Musing about art

The Painter's Eye: Learning to Look at Contemporary American Art ~ by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, 1991. children's book (ages 9-12), 96 pages

The authors introduce young readers to an appreciation of the magic of art through conversations with the artists themselves, while providing them with the necessary tools to begin a lifetime appreciation of paintings.

 I have no idea why Risé chose this for senior citizens, since I checked it out of our library here at the Crown Center, but I'll give it a try.  It is, after all, a short book.  (Do you suppose Risé figures we old folks are in our second childhood?)

 

Bookstore cat

I went to Left Bank Books with Risé last Saturday (I mean Caturday, of course) and took a picture of this black cat in the window.  The cat was named by a child, I was told, so that why the poor cat is stuck with this LONG name:  Orleans Tennessee Maple.  I asked the employee to spell it, to be sure I had heard her correctly, so she spelled "Orleans" and said, "I'm not sure how to spell Tennessee."  Uh, not a problem, since that's where I'm from.  She was surprised, to say the least.

Caturday is the day between Friday and Sunday, a day for cats on this blog.

Musing ~ about three new books

The Mindfulness Coloring Book: Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People ~ by Emma Farrarons, 2015, stress management, 112 pages

On Saturday, Risé and I went to Left Bank Books, and I came home with three books.  Well, two books and a coloring book, but that's a "book," right?  I put it first for that reason.  Mindful coloring is a simple practice that combines meditation with the growing popularity of adult coloring books, and shows that any activity, done right, can be an exercise in mindfulness.  Illustrator Emma Farrarons presents 70 intricate patterns to color your way to tranquility:  flowers, leaves, butterflies, birds, rolling waves, and kaleidoscopic designs.

This Book Is Literally Just Pictures of Cute Animals That Will Make You Feel Better ~ edited by Smith Street Books, 2019, children and young adults, 96 pages

This book features eighty pictures of excessively cute animals, and that's it.  The only words are on the title page and the copyright page.  There are cats flaunting fabulous wigs, sloths dangling casually, and otters holding hands (something that actually occurs in nature).

Big Ideas, Little Pictures: Explaining the World One Sketch at a Time ~ by Jono Hey, 2024, trivia, 288 pages

Have you ever wondered what makes autumn leaves change color, why more choice makes you less happy, or how to win at Monopoly?  Or maybe you'd like to learn how to find your way using the stars or why we need to worry less about what others think of us than you might expect.  Hey, look!  The boater on the cover is musing about the shape of that wave.  I wonder if it was a Monday.  Okay, so you know I'm weird and muse about odd things.

Two books for TWOsday

Darwin's Dogs: How Darwin's Pets Helped Form a World-Changing Theory of Evolution ~ by Emma Townshend, 2009, evolution, 144 pages

If you have ever looked at a dog waiting to go for a walk and thought there was something age-old and almost human about his sad expression, you’re not alone; Charles Darwin did exactly the same.  But Darwin didn’t just stop at feeling that there was some connection between humans and dogs.  English gentleman naturalist, great pioneer of the theory of evolution, and incurable dog-lover, Darwin used his much-loved dogs as evidence in his continuing argument that all animals (including human beings) descended from one common ancestor.

From his fondly written letters home enquiring after the health of family pets to his profound scientific consideration of the ancestry of the domesticated dog, Emma Townshend looks at Darwin’s life and work from a uniquely canine perspective.

Mistral's Daughter ~ by Judith Krantz, 1983, literary fiction, 500 pages

They were three generations of magnificent red-haired beauties born to scandal, bred to success, bound to a single extraordinary man — Julien Mistral, the painter, the genius, the lover whose passions had seared them all.

• Maggy:  Flamboyant mistress of  Mistral’s youth, the toast of Paris in the‘20s.  Her luminous flesh was immortalized in the  paintings that made Mistral legendary.
• Teddy:  Maggy’s daughter, the incomparable cover girl who lived fast and left as her legacy Mistral’s dazzling love child.
• Fauve:   Mistral's daughter, the headstrong, fearless glory girl whose one dark secret drove her to rule the world of high fashion and to risk everything in a feverish search for love.

From the ‘20s Paris of Chanel, Colette, Picasso, and Matisse, to New York’s new modeling agencies of the ‘50s, to the model ward of the ‘70s, Mistral's Daughter captures the glamour of life at the top of the worlds of art and high fashion.

A friend handed me Mistral's Daughter one day, saying she didn't want it back.  She didn't even finish it.  Yeah, it's too long and what I skimmed didn't grab me, so I'll let Risé trade it for something Crown Center readers may find more interesting.

Today's the first day of SPRING

Under this photo from The Old Farmer's Almanac are these words:  "When Is the First Day of Spring 2024?  In 2024, the March equinox happens on March 19 at 11:06 P.M. EDT.  This falls on a Tuesday and is the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere and the autumn season in the Southern Hemisphere.  If you thought that the spring equinox only ever occurred on March 21, you may be dating yourself.  The civil calendar date of the equinox continues to shift every year."  So today's the day, but not yet.  We have to wait until tonight in my part of the world.

I told you about The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese a couple of days ago, saying "a couple of books worth sharing."  Well, maybe not.  My neighbor Betty knocked on my door, handed me this huge book (736 pages), and said she doesn't want it back.  It has taken her since Christmas to finish it, she said.  I then suggested donating it to the Crown Center's little library, but Betty said our resident librarian Risé had told her large books like this are too heavy for old folks to hold.

Two for TWOsday, both recommended by Risé

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying ~ by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 1992, psychology, 224 pages

In this moving and compassionate classic, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts — of wisdom, faith, and love — that the dying leave for the living to share.  Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter ~ by Sherwin B. Nuland, 1995, psychology, xviii 

+ 278 pages

This National Book Award Winner and national bestseller addresses issues in end-of-life care and includes an afterword that discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones.  Each of us will die in a way that is different from anyone else's death.  Behind each death is a story.  Sherwin B. Nuland (1930-2014) was a surgeon and a teacher of medicine.  In this book, he gave us portraits of the experience of dying that makes clear the choices we can make to allow us our own death.

Risé was working in the Crown Center library, so I went in to speak to her.  While we were talking, Harry came in to get a book, which they must have talked about, since she handed it to him.  It was the first book above (Final Gifts), and while we were talking, I noticed the second book (How We Die) among the nonfiction on the counter.  Risé said she recommends both books, so Harry checked out one and I checked out the other; we agreed to swap books after we finish the ones we had in hand.

** Footnote **

Two related books I've written about in the past on this blog are:

1. The Art of Dying ~ by Katy Butler (posted HERE in 2014)
2. Being Mortal ~ by Atul Gawande (posted HERE in 2019)

Thursday Thoughts

Lots to think about today.  Let's see..........

1. My weather app says there's a 50% chance of rain today, with thunderstorms late tonight.  Today's high is predicted to be 101°F.
2. We are under two "Severe Weather Alerts":  Heat Advisory and Air Quality Alert.
3. Hot enough for ya?  High heat and rain tomorrow, too.
4. Oh, no!  Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go with Risé (my retired librarian friend who is the source of my Risé Recommends posts) to take boxes and boxes of books to trade for some new-to-us books for our Crown Center library.  Yikes!  Rain is not good for cardboard boxes or books!  Now what?
5. As I'm typing this, I'm also glancing out my window and seeing blue skies with fluffy white clouds.  Okay, some clouds are kind of smudgy gray, since we are also under that Air Quality Alert all day.
6. I need something positive to focus on.  How about this quote?  It's from page 33 of the book on JOY and ENTHUSIASM:  "Think and practice joy every day. ... Get enthusiasm, think enthusiasm, live enthusiastically!"
7. 
   So I should think positive thoughts, like something about my brand new apartment.  I can say positive things about my walk-in shower.  In my old apartment, my shower was over my tub, which required a nonslip bathmat with suction cups that could grip the slippery enamel.  Yay, fall risk lessened!
8. Let's end with a book Risé Recommends:

 

The Innocents ~ by Francesca Segal, 2012, fiction (London), 289 pages

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London.  He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry.  To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community — a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates.  Marrying Rachel will cement Adam's role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel's younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he'd care to admit.  Ellie — beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent — offers a liberation that he hadn't known existed:  a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London.  Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence.  What might he be missing by staying close to home?

Another book that Risé recommends

The Little Paris Bookshop ~ by Nina George, 2015, fiction (France), 416 pages

Monsieur Perdu can prescribe the perfect book for a broken heart.  But can he fix his own?  Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary.  From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life.  Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls.

The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared.  She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story.  Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.  

This is a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives.

See these other books that my retired-librarian friend Risé has recommended (click on the titles):

• Everything I Never Told You ~ by Celeste Ng, 2014, fiction, 305 pages, 8/10
• The 13th Gift: A True Story of a Christmas Miracle ~ by Joanne Huist Smith, 2014, memoir, 224 pages
• Lost Laysen ~ by Margaret Mitchell, 1996, novella, 128 pages
• The Fifth Child ~ by Doris Lessing, 1988, fiction, 144 pages
• Plum Wine ~ by Angela Davis-Gardner, 2006, fiction, 352 pages

A book about cats for our library

Know Your Cat: An Owner's Guide to Cat Behavior ~ by Bruce Fogle, photography by Jane Burton, 1991, animal behavior, 128 pages, 9/10

This guide book for cat lovers provides penetrating insights into cat behavior, based on the scientific research and analysis of veterinarian Bruce Fogle.  Supported by 350 color photographs, he explains how cats communicate through body language, meowing and hissing, and rituals like rubbing and grooming.  Reading this book will give the novice an overview of how cats behave and what to expect as the cat grows to maturity.

My friend Toni was talking with me in the lobby recently and asked me to wait while she ran back up to her apartment to get this book.  Her daughter Margo wants to donate it to the Crown Center library, and Risé and I re-shelve the books there.  Thanks, Margo!

Yes, kitty cat, today is Caturday.

A word and a coincidence

Trying to be funny, I asked my friend Risé about her "druthers" the other day.  I had even looked up the word before I called her, to be sure I was using it correctly.

===================================================================

druth·ers (informal, North American), noun = a person's preference in a matter.  Example:  "If I had my druthers, I would prefer to be a writer."

Origin of the phrase = When a person says, "I'd rather," it sounds like the word "druther."  Therefore, it's a shortened way of saying "I would rather."

===================================================================

Hours later, when I sat down to read, I decided to go back to a trio of books I'd barely gotten into months ago:  The Herland Trilogy on my Kindle.  I knew I'd need to start over.  I searched my Kindle, found the trilogy, and opened it to where I'd stopped reading.  That's when I was startled to see these words on the very top line of the last page I had gotten to:

". . . can't always have your 'druthers' . . ." (p. 22).

I stopped reading after those five words, just to jot all this stuff down.  What are the odds?  I haven't used "druthers" in ages, probably not in years.  And there it was, in the book I picked up to read.  A book I'd been reading long ago, not even recently.

A book recommended by Risé

Did you remember to change your clocks?  Or are you already running late?

Risé Recommends ~ I'm beginning a new series of books recommended by my friend Risé, a retired librarian.  This is a book in the Crown Center's library that she recently recommended to me:

Plum Wine ~ by Angela Davis-Gardner, 2006, fiction, 352 pages

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university.  When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift:  a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy — one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s life.  Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese?

Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden.  But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi’s life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha — Hiroshima survivors — Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi’s past — and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

I have questions:

• What is a Tansu chest?  Tansu are traditional portable storage chests from Japan.  In Japanese traditional houses, there were no fixed chairs, tables, or pieces of furniture in the living space.  Tansu were intended as mobile cabinetry and used to store objects of daily use, clothes, and personal items.
• What are hibakusha?  Atomic Bomb survivors are referred to in Japanese as hibakusha, which translates literally as "bomb-affected-people."

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.

What I'm thinking about

1.  On the Crown Center bus ~ Iva, Betty, and Meredith on the left; Bonnie, Esme beside Jerry, and Shannon (in the back) on the right.  This is an old photo, but I'll be on the bus again today when we go to buy groceries.

2.  Another bagful of books ~ Risé invited me to go with her this morning to the last day of the sale of used books at the Jewish Community Center.  That's when we can fill a bag with books for five bucks.  I've written about the books I've stuffed into bags other years, like THIS in 2017, but I haven't been to their sale since I quit driving.  I'll tell you about the books later, probably over several days, a few books at a time.  I set this to post itself while we're book shopping.

3.  Punxsutawney Phil ~ Did you see my earlier post?  Today is Groundhog Day, so go back one post to see what I wrote.

4.  Einstein's cluttered desk ~ The photo on the right was his office on the day he died.  These are the words on the left photo:  "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" — Albert Einstein

5.  Survey about daily life ~ Do you need help...

... with using the telephone?

... with shopping?

... with food preparation?

... with housekeeping?

... with laundry?

... with transportation?

... with your medications?

... with your finances (budgeting, buying, banking, paying bills)?

6.  And then there's quality of life to consider, as Atul Gawande wrote about in his 2014 book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.  I gave that one a 10/10 rating and highly recommend it.  A survey could ask questions about whether you are satisfied with your life, how you feel, whether you are involved in activities or not, whether you feel hopeless or happy.  Think about it.  How alive and involved are you feeling these days?  In answering some of their quality of life questions, I didn't just circle Yes/No as requested.  You know me, right?  I had to throw in a few remarks, as well.

7.  Do you often get bored?  NO, I don't think I've ever been bored, except in some business meetings.  😃

8.  Do you prefer to stay at home, rather than going out and doing new things?  YES, but that's because I'm an INTJ (introvert).

9.  Do you think it is wonderful to be alive now?  YES, but reading news of random rampages is not "wonderful."  (Neither, is reading about wars and violence.)

10.  Do you feel full of energy?  NO, not physical energy.  Mentally I have lots of energy, but my physical energy is slowing down.

11.  An alarming day ~ I set off alarms at the courthouse in my town back in 2009.  Why?  I told people it is because I am held together with baling wire. I actually WAS wired together after quadruple bypass heart surgery earlier that year.  The guard let me pass through after I showed her my scars from surgery.

Clawdia posing with our new bow

Clawdia watched me take down the holiday bow that Risé gave me, which I had on the door where the WELCOME sign is now hanging.  I decided to attach this one to the box beside our door.  Thanks for both of the beautiful bows, Risé.

Food for thought and for the tummy

Risé and I had lunch at Jilly's Cupcake Bar and Café, which is about half a block from where we live.  We both got their Brisket BLT (called a BBLT) and a Snickerdoodle gingerbread cupcake (a better view is on the left).  We had enough for another lunch.  We two book lovers managed NOT to go to the bookstore that's in the same strip mall.

Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change ~ by John Lewis, 2012, nonfiction, xvii + 180 pages

Faith, patience, truth, love, peace, study, and reconciliation:  these are the buckets into which Lewis poured his message about "the inner transformation that must be realized to effect lasting social change."  A civil rights pioneer and Georgia congressman, Lewis (Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement) sought to inspire nonviolent activism in a time that he regarded as the most violent in history.  For his audience, Lewis targeted Occupy protestors, and members of the movement could draw lessons from the anecdotes that are the heart of the book.  

At its best, the book provides a testament to the power of nonviolence in social movements, with moving personal accounts of the Freedom Rides, such as when Lewis described being physically beaten in South Carolina or sitting out a 40-day sentence in the unrelenting Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi.  At its worst, it resembles an extended campaign speech:  "Some people have told me that I am a rare bird in the blue sky of dreamers ... despite every attempt to keep me down, I have not been shaken."  In between these extremes is the advice of a wise uncle who has earned the right to have his say. 

John Lewis "was a guiding voice for a young Illinois senator who became the first Black president," according to the West Suburban Journal, where I found this photo of Barack Obama awarding him the Medal of Freedom in 2011.  Quote from the book:

"The most important lesson I have learned in the fifty years I have spent working toward the building of a better world is that the true work of social transformation starts within.  It begins inside your own heart and mind, because the battleground of human transformation is really, more than any other thing, the struggle within the human consciousness to believe and accept what is true.  Thus to truly revolutionize our society, we must first revolutionize ourselves.  We must be the change we seek if we are to effectively demand transformation from others."

This quote is from the dust jacket, so I don't know the page number.  Amazon readers have rated this book 4.9 out of 5 stars, so it must be pretty good.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Books, libraries, WindowSwap, and groceries

My books are always calling me!  I am currently reading the book I shared in my Book Beginnings on Friday post a couple of days ago:  A Tuscan Memory by Angela Petch, 2020, fiction (Italy), 272 pages.

We had a visit from David of the University City Library on March 3rd, meeting in our little library at Crown Center.  Here he is talking to me during his visit.  The University City Library sends books every three weeks to seniors all over the community who sign up for the program.  The library folks choose books based on our general interest or our favorite authors.  Some of us reserve books that we choose ourselves, if we know how to use a computer to make our own reservations.  So I've been talking to Dave (or now, his new helper Loretta) every three weeks for several years.  The next time Dave or Loretta calls, I'll say I'm reading from my own shelves for now, as I posted on Monday.

Dave is on the left in the photo above with Risé, Mary, Sandy, and me (with my hand on Sandy's mobile chair).  Since Donna died, Risé and I are the only ones still re-shelving books.  I really do appreciate Risé a lot; she's doing most of the work culling our bookshelves these days so that we can add recent donations.

It's been awhile since I shared the link to WindowSwap.  Each time you click on the link, you see a new window from somewhere in the world.  I just now looked out a window in Turkey, one in Spain, one in India looking onto a courtyard, and another in France with birds flying past a high-rise.  This link has been really great during the two years of the COVID pandemic, part of which was lockdown and not going anywhere at all.  This photo shows a window view in Switzerland.

Our Circle@Crown Café now has Grab & Go grocery goods:  bread, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, sweets, juice, water, and soda.  It's really convenient to "walk" to the store in the other building, right here on the grounds of our senior retirement center, when all we need is one or two of the basics.  I'm frequently in the Café anyway, having lunch with a friend or three, and can grab what I need.  To get a regular load of groceries, I sign up for one of the weekly bus trips to the store.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts The Sunday Salon.