Grantchester

Pretty sure Geordie is on his third vicar-assistant in Season 10.  

It's never quite clear how Inspector (Geordie) Keating manages to make friends with each new vicar and drag him into the murder case, but in all 10 seasons, it's a detective and a preacher who become partners in crime solving.  

Every episode has a murder, of course--or what would Geordie do?  But the charm of this Masterpiece series rests on the interactions, romances, and collisions among the characters in Grantchester. 

We have Leonard and his partner who finally came out as gay a few seasons back.  The on-again, off-again relationship between Geordie's secretary and one of the detectives on his team. Geordie's marriage to Cathy has had some bumps along the way, but they now seem solid --just when Geordie discovers his son dressing up like a girl in this season.

And of course, there is the college of Oxbridge, site of a few random murders.

Over ten years, the vicarage housekeeper (Mrs. M) has moved from a typical homophobic woman of her times to a fiercely protective mother-figure to Leonard.  The developments in the characters along the way has made this one of PBS' best shows. 

"Error Occurred"--again.

 I'm having technical difficulties--again!

Below is a video of Elena, our rodeo girl, racing around barrels!

But you can't see it because it won't upload.  Trust me, the girl is GOOD on horseback.  

Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor, and Norwegian royalty

I'm spending my weekend with the Roosevelts, thanks to public television.  (Trump and his minions would have PBS and NPR defunded, of course, as part of his mission to make Americans as small-minded as possible.) I can't even imagine what I'd have done without these three platforms for lifelong education and inspiration. 

A pair of excellent counterpoints to the focus on our current administration (if you use that word, loosely) are these two offerings on PBS: :

The Atlantic Crossing 

and

Ken Burns' The Roosevelts, An Intimate History

In the former, "inspired by historical events," eight episodes dramatically recreate the years of America and Norway pre- and through World War II.  While the madman Hitler takes over Europe with megalomania and excruciating cruelty, all nations are in peril.   

The crown prince of Norway and his family cross the Atlantic in 1939 and are befriended by Franklin and Eleanor.  A year later, all hell breaks loose in Norway--a country who thought itself safe due to its neutrality.  

Back when history was taught as dull facts, I was never interested.  But now, thanks to the brilliance of historians and storytellers like Ken Burns and David McCollough and so many others, history comes to life.  

After watching Atlantic Crossing, I couldn't resist re-watching the Ken Burns special all over again.  I'd watched it years ago, but that was before we lived in a country with its own madman at the helm.   

I highly recommend both of these.

Nathan's High School Graduation on Thursday

 

Now that my people have gone back to their own homes, I'm residing in white space, gazing at the snapshots in my mind of the past week. The art world also calls this "negative space," the empty areas around a focal point that create breathing room. 

When I began this foray into making collages, books, and photographs, I filled the entire page, the more the better. Gradually, over time, I've realized that a close up of one person, maybe two, against a white or blurry background can have more impact than a line of people against whatever background happens to be there.  It is, at least, a different kind of storytelling.  

For the sake of convenience, all of us carrying iPhones, most of the pictures we took were not particularly interesting, just thumbnails to jog our memory of a  good week together.  We line up.  We smile on cue.  The plates and residue of restaurant meals are in the foreground. Or racks of Spurs merch--as Marcus wanted to get a Number One shirt.  Three of them blowing out birthday candles, 47, 47, 20.  Two of them celebrating graduations;  Elena giving everyone rides on their four-wheeler and her horses. 

 

We went to Fredricksburg on Saturday, texting each other when we got separated: "I'm here, where are you?"

A handsome young man saw me struggling to walk and gallantly took my arm and led me across two streets.  An example of kindness used to be "helping an old lady across the street."  Outwardly grateful, I squirmed a bit inwardly realizing what part I played in that equation!

On Sunday, my ex and I are both there, guests in Will and Bonnie's new house. For years after our divorce, we were stiff and awkward around each other.

But on this day, there were moments of laughter at shared memories of the Sixties and Seventies.  We are the elders, the only ones in the room who remember Huisache, Magnolia, and Mistletoe, 1967-1969.  Or our cabin on Beckmann Hill in Helotes before Day was born, the voice of young Willie Nelson drifting through the cedars. We are the only ones who recall riding motorcycles on the ragged hills and into deep ravines. We're the only ones who recall our dingy little shared hometown in Georgia with all its life-shaping subtexts. 

Our children and grandchildren listened, laughed along, probably less at the content of our stories and more at the improbable scene of their grandparents chatting and laughing together!  Bonnie tells her father-in-law, "I have never heard you laugh like that!" 

Little flash bulbs in our minds illuminated a past that belonged only to us. 

When, inevitably, the time comes for them to disperse, I know we've reached the completion of this week of togetherness and I miss it before they're even belted into their cars. 

As they head back to their other lives--college, work, summer plans--I'll hear echoes of all these beloved people.

I wonder if we'll ever be together in this exact configuration again: two grandparents, long divorced, one of whom has a girlfriend he's never married; the oldest of the grandchildren with a newly minted graduate degree; the youngest of the grandsons about to start college.

When they leave my house on their last night, I feel alone in empty space for a while, wondering: Now what?   I feel like texting them: "I'm here.  Where are you?" 

Birthday Night at The Pearl

Marcus is 20!

My Tech Rant

I would be so happy--

to never see another QR code

to never again receive a text from the Democratic Party

to shop with paid checkers instead of self-check aisles.

to have no need of passwords

Back in the day, late nineties, early 2k, I was reasonably tech-proficient.  I took a few classes at the Apple Store and wound up buying the first iPod on the UTSA block. Students were duly impressed to see a teacher walking around with earphones and listening to music on a little device they were just beginning to hear about!  Pretty soon they all had one, then the next year they had Mini's, the coolest tech gadgets for a minute or two.   

Now iPods are dinosaurs in the tech world, as am I!

You can't park at the Pearl or the airport (or just about anyone) without your iPhone.  Scan the Fricking QR code, then answer questions, then you're okay. 

Instead of learning HOW to do all that, I just don't go to those places if I don't have to--and when I do, I'm a mess.  I have to call the number on the posted QR code and figure out how to leave.

Even worse, so many restaurants don't even bother with paper menus.  Scan the QR code and read the tiny menu on your phone.  

As for countless yearlong texts from candidates from Maine to Florida, the Democratic Party isn't doing itself any favors--it's made me resolve never to give money to anyone online again, not even a fiver, because the damned texts proliferate like mushrooms on the phone.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one in this camp.  The number of incoming texts is torture.  You can reply "stop" and block the number, but once your number is out there, it's passed around like crackers at a party; you can't get it back. 

Joanne's --the sewing and crafts store that kept human checkers up to the end--is now permanently closed.

Michael's--who has only self-check-out, is (I believe) on its last legs.  It's not fun to go there anymore, so I have started ordering directly from Amazon instead.

I would be happy never to contribute to Jeff Besos' big store again, but it's too late.  We can't roll back the time and revive the countless stores that have gone out of business and switch our allegiances back--but I wish we could. 

Winding Up May in Texas

The Virginia contingent of my family came down the escalator Saturday night wearing Texas Tech T-shirts to celebrate Nathan's high school graduation in early June.  

Tried to post photos, but it's not working out--so just saying that all four Learys and Deana are in San Antonio this week and we'll be attending Nathan's graduation party on Friday night. 

We've also celebrated Jackson getting his masters degree from VCU, Marcus 20th birthday, and Will's and Bonnie's May birthdays. 

Growing (and) Old

I am lying in bed with my charger on my back.  When the pain in my feet returned, I knew something was amiss. 

"Put it on the bullseye of the device," the company rep wrote.

But which incision is the battery? I ask him....then he tells me it's the other one.   "Ohhhh!" I write back.  "No wonder!  I've been putting it on the wrong place!" There's a learning curve here--the kind we keep getting. 

Growing older means adapting to what we can't change, and doing everything we can to change what we can.

Several  conversations with my mama and friends in the past few days clustered around issues related to aging. We talk about what we're doing, books we're reading, and what we're learning about growing, and growing older.  We decry the fact that we can only accomplish a fraction of what we had the energy for last decade, but we share what we're doing with that diminished energy. We ferret out good news stories and share them. 

Friendships like these are islands of peace in a troubled world.    

Like this: Jan insisted I watch The Quilters on Netflix, an intriguing documentary about a group of prisoners in a high-security prison who make intricate quilts for foster children in Missouri.  Most are in for life; some have spent decades inside.  "But when we're doing this, it's like we're outside," one said.  They want every foster child to receive a quilt for their birthday.

These men cut and press and fold fabrics, sometimes waking up in the night to create patterns on graph paper.  The walls of the quilting room are stacked floor to ceiling with donated bundles of fabric. Thank you notes from the recipients make these "hardened criminals" cry.  

Like this: I tell Carlene that I got scammed yesterday.  

Some scammer had tapped into the catalog of Natural Life.  I'd bought gifts for friends and summer blouses for myself, then got an all-cap notice from Natural Life that they'd been scammed.  This was not a moving sale at all.

Carlene's text: "You had the best part of the ordering!!

You got to think of each

Recipient and what they like!   As special as a gift!!

I called Chase to alert them to the scam and to reverse the charge on my card,  all the while thinking about how Carlene can find nuggets of good almost anywhere. 

Last week, she was reading a 30-year-old Anne Lamott book about her drug addiction and recovery.  "If I had read this back then," Carlene said, "I probably wouldn't have liked it.  I probably would have felt judgmental or something.  But it's SO good!"

Like: Nellie telling me about her 20-day art retreat in Italy with a friend.  She's trying to hold on longer to the peace and quiet of Italy. 

Like: Beverly telling me about Larry's lush garden filled with vegetables--and about their attending a protest march every Sunday. 

Like: an email from a book group several of my friends belong to.  Their next book is one I am definitely going to order:  Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. (Gregory Boyle). This book group is a marvel, a group of septuagenarians and octogenarians who have been reading together for forty years. 

Like Freda who--even with her own knee issues--volunteered to walk Luci when I was recovering from surgery. 

Like Linda who called from beautiful Cape Cod this morning and we wound up talking about our prior writing and how a manuscript she wrote when she was 35, and I read shortly after in a pop up camper on Molas Lake, was the starting point of a lifelong friendship.  

Like this text from Jan reminding me of Glue Parties--Elena being the little cutie who showed up at her door to invite her and Makken and Sebastien to join our sticky little porch party. 

So it's a dreary, rainy day and suddenly the sun shines forth and you hear a tiny knock at the door and here's this bright-eyed little cutie asking if you can come out and play at a glue party.  Her hands, festooned in a shiny white "glove," are drying in the sun, in preparation for the ultimate thrill: "peeling."  That's the secret of a great glue party.  Enshroud yourself in white school glue, let it dry (you can dance and do the hokey-pokey while on this step), then peel, gleefully, with your friends.  Pure joy.

Most of my friends are in their 70s, two in their late 60s, several just over the line into 80.  Sometimes we do wring our hands over the incompetent mostly-men who are running the country.  (At this point, let me recommend a powerful six-episode series on Max, The Plot Against America, based on a Phillip Roth novel, and eerily similar to what's happening in America right now. )

Sometimes we talk about our aches and pains and help each other with food, offers to drive, and encouragement. 

But my friends and I are watching less news and try to change the conversation if it lingers too long on the horrors of Trumpism or aches and pains.  (Freda calls the latter "organ recitals").  

 

Another thing about Pinterest-- I think it changes our brains.

I can remember long afternoons on a blanket in the yard going through books I'd read, taking notes for an essay comparing themes or characters. At some point, while my kids were at school, I might drive over to the library to get more books and further my research.  Those days were delicious, underlining and writing notes and questions in the margins.

Around that time,  I also wanted to write a book called Women and Houses.  Fifteen or twenty books were splayed open to passages I'd found, all about the ways a house shaped a girl growing up, or about the kinds of spaces women created.  I read Carl Jung and copied paragraphs about the meanings of houses in dreams.  I found a quotation by Winston Churchill, "We shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us."

Those were the days!  Every discovery took time and legwork.  

Today I could ask Google to find me all that and she would do so in way less than a minute. 

There's something to be said for slow thinking.  Some kind of mental exercise is required for doing a search yourself. 

I may one day look back on the days I've cut down 34 x 46" sheets of paper with the same tinge of nostalgia.  

Social media has its place.  For me, on Facebook it's primarily a place to read the posts from members of the Handmade Book Club.  It would be virtually impossible to find even five book-makers in San Antonio; through the club, I can see what people all over the world are making.

Pinterest is particularly good at picking our brains and feeding us exactly what we want.  We can consume images like candy all day long.  Is it possible (probable even) that it encourages imitation?  (After you "pin" grids, you will get pages and pages of grids; somebody's copying somebody.)

Does it condition our brains to want a lot of everything fast, rather than slowing down and taking the time to find things in their original context?   How important is it that our posts get "liked" or followed? 

Back in the day (here I go again!) a whole town might get excited about a parade, a carnival, a circus, or a rodeo.  The air was electric with anticipation of what we might see together--acrobats, tigers, beauty queens, a rodeo clown. For weeks afterwards, we'd talk about it and relive the juiciest parts. 

If it was a movie we saw with friends--say The Sound of Music or Grease--we'd buy the soundtrack album and play it endlessly, together. 

Fast forward to the days social media: it isn't all that social at all.  Browsing Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is solitary.  In years to come, I won't remember it.   I won't even remember it the next day.  

[P.S.  As for the book, Women and Houses, I made a mistake of telling a friend of mine (a writer in New York) about it.   Before the ink was dry in my notebooks, she'd published a book of essays by her writer friends (not including me) on the same subject.  It was deflating, but even more so because she had the temerity to dedicate her book to me!]

I should-a had a V8!

Today was a day of minor achievements.  Way too hot for major ones, but I did get my organization fix.

Achievement #1

Regarding Pinterest: What the heck is Pinterest for?  Ask someone half my age and I'm sure you'll get a very different answer.  Young professionals seem to be scrolling and saving images and whatnot to "build their brand" in case anyone is looking.  

For me, Pinterest is bathroom browsing.  Millions and millions of seductive images populate this very screen in a nano-second.  The algorithm tells Pinterest what I like.  With a click, I can save my stuff to several filing cabinets, called Boards.  I don't pay attention to what board it's going in, I just save it--for future reference.  Maybe a color or a vibe appeals to me and I save it, but I rarely go back and look at what I've saved.  

Pinterest is an overload of eye candy, kind of depressing really.  Everything, it seems, has already been done.  Every possible paint color combination known to man or woman is there.  Recipes I have never once made.  Smoothies and salads.  What keeps me going back are books, not the ones a person might actually read, but how to make blank ones.

Today I spent two hours deleting pins one by one until I realized it was going to take months. Then it occurred to me to check You Tube for a faster way to delete, and sure enough the Nice People over there had made videos that saved me hours. It was very satisfying to delete 10 whole filing cabinets in less than a minute, like sweeping a floor that had never been swept.  A decade of dust bunnies is gone. 

I still don't know why anyone would want to browse the boards of other people--unless those people are posting original art work or ideas.  Why would we want to poke around the boards of strangers?  Can somebody explain that to me?

Achievement #2:

To make a book, you cut or tear down very large pieces of paper.  Each of these pages is called a folio. When you have the desired number of folios, you fold them all at once, not one by one, and that chunk of folios is called a signature. 

Then you stitch those signatures together (a book block) with a cover and a spine and you have a book.

This whole process requires some basic math, a sharp-bladed Kraft knife, rulers and a self-healing cutting mat. 

After doing that for as long as I could stand over my table today, I had a little epiphany that will save me so much time that I literally pounced my hand on my forehead thinking, "I should have had a V8!" What took me so long to figure this out?

1. Since most books are around 4 x 6, all you really need to know is that one 9 x 12 sheet of drawing paper can easily be cut into four folios, then folded into signatures.  Simple math!  No need to buy a whole roll of paper and tear numerous times if you can get the same result from one 9 x 12 drawing pad.

2. If you want to reduce the size by a few inches, all you have to do is make the signatures and trim them down later.

3. If you want to add a few inches, well that's another math equation; we may get to that later, or not. 

4. A guillotine paper cutter saves weeks of hours!

Maybe the teacher started us on the long way to teach us some finer points we might have missed if she had just shown us the easy way up front?  But since I'm not inclined to do things mathematically, it took me a few months to get the obvious.