the hell wants to hear any of this again?”
Here is my favorite part:
“If you do not live in New Orleans you can try this simple experiment: Put a chalk mark on your wall at a point three feet from the floor, then imagine everything below that line coated with toxic scum, swollen with foul moisture. If this is difficult to imagine, take this book, place it in a sink filled with water and leave it there for a week and a half. Then place the soaked book on the floor and try to imagine the entire floor filled with several layers of such books. If this is still hard to envision this, take all of your books, place them in your bathtub and immerse them in a mix of water, urine, spoiled food, feces, weed killer from the garage, and perhaps your beloved cat, preferably drowned and bloated.”
And note that Piazza was one of the lucky ones.
I Totally Made This.
I have mentioned that my mother and I have been gifting my grandfather with scarves and hats and mittens to donate to his church for Christmas. I may have mentioned that the scarves are generally crocheted The mittens are not. And occasionally my mother will try to knit a hat.
I have more than enough scarves for this year and it is only September. So I bought one of those cheap round looms at Michael’s and gave it a try.
And you guys.
I made a hat!
Project Linus Volunteer Appreciation – 2012
Most non-profits will have some kind of annual gathering to thank the volunteers. Cocktail parties around the holidays are rather popular. My chapter of Project Linus has a Saturday morning tea in September.
The fabulous thing about it is the program filled with representatives from the hospitals and social service agencies that the chapter serves. They tell the stories of the children that we have helped with the blankets we create. Seriously, you could cry.
Last year, I learned that we deliver blankets to the Lake County Courthouse, where there is a place for children to wait for their parents who are “taking care of court business”. There are a lot of reasons that a kid could be there, but I can’t think of any that are particularly happy. This year, when we were addressed by the program director, she presented us with this “quilt” made by the kids (Penny is holding it up to show us):
She noted that the card with the horse was created by a girl that had been in the program regularly for six years.
In addition to the program, there were pizzas, prizes (I won a gift basket, thank you) – oh! and here are the table settings:
The theme was “Red, White and Blue” and included a Blanket Challenge Contest where attendees voted on the winners. Here are a few from the “yarn” division. I did not enter:
But I did draw on a quilt block. This is a shot of three from my table. Someone will gather them all and make them into quilts for the children of soldiers.
Mine is the one in the center. Because I can’t draw. Miss Ingrid totally copied my fireworks idea.
It was a good time and I still have a week and a half before Starbucks night to finish the one last blanket in my stash. No problem.
The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
Book 40
Novelist Douglas Preston went to Florence and found himself living right next to the scene of a double murder – one of seven committed by a serial killer. The victims were all young lovers, shot with a handgun in the middle of the act. Then the girl was mutilated with a scuba knife.
Preston grew all obsessed with the case and teamed up with Spezi – a Florentine journalist that had been investigating from the beginning. Spezi gives us the background, and notes that someone asked the FBI for a psychological profile. The profile fits one of the people that the U.S. might call a “person of interest”.
The thing is, the story is much more about the lame investigations and gawdawful accusations and prosecutions that culminate in Spezi and Preston themselves being accused of obstruction/perjury/other such nonsense in the Monster case.
The book was published in 2008, and mentioned the Amanda Knox case in the Afterword. Knox lived in the same area and was prosecuted by the same thug that was after Spezi and Preston. Preston didn’t say, “Amanda is innocent,” but he said that he was approached by another journalist that had information that might have led to her exoneration. The journalist was frightened into stifling it.
Apparently, saving face is a great big deal in this culture. Preston asserts that the prosecutors would pick a theory, then pursue evidence to prove it – disregarding any facts that may contradict it.
The reviews of this book suggest that Florence itself is the main character here. Perhaps the same could be said for the Italian judicial system. It is far more frightening than the murderer.
The Next Dark Age 