Sunday Sundries, 225

1. HBOW [Human Beings of the Week]: For the umpteenth time, our friends, Bill and Pat Eldredge, took Joyce and me to dinner last week--along with their daughter, Tammy, who, long ago, was in one of Joyce's English classes at Western Reserve Academy. (Joyce also taught their son, Bill.) The Eldredges have been so kind to us over the years--taking us to Tribe games, inviting us over for parties and dinners--just being so kind, thoughtful ... human. It has been one of the privileges of my life to know them.

2. Joyce and I--who haven't seen a film in about a month (a rarity for us)--decided to go to Kent last night to see Long Shot, a putative romantic comedy with Seth Rogen (a lefty journalist) and Charlize Theron (Sec of State of the USA)--two people who have known each other since childhood (she used to babysit for him).

I laughed a few times--as did Joyce--but for the most part it was a cliche collection (including the wise black friend whose  job is to support the white lead; the homely and crude doofus who somehow attracts the bright, beautiful woman, etc.). Just about every convention of the genre came trotting out, did a few lame tricks, slinked back into its doghouse.

And when the writers couldn't think of anything funny, they substituted something gross (pooping in a handbag +  a moment that will remind older viewers of There's Something about Mary, 1998).

The more I've thought about the film, the less I've liked it.

Theron decides to run for President; the current one (a pale parody of D. Trump) has decided to step down ... and things get complicated as she tries to work on a Green agenda ...

But ... good popcorn, great company. (link to film trailer)

3. I finished a couple of books this week ...

     - The first was the new novel by Siri Hustvedt (Memories of the Future), a story set mostly in the late 1970s when a young college graduate from Minnesota goes to NYC to try to write a novel. She makes an odd assortment of friends (including something like a coven of witches), who call her "Minnesota." We get excerpts from her novel, from the journal she kept--plus some scenes in the present (including some anti-Trump passages uttered by her aged mother).

Hustvedt (married to another of my favorite writers, Paul Auster) is an extraordinarily bright and literate and knowledgeable writer (her essays and nonfiction are difficult--and stunning), and her intelligence brightens every page in this novel. Scattered throughout are some gems ...

• "... we are always somewhere and that somewhere is always in us" (26).
• "Every story carries inside itself multitudes of other stories" (66).
• "My mother's brain has lost the stretch of now ..." (110).
• "We often remembered what never happened" (306).

And on and on. Oh, and Hustvedt brightens this text here and there with some of her original drawings.

Oh, and she alludes to an Emily Dickinson poem I'd never seen before. Check this out! (I'm a-gonna memorize it!)

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —

I felt the Columns close —

The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —

I touched the Universe —

And back it slid — and I alone —

A Speck upon a Ball —

Went out upon Circumference —

Beyond the Dip of Bell —

     - The second was a book I took a long time to read--10 pages here, 25 there: How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts (2018) by Ruth Goodman, one of the world's great authorities on the everyday lives of the Elizabethans (of all ranks in life).

It's all here: the "rules" of duels and swordplay, excessive eating and drinking, bodily functions, offensive speech ("a turd in your teeth" and "kiss my arse" are a couple of goodies, eh?), postures, clothing, etc. I loved it. As Goodman points out, the long-ago folk were much like us in some ways (no gas at dinner--bad form) and very unlike us in others.

Any Shakespeare Freak (like me) should read this one!

4.We're about to finish streaming (via Acorn) the TV series Wire in the Blood based, in part, on the ten Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels of Val McDermid (which I've started reading), a writer I learned via friend Chris is a woman (I was thinking Val Kilmer and the like; it's a good thing, by the way, to learn, now and then, that you're ignorant).

5. Last Word: A word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

anthomaniac, n.

A person who is (excessively) passionate or enthusiastic about flowers.

Origin: Formed within English, by compounding. Etymons: antho- comb. form, -maniac comb. form.

Etymology: <  antho- comb. form + -maniac comb. form, after anthomania n.

 Somewhat rare.

1841  H. Smith Moneyed Man  II. x. 321 The intense love of flowers that has procured for me the kindred title of an anthomaniac.

1856  W. C. Bryant Let.  23 June (1981) III. 388 Julia is an anthomaniac, and overwhelms me with ever-blooming roses, verbenas, and a dozen varieties of the clematis.

1991 Sunday Mail (S. Australia)(Nexis) 3 Feb. A progressive garden party..will be held on February 28, giving ‘anthomaniacs’ the opportunity to view some of Christchurch's best private gardens.