The annual longing-for-the-sea has settled in which usually means the Pebble Beach golf tournament has just come and gone. Until summer and for others who are lonesome for Roseledge, check the winter picture in the current St. George Newsletter. Wow! Beautiful, yes, and taken before the recent major snowfalls, but note the absence of tracks, human or otherwise. Few people are about apparently. I hope this means the chipmunks are gone, too, and not living it up in my spa recliner. If I were more able-bodied, I might try a whole year at Roseledge; until then, I have Craig Leischer’s adventure of a year in the Maine woods to enjoy.
Nothing beats that first look, just before the driveway turn starts the summer.
Also to enjoy is Jane Mount’s and Thessaly La Force’s The Ideal Bookshelf, my latest favorite idea book. About one hundred “leading cultural figures” noted, and in some cases explained, why a dozen or so books mattered enough to be on their single shelf. Artist Mount painted the shelf of books, spines out for browser ease, and Editor LaForce contained essays, no small task when the content is one‘s personal take on books that matter. What an excellent idea is this whole book. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell listed the books about crime that he had nearby when writing about crime and you don‘t have to be a librarian (though maybe it helps) to enjoy a look at an author‘s influences. Jen Bekman’s shelf reflected her career change from the Internet which she understood to owning an art gallery which she did not. I love both what Maira Kalman says and how she “says” it. Her shelf choices are mostly about the “how”; for the “what”, you’ll have to check her books, which, fortunately, Roseledge Books usually has some of on its shelves, e.g. Principles of Uncertainty and The Pursuit of Happiness.
Tim's gone; the Inn's sold; adirondack chairs top the sign. What else is new?
An Ideal Bookshelf would be a great bathroom book if it were in much-less-heavy paperback, which it is not. It could also be a great book of the (some day) dead with each page someone’s shelf of books with comment — a great, self-written, obituary. The arrayed books with comments would be fraught with nuance and reflection and a great way to be remembered or newly met. And it would give us all one last chance to control from the grave. My mom would have loved that. (The four, single-spaced pages of instructions that she left instead are a story for another time.)
An almost local news note:
The Smithsonian sold N.C. Wyeth’s 1926 painting, Duel on the Beach, for $1 million. (NYT 12/10/12) But duel on what beach? Could it be somewhere near Eight Bells, his summer home in Port Clyde? Surely this calls for the careful investigation of serious kayakers who could (after a bit of a hike) enter the St. George River at Fort Point, paddle toward Port Clyde, check it out, buy some Ben-Gay at the General Store, and paddle on. As it happens, some of the Most Regular of the Roseledge Books Regulars are just such serious kayakers. And don’t let Google fool you. St. George has a Fort Point, the history of which is the stuff of peace-lovers’ dreams, but that’s a story for another time.