Summer Edition: Trees, Islands, and a Game of Base Ball
John Constable, Trees at Hampstead, in the Tate
On September 21, 1868, a man named Peter Doyle wrote a letter to his friend Walt Whitman and described an exciting game he had just watched. “There was a very exciting game of Base Ball Played here to day, between the Nationals, & the Olympics, both of this city, i went out to see them & enjoyed it very much when the game ended the score stood Nationals 21, Olympics 15 old Base Ball Players say it was one of the best games they ever saw.”
There are many kinds of summer, and as the Texas kind is ramping up to its customary intensity levels, I decided that I want to experience something different. So I read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. What a delightful and charming, and quietly fierce, oddball of a book. Here’s a typical passage:
Sophia knew that very small islands in the ocean have turf instead of soil. The turf is mixed with seaweed and sand and invaluable bird droppings, which is why everything grows so well among the rocks. For a few weeks every year, there are flowers in every crack in the granite, and their colors are brighter than anywhere else in the whole country. But the poor people who live on the green islands in toward the mainland have to make do with ordinary gardens, where they put their children to work pulling weeds and carrying water until they are bent with toil. A small island, on the other hand, takes care of itself. It drinks melting snow and spring rain and, finally, dew, and if there is a drought, the island waits for the next summer and grows its flowers then instead. The flowers are used to it, and wait quietly in their roots. There’s no need to feel sorry for the flowers, Grandmother said.
STATUS BOARD
- Work: Cranking away on my book, with the usual mixed results.
- Music: Mdou Moctar.
- Reading: John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness.
- Food: I am making breakfast casseroles these days. They stick to your ribs and get you through a demanding morning of writing.
- Drink: I continue to insist that the Frisco is the perfect cocktail: 1.5oz rye, .5oz lemon juice, .5oz Benedictine. Shake with ice and pour into a well-chilled coupé glass. You can bump the rye up to 2oz but you’ll need a slightly larger glass.