Which hot drinks? Poirot is said to drink a noxious tisane and/or chamomile tea. I will probably stick with a strong black tea but maybe one with black currant in honor of his fondness for cassis.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Snuggle up with Agatha Christie
We are expecting snow here in the Mid Atlantic region. Who knows if it will happen or not. But I am going to use it as an excuse to snuggle up with some light reading and hot drinks. My choices this weekend will be Agatha Christie's first two novels, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" and "The Secret Adversary". The former introduces us to Hercule Poirot and the latter to the endearing Tuppence and Tommy.
Which hot drinks? Poirot is said to drink a noxious tisane and/or chamomile tea. I will probably stick with a strong black tea but maybe one with black currant in honor of his fondness for cassis.
Which hot drinks? Poirot is said to drink a noxious tisane and/or chamomile tea. I will probably stick with a strong black tea but maybe one with black currant in honor of his fondness for cassis.
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Aaaaahhh A.A. Milne on being an artist
(hint- we are all artists)
From If I May a collection of essays published in 1921 and widely available in free electronic format.
Probably we artists have all been a little modest about ourselves lately. During the war we asked ourselves gloomily what use we were to the State compared with the noble digger of coals, the much-to-be-reverenced maker of boots, and the god-like grower of wheat. Looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers of brawny, half-dressed men pushing about blocks of red-hot iron, we have told ourselves that these heroes were the pillars of society, and that we were just an incidental decoration. It was a wonder that we were allowed to live. And now in these days of strikes, when a single union of manual workers can hold up the rest of the nation, it is a bitter refection to us that, if we were to strike, the country would go on its way quite happily, and nine-tenths of the population would not even know that we had downed our pens and brushes.
If there is any artist who has been depressed by such thoughts as these, let him take comfort. We are all right.
I made the discovery that we were all right by studying the life of the bee. All that I knew about bees until yesterday was derived from that great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who has been a child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining hour by something honey something something every something flower. I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee could only sting you once--though, apparently, there was no similar provision of Nature’s that the same person could not be stung twice.
Well, that was all that I knew about bees until yesterday. I used to see them about the place from time to time, busy enough, no doubt, but really no busier than I was; and as they were not much interested in me they had no reason to complain that I was not much interested in them. But since yesterday, when I read a book which dealt fully, not only with the public life of the bee, but with the most intimate details of its private life, I have looked at them with a new interest and a new sympathy. For there is no animal which does not get more out of life than the pitiable insect which Dr. Watts holds up as an example to us.
Hitherto, it may be, you have thought of the bee as an admirable and industrious insect, member of a model community which worked day and night to but one end--the well-being of the coming race. You knew perhaps that it fertilized the flowers, but you also knew that the bee didn’t know; you were aware that, it any bee deliberately went about trying to improve your delphiniums instead of gathering honey for the State, it would be turned down promptly by the other workers. For nothing is done in the hive without this one utilitarian purpose. Even the drones take their place in the scheme of things; a minor place in the stud; and when the next generation is assured, and the drones cease to be useful and can now only revert to the ornamental, they are ruthlessly cast out.
It comes, then, to this. The bee devotes its whole life to preparing for the next generation. But what is the next generation going to do? It is going to spend its whole life preparing for the third generation... and so on for ever.
An admirable community, the moralists tell us. Poor moralists! To miss so much of the joy of life; to deny oneself the pleasure (to mention only one among many) of reclining lazily on one’s back in a snap-dragon, watching the little white clouds sail past upon a sea of blue; to miss these things for no other reason than that the next generation may also have an opportunity of missing them--is that admirable? What do the bees think that they are doing? If they live a life of toil and self-sacrifice merely in order that the next generation may live a life of equal toil and self-sacrifice, what has been gained? Ask the next bee you meet what it thinks it is doing in this world, and the only answer it can give you is, “Keeping up the supply of bees.” Is that an admirable answer? How much more admirable if it could reply that it was eschewing all pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in order that the next generation might have leisure to paint the poppy a more glorious scarlet. But no. The next generation is going at it just as hard for the same unproductive end; it has no wish to leave anything behind it--a new colour, a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only in this world--more bees. Could any scheme of life be more sterile?
Having come to this conclusion about the bee, I took fresh courage. I saw at once that it was the artist in Man which made him less contemptible than the Bee. That god-like person the grower of wheat assumed his proper level. Bread may be necessary to existence, but what is the use of existence if you are merely going to employ it in making bread? True, the farmer makes bread, not only for himself, but for the miner; and the miner produces coal--not only for himself, but for the farmer; and the farmer also Produces bread for the maker of boots, who Produces boots, not only for himself, but for the farmer and the miner. But you are still getting ting no further. It is the Life of the Bee over again, with no other object in it but mere existence. If this were all, there would be nothing to write on our tombstones but “Born 1800; Died 1880. He lived till then.”
But it is not all, because--and here I strike my breast proudly--because of us artists. Not only can we write on Shakespeare’s tomb, “He wrote Hamlet” or “He was not for an age, but for all time,” but we can write on a contemporary baker’s tomb, “He provided bread for the man who wrote Hamlet,” and on a contemporary butcher’s tomb, “He was not only for himself, but for Shakespeare.” We perceive, in fact, that the only matter upon which any worker, other than the artist, can congratulate himself, whether he be manual-worker, brain-worker, surgeon, judge, or politician, is that he is helping to make the world tolerable for the artist. It is only the artist who will leave anything behind him. He is the fighting-man, the man who counts; the others are merely the Army Service Corps of civilization. A world without its artists, a world of bees, would be as futile and as meaningless a thing as an army composed entirely of the A.S.C.
Possibly you put in a plea here for the explorer and the scientist. The explorer perhaps may stand alone. His discovery of a peak in Darien is something in itself, quite apart from the happy possibility that Keats may be tempted to bring it into a sonnet. Yes, if a Beef-Essence-Merchant has only provided sustenance for an Explorer he has not lived in vain, however much the poets and the painters recoil from his wares. But of the scientist I am less certain. I fancy that his invention of the telephone (for instance) can only be counted to his credit because it has brought the author into closer touch with his publisher.
So we artists (yes, and explorers) may be of good faith. They may try to pretend, these others, in their little times of stress, that we are nothing--decorative, inessential; that it is they who make the world go round. This will not upset us. We could not live without them; true. But (a much more bitter thought) they would have no reason for living at all, were it not for us.
From If I May a collection of essays published in 1921 and widely available in free electronic format.
The Case for the Artist
By an “artist” I mean Shakespeare and Me and Bach and Myself and Velasquez and Phidias, and even You if you have ever written four lines on the sunset in somebody’s album, or modelled a Noah’s Ark for your little boy in plasticine. Perhaps we have not quite reached the heights where Shakespeare stands, but we are on his track. Shakespeare can be representative of all of us, or Velasquez if you prefer him. One of them shall be President of our United Artists’ Federation. Let us, then, consider what place in the scheme of things our federation can claim.Probably we artists have all been a little modest about ourselves lately. During the war we asked ourselves gloomily what use we were to the State compared with the noble digger of coals, the much-to-be-reverenced maker of boots, and the god-like grower of wheat. Looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers of brawny, half-dressed men pushing about blocks of red-hot iron, we have told ourselves that these heroes were the pillars of society, and that we were just an incidental decoration. It was a wonder that we were allowed to live. And now in these days of strikes, when a single union of manual workers can hold up the rest of the nation, it is a bitter refection to us that, if we were to strike, the country would go on its way quite happily, and nine-tenths of the population would not even know that we had downed our pens and brushes.
If there is any artist who has been depressed by such thoughts as these, let him take comfort. We are all right.
I made the discovery that we were all right by studying the life of the bee. All that I knew about bees until yesterday was derived from that great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who has been a child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining hour by something honey something something every something flower. I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee could only sting you once--though, apparently, there was no similar provision of Nature’s that the same person could not be stung twice.
Well, that was all that I knew about bees until yesterday. I used to see them about the place from time to time, busy enough, no doubt, but really no busier than I was; and as they were not much interested in me they had no reason to complain that I was not much interested in them. But since yesterday, when I read a book which dealt fully, not only with the public life of the bee, but with the most intimate details of its private life, I have looked at them with a new interest and a new sympathy. For there is no animal which does not get more out of life than the pitiable insect which Dr. Watts holds up as an example to us.
Hitherto, it may be, you have thought of the bee as an admirable and industrious insect, member of a model community which worked day and night to but one end--the well-being of the coming race. You knew perhaps that it fertilized the flowers, but you also knew that the bee didn’t know; you were aware that, it any bee deliberately went about trying to improve your delphiniums instead of gathering honey for the State, it would be turned down promptly by the other workers. For nothing is done in the hive without this one utilitarian purpose. Even the drones take their place in the scheme of things; a minor place in the stud; and when the next generation is assured, and the drones cease to be useful and can now only revert to the ornamental, they are ruthlessly cast out.
It comes, then, to this. The bee devotes its whole life to preparing for the next generation. But what is the next generation going to do? It is going to spend its whole life preparing for the third generation... and so on for ever.
An admirable community, the moralists tell us. Poor moralists! To miss so much of the joy of life; to deny oneself the pleasure (to mention only one among many) of reclining lazily on one’s back in a snap-dragon, watching the little white clouds sail past upon a sea of blue; to miss these things for no other reason than that the next generation may also have an opportunity of missing them--is that admirable? What do the bees think that they are doing? If they live a life of toil and self-sacrifice merely in order that the next generation may live a life of equal toil and self-sacrifice, what has been gained? Ask the next bee you meet what it thinks it is doing in this world, and the only answer it can give you is, “Keeping up the supply of bees.” Is that an admirable answer? How much more admirable if it could reply that it was eschewing all pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in order that the next generation might have leisure to paint the poppy a more glorious scarlet. But no. The next generation is going at it just as hard for the same unproductive end; it has no wish to leave anything behind it--a new colour, a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only in this world--more bees. Could any scheme of life be more sterile?
Having come to this conclusion about the bee, I took fresh courage. I saw at once that it was the artist in Man which made him less contemptible than the Bee. That god-like person the grower of wheat assumed his proper level. Bread may be necessary to existence, but what is the use of existence if you are merely going to employ it in making bread? True, the farmer makes bread, not only for himself, but for the miner; and the miner produces coal--not only for himself, but for the farmer; and the farmer also Produces bread for the maker of boots, who Produces boots, not only for himself, but for the farmer and the miner. But you are still getting ting no further. It is the Life of the Bee over again, with no other object in it but mere existence. If this were all, there would be nothing to write on our tombstones but “Born 1800; Died 1880. He lived till then.”
But it is not all, because--and here I strike my breast proudly--because of us artists. Not only can we write on Shakespeare’s tomb, “He wrote Hamlet” or “He was not for an age, but for all time,” but we can write on a contemporary baker’s tomb, “He provided bread for the man who wrote Hamlet,” and on a contemporary butcher’s tomb, “He was not only for himself, but for Shakespeare.” We perceive, in fact, that the only matter upon which any worker, other than the artist, can congratulate himself, whether he be manual-worker, brain-worker, surgeon, judge, or politician, is that he is helping to make the world tolerable for the artist. It is only the artist who will leave anything behind him. He is the fighting-man, the man who counts; the others are merely the Army Service Corps of civilization. A world without its artists, a world of bees, would be as futile and as meaningless a thing as an army composed entirely of the A.S.C.
Possibly you put in a plea here for the explorer and the scientist. The explorer perhaps may stand alone. His discovery of a peak in Darien is something in itself, quite apart from the happy possibility that Keats may be tempted to bring it into a sonnet. Yes, if a Beef-Essence-Merchant has only provided sustenance for an Explorer he has not lived in vain, however much the poets and the painters recoil from his wares. But of the scientist I am less certain. I fancy that his invention of the telephone (for instance) can only be counted to his credit because it has brought the author into closer touch with his publisher.
So we artists (yes, and explorers) may be of good faith. They may try to pretend, these others, in their little times of stress, that we are nothing--decorative, inessential; that it is they who make the world go round. This will not upset us. We could not live without them; true. But (a much more bitter thought) they would have no reason for living at all, were it not for us.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Childhood favorites
I posted about the first of this trilogy the other day and am thrilled to have all three books available at this time. This was one of my all time favorite series (the Noel Streatfield "Shoes" series and C.S. Lewis's "Narnia" books were probably my top two series). The plot, in summary, sounds a bit cliche- children find a magical creature who grants wishes and the wishes, of course, go wrong and lessons are learned, but it's worth noting that these were written just after the turn of the last century.
Edith Nesbit was born in 1858 and wrote a good number of books. These are really for older children who will enjoy the historic context of the writing. Americans aren't as familiar with these books but I found them to be exotic (at the time, having lived/spent time in the UK, I see now how unexotic the setting was!).
Here is what Gore Vidal had to say about this series:
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/12/03/the-writing-of-e-nesbit/)
" To my mind, it is in her magical books that Nesbit is at her best. Her most successful family of children are known, simply, as The Five Children, and their adventures are told in The Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet. In the first volume, the children encounter a Psammead, a small bad-tempered, odd-looking creature from pre-history. The Psammead is able to grant wishes by first filling itself with air and then exhaling. (“If only you knew how I hate to blow myself out with other people’s wishes, and how frightened I am always that I shall strain a muscle or something. And then to wake up every morning and know that you’ve got to do it…”).
But the children use the Psammead relentlessly for their wishes, and something almost always goes wrong. They wish “to be more beautiful than the day,” and find that people detest them, thinking they look like Gypsies or worse. Without moralizing, Nesbit demonstrates, literally, the folly of human wishes, and amuses at the same time. In The Phoenix and the Carpet, the same family becomes involved with the millennial phoenix, a bird of awesome vanity (“I’ve often been told that mine is a valuable life.”). With the use of a magic carpet, the phoenix and the children make a number of expeditions about the world. Yet even with such an ordinary device as a magic carpet, Nesbit’s powers of invention are never settled easily. The carpet has been repaired. The rewoven section is not magic. So whoever sits on that part travels neither here nor there. Since most intelligent children are passionate logicians, the sense of logic is a necessary gift in a writer of fantasy. Though a child will gladly accept a fantastic premise, he will insist that the working out of it be entirely consistent with the premise. Careless invention is immediately noticed; contradiction and inconsistencies irritate; illusion is destroyed. Happily, Nesbit is seldom careless and she anticipates most questions which might occur to a child. Not that she can always answer him satisfactorily. A condition of the Psammead’s wishes is that they last only for a day. Yet the effects of certain wishes in the distant past did linger. Why was this? asked one of the children. “Autres temps, autres moeurs” replied the Psammead coolly.
In The Story of the Amulet Nesbit’s powers of invention are at their best. It is a time machine story, only the device is not a machine but an Egyptian amulet whose other half is lost in the past. By saying certain powerful words, the amulet becomes a gate through which the children are able to visit the past or future. Pharaonic Egypt, Babylon (whose dotty queen comes back to London with them and tries to get her personal possessions out of the British Museum), Caesar’s Britain: they visit them all in the search for the missing part of the amulet. Nesbit’s history is good. And there is even a look at a Utopian future, which turns out to be everything a good Fabian might have hoped for. Ultimately, the amulet’s other half is found, and a story of considerable beauty is concluded in a most unexpected way."
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Strange Creatures and Strange Worlds
I am thrilled with our latest two offerings.
The first is a classic of children's literature, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. This was an absolute favorite of mine when I was growing up. It's one of those books that comes back to you long after you've finished reading it.
This story has everything, believable children, strange creatures, wishes coming true and badly behaving adults. When I first read it, the English countryside seemed very exotic to me as well.
This is the first of a trilogy of fantasy books and we hope to bring the second and third books in the next two weeks.
Order here
The second of today's offerings is a strange little novel written in 1666 by the Duchess of Newcastle.
The Blazing World is considered to be an early precursor to modern science fiction and is included in the genre of utopian novels as well. More strange creatures and people!
order here
The first is a classic of children's literature, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. This was an absolute favorite of mine when I was growing up. It's one of those books that comes back to you long after you've finished reading it.
This story has everything, believable children, strange creatures, wishes coming true and badly behaving adults. When I first read it, the English countryside seemed very exotic to me as well.
This is the first of a trilogy of fantasy books and we hope to bring the second and third books in the next two weeks.
Order here
The second of today's offerings is a strange little novel written in 1666 by the Duchess of Newcastle.
The Blazing World is considered to be an early precursor to modern science fiction and is included in the genre of utopian novels as well. More strange creatures and people!
order here
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Always inspiring Virginia Woolf
I was a Sophomore in college when I first started reading Virginia Woolf.I had an idea that Woolf was important author and feminist but I didn't really know why. I had the opportunity to take an English class that was devoted entirely to Woolf and it is no overstatement to say that it changed my life and the way I viewed literature. She is one of the two or three authors whose work I've returned to over and over again. Maybe it's because it's easy to follow her through decades of fiction, non-fiction, and autobiographical writing by way of her letters and diaries.
Everytime I pick up one of her works, fiction or non-fiction, I am delighted and inspired again.
So it makes sense that the first journal Figgy Tree Publishers ever made is full of quotes form Virginia Woolf. This is the journal I've been using for my daily personal writing for the last month. It is still my favorite journal that we've produced.
You can order this journal Here
Saturday, December 3, 2016
Tea Lover's Journal
It's been a sunny day but I can smell winter in the air. This is the time of year I branch out into all sorts of tea varieties. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time remembering which chai needed a little sweetener, and which black tea was strong enough for the full milk and sugar treatment. Now, I've seen some super fancy tea journals but, honestly, I'm not THAT much of a tea connoisseur. Really, I mostly want to remember where I got the tea, how I steeped it and whether I want to drink it ever again.
To meet my plebeian tea drinking needs, I created my own Tea Lover's Journal I has an index, and over a hundred pages for taking notes on different teas. No reason why you couldn't use it for coffee too. I've included entries for teas I ant to try and some blank pages in the back.
It's pretty stripped down but it's about as much information as I need and there is plenty of room if you want more details.
This journal is about 5x7 inches so it is a little smaller than they others which makes it perfect for carrying with you on your tea adventure.
Order here
To meet my plebeian tea drinking needs, I created my own Tea Lover's Journal I has an index, and over a hundred pages for taking notes on different teas. No reason why you couldn't use it for coffee too. I've included entries for teas I ant to try and some blank pages in the back.
It's pretty stripped down but it's about as much information as I need and there is plenty of room if you want more details.
This journal is about 5x7 inches so it is a little smaller than they others which makes it perfect for carrying with you on your tea adventure.
Order here
Figgy Tree Publishers Journal Catalog
This is the full list of Figgy Tree Publishers current offerings in Journals. Ordering is always through CreateSpace although some titles are also available on Amazon. Most items are 6"x9". Blank Journals are 100 pages unless otherwise noted (i.e., for the 31 day challenge or Advent Journals).
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