Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

The joy of an old, forgotten photo

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

I stumbled across this long-forgotten photo–it was like having a magic window back into my mother’s 1988 kitchen. She looks so happy, so full of life. And my little dog Marianne making her very first entry onto the Devine family stage–with years of family love and mischief ahead.

The wonderful thing about a forgotten photo is that all the things in it take you by surprise again, just the way real life does.

The tragedy of a beloved photo is that, eventually, the photo itself becomes what you remember.

God bless disorder, which causes us to lose some photos of people we love, and find them again.

… to my own 60th birthday, early next week.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2006/12/04/aging_mother/index1.html

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/12/04/senior_std/index.html

Just a reminder from Erin of DressADay:

You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

I’m not saying that you SHOULDN’T be pretty if you want to. (You don’t owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, and makes people smile, often even at you.

Pretty can indeed be fun and also heckuva useful.

Thanks to Anil for the pointer to Erin’s quote!

Is this what getting old is going to feel like? Because I can remember when any hotel room was a new adventure.

And part of me hollers that no thunderstorm should ever be…just another thunderstorm.

But I’m tired tonight. It’s been a good day, a good trip, time with good friends, a lot to look forward to tomorrow. But I miss Frank. And I’m tired.

It occurs to me that this grumpy lassitude is what being tired has always felt like, at every age I’ve been so far.

Good night, thunderstorm. I need some sleep.

With half a nod to those “priceless” advertisements…

Owning a straw hat you can bow-tie under your chin so it doesn’t blow off…

I wouln’t have minded chasing a flyaway hat when I was 20 …

Re-finding the hat, crumpled up from its latest packing

I would have been so cross with myself when I was 30 …

Deciding that ironing a straw hat fell under the heading of “scientific experiment,” not “annoying drudgery”

I was just learning how much that helped, back when I was 40 …

Ironing that hat back to good-enough, knowing that I could crumple it up again with an easy conscience…

Just one more thing I’ve learned, since I turned 50 …

Throwing the hat back into the closet, because I am taking too many things already!

Yes, I would have had the sense to do that when I was 10!

And I’m glad I still do! Off to BlogHer–see you there?

In August, 1929, fourteen-year-old Florence Wolfson got a red leather diary where she could summarize each day in four lines of longhand.

For five years, she did just that.

In July, 2006, the New York Times transforms now ninety-year-old Florence into a public figure, with a feature article on her (dumpster-dived) diary, putting much emphasis on “male and female lovers” including her unrequited crush at fifteen on Eva Le Gallienne, whom the NYT breathlessly sums up as “the openly lesbian actress.”

Oh well, the good news is that Florence (and her ninety-five-year-old husband) seem to be perfectly OK with this situation. But I’m wondering how many MySpace bloggers would feel the same, even ten years from now, seeing their naughtiest bits all condensed and made public…

“Thoroughly modern” blogger Millie Garfield explained one of the great things about blogging when she told* reporter Maura Welch that in real-life conversation, someone else is always trying to talk…

“But on my blog I can finish my thought.”

Isn’t real life conversation often exciting, meaningful, intimate, full of surprises, and in so many ways better than writing in blogs?

Of course. But writing things down so that you clarify your own thinking is also of value.

And I’m glad that Millie and all the rest of the wonderful bloggers I read are finishing their thoughts and then letting us read them.

* p.s. There’s lots more interesting stuff from Millie and Lisa Williams and Elisa Camahort and more in Welch’s article about BlogHer (Yay!),
“Women tap the power of the blog,” Boston Globe, July 17, 2006. And thanks to Steve Garfield for a post with linkage to all the blogs Maura mentions.

Real life should also have more hypertext, don’t you think?

…my cellar, that is. Springtime rain is over-staying its welcome. If I open the cellar door, I hear water flowing across its uneven cement floor, with occasional punctuation by thumping sump pump.

My little sister’s Victorian house has a well built into its cellar. Back before city water mains, having a well in your house was the ultimate luxury. When the water table rises, you don’t feel so lucky!

When Marie and I were very little, we lived out in Candia, in a little house with a well. One summer, our well ran dry, and we were trundled around to various neighbors’ houses to take daily baths. Then the Artesian Well Man drilled us a well, with much loud banging of metal…very impressive! The next summer, everyone else’s well ran dry. It was our turn to host neighorhood shower parties.

Later, our family moved to Manchester’s North River Road–by this time, we had two more little brothers. Not far down the hill from our house, some little kid (was it maybe Chris Morris) lived in a house with a stream running through the sand floor of his cellar. We all thought this was simply magnificent. The house was Colonial, with foundation walls of fieldstone. It was as if a piece of the outdoor world had mysteriously been walled from the sky with four walls and a roof on it–but the stream kept running anyway.

In case you can’t tell, I’m hoping these fond thoughts of water will make me feel better about my own cellar.

May you be adored by nobles and princes,
two miles away from you may your lover
tremble with excitement, one mile away
may he bite his lip in anticipation…

From the 4500-year-old clay tablets of Gilgamesh, recently translated by Stephen Mitchell and reviewed by Oxford emeritus professor Jasper Griffin, who has written a lot more great articles in the NYRB.