Books #3 (Is there anybody out there who loves these books?)




The six Lucia books are listed above.  The first four books  are collected in a
volume called All About Lucia.

 

This is a call in the dark.  I love the 'Lucia' books by E.F. Benson, and I must be the only person in the United States (maybe the world) who does.  Thirty or so years ago PBS had series about a comic English heroine based on E.F. Benson's novel Mapp and Lucia - DVD still available on Amazon.  The series, starring Geraldine McEwen (a regular in various BBC productions) and Prunella Scales (famous as the wife in Faulty Towers),  is set between the two World Wars in a place called Tilling, closely based on Rye, East Sussex. 

This series delighted me, and I soon read all six Lucia books, beginning with Queen Lucia, Lucia's social rule of Riseholme, ( based on Broadway in Worchestershire), to her conquest of London, Lucia in London, her move to Tilling, Mapp and Lucia, and her final triumph as mayor of Tilling (although Lucia's triumphs were always tenuous). 

Benson, himself, lived in Rye and even served as mayor there.  He lived in  Mapp/Lucia's house (Mallards) as did Henry James before him.  Unfortunately, the famous Garden House in the stories was destroyed by a German bomb in WWII. 

I read all six of the Lucia books again last year and was so sad when I finished -- once again -- the last Lucia book, the sixth book,  Benson wrote:  Trouble for Lucia.  The fifth book, The Worshipful Lucia, chronicles how Lucia gets herself elected mayor of Tilling - hence her title, Your Worshipful, which apparently used to be the title given to mayors.  That book has since been renamed Lucia's Progress, I supposed, because the first title was so out of date.

 These paperbacks were reissued in 1987.

  Then recently I downloaded (for $3) Mapp and Lucia on to my Kindle and re-read it again.  Besides admiring the way Benson develops his characters and conflicts, plays on frailties, and punishes hubris, I find I love all those characters inspite of themselves.  Now that I have that book on my Kindle, I am constantly tempted to start reading it again or to take just a peek and see what that naughty, but enterprising Lucia is up to.  Mysteriously,  that whole cast of characters, living in Tilling, exists for me in cyberspace. 

I have yet to find anyone who has heard of these novels - much less read them.  One exception:  I once mentioned them at a Jane Austen get together and a young woman said, "Oh, yes, I think my mother read those books."  Grrrrr!

Welcome to Abigail's







Perhaps, because this restaurant is popular with bikers, this is one of the
ornaments that dangles from the ceiling. A canoe also hangs above the kitchen.

One of my favorite restaurants, yes, my favorite restaurant, is Abigail's in Rocheport, Missouri. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Abigail's is named for the propriators' daughter, who is now old enough to occasionally to clear tables.  Long ago, in the 80's, there were yuppie restaurants where you were treated as if they were doing you a favor to let you in.  (My then teenaged son worked in one such restaurant as a bus boy in the Central West End of St. Louis.)  Abigails reminds me alittle bit of those long ago times, perhaps, because there are a limited number of tables available.  The waitress is usually the wife; the husband, the cook.  It used to be the other way around, and I was rather intimidated by the husband-waiter.  I was not the only one intimidated.  Apparently, some customer was so ill advised as to ask our husband/waiter 'what was good.'  I'm so glad he does the cooking now.  (Maybe he's glad, too.)


Taken through the window, this is the cook's cutting board
and maybe his coffee cup.  The neon boat is part of the decor.
(Click to enlarge.). 

The cuisine is written daily on a chalkboard set on an easel.  It has mostly hearty salads that can include salmon, chicken or filet.  Pastas are also to be had and of course desserts from paradise:  chocolate cream pie, smooth as glass; strawberry cake; carrot cake, chocolate cake, pecan pie.  My brother asked for the pecan pie so often that the waitress threatened to name the pie after him.

Trudie took me to Abigail's for my birthday this month.  The waitress/propriator took this picture of us.  For the record, I am the short one.

The End

A Month for All Seasons

Liam leads the charge as the family emerges from the concourse.

Sharif brought his family from Japan to see us in February again this year.  We met them at the airport at 8:00 PM.  We had rented a minivan as usual, although I was leery about driving an unfamiliar car out of a city airport at night.  The weather was good, however, and Sharif was a good spotter of slow vehicles and trailers without lights on the way home.

We arrived home around 10:00 PM.  The grandsons had slept all the way, but once they came into the family room/basement they seemed pleased to be returning to familiar territory including their toys which I had taken out of storage and left by the stairs. 




Sachiyo and Chris play Tic Tac Toe.





We had the rented van until 12:00 noon the next day.  Therefore, we aroused everybody fairly early in the morning and drove to Cracker Barrel for breakfast with the best blueberry pancakes in town.  I regretted our determination to treat the family with breakfast when Liam put his head down on the table and slept the whole time.

Liam tries on Chris's Angry Birds hat as they make their valentines for school.

  After the one day of rest, Sharif and Sachiyo took their sons to the CIS to enroll.  On their first day of school, both Liam (age 9 in January) and Chris (age 6 come March) enjoyed birthday parties (not theirs) in their classrooms that afternoon.  As the school was celebrating Valentine's Day the following school day, the evening after supper was quite busy.

My valentine to each of the boys was a balloon. 
Liam appears to be wearing his.

Liam creates a monster valentine box for his valentines.

Chris made friends with the cat, Chiaco.  I was hoping they would pack her in one of their bags and take her back to Japan, but they didn't.

We were blessed with several unseasonably mild days when the family first came.  Liam and Chris took the pup tent outside to use.  They and the neighbor kids politely removed their shoes before entering.   Later they brought the tent into the family room, and here they are!

After having less than an inch of snow for the

entire winter, we were buried in eight or so inches about a week after their arrival.  Here Sharif and his dad vainly try to

clear the drive.   Dad is using his two year old

snow blower for the first time ever. 

   Burying Liam in snow, seemed to be the first neighborhood project.  

The grandsons had warm coats, hats and gloves, but no boots.  I was sure they were going to get frost bite, but they seemed to survive.  By the time the second big snow came, Liam was wrapping his stocking feet in plastic bags before putting his shoes on, but strangely enough, Chris would have none of that and wore only his shoes and warm socks.


My brother and sister-in-law, besides having us over for a soup supper, lent us two sleds used by their sons a generation ago. 

Noodle soup and chicken made a popular lunch.  Chris looked so cute slurping up his noodles,

but when I tried to take his picture for the record, he hid behind his cup - my special Kansas mug.

On one of the nice days, between snows, Sharif drove his family to St. Louis where they visited the City Museum.  It has many sculptures to climb on and even a lady who roasted marshmallows over a fire - complete with instructions.
www.citymuseum.org
The next evening, Sachiyo and Sharif  roasted marshmallows for the boys in the family room fireplace. 



With teacher work days, Presidents Day, and the snow,  the boys were in school only three days in the three weeks of their visit.  When we woke up on their last Monday, the skies were clear and the streets were open.  But another snowstorm was predicted for Tuesday.   Since their plane was leaving Wednesday morning at 6:00, it was evident that if we didn't get them to St. Louis that day, we might not be able to get them there at all. 

Last pictures and last good byes

Therefore, I called the rental company and secured a minivan.  Sharif and Sachiyo took their boys to school.  I washed, dried and folded a load of clothes for them.  By 11:00, when the rental company picked us up, their six bags and two boxes were packed and ready to go.  After we finished the paperwork, we made a final stop at the teacher's store for pencils for the grandsons' classmates in Japan.  Then we picked up the boys at school as they finished their lunch, and off to St. Louis we went.  The drive there was uneventful.   We left shortly after arriving at their hotel.  We had to get the minivan back to the agency, so someone could drive us home before closing time at 5:00 PM. 

As it turned out, we did have a ten inch snow in Columbia on Tuesday.  The snow fell like a curtain most of the morning.   We had another big snow after spring arrived.  The last of the pile of snow pushed up by the city snowplow disappeared this week. 

Nevertheless, St. Louis had neither snow nor rain. Tuesday,  Sharif and family took the tram from the airport to the Arch and spent the day there.  Wednesday morning they were off - flying to Japan - with plenty of stories to share with their friends and schoolmates. 

Books # 2

Back when I started this blog, I promised to periodically write about books.  The first and last time I did that was May 2010.  Now a fellow blogger (Trilla) has written about books she's read and books clubs she belongs to and I am motivated to do the same.

Jane Austen books and cyclamen

I am often asked about the Jane Austen Society.  I belonged to the Jane Austen Society when I lived in St. Louis, and joined the book club when we moved here.  People often ask how we can discuss Austen's six novels year after year.  I really can't answer that except to say that once we start planning for the coming year around August or September, the ideas just keep popping up. In 2012, we had George Justice come and discuss his editing of Norton's Critical Edition of Emma. During the summer we had a 'picnic at Box Hill,' in a member's lovely cool, green backyard, as did Emma.  Of course, her idyll was on a hill in the English countryside.  Later in the year, Michael Yonan gave a power point presentation on works of art in the era of Jane Austen.  This year, 2013, is the 200th year since the publication of Pride and Prejudice.  Haskell, Professor Emeritus of English Literature, led our book discussion in January.  We lovingly re-read and argued our favorite epigramisms (general truths and small morals) and famous sayings found in the book.  The best known of these is the opening sentence:  "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." 

George makes a point during refreshments and conversation.

Next month we are going to view the 1940 Hollywood version of Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Oliviere and Greer Garson.  In June, we are entertaining Bettina Harvig, who will talk about Jane Austen quilts, and in September Michael Yonan (again) will talk to us about the architecture of the houses in Austen novels.  I can't go into every meeting we've had or will have here, but would like to end by saying that 2013 is the 25th anniversary of this club.


Julie plays  Austen's 'piano' selections.

My Kindle in the upper right corner, the Vermeer Essentials (left)
and Brunelleschi's Dome
which I hope to share at the next TARTS meeting. 

Another group that I enjoy is TARTS. (Sorry, I really can't remember what the letters stand for.) It is composed of docents from the Museum of Art and Archaeology.  We meet the first Monday of every month at a local cafe to share books or magazine articles we think will interest the group.  This last month I brought little book called The Essential Johannes Vermeer, by Christopher Sweet which I use in conjunction with the Kindle book, Vermeer's Hat:  The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World.  Since no illustrations were included with the Kindle version, I refer to The Essential...Vermeer to examine objects Vermeer included in his paintings that reflected the rise of a prosperous merchant class in the Netherlands as Dutch ships traveled to the East Indies and China to bring back spices and Chinese porcelain.  Another member (coincidentally) brought The Embarrassment of Riches, by Simon Schama (800 pages) detailing the Golden Age of Dutch dominance in Europe.  In one excerpt the diarist, Samuel Pepys, complains that he had to wade knee deep through cloves as he made his way through the hold of a captured Dutch ship.  Poor thing!  Must get that book!  Once again, I can't go into detail about all the wonderful books we share.  One or two on Gothic cathedrals, the Renaissance...  They make me hungry for more, more!

The third book group, called The Red Tent (a Biblical reference),  is our church women's book club, although most of the books we read are not particularly religious.  Our name was taken from Anita Diamant's book, The Red Tent, the first book we read several years ago when the group began.  This year we began by reading Hemingway's A Movable Feast, and The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain.  After reading these two books,  we were all ready to go to Paris.  The Night Circus, by Erin Morganstern brought us into a strange world of magic.  I especially enjoy this group because it has many younger women in it, and there are not too many groups that have a mixture of ages.  Mothers and daughters sometimes come together, and a number of the women are the ages of my grown sons.  Every spring we bring snacks to the A-frame at Les Bourgeois Vineyard about 15 miles out of town, buy wine to drink, eat and suggest books for the fall.  These suggestions are then voted on by email and our reading list is ready.

A book I've read for my own delight is The Violinist's Thumb:  And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code, by Sam Kean.  It is amusing as well as informative.  Two other interesting books in the art field are Caveat Emptor:  The Secret Life of an American Art Forger, by Ken Perenyi and Brunelleschi's Dome, by Ross King.  The first book gives one an appreciation for the step by step technology involved in preparing the canvas and creating a painting.  It is an exciting read as well.  The second book gives one a breathtaking glimpse of life and work in the Renaissance as workers climb the equivalent of a 40 story building each morning to work on Brunelleschi's cupola on the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence.  Brunelleschi not only conceived of his dome constructed without wooden centering, but designed machines to lift tons of marble and sandstone to the roof.  His ideas for transporting this stone to the building site were not so successful. 

This post is a bit longer than I expected, and I have already told my three friends who generally follow my blog something about what I read.  So my apologies to them for any redundancies. 
I would say that the main business of all three of my book groups is the delight we take in our friendships, as well as having an excuse to get together and talk about the books we love.  May we all continue to read and share our thoughts!