Meryl Streep

Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
― Meryl Streep

I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world.
― Meryl Streep

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.
― Meryl Streep

The formula of happiness and success is just, being actually yourself, in the most vivid possible way you can.
― Meryl Streep

I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.
― Meryl Streep

I like who I am now. Other people may not. I'm comfortable. I feel freer now. I don't want growing older to matter to me.
― Meryl Streep

No one has ever asked an actor, 'You're playing a strong-minded man…' We assume that men are strong-minded, or have opinions. But a strong-minded woman is a different animal.
― Meryl Streep

Thoughts

The car whether it is a tank or a pod is a metaphor for the separate self. The home is an ego-fortress with the front lawn as its moat. Home decor is one's stage set. This was how I grew up in suburbia and I hated it.

As a pedestrian in the city I have daily opportunities to cultivate my relationships with my community. Yesterday when walking to the market to buy onions I stopped three times to converse with my neighbors. Being efficient has a price I'm not willing to pay.

Dog Nirvana

Dogs possess a quality that's rare among humans--the ability to make you feel valued just by being you--and it was something of a miracle to me to be on the receiving end of all that acceptance. The dog didn't care what I looked like, or what I did for a living, or what a train wreck of a life I'd led before I got her, or what we did from day to day. She just wanted to be with me, and that awareness gave me a singular sensation of delight. I kept her in a crate at night until she was housebroken, and in the mornings I'd let her up onto the bed with me. She'd writhe with joy at that. She'd wag her tail and squirm all over me, lick my neck and face and eyes and ears, get her paws all tangled in my braid, and I'd just lie there, and I'd feel those oceans of loss from my past ebbing back, ebbing away, and I'd hear myself laugh out loud.
― Caroline Knapp, Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs

Fitness is Good Medicine

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/exercise-seems-to-be-beneficial-to-children/380844/

Pancake Meditations

The secret to wholegrain light fluffy pancakes is sourdough!

Robot Tongue

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Spindles and Slats

The happy house on the corner of Oak Hill Ave have their Christmas tree up along with their Halloween pumpkins. Their landlord replaced part of their porch with wooden slats and one section will remain as the traditional curvy white spindles.

Dinnerplate Dahlias on Salisbury Street

I took a walk this morning and spotted a yard full of colorful dahlias. I felt like I had landed in OZ.

Television Land

Last night I saw our 1959 Thermador oven on Columbo. I remember as a kid when I saw our Flair oven on Bewitched, and I was so excited. I never paid full attention to the plots but I was always curious about what paintings were hanging on the walls. I do remember that The Brady Bunch had a few Degas in their upstairs hallway and Lucy and Ricky had a country house with a big stone fireplace. I still get distracted by the decor and whether a character forgot his hat on the chair. At night when I am walking my dog the neighborhood becomes a series of lit up doll houses with framed pictures on the wall, and the blue green flickering of TV's.

Hello Broccoli

This weekend a family grocery has just opened on the corner of Diamond Hill Road and Social Street. There are seven plate glass windows filled with produce, and paper towels. We can walk there!

I get sad on Sundays, the family day when we were small we used to spend the day around the table eating and listening to my grandparents and step-father tell stories.

I am glad I live in the city. I walk everywhere and on sad days it's the little "Hello's" that save me.

Kay Ryan

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

-Kay Ryan


Age

As some people age
they kinden.
The apertures
of their eyes widen.
I do not think they weaken;
I think something weak strengthens
until they are more and more it,
like letting in heaven.
But other people are
mussels or clams, frightened.
Steam or knife blades mean open.
They hear heaven, they think boiled or broken.

-Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (New York: Grove Press, 2010).

Dizzy Gillespe

Artists are always in the vanguard of social change, but we didn't go out and make speeches or say, 'Let's play eight bars of protest.' We just played our music and let it go at that. The music proclaimed our identity; it made every statement we truly wanted to make.
- Dizzy Gillespe

Margaret Meade

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Meade

Spicy Garlic Green Beans

Now that cauliflower and kale are trending I am paying attention to some other green vegetables. I bought green beans and sauteed and slightly steamed them in turkey stock and olive oil, garlic, soy sauce and and hot chili sauce. We ate it with the sliced brined and cooked turkey remnants we picked up at Market Basket. So good!

Peach Paradise Tea by London Fruit and Herb

Job lot has a new peach tea Peach Paradise Tea by London Fruit and Herb. It's great!! We used to LOVE Celestial Seasonings Country Peach tea mixed with black tea to have with milk and honey but then they changed the formula to become overly citrusy. Now we can have this. I have had more tea these past few days than I have had in 6 months! Try it and enjoy.

Sunday Picnic

It is warm and sunny Sunday. We had a picnic under the umbrella-shade of the Maple tree. Sliced peaches, sourdough buttermilk pancakes, bacon and fried bologna. We even brought the electric frying pan outside to cook at the table.

Dream

I dreamed I was playing with a black and tan coon hound puppy. It was still tiny with long floppy ears and four mandalas on its belly. I was falling in love with him.

Apples and Cows

I came to New England to be closer to apples and cows. Today we went to the apple orchard and the dairy farm. The trees are turning yellow and orange!

Sonny Gibbs

For 23 years Sonny Gibbs sold flowers and taught chess at the southwest corner.Story

Anton Chekov

What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
― Anton Chekhov

Journal

Thursday I was feeling sorry for myself, that I failed the assistant librarian test, that I am dumb, that I have no friends, never have had any. Loneliness and bad voices were filling my thoughts.

Friday I noticed the variety store hung new colorful triangular streamers and tacked up large red and blue cloth signs out front. I gave into my introverted mood and read my favorite passages of May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude and some of E.B. White's essays from One Man's Meat. I walked a few short walks with Lily. I waved to people sitting in benches under the tree rather than stop and talk. I drank lots of tea with milk and honey and I finally finished stretching the big canvas.

I told myself I make books not shelve them!

When the sun set I could see that my neighbors put up their Christmas tree decorated with shiny read balls and the living room walls were decorated with garlands. We're a month away from Halloween. Maybe its a comfort to them to have Christmas last three months. I would prefer to not have it at all.

Last night it was warm and all the neighborhood teens were out shouting and hanging out on the wall under the yellow streetlight. It was technicolor hues reenacting West Side Story.

I dreamed I was wearing ice skates while walking Lily. I knew this was going to dull the blades. Kids were out of school playing ice hockey in the street with firemen.

People still ask me about my missing straw hat. It is dearly missed. Especially today, when it will be 80 degrees.

Louis Auchincloss

I think my secret is to use bits and fractions of time. I trained myself to do that. Anybody can do it. I could write sitting in surrogate's court answering calendar call.
-Louis Auchincloss

Local Vocal

I've been thinking a lot about the local drug dealer who stands out at the corner day in and day out shouting and laughing to drum up business. Since my office is just above his lair he has entered my thoughts more than once. I have thought about telling him to take care of his vocal cords because he is destroying his voice. In a few years he will be unable to speak above a whisper, my husband says. We should tell him, I say. He'd have to completely relearn how to use his voice, my husband says. I hear him out there hocking his wares from 11:30 AM until 10 o'clock each night. I should commend him on his work ethic. What will happen when his drug becomes legal? I'm worried. I'm not being sarcastic. In fact I have developed the ability to hear his voice above the traffic noise, chatter, and fans. While it lasts.

The Joys of Being an Introvert

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Changing Mood

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