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
Attracting birds 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Our bird listAmerican Crow*American Goldfinch*American Robin*Barn SwallowBelted KingfisherBlack-capped Chickadee*Blue Jay*Brown Creeper*Brown-headed Cowbird*Brown Thrasher*Canada GooseCedar Waxwing*Chipping Sparrow*Common Grackle*Common YellowthroatCooper's Hawk*Dark-eyed Junco* (returned 9.22.2006)Downy Woodpecker*Eastern BluebirdEastern KingbirdEastern PhoebeEuropean Starling*Fox Sparrow*Golden-crowned Kinglet*Gray Catbird*Great Blue HeronGreat EgretGreat Horned Owl*Green HeronHairy Woodpecker*Herring GullHouse Sparrow*House Wren*House Finch*Indigo Bunting*KildeerMallardMourning Dove*Mute SwanNorthern Cardinal*Northern Flicker*Purple Finch*Red-bellied Woodpecker*Red-breasted Nuthatch*Red-winged BlackbirdRed-tailed HawkRed-winged BlackbirdRing-billed GullRuby-Throated Hummingbird*Rock DoveSandhill CraneTree SwallowTurkey VultureWhite-crowned Sparrow*White-throated Sparrow*White-breasted Nuthatch*Yellow Warbler* Indicates birds seen in our yards.Stuff we bring when we bird away from h
Growing up 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Sociologists and purveyors of media-driven angst would have us believe that "Kids these days, man, they grow up so fast!" Do they? I wonder. If so, faster than... than we did? Someone must be kidding, right? No one grew up faster than [insert the names of the reckless? heroic? wise-beyond-their-years (or not)? classmates who smoke, drank, used, slept around, and/or experimented in junior and senior high] and, hell, that was twenty-five years ago! How much faster can a kid grow up?!In my (albeit, limited) experience, kids grow up just as quickly (or slowly) as their natures and their environments permit.It is both that simple and that complex.Which is why some sixth-graders play with dolls and some play doctor.Whatever their natures and their environments permit. Read more:Growing
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988)"Miss Expanding Universe" (1932)From "ART IN REVIEW; 'Correspondences' -- 'Isamu Noguchi and Ellsworth Kelly'" (New York Times, March 10, 2000):Among the many treasures of this show, elegantly installed to emphasize how the works play off each other, is Noguchi's hanging sculpture in aluminum, ''Miss Expanding Universe'' (1932), named by Fuller. The streamlined shape of a woman whose arms have the aspect of wings, it forecast his turn toward biomorphic form a decade later. Read more:Fine Art
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Do you ever find yourself eavesdropping on your ow... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Do you ever find yourself eavesdropping on your own life?Last night, I was working (or procrastinating in a working posture, anyway) at my desk. My husband and two daughters were playing Great States in the bird room.All I could hear was the girls' excited and encouraging words to each other and their father ("That's it!" "You're right!" "There it is!" "May I help you?"), their enthusiastic replies ("I know this one!"), and their delighted laughter.It was not an unusual evening here in the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. I love that familiar song, but maybe I hear it so often that it fades? I shouldn't let these murmurs and laughing moments and gentle evenings fade into a sort of "life's muzak," though.So I consider myself warned.Because last night I eavesdropped on my own life.And it was good.
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Presented chapbook-style: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard).p. 51ROS: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?GUIL: I can't imagine! (Pause.) But all that is well known, common property. Yet he sent for us. And we did come.p. 57ROS: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all.GUIL: Thwarted ambition—a sense of grievance, that's my diagnosis.ROS: Six rhetorical and two repetition, leaving nineteen, of which we answered fifteen. And what did we get in return? He's depressed! Denmark's a prison and he'd rather live in a nutshell' some shadow-play about the nature of ambition, which never got down to cases, and finally one direct question which might have led som Read more:allowance
A prayer of thanksgiving 1970-01-01 00:59:59 On the day before Thanksgiving a couple of years back, I posted the material below in another forum, and I've reposted it here each year since. It's a little more, erm, sentimental than is my wont, but even an overalls-wearing, great-books-thumping, "mommy-blog"-disdaining curmudgeon can have a soft side.Here's a glimpse of mine.___________________________During these last few days before Thanksgiving, I find that in addition to the obvious — my family, my health, my husband's job and my own — I am thankful for a collection of ordinary and obvious things, as well as a few things less likely to make their way into the typical Thanksgiving prayer.Thank you for my books — the bookcases, shelves, leaning piles, and overstuffed baskets of them; for the stacks and lists and reading plans; for the bookmarks poking from dozens of them at a time; for the worlds that exist in my home because of them; for the smell of them, even for the dust they attract.Thank you for Chlorox wipes. In
What do nine- and ten-year-old girls listen to these days? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I'm rather out of touch with "grrrl power" and the culture of female tweens. What do nine- and ten-year-old girls bop to in the year 2006?Mine are absolutely enchanted with this.What can I say?
Caffeine abuse 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From the Chicago Tribune today:"Everything is a poison, including water, if you have too much," he said. "Caffeine
is a stimulant that releases your internal catecholamines [compounds that can serve as hormones] that make you anxious, jittery and create the fight-or-flight response. When the heart beats too fast, bad things happen. It's an emerging trend to keep an eye on and see if it's getting worse."The researchers found the situation is exacerbated because caffeine is heavily promoted as an effectively legal stimulant in energy drinks or dietary supplements on certain drug Web sites that recount users' experiences. Read more:abuse
From the archives 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Stand and stare.Stuart recites from a William Henry Davis poem in Benjamin Cheever's The Good Nanny: "A poor life is this, if full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare."Standing (or sitting) and staring shape the common repose of a reader, thinker, and autodidact. Imagine a life so heavy with care and worry that it precluded daydreaming, "zoning," or conversing (silently, of course, lest one alarm strangers and neighbors) with one's self (or selves — past, present, and future).Horrible.Now. Make a mental note to be courteous in all of your interactions during this holiday season; in other words, don't add to someone's psychic noise by behaving unkindly during these stressful weeks. Make your mother proud: Use your manners. You're not required to engage in small talk with hapless clerks or the seemingly scattered senior in line behind you, but a smile for the first and an offer to go ahead of you for the latter might afford someone else a little time to just stand and st
Why I read book blogs 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Shields to write Vonnegut's biography, with blessing at Maud Newton.(Charles J. Shields penned Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, which I mentioned in this entry.)
Weather report 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It's 1:22 p.m. and 26 degrees Fahrenheit -- sunny with patchy blue skies and gusts strong enough to lift the swing full of snow and knock a junco off its perch. The driveway is shoveled. It never seems so long as when it's being shoveled, but you know that feeling, don't you? All of the public schools in the county were closed, according to WBBM. We studied, though.And played.Happy snow day, folks.Added later: Eight inches, by the way.Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider M-mv merchandise.Visit our bookshop. Use one of our Amazon links.Or just get that special someone the most perfect gift ever. Read more:report
On the nightstand 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This is the forty-first "On the nightstand
" entry -- a snapshot (picture and words) of the books on (or, in this case, near) my nightstand right this very second. Okay. So what absolutely tickles me about this entry is the sock monkey sheets pictured above. They were advertised in one of the four catalogues that missed the recycling bin yesterday (explanation here). I coveted them from the moment my son pointed them out to me. (My affection for Nick & Nora is described here; for sock monkeys, here and here.) Oh, I thought about those damned flannel sheets all day. I thought about them while teaching, while working, while preparing dinner and then eating it. Finally, just before popping another forkful of stuffing into my piehole (fresh stuffing, folks; I made another turkey dinner yesterday -- hmmm, mmm), I declared, "I must have them. Kids, we're going to Target!"The new sheets have been washed, tumbled, and made into my bed. I wonder if tonight I in my Nick & Nora sock monkey pajama
Inflatable Santa 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So.From certain angles in our comfortable library / livingroom, our neighbor's front yard is visible. This can be a source of amusement -- as in, "Oh, dear. What is he doing now?" -- or, particularly at this time of year, consternation -- as in, "What the hell is he doing now?""Santa
is waving at us," Miss M-mv(ii) announced when she returned to the birdroom table yesterday."Huh?""Santa. Waving. Look out front."Ergh.Later:"Turns out Santa has a large tomato and a snowman-elf with him," declared Master M-mv.The tomato turned out to be an over-inflated Christmas-box shape.Ergh. Ergh.Why do people do this?___________________Apparently, these festive decorations require a constant energy source, and while our neighbor clearly embraces frivolity, he does not, as it happens, embrace 'round-the-clock frivolity. I arrived at this realization this morning, as I stood at my front window, counting juncos and warming my hands on a mug of coffee. Why are three parachutes spread across my neighbor Read more:Inflatable
Fine Art Friday archive 1970-01-01 00:59:59 12.01.2006 (Chinese street art)11.24.2006 (Noguchi)11.17.2006 (Munch)11.10.2006 (Renoir)11.03.2006 (Picasso)10.27.2006 (Vuillard)10.19.2006 (Ancient China)10.13.2006 (Fritsch)10.06.2006 (Morse)9.29.2006 (Renoir)9.22.2006 (Lachaise)9.15.2006 (Albright)9.08.2006 (Dogon peoples, Mali)9.01.2006 (Wyeth)8.25.2006 (Chagall)8.18.2006 (Schiele)8.10.2006 (Magritte)8.04.2006 (Klee)7.27.2006 (Pollack)7.14.2006 (Hopper) Read more:Fine Art
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Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I meant to post this image some time ago. The kids and I first saw it in the October 6 Chicago Sun-Times, and all of us were struck by how much it reminded us of Miss M-mv(i). Not only was she the one to hook us on birdwatching, but she also sits in the position depicted by the two statues -- yes, comfortably -- often and for long periods of time. I can't find any more about the image than this: A Chinese woman looks at a street art installation on display in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006. China's art scene is becoming popular among foreign art collectors push prices ever higher.Two other items"How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?" Have you been insulted lately?And speaking of Shakespeare, when we visited Chicago in October, a card bearing the following message was perched against my pillow when I entered the room: "Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night." Almost made up for the fact that we were in the room next to the Presidential Suite (as opposed to in the Suite, wh Read more:Fine Art
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Celebrities writing badly 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Antigone is about a girl who looses [sic] her brother during a war.Indeed. For more about what an education steeped in the classics can yield, read this listing at Christie's. Yes, the above sliver of juvenilia represents one of one hundred seventy personal items Britney Spears donated to an on-line auction in aid of her eponymous Foundation. Folks, her English teacher wept. (Thanks, CED.)And in "No Starlet Left Behind, Not Even Lindsay Lohan," we find this sample:If not only my heart but the heart of Mr. Altman's wife and family and many fellow actors/artists that admire him for his work and love him for making people laugh whenever and however he could.Oh. My. Goodness.Did you know Lohan was (*shhh*) homeschooled? For a while, anyway. (Thanks, M.)Added a little later: Speaking of homeschooling and celebrities (we were, weren't we?)... did you know Will Smith home educates his children? From the November 21 "Get Buzzed" column in Louisville Kentucky's The Courier-Journal:Will Smit Read more:Celebrities
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Potty talk 1970-01-01 00:59:59 If you take a dim view of potty talk, skip this entry, all right? Good. You've been warned.So.At this time of year, the mail carrier delivers an inordinate number of catalogues. 'Tis the season and all that. Regular M-mv readers know that I don't countenance catalogues; they generally pass from mailbox to recycling bin sans perusal.But the image of a silly t-shirt attracted my eye as I made to pitch this catalogue into the green can.And I laughed.Until I nearly, well, you know.And now the catalogues, all four from today's delivery, have assumed various angles of repose in Family M-mv's bathroom.I am, on occasion, much too easily amused.
The "On the nightstand" archive 1970-01-01 00:59:59 11.28.200610.27.200610.08.20069.22.20069.16.20069.06.20068.26.20068.09.20067.27.20066.19.20065.26.20064.23.20064.5.20064.1.20063.7.20061.14.200612.19.200511.11.200510.21.20059.26.20058.25.20058.5.20057.6.20055.28.20054.18.20053.20.20052.14.20051.14.200512.21.200411.21.200410.12.20049.13.20048.24.20047.19.20046.12.20045.19.20044.22.20043.12.20042.15.20041.26.200412.31.2003 Read more:nightstand
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Presented chapbook-style: Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill).p. 11The astonishing thing about these sets is that all the volumes have the look of having been read and reread.p. 13He has never really been sick a day in his life. He has no nerves. There is a lot of stolid, earthy peasant in him, mixed with streaks of sentimental melancholy and rare flashes of intuitive sensibility.p. 135TYRONE: Thickly humorous. I wouldn't worry about the virtue part of it, if I were you. Then disgustedly. Pah! It's morbid nonsense! What little truth is in it you'll find nobly said in Shakespeare. Then appreciatively. But you recited it well, lad. Who wrote it?p. 137TYRONE: Where you get your taste in authors— That damned library of yours! He indicates the small bookcase in the rear. Voltaire, Rosseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whore-mongers and degen Read more:allowance
Shifting 1970-01-01 00:59:59 When I greeted the dark-eyed juncos yesterday morning, coffee mug in hand, twenty-one bookcases lined the walls of the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. By the time I crawled into bed last night, they numbered twenty-two.This means, of course, that I spent most of yesterday cleaning and shifting.It's funny. When I was in high school, I worked as a page in the town's library. I loved my work, but I really loathed being told, "The 600s need to be shifted," or "We're running out of room in popular fiction. It's time to shift again." There was never enough shelf space for the proposed shift; the volumes were often packed too tightly for browsing; and, golly, but it was a dirty, dusty job.Shifting
one's own books, though? What a pleasure. To move the books, to rearrange them, is to handle them, to meet them again. A delight.A home without books is a body without soul. (Cicero)Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider M-mv merchandise.Visit our bookshop.Use one of our Amazon
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935)"Fisherman's Cottage" (1907) When we visited the Art Institue in October, this painting was located just a few feet from Edvard Munch's "Girl Looking out the Window" (which I wrote about here). All three M-mv women adored it -- the color, the sky, the comforting quiet. "It looks like a cuddle cover and cocoa sort of place," one of them said. I agree.Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider M-mv merchandise.Visit our bookshop.Use one of our Amazon links.Or just get that special someone the most perfect gift ever. Read more:Fine Art
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If you know what this is... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 ... we may have met in the same circle of he-... Ahem. I mean, we may have met in the Little Pony aisle of Target, eh? Heh, heh, heh.Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider M-mv merchandise.Visit our bookshop.Use one of our Amazon links.Or just get that special someone the most perfect gift ever.
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