A Poem for Sunday

My aunt's comment (on my last entry) about another Gerard Manley Hopkins poem prompted me to go read that one, called "Spring and Fall," again. It's very beautiful and very, very profound (like Aunt Cathy herself). Then I Googled and read a few other Hopkins poems, some of which I had not read before. (He burned most of his poetry -- maybe even all of his poetry -- when he became a priest, fearing that it was too vain, so his total body of work is not very large. He started writing poetry again at the request of his fellow clergy.)

Then I read this one for the first time in many years, and I thought today being Sunday it would be very appropriate to post it. It's called "God's Grandeur" and it's full of 'sprung rhythm' like "Pied Beauty." Hopkins' poetry is really very modern considering how long ago it was written.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed.
Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade;
Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:
The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods
With warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Hide the Paper Clips

It occurred to me today that I have not written on this blog about some of my favorite things: office supplies.

Only a few people on the planet know that a trip to Office Max for me is like a day at the mall for most other women. I could go crazy there, or at any office supply store, and I often have.

I think it goes back to my childhood when I sometimes visited my parents' workplaces and marveled at the depth and breadth of their supply cabinets, which I often organized as a surreptitious way of taking inventory while staying out of trouble.

I couldn't believe they had all of these supplies at their fingertips -- boxes and boxes of pencils, pens, rubber bands and paper clips, with letterhead, staple removers, triplicate forms, and, in my mother's case, working at the airport, luggage tags and hand cancellation stamps. It was heaven! I could be entertained for hours in the room behind the ticket counter or at my father's secretary's desk rolling pages of paper into IBM Selectric typewriters or adding columns of numbers on a 10-key machine for the sheer fun of it.

It's still a thrill. When I go into my husband's office, I'm surrounded by temptations: bulldog clips and Post-It notes and manilla envelopes and colored cardstock...

I can't explain it -- I just have a weakness for office supplies.

But of course there is a quote behind all of this, and it's in French because it was originally coined by Napoleon when he established a post-revolutionary meritocracy:

"La carriere ouverte aux talents"

(The tools to him who can use them.)

(The literal translation is 'the job is open to the talented ones.' Thomas Carlyle

changed it to the above translation.)

An English teacher of mine introduced me to this phrase when we were studying a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, Pied Beauty, which he wrote in 1877. We were discussing line 6 at the time. In my opinion, it's one of the greatest poems ever written:

Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow ;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

My Take on Sarah Palin, Part II

Last fall when John McCain, the maverick, announced his selection of running mate Sarah Palin, another maverick, I wrote a blog about it almost immediately, which captured my first blush reaction to his choice. She was fresh and interesting. I went on to enjoy her hard-hitting speech at the Republican convention and some of her interactions with the press, who were relentless in their attacks against her.

They attacked her for:

- being a mother of five children ranging in age from 19 to newborn.

- being a religious woman.

- living in a small town.

- giving her children unusual names.

- having graduated from Idaho State instead of Harvard.

- not having enough ink in her passport.

- being from Alaska.

- having an accent.

- knowing how to field dress a moose.

- having a 'sexy librarian' look.

- not aborting her child born with Downs Syndrome.

- having a promiscuous teenaged daughter.

- not having enough executive experience (though she had more than Obama).

- wearing clothes that were paid for by the GOP (Democrat candidates like Hillary Clinton, and even their wives, like Michelle Obama, receive free designer clothes. Who among normal women, even governors, has a wardrobe suitable for a Vice Presidential run?)

Maybe the attacks worked. Sarah Palin disappointed. She wasn't as prepared as I had hoped. She wasn't as steeped in issues as I would expect a candidate to be. Though fundamentally she had the intangible 'right stuff,' she wasn't quite poised enough. (Think: Margaret Thatcher.) She wasn't quite serious enough. Faced with the most hateful media barrage I have witnessed in my lifetime, she allowed herself to become offended. She was easily distracted.

But who could blame her? If a bully were picking on just one of my children at school, I would create a stir. If grown up media moguls and pundits were hurling insults at my entire family, I would have to speak up in their defense.

She was never my first choice, not even for V.P. - I am a self-confessed Mitt-en. But I still like Sarah Palin and I still hope for her future, which I think is a lot brighter than her recent past.

'Big Bad Bill Day'

Yesterday was 'Big Bad Bill Day,' as my sister-in-law calls it. It always seems to take longer than it should. I remember years ago watching a woman balance her checkbook at a stoplight, and I was impressed. For me it's a ritual and all of the conditions have to be just right. I chalk it up to PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) from our 'lean' years.



It's always a tremendous relief to be done!



Here are a few quotes I've found on the subject:



My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more. - Walter Matthau



When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That's the story of my private life. - Gloria Swanson



Probably the very best thing my earnings have given me is absense of worry. I have not forgotten what it feels like to worry whether you'll have enough to pay the bills. Not to have to think about that any more is the biggest luxury in the world. - J. K. Rowling

Wealth Is a State of Mind

Two stories are coverging in my head today: Michael Jackson's premature death and Imelda Marcos's recent declaration that she is virtually penniless.

It appears that Michael Jackson really was penniless, though he didn't recognize it. He owed half a billion dollars, but remained a legendary shopaholic to the end, apparently oblivious to the reality of his situation. In his mind, if he liked it, he should own it, but due to that philosophy he actually owned nothing, because if he had lived long enough, he would likely have seen all of his purchases liquidated over time and his credit cards rejected. (I don't mean to blame MJ or even to criticize him. I see him as a tragic figure, a moonwalking, talking cautionary tale. Not quite a man, not quite a woman, not quite an adult, not quite a child...)

We all remember Imelda Marcos as the woman who owned 1220 pairs of shoes. Her husband, Ferdinand, ruled the Philippines for 20 years and plundered the treasury to the tune of billions of dollars while his people lived in extreme poverty. Of course they lost all of that and were exiled to Hawaii. A few years after Ferdinand's death, Imelda was allowed to return to her native Philippines, but she could no longer live in the Presidential Palace and many of her jewels were auctioned off by the state. Some of her remaining jewels are about to be sold to replenish the treasury, including a 150 carat diamond pendant that is as large as a human thumb.

But what I found most interesting about the AP story published this week is that Imelda regards herself as poor. She is now drawing from her husband's meager war pension while still wearing a 22-carat diamond ring. The most amazing quotes in the article are these two, both by Imelda: "Here I am, at 80, still struggling to look presentable" and "Filipinos are brainwashed to be beautiful. We're allergic to ugliness."

So wealth is a state of mind, and poverty is a state of mind, and money really has very little to do with happiness. Ordinary people who don't own extravagant homes all over the world or caches of jewels have to be reminded of this from time to time.

No More Backtracking

I've said it before on this blog - the first thought I have in the morning is usually the best (most original or insightful) thought I have all day. I don't know why, but it seems to be true.

Yesterday morning (Father's Day), I woke up thinking that I should slice the bread in half for French toast because it so often gets soggy in the middle, so I made French toast for Scott and it was much better that way. More crunchy surface, less sog.

Today's first thought was 'no backtracking.' I knew immediately what this first thought meant because I backtrack all the time, meaning that I skip something because I don't feel like doing it right now only to return later to do it anyway. So I spend my day backtracking and looping instead of steadily moving forward.

Today, for example, I didn't feel like making my bed immediately, but I did. I didn't feel like showering before eating breakfast, but I did. I didn't feel like lacing up my tennis shoes before eating breakfast, but I did. I didn't feel like going to the post office right after the grocery store, but I did. And I think my day has gone much better as a result.

Back from Oregon

We've gotten a little rusty about road trips over the past year. Since our oldest son left on his mission, we've only ventured out of state to attend one family wedding, then we hurried quickly home again.

But last week we took off to attend my best friend's daughter's wedding in Seattle. On the way home, we made a loop along the northern coast of Oregon and through Portland, an area I had not visited since I was five and barely remembered at all.

And we tried to let ourselves have fun without our chief navigator in the backseat. For the most part, we succeeded. It was a great trip. (We did send Taylor a total of six postcards -- he was never far from our thoughts.)

Now that I've been home for almost two days, I find that I am reflecting back on the unfamiliar areas we traveled through. Here are some of my impressions of the Oregon part of our trip:

* I had expected coastal Oregon to be as modern and sophisticated as coastal California. It wasn't. It's an area unspoiled by chain stores, which gives it an almost primitive feel -- 1974ish -- like it hadn't really changed all that much since my previous visit in 1969. There were no storefronts putting on airs along the coast, no malls, no fancy boardwalks or elegant restaurants or ritzy hotels. It was all woods and ocean. The buildings along Highway 1 were coated in perpetually pealing paint. The boats we saw were weathered, too, and the people were regular people, susrprisingly friendly (given Oregon's reputation) and unpretentious.

So I liked the coast of northern Oregon. It was charming and natural and stunningly beautiful, but I wasn't quite at home there. (When we travel, aren't we subconsciously looking for new places to call home?)

* The buzz on Portland is how progressive it is (i.e., how environmentally sensitive it is.) It still has a bit of a hippie feel. (By the end of our visit, we had abbreviated the local bumper sticker to three initials: KPW for "Keep Portland Weird.") It was green and beautiful and very modern. We enjoyed three things in Portland: the rose garden (where most of the hundreds of visitors had their noses in flowers, prompting my husband to remark that we were behaving like bees); Powell's Book Store (the largest independently owned book store in the world; the sheer size of the place gave me renewed courage that maybe I could publish a book -- apparently millions of people already have!), and the incomparable Japanese Garden (the finest in the world outside of Japan.)

We passed several waterfalls and the Columbia River Gorge driving home, and it was all beautiful and awe-inspiring.

But deep inside I am still a girl from Kansas, and like Dorothy, the most famous girl from Kansas, I have to agree: There's no place like home! There's no place like home!

And that's true no matter where home is or what it looks like. (No matter how long the grass has grown or how high the laundry pile is or how dry and barren the landscape....)

It's good to be home!