It’s strange to confess that I’ve just had a relationship, a rather intimate one, with a person I don’t know. I’ve spent each night for the past week with this person, in bed, in the thirty minutes or so before I turn off the light. This is how we met. Bill, Natalie and I had flown from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where we were going on a couple of college tours. In between tours, we decided to spend two days exploring a favorite neighborhood, with fabulous old houses and panoramic views of the Bay. When we checked into our room at the Inn at the Presidio, we immediately…
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The Power and Pleasure of Introverts
If solitude is an important key to creativity, then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently. We’d want to give employees plenty of privacy and autonomy. Yet increasingly we do just the opposite. from Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking My friend has sent me Quiet, and she has enclosed this note: “I think you will be able, like me, to find some excellent morsels in here that will remind you of things you like about yourself, your husband and your daughter, as well as some insights.” My friend knows us well —…
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Our Kitchen Leads to Oatmeal Cookies!
Our kitchen is yellow and orange, warm like the sunlight that streams through the windows at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and hits the side of my face as I sit at the table, puzzling over a quadratic equation or flourishing a green highlighter over Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. My dad sits at the table, reading BBC History Magazine, a Beethoven piano concerto or a Brahms serenade playing in the background. He taps a finger against the page in time to the music, every so often looking up to share with my mom and me an interesting fact he has just read. My…
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A Family’s Favorite Books in 2012
We went to a sing-a-long two weeks ago at Disney Hall and Julie Andrews was a special guest. Of course, she sang (and we sang-along) “My Favorite Things.” Afterward, I got to thinking if there was one book I had read in 2012 that I could call “my favorite book.” I asked Natalie and William the same question. NATALIE: My favorite novel was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. This was my favorite novel because the themes of friendship, family and being one’s self (instead of what you’re supposed to be) are woven together into a thought provoking and moving story. Set in 1945, the book also deals with the tensions between history…
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Mysterious Gifts
I’ve been thinking about “gifts” lately, and the different kinds of gifts we can give one another. There are of course the tangible gifts we give each other on birthdays and other holidays. It can be fun to select a present for someone special in our lives. But, I’ve also been thinking about intangible gifts that can mean so much, like these gifts I receive often from two of my favorite companions, William and Natalie: Patience (even when I am sharing a worry for the 20th time) and Time (even when they are busy) and Stories (I love hearing their stories!) This post is about some awe-inspiring gifts and our friend…
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Sherlock Holmes Meets the Amazing Mary Russell
I met mystery author Laurie R. King during the production of Mysterious California, my parents’ 2008 documentary. Now, five years later, I have discovered Ms. King’s wonderful Mary Russell series. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice begins the series with 15-year-old Mary Russell meeting the retired Sherlock Holmes in 1915. The two immediately become a team. Mary Russell is inquisitive, clever, and recently orphaned; Holmes is in desperate need of a mind equal to his in logic and deduction. Soon, they are travelling across England, first to solve the mysterious illness of a wealthy neighbor, then on the trail of a kidnapper, and finally to solve their most difficult case of all, one that…
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Reading in Bathrooms & Standardizing Testing
Every once in a while, an essay by Claire Needell Hollander appears in The New York Times. I make sure to read it. She is smart & witty & wise. And, her writing, which both entertains and enlightens, always inspires me to write down my own thoughts in response to whatever it is she is writing about, in this case: standardized testing in classrooms & the wisdom of reading in bathrooms. Here’s the link to her latest essay titled “Testing My Twins,” in the The New York Times (10/20/12): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/opinion/sunday/testing-my-twins.html?_r=0 And here are the memories, observations and thoughts about bathroom reading and testing she inspired me to jot down: I…
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From Los Angeles to Glasgow
First read Pamela’s post “Strangers on a Train” (so that you know who Andy is :-)) Thursday, July 19, 2012 Dear Andy, Thank you so much for your letter! Keeping the postal service going is a most enjoyable endeavor, since it involves writing long letters (and purchasing interesting stamps; I’ve put two of my favorite on this envelope). I wish I could send a little California weather along with this letter to you in dreich (that really is a wonderful word!) Scotland. In fact, our summer’s been a bit long in coming too. Our “June gloom” disappeared towards the end of June then reappeared in July. We have now, however,…
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More Than Just a Book to Read
Natalie and I both read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird this summer after going to a screening of a restored film print at the Billy Wilder Theater at the UCLA Hammer Museum. While we were reading the novel, we happened upon a wonderful exhibit at Loyola Marymount University’s Hannon Library titled the “Saraval Collection: Reproductions of Rare Hebrew Manuscripts Spanning Seven Centuries.” (SEE NOTE BELOW ABOUT SARAVAL COLLECTION) The text by Monika Jaremków included this interesting observation: “More Than Just a Book to Read”: “Books are not limited to literary and scholarly texts; they are real objects created throughout the ages, with the use of different materials, by people…
