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 Got the
promotion. (That was the nasty project.) And
a raise.
Bad friend!
No biscuit! DEDBG just told
me Ulla's probably hatched
her second child right about now but she hasn't heard yet. Hellooo? She
was pregnant? I haven't heard from her since May. Which is my fault too.
I recently bought a darling--at least I think it's darling--little dress
and shorts set for Signe's second birthday, which I have to mail now
if it's going to get to Denmark by surface in time. I had thought about
maybe shopping tonight and I think I will. In addition to a little welcoming
present for the new Dane, I shall look for shoes.
My three-year-old sandals I wore almost every workday for the past three summers and while they're still structurally sound, I've worn out the footbeds with sweat. Charming image I'm sure.
Much more interesting
is Signe's little dress. It's yellow gingham with a big white collar and
no waist or bodice line at all. I love little girls in little bag dresses.
It has a blue flower growing out of a small pocket on the left side. Hmm.
Maybe I should give Ulla Penelope
Fitzgerald to go along with it. Probably I'll just buy a little stuffed
critter. Maybe a western American one. I see bison frequently and I suppose
I could find a moose.
I also have
to tell Ulla about the latest Newbery I read, Number
the Stars. It's about one family's participation in the smuggling
of Denmark's 7000 Jews in several weeks in 1943. Germany had occupied
Denmark for three years and now had found the names of Jews in all the
synagogues; rabbis warned their congregations on Rosh Hashanah that they
would be "relocated"; overnight most Jews went into hiding and
within months all had been evacuated to Sweden and elsewhere. I knew that
Denmark had not lost a single Jew to Germany through any individual betrayal;
I didn't know Danes sank their own fleet rather than see Germany use it.
I knew Denmark still has a royal family; I didn't know a boy had told
a German soldier who asked about King Christian's absent bodyguard that
every Dane was his bodyguard.
Yesterday
I also read A
Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers,
which I might have to get for RDC. I am pleased the Newbery has gone to
collections of poetry. I didn't read much poetry as a child and that neglect
must factor in my historical lack of interest. I did enjoy both the Newberys
I read: Insect song and noise is already poetic and easily onomatopoeic
in Joyful
Noise; plus I like the stipulation of two voices that should inspire
reading aloud. Knowing Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience
gave the travelers' poems another layer of interest for me.
What poetry I like
is cliché: the Romantics and Victorians (Blake, Coleridge, Keats,
Rossetti); the compulsory Irish (Yeats); the anguished chick (Plath and
Sexton, not Dickinson). Two contradictory perspectives on the writing
of poetry:
"Anyone who can write honestly about their feelings is a poet."
And amended to a proverb,
"If you can walk you can dance
If you can speak you can sing"
--But just because you can hold a pencil doesn't mean you're a poet.
The latter was on a English professor's door at UConn.
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