In Art As It Is In Heaven

"They might, without sacrilege,
have changed the prayer a little and said,
'Thy will be done in art, as it is in heaven.'
How can it be done anywhere else as it is in heaven?"

~ Willa Cather ~
from her novel The Professor's House (p 57)

Two views of
Harold Gilman's House at Letchworth, Hertfordshire (1912)

The house of artist Harold John Wilde Gilman (1876 – 1919)
Painted by Spencer Frederick Gore (1878 – 1914)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Recent Reading

1. The Professor's House
by Willa Cather

2. The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman

3. Remarkably Brilliant Creatures
by Shelby Van Pelt

If you're a fan of SeaWorld and love a good coincidence, this is the novel for you! I kept thinking of George Saunders: "Now a coincidence is all right, life is full of them, but a reader's willingness to ingest one is inversely related to how badly the writer needs one . . . " ~from his essay "The United State of Huck" (201)

4. Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell

Anne Hathaway's first impressions of William Shakespeare:
"That you had more hidden away inside you than anyone else she'd ever met. . . . She is rarely wrong. About anything. It's a gift or a curse, depending on who you ask. So if she thinks that about you, there's a possibility it's true" (137).
[See Mary Rose, below.]

And Shakespeare loves Anne because "you see the world as no one else does" (115).

Thinking of deceased children: "How frail . . . is the veil between their world and hers" (108).

5. The Ten Thousand Doors of January
by Alix E. Harrow

Thanks to my friend Katie who knows how to
judge a book by both its contents AND its cover!

6. Winter Street
by Elin Hilderbrand

7. In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
by Bette Bao Lord

8. Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout

9. The Time of Green Magic
by Hilary McKay

Another wacky lovable family (like the Cassons & the Conroys). Abi, Max, and Louis -- living in a big magical house, working together as sibs, dealing with family tensions, and facing their fears (remember Indigo?) real and imagined: "Iffen is real!" (182). From whence came the magic? "It came out of books" (229).

10. Mary Rose
J. M. Barrie

A gentle ghost story, time - travel and loss: ". . . being a ghost is worse than seeing them" (75).

9, 67: "The pictures on her walls in time take on a resemblance to her or hers though they may be meant to represent a waterfall, every present given to her assumes soome characteristic of the donor, and no doubt the necktie she is at present knitting will soon be able to pass as the person for whom it is being knit. It is only delightful ladies at the most agreeale age who have this personal way with their belongings. . . . I have been so occupied all my life with little things -- very pleasant."

32: "I know I'm not clever, but I'm always right."
[See Hamnet, above.]

56, 57: "I can see the twilight running across the fields. . . . happiness keeps breaking through."

65,70: "It is the years. . . . there are worse things than not finding what you are looking for; there is finding them so different from what you had hoped."

11. The House in the Pines
by Ana Reyes

Not to be confused with "Three Pines" or "Twin Peaks." Murder by hypnosis, mesmerism, levitation, and so forth. Somewhere in the woods.

Small Sweet Tangible Things

A Rebirth of Wonder

Children are us, three-to-eight decades ago, before we became so bewildered by the realities of this world that we simply stopped looking at them.

We often count on children to be the court jesters of our lives. They say adorable things and have no idea how funny they are. . . . Yet these are actual human beings. And they are coming to see the world as it really is. Which is an exacting and terrifying experience. . . .

People sometimes . . . approach small children as miniature gurus. They imply that children can tell us the answers to the world's problems if we just get on their level and listen. We hear that children will be the ones to save us from cancer, racism, and global warming.

Of course, this is a lot to ask of them. Especially in a world marked by so much hopelessness and strife. Children will lead us in the next world because, God willing, they will not have been disillusioned by this one yet. They will remind us of a time when the small, sweet tangible things still meant something. They will ask us to go back to that moment when we felt safe.

Sarah Condon
from her book Churchy (121 - 123; see also)

♥♥♥
A real - life example from my grandson:

On Valentine's Day, I picked up Ellie (4) and Aidan (2) from pre - K, and as soon as they got home they were having so much fun looking at everything in their Valentine bags. Aidan was holding up a card, as if he were reading it, and I asked him “what does it say?”

His answer: “It says ‘I love you Aidan.’”

THAT safe!
♥

Getting Through January

Find a sunny spot!

Reading by the Bookshelf ~ Fadeaway Girl, 1915
by Clarence Coles Phillips, 1880 - 1927

Read to a child!

Mother and Child Reading aka Nursery Rhymes, 1896
by Frederick Warren Freer, 1849 - 1908

Tell some ghost stories!

The Rising Generation ~ Illustration for Rip Van Winkle
by Arthur Rackham, 1867 1939

Scare yourself silly!

Crime Fiction Reader
in Fliegende Blätter magazine March 1933
by Martin Claus, 1892–1975

Find your true calling & live the dream!

Literary Salon: A Reading of Molière, ca 1728
by Jean François de Troy, 1679 - 1752

Stop by the bookstore!

Above & below, postcards from

Powell's City of Books ~ Portland, Oregon

Hello From Portland!

"That bookstore is like a church to me, thought Erikka: words to listen to and think about, music sometimes to push the words towards other and grander meanings, friends to smile at and feel comfortable with, and all of that somehow adding together, making a total feeling that was larger than the good feelings of the separate parts." (29)

from The Daughter of the Moon*
by Gregory Maguire (b. 1954)

More bookstores like churches:
The Last Bookaneer
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
The Little Paris Bookshop

P.S. *Another favorite line from
The Daughter of the Moon

"What's a blue blood?" asked Erikka?
"Someone who comes from a long and distinguished line,"
said Kristina.
"A long and distinguished line of what?" (145)

The Christmas Experts

If you want to know nearly everything
there is to know about the history of Christmas,
these are the books for you.

Stephen Nissenbaum (b 1941)
American scholar & History Professor
Author of The Battle for Christmas

John "Jock" Elliott
Advertising executive & Christmas Collector
Author of Inventing Christmas
January 25, 1921 - October 29, 2005

George D. Meredith
Influential Ad Man & Christmas Collector
Author of When what to my wondering eyes . . .
August 7, 1940 - January 5, 2023

Further reading on
Nissenbaum ~ Elliott & Meredith ~ Facebook

A Closing Note on Christmas Cards

Rutger Bregman: "Typically our social circles number no more than about one hundred and fifty people. Scientists arrived at this limit in the 1990s, when two American researchers asked a group of volunteers to list all the friends and family to whom they sent Christmas cards. The average was sixty - eight households, comprising some one hundred and fifty individuals." (232)

~from Humankind: A Hopeful History

Oddly, it's true! The stats don't lie!
That's exactly how many cards I send!

How to Find Orion

How to find Orion? Get a good star book!
I have had many in my life:
As a Gemini myself (born May 24, 1957), I love seeing The Twins -- Castor and Pollux -- featured on the cover of The Stars. However, it is thanks to Orion -- nearly everyone's favorite constellation! right? -- that I know how to locate The Twins. It seems that in learning the stars, we are taught first about the Big Dipper, then the Little Dipper, but Orion is the one who stays with us over the years.

Back when I was in grade school, these two H. A. Rey constellation books were library favorites of mine. In 1999, I gave new copies to Ben & Sam for Christmas!

H. A. Rey (1898 - 1977) is of course best known for his creation of dear little Curious George, and after that for his accessile explanations of astronomy. Maybe less so for his illustrated book of Christmas Carols, but that's why I'm including it here -- because Christmas is coming and because the title song is about a star!

My mom had an old trusted book of constellations, the one she used to teach us kids: The Stars by Clock and Fist (which I still have).

From my 4th grade reading list, I had What is a Solar System? (not pictured) -- and A Child's Guide to the Stars (shown above, outside & below, inside). These two are still with me, but I seem to remember a third one that I liked even better, perhaps also from the Neosho Pulbic Library: a maroon hardback cover with an etched design of two children looking upward out of a window; and inside, a page about The Magi and their mystical understanding of the night sky. Will I ever find it or see it again?

Thank to my friend Claude
for letting me know about the work of
Martha Evans Martin & Will Tirion

Another one from Ben & Sam's Childhood

"As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark,—
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

See Also
on QK: "The Faithful Beauty of the Stars"
on FN: "The Orion Connection"

Halloween Favorites

Pumpkin Moon by Tim Preston
with vivid, startling illustrations by Simon Bartram

Thanks to my friend Katie who knows
that kids' books are for grown-ups too!

Pumpkin Day, Pumpkin Night by Anne Rockwell
with nostalgic, cut - out illustrations by Megan Halsey

***************************

Not forgetting
The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt
and of course Harry Behn's Halloween

Naomi Shihab Nye

"I want to be someone
making music with my coming."

Back in the 1970s, I was a loyal subscriber to the quarterly magazine Power: "Personal Reflections by Youth for Youth." Of course I was thrilled when some of my poems were accepted for publication; but that happened only three times.

On a more regular basis, however, I was filled with inspiration, searching the pages of each new issue for the latest poems by Naomi Shihab, a regular contributor at the time. Hers were always my favorites, so much so that I copied them all out by hand and made my own "Collected Poetry of Naomi Shihab." Certainly she was famous to me!

Those omnipresent Blue Books of my under-grad years, ever a symbol of fraught and fretful soul searching, were never put to better use. I have them with me to this day, and the poems inside, imprinted on my memory:

I would be no one.
I would have no head, no hair, no comb.

I would be the thin mist in the air of a cold morning;
I would rise and disappear early, before the sun
and the noisy streets and everyone moving.

I would hum and greet you when you awaken,
with no words, no face, no promise but my love,
like a river.

I would be here, be here, be here invisible, forever --
when all the braver ones have gone to hide --
when all these tears have years and years been dried.

Nowadays, unlike that olden era of pen to paper,
you can easily order
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems
by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)

and read the many Shihab Nye poems
scattered throughtout my blogs: ~ QK ~ FN ~ KL
as they have been throughout my life . . .

Where are you on
your spiritual journey?"
you ask, your sharp eyes
thumbtacking the question
on my heart.

What can I say?
I am somewhere beyond "go"
I have not stopped.

Years have shown me
the idea of travelling
is a game we play with ourselves
to pretend we're not home.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

See SPIRITUAL JOURNEY,
Quotidian Kit, right - hand column,