It's a different world. Last year, when I described my first trip to Chautauqua, I talked about Brigadoon. There is still some magic associated with the experience, but this year, it is easier to define. There are things that happen at Chautauqua that CAN happen elsewhere...but it is far easier to let them slide in my daily life. At Chautauqua, you stop long enough to get in touch with yourself and with the world.
At Chautauqua, I look. I look at houses, at gardens, at the lake, at people. I actually see--and speak to--people I see on the street, and they respond with a smile, a pleasantry, sometimes even a conversation. I complimented one lady on her garden (it had to be her own, as she was dead-heading the flowers and sweeping the curb..) and we had a pleasant conversation about her daughter's wedding, the 'flower-towers' that she had planted this year, the mysterious ailment that had plagued impatiens recently, and her assertion that the gardens didn't look quite as good this year as last.
The gardens and the houses are enough to look at, in themselves. Victorian gingerbread and vibrant paint, gardens that subscribe to the Victorian ideal of excess, old-fashioned flowers from your grandmother's garden: hydrangeas and daisies and Queen Anne's lace, begonias and bee balm, coleus and gladioli. Wicker furniture on generous porches with vases of flowers connecting them to their surroundings. And people on those porches, with lemonade or iced tea or something a little stronger, watching the passing parade.
If you are a people-watcher, Chautauqua is heaven. There are people bicycling, jogging, riding scooters, strolling, bench-sitting..There are people with dogs, people in the amphitheater, the Hall of Philosophy, people on their way to class, or enjoying a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone on Bestor Plaza. I saw a man pushing his dog in an umbrella stroller one morning; I took his picture, but didn't ask him why. Though I'm sure he'd have told me. In the middle of the plaza, there was a girl playing the violin--beautifully, I might add. Maybe she had an open violin case inviting tips--I don't know. I was too far away to do anything but hear the music.
Listening is part of the experience too. There's the singsong chanting of the newsboys selling the Chautauquan Daily. "Chautauquan Daily, full of knowledge! Chautauquan Daily, send me to college!"--or whatever rhyme they've devised for the day. Some even wear the knickers and vest and caps of Victorian newsboys. And the carillon marks the hours down by the shore--hymns and popular songs at specific hours, bells for the hours and the half-hours. Early in the morning, the most notable thing is the ABSENCE of sounds. It's quiet. No cars, no airplanes, no hubbub...but birds, and the sound of fountains..
This would be quite enough to make a vacation, but one of the most Chautauquan of experiences is thinking. There is food for thought around every corner: lectures and classes and religious services, an orchestra, a choir, an opera, a dramatic group, art galleries, a library, a bookstore, a Literary Arts Center with brown-bag lunches with resident poets and prose writers. There are authors and diplomats, teachers and musicians, children and adults, ballerinas and artists...whoever and whatever you'd want to see, they are there. And they are there to join the conversation with anyone and everyone who makes Chautauqua their home, whether for a week or for the summer.
I brought home pictures, I brought home ideas, I brought home memories. I stopped, I looked, I listened, I learned. I am far richer for the experience.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
The Single Best Moment of Your Life
Writing a blog means never letting a stray thought go by without evaluating it as a possible topic...and writing and saving at least a subject line for a potential blogpost. And that is why I am here. When Andy Murray got his Wimbledon trophy, the picture prompted some news person to ask his readership to post pictures of the single best moment of their lives.
The request snagged my attention, and, as such things do, forced me to think about what picture I might post. I zipped through the posted pictures and was unsurprised to see wedding and baby and graduation photos, some with annotations of physical and emotional circumstances that raised the ante to 'best' rather than simply momentous occasions. None, however, prompted me to the 'Aha! That's it!' response I was looking for.
Can I pin down the single best moment of my life? There have been many that I remember vividly, so I suspect that they would be in the running, but...'best'??? Hard to categorize all the moments and arrange them from worst to best.
Wedding, yes. The birth of our girls, yes and yes. Our granddaughters, yes and yes, squared. The first smiles, the first recognitions, the first laughs..yes, oh lord, yes. Our first house, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and..well, you get the idea. The unforgettably happy and momentous teaching moments. Garden moments. The double rainbow moments when Nature overwhelms you: the golden light of a sunset in Venice, Lake Louise, the day it went from frozen green to brilliant blue overnight, glaciers calving on our Alaska cruise, the blue Caribbean..The wonder in our daughters' eyes when they experienced Disneyworld for the first time, being part of one of the famous marches on Washington in the Vietnam era, the awe of being in Westminster Abbey amidst the resting places of the great, or seeing the heavenly colors of Sainte Chappelle; Monet's Waterlilies at l'Orangerie, standing in the silent square before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg near midnight, or on the field at Gettysburg or Antietam in summer heat, being where history was made in so many places, at so many times..these are all moments worth remembering.
But it is impossible to winnow them down to a handful, far less a single moment. So, if I can't have one, I will take them all. All the moments of my life are singular, are the best, are the most memorable, the most wonderful, whether they be the ones I spend at my laptop or scrubbing floors, or fixing dinner. I wish that I could live that way, celebrating all my moments as if they were the single best moment of my life. A circumstance devoutly to be wished. Carpe diem. Live the moment.
Take the picture, because today's the day, and this, right now, is the moment.
The request snagged my attention, and, as such things do, forced me to think about what picture I might post. I zipped through the posted pictures and was unsurprised to see wedding and baby and graduation photos, some with annotations of physical and emotional circumstances that raised the ante to 'best' rather than simply momentous occasions. None, however, prompted me to the 'Aha! That's it!' response I was looking for.
Can I pin down the single best moment of my life? There have been many that I remember vividly, so I suspect that they would be in the running, but...'best'??? Hard to categorize all the moments and arrange them from worst to best.
Wedding, yes. The birth of our girls, yes and yes. Our granddaughters, yes and yes, squared. The first smiles, the first recognitions, the first laughs..yes, oh lord, yes. Our first house, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and..well, you get the idea. The unforgettably happy and momentous teaching moments. Garden moments. The double rainbow moments when Nature overwhelms you: the golden light of a sunset in Venice, Lake Louise, the day it went from frozen green to brilliant blue overnight, glaciers calving on our Alaska cruise, the blue Caribbean..The wonder in our daughters' eyes when they experienced Disneyworld for the first time, being part of one of the famous marches on Washington in the Vietnam era, the awe of being in Westminster Abbey amidst the resting places of the great, or seeing the heavenly colors of Sainte Chappelle; Monet's Waterlilies at l'Orangerie, standing in the silent square before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg near midnight, or on the field at Gettysburg or Antietam in summer heat, being where history was made in so many places, at so many times..these are all moments worth remembering.
But it is impossible to winnow them down to a handful, far less a single moment. So, if I can't have one, I will take them all. All the moments of my life are singular, are the best, are the most memorable, the most wonderful, whether they be the ones I spend at my laptop or scrubbing floors, or fixing dinner. I wish that I could live that way, celebrating all my moments as if they were the single best moment of my life. A circumstance devoutly to be wished. Carpe diem. Live the moment.
Take the picture, because today's the day, and this, right now, is the moment.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Mediocrity
Oh no! In today's newspaper (excuse me, today's FB pronouncements...) I saw that Kroger has purchased Harris-Teeter. Kroger...the store I remember as that none-too-clean grocery store in Charlottesville that was my last choice for grocery-shopping. Kroger...known for maximum coupons and minimum quality. And now, they will own Harris-Teeter, my favorite non-neighborhood shopping destination that does it all: good produce, good meat department, good selection, good house-brands, good prices--and samples! Don't forget the free samples! And above all, purveyors of Mary T's frozen tea biscuits that are good enough to pass for (and perhaps are better than) homemade. I am officially depressed. Particularly since a new Harris-Teeter is on the verge of opening a new store in Old Town this fall. I have been patiently waiting for the grand opening since the first shovelful of dirt was moved. And now...Kroger!!!
Perhaps you think I am making too much of this. Perhaps I am. But I am getting tired of mediocrity in my world. There seems to be a serious dearth of truly GOOD things, and an alarming increase in the mediocre and/or sub par. I find myself latching onto anything that exceeds the (low) bar of acceptability. Why else would I watch endless crime shows if not to avoid the tsunami of 'reality' shows on TV? Detective shows at least employ a modicum of thought and generate interest in the outcome of the story.
This morning's TV page in the Post touted an extreme makeover of a 300+ pound young woman, which entailed a trip to Chile to find her birth mother. What???!!!!???? And a show that falsely contains in its title the word 'entertainment' insists on regaling me with stories and interviews of people who are famous for being famous. My interest in Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, the left-behind family of Michael Jackson (who apparently are all engaged in self-promotion) and the many and varied antics of assorted B (C, D and below)-list celebrities (who could POSSIBLY call them 'personalities'?) fails to meet even my lowest measurable level of brain activity.
Were it just TV that exhibited such a fall from grace (remember The Twilight Zone, Playhouse 90, All in the Family, The Cosby Show...) we could manage. However, movies have adopted another path as well. Spectacle. Apparently, explosions are necessary. Perhaps there is an unemployment issue or an under-representation of special effects artists in Hollywood, and each movie is forced to include at least five technically-demanding explosions in order to provide equal opportunity employment. Or maybe the viewing public is perceived as having the attention span of a gnat, and explosive effects are needed to keep them awake and aware of the screen in front of them.
Restaurants also are getting wilder and wilder, if not necessarily better. For myself, I'd prefer my ice cream without herbs, my food cooked instead of raw, and maybe, less focus on creative mixtures and more on quality ingredients. I enjoy innovative cooking now and then, but I'd like to find something on a menu that is comfortingly familiar.
Stop for a moment and catalogue the mediocrities in your day: the misspelled words, the technological glitches, the potholes you bounce through, the bad service at the department store, the countless mini-annoyances and disappointments of going about your business. It could all be so much better if there were an effort to achieve excellence, rather than a satisfaction with providing the minimum. Where have we lost our aspirations? When did we come to the decision that things were 'good enough'? Why did we all stop trying?
Okay. I am admittedly being a curmudgeon, and am prone to exaggeration. The fact is that we are all party to this trend toward the lowest common denominator in society. We accept it as the norm and are not writing scathing letters to the networks and movie studios and are not raking newspapers over the coals for their inattention to grammar and spelling, their bias, and their extensive coverage of violent events. We are not out campaigning for the few good and true politicians we believe in, nor are we supporting with our efforts the good works of organizations that are struggling mightily to keep their heads above water. Some of us are--but nowhere near enough.
I suppose we are getting what we deserve. Mediocrity. In spades. Goodbye Harris-Teeter. Hello Kroger.
Perhaps you think I am making too much of this. Perhaps I am. But I am getting tired of mediocrity in my world. There seems to be a serious dearth of truly GOOD things, and an alarming increase in the mediocre and/or sub par. I find myself latching onto anything that exceeds the (low) bar of acceptability. Why else would I watch endless crime shows if not to avoid the tsunami of 'reality' shows on TV? Detective shows at least employ a modicum of thought and generate interest in the outcome of the story.
This morning's TV page in the Post touted an extreme makeover of a 300+ pound young woman, which entailed a trip to Chile to find her birth mother. What???!!!!???? And a show that falsely contains in its title the word 'entertainment' insists on regaling me with stories and interviews of people who are famous for being famous. My interest in Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, the left-behind family of Michael Jackson (who apparently are all engaged in self-promotion) and the many and varied antics of assorted B (C, D and below)-list celebrities (who could POSSIBLY call them 'personalities'?) fails to meet even my lowest measurable level of brain activity.
Were it just TV that exhibited such a fall from grace (remember The Twilight Zone, Playhouse 90, All in the Family, The Cosby Show...) we could manage. However, movies have adopted another path as well. Spectacle. Apparently, explosions are necessary. Perhaps there is an unemployment issue or an under-representation of special effects artists in Hollywood, and each movie is forced to include at least five technically-demanding explosions in order to provide equal opportunity employment. Or maybe the viewing public is perceived as having the attention span of a gnat, and explosive effects are needed to keep them awake and aware of the screen in front of them.
Restaurants also are getting wilder and wilder, if not necessarily better. For myself, I'd prefer my ice cream without herbs, my food cooked instead of raw, and maybe, less focus on creative mixtures and more on quality ingredients. I enjoy innovative cooking now and then, but I'd like to find something on a menu that is comfortingly familiar.
Stop for a moment and catalogue the mediocrities in your day: the misspelled words, the technological glitches, the potholes you bounce through, the bad service at the department store, the countless mini-annoyances and disappointments of going about your business. It could all be so much better if there were an effort to achieve excellence, rather than a satisfaction with providing the minimum. Where have we lost our aspirations? When did we come to the decision that things were 'good enough'? Why did we all stop trying?
Okay. I am admittedly being a curmudgeon, and am prone to exaggeration. The fact is that we are all party to this trend toward the lowest common denominator in society. We accept it as the norm and are not writing scathing letters to the networks and movie studios and are not raking newspapers over the coals for their inattention to grammar and spelling, their bias, and their extensive coverage of violent events. We are not out campaigning for the few good and true politicians we believe in, nor are we supporting with our efforts the good works of organizations that are struggling mightily to keep their heads above water. Some of us are--but nowhere near enough.
I suppose we are getting what we deserve. Mediocrity. In spades. Goodbye Harris-Teeter. Hello Kroger.
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