Monthly Archive

Foam near the bank downstream from the waterfall

Scratchboard, 9″ x 6″

Even on sabbatical, my pile of books to read grows faster than I can actually read them. So many heavy hitters await, like Pauli Murray, Walter Benjamin, and the memoir Lost and Found, by Karen Schulz.

I’m reading for fun, too: I reread Curtain (Agatha Christie)–what a finale–and have just finished The Sword of Summer, the first in Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase series. The munchkin likes the Percy Jackson ones the most, and I do want to catch up there, but I particularly love Norse mythology, which is the setting for this series, so she recommended them. I got the second, The Hammer of Thor, from the library today.

In the more serious category, I have recently read:

Lila, Marilynne Robinson–as with Gilead, this was a reread and I decided to listen to the audiobook. Marvelous.

How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert

The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, Twyla Tharp

And I am currently reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin. All four of those are for my upcoming grad school course, The Arts As Leadership. I am finding Rubin less simpatico than the others. That may mean I have more to learn from him, or it may not.

Yesterday, a book I pre-ordered arrived. It’s of interest not just because it’s by the new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a colleague I admire greatly, but because: ecowomanism! So I have dived in.

What have you read lately that you’d recommend to others?

What happened to someone who attempted a coup against the Russian government, with Putin in charge: He and whoever else was on his plane were summarily killed.

What happened to 19 people who attempted a coup against the people and government of the United States: They’re duly indicted after a grand jury investigation, allowed to report on their own cognizance, and offered bail.

Photo: Rudy Giuliani speaking to reporters in NYC before getting on a private plane to fly to his arraignment in Atlanta

It’s pure coincidence that these two things are happening today, but it sure does expose a contrast between a democratic republic and the kind of autocracy Donald Trump wishes we had. From the howling on the right wing, you’d think we shoot the accused down in mid-air instead of upholding the law and giving accused offenders due process.

It was about ten years ago, as Joy and I were enjoying a Taiko performance at an art museum in the Pacific Northwest, that I first thought, “I have to do that someday. “

It was three years ago, during the pandemic, that I looked up a local dojo and noted that,  now that my schedule had shifted to many meetings’ being on Zoom, I could manage to go to the classes and still get home to attend my meetings. I put myself on the email list for when they resumed classes.

It was a year and a half ago that I got the email notice: the dojo was open! Around the same time, I learned about the D.Min in Theology and the Arts at the United Seminary of the Twin Cities, applied, and was accepted. I was going to have to focus and prioritize in order to add graduate school to my life, so I reluctantly put Taiko back on the “someday” list.

Dance Brigade at Dance Mission Theater

It was three days ago that I learned that Dance Mission Theater, which is a mile from my house, would be offering an Absolute  Beginner Taiko class. Even on sabbatical, I have a lot of plans and commitments, but since this will be for only seven weeks, once a week, my hesitation didn’t last for more than a couple of seconds. I joyfully signed up.

And so tomorrow, I will be an absolute beginner at an art form (and serious workout) that has drawn me for years. I can’t wait!

Just a listicle. I’m still kind of jetlagged.

Five Things That Are Great About Being Home

Luna

She seems very pleased also. Photo by Munchkin.

Being able to read all the books I’ve been ordering all summer. Most are for the grad school class that starts next month. I opened all the packages from Better World Books and started right in on Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I am loving.

The piano

I decided I’d go back to the very beginning of my binder, from when I started lessons about five years ago. Some of the early, exercise-y stuff is too boring to enjoy, but I quickly got to some nice pieces I had practically forgotten, but that are giving my rusty music-brain a way to loosen up and get back into the groove.

San Francisco

The first evening, even though we’d traveled for 22 hours and I had every intention of opening a can of Trader Joe’s corn for dinner, the child nudged me to go with her to our neighborhood grocery to pick up a few things. Carl* was rolling in, making the color of the sky different from anything we saw in Europe, and making the air blessedly cool. Walking up the hill was still a challenge despite all the walking I’ve done all summer (but maybe that had to do with the 22 hours). The store was familiar and friendly and had delicious mangoes. In general, the fruits and veggies were really good in Europe, but the mangoes, not so much.

Everything about our house

I just love our house. It is cozy and full of art we’ve made and/or love, overflowing with books I want to read, and imbued with thousands of memories.

Things I’ve Been Getting Done

Yesterday was a Getting Things Done kind of day. I already had car repair scheduled, because the tenants reported that it wouldn’t start even after a jump, so: maybe it just needed a new 12-volt battery? Or a new hybrid battery?–I hoped not, because they’re pricey, but the car has gone 225k miles on its original battery. And three of the books that arrived were actually intended to be sent directly to a 9-year-old for his birthday (pretty sure the mix-up was on me, not on Better World Books), so, mailing things from the post office being my kryptonite, I figured I’d better send them straightaway. The items that went on my Done List are:

made chai

watered outdoor plants

weeded for 10 minutes or so

played piano

got car jump-started twice (don’t ask)

mailed books

took car to mechanic

walked down scenic Van Ness Avenue (snort) to buy groceries

picked up car

went through mail and tossed obvious junk

read 50 pages of Big Magic

walked 8,000 steps

accomplished all of above despite one hell of a sciatica flare-up (driving is the worst if I don’t set the seat up properly)

re-learned that walking during a flare-up can make it a lot better, at least for a while.

And today: Went through all my mail, filed / took action as needed.

Two things that were on my list for yesterday were “make dinner” and “Zoom with my mom.” Instead I lay down for a nap at 4 and slept way past the time for both. It’s okay. Mom had been warned that that might happen, and the child made dinner for herself and even offered to make me something when I stumbled into the kitchen at some point, but I glurbled some kind of “no thanks” at her and just got myself peanut butter toast when I woke up later, at 1 a.m. That let me fall back asleep until something like a normal Pacific Time waking hour, which should help move the jetlag along.

The car only needed a new 12-volt, and they checked the hybrid battery for me and it’s going strong.

*Whoever announced and popularized the name spells it Karl, but when I first heard it, I assumed it was a clever play on the creator of the best-known piece of writing about fog, and he spelled it with a C. So in my mind the fog is Carl, because it’s funnier that way and funnier is better.

I recovered enough to make my way to the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, and I am making  my way around  it very slowly. Joy was right; I wouldn’t want to have missed this.

I like the strabismus-eyed angels:

And these 17th-century trompe-l’oeil diamond patterns. They look like they truly jut out from the wall:

But it is an illusion created by skillful painting:

There’s beautiful contemporary tile art here, also, such as this piece in the entry hall:

I really like the exhibit of combinations of two Portuguese art forms, azulejo and fado, made (with the collaboration of many people) by a French artist named Bastien Tomasini who goes by O Gringo. We just went to a fado performance over dinner last night, so I could hear the songs of longing in my head. This is also perfectly flat, although it looks like the hands have depth.

Now I am back in the museum café, having been delighted to discover that they serve small (20 cl) bottles of Schweppes ginger ale. There is so little ginger in ginger ale that I’m sure its effect as an anti-nausea remedy is 95% placebo, but placebos can be powerful, especially the ones that take you back to your childhood bedroom, sipping from a Dixie cup of ginger ale your mom has given you to soothe your stomach.

It’s our last day in Europe. I was waiting for a bus to take me to the National Tile Museum, when I began to feel increasingly sick to my stomach. I headed back to the apartment and got there just in time.

While my body was hunched miserably, my mind ran the inventory, as they do in this situation: what did I eat this morning? Nothing but oatmeal and mint tea! What could be wrong there? And it came to me: I made the oatmeal with the last of the almond milk. The almond milk that’s been in the half-fridge whose door doesn’t shut properly so that nothing gets very cold. The door that we discovered open a couple of inches when we got home last night, to an apartment that was in the mid 80s at least. Yeah.

I hope it was that, anyway, and not some bug that’s going to be with me for the next 36 hours, because I’m going to spend a lot of those in taxis and planes and I really, really do not want to be traveling while sick.

I’m recuperating and hoping I’ll be able to go to the museum a little later. In the meantime, I’ve sprinkled this post with some of the tiles from the buildings in the neighborhood.