Gang aft a-gley

[rolanni]

Ah, my dear friends, I have a terrible dilemma before me.  Both Olga and Natalia wish to be my wife; each has written several times to me of their passion. They are equally attractive; both are looking for love, but neither appears to be able to do laundry.

Well.  That's really not a dilemma at all, is it?

So, today was an odd day.  One of those days where Things Got Done, but they were Entirely the Wrong Things.  On the other hand, a day that includes a milkshake and an unexpected ride in the country can't be too far awry.

At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I did make it to gym and waked for miles.  My "gym book" this go is a Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, and a buncha other awards, soon, I'm told to be  Major Motion Picture.  Again.

AWIT was published when I was 10 years old.  Despite this, I didn't read it (the first time) until I was an adult.  It was sitting on a table in EJ Korvette's in...damned if I remember -- Towson, probably.  Anyhow, remainder table, one among many of its own kind, and many others, not necessary of its kind.  I was waiting for my then-boyfriend to finish up doing something or another, and started to read AWIT, as the most interesting looking book on the table, and by the time he re-appeared, I'd tessered once already and wasn't about to miss the rest of the story.  It was a buck I never regretted spending.

I read AWIT a couple times since then, but not for 20 years or so -- found the sequels, but none of them held my interest beyond the first two pages. . .  So, yanno, life goes on; so many books, so little time; and all like that.

But AWIT is going to be coming out as a movie next year; this time, so the hype goes, done right, which means that lots of people who read it as kids, and who imprinted on it, are re-reading.  And some are being disappointed, and blogging about their disappointment (one more time from the choir: What an age we live in).  Now, by the time I'd read AWIT, I'd read. . .a buncha books, many of them science fiction/fantasy (Back when I started reading sf/f, you could easily read the monthly titles, and still have room left over for others kinds of books.  It just wasn't possible, if you were any shakes of a reader at all, to read only science fiction.).  I thought AWIT was a good enough book.  Certainly, the Mrs. Whatsit, Who, and Which have pleasantly improved my inner life.  Meg irritated me -- but Meg was supposed to irritate me.  Partly, after all, this was a story about Meg coming to terms with Meg, and if she could stand it, so could I.

I did have some reservations about the sudden appearance and utter acceptance of Calvin, especially the part where he liked Meg straight off.  Otherwise, he seemed like good enough kid.

Charles Wallace was being set up either as John the Baptist, or the new Christ figure, but I'd already read Perelandra, and Out of the Silent Planet and whassis -- That Hideous Strength.  Plus, I'd been raised Roman Catholic.  All of which meant I was pretty good at ignoring the God-stuff and following the story along.

So, anyhow.  I read it back then; liked it well enough.  Read it a couple times more and liked it on rereads.

This time, I'm still liking it.  Meg perhaps annoys me less, but, then I know how the story goes, more or less.  I find that I misplaced a couple things on the timeline, but no big surprises so far. . .The Happy Medium, surprisingly or not, irritates me more than Meg does this time.  Hmm.

One of the reviewers I read was saddened by the fact that AWIT didn't sing for them anymore, and blamed -- the 60s (given a 1962 pub date, and its long history of rejection, AWIT was probably written in the late 50s).  The 60s, said the reviewer are just too unbelievable to a person of modern sensibility, and the story therefore suffers from its setting.

I will go on record here as saying that the 60s setting doesn't detract from the story  at all, for this reviewer.  OTOH, I lived through the 60s.

So, that.

After gym, I ran the rest of the errands on my list -- sadly, neither CVS nor Agway had any of the bug repellents I had pinned my hopes upon, so I wound up ordering from the internet, rather than shopping locally.

Agway did provide me with a ginormous lacy yellow day lily, a hug pot of bee balm and a Jimmy hosta with white bells (the hosta on the other end of the property have blue/purple bells).  I have probably under-bought, but the wallet gets a vote, and this will at least start a Cat Garden Renaissance.

For those keeping score at home, I remain Utterly Delighted with my new fountain pen, which has scarcely been out of my hand since I bought it.  So delighted am I, that I have purchased another Pilot Metropolitan, this is the formal White Tiger color scheme, and blue ink, so I will have a fine signing pen at Confluence.

And that?  Really is all the news that's fit to print.

Everybody stay cool, or warm, as appropriate.

Comments

[mirlacca]

I used to be a confirmed fountain-pen writer (when I was in elementary school, that was all we were allowed to use; the nuns considered ballpoint pens inventions of the very Devil). Since then I've used them less, but for a while really liked the Sensa pens.

I got the White Tiger pen based on your rave review, and I too am very very pleased with it.

[hairmonger]

Meg irritated you? The Happy Medium, happily forgotten until your mention, irritated the HELL out of me at age (nine? ten? maybe a year after publication) but not Meg. Being raised Baptist any religious tropes slid easily over my head until I was in college (and, yes, had read everything C.S. Lewis wrote.) I haven't read it in about twenty years, so even though I'm extremely unlikely to see the film I had better dig it out. I found the sequels too demanding.
60s? Reading it as a child in the early sixties there seemed nothing to place it in time at all. Anywhere in the 20C would do, even parts that hadn't happened yet.

Alas, as a left-hander I was happy to give up fountain pens, even though I occasionally used my grandmother's mother-of-pearl dipping pen until it became too much trouble to find nibs to fit.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

[rolanni]

Well, I was in my 20s. I hear that we Read Up, so somebody who was 10 or 11 would have read a 13-year-old as a model for one way of being. FWIW.

[rolanni]

I used cartridge pens -- not well, since I didn't firmly settle which hand I was until quite late (natural Lefty, "normalized" to a right-hander by the nuns), and was therefore in a perpetual stated of Inky. I do remember that we were NOT allowed ballpoints -- and I remember why, too. They were Just Dreadful. Even blotchier than an ink pen, and the ball dragged across the paper and tore it.

[mirlacca]

I remember the nuns complaining about skips with ballpoints, too.

I still have the callus on my middle finger!

Did you get cigar boxes from the corner drugstore to store school stuff in?

[rolanni]

My *dear*.

I had a Rich Resource in cigar boxes in my grandfather, who had STACKS of them in the basement. He used some of them to keep nails and screws and s-hooks and whatnot sorted, but the sad truth was that he smoked faster than he fixed.

Right before school came in (for only two years; he died when I was seven), he and I went to the basement and go through the pile, discussing the merits of this box and that. The year he died, we hit the mother lode -- a gorgeous box done in patterned gold foil, *just* the right size, and on the lid, a picture of a Spanish lady in her mantilla, hiding coyly behind her fan. I'm still amazed the nuns let me keep that one...

After my grandfather died, the basement was more or less left as it had been for several years, and I was still able to make a withdrawal from the stack of boxes every school year.

The family did finally clean out the basement, with bad timing for my sister, who had to *buy* her so-called cigar box from the five and dime.

[mirlacca]

Like this one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Spanish-Beauty-Rosita-on-Original-Antique-Cigar-Box-Label-Vintage-Art-/122394775956?hash=item1c7f4c1194:g:nbAAAOSwTuJYxepq

I had to use the cardboard boxes, and then cover them with shelf paper. No fun at all! But I also got the insert ads that used to say, "Win a Thoroughbred Foal! Name this Horse!" I entered that contest *religiously.*

[rolanni]

Could be her sister, anyway.

I must've lived in the wrong part of the country for the thoroughbred foals. My ads were about learning how to draw, or qualifying for police academy...