Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
It’s the birthday of this guy, who “came into my life and made the living fine”: 
As per usualy, I can express my feelings best with a quote:
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
Happy birthday, Doc!
1. It’s my sister-in-law’s birthday today! It’s been 11 years now and she’s still kind and happy and accommodating and delightful to be around, no matter what my family throws at her. Happy birthday, Altair!
2. Tomorrow is St. Lucy’s Day, which I’m just learning about as “one of the few saints celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Nordic people”. The celebration includes wearing a wreath on your head and lighting candles to fight the darkness of winter, so it should come as no surprise I like it.
3. And finally, I learned that someone who makes scissors is called a “putter,” which is short for “putter-togetherer.” Here is a nice little silent film about a putter:
The Putter from shaun bloodworth on Vimeo.
1. It was poet Wallace Stevens’ birthday yesterday, who once said, “After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.” Happy birthday, Wally.
2. Doc took this picture of Toby yesterday after I’d left for that early commercial shoot. I intend to do much the same thing tomorrow:
I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
It’s my dad’s birthday today! I could talk about how he’s his grandson’s absolute favorite person, or about how strong and handy he is, or about how he lives by The Cowboy Code, or about how he has so much knowledge about so many things, but instead I will thank him for raising me without once casting doubt on my ability to do anything because I was a girl.
Since I’ve been lucky enough to find a feminist to date in Doc, I’ve been thinking about where I got the expectation that I wouldn’t be humored or dismissed because of my gender, and it goes straight back to how my dad treated me growing up. So thanks, Dad. And happy birthday!
This picture isn’t about raising strong daughters. But it IS about plaid shirts and Christmas cookies, and it’s too great to not post.
The Writer’s Almanac tells me it’s detective novelist Raymond Chandler’s birthday today. It also tells me a trick he used to learn the style of pulp novels so he could go on to write his own (really good) ones:
As a schoolboy in London, Chandler had learned to translate Latin texts into English and then back again into Latin. He used this same technique with mystery stories: he read them, wrote down detailed plot summaries, and then tried to rewrite the stories. Then he compared his finished versions to the originals, to determine where he could have done better.
Happy birthday to proto-hippie Herman Hesse, writer of Siddartha (in 1922!), which gives us this quote:
The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.
(Via The Writer’s Almanac)
Actually named Eric Blair, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, and giver of this truth:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns…instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
It’s my nephew’s third birthday today! I didn’t think he could get any cuter, but he really does every day:
(This was from his birthday party Saturday. Note the blurry delight on his face and note the train cake, which my mom made and my dad decorated.)
Happy birthday, Bubbs! I think I speak for all Kaminskis when I say you’re our favorite member of the family.
It’s my mom’s birthday today! I’ve said it in years past, but it’s still true: She’s not only my mom, she’s my friend. We talk on the phone every day, we email each other, we go to yoga together, and we compare style notes. Because as you can see from the photo above, I got all my sense of style from her!