First Sunday of the month I devoted to catching up on the newspapers I missed while we were in Toronto. Went to a meeting at my club which was halfway through being restored after the movie “The Runaway Jury” was shot there. Look for the hunting club in the movie with Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and John Cusack coming later this year. The weather was bitter cold and that called for minestrone soup. It was nice to be able to heat up the house from the kitchen and pour out good smells in the process. First time I cooked without putting the vent on to exhaust the excess heat and humidity since last winter. And you, dear Readers, can make yourself this minestrone soup because I’ve included the recipe in the new section of this Digest for the Recipe of the Month: http://www.doyletics.com/digest32.htm#section5
I received this poem by Emily Dickenson in an email this month from Ruth Anne Mistead and would like to share it with you. It speaks to the props that people use in their daily work as crutches that may be dropped once they truly understand the work they do. Also applies to life as the scaffold of death eventually drops one’s body back to the Earth and affirms for each one a Soul:
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
and adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter —
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life —
A past of Plank and Nail
and slowness -- then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul.
St. Nicholas visited our house and left me his uniform to wear and some suggestions for the right words to say to the young children. I sat down and read from the Golden Book the words their angels had written in the book. Here’s the words [and on-line you’ll find a photo]:
“Good Evening, Children, I am St. Nicholas and this is my loyal servant, Ruprecht. You know, Children, that Christmas is coming soon, and the Christ Child is coming close to the Earth. I have descended from Heaven to seek out the Children of the Earth to see how they are preparing for his coming. I have brought along my Golden Book, in which the Angels have written, things so beautiful that they light up the pages. There are dark things written there and we shall read them as well.
“Ruprecht, hand me my Golden Book.”
[St. Nick read the page for each child present. Followed by a closing song and a present to St. Nick.]
“Thank you Children – that was a beautiful song. This is a lovely gift. I will hold you in my heart forever. I can see that you are well prepared for the coming of the Christ Child. Continue to do your best as He is coming soon. I must go now as there are other children waiting for me.
“Ruprecht, it is time to leave. Goodbye, Children, and May God Bless each and every one of you.”
To make it a little interactive, I diverged from the script a bit and asked the children if they knew the meaning of Christmas coming near. One little said, "Many presents!" To which I replied, "Yes, and it also means that the Christ Child is approaching the Earth." A small girl piped up, "You are right, Santa!" Obviously these children had been doing a good job of preparing themselves for the coming of the Christ Child.
After that Del and I took our Christmas act to our daughter’s house where my precocious grandson Gabe kept asking Del, “Grandma, how come Grandpa is wearing that costume?”
Our living room has become Santa's workshop this month. Actually it became a gift wrapping room where over 175 presents were assembled, stuffed into boxes and gift-wrapped by Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus was busy wrapping presents one morning. The dining room table was completely full at one point, but before I could take a photo of her, she had cleared the table. “Too busy for photos,” Mrs. Claus said. Took one anyway, and she wouldn’t stop putting tape on a present even for the photo, which you can see at right (on the website Digest).
We hand delivered the ones for my son's family around Thanksgiving. Our Metairie, Baton Rouge, Alexandria and Beaumont crews assembled at Timberlane on December 14th — we had a full house of kids, grandkids, gifts, toys, and food. Then we hit the road to hand deliver the Bellaire and Beaumont brood their gifts. We made seven out of the eight offsprings deliveries in person this Christmas.
One morning I awoke from a dream in which I heard these words, “Upon seeing the ocean, Clive said to himself, ‘It is a sea to which I will return – a sea of dreams, a sea of unconsciousness, a sea of future lives that rolls and billows in front of me even as the vast ocean upon which I gaze.’ ”
It was the day on which I had to prepare the following for our open house: shrimp stuffed merlitons, oyster dressing, roast turkey, baked yams, baked sac-au-lait casserole. That night we went to a party given by Total Benefit Services and met some old friends there. The next day Del and I spent cooking and preparing for the guests coming at 4 pm. Roasting the turkey, stuffing it with the oyster dressing halfway through its roasting, making the giblet gravy, and the other thousand things that eating flesh is heir to. We had a full house and everyone left with a full tummy and an armful of gifts.
The next day Del and I went to the Saints game. It was a gorgeous day with bright clear skies and I took a bunch of pictures of the downtown buildings as we walked from our parking space. The Saints played a great game right up to the last 8 seconds when the other team beat them by one point on a two point conversion.
Now for a little surfing fun: Using HotBot’s advanced search capabilities, I searched for “Bobby Matherne” excluding any links to doyletics.com or pages dated before Jan 1, 2002 to exclude most of the review pages from my two web sites. In the process I have discovered these new links to me:
David Bower’s NYU dissertation has a link to one of my Bruner reviews at:
http://home.nyu.edu/~dnb208/docbib.html
English 287 at Kansas State University lists my “How To Read A Book” review in its study guide for the Syllabus. http://www.ksu.edu/english/baker/english287/287-sg0.htm
The Norwegian National Library has an interesting article about emotions and LeDoux that not only references my doyletics.com website but actually cites my research results from mine and Doyle’s work. http://home.newmedia.no/~olavege/epm26.htm
The Phoenix Art Group’s Quote archive has a quote from my “Art is the Process of Destruction” Essay, namely, “"...art, true art, rightly understood, is not pretty, because it involves the destruction of the sameness that we have become inured to over time, and most people resent it when some new artist destroys artistic illusions they have worked hard to acquire."
http://phoenixartsgroup.org/quotearchive/page14.html
The website http://www.googlism.com has a googlism on art which includes my thesis of art as the process of destruction: http://www.googlism.com/when_is/a/art/
Then my LSU Tigers gave me a big Christmas presents by beating the No. 1 Arizona Wildcats in basketball. Was neat to see former LSU coach Dale Brown in the crowd during the game. His team was the last one to defeat a No. 1 Wildcats team almost twenty years ago against the same coach, Lute Olsen. The Tigers came back a week later and soundly whipped the cross state rival Tulane. Again. That’s why they’re so cross. Go Tigers.
Meanwhile a funny thing happened to the Saints on the way to the playoffs. Only having to beat the vincible Panthers, they were unable to score a single TD even when the defense handed the Saints offense a first down on the 15 yd line. Instead of winning, the hapless Saints relegated their only dependable quarterback to the sidelines, Coach Haslett has become Coach Hasbeen, and the fans filled the Superdome for the last game of the year – filled it with boos. BOOO! There! Had one that got stuck. That feels better.
Hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve and will be pulling for my LSU Tigers at midday in the Cotton Bowl on NY's Day. I've been planting five or six cotton plants the last couple years on the Timberlane grounds and now I'm ready for my harvest. Think "Purple and Gold" for New Year’s Day! We’ll be eating black eyed peas and cabbage whichever way the game turns out.
Okay, this last bit belongs in next month’s Digest, but I couldn’t wait that long or bother to think about it for another month. In the Cotton Bowl: LSU took the game to Texas and outplayed them to a standstill. After one quarter of play, LSU was leading 10-7 and Texas still had ZERO yards on offense. Turnover gifts and defensive breakdowns by LSU allowed Texas to get back in game. Final score was 35 to 20 and LSU lost. I was disappointed in the outcome of the Cotton Bowl because I had hoped for a good chance to practice grace in the face of victory.
Happy New Year Everyone! To the football recruiters: “Gentlemen, start your engines!”
The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above.