I vant to be alone !

"The pursuit of reading is carried on by private people."

So what would Virginia Woolf make of today's public sport of reading? We wait anxiously to hear Oprah's book choices, form reading clubs to discuss books as a group, make celebrities out of some authors, chat with unknown people about books online and read magazine columns to find out what books are on the bedsides of various public people. Of course, just about anything which promotes reading is fine with me. But I think Wolf was describing something rare these days - being alone with your thoughts. Pondering ideas dear to you, allowing time for reflection on the facts and fantasies you read, making sense of a book in your own way. Perhaps in this tell-all world, there are some things we can keep for ourselves

Prolific Hassam

“It is refreshing to note that Mr. Hassam, in the midst of so many good, bad, and indifferent art currents, seems to be paddling his own canoe with a good deal of independence and method."

An art reviewer wrote this about the cityscapes of American Impressionist painter F. Childe Hassam (1859 - 1935). Hassam was a prolific painter whose works I saw recently on a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org. LACMA has The Spanish Stairs which I climbed on my honeymoon trip to Rome. They also exhibit one of Hassam's popular flag theme paintings. You can browse through hundreds of his paintings on this site.

Let us all paddle our own canoe, where ever that may take us!

Trading Places

"Don't take advice from someone you wouldn't trade places with."

This quote is from a fairly dull movie titled The Answer Man - but I thought this maxim had merit. I will alter it to say, "Don't take restaurant recommendations from someone you wouldn't dine with." Of course this advice could apply to book recommendations and so on. It's all a way of saying... consider the source.

Newly Coined Word

funemployment

Urban Dictionary definition: The state of being without a job, yet having lots of time to enjoy fun activities during otherwise normal working hours.

Of course, for many people, being laid off is no fun at all. But I think it's a sign of the times that a new word has been coined for people who don't expect to find another job soon, so are slowing down to enjoy their new found free time. Instead of pounding the pavement, they explore new areas which may even lead to a career change. Time is a gift - if you can afford to take it.

Try or cry ?

"Fall down seven times, get up eight."

New Year's resolutions often look like impossible-to-reach goals. Instead, as this Japanese proverb suggests, it's all about trying. The dictionary says trying is about testing the powers of endurance. How helpful to shift ones thinking about changing habits from an event to a process - since you are much less likely to fail!

A Truly New Year

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."

As we rest a bit this week and prepare for the New Year, here are Albert Einstein's wise words to reflect upon. This year has not been a stellar one in many ways - the economy and world peace spring to mind. New thinking is hard. We need to actively try to spark it by listening to new ideas, trying a new activity, asking ourselves what the new normal is. A long walk through our snowy forest today will help me...

The Wisdom of Resolutions

"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other."

I thought this was funny until I realized that my New Year's resolutions are about the same each year. So, it appears, I can skip the whole process with the same effect. That's one thing crossed off my list!

A Lonely Quiet Concert

"In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation."

Stephane Mallarme was a French poet (1842 - 1898). Mallarme was famous for holding literary salons in his Paris home. His poetry inspired musical interpretations from Debussy and Ravel.

At first, this quote sounds melancholy. But it really is a glorious thing to lose yourself in a book. It's the rare book which suspends time. Read any lately?

Bigelow's Landscapes

"I'm looking for a feeling of being inside a painting, one that will echo the experience of looking up and seeing light through trees and having no beginning or end."

That's New York artist Isabel Bigelow talking about her landscape paintings. You can see her spare, graceful paintings such as Bare Tree at Reynold's Gallery. Bigelow likes willows and exploring shadow and light in her paintings. As she suggests, you can fall into her paintings... perhaps feel you are lying on your back looking up through tree branches at the soft winter sky.

The Sad Tale of Tess

"And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry."

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) wrote the classic of English literature, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, about a maiden's fall from grace. At the beginning of the novel, Hardy describes the maidens at the village May Dance. But the hope of youth is not to last and the story soon becomes bleak, then bleaker. Tess plummets downward through the social and sexual mores of her time. The interesting thing is how beautifully this sad story is told. Hardy writes poetically of the people, the diary farm and English landscape. Tess is an unforgettable character who has lived through song, theatre, movie and film adaptations. It is worth re-reading and seems fitting for the dark nights of winter.