Around & about

It's president's day. And if you're one of those people (like me) stuck at work when the rest of your people are presidentially enjoying their day off, you might want for something to read.

If you are bumming around today, read these. It's a good way to spend some time off.

• It turns out the Vatican was also contemplating Amy Winehouse.
  
• Jason Morehead asks great questions about The Persecution Complex of the Modern Introvert.
  
• 10 Lists That Read Like Poems 
• I already have a psychotic compulsion for making lists. I now want to make a list in each category, especially one like Nora Ephron's and Isaac Newton's. Or I wonder if I'd get hired by making Da Vinci's list into a resume for myself.
  
• Then I also found Thelonius Monk's awesome list of advice, reminding me he was as much philosopher as he was musician. How to be cool and be good and all that jazz.
  
•  "The tremendous activity of a boy sitting still." The Fine Arts Museum of St. Petersburg, FL had a strong collection of Ashcan Art- paintings from early 20th cent. urban and immigrant life. I thought it was some of the best art I found in Florida.  These works are powerful and real. They make the Impressionists look like they drowned in their damned waterlily ponds. Read this great discussion of what they meant to America and art here.
• Excerpt: ""People's houses," Robert Henri wrote, "get to look like them. There is more in a house than the materials it is made of. Humanize the house." The Ashcan School painters took this very seriously, finding ways to humanize nearly everything. In George Luks' 1908 painting, “The Guitar (a Portrait of the Artist's Brother with His Son),” a guitar is shown to be a tool by which the father will teach the infant son how to become a man. The guitar is an outgrowth of the father's character as it is being imprinted on the baby boy."
  
• I am on the hunt for a used copy of Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I keep seeing it quoted and used about life in California. I live in California. I love California.  I want to write like Joan Didion. So I must read this classic book. It also needs to be a real copy. It won't be as real as she is if I yank it out of an Amazon package and crack the spiffy new spine myself.. If you're browsing second hand shops, and you see one of these, pick it up for me. Until then, read this great interview with her from Believer Magazine.
  
• Have I mentioned lately that I love where I live? Look what's happening in a couple of weeks to the Bay Bridge--a bridge I try not to cross because it takes me to the wrong side of the bay (Oakland is NOT for me), but still!  How awesome will this be?
  
• Maybe I would have been more athletic if I had known Scientists suggest beer after a workout.
  
• Remember when I said that going to bars and seeing friends' bands was one of my favorite things to do? Some of those those guys from those bars in my twenties are still at it. Look. I even have a t-shirt with the lead singer on it.
  
• .Making Art With 60,000 Woven Coffee Stirrers What a glorious use for them! Hooray for physics and art!
  

Desert Island Books

"If you were stranded on a desert island, what is the one (fill in the blank) you'd want to have with you?"

It's annoying when people say "The

Bible", because we never know if they mean it.

When getting ready to move, this question doesn't exactly count as packing strategy. But the process of selection and rejection is an interesting one. People wouldn't ask about desert islands if what is brought or left wasn't somehow telling.

I don't have to answer "The Bible", because I am moving in with a Pastor. Chances are, there is a bible or two around that house.

I did however take my two beautiful bookshelves and consolidate the travel ones to a single milk crate. If it didn't fit in the crate, it didn't go. Forecasting what I'd need and what I wouldn't was tough. I mostly got it write, with a few exceptions.

The top-five books I'm glad I brought:

1. Discovering Marin, A Historical Tour of Cities and Towns, by Louise Teather.

Every time I go to a place in Marin County, I look up the history of where I went. The book had a 1973 copyright, so it's good for original history, but that's a pretty big gap and a lot has changed in Marin since the 1970's. A friend bought it for me at a book fair. I love the historical information more than I care that this is one of the most boring books I have ever read.

2. Jesus Among Other Gods, by Ravi Zacharias. The more I read this, the more I see it as a manual to presenting the Gospel to the heart and mind of Marin County.

3. Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard. One of my favorite books of all time, re-reading it comforts me. It is very atmospheric as I'm on the rugged, North-Pacific Coast. It talks about both God and Christian community as she finds them revealed in nature-- and God, Church, and Natural Beauty are intense parts of my experience here.

4. Lonely Planet's San Francisco City Guide. I have been a Lonely Planet fan for a while, but between this book and my GPS, I am fearless. I carry it around with me. A few times I have been in The City with some extra time, so I look in the book to see what else is in my neighborhood, plug it into the GPS, and off I go! Neither device, however, prepares me for the parking nightmare I'll find when I arrive. (On Parking: It seems the City of San Francisco got special help with it. They first employed petulant Olympian deities to grant or revoke them from drivers in an arbitrary way, then they reached out to the Italian mafia to fix the extortionist rates and enforce the meters.)

5. The Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham. Also, on a whim, I threw the Penguin Classics Letters of Vincent Van Gogh in the crate. The Moon and Sixpence is Maugham's fictional, literary tribute to Paul Gauguin. As I'm reading it, I'm finding the veil of fiction to be a pretty transparent one. This turned out to be my most precise set of predictions. While the Musee D'Orsay in Paris closes down for 9 months, my city is hosting some of it's masterpieces. San Francisco is the only one to get the works, and the exhibit is called

Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay

I have seen these pieces before, but now I have the books to read and prepare so I can actually appreciate what I see when I do!

The milk crate wasn't a total victory, however. There are a few things I am sorely missing.

The top-five books I wish I'd brought:

1. Orthodoxy: The Annotated Edition - Paperback (Aug. 1, 2002) by G. K. Chesterton and Craig M. Kibler

2. Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church by Philip Yancey

3. Spirit Rebellious, by Kahlil Gibran--a vintage volume about the strife in Lebanon, on revolution and Society.

4. Everyman's Poems by William Cowper. I had a vintage copy from the 1930's that was the best collection of his work I have seen, especially with some rarely-printed favorites. I found myself trying to recall some of his lines the other day with no way to look them up.

5. The Maytrees: A Novel by Annie Dillard. I have time to read and I left my unread copy of this back in Florida. I keep seeing it featured everywhere here.

For the brief time I lived in that apartment, I sure did love having all of my books around me.

What I'm Reading

I came across the most annoying thing the other day: I was reading and in the middle of the book, for three chapters, the pages were out of order! 148, 152, 151, 150, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161... and on. I have never had a book where the printing flaws were so debilitating! I figured it's because I only paid $.75 for it at a used book sale, but still! Someone should have put a warning sticker on McCarthy's Bar: Warning: This book was assembled by an Irishman who has had too much Guinness.

I have been plowing through a few other things since Christmas, and in honor of having just finished the school year, I thought I'd post the list of books I have a new capability finishing in the coming weeks (provided all of the pages are in order).

I'm well into, and sure to imminently finish:

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
McCarthy's Bar, by Pete McCarthy - a travel narrative to get ready for my trip!
The Dubliners, James Joyce
The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Phillip Yancey
For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers by Susan Cahill

Notebooks

This summer, I started making my own books. I really love my Moleskine, but I wanted something with the same design of different sizes, distinct appearance, and varying page count. I need to tell one notebook from another.

From my moleskine design, I kept:

• blank, non-lined paper (a must! also hard to find in notebooks instead of sketchbooks)
  
• a closure
• a hard cover
  
• pocket
  
• a bookmark ribbon
  
• and hand-sewn pages that lay fully flat

I added:

• unique cover art
• varying page count
  
• wider page width

I have made about twenty now, and I gave most away as gifts. This is my most recent and some of my most favorite work:

Seattle Photos

I have more writing coming, but I thought I would put these up since I have them ready.

For Those Wondering How I Spent My Break

they should consult the following tableau:

The only significant thing missing is George Herbert, who is 2 years old today.

The Gargantuan Book Sale

I thought I would a list of my terrific finds from the book sale in Gainesville on Saturday, but this seemed a little more efficient:

Ramblings

• I just watched the movie Once, and it was as lovely as everyone said. Its earnestness was captivating. As I watched the Dublin scenery, it made me really excited for the trip to Ireland I'm planning. But then I thought the Dublin in the movie does not exist in the touristy city-centre where I'll likely be. I'd have to live there to find it. I remember seeing that landscape in Belfast--gritty, working-class, hardened. I was drawn to it, but as a foreigner, there was nothing to draw me in. And I just wished something that seemed so real wasn't so off-limits to me.
  
  
• I went to a gargantuan book sale today in Gainesville, and I had to quit buying books when, with a box and a bag, I had more than I could physically carry. And, while I'm excited about my finds, the finding and buying them was a surreal experience. Suffice to say I don't suffer crowds well to begin with, and this place was third-world crowded. The prices were so low and the searching was so aggressive, it felt more like looting than buying. And all at once we were the Yahoos from Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I wondered what the Houyhnhnms would think if they saw us. They'd think the hundreds of book grubbers looked like they were digging useless things from the earth for the sake of greed and competition.
  
  But these things were books--and classics and textbooks at that! The very things that are supposed to redeem us from the ignorance that begets greed and mindless competition. It was jarring to see this frenetic tableau paired with and created for its opposite, reading and contemplation. While I wanted to flee the debasing of the Books, I thought they're probably just books, and I bought a box full.
  
  
• I've been wondering what to live for. And the weight of "purpose" resembles the weather--English weather. There are days of brilliant sunshine that soak the wild daffodils, where everything is clear and in sharp focus. Then there are some days of continual, relentless rain with the kind of piercing cold that makes you feel bruised from the inside out. But most days are in the middle, dry but overcast--not darkness but greyness.
  
  
• Today I considered whether I could have / would have been friends with Holden Caulfield. And I don't think so. I think people who cite Catcher in the Rye as their favorite book might have missed the point. That child--and I do mean child--lives in a peculiar hell he made for himself.
  

Because Jen Does

An interactive birthday list:

• A fine art umbrella
• a polarizer
• a subscription to Smithsonian magazine
  
• Moleskine City Books, Boston and Dublin
• Moleskine large plain notebook
• Long-sleeved J-Crew tees, XL
• personalized stationery
  
• anthropologie Aloha candle
• an electric kettle
• New car adapter for my ipod.
  
• a new French Press (mine broke)
  
• anything from my Amazon Wishlist
• stovetop espresso maker
• Prog by The Bad Plus
• Some Cities by Doves
• On the Outside by Starsailor
• NARS lipgloss in Bad Education
• mug trees for my classroom
  

Sioux Falls Weekend

Not into Thrill Rides

I always thought that if I wrote for a living (in those rare moments short on self-consciousness) I'd write fiction. People say you are supposed to write what you like reading most--and I find the right novel ranks among one of earth's greatest pleasures.

But the person I am now probably couldn't write fiction. I can't bear to let things unfold on their own--a characteristic that makes me unbearable company for film-watching. I must know what comes next.

Woe is the man who has seen the movie when I haven't and knows what happens when I don't.

My friend Dave talks about his ultimate adventure being a roll-the-dice roadtrip. He thinks one should get up in the morning with the map and roll to see whether to go North, South, East, West, or to stay put. Another die says how long to drive and how long to stay.

When I consider this, my heart races in panic. Where do we start? Where do we stay? What do we eat? When do we stop for gas? When will we stop at all? What if we go too far? What if we get lost? How do we get home? How much will this cost?

That is not an ultimate adventure. That is an ultimate nightmare.

Right now, I feel fiction's departure from reality as a weighty responsibility--make that liability. Even if I "write from real life" (as everyone is advised), I still must launch characters from the known shore. But doing that means I don't know they'll be able to get back. Maybe good fiction doesn't care if it gets lost at sea, but I won't risk sailing off the edge of the earth.

It's not worth it to me.

The actual writing of the fiction, to me, bears the same horror as Dave's ideal vacation.

And I don't think it is supposed to.

Christmas List

I checked the refrigerator today when I got home for "tree-festooning," and all of my siblings had their Christmas lists posted. The problem with posting things on the fridge is that you can't add hyperlinks; one may look at a written list, but there is no compulsion to click on it. So I posted mine in the family pile, but here is where you can add specifics and pictures.

So, without further adieu, the interactive Christmas List:

• long sleeve JCrew tshirts. (XL, holiday red, black, and sapphire)


• a weekly London Engagement Calendar


• bookends


• a pretty inkwell


• The Blair Decade, PBS video


• Moleskine City Books, Boston and Dublin


• Moleskin large plain notebook


• Magnetic Poetry (I have never owned a set and always wanted one.)


• Levenger Ink in cobalt blue and emerald


• Style 101, from InStyle


• Elements of Style by Strunk & White (mine has dissappeared)


• This is Not a Book, by Michael Picard


• England, England, by Julian Barnes


• Joshua Tree, U2


• Under the Table and Dreaming, Dave Matthews


• Crash, Dave Matthews


• Stars: The Best of the Cranberries, 1992-2002


• Stella by Stella McCartney


• Weekly Subscription to The Washington Times


• A Subscription to Paste magazine.


• Anything from my Amazon Wishlist


• Anything from my Sephora Wishlist

I seem to have posted a series of shallow, materialistic lists. I will make a real post later.

Thanksgiving top- fives

It is hard to categorize my restful and heart-warming experience for this trip to the Midwest. But one of my "core-competencies" is list-making, so this is probably the best way to make notes about my holiday. Here are some more Top-Fives:

Things I miss about the Midwest:

1. Caribou Coffee
2. The smell of the cold
3. heavy, fluffy scarves
4. the lack of a need to lock doors
5. being able to find cold storage anywhere outside during the winter

Favorite Christmas decorations:

1. white lights
2. red ribbons
3. red berries and evergreen
4. sparkly tinsel
5. **mistletoe**

Places to drink in Sioux Falls
Going out is unbelievably inexpensive here! Pint of imported (read snobby) beer: $2.75

1. McNally's Irish Pub
2. Braccos
3. Paramount Piano & Wine Bar, on Phillips Ave
4. Long Shots (Main Ave)
5. Kaladi's

Favorite Sioux Falls Stores

1. World Market (Cadbury dark chocolate Flake bars, and McVittles Plain Chocolate "Digestives" [cookies] )
2. Zandbros (new fountain pen converter, Pelikan Blue ink, Dover collection of W. Somerset Maugham short stories, Christmas cards with a Dickens Quotation)
3. Barnes and Noble (one of the largest I have ever seen, purchased a renewed Victoria magazine, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Barnes and Noble's History of Ancient Rome for dad )
4. Ten Thousand Villages (jewelry from India and Chile, Bangles from Bengal, experienced "singing bowls" for the first time thanks to Chase)
5. The Red Shoe (purchased absolutely nothing, but this is a common reaction of mine to Stuart Wietzman and Cole Haan)

*You Left Your Heart Where?!?

For Thanksgiving, I am going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Can I just say how much I love this city? I usually get the wierdest looks when I talk about how excited I am to go there, but you have to go there--maybe you even have to go there with Dave--to see how charming it is. Dave pretty much grew up there. I cannot count the number of hours I have spent with him, driving around the "country's biggest suburb," admiring all of its quaint eccentricities.

For instance, Sioux Falls has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any where in the country--it is a great place to go out. It has a thriving local theatre and arts scene, my favorite coffee shop chain, Caribou Coffee, as well independent coffee shops scattered all over the city (inc. a tiny Ethiopian one on 10th where I think my friend Mike and I were the only white people to have ever been there). It has a Magnolia tree, which is strange because you are not supposed to be able to grow Magnolias that far north (Magnolias are my favorite tree). It has one of the largest green spaces in the country, with a park that on either side of the river that surrounds the city. This city's people have a ridiculous amount of civic pride; it has a long history, and they celebrate it (with the kind of brass placards nerds like me have to stop and read). And the people are friendly in that mid-western, down-to-earth, genuine sort of way. In case you get a chance to go, here is a list of things to do when you get there.

Top Five things to do in Sioux Falls, SD

1. Zandbros: a variety store/independent bookstore. It is where I bought my first fountain pen, they carry the Bloomsbury Review (the sign of a good bookstore), and the type of quirky, home-decorating stationary things where people always ask. "Where did you get that?" Bonus: there is an antique-soda-fountain-turned-coffee shop in the back.
   
2. The Washington Pavillion. Instead of tearing down an old highschool, they turned it into a civic arts center. It has a performing arts center, and both a permanent visual arts collection and rotating exhibits. The last time I was there, they had an exhibit about Harold Edgerton (that is now in Arizona.)
   
3. Falls Park. They light it up for Christmas and it is gorgeous. In the summer, when the falls are low, you can climb all over them; and in the spring, when they are full of the melting snow, it is a powerful experience.
   
4. The Sculpture Walk. Some really great pieces have come from here. The city votes on their favorite, then the city buys it each year and puts it out for everyone to enjoy. It started out as local artists, but now it is a national competition. Local corporations also buy pieces and put them in places for the city to enjoy.
   
5. St. Joseph's Cathedral (See photo above). You can sit on the steps for one of the best views of the city.It is a beautiful piece of architecture--stained glass windows and all.

*title taken from a NYTimes Article.

Some top-fives

I was reading the Guardian, and one click led to another, taking me to this. What a masterpiece! And this was the commentary: "The elegance and logic of Harry Beck's design - its combination of bustling intersections, sprawling tributaries, long, slanting tangents and abrupt dead ends, all sucked into the overturned wine bottle of the Circle Line - seems to spark other connections and appeal to the brain's innate desire for patterning and structure."

"The brain's innate desire for pattern and structure".... might explain my top-five lists.

I have been mulling over these lists for a while, and in lieu of a real blog entry, here are some of my recent top-fives:

Favorite Things Men Wear:

1. well-cut, single-breasted black suit
2. closely-coordinated shirt and tie
3. Pea-coat
4. The Jeans--the kind that sit just right
5. cologne--particularly Armani

Renaissance Art Works:

1. Michelangelo's David
2. Botticelli's Primavera
3. Ucello's Battle of San Ramano
4. Rafael's Entombment
5. Donatello's St. John the Evangelist

Favorite Beers:

1. John Smith's
2. Old Speckled Hen
3. Southshore Red
4. Newcastle
5. Guinnesss

Favorite Actors:

1. Cary Grant (hands-down favorite)
2. Colin Firth
3. Jimmy Stewart
4. John Cusak
5. Anthony Hopkins

Things I'd like to own someday:

1. A really expensive, beautiful fountain pen engraved with my initials
2. An overstuffed reading chair that permits me to sit sideways
3. A full wine rack
4. A tailored leather jacket
5. a DSLR
   
   Ok.. so this list is way longer than five...


6. A diamond ring
7. an espresso Machine
8. A British Passport

Other artful things of note:

• I love my Levenger bottled ink. I can't believe I ever used any other kind. It is strong and vibrant, and it has made the most stubborn pens smooth and sure.


• I found a new lip gloss by Laura Mercier that replaces my discontinued favorite from Guerlain.


• I have a new travel mug from Starbucks that epitomizes the travel mug. It has a non-leaky top that flips open and is non-intrusive. It keeps my coffee warm through 5th period, and it is a pretty raspberry color.

entourage

"What have you read?" The question is not "what have you read?" but "what are you reading?"

I have a friend who always finishes one book before starting another. He even finishes one book before he BUYS another. I could never live like this. For me, this would be akin to going through my whole day only talking to one person; in the case of a long book, a whole month in the company of only one.

I have another friend who says she doesn't feel like she has really ready anything because she has 20 unfinished things. I don't agree with this, either, because it makes reading and books some kind of to-do list: I don't have to finish something for it to mean anything. For me, books are living things that walk with me, drawing me into a deeper reality.

So each day, I actually have this invisible entourage of authors and ideas going along with me. You don't put friends and mentors on a to-do list, and what kind of entourage only has one person?

Of course, the Red Beacon of Crazy flashes when you tell people, "I don't read. I have an entourage."

Nonetheless, here is my entourage for this month:

Orthodoxy--G.K. Chesterton
Real Christianity--William Wilberforce
Velvet Elvis--Rob Bell
Liberty, Equality, and Power-- Murrin, Johnson, et al.
Letters from London--Julian Barnes
A Long Way Down--Nick Hornby
The Metaphysical Poets--Penguin Classics
New Poems on the Underground
Jane Eyre--Charlotte Bronte. (Actually, this one has been walking with me for a decade. It is my favorite book. I am always reading it just a little bit.)