“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise […]
Or, at least, to have a title that suggests as much? Here is a very fun site where you can receive one handed to you on a silver platter, completely free of charge, without the undo hassle of either an advantageous match to a good fortune or a bunch of unseemly social scrambling.
Hoping you […]
I love winter. I love the sense of repose its cold, grey days impart; the delightful pause between the flurry of Christmas and the flurry of spring gardening. January has habitually been my ‘quiet month’, a season of enforced calm that, I find, affects all the rest of my year. There was such a wonderful […]
To My Dear and Loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold, Or all the riches that […]
February 8, 2007
That’s what I was doing yesterday afternoon. Playing nursery-maid to my biddies, on a blanket in the backyard with my tea on a tray. Fortunately my work was of a portable variety, and thus I sat, surrounded with pencils and notebooks and papers that kept rolling over the lawn on the light gusts […]
Madeleine L’Engle, reminiscing over her school years and the development of her craft in A Circle of Quiet, wrote:
Looking through some old journals, I came across several [poems]. There was one, notable for its arrogance, if nothing else:
We lived on 82nd Street, and the Metropolitan Museum was my short cut to Central Park. I wrote: […]
While I’m certainly no expert on propogation, I thought I’d share my little successes in this most satisfying of garden practices, in the hopes that others might be inspired to take a few cuttings of their own–particularly when they see how simple and fun it can be.
My mother-in-law is the master of this art, and […]
Sowing sweet pea seeds outdoors in January seems like an act of faith.
Especially when the sun hasn’t shown its face in days and the whole world is sodden and drear. I was almost laughing at the absurdity of it last week when, bundled in my winter coat and hurrying against the cold of a […]
I seriously cannot recall a time in which music was not an essential element of my life. In fact, I have a distinct memory of my own personal first encounter with classical music—Mozart to be exact. My parents had given me a little record player (how much children miss these days! There is something so […]
January 20, 2007
The bluebirds are house-hunting this morning. I had to call Philip and tell him, describe the way one female in particular kept poking about the hole of the house on the side of the water oak outside the kitchen window, nosing in and out as if unsure, tilting her head in examination, while […]