Can you read this?

 

This is from an 8-page letter Mom wrote in about 1973.  We were living poor in San Diego, and they came down from Washington for a visit. She writes about how nicely I had fixed up our dumpy apartment.

From the time I left home as a teenager until well into my 50's, I would get at least one letter a week from Mom. She did not hold back on personal advice or opinions. 

Sorry to admit, I'd sometimes dread those multi-pagers written on plain notebook paper in her distinctive long hand. Now I'm glad I saved a few. She disliked and never really trusted email.

She was a fast and prolific paper correspondent, writing not just to her kids, but to dozens of other family members and acquaintances across the country. She was known for her fat envelopes filled with pressed flowers, odd clippings and blurry snapshots with "discard" written on the back, which made us laugh. I had no problem deciphering Mom's beautiful but unusual handwriting, having read it my entire life.

Well, they don't teach cursive anymore, and I guess if you can't write it you can't read it! Some of us remember penmanship class (more popular with girls than boys) and the perfect cursive alphabet always posted above the blackboard in grade school.

A friend mentioned that the National Archives is looking for online volunteers who can help transcribe thousands of historical documents written in cursive. By transcribing these digital pages, it makes it easier for young scholars, genealogists and history buffs to access the information. 

I've had lots of practice with cursive, and might look into volunteering. It might be interesting (or dry as dust) depending on the document.

Farewell to January. Soon we find out what the groundhog has in store.  

Have a good weekend.

Downshift

 

I planted a bag of Costco hyacinths last September, and predictably, a squirrel dug one up and just left it laying there. They must dig more from curiosity than anything else. For all their mischief in the garden, I've never seen a chewed bulb. For that matter, hyacinths are poisonous. 

Anyway, it was undamaged so I planted it in a tiny flower pot and brought it inside a few days ago. Nothing smells like a hyacinth in January-- described as "slightly spicy with a hint of jasmine and rose."

Speaking of jasmine, I did a heavy prune (actually, a butchering) on our old one that flops up over the deck railing. It looks like it was chopped by Attila the Hun!  Hopefully, I didn't finish it off.

Like many flowering vines, the hardy jasmine is so exquisite when it blooms, but kind of an invasive pain the rest of the year.

The big home project this spring is replacing the 45-year old deck. Hence the jasmine prune. How many times have I painted those splintering boards on hands and knees? The new deck surface will be composite, yea, which should outlast us. We have a contractor lined up and they start sometime in March. That's exciting.

This morning we woke up to grey and cold instead of sunny and cold. Bean soup for dinner. These times they are a'changin'.

Happy Lunar New Year

 

 

Today is the most important event in the year for billions of people around the world. Lunar New Year represents a fresh start. Goodbye Dragon, hello Snake. 

Common rituals include marathon meals with lucky foods such as dumplings, fish and noodles. 

Many years ago, we were invited to family feast at the home of one of Amanda's friends. What an unforgettable experience, not just the sheer volume of food, but the ritual importance of each dish explained by the host.

Well, coconut shrimp and egg fried rice in this house last night, which hopefully brings some good luck.

 

Fried rice is fun to make, especially because John dices the vegetables with machine precision and everything is prepped. I just have to throw it together. In this case, with a bit of "lucky" leftover ham.

What a strange month in so many ways. My blog followers have surely noticed my obsession with light. How I've enjoyed our precious peek view of the Olympic Mountains, with spectacular winter sunsets night after night. 

Friday will finally bring back the clouds and rain (and a possibility of snow) but this has been the driest January in Seattle since 1985.

Time thoughts

 

 

By the end of his life, Albert Einstein was convinced that linear time didn't exist.  When his friend Michele Besso died in 1955, right before his own death, Einstein wrote the bereaved family:

This is not important. For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.  

This is called the "block universe" theory, meaning that space and time are four-dimensional, rather than unfolding in a linear way, as we like to think of our lives gently passing by in minutes, hours and days. This idea that time is an illusion didn't start with Einstein, although he had the science.

In Parmenides (one of the mind-twisting Dialogs of Plato) they make the argument that there is no such thing as change, because the entire universe is the set of all movements at once. Everything that ever happened, or ever will happen, is happening simultaneously, right now. Smart Greeks.

The Four Quartets, by T.S Eliot, is a complex poem that tackles the great mysteries of time, death and faith. It's one of my favorite poems and considered the culminating achievement of T.S. Eliot's career.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.  

From Burnt Norton, Four Quartets

Sun and music

 

 

 

It was a bright winter weekend in Seattle. The sun angle is at blinding eye level, especially in the car! Sunset is just after 5 o'clock. We are turning the corner up here in the dark lands.

 

On Sunday we met up with friends for coffee at SAM before the Symphony. It was a good program. Midori, the international violin celebrity, played the fiendish Braham's Violin Concerto and made it look like a stroll in the park.

 

In Braham's time, it was famously declared "unplayable" by violin virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski. To bad the old guy couldn't watch this beautiful, petite, middle-aged Japanese American woman whip it out.

Along with a Wagner prelude and Schumann symphony (we got our money's worth) there was a piece composed by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. 

 

What? The famous poet also wrote music? 

No, actually, his mother named him after the writer. But poor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (unlike Samuel Taylor Coleridge) had a short and sad life. 

 

 

But now-- that poem is stuck in this English major's brain.

The beat goes on

 

The West Seattle Ukulele Players have started meeting at a local tavern/restaurant called The Bridge. The enclosed patio is much warmer than the CP Coffehouse patio, which is open to the elements. Hopefully we won't wear out our welcome before spring. 

The bartenders close the door to the inside restaurant so not to annoy the few afternoon drinkers and diners, but the sound of 30 or 40 ukulele players belting out "Jambalaya" does carry.

All the music we play has been airdropped to our iPads over the past two years. What a mess. Even a compulsive librarian has trouble keeping hundreds of singles, various books, song decks, holiday playlists and such organized on the device. 

And new stuff gets airdropped every week, so the situation keeps getting worse. There is much head scratching and tapping screens, as well as bad words spoken to devices while trying to find buried songs. It would be almost impossible for a new person to jump in and figure all this out.

I'm not crazy about playing some of the great rock classics our leader is partial to. For example, the ukulele can't do much for "House of the Rising Sun," or "Desperado." The best part is just being part of this fun group. Ukulele players on the whole are cheerful, friendly and like minded-- a comforting thing in dark and confusing times. 

Have a nice weekend.