Before Hallmark, Love through the Ages

Some stories are worth retelling. Here, last year's Valentine's Day post:

On this St. Valentine's Day, a tale from American novelist Keith Donohue's haunting Angels of Destruction, as told by Norah, who may or may not be an angel.

"The past is no more certain than the future. Little is known about the real Valentine, only this. There may have been two. Both were martyrs who died for what they believed. Both lived and died long ago. The first Valentine was a priest in the Roman times when the emperor outlawed marriages for young soldiers. This was done so that they would be more devoted to fighting than their sweethearts. But Valentine felt sorry for those men and married them in secret. When the emperor found out, he had Valentine killed! Off with his head, chop. Sometimes love means sacrifice."

"The Second Valentine was just a man who had been falsely imprisoned. He fell in love with the jailer's daughter and had to smuggle love letters in secret. He signed them, From 'Your Valentine.' These two stories are legends, and not much is known about Saint Valentine."

"The day of February fourteenth is related to love and fertility rites of the pagans. The pagans were people believe in more than one god or sometimes not at all. This is love and fertility rite is the time of the marriage of Zeus and Hera....It was also the feast of Lupercalia, when the boys of Rome ran naked...in the streets, striking women with a leather strap. This custom was continued by the Christians. In the Middle Ages, during the coldest part of long winters it became a day when men and women sent each other notes of their true love. These were the first valentines."

"It is a day to look forward to the end of winter and death and to celebrate a new beginning. The Middle Ages poet Chaucer said, "for this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird chooses his mate.""

Learn more about Keith Donohue.

Isn't little Norah right, the past is no more certain than the future, but it is worth exploring so we don't just easily brush this day off as "Oh, that's just another Hallmark holiday." We can overlook the commercial aspect, which is ingrained into almost every aspect of American modern life.

Celebrate romantic love and the art of romance, which seems to be another dying American tradition. Courtship, does that word even exist in our modern age? Eating lunch Sunday at a restaurant, so many sweethearts were not engaged in conversation or looking into each other's eyes - they were looking at their gadgets. It kind of seemed to say, "Sorry, you can't hold my attention for a full meal. Let me check my e-mail!" Dick Powell may only have had eyes for Ruby Keeler in Dames and declared it in song, but eyes seem to stray toward an electronic in the company of others, romantic or mutual.

Look at your bird today, or consider this even if you don't have anyone in your nest: Give thanks that you have the right to choose your mate, which was not always the choice. Although not everyone yet can have their love recognized in the eyes of the law.

Today, give thanks for love.

A Letter on Paris and the Past

"The old man caught my attention...'Do you know...the single biggest regret of old age...It's nothing to do with making more money or taking better care of the old body...The old folk say their biggest single regret is not having taken more risks.'" - Keith Donohue, Centuries of June.

Dear readers,

I hope this letter finds you well, and that you have wonderful food to nourish your body and soul, books stirring your imagination, and you are taking a slower pace now the summer is in full swing.

I've enjoyed the first sweet corn of the season, a peach sorbet cone on a steamy July night, and I've just started Stephanie Cowell's Marrying Mozart, which I found at a thrift shop for 25 cents and my mother and a coworker already borrowed and devoured. When I see so many people mindlessly scrolling through Facebook statuses on their phones, I think how much more fun it is to be with young Mozart in Mannheim. The modern impulse to project or follow emotions constantly in real time isn't for me. Real time is fast moving, slipping out of our hands, too precious.

I've been thinking a lot about the line about taking more risks. What risks do you wish you had taken? Reflect on them silently, or share them out loud. Is it too late? Famed French singer Edith Piaf sang how she regretted nothing, but I think most people have some regrets.

I wish I had lived in Paris, even for a semester of school or for a year. I've lived in New Jersey my entire life. I slept walked through my twenties through a boring job in suburbia I didn't like and a series of bad relationships (not abusive, just time-wasting relationships). I sadly consider my twenties my lost decade. If I had a life do-over, I would trying something brash like living in Paris. A week's vacation there several years ago wasn't enough time to fully explore her soul.


Owen Wilson's character Gil in the film Midnight in Paris wanted to live there too. Unable to cope with the present, Gil, a writer, keeps time traveling back to Paris of the 1920s, where he encounters F. Scott Fitzgerald and his tormented wife Zelda, Hemingway, and other great writers as well as painters of the era. Of course, many of his heroes have their own demons. Demons transcend time. But who can blame him for wanting to be part of a thriving arts culture and one not focused on Keeping Up with the Joneses or living life for appearance's sake?

I too feel unable to cope with the present sometimes and wish I lived in another time, before reality television, texting and phones out everywhere (including among the Kindergarten set now). I went to hear historian David McCullough talk about Americans who moved to Paris between 1830 to 1900 in The Greater Journey. He spoke of how people went to Paris to excel not for ambition for money or power, but to excel in their fields: medicine, writing, painting, and such. Why don't we want to excel as individuals in our lives even just to better ourselves? He spoke of the idea of people passing on what they learned in Paris back in the states. Why don't we embrace of the idea of cultivating knowledge and passing it on?

In addition to wanting a better arts culture, Wilson's Gil couldn't cope with his materialistic fiancee and her parents, shopping for possessions for a house not even bought yet and Gil worrying about how he'd pay for it all. He'd have to take writing jobs he'd hate to maintain a lifestyle society tells him is required. How many of us do that? How many instead of rejecting what society tells us is needed work excessively to get it? I'd rather work less and make less money and live without things (cable, expensive clothes and bags, upgrading home interiors and electronics, etc.) and have time for my books, my passions, my ideas. Even if I had a lot of money, those things aren't so desirable to me. Gil craved ideas - those can't be bought in a store.

I want a mysterious car to pick me up in the midnight hour and go back in time. Do you?

Perhaps it's human nature to want to go back. A character Gil encounters thinks the era he so idolizes is nothing special - she longs for the era of La Belle Époque. Go back then? Those crave to live among the artistic geniuses of the Renaissance era. We need to make peace with the era we are born with (at least I do). But we can say no to ideas and things society thrusts on us.

Warmly,
Catherine

PS- since it's Bastille Day this week, and Paris is so on my mind, I think I shall do a few French-themed posts.

Welcome Summer!

My kind of fast food: raspberries, nature's sweet candy and a summer delight.

On this summer solstice, reflect on your favorite summer memories as a child, and what you most look forward to. Has it changed much? Favorite childhood summer memories: watching fireflies, searching the backyard for a twig for a spear for marshmallows for toasting, swimming, and something we never appreciate: having the summer off.

Keith Donohue, in his haunting Angels of Destruction, talked about the "endless nirvana of doing nothing at all" that summer offers. We need a little more "nothing" in our harried lives.

Some delights I anticipate each year: going to the beach, lazy weekend naps, the air perfumed with honeysuckle, reading in a shady breeze on a lounge chair. Also...

Eating outdoors: on the patio, at a quaint cafe, on a picnic blanket, or at the farm. At Demarest Farm in Hillsdale, New Jersey, shaded picnic benches await just beyond this cheerful scene.


Lemonade stands. Learn about the history of lemonade from FoodTimeline.org.

It's comforting to know 50 cents can still buy you refreshment on a hot summer day.

Early evening strolls in the park with the family's adopted dog, Scotty, who doesn't seem to care at all (nor do I) if I'm not beach body ready (what a ridiculous concept). How much people fret needlessly over their appearances in the summer. Animals seem to have their priorities in order: love, food, home, play, rest (all cherished four letter words).

Farmers markets abundant with summer's bounty. At the Thursday Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City, Katchkie Farm has spearmint basil ice tea, $2, an infusion that transports me straight to the garden and not bustling 42nd Street.

I can just smell the basil looking at this picture. For me, no manmade perfume created in a laboratory can compete with the perfume of nature.


While I keep my suit on, I love swimming, including the peacefulness at night. R.E.M.'s poetic Nightswimming (from their Automatic for the People record) is a favorite anthem for summer.

"Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago.
Turnaround backward so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals a picture in reverse.

Still it's so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge.
The moon is low tonight.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago.
The fear of getting caught. The recklessness of water.
They cannot see me naked.
These thing they go away replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
September's coming soon.
I'm pining for the moon.
And what if there were two side by side in orbit around the fairest sun."



Enjoy the delights of summer.

A Letter Praising Books

Dear readers,

I'm writing to you in letter format again, since I'm hoping to keep up the awareness and art form of letter writing, even if it's composed over e-mail or other technological form.

This week, I got a delivery of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker, with the most beautifully written thank you note on a stationary with her name attached to it. I thought I couldn't remember when I last received such a fine note, and this one from a child. Even on Christmas cards, I barely get more than "Merry Christmas." Truth be told, I don't recall receiving any letters in the mail since my college years.

Here's the reason for today's letter...

Some women covet shoes. Others bags. Here's what draws me like a moth to a flame: books. Filled with words that move me and stay with me, actually become part of me, ideas that challenge me, stories that make me dream, time that knows no boundaries.

Books: actual turn the page, put a bookmark in it, flip back to a cherished passage you were lingering over - those books. I hope they remain stalwarts.

I considered this recent New York Times article that Amazon will begin selling $114 Kindles which will include ads as screen savers and at the bottom of the home screen, and selling special offers. Why does consumerism need to be infused in every element of our lives? Shannon Hoon sang in Blind Melon's No Rain, "All I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away but it's a great escape." There's no escaping commercials.

I don't despise eReaders the way many book lovers do. A friend thinks they will co-exist peacefully among books. And promoting literacy in our age of arts and education cuts is a good thing.

But I find so much of what I read through thrift shops and library book sales. I discovered my favorite new author, Keith Donohue, at thrift. His latest, Centuries of June, is coming out May 31st, and I'm actually giddy. Giddy over a book. My last read, Witch Child, which still haunts me and my mother is now enjoying, was 25 cents from a library book sale. I would have never been exposed to either if the physical books weren't bought and passed on. I love passing on a cherished book once I've read it (I keep a few for my own).

The New York Times wrote a beautiful love letter of an article to typewriters, and I thought of the parallel to books. Here are some of my favorite passages from it:

"Manual typewriters aren't going gently into the good night of the digital era.

For one, old typewriters are built like battleships. They survive countless indignities and welcome repairs, unlike laptops and smartphones, which become obsolete almost the moment they hit the market. "It's kind of like saying, 'In your face, Microsoft!'

Young typerwriter afficiandos...chafe against digital doctrines that identify human "progress" as a ceaseless march toward greater efficiency, the search for a frictionless machine.

Louis Smith, 28, a drummer from Williamsburg, stated "It's about permanence, not being able to hit delete. You have to have some conviction in your thoughts."

I loved this, and I consider the concept of permanence in our world of texts and e-mails gone so quickly, stories never passed on, and a book outlasting decades while gadgets get upgraded.

I'll write again soon, as I have a fine book calling my name. As you can see, I have far too much to read, but in my book (pun intended), that's the best kind of excess in life you can have. Happy reading.

Warmly,
Catherine

A Letter on Learning

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." Book of Hebrews, as quoted in Keith Donohue's Angels of Destruction.

Dear readers,

Since I can't have those "Here's what I learned in class today" moments at the dinner table, I've decided to tell you what I learned this week in daily life.

I have so much to learn. This week, I met an 83-year-old man named Robert, who by lucky chance (for me) was seated next to me at the Banff film festival (think National Geographic, come to life on screen), which I attend each year with my sweetheart. Robert was telling me about this book: Slave: My True Story, by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, a true story about a 12-year-old sold into slavery in 1993. He said it's one of the best he's ever read. I love readers. I once saw a man walking to work in front of me with a brown bagged lunch and a library book and thought - how great, he's frugal because he's bringing his own food, and he's smart and budget minded reading a library book! Anyway, Robert is a retired reference librarian, and I agreed with his sentiment that another lifetime is needed to finish everything one wants to read.

What are you reading? I'm in the middle of Celia Rees' Witch Child, about a 14 year old girl who may or may not be a witch fleeing England in 1659 for America. I thought about how witches were an easy source of blame, and how witches take many forms. I also thought about the displacement of people fleeing tyranny caused the displacement of others whose lands they occupied. It was Tori Amos (who has a Cherokee bloodline) who sang in a Cherokee edition of Home on the Range, "Jackson made deals, a thief down to his heels. Hello long trail of tears. The white man came, this land is my land this is your land they sang."

I've just ordered Ben Gadd's Raven's End directly from the author after seeing his stunning words featured in A Life Ascending, which follows mountain guide Ruedi Beglinger and his family in British Columbia. They said there's a belief if people who die who love the mountains, they come back as a raven to live there.

Here' a preview of that film.

"I believe that mountains have energy in them which get passed onto us as we travel in it. I believe mountains are fully alive," Ruedi says.

Isn't he so right? Do you get positive energy from nature?

I have so much to see. When a film was on showing footage of the Grand Canyon, my sweetheart, Steve, to the right, whispered, "I was there." He had gone with his brother in the B.C.-age (before Catherine). Robert, to my left, said, "I was there with my daughter." (He biked from New York to California after retirement. I get winded walking up a flight of steps). I thought - I need to see these things. Other than a childhood trip to Hawaii and California (I've been to the latter to San Diego on business as well), I haven't left the East Coast in my 35 years.

Robert might not have been an angel, but I'm so glad I spoke to him. Speaking to each other - something we don't do enough. Everyone's face down in their gadgets checking e-mail or Facebook status, missing it all (yes, as soon as the intermission began, poof, out came the gadgets).

I'm coming to peace with the fact that my time machine idea isn't so realistic, and I was inspired by Michael Stipe's reading of a poem, Blue, in R.E.M.'s Collapse Into Now.

"I am made by my times, I am a creation of now, shaken with the cracks and crevices. I'm not giving up easily. I don't have much, but what I have gold.

This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive.
Living, blessed, I understand this.
Twentieth century, collapse into now."

I am thrilled to be alive. I hope you are too, and you are filling your life with experiences that make it richer, and people that make you better, even if you only sit next to them for a fleeting moment.

That's what I learned in life this week. While learn wouldn't fit into my favorite four letter words, perhaps I can add, "Know."

Warmly,
Catherine

Before Hallmark, Love through the Ages

On this St. Valentine's Day, a tale from American novelist Keith Donohue's haunting Angels of Destruction, as told by Norah, who may or may not be an angel.

"The past is no more certain than the future. Little is known about the real Valentine, only this. There may have been two. Both were martyrs who died for what they believed. Both lived and died long ago. The first Valentine was a priest in the Roman times when the emperor outlawed marriages for young soldiers. This was done so that they would be more devoted to fighting than their sweethearts. But Valentine felt sorry for those men and married them in secret. When the emperor found out, he had Valentine killed! Off with his head, chop. Sometimes love means sacrifice."

"The Second Valentine was just a man who had been falsely imprisoned. He fell in love with the jailer's daughter and had to smuggle love letters in secret. He signed them, From 'Your Valentine.' These two stories are legends, and not much is known about Saint Valentine."

"The day of February fourteenth is related to love and fertility rites of the pagans. The pagans were people believe in more than one god or sometimes not at all. This is love and fertility rite is the time of the marriage of Zeus and Hera....It was also the feast of Lupercalia, when the boys of Rome ran naked...in the streets, striking women with a leather strap. This custom was continued by the Christians. In the Middle Ages, during the coldest part of long winters it became a day when men and women sent each other notes of their true love. These were the first valentines."

"It is a day to look forward to the end of winter and death and to celebrate a new beginning. The Middle Ages poet Chaucer said, "for this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird chooses his mate.""

Learn more about Keith Donohue.

Isn't little Norah right, the past is no more certain than the future, but it is worth exploring so we don't just easily brush this day off as "Oh, that's just another Hallmark holiday." We can overlook the commercial aspect, which is ingrained into almost every aspect of American modern life.

Celebrate romantic love and the art of romance, which seems to be another dying American tradition. Courtship, does that word even exist in our modern age? Eating lunch Sunday at a restaurant, so many sweethearts were not engaged in conversation or looking into each other's eyes - they were looking at their gadgets. It kind of seemed to say, "Sorry, you can't hold my attention for a full meal. Let me check my e-mail!" Dick Powell may only have had eyes for Ruby Keeler in Dames and declared it in song, but eyes seem to stray toward an electronic in the company of others, romantic or mutual.

Look at your bird today, or consider this even if you don't have anyone in your nest: Give thanks that you have the right to choose your mate, which was not always the choice. Although not everyone yet can have their love recognized in the eyes of the law.

Today, give thanks for love.