frumiousb

Bookshelf in new apartment is finished, pictures when ready.

Small cat howled all night long again last night. She didn't seem unhappy-- just liked the sound of her own voice.

If she continues with night opera, I'm gonna bake me some kitty cat cakes.

I've got no Internet access at home and so am not around very much right now. If you have an urgent found_objects matter, then please leave an email here.

Some various wedding shots from friends.



Photo by nikkyb.
Featuring me and spidertangle
Taken on the balcony of our new house on Saturday.

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Still sleeping in Delft as B. developed a terrible stomach flu and we're not yet organized enough to be sick in the new apartment. All social and work plans are consequently cancelled as I've got to deal with all the house stuff myself. My throat was swollen and sore yesterday, but has resolved itself into an irritating little cold.

PTT Post refuses to deliver mail to our new apartment, which is a *huge* problem since all the addresses were switched as of Monday. We're trying to figure out why-- whether they don't think that it exists or whether they don't find it safe to approach.

Same problem with the cable company. I've now had three polite people explain to me that nobody lives at that address yet. Neighbors who have moved in are very pissy about the problem, as you may imagine.

All our stuff got moved in safely on Monday. V. lucky that I did some research about the only possible way for them to park and get in the building. Apparently one of the neighbors had the moving company pull up, look at the situation and refuse to deliver their belongings. So I'm really glad that we're already in. Our moving guys couldn't fit the couch in the elevator and so had to carry it up six flights of stairs and they were absolutely *not* amused. I'm assuming that our bill will exceed the estimate as a result.

coco_keesses and S. are building our bookcases as we speak. The trim guy comes back Friday to finish our plinths. Someone is coming today to saw the bottom off our doors (they were cut too long for us to put in a floor and still have them close.)

House survived the party on Saturday just fine, although both my phone and my ipod walked away, presumably by drunken mistake. The phone was returned the next day by a shamefaced friend and I'm hoping that the same will be true of the iPod. At one point there were quite a few iPods out and people playing dueling iPod DJ and I guess that's when it disappeared (we put our main party music selection on the iPod). Also, somehow missed that one of our guests was drunk enough to find it a good idea to toilet paper the neighbors' railings, so I cleaned that up on Sunday. Champagne goes down like soda pop, but is not. Lesson learned.

White van man comes on Saturday morning to relocate our Delft stuff to Amsterdam. Woo-hoo. After that will have no home Internet connection for several weeks while the utility companies figure out that we exist.

pictures, etc. to follow once we're safely in at the new house.

With much love and many thanks again for a lovely week in Paris!

love, Emily x

(found in Amsterdam close to the Ij. I've altered the image so that email, full name, and full address aren't visible. Dr. Google informs me that the note writer is a fairly well known classical musician.)

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(Yes, my first Sunday Salon post in several months. I am distractable.)

Some years ago, I burned myself out on Auster. I read one book, Moon Palace and then I started reading his work compulsively-- ripping through everything that I could find. It was sort of like eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for three months. Very satisfying, but quite difficult to look at the jar after that. And then I left him alone. I ignored newly released books. I wanted nothing more to do with the man.

Then two years ago, someone gave me The Brooklyn Follies right after it came out. I sighed, but read it. I liked it a lot more than most of the critics and fans. I was back on the slippery slope.

Then this year I picked up and read a copy of his collected prose. And I was doomed. I've started reading everything that I can get my hands on. And re-reading.

The New York Trilogy was one of the first things that I read by Auster, and one of the most dearly beloved. Rereading City of Glass was an interesting experience. I wondered whether I would find the same things moving, whether I would still like it as much. I knew that my reading experience would be affected by Auster discussing why he had written the book in his collected prose.

In the end, I found that my own experience of grief/tragedy deepened my connection with Quinn. His need to find threads in the seemingly random is something that I understand better now-- it added some holdfasts to the text that I had lacked before.

It remains a great book.

hy read it if you haven't already? Detectives, writers, identities, loss, intrigue, mistakes, death, sex and consequences. (Putting these things in a line gives the wrong impression, but read it all the same.)

I'm curious whether I'll burn myself out again on Auster a second time.

Any writers who you read in waves? What happened to you when and if you went back a second time?

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found in Amsterdam.

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My sister and I both really enjoyed walking in the park.



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big thanks to oursin for reminding me of how much I love this song. :)

Plasterers are finishing up today, and that part already looks much better. The company we're working with seems neat and competent, which frightens us.

The building company has fixed the windows so they now open, but now one of them doesn't close.

We bought tiles from a very inexpensive company, but then they wouldn't deliver them to our house-- only to the building basement. So we needed help to carry them up to our apartment. That was the lift to the 5th floor, and then by hand to the 6th. So thank you to the people (thisc0rrosion and others) who helped us move 1500 kilos of basalt to the 6th floor. :)

Moving appears that it's going to be loads of fun. Apparently moving trucks will be too heavy to use the ramp into our parking garage, and the city doesn't easily give permits to park on the street outside. Sigh.

There was plenty to like about this book-- not the least of which is Rankin apparently making fun of the idea that all murders these days have to be puffed up into conspiracies, but it still isn't the strongest in the series. Why not? The pacing is a little bit odd-- I found it difficult to hold attention and I always give attention to Rebus books. Also possibly a few too many red herrings. Readers new to Rebus should not begin here-- don't think that it is really representative.

This book is interesting for fans, of course, as it may be the last Rebus book. (I confess that I have my doubts because of a hint or two dropped in the story.) I kind of hope not myself, but we'll see.

The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Complicating Brown's legacy even further is the terrorism of recent times. The historian David W. Blight asks, “Can John Brown remain an authentic American hero in an age of Timothy McVeigh, Usama Bin Laden, and the bombers of abortion clinics?”
pg. 500

With the recent murder of George Tiller, bleeding Kansas takes on a whole new meaning. That may seem like an off-topic remark, but it is the notion of the "good terrorist" that is at the heart of the John Brown story, and the legacy that he left is not at all uncomplicated.

One of the things that I like best about this biography by Reynolds is that he does not attempt to sidestep the nature of Brown's life and deeds. Instead, he looks openly at the questions of criminal violence, morality, puritanism and madness that drove the man and his sons. While I feel that Reynolds has a difficult time not admiring Brown, he rarely stoops to excuse him. There is one important exception to this-- at the end of the book while Reynolds is discussing the legacy, he glosses over the question of other kinds of American moral terrorists. He tries to make the point that slavery was fundamentally different than taxes or abortion as an issue to be addressed-- that there was something so unique about the social problem slavery presented that nearly no option except violence was open. I found that too easy. The problem at the heart of Harpers Ferry is that while the modern reader can sympathize with the frustration and rage that lay behind the actions of that day, I think that it is very difficult to find what Brown did legitimate without allowing other would-be good terrorists recourse to the same methods.

It is an interesting problem. To be frank, I do not know where I stand on its points. But it adds depth to what would otherwise be another exhaustive civil war biography, and makes the book something really special.

I did not go into reading John Brown Abolitionist with much knowledge of its subject. In fact, I would hazard a guess that having sung "John Brown's Baby" as a child was as close as I got to ever really thinking about the man. All the same, I did not find the history confusing or the text too exhaustive. It is a long book, but I got value from the whole length.

I have to also say that normally I have very little patience for history as written by literature professors, but in this case Reynold's background suits the subject well. John Brown, phenomenon, is as much about the symbol as the man himself and it is in literature that the symbol was so powerfully created. One of my favorite aspects of the book was considering how writers like Alcott, Emerson and Thoreau picked up Brown as an icon.

Highly recommended. I'm still thinking about it, even several weeks after I closed the covers.

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They Look at Us
Martin Luther King
Is with John Brown.
Look up: you'll see them both
Looking down —
Deep and so wide
At us.