~Sunday~ My alarm was set for 10:00 today, but I awoke at 8:30 and surrendered to the start of the day.
We had our Manbites Dog Theater board meeting from 11:00 – 1:00. Everyone was able to attend, except Alice, who had a church function she needed to be at today.
I stepped up to take over scheduling future board meetings and to help in doing some “task tracking” of action items resulting in future meetings. It’s the least I can do, since my hope and intent to contribute in the area of grant-seeking and great-writing has been a dismal failure.
Jeff went over the schedule that’s been decided on for the 2009 – 2010 season, and as usual, most of the work chosen seems compelling to me, and I look forward to seeing them.
At 5:30, I lay down for a nap, setting my alarm for 8:00 thinking I’d never nap that long, but certainly wanting to be awakened if I did.
I woke up at 7:00 and debated as to whether I’d be able to go back to sleep or if I should just get up and catch the 7:45 bus instead of the 8:15. It would be good to get started earlier today, as I needed to leave work a little bit earlier to pick up Robert at the airport.
I got up, looked out the window and thought that the way the sun was shining across the parking lot looked unique, interesting, this morning.
Halfway through my shower, it dawned on me that what was different about the way the sun was shining was that it was from the opposite direction. It was actually 7PM Sunday evening, not 7AM Monday morning. Oops. My bad.
Responses to a tweet saying what I had done indicate that this can be a good thing, and that I’m not the only one who does this:
After my shower, which then seemed a bit superfluous, I did a grocery store run. I called Dad on the way and wished him a Happy Father’s Day. Mom was at bingo. They’d had lunch at Golden Corral.
Once home from the grocery store, I put on a Selected Shorts podcast, and enjoyed the stories while I:
Everything but the cantaloupe will go into making a salad each day this week. To that I’ll add some pineapple tidbits and some raisins. Sometimes I also add grated cheddar cheese and/or the whites of a hard-boiled egg, depending if I want protein in the salad or not.
These are the Selected Shorts podcast that I listened to:
A Gallant Writer Celebrated
Sunday, May 31, 2009
“At an early hour for the French man of letters Henri Grippes—it was a quarter to nine, on an April morning—he sat in a windowless, brown-painted cubicle, facing a slight, mop-headed young man with horn-rimmed glasses and dimples. The man wore a dark tie with a narrow knot and a buttoned-up blazer. He signature was ‘O.Poche;’ his title, on the grubby, pulpy summons Grippes had read, sweating, was ‘Controller.’ He must be freshly out of his civil-service training school, Grippes guessed. Even his aspect, of a priest hearing a confession a few yards from the guillotine, seemed newly acquired. ” – Mavis Gallant, “Grippes et Poche”
A bizarre bureaucratic feud, between a novelist and a tax official, lasts two lifetimes in this story by contemporary master Mavis Gallant, who reads her own work.
And then these from 2007:
Appetites for Life
Sunday, December 09, 2007
“It came upon me that I had misspent my life. All those years laboring over words, words, words. And for what? What difference did it make to anyone? Who cared what I had to say? I had lost the appetite for telling.”
– Mary Gordon, “Storytelling”
A jaded writer, and an aging gourmand, revive their appetites for living.
Gordon’s reflective tale “Storytelling” was read at The Getty Center in Los Angeles as part of a program entitled SIDE TRIPS AND REVELATIONS. It is indeed revealing about the craft of writing, and Gordon also took the time to discuss her work with us in a brief interview featured after the story. The reader of “Storytelling” is the stage and screen actress Lindsay Crouse, whose film credits include “House of Games” and “Places in the Heart,” which earned her an Oscar nomination.
Our second story is from an earlier season at The Getty–a program devoted to food fictions. In English novelist V.S. Pritchett’s “Just a Little More , an aging man reclaims his dignity in his robust accounts of meals he remembers. The reader is Rene Auberjonois, most recently seen on the television series Boston Legal..
“Storytelling,” by Mary Gordon, read by Lindsay Crouse
“Just a Little More,” by V.S. Pritchett, read by Rene Auberjonois.
For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space