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18:13
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Sentences We Love
"You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting.
So... get on your way!"
Dr. Seuss
We're trying to make the most of summer before school begins - one last play date, swim, camping trip, mountain hike... or just lolling on the deck furniture.
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18:08
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Sentences We Love
"We turn not older with years, but newer every day."
Emily Dickinson
A wonderful sentence for anyone of a "certain" age who is having a birthday... It reminds me (only in concept, not in subject) of Martin Amis' Time's Arrow with its story in reverse chronology. It's all in your vantage point.
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20:31
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Sentences We Love
"Windows augment and sear into our memory the beauties of the vistas beyond them..."
So said Klara Glowczewska, Editor in Chief, Conde Nast Traveler.
So as you take vacations and hope for a room with a view, Glowczewska thinks it matters so much to our travel enjoyment, she has compiled a new book titled
Room With A View. I don't want to spend much time in my hotel room on travels - let's go and do! Yet seeing the views in this book, perhaps sitting, gazing and searing would be wonderful too.
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19:47
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Sentences We Love
"It is only you who can make you feel uncomfortable or awkward. I've found the whole experience really liberating."That's one participant in the "
Six Easy Pieces, 31 Challenging Days" experiment chronicled in the New York Times. These women and men decided it was too time-consuming, too consumerist, too whatever to buy and keep closets full of clothes, so they chose six pieces to wear for one month (besides accessories, shoes and undies).
I thought the most telling outcome was that nobody noticed. Yes, in our image-conscious society nobody at work, no friends said, "Hey why are you wearing the same thing over and over?"
How liberating! And yet in an odd reverse way.... maybe that's more fashionable anyway. One participant began quoting Coco Chanel who said “I don’t do fashion, I am fashion.”
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21:28
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Sentences We Love
"People might call my rooms stark, but I think they're like when you have a mint in your mouth and you breathe in deeply - there's a freshness, a crispness."
Interior Designer
Vicente WolfMixing the senses is invigorating. Think how a smell tastes, or how a color feels. So I appreciated the description from this New York designer. Wolf has been in the business 30 years, written books, won awards. And he knows how to describe things too - I know the sensation (or look) he is talking about.
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9:05
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Sentences We Love
"No jump roping on the stairs!"
"Don't eat rocks."
"Please don't write on each other with colored markers."
And my personal favorite....
"The next time we buy a brand new car, please do not write your name on it with a stick."
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12:56
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Sentences We Love
"Donald Trump... can make a Savile Row suit look cheap."
Countess Louise J. Esterhazy is the non de plume of John Fairchild who is retiring his society column from W magazine. The father of 83 year old Fairchild created Women's Wear Daily. His society column has bashed designers, stars and other celebrities over the decades so I'm sharing this bit of wit from his last column.
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13:58
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Sentences We Love
Carl Jung said, 'What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate."
Hmmm... do you believe in fate? I think we often call things fate when we don't see how our actions contributed to an outcome. Not as poetic - but it's similar to the phenomenon of suddenly noticing a type of car on the road when you are considering buying one. So much information comes at us, we're selective in what our antennae brings in. It's more filtering than fate...
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10:51
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Sentences We Love
"It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends."
So begins the delightful tales of friends growing up on Hill Street in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The books were published in the 1940's and are now having a resurgence thanks to the
Betsy-Tacy Society. In 1992, only four of the ten books were still in print. So the organization, based in Lovelace's home state of Minnesota, began a letter writing campaign to Harper Collins publishing house to get them all reprinted.
They are now back in print, recalling happy memories for moms like me and Bette Midler who said, "I read every one of these Betsy-Tacy-Tib books twice. I loved them as a child, as a young adult, and now, reading them with my daughter, as a mother. What a wonderful world it was!"
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12:55
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Sentences We Love
"Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that are forever flowing through one's head." Mark Twain
Twain is known for his acerbic wit more than for positive thinking quotes - yet I see an encouraging thought in this sentence about the power we have to be happy. In this era, we might call it mindful living. Twain's thought is similar to the quote about life being 10% what happens and 90% what we do about it. I recently wrote an article about joy and found that one proven "attitude changer" is to keep a gratitude journal and write five things you're thankful for each day before bed. It helps shift your "storm of thoughts" to happier ones.
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11:59
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Sentences We Love
"The Best Picture category was doubled - and all of us in Hollywood thought one thing: 'What's five times two?"
Steve Martin, Hosting the 2010 Academy Awards
There were many moments from last night's Oscar's best forgotten. The loud woman who interrupted an acceptance speech, Sean Penn's bizarre ad lib, the blue face gag, and several of the dresses. But Steve Martin's wit showed in several moments during the long night. His humor also shines in his books. Martin closed the evening with...
"Ladies and gentlemen, the show is so long that Avatar now takes place in the past."
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8:54
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Sentences We Love
"And this dark forest green sits down. It doesn't jump out at you."
That's designer Sam Blount describing Benjamin Moore's Lafayette Green which he likes painted on a porch floor. There's both a science and an art to color. Here Blount uses language that you wouldn't normally associate with color - but I know exactly what shade he is talking about.
One of my favorite books from childhood is
Hailstones and Halibut Bones which I blogged about last year. When my great aunt was going blind, I read these poems and tried to imagine describing a color so people could see it in their heads.
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9:10
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Sentences We Love
"If momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy."
This quote is so popular you can even buy T-shirts and mugs for the moms in your life with this sentiment emblazoned on it. It's a quote to chuckle at - yet I read something selfish in it. Do you? It's as if the line is proudly encouraging you to spread your bad mood to your loved ones to get them to behave to your liking. If my kids and husband are happy, then I'm happy too. Of course, I might even be happy anyway... but the point is I value peace and harmony. But maybe that doesn't make a good T-shirt...
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13:10
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Sentences We Love
"The pursuit of reading is carried on by private people."
So what would Virginia Woolf make of today's public sport of reading? We wait anxiously to hear Oprah's book choices, form reading clubs to discuss books as a group, make celebrities out of some authors, chat with unknown people about books online and read magazine columns to find out what books are on the bedsides of various public people. Of course, just about anything which promotes reading is fine with me. But I think Wolf was describing something rare these days - being alone with your thoughts. Pondering ideas dear to you, allowing time for reflection on the facts and fantasies you read, making sense of a book in your own way. Perhaps in this tell-all world, there are some things we can keep for ourselves
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12:51
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Sentences We Love
“It is refreshing to note that Mr. Hassam, in the midst of so many good, bad, and indifferent art currents, seems to be paddling his own canoe with a good deal of independence and method."
An art reviewer wrote this about the cityscapes of American Impressionist painter F. Childe Hassam (1859 - 1935). Hassam was a prolific painter whose works I saw recently on a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org. LACMA has The Spanish Stairs which I climbed on my honeymoon trip to Rome. They also exhibit one of Hassam's popular flag theme paintings. You can browse through hundreds of his paintings on this
site.
Let us all paddle our own canoe, where ever that may take us!
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11:15
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Sentences We Love
"Don't take advice from someone you wouldn't trade places with."
This quote is from a fairly dull movie titled The Answer Man - but I thought this maxim had merit. I will alter it to say, "Don't take restaurant recommendations from someone you wouldn't dine with." Of course this advice could apply to book recommendations and so on. It's all a way of saying... consider the source.
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9:31
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Sentences We Love
funemployment
Urban Dictionary definition: The state of being without a job, yet having lots of time to enjoy fun activities during otherwise normal working hours.
Of course, for many people, being laid off is no fun at all. But I think it's a sign of the times that a new word has been coined for people who don't expect to find another job soon, so are slowing down to enjoy their new found free time. Instead of pounding the pavement, they explore new areas which may even lead to a career change. Time is a gift - if you can afford to take it.
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20:13
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Sentences We Love
"Fall down seven times, get up eight."
New Year's resolutions often look like impossible-to-reach goals. Instead, as this Japanese proverb suggests, it's all about trying. The dictionary says trying is about testing the powers of endurance. How helpful to shift ones thinking about changing habits from an event to a process - since you are much less likely to fail!
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11:01
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Sentences We Love
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."
As we rest a bit this week and prepare for the New Year, here are Albert Einstein's wise words to reflect upon. This year has not been a stellar one in many ways - the economy and world peace spring to mind. New thinking is hard. We need to actively try to spark it by listening to new ideas, trying a new activity, asking ourselves what the new normal is. A long walk through our snowy forest today will help me...
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14:55
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Sentences We Love
"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other."
I thought this was funny until I realized that my New Year's resolutions are about the same each year. So, it appears, I can skip the whole process with the same effect. That's one thing crossed off my list!
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9:35
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Sentences We Love
"In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation."
Stephane Mallarme was a French poet (1842 - 1898). Mallarme was famous for holding literary salons in his Paris home. His poetry inspired musical interpretations from Debussy and Ravel.
At first, this quote sounds melancholy. But it really is a glorious thing to lose yourself in a book. It's the rare book which suspends time. Read any lately?
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10:17
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Sentences We Love
"I'm looking for a feeling of being inside a painting, one that will echo the experience of looking up and seeing light through trees and having no beginning or end."
That's New York artist Isabel Bigelow talking about her landscape paintings. You can see her spare, graceful paintings such as Bare Tree at
Reynold's Gallery. Bigelow likes willows and exploring shadow and light in her paintings. As she suggests, you can fall into her paintings... perhaps feel you are lying on your back looking up through tree branches at the soft winter sky.
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12:36
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Sentences We Love
"And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry."
Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) wrote the classic of English literature, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, about a maiden's fall from grace. At the beginning of the novel, Hardy describes the maidens at the village May Dance. But the hope of youth is not to last and the story soon becomes bleak, then bleaker. Tess plummets downward through the social and sexual mores of her time. The interesting thing is how beautifully this sad story is told. Hardy writes poetically of the people, the diary farm and English landscape. Tess is an unforgettable character who has lived through song, theatre, movie and film adaptations. It is worth re-reading and seems fitting for the dark nights of winter.
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9:15
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Sentences We Love
"At 20 we kill pleasure, at 30 taste it, at 40 we are sparing of it, at 50 we seek it, and at 60 we regret it."
La Belle Assemblee, 1807
We'll need to add on some new decades now that a paper published this month in the medical journal
The Lancet said most babies born in developed countries would live to celebrate their 100th birthday. That begs the quantity vs. quality question. As the article asked, are functional limitations being postponed as well? They concluded most people are living longer without severe disability.
So I think I'll try to stick with the spirit of the 50's whatever my age...
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19:00
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Sentences We Love
"I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells." Dr. Seuss
Theodor Geisel (1904 0 1991) knew a thing or two about creativity. The Cat in The Hat has thrived for decades due to the rhythm and creativity imbued in its readable words -- words suitable for small readers which tell a big story. Seuss was not afraid to be silly. Few adults can say that. Now in a New York Times
article titled How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect, we learn that nonsense truly does play a role in fresh thinking. The unexpected helps break down old patterns in our brains. So start your morning off with a little Green Eggs and Ham!
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10:38
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Sentences We Love
"Those who wish to sing, always find a song." Swedish Proverb
In case you're having trouble finding your happy song to sing on this Monday morning, I'm sharing one with you. This whimsical video will help kick the Monday Blues.
Yael Naim is a French-Israeli singer and song writer born in Paris in 1978. Naim's single
New Soul brought her fame when it was used by Apple for last year's MacBook Air ad. It works much better than a jolt of coffee to start your day off right... humming as you go.
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10:52
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Sentences We Love
"Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues."
Joseph Hall (English Bishop, 1574 to 1656)
That's so much more eloquent than saying "everything in moderation." That common quote is usually attributed to Aristotle. Also, Hall's sentence provides a lovely mental picture.
I believe the concept is wise and true... yet can't help laughing at Oscar Wilde's take on moderation:
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
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11:24
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Sentences We Love
"I like redheads. Their mouths are like a drop of strawberry jam in a glass of milk."
So said character Roger Sterling in an episode of
Mad Men. In this AMC series, which has attracted many "maddicts," great quotes are tossed around every week. It's a sassy, stylish show with amazing historical accuracy in the 1960's details down to the underwear and liquor bottles. But the great thing is the writing. I was surprised to learn that the writers for this show about a male-dominated ad agency are mostly female. Tune in, Tivo, or Twitter to hear their irreverent, funny lines.
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9:46
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Sentences We Love
"The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care."
That's just what I've been thinking. In our big discussion over health care reform, why don't we address actual health? In
Michael Pollan's article in today's New York Times titled
Big Food vs. Big Insurance, he argues we must address obesity, diabetes and other chronic (and expensive) conditions linked to our American way of eating.
In one stunning sentence, Pollan writes, "According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat 'preventable chronic diseases.'" Really? That's amazing to consider the amount of health care we would NOT need to debate how to pay for if people ate healthier. Perhaps it seems too insensitive for the President to be discussing how bad it is for people to eat processed, fatty meals. But we need to find the best ways to keep talking about how we eat in this debate or we're missing a major ingredient in high health care costs. Whatever side of the political debate you're on, I presume most people agree that healthier Americans benefit us all.
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10:13
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Sentences We Love
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach
Kid's return to school tomorrow so I'm trying to remind myself the magic of summer is not over yet. There was enchantment in the sky as a hot summer day clouded over and we were deluged with dime-sized hail, as our kids decided they would truly swim rather than splash around, in our lazy family lunches on the deck, and in the brilliant hummingbirds swooping by our heads on their way to sip from the feeders.
I'll continue to watch our corner of the world with glittering eyes - after all fall has magic in it too.
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7:45
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Sentences We Love
"September is the Monday of months."
That's Jeff Scher writing an introduction to his short film created from his paintings. In this mix of media, Scher explores end-of-summer memories on a ride home from vacation. As he says it's back to school, back to work, back to the city. As with many passages in life, it is bittersweet.
Watch Jeff Scher's film and beautiful oil pastels and watercolors titled
Summer Retreat.
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14:22
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Sentences We Love
August has been full of swimming, visits with family and friends, hiking, play dates, watching our hummingbirds, reading and "deck time." Along with school starting again, so will my blogging of wonderful sentences!
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9:01
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Sentences We Love
"There's nothing finer in life than true love and a home-grown tomato."
Gary Ibsen, The Great Tomato Book
The past few weeks, our farm box has contained some heirloom varieties including the green zebra. I like to drizzle our Stonehouse Extra Virgin Lisbon Lemon Olive Oil on them -- yummy about any which way you eat them!
If you're lucky enough to live in Carmel, California, you may have visited the
TomatoFest organized by Ibsen for the past 17 years. However, he retired last year from the event, so not sure anyone else has picked up the job. So have your own tomato fest in your backyard or farmer's market !
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21:01
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Sentences We Love
And that’s the way it is.
Walter Cronkite died today. And the one thing I keep thinking is that I invoked his name in a speech so many years ago... and even though I did, not much has changed.
So long ago and far away, I was named the Young Careerist of California by the Business and Professional Women's (BPW) Foundation. To win my state, I interacted with amazing women, demonstrated my community involvement and gave a speech. As a news broadcaster, I said that I would know news had progressed when I saw the female equivalent of Walter Cronkite. You know, with gray hair, wrinkles, and bags under HER eyes. But twenty years later, it has not happened. I would never have guessed it as a twenty-something.
But, Walter, you are still the best.
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10:37
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Sentences We Love
Age is something that doesn't matter unless you are a cheese.
Billie Burke, American actress (1884 - 1970)
I've always thought that was a great quote. Now I like it even more knowing who the speaker was. Burke was chosen to play Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz when she was 53 years old. Wasn't she lovely in that? Never would have guessed her age...
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10:13
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Sentences We Love
Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich, and your ma is good looking
So hush little baby, don't you cry.
One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing
You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky
But till that morning, there is nothing can harm you
With your daddy and mommy standing by.
Summertime is a famous song composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. You may have heard it sung as a snappy jazz standard - however Gershwin was inspired to write it after hearing a Ukrainian lullaby. The back and forth rhythm is both soothing and sad. The lyrics have the same duality - comforting until you think of the context of African American life in the 1920's when the drama takes place.
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8:45
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Sentences We Love
"Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap."
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a book of short essays written by
Robert Fulghum (published 1986). I'd read it years ago but the point of the title is more meaningful here on the last day of our kids' kindergarten year. As adults, we often make life more complicated than it needs to be. Fulghum's basic rules make for a pretty happy life. He advises to play fair, clean up your own mess and say you're sorry when you hurt someone. These simple kindergarten rules can be applied to politics, business, everything. Parents who have already been through the kindergarten graduation ceremony say it's a real tear jerker - I have no doubt. His essay ends with:
"And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."
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18:39
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Sentences We Love
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain..."
We can probably all see Audrey Hepburn speaking those words leading into the pivotal song from My Fair Lady by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner. Eliza finally "gets" those tough vowel sounds with this rhyme and moves from a squashed cabbage leaf to a lady.
I wish the rain in Oregon was staying in Spain or anyplace else! This has been an odd start to June complete with tropical hail, wild wind, and power outages. Now our days should get back to normal summer wonderfulness!
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14:54
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Sentences We Love
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Marge Piercy's
poem To Be of Use concludes with these lines. I was reading her poem thanks to Matthew B. Crawford who has written a popular
article in The New York Times titled The Case for Working With Your Hands. Crawford's essay is from his soon-to-be out book Shopclass as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. It's hit a chord since many people - both in and newly out of work - are pondering work itself. Crawford's premise is that working with your hands is more tangible - that fixing a car or toilet is more satisfying than sitting in a cubicle without really seeing the fruits of your efforts. As a mother, one distinction I make is how easily a job can be explained to children. As Piercy writes, "the work of the world is common as mud."
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18:57
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Sentences We Love
"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."
You've been seeing this saying on bumper stickers for a few decades. It's credited to Anne Herbert who continues to write regularly on her
blog. I think it's the use of unexpected words which gives it staying power. The word "senseless" has a negative connotation - yet is paired with "beauty." The wording suggests we shouldn't waste time thinking about what we might get back from kind acts - simply toss them out, feel good about it and move on. It's a concept I find both whimsical and solid at the same time.
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8:51
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Sentences We Love
Maybe we do the right thing
Maybe we do the wrong
Spending each day
Wending our way along
But when we want to sing, we sing
When we want to dance, we dance
You can do your betting, we're getting
Some fun out of life
This song written by Edgar Leslie and Joe Burke was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1937. Then decades later Madeleine Peyroux recorded it. Both of their sultry voices do right by the sweet-tart lyrics. Nobody says wending anymore... it's just an old-fashioned way of saying you're traveling along. Get some fun out of life today by
listening.
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12:34
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Sentences We Love
"Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."
Mark Twain and I do not agree on the merits of Jane Austen. One aspect I admire is how well she chronicled her era (she died two decades before Twain was born).
Twain left behind a scathing and unfinished essay of Austen. Yet he certainly was familiar with her novels -- meaning he took the time to read them. Twain was a master of the "put down" and seemed to relish writing them. So I'm not sure if this literary feud was real or for the sport of it. You'll find an interesting
essay on Twain's writings about Austen in The Virginia Quarterly Review. Twain went on to observe that an Austen novel was such that "once you put it down you simply can't pick it up."
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8:56
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Sentences We Love
"Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun."
Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
This morning it's snowing on our deck furniture and there is only gray sky to turn my face to. Somehow in this odd month where we wear shorts one day and practice T-Ball amid snow flakes the next, I'm hopeful we'll soon emerge and feel it's truly summer. Perhaps we'll leave May baskets on doorsteps tomorrow and ring the bell to spur the season along.
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13:00
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Sentences We Love
"I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”
As wife of our second president and mother of our sixth, you would expect Abigail Adams to be one smart First Lady. She wrote incredible letters and managed her family and farm, often on her own since her husband was absent for long periods of time on political trips. But I remain amazed at her forward thinking attitudes about educating women and women's place in the new society. I'm just starting Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution by
Natalie Bober so hopefully that will provide some answers to the independent thoughts of a woman born in 1744. Bober's book is listed for young readers but is wonderfully written for adults too.
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8:44
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Sentences We Love
"Money in the bank is like toothpaste in the tube. Easy to take out, hard to put back."
American journalist Earl Wilson (1907 to 1987)
Our toothpaste is causing me stress. The other day, we bought new tubes for the kids called Fun Sparkle - while my dentist recommended Age Defy for me. I am embarrassed to be seen at the check out counter buying Age Defy! Don't marketers realize the havoc they wreak with such names?! Why can't I have Fun Sparkle at my age? I think I'll throw caution to the wind and add a little sparkle to my day.
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12:56
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Sentences We Love
"This idea that the way forward lies in finding an exact middle path between opposites is of extraordinary importance in storytelling."
English author Christopher Booker had this to say about The Story of the Three Bears. Or as Goldilocks would simply say, "just right."
English Poet Robert Southey (1774 to 1843) was the first to tell The Story of the Three Bears in print -- and in a kinder, gentler way than it had been told. While first versions depicted menacing bears, Southey's were good-natured. Also, the first versions listed the many ways the bears tried to kill the ugly old woman who ate their milk (who later became Goldilocks who ate their porridge) until resorting to chucking her aloft on a church steeple. Not exactly a cozy family tale!
Years later, Joseph Cundall re-told the story, praising Southey's version but changing the old woman to a pretty girl. Goldilocks had many names through the years including Little Silver Hair. To me it remains an odd tale with an uncertain interpretation. What do you think is the moral of the story?
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20:09
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Sentences We Love
No rest for the wicked...
I just like how this sounds. This phrase originates from the Book of Isaiah where it had a serious meaning as in, "There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked." So literally - the wicked shall be tormented. Somehow it has crossed over into an idiom with a more light-hearted meaning and has been used by authors and rock bands. Now the saying suggests paying a penalty for a fun time.
Did you eat too many chocolate eggs yesterday and are now headed to the gym - no rest for the wicked!
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10:49
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Sentences We Love
"Art is the insightful journey of the soul; where emotions spill out upon a canvas or a page, and leave behind lasting impressions of the heart."
This was said by Lisa Weedn Gilbert, an American author who often co-writes with her mother, the inspirational author and artist
Flavia.
I don't think art can ever truly be defined... however, this thought of emotions made visible and of lasting impressions are features I would include in the definition. Looking at it this way, art is an emotion frozen in time -- one which is long gone yet captured to contemplate again.
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9:44
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Sentences We Love
"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go."
American author Christopher Morley from the novel John Mistletoe
Ah, yes, the daffodils blooming, the red-winged blackbirds singing, dusting off the deck furniture and flip flops -- that's spring to me! I joke that we have two seasons here - snow boot and flip flop season. One company, Havaianas, created a whimsical print ad series to celebrate this harbinger of spring; they planted flip flops in
public places around Europe. It's enough to make you smile (and get a pedicure!)
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9:34
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Sentences We Love
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
That was Ernest Hemingway's quest as a writer. Sounds easy - but is hard.
Many famous artists are known for their breakthroughs to fresh styles and the same is true for Hemingway. He sought to simplify, to write with understatement. Hemingway's quest makes for enduring writing. For writers, his novels are especially worth re-reading (you know, the books you were forced to read in school). Perhaps a bit of his economy of style will rub off.
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20:43
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Sentences We Love
"The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh..."
so wrote famous photographer
Edward Weston in 1932. Weston immortalized the California coast and made shells sensual. He knew the greats from Ansel Adams to Georgia O'Keefe and was a great himself. But Weston began by peddling his real, sculptural photographs for mere dollars; in death, they have gone for millions. What made his view through the lens unique? Weston looked for what was real, no artifice, so that objects and landscapes were almost more real than the thing itself. He died in 1958 in his home in Carmel and his family continues the legacy.
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8:02
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Sentences We Love
"Forgo your anger for a moment and save yourself a hundred days of trouble."
A simple Chinese proverb to ponder... But what works for five year olds?
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7:54
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Sentences We Love
"Art is a guarantee of sanity."
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris on December 25, 1911, and is still going strong as an artist though she turned 97 last January. Bourgeois is known for her sculptures, especially her large spiders. She has created within the many movements she's encountered in her decades as an artist - more about her current activities
here. Her art seems as integral to her being as breathing. This is an interesting
discussion of her impact as a woman artist during times when there wasn't much room for her gender in that field. On that point, she said:
“A woman has no peace as an artist until she proves over and over that she won’t be eliminated."
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8:00
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Sentences We Love
"I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side."
I'm an optimist. Really. But what are the odds that in the days before packing up the family for Spring Break, we should have a big leak from the upstairs bathroom showering down on our dining room table, one garage door should break, a rare cougar is sighted making outdoor play nerve-wracking, and a woodpecker in a misplaced effort to attract a mate should start pecking on my metal chimney flu while I'm attempting to finish some writing deadlines?
This little ditty is one of the precursor's to
Murphy's Law. History seems a bit murky on exactly who Murphy was but we all know whoever it was said, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It's against my nature to think like that. So I will just add to my To Do list and count the hours until we're whizzing away blissfully down the road (hopefully from a dry house with our sense of humor in tact!). Happy Spring Break!
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8:52
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Sentences We Love
"That many battles are not worth fighting, but others definitely are, and sometimes one kind masquerades as the other."
I've been pondering this sentence because I have felt that unsettling feeling too. Perhaps as parents, we waver on the question of 'is this a biggie or one to let pass' because we have so many of those decisions to make. And I'm always conscious that it's a truly important job. In my corporate life, I saw people get all excited over a meeting or report and thought how misplaced their emotion was. But with kids, your efforts actually matter.
The sentence is from The New York Times
Motherlode column by Lisa Belkin. Belkin writes a poignant and funny column worth reading.
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10:58
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Sentences We Love
"An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation."
That's economist Steven D. Levitt talking about incentives as the root of his field of study, i.e. how people respond to negative and positive incentives.
Our economy is turned upside down these days so why not really shake ourselves up by reading a book which debunks commonly held beliefs. Levitt, with journalist Stephen J. Dubner, wrote
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. The book takes conventional wisdom, applies facts and gets to the truth. Levitt takes on subjects from whether reading to your baby will actually make them a better student to what is more dangerous than guns. In one of the most controversial sections, Freakonomics asserts the main reason that violent crime is down is due to the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which kept a generation of unwanted children from becoming criminals. No wonder reviewers called the 2006 book both engaging and incendiary.
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10:52
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Sentences We Love
"Knowledge is wealth."
Money can't buy most truly important things in life. But this quote struck me as especially fitting for our harsh economic times. Learning is (usually) free. I see the joy in my children's faces as they learn to read. Sometimes we forget as adults how fun the quest for knowledge can be. I want to know more about the constellations and to further my French. What's on your Life Learning List ?
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10:46
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Sentences We Love
"..to make the most out of this new world, to avoid feeling overbooked, overstretched, and about to snap, to make modern life become better than life has ever been, a person must learn how to do what matters most first. Otherwise, you will bulldoze over life's best moments. You won't notice the little charms that adorn each day, nor will you ever transform the mundane into the extraordinary."
What a lovely way to think of the bright spots in even our gloomiest days. I can almost see the charms sparkling amid the clouds, the harsh word, or the late appointment.
This passage is from
CrazyBusy by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. which was published a few years ago (his newest book is Overloaded Circuits). Hallowell uses what he learned in treating Attention Deficit Disorder to give strategies on handling rampant busyness which he calls the problem and the opportunity of modern life. Sometimes at the dinner table, we share the high and low points of our day. Perhaps, we should only share the charms. I think there is positive power in recalling those moments from our crazybusy days.
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11:15
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Sentences We Love
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."
I am in awe of the inner strength any president must have to be criticised daily from voices around the world - yet remain true and unwavering in his goals. It's hard enough to withstand harsh words as a "regular" person. Lincoln was right; trust your inner core and perhaps put on blinders.
This blog title is from a song my kindergartners came home singing around President's Day holiday:
"Abraham Lincoln kind and good
Was loved and honored by many
To always remember this president
We put his face on the penny."
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9:42
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Sentences We Love
"Consider the insomniac dyslexic agnostic. He stays up all night wondering if there really is a dog."
There's a first for everything. I haven't blogged a joke before -- but this one circulating on email chains got my funny bone. Ha!
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8:55
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Sentences We Love
"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other."
This old proverb reminds me of our current economy. Even if you haven't had to face job loss or mortgage problems - I think we're all looking at spending money differently. It forces me to assess the true value I get from a purchase. I value the experience of renting a movie more than buying a mocha. I ask myself if I need to own a book or can reserve it at the library. And I'd enjoy a free walk in our meadow with my family more than spending money on just about anything. Money is so intertwined with our values. These times help us see the status or superfluous purchase for what it is. It helps us separate the chaff from the wheat. Now if I could only find one perfect lily to put on my counter...
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8:52
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Sentences We Love
"Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential."
I'd like to make the case for the not-so-perfect. President Obama said this to lobby for his economic stimulus plan. However, it applies to so many things in life. The pursuit of perfection (which is arguably an impossible goal) can stall any action at all. Who or what is truly free from fault or defect? And in spending time seeking perfection, what other valuable things are we not doing?
When I've heard someone (usually a boss) ask for people to give 110 percent, I wonder if they skipped math class. That "go get 'em" attitude is ingrained in our culture. And yet this quote seems to applaud a really great effort - it values trying. So, instead of seeking perfection, let's be thoughtful, let's strive, and let's remember to look for the lesson found when we stumble.
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8:30
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Sentences We Love
"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."
Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) was a natural at combining wit and humor in one sentence. After having a family, she resumed writing and wrote columns on a wood plank table supported by cinder blocks. Soon she was in syndication and books and appearances followed. I think it's hard to write funny. As she shows in this passage above, humor comes through in the little details the writer includes and the juxtaposition of the lofty and the everyday.
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8:27
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Sentences We Love
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A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.”
This quote from American writer Marcelene Cox made me laugh since we're planning our spring break trip. It's not so much a rest I'd like to get but some warmer weather. This morning it is 33 degrees and today's "high" will only get about ten degrees warmer. We're heading south but haven't planned our exact route yet. Where ever it takes us - we'll be off next month like heat seeking missiles!
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10:17
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Sentences We Love
"We are compelled to create—to make, write, act, and give birth. How do we manifest this deep desire? How do our creations—novels, babies, and atom bombs—affect our lives, our culture, and our planet?"
Artist Tiffany Lee Brown has embarked on the
Easter Island Project to explore what it means to be biologically childless. At first Brown wanted to reach a better understanding of her struggle with not giving birth, then realized it was about the larger issue of why we create. She's asking people to contribute a seed to take on her trip to Easter Island in August. The place is ironic since early inhabitants didn't survive and much of what we know about them is from the monumental statues they created. People have interpreted "seed" to be anything from a poem, to pieces of an eagle's egg to small pottery. She incorporates these offerings into traveling performances. Brown is also creating a book out of her seed project.
The premise of her project is founded on big questions - I'm interested in the "answers" she'll find through her own journey and from those who have offered seeds of creativity. You can support her project (and have fun) through her Tarot card
readings which she describes as heartfelt and not "overly woo-woo."
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9:01
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Sentences We Love
The writer "must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."
That is an excerpt from William Faulkner's acceptance
speech for his 1950 Nobel Prize. For writers, the whole speech is worth re-reading to reach full understanding. It is both inspiring and daunting.
Faulkner's point is that in writing about these universal truths, the writer helps the reader endure. He went on to say that without these truths, "He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."
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10:00
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Sentences We Love
"The greatest force on earth is the human soul on fire."
I've been noticing this quote around - it's used by business consultants to motivate employees and in reference to our new president. It was said by Ferdinand Foch who served as a general in the French Army in WWI. I agree - a passionate person pursuing their true calling can accomplish the unimaginable.
But what if you are too busy running through life to notice what lights your soul? There are numerous inspirational books. One is Will the REAL You Please Stand Up? by
Fran Harris. She is (amazingly!) an ordained minister, WNBA Champion, business consultant, author and speaker. Her most requested speech is Are you Feasting at Life's Buffet.. or Settling for the Crumbs? Harris tells her audience that if they don't like what is on their plate, then send it back. A simple but useful way to look at it - we are probably more likely to send back a plate of overcooked food than reject parts of our life that aren't working. So Bon Appetit !
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7:20
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Sentences We Love
"The ideal recession desk would be one that makes you feel successful and abundant when you sit at it, without costing so much that you feel foolish for having spent the money.”
That's the well-spoken advice of Reiko Gomez, a
feng shui-oriented interior designer who has refocused her practice on recession-proofing the home, in a New York Times article titled
In Search of the Just-Right Desk. The article points out that the American desk is more important than ever - needing to function as a command center for job searches, freelance work and plain old surfing.
I think your space expresses your approach to work. It sets the mood for creativity. Mine includes red coral, red file folders, a giant diamond-shaped paper weight - hopefully all sparking my energy to finish two books this year!
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9:32
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Sentences We Love
The New York Times found an interesting way to look at the language of inaugural addresses through history. In
Inaugural Words: 1789 to Present, you can click on a president and see which words he chose to use the most - the frequency of the words matches their importance at the time. Click through the years to see that George Washington spoke often of government, John F. Kennedy repeated pledge and ask, and Bill Clinton chose to use America and promise a lot. What stands out to me in President Obama's speech yesterday are the words work, crisis and hard. The happy dancing of last night is over and the president begins the immense job of putting those words into action today. Obama also repeated endure more than most presidents - and I think he can.
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9:45
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Sentences We Love
"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
Many sentences from President Barack Obama's
speech today will ring throughout history. I especially liked his string of traits in this passage. They aren't the common ones. Yes, patriotism was there but so was curiosity. Curiosity speaks to America's spirit of innovation - something we need to revive to meet environmental and other challenges. That desire to know more is one trait which will pull our nation up from its burdens.
There are few times when I felt at that moment I witnessed history - when my parents woke me up to see the first man on the moon, when the space shuttle exploded - this was another. Truly a new era has begun...
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10:15
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Sentences We Love
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape -- the loneliness of it -- the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.
Artist Andrew Wyeth died today at the age of 91 in his native Pennsylvania. A New York Times
article called him one of the most popular and most lambasted American artists. Some called him an illustrator rather than a true interpreter or artist. His painting Christina's World, of a disabled neighbor seen from the back looking toward her farm home, became iconic. It is in
MoMA's collection.
Wyeth chose to spend a lot of time alone, walking and painting. People often saw melancholy in his paintings but he preferred to see them as contemplative. He once asked have we "lost the art of being alone?"
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7:16
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Sentences We Love
"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.'' John Kennedy's inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1961.
Writing any presidential speech must be a daunting task. Even since Barack Obama was elected, new economic and political crises seem to erupt each day. No president-elect has ever been more prepared before taking office or has needed to be. So what is Obama preparing to tell us on January 20th? How will he assure us with the appropriate balance of optimism and realism? And what will Obama tell us he can actually do to fix our mind-boggling problems? The world watches and waits...
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8:39
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Sentences We Love
"The last few weeks in particular I've given a lot of thought to the idea of beauty. I've never really taken the time to do that before."
That's one lovely theme in Michael Hoeye's first book in his
Hermux Tanamoq series. The first title, Time Stops for No Mouse, introduces us to the watchmaking mouse, Hermux Tantamoq, and his pet ladybug, Terfle. Hermux is a sweet mouse with a zest for life. Each night, he writes charming "thank you" notes to the world. The book is hard to classify, it's usually recommended for Young Adult readers. But it has thoughtful themes - such as stopping to notice beauty - and holds the attention of adults too. I found it delightful and fresh.
Michael Hoeye began by self-publishing his book... and then he was discovered. You'll get hooked too and want to move on to the next book in this adventure series, The Sands of Time.
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13:40
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Sentences We Love
"As powerful works of imagination, maps straddle the lines between art and science, and capture a sense of precision and romance."
That's exhibit co-curator Gloria Gerace speaking about the current
exhibit at the Los Angeles Public Library titled L.A. Unfolded. This sentence points out that maps are not necessarily straightforward and factual. I hadn't thought of maps as having "remarkable stories to tell" as the curators describe. This exhibit features a 1791 Spanish Explorers California Coast map, and a variety of types of maps from real estate maps to tourist guides.
The other co-curator Glen Creason adds, "Maps are not always accurate, are not without prejudice, and are rarely perfect, but they teach us about our place in the world."
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18:10
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Sentences We Love
"The intellectual life of the writer is bound together by a tenuous silver chord whose strands are imagination, insight, intoxication with words, and a compulsion to share experience."
I love this quote by James Michener - so true. A writer is never "done." Instead, we are on a journey that includes these ingredients but we never really arrive. I like this aspect of always yearning to learn... of knowing there is a new skill to experience. One of my resolutions has to do with my writing life. May this wise quote provide inspiration to your writing dreams.
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7:48
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Sentences We Love
"Where people of goodwill get together and transcend their differences for the common good, peaceful and just solutions can be found even for those problems which seem intractable."
Nelson Mandela had those wise words to say and I'm hopeful they will ring true for this coming year. America's new president will have a huge burden on his shoulders in trying to bring peace to troubled parts of our world. The public understands the importance of this historic time. So if politicians work toward self-interest rather than the common good, we'll be rather short on patience. Let's hope democrats and republicans have goodwill, as Mandela says, and work together for solutions to our seemingly intractable problems. Here's a toast to a more peaceful 2009 !
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8:40
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Sentences We Love
"Come and trim my Christmas tree, With some decorations bought at Tiffany's..."
Santa Baby was made famous by the sultry
Eartha Kitt who ironically died on Christmas day at the age of 81. The song was written in 1953 by Joan Javits and Philip Springer. The American born Kitt was fluent in French, and spoke other languages, which partly accounted for her unique vocal style. She purred through this slightly naughty song about the Christmas list of luxury items this "good girl" wants Santa to bring.
Kitt remained gorgeous to the end and had a nightclub schedule planned for '09. Each Christmas, I play Santa Baby and enjoy the extra meanings she gives the lyrics. Through Kitt's poor beginnings, early rise to international stardom and life experiences abroad, she makes the words all her own.
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8:28
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Sentences We Love
"Oh the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful."
Thanks to lyricist Sammy Cahn for one of my favorite Christmas songs. However, that frightful weather - two feet of snow - has slowed delivery trucks in Oregon and a book I ordered hasn't arrived. We have a Christmas Eve day tradition of books for the children so I must leave our warm home for a short shopping trip, snow or no!
It is truly a White Christmas in Central Oregon. It's hard to imagine the holidays in a warm place. Snow is so ingrained in our holidays songs, cards and images. Even though this holiday is supposed to honor the birth of Jesus, most scholars don't think this was his actual birth date. Instead December was chosen to correspond with winter solstice and give us all something to celebrate in our darkest (literally!) days.
Whatever the weather where you are - I'm wishing you a delightful holiday!
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10:23
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Sentences We Love
"I'm sorry Mr Kipling, but you don't know how to use the English language."
Those were the words of the Editor of the San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a short story from author and poet Rudyard Kipling. In case you have a writing goal on your resolutions list, it offers hope to keep famous rejections in mind.
George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Stephen King, Irving Stone - all have received now laughable rejection letters. One more to comfort the soon-to-be famous writers among you. This one was written by a publisher rejecting Joseph Heller's Catch 22:
"I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level."
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12:50
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Sentences We Love
"When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life." Christopher Morley
If you are finishing up your gift list, consider visiting your friendly neighborhood bookstore. I have heard, that along with other businesses, the economy has pinched book sales too this season. But I don't think there's a government bailout waiting for booksellers! So consider a book - with it's power to be life-changing, funny or simply entertaining, books are probably one of the best values around. Happy shopping!
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9:18
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Sentences We Love
'Tis the season to curl up by the fire with a good book and a maybe a hot buttered rum. But if you have that empty feeling that your cupboard is bare... try this site to find your next read.
[www.whatshouldireadnext.com] You simply enter a a favorite book and it makes recommendations. I tried a few and the results weren't always the obvious choices. So a suggestion might be on a very different subject but appeal to readers with similar tastes. Happy reading!
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10:20
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Sentences We Love
"The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."
The Knife of Never Letting Go by
Patrick Ness is a young adult novel which has crossed over, gaining an adult readership. With a teenage narrator, it explores themes including growing up and how to live in the noisy world of information overload. It's been called a grim yet brilliant book. Its first sentence (above) has received recognition.
"One of the best first sentences I've ever read and a book that lives up to it!" said reviewer Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Also, thanks to my reader who recommended the opening line, "which grabs you, sets the pace, and doesn't let go until the story closes."
The Knife of Never Letting Go was published this year and has already been translated into several languages. Ness won the 2008 Guardian children's fiction prize.
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11:09
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Sentences We Love
"She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped strictly nothing."
With that sentence
J.D. Salinger paints the picture of Muriel as shallow in his short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Salinger reinforces that impression by referring to her as a "girl." If he'd simply written that Muriel didn't pick up the phone, the sentence would have lacked impact. Instead, the words march steadily downhill to "nothing."
Muriel and husband Seymour Glass spend a day at the beach. Interestingly, the story is told mostly through dialog. Seymour is not coping with postwar life and ends his own in the story. It's one to re-read to find the sad undercurrent which causes Seymour to commit suicide.
Salinger's story was originally published in 1948 in The New Yorker.
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10:11
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Sentences We Love
I've quoted from a variety of sources but this is a first from the Food Network show
Iron Chef America. Talking about food and wine can have its poetic moments... this was more of a silly moment.
"In the best possible way, the soup tastes like a puddle of cheese. And the puddle is a place I want to frolic."
That was judge John T. Edge on the cheddar cheese battle in Kitchen Stadium. Iron Chef is a fun, campy show hosted by word-enthusiast
Alton Brown.
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20:10
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Sentences We Love
"Oh I don't think anybody matures. I think adults are just children who have money."
As a parent, let's hope that's not true. However, that is some of the wisdom from this 1992 movie directed by Kenneth Branagh about college friends who have a reunion over New Years Eve at an English country manor. There are some witty lines and good British humor in
Peter's Friends ... though I'd put it in the good, not great, category.
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11:09
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Sentences We Love
“I love to bring people into the oval office...and say, this is where I office.” George W. Bush
I used to think it wasn't professional to say I worked at home. But then I was explaining to my kids that Barack Obama and his family would soon be moving into the White House and I realized even the President of the United States works at home! His home office is just oval, and fancier, and, well, not the same at all as my little spot under the stairs. But it made me feel better.
Obama pronounced his soon-to-be home office "pretty nice" after touring the White House earlier this week.
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19:27
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Sentences We Love
"We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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8:56
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Sentences We Love
Loving words as I do I became mesmerized by the words floating by on a New York Times
page where you "vote" the word you feel about today's presidential election. The larger the words, the more frequently they have been chosen. Of course, the red ones are for McCain and the blue for Obama. So how are people feeling? McCain's top words are anxious and scared. There are also a lot of "d" words including disappointed, discouraged, depressed and even disgusted.
Obama shares anxious as a top word with other frequently-chosen words being nervous and hopeful along with exhausted and excited. We're having a fancy cracked crab dinner and watching the returns. The kids will watch the first part - we might be seeing history tonight and I don't want them to miss it...
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10:13
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Sentences We Love
"Lost time is never found."
Are all your clocks set to the "right" time? The wise Benjamin Franklin is credited with this sentence. With daylight savings ending on November 2nd , I feel we have been gifted one more glorious weekend hour. We'll spend it with a cozy Sunday supper of roasted chicken criss-crossed with bacon strips topped with a wine, thyme, shallot sauce. Good thing my husband recently found his inner chef!
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10:36
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Sentences We Love
Ne mange pas trop de bonbons!
It sounds so much nicer in French than the "no more candy" we have said a dozen times to our kids today! Tonight the Candy Fairy is taking away much of it.... sneaky! Or should I say sournois!
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10:09
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Sentences We Love
"With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Ben S. Bernanke Federal Reserve Chairman.
I guess if I was speaking to the House Budget Committee, I would use formal speak too. Here Bernanke correctly uses a word that must be on the list of most misused words - juncture. It is defined as, "a point of time ; especially one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances." I've heard people say "junction" instead which means joining rather than having anything to do with time. At least this misuse is not quite as jarring as hearing people say "it's a mute point."
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11:16
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Sentences We Love
"Us being in a kerfuffle with a Buckley is disheartening and absurd."
So said The National Review editor Rich Lowry over the resignation of Christopher Buckley from the conservative magazine his father founded. Who says kerfuffle today except the British? Webster's says the word, meaning disturbance, is of Scottish origin.
The sentence is from a New York Times
article in which Buckley talks about leaving the magazine over his endorsement of Obama. Although there has been a flap over Buckley's endorsement, he doesn't think his late father and conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. would have disagreed with him. Whatever your politics, Buckley's novels are filled with witty sentences. And his column on
The Daily Beast which explains his vote, ends with his version of a cliche, "Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship."
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8:10
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Sentences We Love
Idioms in our own language are silly enough. But here's how the French would say, "When pigs fly!"
"Quand les poules auront des dents!" Or literally, "When hens have teeth!"
The German version is identical to ours, "Wenn Schweine fliegen können!" But whatever language you use, it refers to an event that you think will never happen. However in art, anything IS possible and this saying has inspired some whimsical art including this
flying pig at the Cincinnati Airport.
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7:46
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Sentences We Love
"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty."
How many mothers today give such wise and well-worded advice to their daughters? That's Mrs. March, or Marmee to her four girls, talking to her youngest in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Re-reading this classic is the perfect bedtime story - tales of the girls' adventures told in charming sentences such as these. Alcott's Little Women was an instant popular and critical success; it originally came out as two novels published in 1868 and 1869.
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10:52
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Sentences We Love
"There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them."
Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963) was a poet and novelist known for her semi-autobiographical book The Bell Jar. She experienced a lot of trauma in her short life and committed suicide when she was a mother of two young children. However, she was also a wise woman and a keen observer of human nature. You can read more about her
here. Writers may appreicate this sentence, "Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."
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7:50
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Sentences We Love
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
As if they could tell time, the leaves of our crab apple tree just turned orange and red. In Robert Frost's poem titled October (the first few lines are above), he implores the leaves to fall slowly. The signs of autumn are not as obvious here in a sage green landscape dotted with juniper and pine. But it's unmistakable when you step out in the morning and feel the crisp air. Frost (1874 - 1963) is known for his themes of nature and rural life.
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14:25
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Sentences We Love
"Most of the things you read are simply people confirming what they already think. That's why most of the things you read don't interest you. There has to be some risk for the writer to make stuff come alive."
Those sentences are from author Charles Bowden who you may have read in Esquire or GQ, heard on NPR or read in one of his books. Bowden takes risks as a writer by choosing subjects such as the environment, death, abandoned farmhouses in North Dakota, and drug wars on the Mexican border.
For his book Down by the River, Bowden was asked why he investigated a murder for more than seven years to tell the story of the border wars. He replied:
"All the roadblocks are just little obstacles, because you’re obsessed with finding out the facts. When you get into this kind of work, you just want to get it down right. What other people see as danger, you see as a nuisance. If I wasn’t writing that book, I never would have gone into the saloons and hellholes that are in that book. I don’t court danger."
But it seems he's not scared off by danger if that's what it takes to tell the story.
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20:20
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Sentences We Love
"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
In my Books to Read folder is E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and I wondered where that familiar phrase came from. It is from Alexander Pope's poem titled An Essay on Criticism. The phrase pits the reckless against the wise. Funny how a phrase from a poem most of us have never heard of becomes a popular idiom and makes its way to a book title as well as several song lyrics (think Elvis and Dylan).
I know in Forster's first novel I'm in for a charming tale set in Italy with a tragic end. I'm guessing I'll find both the idoita and the putto.
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11:11
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Sentences We Love
"If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."
American painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) said a lot without words. In Hopper's famous Nighthawks, you can feel the isolation of the customers sitting at an all-night diner. He often painted common features of American life in a style which communicated loneliness. Hopper studied with New York's so-called Ashcan School and traveled to Paris several times where he focused on realism rather than the cubist style of the time. He painted urban scenes from a gas station to Victorian buildings. As he put it, "Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."
His widow bequeathed thousands of his oils, watercolors, prints and other work to the
Whitney Museum of American Art. You can learn about his influence and see his paintings at
National Gallery of Art site.
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10:12
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Sentences We Love
"Nature brings to every time and season some beauties of its own."
Charles Dickens knew what he was talking about. I think Dickens' sentence is lovely in its simplicity. Each fall, I get a bit sad that summer and outdoor living are ending. Then I need to remember the crisp air, geese, fires, soups, snowmen and other winter activities that will fill what used to be long summer afternoons.
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9:35
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Sentences We Love
If you have a beginning reader in your life, you know the joy that new skill brings. There are endless sites to help expand kids' reading talents. Here are a few fun ones to share with your kids.
You'll find an interactive alphabet book at
Gigglepotz which helps with letter recognition.
Starfall is one of my all-time favorites where my kids and I have played word games and enjoyed the moving pictures; it's a free site developed by a man who struggled reading as a kid. The Screen Actors Guide Foundation has a
site where they read stories; there are also accompanying activities. Happy reading!
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8:27
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Sentences We Love
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
This quote is usually attributed to Edmond Burke, though I found some discussion online as to whether or not he really said that. Burke was an Irish political philosopher who lived in the 1700's and is regarded as the father of modern conservatism. It's a quote which certainly heightens ones' sense of responsibility. You could apply it to everything from your country's politics to everyday life. It removes the excuse of not getting involved in "somebody else's business" - because it is our business if we see injustice around us.
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8:31
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Sentences We Love
Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
This traditional poem is supposed to tell a child's fortune based on the day they were born. Like many Mother Goose rhymes we have read to our kids, the words sound bouncy and fun read to but they don't make much sense. I just took my Wednesday's children to kindergarten and they were anything but woeful. They still like hearing even the most nonsensical Mother Goose rhymes, I think because they read like music.
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17:32
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Sentences We Love
"The air is perfectly quiescent and all is stillness, as if Nature, after her exertions during the Summer, were now at rest."
An early American writer described Indian Summer in 1817 this way. It is usually described as a period of warm weather in the fall after the first frost. That's certainly what we're experiencing here in Central Oregon. Recently, we covered the tomatoes a few nights to save them from frost and now we're enjoying pleasant 80 degree days. Soon, nature will rest...
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8:05
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Sentences We Love
“We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.”
This quote is from Cesare Pavese (1908 - 1950), who was an Italian poet and translator. With children heading back to school, I am trying to remember all the moments that made our summer wonderful. Pavese is suggesting we won't retain the specifics but more the feel of past days. But I have a trick - I keep journals for the kids so some of those moments that seemed so funny or sweet at the time can still be brought back. That helps but the start of their first year of school is still bittersweet...
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7:56
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Sentences We Love
Il ne faut jamais dire "fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau."
In America, we've heard the saying "never say never" so I had to laugh when my French language calendar showed how the French would say it. This sentence literally means, "You must never say 'fountain, I won't drink your water'." Of course it's not any sillier than some of our sayings such as "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," "spill the beans," or "tongue-in-cheek." We've used idioms without thinking about them until we had kids - now we see how silly their literal meanings can be. Au revoir!
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8:52
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Sentences We Love
The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you
like the leaves of Autumn.
It is cooler here in Central Oregon this morning along with that fall descriptor "crisp" and it's hard to think summer is actually leaving. The hummingbirds are leaving, the fawn's spots are gone, and soon we'll hear the geese honk. John Muir loved all the seasons and so do I - however the transition is bittersweet at first.
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12:10
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Sentences We Love
"The Vice President is a heartbeat away from becoming President, so to choose someone with not one hour’s worth of experience on national issues is a dangerous choice."
Obviously Senator Barbara Boxer is concerned with McCain's choice as Vice President. Governor Sarah Palin, who has held that office less than two years, was plucked from obscurity because McCain thinks she will help him get elected to the White House -- not because he thinks she will be a good president if the 72-year old has a heart attack and dies. He actually cares more about getting himself into the Oval Office than how America would fare should the inexperienced Palin become president.
Palin introduced herself with, "I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska." Let's hope, should McCain get elected, that he is a very healthy man.
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8:01
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Sentences We Love
"
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel”
We're hearing an awful lot of speeches at these political conventions followed by a lot of opinions about the quality of those speeches. So what makes a good one? Ralph Waldo Emerson said the purpose is to persuade.
Just thinking about the spotlight of history you'd be stepping into to make a convention speech would make the most seasoned person nervous. As Jerry Seinfeld points out, most people are nervous about speaking to a much smaller audience:
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According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
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8:01
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Sentences We Love
"What city are you in daddy?"
There were many moving sentences at last night's Democratic National Convention - from Edward Kennedy saying nothing (not even cancer) would keep him away, to Michelle Obama talking about the American dream. But I liked what was probably the only unscripted moment of the evening - little Sasha asking the presumptive nominee where he was. This can't have been a "normal" year for the Obama's two girls with all the cameras, late nights and traveling. But then normal people don't make history.
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11:11
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Sentences We Love
"A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life...If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience...It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships."
So said an old New York Times book review of a classic I have somehow missed. But no more... it is next on my book shelf. Sometimes it's hard for books on "must read" lists to live up to their hype. But I don't think this best-seller (published in 1943) will disappoint. Have you read it?
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9:38
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Sentences We Love
"
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”
American musician
Miles Davis (1926-1991) said that about the cool jazz he played but I think it pertains to other creative pursuits too. I doubt painters have an individual style with the first brushstroke. And I know it takes experience to find your voice as a writer.
Sunday mornings are usually slow and lazy... and Davis' Kind of Blue set the perfect mood. Davis' influential Blue is the best-selling jazz album of all time -- something that he could only accomplish when he began to play like himself.
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8:05
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Sentences We Love
There's still a few more days of summer to grab and book and settle in your beach chair for an afternoon read. However, in the New York Times
Newly Released, it lists books released this month that are far from breezy.
“Everybody suffers, but Americans have the peculiar delusion that they’re exempt from suffering.”
This is Peter Trachtenberg's introduction to The Book of Calamities: Five Questions about Suffering and Its Meaning. If this sounds a bit too heavy for a summer read, the Times recommends the more hopeful expatriate fiction This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger. Do the weight of the subjects you read follow the thermometer and vacations?
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9:49
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Sentences We Love
"I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes."
Taking a break from politics today (even though it would be fun to comment on John McCain not knowing how many homes he owns), to blog about the frivolous - shoes! Oprah Winfrey said that sentence and she ought to know since she can afford the fanciest designer shoes in the world. I'm reading a novel titled
Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison that is just the right kind of frothy fun after a day filled with five-year olds and writing deadlines. As one reviewer put it, Harbison's book has "heart and sole." I think footwear lust comes from not needing to worry about size - can anyone else explain this passion?
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7:20
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Sentences We Love
"The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How is the president?"”
At least in America, many of us are on the edge of our seats wondering who presidential candidate Barack Obama will choose as his running mate. Will Rogers said that funny sentence. But, how important is the chosen vice president during the election? The reaction to Obama's choice may tell us today.
Hopefully Obama's choice will be smarter than past Vice President Dan Quayle who evidently had trouble counting when he said, "
One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is "to be prepared.”
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8:18
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Sentences We Love
"McCain would venture forth on the back of his bus, going places other Republicans don’t go, saying things politicians don’t say, offering the country the vision of a different kind of politics — free of circus antics — in which serious people sacrifice for serious things. It hasn’t turned out that way."
Political speak is fascinating. Today messages are inspected and dissected so intensely that a candidate speaks off-the-cuff at their peril. Here New York Times Columnist
David Brooks is discussing how John McCain is now sticking with the daily party line message points and running a traditional presidential campaign. McCain's attempt at doing things his own maverick way didn't work. Where is the change many of us had hoped for? Perhaps once one of our candidates is in the White House, they can buck the system just a little bit.
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8:14
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Sentences We Love
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
I said this to my daughter, then wondered where it came from. The proverb has been traced back to 'Teacher's Manual' (1840) by American educator Thomas H. Palmer. It was originally intended to encourage students to do their homework. Today, it has the much broader meaning of general persistence. It has been around long enough that people have tweaked it to their own version. The funny examples include, "If at first you don't succeed, try new batteries." "If..., then cheat." And "If..., try to hide your astonishment."
For my readers outside of America, is there a similar saying in your culture?
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9:00
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Sentences We Love
"If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable -- each segment distinct."
So said feminist and writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin. Pogrebin, founding editor of Ms. magazine, has written several books including Growing Up Free and Stories for Free Children. I like her together-but-separate sentiment in this sentence. We saw distinct personalities in our children from the earliest days.
This weekend, we've been like the orange together - running through the sprinkler yesterday when it hit 104 (yes, the big people too), making Lego vehicles, and eating root beer floats. In a few weeks, my two little orange segments will go off to kindergarten. Like an orange, bittersweet...
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7:26
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Sentences We Love
"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."
Funny, but not very nice! I had heard this quote and was surprised to find out Benjamin Franklin said it. How often did he have house guests I wonder? One of my friends said she was so thankful to have guests or she'd never clean her house. I know what she means. I'll be vacuuming and dusting today getting ready for a wonderful friend of ours to visit for the weekend. I enjoy hearing about "the outside world," fixing a company meal however casual, and learning what friends have been doing since we've seen them. Franklin was a wise man... but I can't agree with this sentiment.
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10:14
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Sentences We Love
"At one moment, you feel like you’re in the middle of a samba parade in Rio de Janeiro, and in the next moment, you are suddenly in a French music hall of the 1930s or in a palazzo in Napoli. It’s like an urban musical travelogue."
That's how
Pink Martini founder Thomas Lauderdale describes his band's style of music. I heard Lauderdale play a rousing interpretation of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue last night at a Pops Concert with Oregon's Sunriver Music Festival. Lauderdale comes by his global music perspective from experience having been raised in a multicultural family. I was captivated by his powerful and playful piano playing -- he is at the top of his game.
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7:06
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Sentences We Love
"The good writer sees things sharply, vividly, accurately, and selectively (that is, he chooses what's important), not necessarily because his power of observation is by nature more acute than that of other people (though by practice it becomes so), but because he cares about seeing things clearly and getting them down effectively."
That's just one of the wise sentences in John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist. I've long thought that keen observation is a key to good writing and here, Gardner makes the point that this talent can be acquired. Gardner was a writing teacher who published novels including the award-winning October Light, children's books, poetry and short stories. His two books on the craft of writing, On Becoming a Novelist and The Art of Fiction, are considered classics. Student Raymond Carver wrote that he was lucky to have had Gardner's "criticism and his generous encouragement."
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9:51
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Sentences We Love
"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic."
This sentence is stunning for its honesty. I had begun to think this above-the-masses attitude was partly behind the recent string of politicians admitting affairs. And here John Edwards comes right out and says it. When your face is plastered across the media, you zip around in jets and have people reaching to shake your hand and hold your baby -- you could begin to feel the average rules don't apply to you. A stunning admission and a truly sad one.
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8:01
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Sentences We Love
"I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."
I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn several times; it's one of those books that you get something new out of with each reading. Here in Mark Twain's great novel, Finn and Jim are enjoying the simple pleasures on their raft away from the rules of society. Many essays and reviews have been written about this American classic, I'll just add it's a great re-read for summer.
You can visit the Mark Twain's H
ouse and Museum in Connecticut.
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10:34
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Sentences We Love
"I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. "
Which perhaps is why Annie Leibovitz is known for her portraits of famous people rather than for landscapes. Leibovitz began her career at Rolling Stone in 1970 and later moved to Vanity Fair. Her famous subjects said they forgot about her camera, leaving her able to capture them in a different and striking way than they had been shown before. Also, Leibovitz said she always looked at the moments between the supposed photo ops -- another reason for her success.
She's known for the cover photo of a naked John Lennon wrapped around Yoko hours before he was killed, for placing Whoopi Goldberg in a milk bath, a young muscled Arnold Schwarzenegger, a naked and pregnant Demi Moore, presidents and everyday people. She's pushing 60 and still traveling the world with her camera. As she said, "I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me. "
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8:19
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Sentences We Love
Kate Reddy still remembers The Look her mother and another mum exchanged when a mother "who didn't make the effort" tried to bring canned fruit to a school function.
"The look was unforgettable. It said, What kind of sorry slattern has popped down to the Spar on the corner to celebrate God's bounty when what the good Lord clearly requires is a fruit medley in a basket with cellophane wrap? Or a plaited bread?"
One brand of humor requires being British. Another Southern. So I feel left-out that I was born in the North where it's harder to write funny. Anyway,
I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson was not only funny but poignant when all I expected was a good summer read. In an
interview with the author, Pearson said she wrote an article on working mothers in the London Evening Standard that drew so many letters, she knew she had hit a cord. And so Pearson's first novel was born. It has been labeled "chick lit" but there's so much more to it and, besides, is well written. It was a best-seller in both America and England.
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11:05
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Sentences We Love
August's hot weather was once believed to be a time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies." (Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813) That's too dramatic for how the heat makes me feel today - which is lazy!
These hot sultry days are full of swimming lessons, water balloons, iced tea, sweet corn at the produce stand and plans to be outside early rather than at the sun's peak. I have the need to capture it all before summer fades... Carpe Diem!
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8:38
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Sentences We Love
"The high-toned sweet plum and raspberry fruit tastes almost jaunty on the tongue despite the weighty mouthfeel."
Jaunty? What a fun word to use (meaning lively or sprightly) in reference to wine. The language of wine can be so entertaining. Yes, some people attempt to impress with overbearing descriptions... but for most of us, the language of wine adds to the pleasure of drinking it.
That sentence is from Northwest Palate Magazine about
Volcano Vineyards Gold Medal winning Syrah (2007 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition). Volcano is a micro winery in Bend, Oregon, making wonderful Rhone varietals, many of which have won awards. Worth seeking out in Oregon's restaurants and wine shops. Or if you're lucky enough to be in downtown Bend, you can enjoy Volcano's tasting room.
Enjoy their wine and talking about it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Wine is bottled poetry."
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8:29
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Sentences We Love
"A lifelong lover of books, Ms. Goodyear lost her sight about four years ago, but in its place has acquired a roster of readers who stop by regularly, bringing with them dogs, gifts from their international travels and offerings of dark chocolate, the elixir she has savored daily since she was 3."
Elizabeth Goodyear just celebrated her 101st birthday. She is a lover of books and has friends who visit her regularly to read to her, including books by her favorite novelist Rumor Godden. A popular New York Times article titled
In Strangers, Centenarian Finds Literary Lifeline profiles this lady who exclaims she didn't think much would be happening at her age but is happy to have daily visitors. Goodyear's one-bedroom apartment sounds like a lively place; as she says "usually there's something going on here."
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10:25
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Sentences We Love
"When I was young in the mountains, grandfather came home in the evening covered with the black dust of a coal mine. Only his lips were clean, and he used them to kiss the top of my head."
Would you know reading these sentences that they were written for children ages four to eight? Cynthia Rylant's Caldecott Honor book, When I Was Young in the Mountains, was the first book this prolific author wrote and was based on her own childhood. Rylant has the gift for simple sentences full of meaning and warmth. Some of her children's series are funny too -- Mr. Putter and Tabby is our favorite.
There's a common myth that children's books are easy to write. Not so. Much harder to use words and sentence structure at the right level for children and yet imbue all the meaning their growing minds are capable of understanding. Rylant is a master at it.
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9:53
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Sentences We Love
One hot day in India, "what was left of a man" came to visit a British newspaper man to tell him a wild story.
"He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled - this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back."
Rudyard Kipling packs a lot of adventure into his short story The Man Who Would be King. This description is so vivid, I can see the character shuffling along. Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and spent an unhappy childhood in England. Later he returned to India as a journalist and traveled frequently, so he comes by the exotic settings in his stories from experience. Kipling serves as the narrator of The Man Who Would be King. His story was adapted to the 1975 movie with Sean Connery and Michael Caine playing the roles of the adventurers.
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7:48
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Sentences We Love
"Seba's scenic illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate, were unusual even for the time. Many of the stranger and more peculiar creatures from Seba's collection, some of which are now extinct, were as curious to those in Seba's day as they are to us now."
The vivid images from this huge book are more stunning than this sentence - this is a book to see more than read. Albertus Seba (1665 - 1736) was a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector who has become known for his large and beautiful book
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. He was passionate about collecting and went to the docks when ships came in to get new specimens from sailors. The illustrations in Cabinet of Natural Curiosities show Seba's specimens, from shells and snakes, artfully arranged. Each could be framed and hung as art. The cover image of red coral has "crossed over" and can now be found on objects in home decorating stores (and even the file folders on my desk). This prized natural history book costs around $200.
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7:43
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Sentences We Love
"All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved."
A Room of One's Own is a long essay by Virginia Woolf, first given as lectures then published in 1929. As you see left, I have a spot under the stairs. This is where I blog, write, pay the bills etc -- from the creative to the mundane. It's a little spot where I'm surrounded by my favorite things... yet it's also central to the house and right in the children's path. Chris Casson Madden wrote a book titled
A Room of Her Own showing the spaces where women create and call their own. I think one's environment has a great impact on creativity. Do you like to write at the coffee house, sitting by a river, quietly at your desk?
Fans of Woolf's can read more about A Room and learn about Woolf-based events at this
site.
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8:10
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Sentences We Love
Language without words (almost) by pianist Keith Jarrett...
I recently heard Jarrett's solo recording The Melody at Night, With You - a beautiful jazz album with standards such as Someone to Watch Over Me and
I Loves You Porgy. On other recordings over his long musical career, Jarrett extends beyond jazz and plays classical and gospel piano. A prodigy with perfect pitch, he began piano lessons at age three. I wrote there are almost no words in his music since he is known for his grunts and moans as he plays. So happy to discover more of Jarrett's brilliant music!
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19:38
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Sentences We Love
"How luxuriously warm the hours when midday glitters in stillness and sultry heat and the blue fathomless ocean covering the plain like a dome seems to be slumbering, bathed in languor, clasping the fair earth and holding it close in its ethereal embrace!"
I was smitten by the first paragraph.
Nikolai Gogol was born in the Ukraine in 1809 and lived to 1852. When he published his first volume of Evenings on a Farm in Dikanka (here as edited by Leonard J. Kent), it was met with success. In this sentence, I see the hot blue dome and feel the heat of a summer afternoon. The word choices contribute to the heat. Of course, with any foreign writer the translator matters so much to understanding the true intent of the author.
I read that this author mingles humor with horror... we shall see. I don't know much about Russian literature. Have you read Gogol?
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10:24
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Sentences We Love
"You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else. "
Iron Chef
Mario Batali should know. I'm still waiting for that defining moment. Sure we've picked a couple sungolds off our vines so far but what I want is a caprese-worthy basket full of the sun-riped red jewels. Botanically speaking, the tomato is a fruit; in the culinary world, it's used as a vegetable. However, it's classified, I'm ready!
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8:05
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Sentences We Love
If, "Manners maketh man" as someone said
Then he's the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sting wrote An English in New York in honor of
Quentin Crisp, the gay writer known for his outlandish dress and witty quotes. Yet, without knowing the background, you can apply Sting's sentiment to any way of being which is against the tide. Sting is one songwrier who can write the stunning sentence.
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7:49
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Sentences We Love
"Beltway wisdom has it that the addition of such a corporate star will remedy Mr. McCain’s fiscal flatulence."
It's not really funny that a political candidate knows so little about the economy -- but I did have to laugh at this "turn of phrase" in Frank Rich's column in The New York Times titled "
It's the Economic Stupidity, Stupid." Rich goes on to write that John McCain vows to read Greenspan's book as a tutorial and is thinking he'll learn to get online one of these days. Oh dear. The "right" vice president won't fix what's wrong with McCain. Along with his lack of fiscal know-how, I can't imagine him ever uttering a stunning sentence.
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9:09
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Sentences We Love
"I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of."
Said as only a Texas billionaire can. That's T. Boone Pickens talking about his
plan to stop America's "addiction to foreign oil" and built wind turbines. His site is full of grand sentences such as "The Pickens Plan is a bridge to the future." The head of the Sierra Club said "...Pickens is out to save America." Pickens is taking his message directly to the people through a massive ad campaign. That, he says, will make energy a top problem to solve by the next President. Do his sentences resonate with you?
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9:03
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Sentences We Love
"A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.”
New Yorker Spencer Tunick is known for his photographs of large numbers of nude people. Tunick has photographed thousands of nude people in public places all over the world, including 18,000 people in Mexico City's main square. In 2007, Tunick posed hundreds of nude volunteers at Aletsch Glacier to draw attention to global warming. It was not warm however, as the volunteers braved 10 degree temperatures at the time of the photograph. See his work on his
site.
While our society places such high value on having the "perfect" body, we'd be wise to remember Tunick's words about all bodies being beautiful. He ought to know.
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12:02
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Sentences We Love
"We should tax what we burn, not what we earn."
Al Gore is calling for Americans to end our reliance on fossil fuels and embrace greener sources of energy. His plan would include taxes on carbon dioxide production which he refers to in this sentence. Gore spoke at an energy conference today saying our future is at stake.
Gore is using his unique position for the greater good. By being so knowledgeable about energy and by speaking out, I'm sure he'll have more influence on our country than he would have as president. Being independent has the advantage of saying the words he needs to say without worrying about the political impact. Let's listen.
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8:07
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Sentences We Love
Satie slipped into his scores such weird performance instructions as "on yellowed velvet," "without pride," "with the tip of the back teeth" -- all aimed at destablishing the player's traditional logic and good sense, and better preparing them to accept the unusual combinations of notes that he offered them.
What amazing ways to describe sound! I love The Magic of Satie played by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet - so moody. This sentence is from the CD's jacket. The liner goes on to say that Satie was an "odd composer" whose music appeals to a state of mind and speaks to one listener at a time. Erik Satie lived mostly in Paris, wasn't much appreciated in his lifetime and led a lonely life. I hear French melancholy in his hauntingly beautiful compositions.
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8:25
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Sentences We Love
"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." Persian proverb
Everyone I know has read Three Cups of Tea - now I'm finally getting to it. I like the seeming incongruity in this quote which opens the true story of a mountaineer who failed to climb K2 and instead built 55 schools in the villages around Taliban country. I wonder how many people going about their ordinary lives can find the motivation to do extraordinary things.
You can read much more about Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin's mission at the tea
Web site.
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7:42
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Sentences We Love
I'm having a hard time. With a summer book. Phrases masquerading as sentences. Without verbs.
"She had felt love before, though not often, but this was different and holy. (new paragraph!) Which was how she knew something had gone wrong, some problem, he wouldn't just disappear like this leaving her stranded in this French hotel without explanation."
I wanted a fun read and Le Mariage by Diane Johnson promised "a lively romp." However the use of sentence fragments, some even broken by separate paragraphs, is bothering the part of my brain which pays attention to grammar. It's an intrusion on what the jacket touted as "playful, a splendid entertianment." So far, Johnson seems like a great storyteller and the setting is Paris - so I'll stick with it a bit longer.
Do you mind. Sentence fragments? Standards for "beach" books different than literature. Which lends a breezy quality or bothers us wordsmiths.
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7:58
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Sentences We Love
"Long before I could understand why, I reacted against the rigidity of the Victorian era, with its uncomfortable chairs and sofas on which one could do nothing but sit upright, and its red, green, or saffron upholstery -- all invariably arranged against a background of wallpaper on which colors that should never be allowed out together made faces at one another."
Of course, if Elsie de Wolfe had simply said the colors didn't go together, it would have been a boring sentence. Instead de Wolfe, sometimes called the First Lady of American decorating, showed her sense of the dramatic in speech as well as her rooms. De Wolfe made her mark on interior design with pale colors, by using her signature leopard fabric, and by embroidering taffeta pillows with the motto, "Never complain, Never explain." De Wolfe dyed her hair blue, carried her Pekingese everywhere, tossed off witty quips to the press, wowed Paris with her fashionable clothes and once entered a fancy ball turning handsprings (a stunt Cole Porter included in his lyrics). She published
The House in Good Taste in 1913. Never a dull moment!
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7:41
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Sentences We Love
"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others."
Here the prolific culinary writer M. F. K. Fisher answers why she writes about food. I have the fat tome The Art of Eating by my bed and read an essay every now and then. The collection includes her first book Serve it Forth (published in 1937) and her thoughts on food from oysters, eggs to vegetables. Fisher was a top-notch essayist, weaving in her thoughts about the history and culture of food. Her sentence structure is sophisticated and sensual. Foodies and writers will appreciate her.
If you're not familiar with
Fisher, I recommend any of her essays with a cool glass of wine.
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7:58
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Sentences We Love
"The future story writer in the child I was must have taken unconscious note and stored it away then; one secret is liable to be revealed in the place of another that is harder to tell, and the substitute secret when nakedly exposed is often the more appalling."
Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings is part autobiography and part "how to be a writer." It's also a charming story of Welty's upbringing in Jackson, Mississippi. Welty's three chapters titled Listening, Learning to See and Finding a Voice, describe how important it is that any writer be a keen observer. In this sentence she tells that as a girl she frequently asked her mother where babies come from but, one day, instead was told the story of how her mother's first baby died. Welty lived her long life in Jackson, dying in 2001 at the age of 92.
You can visit her home and garden in Jackson which is preserved by the
Eudora Welty Foundation.
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7:35
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Sentences We Love
"It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband."
I just had to read the most popular emailed article in The New York Times -- Maureen Dowd's
column An Ideal Husband -- even though I already have a wonderful husband. Dowd relates the points a Catholic Priest has been making for decades in his lecture called Whom Not to Marry. It's one of those bits of advice that seems so common sense that isn't common at all. He dispenses advice with humor and adds why it's important to assess a new friend's character, "Infatuation trumps judgment." It's worth sharing with your single friends.
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7:54
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Sentences We Love
"The haze of the morning had become a sort of clear tremour over everything, like the colourless vibration about a flame; and the opulent landscape seemed to droop under it."
The heat is rising in Charity Royall's life just as in this summer day. Edith Wharton's 1917 novel follows a young girl's romance amidst the backdrop of the lush New England landscape in summertime. I like Wharton's use of words such as haze and tremour which help us
see the heat. Both nature and the heat are elements which enhance this story of first love. If you're in Massachusetts, you can visit Wharton's home
The Mount Estate & Gardens to see how passionate she was about landscape design.
I'm only half way through and am worried the flame might burn too hot for Charity! Better go make iced tea so we can stay cooler than Wharton's heroine in the heat of this afternoon.
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9:10
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Sentences We Love
"I gotta do holidays. They offer me so much. In particular, for me and the reader, a whole set of associations. If you write about Easter, if you write about the Fourth of July, something as important, almost invisibly important, as the temporal setting of a book...if the reader can say, 'Gee, that's a time I know. I have a whole set of memories and associations to bring to bear on whatever's happening then,' you've got a lot going for you. "
Richard Ford's
Independence Day was the first novel to win both a Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner. Holidays are evocative. What does today bring to your mind? From fireworks and grilling to where America is headed with a new president at the helm - July 4th covers a lot of ground. Perhaps fitting for our multi-cultural nation, I'm cooking chili chicken with roasted tomatillo salsa this afternoon. Happy Independence Day!
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7:40
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Sentences We Love
"Upstream the canyon is silent.
Water innocent and steady as window glass
slides over speckled stones.
Brook trout and kokanee, rose and silver,
cast moving shadows on the bottom,
announce themselves to eagles, to flies.
Hard to be either predator or prey
in such transparency."
A poem by Sharon Fain I found in a guide book to my favorite place: Some Common Birds and Flowers of Central Oregon's Metolius Basin. The river is spring fed, about the same level and temperature all year around, and is clear as glass as the poet writes. I fly-fished the river BC (before children), and today hike along the river banks lush with lupine, paintbrush and corn lily. When she was four, my daughter said, "I love the nature" and I hope today finds you out in it.
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7:32
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Sentences We Love
"You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet."
I took an early morning walk but couldn't feel that arc... the thought in this sentence struck me and I know I'll continue trying to feel the impossible when walking through our forest again. I was surprised to realize Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has sat on my shelf unread. Published in 1974, Dillard won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for this book which is part nature, part meditative writing. Dillard herself referred to it as a theological treatise. Her appreciation of Thoreau is supposed to be evident in the pages. I'll see - I've only just begun walking through it.
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8:15
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Sentences We Love
"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
British author Henry James would enjoy today since it should be in the 80's. I was thinking how the weather can almost be a character in a novel. Remember the heat in the courtroom in To Kill a Mockingbird? Those emotional scenes of the trial wouldn't have been the same if snow had been falling. Last weekend, we had a thunder, lighting and hail storm. We stayed outside in our shorts in the warm air amazed at the drama of nature. The storm made our pine and juniper forest feel tropical -- think The Year of Living Dangerously when you can smell a summer rain. What summer reads are truly about the heat of summer?
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8:01
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Sentences We Love
"It was an absolutely wonderful, positively perfect, especially terrific idea."
Keven Henkes sentence almost sings with fun sounds. Henkes isn't afraid to use big words, then he strings them together in a musical way. Here the first word in each pair has four syllables which lends a poetic touch. I've blogged about this prolific children's writer before because he understands words and kids so well. In this book titled Owen, a little boy has trouble giving up his blanket when it's time to start school.
Grown-up writers can learn from good kids' books. I dare you to read one aloud today... whether there's a kid present or not!
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9:06
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Sentences We Love
Thank goodness there are so many great blogs for book lovers! In this age when reading actual books is down, it warms the cockles of my heart.
If you're wondering what your next summer read should be, visit
The Elegant Variation. Mark Sarvas posts insightful book reviews and talks about his own new novel
Harry, Revisited. This enthusiastic and very busy reader will inspire you to add to your stack of must-reads.
As a mom, I appreciate reviews of kids books and
Books For Kids by a retired librarian is a helpful resource.
Book-a-Rama is fun to check out from a blogger and bookaholic in Canada who is taking a Read-a-Thon challenge today. I've found several books to add to my list at
A Life in Books. And
Danzig U.S.A. is an eclectic mix of culture, insight and beautiful photographs from three contributors in Louisville.
Just a few of my favorite things - please add yours!
Monday Note: I noticed on Google Analytics several international readers of my weekend blog. Fun to know people in Malaysia, France and Columbia are visiting! What's on the bestseller lists in Israel and Portugal?
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8:03
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Sentences We Love
"Wine is sunlight held together by water."
This morning the sun is streaming through our windows and, preparing for the hot day ahead, we just went out to water our strawberries and hanging plants. I was reminded of this quote by the Italian scientist and philosopher who was born in Pisa in 1564. Perhaps with Galileo's knowledge of astronomy and with the improvements he made to the telescope, he was apt to link wine with the solar system. A toast to the weekend!
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7:11
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Sentences We Love
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another. And his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."
Here are thoughtful sentences from Scottish novelist and dramatist James M. Barrie who is remembered for creating Peter Pan. There's something about old-fashioned English that makes his sentences grander than if I tried to communicate the same sentiment today.
I found this quote in a book I am just beginning titled Dough - A Memoir by Mort Zachter. The author's immigrant family struggled to make ends meet in their bread shop in New York. Or so everyone thought. In his 30's Zachter learns his uncles have secretly amassed millions. I have an advance copy; Dough will be available this August. I'll let you know what I think of this true story of parallel lives.
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8:04
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Sentences We Love
"It took me time to understand my
waterlilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them."
At a London auction at Christie's this week, one of Claude Monet's waterlilies series titled Le Bassin aux Nymphéas sold for $80.4 million. Funny that Monet was thinking more like a gardener than a painter when he planted his now famous waterlilies. Thank goodness this French impressionist followed his early creative yearnings rather than going into the family grocery business as his father wished.
"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
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7:44
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Sentences We Love
"The soft gray of the dawn had lightened and the sky was the wet pale blue of a watercolor sky just painted and not yet dried."
"It was the time of afternoon when the bars of sunlight crossed the back yard like the bars of a bright strange jail."
"In the gray of the kitchen on summer afternoons the tone of her voice was golden and quiet, and you could listen to the color and the singing of her voice and not follow the words."
I blogged about Carson McCullers last Friday, and now as I continue reading The Member of the Wedding, I am struck by her descriptions of the summer days experienced by 12-year old Frankie. That watercolor sky would not be so memorable if McCullers had not told us it was still wet. And when she talks about the bars of sunlight, I can see them slanting into Frankie's yard. She is a master of writing the atmosphere in this story which McCullers once referred to as a fugue.
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7:25
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Sentences We Love
"How come when it’s us it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken it’s an omelet?”
Irreverent and original, George Carlin's love of words came through in the stand-up comedy he shared for almost five decades. Carlin died yesterday at age 71. Carlin said his parents loved language and passed that along to him. He was known for his word play and long list of oxymorons including "jumbo shrimp."
Carlin saw the absurdities in life. "This is my art, to interpret the world.”
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8:19
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Sentences We Love
How do you edit your writing? Do you let it sit overnight? Read it aloud? Sometimes, I print out a composition since my eyes tend to see things on paper they don't see on a screen.
James Kilpatrick's current syndicated column titled
Redundancy Good, Redundancy Bad asks when words should be struck, or kept for cadence or clarity. Kilpatrick cites Strunk & White's rule to "Omit needless words" which comes from my favorite writers' reference book.
My personal beef is business emails. In my corporate days, I noticed they were often the wordiest writing I encountered. How annoying on a busy day at the office to plod through flabby sentences! When you separate the chaff from the wheat, the meaning is stronger.
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7:50
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Sentences We Love
"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
I've just discovered writer Carson McCullers (1917-1967). I am reading her book The Member of the Wedding about a lonely girl, jealous of her brother's wedding, who feels she doesn't belong anywhere. In 1946 Saturday Review wrote about her book, which also became a Broadway play: "What makes this story so unusual is the fact that most of it takes place through the medium of desultory conversations between three really weird people sitting in an even weirder kitchen. Nothing or almost nothing occurs here, and yet every page is filled with a sense of something having happened, happening, and about to happen. This in itself is a considerable technical feat; and, beyond that, there is magic in it."
McCullers' life was filled with writing, personal sadness, health problems, alcoholism and literary acclaim; you can read more about her
here. Let me know if you've read any novels, short stories or poetry of McCullers whose style is often referred to as Southern Gothic.
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9:23
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Sentences We Love
"I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it."
A good thought well worded from Spanish writer and poet Rosalia de Castro (1837 to 1885). De Castro is speaking figuratively about her journey through life but it also makes me think of physical travel. On vacations, you hope to see certain sites, then make discoveries of the unknown which can be more inspiring than what was planned. Perhaps because school is out and everyone seems to be going on vacation, I feel the travel bug too. Where are you traveling?
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8:53
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Sentences We Love
I think Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches should be required reading by all world leaders. Remember the story about the star-belly Sneetches who act superior to the plain ones? The plain Sneetches feel left out until Sylvester McMonkey McBean, who calls himself the Fix-it-Up Chappie, comes along with a machine that changes everything. In the end, McBean gets rich off the Sneetches prejudice but they finally learn to get along.
"Just pay me your money and hop right aboard!"
So they clambered inside. Then the big machine roared
And it klonked. And it bonked. And it jerked. And it berked
And it bopped them about. But the thing really worked!
When the Plain-Belly Sneetches popped out, they had stars!
They actually did. They had stars upon thars!
Theodor Seuss Geisel published more than 60 children's books. Along with his wonderful rhymes and funny made-up words, he usually has a message in his books such as this one. Also, there is a driving rhythm in his word choices. I learned the poetic meter Seuss often wrote in was anapestic tetrameter which has two unstressed syllables followed by a strong one. So that's the secret behind his books which make them so fun to read aloud.
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8:48
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Sentences We Love
Bed In Summer
In winter I get up at night,
And dress by yellow candle light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day,
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown up people's feet
Still going past me in the street,
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
My Robert Louis Stevenson poetry book titled A Child's Garden of Verses (published in 1885) was one of my favorites growing up. Most of us remember having to go to bed when it seemed the grown-ups were still awake having fun. Here there's light still at 9:00 in the evening which extends our day as we sit outside watching the deer stroll by.
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8:44
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Sentences We Love
"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
Marine biologist
Rachel Carson wrote influential books including The Sea Around Us which I read as a teenager. I remember she imparted facts in a poetic style. Carson, who died in 1964, wrote eloquently about man's impact on nature and sparked social change in America. In Silent Spring she took on the chemical industry and as a result of her well-researched book, DDT was eventually banned.
I was reminded of Carson when I read an
article in The New York Times about the new Progressive Book Club which will highlight politically liberal books and, along with current titles, is offering Carson's decades old Silent Spring. What an amazing achievement as an author to write nonfiction which is relevant more than 40 years after it was published. Carson could have been joining our current discussion on global warming when she said:
"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature."
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7:55
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Sentences We Love
"When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue -- you sell him a whole new life."
That's a rather big statement by writer Christopher Morley. Has a book ever changed your life? Some might site a self-help book or the bible. I remember Doctorow's Ragtime changing the way I thought about the structure of novels... but that wasn't really life-changing. Have you experienced a book which had a profound impact on you?
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8:29
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Sentences We Love
"He believed ardently in the Digest’s populist mission of making well-written books with strong stories and interesting characters available to people who might not otherwise be readers."
That's the son of John S. Zinsser Jr. talking about his father's work condensing many hundreds of books as editor of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Zinsser died last month at age 84. His life's work included condensing the classics of Faulker, Steinbeck and others to their bare essentials.
In a New York Times
article about his death, Zinsser said upon his retirement in 1987 that books were getting too long and he appreciated the days when a good story was told in a reasonable number of pages.
I don't want to read a book that has been tampered with -- that is not the original creation of the author. Beautiful sentences would be lost, leaving only a skeleton of the authors intention. What do you think? Does a huge tome like War and Peace turn you off? Would you read a book which was cut down by a condenser?
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7:54
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Sentences We Love
"My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog."
That's the first sentence of Kate DiCamillo's Newberry award-winning book Because of Winn-Dixie. It is supposedly for the young audience but I loved the story. Near run-on sentences like this one with entertaining details pull you along as do DiCamillo's warm-hearted characters. There seems to be a new area of YA (young adult) books which grown-ups are reading. Maybe the quality of the writing has risen. I met an older couple on vacation who were enjoying listening to Little Women in their car. Have you read any kids' books as an adult?
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7:39
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Sentences We Love
Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today, any shock they should try to stem,
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows, anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four letter words
writing prose
Anything goes.
This is the title song to Cole Porter's Anything Goes. I'm reading a biography of him and have learned there's a lot of education, thought and pattern behind his snappy, fun and sometimes naughty lyrics. Porter was always interested in music; he sang in the glee club at Yale, studied music at Harvard and traveled the world enjoying the words and rhythms he heard. This song celebrates the free spirits in America in the 1930's. Reading, or singing, his lyrics it's easy to understand how much he loved playing with words.
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7:36
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Sentences We Love
"At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. "
It is a special morning since Wang Lung is going to meet his new wife. Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth chronicles the joys and tragedies of a peasant farmer in China where Buck grew up (her father was a missionary). The Good Earth was Buck's second novel and for it she received the Pulitzer Prize and was later awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. It is both a family saga and a historical novel, giving a view of China when the last emperor reigned. Buck manages to cover class differences, the symbolism of land, the fate of being born plain or beautiful, betrayal, hope and despair. She's an American woman writing as a Chinese man and does all convincingly. It's a rich novel from Buck's unique perspective.
I think I've read this book at least twice -- it's a classic worth re-reading.
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7:37
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Sentences We Love
"The river was there."
Hemingway, of course. In the short story, Big Two-Hearted River, Ernest Hemingway writes the story of a man suffering shell shock from World War I. He hikes along a river in Michigan and through a burned-out forest; his walk parallels his emotional journey to heal.
"He was there in the good place," is another simple sentence full of meaning. For Hemingway, it is almost the biblical good place which our character finds since nature is an escape from his painful reality. My husband was re-reading Hemingway on our vacation. He thought this story was typical of the sentences Hemingway is famous for - and sometimes parodied for! In fact there is an annual contest called the International Imitation Hemingway Competition which pays mock homage to the famous author's trademark style with entries like The Snooze of Kilimanjaro and The Old Man and the Flea. The winning writer gets an all expenses paid trip to a Harry's Bar in Italy. I'm not sure this contest is still going on.. if so it's certainly worth studying Hemingway for!
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7:49
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Sentences We Love
"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in."
I planned to keep blogging this week while we're away but find I'm in vacation mindset. Lack of routine and chores is very freeing! We don't have much we truly need to do and ask fresh each day where we're going to explore. Today maybe a nature hike and lunch out, then later art gallery hopping for us big people - nothing too strenuous. Next week I'll be back to "normal" and blogging daily.
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7:50
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Sentences We Love
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
Leave it to Mark Twain to capture a big point in a little sentence. Twain adheres to Strunk & White's admonishment to omit needless words. It may be hard to say "unnecessary necessaries" ten times fast but the juxtaposition of opposites somehow adds Twain's trademark humor to the sentence.
Last weekend I packed the family for vacation and was trying to take only the necessities - yet our Sienna was packed full! It's a mindset I will continue to challenge.
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9:49
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Sentences We Love
"We as a business cannot afford to have a customer take a second look and ask, ‘Do I need this?’ That is the kiss of death. We’re finished, because nobody really needs anything we make as a total industry.”
These are the words of Bud Konheim, the chief executive of Nicole Miller, in a New York Times article titled
Dress for Less and Less, about how the price of clothes has actually deflated in past years.
This sentence is remarkable for its honesty. There's no spin here! Who really needs fashion? We need to cover our bodies, and fashion might be fun sometimes. But do we really need new clothes each season? This top exec at a fashion house knows we really don't.
Konheim's honesty continues when he adds that the price of clothes has truly hit bottom, “I think we’ve exploited all the countries on earth for people who really want to work for nothing."
During this time of presidential politics, where people barely say a word without doing a focus group first, I have to commend Bud for being an honest man.
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9:35
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Sentences We Love
"There's an old joke that if you laid every economist in history end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion."
Ha! The main point in Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich's book is found in its long title: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics. The authors say, joking aside, we actually know a lot about money and markets, yet still make irrational decisions when it comes to money. Belsky and Gilovich write that by combining the disciplines of psychology and economics, we can understand how people make illogical choices when spending, investing or borrowing money. The book is written in an entertaining style -- just the kind of writing that will help make solid financial advice less dry!
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7:30
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Sentences We Love
"So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true."
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a book titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception which comes out in June from
Public Affairs publishing. McClellan writes about the glare of the lights to communicate the intense scrutiny he received by the press while passing out information he found out later was false. While McClellan is bitter at being deceived, a review in the
New York Times of the yet-to-be published book says he retains affection for President Bush.
What Happened may be written in an entertaining style but I think I'm done with this administration and will skip this read - time to move on!
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7:45
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Sentences We Love
Time to get busy, such a lot to do
Building and fixing till it's good as new
Bob and the gang have so much fun
Working together, they get the job done.
Are you heading back to work today after a relaxing holiday weekend? For my international readers, Memorial Day commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in military service. Some people will have observed the day by flying a flag at half-staff. While for others, it is simply a day off with the meaning lost like so many holidays.
My boy has been going around this morning singing this theme song to the kid's show Bob the Builder. The simple rhyme is catchy and the point about team work is a good lesson, for both big and little people. It seemed apropos for today. Happy working!
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8:03
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Sentences We Love
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
Joseph Brackett's 1848 Shaker dance song wasn't well known until composer Aaron Copland used it in
Martha Graham's ballet,
Appalachian Spring, first performed in 1944. Since then, the song has been adapted by many folk singers and composers. This first sentence has been broadened from Brackett's original religious meaning to refer to the whole simplicity movement, or the path away from material possessions.
I remember singing Simple Gifts in middle school choir. I've always believed in the point of simple living in today's context: knowing the difference between needs and wants, enjoying nature and family, spending time consciously. It's an ongoing process to weed out what is not important -- it's like a writer editing a sentence.
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8:08
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Sentences We Love
"Tilting at windmills" means attacking imaginary enemies. And while most people know it is a reference to Cervantes' 1604 book Don Quixote, those words are actually not found there. In the popular Spanish novel, Quixote uses his lance to attack a group of windmills which he mistakes for ferocious giants.
Later that century, there is a figurative reference to tilting (or jousting) in a journal written by English poet John Cleveland, "The Quixotes of this Age fight with the Wind-mills of their owne Heads."
The full form of the phrase isn't used until towards the end of the 19th century. For example, in The New York Times, April 1870, "They [Western Republicans] have not thus far had sufficient of an organization behind them to make their opposition to the Committee's bill anything more than tilting at windmills." Today, I think people use it in an even broader sense to mean a futile effort.
So, even if Cervantes didn't write the specific words, we have him to thank for this useful phrase.
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9:17
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Sentences We Love
You might be using the American slang phrase today, "TGIF !" to mean "Thank God it's Friday" or "Thank goodness it's Friday !"
It's interesting to find out, these four little letters can stand for several sentences with meanings beyond an expression of relief at the end of the work week. Florida used TGIF as a slogan to mean, "Thank God it's Florida." Of course, there is a restaurant chain named T. G. I. Friday's. And one television sitcom used it to mean, "Thank goodness it's funny."
Since people from the UK to India and Belgium read this blog, I wonder if my international readers have heard of this saying..?
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9:19
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Sentences We Love
"
What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
Of course I would like this sentence from English novelist Joseph Conrad since it has such a wonderful "v" word in it! Verisimilitude means being true, or depicting realism. It is often used in reference to art and literature, as in Conrad's sentence. I wish I'd taken Latin; it provides so many clues to words. For example, verum means truth.
So is there more truth in fiction? In a novel, an author can certainly leave out the daily bits of life to focus on one important theme so we see it more clearly.
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21:27
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Sentences We Love
"If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive."
That's a modest statement from an author without literary ambitions whose books spawned the James Bond empire. Ian Fleming didn't seem to think he was very talented - rather he scheduled "seat time" daily and wrote a novel in two months. Fleming kept up his writing pace through a glamorous lifestyle which included his Jamaican retreat and a steady diet of cigarettes and cocktails. In one aspect, his lifestyle sets an example for writers -- that is to schedule time to work every day and not let lofty visions of literary excellence hold you back.
In a New York Times article titled
Remembering Fleming, Ian Fleming the reviewer writes about a current exhibit on Fleming in London's Imperial War Museum. Fleming had rich experiences to use for his books from his military career in World War II. It's amazing that the man whose first book was Casino Royale also wrote the children's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming's approach to his writing reminds me of the words by Pablo Picasso, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."
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9:27
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Sentences We Love
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
The English philosopher Francis Bacon wrote this around 1600 long before the term "beach book" but I think that's the type of book he says should be tasted. The books that are worthy of being digested are harder to find. It is funny to think that reading habits change with the seasons along with clothes and food -- but many people do turn to light reading in the summertime. What are your summer reading habits?
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8:16
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Sentences We Love
"This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. ~ The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water."
So begins Henry David Thoreau's chapter titled Solitude from his book Walden. I like Thoreau's suggestion that your senses can become one in taking in the summer evening. We went to sleep last night listening to the frogs -- a sure sign of the new season. Thoreau ends this chapter enthusing about the power of the morning air to keep one serene and contented. It is hard to imagine this lover of nature working in his family's pencil factory in Concord, Massachusetts, but that's what he did much of his adult life.
Are the writings from this man of the mid-1800's relevant today? I haven't read much Thoreau - so you tell me..?
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8:09
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Sentences We Love
"There was a star danced, and under that was I born."
I am a tad bit busy today. Tomorrow we have two, yes two, birthday parties at our house. First nine little girls come over for butterfly crafts and cupcakes, then six little boys will play race car games and eat more cupcakes. In the midst of all the party preparations, I've been remembering the day when a star danced and my sweetpeas came into the world. Oh joy!
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7:50
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Sentences We Love
Frances and Edward Mayes are two lucky people who found a villa in Tuscany with good olive trees.
"I have to consider that the state of being happy consists of something very simple: your hand parts silver leaves to reach a clump of shiny black olives, your thumb and index finger pull an olive and snap it off the branch, letting it fall just as fast as Galileo said it would."
There's a state of contentment that comes only from physical activity. Perhaps you find it in gardening. In this sentence, instead of the olives simply falling Mayes' refers to the Italian astronomer, giving richer meaning to the simple act of picking olives. We're doing some planting this weekend which won't result in fresh olive oil to douse on bruschette but will bring happiness just the same.
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6:38
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Sentences We Love
Robert Rauschenberg died Monday at age 82. He was a prolific American pop artist about whom much has been written. This sentence, in which American composer John Cage refers to Rauschenberg's art, is one which stands alone.
“Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”
Rauschenberg blurred lines between painting, sculpture, photography, and print and paper making. He was also known to pick up trash on the streets of New York and that is what Cage was referring to. Not only could junk be the stuff of art - but in Rauschenberg's hands it could become beautiful art.
Aside from the specific context that Rauschenberg's non-traditional approach provided inspiration to other artists, this sentence can be an inspiration to our lives. Cage uses "underfoot" as though you might rush by and trample it. He doesn't say that we see it; he says we need to take the trouble to look. This sentence speaks of missed opportunities. It's a more sophisticated version of "stop and smell the roses." Beauty is there. Now.
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7:57
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Sentences We Love
"Lilly ran and skipped and hopped and flew all the way home, she was so happy. And she really did want to be a teacher when she grew up -- That is when she didn't want to be a dancer or a surgeon or an ambulance driver or a diva or a pilot or a hairdresser or a scuba diver..."
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse is the story of a little girl who can't wait for sharing time at school causing the teacher to take her special things for the day and causing Lilly to show her anger. In this sentence at the end, Lilly is friends once again with her favorite teacher.
Kevin Henkes is one of the best children's book authors. He really understands kids. Here Henkes' juxtaposition of various possible career choices is so true to life. My aspirations included singer, architect and entomologist. The funny thing is Lilly the mouse is very much like my girl - both are creative and passionate. :-)
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8:00
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Sentences We Love
"It is now fifteen years since I first approached the forbidding granite wall of rock, found the jagged cleft cut by the rushing torrent of the river, negotiated the narrow road on the ledge above the ravine, swung around the hairpin bends and plunged through one rock tunnel after another, until I found myself in the sun-splashed forest, surrounded, it seemed, by an orchestra of a thousand birds singing in harmony a hundred songs."
Does this sound like a cookbook? That's the magic of Roy Andries de Groot's The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth. In this sentence he describes the first time he traveled to the valley of La Grande Chartreuse, fell in love with its cuisine and spent years chronicling the dishes. De Groot writes that his book is not a tourist guide, yet it is filled with descriptions of this high Alpine valley that will make you want to visit immediately. His descriptions are all the more amazing since de Groot was nearly sightless. Chefs rave about this book; Julia Child said it "is a whole way of life." I've only just begun and read a recipe which takes three days to make... so it may serve as more of a travel than a cook book for me.
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14:15
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Sentences We Love
I blogged about Dara Horn's novel
The World to Come earlier this year and told the author what a brilliant book I thought it was.
Dara Horn emailed me back - how nice is that? She told me she is well into writing her third novel scheduled for publication in spring of 2009. Titled All Other Nights, it is about Jewish spies during the American Civil War. Horn has an interview in
Esquire magazine about it and there is an excerpt in
Granta last year in an issue titled Best of Young American Novelists.
Horn, at age 31, has already won awards including 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, has been chosen as Editor's Choice by The New York Times Book Review and others, and is generating raves from critics who call World captivating and daring. Wow - what a way for this young novelist to start her writing career!
And if you happen to live in Central Oregon, you can catch this rising literary star on tour next week. Horn will speak in Bend at the Tower Theatre Thursday May 15 and in Sisters at Five Pine Friday May 16.
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6:26
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Sentences We Love
Isn't that a great title? The book is subtitled, "reinventing modern motherhood."
"Unless the housekeeper of our dreams suddenly swoops down from the sky, the key for many of us is to find a way to savor the dailiness."
I'm a big fan of dailiness. When you stop rushing, you find the good stuff is already there. The excitement in my daughter's face when she saw her daisy seeds sprouting would have been enough to make the day a great one. But, it didn't end there. Every day my kids help me recognize moments worth savoring, the ones you shouldn't rush past.
In "
Good Mom," authors Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile explore how mothers can learn to enjoy motherhood despite the craziness of their schedules. They start off with a check list to see if you need the book, asking if you secretly wish you had your own apartment. Ooops. Another check list item is that you consider a trip to the dentist your special "alone time." Oh, it's not?
The book is funny and witty and improved my attitude on a crazy day. I'm off to find joy in small moments. Happy Mother's Day !
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6:25
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Sentences We Love
"The mind of the wine consumer is a woolly place, packed with odd and arcane information fascinating to few. Like the pants pocket of a 7-year-old boy, it’s full of bits of string, bottle caps and shiny rocks collected while making the daily rounds of wine shops, restaurants, periodicals and the wine-soaked back alleys of the Internet."
New York Times chief wine critic Eric Asimov knows his way around a wine shop and a paragraph. Here he opens a popular article titled
Wine Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head? It turns out two studies show American consumers still don't know much about wine and are swayed by marketing hype. Asimov is an entertaining writer. Who would think to compare oddball wine facts with the contents of a little boy's pocket? Probably the dad of two of them. When I read him, yes, I learn about wine but I also learn how engagingly knowledge can be imparted in the hands of a solid writer. Salut Eric!
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0:46
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Sentences We Love
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."
We're familiar with the hobgoblin sentence - yet what was Ralph Waldo Emerson really saying? Emerson isn't specific in his essay
Self-Reliance exactly which steady conformity is foolish and which is wise. He is telling us to think anew each day and goes on to add, "To be great is to be misunderstood."
Ah, if only the players in last night's Presidential contests seemed truly great! Instead they tailor their words to what will sway the voters at that moment. Emerson could not have known in 1841 about political pundits, exit polls, marketing firms, speech writers and the like. It all goes against the point of Emerson's essay to follow our own instincts and ideas. It would be so daring and fresh for a politician to simply state their intent regardless of the consequences. And we may just be ready to listen...
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6:43
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Sentences We Love
"Susan Ward came West not to join a new society but to endure it, not to build anything but to enjoy a temporary existence and make it yield whatever instruction it contained."
Angle of Repose is a novel by Wallace Stegner about a wheelchair-bound historian who decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents. In this sentence we see the West coast through the eyes of a bride who is a true easterner. She continues to define herself through her cultured roots never quite embracing the rougher side of America where she eventually builds her family life. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972.
My husband and I had our own mini reading group since we read Stegner's book at the same time and could discuss its themes of America as a nation in flux, of young and old, of dreams reached, of finding a resting place when dreams aren't realized. Wallace Stegner has said of his epic novel, "It's perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that's my story."
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7:52
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Sentences We Love
Proud Songster by Thomas Hardy
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
You may know Thomas Hardy as an English novelist (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Ubervilles) yet he saw himself as a poet. His themes were often about disappointment in life and love though thankfully many of his poems, such as this one, are about his love of nature. We had a glorious sunny weekend outside, the pine air rich with the sounds of robins, wrens, and white-crowned sparrows. My husband has counted 80 different species of birds on our property and thinks this is the best time of year to see and hear them. Their sounds are proud, as Hardy says, as though they have no cares in the world.
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9:48
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Sentences We Love
Although 59 million newspapers are sold in this country each Sunday, overall circulation has declined. People are spending less time with newspapers, and fewer people are developing the newspaper habit in the first place. A recent
article from the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported that editors are evolving by making papers more niche oriented and enhancing their online offerings. I read
The New York Times online everyday - but on Sundays, the screen simply can't compete with a good mug of coffee and the Sunday newspaper. It is a lazy luxury we even kept up when our sweetpeas were infants, laying them on the sofa between us. I don't have much downtime in my week but this is one habit I won't let decline in our house.
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8:29
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Sentences We Love
I have long loved the color and passion found in the art of
Henri Matisse. In Sister Wendy's Story of Painting, she writes that Matisse "produced some of the most powerful beauty ever painted." Sister Wendy explains that this 20th century master found serenity in his art.
"He spoke of his art as being like 'a good armchair' - a ludicrously inept comparison for such a brilliant man - but his art was a respite, a reprieve, a comfort to him."
Sister Wendy became an unlikely celebrity in the 1990's when she produced a series of art histories for
public television. If you didn't catch her, she is quite knowledgeable and funny. Enthusiasm for art shines through in this Carmelite nun's writing. I'm happy to sit in my armchair looking at the brilliance of Matisse.
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9:15
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Sentences We Love
Let's start off May with a laugh.
"I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals. "
Do you ever feel this way? Extra points to those who know who said this -- Butch Cassidy. Paul Newman utters these words and other witty sentences in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The screen play about these Western icons was written by William Goldman and sold for a mere $400,000. Some books are "read-agains" and I think this classic 1969 movie is a "see again."
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20:37
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Sentences We Love
Here I am living in the middle of a pine forest reading The New York Times
Sunday Book Review and I realize the author is coming to speak at "my" local book store. Sheila Weller is speaking about Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation at Paulina Springs Books in May. Weller's book explores how these three musicians set aside expectations of what women should do and blazed new paths. She writes that when King was a young mother she wrote the hit Will You Love Me Tomorrow with her husband which was about a shocking subject.
"In 1956 girls weren't agents of their sexuality, much less gamblers with it."
How lucky to be in a small town which attracts well-known authors!
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7:53
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Sentences We Love
It is hard to ignore the many political columnists striving to make their points about the current presidential race. What makes a powerful essay? I go to my favorite handbook for writers, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.
"If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete."
Clearly, this separates logical arguments from rants. Elements goes on to say, "In exposition and in argument, the writer must likewise never lose hold upon the concrete; and even when he is dealing with general principles, he must furnish particular instances of their application."
We can probably all agree, this race is never dull. But in the excitement, I see emotion carrying even mainstream columnists to overreach logical arguments to the personal. A re-reading of this classic should get writers back to the vivid from the vague.
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