Monthly Archives: August 2009

Julie, Julia and the Urge to Write

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We loved the new movie Julie & Julia.  (That is, after we moved away from the talkers behind us and settled into the third row.)  An ocean and half a century separated these two women, but a love for cooking brought them together. We watched them grow in joy and self-confidence as they learned to cook.

Meryl Streep is right on as Julia Child, and Amy Adams fits perfectly in the role of Julia’s admirer, Julie Powell.  Their husbands come across as decent, good-hearted men.  As a treat, the movie even manages to fit in Dan Ackroyd’s classic parody of the famous chef.

The story is as much about writing as cooking. Julia writes a cookbook and finally finds a publisher for it, and Julie gains an audience through her blog. The need to write, on a laptop or a manual typewriter, drives both women along and gives them an avenue to share what they love with others.

It made me wonder why I write here. Mainly, because I enjoy it. I write to please myself, and I am my blog’s chief reader.  That anyone else reads it surprises me, and pleases me.  Cooks need eaters, and writers appreciate readers.

ADDED:  Here’s the Monitor’s review of the movie.  The critic is too hard on the Julie part of the story, I think.

The Dead Have No Affairs

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“Next month will be one year.”

“What’s the date?”

“The 12th.”

“You’ve made it so far.”

“I’m trying every day.”

She may have said ‘crying every day,’ but I didn’t quite catch the word, and since others stood behind me in line there was no time to linger.  She’s an old friend who clerks at a grocery store where I’d stopped to buy Pepsi.  We spoke over the counter at the express lane.  I performed her husband’s funeral last year after he died of cancer.  They’d been married 35 years.

September 12th will be a hard anniversary for her.  A steep loss stains a day in that way.

The conversation reminded me of a poem Robert Frost wrote about a boy who bled to death after a buzz saw cut off his hand.

And then — the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed.  They listened at his heart.
Little–less–nothing! — and that ended it.
No more to build on there.  And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

No more to build on there.  And I wonder what affairs Frost imagines here.  The affairs of preparing a body to be buried? or the general affairs of the living?  Perhaps both.  From then on each year at the saw mill they’d have remembered the day the boy died.

The dead have no affairs to turn to, but the living do; and if the living loved the dead, the loss makes their affairs that much harder in proportion to their love.

Marriage Without Clergy

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On Monday Ann Althouse married a man, Meade, whom she met through the comments on her blog.  He lives in Ohio, and she in Wisconsin, but they married in Colorado because there couples can perform the ceremony themselves.

We drove from our hotel in Bachelor Gulch to the Office of the Clerk and Recorder in Eagle County, where we showed our driver’s licenses, answered a few questions, paid $30 cash, and got a license that empowered us to marry each other. We drove up Bellyache Ridge — just the 2 of us — where we did things our way and solemnized the marriage on our own.

What a great thing.  I wonder about the wisdom of doing this without witnesses, but that’s a minor issue.  I love the idea of marriage without clergy.

Some clergy love to perform weddings, and others, like me, do not.  (I don’t mind when it’s a small wedding for people I know.)  The part of weddings I like least is my role as an agent of the state who signs a legal document.  After fifteen years of this practice, I’ve grown more and more uneasy with it. I’d be content never to put my name on another marriage license.

Couples could legalize their marriage at a courthouse, or on a mountain as Ann and Meade did, and if they want a religious ceremony in addition to this, I’d oblige them.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s Church

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Our vacation included an unplanned trip to Clarkesville, Georgia, where a kind woman at the United Methodist Church gave us directions to Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church. ‘Turn right at Blimpie’s. Go one block and turn left. Go a couple of blocks to the library and turn right. Follow that road up to the church.’

And there is was, the place where Barbara Brown Taylor once preached and served the sacrament.

clarksville church 1

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A view from the pulpit:

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My wife took this one:

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From here she left parish ministry.  The burning bush ran out of fuel.  She found a new vocation teaching college students and proved the truth of her own words, ‘What has been lost gradually becomes less important than what is to be found.’

No Longer a Stranger

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chatuge

God setteth the solitary in families.  (Psalm 68.6)

My family gathered in late July for a reunion at a house on Lake Chatuge in western North Carolina. Our last reunion happened seven years ago at Bethany Beach, Delaware.  This time 24 of us showed up from across the country.

I once dreaded these events, or at least regarded them only as a duty. I felt like a stranger to my family. My Dad fathered five children with his second wife, and later a sixth, me, with his third wife, my mother. It’s strange to be an only child with five older half-siblings. There are lots of unanswered questions.

On growing up I realized the man who seemed a faithful father to me appeared differently to his other adult children, whom he left.  After his death in 1982, I saw him more and more as a contradiction. Experience told me I’d always feel out of place at family events.

But at the reunion last month the unexpected happened. On Monday evening I sat on the front porch listening to the conversations flow against a background of cicadas in the woods, and for the first time in my life I felt a part of the family.  I was no longer a stranger.

My family hasn’t changed — they’ve long accepted me. No, I’m the one who’s changed. The odd thing is I never looked for this sudden sense of belonging. It came unbidden. I sat on the porch and let it envelop me, smiling as the gift of family finally came.  The last tumbler had slipped in place and opened the lock.

On Wednesday morning we took an early boat ride on the lake before leaving.  As we drove toward Asheville, I longed for something I’d never wanted from my family before — more time with them.

Gates and Crowley

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I followed the Gates–Crowley–Obama story as we drove through Maryland and North Carolina on vacation.  The radio and newspapers kept us up on the latest acts in the drama.  When we returned home, the front page of the paper showed the three men and Joe Biden at a table drinking beer. 

My experiences lead me to respect police and give them the benefit of the doubt, but people in the black community look at this differently, and I’ve reflected on their stories in recent days.  It’s also good to see things from a police officer’s perspective.  These things appear differently depending on where you sit.

The best commentary I’ve found comes from Mark Sappenfield at the Christian Science Monitor.  He shows sympathy for both sides.

Gates was reacting to the historical tendency for law enforcement to racially profile minorities – to suspect them of wrongdoing simply because of their skin color. Gates might justifiably have thought there was something strange about arresting a prominent Harvard scholar on his own front porch.

Crowley might wonder why the routine matter of asking for ID should brand him as a racist. That area of Cambridge had seen a spike in daytime break-ins recently. Was it too much to ask for a little civility and cooperation for an officer doing his job?

Sappenfield also noted how Obama himself overreacted at first.  The President certainly lost ground with me, an independent white voter, with his ‘acted stupidly’ comment, but he gained some of it back when he ‘calibrated his words’ differently.

These matters are powerful because they tap deep emotions and long memories.  When a race issue rises, America slips into an old dance — the Black Grievance & White Guilt Two Step.  In the white community, some people mimimize racial injustice while others magnify it and see all whites as racists — neither approach speaks for me.

The news says Gates and Crowley will continue their conversation.  Life has linked them — like Huck and Jim thrown together on the raft by circumstance.  I’m curious where the current will take them.