Happy St. Valentine’s Day. Samuel and Daniel are with grandparents. Karin & I – accompanied by sleeping Abel – romantically gorged at the local diner (I ordered Mexican food and pancakes). We knew it’d be a quiet venue; there were just a handful of couples. But all races and persuasions were represented, including people with MAGA hats.
Afterward, I remarked to Karin how nicely everyone got along. “They all ignored each other,” she said.
Then I realized, not everyone shares my idea of “getting along.”
Back at home, we read love poems to each other.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Forget-Me-Not,” by William McGonagall:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
A gallant knight and his betroth’d bride,
Were walking one day by a river side,
They talk’d of love, and they talk’d of war,
And how very foolish lovers are.
At length the bride to the knight did say,
“There have been many young ladies led astray
By believing in all their lovers said,
And you are false to me I am afraid.”
“No, Ellen, I was never false to thee,
I never gave thee cause to doubt me;
I have always lov’d thee and do still,
And no other woman your place shall fill.”
“Dear Edwin, it may be true, but I am in doubt,
But there’s some beautiful flowers here about,
Growing on the other side of the river,
But how to get one, I cannot discover.”
“Dear Ellen, they seem beautiful indeed,
But of them, dear, take no heed;
Because they are on the other side,
Besides, the river is deep and wide.”
“Dear Edwin, as I doubt your love to be untrue,
I ask one favour now from you:
Go! fetch me a flower from across the river,
Which will prove you love me more than ever.”
“Dear Ellen! I will try and fetch you a flower
If it lies within my power
To prove that I am true to you,
And what more can your Edwin do?”
So he leap’d into the river wide,
And swam across to the other side,
To fetch a flower for his young bride,
Who watched him eagerly on the other side.
So he pluck’d a flower right merrily
Which seemed to fill his heart with glee,
That it would please his lovely bride;
But, alas! he never got to the other side.
For when he tried to swim across,
All power of his body he did loss,
But before he sank in the river wide,
He flung the flowers to his lovely bride.
And he cried, “Oh, heaven! hard is my lot,
My dearest Ellen! Forget me not:
For I was ever true to you,
My dearest Ellen! I bid thee adieu!”
Then she wrung her hands in wild despair,
Until her cries did rend the air;
And she cried, “Edwin, dear, hard is out lot,
But I’ll name this flower Forget-me-not.
“And I’ll remember thee while I live,
And to no other man my hand I’ll give,
And I will place my affection on this little flower,
And it will solace me in a lonely hour.”
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“May Colvin,” from The Oxford Book of Ballads (ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch):
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
False Sir John a-wooing came
To a maid of beauty fair;
May Colvin was this lady’s name,
Her father’s only heir.
He woo’d her but, he woo’d her ben [Editor’s note: both in the outer and inner rooms],
He woo’d her in the ha’;
Until he got the lady’s consent
To mount and ride awa’.
“Go fetch me some of your father’s gold,
And some of your mother’s fee,
And I’ll carry you into the north land,
And there I’ll marry thee.”
She’s gane to her father’s coffers
Where all his money lay,
And she’s taken the red, and she’s left the white,
And so lightly she’s tripp’d away.
She’s gane to her father’s stable
Where all the steeds did stand,
And she’s taken the best, and she’s left the warst
I’ve finished reading the “Little House” books and begun Caroline Fraser’s celebrated Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
This quotation is from LIW’s First Four Years – a posthumous publication, much sadder than the other books. (The quotation isn’t sad.)
In December Laura felt again the familiar sickness.
(Nicely put.)
The house felt close and hot and she was miserable. But the others must be kept warm and fed. The work must go on and she was the one who must do it.
On a day when she was particularly blue and unhappy, the neighbor to the west, a bachelor living alone, stopped as he was driving by and brought a partly filled grain sack to the house, and taking the sack by the bottom, poured the contents out on the floor. It was a paper-backed set of Waverley novels.
“Thought they might amuse you,” he said. “Don’t be in a hurry! Take your time reading them.” And as Laura exclaimed in delight, Mr. Sheldon opened the door, closed it behind him quickly, and was gone. And now the four walls of the close, overheated house opened wide, and Laura wandered with brave knights and ladies fair beside the lakes and streams of Scotland or in castles and towers, in noble halls or lady’s bower, all through the enchanting pages of Sir Walter Scott’s novels.
She forgot to feel ill at the sight or smell of food, in her hurry to be done with the cooking and follow her thoughts back into the book. When the books were all read and Laura came back to reality, she found herself feeling much better.
It was a long way from the scenes of Scott’s glamorous old tales to the little house on the bleak, wintry prairie, but Laura brought back from them some of their magic and music and the rest of the winter passed quite comfortably.
Alert: Winter storms in the Midwest through the Northeast U.S. and the professional football championship game in New Orleans may delay final delivery of your mail and packages.
No kidding. Behold the shipping history of the package I ordered three weeks ago:
Mishawaka
Mishawaka
Mishawaka
Indianapolis
Indianapolis
“In transit”
“In transit” (1.5 weeks later)
South Bend 😀
Indianapolis 😑
Indianapolis
(Indianapolis is 2–2.5 hrs. from Mishawaka and South Bend, which are across the street from each other.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Tonight’s Super Bowl’ll be shown on Fox – and, for the first time, on Tubi, which appears to be struggling to handle the increase in viewership. I can’t access my queue or viewing history on the app. I keep putting on Tom & Jerry, for Daniel, but when I go away it switches to Dances with Wolves. Daniel has given up and fallen asleep.
I, too, slept through most of that movie when I saw it twenty-five years ago. I can only suspend judgment as to its quality.
“Of the Coming of John”: the only fictional chapter in Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, the book that my reading group discussed tonight.
There are similarities to Twain’s Puddin’head Wilson. What this means, I’m not sure.
I’m too tired to say more.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Update (7 Feb): Good morning! Last night, I left the blogging until the last minute, and fell asleep.
’Tis the season! I bought Karin some roses. A week early, yes. But the opportunity presented itself, and I thought that this year I wouldn’t leave things until the deadline.
There was a table at the supermarket with bouquets and cute little buckets. I chose a bucket with roses because I knew those flowers wouldn’t poison the cats. I brought it home.
Uh, that’s a bush, for planting, said Karin.
Trouble is, we’d agreed to uproot an existing rosebush from our yard.
Could you have it on your desk, at work?, I asked.
Not enough sun.
The moral is, what matters isn’t to be early but to put thought into your gesture! It’s the thought that counts! (A corollary is, the supermarket pretends to be helpful by putting these displays near the checkout area, but it isn’t! It’s just rushing you! Beware!)
Renaming the Gulf has one thing going for it, historian Greg Grandin comments.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Re: oil spillage. This afternoon, while I was bottle-feeding Abel, Daniel got his mitts on our sesame oil. Let’s just say that the kitchen, hallway, and bathroom smell delicious now.
Actually, Daniel and Samuel were pretty good today. I’d worried because it was Karin’s first day back at work – my first full day alone with all three boys.
Daniel took a turn bottle-feeding Abel. He kept getting him to smile.
Abel has dimples.
Update: Samuel and Daniel both poured out the sesame oil. Samuel confessed.
They poured much of it onto Karin’s potted mint plant. That poor thing is subjected to unimaginable abuse. Yet it survives.
