The Best Laid Plans

Well, my well intentioned vacation has turned into an extended illness. I have pneumonia now. Sigh. It certainly has been a trying year. I have been sick every month for the last year. I recently had bronchitis and it has turned into pneumonia. Luckily my mom is a Polyanna and we have been playing the glad game. We have decided to look at this as a tender mercy from heaven that allows me to be sick in a safe and loving place. I am slowly getting better--my parents have been amazing. I am just glad that I have this time to get better. It is the first time in three years that I have not been teaching in the summer. So really it has been a vacation--not super comfortable but I have gotten a lot of reading and writing done when I have been feeling better. I have finished several books in the last week and thought I would share them.

I have become a big fan of Jessica Day George. She is a local writer--a graduate from BYU. She has two children and lives with her husband and small dog Pippin in Salt Lake City. She has two books that are fairytale retellings. Then she has the Dragon Trilogy. In Dragon Slippers the heroine is Creel--a orphan from the country who has plans to become a dress maker in the King's Seat. But her aunt who is "dumber then a barrel of turnips" has other plans. She decides to feed Creel to the local dragon--if the land owner's son saves her then they will all be set for a life of luxury, if he doesn't--there is one less mouth to feed. Creel ends up meeting the dragon, befriending him, gaining a pair of beautiful blue slippers that magically control all of the other dragons, and is apprenticed to the finest dress maker in the kingdom. Creel is a spunky heroine who is a gifted seamstress and a caring friend to the dragons--but can she handle being the heroine of a dragon war?

The next book in the series continues the exploits of Creel and her dragon friends. Creel gets closer to Prince Luka and helps him and the King of the Dragons save the kingdom from alchemy of the worst kind. She creates several gorgeous dresses, sashes, and a wedding dress. . . just not her own.

Dragon Spear came out just yesterday and I had a lot of time on my hands. This is the final installment of the trilogy and finds the dragons trying to make it on their own away from the humans who never can seem to leave them alone. Luka and Creel help the Dragons establish a home in the Far Isles where they can be safe and raise their children. . . but they discover that there are more dragons than they had thought.

I have also been on a Mary Stewart kick. She is the original lady of suspense--huge in the forties and fifties, she wrote until her death in the late nineties. Gabriel Hounds is set in Lebanon and follows young Christabel and her "cousin" Charles twice removed as they deal with marijuana dealers and the mystique of the Far East. It is quite delightful and very exotic. Excellent plot and writing, though escapist in nature, this is the best kind of suspense--just enought danger, dogs, and romance.
While picking up my copy of Dragon Spear I discovered that one of my favorite writers, Patricia C. Wrede, has finally written a new book, the first of a series. Thirteenth Child is brilliant. It gives the American West its own mythological past. Eff was born a thirteenth child. Her twin brother, Lan, is the seventh son of a seventh son. This means he's supposed to possess amazing talent -- and she's supposed to bring only bad things to her family and her town. Undeterred, her family moves to the frontier, where her father will be a professor of magic at a school perilously close to the magical divide that separates settlers from the beasts of the wild. It is like a mixture of Little House on the Prairie and Harry Potter.

Next was an old favorite--Thornyhold by Mary Stewart again. This old-fashioned gothic romance is as good as they get. When Gilly's witch aunt leaves Thornyhold to her, a house in the middle of the woods, Gilly finds that she has inherited far more than she realized. Along with the house comes a cat, a still room filled with herbs (and a missing recipe book), an attic chamber with carrier pigeons (who have secret messages), and an attractive neighbor whose young son offers the sacred and unique blessing of friendship. But Thornyhold possesses far more than even these simple offerings. The place itself seems to envoke otherworldly gifts as well: Gilly cultivates the abilities to heal and to foresee the future once she makes Thornyhold her home.

It's impossible not to like Hermux Tantamoq, the watchmaking mouse. He relaxes in a flannel shirt printed with pictures of cheeses from around the world, he has a caged pet ladybug named Terfle, he writes endearing thank-you letters to the universe each night, and he has a big heart--a heart that aches for the fearless aviatrix Ms. Linka Perflinger, who unexpectedly visits his shop requesting an emergency rush repair of her wristwatch. Little does he know that this brief rendezvous with the jaunty adventuress will change his life forever. Nothing. Even nasty encounters with his neighbor (the horribly garish and affected cosmetics tycoon Tucka Mertslin) and pleasant interludes with his artist friend Mirrin don't distract him from his new heart-quickening obsession. Suffice it to say that gentle Hermux gets in way over his head with his detective work and proceeds to have fur-raising encounters involving spies, thieves, killers, betrayal, the Fountain of Youth, snakes, calliopes, and dramatic rescue attempts. Throughout it all, however, Hermux continues to thank the world at large: "Thank you for corner grocers. For sandwiches and honey fizz. For scary news and narrow escapes and trolleys and shopping bags. Thank you for loyal pets and bold adventurers (and adventuresses)."

Just thought I would share some good reads. Now back to bed for me.

Bits and Pieces

I like the sound of water and rivers so much because the voice of God is described as the rushing of waters. My small self took this in during scripture reading time and I have never forgotten it.

I have decided that I want to go to Ipanema--just so I can sing the song "The Girl from Ipanema" on the beach.

Sometimes answers come in lyrics:

As my life goes on I believe

Somehow something's changed

Something deep inside

Ooh a part of me

There's a strange new light in my eyes

Things i've never known

Changing my life

Changing me

I've been searchin'

So long

To find an answer

Now i know my life has meaning

Now i see myself as I am
Feeling very free

Life is everything

Ooh it's meant to be

When my days have come to an end

I will understand

What i left behind

Part of me

I've been searching

So long

To find and answer

Now I know my life has meaning

Woah woah

Searching

(don't you know i'm)

For an answer

To the question,

Oh yeah"who am i?"

Maybe

Maybe it's true

It's only natural

Good things

In life

Take a long time

~ Chicago song lyrics

"Impudent Porcine Mendicant" which means a saucy pig-like beggar

Combination of words from my GRE word of the day

The word copesetic means alright or fine.

Dianna Krall is married to Elvis Costello. Huh.

Walks and Stuff

Yesterday, I wrapped myself in a shawl and went for a walk on the river road. I have not done this for quite some time. The storm had just rolled away and everything was sparkling green--that green green of Spring. Of course Spring is just coming to Cache Valley. I am home for a while--to recover, regroup, renew. Today I found a poem by Billy Collins that reminded me of my walk. Here it is--



Directions
You know the brick path in back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window,
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk up into the woods you come
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of the Ice Age,
and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now
against the light-brown fallen leaves?

And farther on, you know
the small footbridge with the broken railing
and if you go beyond that you arrive
at the bottom of that sheep's head hill?
Well, if you start climbing, and you
might have to grab hold of a sapling
when the going gets steep,
you will eventually come to a long stone
ridge with a border of pine trees
which is as high as you can go
and a good enough place to stop.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rockto sit on,
you will be able to seethe light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Still, let me know before you set out.
Come knock on my door
and I will walk with you as far as the garden
with one hand on your shoulder.
I will even watch after you and not turn back
to the house until you disappear
into the crowd of maple and ash,
heading up toward the hill,
piercing the ground with your stick
- Billy Collins

Graduation

I did not go. Threats of swine flu in Park City and the thought of hundreds of sick college graduates made me reconsider my small part in the faculty processional. I am not a paranoid freak, worried about pandemics, I just have a compromised immune system. Here are some thoughts for graduation and all those who are graduating from things in life. I am graduating from survival to recooperation. :)

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift. . . . It is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever learned."

~JK Rowling 2008 Harvard Commencement address