Christ's mass

     Now that he season that celebrates Christ's birth has finally arrived, many of the secular lights will be extinguished and trimmings taken down and the trees discarded or mulched. What of the other remembrances celebrated by the Church at this time? St Stephen, the first Christian martyr; St John the Evangelist; the Holy Innocents and the Epiphany and childhood of Jesus?

     I continue living in my own little world, that flow of the Church year learned as a choir boy and continued as sacristan at the parish church where I grew up. Christmas began for me then at 3pm on Christmas Eve with the live broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

     David Wilcox's musical influence seems to remain strong . . . and each year one new musical piece is commissioned . . .

     I wondered when I was little, "Who is this Mary? And what's a virgin?".

     I don't worry much about the pagan origins of some of the things we do at this time of the year. The time of year in the northern hemisphere when the long dark nights begin to shorten is a cause for celebration. A time to anticipate the first aconites and snowdrops . . .

     So, what did I do with the day? Mass to hear the Gospel . . . ultra-traditional goose for dinner, traditional carols to listen to and to play and sing;  and Kathy likes to watch lots of Christmastime themed movies . . .

The remainder of a white Christmas

From the bookshelves 62 ?

I will attempt to finish or rather continue to read and re-read this work . . . one day.

I walked this

morning along the Little Colorado river, part of the Becker Lake riparian wildlife area. I remembered my camera to take some snapshots . . . here are some of the results.

 

 

 

Life  is often described as a journey.  On this journey we experience many things and collect mementos, items which may not have any intrinsic value but are  valued none the less as reminders of past events or people we have known who have made the journey lighter.

    Along the way we fall in with companions who share the journey.  Geese fly in company when they journey south from northern climes in the autumn to warmer areas, avoiding the wintry conditions further north.  They fly in a 'V' formation.  They do this because the beating wings of the leading birds creates lift for those behind.  The flying range of the flock is greatly increased over that of a bird flying alone.

    People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier, because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

    Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone, and quickly gets into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front.

    If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay in formation with those who are going the same direction as we are.

    When the lead goose gets tired, he rotates back into the formation and another goose takes the lead point.  It pays to take turns doing hard jobs.  The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

    What do we say when we 'honk' from behind?

    When a goose falls out of formation and goes to ground because it is sick or injured two other geese will follow it and stay with it until it recovers or dies.  They resume their journey with another formation or catch up with the original group.

    If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.

    I found this story amongst my school notes, a much copied anonymous piece, one of those mementos imbued with extrinsic value if only the analogy can be learned and put into practice.

Silence

More reading . . .

I'm reading the stories from Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernières. BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast several of the stories.

Still awaiting The Life of Insects to arrive. This is an allegorical novel by Victor Pelevin which the reading group will be discussing next year . . . January.

Tempus Fugit

     So what have I been up to this past week? The usual which for me means walking with a neighbour who likes the company; collecting the mail, most of which is for Kathy as she manages to get on so many mailing lists from buying from so many catalogues, and getting lost playing music nearly everyday. There must be some sleeping, eating and household chores and the occasional honey-do each day, too.

     Oh, and reading. I received my Folio Society selections this week which included Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Seeing Stone.

This is an award winning book, a retelling of the Arthurian legend from the perspective of a thirteen year old boy at the end of the twelfth century when Richard Cœur-de-Lion is off on Crusade and Prince John is lusting after the throne of England. This is the first book of a trilogy written for young people.

The chapter 41 heading is Mouthfuls of Air. And that segues into Antony Burgess:

I haven't read this for a very long time. I was sent to the dictionary to look up hebetude. And that leads to the venerable O.E.D. Is this the only dictionary with a users guide?

 Simon Winchester has written about the making of the first edition of the O.E.D.

 

And before that he wrote The Professor and the Madman; an account of the extraordinary contribution to the dictionary of an inmate of Broadmoor and his correspondence with James Murry . . .  

I am become a wraith . . .

catching up on Stuart's blog:

Remarkably Clear Insight of the Day

If you spend your whole life working to avoid making a scene, you will wake up one day to realize that you are no longer in the play, and nor should you be- you've ceased to be worth watching.

. . . . do you . . . .

dream monochrome . . .

or colour?

From the bookshelves 60, 61

A painstakingly made book . . . then a movie. I read this at a time I was doing a clinical-internship in a nursing home as part of an occupational therapy assistant course. This relates obliquely to the story of the man in Brussels who recently reported that he was conscious for the past twenty odd years; not in a coma.

     I mentioned in a previous post I occasionally miss John Ciardi, or rather his pieces about words on All Things Considered (or was it Morning Edition?). I re-read an excerpt from Invisible by Paul Auster in GRANTA 106 which makes reference to Bertran de Born, a poet condemned to carry his own severed head like a lantern for causing a bitter rift between a prince and his father.  He appears at the end of Canto 28 of Inferno.

Browsing the bookshelves again 58, 59

To see East Anglia through another's eyes . . . and feel the light; taste the salt air from off the North Sea; Tyne, Dogger, Humber, Thames . . . North Uitsera, South Uitsera (Viking),  Fisher, German Bight . . . a blast of wind from the Baltic . . .

Rima has a link to Kevin Crossley-Holland's website on her sidebar. Mr. Crossley-Holland lives in Norfolk.

James Dodds learned boat-building in Maldon, Essex. 

Reading group

The reading group I belong to has read these books over the last five years:

Love in the Time of Cholera       Gabriel Marquez*

Waiting for the Barbarians          J.M. Coetzee*º

God's Bits of Wood                      Sembene Ousmane

The Cave                                      Jose Saramago*

My Year of Meats                         Ruth Ozeki

Blood Meridian                            Cormac McCarthy~†

End Zone                                      Don Delillo~

The Maltese Falcon                     Dashiell Hammett

The Silent Cry                              Kenzeboro Oe

Under Milkwood                          Dylan Thomas

Lolita                                            Vladimir Nabokov

The Master and Marguerita          Mikhail Bulgakov

The Quiet American                      Graham Greene

The Namesake                               Jhumpa Lahiri†

Black Rain                                     Masugi Ibuse

Henderson the Rain King              Saul Bellow*~†

Miramar                                        Naguib Mahfouz*

Snow                                             Orhan Pamuk*

Free Fall                                       William Golding*º

The Waves                                     Virginia Woolf

Family                                            Pa Chin

As I Lay Dying                               William Faulkner*†~

Ceremony                                       Leslie Marmon Silko

A Confederacy of Dunces              John Kennedy Toole†

The Kite Runner                             Khaled Hosseini

Whose Body?                                  Dorothy L Sayers

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly   Jean-Dominique Bauby

The Known World                          Edward Jones†

Lost City Radio                              Daniel Alarcon

Our Man in Havana                       Graham Greene

The Sirens of Titan                         Kurt Vonnegut

The Brief Wondrous Life of

Oscar Wao                                     Junot Diaz†

Empire Falls                                  Richard Russo†

Silence                                            Shusaka Endo (Tanizaki prize)

A Mercy                                          Toni Morrison

Everything that Rises must

Converge                                        Flannery O'Connor

The Plague of Doves                      Louise Erdrich

Beyond Black                                  Hilary Mantel

*Nobel Prize for Literature
†Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
~National Book Award for Fiction
°Booker Prize for Fiction

 and we'll be discussing Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout next week. I've not read some of the books on the list; and of course I've read others on my own . . .

ADDENDUM: Round Valley Book Group now has a blog

Happy Thanksgiving

     Computer troubles resolved - for the moment.

     Started Tabula Rasa on a whim and was then bereft of ideas.

     Company just arrived to stay over Thanksgiving.

     Kathy had to rush over the hill to Show  Low for an appointment this morning after finding out today is the 24th not the 23rd.

     I may catch up with pictures later. Meanwhile I'll meditate and contemplate that for which I am thankful . . . that I woke up this morning, that I am able to play some music each morning, that I am still relatively sane (relative to what or to whom?)

Meanwhile here's another of Nick Bantock's books from my shelves

The rules of this award-

This award is bestowed on to blogs that are exceedingly charming. Well, I'm not sure about that; but charming enough to attract eight followers

These kind of bloggers aim to find and be friends. I'm tickled pink that others have troubled to comment (or cast a pebble into the puddle  . . . er . . . pond; lake; sea; ocean?)

They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. No, I'm too self absorbed in humble introspection . . .

Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated.

Thank you, Lemon Verbena Lady; I can only reciprocate  . . . but that's already been done.

Please give more attention to these writers:

Dick Glasgow is a very busy and affable fellow and offers a warm welcome to County Antrim and plenty of links to traditional music happenings in his corner of the world.

 Personal poetic expression may be found here.

Duta alread has many acknowledgments of the quality of her contribution to the blogos-sphere.

Because 60 is divisible by 2, 30, 3, 20, 4, 15, 5, 12, 6 and 10 . . . . keeps things neat.

Watch artwork grow at Christine Walker's blog.

And a slice of life called Please and Thank You

 

Codex Sinaiticus

Scholarship . . . conservation . . . history . . . Codex Sinaiticus

     I'm most likely behind the curve (so what else is new?) on this. Brush up your biblical Greek . . .

Open Book

I mentioned Open Book a few posts ago. The vote was counted and the winner is . . . listen here.

Well, that was a gratifying surprise!

They will not grow old . . .

as we who are left grow old.

We will remember them.

I remember Leo Saunders, one of those left who did grow old.

The story so far . . .

     Thinks: to save money on postage and to let friends and family have some idea of what I'm doing in England I'll start a blog. In the process of setting up the account I needed a name. Oh, what the hell: Thrupnybits. (I know, I know, stop sniggering behind your hand there) And a name for the blog? Mmm . . . how pretentious can I be? I don't think I'd browsed many blogs at this time I just jumped in. I can't remember now if I made a list to choose from. Mmmm . . . seeking something . . . how about epistēmē? Mmm . . . how can I have lived through so many years and still not answered the question "who am I?" or kept in mind the adage to 'know thyself'? Should I throw away all the books and start again? Pestered again and again with the question, “What do you want to be (or was it 'do'?) when you grow up?” I have the fuel (fertile? or mere wind-egg?); do I have the fire that consumes? 

     I can only know of my early life from what I have been told and the few pictures of me. I have no memory of that time; I do not have a memory of my sitting looking at the camera, only the memory that I was told this is a picture of me with Mr. Foster. My earliest memories, which are remembered as me being the centre of my universe, occur later as consciousness awakens. I do not have an eidetic memory. What about olfactory or auricular memory? The sense of smell, though the weakest of human senses, holds the key to many early memories: the smell of the kitchen on wash day; mum’s eau-de-cologne; the orangey-whisky-evergreen smell of Christmas at home; to this day I do not like the smell of gin as I took a swig of the stuff from a bottle I thought contained soda water, ugh! Sounds from childhood include the early morning crowing of cocks; the whining hum of the milk float; the swish of cars passing down the High Street; birdsong, particularly summer skylarks and evening blackbirds and thrushes warning ‘tchick’. So, of the first two years or so of my life I have no memory and therefore no knowledge but what I was told. I don’t know what my first words were; I never asked and wasn’t told. Boys are well known for staying mum until they are about three and then spouting complete sentences . . . does that mean by inference I think girls start off babbling and then never stop? I see pictures of me when little and I think I often look slightly puzzled viz:

2+ years old with Mr. Foster, our next-door neighbour, in Kelvedon, 1953.

 

Chaos

     Mmm . . . any books here I'd disown or be ashamed for having on my shelves? Some I've lugged around for nearly forty years . . .

     I did a quick dust but no rearranging . . . I mean organizing. Choking from the smoke  of a prescribed burn gone a bit wild; I think I've been spending too much time in my own company lately . . . I missed all the sensational news about gunmen going berserk . . .

I can't spell . . . Alan, Allan, Allen, Alyn, Alun, Alain . . .

     Well, I just happened to capture a fairly decent  rendition of a couple of traditional tunes I like and play on the hammered dulcimer. Plain vanilla tunes; no embellishment.

     
Jamie Allan was piper to the Countess, later Duchess of Northumberland. I can't do the tune the justice it deserves as it sounds much better on the Northumbrian small pipes .

     Winster Gallop is a traditional English dance tune.

Download Alan - Jamie Allen And Winster Gallop
         

Get Knotted!

     Knowing the difference between a hitch and a bend and learning to splice was all part of Scouting when I was growing up. Making a neat back-splice was satisfying but I didn't get much beyond the basics. Knowing how to make a good long-splice is a valuable skill for one looking after bell ropes. Alas I never went to sea but knowing how to make a proper square knot (or reef knot), make a figure of eight and tie sheet bends the correct way was handy the few times I went sailing with friends in a gaff rigged converted 23' whaler.

From the bookshelves 51, 52

I lived in Venice,CA in the early nineteen-eighties within walking distance of Small Word Books; mind you walking distance for me at that time was anywhere within four or five miles of where I lived. Living in LA and having a street address with fewer than four digits is quite unusual, too.   I digress. I expect it was whilst browsing the Venice bookstore that I found these books by Eva Figes.

Twitchers . . .

Marie and Belle watching birds on the deck 

Chalked up fifty-nine so . . .

today is the first day of my sixtieth year . . .

From the bookshelves 50a, b and c.

A book in form containing . . . art and correspondence found in the studio of one Griffin Moss . . .

A second book containing  more of Sabine Strohem's postcards to Griffin . . .

Will they ever meet? Can they ever meet? . . . visit Nick Bantock.

Web logs . . .

     There went another day (or three) reading other people's blogs.

     How do you browse blogs? Perhaps you're sensible and eschew reading others' blogs to concentrate on writing your own. Do you just keep clicking 'next blog' until you find one that is so intriguing you stay for more than five seconds? Or perhaps you use other strategies like following links from one blog to another or following links to followers profiles. Too much following? Do you dismiss a blog because there are no followers or the profile has had only a few views in a year or two. Perhaps someone's comment on a blog intrigues you enough to find out more about the poster. This sometimes leads to disappointment as they've only registered to publish a post; or perhaps they deleted their own blog long ago in favour of just reading and commenting on others' blogs; or perhaps they've kept their profile private; maybe even their blog too if they have one.

     In the little time I've been in blogland-ether-ather-osphere- ? what do you call it? I've noted some trends. Some bloggers collect, that is link to and follow blogs like their own exclusively. Very handy when looking for blogs expressing differing ideas about the same subject.

     Serendipity happened for me today linking through comments to others' blogs. One received a 'Blog of Note' citation last week and the other has just eleven public followers. I think they complement each other in that one is the expression of a magical, mysterious created world and the other, from what little I have read of it so far, is a thoughtful lamentation of the loss of magic, mystery, tradition and goodness of the world and our place in it and what writers and thinkers have to say about this loss.

     I hope I can stop reading others' blogs for a while so that I can catch some inspiration of my own. I am still imagining myself in the middle of a silent desert . . .

From the bookshelves 48,49

     I like a bit of word play in a title. Geoffrey Household was 84 years old when this was published. A nicely short (by today's standards) novel of 135 pages (approximately 33075 words). Published by Atlantic Monthly Press in the US. His first story appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1936.  From the jacket blurb: "Seven hundred years after the Age of Destruction, all is not well in the new Euro-African Federation settlement at Avebury . . . . - both a spoof of the English character and a vote of confidence in its simple staying power."

     His fist novel was published in 1936: The Terror of Villadonga or as I know it The Spanish Cave. A good mystery yarn for children. My sister inscribed my copy on the flyleaf: Alan,with love from Anthea. January 1961.

This Earlham Library edition was published by The Bodley Head, London 1960; price 10/6d (52½p) Hardback.

Cat books from the shelves 4

Good morning.

Now you see it . . .

 . . . now you don't.

Bon soir . . .

The first snow is usually gone by mid-afternoon.

From the bookshelves 47

     Norman Maclean is, of course, excerpted in The Last Best Place. This is another book with a very fine first sentence:

     In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

Good morning

First snow.

Luvvies 2

     Well, ThankYou, here's the post about the Murder on the Nile production with Great Falls's Center Stage company in 1992. The group was only five years old then and had acquired an old movie theatre in downtown. Dona Stebbins and her husband Grant were founding members and benefactors. I acted with Dona in Lion in Winter. I learned from the Great Falls Tribune newspaper site that Center Stage went dark last season with debts of $5,000. Membership had dwindled to just fifteen or so.

    Murder on the Nile  was staged at the Ursuline Center as, much to the chagrin of director Ed Moran, the theatre was far from ready to put on a show never mind host an audience. Thanks to James Livingston, who made mementos for the cast and crew, little books of photographs taken in the green-cum-dressing room and other ephemera like the local reviews, I have a solid aide de memoire. I'd only been in Great Falls since July and this production went up on November 27th. I played Simon Mostyn, creepy penniless playboy,

     Debra Norman played Kay Mostyn; Scott Barrera the sleuthing priest; Samantha Courtney, Jacqueline de Severac; Allen Lanning, Smith a political extremist; Grace Wendt, Christina Grant niece and charge of her aunt, Miss ffoliot-ffoulkes played by Maria Crocetti. Tom Broderick played  Dr. Bessner; Gayle Robinson Kay's french maid; Joe Lawson ships steward; Tom Jacobson the ships Scottish manager McNaught. We had great fun, apart from a few powder burns occasionally and squeezing onto a tiny stage.

Bookshelves

     I haven't posted any books from my shelves lately. The books pictured are from my book-cases (or the floor) and I have read most of them. I've never counted them nor do I otherwise keep track of them. I sometimes look for a book and realize I must have culled it on one of the moves when Kathy was in the US Air Force. I did a quick estimate based on number of books per foot of shelf and calculated I have about 1800 books. So this is a small eclectic selection of the books of which I am fond or think must be worth reading again. Why no descriptions? Good question. Answer: laziness. One thing that is difficult to do now is finding a treasure through browsing in a book-shop when it is too easy to shop on-line at Amazon which offers you suggestions along the lines of "you bought that we think you might like this" or "other people who bought x also bought y".

     I did find my paperback copy of Dr. Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia and am re-reading it. Where is happiness to be found?

A man ought to read as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good 

Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784

Take a deep breath

     Why is it that inspiration often comes just after you've lowered your body into a bathtub full of soothingly warm, lightly scented water? You soak in the water, mulling ideas (is that like mulling wine?) and desperately repeating key words that will help recall of the original idea. When you finally get to that special  writing space where the chair is comfortable, desk and notebook sloped at just the write angle and with your favourite pen in hand after having dried off, brushed your teeth, dressed, rescued slippers from the dog ; the words are gone and the idea has drifted into the ether . . .

     Same thing happens when driving. Pull over and stop to make a note? Not on your Nellie. Now where does that expression come from? Had a teacher who had a giddy aunt. And my uncle's name was Bill.

     Cats do some silly things. I just went down to the Post Office to pick up mail. A cat dashed across from the far side of the road in front of me; stopped on the edge of  the verge; saw me then dashed back the way it had come in front of me again and the traffic coming from the other direction.

     Caught up with some of my Radio 4 listening this morning. Open Book  invited ten writers to choose books they thought deserved rescuing from neglect. Listeners will later choose the one they would like to hear adapted for radio. In next week's programme Howard Jacobson will give his reasons for choosing Samual Johnson's Rasselas which I know should be on my shelves somewhere. The Snow Goose is Michael Morpurgo's choice.

     Think I'll take an inspiring bath now. Typing gets in the way, too. F'rinstance it's taken me the best part of an hour to dash off this post.

Luvvies . . .

     Over the years I've participated in some community theatre (am-dram). Here's a résumé:

        School: 1966-8
                  Pirates of Penzance . . . . . .chorus
                  Mikado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chorus
                  Under Milk Wood . . . . . . . .reading , various parts
                  Murder in the Red Barn . . . .Grandfather
                  Toad of Toad Hall . . . . . . . Policeman/ Front of Horse
                  Richard III . . . . . . . . . . . . Bishop of Ely

        Kelvedon Players: 1967-71
                  Murder in the Cathedral . . . 2nd Priest
                  Beggars’ Opera . . . . . . . . .Filch
                  Royal Hunt of the Sun . . . . .Filipillo

        Moonlighters’ Theatre Company: 1991
                  The Crucible . . . . . . . . . . Proctor

          Thetford Music and Drama Society 
         (Breckland Drama Festival 1992)
                  Deadline Dawn . . . . . . . . .Brother Luis

        Center Stage: 1992-96
                  Murder on the Nile . . . . . . Simon Mostyn
                  South Pacific . . . . . . . . . .Lt Harbison
                  Lion in Winter . . . . . . . . . Prince Richard
                  Cabaret . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cliff Bradshaw
                  Deathtrap . . . . . . . . . . . .Syndey Bruhl(rehearsed)
                  Real Inspector Hound . . . . .Moon
                  See How They Run . . . . . . Revd Toop

        Great Falls Performing Arts Center

                  Meet me in St Louis . . . . . .Mr. Alonzo (Lonnie) Smith

        The Malmstrom Character Company

                  The Red Lamp . . . . . . . . . .Bill Worth

        Quicksilver Productions: 1998
                  Oresteia . . . . . . . . . . . . . Agamemnon

What brought this to mind was tidying up a closet looking for some photographs and papers when I found a box of ephemera. Some of the plays and concerts I can't remember seeing but the ones I was in I sure do, especially as I have the video-tapes of a couple.

Is the boy father of the man?

Five years old and the book thing has started. I think the book must have been the property of the photographer. We learned to read from the Janet and John books at school. I not only learned to read but also that books are sensory objects. Paper in daily life is usually quite friable fragile like news-print; proper book paper is durable. I look as though I'm not quite sure about how I should sit; was the chair too high for my short legs? I hadn't yet become obsessive about holding a book firmly by the spine. Not so much smiling as squinting into the sunlight.

Big Mountain, Whitefish, MT. 1996

Forty years on I'm still squinting into the light but I have the beard I always wanted.

Not again?

     Yes, another week-end getting away to play some music in the open air; walk rocky trails; read, write and shelter from the rain. Oh, and enjoy a camp fire. It's taken a week for Kiki to realize that dead fires are nothing to be afraid of and that barking does not make the flames come back.

     Still not finished Lanark. Am now reading Christopher Phillips's Six Questions of Socrates. I finally did a little recording of the dulcimer, too. Just a couple of traditional tunes that I like. No embellishment; no harmony. Jamie Allen and Winster Gallop.

How rocky are the trails? Well this is a bit OTT.

 

And this is about as dramatic as the skies get.

Is Sassy bothered?