LINES FORM A MOVIE

I always thought that my reading was not well rounded because, like some of the more literary characters in the books I did read, I never could remember anything witty or apropos to throw into a conversation. I’ve never amassed a repertoire of pithy sayings from, say, the Odyssey or Finnegan’s Wake, even from Catcher in the Rye. Only recently has it occurred to me that the writers fleshing out those literary savants they’d created had time and references to make their characters widely or aptly read. The ones I admired for their bon mots were just characters – not real folks. And if there are, and there probably are, such folks floating around in the real world – and I’d guess they’d be closer to the academic world than I am – they are few and far between. Yes, most folks know a few lines or sayings from Shakespeare or the Bible, but most don’t know that they know them, if you know what I mean.

Few of the books I’ve read lent themselves to memorable catchy phrases,* but now that we are into the second century of the cinema, there are plenty of times I can quote appropriately from the movies. Frankly my dear, one could go on and on with quotes from Gone with the Wind, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, Casablanca, Star Wars, Love Story, even Blazing Saddles – though that’s more of a sound bite than a quote.                

“Round up the usual suspects.”

*With the exception of one book: Shibumi by Trevanian. I wrote about it here.

RAG BAGS AND POTATO MASHERS

Last week, my husband wanted a cloth to use to polish something. He asked what I had that would do the job, and I joked “I’ll look in the rag bag.”  The rag bag? Well, I really don’t have one. I keep a few odd, old socks for jobs like this, but I don’t have an actual rag bag like my mother’s. It hung just inside the door down to the cellar, and all of us knew where it was when she wanted a rag. In these days of Swiffers, microfiber cloths, and shammys, rag bags are obsolete. Oh, and “shammy” reminds me that there was always a leather chamois, ready to use, by the rag bag.

Rag bags are among the things that have left the building. Taking a mental inventory of my mother’s home, I note the potato ricer and the masher, and the orange juice squeezer and the meat grinder. They can still be found, even purchased brand new, but most gals these days use an electric appliances to do the job. Speaking of electric mixers, who uses an egg beater these days? You can buy them, but unless you’re off the grid why would you want one? Me, if I’m going to beat eggs, I use a whisk.

One of my earliest memories is of my mom using a washboard. I can not, in my wildest dreams, imagine using a washboard on my sheets. Just handling all that wet fabric must have really burned up the calories and built up the arm muscles. I remember her first little washing machine, with its hose hooked up to the kitchen sink. Cute little thing – I remember it as being about the size of a three-drawer file cabinet, with a wringer on top. No more wingers either – progress is wonderful. Until the mid-fifties when we moved to a house that had a washer-dryer, mom always hung the laundry out to dry. I can still remember her wrestling the sheets into the apartment window on a freezing cold day. I don’t need one of those fancy aroma candles because I still have the scent in my head.

What else? My mind is still wandering through the house. A rug beater. Mom would throw the throw rugs over the wash line and bet them dustless. Just thinking about some of the chores she did gives me the groans. According to the time – day, week, month, and on – she had a regular job to do. Every week, I mean every week, she cleaned out the refrigerator. Me, I whisper “clean” into the fridge and call it a day.

You can go online and find all the things that are perhaps not gone for good, but gone from regular use: rotary dial phones, even land lines, clothes pins, coffee percolators, baby carriages, record players, typewriters. I won’t go on. 

THE HIGH HOLY DAYS

Here's one I wrote that appeared in this month's issue of our community magazine. It was extremely interesting to research, and it brought back memories of the Jewish neighbors in my childhood, and all the things I'd learned and forgotten over the years.

Even though they may not celebrate them, many people are aware of Passover and Chanukah because they coincide with other religious observances in spring and winter. Where the Christian observances are usually Gregorian calendar-related, Christmas on December 25, always falling on the same date, most others, including Easter, Passover, and Chanukah are celebrated according to a lunar calendar.

Also falling according to a lunar calendar, each year in the fall, Jews around the world celebrate the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This year, Rosh Hashanah begins the Hebrew year 5778 at sundown on Wednesday, September 20. It will last through sundown on Friday, September 22, though some observe it for only one day. The New Year is celebrated at this time, in the Jewish month of Tishrei, according to the tradition that this was when God created the heavens and the earth and the Book of Life was written.

Rosh Hashanah is a formal, solemn observance during which work is prohibited. After religious services, a festive meal is served. Many people begin afresh with new clothes for the occasion, and use their finest table linens, dishes, crystal, and flatware. Only the best foods are served, including the traditional round, braided challah, and apple slices dipped in honey. The ancient Jews, who knew a lot about what could affect our health and well-being, knew that apples had healing properties - “an apple a day.” Along with them, the honey signifies the sweetness of life and the hope for a sweet year ahead.

The days of Rosh Hashanah are spent in prayer and anticipation of a new year, and are followed, in the days leading up to Yom Kippur, by a time of self-examination and repentance. As observed and manifested in the various confessional rites of many of the world’s religions, there is introspection, assumption of responsibility, shame and regret, and asking of forgiveness, leading to a promise to atone.

In Leviticus 23:27-28, we read: “the tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you. You shall practice self-denial. And you shall do no work that same day because it is the Day of Atonement.”  The strong words associated with this observance: introspection, repentance, shame, regret, responsibility, self-denial, and atonement, indicate the great importance of Judaism’s holiest, most solemn day, Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur begins with fasting, after a traditional meal before sundown, when services begin on the eve (erev) before, and ends at sundown the next day. Kol Nidre, meaning “all vows” is both the title of a song or chant, and the name given to the first part of the Yom Kippur services. The presentation of the Torah scrolls is part of the traditional customs and rituals for the observance that also include prayer, preferably in congregation, solemn music, and the wearing of white as a symbol of atonement and purification.

The sound of a ram’s horn, the shofar, is heard before and throughout the High Holy Days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. This last day, this time of atonement, this time of vowing to do better, is brought to a close with a final blast.

SCOTCH TAPE

I had a lovely chuckle this morning. I read in The Writer’s Almanac that on this day in 1930, 3M began marketing Scotch Tape. Every once in a while, when I’m called upon to use some of my own supply of this ubiquitous tool, I’ll remember my mother telling me how, when she was in her room wrapping Christmas presents, I’d knock on the door and call out “I hear Scotch Tape!”

I was always curious to know what she was doing and how she was doing it. My sister, also curious, went even further: she’d open the wrappings and peek at the packages to try to find out who was getting what. I delight to look with my mind’s eye and see her doing that. Mom always knew. Sometimes we’d swear she had “eyes in the back of her head.”

I do love it when little things that happen bring back such wonderful memories. They certainly set the pace for a happy day.

STILL - I BUY BOOKS

My cousin reminded me that today is National Book Day. (Thanks E!) I thought it appropriate to re-post this one from March 2013. Buy or borrow, books are my delight. All these years later, I've even have given in to the Kindle way of reading, though I still prefer a book in my hands.

I don’t smoke or drink or even chew gum. My vice: I buy books. Many are worthy of any good library, many, some of you might think, are not.  Recent purchases in the former category include Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, and the Merriam Webster New Book of Word Histories. The latter? Well, let’s just call them Fiction: Romances, Mysteries, Romance Mysteries – I’ve a long list of favorite authors.

Since 1990 when I stopped lumping in book money with the rest of our entertainment expenditures, I’ve spent just over $14,000.00 on books, many of them used. Egad! That’s a nice chunk of change.  I’m sure the lifetime total would be nicely impressive too, and I delight in every dollar’s worth.

I was reading Theodore Dalrymple’s essay Why second-hand bookshops are just my type, and I came upon the telling of a bibliomaniac whose library was sold after his death for only a third of what he’d paid for the massive collection. I sold off my college text books – about twenty years later - but I can’t imagine selling my books now. I’ve always given them away when I was finished with them. I’ve read many of my books four or five times, but usually when I’ve read a book twice – or have gotten only part way into a real dud – it goes into the bag to be taken to the library for the sale room.  Sell them? I’ve not got the time: I’m reading!

Dalrymple’s essay mourns the passing of second-hand bookshops. I’ve rarely had the pleasure of browsing in a second-hand bookshop.* I do now have the pleasure of browsing in second-hand book sites on line. My favorite is Thrift Books, and Britain’s Awesome Books is pretty well that: awesome.

Really, really esoteric volumes can sometimes be found, used, of course, at Amazon – but then, what can’t you find at Amazon?  I do browse the shelves of the sale room at the library – always going with book lists in hand to be sure I’ve not read that one before, always looking for new treasures. (And library sale rooms are great sources for children’s books. I’ve got on hand new birthday and Christmas books for my granddaughters well into 2016, but used books are great to hand out throughout the year for un-birthdays and such.) 

I don’t know if you’ll think this good or bad, but though I’ve always belonged to the library wherever we lived and occasionally do check out books, I’d really rather own a book than borrow it. If it is mine I can take as long as I want to read it: though I read many books in a week, it gives me the itch to have a time limit on my reading.  If it is mine I am happy to let it just sit in my stack of to-be-read and enjoy its being there.

In one paragraph, talking about the pleasures of finding markings and various papers and bookmarks in used books, Dalrymple says “there is no substitute for being able to hold the physical book in one’s hand.” I agree wholeheartedly – but for another reason on another plane: I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with an electronic book. A good friend of mine has shown me the wonders of her iPad, and how she can enlarge the type, and how it remembers where she left off, and all the other delights of electronic reading. Not for me. I want to be able to flip back to that remembered reference to a certain character or place – and I remember it was on the left hand page about two inches from the bottom. Yes, there it is. I remembered the ‘landmarks’. Can’t do that with an electronic book. 

This is just a fraction of the books I once owned. I keep them
and all my little dustables in our bedroom - this way none of it
has to be dusted very often.

I want to hold the book and not have to be too careful not to drop it in the toilet if I’m in a bathroom reading session – though there I usually read magazines. I want to refer every once in a while to the jacket’s cover picture or inside blurb and bio. I want to see my books – especially the ones I’ve kept and reread for years. Just seeing the books on the shelf gives me a fleeting remembrance of the story. I can’t get that feeling with an electronic device.

Books are neat and compact, easier to collect and store and dust (though I rarely do) than say salt and pepper shakers or automobilia. Yes, for many reasons on many levels, I’ll stick to books as my vice of choice.

*but I love pictures of them – so higgledy-piggledy, stacks and stacks.  As the bibliophile’s lament goes: So many books, so little time. 

POEM FOR A BOOKWORM

My regular readers know that I am a great bookworm. Though once I’d read almost every book that came my way, in my old age I am a bit more selective. I’ve swung over to mostly fiction, shunning those written in the first person or present tense, and I’ve narrowed down my reading to the lists of several favored authors. And I do mean lists. I keep a loose leaf binder filled with my favored authors’ book lists – titles, dates, have I read it, do I still have it, was it g, or vg, or vvg, or pu. You know what p u means. So you can imagine my delight when I read this poem in The Writer’s Almanac.  I like the line "life is continuous as long as they wait to be read." Yes. It's pleasing to have a pile of books sitting, waiting for me.

The Bookstall  

           by Linda Pastan

Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open—that one
and that—and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read—these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon.
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.