Reading Lolita in Tehran This is one of those books that people tell you is really great, and you think “yeah, yeah, a book group in Tehran … sounds interesting.” I don’t know where we all got the idea that this book is about a book group of the sort we know here … a sort of hen night where a bunch of women get together and after a desultory discussion of the book at hand, retreat into drinks and gossip and general social activity. This book is not about that kind of book group. This book is about women…
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Blog in Progress I loved my old template, but alas, with my new laptop, I can hardly read the text … it’s a very faint grey and my poor eyes were having a terrible time with it. So, for the next couple of days I’ll be fussing with the template. I know, change is hard … but after my Powerbook died on me last week, I’m in that state where one must get used to a lot of computer change all at once. That said, I must admit I love my new iBook — it’s so tiny, so compact, so…
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Snow on the Lilacs Good thing I didn’t plant the tomatoes on Friday, when the sun was shining, when it was 70 degrees and my apple trees were blooming and the lilacs were this close to opening. Good thing because today it’s snowing. Snowing like winter, big fat wet flakes falling outside my window, two inches on the lawn, and the poor lilacs are all bent over from the load. Everything will be fine, this is expected, it’s Montana after all, and although the official last frost date was yesterday, the 17th, everyone knows that if you put your tomatoes…
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The Perfect Yellow My living room is now the most perfect, Provencal, mustard yellow … actually the color is called “Golden Pollen.” Since this is an old house, there are beautiful old oak moldings and window trim in this room, moldings that remind me of my grandmother’s farmhouse in Illinois (sadly torn down now, but it was really getting pretty unsafe), and against the yellow paint, they look even warmer and more lovely than they did before when the room was painted in 25-year-old flat off-white paint. And with a coat of fresh paint, the, shall we say, topographical element…
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Spelling for a Cure There’s a woman in town who has cancer. Since she’s your basic writer/musician/storyteller, and since she lives in the good old USA where if you don’t work for a big corporation you’re hosed, she has no health insurance. And now she has cancer. So what did the good citizens of Livingston do? Had a spelling bee. A spelling bee that put the local writers on the spot. So at seven o’clock last night, there they were: Elwood Reid, Tim Cahill, Thomas Goltz, Diane Smith, Alston Chase, Jim Liska, and a bunch of other people who I…
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Music Madness at LivingSmall Music– I’m in a music zone. I am not one of those people who buys CDs on a regular basis. In fact, I’m one of those annoying people who plays the same CD over and over and over again — which is one of the many reasons it’s good that I live alone. However, every year when the Oxford American Magazine Music Issue comes out, I wind up buying a glut of CDs, and this year, the Music Issue happened to coincide with both the death of Nina Simone (go, right now, and read Jeanne d’Arc’s…
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Another Day, Another Garden Bed Woke up this morning to sunshine, which was welcome. Although come to think of it, yesterday was sunny, it was just intermittently snowing and hailing through the sunshine. But this morning, blue skies and happy dogs. A good way to start a Sunday. Planted one more raised bed today. The plastic sheeting over the raised beds seems to be working quite well. This morning when I went to shake the puddles off the two existing beds, I discovered they’d frozen overnight. But underneath, carrots and arugula are sprouting, and the shaky-looking transplants I put in…
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A Perfect Rain We’ve had two days of perfect spring rain. No downpours, just soft, soaking perfect rain. For those of you who don’t live in the West, it’s important to remember that we only get 14.5 inches per year, on average, and the past couple of years we haven’t even gotten that, so the general mood is one of deep relief and nascent hope for a good season this year. Here on my little backyard farm, the pathetic-looking chard and parsley plants I transplanted on Monday are looking good. They like real dirt. They like soft rain. They’re looking…
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Snoopy-dancing All Over The Room Run run run to the nearest good newstand and snatch up a copy of the Oxford American Magazine. This much-beloved Southern Magazine of Good Writing has been resurrected after a hiatus when some of us feared it was gone forever, and is back with the ever-astonishing Music Issue. Fabulous writing and a CD of amazing music. Here’s the playlist: “Why You Been Gone So Long” by Johnny Darrell “Total Destruction to Your Mind” by Swamp Dogg “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” by the Del McCoury Band “La Chanson d’une Fille de Quinze Ans” by Ann Savoy…
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Everybody Likes Cake, Part 2 Yesterday I moved a dumptruck load of compost into my new raised beds. I do not recommend moving a dumptruck load of compost by oneself, especially if one is, as I am, a small-ish woman who is no longer the strong thing she was in her twenties. It was hard. It was really hard and I had to get it all done yesterday because had been dumped in such a way that it blocked open the big gate to the alley. The dogs were pretty good about it, but every once in a while, something…