The Sound of Music

 

     My oldest son just began his second year of flute lessons in school and his first year in the school band; my youngest just restarted piano lessons. They both love their instruments, and I love the sound of music in the house.

Scrambled Scrabble

 

     I will admit to a certain addiction to Scrabble, but this is the first time I've played it in Portuguese. No, I don't speak Portuguese. Is that a problem?

     Somehow, I inadvertently changed the language on my iPhone, made the word "flame," thinking I was making it in English, but the electronic game thought I was writing in Portuguese. My opponent then made the word "laca," which led me to realize that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

     Did I quit? Did I give up? No. I know a few other languages, some even related to Porguguese. The weird part ... I'm not even doing that badly. At the moment, I'm ahead by four points.

 

      

     I like to play in French. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. I have an actual board game of Scrabble in English and one in French. My husband and I play Scrabble on my Kindle during our annual New England-style town meetings. Here I just made the word "doué" (it's somewhat humorous that it means "gifted," isn't it?) and am ahead by 12 points. On verra ...

 

     

     And mostly, I play in English, my native language. It's a good distraction when I'm waiting to pick up one of my children or sitting through a 30-minute piano lesson. 

Dancing Spiders

     My husband and I went to the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College to see the Mark Morris Dance Group, one of my favorites. I have loved modern dance since I was about twelve years old. My husband finally heard my laments that I've been too far too many Red Sox games without him ever reciprocating and buying tickets to something I'd like to see. So he bought tickets to see Morris. I had to teach an online class from 6-7 p.m. and the performance began at 7 p.m., so I brought my laptop and taught it from the Dartmouth concert. Would it be a stretch to say "I've taught at Dartmouth"? Yes, I thought so ...
     I was recently asked to write a piece about what it's like to teach online for the Concord Monitor. Here it is:
     http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/8261769-95/whats-it-like-to-actually-teach-online
     We ran into Louise Bourgeois' famous spider sculpture at Dartmouth, which gives me mixed feelings. Bourgeois once said, "... spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother." There have been many spiders in my life lately. Those in Chartlotte's Web and Martha White's recent talk, those climbing through the dock at the lake, and those making webs in my windows at home and catching the last few mosquitoes of the year.
     The dances were not very spidery (for that you'd want the late Merce Cunningham, perhaps) but captured the synchronicity and tugs-of-war in relationships, the bonding of individuals through culture and movement, and what many critics call Morris' "musicality," all with a lot of humor.

Wonderland

 

Something about this red toadstool made me want to go back and reread another of my favorite books, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Chapter Five, "Advice from a Caterpillar," which features mushrooms. My oldest son once appeared in a production of this work at a local theater and was ... the caterpillar. Here's an excerpt for fun:
 
"Alice folded her hands, and began:--

`You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
`And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

`In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,
`I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.' "

A Fall Day at the Lake

Loony Living

 

     Over the summer, I worked to make our living room feel warmer and more inviting. The coffee table that had been beaten on by two toddlers and the faded Ikea chair with the wobbly leg found their way to the dump. The too-small, discount rug was retired to the basement. I replaced the mirror over the fireplace, a leftover from the previous owners of our home, with our Woody Crumbo Native American print and the oars we've used to paddle New Hampshire's rivers (I bought two new, inexpensive oars at Cabela's for the paddling we did this summer). I'm happy with the results, which you can see below.

 

     I especially enjoy the Robert Abbey lamps I found for the endtables. Living in a home built in the 1980s, there are few lighting fixtures in the ceiling. The pillows were a gift from my husband. The aloe plant was a gift from a colleague. The print on the wall was a gift to my husband for his most recent birthday and is by the wonderful New Hampshire print maker, Matt Brown.

 

     I surprised myself by liking the geometric pattern on these chairs, and I enjoyed picking out inexpensive throw pillows from Etsy. My sons love to sit here. Note the iPod charger lurking nearby (above) and the Lego organizer (below).

   
     We found the endtable on clearance at the Company C headquarters in Concord, NH. They had mustard-colored endtables I liked, but this table had a blue bottom, which we repainted to match.

      
     Living near the lake and the loons, I loved this Inuit soapstone carving of loons that I also found on Etsy. It was too small for the fireplace mantle, where I'd hoped to put it, but it's perfect on the coffee/cocktail table.

     Repainted for the umpteenth time, this flimsy cabinet was bought by my parents in the 1950s when they were first married. It now houses our cookbooks, acquired from many years working in publishing, and some glassware on top and the bottom hides the messy art supplies my sons frequently use. I replaced the handles on this cabinet with pieces from Restoration Hardware a few years ago. The right drawer is my favorite. It's lined with metal to be a breadbox.

Celebrating Gibson's Bookstore

   
     After seeing so many independent bookstores close, it was a pleasure to stop in Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH, one of my all-time favorite bookstores, which just moved to a new location and expanded. Expanded! I wish Gibson's, and all the independent booksellers, much success. I took this photo of the graphic novel section, including one by one of my favorite authors, Marjane Satrapi, for my son, a fan of the genre.

9/11: Now and Then

     Having spent 9-11-2001 watching the towers fall in NYC back in the days when I worked for a publisher in the famous Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, wondering if my firefighter stepbrother was alive, hoping my husband who had changed trains beneath the WTC that morning was safely at work elsewhere, and huddling around a car hearing news of the Pentagon and alleged planes headed to destroy the White House, I can only say that spending 9-11-2013 watching my son do his math homework was sheer joy. And I rarely use the words "math" and "joy" in the same sentence.

Belated Back-to-School Shopping

Lake Life

 

     Perhaps my favorite part of this photo is the set of stairs to the right that leads to one of my favorite spots in the world.

 

     

     Taking a walk with the dog often leads to this dock. I love the wet paw prints and the fact that we spotted fish and a painted turtle today by peering through the wooden slats of the dock.

 

Metamorphosis (à la Kafka)

 

     Metamorphosis has been on my mind, having been in Kafka's Prague this summer. Mornings were in the 40s this week. These leaves were caught mid-change. Cider donuts and apples are ready. Aren't you glad this posting didn't involve dung beetles?

Life in the Woods (to quote Thoreau)

 

     This sign appears on multiple telephone poles near my home. Ah, life in the woods! At first I thought it was a lost raccoon. Small type below the phone number said the trap was in a box and had fallen off a truck. A turnip truck?

Abstract Expressionism on the Front Walk

September

 

 

 

 

Old Hat, New Hat

A Long Friendship

     Céline (on right) and I became friends when I received a fellowship to teach in France in 1995-1996. In fact, she was my first Internet friend, since I had newly discovered the Internet and searched for (I can't say "googled" ... I think the search engine was called Mosaic) the name of the town where my new husband and I would be living. Céline found it strange that I'd located her name on a French governmental website where it had landed as part of a "pen friends" project when she was just a kid in school.
     In 1995, she was a nurse, working in a neighboring town. She sent me maps and apartment notices and we met when I arrived. She rescued me during a mysterious power outage and took me to meet her wonderful parents, with whom we Skyped with this weekend, who fed me dinner while my husband worked the vendange (the grape harvest) and sang French karaoke, one of his many talents. It was the start of a long friendship, and so much more fun than me looking up the phrase "fuse box" in my French-English dictionary. Balzac never discussed fuses in his Comédie Humaine, as I recalled.
    Jump ahead 18 years. Céline is a nursing professor in Québec where she lives with her husband and two lovely daughters, close in age to my sons. We love spending time with her and her family and see them once or twice each year, in Québec or in New Hampshire.
     I hastily finished syllabi Friday so we could spend the holiday weekend in Québec with our friends. The kids love it, and we are hoping to exchange children next summer so that they can improve their language skills with my sons learning more French than "Tête, épaules, genoux, et pieds" and her daughters more than "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," although you never know when those songs might come in handy.

 
     "Les Grands" had fun swimming, jumping on the trampoline, playing video games, and exploring the Biodôme together in Montréal. No longer in strollers or requiring naps, we took the metro into Montréal with ease.

 

 

     "Les Petits" got on equally well and enjoyed charting on our progress on the train.

 

     Finding a seat on dad's lap is always a good deal!

 

 

     The Université de Québec à Montréal marks "la rentrée," the start of the academic year . . .  to which we returned today, too.

Don't forget to STOP!

     I live in a town with no red and green traffic lights like those in the French game, Mille Bornes, which we've been playing, a gift from some great friends. I pass this sign every day as I walk the dog. In a mindfulness workshop, I learned to use the letters as an acronym: S-Stop, T-Take a breath, O-Observe your thoughts, feelings/sensations, emotions, P-proceed. It brings a certain measure of awareness, a much needed pause, and mindful action and intention to an otherwise frenzied day.

Summer Rain

La Rentrée

     Fall met me on this path as I returned to campus to teach.

 

 

     The school year started with a bit of nervousness for my youngest son . . .

 



 

     . . .  but had plenty of smiles . . .

 

 

     . . . when friends were spotted on the playground on the first day.

     Brownie (you can only see the tip of her nose) greeted her boys at the bus at the end of the day . . .

     . . .  for the mad dash home!