Picture of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s painting Tribal Map (2000-2001) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., in 2022. Source: Wikipedia. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Rilla finished her first college class yesterday. A 200-level Women in Art course, which, yes, was rather a dive into the deep end. She turned in her final paper and we celebrated with Jamaican takeout. She worked so hard & has done very well in the class—and as her study partner, gosh I learned a lot!
She (we!) encountered the work of so many artists we hadn’t met before: Carrie Mae Weems, Mariko Mori, Emily Counts, Rosa Bonheur, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Pablita Velarde, and Edmonia Lewis to name a few.
This homeschooling gig remains my best education ever. So grateful for the ongoing adventure.
December 11, 2024 @ 9:10 am | Filed under:
Bloggity UPDATED: Aha! I think I figured it out. It might be a Feedburner issue. My blog’s RSS URL is melissawiley.com/feed/ (versus the Feedburner version: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bonnyglen).
None of my December posts appear in the Feedburner feed. But they’re all there on the other one. So if you use a feed reader like Feedly, you may need to change the URL in your subscriptions. (But note that even then, it may take a day or so before new posts appear in your Feedly or other readers.)
Thanks for bearing with me—and for reading me, wherever you like to read! We’re coming up on this blog’s 20th anniversary in January. Hard to believe! And some of you have been with me since the beginning. I treasure every single Bonny Glen reader. Your time is precious and there are trillions of words to read on the internet. I’m grateful mine are some of them.
ORIGINAL POST:
Jamie kindly alerted me to an odd issue: my December posts aren’t showing up in Feedly. I’ve checked my RSS feed and also tested a different feed reader, and all seems well there. So maybe it’s just a Feedly issue?
This post, which I’ll probably delete in a day or two, is simply for troubleshooting purposes. If you use an RSS feed reader, can you let me know if you’re seeing my December posts there? Thanks much!
December 9, 2024 @ 9:50 am | Filed under:
Books 
One of my favorite moments in time. This would have been December 2005. Reposting it today in honor of these two birthday fellas. Love!
This practice worked well for me last week, so I’m giving it another go this week. I’ll update the post throughout the week as new passages capture my fancy. New entries will appear at the top of the post.
After all, if you’re hopelessly trapped in the present [note: Burkeman’s argument is that understanding this reality is a good thing that vastly improves our quality of life], it follows that your responsibility can only ever be to the very next moment—that your job is always simply to do what Carl Jung calls ‘the next and most necessary thing’ as best you can.
—Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals
This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links. I’m also doing a better job of updating my Bookshop shop (lol). Here on the blog, there’s a widget in the sidebar for my current/recent reading adventures. And I’ve got other collections of books there if you’re looking for great gift ideas.
Mole by Ernest Shepard, from The Wind in the Willows
Fridays are my allergy-shot day. Each week, in late afternoon: poor Scott has to give me three (three!), after which I’m pretty much wiped out for the day. They are potent cocktails. They’re no fun to get—and the subsequently itchy arms are no joke—but these shots have changed my life, rescuing me from what had become increasingly debilitating asthma that turned out to be the Pacific Northwest’s earnest effort to clobber me.
So I’m grateful. I’m a lot healthier. And in a strange way, I’ve come to appreciate the way they’ve blown my old Friday rhythm to smithereens. Since I had a (mild) anaphylactic reaction to my maintenance dose a while back, I’m now forbidden to spend any time outside on shot days. Can’t risk increasing my allergen exposure on the days I get jabbed. And I was sternly admonished to do nothing that elevates my heart rate for two hours before or after the shots.
In the summer and fall, this was a huge bummer: no gardening! No long walks with Scott! But in winter? Mandatory cloistering in a cozy home? Doctor’s orders to hibernate? Happy to oblige.
Now Fridays are a reading day, a writing day, a tying-up-the-kinds-of-loose-ends-you-can-tie-up-from-your-chair day. A knock-things-off-the-admin-to-do-list day. A tuck-yourself-in-bed-early day. A day the world will just have to make do without me.
And then comes Saturday morning, when I always feel like Mole emerging from his hole in Spring. Even in December!
A new idea, or more accurately, an old idea I’m reviving. A collection of passages that caught my attention, warmed me, sparked thought, in my week’s reading. What I’d like to do, and we’ll see if it takes, is come back to update this post as the week rolls out. Or, in a week like this one, I can collect things I’ve marked, saved, or shared elsewhere.
In today’s internet, updating a blog post is an odd thing to do. But after nearly twenty years of stashing words in this space, I know the blog’s most important purpose is to serve as a storehouse of memories. It’s a living (if sometimes ignored for a stretch) record of a thought-life.
…the days are more fun than the years which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest one day at a time.
—Horace, Odes, translated by Derek Mahon, quoted in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals
Most of the long-term benefits of reading arise not from facts inserted into your brain, but from the ways in which reading changes you, by shaping your sensibility, from which good work and good ideas will later flow. ‘Every book makes a mark,’ says the art consultant Katarina Janoskova, ‘even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory.’
—Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (emphasis mine)
Moominpappa at Sea, chapter 2. The Moomins are in the middle of the sea, searching for the lighthouse island Moominpappa knows is out there somewhere.
“We shall see it soon,” said Moominmamma. Her head was full of little thoughts that she couldn’t really get organized. “I do hope it’s working,” she thought. “He’s so happy. I do hope there really is a lighthouse somewhere out there, and not just a flyspeck after all. We can’t possibly go home now, particularly after such a grand start…You can find big pink shells, but the white ones look very nice against the black soil. I wonder whether the roses will grow out there…”
It’s late August in Moominland, but this passage has such a December ring to my ears. So many small thoughts zinging around. Mind full of shells and soil and roses and lighthouse hopes. Safe harbor behind us, mysterious seas ahead. Island or flyspeck? Reading maps is a risky business.
“Isn’t it just!” I can imagine Little My exclaiming, with relish.
This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links
