Starting a series of nostalgic posts — this blog has been neglected long enough!
Marianne dancing with the captain of the boat. Not to worry: he had locked the steering wheel so the boat was making circles in the big lake at Mondsee, Austria. March 7, 2004.
In March of 2004 Marianne and I went to Austria for a week in Spring Break. Marianne was taking a group of her students on a tour of Vienna, as part of her course on the Viennese psychologists Freud, Adler, and Frankl. Near the end of the week, we had a quick excursion to Salzburg. The day we were to return to Vienna we had some time to kill and we wandered with a few students to the shore of the lake at Mondsee. We saw a sign for lake tours. There was snow on the ground, but Marianne sought out the guy dressed as a captain and asked if tours were offered. He said yes, and we hopped on the boat. Once safely far from the shore, he locked the steering wheel at a fairly steep left turn angle, put on some waltzes on the audio system, and came up on the deck to dance with people! Here he is, dancing with Marianne. Photo taken with the Gateway (!) digital camera we owned at the time.
Another year has gone by since the previous post here. And what a year! Gentle reader, settle in for a long retrospective, replete with news, good and bad, and lots and lots of pictures. This was the year that we both got into photography seriously, and the evidence is pretty extensive below.
January
The year started with really, really cold weather. The American Social Science Association meetings were in Philadelphia in early January, but D only went one day, as it was too much to brave temperatures hovering around 3 F (-15 C)! M came later in the day and met D at the hotel, and we both then went to dinner in South Philly at a pig roast that D’s former graduate student Erin had organized.
Before that, though, by a couple of days, we spent New Year’s with Dominick, Margherita, and Caterina in Long Island. Here is Caterina enacting a Greek New Year’s custom, the smashing of a pomegranate against the front door, for good luck, by the youngest member of the household:
The view out of our front door right after that (apologies in advance; there will be lots of snow pictures in this post):
Looking out our front door on January 3.
We took a trip to Mohonk Mountain House shortly after this, for our 14th wedding anniversary. Was it cold? See for yourself:
A windswept Marianne in front of the frozen Mohonk Mountain House lake. January 12.Frozen Mohonk Mountain House lake from the porch of the main building. January 12.
Yes, what you see on top of the lake is ice. ICE. We had a lot of that in January and February.
Since we are professors, we have to jumpstart ourselves for the Spring semester, no matter how bad the weather is. But the 2014 winter made a mockery of the start of the Spring 2014 semester at Temple University, D’s place of employment. On the very first day of the semester, January 21st, there was a nasty snow storm that convinced the university to close. D had to miss his classes, walk VERY carefully on slippery snow to the train station, and then freeze half to death waiting for a train home. It turns out the city’s businesses all closed down at the same time and trains were coming to Temple University station full. After 90 minutes of freezing at the open-air Temple train station, D finally figured how to save himself: take a train in the other direction, then fight his way into a train home in a covered station (and fight is an accurate statement; elbows were involved and insane crowding). Here’s what it looked like at the Temple station before the epiphany to go the other way:
Temple University train station, January 21.
The next day our back yard looked like this (you can just feel the cold in the photo):
Freezing back yard on January 22.
Near the end of the month, it was time to celebrate D’s 55th birthday. Lots of friends braved the elements and the party was wonderful. Phil Jones wrote a poem in his card, which is well worth immortalizing:
Birthday poem by Philip Jones.
And then it was time to celebrate this birthday at Dominique and Steve’s, together with their incredibly cute daughters:
D, M, and C. January 29.
A and D. January 29.
February
The second month of the year started with a Superbowl gathering with some of Marianne’s colleagues. The very next day we had a bad snow storm and the next day, February 4th, an ice storm that resulted in an epic power outage to about three quarters of a million electric utility customers in our area, us included.
It looked like this the day before we lost power:
Tree in neighbor’s yard on February 3.
And three days into the power outage, this was the temperature in our house:
Temperature inside our house at 9:27 am on February 7. Power was eventually restored that evening. The thermostat runs on a battery and the heating on gas, but it does not work when there is no electricity to power the blower.
Luckily for us, we were able to stay with Dominique and Steve and the girls for the time our house had no power; they lived then in Philadelphia proper, in an area where the electric wires are underground, so they never lost power. We would visit our house daily, and the photo above was taken during the last such visit before power was restored.
In the middle of February, we had tickets for an Academy of Vocal Arts opera for Valentine’s Day. We made the excellent decision to reserve a room in the Rittenhouse Hotel, very near the performance venue. Even so, it was tricky to walk to the opera and back on icy sidewalks. But the view or Rittenhouse Square was nice from our room, and the brunch the next morning amazing. View:
Brunch:
March
Having survived the weather in February, we had some more of it in March, but gradually things starting warming up again. Our Spring breaks did not coincide this year, but we did have a weekend in between to spend away. We went to Cape May and had a nice time, except we caught a stomach virus and our return home and the next two days were miserable. We recovered though and life went on.
April
The first memorable event from April was early on, when M had some of the pieces she created for her mosaics class exhibited at the Abington Arts Center.
April was the month that spurred us on to taking photography more seriously. I’d been posting iPhone photos on Google+ and getting some unexpected encouragement from a really wonderful photographer active on that network (who’s become our best friend we have not met yet, but perhaps this can be corrected in 2015). M and I decided to take a short (two meetings) iPhone photography class offered at the Morris Arboretum, and this started a flurry of activity in taking, editing, and posting photos online. Some of the best photos:
A curiously shaped tree branch I like to call the “eye of the needle” in the Morris Arboretum, on April 6.
A fallen branch in the Morris Arboretum, exaggerated by a photo filter, on April 13.
OK, I may have gone a little overboard with using a filter on the second one. But the next one, taken during our afternoon walk the day before Easter, needed no editing at all; the sky’s color really was this purple:
On a walk in our neighborhood, April 19.
Meanwhile, M became very fond of an iPhone app, “Waterlogue”, that creates watercolor effects our of photos. Here is her rendition, using this app, of the previous photo:
We spent Easter at Suzanne and Kevin’s, as we have done many a year, with lovely friends.
May
May saw the end of the Spring semester for both of us and the purchase of a camera for me. You will see samples of what I did with it below. The first one comes right now: a happy M in Ocean City, NJ, twice, the second time on a speedboat:
M in Ocean City, NJ, on May 17. We visited OC to attend a department party by M’s colleagues.
M in a speedboat tour of Ocean City, NJ, on Memorial Day weekend, May 23. We visited OC then with N and C, and discovered that May 23 was the very first day that this company was doing boat tours for the season. We were their first customers for 2014.
And, because I can’t resist, here is a cool dancing tree in Ocean City that I caught on the same trip as the boat picture:
I like to think of this tree in Ocean City as the “dancing tree”. May 23.
June
Lots of photography early on in June, from a trip to Alverthorpe Park. This may be my best photo from this year:
Great Green Gradations is how I titled this photo of mine on Google+, where it got a very warm reception. Alverthorpe Park, June 8.
In the middle of June, we took a trip to Rochester, NY, to celebrate my dissertation advisor’s 65th birthday. We did this by flying to Rochester well ahead of time, renting a car, and driving to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada to spend a few days. It was a great idea: we saw a play in the Shaw festival there, visited some excellent wineries, and managed to take some photos. Here’s a sunset shot from the shore of Lake Ontario:
Sunset on Lake Ontario from Niagara on the Lake 2014-06-14.
July
We spent two weeks in Ocean City with friends and family in a big rental house, as we have done in the last several years. It was as great as always! Lots of fun was had by all, on the beach and in the amusement arcade, that also looked good at night:
Ocean City amusement park Wonderland, July 1.
And here we are at the end of this vacation:
Not too long after the vacation ended, M had a CT scan, part of her regular monitoring regimen. The scan confirmed that a small region of concern since January had grown enough to warrant a biopsy. This was quickly scheduled for August 6, and then we impulsively booked a trip to Bermuda for August 7-12. Why not spend some time by the beach on an island we love, as we wait for the results of the biopsy?
August
The biopsy was done on August 6. The next day we were in a rainy Bermuda. There had been a hurricane that passed nearby. It did make for some interesting skies:
Post-storm Elbow Beach, Bermuda, August 7.
And since this post is already overly heavy with photos, here is an album of ten more photos from Bermuda as posted on Google+.
Upon our return home, we got the results of the biopsy, which confirmed what we had feared: M’s cancer was back and a plan for treatment was needed. After some meetings with Dr. Hanjani, the course of treatment was decided: surgery on September 12, and then chemotherapy as needed afterwards. If you want the blow-by-blow account of how it all went, we made a blog just for this medical episode, which you can find here. If you visit, scroll to the bottom to find the earliest posts, and then gradually up to read about events in the order they happened. The first post, which gives the background history, is here.
Near the end of August we visited the Morris Arboretum again for one of their “date night” events. I took a photo of M then that I want to share here, as it shows her amazing positive attitude in the face of impending surgery and (as we were expecting) chemotherapy:
Marianne in the Morris Arboretum, August 27.
September
Of course, the dominant event of the month was M’s surgery on September 12. It went fabulously well! Photos and details are on the separate blog I just listed above. With the help of some wonderful friends, the days in the hospital went fast and M’s recovery at home was excellent. At her University, her Dean assigned her to non-teaching duties for the part of the semester that would not be covered by medical leave, to safeguard continuity for the students. This was also a great arrangement for M, who was able to spend her gradually increasing energy on work tasks without being stressed.
Two more September events worth mentioning are the planting of some new trees and bushes in your back yard that had lost many trees to disease and hurricane Sandy over the last few years, and a thorough renewal of our roof which should allow us to get through the next winter without worrying about the fact that our house had an old roof even when we bought it in 2000.
October
October was a month of recovering energy and going for walks in nature, as well as a special treat, a visit to the Lodge at Woodloch in Hawley, PA. But first, we attended the first Lyric Fest concert of the season and had our traditional for us lavish brunch at Continental beforehand:
Pre-Lyric-Fest-concert cocktails and brunch at Continental in Philadelphia, October 5.
A few of the photos I took on a visit to the Morris Arboretum follow. This was a great year for autumn foliage!
Patchwork quilt of leaves in Autumn 2014-10-18 in the Morris Arboretum.
Marble gazebo and pond in the Morris Arboretum, October 18.
Marianne under glorious foliage, Morris Arboretum, October 18.
Just look at the happy, healthy M in this last one! There are several other photos from that visit that turned out good, and you can see them here, here, and here.
The visit to the Lodge at Woodloch was excellent, for foliage photos but also for food and wine related events. As I have already overwhelmed you with photos, I am only sharing links to relevant posts I have made to Google+: here, here, here, and here.
November
After studying carefully the biopsy from the surgery and the baseline CT scan done in November, and after consulting with colleagues, Dr. Hanjani decided that chemotherapy was not indicated at this time, after all. This was a great surprise for us and very, very welcome news.
We continued visiting the Morris Arboretum regularly and I kept taking photos; one of the best from November is next:
Gazebo and Pond 2014-11-25. Morris Arboretum.
December
Highlights of December included the ending of the Fall semester for D (a little rough, due to having to teach a principles class at the last moment when a graduate course got cancelled due to low enrollment, but also due to the mental toll taken by the medical adventures in the middle of the semester). Christmas eve with friends and Christmas at Suzanne’s followed. Leading to these, we had two more trips to Longwood Gardens, one with a side trip to Winterthur to take in the seasonal decorations. Enjoy some photos here, here, and here. And I leave you with one of these photos from Longwood Gardens with our best wishes for a great 2015:
Wow! An entire year has gone by without a post here. This post then had better be good — and it will be long, but fun.
New Year’s fun
Before we get started in earnest, let’s recapture the end of 2012, which we celebrated by attending a great Philadelphia Orchestra concert led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and then having a celebratory dinner at Estia restaurant. You won’t believe what music they played at this Greek restaurant around midnight.
M gives a toast before the concert at the Kimmel CenterGoing to New Year’s Eve dinner
Kitchen remodeling
Last December’s end-of-year post ended by looking forward to a kitchen remodeling and a trip down the Rhône. The first of these did come to pass. After a few weeks of making coffee and washing dishes in the bathroom, not to mention eating meals in the living room, we started enjoying a beautiful new kitchen from the middle of March onwards. Here’s a view from December 14:
Kitchen 2013-12-14
But our vacation plans for the summer were altered, because of unexpected opportunities for Marianne to present her work at two conferences. More on this in a while.
D’s birthday and new course
January saw D celebrate his 54th birthday at Ann and Phil’s house, who generously hosted the celebration since we had no functioning kitchen and our house was a mess with the ongoing kitchen work. Much fun was had with our hosts and R, T, Q and C and J, J, M and S. One of the gifts was this portrait by Quinlan:
Q’s portrait of D from memory
The start of the year also found D teaching a new undergraduate course, the Economic Theory of Networks. That was exciting, even if it meant a lot of extra work preparing lectures and grading the course blog written by the students (for the curious, the blog is here, but be warned that the quality of the posts and comments is variable, as can be expected.) D is gearing up to teach this course again in Spring 2014, and by now he knows how to do a few things better.
Matilda on Broadway
Ellen organized two trips to NYC to see Matilda before it officially opened. We joined in on March 23 and had a great time (despite D’s almost overwhelming feeling of being crushed by the rushing crowds and slow traffic every time he is in Manhattan).
After the show: Look up at the mirror under the marquee!
Visit by Kostas
D’s brother, Kostas, visited the US for four weeks, from mid-April to mid-May. He came on a short sabbatical from his polytechnic to collaborate on a book proposal with his former dissertation advisor in Princeton. While there, he also started two research papers with current graduate students in the Electrical Engineering department. Meanwhile, we were able to do fun things with him every weekend while he was around, ranging from dinners with friends and family to a Lyric Fest concert to celebrating Greek Easter at Estia restaurant in Philly on May 5.
Kostas in front of Einstein’s house 2013-04-27
D honored by his department
One fine day in May, Marianne finagled her way into the economics department award luncheon, or so D thought, only to find that she was in on the surprise the whole time. He only realized what the program said about Outstanding Graduate Teacher of the Year the second time he looked at it. Truly an honor (the selection is made jointly by the graduate students and the department)!
D is honored for his graduate teaching at the economics department’s honor luncheon in May
Trip to Rochester, NY
Marianne got invited to participate in two conferences in the summer. The first was in our old stomping grounds, Rochester, NY, where she studied at the University of Rochester for her BA and I studied for my PhD a few years later. The conference was held at a hotel by the Genesee river, so we did not get a chance to visit the campus. But it was a good venue for Marianne to present, and I got a chance to have lunch with my doctoral dissertation advisor, which was extra nice.
Ocean City vacation(s)
We managed to visit Ocean City four times in 2013, in February, June, July, and September. The July visit was the longest one by far, two weeks, with lots of friend and family visiting. The February visit was the most unusual, since it snowed. It’s not every day that one can make snow angels on the Ocean City boardwalk!
M makes a snow angel on the Ocean City boardwalk
In case this photo was just a bit too chilly, here’s a cat basking in the sun from our visit to Cape May (yes, one more shore visit in the year) in March for Spring Break.
Cat in the Sun; Sunset Beach, Cape May, NJ
But for a really warm photo, here’s one from July, when a whole big group of us took a “pirate cruise” in one scorching afternoon and had lots of fun.
Pirate cruise in OC NJ Bay 2013-07-13
Canada in August
The second conference Marianne participated in was in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. Bracebridge is a small town about two and a half hours’s drive north of Toronto, in an area called cottage country because of the many summer homes well-to-do Canadians and others have in that area, among the many lakes. Bracebridge is by a river and lake Muskoka. Although we had not heard of this place at all, it proved to be charming and it also proved to contain a formidable coffee shop and a couple of first-class restaurants.
Plaque with the story of Bracebridge’s foundingMarianne by the river in BracebridgeBracebridge’s main streetLake Muskoka from a cruise on the “Lady Muskoka”
After the conference was over, we spent a few more days in Bracebridge and then drove to Toronto, where we spent five days. We had a centrally located hotel, so we walked around a lot. We had some fabulous meals and had a very pleasant visit to the island right across from Toronto on Lake Ontario.
Toronto City HallToronto’s waterfront from Lake Ontario
After Toronto, we visited (all too briefly) Niagara Falls. After sampling the winery offerings (Ravine Winery and Reif Estate Winery), we determined that a repeat visit in the Niagara area of Ontario is warranted.
SuperMarianne! (Her idea—there was an array of strong colored lights aimed at the falls, and if you positioned yourself just right in front of the camera, you could get this effect)
Marianne’s last injection in October
The vaccination study (please refer to our 2012 retrospective post, the previous post on this blog) is now over! Marianne had the last injection in the chemo suite in October. Now she will continue to be closely monitored for a long time, which is an important benefit from participating in the study. So far, all blood tests and CT scans have been clear! We are immensely happy about this.
M’s last injection for the ovarian cancer vaccine study; at Abington Memorial Hospital
Small trips
We kept taking short, weekend trips by car in the fall. Two memorable ones were: to Gettysburg in late September and to Woodloch Pines in mid October. Then we took an unusual day trip to New York City to see Twelfth Night, with Stephen Fry as Malvolio, as part of a two-production Shakespeare on Broadway, imported from London. It was an authenticity-minded performance, with male actors in all roles and Elizabethan music performed by a live band (which included two Piffaro musicians, Priscilla Herreid and Greg Ingles). This was so much fun (and the same goes for the excellent dinner we had at our favorite New York restaurant, Molyvos), that we decided to do it again, this time for both productions, Twelfth Night and Richard III. The second time we found Twelfth Night a little better even, which we could hardly believe. We were a little puzzled by the vaudeville quality of some moments in Richard III, however; presumably, this artistic choice of the excellent Mark Rylance was made to keep an American audience engaged and/or to differentiate from previous performances.
Off to celebrate holidays with merriment and good cheer. See you in the new year!
It’s time again to review the year that’s ending; hurray to the blog version of the Christmas letter! It has been a good year. This year had to be better than 2011, of course, since the latter was dominated by Marianne’s cancer recurrence and the necessary chemo treatments and surgery. If you read our retrospective of 2011 below, you will see it says near the top that we were ready to see 2012. Happily, 2012 did not disappoint us, so on with our reminiscing!
Teaching from her own book
After a long recovery from her December 2, 2011 operation, Marianne got enough energy back in time for full-time teaching in the spring semester. What was special about it was that she was able to teach her personality psychology course out of her own published textbook in the spring semester. She had done this once before with a pre-publication rough draft of her book, but this was the real thing. The class went very well. Marianne also has a website now about her book, which Dimitrios set up for her as a Valentine’s day gift (yes, we are nerds; why do you ask?).
Right after the semester was over, we headed to Bermuda, one of our favorite vacation spots. It’s such a favorite that we are not sure how many times we have been there. We think this was the fifth time. It was also a different visit — our friend Rob, who left Blacksburg, VA, for Belfast, North Ireland, a few short years ago for a new academic position, joined us in Bermuda. He turned 50 this year, so this was a celebratory vacation, and he had never been to Bermuda, a problem that has now been rectified.
We stayed at our previously favorite hotel, the Elbow Beach Hotel. It occupies a commanding position over Elbow Beach (what else?) and used to be a huge complex of a large hotel building and many smaller units that have 4 rooms each, with balconies and gardens and views of the ocean or flower gardens or both. Last time we were there, all buildings were in use and we had some excellent meals in the main restaurant of the large building. Imagine our surprise to arrive and find out that the main building was for some years now degraded to just a shadow of its former self, with no active guest rooms, no active restaurants, and only the lobby and concierge service fully functional. Clearly the owner of the hotel, Mandarin Oriental, is suffering some financial difficulty and/or is seeing a lucrative future only in smaller, bungalow-like units for the guest rooms. Our room was excellent, however, and so were the surviving restaurants, both on the beach. Our room also introduced us to our new addiction: a Nespresso machine. I do mean addiction: we returned to our house on May 31st and bought a Nespresso machine of our own on June 1st. We have enjoyed many espressos, cappuccinos, and lattes since.
For posts we made from Bermuda, complete with photos, please click on “May 2012” on the right or here. If you click on “June 2012” or here, you will also see, near the bottom, two nice photos of the two of us created by Rob.
Out with the old (pool), in with the new (gazebo)
When we bought our house in 2000, it came with a then one-summer old pool. Since then, we have had many a fun-filled pool party with our friends of all ages (I think the age range of all our pool party participants extends from 2 months old to 84 years old). But the pool was getting old and creaky (it had a visibly patched hole in the bottom for several years neat the end of its life) and eventually we decided that it was too much to maintain. Our wonderful neighbors got together and dismantled it, in return to being given the aluminum from the pool frame to sell, and we were ready to get our new yard toy, a gazebo. No sooner had it been installed, we were having breakfast in it. The next order of business: we will find ways to integrate the gazebo into our future garden parties and barbecues. We are not going to give up one gathering our friends frequently when the weather is good, even now that there is no pool to make the gatherings into pool parties. We have already had some gazebo parties so the testing phase is over.
Ocean City vacation
We had a New Jersey shore vacation in Ocean City, as in the previous several years, for two weeks in August. We rented a five-bedroom house (the same we had rented in 2010 and liked then) and were joined by lots of friends and relatives. It was an excellent time at the ocean. Next time we do this, however, we will not schedule it too close to the start of the fall semester. Coming back to the classroom just a couple of days after returning from vacation was a little hectic. Some photos follow. (There are several hundred photos to choose from; we are preparing a selection to be shared online with the people who joined us on this vacation; we are behind schedule on this but we will do it.)
Marianne’s new teaching in the fall semester
After teaching the same courses at her University for 20 years, Marianne got to teach the senior seminar (capstone course for psychology majors) in the fall and will continue in the spring (it is a two-semester sequence). This was exciting and at the same time it made the semester very busy. As some faculty members who have been teaching the senior seminar retire in the next year or two, Marianne will become the main coordinator of the seminar.
Marianne’s start in the vaccine study in March and her good health exams
In March, Marianne became a participant in a study of a vaccine intended to prevent further recurrences of ovarian cancer that has already recurred at least once. The principal investigator of the study is an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the doctor we have gone to twice for second opinions over the years; Dr. Hanjani is a co-investigator. The idea is to see which of two ways of strengthening one’s own immune system against ovarian cancer cells is more effective. The study involves a sparse but complicated schedule of injections, blood tests, CT scans, and physical examinations by Dr. Hanjani. The injections are much easier to take than chemotherapy and all the tests have been wonderfully reassuring. A few days ago, during one of the examinations, Dr. Hanjani told Marianne it is time to forget about the cancer and go on with her life. He also indicated he is ready to have the chemo port removed. We are elated by his confidence, based as it is on such good evidence.
Hurricane Sandy
We were far from the only people affected when Hurricane Sandy came around in the end of October. The eye of the storm came directly over our house. We were lucky that the rain that came with it was not as heavy as predicted in our area, otherwise we would have had a flooded basement, as we were left without electricity for 24 hours and our sump pump that keeps the basement dry when it rains heavily is electricity-powered. Also, right after the eye of the storm had passed, we heard a huge thump that turned out to be a large branch of a tree falling on the house next to us (the tree is in between that house and ours, on the verge of our driveway). All in all, we were truly lucky. So many other people lost their houses and all their possessions from this storm, and of course many lost their lives.
The house the tree branch fell on changed owners very recently and the first order of business of the new owners was to remove the branch and the rest of the tree the branch fell from. It took a while for this to happen, but at least now we are no longer afraid to park our car in our driveway. Pictures from the tree removal:
Odds and Ends
Dimitrios has nothing too special to report regarding work; teaching went well and he presented in his departmental seminar a new paper he is writing with old friend and coauthor Rob. Worth mentioning is the publication, early in 2012, of a book review by Dimitrios in the Journal of Economic Psychology. Those who know the kind of economics he studied in graduate school will have a grin in their faces. Also remarkable about this story: he was invited to write the review for that journal after the book review editor of the journal came across a posting D had made on the Google+ social network. D intends to use this to justify his obsession with participating in Google+ for some years to come.
Looking Forward
We are looking forward to remodeling our kitchen early in 2013 and to taking a wine cruise down the Rhône some time in the summer. We considered this cruise this year also, but ran out of time to fit it into our summer. The trick will be to do it without compromising our vacation at the shore. Ocean City, while damaged by hurricane Sandy, still is the place we would like to go to for our beach vacation with friends, to continue our tradition of doing so almost every summer since 2007.
We hope everybody who reads this has a happy and healthy 2013!
All of a sudden, I had the urge to visit Barnes & Noble yesterday afternoon. M agreed and we bought three novels, after which we had a mediocre dinner at a nearby Mad Mex. But the really memorable thing is that I started one of the novels yesterday and finished today, which is pretty fast for me. Also, I finished it with tears in my eyes. The reviewer in The Guardian thinks The Absolutist is too direct and possibly more apt for young readers than mature ones. This made my day: I am in some sense young enough to get such a big emotional charge from this novel, then! I highly recommend it. The author, John Boyne, already has had a mega-selling success with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I can imagine reading that one soon, too. Even if it is more explicitly a Young Adult novel. Especially because of this, in fact.
This is the third time I am blogging about The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore. You will have to excuse this short, silly little post, though. After finishing this amazing novel, I am too much in awe of its language and intellectual scope to dare add my own reflections. Perhaps I will feel up to it in a few days. I am just very thankful that Benjamin Hale delivered to the reading world this masterpiece that feels as though it was written by some supernatural combination of Shakespeare, Nabokov, and Jane Goodall.
Reader who chances upon this post (and so few of you there will be): take my advice, read this book, and marvel.
I mentioned earlier that I had begun reading The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, a rather astonishing novel. I picked it up again today after a few weeks’ absence and I just have to share this short bit of monologue by Bruno, the eloquent ape, delivered in the midst of his reminiscences about arriving in New York and meeting a Diogenes-the-Cynic-like man, and from the point of view of a Sheakespeare-quoting ape who, having learned to speak and read and having conducted a self-directed education in a library, oftentimes views the world from the perspective of a human, only to quickly remember the preeminence and pride of his animal nature.
I really wish I met just one person whose utterances were as mellifluous as Bruno’s are in real life; what would it be like? And if I can read this type of stream-of-consciousness in a novel, why on earth would I try (for the nth time) to read James Joyce’s big, fat account of a story that begins with a certain stately, plump Buck Mulligan coming down the stairs? No. Bruno’s story is much, much more engaging and unbelievably intelligent.
Back in Plato’s selfsame ancient Athens, Diogenes went naked and lived in a bathtub, urinated, defecated, and masturbated in public, and denounced all laws, religions, governments, and good manners. People called him “the Cynic” because the word means “doglike” in Greek, because Diogenes lived like a dog. He wasn’t offended, though; he liked it. You’re damn right I live like a dog, he said to them. Alexander the Great returned to Athens fresh from conquering the known world and found Diogenes, naked as was his fashion, sunning himself on the steps of the Acropolis. Alexander stood before him and said, Ask any favor you choose of me. Name anything, because I am Alexander the Great and that basically means whatever it is, I can get it for you. Diogenes looked up at him, squinted, maybe gave his scrotum a lackadaisical scratch, shrugged, and said, Get out of my sun. Can one help but admire that? We are animals who like to constantly congratulate ourselves on all our sweetness and light and triumph of spirit, and nobody is supposed to choose to live like a dog. I’ve always admired this man, his presence at the same place and time as the birth of philosophy, like a voice crying, not in the wilderness, but from the wilderness in the human heart, in the midst of civilization. The solemn golden machineries of politics, learning, thought, goodness and grace and virtue and art—especially art—all we call our society, needs Diogenes in the middle of it, a human proud and content to live like an animal, to remind us not to mistake the frippery of human civilization for anything too distant or distinct from what’s already there in pigs and monkeys and dogs, to remind us that for all the sweetness and light of our great cities and great machines and great art, we are nothing terribly more magnificent than apes with clothes on our bodies, words in our mouths, and heads inflated with willful delusions.
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale, Twelve (a Hachette company), 2011, pages 413-414.
It took a couple weeks more than we expected, but our new gazebo was delivered and installed today. Here are some pictures from the action. Don’t miss the curious bunny, although it is hard to see the tiny creature in some of the photos.
