My Grandmother and Edith Wharton

Taking pictures of pictures isn't the greatest way to show them, but it sure is fun. This one is from a thin black album over a century old. Some of the photos are dated 1912, before my mother was born. The pictures of my grandmother, Evelyn Langley Manchester, and her sisters and friends remind me of the world of Henry James and Edith Wharton, a world I return to time and again in my reading. Edith Wharton was a summer visitor to Newport and might have passed my grandmother on the street or on Bellevue Avenue or Ocean Drive. I think my grandmother is more beautiful than Mrs. Wharton, born Edith Newbold Jones.

In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer is in Newport at the same time as his forbidden love, Ellen Olenska. He goes out to a farm in Middletown to see some race horses, and sees Ellen down on the shore. My grandfather, David Coggeshall Simmons, was part of a Middletown family whose large farm on the East Main Road is now a land trust and while it no longer has dairy cattle is run by the youngest generation as a demonstration organic farm. You can still stop at the farm stand in the summer and buy fresh produce. It can't be too far from the farm that Archer visited. This man and horse are in my family album, not Newland Archer's.

Literature stands by itself as a deep source of pleasure, but that enjoyment is even greater when the place evoked is known to the reader. Last summer as I drove with my mother along Ocean Drive and some of the side roads, I looked for Wharton's summer cottage. I found one that looked promising, but I need to do a little more research. And I need to find out who the man is. Later: more 1912 photos.

Saturday Mashup

Librarians are wonderful, and so are their children, and also the blogs which give us these surprising discoveries! Today a lot of shiny bits and pieces appeared out of the chaos that is daily life, and with patience and attention I might get to highlight a few of them. Until next time, here is a belated Easter image from Biltmore Village --

Oh, so maybe you wanted to see the McDonald's a block away, the one that sits by the entrance to the Biltmore Estate and mirrors its style? Be good and hopeful, and maybe I'll take a couple of pictures there. While you're waiting, listen to a child talk and read a good book and remember that while change is constant, the really good things don't change.

I'm quitting trying to be "with it," technologically. The last straw came in today's funnies, when the dad in Zits announced he's started a blog, and the teen kid told him blogs are over -- now it's vlogs. What's the point? Blogger spellcheck doesn't even recognize the word "vlog." Better to put your attention on the children and the books. Maybe I'll listen to my own wisdom.

April

Sometimes it helps to see a big blue circle. This is why we need art, to take us out of our mental hamster wheels, out of our inward gazing and into the air of possibility and delight.

Going into nature, afield or in the back yard, does this too.

And when we go into a garden and find a big blue circle

and are allowed to touch it

and to find that we can turn it on its base

and we feel as happy as a child under the sky

then life feels a little better, a little more grounded.

Cloudscapes

When you use gmail to let someone know you're going to have a colonoscopy, then use the spellchecker, the word "colonoscopy" is not recognized. But gmail helpfully offers you "cloudscape" and "kaleidoscope." So, tomorrow is my day to enjoy a cloudscape. (The real fun, of course, comes the evening before, as the actual procedure is not bothersome.) In the usual way of the world, the air has been full of cloudy mentions of late. The news that a friend who is only 35 has colon cancer, front page news about the detection procedure, and several other mentions in the media of the disease. Not a good week for clouds or people. But maybe if you live out in the Pacific Northwest, things are different; no one has ever heard of such a thing. They live their happy kaleidoscopic lives out there, filled with oysters and geoducks and beautiful cloudscapes over the Pacific. (With very sincere apologies to Porter, if he see my words, because he knows that this is not true. Maybe it's only in GoogLand that there is no disease.)

P.S. Those folks at GoogGroundZero must be too busy having fun at the mothership, because they apparently don't know about geoducks either.)

March Comes In

... with its brezzes loud and shrill, and the etagerie on the front porch falls over, startling the cats indoors, while a long branch of white pine clanks onto the roof of the car and the windsocks are flying straight out. Suddenly, it seems, the bulbs are all blooming -- iris reticulata, snowdrops, daffodils, crocus, two colors of grape hyacinth, and one Forsythia blossom. The Old Farmer's Almanac announces St. David's Day, St. Piran, St. Perpetua, Daylight Savings Time, then Pure Monday, Palm Sunday, the vernal equinox, and Easter. Surely the non-Christian world has observances in this month as well, but they're not in the OFA. There's a lot going on in the world, but it's good to look at what's happening in right around you.