I just watched Bette Davis in Jezebel, and I now know the true meaning of "expressive eyes." Vivian Leigh had some mighty stiff competition in the arena of stubborn Southern Belles.
(Also Henry Fonda's pretty studly.)
Monday, July 20, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Tough Love
I was listening to more of my Woods Hole oral history tapes and I have a tidbit to share with all y'all.
This one woman's father, Captain So and So, decided that a great and necessary way to combat the plenitude of poison ivy growing in Woods Hole was to immunize his children using this creative tactic.
He forced them all to eat poison ivy sandwiches. Buttered, of course.
His daughter averred they tasted just like lettuce sandwiches and worked like a charm.
My dad was always pretty neurotic about poison ivy, but he never made us eat it.
This one woman's father, Captain So and So, decided that a great and necessary way to combat the plenitude of poison ivy growing in Woods Hole was to immunize his children using this creative tactic.
He forced them all to eat poison ivy sandwiches. Buttered, of course.
His daughter averred they tasted just like lettuce sandwiches and worked like a charm.
My dad was always pretty neurotic about poison ivy, but he never made us eat it.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Stuck in My Head
Well if you don't like my peaches,
Just let my orchard be.
-- Eilen Jewell, 'If You Catch Me Stealing'
Just let my orchard be.
-- Eilen Jewell, 'If You Catch Me Stealing'
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Journal Entry January 3, 2009 — Ode to a Moleskine
This evening (I wanted to say ‘today’, but it is already dark, and especially so being midwinter) I stopped at Border’s in Concord on my way from Meredith to New Boston.
When I am idle and dissatisfied, bookstores and new journals have a lure for me that is less powerful in sunny days of content employment and companionship. As you can see, I bought a Moleskine, despite my aversion to anything potentially pretentious or cliche. “The notebook Hemingway wrote in!” the sticker boasts. As if one could leech genius through similarly-patterned paper.
I don’t believe that’s true any more than I believe buying an overpriced cappuccino at Cafe de Flore makes you anything like Sartre. Or that walking in the New Hampshire woods on a snowy evening brings you closer to Robert Frost. If anything, such copycat behavior simply displays your unoriginality and desperation.
I bought a Moleskine because it’s sleek and smells good. The paper is a pleasing shade of papyrus (not blindingly white), and it has a nice, soft, velvety feel. It’s flexible, too, and unostentatious. No fruity quotes, no distracting illustrations. It manages to be both feminine and masculine at the same time, and possesses the capacity to take on the spirit of whoever is scribbling in it.
(something I once wrote in my "real" diary)
The Sound and the Fury
The other day, maybe just yesterday, but time exists on such a weird continuum for me at the moment, I was working in the bookstore. It was a quiet moment, so I had ducked behind one of the shelves and was happily reading an essay out of David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed in Flames, when I heard a very loud and utterly disembodied burst of flatulence. I have not heard a fart of such volume and trumpet-like proportions since the days I spent every other moment with Cliff and the Lewis twins when they were eleven and did such things on purpose.
I half-expected Rodney Dangerfield to materialize in front of our row of Touch-and-Feel books and say "Hey hey, did somebody step on a duck?"
"Wasn't me!" the Kindergartner inside of me wanted to yelp.
But the funny thing about being a grown-up is that you can fart as much as you want and no one's allowed to make fun of you. At least not to your face. At what age, exactly, does that shift happen?
I identified the culprit lurking in the shadows of the "Native American" section, buried guiltily in Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which you know he only picked up to look like he was too busy reading to be the responsible party. Or to pretend he wasn't really more interested in the "Contemporary Teen Series" shelf directly under it that contains Twilight, and Gossip Girl.
I wonder just how much of a breach of customer-service etiquette it would have been to squeal "EEEEWWWW that man FARTED!"
Carol would've probably run me out on a pole.
I half-expected Rodney Dangerfield to materialize in front of our row of Touch-and-Feel books and say "Hey hey, did somebody step on a duck?"
"Wasn't me!" the Kindergartner inside of me wanted to yelp.
But the funny thing about being a grown-up is that you can fart as much as you want and no one's allowed to make fun of you. At least not to your face. At what age, exactly, does that shift happen?
I identified the culprit lurking in the shadows of the "Native American" section, buried guiltily in Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which you know he only picked up to look like he was too busy reading to be the responsible party. Or to pretend he wasn't really more interested in the "Contemporary Teen Series" shelf directly under it that contains Twilight, and Gossip Girl.
I wonder just how much of a breach of customer-service etiquette it would have been to squeal "EEEEWWWW that man FARTED!"
Carol would've probably run me out on a pole.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Traventures
Travel Adventures -- the funny ones
I knew my trip would be interesting from the get-go when, as soon as I arrived at the bus station in Falmouth, I was invited to join a makeshift cab carp00l (cab-pool?) made up mostly of Brits who had learned the bus from Boston was tied up in 4th of July traffic.
Next, while at South Station in Boston, a crazy old lady asked me if I had any extra pants in my suitcase. Not once, but twice. When I told her no for the second time, she shrugged and announced that I was still a nice person because I had let her use my phone. I guess you never know who's going to judge your manners these days.
Next . . . We all went to the Jersey Shore. That's funny enough in itself, right?
Finally, on the way home, I sat next to a man that pulled out tweezers and proceeded to pluck his stray hairs for the duration of the ride.
I do love traveling, especially via public transportation, and I'm not saying that facetiously. You see so much.
I knew my trip would be interesting from the get-go when, as soon as I arrived at the bus station in Falmouth, I was invited to join a makeshift cab carp00l (cab-pool?) made up mostly of Brits who had learned the bus from Boston was tied up in 4th of July traffic.
Next, while at South Station in Boston, a crazy old lady asked me if I had any extra pants in my suitcase. Not once, but twice. When I told her no for the second time, she shrugged and announced that I was still a nice person because I had let her use my phone. I guess you never know who's going to judge your manners these days.
Next . . . We all went to the Jersey Shore. That's funny enough in itself, right?
Finally, on the way home, I sat next to a man that pulled out tweezers and proceeded to pluck his stray hairs for the duration of the ride.
I do love traveling, especially via public transportation, and I'm not saying that facetiously. You see so much.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
A Funny Email
 | Christina N. |
INVITATION OF A LIFETIME
2 messages
| Emma B. | Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:52 AM | |
| To: cn********@gmail.com | ||
| ||
| Christina N. | Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 6:54 PM | |
| To: Emma B. | ||
| ||
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