My little sister and her husband are painters. They’ve dreamed of careers in art since they were children. And it’s with much more than a sisterly bias that I can say they are both extremely talented. With an enviable ardor they packed up and left everything they had ever known not six months after they […]
My husband adores old books every bit as much as I do. Someday, I fear, the very rafters of our house will bulge with loved acquisitions. But even he looked askance at some of the derelict volumes I carted home from the dispersal of my grandmother’s house. Ex-libraries, with yellowed pages soft from use and […]
May 2, 2005
Philip and I had quite the Gene Stratton Porter experience today. We’ve been troubled about the recent tenants that have taken up residence in our prize black walnut, namely, a swarm of honeybees. We actually saw them swarm a few weeks ago, and were pretty frightened by the sheer […]
We had a dinner party Saturday night. Both of us were shocked when we realized how long it had been since we’d had a real sit-down china-and-crystal affair, what with working on the house and family weddings and all…I was as obsessively excited about it as Virginia Woolfe’s Mrs. Dalloway…I planned the menu with excruciating […]
On the Worth of Old Books “Each age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” C. S. […]
On my twenty-first birthday I did a very sentimental thing. I wrote a letter to myself on my best stationery, sealed it solemnly, and dated the envelope July 27, 2005. Ten years later. With a fluttery feeling about my heart I laid it reverently on the bottom of my new hope chest and piled on […]