Owner: Mental multivitamin URL:http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:14:56 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Mental multivitamin was established in October 2003 for readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Regular features include "On the nightstand" and "The recommended daily allowance." Site statistics:Click here
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Fernando Botero (1932-)"Naturaleza muerta con libros" (1999)We discovered Botero in the summer of 1994, when an exhibit of his sculptures was arranged along Michigan Avenue just north of Art Institute. My first thought: "Boy, he gives 'capacious bottom' a whole new meaning!" My second: "Golly, but this is wonderful stuff!"(Speaking of capacious bottoms, if nudes trouble you, skip the "comical" link below (although, I'll let you in on a secret: It's my favorite of Botero's paintings).)While it is Botero's whimsical images of the corpulent and comical that most appeal to me, Latin America's most celebrated living artist has recently used his work to explore compelling contemporary issues, like "the brutal, drug-fueled guerrilla war that has been going on for 40 years in Colombia" (registration to read the NYT online is free) and abuses at Abu Ghraib. Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
The Saturday Review of Books 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday
Review of Books
." Consider participating this week.What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. My studies are still going well. We resume lessons this week (after being out of town for Shrew last weekend). Today I'll play "Alpine Melody (p. 69 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1, for those who are following my laborious but merry progress along the keyboard) and continue work on "Edelweiss" (the second tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1).Watching: Yes, birds, again. Tomorrow and Monday morning for Project FeederWatch. Working: Three thousand words by tomorrow night.
From Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventur... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From Piano Lessons
: Music
, Love, and True Adventures (Noah Adams):It was a pretty loud voice inside my mind. Surely, I'd made an awful, expensive mistake. I figure I've only got an extra twenty minutes a day in which I can pay any attention at all to anything not connected with work or with keeping the house from falling down. Once Neenah and I went through an entire year refusing to realize that our car's windshield wipers were broken and wouldn't turn on.My spare twenty minutes come right after dinner, twenty minutes before I fall asleep in a chair trying to read. Usually I'll struggle with it for a while; then I'll take a hot bath and get in bed, where suddenly I'm awake again. Seven or so books wait on the table by the bed. One will be by an author I'm soon to interview, the others are interesting-looking books that I probably should read, and another will be something that's already past its story-potential time, to read just for pleasure, a few pages a night.
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 George Bush's Washington is not threatening, as Washington was under Nixon. Nor is it dangerously ludicrous, as it was under Reagan. Instead, it's like half-cooked candy before it reaches the "soft ball" stage -- you can get it together, but it's just mush; it has no form, no shape, no coherence. Since Bush is not venal, mean, nor nearly as daffy as Reagan, the American people, notoriously tolerant when it comes to their presidents, may be ready to cut the guy slack. "Well, he doesn't look great so far, but let's give him a chance" is the common line. "Wait until we see him face a real crisis," they say in D.C. But as Chekhov once observed, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out." We have just graduated from an eight-year course in the inadvisability of doing nothing while social problems fester. We're about to discover that inaction in the face of unraveling disaster is just as bad when it's the result of indecision as it is when it's the Read more:allowance
From the archives: February 25, 2004 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a mommy story. Not a myth. No, this is an all-true account. Lean in a little closer. I want to be sure you're listening this time.There.Now."Mom, I love these brownies you made!"Yes, folks. By 9 a.m. yesterday, the beds were made; the floors swept and vacuumed; two breakfast-type meals were prepared, served, and consumed; and a load of wash was swish-swishing through its cycles. This writer-teacher-parent had sent off a query letter to one editor and a follow-up note to another and made adjustments to the weekly family calendar to accommodate a new writing project.And I had made brownies. Delicious brownies.Not from scratch, of course. I've heard this can be done. In fact, my son showed me how to do it when he was eight.But I favor a Duncan Hines mix, myself. Sprinkle a large bag of Nestle semi-sweet morsels atop the batter before popping it in the oven. Serve the brownies warm and the milk ice cold from the fridge. Read a Read more:February
A quiz!? Has she lost her mind? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Nah. I just thought this one, like the nerd score in the sidebar, was spot on.What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.What kind of reader are you?
Is that the UPS truck I hear? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A short list of things that make me happyThe Amazon.com Associates programAn Amazon.com Prime trial periodThe rattle-rumble of the UPS truck coming down our streetA very large package carried in by a tall man-boyAn inventory The books:The Physics of Superheroes (James Kakalios) The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) How to Read a Poem (Terry Eagleton)The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (Will Durant)The Street of Crocodiles (Bruno Schulz; thanks, SFP)The Story of Art: Pocket Edition (E.H. Gombrich; now Master has his own copy) Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (E.L. Konigsburg)The Chronicles of Narnia CD Box Set (C. S. Lewis) Cliffs Notes on Shakespeare's Sonnets (Carl Senna)Sonnets (Caedmon Shakespeare; read by John Gielgud (!))The Best American Essays 2006 (Lauren Slater)Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You (Clare Walker Leslie; thanks, Cindy)The films (
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 You've got to get up every
morning with a smile on your faceAnd show the world all the love in your heartThen people gonna treat you betterYou're gonna find, yes, you willThat you're beautiful as you feel.~ Carol King, "Beautiful," Tapestry
If I've said it once, I've said it six hundred times... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It can't all be Shakespeare, Latin, and Bach. Into every life must creep some Junie B. Jones, some My Little Pony fun, a free day, some takeout, and, yes, some "Baywatch."Related entry: "Guard."
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Maurice Sendak (1928-)Synthesis and serendipity at work in my reading, thinking, learning, working, teaching lives: Alternately mystified and, well, charmed by the unusual and child-like cover illustration of Sonnets (which I received on Wednesday), I finally flipped the new disc over to learn that, yes, the Sonnets are read by Sir John Gielgud, but also that the liner notes were penned by none other than Harold Bloom and that the cover illustration is by Maurice Sendak, who apparently provided cover art for the complete Shakespeare on Compact Disc series. I was able to find six images from this series. Aren't they remarkable?During his accomplished career, Sendak created -- among a cast of memorable characters (including Micky In the Night Kitchen; aren't the illustrations above reminiscent of dear Micky?) -- Really Rosie, for which Carole King composed and performed the music. And, yes, Really Rosie is the primary reason I purchased The Collection: Really Rosie/Music/Tapestry (whic Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
The aging autodidact 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Yesterday Mr. M-mv took a photo of me on the way to music class, and as I downloaded it to send to Aunt M-mv, I realized that it so perfectly captured the way I feel that it was, in fact, me -- much more so than, say, the photo in the "About" section of M-mv, for example. My wrinkles, silvery "Pony hairs," and all. This is what I look like. So the next time you're wondering just who is recommending this book, that movie, or another thought-provoking article, think of an aging autodidact in "cheaters" and a handmade scarf.
"I am born." 1970-01-01 00:59:59 As I've mentioned elsewhere, the family book club is reading David Copperfield sloooowly. Beginning today, we'll tackle a chapter a day every weekday for thirteen weeks. We were motivated by the idea of reading Dickens the way he often published -- serially.Care to join us?
Praiseworthy 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From Po Bronson's article "How Not to Talk to Your Kids" (New York, The Magazine, February 19, 2007):Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Out of our children's lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can't say during the day—We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments. We expect so much of them, but we hide our expectations behind constant glowing praise. The duplicity became glaring to me.Eventually, in my final stage of praise withdrawal, I realized that not telling my son he was smart meant I was leaving it up to him to make his own conclusion about his intelligence. Jumping in with praise is like jumping in too soon with the answer
It's no secret, after all. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I sort my M&Ms.I have a thing for stuffed simians... and all things bearing them, like these and these and these.I allow, nay, encourage the occasional television binge.Yeah, I read Entertainment Weekly.And I trim my own bangs, too. I think they turned out all right.Read. Think. Learn.And, folks? Relax. A little, anyway. Sometimes. It's all good.
Forget flowers and frills! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 If they read M-mv, this is what they really want. Immediate delivery. Complete satisfaction. Oh, and then they can spend it in their all-together right here.
Chapbook entry 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I first read The Children of Men (P.D. James) nearly fourteen years ago. On rereading it with Master M-mv last month, I realized that the book's power, for me, resides in its bleak view of man's future -- which is another way of saying that the writing did not bear a second (close) reading well. I had not read a lot of science-/futuristic fiction, when Children arrived on my doorstep all those years ago, so it played as a seemingly original idea (although I remember that I slipped it onto the same mental bookshelf as Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke); Master, who read the Clarke last week, actually preferred End to Children).No, I haven't seen the movie. Call it a product of my creeping case of modern monasticism, but I just can't abide a movie theater. Oh, the noise! The noise, noise, noise, NOISE! And the germs. And the smell. And then there are the people. Ergh. I'll wait for the DVD, thanks.___________________________p. 39Why, Theo wondered, did he and his like come week aft
From the archives: February 14, 2006 1970-01-01 00:59:59 "Be mine."He said.He said, "Thanks for being my Valentine, yet again."He said, with you, I never feel old or get tired.He said, with you, I don't get discouraged or disappointed.He said, I love you.And I said, "I love you."And I know.And I know.And you're welcome.I said."I am. I already was. I always will be." Read more:February
Count for the Birds 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Participate in the 10th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count, February 16 - 19. You can couple your Project Feederwatch efforts this weekend with the GBBC.Postscript: Do you know what this autodidact is getting for her birthday? This! Read more:Birds
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Pablo Picasso, "Piano"From Playing the Piano for Pleasure (Charles Cooke):I believe in quality rather than quantity in piano practice -- an hour of concentrated, efficient work rather than a longer period during which the mind, though the fingers continue to drum, goes hazy if not blank. Don't misconstrue my harping on one hour as meaning that sixty minutes a day, however well planned and commendably carried through, are all you should spend at the keyboard. I am referring to one daily hour of work -- if you can give the name of work to the spectacle of a hobbyist blissfully riding his hobby. Naturally, the more you also play -- for yourself, for others, with others -- the better. The goal of your daily hour should be this and only this: to play the piano better and better from month to month and year to year.[...]The place of music in the life of the amateur pianist should be, as I see it, important but not all-important: a source of pleasure in the work done and in the results achie Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
Saturday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday
Review of Books." Consider participating this week.What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. I know I'm a broken record on this, but I am so enjoying my work and play at the keyboard. I'm working on "The Amazing Aerobics of Hanon" (p. 78 and 79 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1) and will offer a polished "Edelweiss" (the second tune in Greatest Hits, Level 1) to my teacher this morning, after which we will begin "My Heart Will Go On" (the third). I think I will show her some of the sheet music Mr. M-mv gave me for Valentine's Day to see if I am ready to begin studying them. I'm not as fond of the idea of spending two or three weeks working on an insipid movie theme now that I have a beginner version of "Claire de lune" in my music sack. (The Satie, while an "easier" version, is definitely hovering in "advanced intermediate" territory.)Oh, and the library book sale! We're going for an hour before lessons. Rumor has it
"I'm cute! I'm cute! She thinks I'm cute!" 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I just received the most wonderful compliment about my work -- in writing, no less. I feel like Rudolph leaping into flight.I'm good! I'm good! They think I'm good!Yes, sometimes, even the most curmudgeonly among us need to hear that we're all right.Still marching toward that deadline, though. See you on the other side.Added just a little later: To give you some idea of how hard I work in the interstices parenting and teaching permit (and this is most assuredly not a bid for sympathy; simply a pictorial anecdote) --Yes, it's a many-mugs-of-coffee sort of day.
Hey! The UPS man brought me a lei! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, not really. But a lei was tucked into the package from Random House, which the UPS man brought to my door. And now an uncorrected proof/advance reader copy of The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings) has been added to my knapsack. Scheduled for release May 15, 2007, The Descendants, a coming of age story set in Hawaii, is described as the ultimate beach read. After the month I've had work-wise? I could use a good beach read.Hey, happy Fat Tuesday, folks.
Speaking of leis and Hawaii... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Listen: "'kay. This one's for Gabby."Read: "Hawaii
, he sang of thee -- and people listened" (San Francisco Chronicle, March 9, 2005).Israel leans into the microphone, says: "Kay, this one's for Gabby," and begins gently strumming the uke. His beautiful voice comes in, a lilting "Oooooo," then slips into the opening words of "Over the Rainbow," from "The Wizard of Oz." Bertosa listens behind the glass, and within the first few bars knows it's something very special. He spends most of his time recording lousy dance music. This is otherworldly. An incredibly fat man, elegantly caressing a Hollywood show tune, breaking it down to its roots, so sad and poignant, yet full of hope and possibility. Halfway through the tune, Israel spirals off into "What a Wonderful World," the George David Weiss/Bob Thiele hit made famous by Louis Armstrong, then melts back into "Over the Rainbow." He flubs a lyric, and tosses in a new chord change, but it doesn't matter. It feels seamless, chilling. Isra Read more:Speaking
Members only 1970-01-01 00:59:59 If you enjoyed this even half as much as we did and if you live in or near the greatest city in the world, you'll likely be as delighted as I was to learn that the Field Museum will be increasing public access to the World's Columbian Exposition collections, most of which have been kept in the museum's vaults.Read more here.And mark your calendars now, members: April 4 and 5. (More here.) Read more:Members
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Miss M-mv(ii) (1997-)"Portrait of an autodidact as an old(er) woman" (June 2004) When I grow old...I will wear a green hat with a flower in its crown.And I will fix my face in a bemused arrangement that is as much a smile as it is a frown.And I will write my children letters.________________________Read. Think. Learn.Hey, and be excellent. Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
On the nightstand 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I haven't time for a lengthy review of all I've been reading, so here's the stack closest to my laptop. :: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Richard Hofstadter).How it ended up on the stack: Margaret made me do it, whether she realizes it or not. And how did I miss this one, anyway?Excerpt:Intellect, on the other hand, is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole. Intelligence can be praised as a quality in animals; intellect, being a unique manifestation of human dignity, it is both praised and assailed as a quality in men. When the difference is so defined, it becomes easier to understand why we sometimes say that a mind of a Read more:nightstand
"There are five people in my family..." 1970-01-01 00:59:59 And there's not one of 'em I'd swap.[...]Oh, five is such a pretty number!I'm awfully glad that I've five people
in my family --One, two, three, four, five.If you can sing that song, I know roughly how old you are. (You already know that I will be forty-three this year.)___________________Twenty-two years ago today, Mr. M-mv gave me an engagement ring. I was surprised about how and when he proposed, yes, but the idea of marriage? No surprises there. He had already told me that we would be getting married. He announced this about two weeks after our first date.Silly boy.I can only imagine how annoyed his parents must have been when he declared his intentions to them over supper one early-spring night in 1982. He was a just junior in high school at the time. Our own son is now about the same age Mr. M-mv was then, and if Master arrived home this evening and said, "I'm going to marry so-n-so," why, I think Mr. M-mv might choke on his bowl of oatmeal!It would be all right, though. Th
Why a physicist dropped everything for paper folding 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From "The origami lab" (The New Yorker, 2/19/2007):Something about origami’s simplicity and its apparently endless possibilities appeals to people. In 2003, the Mingei International Museum, in San Diego, mounted an exhibition called “Origami Masterworks,” which included several of Lang’s pieces. It was supposed to run six months, but attendance was so robust that the show was extended for six months, then for eight more. In Japan, the “Survivor”-style show “TV Champion” has often featured contestants engaging in extreme origami—folding with their hands in a box, or while balanced on stools with the paper
suspended above them, or while snorkelling in a fishtank. A surprising number of countries have origami organizations; the Origami Society of the Netherlands has more than fifteen hundred members—probably the highest per-capita membership in the world. There is a soothing element in the monotony of folding and unfolding. In fact, origami as therapy has its proponent
Chapbook entry 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From "The Guest" (Albert Camus)::: Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust.:: Towns sprang up, flourished, then disappeared; men came by, loved one another or fought bitterly, then died. No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them, Daru knew, could have really lived.:: Men who share the same rooms, soldiers or prisoners, develop a strange alliance as if, having cast off their armor with their clothing, they fraternized every evening, over and above their differences, in the ancient community of dream and fatigue.Perrine reminds us:Beginning readers need to remember that most stories operate almost wholly at the literal level and that, even in highly symbolic stories, the majority of the details are purely literal. A story should not be made the excuse for an exercise in ingenuity. It is better, indeed, to miss the symbolic meanings of a story tha
Recommend Site To A Friend
