The There There Letter: Qindar, Quit, and Quincunx
Take care of those you call your own and keep good company. (Queen/Brian May, Good Company, from A Night At The Opera)
Three things from DAH. The There There: Where the heart is.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance.
This Letter is Free every Friday!
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First up this week: Qindar …
Planning a trip to Albania? Apparently, many are, as Albania has rebranded itself for tourism. Well, you'll need local currency (probably). The qindar is "a monetary subunit of the lek" (Merriam-Webster). You'll need a big bucket of qindar since the more substantive lek is worth about 1 US penny. A useful Scrabble word, however, should the rules allow. No "u" after the "q" … how handy is that? And Albania! The Enver Hoxha era kept Albania closed for decades. It's difficult to imagine it opening up for foreigners to visit and spend their lek and qindar. Yet Lonely Planet awarded Albania "Best Travel 2023" ("Albania's stunning mountain scenery, crumbling castles, boisterous capital and dreamy beaches rival any in the Mediterranean.") I need to update my thinking.
Second up this week, Quit …
The concept has such a cultural pejorative sense for me. But is it so bad to quit? I suspect I've long overlooked a practical alternative. "Above all, don't be afraid to quit. Sometimes, the best decision will be to end a relationship, quit a job, break off a friendship, disband a project, or let a commitment fall to the wayside. Quitting can be necessary to make room for positive change, and can be an opportunity to develop and grow." (www.WholeLifeChallenge.com). From that same blog:
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance.
This Letter is Free every Friday!
You can subscribe and browse past issues HERE
First up this week: Qindar …
Planning a trip to Albania? Apparently, many are, as Albania has rebranded itself for tourism. Well, you'll need local currency (probably). The qindar is "a monetary subunit of the lek" (Merriam-Webster). You'll need a big bucket of qindar since the more substantive lek is worth about 1 US penny. A useful Scrabble word, however, should the rules allow. No "u" after the "q" … how handy is that? And Albania! The Enver Hoxha era kept Albania closed for decades. It's difficult to imagine it opening up for foreigners to visit and spend their lek and qindar. Yet Lonely Planet awarded Albania "Best Travel 2023" ("Albania's stunning mountain scenery, crumbling castles, boisterous capital and dreamy beaches rival any in the Mediterranean.") I need to update my thinking.
Second up this week, Quit …
The concept has such a cultural pejorative sense for me. But is it so bad to quit? I suspect I've long overlooked a practical alternative. "Above all, don't be afraid to quit. Sometimes, the best decision will be to end a relationship, quit a job, break off a friendship, disband a project, or let a commitment fall to the wayside. Quitting can be necessary to make room for positive change, and can be an opportunity to develop and grow." (www.WholeLifeChallenge.com). From that same blog:
The Golden Rule: Don’t Quit on a Hard Day
It’s normal to want to give up when things get hard. That’s usually when most people quit. But just because something is hard, or you have a bad day, doesn’t mean you should quit. In fact, bad days can be a great motivator if used effectively — they can remind you why the goal, situation, or relationship is worth the effort. So, give yourself some perspective. If you have a bad day, accept that those days will happen. Follow the golden rule and sleep on your impulse to quit. If quitting truly is the best option for you, that will become clear even on the good days.
OK. I'll sleep on it. But first, I'll try to figure out what I want or need to quit.
Third up this week, Quincunx …
Five dots. One in each corner, one in the center. Like the number five on a die. And a pattern for tree planting. And an arrangement of locks on the cover of Charles Palliser's epic Victorian-style novel The Quincunx (1989). It's 800 some-odd pages long. I began reading it (in the 1990s … yes, completed before the end of that decade). It was an interesting reading experience. I slogged through a few hundred pages and thought, "I'm not going to make it." Then, something clicked, and I was fully absorbed and couldn't stop reading, day and night, for the rest of the weekend until I finished the book. It's not often that something emotionally grabs me after such a sustained effort. This memory has stuck with me, so it hasn't been that common a thing. Of course, I did get caught up reading about British breakfast (see the next item). Rather a different experience, but absorbing nonetheless.
A book about British breakfast ...
Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey, by Felicity Cloake
Not what I'd planned to write about here, but I got two books on the same day, and I read the 350 pages of this longer one first. This is a travelogue, with food visits and recipes (to which I paid scant attention). Regular kudos for Marmite from the author, surprising how many of her friends use ketchup rather than HP brown sauce (which now I must procure). A fun read if you like rustic, food-centric road trips.
"As a greedy woman who loves cycling around the country in search of double and even triple breakfasts, I was delighted by this book about a greedy woman, cycling around the countryside, looking for several square meals a day." (Nell Frizzell reviewing for The Guardian, 15 June 2022)
And a bit more:
"Queen-Anne's Lace"
by William Carlos Williams
Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's "Sometimes"
Third up this week, Quincunx …
Five dots. One in each corner, one in the center. Like the number five on a die. And a pattern for tree planting. And an arrangement of locks on the cover of Charles Palliser's epic Victorian-style novel The Quincunx (1989). It's 800 some-odd pages long. I began reading it (in the 1990s … yes, completed before the end of that decade). It was an interesting reading experience. I slogged through a few hundred pages and thought, "I'm not going to make it." Then, something clicked, and I was fully absorbed and couldn't stop reading, day and night, for the rest of the weekend until I finished the book. It's not often that something emotionally grabs me after such a sustained effort. This memory has stuck with me, so it hasn't been that common a thing. Of course, I did get caught up reading about British breakfast (see the next item). Rather a different experience, but absorbing nonetheless.
A book about British breakfast ...
Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey, by Felicity Cloake
Not what I'd planned to write about here, but I got two books on the same day, and I read the 350 pages of this longer one first. This is a travelogue, with food visits and recipes (to which I paid scant attention). Regular kudos for Marmite from the author, surprising how many of her friends use ketchup rather than HP brown sauce (which now I must procure). A fun read if you like rustic, food-centric road trips.
"As a greedy woman who loves cycling around the country in search of double and even triple breakfasts, I was delighted by this book about a greedy woman, cycling around the countryside, looking for several square meals a day." (Nell Frizzell reviewing for The Guardian, 15 June 2022)
And a bit more:
"Queen-Anne's Lace"
by William Carlos Williams
Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's "Sometimes"
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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