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Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Mallay
Edna St. Vincent Mallay, who brought us the candle burning at both ends, was born on February 22nd 1892, a woman before her time. Enchanting, bold, and brilliant, her poetry was described by Thomas Hardy as one of America’s two greatest attractions – the other was the skyscraper. In the biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Mallay, Nancy Milford describes E. Vincent as the herald of the New Woman: She smoked in public when it was against the law for women to do so. She lived in Greenwich Village during the halcyon days of that starry bohemia, she slept with men and women and wrote about it in…
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living in small & sticky spaces
I’m not a compulsive list-maker by any stretch, but sometimes, if I have a new pad of paper, a new ink cartridge in the fountain pen I use maybe three times a year, and nothing else to do (in other words, my Wireless connection is acting up) I’ll start a list such as that begun on June 24, 2012. Entitled, “Things We Really Need To Do Around Here,” it has been ignored for nine months. Thirteen of fourteen things still need to be done, not the least of which is “Hang pictures & get rid of ones we HATE.” The only thing done that resulted in any demonstrable changes was “Call the Mike…
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ronald reagan’s love medicine . . . happy valentine’s day
Many relationships in my life I conduct almost entirely by telephone, including those with the people dearest to me. With too much ocean or freeway stretching between our houses, it is easier to continue our conversations from the comfort of our own homes. Always, there is something to talk about even when there is nothing to talk about. Before Skype, I treasured long-distance phone calls with my mother, usually during the weekend when we could be less circumspect with the time difference and the cost per minute. Before Facebook, there were sporadic phone calls from childhood friends, the rhythm of home so achingly familiar, we fell softly into conversation, picking up…
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live your ‘wild & precious life’
My daughter will not read my blog. Not yet. Very young and wise, she tells me that because we are here for but the briefest sojourn, her plan is to save my random musings. When I am gone, she will open the jar. Her beautiful strategy to counter the missing of people likely to go before her, reminds me of the frail yet fervent 83-year old Maurice Sendak‘s final interview. Illustrated in this animated film by Christoph Niemann, is the purest expression of mortality I have ever heard, Sendak’s impassioned entreaty: Live your life, live your life, live your life. :
