I have been neglecting my blog. I have been too busy with holiday fun. Eileen and I spent a few days with Mark and Leigh at their home. We were joined by Ben, Emily, and Jeremy. This visit helped me remember how much I enjoy conversation with people I love. Hell, probably with any people. We drove home yesterday and arrived just before a snow storm.

While it was good to visit with people, returning to my house now provides a new, unique pleasure of returning to the comfort of the books surrounding me especially those in my study.

Eileen and I are understandably weary today. I stayed up very late every one of the three nights we were visiting. We did get a chance to chat with Sarah today. We usually do so on Saturdays but we were busy traveling home. The English branch of the Jenkins fam have been partying like mad over there. Celebrating and re-celebrating Alice’s second birthday. Here’s what we looked like (Alice put the star on me on their screen).

I have plenty of new books to read. I love visiting Mark and his library. I left my copy Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Don Quixote at home and read in Mark’s copies. I also read in his Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Mark gave a very cool book on Dante written by one of his favorite teachers.

Right up my alley.

I cooked in Mark’s kitchen which is amazing. It’s fun to work in it. I was able to get a little playing on Leigh’s fabulous piano.

I enjoyed chatting with my niece, Emily, and her husband, Jeremy, and my nephew, Ben. Tony, Ben’s husband, was under the weather, so we missed seeing him.

Eileen and I are laying around today. Life is good.

“They said they said.
They said they said when they said men.
Men many men many how many many many many men men men said many here.”
Gertrude Stein, Patriarchal Poetry, quoted by Susan Howe in The Birth-Mark

Inside Music – Singer and musician, Julie Fowlis finds a place to breath for January 1, 2022

cool This episode is only available for 28 more days or so. I stumbled across this one morning and loved it. Recommended.

The Selk’nam’s quest for recognition

“In the 19th century, other Europeans and their descendants would arrive, this time to stay. Men who had already domesticated plants and animals and who upon arriving in what is now called Tierra del Fuego found hunter-gatherers who had lived there for more than 10,000 years. That indigenous group would become to known as Selk’nam.  The encounter between hunter-gatherers and the colonizer farmers led to a defacto death penalty for the Selk’nam. A tragedy that is still the order of the day. Considered extinct in the history books and laws written by the victors, yet the survivors claim to be alive. And now they fight for recognition.”

‘Pooh,’ ‘Sun Also Rises’ among works going public in 2022 | AP News

cool beans

Building Trust Across the Political Divide – Comment Magazine

bookmarked to read