Dog Days

     You know what I'm talking about. Especially if you live in the south. Those days when you don't want to get in the car and go anywhere past noon, because you know when you get back in the car to go home, you'll be roasted to a perfect medium rare in just five minutes. It's especially hard for me, because I can't drive at night due to night blindness. So if there are any necessary chores to be done or appointments to be met, they'd better be done and met by lunchtime, or else they ain't gonna be done nor met. 

     Which leaves me with these long, heavy afternoons to fill. Reading? I'd love to, and I try, but my eyelids start drooping after only twenty minutes. And I hate to take naps. Why? Because I always wake up from them groggy, draggy, and discombobulated, then, even though I remain groggy till I go to bed at night, I have a hard time falling asleep.

     Watching movies/TV? A better choice. Which is what I was doing earlier this afternoon, until I got tired of sitting on my duff. So now I'm in front of the computer, sitting on my duff. From one screen to the other. Hardly progress. Well, at least I'm doing something creative, even it's creating pointless ramblings such as these. My only defense is that I'm certain there are lots of people just like me, lazing around on an oppressively hot Saturday afternoon, going through the same motions, or some very like.

     Someone suggested I try going for a walk. Ha! I laugh at the very thought. In this heat? Uh-uh! In this neighborhood? Not in ANY weather! I do go for walks, however, when the temperature is more agreeable, and in much more agreeable 'hoods.

     That same "someone" also suggested I go swimming. She doesn't know I can't swim, and I didn't have the heart to tell her.

     Sharp, sudden turn to the left ....

     In case you haven't noticed, I've started another blog (see shameless plug and link in right side bar). I decided I needed a space where I could just write about spiritual things. I know this blog is purposely called "A Spectrum of Perspectives" and that one of the colors in that spectrum is my monastic vocation story, but I realized not too long ago that, in those posts, I wrote very little about my interior struggles and growth, and perhaps that was a huge oversight. I know there are so many women out there discerning a religious vocation, and I want to help in what little way I can by sharing everything I've experienced in my own discernment and subsequent experience. I also simply want to share my spiritual musings, such as they are, and my love for God, the Church, and my faith. Hence the new blog. I'm presently mulling over a few posts in my head. Those kinds of posts, with that kind of material, are so much more difficult to write. I need to pray and meditate over them, unlike posts like this where I just type as I think. On the fly. (I'll have to look up the origin of that expression—"on the fly." If you think about it, it's sort of bizarre. It conjures up images of sitting in a tiny saddle on top of a fly and buzzing around to random places.)

     Well, it's been nice chatting with you. In case you're interested in what I'm reading these days: Time Enough by Emily Kimbrough, my favorite travel memoirist, and of course Elisabeth Leseur: Selected Writings.

     Stay cool!

Emily Who?

     I love travel writing and I love well-written humor. I found both in the books of Emily Kimbrough.

      Emily (I can't call her Ms Kimbrough; she's been one of my "kinsmen of the shelf" -- to quote another Emily -- for far too long) was born in Muncie, Indiana in 1899 and died in Manhattan in 1989. She is perhaps best known in the book lovers' world as having co-authored, with actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, the delightful 1942 memoir Our Hearts were Young and Gay, which recounts their misadventures as young women on their first trip abroad in the early '20s. I emitted many a guffaw when I first read it, and subsequent readings have been just as pleasurable. This popular book inspired a film (1944) starring Gail Russell and Diana Lynn, the screenplay of which Emily and Cornelia collaborated on with Sheridan Gibney. Emily also wrote the book's amusing sequel, We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood, relating Cornelia's and her experiences working on the film.

     It wasn't Our Hearts were Young and Gay, however, that introduced me to Emily; it was one of her later books, Pleasure by the Busload, which I stumbled upon during my very first visit to the legendary Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. The book's dustjacket blurb described it as a humorous account of a Volkswagen van trip in Greece that Emily took with some friends, among whom was the renowned Greek concert pianist Gina Bachauer. Being a great fan of Bachauer, I was naturally intrigued and bought the book on the spot. It's been twelve years since I read it, and I only read it once; my memory being the rusty sieve it is, I can't recall details, but I do recall having loved it and being eager to find more of Emily's books, all of which are memoirs. You can imagine how pleased I was to find several of them together on the bottom shelf of the dimly lit back room of a dusty antiquarian bookshop in San Antonio. All the books were in good shape and still had their dustjackets. Some other titles I purchased online.

     Aside from the fact that I love travel writing, especially about Europe, the main appeal of Emily's books is Emily herself. Here is a middle-aged, very proper woman, portrayed in the books' cartoon-like line drawings with hair in a demure bun, taking these seemingly carefee trips with her friends but finding herself in one comical situation after another, and writing about them with such a winning combination of wit, wryness, self-deprecation, and obvious intelligence. Her writing style brings to mind a grammatically mindful school marm who unknowingly has a large portion of slip showing from beneath her skirt.

     Unfortunately, the only one of Emily's books in print today is Our Hearts were Young and Gay. However, most of them, because they were so widely read in their day, can easily be found through the internet. My favorite online source for buying used books is AddAll. It searches Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon, etc. and many independents (including Powell's), 24 in all.

Here is a list of Emily Kimbrough's titles:

Our Hearts were Young and Gay (with Cornelia Otis Skinner)
Forty Plus and Fancy Free - Italy and England, including Queen Elizabeth's coronation
Floating Island - a barge trip on the canals in France
So Near and Yet So Far - New Orleans
We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood
How Dear to My Heart
Now and Then
Time Enough - a barge trip on the river Shannon
Forever Old, Forever New
It Gives Me Great Pleasure - her experiences as a public speaker
Water, Water Everywhere - Aegean Islands, Yugoslavia, Paris, London
Pleasure by the Busload
The Innocents from Indiana
Through Charley's Door - her first job, at the original Marshall Field's
Better than Oceans
And a Right Good Crew - a barge trip on England's canals

In the Summertime. . . !

     Dancing to this song in the privacy of my living room is about all the physical activity I can stand when the daily temperature rises above 90F.

     Once Memorial Day passes, I always feel a little restless twinge inside that warns me of long, hot, drowsy days ahead, dog days, days when the Texas humidity feels like a giant blanket round your shoulders. You get all your chores done, run all the necessary errands, as early in the day as possible to avoid going out once the sun has passed the mid-sky mark. After the morning get-it-done frenzy, all you want to do is loll in an air-conditioned space and read. At least, that's how the afternoon heat affects me.

     So it's time to plan my summer reading! Or rather, rereading. Summer simply screams for rereading old favorites. Let's see ... will it be kiddy lit? Travel narratives? Or novels?

     Leticia the Eternal Kid would choose to chase hardened criminals with Nancy Drew or hang out at the hospital with Sue Barton and her fellow nursing chums, or maybe romp around the prairie with Laura Ingalls in the "Little House" books. And there's also the Betsy-Tacy series, which she's only read once and loved -- she'd probably skip the first four books, though, and go straight to when Betsy and Tacy are in high school. Or maybe she'd reread a few of the "shoe books" by Noel Streatfeild (you know: Ballet Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Theatre Shoes, etc.), although she remembers that if you've read one, you've read them all, because they all have the same basic plot: young girl shows real talent and promise in some performing art or other, has some success, becomes a pain-in-the-neck diva, because of which she loses a big opportunity to some other girl, who likewise enjoys a big success, so the first girl learns the valuable lesson that "the business" doesn't revolve around her and there's always someone to replace her.

     Leticia the Armchair Traveler would perhaps reread some of the highly entertaining (if outdated, travel-wise) narratives by Emily Kimbrough, that proper middle-aged lady who loved planning and taking trips (and getting into less-than-dignified scrapes) with her friends, many of whom were well-known theater and film people of the 30's, 40's and 50's. In fact, Leticia the Armchair Traveler would probably start at the beginning with the side-splittingly funny Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, which Miss Kimbrough co-wrote with her friend, the stage star Cornelia Otis Skinner, and which recounts their first trip to Europe together as young girls in the 1920's. Leticia would then follow up with We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood, the equally funny story of how the Misses Kimbrough and Skinner helped write the screenplay for the film adaptation of Our Hearts. But then, any of Miss Kimbrough's many books are great summer reading, if one is a lover of travel, humor, and nostalgia.

     Leticia the Lit Lover would most probably choose to reread her beloved Barbara Pym, which she does every two or three years. She'd first of all whiz through Pym's best-known and most popular novel, Excellent Women and once more sink into the warm, soothing bath of Pym's prose, which combines sharp intelligence, wit, and tongue-in-cheek perspicacity. She'd reacquaint herself with Pym's small but delightful world of professors, anthropologists, clergymen, and the spinsters who love them. After that, there are twelve more Pyms from which to choose, almost all of them gems.

     Two more novels Leticia the Lit Lover would consider rereading: A. S. Byatt's Possession and Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.

     Or ... maybe Leticia the Lazy Loller will wade her way through them all! It's highly likely.