Some Tuesday Readings

Tweetspeak Poetry is on vacation this week, so I have no post today.

Some Tuesday Readings 

John Uodike’s “In the Beauty of the Lilies”: The Children – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Seasons Cusp – poem by Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

 

The Resignation – poem by Thomas Chatterton at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Two Poems from Mexico – Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

Photograph by Chen Mizrach via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Do You Surround Your Writing? And with What?

My wife and I have likely always been interested in art, but it’s become something more than an interest in the last few years.

In 1999, during a belated 25^th anniversary trip to Holland and France, we made sure to see the Rijksmseum in Amsterdam, if for no other reason than to see Rembrandt’s the Night Watch, then simply on display but today in its own special gallery. In Paris, we had to contend with the state workers (including museum workers) staging wildcat strikes (we quickly learned what “en strike” meant) but through constant rearranging of our schedule and a careful eye for what looked opened still managed to see The Louvre, the Musee D’Orsay and the Picasso Museum. Later that same year, on a business trip to Brussels, I hurried on arrival to see the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, despite severe jetlag.

In 2005, our week in Montreal included the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Three years later, while in Chicago to see my wife’s favorite singing duo Chad & Jeremy, we managed to find time for a joint exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago – Edward Hopper and Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light.

For the last three years, we’ve spent two weeks in England, mostly London, and discovered that art and new exhibitions never stop in that great international city.

In 2012, it was Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye at the Tate Modern; the Turner collection at the Tate Britain; the Courtauld Institute of Art; the Ashmolean in Oxford; and the National Gallery. Perhaps the highlight of all of it for me was finding a painting I fell in love with at the Tate Modern: Marguerite Kelsey by Meredith Frampton (1928). In 2013, we were able to see Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure at the National Gallery on its closing day; The Queen: Art & Image at the National Portrait Gallery (and the gallery itself); and L.S. Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at the Tate Britain.

This year, we were able to Late Turner: Painting Set Free at the Tate Britain; the Wallace Collection (including The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals); and the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. We had planned to see the John Constable exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum but my back problems (and the subsequent two days of vacation plans lost) forced us to drop it from the itinerary. We did manage to get to Blenheim Palace and not only see the palace but the Ai Weiwei exhibition there as well.

And this year, we didn’t have to travel at all to see a wonderful exhibition at our own St. Louis Art Museum, Impressionist France: Visions of Nation from LeGray to Monet.

Yes, art has become increasingly important to us. I’ve read that this is not uncommon s you get older. Perhaps it has to do with more leisure time (and grown children). But, for me, it also has to do with something else, and it took me a while to figure it out.

Art surrounds my writing.

Music has been a powerful influence on my two novels, but art surrounds virtually everything I write. I read a lot about artists; I love non-fiction works on painting thefts and frauds (not to mention movies like The Monuments Men). I just finished reading a book on the art of Anselm Kiefer and am currently reading one on the paintings and life of Edward Hopper. And it was not a coincidence that the Sarah, the heroine of Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, is an artist, and that her painting gets caught up in her crisis of faith.

This idea of what surrounds your writing is not an idle one. In On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, Charity Craig (co-author with Ann Kroeker) says this: “If I’m not surrounding myself with people and books and experiences that inspire and connect with me, I may be left wondering what to write about.”

For me, it’s art that surrounds my writing.

Illustrations: Top, Railroad Bridge, Argenteuil, oil on canvas by Claude Monet (1874, St. Louis Art Museum); lower right: Marguerite Kelsey, oil on canvas by Meredith Frampton (1928; Tate Modern); lower left, The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals (1624; The Wallace Collection). 

The Best Vacation(s) Ever

My friend Emily Wierenga has a new book coming out July 1 – Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. I pre-ordered on my Kindle; I’m hearing that the paperback version is already shipping, but I suppose I have to wait until July 1 for the Kindle maginc to happen.

Emily went traveling to find herself, and to fine home – Canada, Central America, the united States, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. And she posed a question to those of us interested in reading her book. Actually, she posed several. The one that intrigued me was what inspires you to travel?

I don’t really travel, at least in the sense Emily means. When I think of travelers, I think of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux or, more popularly, Rick Steves.

But we have been blessed in our married life to have taken some wonderful vacations.

Before kids came along, my wife worked for the Houston Chronicle in the department that did the travel section, and one time I got to tag along on one of her business trips to Hawaii (Maui, to be specific) for the price of my plane ticket. A few years later, as the result of recognition for a huge project I completed at work, she got to tag along on one of my business trips to Hawaii.

A tenth anniversary trip to London. A couple of family trips to Gulf Shores, Alabama. A week in Charleston, South Carolina when tourists had cancelled plans because of a hurricane scare; we held on to our reservations, the hurricane went north, and we had the city virtually to ourselves. A 25^th anniversary trip to Amsterdam and Paris. A week in Montreal (we loved Montreal; I was even able to do a bike ride along the St. Lawrence River and a nearby 15-mile canal).

If I had to pick a best trip, however, I would have to pick two – back-to-back trips to London, in 2012 and 2013, each trip about two weeks. The first one inspired the second one; I think them as one vacation with a pause in between.

In 2012, we arrived at the tail end of the Paralympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics; the Paralympics marathon passed right in front of our hotel on the south bank, right across the Thames from Parliament. And we went to the parade called by the Queen to honor the athletes of both events, joining millions of Londoners and Britons (and waving our British flags, too). We experienced perfect weather, too; I didn’t open the umbrella once the entire time. We did a side-trip to Oxford, and my wife fell in love with the place (me, too, truth be told). And our seats for the play version of Chariots of Fire in London’s West End were on the stage – we were part of the Olympic stadium “crowd.”

In 2013, our hotel was three blocks from Buckingham Palace and two blocks from Westminster Abbey. The room was wonderful, as was the breakfast they would serve in our room any morning we wanted it. The normal London weather had returned, however; it rained every day we were there. We didn’t care (much).This time, we took a side-trip to Canterbury. We got to see James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic Theatre. I spent a morning at the Charles Dickens House near Russell Square.

The back of Westminster Chapel as seen from our hotel room.

Two things happened on this trip that turned a wonderful vacation into something unexpected, and almost profound. I’ve written about them before. One was my Sunday morning visit to Westminster Chapel, a short half-block from our hotel. The congregation prayed out loud during the individual prayer time; I’d never seen or experienced anything like it.

The other was what happened during the daily 3 p.m. prayer time at Canterbury Cathedral. This is a daily event; all activity in the church stops for a few minutes as a prayer is said over a loudspeaker. I was standing next to a group of Japanese tourists (yes, with their cameras) and when we were invited to join in saying the Lord’s Prayer, they joined in as well, saying the Lord’s Prayer in English. To be standing in one of major sites of Christendom on the planet and saying the Lord’s Prayer with all the rest of the tourists was, most likely, the highlight of the entire trip.

We take vacations for any number of reasons – to get away, break the routine, see something we haven’t seen before. In a city like London, we are drawn to the museums (and especially the art museums), the theater, and day-trips to places we have read about but never experienced. And while our vacations have been exciting, stimulating, informing, and exhausting, the one I would call our best vacation was best because of prayer.

While this is a very different kind of travel from what Emily describes in her book, it appears we ended up in something of the same place.

If you have a great vacation story to tell, The High Calling wants to hear from. Check The High Calling's web site for information on submission and linkup.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I really did have to write essays in elementary school answering that question, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

Sometimes, answering the question was easy. “We went to Pensacola, Florida,” or “We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee” (this was before Gatlinburg was discovered and made over as a tourist mecca).

Those were the times when my parents had the financial resources to take a vacation. When they didn’t, my answer to the question might be “I spent a week with my aunt in the Ninth Ward” or “I spent a week with my grandmother in Shreveport.”

Except for my trips to Shreveport, our vacations were always by automobile. I can remember long trips to Washington, D.C., North Carolina, the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, and Parris Island, South Carolina when my older brother “graduated” from Marine boot camp. I can also remember short trips to Dallas (Six Flags!), Galveston (revisiting the one family vacation my father knew as a child), and Pensacola.

And on those long trips, I can remember asking – many times – for something to drink because I was thirsty. My father’s response was to hand me a cup of “imaginary water.”

Because me and my siblings were rather chronologically spaced out (eight years between me and older brother and ten years between me and my younger brother), there were a lot of vacations as an only child or as the oldest or youngest child by a wide margin. The benefit of that was a lack of sibling rivalry and fighting in the car. What I remember most about those long car rides was spending a lot of time reading or napping.

The memories I have of those vacations are largely good ones. I loved the mountains, and wading in mountain streams, and hiking up a nature trail in the Blue Ridge to suddenly come upon the entire Shenandoah Valley laid out before us. I also remember the massive traffic jams in Houston and Washington, D.C., and the severe sunburn in Florida. But vacations were good times, fun times, things I remember as fun and different, and things I could write about in September for the inevitable essay question.

Vacations have changed. Now they seem to have to be planned with all the strategic and tactical details of a battle plan. Life seems more complicated, or we’ve allowed it to become more complicated, including how we have to keep the kids from getting bored (which, of course, is the major horror of 21^st century culture – boredom).

In The Secrets of Happy Families, Bruce Feiler describes how he talked with the game maker Zynga about what to do to keep children occupied on vacations, particularly for those times when plans might go awry (traffic jams, delayed planes, thunderstorms closing the beach). But tension can happen even when things go well, and Feiler has some good ideas for that as well: “…worry less about eliminating the negatives and focus more on maximizing the positives. One easy way to do that: put away your phone, get down on your kids’ level, and play.”

I like that. Get down on your kids’ level and play.

This month at The High Calling, we’ve been discussing The Secrets of Happy Families. Check the site today to see what Seth Haines has to say about the final chapters in the book, covering vacations, sports, and family reunions.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

London

I’ve been mostly offline the past two weeks, although the blog (thanks to the scheduling feature) has been operating normally. We were on vacation in the UK, specifically London with a day trip to Oxford.

We were in London in 1983 for an early 10^th anniversary trip. Our oldest was three (and stayed with his grandparents in New Orleans). Our oldest now has his oldest who’s 2 ½ and his youngest who’s four months.

Much in London has changed in the intervening years – and much has stayed the same. What’s definitely changed is that the food has improved dramatically – we didn’t have a bad meal the entire time. For our 1983 trip, we can remember the one really good meal we had.

Some of the highlights:

 Seeing the J.M.W. Turner painting collection at the Tate Britain.

The Lewis chessman exhibit at the British Museum. And the Elgin marbles. And the “Shakespeare Staging the World” exhibit. And walks around Bloomsbury and Russell Squares.

An early Sunday morning walk along the south embankment from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Coffee and dinner with two online friends of my wife’s. Face-to-face still trumps online.

The parade through central London for the British Olympic and Paralympic teams. We waved our British flags along with about a million other people.

The evensong service at St. Martin’s in the Fields on Trafalgar Square.

The fireworks display at the conclusion of the River Thames Festival.

Seeing the stage play “Chariots of Fire” at the Gielgud Theatre (our seats were on the stage – we were part of the Olympic stadium). And then seeing Simon Callow in the one-man play “The Mystery of Charles Dickens” (he even did the public reading that Dickens was famous for – the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist).

Hearing my name called while I’m washing my hands in the men’s room at the National Gallery, and turning to find a friend from our church in St. Louis who was in London on business.

Victoria sponge cake at the restaurant in the Crypt of St. Martin’s in the Fields. Twice.

Christ Church College at Oxford (where the staircase and dining hall were used for the Harry Potter movies) and the Dickens exhibit at the Bodleian Library. And the Anglo-Saxon Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum.

The Buckingham Palace tour (the Queen does it first-rate).

Westminster Cathedral (the Catholic one, not the Abbey). I went to pick up a Pilates mat for my wife at a fitness store near Victoria Station and took a slight detour to see the cathedral. I stood in the back while a mass was going on – in Latin.

Walking around the craziness of the Jubilee Market in Covent Garden on a Sunday afternoon.

The weather. The one day London caught any rain at all was the day we were in Oxford – which had sunny skies.

The Edvard Munch art exhibit at the Tate Modern. The Poetry as Image Galleries at the Tate Modern.

The portraits of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare at the National Portrait Gallery, and dinner at the gallery’s rooftop restaurant overlooking Trafalgar Square.

T.S. Eliot’s grave in Westminster Abbey.

The view from the front door of our hotel: Parliament and Big Ben.

I wanted to see the Tate Modern Museum, but I didn’t expect to fall in love with it. I viewed the galleries on one visit, viewed the Munch exhibit on another visit, and hit it a third time to get a final glimpse of what was my favorite work in the entire museum – Marguerite Kelsey by Meredith Frampton (1928) (pictured at the top).

We also got to see three paintings by Vermeer – one in Buckingham Palace, one in the National Gallery, and the only one privately owned and currently on loan to the Ashmolean in Oxford. That’s about 10 percent of Vermeer’s total output.

I’m just about ready to go back (or maybe that’s residual jet lag).