This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Oh many are the lovely northern rivers!
the Housatonic and Connecticut and Charles and James and Thames and Roanoke and the St. Lawrence and the Kennebec and the Potomac and the sweet Delaware
and not of them the least the lordly Hudson; and all of them have made the fortunes of famous towns as arteries of trade, but all of them flow down into the sea, all of them flow down into the sea.
Today is the anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the river that bears his name; on September 12th, 1609, he sailed as far north as Albany (had there been an Albany) looking for a shorter passage to India.
Oh and look at that -- Goodman would be 100 years old just a few days ago now, he was born September 9, 1911.
posted evening of September 12th, 2011: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Readings
Christine passes along a link to Brooklyn Rider's web site -- a string quartet featuring a couple of the musicians who made More or Less I Am such a fantastic show. Take a look -- a fun site design and some marvelous music.
posted evening of September 11th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Ellen is going out for dinner tonight with Lisa; Sylvia and I are going to cook a nice dinner for ourselves.
Rigatoni with sausage and spinach
Simplest dinner around. Saute some onions and garlic with fennel seeds, cook the sausage in the same pan, add some spinach leaves and wilt them. Toss with pasta, serve with some grated cheese. (We have some asiago on hand that will be very nice with this.) Sylvia and I are going over to the grocery store in a little while to pick up some spinach and some artichokes to serve on the side. (I asked if she wanted artichoke hearts and she said, "I want the outside part of the artichoke, the kind you scrape off with your teeth.")
Apple-blackberry gratin
(recipe based on one found in this week's NY TimesMagazine)
I was thinking of posting some of my own memories from ten years ago; and I was also thinking of posting links to some of the excellent commemorative writing I see elsewhere. But ultimately I find I cannot commit myself either to being a part of the media frenzy around this date or to distancing myself from what was after all an important moment in my life and in the world around me. Instead let's just be quiet and listen to some music.
posted morning of September 11th, 2011: 5 responses
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of
you,
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.)
We had a great time last night watching More or Less I Am -- such a great idea for a show, and put together pretty flawlessly and on a shoestring budget... I was struck throughout the poem (which I have not read since high school, IIRC) by how strongly and explicitly Whitman invites the reader into his head and vice-versa. I kept thinking of how a second-person pastiche might start out,
You celebrate yourself, and sing yourself,
And shall assume what you assume;
For every atom in yourself is yours is me is you.
Interesting... there were a enough spots in the poem where the poet identifies himself with the reader, the act of identification seems to be a primary theme of this poem. I ought to spend some time with it.
I’m in the front seat, riding with Soichiro in his car on his way to Shinjuku. “One cuts off one’s finger to make a pointâ€, Soichiro explains while driving. “Usually to show the sincerity of an apology after doing something wrong.â€
“You cut off a single digit of your own finger in a ceremonial way, while facing your boss, and then you present the severed finger on a folded napkin to him. It reinforces the power of your apology. It shows that you’re serious about what you’re saying.â€
Somehow, i don’t feel like questioning that.
The BBC's Today in Pictures feature shows some of the exquisite tattoos worn by members of the Yakuza. (Thanks for the link, AWB!)
I want to try posting a rough translation of the first canto of Gerbasi's "My Father the Immigrant". The loose rhythm and magical language of the poem are seeming to come across into English pretty naturally.
My father, Juan Batista Gerbasi, whose life inspired this poem, was born in a winemaking region on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy; he died in Canoabo, a tiny Venezuelan village hidden away in the wilderness in Estado Carabobo.
We come from the night; and into the night we go.
We leave behind the earth, enveloped in her vapors;
the dwelling place of almond grove, of child and of leopard.
And leave behind our days: lakes, snowstorms, reindeer,
dour volcanoes, enchanted forests
where the blue shadows of fear live.
And leave behind the graves beneath the cypress,
lonely like the grief of distant stars.
And leave behind our glories, torches blown out by secular gusts.
And leave behind our doors, muttering darkly in the wind.
And leave behind our anguish in celestial mirrors.
And time we'll leave behind, time with man's drama:
Progenitor of life, progenitor of death.
Time, which raises up and wears down columns,
Which murmurs from the ocean's multitude.
And leave behind the light which bathes the mountains,
which bathes our children's parks, our altars white.
But also the night with its mournful cities,
quotidian night, no longer even night,
that brief respite, trembling with lightning bugs,
or passing through our souls in savage strokes.
Night which falls again against the light,
awakening the flowers in moody valleys,
remaking the waters' lap among the mountains,
launching horses into clear blue streams;
meanwhile eternity, gleaming golden,
makes its silent way through heavenly fields.
So ever since I tried A Softer World's delicious Black Mischief, I have been playing around with putting coffee in my cocktails; I like the taste and caffeine content alters the intoxication in a pleasant way. Today I think I found a winner, though I'm sorry not to be able to come up with a clever name for it à la Emily Horne. (If you've got any ideas, please suggest them in comments!)
The idea is simple enough; it is essentially a margarita with coffee in place of lime juice, and with a smaller proportion of Triple Sec than you would put in a lime juice margarita (because coffee is not sour). So you fill your glass halfway with iced coffee, add some ice, then a (generous) shot of tequila and a few drops of Triple Sec. A slice of lime is optional; I tried it with and without and it tasted good either way, but somehow the lime seems appropriate. This is a good drink to linger over; the first time I tried it I drank it too fast, because the flavor was so nice, and got inappropriately soused.
posted evening of September 4th, 2011: 1 response ➳ More posts about Projects
What fire of darkness, what circle of thunder,
Fell over your visage when you beheld this land?
(making no claims for the quality of that translation/transliteration; I have not read the rest of the poem yet so I don't have any context) -- Gerbasi, a key figure of Venezuelan poetry in the 20th Century, was a son of Italian immigrants; Zupcic's father is an immigrant from Croatia. Several of the stories in this collection are told from the point of view of a Venezuelan named Vinko Spolovtiva, concerning his (absent) Croatian father.
* Dragi is Croatian for "Dear", the salutation at the top of a letter. The story "Letters toward writing a novel" consists in part of letters written by Zlatica Didic to his siblings, and his son, narrating, comments, "There is a word which opens most of the letters: Dragi. According to Bozidar, who translated them, this means something like "dearest". I decided not to translate it: it has a sweet sound, a nice sound. Nigmar thinks it looks like a sunstone -- that seems right to me."
posted afternoon of September 4th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Epigraphs
At different libraries around Scotland, some anonymous, enormously talented artist has been leaving sculptures carved from books. Chrisdonia of This is Central Station has a roundup of images and reporting.
Brooklyn Rider
So ever since I tried A Softer World's delicious 
