Odd Couplings, Book Version

This post at Bookriot is one of the best things I've read in a while. It's a listing of the Top Ten Made-Up Literary Couples, with explanations of why the two belong together. With pairings like Jane Eyre/Rhett Butler, Katniss Everdeen/Aragorn, and Bella Swan/Lestat, how can you miss?

Reading a post like this makes you think of the possibilities. How about these?

Guy Montag and Belle (Beauty and the Beast) - Okay, cheating a little since she's a movie character, but she's drawn to tortured, guilty souls and could totally feed his awakened hunger for books!

Laura Ingalls and Hawkeye (Last of the Mohicans) - These two share a "westering" spirit of travel and a love of adventure.

Other ideas?

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You Ain't No 'Lectric Elephant

I grew up in awe of my maternal grandmother. A farmer’s daughter, she rarely had idle time. Nearly every hour of the day, she was busy—cooking, managing the books for the farm, making phone calls, volunteering at the church—and that was when she was retired! This is a woman who woke every morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am (so I thought then; I’ve since discovered I share her love of early mornings) and often had a pound cake cooling on the counter by the time the rest of us stumbled groggily into the kitchen.

I can’t imagine how her workload looked when she had my mother and aunt at home and helped my grandfather, the traveling salesman, keep track of his travel and orders and expenses. They lived in Atlanta then, and to help manage all that work and the obligatory social engagements she had to maintain as a good corporate wife, she had a housekeeper named Alice.

I don’t remember Alice well, but I do remember her ability for succinct and accurate interpretation. Alice gifted the family with one of our favorite phrases. My grandmother was busier than usual and worried about it (a family trait), when Alice finally pinned her with a look and said, “Now slow down, Mrs. Bero—you know you ain’t no ’lectric elephant.”

None of us has ever understood why she picked that particular phrase, but it fit so well we now use it all the time. A case in point: this past week. Despite a very relaxing break, I managed to contract acute bronchitis again, and so I spent the first three days of the new school year at home in the bed. I dragged myself to school Friday out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but I’m paying for it this morning with a headache and a relapse. That’ll teach me.

Alice was right. Nobody is this family’s “a 'lectric elephant,” and I’d do well to remember it.

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First Footings

New Year’s Day is a big deal in the Scottish culture. Trust me, you haven’t partied until you’ve done it with people in kilts and bagpipes. “Auld Lang Syne” was written by Robert Burns, remember? Hogmanay, as the celebration is called, has a number of traditions, but one of the most fun is the First Footing. According to Scottish tradition, the first person to cross the threshold of your home in the new year will determine the kind of year you’ll have.

Well, I'm not combing my friends list to find a tall, dark-headed male in the superstitious hope that this year will somehow be better than last. What I am going to do, however, is be sure that my steps are aimed toward making this year a successful one. That means steps toward fitness, steps away from mindless eating, steps back into creativity, and steps leaving overwhelming stress and worry behind. Sounds easy when you put it that way, right?

May 2012 be a happy, healthy, and prosperous year!

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Merry Christmas!

One of my favorite moments of Christmas is proceeding into a candlelit sanctuary on Christmas Eve, singing "Of the Father's Love Begotten" accompanied only by handbells. That moment encompasses the mystery and hopefulness of Christmas. May you all have a day filled with many blessings!

Of the Father's love begotten,

Ere the worlds began to be,

He is Alpha and Omega,

He the source, the ending He,

Of the things that are, that have been,

And that future years shall see,

Evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him;

Angel hosts, His praises sing;

Powers, dominions, bow before Him,

And extol our God and King;

Let no tongue on earth be silent,

Every voice in concert ring,

Evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father,

And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,

Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving

And unwearied praises be:

Honor, glory, and dominion,

And eternal victory,

Evermore and evermore! Amen.

Words from “Corde natus” by the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius, translated by John Francis Neale in 1851, sung to the medieval plainchant melody “Divinum mysterium.” Nativity of Christ window from the Chartres Cathedral.

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Writers Behaving Badly

Years ago, when I first started writing, I bought a copy of Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, a collection of scholarly essays about the appeal of the romance novel edited by bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz. You see, reading romances was bad enough. Wanting to write them was tantamount to spitting in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey and betraying all my hard work as an English major. Reading dreck like romances required that I turn over my Mensa card immediately and scurry back to the respectable fiction aisle.

But what exactly does “respectable” fiction look like? Having read my share of literary fiction--prizewinning literary fiction, at that—I can’t say that I’m consistently impressed. Considering how snide serious writers are about genre writers (read about the kerfuffle when the National Book Foundation folks decided to award its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to Stephen King here), I find it vastly amusing when a genre writer gets a good jab in at the literati. Like King’s acceptance speech. Or even better, this excerpt from British romantic novelist Mary Wibberley’s book To Writers with Love. Not long after being asked by a woman at a literary society when she was planning to write a “real” book, Wibberley attended an Arts Council presentation in which several women novelists read excerpts of their work. During the presentation, she writes,

A fleeting—but scathing—reference to Mills & Boon and romance in general was made by one of them during the question session. I kept silent, oh foolish me, but afterwards went and read the blurbs on the covers of the books these authors had brought for sale. One was about an eighty-seven-year-old woman who decides to commit suicide and locks herself in a cupboard to do so. I wasn't sure why. Another concerned a gorilla that is bred from a human ovum and goes to public school. So that's literature. I had so often wondered. One day (when I have time) I am going to write a book about a one-legged Armenian transvestite who is forced to flee (well, hop, I suppose) to a Tibetan monastery after being seduced by his lesbian dentist. I'm quite confident I'll get an Arts Council grant to write it. So, yes, lady from the literary society at which I spoke, I would like to write a real book. And that will be it. Or I might just build a pile of bricks.

*snort*

But one doesn't have to get snippy to get a point across. Bless author Maya Rodale for this gem of a response!

Check out more here.

Image from http://casserbs.tumblr.com/

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Thanks and Giving

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, the smells of fresh bread permeating the air. Nearby are sleeping dogs and a happy family. In a bit, we’ll drive over the river and through the woods to one of the grandmother’s houses (my sister’s MIL). We will have plenty to eat today, plenty to laugh about, plenty to share. This weekend will bring the Florida-Florida State game, Wicked’s Chex Mix, my Daddy, dinner with my sisters, and a meal with the men at the Fresh Start ministry downtown. If we’re lucky, we’ll also have some quiet time and even a nap.

Back in the 1950s, my aunt brought a special Thanksgiving blessing home from school. My grandfather liked it so much, he adapted it for everyday use. Here’s to blessings, both spoken and experienced.

For all thy gifts so good and fair,

Bestowed so freely everywhere,

Give us grateful hearts, we pray,

To thank thee this Thanksgiving Day.

Amen!

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I'm a Mean One

Unless you grew up under a rock, you recognize this image from the incomparable How the Grinch Stole Christmas holiday special, characters by the inimitable Dr. Seuss, animation and direction by the peerless Chuck Jones. I am totally feeling the Grinch as he stares balefully down on Whoville right now.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks and getting blasted by Christmas music. Note the date above. We haven’t even, to quote the Coneheads, “consumed mass quantities.” No turkey coma. No football immersion. No Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (best moment from the past few years: Cartoon Network Rickrolling the entire parade with the actual Rick Astley). It’s actually just a normal Saturday, but I’m being forced to endure the twin atrocities of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” Ho ho ho my fanny.

Let us just state for the record that we at Chez mimi are not anti-Christmas. We can get downright jovial. But we know how to focus on the season properly, which usually entails buying a tree later so it lasts through Epiphany and attending church throughout Advent, not just swooping in for an annual hit-and-run at the Christmas Eve service, with a followup on Easter Sunday.

What’s provoking this spew of Grinchlike bile? The incessant holiday creep that invades earlier and earlier each year. Starbucks is actually showing amazing restraint by holding off on the holiday music this long. Walmart has had trees and decorations available since just after Labor Day, for Pete’s sake--yet another reason they’re at the absolute bottom of my shopping pile. When you start thinking of praising a retailer for restraint for holding off on the mistletoe until the day after Halloween, something is seriously skewed.

That’s why I’m a big fan of Nordstrom. If I were aspirational in the income department, I’d shop there all the time just as a thank you for their no-Christmas-decorations-until-after-Thanksgiving policy. (Check out a news story about it here.) It’s just too bad that they have to post signs about the policy because people have become so inured to the shopping season stupidity.

It’s gotten so bad that KellyKellyKellyKelly, one of my oldest and dearest friends who happens to work for a major retail chain, told me that the mall where her store is located has demanded that all stores open at midnight on Black Friday. Frickin’ MIDNIGHT. If you’ve ever worked in retail, you know that a midnight opening means someone has to be there earlier, so that means lots of employees cutting their Thanksgiving Day short so they can allow denuded buttheads the ability to worship at the altar of consumerism RIGHT AWAY.

People, the stores aren’t going anywhere. If part of your holiday spirit involves going to a mall in the dark of night to grab bargains and elbow it out with rude, impatient people, then be my guest. I’ll be tucked in my bed. Visions of sugarplums optional.

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