The There There Letter: Rescue, Recommendations, and Rosé
Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, Rescue …
I've been reading Agnès Poirier's Notre Dame: The Soul of France. It begins and ends with reportage. In the middle there's a political history of France centered on Notre Dame. It's an interesting book and a quick read. The first chapter really got to me. 15 April 2019: Notre Dame in flames. We'd visited Notre Dame in the summer of 2018, so the setting was familiar. I've seen the photographs, and read the breathless newspaper copy about the fire. What I wasn't aware of before Poirier's book was the rescue work. Not of people (the cathedral wasn't busy and was quickly evacuated), but of artwork and artifacts. National Heritage curators and architects from throughout greater Paris gathers and enters the burning cathedral. Wearing hard-hats, they work together to save as many of the irreplaceable relics, works, and paintings as possible. Meanwhile, church bells chimed across Paris, across France, as a prayer for Notre Dame. The nation's best fire-fighting team battles its way up the north and south bell towers, to save the massive bells, and to prevent the towers collapsing. That first chapter is a stirring read of rescue.
An engrossing history of 'the soul of France'
Second up this week, Recommendations …
Poirer's book was brought to my attention by a review, a recommendation from a publication I like. Our whirlwind one-day Paris visit in 2018 was organized with the recommendations of our dear friend and trip-leader, John. Many new wine discoveries are made by the recommendation of another dear friend, Susana, the Davis Enterprise wine columnist. So many things we enjoy are delivered to our awareness through recommendations. I was looking online for recommendations for language reference books when I stumbled upon a lovely book recommendation website: Five Books. Here's what they say about themselves: "We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. This site has an archive of more than one thousand interviews, or five thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week." I really like the interviews. Five Books has begun adding short lists from site-users, too. Lots of fun.
The five best books on everything
Third up this week, Rosé …
We could all use more fun these days, couldn't we? One of my decisions for more fun is to enjoy more rosé wine, particularly purpose-made pink wines. I mean wines that were intended to be pink from the get-go; pink from vine to bottle (rather than made as the byproduct of some other wine, although those can be delicious, too). Pink wines earned a dodgy reputation in the USA during the 1980s. That was the era of thin, sweet, insipid White Zinfandel. But times have changed, and the tide has turned. High-quality dry pink wines have become more and more popular. It's worth seeking out recommendations for some delicious pink fun.
NYTimes Wine School: How Do You Define Rosé?
And a bit more: An end-of-summer poem appropriate for staying indoors (lots of smoke and ash-fall where I live these days):
Still Life with Invisible Canoe by Idra Novey
Levinas asked if we have the right
To be the way I ask my sons
If they’d like to be trees
The way the word tree
Makes them a little animal
Dancing up and down
Like bears in movies
Bears I have to say
Pretend we are children
At a river one of them says
So we sip it pivot in the hallway
Call it a canoe
It is noon in the living room
We are rowing through a blue
That is a feeling mostly
The way drifting greenly
Under real trees
Is a feeling near holy
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem Sometimes …
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, Rescue …
I've been reading Agnès Poirier's Notre Dame: The Soul of France. It begins and ends with reportage. In the middle there's a political history of France centered on Notre Dame. It's an interesting book and a quick read. The first chapter really got to me. 15 April 2019: Notre Dame in flames. We'd visited Notre Dame in the summer of 2018, so the setting was familiar. I've seen the photographs, and read the breathless newspaper copy about the fire. What I wasn't aware of before Poirier's book was the rescue work. Not of people (the cathedral wasn't busy and was quickly evacuated), but of artwork and artifacts. National Heritage curators and architects from throughout greater Paris gathers and enters the burning cathedral. Wearing hard-hats, they work together to save as many of the irreplaceable relics, works, and paintings as possible. Meanwhile, church bells chimed across Paris, across France, as a prayer for Notre Dame. The nation's best fire-fighting team battles its way up the north and south bell towers, to save the massive bells, and to prevent the towers collapsing. That first chapter is a stirring read of rescue.
An engrossing history of 'the soul of France'
Second up this week, Recommendations …
Poirer's book was brought to my attention by a review, a recommendation from a publication I like. Our whirlwind one-day Paris visit in 2018 was organized with the recommendations of our dear friend and trip-leader, John. Many new wine discoveries are made by the recommendation of another dear friend, Susana, the Davis Enterprise wine columnist. So many things we enjoy are delivered to our awareness through recommendations. I was looking online for recommendations for language reference books when I stumbled upon a lovely book recommendation website: Five Books. Here's what they say about themselves: "We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. This site has an archive of more than one thousand interviews, or five thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week." I really like the interviews. Five Books has begun adding short lists from site-users, too. Lots of fun.
The five best books on everything
Third up this week, Rosé …
We could all use more fun these days, couldn't we? One of my decisions for more fun is to enjoy more rosé wine, particularly purpose-made pink wines. I mean wines that were intended to be pink from the get-go; pink from vine to bottle (rather than made as the byproduct of some other wine, although those can be delicious, too). Pink wines earned a dodgy reputation in the USA during the 1980s. That was the era of thin, sweet, insipid White Zinfandel. But times have changed, and the tide has turned. High-quality dry pink wines have become more and more popular. It's worth seeking out recommendations for some delicious pink fun.
NYTimes Wine School: How Do You Define Rosé?
And a bit more: An end-of-summer poem appropriate for staying indoors (lots of smoke and ash-fall where I live these days):
Still Life with Invisible Canoe by Idra Novey
Levinas asked if we have the right
To be the way I ask my sons
If they’d like to be trees
The way the word tree
Makes them a little animal
Dancing up and down
Like bears in movies
Bears I have to say
Pretend we are children
At a river one of them says
So we sip it pivot in the hallway
Call it a canoe
It is noon in the living room
We are rowing through a blue
That is a feeling mostly
The way drifting greenly
Under real trees
Is a feeling near holy
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem Sometimes …
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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