The year is almost over and so of course “Auld Lang Syne” is sounding in my mind. Robert Burns is credited with this song and the title words translate as “Old Long Gone.” The year is old and, at times, seemed incredibly long and is almost gone presenting an opportunity to reflect on the past year and imagine the one to come.

When I started this website I wrote this about the “Journal” section:  “These entries will be an explanation of how reading impacts my life. Not a book review, or a critique but a thought or two about how a particular book or reading shifted the way I live.”

On this last day of the year I thought I’d mention a handful of books that have lingered long enough to shift the way I think and live. In no particular order.

Concertina – Poems by Leslie Schultz

This collection of poems by my friend and reading and writing companion touched on topics and emotions with artful grace and intimacy. One is, in fact, dedicated to me and, while I do love it and reread it, it is the title piece, “Concertina,” that I return to most often. This dance-inducing instrument is the ligament that ties together so many elements of the poem and the life described. All these poems are dedicated to people that matter to Leslie and I keep wondering what the world would be like if we all, like Leslie, took time to think about those that we love and who influence us as carefully and creatively as Leslie did in these poems. Concertina and Leslie’s Website/Blog

Timefulness: How Thinking Like A Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud

I learned about this book from The Center for Humans and Nature website (see link below) where Bjornerud was interviewed. She was asked why so many of her metaphors in this book had a musical aspect to them. She is a professor of geology at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI – where one of my sisters and my brother got degrees! – which has a conservatory so the air is always filled with music. I had to read this book for the musical metaphors and because, on some level I am a (VERY) amateur geologist having geology as the anchor science in my interdisciplinary degree. I learned a lot about this science and how young it is, which I probably should have known. I learned so much more as Bjornerud pulled from many disciplines to consider the way time affects our relationship with the Earth. Here is a passage that shows off Bjornerud’s way with words and her clear thinking:

“People would treat each other, and the planet better if we embraced out shared past and common destiny seeing ourselves more as lucky interlocuters and eventual bequeathers rather than permanent residents of the Earth’ s estate. In short, we need a new relationship with time … Earlier societies and cultures were permeated with the presence of ancestral spirits and the practice of ancient rituals that knitted the living, the dead and the not-yet-born together into a unified temporal fabric.”

Bjornerud concludes quoting Kurt Vonnegut: ‘One thing that no cabinet has ever had is a Secretary of the Future, and there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren.”  The place I discovered the woman and her book

The Big Impossible by Edward J. Delaney

This collection of short stories and a novella is one I keep rereading. How did Delaney get me into the head of a school shooter? I felt as if I was right there at the Sullivan household in 1968 in Dorchester, MA as race, class, even fashion chipped away at this family and community in the novella, “House of Sully.” There is a story about a man who took an impulsive action as a teen and suffered no consequences, except in his mind for the rest of his life. I entered that realm on the skill of Delaney telling this story in second person, an accomplishment in and of itself. There is wit, melancholy, Google and landscapes as diverse as Florida and Nebraska. One easy resolution for the new year is I will be reading more by this writer! More About E.J. Delaney And the publisher who put this book in my hands: Ruth Greenstein and Turtle Point Press

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl

Hampl has long been a favorite writer of mine. Her other books  have made me laugh out loud and lured me into contemplating closely ordinary items, such as a tea cup. And now this book.  It is a travelogue, a reflection on the contemplative and reading life, a history lesson for me about two 18th Century Irish women who left the familiar for the quiet life apart, a study of Montaigne, and mostly, to me, an example of going deep in life even if it means others perceive you are wasting time. More About Patricia Hampl

Following Our Celtic Call: A Pilgrimage in the West of Ireland and Newgrange with Paintings and Poems By Patty Smitherman and Kathleen Michaud

To discover something new about someone you know very well is always a special gift. In 2019, my oldest sister, Kathy, published this book with her friend. To hold her book in my hands was a thrill. But to open its pages and take in the watercolors Kathy did and the reflections that  she and Patty took the time to create made me reconsider this sister of mine. She had depths and talents I’m not sure I knew or certainly didn’t appreciate. The watercolors alone call me back to the book over and over again. Following Our Celtic Call

 

Now, near the end of a year, here is a remembrance from Patricia Hampl: “Listen to your inner voice children. It will guide you. Right here, Sister says, not reaching up to her wimpled head, but touching a pale hand to her obscure bosom under the gloomy tarp of her habit. Right here.” … Though I don’t yet know it, though Sister has her hand on her breast, this is what is called the life of the mind. It’s what I want to do. It’s where I want to be. Right here.”

May all of you be where you want to be, doing what you love to do in 2020.