Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Posted on July 14, 2006 by bloglily

I often see titles borrowed from this poem, most recently Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. (I have actually come across more than one law review article called Thirteen Ways of Looking at [insert legal topic here].) The works that follow seldom have much to do with the poem. And so for a reason no more complicated than that we’ve just thrown fourteen ways of looking at the French out there for your pleasure, I thought it would be a good thing to let Wallace Stevens speak for himself, for once. You’ll find it below the fold –

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Fourteen Things We Like About France and the French

Posted on July 14, 2006 by bloglily

Note to the Reader: Today’s guest bloggers are from the Bloglily Household. Since most of our household consists of children, you will not be wrong if you suspect this post was written by children. Indeed it was. Because it is Bastille Day, and two of the Bloglily boys attended French school for a long and memorable time, they honor today all they have learned to like and admire about France and the French.

I typed up pretty much what they told me, but had to cut them short on number 5 because they were starting to reenact some of the bloodier battles between France and England and things were getting out of hand. I also told them they could list food items if they had difficulty thinking of something to say, which they did at around eight and when they first got started.

Fourteen Things We Like About

France and the French

(fourteen because it is Bastille Day

Today, July Fourteenth)

1. Le Carambar. A candy that can be chocolaty, sour, fruity, caramely but always tasty.

2. Weird French food. Snails and things like that. We don’t like to eat snails. We like to say escargot because it sounds good.

3. Le Tour Eiffel. If you drop a penny off it and it hits someone it will kill them.

4. French swear words sound better than English swear words. They really SOUND like swear words.

5. Histoire. There were all kinds of awesome battles in France. Bloody stuff. When they chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head. The Hundred Years War was also awesome. Some of the losses of the French were sort of funny. In one of the battles, their horses turned around and got shot in the rear by English arrows. Another one was when their men were walking down a path, a narrow path, and all of a sudden the English came out of the bushes and started killing the French. The French had some of the worst times in wars, except for when the Russians quit World War I. Another interesting fact about the French is that they were in most of the important wars. They did pretty well in World War I. In World War II, they got whooped.

6. French people are strict, but that’s not awesome. They let their kids pretty much do anything, as long as they behave well. That’s awesome.

7. The French are really good at football. They got very far in the WorldCup. The Italians called Zidane a terrorist because they are jerks.

8. Nice is beautiful and the water is crystal clear so you can see right through it.

9. French cheese

10. Baguette

11. Wine

12. Fois gras (their dad chimed in here)

13. Fifth grade French teacher Philippe was very good about telling us history.

14. Fourth grade French teacher Francoase (editor’s note: she really spelled it like that; she liked phonetics) because she was very good about telling us history.

Happy Bastille Day From the Bloglily Household where France is held in high esteem for its food, good swear words and the many bloody battles it fought and, mostly, lost.

if you would like to chime in with other reasons to love France and the French, please… feel free.

Reading Your Blog

Posted on July 13, 2006 by bloglily

Here’s something interesting, by way of Lorelle. If you’ve ever wondered how hard it is to read your blog, Juicy Studio has devised an answer of sorts — a “readabiity test” for your posts.

My favorite thing about this site was discovering that both the Bible and Mark Twain (well, yes, TV Guide too) are among the easiest to read of texts.

I plugged in a recent post. I’m a bit harder to read than Mark Twain, but easier than most contemporary fiction. That seems like a good place to live, writing-wise.

There are a lot of things to say about this, beginning with how the site doesn’t assess quality, just accessibility. Perhaps you’ll have more to say after you find out whether you, like me, or a sort of TV Guide blog, or whether you’re up there with the Times or, interestingly, the government. As for me, I have to go now and write some fiction. Fiction that somebody, someday, might find readable.

The Long View, The Hidden Flower

Posted on July 12, 2006 by bloglily

We often hike to the top of the hill behind our house. At various times, we might include my husband, my three boys, many lovely women friends, their children, husbands, dogs. It’s a steep climb. All along the way, there are wonderful views across the bay to San Francisco. Because the trail begins not far from where we live, it’s a regular part of many lives — runners puff by, people let their dogs run off leash, early morning workout enthusiasts go up to get their sunrise reward. Sometimes people from the nearby hotel can be seen on the trail, wearing modified business clothes. Nothing’s really out of the ordinary on this hike.

You approach it from a residential neighborhood.

At the trailhead, you can take note of the many possible hazards that lie ahead, only one of which I’ve ever encountered. You can guess which of these it is: ticks, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, people who don’t pick up after their dogs.

Yes, the latter. There are rabbits, and there are hawks. It’s dry up here this time of year. The trail’s dusty, and the hillside isn’t really green any longer.

But there’s still beauty, if you keep your eyes open. Here’s something so small I might have missed it, if my son hadn’t stopped to pick up one of those dandelion fluffs you make a wish on.

I wished for more happiness, just like this moment.

When you get to the top, there’s the UC Berkeley campus (the bell tower is called the Campanille).

And across the way, the Bay Bridge, and San Francisco.

But this morning, it was the details that got me. The small things, like the way the wildflowers were still there, but they were hidden by the dust and the scratchy bushes.

If you could always remember to look at things right in front of you, think of how much beauty there would be to keep you company during your days.

I discovered today how much I like the closeup viewfinder on my camera. My son likes the landscape function. He’s the one who took the city views and the trail views. He likes to get to the top of the hill and see how far he’s come. I suppose it’s the parent in me who just wants to linger on what’s right in front of me. And so, as often happens, we did both.

A Dispatch From the Land of Tea Cakes

Posted on July 11, 2006 by bloglily

The tea cake is the madeleine of the American south. Like the madeleine it is a very basic, sugar, flour, butter, eggs concoction. It is the sort of thing our elders served when people came over in the afternoon. It’s simple and a bit dense, the sort of thing you’d dip into a cup of tea. Unlike the madeleine, the tea cake is a shape shifter. But more on that later.
sugar, flour, butter, eggs, salt, vanilla, baking soda

These are the ingredients. The eggs are sitting in warm water because I forgot to bring them to room temperature:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs

–cream these ingredients and then add:

4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda

The dough will look like this:

An important thing to remember is that there is a lot of flour in this dough. It isn’t sticky. I think that’s why it’s so easy to roll out.

This is only half the dough the recipe made. I rolled the dough into two logs and put them in the fridge while I considered my next move. I decided I’d make little cakes, and put dough inside a mini- muffin tin. I sprinkled the dough with sugar.

Here’s the mini-muffin tin. And now, a confession. Although I liked these, they were not a hit with everyone in my house. My husband thought they were too dry. One son liked them a lot. Another son said they were just way too rich. He had a quarter of a cake and that was it for him. I left them in the kitchen at work, and they did disappear. This might not be the best measure of yumminess. Stale cheerios will disappear from that kitchen, if you are patient enough.

I began to think about the denseness problem, and had an inspiration. If I rolled the dough out very, very thin, maybe the cookies wouldn’t be so overwhelming. And then I remembered those farm animal cookie cutters, the ones I’ve never used because, well, I’ve always been too busy to use things like that. Or thought I was. But this summer — and the rest of my life — is going to be different. I’m using our stuff. But I digress.

Here they are — cute huh? Animals. I cooked these in a 325 degree oven for eight minutes, then took them out, turned the cookie sheet around and cooked them for another eight minutes. They’re done when they’re brown and smell really good.

Apples are nice too.

This is what I mean by the shape shifting properties of this dough. Roll it thin and cut it out with any cutter you like and it will be whatever you wish. How many things in life are like that?

Here are my family’s reactions:

Husband: The thinner the better. (Not you, of course, just the dough. Your shape is perfect.)
My youngest son: They’re good. I like the fat ones better, because you get more.
One of my older sons: Good job mom. I’d like these in my lunch. They’re like chessmen cookies.
Other son. Too busy talking on the phone with a friend to say much. Thumbs up.

Have a cookie, darlin’:

Summer Reading

Posted on July 10, 2006 by bloglily

The other day, browsing around a wonderful blog about reading and books, I ran across a discussion about what makes a person well read. There was mention of summer reading lists, the kind schools assign kids who are in academic English literature classes. The writer said that parents had complained about the assigned reading, and the discussion went on to wonder how it could be possible that parents would not want their children to read during the summer.

I started to write a long response, but thought better of it. I’ll just respond here.

I may be in the minority, but I can see a reason to complain about summer reading lists. It’s not that children don’t or can’t or shouldn’t read during the summer. If a child is in a family that values reading (and surely any child who’s in honors English must at some level be a reader from a family that values reading), then that child will read in the summer.

Part of learning to read for pleasure is being allowed to roam throughout the stacks of your neighborhood library, pulling books out at random, deciding for yourself what you like and what you don’t. How to lead children gently toward what they might indeed love is tricky. The summer reading list is one way to do that, but gentle it is not. And in putting a book on such a list, you run the risk that a child will assume it is not very good, just as they do with any other thing an adult gives them and says this is good for you.

I wish childhood could go more slowly and that great books weren’t thrust at our children like broccoli, but that they had time and space to wander in places where the books are there for them to read, when they are ready to read them and adults wait to be asked, are there more like this?, before they tell a child what to read.

As the former English major mother of three reading children, it is hard to see them read comic books for pleasure and ignore the books I leave suggestively on their bookshelves. But then I’ll look up and see that somebody’s decided to read Philip Pullman after all and someone else is deep into a biography of Martin Luther King and the third boy is enacting a complicated dynastic struggle on the living room floor, kind of like the Brontes might have done. Yes, he is using an Archie comic and The Great Brain as tents for some of his soldiers, but it’s okay for books to serve more than one purpose, on occasion.

A love of stories is what makes people life-long readers. Pleasure, physical pleasure in the way books smell, in the way you read in bed with a book under the covers, is part of that too. So is a feeling that books can surprise you and take you places and that you own them because you chose them, even if you have to return them to the library: that’s what makes children life long readers.

So, What Did the Italian Guy SAY to Zidane?

Posted on July 9, 2006 by bloglily

Zidane. You saw him headbutt that Italian guy when there were only a few minutes left in overtime against Italy. You saw the Italian guy go down like … well, like he probably deserved to. You saw the red card and France’s chances of winning go south.

And if you weren’t too busy screamining invective at the television, you might have seen what led up to the headbutt — the Italian guy kind of got in Zidane’s way, put his arm around his waist when the play was over, and leaned in and said something. A pause. And then the spectacular headbutt.

So, what did the Italian guy say?

My favorite of all possibilities is the one proffered by our friend Kate:

Dude, those shorts make your butt look really big.

Every woman agreed that would merit the game losing headbutt.

Anybody read lips and know if he said something even worse than that? Is it even possible?

It was the summer of jasmine

Posted on July 9, 2006 by bloglily

One of my favorite books, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom begins “It was the summer of wisteria….” The description that follows, of a house literally inside the wisteria, is astonishingly beautiful. Wisteria grows around here too. It blooms at Easter, for a brief period, and then it turns grey and pods appear where the grape-like clusters were. We’re either too far north for it to be scented, or we aren’t growing the right kind, but wisteria in Northern California is not the wisteria Faulkner knew.

Last night, lying in bed, the window open, the room was permeated with the jasmine that grows in great hedges all around us. Where I live, summer smells like star jasmine. Star jasmine grows on vines that mass into hedges of glossy green leaves and tiny white flowers. Its scent is exotic, but not very strong. It’s a little mysterious. You find yourself wondering what it is, before you remember that it must be jasmine. It makes even walking around the neighborhood an adventure. Outside this morning, working on my novel, it’s perfuming our yard and the summer.

Here’s something surprising: After writing this, and because I don’t have the book handy, I went over to Amazon, to see if my memory of the book matches the reality. Turns out, I’m wildly off mark. The scene with the wisteria isn’t anywhere to be found in the first pages. My guess is that I didn’t just dream this up, but that it occurs a bit later. It’s just that the book must have begun for me there, in the dreamy, wisteria-scented bedroom rather than in the dusty office the narrator visits the summer before he goes east for college.

Writing Fetishes

Posted on July 7, 2006 by bloglily

I’m going to admit right now that I’m unable to resist organizing tools, paper products, and writing utensils. I particularly like notebooks, and binders, especially ones from other countries. And in the last ten years I’ve become quite involved with colorful plastic sleeves, file folders with nice graphics and sheet protectors. I own more cartridges for my fountain pen than one woman can use in a lifetime, especially a woman who writes mostly with a computer. I should mention that these items are completely unused, stored up for a day when I might need a file folder with a really nice graphic of an antique map on it. So far, that day has not come.

Today, rooting around in my office for an envelope, one of the few paper products I’m not obsessive about, I came across a stash of plastic sleeves. Near it were six German pencil sharpeners. Behind them on a shelf were several more boxes of staples than you’d find in my office in the City, where I actually staple things with some regularity.

I felt uneasy. I wanted to hide this stuff, disavow the woman who’d piled up these things. I’ve felt this before. In fact, I feel it almost every time I go into my office which might be why I write either downstairs at our dining room table, or in a cafe. Beyond thinking I just need more time to tackle cleaning this stuff up and putting it to use, I’ve never really tried to understand why it all makes me feel sort of bad.

What I do know, though, is that I’m not the only person who does this. And so, on the chance that others have this issue, I’ve formed a theory about why those writing objects make me unhappy and an Action Plan.

First, the Theory. You will have guessed it already. Unlike me, you have not been avoiding thinking about this. Here it is: Those objects make me uneasy because every one of them represents a failure to write. Empty folders, unused binders, pencils that have never been sharpened: they’re about silence. I’ve replaced words I might have written with their receptacles, with something that cannot ever speak. I suspect I’ve fetishized the tools of writing, particularly the containers for it, because I find the act of writing itself something that can’t be contained, and something I’m a little afraid of. There might be more here, having to do with consumerism and materialism. More can certainly be said. This is a theory, in its beginning stages, after all.

But the way I know I’m on to something is that I didn’t buy a single one of these things to actually put a finished piece of writing in. Or even to begin a new project with. That’s why they’re unused. They’re not for writing. They’re for not writing. They’re un-writing tools. They are not tools I need right now, or ever. Not if I’m going to finish a novel this summer, which is my hope.

My Action Plan? First, rather than organizing my many notebooks, pens and folders (and, possibly, acquiring some system to keep them organized, a system I do not need), I went for a hike this morning up the beautiful Claremont Canyon behind my house. Next, I went to a café without internet access and wrote (well, I made myself available to write) for several hours. I brought the one tool I don’t fetishize, possibly because I can’t afford to. That’s my laptop. The one I have and love (an ibook G4) is going to last me a really long time. In the last year, I’ve used it so much I’ve worn the letters off the keyboard. I pound on it, produce things with it, gossip with my friends over it, look up recipes with it.

My head cleared by steps one and two, I saw that my laptop and a printer are all I need to function as a writer, beyond a community of like-minded people. (I’m talking to all of you, by the way.) Okay, maybe also one three ring binder to put my chapters in. A few pencils and a notebook. But that’s it. Really. The rest can just…. go.

To show you how serious I am about this last part of my action plan, I have an offer for you. Perhaps you, Dear Reader, are in actual need of a snazzy file folder, a notebook, a nice pencil, pencil sharpeners and/or colorful plastic sleeves. If so, email me your address. Any and all of it is yours. When my digital camera comes home tonight (my husband took it today), I’ll even post some pictures. (Note added later: Husband says taking pictures of stationery items I want to give people steps over some line. Encourages me to enter ten step program around that.) I’ll mail the stationery item(s) to you straight away. In return, you simply have to promise to USE these things and report back here that you’ve done that. Pictures would be nice. Deal?

What’s in a Name?

Posted on July 6, 2006 by bloglily

Quite a lot, apparently. For a very long time, I couldn’t think of a name for the novel I’m working on. One of my sons was quite bothered by this. When the subject would turn to my writing, he’d ask me if I’d thought of a title yet. The novel wasn’t real until I came up with something. After a while, I did think of one: The Secret War. It’s what people called the Cold War, the time period in which my book is set. The hero is a guy who works at the National Security Agency. The secret war is his business. Most of my book is set in Germany, in 1969. My hero’s been to Germany before, just as the war was ending, and he’s hoped never to have to go there again. The novel opens just as he learns he’ll be going back. The book is a mystery and mysteries are always about secrets — in this case, the secrets are about what people did during the second world war.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself wondering if I got it right. This is one of those times. And that’s why lately I have been thinking about the names other people have given their novels. In my not very systematic review of titles, I noticed a Person, Place, Thing tendency among novelists. Most titles are nouns, and most often they are simply the name of the main character: Don Quixote, Huck Finn, Sula, Madame Bovary, Daniel Deronda, David Copperfield, The Cat in the Hat, the Woman in White, the Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre. And even a title like The Beautiful and the Damned refers to a group of people.

And when titles are not the name of a character, they are the name of a place: The Mill on the Floss, Howard’s End, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barchester Towers, The Street, Austerlitz, Wuthering Heights.

Occasionally, you find a person and a place combined: The Vicar of Wakefield, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Brown Girl, Brownstones.

As for things; generally they’re things and people combined– how about The Eustace Diamonds? Humboldt’s Gift?

There are also titles that are basically verb forms: On the Road, To the Lighthouse, Passage to India, the Voyage Out, Digging to America, even As I Lay Dying — all novels that employ some sense of movement and journey in their titles. The Odyssey is the ur-title here.

Perhaps exhausted by what might be a Victorian tendency toward Person, Place, Thing naming, modern writers often favor quotations. I don’t know if this is a sign of some kind of exhaustion of originality which might be fodder for the deconstructionist I did not become — but I give you: The Sound and the Fury, A Separate Peace, For Whom the Bell Tolls… wait a minute, Vanity Fair — maybe this is not so modern after all. But what about 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley’s theft from Wallace Stevens?

And don’t forget novels with titles that are attributes: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility. Still, this might be seen as a version of title as character because each of these attributes belongs to a woman who’s important in the novels. It’s just a clever way of doing it.

This look at naming was an interesting exercise, but not as helpful as I’d hoped in making sure I’ve done a decent job naming my book. The one I have now, The Secret War, doesn’t have much in common with the great books I’ve just mentioned. Neither a place, nor a name, nor an attribute, nor something or someone in motion.) So, I turned to titles from the Golden Age of the Mystery for assistance.

Dorothy Sayers: Murder Must Advertise, Strong Poison, Gaudy Nights. Hmm. Clever, but not really person, place or thing.

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, Five Little Pigs, Murder on the Orient Express. Nursery Rhymes, puns, straight across Murder….

I could say more, but I have the suspicion that mystery writers title their books differently than literary fiction writers — possibly they rely more on a title that’s a bit of a mystery itself, a title that’s a sort of sleight of hand, as a pun is, a title that partakes a little of the mystery form itself. And that, after all, is what The Secret War delivers — it has several meanings (the cold war, the secrets about the war the main character discovers…) These kinds of titles make this promise to the reader — the mystery will surprise you, things will appear one way but will actually turn out another. This theory is still unformed, and more research will need to be done. But this is my preliminary finding, for what it’s worth.

And now, I turn to you, Dear Reader. What are your favorite title categories? Can you think of another good title for my mystery? How do you think of things to title your blog posts? Meditate on titles for a moment, and see if you can resist making up titles of your own.

Writing Recovery

Posted on July 5, 2006 by bloglily

I think I’m just about done burying myself in sugar, flour, butter, eggs and fruit. The truth is that, although I love to cook, I also love to write. It’s just that sometimes cooking is easier.

Today, though, I’m getting back to my novel. It’s a mystery, set in Bavaria during the cold war — the summer of 1969 to be exact. The summer of the moon landing.

The protagonist is an American soldier who is a linguist and a security analyst. He’s been to Germany before. Twenty-some years earlier, at the end of the Second World War, when he was quite young, he was among the American soldiers who liberated concentration camp victims. And then he stayed on for the Nuremberg trials. After this shattering experience (one in which he falls in love with a Czech woman he meets at the camp, only to see her die, against the backdrop of translating so many stories of individual evil during the Nuremberg trials), he returns to the states, where he buries himself in his work (at the National Security Agency, as it happens), and keeps himself at a distance from people he might care about.

The novel begins as he is sent back to Germany (as I said, it is now 1969 and he is in his forties), to Bavaria, to look into some trouble on a small military base very much like the one where my father was stationed when I was a child. Like the protagonist, my father also worked at the NSA in the 1960s, and was a Russian linguist. So, it’s a subject I’ve been interested in for a long time. As for the novel, pretty soon, someone is murdered, and off we go. You don’t actually learn much about the hero’s past for quite a while, and then only in small bits. I’m about half to two thirds of the way through, having killed the second person and my hero is finally getting his butt in gear to figure out who the bad guy is.

The novel has a name — The Secret War — which is what the cold war was sometimes called. And, of course, since it’s a mystery, there are a lot of secrets. Because it’s set in Germany, not long after the war’s end (only twenty years) the secrets are often about what people did during the war. One thing I love about the mystery genre is the way, as the central mystery is solved, so many other things are uncovered. I’m particularly interested in secrets — what lies beneath the surface, unsaid, but still present in other ways, in part because when we lived in Germany during my childhood, there seemed to be so many of them. Unfortunately, one of my troubles as a writer is that, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been quite mistrustful of language — disturbed and saddened by how it often fails to get to the truth, and also how often it’s used to disguise what’s true. it’s a slippery tool for me. But it’s the one I know the best.

Today, then, I’m heading out to write.

Red, White, and Blue, Baby

Posted on July 4, 2006 by bloglily

Today’s my brother Tom’s birthday. He’s taken it well, having to share his birthday with that of our beloved country. This year, he’s having a birthday celebration in El Paso with our parents, his girlfriend from Columbia, Lena, our friend Aurelia and my three boys. Whew. There will be fireworks, as there often are on his birthday.

My brother lives alone most of the time. He’s a bachelor, a category of male life my sons find fascinating and wonderful. Every room in his house is magical. For example, the laundry room in his house has the usual stuff — but it also has an enormous bucket of bubble gum. He has an entire refrigerator in his garage devoted to soft drinks. He has THREE televisions. He plays the guitar well. He is terribly kind and very generous.

Today, thinking about my brother, I made the Cake with a Thousand Faces

I employed raspberries and blueberries and will not explain why that is. I’m sure you can guess. This is how it looked before it went in the oven.

This is how it looked when it came out of the oven:

I’m sure it is very clear how much I love my brother. Happy Birthday to him, the Red, White and Bluebaby.

Jam Today

Posted on July 3, 2006 by bloglily

The jam is done. If you want to see how it all started, you can read about it here. This is how I finished it.

Sterilize the jars. That means: wash them in hot soapy water, fill them with hot water and put them in the microwave on high for ten minutes or in the oven at 250 for about half an hour. I use boiling water. You do not have to; boiling water can be scary. We don’t want you to be afraid.

Next, open the fridge and take out the jam you put in there a few days ago, the jam that’s been sitting in its sugar and lemon bath and becoming more and more delicious.

Put it in the lovely copper preserving kettle. While you’re at it, take the top of the two part canning lid (there’s a screw top and a flat sealing part), and put it in a sauce pan with water.

Turn the heat on. As soon as the water begins to boil in the saucepan where you’ve put the lids, turn it off. You don’t want to cook the lids, you want to keep them warm. When the jam begins to boil, turn it down to a simmer. Cook for about 15 minutes. Sometimes the jam is a bit runny. That’s okay. It firms up in the fridge. It is not meant, anyway, to be glutinous.

Can the stuff. That means, put it in the jars using a ladle (there is a special funnel you can get that helps this.) Leave about 1/4 inch of headroom. Wipe the top of the jar with a clean cloth. Screw on the two part lid that comes with all Kerr and Ball canning jars. (If you live in another country, this process will have to be as per the manufacturer’s instructions.) Turn the jars upside down. Set a timer for five minutes. And then turn the jars right side up.

You will notice that, somewhere between ten and thirty minutes later, the jars will make a most satisfying “pop.” If you’ve canned a lot of jars, there will be a lot of popping. This is the sound of the jar sealing. In our small house, when I make jam at night, I can hear the popping all the way up in my bed. I love it.

And that’s it. Except you need to try to keep the jam for the winter and not eat it right then & there, which is what we did with some of it last night. This picture doesn’t really do justice to the color which is a deep … raspberry. Here are some things you can do with jam:

spoon it over plain yogurt
spoon it over ice cream
eat it with a spoon
use it as a relish with meat
and, of course, put it on toast

Tonight, the Writing Cafe is Serving

Posted on July 2, 2006 by bloglily

Jam, of course.

–The Queen and Alice, on hiring Alice as a maid–

`I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!’ the Queen said. `Twopence a week, and jam every other day.’
Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, `I don’t want you to hire ME–and I don’t care for jam.’
`It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.
`Well, I don’t want any TODAY, at any rate.’
`You couldn’t have it if you DID want it,’ the Queen said. `The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday–but never jam today.’
`It MUST come sometimes to “jam today,”‘ Alice objected.
`No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. `It’s jam every OTHER day: today isn’t any OTHER day, you know.’
`I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. `It’s dreadfully confusing!’

-Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass (with thanks to everything2.com)

The Raspberry Jam is done. It is beautiful. Pictures tomorrow. Alice tonight.

BlogLily

\”it must give pleasure\” — Wallace Stevens

Monthly Archives: July 2006