Spring Equinox

The 2008 Spring Equinox is today, March 20. I decided to sit out in the backyard with Samba on my lunchbreak so we both could enjoy the fresh air and sunshine (60 degrees!!). I noticed some crocus in full bloom in our neighbor’s backyard and took some pictures. Here are two of the images in honor of the equinox.

Message in a Bottle

— from How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch

Imagine you have gone down to the shore and there, amidst the other debris — the seaweed and rotten wood, the crushed cans and dead fish — you find an unlikely looking bottle from the past. You bring it home and discover a message inside. This letter, so strange and disturbing, seems to have been making its way toward someone for a long time, and now that someone turns out to be you. The great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, destroyed in a Stalinist camp, identified this experience. “Why should’t the poet turn to his friends, to those who are naturally close to him?” he asked in “On the Addressee.” But of course those friends aren’t necessarily the people around him in daily life. They may be the friends he only hopes exist, or will exist, the ones his words are seeking. Mandelstam wrote:

At a critical moment, a seafarer tosses a sealed bottle into the ocean waves, containing his name and a message detailing his fate. Wandering along the dunes many years later, I happen upon it in the sand. I read the message, note the date, the last will and testament of one who has passed on. I have the right to do so. I have not opened someone else’s mail. The message in the bottle was addressed to its finder. I found it. That means, I have become its secret addressee.

Thus it is for all of us who read poems, who become the secret addressees of literary texts. I am at home in the middle of the night and suddenly hear myself being called, as if by name. I go over and take down the book — the message in the bottle — because tonight I am its recipient, its posterity, its heartland.

White Grackles, Roasted Greenbeans, and Georgene Lockwood

I don’t generally go in for The Complete Idiot’s Guide series, but came across Georgene Lockwood’s TCIG Simple Living book at Half-Price last weekend and was so impressed with it (after a cursory examination) I decided to give it a try. Oh, along with five other books. I realize having tons of books is not necessarily the best approach to simple living, but according to Georgene Lockwood we each have to find our own way...

One exercise she recommends (lots of exercises) is to keep track, on a daily basis, of three things to be grateful for, which, she acknowledges, sounds kind of hokey. Why not? Here are my three things for yesterday.

1. On my lunch break (it was a work from home day), I saw this splendid albino grackle on our feeding tray. I have heard of these before, but have not seen one. It was a very striking bird.



Here is a normal grackle for comparison.



2. I decided to choose roasted green beans for my second item. It is amazing how delicious, healthy, and easy to prepare these are. Of course, you need fresh green beans. Cut off the ends with a paring knife, toss them with a bit of olive oil and kosher salt on a large baking sheet, and then roast them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, turning them with a spatula at 10 minute intervals. Some beans cook faster, some slower, so you want to keep an eye on them until you have some experience with this. They taste better than french fries and are more healthy. We have gotten in the habit of roasting most vegetables. At least, it is a cooking technique we use for them about 75-80% if the time. They taste great and retain more vitamins and minerals (which aren’t leached away by cooking water, etc.).



3. Reading Georgene L’s book was my third grateful choice.

Part of the exercise is that you can't repeat items -- you have to think of new ones each day.

If I were going to pick a fourth item, it would be seeing a female cowbird in our backyard yesterday morning. We haven't seen one since last fall. She is probably hoping to find some early nest to lay an egg in. (Cowbirds don’t make their own nests. They lay eggs in the nests of other birds and let them do the hard work. I hope she chooses a starling's nest.)

Stashing Books

I was inspired to post a few bookcase pictures after reading this post about treacherous book piles on Eliose by the Book Piles, one of my favorite reading blogs. Elly and I have been in our home for nearly 20 years. We have gutted the house and completely rehabbed it. Well, not quite completely. I figure we’ll have the job finished in maybe another 20 years...

Here are the first bookcases we built. Believe it or not, the previous owners ripped out the fireplace and everything else on this wall. (You have to wonder about previous owners, sometimes.) Fortunately, we were able to find a period fireplace mantle appropriate for our home. Comparing it with other fireplaces in the neighborhood, it is difficult to believe it isn’t original. Anyway, we built out the entire chimney wall and then added the built-in bookcases. This picture was taken last fall after Elly and her mom did fall theme arrangements for the living room. The illumination is very warm tungsten lighting, and I haven’t gone to great lengths to color correct it so the actual shade of yellow is a lot milder than how it appears here!



We worked a lot of books, including Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, etc. onto the dresser in our bedroom, which is more or less done in Empire style. We’re planning to add additional Sherlock Holmes touches to the room. The small set in front is a delightful edition of Washington Irving.



The rest of these are quick and dirty attic bookcase projects. Converting one of our rooms into an actual library is on the project list for this year, as soon as we finish our day room and laundry room (but that is another post).

We made these bookcases of MDF (Medium Density Fiber board) which is inexpensive and readily available from U.S. home improvement centers. One trick is to use sheet metal screws instead of wood screws to attach the shelves to the case sides. Wood screws taper and will split the MDF material. Sheet metal screws are cylindrical and don’t cause this problem. It is still a good idea to predrill though. I cut spacers out of scrap to set the height of each shelf from the next lower shelf, which made the job go very quickly.



I used 1/4-inch hardboard for the backs, and attached them with a bradnailer (which took about 60 seconds per unit). This is quite sturdy. Dados or any sort of shelf support are not necessary, but the cases must be narrow to prevent sagging. These are about 24-inches wide.

Here are several shelves thrown up with little ceremony over an attic work table. We used premade particle board (Low Density Fiber board) shelving and metal brackets. Because of the way the original stud wall was constructed, we couldn’t put a bracket in the middle, which causes the shelves to sag as you can see.



Here is the view down the attic staircase, one side of which is lined with book shelves built from the same premade particle board shelving, which comes in different widths. The shelves are quite long, maybe 8 or 10 feet. The shelf brackets are more appropriately spaced, so there is no sagging. The bookcases on the landing are made from birch plywood and were more complicated and deeper. Were we building them again, we would probably go the MDF route.

The MDF bookcases were built one weekend over two afternoons. The staircase shelves were installed in about two hours. An advantage of installing shelves in a little-used area is they don’t require elaborate finishing, which generally makes them quick and easy to install. Not to mention less expensive.

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

After thinking this over for a while, I decided I did not want a letter to Richard Dawkins on my blog. Yuck!

Instead, I’m working on a longish rant about all the blunders Dawkins makes concerning Einstein’s ideas about religion. I plan to post it on my website, and will include a link to it from here. I’m still hacked about his rediculous claim to be a member of “Einstein’s camp” in his interview with Terry Gross, aired on NPR’s Fresh Air, March 8, 2008. Einstein vehemently denied being an atheist and noted that the intolerance of fanatical atheists is of the same kind as that of the religious fanatics. Another thing he got right!

The Importance of Books

“...books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or exite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life — wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.” (p. 15)

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Exquisite Spell

“‘Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it,’ Emily Dickinson said. One reason I like staying up to read long after everyone else has gone to sleep is that in the middle of the night not much conspires to break that spell. I like the dark hour when the secular world recedes and consciousness is loosened for poetic reverie. I have called the poem a soul in action through words because I want to suggest that lyric poetry provides us with a particular means of spiritual transport.”

— Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, p. 250.