Pachelbel Bedtime

My friend Sara wrote:
“I am not a particular fan of youtube or cute parental tirades generally, but I rather enjoyed this and thought you people might too.”

I have a bit of a weakness for You Tube myself, in the same vein as some kind of food you think you don’t care for so much, easy enough to resist, but if someone happens to hand you an open package of it and you happen to taste one, you pretty much finish the whole lot of whatever it is—gummi bears or Cheez-its or Girl Scout Thin Mints—in spite of saying with each bite, This is the LAST one.

Anyhow, this song is really quite clever and likeable, the musician talented, and I think it’s about time for more on the rhapsodic end for this blog.

How Sports Can Be Sublime

There’s a lot to be grumpy about out there, the general theme of this blog, but the subtheme, the stuff to rhapsodize over… man, it beats all. It’s when I have things to share like this little You Tube clip from a bicycle race in France that I wish I had a proper lively blog with a big viral audience. This is so inadvertently uplifting! Ah well. Pass this along if you find it as delightful as I did. You don’t need to love or even know cycling, and it’s probably even better if you don’t understand French. Even with the crappy video quality, it’s an etude on the wonderful surpringness of the world. Or if not an etude, some other musical term. Capriccio or something.

C’est beau!

Forgotten Cultural Icon

Remember Euell Gibbons? You’ve got to be of a certain age to recall him hawking Grape Nuts on TV. The author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962) hearkens back to the days when public television called itself “The 21-inch Classroom.” Euell may just have had a show, I don’t know. One of the first “health food nuts” of our times, his Stalking the Wild Asparagus is just the book I need when I think of the uneventful apocalypse ahead, where we have to find our own edible tree bark and make soap from beetles’ wings because the distribution of goods shall have decayed so. He’s got a whole chapter on burdock!

The title has been much riffed on, but I’d completely forgotten it until now, poking through the shelves of my friend’s house in central New Hampshire, where I’m blissfully spending the afternoon doing nothing but drinking tea and reading (and now writing). Toasty on this brisk October day with the sun slanting in the windows, and even the four dogs quiet after our three-hour hike this morning. (Child and husband went on their own camping trip, no dogs allowed.)

While on the topic of reading, I just finished Pere Goriot, the 1834 novel by Honore de Balzac. I do seem to be on the old book kick this year. I read it because a) it has been sitting in my house for 60 years (it came with the house when I moved in) and b) just previously I read an endearing little novel called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. It was a sweet book on a serious topic and I enjoyed it. But it made me realize I had never read any Balzac. I had always admired him though for his reputation, productivity, intriguing name, robust deshabile statue by Rodin, and not least, the fact/story/myth that I’d heard that he drank 60 cups of coffee a day. That is prodigious.

Before the Little Chinese Seamstress, to go yet further back in the conversation monologue, I had read another oldie: Melville Goodwin USA, a 1952 novel by John P. Marquand. I love J.P., and this was the fourth or fifth novel of his I’ve read. Least favorite too, but it wasn’t bad. I’d recommend B.F.’s Daughter over it, or Wickford Point, or his most famous The Late George Appley. (Melville Goodwin, I just discovered, was made into a movie in 1957 called Top Secret Affair.) Before Melville, I finished the previously mentioned Ten Circles Upon the Pond.

Have I wandered enough? Back to my fading afternoon of reading I go. I am loving the come and go of the furnace’s rumble, and the gentle snores of the sacked-out dogs.

A Real Vacation

It wasn’t the 80 degree temperatures, the chirping coqui frogs, or the inimitable Caribbean colors… It was that between self check in and self check-in, I clicked no buttons, did no scrolling, browsing, surfing or blogging, and slapped no mouse. Ahhh. OK, I realize upon closer reflection that it wasn’t that idyllic: I did hit the on and off buttons on the rental car radio and push the camera shutter.But in all, the absence of the tickety-tick of a keyboard was probably the most rejuvenating part of a week in Puerto Rico.

Most surprising was… how little Spanish I spoke.

Most unusual was… swimming with the dinoflagellates in a bioluminescent bay. (Stung by a jellyfish, I didn’t stay in long, but it was cool watching others’ phantasmic sparkly swimmer shapes (despite wondering petulantly, enviously, why they weren’t getting stung).) And seeing shimmery sparks if I rubbed my wet bathing suit.

Most exciting was… driving the high, steep, narrow, guard rail-less little road over the mountains between Fajardo and Ponce. I tried taking pictures but ended up with a portrait of a post and a largely green and unimpressive view of a narrow valley. Couldn’t see the houses perched on the edge of a vertical hill with stilts on the downhill side, or the blind hairpin switchbacks.

Most gratifying was… compliments on a very social 4-year old. Turns out she is a salsa dancing fiend and only cried when we left the dance floor.

Most rigorous was… a 2-ish mile run at Sombe (Sun Bay) Beach (see photo, credit Vieques tourist board). Barefoot. Hot sand. Very hot. Oh, and the salsa dancing with a 4-year old on the hip.

Most annoying was… carelessly applied sunscreen. Many neglected spots and then a nice handprint on my chest where I must have slapped the excess after putting some on someone else.

Most delicious was… food at Chez Shack in the jungly interior of Vieques, as well as the ribs and tostones at the roadside “mini restaurante” along the shores of Lago Dos Bocas. The $1.50 empanadillas at the public beach in Cana Gorda were not bad either.

Biggest relief was… getting home after a week of no news to see we had not gone to war with any new dreamed-up foes.

Rhapsodic Juggling

I don’t know Chris Bliss, but that’s a perfect name for him. He does a stupendous juggling routine, made the more affecting by its rapturousness. Warning: It’s over four minutes long and the link launches right into it. There are links to some stand-up routines alongside.