March 20, 2007
Interlude.
StoryQuarterly Joins Narrative Magazine.
St. Joseph's Altar.
M and A and I visited a St. Joseph's Altar yesterday, and ate a delicious lunch up on a hidden rooftop at Immaculate Conception Church. Here's some info about the annual feastI found on Google. Now that I have a teenage driver, (see below), the fava bean's staying in the pocket of my purse.
St. Joseph's altars are Sicilian in origin. During a terrible famine, the people of Sicily pleaded to St. Joseph, their patron saint, for relief. St. Joseph answered their prayers, and the famine ended. In gratitude, they prepared a table with foods they had harvested. After paying homage to St. Joseph, they distributed the food to the less fortunate.
The Altar is set up in three tiers, representing the Holy Trinity. A statue of St. Joseph is placed on the top tier, usually surrounded by flowers, greenery & fruit.
No meat is prepared for the Altar. This is probably because St. Joseph's Feast falls in the Lenten Season and also because meat was a rarity to the Sicilian peasants. Breads, cakes and cookies, baked in symbolic Christian shapes, are prepared for the Altar. Pastries in the shapes of monstrances, chalices, crosses, doves, lambs, fish, bibles, hearts, wreaths and palms adorn the tiers of the Altar. Symbols of St. Joseph - such as lilies, staffs, sandals, ladders, saws, hammers and nails - are also used. There is symbolism in many of the items on the Altar. Breadcrumbs rerpresent the sawdust of St. Joseph the Carpenter. Twelve whole fish represent the apostles. Wine is symbolic of the Miracle at Cana.
The Altar is a medium of petition and thanksgiving. Petitions of the faithful are written on pieces of paper and placed in baskets on the Altar. Photos of deceased relatives & friends may decorate the Altar as well.
The Goodie Bag:
Visitors to St. Joseph Altars are given small paper bags containing a few blessed items from the Altar. The bags usually contain a holy card and a small medal. Various cookies or small breads may also be in the bag.
The most interesting item found in the goodie bag is the fava bean. In Sicily, the fava was fodder for cattle. During a great famine the people resorted to eating them to survive. They were considered lucky to have favas to eat, hence the fava bean is also known as a "lucky bean." Some believe that the pantry that contains a fava bean will never be bare. The fava, or lucky bean, serves as a token of the Altar - a reminder of God's provisions through the intercession of St. Joseph.
Six foot baby driver on the loose.
A got his driver's license yesterday morning before 9 a.m. This took three tries because since the storm there aren't as many DMVs and the lines are give-up long. Three times in a week either M or I got up early, made it to the DMV for 7:15 a.m., and waited outside the doors which open at 8 a.m. Same drill: Drop A off to get in line, run to MacDonald's for a MacGriddle and Hi-C, a coffee, stand there, talk a little, read our books a little. Two out of three times, the wait was so long for the road test that we couldn't get it done that day. But yesterday A was first in line! I wanted to hug the road-test man, but he kind of waved me off. Now I have to stifle the impulse to drop A off at practice, pick him up from school for doctor's appts, because he's mobile and agile, Christmas-happy in his truck, windows down, one hand on the wheel.
Produce.
March 12, 2007
Division I State Champions.
Al dente.
Means to the tooth, and these frozen pastas by Bertolli are amazingly good. You open the bag, throw everything into a skillet, cover it, and wait for the popsicles of sauce to melt into a delicious and complete dinner (they say it serves two, but not in my universe) of pasta! Trust me. I'm Italian.
Walking Eddie.
I'm going to tell you some things I like about walking Eddie, because I can't keep all of this dog-goodness to myself:
1. Eddie is great company, and when he stops to rest, he leans against my leg. I like being leaned on.
2. Eddie invites sniffs from other dogs, whose owners then talk to me a little, and we exchange the names of our dogs.
3. When I slow up, Eddie slows up, and when we're clipping along, we 180 the blooming park, admiring the flowers and the smell of spring.
4. I envy his bladder control as he stops to mark, and mark, and mark, and mark.
5. I'm afraid to walk alone, and Eddie feels like protection.
1. Eddie is great company, and when he stops to rest, he leans against my leg. I like being leaned on.
2. Eddie invites sniffs from other dogs, whose owners then talk to me a little, and we exchange the names of our dogs.
3. When I slow up, Eddie slows up, and when we're clipping along, we 180 the blooming park, admiring the flowers and the smell of spring.
4. I envy his bladder control as he stops to mark, and mark, and mark, and mark.
5. I'm afraid to walk alone, and Eddie feels like protection.
March 09, 2007
Forgiveness.
Plants that survived Katrina are blooming all over the city. Lorapetalum or Chinese witch hazel
Camellias (three months late but elegant and bruisable as ever)
And the most glorious smelling jasmine, jasmine, jasmine.
Camellias (three months late but elegant and bruisable as ever)
And the most glorious smelling jasmine, jasmine, jasmine.
The Napkin Project.
Clickables.
A short lead.
I walked our dog, Eddie, for the first time by myself on Monday. And then on Wednesday and this morning, because for the last eighteen months these are the days of the week when I walk in City Park with my two friends and their dogs. I befriended E and I when we all evacuated to Houston for four months. The regularity of these forty minute walks gives us a chance to keep up with the small and big stuff that's going on i.e. recent purchases, pounds gained, aches and pains, our (lively) teenage sons, sick parents, funeral arrangements. They are like my sisters, but unarmed; we only know each other from August 2005, so our back stories have no witnesses, no other versions, which makes these friendships feel kind of clean, considerate, and free roaming. I watch how they walk their dogs so I can learn how to handle mine. And I know that if a dog runs up to Eddie with bared teeth, they'll know how to quiet the danger.
Eddie's twelve and 80 lbs., a sweet chocolate Lab with a gray muzzle, tender eyes, and puppy energy. Malcolm showed me how to keep him on my left. (We took a practice walk together on Sunday.) "You're going to get attached to him, and he's old," he cautioned me, but I'm good with this late start at understanding dog love, how to receive his and show mine. I already miss him when we walk, and make him sit so I can pet his neck and take in his kindness, his patience with me for waiting so long to walk him.
Seven Line Stories.
Dud Durden.
A downloadable book written by Jack Pendarvis. Because I like to bring you good, free things.
March 06, 2007
Musical Interlude.
Some new Apostle of Hustle.
MS Review's Prose Poem Issue.
Edited by Julia Johnson, and available today.
A Slow Read Through Sudden Fiction.
I'm working my way through wonder after wonder without skipping around (except to my story "Following the Notes," which I've read, um, four times) because that's the kind of linear girl I am.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas publish this powerful anthology once every ten years. I have worn copies from 1987 and 1997, and it was a secret dream to have a piece in the next one, or the next one.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas publish this powerful anthology once every ten years. I have worn copies from 1987 and 1997, and it was a secret dream to have a piece in the next one, or the next one.
Produce.
Sit.
I haven't yet told you I love chairs.
I don't think the holes in this one are for your arms. Maybe for your legs if you turn the other way.
I don't think the holes in this one are for your arms. Maybe for your legs if you turn the other way.
Book and Play.
There's a beautiful essay in the NYT today by Joan Didion about watching her memoir become a play starring Vanessa Redgrave.
AWP in Atlanta.
This was my first AWP conference, and I drove from New Orleans to Atlanta. Twenty miles into the trip, I passed a truck on fire in Slidell, sped through opaque black smoke, which felt like driving with your eyes closed for too many seconds. I prayed the person had gotten the hell out of there. Then, in Atmore, AL, the interstate was shut down and thousands of cars and trucks had to detour through the railroad town, which took an extra hour and a half. Halfway into it I had a Katrina evacuation flashback, except I could've U-turned and gone home. The ugly part of me hoped something serious had caused this slowdown, and the better part of me worried people had been badly hurt or killed. The trip took me over 8 hours, but I got to Atlanta at 8 p.m. and met friends for Thai food.
There's a lot to say grace over at AWP. I didn't talk to every friend/writer I wanted to, or visit enough tables of lit mags and small presses, or hit all the panels I'd circled in my program like Charles Baxter's or Thom Didato's, or stay long enough to hear Elizabeth Spencer read, but the conference was productive, helpful, a feast. 5,400 writers attended, and the downtown Hilton was stressed lines i.e. slow lines for coffee, cocktails, elevators. Not enough chairs in the lobby so you had to step around the legs of writers camped out on the carpet because they quickly needed a place to talk, and we sit when we need to.
Highlights: Bruce Beasley's and Mark Doty's poetry readings; the "fairy tale" and "flash fiction: words across the world" panels; hearing Iowa Prize winners Jim Tomlinson and Kevin Moffett read from their short story collections; a rainy dinner with the kind editors at MacAdam/Cage and writers Sheri Joseph, Katherine Towler, and Jack Pendarvis, who makes me laugh so heartily that my Adam's apple jumps; Antonya Nelson's essay on THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING; discovering the entertainingly dangerous stylings of Michael Martone and hearing John Barth read, meticulously, from his new novel; and, spending delicious real time talking and drinking with writers I know from the web.
On the way home, I stopped at the Atmore, AL exit and asked the woman at the BP station what had happened on Wednesday to close the interstate. She told me there'd been brush fires - 30 miles of them - that made her 2 hours late for picking up her kid. No one got hurt. I don't know what happened in Slidell, but when I checked the Times Picayune at home, there was no mention of a fatality and the burning truck.
There's a lot to say grace over at AWP. I didn't talk to every friend/writer I wanted to, or visit enough tables of lit mags and small presses, or hit all the panels I'd circled in my program like Charles Baxter's or Thom Didato's, or stay long enough to hear Elizabeth Spencer read, but the conference was productive, helpful, a feast. 5,400 writers attended, and the downtown Hilton was stressed lines i.e. slow lines for coffee, cocktails, elevators. Not enough chairs in the lobby so you had to step around the legs of writers camped out on the carpet because they quickly needed a place to talk, and we sit when we need to.
Highlights: Bruce Beasley's and Mark Doty's poetry readings; the "fairy tale" and "flash fiction: words across the world" panels; hearing Iowa Prize winners Jim Tomlinson and Kevin Moffett read from their short story collections; a rainy dinner with the kind editors at MacAdam/Cage and writers Sheri Joseph, Katherine Towler, and Jack Pendarvis, who makes me laugh so heartily that my Adam's apple jumps; Antonya Nelson's essay on THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING; discovering the entertainingly dangerous stylings of Michael Martone and hearing John Barth read, meticulously, from his new novel; and, spending delicious real time talking and drinking with writers I know from the web.
On the way home, I stopped at the Atmore, AL exit and asked the woman at the BP station what had happened on Wednesday to close the interstate. She told me there'd been brush fires - 30 miles of them - that made her 2 hours late for picking up her kid. No one got hurt. I don't know what happened in Slidell, but when I checked the Times Picayune at home, there was no mention of a fatality and the burning truck.
Promise.
To post weekly - or more! - for the two, wait, three people who said they check in here and find nothing new.
recently
Another Sweet Holiday Gift Idea.
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Awww.
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A request for Jim Shepard.
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Pia's Nifty Gift Ideas.
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My Favorite Runners.
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Story Quarterly Contest.
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Clickable:
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You Try and Choose.
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Pop Up Books.
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Container Houses.
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aviary
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Pia Z. Ehrhardt.
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