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!

Art to Soothe Your Sun-Battered Eyes

My choice of painter for this hot, muggy season is American tonalist Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938). For a brief bio, click here.

Bathe your eyes in his soothing wash of colors!

"A Reading"

"In the Garden"

"The Blue Dress"

"Summer"

"Lady in Gold"

"Before Sunrise"

My Favorite Summer Viewing

Most film lovers I know have seasonal favorites, films they love to watch at certain times of the year. For instance, every Advent one of my sisters likes to pull out all her Christmas-y DVDs, set them to one side, and watch one each evening. Another of my sisters DVRs all the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.

Now that summer looms its heavy, humid head over us, I reckon it's time to pull out my favorite films and mini-series and be carried away to a cooler, more pleasant place, both geographically and spiritually.

Let's start with the film that's actually named for the season: David Lean's romantic Summertime, starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi. A 40-something spinster finding love while on vacation in Venice, beautiful cinematography, heroine leaning out of the train window and waving goodbye ... <*sigh*> The entire movie has been posted on YouTube, but here is just a snippet:

For years, I loved the Disney version of Pollyanna with Hayley Mills. Then I discovered the 2002 BBC version and fell in love with it. I didn't fall out of love altogether with the Disney version and all its slick, over-produced cuteness, but I now prefer this one by far.

No summer would be complete for me without a viewing of Wonderworks' incomparable Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. (Anne of Avonlea is now marketed as Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel.) Seldom have I seen such a perfect combination of screenplay, cast, location, and cinematography -- and the musical score is absolutely heart-stirring. However, after just one viewing of Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story and Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, I have since steered clear of them—they're ridiculous, and are not taken from the books. I'll just stick to the original first two, thank you!

Maybe Enchanted April is technically a spring movie, but the general idea of getting away from miserable weather to a more congenial climate works in any season. This film is one of my top ten favorites of all time. And if you haven't read the novel of the same name by Elizabeth von Arnim, I can't recommend it enough.

One of my top five favorite mini-series is The House of Eliott. It's about two orphaned young Englishwomen in the 1920's who find themselves in dire straits and start their own couture house. The story is compelling, the script quite good for the most part; but the costumes are the real draw! At the end of the first series (twelve episodes), the Eliott girls stage their first fashion show, and the gowns are stunning. The second series is just as good, but the third (which is only six episodes) is negligible.

 

 

Way back in the late '6os the BBC graced PBS with a superlative adaptation of John Galsworthy's classic triptych The Forsyte Saga. It starred Eric Porter as the definitive Soames Forsyte, one of the most complex anti-heroes in English literature, Nyree Dawn Porter (no relation) as the long-suffering Irene, and, in later episodes, Susan Hampshire as Soames' self-absorbed daughter, Fleur (Hampshire won an Emmy® for her portrayal). When The Forsyte Saga aired (1967 in the UK, 1971 in the US), it created every bit as much public stir and ardent viewer devotion as Downton Abbey has in our time. Granada Television did their own adaptation for ITV in 2002 starring Damian Lewis as Soames, but their version pales in comparison, despite its technicolor and sumptuous production values. The acting and casting in the original BBC production simply can't be beat.

  

And of course, I can't leave out the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Summer wouldn't be summer without an eyeful of Colin Firth in that wet shirt! (Which is nowhere in the novel; but who cares?!)

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.