Tues Ten 041310: Notices They’ve Paved Paradise

I had a crazy experience last weekend. I went to the local not-so-urban, but sprawling shopping center where they keep my local Kroger grocery store. Normally, that wouldn’t be all that crazy, but I went on a Friday evening at 6:00pm. That definitely contributed to the crazy, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Do you know Joni Mitchell? I have her album (read CD), Miles of Aisles. It’s a great compilation of her work from mostly live performances with the L.A. Express and offers a nicely jazzed up version of some of her classic folk tunes. Big Yellow Taxi is one of the classics included. It’s the tune that sprang to mind during my crazy Kroger on a Friday at 6pm experience.

In honor of convenient, but harrowing grocery shopping and the incomparable Ms. Mitchell, I give you this week’s Tues Ten: Confirmation Notices They’ve Paved Paradise (and put up a parking lot). And just for fun and juxtaposition and sanity promotion, I’ve included a BONUS Ten: Proof Positives Nature Still Blossoms (this time of year in the South despite prevalent concrete). The photo edition.

1. If your car stalls at the front of the turn lane, you might consider switching on your hazards. Just a thought.

2. Those giant 15-passenger vehicles aren’t really designed to be able to make u-turn into the parking space angling AGAINST you on the OPPOSITE side of the lane. Just sayin.

3. Neither is the brand new-to-me mini-van I’m enjoying. But, to my credit, I know that and don’t try it.

4. Even if you are in the middle of a parking lot on a Friday afternoon sporting cute blue jeans and flip flops, it’s still a good idea to look both ways before crossing the street. At least that’s what Mrs. Kendrick taught me in K-5.

5. Wowza with the nice Spring weather we’ve been having here over the past week. The sun off the windshields is practically blinding me.

6. Where is a good master plan when we need it? Seriously. How many angling lanes of traffic can funnel into one right of way?

7. What very friendly check-out clerks and baggers my local Kroger continually has! Smiling faces were a craziness bright spot. [Self: take note.]

8. The appropriate sequence of scan-and-remove-quickly required to use my Kroger discount card AND my debit card at the gas pump is difficult to discern. But, admittedly, that could be the result of holding a sick baby all day.

9. Wait. There’s a gas pump in the middle of the shopping center parking lot. Ok.

10. I can’t believe I actually found myself complaining about having to park 20 spaces rather than 5 spaces from the front door of the conveniently-located store where I can purchase cold milk and pasteurized apple juice for maybe more, but still next to nothing (compared to most of the mothers in the world) every single day. Somebody’s spoiled, and it’s not the gallon of whole milk.

AND, the bonus ten photo edition…

Tues Ten 033010: Pantry Surprises

Has anyone noticed that I’ve gotten unusually sentimental and nostalgic in my Tuesday Ten posts lately? Yep, I’ve been looking back over the last several “lists” in this category–the one that was conceived as an easy and quick-witted way to post on Tuesdays–and found a super-sized helping of provoked thought, infused meaning and best of times. Naturally, I’d like that “theme” to pass quickly. I’m probably more prone to sentiment and nostalgia than most, but every Junkie needs a break. And, that’s what Tuesdays were intended to provide. I’m in serious need of a marshmallow-style list at the moment.

Good news! Poor organizational skills to the rescue. For this week’s list I give you a Tuesday Ten: Pantry Surprises… pleasant or otherwise, they shocked the heck out of me.

1. One empty box of Cheez-It crackers. What?

2. Two jars of peanut butter… creamy AND extra crunchy.  Equal opportunity “kiss” cookies.

3. A disproportionate number of Zoo-pal knives — alligators, beavers and such. You know, they’re the eating utensils with handles shaped like animals. The knives, forks and spoons all come in one box. I’m guessing the forks and spoons were used for various birthday parties and living room picnics. But, really, who turns their preschoolers loose with plastic knives? And, really, what can I do with said knives once the forks and spoons are gone?

4. Keebler fudge-lined ice cream cones. HOW has this escaped my attention?

5. A can of peach pie filling that is bursting out of its aluminum seems. Expiration date = sometime in 2007. Gross and solidifying my homemaker of the month award.

6. 1/2 package of white chocolate bark. Was this from Christmas? For making chocolate covered pretzels? It’s a good thing chocolate doesn’t go bad. Now, let’s see if I have a 1/2 bag of Rold Golds to match.

7. One plastic package of “Crazy Straws.” This has great potential.

8. A 5 oz package of Mahatma Saffron Yellow Rice. Holy Grown-in-the-U.S.A! Where have you been hiding? And, where are my pork chops?

9. Four half-eaten boxes of Wheat Thins. Does anyone check the pantry before making the grocery list? Who does the grocery shopping around here anyway? Oh. That would be me.

10. An enormous box of 13-gallon tall kitchen bags. Will be putting those to good use very soon.

Alas, no Rold Golds. Sigh.

Tues Ten 031610: Handwriting Samples

I found some old letters recently. They were sent from old friends, from my mother and a few from my grandmother. Reading them again was an emotional experience. It took me back to other times in my life, and helped me relive experiences, remember the impact of people, and benefit again from encouraging words.

I’ve been thinking about letters recently, perhaps spurred by one of the selections in my recent Tuesday Ten list of books I’d enjoy re-reading. The book, A Woman of Independent Means, is a story told entirely in the form of personal letters. Although fictional, the power of the letters as they reflect the life of the heroine was unmistakable.

In particular, I’ve been thinking about the handwriting found in letters, and the specific moments in time they often describe or commemorate. In this increasingly digital age, the physical act of writing is in danger of becoming a lost art. I think I have maybe penned two or three actual letters in the last 12 months, providing much frustration to the readers in deciphering my handwriting. But, it is MY handwriting. I find that these days I sign, date or initial many documents. I record phone messages or grocery lists. But, most of my “written” words are actually typed. I often type my brainstorming lists. I’ve even been typing almost all my journal entries for the last year.

While the typing may be a faster way for me to record ideas, something is definitely lost in the process. There is a very tangible quality to the process of scrawling words on a piece of paper — a quality that just isn’t matched by pecking on a keyboard. Perhaps the quality comes from the fact that it DOES require slowing down to form the letters. It DOES give the mind a chance to compose thoughts more carefully. Beyond that, words on a page–letters–can be held in the hands. They can be stored away for later reading. They can be tacked to a bulletin board as a reminder. They can be hung in celebration of a new skill. They have their own presence.

It strikes me that to know a person’s handwriting is an intimate thing. There are countless friends and acquaintances in my life from whom I’ve never seen an actual written word. We’ve corresponded, to be sure, through email or Facebook or even on the telephone. But, I’ve never seen their handwriting. I’ve never seen how they sign their own names, how they form their capital letters, whether they use strictly cursive or print or some combination of the two, whether there is a slant to their written views or how they scratch through an error in their thinking. The handwritten understanding of a person can be a rare privilege. Experiences or sentiments recorded by hand offer a glimpse of specific situations, of larger contexts, of unnamed impressions. When I see my Grandmother’s handwriting again, I can sense the quiver in her fingers that made her writing slower as she aged. When I see my Mom’s handwriting, I can remember its carefully formed letters on the many hand-written tests she gave (and graded) during my growing up years. To this day, it is the handwriting of an elementary Language Arts teacher. When I see the handwriting of old friends, I recognize how it (and they) have changed over the years. I’m just now beginning to see the carefully formed alphabets of Little Drummer Boy and Bug as they learn how to write.

In celebration of the powerful act of physical writing, I give you this week’s Tuesday Ten: Handwriting Samples from the letters that have impacted me recently. No, I’m not offering the actual written shapes, but snippets of the letters and words shared. And like the cues experts glean from actual handwriting, these samples offer me some welcomed glimpses and reminders of the hearts of the people that wrote them. Some probably need further explanation. Some are just descriptions of a time or experience that warranted a written record at the time. I’ll let you use your imagination and enjoy.

1. “Dinosaur”
Little Drummer Boy presented me with this specimen of his preschool activities, complete with a picture of a brontosaurus and the typical guidelines found on writing worksheets. He copied the dotted lines to form the letters two times and then branched out on his own as instructed. The process broke down a bit through the “au” section, but wow! One of his first forays into letters not found in his name.

2. “Sometimes the top of a ladder seems a long way off, but you get there only one step at a time. So ‘hang your ladder to a star’ and climb. With all our love.”
One of the off-to-college letters I was privileged to receive from my Grandmother & Granddaddy.

3. “Bravo”
A congratulatory note from the Queen of my day job after the launch of some project. I can’t even remember the project, only that the impromptu tabletent was sitting on my desk when I arrived in the morning.

4. “C, E, T, I”
To my surprise, Bug formed these letters with his finger on a handy Leapfrog writing board we have. Toward the end of the process in a my-brother-is-my-best-friend moment, Little Drummer Boy showed him how to turn a capital “T” into a capital “I.” New knowledge is born.

5. “I spent the morning setting up questions to discuss: ‘If it’s cold outside and you could choose between sleeping with lots of blankets to stay warm or an electric blanket, which one would you choose, and why not the other.’ You know, typical existential questions.”
This description of a friend’s teaching preparations is a reminder that being witness to the passions of another can be a great pleasure.

6. “Dusty sends his love”
This epilogue was found in Mama’s letter to camp when I was 11 years old. It was accompanied by Dusty’s Cocker Spaniel “paw signature” accomplished with an ink pad and much patience, I’m sure–evidence of a Mother’s love, creativity and attention to detail.

7. “He will keep your soul.”
This little word of encouragement came as the fruit of an unidentified “Secret Service” communique. I suspect it was the doing of a group of high school girls with whom I had the privilege of enjoying each week in a Bible study. But, I’ll never know for sure.

8. “This check is small but maybe enough for a ‘burger & fries.’ So good to hear from you my love. P.S. I think Mama & Daddy are missing you.”
My grandmother always knew the value a college student would place on a good burger and fries. And I’m sure she was right about Mama and Daddy.

9. “We walked all afternoon through some of the most breathtaking — it took my breath away — countryside. The views were magnificent. The wild flowers were abundant and created a colorful carpet on the lush green of the grasses and ground covers. The terrain was, at times, formidable. The hills weren’t difficult, but it was no easy endeavor climbing them. I guess because the air was so pure.”
A description of a place I’ll likely never see can be almost like being there–at least like being in the mind of a friend who’s there. And that place is extraordinary.

10. “You have now embarked on perhaps the most rewarding journey of a woman’s life — that of motherhood. As you have already discovered, it is a wonderful, yet awesome responsibility & as we have already observed, you are a great mother.”
My mother wrote this to me in a letter for Little Drummer Boy’s first Christmas. The approving statement of someone you admire is powerful and worth remembering.

Please share with me your memorable handwriting samples…

Tues Twenty 030210: Books Redux

I’ve been thinking about books a lot lately. I just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, a memoir of her life and friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. What is it about books, whether mysteries or memoirs or monographs, that have such power to move me? Just Kids was at times poignant, at times an exercise in frustration, at times an obscure literary lesson and at times a huge 60s and 70s cocktail party. But, at the end, when the final scenes for Patti and Robert were played out before his death, I was moved to tears. It was such an unavoidable description of the realities of goodbye and hello and time spent and time lost and unexpected outcomes and enduring soul kinship. And, since I’m writing this to the backdrop of Little Drummer Boy and Baby Girl giggling and playing together, I’m realizing it was also a story of life lived and how it moves on. Quite a range of thinking from just 279 pages.

I’m not sure I have ever in my life been able to read words on a page without thinking about them. Yes, I sometimes realize at bedtime that I’ve reached the end of my 647th encounter with Corduroy or Harry the Dirty Dog or The Tale of Peter Rabbit without remembering the actual act of speaking the words. But, the first time I read them I thought about them. The first time I read them I engaged in some strange process of extracting personal reactions or obscure life lessons. Many of the books my children read are copies I had as a child myself. I’m sure my first time reading them as a parent produced different thoughts than my times reading them as a youngster. That’s just how it goes.

I’m in the midst of deciding on the next book to read and culling down a list of possibilities gleaned from way too much time spent with NPR email alerts and the New York Times Book Review. I don’t know why I always get indecisive with this process. It’s not like I can’t put a book down and pick up another one at my leisure. Sometimes the decision represents some tantalizing combination of being afraid a book won’t live up to its billing and of being afraid it will so surpass its billing that it will haunt me for months or years. Perhaps I’m overthinking. While I decide and reign myself in, I thought I’d offer up a Tuesday Twenty list of books I’d be delighted to RE-read. I just read an interview in the LA Times with John McPhee, the author and long-time columnist for The New Yorker. The article was about his upcoming book of personal essays (just another addition to the list of reading possibilities *sigh*), and in it, he offered some sage insight about being a reader, despite his ample experience being the writer in the equation. He observed that “the creative person in this process is the reader, by a long shot. The writer supplies three or four words, but the reader makes the picture.” These books have afforded me the opportunity to paint a unique picture on one or more occasions in my reading. And, I’m convinced another reading would give me an entirely new view. The power of a good book.

1. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Some folks tire of the intricate detail found in Edith Wharton’s work, but I really enjoy the description of New York society during the turn of the 20th Century. It’s a toss-up between this more popular novel and The House of Mirth. Both have such a wrenching view of women living outside the constraints of the trappings of that society.

2. Emma by Jane Austen
Fills my latent romantic tendencies. Downright funny at times, and there’s a happy ending!

3. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
The most poignant part in the first reading: Ellen thinks her last name is Foster because people always refer to her as “that Foster child.” Hers is a story of triumph and Kaye Gibbons’ Southern stream of consciousness is remarkable, if you like that sort of thing. I’d read any of her books again. Seriously.

4. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Vermeer. Enough said. But, the fictional tale surrounding the moments captured in one of his most astounding works is bittersweet, eloquent and artistic.

5. Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather
Years later, I’m still thinking about the bittersweet end of this beautiful novel about a woman who wants so much more than what the culture she lives in is willing to give her.

6. A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Bailey
Told entirely in letters, this story of a woman’s powerful spirit made me want to go out and buy stationery. The lost art of letters never looked so attractive.

7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
I can’t tell you how many times I read this as a child. It still stirs me, both from the family story, the independence of “Jo” and my own memories of reading it.

8. 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton
Published just last year, I’m astounded by the restraint in this book, by the new perspective on terrorism, by the mother’s heart described, by the uncommon experiences found in the common subway.

9. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls was my best friend in elementary school. It would be good to see her again.

10. The Lively Art of Writing by Lucille Vaughan Payne
This little book was my 9th grade English textbook. Thank you, Mrs. Armstrong. I still use the principles today. And, I still choose when to lovingly ignore them.

11. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
I read this book way back in college, and I think explored the evolution of cities in a project centered on it. It is an amazing glimpse of the fragmented sociology of kingdoms told by a fictional Marco Polo. The young European explorer offers Kublai Khan, the aging asian emperor, tales of the cities throughout his empire. As it turns out, the stories all describe the same city — a lesson in points of view.

12. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
No elaboration required.

13. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
An unforgettable non-fiction account of one reporter’s indoctrination into all things Southern and a beautiful and quirky account of the mystery and crazy culture of Savanah, GA. Best tombstone epitaph: a bench at the grave of Conrad Aiken is inscribed with “cosmos mariner, destination unknown.”

14. Night by Elie Wiesel
You may have seen the account of my first reading of this memoir. I still shrink back from the book, but crave the undeniable reality check on human nature it offers.

15. Creating a Beautiful Life by Alexandra Stoddard
Every time I look at this book, I’m encouraged to pay attention to the little things and value beauty in my life. Beauty, as I behold it, is important and it’s not that hard to achieve.

16. On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon by Kaye Gibbons
A very moving tale of a woman during the Civil War era. In my first reading, I was compelled to record Emma Garnett’s thoughts on seeing the jarring, but numbing realities of that war through photos, and how it would have been more powerful in paintings…

“If Monet or Manet or Toulouse-Lautrec had performed the scenes of battle, I might have been urged toward emotion, for the horror would have quivered on the surface of the page and beckoned my mind to follow attendant sensations deeper and deeper to the core, down into the true, wasted, stupid, futile blasphemy of that conflict.”

17. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
An example of C.S. Lewis’ creativity and a treatise on the nature of evil told from the perspective of a young devil in training.

18. The Divine Romance by Gene Edwards
A beautiful telling of the story of God–his creation, his work, his redemption–expressed as a love story. The very first page describes two essentials of God’s existence in the pre-dawn of creation. God was alone. And, God was love. A profound paradox of coexistence for both God and man — the lover without the loved.

18. My Mississippi by Willie Morris
Who can escape the words of Willie Morris. His thoughts about his (and my) home state are moving, steeped in memory and the fervor of the unique life here. His essay is accompanied by a collection of photos of the state taken by his son.

20. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The first descriptive word that came to mind when I read this book originally was “ethereal.” Its descriptions of characters and of the Newfoundland area were beautiful. The journey of a man coming to grips with his own history and finally learning to love was like a deep breath.

Tuesday Twenty: Counting Ways

This month (this week) brings much focus on love, often in the form of hearts and flowers and sweets. Love IS sweet to the soul. Love blossoms often in unexpected spaces. And, real love always encompasses the whole of a human heart, unshielded. So, I suppose those familiar trappings apply.

One of the most well-known pieces of literature ever written describing love is found in the Bible in First Corinthians 13. It presents a laundry list of love’s qualities surrounded by convincing arguments for its supremacy above all other virtues and pursuits.  And, the picture shown is not one as easily configured on a greeting card as one might assume. The descriptions are full of “not”s that are all too common and daily occurences for most of us. It’s a picture worthy of our pursuit, but not easily attained because of the self-sacrifice and self-revelation involved.

In honor of our culture’s penchant to pursue and acknowledge that greatest of gifts this week, I give you a boiled-down and scrunched-up version of love’s description from the famous Corinthian passage–another up-sized Tuesday Twenty: Counting the Ways of love. This one shows love’s most heart-challenging qualities expressed in those verses–words or the antitheses of “not”s found within. And, there’s eyecandy, too! I popped some of the enumerated words into this month’s tardy, but still relevant desktop calendar. Point-clicky the image above and enjoy!

LOVE IS….

1. essential

2. patient

3. kind

4. trusting

5. discreet

6. humble

7. polite

8. unselfish

9. good-natured

10. forgiving

11. just

12. truthful

13. tolerant

14. affirming

15. hopeful

16. enduring

17. unfailing

18. abiding

19. whole

20. supreme