What with all the wild and crazy car advertisements on tv the last few nights, I'm tempted to go look this weekend. I need a new (or used) car but sure don't like the process of getting one. Car salesmen, you know. If there are any readers who want to offer advice or suggestions, I'm listening.

Labels: shopping

You've just got to see this crazy video. And if you're yearning to know more about it, here is some explanation and discussion about it. (Hmm, I love Diet Coke and my daughter loves Mentos.... does that explain some of the, uh, explosiveness and yet delightfulness between us??!) By the way, you'll probably get a dialog box about needing ActiveX controls, but the video will run just fine if you say "ok" to the first prompt about needing them and then "no" to the second one, about restoring mime controls.

Labels: blogs (others'), huh?

Evocative, lovely piece about writing and home, in About Last Night, here.

Labels: blogs (others'), writing

The sun is out. There IS a god.

Labels: weather

It's the 168th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of Princes Harry and William. She was only 18 and two years away from marrying the love of her life, Prince Albert. She continued to reign for 63 years, 216 days - the longest in British history and an astonishing career of any kind. Awesome, interesting woman.

Labels: anniversaries, history

The supposedly dyspeptic owner of "and you thought you were cranky" says "there's no such thing as a bad book". As I have mentioned before, I grew up with a father who judged many things, but especially books, some of which he dismissed utterly, definitely as being "bad". Keep in mind that one of his favorite sports was ranking things. This college is "first rate" but that college is "fourth rate" and that other college is "sixth rate", for example. Really, he really did talk - I mean pontificate - like that. His thoughts were interesting and filled with what sounded like facts but at some point I realized that much that went into his assessments was opinion. There were some facts and objective stuff, of course, but lots of opinions. His whole "Nancy Drew is junk" thing, for example, had a smattering of validity in that Carolyn Keene isn't Aristotle or Trollope or Pirandello, but I have yet to figure out what dire effects befall those of us who read her, especially since they're so much fun. So cheers to 'cranky' and to Nancy and to Cherry Ames and to Shakespeare and all the rest, whoever they may be!

Labels: blogs (others'), books

Spiced Sass offers a quote of the day which is also food for thought for the day:

"In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die." (Dorothy L. Sayers, British writer, 1893-1957)

I guess it's accurate to say that tolerance is a two-edged sword. Perhaps one needs to know what one believes in and radiate one's tolerance, spoke-like, off of that? How does one distinguish between being tolerant and being kind? At what point does being tolerant slip into being permissive? Many interesting thoughts and questions arise. What do you think?

Labels: blogs (others'), reflections

I know it's summer and I know I'm going to have to move to the North Pole before I get much older. But today's hazyhotandhumid-ness is simply too much. People should stop wasting money on gyms or steam rooms. All they need to do is go outside. And offices had better start providing showers and/or noseclips.

Labels: weather

-I wonder whether this story will have long legs and a long life, or just die a quiet-ish death. It's pretty horrible that they hate the administration so much they were willing to risk charges of aiding and abetting a national enemy in order to publish the story.
-In WWII would the Times have released the information that the enigma code was solved if they'd gotten word of it in the mid-forties? Should a country announce how clever it is to have broken an important code when the result of intercepting and using the code, instead, is saving thousands (millions?) of lives and shortening a war?
-Today's picture on the front page of a sign saying "Dead End" makes me wonder if they've decided to stop showing at least one dead body on the front page every day (get it? "dead" end?). Today's first dead body photo is all the way back on page A8. But perhaps I am reading too much into the sign. I hope not.

Labels: writing

-Fabulous idea! I sure want to do it, but will I?! (HT: Spiced Sass)
-A terrific photo. Gorgeous or what?
-Read this. I think I agree with him. Do you?

Labels: blogs (others'), great link(s)

What a lovely complimentary column. Would that it were always so. Would that all the nay-saying Americans would read it. Would that everyone would read it who rides subways and commuter trains, so maybe they'd stop using their cellphones to share that they are on the subway or train with every one of the people they know, one after another. Seriously, I have noticed - and remarked on - people recently being more cordial and outgoingly friendly than they've been for a while, even just passing each other on the street in NY, NY. This is a great country.

Labels: blogs (mine), people

There are lots of reasons why things happen and the influence of the U.S. president is like that of a parent: if he's responsible for all the bad stuff, then he's also responsible for all the good stuff. In which case the BDS'ers had better give George credit for organic food and air conditioning and Edy's ice cream and green suede shoes and giggly babies and daisies.

My friends and I sometimes remark "it's George's fault" as a tease on the rampant and ridiculous BDS. Icy roads? George's fault. Too humid to garden? George's fault. Stomach ache? Paper cut? George.

Wouldn't it be great if humor could show how foolish it is to blame anyone for everything? So I've decided to riff this chuckle in posts entitled "gf" and I'm kicking them off by noting that it is yet another grey overcast weekend in the northeast. Thanks a lot, George.

Labels: fun, gwb

If supposed news shows can run stories about barbeque cooking and showgirl outfits, then I can say I'm reading a book by Barbara Delinsky (The Vineyard). I realize it isn't great art but, like Robert Parker (of the Spenser books, among others), she creates people who spring to life and become part of one's day. I admire that skill enormously and am enjoying this very much. So there.

Labels: books

Why is this being so under-covered? I'd put more links here but it seems pointless since no one's paying much attention. Everything I read says that this stuff is pretty miniscule and very easy to hide because it looks fairly harmless until it's midway in assembly. Brother.

Labels: huh?

Lovely looking, interesting new yarn and knitting book with sumptuous alluring photos of sheep and wool plus lots of intriguing patterns: Morehouse Farm Merino Knits. The book is as creative and tantalizing as visiting their store. So, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get another 5-10 hours in a day??!

Labels: knitting, places

For any one who noticed, or for that matter cares, apologies for my silence this last week. I was so busy and tired that I almost didn't notice that I hadn't written here even though I love doing it all the time and look forward to it. Generally I'm a pretty high energy person who does a fair amount of stuff in a day. I almost always work longer than the usual 7.5 hours each day, getting in half an hour early and leaving an hour or two after I can, and then spending a few hours of personal time at home in my garden or knitting or something. With a <2 hour commute, it's long days but worth it because I feel productive and I get things started and finished by being in the office outside of the usual times, and being sure to have a little bit of personal time too. This week, though, there were actually more things to do at work, and more levels of details for most of them, than I could actually get done, efficiently or quickly, or at all well, or at all within reasonable periods of time. I'd start one thing and be called to do something else and be summoned to a meeting I had to attend then get back to my desk and find three or four things that had to be done right away with notes like "call as soon as you can!" and then there'd be an email or phone call with yet another new project that I wanted to do and/or had to do and then it would start all over again. I think it's part of the "be careful what you wish for" issue because I always say I want to be really really busy and be in high demand. Turns out there is a limit to everything. Shocking, isn't it?!

Labels: blogs (mine)

Imagination is one of the most vital pieces of life. It allows us to laugh, to play, to draw, to create, to write, to pretend, to step outside those well-referenced boxes, to become our best selves, to learn more and better, to conquer fear, to accept and even conquer sadness and pain, to live despite awful events, to live in awful circumstances. To endure. To soar. There are, of course, the things John Lennon's song tells us about imagination. There are, every day, new games, paintings, books, poems, ideas. . . . There's artistic imagination, helping us make beautiful and interesting objects. There are personal connections that cause wonderful things to happen, such as that the one showing the power and impact of imagination on a student and a teacher, movingly told about in a recent piece in the NY Times. But to me it's personal imagination that is most important. It's what little children have when they make unexpected connections. It's what humorists have when they scrunch up a napkin and portray all at once the mustachioed villain, the bow-in-hair damsel in distress, and the bow-tied hero. It's what poets have when they put words together like "no man is an island" and "I love thee like a summer's day". It's what some technical people have when they envision and build complicated tools. It's what some statesmen have when they forge societies. It's what we all have when we let ourselves be fully ourselves.

Labels: reflections

Referred there by Blue Tea (a terrific blog, by the way), I perused the "Beastly mispronounciations" page and was delighted even though it didn't include two of my personal favorites: thee-AYE-ter (theater) and sup-POZ-ub-ly (supposedly).

Labels: blogs (others'), great link(s)

I hate to say it but the obliviousness and less niceness of the world keep marching on. This is the third time this has happened very recently and it's pretty trivial in the overall scope of things but it's really annoying to order something and then get a package or envelope a few days later and open it all excited and happy, only to find a partial shipment with nary a notice or even a handwritten note about why it's only what's there. Would it take hours and tons of energy to include some explanation about what's there and when the rest is coming? I think not. Would it make it more likely that you'd re-order from them if they took that teeny tiny more time. You bet.

Labels: shopping, whining

Today, the day before the 62nd anniversary of Battle of Normandy, it is appropriate to note that in a month, on July 17th, we can also observe the 103rd anniversary of Harry S. Bingham IV's birth. Who is that, you ask? Well, he is a thoughtful and decent man, someone we should all know about and emulate (h/t and thanks to Wide Awake Cafe). He is the kind of man who made June 6, 1944 possible.

Bingham's flashy biography includes a mother, Alfreda Mitchell (granddaughter of Charles Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany & Co.) and a father, Hiram Bingham III (U.S. Senator and governor of Connecticut, an archaeologist who discovered the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911 and upon whom Steven Spielberg modeled Indiana Jones). Bingham graduated from Groton, Yale and Harvard Law, and entered the foreign service third in his class, serving first in Peking, China. By 1936 he was a U.S vice-consul in charge of visas, in Marseilles, France, putting him right where one Varian Fry found him in August 1940.

A month earlier, the French Government had surrendered to the Nazis, dividing France into two zones, one including Paris and administrated by Nazis and the other administered by the French at Vichy. The U.S. had not yet joined the War and did not do so until late 1941, and was for the time being intent on maintaining good relations with the Vichy government.

Fry, an American journalist determined to save all European intellectuals from the Naziis, was a volunteer with the Emergency Rescue Committee (now the International Rescue Committee) founded by German author Thomas Mann to raise funds and obtain U.S. visas for Jews, anti-Nazi Germans and others in France or concentration camps. When he arrived in Marseilles, Fry joined forces with two vice-consuls, one of whom was Harry Bingham, and eventually Bingham issued visas and travel documents that saved an estimated 2,500 lives. Among them were painter Marc Chagall, Nobel prize-winner Otto Meyerhof and philosopher Hannah Arendt. At one point he arranged for novelist Lion Feuchtwanger to be smuggled out of an internment camp disguised in women's clothing and then hid Feuchtwanger in his home until he could get him out of the country.

Unfortunately the State Department's desire to work with the Vichy government at the time led to its actively discouraging Bingham. He resigned from the foreign service and never wrote about his WWII work nor told any of his eleven children about it. A few years after his 1988 death his youngest son, William, found a bundle of letters and other documents behind a fireplace in the family home, revealing the amazing story. It took much letter writing and other efforts until 2002 when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented Bingham's children with a "Courageous Diplomat" award, praising Bingham's "constructive dissent." The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and Wally Findlay Galleries International, among others, joined the celebration that took place in the Rayburn House Office Building and included Chagall's granddaughter, Bella Meyer, and two recipients of Bingham-procured visas, one of whom said, "There were never enough visas, but somehow, when a Martinique-bound boat became available, Bingham produced 800 of them in 48 hours."

And on May 24 of this year, "Hiram Bingham IV, a U.S. diplomat whose unselfish actions in saving Jews from the Nazi Holocaust cost him his diplomatic career, was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in a commemorative stamp."

Labels: anniversaries, france, history

In a republic as diverse as ours, I wonder whether a national amendment on something as personal and cultural as a definition of marriage is a good idea. I mean, if two people want to try something so precarious and fraught with difficulties, why not let them go for it and wish them luck? For me, it doesn't matter whether one calls alliances 'marriages' or 'unions', but patently it does matter - a lot - to some people on both the "I want it" and the "over my dead body" sides. From a governmental point of view, I thought allowing states to encourage and retain their own rules and cultures was the reason for the clever federal system that the founding fathers designed, so why involve the national government? And then there's another question: if it matters so much to some people to live together and call it married, what difference does it make to anyone else, really? I mean, if Bob and Jane are miserable and cheat on each other, and Ellen and Tom are blissful, the condition of one marriage has no effect on the legality or anything else of the other one, right? So why not be married or live together, or not, or whatever, as people want to? What skin is off my or your back, when it comes down to it? Besides, a rose by any other name is still a rose, isn't it?

Labels: people

Since this apparently is a linkage day, here are some not to miss:

-An engrossing post about and from a Princeton grad now serving in Iraq, from Powerline. (Update: the PL link may not work for you, so here is a copy albeit w/o photos.)
-Maggie's Farm's 'Saturday Verse', by by William Carlos Williams, deliverer of over three thousand babies (!) and 1950 poetry National Book Award Winner.
-Also from Maggie's Farm, a provocative piece on climate change. By the way, have you noticed that the MSM is now using the phrase "climate change" instead of "global warming"? Should we draw any conclusions from that?
-Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
-Three novel, well-written, interesting cat blogs - yes, I said cat blogs: ferdinand t.cat, tacjammer and catymology.

Labels: blogs (others'), great link(s)

The older of the two handsome young men in the photo on the left is Drew and the younger one is his son. These yummy guys are the son and grandson of Laura, proprietor of the Wide Awake Cafe. Yesterday, Drew began training before leaving to serve in Iraq. A West Point graduate and a Captain in the National Guard, he served five years in the Army before transferring to active duty in the Arkansas National Guard in order to settle down in one place with his wife and son. I'm going to put Drew's photo on my sidebar until he's back and his son is atop his stateside shoulders again.

Laura wrote, "the more prayers the better". Indeed. And since her brother will be deploying in July, let's keep Laura, as well as both young men, in all of our thoughts and prayers.

Labels: blogs (others'), people, s.p.e.e.d.ing

It's June - summer actually has managed to arrive! Ok, technically it's 20 days away, but June is summer, let's face it. And today is Marilyn Monroe's 80th birthday. (What a concept - Marilyn at 80.) I bet she'd still be gorgeous. I met a woman a couple of weeks ago, a knitter, who is 74 and really truly looks like what I always thought you looked like around 50. That would be MM, I feel sure.

It's quite the musical and celeb birthday, as a matter of fact, so happy b'day to Alanis Morissette, Lisa Hartman Black, Ron Wood, Frederica Von Stade, Sylvia Syms, Edward Woodward, Frank Morgan . . . and authors Colleen McCullough, John W Van Duren (I Remember Mama), John Masefield . . . and I love the juxtaposition of Charles Wilson (of Charlie Wilson's War which is a fascinating book about Afghanistan in the last couple of decades and a portrait of a wild Congressman) sharing today's b'day honors with Karl von Clausewitz (The Art of War).

Labels: anniversaries, people