Category Archives: Uncategorized

Foyle’s War

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Oh yes!  This is going to be the summer of Foyle’s War for our family.  We have only watched two episodes but we are loving this uncommonly wonderful British mystery series, set in Hastings, on the coast of England, in 1940.  The writing, the music, the cinematography, the acting–they are all quite good. 

Michael Kitchen plays Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, a man one can’t help but admire.  I particularly like the way he questions suspects.  There is solid strength behind his quiet, unassuming manner.  Honeysuckle Weeks plays his spunky driver “Sam” Stewart.  You can see, just in the way she walks, that her small body is harnessing untold energy.  Fun. Intriguing. Foyle’s War. 

The Price of a Haircut

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I have a confession to make.  I get expensive haircuts.  It kills me to admit it, Miss Frugality who refills water bottles, grinds her own wheat, wraps presents from wallpaper sample books, and washes generic Ziplock bags for reuse.  But there it is. 

For twelve years I paid eight dollars ($5 for husband and sons) for a good haircut from a stylist who loved our family and never raised her rates for us.  It was a sad day when she moved away.  When money was tight, I bought a razor and learned how to give the guys haircuts.  My husband was the first to escape that tyranny; one son still insists I cut his hair. 

I’ve done the beauty college ($ 9), the no-appointment, leave with a wet head, walk-in shops ($12), the blue-haired, weekly wash-and-set shop for grandmas ($16), and eventually went to a good stylist who waxed eyebrows for free with her $22 haircut.  Then I was given a gift certificate to the most expensive, la-di-dah shop in town.  It was The Best Cut I’ve ever had.  I went back, on my own volition, naively assuming it wouldn’t be too much more than the $22 range. Soo-prahse, soo-prahse!  $35.   Prices have increased, and I now pay $42 for a cut and style.  Never In My Days, would I have believed that I would pay that much for A Haircut. 

My only consolation is that the cut is good for five to six months.  And it is still the best cut I’ve ever had for my thick, curly mop.

I live in the country.  I know prices can be higher in the city. 

How much do you pay for your haircut? 

Ten Favorite Novels – Glaspey’s List

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Books about books will always have an honored place on my bookshelf.  There is something seductive about reading reading lists.   They suck me in, good Best Books lists do. 

I love to mark these books I own, noting books I’ve read, books I own, asterisking books I’d like to add to my collection.  I hand these kind of books to other book-lovers with a colored pencil and ask them to mark and initial the titles they love.  I have often bought Honey for a Child’s Heart as a baby gift, personalizing it with stars and notes about my favorite children’s books. 

Terry Glaspey’s Book Lover’s Guide to Great Reading is a trusted resource for great book lists. This book arrived in the mail this month and I have enjoyed my random dippings into it.  I think every book lover sees a “Best Books” list as a measuring device, looking for familiar titles on the list.  check, check, check, no, check, no …   

Here is Terry Glaspey’s List – Ten of My Favorite Novels

1.  The Bothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2.  A Soldier of the Great War  Mark Helprin

3.  Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

4.  Les Miserables Victor Hugo

5.  Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë

6.  The Brothers K  David James Duncan  

7.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  Mark Twain

8.  The Power and the Glory Graham Greene

9.  The Second Coming  Walker Percy

10.  Cancer Ward  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I’m planning to read # 2 this summer (but hadn’t heard of it before last week).  I’ve never heard of titles #9, #10, but I know the authors.  I’ve read 4/10 of these books.  It is past time that I re-read The Brothers Karamazov, a book I read plowed through (in between diaper changing) the summer of 1986 because it was so often named as a favorite novel on a radio program I heard.

Familiar with any of these?  What book (s) would go on your ten favorite novels?

                                            

Summer of the Great War

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This summer I am reading through The Great War aka WWI.   I have never gotten beyond Sarajevo in my understanding and the time seems right to correct that.  My son Collin is joining me; we keep interrupting each other’s reading with a new insight just grasped.  He is currently reading Jeff Shaara’s To the Last Man while I revel in Barbara Tuchman’s magnificent prose in The Guns of August.  My friend, LimboLady, getting some rest in between school sessions at our house, is engrossed in The Yanks are Coming which arrived from Amazon this morning. 

On our bookshelf, waiting to be read: 

Waiting at the library, all by the novelist Anne Perry:

World War I-related DVDs in our Netflix queue:

Gallipoli

All Quiet on the Western Front

World War I in Color (Kenneth Branagh narrator)

Random Harvest

The Great War

Paths of Glory

The Fighting 69th

Sergeant York     

A World War I soldier’s blog:

WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier  “This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin’s letters from
the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after
they were written.
To find out Harry’s fate, follow the blog!”
     

Hannah Coulter

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When I received Hannah Coulter a few weeks ago, I determined to read it slowly. I limited myself to one chapter at a time, but often skimmed the previous highlights, just for the pure pleasure. 

As I read, I kept thinking “the folks would love this”, [fill in thirty names] will want to read this.  This is a perfect book to read aloud to Curt and Collin during our long Sunday drives to church.  At 186 pages it is a small enough book to give to readers who would be intimidated by an epic tome.

Hannah Coulter is the quiet telling of a woman’s tale, a tale of sorrow, goodness, love, hurt, work, holding and letting go.  It is Ecclesiastes 3 manifested in one woman from Kentucky.  “This is my story, my giving of thanks.”   Wendell Berry gives her a voice which is modulated in a pleasing tone.  She speaks of her pains and her joys with honesty, clarity, and wisdom. 

Here is a necklace of sentences from the book.

And so I learned about grief, and about the absence and emptiness that for a long time make grief unforgettable.

“It [Hannah’s beauty] could get you an early start on a miserable life.”

When he came to work in the morning, Wheeler was like a drawn bow–lean and tense and entirely aimed at whatever he had to do.

Books were a dependable pleasure.

The days were separate and suspended, like plants in hanging pots.

Happiness had a way of coming to you and making you sad.

We had made it past hard changes, and all of us were changed, but we were together.

What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room?

“Hannah, my old girl, we’re going to live right on.”

“Margaret, my good Margaret, we’re going to live right on.”

He said it only when he knew that living right on was going to be hard.

The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another by the hand. 

We sat down to it [Thanksgiving dinner], the four of us, like stray pieces of several puzzles.

There we were at a great crisis in our lives, and it had to be, it could only be, dealt with as an ordinary thing.

After she left, the house slowly filled up with silence.  

Hannah Coulter.

Done Daily?

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“He [potential tenant, newcomer to town] was worried about getting his laundry done daily.”

“Done daily?” boomed Ella.

“Done daily?” quavered Dimity.

“The man must be mental,” said Ella forthrightly, “if he thinks he’s going to get his washing done daily, in Thrush Green too.  What’s wrong with once a week, like any other Christian?”

          ~ Miss Read in Winter in Thrush Green

I’m listening to Miss Read’s book.  This exchange was so delicious I listened to it six or seven times.   The whole book has so many clever turns of phrases that I will either 1) listen to it once more with a journal close by  or 2)  get it from a library and copy sections into my journal or 3) order it from PaperBackSwap and highlight all the tasty morsels.

our near-empty hamper

Do you do laundry daily?  (Which is a silly question if  you have young children.)

We do at our house, “we” being my husband, the Laundry Czar.   He and I hold different doctrines on the desired frequency of  this task. (He also starts the dishwasher when it is 3/4 full.) What can I say about a man who loves doing laundry loves having the laudry done?  When he gets up in the middle of the night, he’ll put the load from the washer into the dryer.  And start a new one, if one is available.  We all fold clothes together in the morning and put them away.  

I read this quote to him, and clearly taking Ella’s position.  “This is too rich,” I crowed. “I must put it on my blog.”

“Just be sure to mention that I am ALL for the man,” was his cheerful reply.

~   ~   ~

In another century, a young friend took a job as a temporary mother’s helper.  She would phone me daily and report her progress.  “I did three loads of wash, I made dinner, and I read to the kids,” she exclaimed, drawing the word three into three syllables.  I paused.  I chuckled.  I checked my tongue.  “Welcome to my life, ” I murmured.

June Snow!

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Someone wise once said, “Never complain about the weather.  You can’t control the weather, so don’t waste your time complaining.”

I’m not complaining.

I’m exclaiming!

It’s snowing!
It is June!

Big, fat, pregnant snowflakes.

Perhaps I’ll make butternut squash soup for dinner.

Go figure.

Thrift-in-Trifles Decorating

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Although the Doctor’s daughter [Lucie Manette] had known nothing of the country of her birth [France], she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics.  Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful.  The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seem to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?
             ~ Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities  

I’ve been in homes that have this pleasant, comfortable, tasteful ambiance.   They are lovely places to live.

I think decorating know-how is a gift, don’t you?  Just like some women can wear rags with panache, some folks can take cast-off furniture and make a cozy home.  It doesn’t come naturally to me, but I can be taught.  My oldest sister and my youngest brother have “an eye” for placing furniture, for hanging pictures, for creating visual balance. 

Where did you learn this stuff?  From catalogs, magazines or television?  From floor models of stores?  Did anyone take interior decorating classes?

I have to see it modeled, usually in a friend’s home, and imitate it.