Mid summer update

I made a boo-boo. When I made paste paper on thick cardstock, it was fun. I did a passable job of making some attractive paste paper patterns. When it dries, the combed patterns have heights and valleys, making it even a bit thicker. Then I printed out some verses and pasted them on the back.

When all was said and done, the piece was too think to laminate. Oh, I laminated it all right, but almost right away the laminate peeled off. The paper etc. was too think to have properly sealed and the top layer came off. The plastic is still stuck to the bottom. Oh well, live and learn.

I scooted into town this morning to do a few errands, picked up a very few groceries and tried to get home before the heat hit. Nope. Didn't make it.

I saw the movie Last Holiday with Queen Latifah which was good, if light and slight on the plot, but serviceable for a feel-good movie. I also watched some of  Joyful Noise with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton but that was a terrible movie. There were a lot of famous people in it (Kris Krostofferson, Jesse L. Martin, Courtney Vance...) so acting was good but the plot was unrealistic and it just was generally unwatchable.

The UK cop show Line of Duty season 3 was out this past March and I binged on the show till the finale. Fortunately UK series only have 6 episodes or I might have just expired from the tension. It isn't a gory show or a bloody show or a sexual show. None of that. It's written in such a way that in genius fashion builds the tension from episode to episode. It really keeps you guessing. I mean, they aren't ashamed to do anything with any character. In one season, early on they threw a major character out a window. One guy who is the worst of the worst corrupt has gotten away with it for two seasons. So it isn't a given that any character you're attached to will or won't make it, or this one or that one might or not be be corrupt ("bent" in UK parlance).

I have also been enjoying the Nextflix presentation of Irish Castles. Not only are the castles gorgeous and the scenery scrumptious but the history they present is done in a seamless but educational way. VERY interesting. I'm trying to hurry up through it because my Netflix is going away in a few days. I canceled it. Though I do occasionally enjoy a documentary, I need to cut expenses and entertainment is the first to go. I really don't use Netflix enough to warrant the monthly bill. I got rid of Hulu a while ago.

We're halfway through summer and it has been a fabulous June so far. One more month and I will be back in the swing at school. August 1. I love summer, and I'm reveling in the 4 more weeks of vacation.

This summer I've been reading theology books as well as novels. I study the Bible, listen to sermons, and write. I am also investigating the world of ePublishing and formatting an eBook. It's not for the fainthearted.

I love that days and days go by and I don't have to talk to anybody or go where it's noisy or get exhausted just by being in public.

Lunch today was salmon salad on a brioche with a thick juicy tomato slice, green salad, dessert of fresh figs with bleu cheese crumbled on. Lemon water. Mmm.

Then, nap.

Some recent pics.

Have a great week everyone.

Apparently I have healthy eyes

I've gotten a couple ideas for some blog essays here at The Quiet Life. I think you'll like them. I'll be writing them in these first weeks of the summer. I know for sure my life will be very quiet! Plenty of time to write.

I got new glasses frames and inside the frames are new prescription. It had been ten years since I had them checked and reading had become a little dicey as my eyes would not focus to see the words with my old glasses on or off.

The Eye Doc said I have really healthy eyes. Go figure. One problem was my glasses had slipped and I was looking out the wrong part of the bifocal. Adjusting the nose pads fixed that. My eyes have changed prescription, it's been ten years after all, he said. But nothing abnormal nor anything to indicate any disease, which I had been hypochondriac-ally imagining the worst. I was mentally in a hospice already. So, good news. He also said my right eye has an issue seriously reacting to allergies. I hadn't known that. Go figure.

I'm always happier before I go to the Doctor and I dwell in ignorant bliss. I made that remark to Tracey & said also the time I went to the X-Ray guy after I fell in school and the Doc said did you know you have a lot of arthritis in my knee and I said "NOO, sheesh". And the other lady buying glasses who was also my age burst out laughing. Sistas in infirm golden years. We had a moment.

The lenses were expensive, even after I had the nurse X out all the extras on her list with the prices next to them. No to compressed. No to progressive bifocal. No to transitional. No to everything except a Coke bottle glass fitted on there with duct tape. But the frames were free. My friend helped me pick them out. I didn't even look, I'd had enough by then. So, it will be a surprise when they come in.

Anyway, new glasses should be in next week. Just in time to read the stack of books I have on the coffee table.

Today I finished packing the classroom. My half of it anyway. My classroom is packed up tight, as are most of the rest of the classrooms in my school. The halls are filled with upturned furniture temporarily stored there while the custodian crew clean the walls and the floors in the eerily empty classrooms.

Tomorrow we have one final meeting, then a retirement picnic for the three retirees who will be leaving us, then our summer begins. Nine weeks of glorious hermitage. I even did my grocery shopping today so tomorrow all I have to do is come home and BASK.

Summer...here is a magnolia flower. They're blooming on the tree out in the front yard. White velvet with dewdrops, ahhhh.

School is almost out and my stack of books is getting higher

A spring Friday night...having finished a supper of fresh egg scrambled with a red pepper, bagel, and a creaky red potato. Yum. it's so goo, in fact, I've eaten this exact dinner all week.

I'm listening to Spotify's Folk channel. These are the gentle acoustic songs of my childhood of the 1960s I didn't like then but I do now. Especially the Mamas and the Papas, their harmonies are gorgeous.

I've been thinking about the 1960s a lot lately. It was a terrible, crazy time. The death counts on the nightly news with Walter Cronkite, toting up the cost of Viet Nam War in bodies and blood. The hippies turning everything upside down. The assassinations, riots and chaos. It felt like the world was ending. Or out of control anyway.

Entrance of the Drive In, showing screen, admissions office, and driveway.
HillTop Drive in, East Greenwich RI. It was a active drive-in for decades.
These photographs were taken before the site was adapted for another use.
Demolished 1999 Source

On the upside, it was a thrilling time too. The NASA space shots. Watching a man land on the moon, get out of the spaceship, and walk around. I was amazed. Color television. Bar codes. Piling into the wayback of the station wagon with bunches of cousins and going to the Drive-In Movie Theater in our pjs. It was thrilling and all coming on so fast.

I remember the Kent Cinema, the two-screen theater in town next to where the kids would go get milk shakes at the creamery after the game. If you tried to go to an R-rated movie the ticket booth lady would holler at you. "I know your parents. I am calling them right now!"

Almacs where after you paid for your groceries the cashier would give the mom a placard with a black number on it. You went to the car and then drove up to the front of the grocery store, and the bag boy had taken your groceries and put them in a gray bin with a corresponding number to your  placard, and placed the bin on a conveyor belt with rollers. The guy would push it through a flap like a large doggie door, and they rolled on the belt outside to the front of the store. You pulled up curbside and gave the placard to the guy. He'd load your groceries from the bin to your car. Once in a while he'd get the bins mixed up and we wouldn't notice the wrong groceries were in the car till we got home. The kids heard some swearing then, and the mom would have to go back and track down her real groceries.

Well love beads gave way to puka beads which gave way to mood rings then pet rocks and Tomagatchis and then I was grown up and didn't track fads anymore.

So all that is water under the bridge. In today's fast world I have deliberately slowed my life down. I want peace and quiet. And here it is-

I have 9.5 more days of school then I am out for the summer. I got my summer kitchen chair out and swapped it for the winter chair. I sit at the table in the kitchen and sip chilled herb tea and read and watch movies and study and write. I need a good chair due to the length of time I sit in it! That means taking the 100-year-old Bankers chair from the bedroom and putting it at the kitchen table. The Italian metal and wood chair I usually use during the year is good and comfortable, but is about 3/4 inch too high. My calf muscles get cramped.

I am going to resume studying quantum physics, make collages and hopefully some cloth covered books with the huge pile of good scraps my friend gave me, and take photos and post-process them in Pixlr. I am going to watch movies and good TV shows, like Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing and then double feature it with a re-viewing of Branagh's version from 20 years ago. There is a show called Eureka that is a sci-fi series about a town full of quantum physicist-genius types. I'll watch that, too.

I've got my books stacked up and ready to go, John Flavel's The Mystery of Providence, and Fatal Inquiry, #6 in the Barker and Llewellyn Victorian detective series by Will Thomas. And a few others, as well.

Here is some Boogie Woogie to enjoy. The music is outstanding and the dancers are amazing. The pianist is Silvan Zingg, he can speak many languages, (French, German, Italian, English, to name a few)is considered THE finest boogie woogie pianist alive today,and is a tremendous pianist of any genre. He founded the San Francisco International Boogie Woogie Festival.

Book review: "The Darlings"

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd gone to the library and returned with a load of books. One of them with a great cover photo and design (yes, I judge a book by its cover, more on that in a minute), was The Darlings, by Cristina Alger.

Set in post-2008 Wall Street economic and financial crash, Alger, a lawyer and a former NY financial analyst at Goldman Sachs herself, writes realistically of that world which most people don't see, and what they have seen due to the Wall Street crash of 2008, revolted them.

However, she brought each character to life in a way where they were not totally good not totally bad, but just people in a sphere like any other person, trying to make the best professional and family decisions they could. I admired her for painting each of her characters with realistic foibles and heroic impulses, conflicted and human. I also enjoyed the realism she brought to the table regarding the world of high finance. It wasn't overly complicated so it could be understood, but full of enough details to make it realistic and credible.

The pace was fast and page-turning. I could hardly wait to see how it all turned out, and with 50 or so pages to go I did peek at the end, something I never do. And the end was almost the best thing about the book! I still disagree with the jacket's proposal that this is a book 'of epic proportions,' a singularly aggravating thing to say about a debut book out a few mere weeks, but overall the book itself is tremendous. It is interesting to read because the story is good, and it is a pleasure to read because the writing is good. The combination of the two these days is rare enough, and I look forward to more from Ms Alger.

A note on book covers: I've mentioned on this blog and on Facebook that the media is dark these days. The material is often depicting evil, murder, crimes, or terror. As a result, I've noticed that most movie posters are dark, reflecting the main themes of the content. I mean actually dark, colors of black and gray permeate the promotional material these days. It is the same with book covers. If a cover is dark it most likely is of a subject matter I won't want to read. As I was selecting The Darlings, I had noticed moments before that most of the books on the new releases shelf were dark. The beautiful photograph of New York edged in gold, with plenty of white space,  with bright red title, was a refresher for my eyes. On that basis, I picked it up to read the synopsis on the cover. I'm glad I did.

Library books

I had a good haul from the library today. I ran out to do errands this morning, which include PO, bank, Dollar Store, Grocery Store, and library. I go out once per week. It is because I am so bare bones on my budget the gas in the car is just about  the only personal expenditure I have wiggle room on. So I don't hop in the car and zoom off at will. In summer I go out once per week and this really saves a lot on gas!

I got The Big Year:A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik. It is a recommendation that fellow blogger and wonderful artist Beth Stone made over at Beth Stone Studio. Her recommendation was actually of the movie that the book was made into. She said that "It's a pretty low-key movie about birding starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. With that trio, you'd think it would be a slap-stick comedy, but it's really not. It has a few "chuckle" spots, but overall, it's just a mellow, feel-good movie about birdwatching." Beth is a Christian woman and it's good to hear that there is a nice, clean movie out there. I'm looking forward to reading the book and then finding the movie to watch. And you all know how I feel about birds already. Love them!

I also checked out Incendiary: A Novel by Chris Cleave. The blurb states- "Living hand to mouth in London's East End, the unnamed mother's life is shattered when her policeman husband (part of a bomb disposal unit) and four-year-old son are killed in the stadium stands" by an al-Qaeda terrorist attack. Throughout the book she reveals the desperate sadness of a broken heart and a working-class life blown apart. So it's a light summer read, then.

In the pile is The Darlings by Cristina Alger, "A sophisticated page-turner about a wealthy New York family embroiled in a financial scandal with cataclysmic consequences." Here is almost the whole reason I picked up the book. At the end of a hyper-hyperbolic synopsis, the last lines goes like this- "The Darlings offers an irresistible glimpse into the highest echelons of New York society-a world seldom seen by outsiders-and a fast-paced thriller of epic proportions." It is a debut novel "of epic proportions!" Quite a feat for a debut novelist to manage those heights right off the bat. I mean, it's epic as in the world's best and longest selling book, the Bible. Or of the world's most famous and one of the longest epic books, War and Peace. Or the world's most romantic epically sweeping book, Dr Zhivago. Or a true epic as defined by Webster's dictionary, "a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds" ... like Homer's Odyssey! Therefore, since The Darlings is a book of epic proportions, as august as the aforementioned, I have GOT TO READ THIS book about the rich guy in New York!

And because I didn't like the new Sherlock Holmes book House of Silk all that much and I am STILL WAITING for the 6th novel in the Barker and Llewellyn detective series (hear that Will Thomas?) I checked out another gritty Victorian whodunit, The Poe Shadow. "Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s."

The guy must have done a good job, because Poe is renowned now. I crack myself up. All sarcasm aside, Poe did have a terrible reputation when he died and his death was of very mysterious circumstances, the likes of which are not known today.

Last, I got a non-fiction book called Art Explained. Because, well, sometimes I need someone to explain art to me.

The books on the left are a Grisham and a Larry McMurtry compendium of short stories. Those authors are in a class by themselves! The books on the bottom shelf are religious books, non-fiction and theology. I'm in for some happy reading.

What book has your bookmark in it these days?

Summer Reading Program

I've been thinking of great first lines to books lately. I really love language and I remember the really good lines that meant I was about to become embroiled in a story that swept away all else in the world. For a time, anyway. I am getting excited because the school year is almost over, and I will have days upon weeks to read what I choose. I'm really excited about this. I already have some books lined up- Leaving Cold Sassy, the unfinished sequel to Cold Sassy Tree, which a friend kindly lent me. An old Grisham law thriller, any old one will do. Angel Harp, a book that another friend had said was terrible but she sent it to me all the way from Kansas for me to try my hand at it, so I will. Lol. The Rainbow Men, by Douglas Sheldon. I found it in a swap pile, and there was no cover and very little is available on the internet about it as far as a synopsis goes. But I was taken by the first line:

"So this is how it ends for David Fulton Webster, he thought, in a dinghy with a dying girl." Intriguing! I'm hooked!

Topping the list will be bible study. Opening line: "In the beginning..." Pretty good if you ask me!.

My two favorite classic opening lines are below. The first is from my favorite author, Thomas Hardy: from The Return of the Native:

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor."

That's just beautiful. Simply wonderful.

And this one from Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez--

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." Who wouldn't love that? So creative, and so immediately relatable.

My favorite joke about an opening line is from the wonderful comedy, Cheers. In the bar, Frasier tries to get the guys interested in classic literature. He begins reading the first line from Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities".

"Dr. Frasier Crane: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."
Norm Peterson: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Which was it?"

It's much better seen. Skip to 2:40 - 3:40 on the video below. After that joke about the opening line, Frasier continues to read, and the guys immediately mock Dickens for being too indecisive. As they begin lose interest, Frasier spices it up...



Happy Summer Reading!