Monday, Monday

Loved IN THE HEIGHTS. Maybe a bit dated and a bit predictable. But I also think it is unfair to criticize Miranda for not having a Black enough cast. It's his memory of the neighborhood he grew up in. And there are certainly prominent Black cast members. But the bulk are Hispanic, which reflects his experience. I found it vibrant, lively, joyous and a good movie to return to the movies with. It certainly would not be as much fun watching it on HBO Max.

Enjoyed watching the making of the cast album for COMPANY on Criterion. Elaine Stritch is a stitch in it. Watching the cast sing Sondheim's songs you really see how difficult the lyrics are. I've never seen COMPANY performed (it is a rarity, I guess). I have seen SUNDAYS IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, ASSASSINS, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and INTO THE WOODS.

Also watched THE DRY on Amazon Prime. I think there is one too many twists in it and the makers didn't take enough time with the drought, but it was a solid crime movie IMHO.

I attended a concert in a tent as part of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Concert. Wonderful music by Mendelssohn and Brahms. Christina Goerke brought so much feeling and joy to her singing. 

Just finished THE PUSH, which was sort of like THE BAD SEED except it looks at three generations of women who eventually produce a murderous child. Or do they? Is it nature or nurture? A page-turner.

The Detroit Free Press ran an article on restaurants with decks on Lake St. Clair or the Detroit River. So a friend and I drove across town around 1:30 thinking we would sail in. The place was packed and it's a large place. We could only see the lake if we stood in the parking lot. But we had a nice lunch. We ordered a lobster roll and they told us lobsters wouldn't be available to mid-July. Maybe they have a chip in them too. 

Anyway, what's with you?

Happy Father's Day.

 

FFB: THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED RIPLEY, Patricia Highsmith

 From the archives

 Charlie Stella's review

THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED RIPLEY, Patricia Highsmith

Hedonism or Good Deed Doing?

Dark without gratuitous violence and as existential as it gets, The Boy Who Followed Ripley was (and remains) a wonderful Patricia Highsmith psychological thriller that makes the reader wonder yet again just what it is that motivates her wonderfully dark creation, Tom Ripley. If he’s supposed to be just another hedonist, it doesn’t show in this brilliant offering. Tom shows signs of genuine humanity when dealing with a runaway young man (Frank Pierson, age 16) who has crossed the ocean in flight from patricide (after shoving his wheelchair bound, very wealthy, dear old dad off a cliff).

Never mind the spoilers here, amici; this book is too good not to read (although I’ll do my best to leave you somewhat hanging). This Ripley installment takes place during the Carter (here) Chirac (there) years when Tom is married to a wealthy young French woman (Heloise) and living in France in Ripley’s estate (Belle Ombre). Tom still deals in the world of high end art (frauds and otherwise) and hasn’t lost his sense of survival (at any cost). Whether or not he’s a sociopath is a good question since he thinks/discusses his past murders (yeah, plural) as if he were thinking/talking about cars he’s owned. Although his first and most famous murder, that of Dickie Greenleaf, can at times still haunt Tom, it’s not like he regrets clubbing the rich S.O.B. to death (although let me point out that he does, in fact, regret clubbing a Mafioso, one of his later murders, to the same end).

Ripley is the ultimate survivor who once had nothing more than a suitcase and some clothes, but by book four, through a combination of cold blooded murder(s), an ability to adapt and learn, connections earned through his reputation and (no doubt) a ton of luck, now has everything.

So why take up with this kid who has sought him out from across the Atlantic? Ah, there’s the rub. Has he suddenly become, as the man behind the curtain once put it, a “good deed doer”? Or does Tom see some of himself in young Frank Pierson, a boy who wasn’t exactly crazy about his father but didn’t hate him either; a boy who just might have spotted a golden opportunity when dear old dad was taking his usual gander at a sunset from his favorite spot a few feet from a deadly drop to the rocks way down below.

Tom decides to help the boy evade his family for a few days and puts him up until a pair of suspicious characters he thinks might be kidnappers appear on the scene. Tom then takes Frank to Berlin in an attempt to evade the pursuit of those potential bad guys and the detective the Pierson family has hired to find young Frank. One can only assume it’s a temporary game Tom is involved in; perhaps he misses the intrigue of a life on the run or maybe it’s the potential danger of having his name splashed across the headlines once more in his controversial life, but help Frank Mr. Ripley does (with the caveat that the boy will return to America and his family and the girlfriend Frank is not quite sure really likes him).

A few days on the seamier side of Berlin with some wild nights in a few gay bars, some dealings with people living on the fringe and then a kidnapping and what to do about it makes The Boy Who Followed Ripley a thoroughly entertaining read which will probably find you returning to book one in the series in an attempt to understand this wonderfully complex character who seems to know how to get things done (whatever the cost) and barely flinches in doing so.

There’s more to the story following the kidnapping. The world of Ripley doesn’t portend many happy endings and I’m not about to let you in on the secret(s), but at least in this adventure we can sense Tom’s heart does in fact beat almost, not quite, like the rest of ours.

I never would have thought I could so thoroughly enjoy a crime novel where I had to search for curse words and/or graphic violence, but it’s back to book one in the series for this reader. Highsmith’s Ripley is a mesmerizing character fully deserving of our attention (in whatever order we read him).

Short Story Wedneday: Black Country, Charles Beaumont

 

Charles Beaumont published "Black Country" in PLAYBOY MAGAZINE in 1954. It was their first short story. He also wrote 21 episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Tragically he died in his thirties of a dementia-related illness. 

"Black Country" is the story of a jazz group, led by Spoof Collins, The story begins with his burial, his horn and music is buried with him. Spoof had hired a white kid (Sonny) who played a sax and a female pianist/singer (Rose), integrating the group because they played so well. Of course, sex enters the picture and so does the illness that will eventually kill him. And then comes racism as Sonny tells Spoof to take his black hands off of Rose. Spoof falls to pieces and eventually dies. 

What makes this a ghost story of sorts is the effect of the buried horn and the buried man on Sonny after Spoof's death. This is a story that succeeds more on its terrific ambiance and sense of place than your belief in the plot. You can read it here. https://silo.pub/charles-beaumont-black-country.html

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

George Kelley

Monday, Monday

Has been a rather strange week. Very hot for June. I had dental surgery and had a bad reaction to the antibiotics. I have also had periods of dizziness. I think I may have that issue with ear crystals again. Or a sinus infection. I hate to try and fix it alone because you have to do things with your head hanging off of the bed and I am always afraid I will do damage. Or fall on my head. 

It seems somewhat better today. 

On the plus side I got out quite a bit to restaurants and my son's house so I was never alone for a whole day. Kevin finished eighth grade and will be playing tennis every day this summer. And taking driver's ed. Gulp. As an incoming freshman, he reads three books over the summer: ANIMAL FARM, INTO THIN AIR and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME. He had choices on the second two.

I am really in the doldrums on finding a good book for me right now although three await me at the library. On TV, LUPIN is back and I have been watching SWEET TOOTH. Finished HACKS, which I liked a lot. I rewatched Alda's THE FOUR SEASONS and found it horrible. I remember liking it at the time but now it was unconvincing that these people would be friends or married. It was just so dull. The only interesting character was Sandy Dennis' because she was not such a generic forty-something.

I finished my story for Lawrence Block's anthology on stories with games in them. He accepted it and now I have to find something else to write. If my head stops spinning that is. 

What about you? 

FFB: THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM, David Thomson

Ed Gorman's review from the archives.

I like to read while I eat. Lately I've been working my way through David Thomson's enormous Biographical Dictionary of Film at lunch time. Thomson is the most interesting and entertaining film critic since Pauline Kael--and every bit as frustrating. When I disagree with him, I want to all him up and read him his rights--before violating every one of them.

Today I read his take on Edmond O'Brien. Thomson notes going in that movie stars aren't supposed to sweat. That makes them too much like everybody in the audience. Part of movie stardom is inaccessibility, fantasy. But what a clever hook because beefy O'Brien sweated all the time, especially in his most memorable movie DOA. He was also fat, frequently out of breath, devoutly neurotic and often frightened. He was, in other words, pretty much like the people in the darkness watching him on the big screen. An Everyman of sorts.

In the course of his entry on O'Brien, Thomson makes clear that he enjoys the odd-ball actors and actresses far more than he does the stars. Thus he finds Warren Oates vastly more compelling than Robert Redford and Jeff Goldblum more intriguing than Paul Newman.

When I was a kid I rarely wondered about the lives of the stars. But I was always curious about character actors such as Elisha Cook, Jr. and J. Carrol Nash. There was a vitality to their performances that the stars were rarely capable of matching. And in the case of Cook, there was a melancholy and weariness that I recognized even then as being much like my own.

Same with the women. The ones I was always excited about were the second- and third-leads. They were the ones I got crushes on. They were often as pretty as the leading ladies, sometimes even prettier. And they frequently had more interesting roles, the bitch, the tart, the victim.

Barry Gifford once remarked that when you see a musical with all those young gorgeous girl dancers you have to wonder what became of them. The majority probably became housewives; more than a few probably took to the streets as parts became harder and harder to come by; and a lucky handful became the wives of powerful Hollywood men.

I've been watching a lot of silent films of TCM and the same impulse grabs me then, too. Who were they? What happened to them? Did they know they'd become immortal? A full century later I sit in our family room and watch them as--most likely anyway--another century from now people will still be watching them. This is probably heresy of sorts but to me film immortality is far more imposing than literary immortality.

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Here We Are in Paradise" Tony Earley

 

This is the title story from the first collection from Tony Earley. Most of the stories appeared in  literary journals. The couple in this story is the most ordinary of mid-twentieth century couples. The writing is plain, which well suits this couple. 

The story begins with Vernon Jackson purchasing a flock of ducks to place on the pond on the land he has bought. His wife would prefer he puts a house there but instead it's a mobile home. He has no reason to think ducks something his wife wants and in fact, he seems to know little about her despite their long marriage. She is sick now and he thinks they can sit outside at night and watch their ducks, wings cut so they can't escape. 

The story traces their meeting at a softball game where Vernon is the star pitcher. Pitching seems to be his one skill and it is enough to attract the young woman. But he has never bothered to get to know his wife, which she realizes late in their marriage. Yet, he treats her well, if without much thought, and it is hard to think ill of him. 

It is hard not to think that many marriages were like this one. They are no children and this was a further impediment to closeness since they can't seem to talk about it. There is no doubt Vernon loves his wife and little doubt she does not love him but is stuck in a marriage that just happened to her.

I have read countless stories like this over the years. All of Earley's stories could be novels and yet I think he says all that he wants to say in under 8000 words. I also read his novel JIM, THE BOY, which was excellent. 

Kevin TIpple

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Richard Robinson 

Rich Horton

Still Here

 

Although there were some men at the protest against gun violence on Saturday at noon, it was mostly women. And the approving beeps from passing cars were mostly from Black Americans or women.  Anyway, nice to see a racially mixed crowd supporting it.

Finally getting around to BERLIN BABYLON, which looks great although I do find it tiring to read on my TV. But the dubbed version was wretched. Couldn't they use people with German accents at least?Also still watching THE HANDMAID's TALE and IN TREATMENT. MARE OF EASTTOWN ended very well. I am tempted to rewatch it because it would have been a better show if watched more quickly than once a week. So many characters.

Also watched BELLS ARE RINGING on Criterion this week. Lovely little movie from 1960. Also watched MIDNIGHT RUN, which I remembered as funnier than it was.  

I have about given up on my book club book THE OVERSTORY. I am very sympathetic to its aims but it is too long for me and the characters too similar. I am also reading a book about the making of the film GIANT. Not sure I will stay with that either. It is not a movie I have much feeling for. 

Just seems to be one of those periods when I drift from book to book and don't finish a lot of them. 

Went for a walk at Cranbrook Gardens. It was gorgeous. Cranbrook has been a place where a lot of famous architects and designers have spent time. It is also a splendid school for the very wealthy. There is an art museum, a planetarium, a science building and lots of gardens and trails. It costs $35,000 a year for a sixth grader.

About 2o% of people in a upscale grocery story yesterday were not wearing masks. I guess we will find out if we are being to hasty in our retreat. It is more difficult to wear masks in 90 weather for sure. 

What are you all up to?

 

 

FFB: THE PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER

 (from the archives)

Reviewed by Quinn Cummings

Quinn Cummings is the author of Notes from the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

I don't know why short stories have withered as an art form. Really, they couldn't be more modern. All the pleasure of eavesdropping on the table behind you, only with a good editor. In the modern arena where we're all gladiators competing to see who has the shortest attention span and the most to do, what could be better than a beginning,a middle and an end in the time it takes the plumber to snake the bathroom drain?

And if you're going to read short stories, you're going to want to read Dorothy Parker. Even if you don't think you know Dorothy Parker, I'll bet you do. Men don't make passes...

If you just thought, ...at girls who wear glasses, you know a little Dorothy Parker. If you're a bookish type (And we know you are; you're reading this) you probably know she wrote for The New Yorker and the Constant Reader, was the Clever Girl in Manhattan in the 20's and 30's, was the Hermione Granger at the Algonquin Round Table.

Some of her stories are funny. Some are snorting-into-your-sleeve funny; my mother gave me "The Waltz" to read when I was eleven and I can't think of a better gateway drug to Ms. Parker. "From the Diary of a New York Lady" gleefully exposes the stupidity and lack of self-awareness of a society dame, some primordial Paris Hilton. But while I've never turned down Dorothy in high humor, the stories which have stayed with me were her more serious stories, which inevitably circle around how people, knowingly and unknowingly, hurt one another. Her serious short stories have the precision of Flaubert and the scrupulous attention to detail of an autopsy. I don't wish people pain, so I'm not pleased Ms. Parker had a well-documented difficult romantic life. Having said that, there have been times in my dating life where I thought back to some moment or sentence from a story of hers and thought, "Oh. That's what she was talking about" and felt oddly mollified if not exactly happy. Her stories are clear and bright, very much of their era but also timeless. They are excellent company which fits in your purse.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Little Stranger" Gene Wolfe

 

I have a friend who always cites Gene Wolfe as his favorite writer and I have been meaning to read a story by him for years. "The Little Stranger" is the story of an elderly woman, living alone, who hears her house moaning most nights. No one can locate the source of the problem. She writes about it to a now-dead friend and in fact, it is through her letters to him that we follow the story. 

(This is a story hard to describe without giving things away) But I will try. The woman decides that if she were to add a small house to her property, the moaning might disappear. (You can never follow her logic in this tale) When a caravan breaks down outside her house, she strikes a deal with the family that if they build the house for her, they can stay on her land until they fix their caravan (good deal for her!)

The question is: is she a witch? The people in the caravan never come out ahead in their bargaining. But it's not clear that she does any real harm, even when  two children named Hank and Greta turn up. I enjoyed this story but it would not make me cite Wolfe as my favorite writer. It is a bit too circuitous and vague for my taste. 

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Matt Paust 

Richard Robinson 

Todd Mason

First Wednesday Book Review: KLARA AND THE SUN, Kazuo Ishiguro

I am blaming myself for not enjoying this book more. And I am greatly in the minority Although it is a glum book that is not the reason why. I am not sure what the reason is because I am a great fan of NEVER LET ME GO and REMAINS OF THE DAY. 

It shares a lot of DNA with NLMG. They are both set in the future and deal with the sacrifices some make for others. In this case, Klara is an AF. Artificial friends are mostly purchased for teenagers, to help them through those early difficult years 12-15. Klara is an especially intuitive AF and is purchased for a girl who suffers from an unnamed illness. Her mother is dubious about Klara at first but comes to rely on her advice and help. Klara turned out to be the character I most understood in the book. The humans were far more opaque. Of course, the story is told from her point of view, which always makes a character more sympathetic. 

Klara doesn't see the world quite as we do nor does she understand a lot of what she sees. She invests the sun, for instance, with mystical powers. 

Do you ever go back and reread a book that you didn't much care for at first and find your opinion changed? This has happened with books I read in high school and college. Books that were forced on me.  

For more First Wednesday book reviews, see Barrie Summy.

Some of the areas that need work

 

The only difficult one is the large circle one, second on here. It has a lot of perennials and a lot of weeds. 

I got an app for my phone called Picture This so I wouldn't pull out flowers thinking they are weeds.

Phil chose this house because he thought he could do a lot of great gardening. Now I feel obliged to try and keep it up.

Still Here

I had a very nice two week trip to VA, MD, DC and DE. Great weather. Mostly we walked in gardens because the museums were just opening. My brother and his family are moving to FL so it may be the last time I go to VA at least.  Lewes is a very nice town on the ocean although it was too cold to really do more than walk on the beach. Great meals though. Lots of fish, of course.

Now I am knee-deep in gardening and it really is too much for me. There are beds everywhere that need lots of weeding and planting. I ordered 8 bags of mulch not realizing how heavy they are. Oh, well, there's always next year. 

Reading KLARA AND THE SUN, which I am not enjoying much sadly. The flat writing style he uses for his AI characters seems to be catching because the human characters use it too. 

I did enjoy Megan's book, THE TURNOUT, which is getting great prepublication reviews. It comes out in August.She will be doing a virtual tour that I will post on here before it happens. Also reading THE OVERSTORY for my book group.

Still enjoying FOR ALL MANKIND and just started THE FRENCH VILLAGE. IN TREATMENT looks promising. Hpefully MARE ended well last night. Also found a show called LOUDERMILK with Ron Livingstone on Prime, which is pretty good. 

I am going to get hearing aids. Anyone have any recommendations for me?

And what about you?
 

 

Short Story Wednesday, "The Best of Everything," Richard Yates

 

Richard Yates wrote two of my favorite novels, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE EASTER PARADE, but he also wrote this fabulous collection of ten short stories (among others). Written in the fifties "The Best of Everything" almost seems like a story written earlier. Were people in their twenties this naive? This innocent? I have to assume some were.

It is the story of a couple on the day before their marriage is to take place in Atlantic City. The point of view switches between the two of them and you can't help but notice how drastically different they are from each other once you are in their heads. You also realize they don't know each other at all and that their marriage will probably fail quickly. 

The woman is a typical middle class young woman working as a secretary. She speaks well and is respected in her office. The man is a step or two down the socioeconomic ladder and has a poor grasp of English, which the woman's roommate makes her constantly aware of, calling he and his friends, "Ratty little clerks." 

But for whatever reason, Grace goes forward with the marriage plans although we sense her worry. Her roommate, feeling badly about the things she has said about Eddie, leaves her alone the night before the wedding and Grace plans an early consummation, feeling this will set things right.

But Eddie has been the man of the hour with his friends at a bachelor party and he is stunned by their good will. You get the feeling he has never been the center of attention before this night. He hurries to Grace's apartment to tell her he is going back to the party and her attempt to seduce him goes to naught.

We understand now that Eddie will always choose his friends over his wife and that will destroy their marriage quickly. She goes so far to put his hand on her naked breast. Nothing.

There is a lot of discussion online about this story. One teacher said it was the cause of a female student in his class dumping her boyfriend. Yates' real gift here is capturing the mind and language of both characters so clearly and with sympathy. Eddie is not a bad man and Grace is not a snob, but they certainly don't belong together. They seem to have reached an age when they believe it is time to marry no matter to who.

Here is a nice piece by Stewart O'Nan pondering the fate of the writing of Richard Yates. He had an unhappy life and an undeserved disappearance from the shelves. His resurgence in the early nineties quickly died out. A real shame.

I will be back in three weeks with more short story reviews but don't let that stop you. 

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

TracyK

George Kelley  

Matt Paust

Still Here

 Megan has been here for a few days and what a gift that is after 16 months. We saw a fairly bad movie (NOBODY), went out to lunch, went out to dinner, had dinner at Josh's house, and had a pedicure, my first ever. Also watched 1934's DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY with Frederic March, what a strange film.

Crazy about the Apple TV series FOR ALL MANKIND. Odd to feel affection for an alternative history of the space program but it is so interesting to envision the changes that would happen if the Russians had landed on the moon first. 

 Back into the horror show of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. My interest is waning.

Been listening to a lot of the music (soundtracks) of Nicholas Britell (Succession, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) 

I will be a bit sparse here for the next two weeks. 

What's happening with you?

FFB-SQUEEZE PLAY, Paul Benjamin (Paul Auster)

(From the archives 2009)

Kent Morgan writes a sports column for a paper in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but spends most of his time puzzling over what to do with all the books piled on his furniture and floor and stored in his garage. More bookcases are not the answer as he has no room for them.

Squeeze Play - Paul Benjamin - Avon 1984

Five years ago third baseman George Chapman had an Alex Rodriguez-type season as the New York Americans won the World Series. Unlike Rodriguez, he seemed to be the perfect hero at a time New York City was dealing with strikes and political scandals. The following February his career came to an end when he lost his left leg following a car accident in upstate New York. He disappeared from sight for awhile, but then returned to the limelight as an advocate for the handicapped. Now a possible candidate for a US senate seat, Chapman contacts PI Max Klein as he has received a letter threatening blackmail and possible death. The pair played college baseball against each other and after graduation from Columbia, Klein worked as a lawyer in the D.A.'s office before switching to his career as a gumshoe. Klein's law school friend Chip Contini, the son of east coast mob head Victor Contini, recommended Klein to Chapman. Chapman claims he has no idea what he has done that could lead to blackmail or why anyone would want to kill him. Squeeze Play turns out to be a pretty routine PI novel with Klein getting beat up several times by thugs who he believes work for the older Contini. Chapman is found dead early in the book and soon his attractive widow, who had a rocky relationship with her husband, is making a play for Klein.

The author actually is Paul Benjamin Auster, who went on to write several novels loved by the critics including the New York Trilogy: City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), The Locked Room (1987), which have been described as "surreal variations of the urban detective story." Auster supposedly wrote this book while living in France in the 1970s during a period that he needed money. While the Avon edition often is listed as a paperback original and offered at high prices by book dealers, an earlier edition was published in 1982. In his memoir, Hand to Mouth; a Chronicle of Early Failure (1997), Auster does not identify the publisher and writes, "production of my novel dragged on for two years. By the time it was printed, he had lost his distributor, had no money left, and to all intents and purposes was dead as a publisher. A few copies made it into a few New York bookstores, hand-delivered by the publisher himself, but the rest of the edition remained in cardboard boxes, gathering dust on the floor of a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn. For all I know, the books are still there."

Andy McCue, the current president of the Society for American Baseball Research and author of Baseball by the Books: a History and Complete Bibliography of Baseball Fiction (1991), has added to the story. "I have never seen a hardbound copy of Squeeze Play, but do have a 1982 paperback. This could explain the 1982 copyright on the 1984 Avon reprint. The trade-sized paperback has a highly garish pinky/purple cover, with a series of shapes breaking up the cover into several sections, most of them filled with drawings. The drawings are fairly amateurish, as are the production values of the book as a whole. The publisher is listed as Alpha/Omega Book Publishers, Inc. of New York."

An interesting history to a book that likely is not on the radar of anyone other than Auster completists and baseball fiction collectors.

 

Short Story Wednesday: THE DAEMON LOVER, Shirley Jackson

 

This story could be read as a realistic tale of a woman who is jilted on her wedding day. But it is also easy to see it as eerie and unsettling. The story begins with a young woman (age 34) trying to decide what to wear for her wedding that day. Her fiance has come into her life recently and the proposal seems to be unexpected. When the time he was supposed to appear comes and goes, she sets out to find out what befell him. She visits the apartment he claims to live in, the florist where he might have bought flowers, the shoe shine man who might have polished his shoes. Eventually she works her way to a building where someone reported seeing him. On the top floor are two doors. One gives way to a dilapidated room. but she can hear laughter behind the other door. She knocks but no one answers. She returns on occasion to this place but he is never there. 

Was he ever there? Although she claims to be 34, you can easily see her as much older given the way she is treated. I really expected to find out this had all happened fifty years earlier and she was locked into a Groundhog Day scenario. 

Her lover's name is Jamie Harris. Maybe Jackson is establishing a link to this.

"The Daemon Lover", also known as "James Harris", "James Herries", or "The House Carpenter" (Roud 14, Child 243) is a popular Scottish ballad^[1] dating to around 1685.^[2] Roud records the title as A warning for married women and identifies the woman in the song as "Mrs. Jane Reynolds (a west-country-Woman) born near Plimouth who having plighted her troth to a Seaman, was afterwards married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit."^[3]

^{As always the excellent writing carries this story.}  

 

^{Jerry House} 

^{George Kelley} 

^{Richard Robinson} 

^{Matt Paust} 

Still Here

 

Lots of rain in Michigan. Hard to get the new plants into the ground. And I am horrible at it because I don't really have the upper arm strength to dig with a proper shovel.  So I must not buy any more plants. A trip to the nursery is great though and you must get something new.

Reading a really fun book, A MAN NAMED DOLL (Ames). I am sure you would all like it too. Also reading the Philip Roth bio and watched a doc about him on TV. He was probably the writer I read most in my life so even the his biographer is a horrible person, I will read it. Roth was probably a bit of a jerk too, but his work was not.  Also reading HOW TO WATCH A MOVIE, David Thomson.

Watching the twenty seasons of SILENT WITNESS, which is good although too many of the cases concern accidents (murders) with multiple victims and it is hard to keep track of them all. It is a well-done show though (Prime). Also watching MARE OF EASTTOWN and ATLANTIC CROSSING. I seem to watch more documentaries than anything else right now. 

Rewatched RACHEL GETTING MARRIED after a podcast discussed it. I do listen to a lot of audiobooks from my library and podcasts. When you live alone, I think, you need to have something on: tv, radio or audiobooks. 

What about you?