The crisp onions were making a great crackling,
and on a cold night the smell was enough to
draw water out of dead teeth.
Here’s a better idea. Read some authentic Scottish fiction, written by a Scot. You cannot improve on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped
Morning Tide
Life is harsh, difficult, but not without comfort of onions and the pleasure of practical jokes. Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth is always hungry, often running, impatient with school, and coming to grips with the reality of a harsh life.
He [the schoolmaster] was clever,
there was no doubt of that.
And he could speak seven languages.
Seven. Ay, ay.
The old men nodded their heads.
Learning was a great thing.
They looked far beyond one another.
A great thing, learning.
A far and wonderful thing.
There was no denying that.
It was a strange thing, too.
Its strangeness excited them a little,
and its wonder.
Love of learning was in their marrow.
. I’m quite sure you have heard neither of Neil Gunn nor this title. However, if you lived in Scotland, Gunn would be a familiar author. In this-coming-of age tale, twelve-year old Hugh MacBeth is reckoning how he can help the family while his father is away fishing and his mother is ill. I can say with certainty that my sons have all experienced a moment like this.
I’m thankful, for my sake, that I read a borrowed copy of James Sire’s book How to Read Slowly
Sire writes for readers on every level. If you like the idea of reading, but haven’t finished a book in a year, this book is for you. If you enjoy reading, but sense there are better books, Sire will guide you. And if you, like me, can’t not read, you will get a great refresher course on how to better do what we can’t escape doing.
How to Read Slowly
I was immediately captured by the dedication: To my father who in his eighties still reads voraciously.
Sire doesn’t just tell you…he shows you. His chapter on poetry would make the most reluctant reader of poetry want to dip his big toe in the pool of poems. Here’s a sample:
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Simple enough, right? Yet Sire asks questions and makes observations which make me want to jump up and click my heels! Visually, what do you see in this poem? Sire concludes, “Williams’s poem is like a still-life painting. Quality presents itself quietly and yet persistently. And, though we cannot say why we see, we see.”
Excellent questions, superb commentary, quotes that express what I’ve always felt, more book titles to read: that’s what you will find in this wonderful read.
For lack of attention,
a thousand forms of loveliness
elude us everyday.
~ Evelyn Underhill
…taking things with gratitude
and not for granted
G.K. Chesterton
The fifth cup of tea between friends is the best.
~ Chinese proverb
If I have seen further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
~ Sir Isaac Newton
I am content to be and have what in Thy heart
I am meant to be and have.
~ George MacDonald
I learned, though, that fear would recede more quickly
if I immersed myself in routine chores.
Cooking soup and folding cool linen can be great healers.
~ Gerda Weissmann Klein
Nothing seems particularly grim
if your head is clear
and your teeth are clean
and your bowels function properly.
~ M.F.K. Fisher
Interrupting is the verbal equivalent to shoving.
~ Margaret Shepherd
Meeting people isn’t a skill, Matt, so much as just good manners.
~ Garrison Keillor
God gave the Americans watches.
He gave the Africans time.
~ John Patrick, MD
After a full belly, all is poetry.
~ Frank McCourt
His face twists, but he holds back the tears,
determined not to commit the sin of despair.
~ Mary Doria Russell
I don’t want to get to the end of my life
and find that I just lived the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well.
~Diane Ackerman
It’s moronic, guys using science and computers to prove
the existence of God, like we’re doing him some favor,
like he’s one of Saturn’s suns or some supernova or something.
[expletive] Computers are the coolest thing in the world,
but they’ve got their limits. So this is it, here’s my creed:
I believe what believers have believed for the last four
thousand years: that there is one God who made the
world and who judges what we do in it.
~ Fernanda Eberstadt
A good wife will smooth many imperfections.
~ Anthony Trollope
This is the fun of serving.
If you have never surprised anyone
in the midst of ordinary daily life,
you’ve missed a lot of the satisfaction
that can be spread through days.
~ Edith Schaeffer
Binge eaters don’t appreciate an audience.
~ Jami Bernard
Live strictly within your income
and save something for a rainy day.
Incorporate within your lives the discipline of budgeting.
~ L. Tom Perry
If you read one book a week, starting at age five,
and live to be 80,
you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books.
~ Lewis Buzbee
Quotes are free — truth is rich.
~ Laurie Hagberg
The purpose is blatantly to supplant the joy and beauty of health with cosmetics, clothes, cars, and ready-made desserts. There is clearly too narrow a limit on how much money can be made from health, but the profitability of disease–especially disease of spirit or character–has so far, for profiteers, no visible limit.
details the adventures of Michael Tucker and wife Jill Eickenberry in Umbria. This book has so many parallels to Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun
. They both chronicle a year of fixing up a rustic farmhouse in Italy from an American’s perspective.
Michael Tucker is a funny guy. He’s the guy that keeps the party going, full of stories and jokes. His story has more for purveyors of pop-culture. Most of his Italian friends and experiences are within the ex-patriot community. He loves good food, but at the heart he is an entertainer. Each chapter is framed and paced to tell a charming or funny story. His language is salty, peppered too strongly with profanity for my tastes.
Frances Mayes’ style is quite different. Her book comes with recipes, thoughtful reflection about the cultural differences (particularly the pace of life), and a cast of Italian neighbors and workers. I would recommend her take on Tuscan life over Michael Tucker’s tale of Umbria.
Here are several tidbits that tickled or tugged me from Tucker’s book:
It seems we never had time to get things done because our days were filled to the brim with lingering. Breakfast became a longer and longer linger. Not mine, which is just coffee and a crossword puzzle. But Jill and Caroline have a way of making breakfast into a full-act play which unfolds in long, slow, Chekhovian acts–from the yogurt and peaches, into the cheese, prosciutto, tomatotes and panini, into the biscotti dipped in chesnut honey, all washed down with tea. (p.95)
The ricotta–literally “recooked” cheese–had a freshness that connected it in taste and smell to the milk of the animal it had just come from.
[on his marriage] For better or worse, we cultivate this closeness. The better is obvious, I suppose. The worse is that one of us will die first and the other will be left alone. Some couples we know hedge against this eventuality by maintaining a distance, by emphasizing their individuality. But that’s not for us. (p.158)
[dancing with his wife] On one anniversary, back in the New York days, Jill surprised me with ballroom dancing lessons, while I had gotten her an evening of dancing at the Rainbow Room at the top of the Rockefeller Center–all unbeknownst to each other. It was like our own little O’Henry story.
[dancing with another woman] JoJo and I were not doing so well, either. First of all, there was the question of who was leading. […] I tried following as best I could, but moving backward with my right foot was a very odd way to begin a dance; I couldn’t get the hang of it. Not that it mattered — Benny Goodman and JoJo were not in any way marching to the same drummer. But by God she had enthusism! At one point — she was coming at me out of a spin at seventy miles an hour, minimum — I frankly didn’t know what to do with it. My whole life flashed in front of my eyes. Just standing my ground — or God forbid trying to catch her in some way — would have been to commit suicide. I held out my arms wide, running back and forth like a shepherd, somehow herding her toward the center of the room. We needed space. Help me, Jesus, we needed space. (p. 173)
I love lilacs from afar (my husband is allergic).
I enjoy asparagus close up.
Yesterday a friend fixed it with butter and brown sugar.
I admit that sounds a bit different.
But it tasted yummy.
~ Pizza tastes delicious.
Our friend Isaiah ate pizza last week.
He’s coming home June 12th!!
~ The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
And the Lord gives back.
Isaiah was given, taken away and is being given back.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
~ Baby Isaac was born last week to our friends.
Our church prayed publicly for a child to be born.
Yesterday was Isaac’s first day in church. More tears of joy.
~ My husband is reading 
I love that he is reading Wendell Berry.
Every murmur of appreciation
is followed by a what? read it aloud! from me.
Last night he read this, a perfect recap of our month.
~ New discoveries this month
Music: Jamie Soles
Art: Frederick Morgan
Food: Jamie Oliver (via Netflix)
~ Deep, philosophical questions:
Should I catch up on my unfinished reading
or start new with
The Summer of Southern Literature?
(doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?)
Perhaps Southern Lit needs a year?
~ A new season, a new transition.
I’ve been teaching my kids at home since 1994.
And that job is completed.
I’ve accepted a full-time job at a local pharmacy.
My title is Manager of Internal Operations.
My husband and I decided that it would be good
for me to work 2-3 years to fulfill our financial goals.
I’m using my gifts in an unexpected way.
A big change.
~ A never-done-before, breath-taking wedding processional
I’m playing for a wedding this Saturday.
The bride wants to come down the aisle to…
Amazing Grace.
I need to make some stylistic decisions.
I’m thinking quiet, elegant, open chords.
I don’t want to discount the potential harm from swine flu.
Neither do I want to inflate the threat.
If the swine flu attacks me today–and I doubt it will–,
it will find me making a birthday dinner,
taking a walk, reconciling a bank
statement (one of my favorite tasks),
cleaning floors, answering the phone,
and reading a book.
What sensible and human things are you doing?
“Nothing seems particularly grim
if your head is clear
and your teeth are clean
and your bowels function properly.”
The problem is how to characterize How to Cook a Wolf
~ It is a cookbook, but one with only 75 recipes added like seasoning to the prose. Along the way you will learn how to cook fish, eggs, fritattas, polenta, gravy, bread and War Cake.
~ It is a book on frugality.
~ It is a survival book including a basic recipe for a gruel/sludge that will keep you alive.
~ It is sort of a social history, illuminating life at home during the second world war.
~ It is a dialog between the author and herself. She wrote the book in 1942 and revised it in 1954. The original is kept intact and revisions added in [brackets]. This is one of the most entertaining features. As any writer knows, reading your work at a later date can make you alternately wince or nod your head. Fisher, an opinionated writer, tends to argue with herself, retract a statement or two; but she admits at the end of one chapter that she is pleased with what she wrote.
~ It is a book worth reading for its delightful prose. W. H. Auden wrote about M.F.K. Fisher “I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose.” Here’s what I want you to do: click on the link above, click on the picture of the book “Click to Look Inside” and read the table of contents. I don’t know any other book with better chapter titles.
If you are curious about the wolf in the title, it comes from the ditty by C.P.S. Gilman: There’s a whining at the threshold. There’s a scratching at the floor. To work! To work! In Heaven’s name! The wolf is at the door!
Here’s some morsels of Fisher’s writing to further tempt you:
[As an older and wiser frittata cook
I almost always, these richer days,
add a scant cup of good dry Parmesan cheese
to the eggs when I mix them.
Often I add rich cream too.
How easy it is to stray from austerity!] p.61
I believe more firmly than ever in fresh raw milk,
freshly ground whole grains of cereal,
and vegetables grown in organically cultured soil.
If I must eat meats I want them carved from beasts
nurtured on the plants from that same kind of soil. p. 71
The doubtful triumphs of science over human hunger
are perhaps less dreadful to the English than to us,
for in spite of our national appetite for pink gelatine puddings,
we have never been as thoroughly under the yoke
of Bird’s Custard Sauce as our allies. p.152
In the old days, before Stuka and blitz became part of
even childish chitchat, every practical guide to cookery
urged you to keep a well-filled emergency shelf
in your kitchen or pantry.
Emergency is another word
that has changed its inner shape;
when Marion Harland and Fanny Farmer used it
they meant unexpected guests.
You may, too, in an ironical way,
but you hope to God
they are the kind who will never come. p.187
A Living Pencil 