jaeleslie

Pushing forward, while taking it easy, very tai chi kind of effort today. This morning I read an article about the collage artist and painter Romare Bearden (took notes, decided not to make copies, that way lies madness), and some other stuff.

Thanks by the way to numbat who recommended The Hard Way to Haparanda by R.P. Lister (no not that Lister) which is great fun. It is a book about his travels in Lapland, back in the day (do you remember? mid-sixties, this had to be dug out of the lower stacks of the library) when anyone who took any exercise at all was looked upon as dangerously eccentric, so the whole first section is rather peculiar as he establishes with great good humor what kind of neurosis it is that possesses him to inflict such suffering on himself as hiking up and down mountains in bad weather carrying a large heavy pack. I read a great deal of the first part aloud. His tone is that of the wryly self-effacing Brit, but he makes many interesting general observations on human nature, and the national characteristics of the other Europeans he encounters, mostly Swedes and Finns...

Then I had lunch with Chris who was on the way outstate to Valley Ridge Studio for a weekend poetry workshop with Ellen Kort (state poet laureate), and with Marcia, who is off tomorrow for three weeks in Holland and Spain. Came home and had a pleasantly stunned afternoon working at this and that, cutting mats, sorting clip art files, setting the bread machine, making soup, and so forth.

I did not attend Number One Son's scheduled rugby game, from which the mud is even now being washed away. That will be more laundry again. Since he has come home in one piece, excuse me while I go check on the latest heroic exploits.