Category Archives: nature

Respite

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The heat warning ended, more books arrived, and really? Nothing is right with the world, is it? But Friday still becomes Saturday and Saturday, Sunday, so here I am, reading Nights of Plague for a book discussion, practicing Florence Price’s “Juba Dance” for band rehearsal on Monday, and wondering whether I should walk first this afternoon or do the yard work first. And with a thud of all-at-onceness, such banal dithering has made me as uncomfortable as my first encounter with Ilya Kaminsky’s poem.

(forgive us)

August

By Posted in books, nature 6 Comments

From 57th Street Books.

Since my last post, the light has shifted and softened, the sunflowers have bloomed, and my flutes have nearly made it back home. The fall semester — and with it, band rehearsals and weekly music lessons — begins next week. But this week, I am celebrating the near end of the summer. 

Last night, after some noodles and bookstore wandering, we watched the White Sox handily beat the Yankees. Later this week, we plan to enjoy a post-tourist, post-summer-campers museum visit. And over the weekend, we will wander in one of the conservation areas.

Saturday morning

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Image captured on June 14 walk.

News of Alan Arkin’s death prompted me to set aside Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty yesterday and watch Glengarry Glen Ross (appreciation here) and Little Miss Sunshine. It had been a long time since I had last seen GGR, but LMS is one I have revisited; both, as they say, hold up. A friend recommended Arkin’s books for younger readers, so I read The Lemming Condition earlier this year (review here); I may pull the sequel from the shelf today.

It’s a gloomy, gray, humid morning here, the sort of morning during which one thinks about the many things one could do, then actually accomplishes little. I’d like to buck that trend. (Is anyone else chuckling?)

A few more books

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Two gifts and one recommendation.

I’m halfway through My Murder and about 150 pages into Empire of Pain; music practice is going well; and I’m (slowly) developing a routine for studying Latin.

The drought continues, so I’m using weepers on the days permitted for our location to ensure the trees and bushes make it through another summer. The containers and raised beds are doing all right, but the finches have begun to shred the sedum despite my vigilant refilling of the bird bath.