Bombay Letters – A Mall, Gandhi’s House, First Wedding

Posted on September 8, 2011 by literarylee

June 1998

Hello from Bombay,

Here’s your man on the scene with a few more snapshots of life here in India.  On Saturday, the kids wanted to go to the local “mall.”  It is very upscale and classy, at least from a Bombay point of view.  It is nothing like our glass and chrome, high ceilinged, wide walkwayed malls we know in the U.S.  The stores are small (some smaller than our living room), and the mall walking areas are narrow (about 8 or 10 feet wide!)  The stores are filled with electronics, CDs and tapes, fancy clothes, designer sunglasses, Casio keyboards, and other imported things.  A couple of stores even sold food.  I finally stopped at one to check out the prices.  A small bottle of mustard cost the equivalent of $3.75.  A small jar of name brand popcorn: $3.00.  A box of instant macaroni (last time I looked in the US, the cost was no more than 65 or 70 cents) cost nearly $4.00.  And a small bottle of spaghetti sauce, a whopping $7.50.  I’d rather buy a gob of tomatoes for a rupee a piece and make my own. Continue reading →

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Poem Memory Tip # 3

Posted on September 7, 2011 by literarylee

Some forms of poetry have a specific number of words or syllables.  Most, or at least many, sonnets contain 14 lines, each with 10 syllables.  Knowing a pattern like the number of syllables in a line, or a particular rhyme scheme can make memorizing a poem easier.  Here are the first four lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128:

1. How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,
2. Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
3. With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
4. The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

It’s helpful to know a poem’s patterns.  So many times while I’m going over a line and am not sure I got it right or not, I can count while I recite.  If I end up with eight or nine or twelve syllables, I know I missed or added something, but when I have ten, I am pretty sure I got it right.  Counting syllables is useful for poems like sonnets that have a regular number in each line.

This tip can be a helpful guide for me to know if I’ve gotten it without having to look at the actual text.  The longer I can work on a line without actually reading it, the more likely I’ll be committing the particular word, phrase, sentence or stanza to memory.

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Sonnet 128

Posted on September 7, 2011 by literarylee

William Shakespeare

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

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The Rider Chronicles 10 – Moments Missed

Posted on September 6, 2011 by literarylee

The good news: I only live four hours away from my little grandson Rider, an easy trip.  The bad news: I live four whole, long hours from my little grandson Rider, miles and miles from this baby boy who has so captured my heart.

On the one hand this relatively short trip up the I-95 corridor to visit him is not so bad.  I’m actually pretty lucky it’s only that far away.  Gone for many are the days, actual or fictional, when generations live nearby, a walk down the street, a five minute drive, in the next village over.  Now are the days when children leave home for some far away college, then back pack through Europe or go to graduate school, and eventually marry some nice person also from far away.  Then the happy couple ends up living miles, hours, plane flights away from their parents, several states or maybe even continents  away.  I should talk.  I live nine long hours from my parents when I’m assigned stateside and handfuls of international time zones away when I’m working for two or three years at a time abroad.  Four or so hours of driving in a way isn’t that bad.  Continue reading →

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Our Own Work / Our Own Sustenance

Posted on September 4, 2011 by literarylee

We’ve been putting some of our harvest by over the last few weeks, preserving it for use this winter and to give as Christmas gifts.  My wife used a slew of the many, many tomatoes that ripened all at once and made fifteen pints of tomato chutney, so luscious, so tomatoey, and oh so good on grilled pork.  We picked pails of figs from her cousin’s two fig trees and made sixteen pints of fig jam.  Few things top homemade fig jam on hot toast or biscuits.  During the recent hurricane, we entertained ourselves by making six pints of bread and butter pickles, so good, so sweet, so perfect.  On Sunday afternoon, I picked about five quarts of beans which we froze.  We wanted to can them, but needed a pressure cooker for that.  We’ve been pickling pecks of peppers picked gradually over the summer, and freezing roma tomatoes by the dozen to use for sauces when the cold winter winds are howling and verdant tomato vines covered with red fruit is a distant memory.

Grown, prepared, canned, shelved for later

Continue reading →

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Serenity Above the Fray: Late Summer Grasses at Union Center

Posted on September 3, 2011 by literarylee

Union Center Introduction

Summer’s near its end at Union Center.  The riotous colors of spring with their attendant hustle-bustle are a dim memory.  Still, this neighborhood is hardly less vibrant.  Its intensity, its residents’ joy in life shows itself differently, unexpectedly.  Take a walk with me and meet our grasses, who somehow know how to bend in the fiercest breeze, the intensest of onslaughts, yet float right back up, tall and cool.

Community Minded

All grass is group grass.  Tight knit grass communities are famous for standing firm together, come what may, a unified front to face the world.  This group, however, takes community to a new level.  You find them in crowds, always bunches of them together, swaying, bending, beautifully bobbing their fuzzy seed heads from side to side.  Why we love these folks so much is that they bring good cheer, a hearty bonhomie to whatever they do.  We’re always glad when they’re around.  Continue reading →

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Late Summer Beans/ Late Summer Man

Posted on September 2, 2011 by literarylee

What the heck!

Nineteen days ’till the autumnal equinox, one of two dates on the calendar with equal doses of night and day.  From the first one on March 21, the days continued getting longer, warmer, the air full of promise: spring and summer and life, ahead.  This equinox will mark the first day of Fall and will continue time’s relentless march toward shorter days, the end of the growing season, harvest, winter.  I don’t say, “What the heck” because I don’t like what’s coming.  Fall is my favorite time of year.  I only remark because, well, it’s here already!  Once again, time has played me fast and loose, or maybe I’ve not marked it as I ought.

If you were to ask me how I lived my life, I’d tell you I am absorbed each day, focused on life and living, people and plants, writing and words, the beauty and wonder around me.  Then I glance at a calendar and, what’s this? September already!  I was so taken up in time, I hardly noted its passing.  Maybe that’s o.k.  For sure it’s startling.  Continue reading →

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Among the Liberators – The 1700 Block

Posted on September 1, 2011 by literarylee

Among the Liberators – Introduction

And so our walk begins

All of a sudden you’re there, among the Liberators on Virginia Avenue.  The slight turn off Constitution is so gradual, so subtle that, even after the scores of walks I’ve taken along this street,  I’m always surprised to have arrived.  The broad, soaring trees prophesy much of the time you will spend on Virginia, a street lined and surrounded by scores of majestic old trees.  Somehow the whole street feels grand, mature, seasoned, not fresh and inexperienced, yet not yet decrepit and irrelevant.  Here at the 1700 block, this sage avenue welcomes any and every alert walker, inviting one and all to discover her delights.  Continue reading →

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Approaching Armada

Posted on August 31, 2011 by literarylee

Tall clouds loomed high in the west, an approaching armada, sails furled purposefully.  The rising sun touched the topmost sheets, painting them a faint pink, mauve, a splash of bright against the blue sky above and the steely gray below, the ocean on which these ships sailed.  I soaked in this perfect picture, this heavenly mural that lasted a few minutes and was gone.

(Daily Sentence Introduction)

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Duck 17

Posted on August 30, 2011 by literarylee

"Waddle you do now, Tom?"

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