Sheep study, Q. Cassetti. 2010, digital.Luckystone is being swamped with rain. The cats are circling, looking for a warm spot to twist themselves into to ride out this Noah inspired deluge.There are branches on the roads, willows bent over and the water, coming down in sheets, also is rough and tumble—and high, in the lake. Chet, the Lawnmower man would refer to this sort of rain as a “soaker” which, to someone who loves and works with grass is imperative to the greening of the ground…and keeping it green versus the tan straw that often happens by August.
The temperatures, as they often do mid August onward, keep getting incrementally cooler that multiple layers are not out of the question, and the anticipation of thick sweaters and heavy socks do not seem too much of a stretch. But cool and wet are Chet’s friends, so the grass will be green as we roll into September, the change of seasons, the start of schools and the shoulder to winter. In this spirit of autumn, I made up a big pot of Restoration Soup, otherwise known as Recycled Soup (comprising of left over corn, tomatoes, sausage, noodles, beans with seasonings) to prepare for the hoards that are going to descend on us this week with the deconstruction of the back walkway and the finalizing of the backwall behind our woodfired range. From no action to action immediately. So my group of 6 for lunch is now jumping to 9-10 and I need to recalibrate to accomodate.
We spent the morning talking with a friend and making plans for an interesting and very important project on the horizon. Soon, you will hear about the content, but not until I have it better in my sights and understanding…and how to grapple with it creatively to package it beautifully, compellingly and memorably to galvanize support, awareness and better understanding among all of us who now (moi aussi) are naively waiting for “it” to happen…and it already has. So, get ready to buckle down with me… More on that front later.
I was the shuttle bus yesterday for Alex…picking up and delivering. I got the raspberries in the freeze and did a quick shot at the Shur Save (Savior) and loaded up a cooler with the goods. Kitty and Rob and I went to Target and did some college shopping (with the rest of the world) and was stunned by the stacks of $29. microwaves, bookshelves, towering stacks of plastic totes. All the cheap stuff was wiped out with all the new apartments and dorm rooms being furnished that I was really glad we had done a bit of this earlier—and only had the health and beauty stuff to buy. Absolute insanity. The televisions were amazingly priced ( I guess one needs a personal tv to go with your microwave for college…note to self: you should pay extra to go to Hampshire as in room tvs are forbidden). And the shelves to the tvs were scoured as well. New world for this mom. Jeez.
I am reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: David Mitchell reinvents himself with each book, and it’s thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact. In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he harnesses that plenitude into a more traditional form, a historical novel set in Japan at the turn into the 19th century, when the island nation was almost entirely cut off from the West except for a tiny, quarantined Dutch outpost. Jacob is a pious but not unappealing prig from Zeeland, whose self-driven duty to blurt the truth in a corrupt and deceitful trading culture, along with his headlong love for a local midwife, provides the early engine for the story, which is confined at first to the Dutch enclave but crosses before long to the mainland. Every page is overfull with language, events, and characters, exuberantly saturated in the details of the time and the place but told from a knowing and undeniably modern perspective. It’s a story that seems to contain a thousand worlds in one. —Tom Nissley
I agree with Mr. Nissley. Its a gem. Maybe its an Audible book too. Could be good as a listen to.