Oscar nominations are out! I’ve only seen one of the films, and was impressed by it. Some years I’m able to see all five; this, I think, is not that kind of year simply because a movie night for Jeremy and me is not such a frequent thing anymore. Still, I would like to catch a few more of the Best Picture nominees prior to March 5th.
Commentary on the nominations, anyone?
By 9:47am, I have learned that…
Beautiful, crazy, strange January weather.
A newscaster recently said he imagined we may not have to scoop snow again this winter in Lincoln… And I shook my head at such a preliminary guess. We live in Nebraska, the state where the sun can shine through snowshowers and where the weather can change in mere minutes.
Anyhow, I love me a good April snowstorm. There’s nothing quite like building a snowman next to a bed of daffodils.
We were *this* close to signing up for a digital phone system with a local business when we discovered there are much cheaper options for doing so. The hook was that we already use high speed internet (a job necessity for Jeremy, a major perk for me) and have a cable hookup, therefore the digital phone system, at $59.95 with tax, seemed decent since it includes free long distance and little things like caller ID and call waiting.
Then a coworker told Jeremy about digital phone service via businesses like Vonage, where the fees are in the $25 range. Not too shabby…
But then, I couldn’t get into my husband’s office yesterday and I got kind of annoyed with that. I end up standing outside the office (in rain, sleet or snow, with baby on hip) until someone buzzes me in. This problem, and many others, could be easily solved with a cell phone. But if we go cellular, we can’t afford a land line any longer.
So, people. Help me out here. Tell me what you use, what you like and dislike, and pretty please with sugar on top, tell me approximately how many George Washingtons you spill for the service.
Mucho gusto.
To my shame, I admit I am quite ignorant of most copyright laws. Does anyone (Renae?) know how to correctly share the following column? Thanks, Karma, for passing this on to me.
American Life in Poetry: Column 033
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
Katy Giebenhain, an American living in Berlin, Germany, depicts a ritual that many diabetics undergo several times per day: testing one’s blood sugar. The poet shows us new ways of looking at what can be an uncomfortable chore by comparing it to other things: tapping trees for syrup, checking oil levels in a car, milking a cow.
Glucose Self-Monitoring
A stabbing in miniature, it is,
a tiny crime,
my own blood parceled
drop by drop and set
on the flickering tongue
of this machine.
It is the spout-punching of trees
for syrup new and smooth
and sweeter
than nature ever intended.
It is Sleeping Beauty’s curse
and fascination.
It is the dipstick measuring of oil
from the Buick’s throat,
the necessary maintenance.
It is every vampire movie ever made.
Hand, my martyr without lips,
my quiet cow.
I’ll milk your fingertips
for all they’re worth.
For what they’re worth.
Something like a harvest, it is,
a tiny crime.Katy Giebenhain, Best of Prairie Schooner: Fiction and Poetry
Yup, that’s what our favorite 20 month old wordsmith has been calling me the past two days.
Between referring to me by my first name and her crazy mood shifts, I think she’s hitting the teen years a little early.
Megan issued the invitation and I responded to it by checking out Hannah Coulter from a local library last week. The following is my review of the book.
In the beginning of the novel, when Hannah recalls that she knew little of husband Nathan as a boy—in the days before he crossed “the waters” for battle in Okinawa during World War II—I began to wonder what kind of story author Wendell Berry was going to tell. The reason for my confusion relates to the fact that Hannah was married, to someone other than Nathan Coulter, to a man who ended up dying in the war. At this very early point in the novel, I wasn’t sure where to place my interest: Was this a story of her second husband? Was it a tale of true love lost forever? Was Hannah Coulter now a bitter old woman? And for some odd reason, I never lost my tentative stance as a reader. Throughout the entire book I felt like I was trying to “figure out” the main point of the story. Now that I’ve read the entire thing, I surmise that there was no particular main point to grasp. The joy of Hannah Coulter is definitely in the telling, in the meandering paragraphs of her days on the farm, of the two loves of her life, and of relationships with friends and family.
Though the novel is endearing in many chapters, it isn’t the type of book I’d eagerly press into the hands of my friends. However, I found a few pieces of gold sprinkled throughout its pages and ended up scribbling quotes in my journal. On New Year’s Eve several friends and I toasted to “Hope without shame” in 2006. The following quote clarifies that sentiment:
Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you musn’t shirk it. Love, after all, “hopeth all things.” But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation. (p. 146)
Another section, this time related specifically to marriage, struck me as quite beautiful. I copied nearly an entire page because I like it so much:
It would be again like the coming of the rhymes in a song, a different song, this one, a long song, the rhymes sometimes wide apart, but the rhymes would come.
The rhymes came. But you may have a long journey to travel to meet somebody in the innermost inwardness and sweetness of that room. You can’t get here just by wanting to, or just because the night falls. The meeting is prepared in the long day, in the works of years, in the keeping of faith, in kindness.
The room of love is another world. You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than worlds on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together. You come together to the day’s end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all into your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you are free in the place that is two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room? [emphasis mine]
If you want to now why ever in telling of trouble and sorrow I am giving thanks, this is why. (p. 110)
These quotes, for me, were the highlight of this book. Towards the end of the novel I began to lose interest in Hannah’s story. I found her thoughts on her children, who all moved away from home and completely lost interest in the family farm, tiresome and frustrating. It rang too closely to the “in my day things were so much better because…” complaint that frankly no one wants to hear. If Berry had perhaps been a little more concise in his storytelling, limiting the book to a central theme, it would’ve made for a simpler, more enjoyable read.
In general, my husband doesn’t like to have his picture taken. I usually have to coerce him to let me point and click in his direction. So not only was I pleased to capture Livia through the cylinder holes, I was happy to snap my husband’s visage as well.
I love this guy. And I really like the past two photos I’ve posted. They seem to capture the essence of my sweet family.
