The Roseledge Books Blog

Today, especially, I miss my old neighbors. Every St. Patrick’s Day the mostly Scandinavian-surnamed lot of them would “drop in” after work, sure of their Irish coffee and soda bread, to argue the important question: were the Irish here before the Vikings?

They were to bring new evidence, which sometimes had something to do with the question, and prepare for the “spirited” argument the Irish call conversation. With Tim Severin’s The Brendan Voyage and Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Last Rituals, I consider the Irish reaching Iceland first settled, but their reaching points further south (even to Cape Cod?) iffier. My old neighbors may differ, but it’s hard to know how a CD of U2 at full volume or a reading of too many verses of a Yeats poem makes their point.  The priest acquaintance who suggested checking the Vatican tax records from the time was spot on.   What fun.

And now, as I read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, I know what I was doing, always a good thing.  I was cultivating the “slow hunch” within a “liquid network“ of idea connectors and critics, both necessary characteristics of a good idea – which having the Irish on these shores before the Vikings clearly is. I love this book, and I am only on the third of, I think, seven factors.

Liquid networks of seaside friends may lead to best ideas ever.

With March temps in the 50’s promising spring but not soon enough, news of Tenants Harbor — well greater TH — is ever more welcome, as a Roseledge Books Founding Spirit understood when he forwarded this link.

Also local and noteworthy, the Herring Gut Learning Center newsletter (Herring Gut Learning Center’s News) is looking for suggested names, even as it announces and reports on new programs. Ann Boover’s work makes me think a Maine or even a coastal Maine equivalent of Leanne Shapton’s The Native Trees of Canada could be coming. Or maybe a local birds-with-drawings effort? The drawing of the flora in situ in Diane Smith’s Letters from Yellowstone is another possible book model and a good read no matter what.  Okay I’m a little lonesome for the gulls, et al.. I’m still working on book suggestions linked somehow to gardens for the proposed Herring Gut gardeners. How about the herbalist’s garden in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs? Scott thinks he knows where it was.  Other suggestions? And no, I am not sending in “Pickled” as a possible newsletter title, though it did come to mind.

I continue to experiment with knittings for porch events and varied temperatures. Roseledge Book Regulars may recall last year’s big woolly, the super sized, soft sweater with detached collar, warm enough for people with no neck to enjoy late fall’s last late nights. Now I am working on a shoulders only  “drop-on”, a not-scratchy, lightweight biggish collar, able to be dropped into place without getting up from my chair. So far, this third iteration looks good: not too big or loosely stitched (first try) and better pinned than knitted closed (second try). Time to see if the patio here will serve as a test location. I have found the perfect wine, surely named Kenwood for my new digs, and the chairs are in place.

David Baldacci’s latest paperback, Deliver Us From Evil, is keeping me company, but nothing beats seeing you all.

How do I go nuts? Let me count the ways.

1. Reading about plagiarists, most recently, the German Minister of Defense whose Ph.D. thesis he apparently plagiarized. This has hurt his credibility (yes!) which, in turn, may cost him the Chancellorship when Angela Merkel steps down, or so the NYT reports (3/2/11). He joins other unworthies who  cannot admit with an attribution that they built on the work of others and who do not understand how readily they will be found out. I don’t know which makes the plagiarist and his aiders and abettors the bigger dummies. He might want to read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (which I have just started and, so far, love) and figure out how to have an idea he might legitimately call his own.

2. Hearing Michele Bachmann and “facts” in the same sentence, or maybe just hearing Michele Bachmann. A political fact-rating blog noted (on early morning MPR in late January) that of 13 facts she reported, 7 were false and 6 were ridiculously false, or vice versa or maybe they were absurdly false. Double aarrgghh!! A re-look at Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post Fact Society (which I thoroughly recommend) could not right her wrongs, but his explanations helped the blood pressure, especially the chapter on questionable expertise. Down with ninnyness.

Rant, rant.

Breezes blow, ideas flow, the tide is out but will be in. All's well.

But then I find a nifty author with whom to share a cup of coffee and the world tilts back to tolerable, even pleasant and worthwhile. Currently I am enjoying every bit of Maira Kalman’s adventures with democracy and how it works in her NYT-blog-turned book, And the Pursuit of Happiness. With her, I have ideas. When I have figured it out, I will let you know how she fits into Steven Johnson’s good idea generators.

I, with other seniors, am learning the ropes in my new winter digs.  Here someone walks off with the wrong walker instead of the wrong jacket. And plans to map the best cinnamon roll locations shift to oatmeal sites. I don’t believe our silverware is dulled, but it would explain why I have trouble piercing a grape with a fork. Morning coffee on the patio starts with the first tulip, which I hope really means with the first blossom. I am searching for a potted pasque flower or wild gentian  to sneak beneath the leafless bush when the walk  is bare and declare the patio coffee-ready. Hurry up, spring. If the ground weren’t so well and truly frozen, I would try to plant a magnolia bush, upon which the blossoms come before the leaves.

About ten weeks and counting.