5.5.08

"This isn't heaven...This is Cleveland."

Another Happy Mother's Day to the joyously visionary Joan Vigliotta: although this is not by James Marshall (whom you made us love even more, with all your wonderous words and pictures of yesterday aft.), it is still a baby.  It's also not in Cleveland: it's in Nurnberg.

We of Joy Look know where a bit of heaven can be found on earth: in Joan's dining room, stacked with books, annotated with post-it notes, abounding in love and the joy of literature...thank you, Joanie, for your vision.  It is beautiful beyond words.

3.5.08

Peter Sis, Mary Poppins, and Miss Rumphius

The Magnificents: Peter Sis, Katherine Tillotson, Joan Vigliotta (and, just to the right, Jane Wattenberg and Bev Hock....were that my iphone had a fish-eye lens, and could capture all of youse!) auch: the magnificents always also include Andrew Ogus und Margaret Simpson
"In a world where there are few possessions, where nobody answers questions, where nobody explains--I say this with joy, not sorrow!--children must build a life for themselves."

Please, please, please: if you read nothing else this year, read "The Wall."  Peter Sis has created a masterpiece.

Then, when you are done reading that masterpiece, go on to another one:  you can get "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn," (long out of print, but you know where to get it, and if you don't, email me)...the quote, above, is from "Only Connect," by P. L. Travers ("Mary Poppins") and is cited in "Pipers...." by the amazing Jonathan Cott.

Later, I will fill everyone in on how Miss Rumphius entered the picture (Katherine, are your ears buzzing?)....

2.5.08

Sitting Here



....it's all right here
and will be, that
world is wonder,

being simply beyond us,
patience its savor,
and to keep moving,

we love what we love,
what we have,
what we have to.

I don't know--
This fact of time spinning,
days, weeks, months, years....



"Sitting Here" by Robert Creeley
from Jonathan Cott's wonderful book, "The Roses Race Around Her Name: Poems from Fathers to Daughters"

Posthaste to Laurie...


Look's like the evidence is mounting:  maintaining a broad network of friends and companions is one of the best things you can do for your health.

I'd like to send my utmost appreciation to a friend who has been a veritable beacon of light (thanks, in large part, to her extraordinary compassion and awe-inspiring intelligence, which I mentioned in passing to her two hours ago over coffee.. the embodiment of non-ego, she continually brushes aside all compliments, and laughs...thank God): a dear and trusted companion who is a most magnificent human being.

{The new louis is very good indeed: pure art. The grill can wait: old Volvo's rock with or without hardware.}

1.5.08

Weimar: "Where else can you find so many good things in such a small space?"....Goethe

"There is no past, to which one may look back, there is only eternal newness, which shapes itself from the broadening elements of the past."