My friends Jill and Ronn shared more of the bounty of their garden: little blue-purple potatoes, one creamy yellow tomato, two lovely little Roma tomatoes, and a whole mess of okra. Theirs is a deer-fencing protected garden, so they manage to grow vegetables (Ronn told me he gave away 30 cucumbers yesterday) and flowers. It's a magical place. And my dinner was equally magical. I'll let the two photographs speak delicious volumes for me. I am saving the glorious okra for tomorrow.
(There is no picture for this part of my blog entry. First thing this morning, at school, I did a dumb thing. I am embarrassed to admit that I sent an invitation to Shelfari (originally sent to me by a New Orleans friend back in January) to everyone in my Gmail contacts instead of just to my students, and I did so completely unitentionally! While 16 14-year-olds fluttered about helplessly in class, calling my name and requiring my help, and while the Internet was as slow as lard still in a can, I pushed the wrong button and bingo! 670 contacts got invited! Argh. The great thing is that almost two dozen old friends and former students emailed me! One is an oil engineer in Texas; one is teaching in NOLA; an old friend from Vanderbilt updated me on his family from South America; one lives in Oregon and teaches online with Kaplan University; two mothers of former students wrote me about their reading; and a McGehee graduate of 1972 said I was the best thing to happen to her in an otherwise hectic day. Something good can come even from a careless mistake, and that's even better than my dinner!)
I love books. I love everything about them -- the smell of the paper, the way they feel in my hand, the different typefaces and methods of pagination and decoration, their covers and cover art, dedications and epigraphs, blurbs, ideas and words and typos and . . . well you get the idea.
I used to have one book wall, with enough shelves to leave quite a lot of room for more books. That was six years ago. Now I have a book corner too. And I've eaten up almost all of that space. I have a perfectly good library here at the college, but leave it to me to want to read things I can't find there.
Like this little book I bought through Alibris. What makes it so special, you wonder? My friend Jill wrote it. I read about it on her blog and decided I wanted to read it and own it. I don't personally know many actual published writers. Yes, there are my sometime neighbor and Naomi Shihab Nye and my own brother Billy. And there are Milly Barranger and Andrew Hudgins and now John Jeremiah Sullivan. But in the grand universe of things, they number few. Some of them are really just acquaintances anyway, but Jill is a real friend with a great eye for detail, an incisive wit, and keen intelligence.
Oh. Did I mention she has a beautiful garden and a yen for cats and dogs? And now I have one of her books. It's next on my Shelfari list of things to read.
My friends Jill and Ronn shared more of the bounty of their garden: little blue-purple potatoes, one creamy yellow tomato, two lovely little Roma tomatoes, and a whole mess of okra. Theirs is a deer-fencing protected garden, so they manage to grow vegetables (Ronn told me he gave away 30 cucumbers yesterday) and flowers. It's a magical place. And my dinner was equally magical. I'll let the two photographs speak delicious volumes for me. I am saving the glorious okra for tomorrow.
(There is no picture for this part of my blog entry. First thing this morning, at school, I did a dumb thing. I am embarrassed to admit that I sent an invitation to Shelfari (originally sent to me by a New Orleans friend back in January) to everyone in my Gmail contacts instead of just to my students, and I did so completely unitentionally! While 16 14-year-olds fluttered about helplessly in class, calling my name and requiring my help, and while the Internet was as slow as lard still in a can, I pushed the wrong button and bingo! 670 contacts got invited! Argh. The great thing is that almost two dozen old friends and former students emailed me! One is an oil engineer in Texas; one is teaching in NOLA; an old friend from Vanderbilt updated me on his family from South America; one lives in Oregon and teaches online with Kaplan University; two mothers of former students wrote me about their reading; and a McGehee graduate of 1972 said I was the best thing to happen to her in an otherwise hectic day. Something good can come even from a careless mistake, and that's even better than my dinner!)
