Caturday ~ a poem by Scooter

Scooter is Susan Beth Pfeffer's cat.  In this photo, he is reading the first in her trilogy of Moon books:  Life As We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone, and This World We Live In.  Anyway, Scooter recently wrote a poem that is purr-fect for a Caturday post.

Rubies are red
Emeralds are green
If I don't get fed
I'll eat your spleen.

I must say, it sounds very cat-like.  Kiki would never say that to me, though, would you, Kiki?

Kiki?

Oh, sorry, she's busy eating.  I guess that saved my spleen, huh?

Beginning ~ with fruit salad

Living Buddha, Living Christ ~ by Thích Nhất Hạnh, 1995, religion

Twenty years ago at a conference I attended of theologians and professors of religion, an Indian Christian friend told the assembly, "We are going to hear about the beauties of several traditions, but that does not mean that we are going to make a fruit salad."  When it came my turn to speak, I said, "Fruit salad can be delicious!"

The title tells us Thích Nhất Hạnh is comparing Buddhism and Christianity, but after this beginning, I was curious about how much of a "fruit salad" he'd make of these two religions.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.
Click here for today's Mister Linky.

Postcards ~ do you collect them?

Oh, my goodness!  This is a very old postcard showing Chattanooga from atop Lookout Mountain, but the Incline Railway is not situated the way this shows.  Somebody had a real job, since photoshopping didn't come along for maybe 50-60 years after this card was made.  I found it while googling a postcard showing my town.  This incorrectly-placed incline would be arriving at Point Park, it seems to me.

I was looking for postcards because I just learned from Jan @ Yearning for God that this is National Postcard Week, from Sunday, May 6, through Saturday, May 12.  I've never been a collector, but in sorting through my mother's things after she died, I discovered a number of postcards I had sent her over the years.  Most of them were from Holston Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.  That's the annual event attended by all United Methodist ministers in the Holston area, along with an equal number of lay people.  I would send cards to each grandchild — whose number kept increasing over the years — plus my mother, except for the years I took her with me.

Jan's post included a helpful tip:

I will have to buy some new postcard stamps, which now cost 32 cents...

I left this comment on her post:

Thanks for telling me how much postage to put on the one postcard I happen to have (in a place where I know it is, at any rate). Someone who has sent me mail three (count them: 3) times will get this card. I promise. But first, I must go home from this house where I'm house-and-cat-sitting and put my grubby little hands on the postcard and the address.

Can you guess who that particular card will go to?  I failed miserably in sending out daily letters during February's Month of Letters, but Jan didn't.  Neither did Madge, or Paula.  Maybe postcards are better than nothing, better than getting no letter at all from me.  I also owe letters (or postcards) to Beth, and Helen, and Ginny, and Martha ... and my list is at home (I'm house-sitting, though I go home every day because I have to give Kiki two droppers full of her antibiotic, daily).

Hmm, I've found another vintage postcard of the incline, this one dated 1935, when my parents were in high school.  Maybe it was possible to see that much of the river from the side of Lookout Mountain above St. Elmo, but it still looks strange to me.  I guess I should go shopping for postcards about the Incline.  Or maybe I'll grab a friend and go ride the Incline today.  Surely, I could find photos and/or postcards at the actual site.

For those of you who are curious, last year I lived about a mile from the bottom of the Incline, in St. Elmo.  Now I have moved closer to my children, and we all reside on the other (northern) side of that river, beyond the ridges you see on the far shore, beyond the downtown area.

Eleanor, Quiet No More

Eleanor, Quiet No More: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt ~ by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Gary Kelley, 2009, children's biography, 9/10

Yes, that's the front cover of this book, in its entirety.  The book's title is on the back.  Here's a summary of the book:

Eleanor Roosevelt was raised in a privileged but stern Victorian household, with an affectionate but mostly absent father and a critical mother who made fun of her daughter's looks.  Alone and lonely for much of her childhood, Eleanor found solace in books and in the life of her lively and independent mind.  Her intellectual gifts and compassionate heart won her the admiration of many friends — and the love of her future husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

While other young women of her class were spending time at dances and parties, Eleanor devoted her energies to teaching children in New York City's poorest neighborhoods.  Later, she became the most socially and politically active — and controversial — First Lady America had ever seen.  Ambassador, activist, and champion of civil rights, Eleanor Roosevelt changed the soul of America forever.

Rappaport thanked a classroom of third graders for their honest appraisal of the book, so it was easy for me to read straight through this afternoon.   The author does a good job of making clear what Eleanor Roosevelt was like, as I remember her.  Here are a couple of quotes by Mrs. Roosevelt (the book has no page numbers).

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway."

Eleanor learned to think for herself, partly because she had a teacher who "shocked [her] into thinking."  She was a woman ahead of her time.  Though she died in 1962, before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, look at what she did "anyway," based on doing "what [she] felt in [her] heart to be right."  These words are enlarged and laid out as in the book.

The Daughters of the American Revolution 

refused to let the great black contralto 

Marian Anderson sing in their auditorium.  

Eleanor resigned from the group:

"To remain a member implies

approval of that action,"

she wrote in her newspaper column.

And millions read her words.

She arranged for Anderson to sing

at the Lincoln Memorial.

More than 75,000 Americans —  black and white —

came to hear her.

I rate this book 9 of 10, an excellent book.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Bonus story:  When I checked this book out of the library for my roommate (yes, I read it before she did and can probably count it as Library Loot this week), the librarian told me a story.  A library patron who is in his 80s told her he once "babysat Eleanor."  I started doing the math, and that didn't add up.  But wait!  He worked at an airport somewhere, and Eleanor was the only person waiting for the only small plane scheduled to leave.  His boss told him to "take care of her."  So now this elderly gentleman has fun telling folks he "babysat Eleanor."  I think it's a sweet story, and it shows how people loved her.

Monday Memories ~ my encyclopedia story

When my three children were growing up, we bought them a set of the World Book Encyclopedias.  They looked like this 20-volume set I found online.  I also remember Mother buying the four of us the same encyclopedia.  She paid 50-cents a week on it, which was a lot of money back then.  A little story for you about these books.

After World War Two, there was a housing shortage, and old barracks in my town were converted to temporary apartments for returning soldiers with children.  My dad was a veteran with a wife and four kids, so we qualified.  The barracks, however, were slung together, rather than built to last.  So when it rained, we often had leaks.  And those leaky spots usually dripped rain onto our furniture.  When it stormed, my siblings ran to cover their beds — I can't remember if we used tarps, or shower curtains, or what — but I was less interested in a dry bed than I was in saving our books!  Especially the encyclopedias.  So I covered up our bookcases.  As you can see, my love of books goes way, way, way back.

In the days before digital — before we had a television in our home — books were the only way to learn about something, the only way to check facts.  It was, in fact, our version of Google.

"The World Book was Google, for an era of print. If you needed to know something, there it was, on the shelf at home."

I found this quote while searching for an image to use.  Think about it ... if rain suddenly started pouring into your house, what would you save first?  Your TV?  Your iPod?  Your Kindle?  I saved the source of my knowledge — our encyclopedias.

Sunday Salon ~ Kiki misses me

LIFE

Babe

I'm house-sitting again, which also means cat-sitting with Babe, who likes to come inside through one door and rush to another door meowing to be let out.  The first day here (this time), she meowed to go outside and I went to the kitchen to let her out through the garage, where she has a cat door to the outside.  No, she sat at the other end of the kitchen, refusing to go that way.  When I closed that door, she marched through the den to go out by way of the deck.  That takes her right back past her cat door to the garage, but it's what she preferred, thank you very much.  It's her favorite game, in one door, out another, refuse to do what's expected.  Kiki has spoiled me, good cat that she is.

Kiki

Speaking of Kiki, the first night I was here at Jane's, my roommate Donna got up in the middle of the night and found Kiki waiting for me by the door, in the dark.  Since Kiki usually sleeps curled up next to me, for at least part of the night, she misses me.  I'm only a couple of miles away, but she doesn't know that.

BOOKS

I should call this "the Luke Tull" edition.  Do you know Luke?  I've been reading Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler's 1982 novel about the Tull family.  Each chapter is narrated by a different family member:

1.  Pearl Tull, the mother
2.  Cody Tull, her oldest son
3.  Jenny Tull, her daughter
4.  Ezra Tull, her youngest son, who is Pearl's favorite
5.  Cody Tull, again
6.  Pearl Tull, again
7.  Jenny Tull, again, now Dr. Tull, a pediatrician
8.  Luke Tull, son of Cody

There are two more chapters, but I don't know who narrates them.  Not yet, anyway.  Ezra has a restaurant he named the Homesick Restaurant.  Cody moved as far from family as possible, taking along his wife Ruth and son Luke.  That's how far I got before the library informed me they had my book on hold for me:  The Beginner's Goodbye, Anne Tyler's 2012 novel.  It's a new book, so I'm limited to seven days.  I put aside one book and started the other.  I was reading along and got to page 57, where I read this:

Not half an hour later, the phone rang again.  This time it was TULL L.  I answered, but I was warier now.  All I said was, "Hello?"

"Hi, Aaron, it's Luke."

Wait!  "Tull L." on the caller ID is Luke.  That would be Luke Tull.  That's when I made the connection that these two novels are by the same author.  That's when I realized both novels are set in Baltimore, Maryland.  That's when I remembered I don't usually read two novels at the same time.  But I did, and now the same character is in both books.  But there's a 30-year gap between books, and I haven't finished the first one.  I haven't even finished Luke's chapter!  In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, chapter 8 starts with Luke in his early teens:

The summer before Luke Tull turned fourteen, his father had a serious accident at the factory he was inspecting.

In The Beginner's Goodbye, Luke owns a restaurant.  Wait!  How'd that happen?  Luke's uncle Ezra owned a restaurant in the earlier book.  Is this the same one?  A different restaurant?  Now I wonder if I should finish the earlier novel before continuing this new one.

And then I made another connection.  The wife of Aaron, the main character in The Beginner's Goodbye, is/was a pediatrician.  (The book starts with her death, so "was" a pediatrician is correct.)  Jenny Tull, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, is a pediatrician.  Is that how they know each other?  Is that how they became friends, through Luke's aunt Jenny and Aaron's wife?

I don't know if Luke Tull is merely a minor "friend" of this protagonist (Aaron) or if he's important to the story.  Does it matter?  Maybe not, but it's a curious problem to encounter.

Here's my solution.  With about 80 pages to go, I think I'll finish the earlier novel.  Then I'll finish the 2012 novel.  What do you think?

[CORRECTION, afternoon:  I stand corrected by today's New York Times review of the new book.  Aaron's wife Dorothy was an oncologist, a cancer doctor, not a pediatrician.  The two novels have already blurred in my mind.  I've been reading the earlier one today and will finish it soon.]

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A penny for your thoughts

A penny for your thoughts.

I'm thinking my thoughts ought to be worth more than that!