tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67034925789122907212024-03-08T16:07:41.361-07:00(e)Elizabeth RhondeauE.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-2507864624599879212014-02-04T09:09:00.000-07:002014-02-04T09:09:34.996-07:00<br />
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Got a new name nearly eight months ago now and made it driver's license official just last week, and so it follows my little internet space should do the same. New name, new year, new month, etc.<br />
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<a href="http://www.erhondeaumorgan.com/"><span style="font-size: x-large;">www.erhondeaumorgan.com</span></a></div>
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Hope to see you there!</div>
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xx</div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-18620175600243781962014-01-01T17:46:00.001-07:002014-01-01T17:46:40.352-07:00#dontbedead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SERIES THREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You guys I don't even like exclamation points okay this is for serious frenzy-feels only and if TWO YEARS' PATIENCE doesn't deserve a little extra punctuation then really I don't know what does. ALIVE SHERLOCK!!!!!!!! NOT-BACHELOR JOHN!!!!!!! ANSWERS!!!!!!!<br />
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Um. Anyway. <i>My</i> (student) Dr. John did some research at Bart's over the summer, and way back in February while interviewing with the lab we wandered around the corner to see if a little street-side study of our own might offer new insight to our, uh, occasional theorizing. And maybe we weren't entirely successful on that front, but we totally weren't disappointed.<br />
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Post-its, full-on letters, a dozen different languages, hashtags, QR codes, entire comics. And one favourite touch? On top of the telephone someone had left a full supply of loose paper, pens, and scotch tape for the unprepared. Fandom people are my favorite people.<br />
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With filming begun in March, the next time I stopped by the booth had been scrubbed clean and repainted. But one last visit just at summer's end proved that resurrection isn't just Reichenbach business — the shrine was in full swing, papered anew.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">just a little experiential research here, don't mind us.</td></tr>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-68552833177322135552013-10-31T15:27:00.000-06:002013-11-12T21:54:38.430-07:00an oak crown for october.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I learned a few years ago but not quickly that when it comes to museums, you can't do it all. It feels necessary, I know: millennia of world history! masterpieces of impossible import! the actual bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln! For a good half of my life so far I entered every museum with an endless To Do list, determined to see and love and <i>appreciate</i> (this is terribly important) every. last. thing., all in the name of Knowledge & Culture. </div>
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But here's the thing. When was the last time I ever cared about pottery? I mean, maybe you do, and that's great! But I don't. So why am I wasting museum-time on whole rooms of the stuff? Do I really wish deeply to understand ever inner working of 18th century weaponry mechanisms? Then why am I reading all about them?! There is absolutely merit to learning for learning's sake, but also when was the last time you really remembered all that stuff you learned about something you don't actually like? Case in point: me, math. </div>
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Basically what I'm trying to say is I have always loved museums, but I love museums now especially because I have learned to take them at the leisure of my loves. Give me the miniature opera set designs! Show me the Blaschka radiolarians! Bring me the Byzantine angels! Leave me to the tall ships! You get the point. But of all these, take me first and immediately to the Ancient Greek and Roman metalwork, jewelry especially, rings most of all. This one is strange because in real life I don't actually like jewelry much, or am at least very picky about it, but it also makes sense because these ancient empires could DO NO WRONG. At least where gold things are concerned. Which is why if for some reason I only have fifteen minutes in a museum, this is where I will start. And why whenever I am at the Met or in the <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_image.aspx?image=con5132a.jpg&retpage=18095">British Museum</a>, I pay pilgrimage to these ancient oak wreaths:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">British Museum, taken upon my last afternoon in London, where I found this and only this room closed to the public for that afternoon only. a sad day, compounded.</td></tr>
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There is hardly any description for either, other than that they both originate from the Dardanelles region around 350 B.C. up to the 1st c. A.D., noting that Egyptian mummy portraits often depict something similar worn by the deceased. In the case of the British Museum's object, curators think the crown might be of some Zeus offering, as oak, bees, and cicada all have significance to the ultimate deity, but the connection to life and death is unclear despite the fact that every golden crown similarly styled has been found in a tomb. Maybe they are part of passage to the next life, perhaps they eulogize accomplishments long past. Whatever they mean, they are my very favorite of all favorites. </div>
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But they are very much not for sale, which I have languished about on occasion. Happily, however, John had the afternoon free a few weeks ago and we ended up hiking through whole hillsides of brush oak and I had a tiny thought. <i>I will make my own. </i>Commence a half-hike's worth of gathering, in which I filled both pockets with oak leaves and more oak leaves, plus stuck a few extras in my top-knot. It wasn't until our return trip down the mountain that I began to think of any true meaning behind the act; I loved the crowns, and that was reason enough to imitate them. But also here I was amidst the season's last great glory, and that is a funeral, too, and this crown an immortality. October has long been a favorite month of mine, and as I sit here typing I realize that my own modern artifact has taken on its ancient ambiguities. At the ends of autumn, a crown to commemorate all it has been, and a tribute to the turning of a new time.</div>
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The project hardly needs a full D.I.Y., but if you're following along, grab a few extra supplies: </div>
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➝ one length of twined floral wire, </div>
<span style="text-align: justify;"> ➝ </span>a hot glue gun<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"> ➝ </span>hot glue sticks<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"> ➝ </span>metallic gold paint<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"> ➝ </span>paint brush<br />
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Dumping your autumn plunder to the table, sort into small, medium, and large leaves so that you have an easily accesible pile of each. Shape the wire into a wide horseshoe, so that the ends nearly meet. This can be adjusted later to fit your head more exactly, but do try it out in the beginning to make sure you're on track. </div>
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Starting from one end with a large leaf, run a length of hot glue from the middle of the leaf down to the tip of the stem, and lay this glued edge along the wire. The un-glued half should extend beyond the crown base. Once the first leaf is secure, continue adding leaves in close-quartered groups of two fanning outwards until you reach the middle. When this first half is done, repeat process from the other end. For a tapering effect, attach leaves from large to medium to small until the tiniest versions meet in the middle, where you can play around with any sort of golden-acorn arrangement. Fully formed, readjust as needed to individual head size and secure with bobby pins for extra hold. Et voilà! Look at you, all B.C. beautiful! Troy and a whole legion of Helens could not compete! And . . . I'm not going to lie . . . I've maybe worn mine around the house for hours at a time.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A FEW TINY TIPS FOR THE FELLOW MAKER: </span></div>
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Craft your crown within two or three hours of picking the oak leaves. Once dry they are much more fragile and harder to maneuver. On a related note, if you'd like less curl to your end result, lengthen the stripe of glue depending on how flat you'd like the leaves to lie. As they dry the oak leaves will curl inward and upward, so however much the leaf is tacked down will determine the volume of the finished crown. </div>
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-77300437413264867992013-10-30T11:34:00.002-06:002013-10-30T11:36:25.885-06:00Konigsburg Collective: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“All the way home I thought about my friend Jennifer the witch. I also thought that I had gone out an ordinary girl and had come back a witch's apprentice.”</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://hanna-land.blogspot.co.uk/">Mallory's</a> back with all the details in this month's Konigsburg Collective — t</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>he title's a mouthful but the book's an afternoon's read: take advantage of this miserable cold front and spend a rainy hour curled up on the couch with </i>Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth<i>, E.L. Konigsburg's very first book and a Newbery Honor winner (she lost to herself that year). xx E.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's Halloween and Elizabeth is dressed as a pilgrim. She meets Jennifer on her walk to school when she spots an oversized shoe on a bony foot hanging from a tree. Elizabeth is terribly lonely, she's in the fifth grade, new in town and an only child. Her mother nudges her to befriend Cynthia, who lives in her same apartment building, which would be convenient and parent-pleasing but cannot be done because Elizabeth knows factually that Cynthia is mean and also two-faced. So it's Halloween, and Elizabeth is new in town, friendless and dressed in an itchy pilgrim costume, and there's Jennifer, also dressed up as a pilgrim but claiming wholeheartedly that she is in fact a witch. And somehow she knows Elizabeth's name and knows that Cynthia is mean and also two-faced, and she (Jennifer) may write with a quill, for she has colonial-like penmanship. So there's no question that Elizabeth must become an apprentice to Jennifer the witch. And there's no issue with the consumption of raw eggs and onions and the saving of fingernails and snowballs for flying ointment: the great goal of adolescent witchery. But working with a witch, especially when she's your only friend, can be a frustrating venture. “Some days I really didn't like being her apprentice. But I was always a little bit worried that she would choose another apprentice.” Still Jennifer, being a witch and all, was capable of admirable and noble things, like exposing a Cynthia lie to Mrs. Stuyvestant <b>without</b> being a tattle tale, and understanding Macbeth, and casting successful tripping spells. The girls meet every Saturday at the library, perfecting their witchcraft The crux of their friendship appears when their pet frog Hilary Ezra is named as the ultimate ingredient for their flying ointment; a dilemma, undoubtedly, and their greatest test of friendship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In true Konigsburg fashion, Elizabeth and Jennifer (like Claudia and Jamie and The Souls) though not always accordant, are passionately working toward a common goal. Jamie and Claudia had their mysterious statue, The Souls their academic bowl; for Elizabeth and Jennifer it is their flying ointment. And while the conjuring of their ointment leads to their biggest altercation followed by the sealing of their friendship, it is not the heart of the story. Ironically, the heart happens at Cynthia's very pink birthday party. As part of Elizabeth's promotion to journeyman witch she is restricted by a list of taboos, she cannot play musical chairs, or eat cake, or play pin the tail on the donkey, and at first she is miserable but then she makes a choice. “... I tried hard to accidentally forget the taboos. I tried to make a slight mistake that couldn't possibly be my fault; but the harder I tried, the harder it was to forget that I was a journeyman witch ... So I decided instead to enjoy being odd. And I did.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I count Elizabeth the luckiest of girls to have had this epiphany in the fifth grade. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Konigsburg is a master at portraying the conflict of the pre-teen psyche. It is true that friendship can be messy when you're 11, and loneliness at its deepest darkest in those years. But if you manage to figure out the tricky pursuit of acceptance while still maintaing your own sense of uniqueness, well you just won the coming-of-age lottery. And what's exceptionally beautiful about Elizabeth's newfound confidence is that she found it in Jennifer first — Not much unlike the interdependence of Claudia and Jamie, The Souls and Mrs. Olinski. Konigsburg again and again reminding us that through others we find the greatest parts of ourselves.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Oh Jennifer,” I thought to myself, “how strong you are. Nerves of steel and the heart of a witch!” </span></i></div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-46620173033113439262013-09-08T09:42:00.000-06:002013-09-08T09:42:05.573-06:00(three months.)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-15065669061753699682013-09-04T08:03:00.001-06:002013-09-04T08:11:01.309-06:00FREE THINGS!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SmOlu7kk93w/UiczAcL2A4I/AAAAAAAAFN0/9LXBnoFYoX0/s1600/EM_wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SmOlu7kk93w/UiczAcL2A4I/AAAAAAAAFN0/9LXBnoFYoX0/s1600/EM_wallpaper.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Had some lonely leftovers from my last big design binge so I made iPhone wallpapers! Because this is what you do! When your dissertation is due in nine days! I am not going crazy!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Or at any rate the wee leopards lurking all dodgy-eyed between my apps made me happy, so I'm just here to share some joy. <span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 12.800000190734863px; text-align: left;">¡Bonus! e</span>delweiss for daring, courage, noble purity and the ability to thrive in hard places at high altitude. Visual cue to keep <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUpMv6PjXY">climbing every mountain</a>.</span></div>
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— <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28074186/leopard-iphone-EM.jpg">LEOPARD</a> | <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28074186/florablack-iphone-EM.jpg">EDELWEISS</a> —</div>
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Files are sized to iPhone 5 height and a doubled width so you can play around with the positioning yourself and can also of course fit anything smaller, too. To download just open the above link on your phone, hold-click the image, and save to camera roll.<br />
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-10159427282439806592013-09-01T18:04:00.000-06:002013-09-01T18:04:11.457-06:00good old J.K.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple . . .</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>J U L Y</b></span> — Between Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye we stayed a night at Fort William, which is mostly just the last outpost before the endless west but also home of <i>The Jacobite </i>— West Coast Railway's gorgeous old steam train and the Harry Potter films' Hogwarts Express. Never mind that the day's trip out to Mallaig and back is consistently rated the Top Rail Journey in the World. Yes?! Yes. Getting tickets was a whole mess of ridiculous (We bought the actual literal <i>last</i> ticket online. Ticket. Singular. There are two of us.) but John is a superhero (Got up early. Waited in the rain to be the very first in line for day-of sales. Let me sleep.) even despite most every other human at the station falling under the terrible, horrible, not very good <u>at all </u>spectrum (You know, the kind who call a mile an inch and black a clean white just to get what they want). We came away with two tickets in the end . . . in different carriages. At opposite ends of the train.</div>
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But because my husband is also impossibly personable and actual poster child for the Beatitudes' pure and righteous, we pulled away with the two of us comfy-cozy together on the only truly Harry Potter carriage of the whole train (Ha! Take that, you darkly Death Eaters in your karmic cattle cars!), sharing a fancy-pretty sliding-door compartment with a family John had met in the morning rain, brothers with their daughters on holiday — Scottish to every hair of a Highland thistle —and the two youngest tiny enough to count for one so as to make room for seven people across six seats. We shared seats, we shared sandwiches, the men argued football, us girls raced up and down the corridors sticking our heads out windows and coughing up steam ash and pointing at particular beauty and crying for magical joy, etc. Remembering it now is akin to all the light and softness I feel for childhood, a luminescent space outside of time.</div>
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Sure, the Harry Potter part was neato. We saw the famous viaduct from CoS and Dumbledore's island from HBP. The day was darkish and wet, which made the mingling steam and mist a thing of Tolkien-envy. But the very best bit was having our rather bad beginning (those mean people <i>really</i> lit up our Inner Despair for Humankind) met with such immediate and abiding antidote. Those gracious Glaswegians with their hearts and souls and nobleness. We made friends. We swapped life stories. We shared a small day of wonder. Which, come to think of it, was the most Harry Potter part of all. Good <i>does</i> triumph; love conquers all.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">OTHER THINGS</span>: if <i>The Jacobite's</i> on your itinerary, brave the early morning and the horrid people! All tickets sold online fill up the basic carriages in the way back, whereas the very first from the 50 day-of sales put you in the Harry Was Here seats up front. </div>
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Returning to Compartment D after our lunch hour in Mallaig, the littlest Scot presented John with a love-heart rock from the beach. Which was after all the wide-eyed admiration from across the table but before the parting postcard promising penpalship. Have I mentioned I may have married the Pied Piper? We were already essentially at the ends of the earth, but these girls would have followed him still.</div>
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Also does the other cousin not have a wee touch of the young Amy Pond about her? Or was it just the accent?</div>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-65655736588778443092013-08-30T06:58:00.000-06:002013-10-15T10:56:09.132-06:00THIS IS IMPORTANT.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>FIRST, A QUICK SURVEY:</b></div>
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(1) Are you a human? </div>
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(2) Do you read things?</div>
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If you answered yes to one or all of the above, congratulations! You are officially qualified to</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www2.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2013&month=07">READ THIS</a></span><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
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(apologies for the seizured gif. but really. you need. to. read. this.)</div>
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shout out to my aunt julia and my mum for the heads up.</div>
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-21487336373899563152013-08-29T21:30:00.000-06:002013-08-30T06:04:15.658-06:00camden town, indostan.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Some days I have to invent reasons to get out of the house, to walk away from my desk and dissertation in the name of sanity or fresh air or just another human's face, if nothing else. This is not a pity party, by the way. Just this moment's reality, self-induced and (thankfully) fleeting.</div>
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Last week it was Camden Market. A short walk down the street and one bus ten minutes across Primrose Hill. I went with purpose: there was a shop in the Stables' stalls that sells architectural drafts of stained glass windows and, though I can't justify pounds sterling in the hundreds, I wanted to see them again. I like in museums the unfinished things, preliminary sketches like Patrick Heron's charcoal drawings of T.S. Eliot, or the ghostprints of St Jerome and his lion in Leonardo's <i>Wilderness</i>, or the squares of Manet's <i>Execution of Maximilian</i> stitched back together by Degas. I like seeing decisions made and unmade, all of them recorded, the raw end of a masterpiece — to me it strikes the balance right, the potential and the mess in equal measure. These sketches were like that. In February, when John and I first found the place, there were two ten-foot angels in the front doorway, the final drafts for a chapel in Sleepy Hollow, New York. They were nouveau work; bold solid lines, organic sensibilities. Pieces of them were colored, potential blues in wide stripes down the drapery, touches of rose and gold on their wings, and they held banners at their waist that fell diagonally to the floor — I can't remember what they said, simple truths, straightforward things, like <i>God is Strength</i> or <i>Hope and Light.</i> In February they'd seemed like actual messengers, saying things I needed to hear. I hate that I've forgotten. I only remembered that I loved them, and one in particular. I wanted to see that angel again. I wanted to remember what her banner said. I think I wanted to convince myself I needed to bring her home.</div>
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But she wasn't there. The shop wasn't there. I walked the length of the stalls once and then over again, matching my memory to the current setup. Lot 745. I remembered the loft with a notch for a ladder. Before, a daughter in the eaves, playing behind cardboard barrels while her dad rearranged the stock. Now, umbrellas from Myanmar in place of parchment tubes, and the pretty woman selling them didn't know anything about the previous tenant. I went to neighbors. Nothing. I went to security. Nothing. I talked to nine people and none of them even remembered the place's existence. To be fair, I don't know if I was doing a good job explaining. <i>Stained glass sketches</i>, I kept saying. <i>Big boxes of rolled paper, like industrial school maps, but they were drafts for the windows in churches. From here, Europe, from the States. Oh and he sold pins! Thousands of them on felt panels along the walls. The collectible kind, you know, like you put in shadow boxes for a boy's room? No?</i> Nothing.</div>
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So I went walking. I'd made the trip over anyhow, and if you know the Camden labyrinth then you know that you can never actually know it all. I could stand to get lost for another half hour. But we all know what happens when you get lost, right? You get a little found.</div>
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I walked into the shop because there were stacks of Tibetan singing bowls on a shelf behind buddhas organized by size, metal, and color. I've been looking for brass bowls to have on our reception tables in September, and the place looked promising. If I had looked closer I may have noticed it sooner: the shadow puppets on the walls, the bridal hair pins in the cup by the door. Instead it was the smell that hit me first, musty wood and dirty concrete, a faint floral note overpowered by heavy rain. It struck me like the monsoons it reminded me of — a two-second hint of a beginning, and then the deluge. I grabbed at a lintel carving from the nearest table, flipping it over to find a tag. <i>1904</i>, it read. <i>Jawa Timur</i>.</div>
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A few weeks ago it was sickly humid in the city and coming in to work via tube was a sweaty gross sardine-style affair that made all the black suits extra grumpy and aimless tourists. But a part of me recognized the heat on the air, the thrum of traffic in the wet haze — something in me reveled in it. And you know those moments where some sight or smell or small bar of music smacks you through the soul with a memory not necessarily specific but all-encompassing? London, London, London, INDONESIA. A few weeks ago all it took was the fleeting second between stepping off a curb and into the street. I was turning off Tottenham Court Road but could've sworn it was instead the rubbled crossways in Tebet Dalam, that I was going to walk around the corner to eat rujak on broken benches while Ari chastised me for trying to pet every vagrant cat in the neighborhood. I nursed an empty ache between my rib bones the whole rest of the day, craving condensed milk and an open window on a Metro Mini.</div>
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So walking ignorant like that into Indostan (you would think the name might've given it away ...?) nearly knocked the breath out of me. Boat letters! Krepuk tins! I visited each familiar face like I might puppies in a pet store, hungry to memorize them, desperate to make them mine. The end wall was one massive panel carved and painted bright turquoise, pink, red. From the ceiling hung model pinisi, gamelan pieces, bright colored dewi in full flight, arm-wings outstretched. Odd visions accompanied it all: sitting cross-legged on a dirty mattress with a toddler holding a hymnbook; morning light filtered pink through an old sarong across the window; thousands of candy wrappers tied to a tree — an old man's mania. An art piece in homage to beauty in blunt places. I was delighted; I was devastated. It is unsettling to time travel. </div>
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I am still looking for the stained glass shop. I sent an email to the market managers but haven't heard anything. The marrow seems heavier in my bones these days, thick with thinking. There's a rhythm of Cummings beating there, too: <i>time is a tree (this life one leaf).</i></div>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-789904917525502082013-08-17T11:24:00.000-06:002013-08-17T11:24:49.215-06:00Konigsburg Collective : The View From Saturday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">AUTHOR'S NOTE:</span> <i>Apologies for the long-overdue installment. There was work and honeymoons and moving house and saying goodbye and (still to this moment) dissertations to be written. None of which are very good excuses, but hopefully serve as explanation. Aside from the fact that as I wrote the small essay below, I came more and more to realize that the things I love and feel for </i>The View from Saturday<i> could be the workings of a doctorate degree, if not an entirely new book in and of itself. Happily for you, I've been working in editorial all summer — I'll spare you the full ms for the clean-cut version here, only asking that if you have or are or will be reading along, tell me about it! Let's say we're at Sillington House. Tea time is always 4:00 PM.</i></div>
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Here is the conflict: you want to be the same as everybody else, and you want to be entirely different from everybody else. You are a dazzling phenomenon of human potential without equal. Also you are just as ordinary and just as normal and just as cool as all those other people, too, particularly your peers, obviously. Two totally contradictory things, and you would like acceptance for both. Please (and thank you). </div>
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Here is the problem: you are twelve years old, barely past childhood but still too young to grow up. Maybe you are living in your siblings' shadows or coming to terms with your parents' divorce or spending the summer in a retirement resort. Whatever the situation, you are twelve years old in the middle of a bunch of other twelve year olds, none of whom seem to have any of the same anxieties, one of which is</div>
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"Julian Singh," he said, extending his hand. No one (a) introduces himself and then (b) extends his hand to be shaken while (c) wearing shorts and (d) knee socks and (e) holding a genuine leather book bag on (f) the first day of school.</blockquote>
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I mean, you'd hesitate to return the shake too, right? Acceptance doesn't seem to be much of an option. Unless your curiosity gets the better of your insecurity, which is exactly Ethan's downfall. "I managed to say nothing until the bus had turned left off Gramercy and was back on Highway 32, but then . . . 'Did you buy the Sillington House?' I asked."</div>
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Two-thirds of the way through <i>The View from Saturday,</i> just as Noah and Ethan and Nadia and Julian have officially become The Souls and Julian — in the flashback, flashforward storytelling style — has answered for acronyms at the Academic Bowl, the plot of pieces comes together for one sustained series of events. Epiphany High School is putting on the musical <i>Annie</i> for their holiday season and Ethan suggests Nadia's dog Ginger for the part of Sandy. The Souls set about an intense training routine in the lead-up to auditions and, with Ethan's directorial prowess and Julian's legerdemain, Ginger (being a genius of her genus) easily steals the stage from seven other wannabes. But the drama coach also nominates an understudy: Arnold, a large yellow lab very unfortunately owned by Michael Froelich, best friend of Hamilton Knapp, the two of whom are every reason middle school has ever been hell. Julian worries having Arnold as an understudy will make Froelich feel like an underdog, and with Ham in the mix it's almost certain mischief. On the bus to watch the debut matinee, Julian overhears Ham's plan: <i>tranquilizer and laxative . . . sent biscuits . . . star dog . . . pass out like a mop. Instant coma. </i>Big Trouble.</div>
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At the auditorium, Julian escapes backstage just in time to see the drugged bacon bits on the table — and Arnold all gussied up for the part. Fearing the worst, he races towards Nadia only to learn that Froelich's dog has won the matinee spot as reward for hard work and good attendance. Ginger is safe. The treats meant for her have been gifted instead to the understudy. Julian has to make a decision.</div>
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The show goes on, to great applause and occasional disruption from Knapp and his gang (which earns an audience-wide reprimand from the drama coach, words I have remembered quietly to myself in far too many similar situations: "<i>I am sorry that you have not learned at home how to act in public. I am ashamed for you because I know you are not ashamed for yourselves."</i>). The students filter out to various vans and buses to take them home, and Julian has to make another decision.</div>
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Ethan, Nadia, and Ginger had not yet come out of the auditorium. Noah and Mrs Olinski had gone to speak to Mrs Korshak. I stood alone. There was something I wanted to do. When Knapp had started that ruckus, I had momentarily regretted my decision to save Arnold. I was still so angry that I was about to violate one of the cardinal rules that Gopal had taught me.</div>
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. . . Gopal had taught me that magicians never reveal the secrets of their trade to laymen. Gopal always said that magicians who were interested in letting people know how clever they were were not really magicians. "Don't ever destroy the wonder," Gopal had said. "Let your magic show you off, not you show off your magic."</div>
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I knew that Hamilton Knapp would find out soon enough that Arnold, not Ginger, had been chosen for the afternoon's performance. He would find out soon enough that his trick had not worked. I knew that I should never reveal to Hamilton Knapp that I had saved Arnold from the fate he had meant for Ginger. I knew all of that. Yet I moved toward the Vet in a Van. Dr Knapp was behind the wheel, waiting for her turn to pull out. I walked around the back of the van onto the sidewalk on the passenger's side. I tapped on the window and motioned for Ham to roll it down. I reached into the open window. He pulled away from me but said nothing.</div>
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"What's the matter?" his mother asked. </div>
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"Your son has something growing out of his head," I said as I pulled two bacon-shaped doggie treats from his ears. "I think these belong to you," I said as one by one I dropped the rest of the drugged biscuits on his lap. I turned and walked away. I was glad that I had chops. Gopal would forgive me.</div>
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So I've just spent twenty minutes typing to make sure I tell you about a magic trick with some dog treats. We could have much more easily discussed the symbolism of sea turtles or the beauty of Julian's book bag transformed, admittedly more lovely passages. Why the Sandy saga? Because this, I think, illustrates the heart of the whole thing and the reason I will recommend this book to anyone who asks and some who don't and why I want you to go home and share The Souls with every child you can find (and most adults, for that matter). Because what Julian does here is so totally twelve years old while simultaneously well beyond his wisdom, a perfect balancing act. He is showing off, yes — and who wouldn't? But he also shows a small kindness, a second chance. Julian could have exposed Knapp's wickedness to the entire school, and in returning the hurt Hamilton has caused him all year long, he might have been justified. He could have felt himself vindicated; told a teacher, told Ham's mom, mediated a public punishment. Instead Julian quietly shows that he has seen Hamilton for who he is in that moment. And in allowing him that small mercy, he also shows him that he could yet become someone better. </div>
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It is the tiniest act of redemption, and the story never does say if Hamilton Knapp turns to repentance, nor do we get any sense that Julian feels he has done some deeply merciful thing (and we shouldn't; he's twelve and naturally unaware of his own goodness). But it twists the thread of the entire story to a stronger braid, and we see, suddenly, that the point is <i>to see</i>. For Ethan to look beyond Nadia's angst and see her capacity for luminous love. For Nadia to forgive Noah his unbearable know-it-all attitude and see him as the perfect partner for a good spar. For Noah to pass by Mrs Olinski's wheelchair and see her as an expert source for a whole host of new information to add to his never-ending databank. For Mrs Olinski to depreciate Hamilton Knapp's intelligence by seeing his cruelty, for passing by Julian's odd formality to see his kindness. And ultimately for Julian to have met them all and seen the potential of their individual strengths to form one unbeatable team. This, everyone, is the view from Saturday. Not only a pleasant country scene framed by a window in the dining hall at Sillington House, but looking at a person and choosing to see them for who they are — to recognize their own individual brand of dazzling phenomenon — and then be the kind of person that allows and even encourages them to change and to grow and become ever better.<br />
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I worry now that I am writing a little too "one with the cosmos," as my dad would say. I do not mean to paint this a saccharine vision of tie-dyed loving and daisy-chain emancipation. This book <i>is</i> about a journey, and acceptance, and self, but <i>The View from Saturday</i> falls far and beyond the typical happy ending the modern world would have us write. Too often we celebrate individuality as an end-all; countless bildungsroman center on some highly quirky, endlessly bullied, impossibly onliest character who, against all popular people/family divides/scholastic challenge/dens of dragons come to recognize their own gifts and accept themselves as themselves no matter what anyone else has to say, cue music and the self-made statue in the square. Which is not <i>totally</i> wrong, but really makes up barely a part of the answer, and only in very small doses. Because wouldn't it be better if we were reminded also to seek this same epiphany in others? To accept our potential as endless and then extend that grace to all? There is far more rooted, richer ground to tread. </div>
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It is interesting and no coincidence that Konigsburg chose to call them The Souls. Whatever the creed or religion or no belief at all, the word suggests inner depth and an outward reach. It is the standard in describing there being something other, something more, than the immediately visible. There is a moment that I love (just before the dogs-and-drugs bit, incidentally), where Julian starts a sentence with "Since I had become a Soul."I like thinking about that, how to finish that sentence for myself. <i>Since I had become a soul</i>. I hope I learn how to answer the way Ethan did, when he gave in to conversation on the bus that first day of school. When he chose however begrudgingly to step outside himself to allow haven for another. It is no instant transformation, but there were beginnings in the choice that return to him ten-fold — that return to all of us when we choose the same.<br />
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<i>Something in Sillington House gave me permission to do things I had never done before. Never even thought of doing. Something that triggered the unfolding of those parts that had been incubating. Things that had lain inside me, curled up like the turtle hatchlings newly emerged from their eggs, taking time in the dark of their nest to unfurl themselves.</i></div>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-50369092155626607622013-07-11T08:35:00.000-06:002013-07-11T08:35:10.716-06:00one month, plus some.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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People say wedding days are perfect, and that is because they are right. I have never been to a not-perfect wedding ever, and in my case I imagined perfect and then found it to be actually even more perfecter times ten. Not only was I getting married (!), but our closest family and dearest of dear friends crossed continents to come and there was sunshine all over the South Downs and lunch in the library and croquet on the lawn and it was in so many ways ridiculous as well as being exactly right. The trouble is that these are facts and details and <i>things</i>, and they are important things but not the essential thing, which is the something deeper that still thrums through my marrow in ways that have not been written yet in fugitive words that slip through my fingers in life's liminal spaces; taking the stairs down to the design department, waiting for the bus to slow at your outstretched hand, the breath between soul-borne bone-shaking laughter over something already entirely forgotten. It is like I have searched happiness of all its synonyms and found language outdone. Words as I have known them no longer hold their weight.</div>
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So instead I am looking for new words, and in the interim I will say this straightforwardly: I married John William Morgan in the London Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at high noon on the eighth of June and it is to this day and counting the very best thing I have ever, ever done or will do.</div>
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all photography : <i><a href="http://deangovier.com/">dean govier</a></i></div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-69393599243607453072013-06-15T15:59:00.000-06:002013-06-15T15:59:09.572-06:00Konigsburg Collective : From the Mixed Up Files<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3xv4EC3aYHk/UbzhlYcxizI/AAAAAAAAE1Y/phoKITid-wA/s1600/Doc+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3xv4EC3aYHk/UbzhlYcxizI/AAAAAAAAE1Y/phoKITid-wA/s1600/Doc+(1).jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i>This first official installment in </i>The Kongisburg Collective<i> series is from the magnificent Mallory Hanna, original muse and co-producer of the whole project. You can find more of her glowing goodness <a href="http://hanna-land.blogspot.co.uk/">here</a>.</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i>Also: my apologies for whatever funky thing your monitor is doing to the above illustration. I have no explanation and have given up any attempt to find one.</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">________________________________________</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">Just before reading my first
Konigsburg novel, I had — for the first time — quit a book mid-read. The book
was about two cousins that hated each other, when unexpectedly one of them dies
and the other is left to think about it.
The subject arose abruptly, smack in the middle of the page staring at
me. I remember rereading the paragraph, making sure I'd understood it right. I
had. I quietly, heart pounding, put the book back in my closet.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">I was an eager 10-year-old,
perfectly primed, when I found <i>From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.
Frankweiler.</i> It was at the bottom of a forgotten book pile in the basement,
and I wasn't thrilled with the bland book cover and long, confusing title at
first (this coming from a fifth grader).
I had never left the west, but was transported to 1960s New York, and in
awe of the capable Claudia Kinkaid who convinces her younger brother Jamie to
runaway with her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was not your typical
running away story; it was running away in style, wrought by the old comforts
of a museum and the newfound camaraderie of a brother and sister still and
often prone to long winded arguments. They manage by sleeping in dead royals'
beds and hiding in bathrooms and bathing in a fountain sparkling with pocket change (I never looked at a fountain the same way again; every mall, every garden,
every wide-eyed toddler throwing their money into the water was an imagination
of my own possible survival). And aside
from the charm of transistor radios, and ancient artifacts, and spontaneous
fountain bathing, I was painfully invested in the brother/sister act that allowed
the Kinkaids to survive; I was entranced by the final meeting with the kooky
and wise Mrs. Frankweiler; I shared Claudia's long awaited, personal
realization.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">The last chapters of the book come dappled
with truth—call it theme. It's where Konigsburg un-muddles the complex and
quietly tells us this is what it's about and it's for everybody. Mrs.
Frankweiler explained, </span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">“<i>I think you
should learn, of course, and some days you should learn a great deal. But you
should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside
of you until it touches everything and you can feel it inside you. If you never
take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they
begin to rattle around inside you. You can make noise with them, but never
really feel anything with them it's hollow</i>.”</span></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">And so went my initiation to
Konigsburg's first bit of magic. She
never left me feeling stunned or blindsided or displaced or confounded, but
rather subtly finding myself different and more my own all at once.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">Among numerous awards, this
book won the Newbery Medal in 1968 and in 2012 was noted as one of the “Top 100
Chapter Books” of all time. It is a book that has simply endured, amidst
remarkable odds, keeping its ranks among Lowry, L'Engle and Rowling.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">When E.L. Konigsburg passed away, I felt a loss so tangibly
personal. I felt the loss of a great
author, yes, and even more the loss of a muse for my own writing. But I also
felt a fear that<span style="color: #333333;"> Konigsburg might get lost at the bottom of the
book pile in place of supernaturals and boyfriend clubs, fallen angels, throngs
of amnesiac teen girls. A fear that among the push for “edgier” literature,
Konigsburg would be rendered irrelevant. Author Shannon Hale recently shared
that one of her most beloved and highly awarded novels, <i>The Goose Girl</i>
was rejected by all major publishers. Some expressed, “</span><span style="color: #262626;">I did not find the story compelling enough to maintain my
interest ... I felt that the narrative was a bit too labored, too slow in
progressing ... the rather slow and deliberate pacing of the plot does not bode
well for a middle grade audience." "Further, many young adult books
are becoming more and more 'edgy.'”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #262626;">The Young Adult market may be fast-paced and often
salacious in the name of relevancy and Attention Deficit Disorders. But there
must always be a place for “intelligent fiction.” There's a reason books like Hale's, despite a
publisher’s opinion,</span> rise to wild popularity after finally being allowed
the freedom of publication. In the name of edgier literature
we deeply underestimate the caliber of our youth. We are blinded by trends, lost in sales numbers,
our eyes so deliriously glued to the latest vampire spinoff that when an
incredible author is lost, we almost miss it. <span style="color: #333333;">Konigsburg
didn't expect her young readers to be smart — she <i>knew</i> they were. Books like <i>The Mixed Up Files of Mrs.
Basil E. Frankweiler</i> endure because there is still some inner workings of
our youth's subconscious that yearns to be validated, even reminded of who they
can be and who they once were.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">Before Harry and Katniss,
Percy and Bella, there was Claudia: an ordinary girl, capable and smart, who —
aside from making her mark in the MET — knew, above all, how to keep a secret.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-54861745250988123662013-05-08T05:36:00.000-06:002013-05-08T05:36:24.273-06:00The Konigsburg Collective.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">E.L. Konigsburg passed away last month. Maybe you already knew that. Maybe you've no idea what I'm talking about. I hope the name sparks something in you. I hope you'll keep reading anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">E.L. Konigsburg wrote children's books, two of which have won the Newbery Medal and another the Newbery Honor (she lost to herself that year), and three that are among my top ten favorites of all time, the first books I recommend when any parent or child is asking. In short, she's good. She's the author I want to be — and the one I pretend to be, when by myself on long car rides where sometimes (I don't know, it just happens, you can judge me, really I know) I talk out loud, pretending to be an expert on the writing process so that I can better understand it myself. But I didn't even know she was gone until I came home to an email from a blog reader. She wrote,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I follow your blog and remembered that you once mentioned your admiration of the author E.L. Konigsburg, whom I also love. I am an aspiring writer of children's stories, a young mother, and I've claimed E.L. Konigsburg as more than a muse through my process, so much so that I was about to write her a letter, like today. And to my surprise, I found out she passed away about a week ago. But I'm related to no one, nor friends with anyone who would understand the great loss I feel at her death. So, you popped into my head and I didn't know if you knew or if you will think this is weird but sometimes you just need someone who gets it, you know? I feel there should be headlines and national readings of her work but, alas, an extraordinary storyteller has died, and I feel it is the saddest secret.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I read Mallory's email as the sun set against the remnants of a day-long storm. Outside the sky was still thick with bruisy black clouds and the light only managed to cut under them horizontally in great dense discs of orange-gold, making for that lovely strength of light that throws everything into severe relief softened by the late hour. None of which is relevant except to say that I read Mallory's email and then stared out the window for a very long time afterwards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">E.L. Konigsburg passed away last month, and I hadn't heard a thing. I started researching, wanting to know more, demanding the world provide it. I didn't find much — The New York Times ran an obituary, Publisher's Weekly paid their dues, there are a handful of blog posts marking the date and the Tumblr tag is full of loyal reblogs in her name — and what I did find wasn't the substance I wanted, or maybe just not the substance I thought necessary to reflect an author as substantial as E.L. Konigsburg. Because that's what it always was, wasn't it? Real, solid, straight stuff. Even in the most outrageous situations. What I love about her writing is its unflinching directness while maintaining an essential innocence, that so many of her plot lines involve hard things, tricky things, real things that in this world you need to understand—but she does not bludgeon you bloody with them the way so many other books do, hitting you upside the head and right in the stomach in their determination to prove to you that they are a Very Important Book Dealing with Very Important Things. No. With Konigsburg you follow them quietly, carefully, in a spirit of observation and deduction so that in the end you have begun to interpret them in your own right; not feeling victimized, but free. She is the paragon of what I in my mind have always deemed "intelligent fiction," stories that triumph passion for the world around you down to the deepest details, with a reverence for what we have been given and what more we have to give in engaging with it and making it our own. Stories that reiterate the joy of living, that, like Monica Hesse wrote in a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2013/04/22/to-my-lawyer-saxonberg-the-genius-of-e-l-konigsburg/">nearly perfect paragraph</a> for the Washington Post, "knowledge is worth possessing, even when it's not publicized, even when it's not Tweeted. It carries its own inherent worth." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For me, Konigsburg has always been a refuge. I could recount for you any number of afternoons I have fled to the library and straightaway to the Juvenile stacks, K shelf, and I'm not just remembering my elementary school years. My very last semester of University I returned nearly desperately to <i>The View from Saturday</i> because I knew it would never disappoint me even when I so often found some "higher" texts of the newer literature always did. And that idea, this idea that I could read about Mrs. Olinski and The Souls on their way to Academic Bowl stardom as a sixth grader feeling like I'd discovered the secrets to all words and here, thirteen years later, not only find its magic steady but thirteen times stronger?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mallory was right. There should be headlines and national readings. There should be library memorials and book club revivals. But there aren't. <span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">So between the two of us we endeavored to come up with an offering of our own, which is why starting now until however long it takes us we will be remembering one new Konigsburg book per month, trading small essays in tribute to her bibliography under the banner of </span><i style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">The Konigsburg Collective</i><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">. A book club of sorts, I suppose you could say, though there's no pressure to follow along exactly or even at all. Maybe it's just an excuse for us to read them all over again. Maybe it's an excuse for you to read them for the first time. At any rate . . . one book, once a month . . . can't hurt. And I promise we'll all be the better for it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;"><i>Want to get a head start? </i>The Konigsburg Collective<i> sets off where so many of us first began—Mallory will be back this month with </i>The Mixed of Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.<i> </i></span></span></div>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-30032769748968216392013-02-01T15:22:00.001-07:002013-02-01T15:22:40.364-07:00field notes // kensington.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-17779674913545917402013-01-15T17:24:00.000-07:002013-01-15T17:24:07.084-07:00london 2012.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just a small collection of my daily walk from last year in London before I get too far into this new one. Mostly from my phone, unfortunately. January Resolution: take actual pictures with actual camera.<br />
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-86476361473733480112013-01-14T19:31:00.001-07:002013-01-14T19:31:31.312-07:00milk, etc.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In England you can buy your milk by the pint, in little jugs exactly like the American gallon size except obviously not gallon-sized because it is a pint (that's the point) and it fits in the side door of a refrigerator in line with mustard and jam and the pesto jar. I am telling you this because it is one of my favorite things in a small way, and because if I do not blog my Aunty Jules will call my mum and together they will begin to plot the ultimate demise of the turkey feather girl who (admittedly) has lived two months too long at the top of these posts and it is a new year and a new beginning and a new me. Or so the magazines say.</div>
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Another one of my favorite things is to walk across bridges and also to watch water move, and it is no secret that I love the Thames even when mostly it is brown and muddied and murk. I like people watching in train stations and reading books on the tube, and the anticipation of reading a book on the tube. I like anywhere to sleep with the windows open and a few nights ago woke to foxes rummaging in the bins outside. They would find good things and sing sad-sounding bird songs to their fox friends and their fox friends would reply from a few streets over to meet in the shadow of the churchyard and circle up to share their good things and laugh.</div>
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(There are of course things I don't like. The water pressure (negligible), the laundry machines (nugatory), Super Target (none), the complete impossibility of customer service (not necessarily Britain's fault; America seems to stand alone in this regard and that's fact, not nationalism). I still every single time forget which faucet is what temperature and wash my face with cold water and brush my teeth with hot. Sometimes I wish our oven made more sense.)</div>
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Yesterday I met an old friend at church who has just moved here as well and after the service we walked down Exhibition Road and got on the Circle Line and came up out of Westminster station just under the bright face of Big Ben tolling the quarter hour with Boudicca lit up by the Eye behind her and it was just one of those intensely quintessential London moments that constantly knock me off my feet. We crossed over to South Bank and talked about being human and learning to love and also to let go, and in the space between Jubilee Gardens and a saxophonist Tom suddenly turned to me and said "Look at all these people living all these lives!! This is awesome!" And given that I just came back to this blog post long past midnight, I'm going to leave it at that. Hi, 2013. Think I'll like you a whole lot.</div>
<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-10908684940072049972012-11-22T17:18:00.000-07:002012-11-22T17:18:54.949-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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self portrait with turkey feathers. in class on a holiday.<br />
to distract me because I needed it. that is all.</div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-58620324077236699882012-11-19T14:49:00.000-07:002012-11-19T15:34:47.909-07:00footnote.<div style="text-align: justify;">
Because it is relevant to my last post and because I read it last week and have yet to stop thinking about it:</div>
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To the Londoner of my generation, the London sky has another dramatic significance which—once our present boredom with the whole subject is overcome—is memorable. It has been a battlefield. One day in 1940 in the entrance hall of the BBC I heard the sirens howl. One of the maternal ladies at the reception desk called out, "Air Raid, please" (one is inclined in London to say "please" for everything, and one must certainly say it out of deference if a V.I.P. like the Angel of Death is announced), but she was in fact telling the boys to close the steel shutters. I shall not forget that large white cloud bellying against the blue in the afternoon and, as my stomach turned over, seeing a flight of silver Spitfires dive into it. I froze with fear, hope, anger, pity. Many times afterwards, Londoners in the black-out heard the sky grunt, grunt, grunt over them, then howl and rock, or saw it go green instead of black, the whole 700 square miles of it twitching like sick electricity and hammered all over by millions of sharp gold sparks as the barrage beat against it like steel against a steel door. The curling magnesium ribbons that came slowly down were a relief to see, in that unremitting noise.The glasses and plates, the curtains, the favourite vases, ferns, clocks, and photographs, the pens on the desks, the ink in the pots danced in their places throughout the night in evil monotony hard to endure. The sky was extravagant; the earth would occasionally come to life in scattered carrotty fires, and on the bad nights, when the docks, the East End, and the City were burned out, the tide being too low to give the firemen water, London turned crimson. Even then, people made the "historic" remark, the remark of experience. Nothing like this, they said, had been seen since 1666. One cloudless August afternoon near the end of the war, green snow fell in minute insulting particles all over Holborn. We saw them when we got up from under our desks, where we had ducked when a bomb had fallen a mile or so away in Hyde Park and had blown the leaves off the trees into these mysterious smithereens. It had seemed, for a moment, like a new venture of the London climate, which we knew to be capable of anything. </div>
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Seven hundred thousand dwellings were damaged in the County of London, that is to say more than eighty per cent of the total. And of these, nearly a third were totally destroyed. Little was left of the docks or the City. And about 30,000 people were killed, more than 50,000 injured. On December 29, 1940, all Paternoster Row went, and a favourite phrase, imported from American films, was that "London can take it," whatever that may mean. London did nothing so exhibitionist, showed none of the characteristics of the prize fighters' ring, as seen by publicity agents. London was quite simply morose, fatalistic, frightened, depressed, and fell back on that general practicality of mind that counts as calm. The climate had predisposed us to expect the worst and to disbelieve in the facts. Fatalism is the English religion. "London can take it" is just the beer talking. At the George, in Great Portland Street, I do recall two drunks discussing the kind of funeral they wanted, with a lot of circumstantial detail about the correct amount of flowers, during a bad half hour. And there is no one who could not supply a list of old aunts, grandmothers, and so on who stuck the thing out, immovably, sustained by a vigorous social disapproval of the whole shemozzle. Private life rules the world. </div>
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It was the silence of London in the early evening that struck one. One had never known it to be <em>dead</em> quiet before. The machine had stopped. One walked down mile after mile of empty streets to the sound of one's own heels only, and voices carried far, as if across water. I remember two painted old crones sitting out alone on a bench in Lincoln's Inn Fields, when I was fire-watching. They were, no doubt, caretakers, and I could hear their voices far across the square. They were talking about actresses and distant connections of the Royal Family, of course. One night I saw a soldier come fighting out of a pub and get his teeth knocked out. One could hear them fall as distinctly as pebbles, a hundred yards away.</div>
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—<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">V.S. PRITCHETT</span> </blockquote>
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Every Sunday I walk past the V&A on my way to church. During the war the museum was used as a canteen for the RAF and a refuge for children evacuated from Gibraltar. It was hit repeatedly; the worst bomb exploded just outside the Exhibition Road entrance and the façade is to this day mottled with the effect of the shrapnel blast. The doors were blown in and nearly every iron grill, gate, and window destroyed. The museum remained open to the public. Today I walk past the inscription cut into the stone around the wreckage. <i>The damage to these walls is the result of enemy bombing during the Blitz of the Second World War 1939-1945 and is left as a memorial to the enduring values of this great museum in a time of conflict</i>. It makes me proud to be human.</div>
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-81980227233867377422012-11-19T14:14:00.000-07:002012-11-19T14:14:11.081-07:00remembrance day.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week, Veteran's Day, another eleven I love. And I like how it is done here, how weeks of reminding lead up to the big remembrance. At street corners and subway stops, next to the till, outside the bookshop, the grocers, the opera. Paper poppies in boxes, ten pence or ten pounds, paper poppies in boxes. Mine from the window overlooking the gardens at Kensington. I carry it home in cupped hands because I don't want to bend the petals. I wrap the stem in tape colored like the sky so that it stays close against the safety pin, so it lays flat above my heart. I pin it to my coat collar. I pin it to my shirt. I pin it to my sweater. Every day all week long I wear the poppy. Everyone is wearing poppies. Business men who get off at Bond Street wearing black, punky teenagers taking up too many seats at the back of the train, a wrinkled woman folding into a taxi cab, tiny children in mittens. Between trains we walk so quickly, going so many places. All of us and our poppies. <i>Row on row</i>. </div>
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<i>We are the dead</i>. In my head I hear words I learned a dozen years ago. I remember them all. I walk along the river after dark. I walk for miles.</div>
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-56743933097284866452012-11-13T19:56:00.002-07:002012-11-13T22:01:33.190-07:00a letter from London, long overdue.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>I am in a plane and I am a prayer</i>. That was my first sentence. <i>Every sinew of self stretched to silent supplication</i>. The beginning of the essay about the time I moved to London, that one time I packed a suitcase, a carry-on, and two ziplocs of trail mix and moved not just across the country but out of it. I was going to be scared and second-guessing, I was going to make evident my insanity but perhaps eventually arrive at some small understanding, conclude with a quiet sentence in favor of strength. It might have been really something. </div>
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Instead, I am in a plane and I am a prayer of irrepressible hallelujah. This is my first sentence. To be fair, round one of the flight was mostly foreboding—from Salt Lake City to Chicago I watched clouds collect like an inverted tundra beneath our wings, mottled, thick, and frozen. At one point I felt compelled to recite The Wasteland, <i>Unreal City,/under the brown fog of a winter dawn</i>. But even I had to admit that was too dramatic. And the woman next to me seemed concerned. Talking to oneself. Generally worrisome. </div>
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But I am in a plane and I am every cell singing impetuous praise, and I can't tell you exactly why or where it is coming from except to explain that sometimes answers arrive only after you have accepted the question, and as my triple seven lifts up over the Windy City it seems to me that this is Heaven's version of a hearty high-five. The sun setting behind us has painted clouds the color of the Renaissance, and the Sistine sky rolls from gilded rose into deep purpled blue. One particularly painterly thunderhead flat-bottoms like a mushroom cloud and it is not sinister but somehow holy and I find myself wanting Wordsworth to write this, remembering that he already has. <i>Trailing clouds of glory</i>. <i>Intimations of immortality</i>. I watch the sun set until I can see only stars. </div>
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There are still things to worry about. I do not know where I am living, I haven't fully finished enrollment at the university, I don't know when I will next talk to John or what exactly to declare as my intended purpose for entry on the customs card the stewardess hands to me with the tonic water I requested. I can't sleep on planes. I can't sleep unless I am lying down and it is dark and it is completely quiet, and on planes I am 0 for 3. I have a lot of time to think about what I've done. There is another hour of asphyxiating anxiety in the early morning, when I choose to focus on the shadows between the stars rather than count out the constellations. But I force myself to close my eyes and fall into fitful half-dreams and when I wake up it is proper morning and below me the sun has tipped over the edge of the world and the river lights up like liquid gold, spinning into the heart of a city that has my whole life spoken to me like home. Have you ever seen <i>A Room with a View</i>? Joy! Beauty! Love! From above, every building, each street, every turn of the Thames declaring the eternal yes.</div>
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All of this was six weeks ago. I found a flat. I'm more than a month into my masters program and in the thick of theses and thinking. I talk to John more than most people would assume necessary but is somehow not ever enough for me. And while I still can't tell you that I know exactly my ultimate purpose in being here (on the card I settled with "study;" this might prove the most pertinent way to define my daily walk, though I meant it more innocently then), I can say that this morning I woke up happy, that there are few things more whole and holy than knowing you are in the right place at the right time.</div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-63050445048346036802012-09-26T07:03:00.000-06:002012-09-26T08:27:51.510-06:00l'automne.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-25168430838533312062012-09-21T15:17:00.000-06:002012-09-21T17:45:58.507-06:00public service announcement.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You have exactly <b>nine days</b> left to get yourself to the freezer aisle and cry into your last ever bowl of Häagen-Dazs coconut macaroon ice cream before it disappears forever and we are left to only wistful reminiscing (is that redundant?) about way back in the day when there was that one glorious summer of the very nearest thing to perfection you've ever known and your mum joked about actually buying an extra freezer where we would keep in the garage pint after pint of this perfect stuff, pint after pint long after the limited edition had run its beautiful run, unless of course our campaign was successful, our campaign to eliminate the <i>limited edition</i> lid entirely, which we talked about sometimes mostly seriously but summer was so full of so very many other things and then suddenly it was September and time was too far gone and so instead we have measured these first days of fall in ice cream scoops (apologies to Eliot) and today I drew a picture because just because and why not and now you know and if you haven't known, <i>hurry fix it</i> because I am telling you that sometimes actually you can buy happiness, and for the next nine days it will cost you only $4.69.</div>
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<i>you're welcome.</i></div>
E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-38169920063912962332012-09-05T19:36:00.001-06:002012-09-05T19:36:56.514-06:00<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Yes! It's true! As of right-now-this-minute-these-words my pint-sized place on the interwebs is one hundred and eleven posts old. <i>Cool!</i> You say. <i>Fantastic! </i>And also <i>Why does this matter?</i> Well, here are some things:</div>
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→ One is my lucky number and eleven is my favorite double digit, so I figure three of them right in a row is something extra spectacular. </blockquote>
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→ I generally operate under the idea that any opportunity to reference Lord of the Rings is an opportunity well-taken. </blockquote>
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→ There are few things happier than finding your postbox home to actual post or, as we would say around here, <i>rill mell.</i> </blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">→</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> I have this hereditary habit of buying postcards from absolutely wherever I go because a) my mum started it and b) I am enamored of the bite-sized-correspondence culture and c) mostly it's just the best way to pretend you own a Van Gogh, at least until you're rich enough to buy up the Met entirely. But to be honest my collection is getting totally out of hand, and I should really do something about it.</span></i></blockquote>
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So if you've made it this far and even managed to connect the dots, you'll know that to celebrate this obvious milestone I'm going to send you a postcard! Well, only if you'd like—but I promise it'll be a pretty one and even say some nice things on it, too. Basically what will happen is that you email me your address, I'll pull a postcard from my collection, add a few colors and contours myself (this will maybe involve glitter), send it off to you, and voila! Your postbox is proud home to actual post and the world is all the happier for it. Sound like something you could get behind? Excellent! Let's recap:</span></i><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><b>Please send all postcard requests with the subject "111th,"</b> and know that eleventy-one posts is too short a time to write and read and wander among such excellent and admirable people such as yourselves. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, but it means whole worlds and miniature galaxies to me that you would </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">stop in so frequently no matter how sporadic my actual blogging tends to be. Thank you very much for coming to my little party; I do hope you'll stay awhile.</span></i></div>
<br />E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703492578912290721.post-21791999264111472032012-08-29T18:23:00.000-06:002012-08-29T18:23:03.973-06:00ma soeur le missionnaire.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Exactly one week ago today my sister Olivia embarked on an eighteen-month assignment to serve as a missionary for <a href="http://www.mormon.org/">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints</a> in the France Paris Mission. We'll be posting her weekly reports home over on her <a href="http://soeur-rhondeau.blogspot.com/">blog</a>, and I think you should read it not only because she is my best friend and I'm biased, but because she's also one of the wisest women I know. Her capacity for soul-swelling insight has been a refuge to me my whole life long, a constant reserve of <i>bon mot</i> and <i>savoir faire</i> that never fails to shape and move me. The people of Paris are the luckiest. </div>
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The whole year and a half thing can some mornings feel far too long and more than I'd like, but I'm glad and grateful for this weekly dose of wisdom that is if anything only magnified by her work and calling. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://soeur-rhondeau.blogspot.com/"><b>http://soeur-rhondeau.blogspot.com</b></a></span></div>
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<i>On Sunday I went to watch talk that Elder Bednar gave entitled </i>The Character of Christ<i>. He said that the defining element of Christ's character is that in the midst of struggle, while most people would turn in, Christ turns out. He turns out in compassion and love even when things are tough. This is now going to be a lifetime goal for me—to turn out, when we have the tendency to want to turn in. To help others and focus on the good. Learning about Christ and how to be like him is such a privilege and I need to remember that and really take what I have learned and make it real. Life is all about turning—changing, and turning to goodness and truth and God in order to become better, so that we can better love others.</i></div>
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E.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10879792423179971635noreply@blogger.com2