Hi,
This week, I answered the question I first posed two months ago after reading the first chapter of “The Mirror and the Light” by Hilary Mantel. Her Thomas Cromwell asked the question “If you can’t tell the truth at a beheading, when can you?” after Ann Boelyn was beheaded. I asked myself this question again after seeing the NYTimes Sunday Front Page: 100,000 dead in the US from coronavirus at the same time I watched a video of throngs of unmasked non-distanced Memorial day celebrations. My answer is: You cannot speak the truth even at a beheading. We are living (at least, some of us) proof of that. And, Tolstoy’s line “How Easily Catastrophes are Taken Personally” is actually the next observation after I concede that truth cannot be told. I think it will be my “threadshots” for today.
1. This week I am not going to opine because I cannot even stand to hear my own opinions anymore. I’ll just tell you what I consumed.
2. I “listened to books” as I did my sewing. The perfect companion. I started with “Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them” by Frank Langella. Not kidding. One of the better things I’ve listened to in the last year. Published before the pandemic and just about all the stars and celebrities he has met and anecdotes about them. Big Discovery?? Everyone in Hollywood thought Cary Grant was a five-star bore.
3. The second Audible book is “A Shepherd’s Life”, James Rebanks. I have followed his Instagram account for a year. He posts photos of his sheep. He posts photos of his kids with their own sheep. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy these photos. He also posts photos of his English Lake District landscape that I once visited while reading the paperback of the Watergate hearings in 1974. He just posts the photos and rarely says anything. Except sometimes, he’ll say one of his herd won a prize at the fair. I suggest you follow him @herdyshepard1
4. I read a bit of Pablo Neruda's Ode to Common Things just about every day. "I have a crazy, crazy love of things. I like pliers and scissors. I love cups, rings, and bowls –not to speak, or course, of hats." Me, too, Pablo. This book was worth every penny. 5. I also read a bit of "The Rings of Saturn" by WG Sebald each day. His character is supposedly walking around England but what he is carrying as he walks around England is a sadness that I swear to you somehow gives me joy. This book was described by someone as "irradiated with melancholy" and there's that but there is simply the joy of his observations. He is the writer who puts into his novels old photographs that appear to come from albums and at first you think they are illustrating something or someone in the narrative. But, then, you realize..wait, I think that's just an old raggedy photo of someone's aunt bessie. He talks about photos in the attic as waiting to be rescued and that they ask us for a little while to pay them some attention. "We existed," these photos say. "Please take care of us for awhile." 6. I am going to track down some writing of Charles Portis this week. He wrote True Grit and died in February 2020. Now, believe you me, I am as surprised as you that I am dedicating myself to this goal. But, I read an article in the New Yorker about him and the author said this about him: “Only a mean person won’t enjoy it” is something a critic once wrote about “True Grit.” In part, I love Portis because I feel less mean when I read him. It’s not just that his novels are gentle and funny; it’s that Portis’s books have a way of conscripting the reader into their governing virtues—punctuality, automotive maintenance, straight talk, emotional continence. Puny virtues, as Portis himself once put it, yet it is a great and comforting gift (in these days especially) to offer readers escape into a place where such virtues reign. 7. One thing I know for sure after this week: I need to feel less mean and feel like I live in a universe with governing virtues instead of vices. 8. I listened to an audio journal from an ER nurse in Queens New York this week and had to pause my stitching to realize this wasn't a novel I was listening to but real life. There's a character in "War and Peace" that is described by Tolstoy as "the girl only knew how to do her best and keep working." I think this describes Kate O'Connell and she most definitely doesn't have to read Charles Portis this week. 9. I have always wanted to be able to identify birds with their particular birdsongs. Honestly, an owl is about the only one I can identify. So, here's a site all about birds. They have webcams on birds and thankfully they move a bit more than animals in a zoo. They have a link to trying to identify birds but it takes too much effort right at the moment. I made a pillow from one of my threadthoughts.
