sunday at st. john's

For our Sunday drive, we decided to go up to Collegeville and walk around at St. John's University, a Benedictine school with an attached abbey. I think St. John's is one of the most beautiful, restful places I have ever been — a sanctuary hidden amid prairies, cornfields, forests and lakes; a thin place, even, where the veil between heaven and earth is a little lighter, a little more ethereal than it is everywhere else.

I think part of it is due to the spirit of Benedictine welcome that hangs over the place, from the plaque outside the abbey chapel to the older monk who invited us into the Great Hall and gave us a loaf of bread that the monks make at the monastery.


If you asked me my favorite kind of church architecture, I don't know that my answer would be a 1950s-modern design by a former Bauhaus artist (Marcel Breuer). All I know is that whenever I walk into the abbey chapel, I catch my breath. There is something awesome and amazing about it. I had an opportunity to participate in midday prayer with the monks once when I was up there a few years ago. I'd love to do that again, maybe even come for a weekend retreat. That's hard to do when you have kids, though. Maybe I will just have to reread Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk, which is about the year she spent living at St. John's.



We took a walk in the woods, around part of the lake ...



... and finally thought to ask someone to take a family picture.

a team i could join

The Madwoman of Preserve Path, a fellow wordsmith, posted this article from the Chicago Tribune May 21 about two guys out to rid the world of bad punctuation and poor spelling. I love the photo alone!

Here's a snippet:

They entered a men's clothing store near Ashland Avenue. The large faded metal sign out front read "Mens Clothing." They swung open the door. An older man was resting his elbows on a shirt rack. They approached. Deck spoke. "We noticed your sign."

The man said nothing. Deck explained it needed an apostrophe. The man is Robert Marks, the manager. He is 60 years old and said he had been coming to this store (founded in 1914) since he was a child. (He said the sign is at least as old as he is.) He listened to them explain why the grammar on the sign was wrong. And then he shrugged, never changing his expression.

Deck asked if he had a ladder, so he could climb up and ...

"Don't worry about it," Marks said.

"We could jus ... "

"Leave it alone."

As I told the Madwoman, it just gets me that so many people in the world don't even notice punctuation errors, much less care. Either they don't read ... or they have no concept of grammatical rules in their heads. Either way, it's hard for me to fathom what it must be like to drift along through life with such a mind. If that makes me a snobby word nerd, that's OK.

feast and family

This year, we had two Christmases — the big family gathering at Steve's dad's place on Christmas Day and a small family gathering of just the three (well, four) of us at home on Christmas Eve, when we opened our presents. Someone else is usually in charge of what we eat at the big feast, so even though Steve and I usually bring something to contribute, I don't really get to participate in the fun (and energy) of planning out a meal. I miss that sometimes — dreaming up side dishes to go with the ham or the turkey, mulling over cookbooks to find creative ways to do sweet potatoes or green vegetables. So this year, Steve and I began a Christmas Eve tradition of having our own private feast, just for the family. It doesn't have to be huge or perfect — just fun and delicious and maybe a little adventurous. To get in the spirit of it, I turned to one of my favorite cookbook authors, Nigella Lawson, who manages to be laid back about cooking even while she's passionate about it. For Christmas Eve, I browsed through her Feast and decided to go with sausages with onion-cider gravy and a mashed potato dish that also incorporates apples. That, and the Brussels sprouts cooked with pancetta and chestnuts. It was delicious; I nearly literally swooned when we finally sat down and started eating. For dessert, we just had a few slices of chocolate loaf cake that I'd made over the weekend (from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess). I've baked several batches of it throughout the fall, and it's my biggest addiction at the moment. I cannot stop at just one slice and sometimes have eaten half a loaf in one sitting. Let's hope I don't get gestational diabetes.

If Nigella Lawson is relaxed and laid back in her attitude to cooking, my other favorite cookbook is the opposite and appeals to an entirely different (read: obsessive) side of me. It's The New Best Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. These folks will test a recipe down to its bare bones before settling on the very best combination of ingredients and cooking techniques. It's fascinating and sometimes pretty funny to read their process as they haggle over the minutae of a recipe, often making it dozens of times and having testers taste each permutation. For sweet potatoes — which is what I made for the big family gathering yesterday — it was all about whether to boil the potatoes or bake them to get the best flavor out of them, and whether to cook them whole and scrape them out of their peels once cooked or cut them up ahead of time. Their conclusion: Cut them up raw and braise them in a pot with nothing but a small amount of butter and cream, thereby letting them cook in their own juices. (I used a variation with ginger and brown sugar.) This way, they say, you get the full-bodied sweet-potato flavor without watered-down mushiness. And what do you know? They were right.

In the picture: Here's Daniel, the youngest of the 12 cousins (so far) on Steve's side of the family, with the oldest cousin, Beth, who is a junior in college and studying to be a teacher. He loved her. All the cousins but one were together yesterday, which was a rare achievement. It was a beautiful day — snowy but not too cold — and all the kids were red-faced and sweaty after coming in from ice skating on the pond outside the house. It was nice and relaxing, a very good Christmas.

a day in the life

I've been a Beatles fan all my life (well, since I was 14). Steve, not so much. He's always been into more alternative and obscure music and (I think) thought the Beatles were overrated or something. Maybe it was a music-snob thing. At any rate, he owned no Beatles albums when I met him, and although I didn't really get it, I didn't let it be a dealbreaker, since we do share other important musical preferences, like Elvis Costello and David Bowie.

So in the past couple of weeks, the media has been observing the 40-year anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — which is one of my favorite albums of all time, even though I've pretty much played it until I've gotten sick of it many times in my life.

One day last week, Steve came home from work and said all nonchalantly, "Do you have any Beatles albums?"

"Of course!"

Do you have Sgt. Pepper?

"Yep ... why?"

"NPR's been running a lot of stories about it, for the anniversary. Aimee Mann was on today talking about the op-ed piece she wrote for the New York Times (which we'd read that Sunday). I think I want to check it out. They're having a pledge drive next week anyway, so I need something to listen to."

A couple of days later, which was last Friday, he came home from work and set Sgt. Pepper and my copy of Revolver down on the table. He came into the kitchen, where I was chopping up chicken for dinner.

"I listened to those albums."

"Oh, really? What did you think? Did you like them?"

"There were a couple of songs on Sgt. Pepper that just blew me away." His face looked as if he'd had a spiritual awakening.

He went in and put the disc in the CD player. He programmed it to the end: A Day in the Life. And we started listening, and I started singing, since I pretty much know the words to every single song on that album. "... I read the news today, oh boy ..."

"These lyrics are amazing!" he said. "They sound more like John than Paul. I think John is my favorite Beatle."

I grinned: He knows the difference. "Mine too! Though I also love George ... he was so spiritual and quirky."

We skipped back to some of the other tracks, and that was how we ended up dancing around the kitchen, me with the big chef's knife in one hand, singing I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends. The soundtrack to my life, and my husband just getting hooked for the first time. It felt a little like falling in love again.

this is the day

All fall, I've felt like Izzy on Grey's Anatomy in that episode where she stands outside the hospital all day, trying to psyche herself up to go in but never quite ready to do it. I've been putting off going back to ballet class the same way. Just not feeling ready. Not energetic enough. Not having a leotard that fits my postpartum body. Not ready to appraise my body and my posture in a full-length mirror for an hour and a half. Not being able to find my ballet slippers in the bags of pre-pregnancy clothes I stashed away almost a year ago. Not organized enough to figure out the logistics of feeding Daniel or pumping breastmilk before I go so I don't have to worry about leakage during class. Steve has been trying to encourage me. A few weeks ago, he bought me some new ballet slippers, but I procrastinated on sewing the elastics onto them.

Well, this morning, I finally went. Last night, I sewed on the elastics; and this morning I got up at 7:30, fed Daniel and left the house at 8:15 in a too-tight leotard, breast pads and yoga pants. And it was wonderful. It felt so good to be back at that barre, doing pliés and tendues and arabesques and soutenu turns. To hear Tatiana pound out the familiar music on the piano in the corner, and to remember how soulful and joyful it feels to stretch my body and dance. And it felt nice to see all the old familiar faces and my teacher, Janet, who gave me a hug when I told her about the baby. She told me to expect my body to be "lush" for a while, especially since I'm breastfeeding. She said the same thing happened to her, and I was relieved that even longtime ballerinas have had their "lush" periods. (And God knows "lush" sounds a lot better than some of the words I've been feeling!) So I summoned up a healthy dose of compassion when I looked in the mirror, and I even felt a bit of pride in my mom-body, not perfect and young anymore, but still perfectly capable of glissading across a floor and bringing a baby into this world.

I feel like I've reached another turning point in this journey — like I'd been tamping down a passionate part of myself these past months as I embrace (with an entirely different sort of passion) the role of motherhood, and now I've allowed that old self back into my new life. It feels great!

boy, those lutherans sure can sing

I speak in particular here of the National Lutheran Choir, whose annual Advent concert Steve and I attended Saturday night at the Basilica of St. Mary (our second "date" without Daniel since he was born), as we have for the past four or five years. The choir aside, it seems like most of my Lutheran friends are musical in one way or another. Maybe it's because they went to St. Olaf College, where music reigns supreme, or maybe there is something larger about the Lutheran zeitgeist that fosters a love for singing. I remember reading an essay by Garrison Keillor, posted on my very musical, Lutheran friend Liz's blog a while back: "We make fun of Lutherans for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their constant guilt that burns like a pilot light, their lack of speed and also their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese," he writes. "But nobody sings like them."

Anyway, the concert was exquisite, magnificent, even mystical in parts. At one point, the choir was spread throughout the whole, huge basilica, the singers in their black robes and cross pendants lined up and down the aisle, sustaining a series of undulating notes that would have reminded a more cynical me of an episode of Star Trek but which, at the time, felt like being carried along on the breath of angels.

This year, I find that I am especially drawn to images of Mary holding her sleeping infant son. I have always found the paintings beautiful and interesting (and sometimes funny, when the image of Jesus looks like a miniature grown man), but now I linger at the paintings and think about how familiar that pose is, how it reminds me of the way I cradle my own son in my arms, how he sometimes looks like a wise little man hands himself when he holds his hands out in a certain way. The same with music: As the choir and audience sang Silent Night together that night — "Holy Infant so tender and mild" — tears rolled down my face. As a Catholic of the post-Vatican II generation, I have never been really into Mary, the way some women of my mother's generation are. But now I'm thinking that becoming a mother has given me a new soft spot for her. When I think of all she went through with that son of hers, it's easier to put myself in her shoes and imagine what a strong, brave, patient woman she must have been.

october

I love this time of year. The leaves are nearing peak color in the Twin Cities, and it is the perfect time for walking along the Missisippi River Boulevard in all its red and orange glory. This afternoon, Steve took off work, and we bought lattés and smoothies at Caribou and took a relaxing Friday-afternoon stroll with Daniel. We walked two miles, which was really good exercise for my post-partum body. (I had my six-week checkup today and got the thumbs-up to resume normal exercise!) It was our first time at the river trail since mid-August, when we walked to bring on my labor. And now, we walked as a family.


Daniel slept through it all. He sleeps like a log in his carseat-stroller. I can't believe he is six weeks old already. And I can't stop kissing his chubby little cheeks (or taking pictures of them)!



Today, I also brought out one of my favorite albums in the world — one I listen to every year around this time — U2's October. I have had it since high school, and it never fails to make me feel nostagic and emotional in a rather gothic way — which of course is perfect when the leaves are falling all around you and the sun is still bright and warm, but the air is getting brisk and the hint of winter is around the corner. The title song is short and spare, but it feels so huge and holy to me:

October
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care
October
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on

magical birthday

If the Lemmondrop were born today, we might have to rethink his name and christen him after the famous boy wizard who was born on July 31: Harry Potter!

Given our last name, however, I don't think Harry would make a very good first name. :)

yes i will yes

Today is Bloomsday, the day when Dubliners commemorate the events of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, which takes place all on one day 102 years ago — June 16, 1904. (This year, I hear, some Bloomsday events are being cancelled or cut back due to the state funeral today of the late prime minister, Charles Haughey.) The main character, Leopold Bloom, is an ordinary Dubliner who makes his way, odyssey-like, through a day in the life of his urban landscape. (Funny how Leopold Bloom is also the name of the uptight accountant in The Producers.)

Most people haven't read the whole book if any (present company included), and although it seems obvious from the title, I never realized how much Ulysses parallels Homer's Odyssey until last summer, when we were in Dublin (fittingly). A professor friend of the archbishop (who was our leader on the trip) joined us for a few days, and one morning, he sat with Steve and me for breakfast in our hotel. He teaches philosophy at a college in New York. Brilliant man, the kind of brilliance I want to soak up but know I can never emulate. Who shuts themselves at home to read Oscar Wilde's entire oevre over a weekend, just for fun? Not me — would that I were so scholarly. But I do like to ask questions, so I took the opportunity to talk to him about Ulysses, and it was interesting to hear him break it down over breakfast. Leopold's wife, Molly, is Penelope, and she is being courted by another man. Leopold is Odysseus, and to win her back, he must undertake a series of trials. The funeral of a local man is the descent to Hades. Barmaids and singers serve as the sirens. Stephen Dedalus (a character who loosely resembles James Joyce) represents Odysseus' son, Telemachus.

Ulysses has a famous ending, and even people who haven't read it probably know of those famous last words of the book, culminating in "Yes." It's when Molly Bloom delivers a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy ending with her ardent recollection of her first passionate encounter with Leopold. Last October, while I was taking a poetry class, I happened to run across those pages, and I decided to shape the final words into a cinquain (22 syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8, 2, in five lines) as a practice exercise. The words fell into place perfectly.

I drew
Him down to me
And his heart was going
Like mad and yes I said yes I
Will Yes.

our last hurrah

We left Friday morning for the North Shore with city things weighing on our minds: doctor and hospital questions, unfinished articles, deadlines. All that evaporates once you pass Duluth on Highway 61 and head north past Betty's Pies, Two Harbors, several state parks. You're under the spell of glittering Lake Superior, out the window to your right. And once you get to Grand Marais, it feels like you're in a different time and place altogether. They say Grand Marais is one of those places, like Connemara in western Ireland, where the veil between heaven and earth is thinner somehow, and I think it's true — of both places.

It was our last vacation before the baby is born. I couldn't do much hiking, but we had a splendid time, relaxing and reading at the edge of the lake outside our lodge (the Naniboujou Lodge, about 15 miles north of Grand Marais) in big red chairs, eating the most delicious breakfasts I've ever had on the North Shore. (The huge cinnamon rolls at the lodge are not to be missed — nor is the brightly colored dining room, which I am having trouble uploading, but you can see it if you click on the Web site link.)


We have a few rituals in Grand Marais. Every time we are there, for example, I buy a book at Drury Lane Books ...


Often, it's poetry or a book on gardening or whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. This time, I bought The Scent of God by Beryl Singleton Bissell (a new memoir by a local woman who used to be a nun until she fell in love with a priest, and they both left their respective vocations and got married). And because I'd bought my tenth book, I also got a free one, so I chose The Jane Austen Book Club: A Novel by Karen Joy Fowler. But I won't be starting either of them until I finish with the used paperback I picked up at the lodge — Anne of Ingleside, the sixth book in the Green Gables series. I'm loving it! Anne is the mother of six children now, and I love reading about what she's like as a mother. She's good-natured, patient and compassionate; and she encourages laughter and imagination in her big, cozy home. I hope I will be half the wonderful role model she is!

One of Steve's rituals is collecting the grey-blue rocks that are so ubiquitous on the North Shore. Our house is full of them. They sit in boxes in the basement and in glass dishes on shelves. He loves them so much. I myself prefer the colorful rocks, the ones that stand out on the beach, but he is always searching — with great passion — for just the perfect shape, smoothness and shade of grey.


He also loves to skip stones. He can make them go six or seven times along the surface of a good wave. He cannot wait to teach our son to do it!


The moonlight on the water was so breathtaking. All I could capture was a few blurry shots.



Today, we walked out onto Artist's Point at the tip of Grand Marais. It was such a beautiful day.



It has been hard to come home. But I know we'll be back before too long. And next time, we'll be able to share it with the third member of our little family. I can't wait!

'a couple of kooks hung up on romancing'

Here we are, three years ago today!






Tonight, we'll be in our ever-romantic childbirth class, followed by anniversary cake. Tomorrow night we'll celebrate over dinner at Solera, where our favorite local band, The Owls, will be playing upstairs afterward. Steve planned the evening, and I can't wait!

We sat and talked for a long time this morning over breakfast and coffee. It was happy, hopeful talking, the kind that leaves me feeling that all is right with our little world. We talked about our three years together, our future, our goals for parenthood, our hopes and dreams (to steal an album title from The Owls). We talked so long that we were late for work. But it was worth it.

And on the way into work, I listened to one of my all-time favorite songs — Kooks by David Bowie — which is on one of my all-time favorite albums, Hunky Dory. (Steve is a Bowie fan, too.) I've loved this song for many years, since I first heard it in my sophomore year of college, and I've waited a long time to play it for our future baby. As I listened in the car, I realized that it fits our quirky personalities perfectly, even if we don't actually plan to throw our son's homework on the fire. Here's how it goes:

Will you stay in our lovers' story
If you stay you won't be sorry
'Cause we believe in you
Soon you'll grow so take a chance
With a couple of kooks
Hung up on romancing

We bought a lot of things
to keep you warm and dry
And a funny old crib on which the paint won't dry
I bought you a pair of shoes
A trumpet you can blow
And a book of rules
On what to say to people
when they pick on you
'Cause if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kookie too

[CHORUS]

And if you ever have to go to school
Remember how they messed up
this old fool
Don't pick fights with the bullies
or the cads
'Cause I'm not much cop at punching other people's dads
And if the homework brings you down
Then we'll throw it on the fire
And take the car downtown

[CHORUS]

And here's one more for my sisters:

'to feel myself beloved on the earth'

In a burst of housekeeping, I have been going through my Outlook e-mail account at work, deleting as many e-mails as I can in anticipation of maternity leave, even though it's still months away. (Can we say "nesting"?) I found this one I sent to Steve more than a year ago. It touched me deeply at the time because Raymond Carver has been one of my favorite short story writers. I didn't write the preamble. I found it somewhere in the blogosphere; I can't remember where. And of course, the poem is all Carver. I get a lump in my throat whenever I read it.

• • •

"Do you know the story of Raymond Carver's life?  Although it's not a conventionally happy narrative, it's one that I've always found weirdly comforting.  Carver was an alcoholic who once said that he became a writer so he could entertain 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit.'  For a number of years, the severity of his alcoholism made it impossible for him to write at all.  But in his forties, after a promising career had trailed off into addiction, Carver began to get better.  He stopped drinking, fell in love, began to write again.  His stories during this time reveal his own metamorphosis — instead of ending in painful isolation, they are full of hope and possibility.

"Then, shortly after he got sober, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  You can see him wrestling with his impending death in his last poems. He married his lover. He rushed to finish his last book of poetry, A New Path to the Waterfall. He tried to get it all in during those last few months, all the living he felt he hadn't done before, all the moments he knew would never come again.

"And then - the last poem he ever wrote, just before he died, titled Late Fragment:

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

the lusty month of may

Today is May Day. It's the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, a celebration of fertility, the "lover's holiday." It's a day known for planting seeds, dancing around a May pole, lighting bonfires. Some people give baskets full of flowers to their loved ones. (See photo at right for example from some Victorian Web site!) One tradition is for girls to chase the boy they like with a basket full of flowers until they catch him. I know someone who did that. She and her husband both were coworkers of mine, and she used to bring the flower basket to work and chase him around the office.

So it's a good day for lovers everywhere — better than over-commercialized Valentine's Day, I say. And for Steve and me, it's the four-year anniversary of our engagement! The official proposal, that is.

Four years ago, May 1 fell on a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, we had a standing date night. On this particular night, Steve rang the bell at my apartment as usual to pick me up, and when I opened the door, he was standing there with a bouquet of flowers. He got down on one knee and presented me with a ring, which he had fashioned out of a gold-plated twist-tie he'd gotten off a package of candy. He had (he told me later) spent most of the day making it. The diamond part was impressively large!

And he popped the question, of course. Although the question did not come from out of the blue, I was happily surprised that it was coming at this moment, and I was tickled by his creativity with the ring and his cute nervousness about getting the moment just right. So it was with a mixture of tears and laughter that I hugged and kissed him and said yes. Yes!

And then we took a few of those pictures where we hold the camera out at arms length and hope we're both in the frame. (They're so cute — I'll post one tomorrow if I can remember.) Afterward, we went out to dinner at The Vintage, on Selby Avenue, to celebrate. I wore my makeshift ring all night, and I still keep it in a treasured place in my jewelry box. (Steve ordered the ring I wear now, which I also love, from BlueNile.com, and it arrived via Fed Ex a few days later.)

We celebrated today over lunch at an Asian restaurant near his office. (He has class tonight — his second-to-last before he finishes school and gets his MBA! I'm so proud.) And I can say, for the first time in almost three years of marriage, that this May Day has also been a happy day for celebrating fertility. I could not feel more blessed by this pregnancy, this event we worked so hard to make happen.

Happy May Day, everyone! Don't forget to kiss your lover, child, best friend, cat or whomever gives you love in your life!

lemon-colored volkswagens and southern art

So, the other day I was looking around Google Images to see if I could find a cute graphic to use in my profile photo area. (None of the pictures I have uploaded in Shutterfly will work, for some reason, because the URLs are more than 68 characters long, and apparently Blogspot has its limits.) One of the images I found when I Googled "lemon drop" was this awesome painting of a VW van! I didn't end up using it, although maybe someday I'll swap it into my profile spot ... I LOVE IT!


If you've known me a long time (or are one of my sisters!), you know that our family used to have an ancient Volkswagen van dating back to the mid-Sixties. It was deep, rusty red, and its side doors swung outward instead of sliding. By the time I got to be a teenager in the Eighties, that car was an embarrassment. One time I had to drive it to a school dance, and I was mortified. But the van had its cool factor, which I only came to appreciate after I got into the Grateful Dead in college, and by then, my parents had pretty much retired it. Hippies used to pull up next to my dad in the middle of busy highways, gesture to him to slide back the window, and yell to him, "Hey man, are you interested in selling that van?" Sometimes people left notes tucked behind the windshield wiper with their phone numbers, and we'd find them when we came out of the grocery store. In the end, my parents sold it to a couple of guys a few doors down the street. Seeing it in their driveway after that made me feel a little nostalgic for it. Only a little.

Anyway, the artist's name is Chase Quarterman, and it turns out he's a young, Southern guy — schooled in Mississippi (and overseas) and now living in Austin. Here's his bio:

Chase Quarterman is an artist currently residing in Austin, Texas. He received his B.S. degree in Graphic Design at Mississippi College in 2003. He draws much of his artistic inspiration from German Expressionism, modern Chinese painting, Mexican folk art, and various southern artists. A semester in London, a trip to China and Mexico, and doing summer mission work in Taiwan has greatly influenced his perspective on cultures and the arts that influence those cultures.

I've been perusing his portfolio on his Web site and just enjoy his style so much. His paintings remind me of the good things I liked about living in Mississippi — the blues, the rich literary heritage, the delicious (though fattening) food, the relaxed pace of life, the quirky sense of soul that is lacking in most other parts of the country. I even recognize some of the places he's painted — the country store in Taylor, Mississippi, where my old friend Baby Jane Burdine's daughter was the mayor. Ole Miss, the university in Oxford, where Faulkner lived. St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Jackson.

I love it when this happens! I love it when looking for one thing leads to the discovery of something completely different that captures my imagination. Life has such a way of doing that, if only we're willing to meander a bit and keep our eyes open. Anyway ... I'm sure there's an essay in here somewhere, but that's for another day. For now, I'll just post some more from Chase, and then I'm signing off. Have a good one!

a weekend of art, bread and spencer tracy

I had an unusual afternoon Saturday - judging the third-annual St. Paul Bread Club bakeoff. I had never heard of this little club until the president called up our office a couple of months ago and asked if someone would be available to participate - no baking experience needed. (I guess he felt it was important to have a Catholic on board?) I love homemade bread - who doesn't? - so of course I volunteered! What a scene: The bakers showed up Saturday with entries in almost a dozen categories. I ended up judging the quick breads category, so I sampled seven batches of scones, banana breads and muffins. Judging was completely subjective - it was all based on what tasted good to me. And it was all wonderful, but my winner was a delectable lemon-raspberry streusel muffin, which had just the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness and held together so nicely in my hand ... mmm.

With all the international films showing around the Twin Cities, Steve and I planned to see at least one Saturday night. But I was tired after the bread thing, and Steve was tired from painting the baby's room all day. (Plus, we had gotten up early that morning to babysit Steve's niece.) So instead, we watched a movie on PBS that I'm glad we stayed home for: Judgment at Nuremberg, from 1961, starring Spencer Tracy as the lead judge in a tribunal for Nazi war crimes. The cast was full of Hollywood stars, many of whom played German roles - Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster and more - although I didn't recognize anyone except Spencer Tracy and Judy Garland until I Googled the film afterward. (Even Judy Garland was a disconnect. She played a wronged, beaten-down German woman, and it was only her Dorothy of Oz voice that made me look a little harder and realize who it was.) Anyway, it was a really good and thought-provoking movie about who was complicit in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

Though we missed the film festival, we did make it to the St. Paul Art Crawl Friday night. And I have to say, the blogger of Cool on the Hill gets it exactly right:

All weekend long, the lofty artists of Lowertown are hosting the Saint Paul Art Crawl with extended hours so you have even more time to pretend to be gazing at their art while you're really checking out their appealingly bohemian apartments.

So true! Every time Steve and I go, we start to entertain fantasies about buying a loft in Lowertown and living the hip, urban life ... hanging out at the Black Dog for coffee and strolling over to the St. Paul Farmer's Market on weekends. ... Still, we do look at the art - and we did not go home empty-handed Friday night. Argh - we really should know better than to bring the checkbook to these things!

Finally, thanks to the diligence of public radio, it's been hard to escape the reminder that today is William Shakespeare's birthday. Nonetheless, it was an e.e. cummings poem in the program at church that captured my attention this afternoon - because today truly has been the most gorgeous of days.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

remembering ramona

Did anyone hear the story on NPR Sunday afternoon about Beverly Cleary turning 90? She was the author of the Ramona books, which I read avidly as a child. I don't think I realized when I was young that she lived in Portland - just like me - and set her books there. It's pretty cool, when you think about it. I mean, I was enthralled by books set in what seemed like the most exotic places - New York (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler), London (A Little Princess) and indeed all of England, Prince Edward Island (Anne of Green Gables), the Great Plains (Little House on the Prairie), Oz. To think that my own city was a place where wonderful children's stories could happen! Now I want to go back and reread them all. I should do that anyway - I remember loving those books, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you why. Specific scenes and plots escape me. Besides, rereading children's books (and reading them for the first time) is so much fun.

(In case this image is copyrighted, it's the latest illustrated version of Ramona Quimby, by Tracy Dockray. If I'm not supposed to post it, someone please let me know!)