There's No One Like Flannery

Die-hard Flannery O'Connor fan, do yourself a favor by clicking here, read the review of her new biography. There's also an MP3 interview by NYT with author/biographer Brad Gooch on the page, which is a real treat.
To give you a foretaste of the review by Joy Williams at NYT:

Flannery. She liked to drink Coca-Cola mixed with coffee. She gave her mother, Regina, a mule for Mother’s Day. She went to bed at 9 and said she was always glad to get there. After ­Kennedy’s ­assassination she said: “I am sad about the president. But I like the new one.” As a child she sewed outfits for her chickens and wanted to be a ­cartoonist.
She reluctantly traveled to Lourdes and claimed she prayed for the novel she was working on, “The Violent Bear It Away,” which she referred to as Opus Nauseous. She referred to each of her novels as Opus Nauseous. Rust Hills, the fiction editor of Esquire, put her in the middle of the “red-hot center” in his Literary Establishment chart of 1963. Elizabeth Hardwick took her to dinner at Mary McCarthy’s apartment, where McCarthy conceded that the communion wafer was a symbol of the Holy Ghost and a pretty good one, whereupon Flannery made her famous reply, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

Christmas: continued

Jan's threatened "cork-popping" about the Christmas-is-over-crowd is well heeded here. In certain real sense, it has just begun for me. Here's a confession for you: I'm still learning to love Christmas. That may astonish some, but it hasn't been long since I began to dissociate the season with shopping and eating and gaudy decorations and music that incessantly attacked my senses, and, more, shopping. A couple of years ago Rush Limbaugh had a feast day over Maureen Dowd's article in The New York Times about her bitter and depressed regards towards Christmas. Rush offered to reboot her perspective and cheer her up. It was a radio riot as only Rush was able to muster. I love Rush, but secretively found Dowd's sentiments sympathetic.

But that was then. What difference a few years have made! I'm not saying I'm totally smitten with the season; I can't be blind to the cultural and commercial side of it, which is easily overwhelming; and I am every bit prone to the distractions and diversions from between the store ads and the kitchen pantry. The last several days found me all Martha, nearly completely absent of Mary. When the parties receded, the remains of the parties shoved away or hastened into the dish washer, and I finally had the rest of the night safely parked on the couch and next to the silent lamp, what I reached for was Dante, in stead of the Bible or The Little Book of Hours: my wayward heart wanted art after several days of "martyrdom" in the kitchen and amongst wrapping paper, it wanted luxury in lieu of necessity.

So, you see, I haven't quite gotten over that residual, hmm, to put mildly, ambivalence, about how much I have to do to be a social and family creature. Generosity of the heart is hard to come by when one is sluggish in seeking external assistance. But at least, I'm able to shift vantage points, shake my head, and laugh at my own forgetfulness and childish ways.

Roll on, Christmas! I'm ready to recollect, gather my dissipated self. After every tiny shattering, there must follow every re-creating. Roll on, Christmas!

Maureen Dowd on this Christmas: fun to read, and I didn't know she had a conservative brother, to boot.

Merry Christmas!

The night is descending, temperature is dropping, Christmas Eve is upon us. Let us rejoice. Let us keep in our hearts the true meaning of this very night, and give thanks and sing praises (the last I will do so very silently).

Merry Christmas to all my friends whom I've come to love in this truly peculiar space wherein our paths have crossed.

To Jan, my sunny-delightful, albeit self-admittedly-sometimes-temperamental, friend: may your Christmas Eve be frozen but not your dreams; may the goddess of punctuation, and the angel of spelling be on your side always; may your pictures be forever blurry and beautiful; may your nifty-crafty Advent wreathe resurrect and stand firm; may all the juxtapositions run away from you, or, at least, run away from December.

To Sally, whom I tracked down only to find having admitted a "Seasonal Fraud:" May your writings grace First Things often, and give it the zest as only a home-schooling mom / poet could; may your little warriors and princesses grow in fearlessness, knowledge and grace; may it snow at least once again around this time next year where you live, so that you will have a timely photo of genuine snow-shrouded, fairytale house (not that I have any problem with the existing one, but that you'll never have to call it a "fraud").

To Webster and Frank: may your blog long live, and your followers grow to a million! May your two personalities be always so perfectly juxtaposed that we, your faithful readers, whenever logged in, always feel comforted and entertained, not to mentioned informed and edified.

And to everyone else who has ever set "foot" in, or simply stumbled onto this little corner of mine: may your spirit be settled and tout, your heart broad and free, your foot steady and strong; may you find whatever I humbly offer kindred to your fancies or memories. And pray for me, if you would, for the ever enlarging of my heart; and I will pray for you, for peace.

Briefly Again...

KDM and I are in self-congratulatory mood: we are nearing the end of Christmas shopping- names are being checked off, the "Done" pile is heaping up in the closet where we keep it hidden, wrapping paper and ribbons are beckoning... all so promising of an end of a task which looked endless merely 48 hours ago. That's an accomplishment we can believe in!

As I type, KDM is out tree-hunting. You read me right, tree hunting. We try to live up to our tradition of not getting a tree until two days within Christmas Eve. We have a cool name for this tradition - Christmas Tree Rescue. We scout the city looking for that unwanted, picked and left over, perhaps crooked, scrawny, short, little Christmas tree. Sometimes the store owner would just let us have it, for free. We'd bring it home, put it in water, dress it up, turn on the lights. Then we'd sit down, holding hands while admiring our adopted orphan, imagining it happy and merry, no longer forsaken and forlorn. When the holidays are over and it's time to remove the tree, with a slight pang of melancholy, we'd take it to the pond, where it will become a haven for the fishies to escape the big bad turtles. As of now, there are about 4 tree skeletons floating in the pond.

Well, I did say we are "nearing" the end of the shopping list. That means some names are still remaining, just so you know what I'm up to when I'm not around.

O, BTW, with all that's going on, shopping list etc., I still have been able to get my daily doses of disgust by keeping up with what's going in our nation's Capital. Thankfully I have just enough light in me to not to despair. My zoom lens is working still: I zoom way out in times like these in order to really see the "big picture." Try it, it works. And keep in mind the difference from self-deception.

Missing Dogs: the False Alarm

Inky and Barney

Scooter

I hope nobody saw the post I put up earlier this morning: the soggy, weepy sob story about two missing dogs (the two Blue Heelers in the pictures, not the yellow one) and a teary plea for prayers for their return. The fact that these two rascals had gone missing since late last evening made me sick and wanting to cancel the day and possibly, the night too.

But my darlings are back, mysteriously, and dare I say, miraculously. Now let the day resume, and a light-bedecked night to follow! Hallelujah!

I hope you forgive my display of irrational exuberance following the irrational (can there be another kind?)hysteria. Would you not have been as broken-hearted had you believed you'd never see these blue beauties again?