Book of the Month

 

I have a plan to read assigned books each month. Last month was Archaeology of Knowledge. This month a love story seemed appropriate, so I chose Joy, Poet, Seeker, and Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis, by Abigail Santamaria. I read a biography of Joy in my teens and found it lacking in real information. This book is better than that. Joy’s life is fully fleshed out starting in her teens. The voice of the biographer is a pained kind of neutral that seldom sympathizes with her subject. It is impressive that Santamaria wrote such a good book without enthusiasm. I would say perhaps it is because she wrote without judgement, but she does judge, a lot. 

I liked Joy in spite of her biographer. Living in a time when brilliance in women was at best tolerated she tried to keep herself going while heroically saving Bill Gresham the burden of being a house dad even though they were both Communists at the time. I liked her poetry and would like to read more of it. I liked how scrappy she was. I liked her enough to wonder if she would have liked me.

Nik, the Booksmith

 

For Christmas my daughter gave me a bookmaking kit. It seemed a natural choice for someone who enjoys books as much as I do. My appetite had been wetted a while ago by watching Nik the Booksmith on YouTube. Nik can make serious, leather-bound books that it is a pleasure to watch her work, but recently has been making whimsical projects like “junk journals” and “lapbooks.” These are also a pleasure to watch and they bring the doability down to mere mortal status. Nik is fun to listen to as she hunts for rulers and glue. When the moment comes for me to get out my Christmas project I will have much more confidence than I deserve, all as a gift from Nik.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NiktheBooksmith

What the Paczki?

 When we moved to Michigan twenty some years ago, there was an odd but delicious local practice celebrated everywhere around Fat Tuesday. There were donuts, known as Paczki, that came in all kinds of flavors and exterior coatings, lemon to prune, granulated sugar to glazed. When I became a Catholic these annual treats became part of my practice of Fat Tuesday. This year I went out to requisition our annual overload and there were none. There were donuts, but no paczki. Paczki are a special thing that really isn’t offered at other times of year. Fortunately there is a donut shop that celebrates Paczki Day, and I got in line with a lot of other paczki lovers for a real treat. The owners of the shop are Asian, but they do paczki proud. If you can find them, they are worth it. I don’t know why they are dwindling here.

Running ‘em dry

I love stationary. Fancy is fine, but give me a tidy stack of 3x5s and I’m just as happy. I buy pens in bulk, and until recently I would run out of pens mainly because they would be spread around the house and lost. These days with mostly grownups we don’t run through pens at the same rate or in the same way. If this were Redwall I’d call it “The Season  of the Dry Pen.” I’m writing. They are writing. We are all thoughtful enough to wear pens out before they are thrown out. 

I like it. It feels like progress after years of chasing time, opportunity and stationary products I am now producing work and making efficient use of my tools. It’s a different life, and I like it.

Last Bag

This is a picture of my last project bag for No Fear! When it is empty and the books put on the shelf I should have a salable book. It’s very exciting. Querying makes me nervous, but it must be learned. Every other part of becoming a published author is in my hand and I’ve learned to do it. Selling my book to a publishing house or literary agent feels dicey and built on luck, but I am a person of faith and generally hopeful. It sounds like the journey begins with Query Tracker and lots of suck-up research. Wish me luck!

Julian Baumgartner, Rescuer of Art

 

Baumgartner Restoration offers something for everyone. There is art, engineering, chemistry, woodworking, gilding, research, puns, cleaning, scraping, retouching and more. I am never bored. My parents wanted to expose me to high culture, so we would make pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art became home places where I had favorite paintings that I looked forward to on every tour. The look of paint on canvas is something you can’t learn by looking at reproductions of famous images. Their kind attention to nurturing my love of art means I am geeked out by this behind the scenes tour of art as work. I like knowing about the bad canvas with the inadequate rabbit skin glue. I marvel at the power of the heat table. The cleaning and scraping are so familiar and satisfying. If you like art at all you will enjoy this channel. If you like high-stakes problem solving, you will like this channel. If you like rocky roads to happy endings, you will love this channel.

https://youtube.com/@BaumgartnerRestoration

Takes a Minute

 I’m feverishly working on a literary adventure for children. It involves 24 children’s books, and it is taking longer than I expected. Most of the books are from the Who Is Series, and they don’t take long, but there are eight books that are from my childhood or childhood adjacent. I expected to fly through them, but so far they have proved very sticky, which is exactly what I want for my adventurers, but not so much for my schedule. What one reads as a child is so important. You never really stop learning from and about those first books. They become even more precious if they were read aloud to you by someone who loves you. My father was always so careful about what he read to me and to his students. I think he will be very proud of the use I am giving them. I hope so anyway.

Heavenly Interior Designers

 

There's an old joke where in Heaven the cooks are French, the policemen are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and the bankers are Swiss - whereas in Hell the cooks are English, the policemen are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the bankers are Italian. Racial stereotyping aside I think the old joke needs amending, something along the lines of in heaven your interior designer is Canadian, because so many of my favorite designers are Canadian. I don’t know what they would be in hell, but I’ve seen them bring heaven to Earth. It’s probably part of the cold climate where you are stuck indoors long enough to figure a space out and make it right. 

There are lots of good designers that aren’t Canadian, but I was making a list of designers whose videos I like to watch, and it was Canadian after Canadian after Canadian. Well done Northern Neighbor.