Randy and I have a joint membership with the Atlanta Botanical Garden that’s about to expire. Before that happens (on April 30th), we wanted to use our free admission privileges to visit the ABG’s outpost in Gainesville, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta.
The trip – on a breezy, overcast day (perfect for our visit) – was well worth the drive. It’s been 9 years since this large acreage was donated to the ABG, so many of the plantings are at full maturity.
We both saw plants we’d never seen before, as well as stunning examples of plants we know and love (some of which are in our own home gardens). Although the cultivated portion of the Gainesville property (vs. its extensive woodlands) isn’t huge, the layout of the paved paths through several separate-but-connected gardens makes the place feel much bigger than it is, while still affording a leisurely pace and numerous excellent prospects.
The garden’s map/brochure says the garden’s specialties include columbines and hydrangeas, and those were certainly in abundance.
Rather than trying to remember the names of all the plants in the photos I took during our visit, I’m just posting them without any identification – and not in any particular order. Ditto the photos of various garden sculptures, ponds, whirligigs, etc. Enjoy!
Comments, with photos taken by Randy and me, on the who, when, where, why, and how of a recent 19-day trip to New Zealand.
Who went?
Me and my partner – and favorite traveling companion – Randy Taylor.
When did we go?
We left Atlanta on February 8th and arrived back in Atlanta on February 26th.
Why New Zealand? Why now?
Randy and I both like to travel. The destination itself isn’t particularly crucial: we’ve greatly enjoyed all our trips, both in the USA and our previous three trips overseas. (We became partners instead of being recently reconnected long-time acquaintances toward the end of a 2017 trip to Italy that we did together with three other friends. Randy and I traveled to Spain in 2018, and we went together – with two friends for part of our trip – to England in 2019.
The COVID pandemic put the kibosh on overseas travel – and any other kind of airplane-based travel – but throughout the pandemic, Randy and I continued speculating about Where We’d Like to Go (Overseas) Next.
If left to my own devices, I would probably choose to return again to one or all of my favorite four places on the planet that I’ve so far visited: the British Isles, Italy, France, and Greece. Randy would rather we visit places neither of us has been before – of which, of course, there are many candidates.
We brainstormed some of these candidates and came up with two Randy-criteria-meeting destinations – neither of them in Europe, and both of them suitably exotic, and therefore tempting, for both of us: Japan and New Zealand. (Exploring China’s natural wonders – though not its cities, and India’s cities – though not its countryside – have also long been on my Travel Bucket List, but I’ve decided I’m too old to embark on journeys to either of those countries unless I can find an affordable guided group tour to join, and neither of those places is near the top of Randy’s List.)
Randy’s pre-Cal enthusiasm for All Things Japanese and Randy’s reports of the amazing programs on the Tokyo-based English-language television station we get in Atlanta proved contagious, making Japan a close contender for Our Next Trip Abroad. However, I imagine the kind of trip I’d like to take to Japan would probably be more physically challenging than a trip to New Zealand – I keep flashing on Internet photos of the dozens of steps leading up to so many of those Japanese shrines and temples I’d love to visit – and I also discovered how far apart the many places in Japan I’d like to visit are, a fact that would require a much longer trip than either of us wanted to take just now. New Zealand seemed a more plausible – and less stressful and less expensive – trip than one to Japan.
For a long time, the only person I knew who had been to New Zealand was my friend Terry, who lives just outside of Washington, DC. Terry’s photos of his now-decades-ago multi-week road trip, plus the amazing scenery from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies that were largely filmed there, have kept New Zealand firmly near the top of my overseas travel fantasies.
Also, a few years ago, I very much enjoyed reading a 2005 memoir of a guy who moved himself and his family to New Zealand: Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand by Jeffrey Moussaiff Masson.
Plus, also a few years ago, Randy and I had met someone who actually lives in New Zealand: someone who’d traveled to aGay Spirit Visionsannual conference that Randy had spearheaded with the help of the GSV Council he was part of for three years. Damien is a kindred spiritual seeker who we’ve kept up with via Facebook and WhatsAp since that conference, and he offered to be our guide if we could spend some time in Auckland (New Zealand’s largest city).
Once Randy and I became aware of an affordable cruise ship vacation that docked at numerous New Zealand ports – and started in Auckland – we decided to go there, and that way. (Incidentally, Randy had never been on a cruise ship vacation before, and I had been on only one – a trip in 2010 with my friend Fred to various islands in the Caribbean.)
We booked a February trip mainly because Cal has, for decades, longed to somehow be out of Atlanta during February (his least favorite, because usually the coldest, month of the year). February is summertime in New Zealand!
What cruise line did we use, and where did it dock?
A video of one of the many YouTube videos providing a tour (and critique) of the ship we booked, the Celebrity Edge:
Here are two photos of the cabin we reserved and slept in for 10 nights. That huge bed was super-comfortable – and the cabin’s (unpictured) tiny-but-not-too-tiny bathroom was completely satisfactory:
So how was the trip?
Definitely worth every penny – even though this was far and away the most expensive overseas trip I’ve ever taken. (More on that anon.)
New Zealand definitely lives up to its reputation as a near-pristine scenic wonderland, with extraordinarily (almost surreally!) friendly people, really interesting cities and towns, an amazing and unique ecosystem, and an interesting aboriginal and colonial (and post-colonial) history. Both Maori and modern, non-Maori art and architecture are abundant and astonishing.
Once we’d booked our cruise and the flights there and back (using Randy’s AAA travel agents for arranging both), we prepared for our trip in various ways, including bingeing on dozens of YouTube videos about New Zealand (the numerous scenic wonders of both islands, The Top Ten Must-See Sights, Why You Will Want to Move to New Zealand, Ten Reasons to Not Move to New Zealand, etc.) Also inspiring were the photos of a similar cruise to New Zealand that a Facebook friend had posted of his and his partner’s cruise there last spring, and the photos taken and tales told by a longtime friend of mine who’d just spent several recent weeks touring New Zealand with his girlfriend in a rental car.
Highlights?
Both Auckland (at the beginning of the cruise) and Sydney (at the end of it) were delightful surprises. Both are spectacularly situated, both are exhilaratingly full of green spaces and large pedestrian-friendly areas, and both feature arresting, modern architecture mixed in with scrupulously preserved historical facades. And both cities are so clean and vibrant! We spent only two days in each of these cities, but we managed to cover a lot of ground in both, and I’d definitely welcome the prospect of visiting either of them for a longer stay.
Also exceptionally wonderful was our Auckland rendezvous with Damien, and participating in one of the lunches and a very moving post-lunch heart circle (aka sharing session) that Damien hosts every day (!) for GLBTQ people in Auckland who are interested in forming a spiritual community there.
The time we spent with the hosts of the B&B where we stayed in Auckland (which we booked through Mister B&B, a gay travel app) was also a superb experience: Terry and Adem were fantastic hosts, and the views from their penthouse condo overlooking the city were mesmerizing.:
With the help of our B&B hosts, we managed to visit two museums in Auckland in our brief stay there, both of them wonderful. The first, the spectacularly-sited War Memorial Museum, was our first exposure to Maori artifacts:
Because we’d seen some photos taken by my friend David (during his recent trip to NZ) of an exhibit of astonishing dresses designed by the Chinese designer Guo Pei at the Auckland Art Gallery, we shoehorned in a visit to this gallery and were gobsmacked by what we saw. (Easily where we took more pictures of a single place throughout the whole trip.)
There was also plenty of non-Maori art in this fabulous museum. A few of my favorites:
We also spent a few lovely hours in a couple of wonderful parks in Auckland, one of them directly behind the Gallery:
Our Day Trip to the West Coast
We rented a car in Auckland so Damien could show us a chunk of the West Coast of New Zealand (which our cruise ship didn’t cover), and so we could visit a couple of inland towns before boarding the cruise ship.
Our car trip to the West, a mere hour’s drive from the city (albeit driving on the left side of the roadway!), was pleasant and fun and suitably scenic, featuring wonderful views of the rugged coastline, a nice picnic and snooze, and, for Randy, a little hike into the forest adjacent to our picnic spot.
Our Car Trip to Rotorua and Environs
The following day, having said our farewells to Damien, we headed to Rotorua, a three-hour drive south from Auckland. Our main goals there were to visit a Maori cultural center and see some of the nearby geysers and volcanic hot pools.
Some of these geysers and hot pools are located in the Maori village we visited, and where we attended a Maori singing and dance performance.
After spending the night at a motel in Rotorua, we drove to the semi-remote, carefully preserved, and extremely popular village set of the Hobbit movies, which Randy toured for a couple of hours (and which he loved) while Cal stayed behind in the very pleasant “Hobbiton” cafe munching on an almond croissant and working a few crossword puzzles.
We then pointed our rental car toward the semi-nearby site of an unusual waterfall that our Auckland B&B hosts had recommended we try to see:
Next we drove back to Rotorua for another night at our motel (after another lovely dinner in town a delightful pedestrian-only sector of town). The following morning we explored some of the non-Maori sectors of Rotorua, including a temporarily-closed-for-renovations art museum and the lovely government gardens surrounding it, plus brief stop at Rotorua’s famous lakeside.
We chose a more scenic route back to Auckland to return our rental car and board our cruise ship. Somewhere along this road is where I think we stopped at yet another cute-as-a-button town for al fresco hamburgers and stops at several local thrift stores (one of which was housed in three buildings shaped like farm animals).
As for our two days in Sydney at the end of our cruise, we enjoyed it as much, or possibly even more than, Auckland. After a brief tour of the beautiful and delightful and delightfully crowded harbor area . . .
. . . we eventually located the starting place of one of those Hop On/Hop Off tour buses (with rooftop seating). We used the bus to get an overview of this amazing (and sprawling) city; there was a lot to see, and fortunately the bus route was quite extensive. The route took us through Bondi Beach, where I’ve never seen more humans per square inch of beach, and through streets there and elsewhere filled with houses and shops that made one fantasize about moving there immediately. (Which many millionaires have, in fact, done – ditto the residential areas of Auckland’s Mission Bay beach area.)
Before leaving the city center, we boarded a municipal ferry to nearby Manley Island for a leisurely beach-side sunset meal (which neither of us was able to finish, the portions were so huge).
After enjoying the sunset, we returned to Sydney and Ubered to our unremarkable but immaculate B&B near the airport:
And the cruiseitself?
Well, the ship was ginormous. As the captain described it, not a “floating hotel,” but a full-fledged “floating resort.” Built in 2018 at a cost of 1 billion dollars ( ! ) and refurbished in 2023, its sixteen decks accommodate 3,000 passengers (including a 1,300-member crew). Here’s a photo Randy took of the ship after we docked in Sydney:
Every day of the cruise itself was full of visual and culinary adventures. Not only were we liberally sampling the bountiful, delicious, and artfully presented daily breakfast and lunch buffets, but we twice had dinner at each of the four freebie restaurants. We also enjoyed impressive shows every night in the ship’s massive high-tech theater (complete with amazing projections behind the performers). Randy used the ship’s complimentary gym (and its spectacular views at the front of the ship) several times and sampled one of the ship’s several whirlpools. As planned, Cal worked (well, tried to work) multiple Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles from a compendium of same that he had purchased specifically for this cruise (along with reading parts of several of the six books he packed).
While onboard, one definitely felt the presence of a hoard of people, especially at mealtimes and theater performances. On the other hand, one can only wish that more U.S. government institutions and corporations would subject their employees to whatever customer service training this ship’s crew went through, given the level of helpfulness and efficiency shown by this multicultural band of hosts. The ratio of staff to passengers was astounding.
Tauranga
Our first port stop along the eastern coast of the North Island, I don’t remember much about it, other than the several hours we spent touring a beautifully restored Victorian-era missionary house and its wonderful gardens:
Napier
Our second port was probably our favorite, not only because, after an earthquake during the 1930s, the town center had been rebuilt in the Art Deco style, but because the town’s annual Art Deco festival was in full swing the day we disembarked. It was so delightful to gawk at the building facades and gander at the costumed townspeople and all the antique cars on display. We also watched part of a play at the town bandstand along Napier’s parklike shoreline:
While in Napier, we also stopped in several art galleries and saw some splendid art there . . .
. . . and we lucked into an antique show in town that was fun to browse in (and that Randy bought some stuff at), plus an antique store that Randy popped into while I waited outside and enjoyed watching several more dozen passersby of all ages bedecked in Art Deco attire.
Picton
The first port on New Zealand’s southern island:
Besides touring a few of the art galleries there (where we saw some impressive art and where Randy bought himself a print) . . .
. . . and where we lucked upon an arts and crafts festival near the town’s main marina:
I think it was also in Picton that we finally treated ourselves to some justly-famous New Zealand ice cream.
Dunedin
Maybe our second-favorite port o’ call, after Napier?
We loved one of the art museums/art galleries we toured there. Some of my favorite works:
We also took a Dunedin city bus to the town’s botanical gardens, which we saw maybe a fifth of with the time we had before needing to report back to the ship.
We had just enough time before leaving Dunedin, however, to tour Dunedin’s Chinese Garden:
Fjordland National Park: Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound, Milford Sound
The scenic climax of the cruise was its final day off the southwest coast of the Southern Island. We spent the entire day (between meals, that is) gazing off the deck at three different areas of Fjordland National Park. These three fjords are similar and are similarly spectacular, so I’m not totally sure which photos are of which fjords, but I don’t think it matters much: they were all wonderful to behold. So unspoiled – or intentionally restored – to its pre-colonial appearance: what a national treasure- what an international treasure, this parkland.
More photos and information about Fjordland is here. You might also watch this stunning, unnnarated 3-minute YouTube video:
Or watch this even more stunning 11-minute video:
Watching either or both of these YouTube videos will surely convey more than our photos can about why we were so looking forward to this part of our cruise.
Incidentally, because the weather was so unusually sunny while we were cruising through Fjordland, we didn’t see as many waterfalls as there are depicted in the videos: the Fjordland we saw was sun-drenched instead of saturated with mist!
Any disappointments?
No disappointments in New Zealand (or about Sydney), but we did find the cruise ship excessively huge. (We wisely chose a cabin close to elevators and the cabin also happened to be on the same level as the theater.) And we both were disappointed (and mystified) at how few (if any?) other gay people were on our cruise ship. (If there were any, we never met them.) I think I saw three kids under twelve, total. But lots of adults travelling in fairly large groups. Cal had fun with his habit of making up stories about what these people’s lives were like back home (which for many meant Australia or the UK), and how they’d come to book this cruise.
The weather throughout our trip (including, remarkably, during our travels through Fjordland) was near-perfect, with one exception. Stormy weather in the Christchurch harbor prevented us from docking there, and that was decidedly disappointing: we had heard a lot about Christchurch from Damien, who’d lived there for a while, and we’d pre-booked a land tour from Christchurch – actually, a city tour and river speedboat ride that I was really looking forward to, based on several YouTube videos I’d seen before our trip. We were reimbursed for the canceled excursion, but that was hardly worth the disappointment of missing whatever’s worth seeing in Christchurch, or missing the thrills of that speedboat ride.
And then there was the totally unwelcome testing-positive-for-COVID during the final two days of our cruise. A definite bummer, that. Fortunately, both Randy and I had gotten our doctors to prescribe symptom-minimizing meds for us in case this happened, and the meds worked fast and well, but we still were required to quarantine in our cabin the final two days of our cruise, so we missed out on two theater performances we had hoped to see, and we and the other COVID quarantinees were the last to be escorted from the ship (giving us less time to spend in Sydney).
The upside of this unexpected, short-lived COVID episode was two days of free room service for our meals and free Internet service, both of which were otherwise extortionately priced (would you believe $50 per day per person for an Internet connection?). By the time the cruise ship docked at Sydney (after two days at sea), we felt fine.
How about those long airline flights? As gruesome as expected?
The 13-hour flight to Auckland (after a 4-hour flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles) was not as stressful as I’d imagined. I like to think that using American Airlines (instead of Delta) was part of the reason (more legroom?). The flights back (with another 5-hour layover in Los Angeles) were, for some reason, more of an ordeal. Having a wheelchair for Randy at all the airports was really helpful (and a time-saver, as we skipped all the long lines at security, customs, and passport control and minimized the stress at baggage pickup and waiting for our Uber rides at the Auckland and Sydney and Atlanta airports). I would definitely revisit New Zealand (or Sydney) again without any undue dreading of the long airline flights (during which we each watched about three movies and had pretty decent meals).
How much did this splendid adventure cost?
I had guessed back in November that this trip would probably cost us approximately $5,000 each, and I was right about that. That includes the $1,780 cruise, the mandatory $18/day per person for tips for cruise personnel, the $1,900 roundtrip airline flights from Atlanta, $300 for trip insurance, the cost of the two B&Bs we rented and our two nights in a Rotorua motel, the cost (including gas) of a three-day car rental, the meals and snacks we ate during port visits or port excursions or at airports, our multiple Uber transports, museum admissions (although an astonishing number of NZ museums are free), and the few gifts we bought for ourselves or for friends.
We saved money on the cruise by booking a lower, sea-view-level cabin with a medium-sized window instead of a full balcony on a higher deck – although, since we spent so little time in our room (apart from the unexpected COVID quarantine time), we didn’t regret that choice. We also economized by stubbornly eschewing the costly (and very prevalent) alcohol consumption on offer throughout the cruise, the privilege of eating at any of the ship’s numerous “exclusive” restaurants, buying specialty coffees (and, amazingly, ice cream!), the spa treatments, the photography studio, the casino, the swanky shopping mall, the expensive cruiseline-sponsored shore excursions and the non-free on-ship tours, skipping access to the top-deck “resort area,” etc. The extent to which Celebrity (and probably all cruise lines) nickel-and-dime their passengers for these extras, including per-item laundry fees and the aforementioned Intenet connection fees, is staggering to this budget-conscious traveler. But all those extras are totally avoidable (except maybe the laundry I needed to do – or maybe didn’t, as I certainly packed more clothes for this trip than I ended up wearing).
As much as we enjoyed our 10-day vacation from household chores (including ten days worth of preparing meals and keeping our two houses habitable), I’ll be surprised if Randy and I take another big-ship cruise. Perhaps we’ll decide instead to book one of those river cruises in the Mediterranean (or up the Nile River?) on a much, much smaller boat? Of course, such a cruise would probably cost more than the roughly $200/day per person this trip cost us. But, still, unpacking-once cruising is a delightful way to get around. As Randy and I get older, the high per-day cost of even budget-minded overseas travel is becoming more tolerable for me (whose target per-day cost of post-retirement living at home, incidentally, is $100/day: a target I do sometimes actually reach!)
Would we recommend a trip to New Zealand?
Unreservedly, and even if there’s no cruise involved. It’s a small country, an unusual country, a beautiful one, an environmentally-conscious and aboriginal-appreciating one, and its sparse population is full of almost unimaginably friendly – and mostly English-speaking – people. I’d love to see New Zealand again, and more of it. Ditto Sydney. I’m thrilled that people I know have either been there before or are going there themselves this very month – one friend for almost a month, and another for his second trip there.
[This is an expanded and updated version, with photos and hyperlinks, to the most recent edition of the annual newsletter I mail out to friends and family every Winter Solstice.]
Significant Milestones
This year I passed the tenth anniversary of my retirement from working 30+ years as a librarian. I marked this astonishing fact by posting to my blog what may be my final thoughts on what this latest chapter of my life has felt like as it gradually unfolded into the New Normal – and highly gratifying – pattern it has become. The main takeaway from these past ten years is that I’ve enjoyed so much Not Working A Full-time Job that I still hope I never, ever find myself forced to return to wage slavery, even part-time.
2023 was also my final stint serving as volunteer librarian for the local congregation of Quakers – something I’ve been doing for the past 27 (!) years. Handing off this responsibility to someone else has been a goal for many years, and I couldn’t be happier with the person – also a professional librarian, and a much younger one than I am – who’ll be stepping in to take on this interesting task in January 2024. This welcome development will free me up to take on sooner rather than later volunteer librarian duties for Atlanta’s calligraphy guild.
On September 29th, Randy and Cal celebrated our 6th anniversary as partners – we’d been friends for several decades.
Out-of-Town Excursions
Yet another post-pandemic year passed without Randy and I making another trans-Atlantic trip together. (This is something we hope to compensate for in February 2024 with a cruise around New Zealand.)
We did, however, leave Georgia a few times in 2023:
In October, we decamped for a week on Amelia Island (near Jacksonville, Florida) for a Gough siblings-and-partners family reunion at my sister Lori’s beach house.
Randy and I – usually with various friends – also continued our approximately-once-a-month sojourns at the cabin in the mountains of north Georgia that I’ve co-owned with friends for the past 24 years.
In-Town Activities and Routines
Randy and I continue our now-six-year-old arrangement of maintaining separate (2 miles/10 minutes apart) households, and spending apart one day and night each week.
Throughout the past year, I have continued my involvement in various networks or organizations that I’ve been pursuing for many years now:
Once-a-week classes (all via Zoom since the COVID-19 pandemic) with a local tai chi teacher. Tai chi is something I’ve done for the past 15 years, and consider super-important for my well-being. These classes, the little gardening that I get around to doing, and a short daily walk around the neighborhood – plus the twice-weekly swimming Randy and I have been doing since July – are the only exercising I do.
Weekly attendance at the silent meditation meetings of the local Quaker congregation (something I’ve done, off and on, since the mid-1970s).
Monthly meetups (these days via Zoom) with a group of ten GSV buddies (including Randy) who this year read and discussed Eckhart Tolle’s teachings in his book A New Earth.
Monthly meetings (via Zoom) of the local calligraphy guild, and, this past year, quite a few Zoom workshops on various calligraphic topics.
Monthly potlucks with a group of six people (including Randy and me) who are exploring together the vicissitudes of getting older – something we’ve been doing together for the past couple of years.
Monthly in-person potlucks with the book club Randy and I are part of.
Frequent all-afternoon get-togethers with several local GSV folks (including Randy and me) who enjoy playing the Canadian card game Wizard.
Housekeepery Update
Although (knock on wood) my antique HVAC system somehow survived yet another season of hot and cold weather, my (second) washing machine finally gave up the ghost, so replacing it and repairing some leaky plumbing and plumbing fixtures in the kitchen and bathroom of my old house set me back a few thousand dollars.
This past summer I rearranged my sun porch – a primary daytime reading perch for Cal:
I replaced a chair in this room with a bookcase that belonged to one of my grandmothers, to hold the largest part of the collection of gardening books that I keep in this room.
I added a set of shelves to accommodate the cuttings I root each winter from my outdoor coleus and Persian Shield plants.
I installed a large baker’s rack that I found during my trip this year to Amelia Island. The rack accommodates more indoor plants and allows me to overwinter more outdoor plants.
Garden Report
Outside my tiny house, I also invested a few thousand dollars this past summer on my garden shed: replacing a set of doors, installing gutters, and replacing a trellis. Before and after photos of the new doors:
In March, I replaced a rotting and ratty-looking trellis behind one of my five (!) outdoor sitting areas with a bamboo fence whose current stark appearance will I hope will be eventually softened with swaths of creeping fig. Before and after photos:
After building this past spring an extension of the rock wall along my driveway . . .
. . . the back yard also now sports a long-envisioned – albeit rather small and somewhat unkempt-looking – cottage garden area.
There are several new plantings in the portion of the front yard, despite the fact that most of the front yard has been completely colonized by a (pleasing-to-me) host of giant ferns. The newest plant out there, centered in the living room window: a still-tiny Japanese maple that (gardening procrastinator that I am) I finally got around to planting on Christmas Eve. It’s supposed to retain its brilliant red leaves for most of the year, so I look forward to being able to see it one day from inside the house, once it grows tall enough to reach the living room window-sill!
Health Report
Although my general health remains remarkably good for someone who turned 75 this year, I’m now seeing three (!) specialists who are monitoring various troublesome body parts. The year’s Most Memorable Medical Moment was the apparently inevitable prostate biopsy (and an unexpected catheter-involving cystoscopy), but the lab results from those decidedly invasive procedures were not serious enough for my urologist to – so far, anyway – recommend any treatment.
Miscellaneous Notes
This is the year I would’ve paid off the 3o-year mortgage to my house – if, that is, I hadn’t refinanced the mortgage several times to obtain lower interest rates. As things stand now, I’ll make my final mortgage payment when I turn 100!
I’ve continued my semi-recent fascination with putting together jigsaw puzzles as either a form of silent meditation or the perfect low-key indoor project to do with a group of friends who are spending time with Randy and me at the cabin (or at the rental house on St. George Island). The jigsaws completed this past year:
Among the hundreds of hours Randy and I spent watching streaming television series this past year via Acorn, Amazon, Britbox, Kanopy, Netflix, and PBS Passport, we heartily recommend All the Light We Cannot See, Annika, Brokenwood Mysteries, The Chelsea Detective, Doc Martin, Happy Valley, Heartstopper, House of Flowers, Lupin, Merlí: Sapere Aude, Queen Charlotte, and Sex Education. (If you haven’t already seen them, we also highly recommend the series we watched during the pandemic that are still available.)
Again this year I compiled a CD of instrumental – and intentionally non-Christmasy – music to give to people as Solstice gifts. Also again this year, Randy used his color printer to create the labels and case covers of the CD, which are based on a painting by the Japanese artist Saitou Kazu (a 53-year-old Japanese artist my friend Franklin introduced me to many years ago). This annual CD-making project was made substantially easier this year by my discovery of software that allows one to download the audio portion of any YouTube video onto one’s computer! (Who knew that YouTube featured so much music?) Especially gratifying for this year’s CD is the fact that I am finally able to include the music to the mesmerizing end credits of the movie The Great Beauty; I was also pleased to include a track by a favorite New Age composer of mine, George Winston, who died this past year. If you didn’t get one of these CDs and would like one, please let me know and I’ll mail a copy to you. And if you got one but your copy (or a copy of an earlier Solstice CD) is in any way defective, let me know and I’ll send you a replacement. (And if you got a CD from me this year but no longer have a way to play the thing, let me know that so I’ll know next year not to send you one.)
Losses – Personal and Otherwise
In Memoriam
Ken Saunders(valued former therapist) – 9/22/1949 – 2/22/2023
Mark McLeod(a friend from the Cal & Harvey era) – 5/29/1954 – 1/21/2023
As I mentioned in last year’s newsletter, one of the disconcerting things about getting older is the permanent disappearance not only of former or current personal friends and acquaintances, but also the deaths of several literary or performing arts or social activist heroes and heroines whose work had for decades been taken-for-granted chunks of my mental life. This past year, the most unwelcome celebrity deaths included:
As is the case with me every year, a goodly portion of 2023 was devoted to my primary – and, alas, decidedly sedentary – pastime: reading books. (The bad news: These days, my reading spells are almost always interrupted by a nap – sometimes by two naps! ) To help jog my faulty memory and for the general edification of my book-loving friends, I posted to my blog mini-reviews of the 32 books that I finished reading this past year.
Also, in addition to faithfully reading several excellent daily online newsletters (among them Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition, Diane Richardson’s Letters from an American, and Maria Popova’s The Marginalian), along with several non-daily newsletters (such as L.M. Sacasas’ The Convivial Society), I’ve been more successful this year than most in keeping up with the weekly or monthly printed issues of my two favorite magazines: The Sun (which this year celebrated its 50th anniversary, and of which Calvin owns the entire run of issues from the magazine’s beginning) and The New Yorker.
Last-minute postscript for my reading friends: The Checklist of Books Cal Wants to Read (actually, it’s two lists: a fiction list and a much longer nonfiction list) abruptly expanded late this month when I chanced upon recommendations for eleven (nonfiction) books read in 2023 by the aforementioned Maria Popova (she of The Marginalian). I want to read Every. Single. One! If you’re in the market for some fantastic-sounding books to read in 2024, Maria’s persuasive summaries of her recommendations are here.
Year-End Holiday Doings
We spent Thanksgiving Day with Randy’s brother and their 94-year-old mom at her house in a suburb north of Atlanta, then drove to my sister Gayle’s house in Blairsville, Georgia for another extended family Thanksgiving gathering.
We hosted friends at my place for an annual Winter Solstice Tea Party. Photos of some of the festoonery (although I forgot to take a photo of the delectables – some of them home-made by Randy or brought by various guests, that were on offer at the tea table!):
We’ve been guests at the houses of several friends for their holiday celebrations, and, after another Christmas Day visit with Randy’s mom Jane, we plan (as we do most years) to de-camp to the snugness of the mountain cabin to see out the old year.
Coda: A Sentiment for the Winter Solstice
This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.
This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions – the worship of the sun.
Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.
The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.
This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.
All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.
Let us all hope for the triumph of Light – of Right and Reason – for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.
And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.
– Robert G. Ingersoll (excerpt from “The Agnostic Christmas,” December 25, 1892)
Randy and I wish for you and those you love a Happy Solstice and a serene and gratitude-filled new year!
The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (2005) by Juhani Pallasmaa
What a revelation, this little book! A mere 80 pages long (including 8 pages of notes), this Finnish architect’s reflections on how most modern architecture typically ignores the non-visual aspects of experiencing built structures/spaces reminds me of the way I felt when I was reading Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space – a book, like this one, that I knew as I was reading it that I’d need to buy a copy of so I could re-read it again and again – not only for these books’ rich, provocative ideas, but, in this case, also for the references to other books I now need to track down and read: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible and his Sense and Non-Sense, Ashley Montague’s Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Edward T. Hall’s The Hidden Dimension, Kent C. Bloomer’s and Charles W. Moore’s Body, Memory and Architecture, Bachelard’s The Poetics of Reverie, Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, David Seamon’s and Robert Mugerauer’s Dwelling, Place & Environment, and David Michael Levin’s anthology Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision.
Biography / Memoirs / Letter Collections
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) by Albert Jay Nock
This book is the most recently read example of a tiny category of books that I find simultaneously irresistible and alarming. Irresistible because the writing is so absorbing and/or whose arguments are so appealing; alarming because the sentiments expressed feature values I do not share and/or am adamantly opposed to. Other authors whose books struck me similarly are G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Christopher Hitchens, and Frederick Buechner. These authors are immensely persuasive and enormously talented, and the values they espouse challenge practically all my hide-bound liberal notions of how to live, what to believe, what’s good for (or bad for) a society of humans, etc. Nock was a deliberately fame-eschewing writer who firmly believed in conservative values that, in my opinion, and if adopted at face value, would lead to all sorts of oppressive, white-supremacy-privileging arrangements and practices. But his main arguments – that human nature is unchanging, that the arena of politics has supplanted the medieval sway of the organized church’s influence, that most people are irremediably, hopelessly ineducable, etc. fly in the face of what I believe that I find it difficult to take seriously. Despite his wish to look upon the human comedy/tragedy with unflinching realism, argues for attitudes that, for my part, are way too convenient for the current champions of the status quo, and reveal a view of human possibility that seems excessively bleak and limited for me to adopt. That said, this is an amazing book, and I doubt that I will ever forget, or be able to easily dismiss, his “observations” about the stubborn repetitiveness (he claims predictability) of human history, the resulting inevitability of (mostly greed-driven) warmongering, etc. Writing in the 1940s in the middle of World War II, Nock sees all the signs of the waning of yet another empire (the British one) giving way to the next one (the American empire). Much of Nock’s analysis – especially with respect to the persistent existence of the merchants of war and the charade of nationalism – seems irrefutable; it’s his remedies and his attitude of resignation and indifference, especially in the political arena, that I find difficult to internalize. Still, it was refreshing to see how deeply he penetrates the unflattering truths behind the veneer of political idealism that liberals like me are so often uncritical of. If I had my way, all my friends would read this book, as it stands as a corrective restraint on the romantic, unrealistic notions of progress-envisioning reform and revolutionary movements and ideals. Many, many passages of Nock’s book are clearly destined for various sections of my Commonplace Book, and I can say this of very few books I’ve read. And I suspect that I will be “haunted” by some of Nock’s depressing “observations” for the rest of my days – another thing I can’t say about many books.
Orwell’s Roses (2021) by Rebecca Solnit
Having already read with enormous pleasure and admiration Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby and Wanderlust: A History of Walking, I was happy to learn recently that she’d published another book. I was not disappointed. Solnit’s unique writing style could make interesting virtually any topic she’d chosen to write about; the fact that she decided to write about George Orwell made getting hold of a library copy of Orwell’s Roses a priority for me. As she does in some of her other books, Solnit approaches her biographee obliquely, focusing on her discovery that Orwell happened to be an avid gardener as well as a major journalist, social critic, and prophet. I particularly like the way Solnit weaves together her musings about the numerous ironies and paradoxes of Orwell’s career, personality, and hobbies and the history of the various subjects connected with Orwell’s career that other authors would probably consider tangential or irrelevant to their reflections on this important author’s life and work. I also like the way Solnit fills her writing with subtle foreshadowing and flashbacks to different parts of the stories she chooses to tell, and the often-unexpected links she makes between these aspects of her stories. I learned a lot about a lot of things besides Orwell – things about Stalin, about the Spanish Civil War, about roses, and about gardening. I also came away from Solnit’s book with a heightened ambivalence about All Things British: post-Solnit, I am even more conflicted than I was before about the uncomfortable mixture in my brain of my (and Solnit’s) Anglophilia with our Anglophobia. One of my longstanding reading goals has been to eventually track down and read all of Solnit’s twenty (!) books: she’s that good of an observer of modern life and that good a writer. Her latest book is so rich that I’ve decided I need to buy a copy so I can read it again someday (and mine it for quotations on numerous topics to add to Cal’s Commonplace Book).
William Cowper: Selected Letters (1989) edited by James King and Charles Ryskamp
As with many of the books I decide to track down and read, I learned about Cowper (1731-1800) and his legendary letters from repeated citations over several years in different blogposts written by my favorite “biblioblogger,” Patrick Kurp. This collection – with its indispensable and excellent explanatory endnotes – represents less than one-tenth of Cowper’s letters that have survived. My first attempt at reading them wasn’t very rewarding. Perhaps because the language seemed a bit too remote, although I may’ve merely become beguiled by some other, less antique book. After a pause of several months, I plunged into Cowper’s letters again, and am glad I did. After a while, his writing style changed from rather stilted to totally charming. Cowper was an odd, lonely, tortured soul, a victim of a burdensome combination of religious piety (i.e., chronic guilt) and some version of mental illness (which led to, among other things, frequent bouts of debilitating melancholy, four suicide attempts, and a two-year stint in an asylum. That his letters are, in the words of the editors’ preface, “renowned for their seemingly effortless spontaneity, intimacy, and delicacy” is a miracle, given his mental afflictions. Cowper wrote his letters in a remarkable-for-its-time conversational style. As the editors note, they are filled with gossip, village news, advice, humorous anecdotes, and self-reflection. Above all, the letters display a lively mind monitoring itself and reporting its discoveries of the little joys of daily existence in a correspondingly lively manner.” Letters, diaries, and memoirs (particularly by writers and artists) constitute a consistent and significant portion of the kind of books I most enjoy reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to this transporting (if sometimes, because of Cowper’s painful mental condition, sad) glimpse into the unique sensibility of this 18th century British poet.
On a Barge in France (2016) by Harvey Schwartz
Found this at a library book sale and instantly bought it for two reasons: (1) I’m interested in reading any account of anybody’s journey down a European canal (something I’ve done myself three times now, and would love to do again), and (2) The author’s name happens to be identical with one of my former partner’s! I was not disappointed: Schwartz (a retired lawyer from Ipswich, Massachusetts) is a talented author (he’s also written a couple of novels), the book is full of well-described details about the ways and means of canal boat navigation, his and his wife Sandra’s adventures are interesting, and his commentary on the peculiar (well, to Americans anyway) customs of France are often hilarious as well as informative. Schwartz’s memoir of their four summers and a single winter in their boat in France was a lark that I didn’t want to come to an end. I hope that one day there will be a sequel!
Avid Reader: A Life (2016) by Robert Gottlieb
I didn’t know anything about Robert Gottlieb until I read his New York Times obituary (he died earlier this year). That obituary and various other tributes to him mention Gottlieb’s autobiography, and the title alone was enough to get me to quickly track down a library copy. Now that I’ve finished this totally enthralling book, I may need to buy myself a copy, not only to lend it to anyone who ever asks me to recommend “a good book,” but to trawl through the text again for some of the titles and/or authors Gottlieb either loved reading himself – or whose books Gottlieb edited. Actually, as I devoured this excellent, absorbing story, I realized that I have already read many of the books Gottlieb edited (or mentions as among his favorites).
Why did I find this book so unputdownable? Because its subject – behind-the-scenes anecdotes and gossip about the publishing world, and rapturous praise for the author’s favorite books – is precisely my favorite reading material. Usually, those kinds of books are about British publishing history and/or literary gossip; Gottlieb’s book is about mostly (though not exclusively) American publishing history and/or literary gossip, so I am more familiar with its (and in Gottlieb’s case, vast) cast of characters.
Truth be told, Gottlieb’s career as a sought-after, well-respected, hard-working, world-trotting book editor (first at Simon and Schuster, later at Knopf), and his five-year stint as editor of one of my two favorite magazines (The New Yorker) ignited frequent fantasies of wishing I had lived Gottlieb’s extraordinarily charmed life (complete with his houses in Manhattan, New England, and Paris) instead of my own, which, though as book-besotted as Gottlieb’s, has been much more prosaic and uneventful (and lived almost exclusively in Atlanta, Georgia). But reading this wonderful book, with its glimpses into a world so well-described (and so self-depreciatingly so) is The Next Best Thing. Gottlieb was obviously a gifted editor, but he was also a gifted writer himself. I’ll be tracking down and reading several of his other books, and will never forget how much I loved reading this one. Highly, unreservedly recommended to every “avid reader” on the planet, and easily the best book I’ve read this year.
Modern Nature (1994) by Derek Jarman
This memoir was one of several published by the controversial British filmmaker (and prolific writer and painter and AIDS activist). This book chronicles Jarman’s life from January 1989 to September 1990. Having seen only a few of Jarman’s many movies, I must’ve become interested in tracking down this book after finding out (perhaps through a magazine article or website or television documentary?) that Jarman spent his final years living and gardening at a small, restored fisherman’s cottage on a bleak, windswept stretch of beach within sight of a huge and hideous nuclear power station. The journal is excellently written but difficult to read, given the horrific physical challenges and homophobia Jarman was coping with in the years left to him following his AIDS diagnosis in 1986. A gifted writer, Jarman’s journal alternates between describing his daily activities as a still-struggling filmmaker (despite his fame by this time in his life), his love of gardening, and flashbacks to various parts of his earlier life (including his time in other gardens he had made). I was glad to discover, after reading this morning on the Internet more about Jarman and about Modern Nature, that shortly after Jarman’s death in 1994, actress Tilda Swinton and others quickly raised the money necessary to preserve Jarman’s house and garden. I would love to visit this site one day, as Jarman’s evocation of this unusual, seemingly inhospitable place into a nurturing refuge is so vividly captured in this captivating memoir. (Click here for some 2020 photos of Jarman’s garden.)
Madame de Sevigne: Selected Letters (1982) translated from the French by Leonard Tancock
Over the decades of my adult reading life I kept seeing references praising the various excellences of this French aristocrat’s letters, and had made many a mental note to track them down someday. While browsing in a bookstore last week, I fell upon a discounted copy of one of the many collections available. I’m glad I did that, as reading these letters was totally diverting, despite how old these letters are (de Sevigne died in 1696) and how far removed from my experience hers were (de Sevigne was part of Louis XIV’s court). Tancock’s selection comprises a mere 1/10th of de Sevigne’s total epistolary output, and most of the letters selected were written to her grown daughter, but the mixture of court gossip, motherly advice, and de Sevigne’s conversational and often surprising commentary about her life and times was thoroughly entertaining. Reading the letters confirmed my suspicions that The Rich (of whatever age) Are Not Like You and Me – their preoccupations and anxieties and hardships and domestic dramas – and their class-created blind spots – are worlds apart from anything I could imagine without the help of letters containing the simultaneously mannered and spontaneous outpourings of someone as privileged and as articulate as this educated, sensitive Frenchwoman. The fact that the maxim-maker (and fellow aristocrat) La Rochefoucauld was a close friend of de Sevigne’s was, for me (because I’ve included so many of his bon mots in my Commonplace Book) a bonus.
Gardeners and Gardening
The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening(1983)
Having thoroughly enjoyed two other collections of this former garden columnist for the Washington Post, I was happy to come across the other day a bargain-priced copy of another such collection. Mitchell died in 1983 at age 69, and, unless further collections are published, I am now the happy owner of all Mitchell’s books about gardening. This one is just as delightful as the other two collections. The delight is largely due to Mitchell’s informal, self-deprecating, and humorous style. Fortunately, and unusually, my own gardening efforts take place in a climate almost identical to Mitchell’s (he lived in Georgetown), so I am familiar with many of the plants he extols or abhors, and even share some of his gardening passions, preferences, and antipathies. I cannot imagine any amateur gardener who wouldn’t love Mitchell’s wry advice on how to go about maximizing the pleasures of the smallish urban garden.
A Country Year: Living the Questions (1986) by Sue Hubbell
When I bought this memoir at a library book sale, I mistakenly believed it was written by the same person who had written the novel The Secret Life of Bees, which I read and enjoyed 20 years ago. Wrong: that book was written by Sue Monk Kidd in 2002, and adapted into a 2008 movie of the same name. I don’t remember how much fascinating beekeeping information was contained in Kidd’s book, but this book by Hubbell is certainly full of it. Hubbell lived (at first with her husband, and then by herself) for many years in the Ozark mountains in Missouri; she died in 2018 at age 83 in Maine. Her memoir is divided into seasonal reflections, and was, for me, a page-turner. Its author is not only an authority on bees (and other insects), but a keen observer of human nature. Her accounts of her neighbors’ attitudes and activities are endearing and often hilarious. For a reader like myself who still periodically indulges in short-lived fantasies about abandoning city living and moving to the countryside, Hubbell’s commentary on the enormous amount of hard work involved in living in a rural setting was definitely sobering. Plus I now have a lot more interest in bees and their amazing ways.
Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden (2001) by Diane Ackerman
This is the third book of Ackerman’s that I’ve read, and, after a mysterious initial impression of non-wonderfulness, something happened and I looked forward to reading more of this book each day until I finished it. Divided into four chapters corresponding to each season, the book is subdivided into 52 separate meditations on various parts of her garden (in Upstate New York), interwoven with philosophical reflections on all sorts of topics that gardening inevitably provokes in most gardeners – the persistence of change, intimations of mortality, human resemblances to flowering plants and garden-inhabiting animals, our ambivalence about change, and sundry other fascinating asides. As a poet and an amateur scientist (and world traveler), Ackerman’s prose is studded with astonishing images, exquisitely chosen adjectives, nuggets of scientific factoids, and intriguing anecdotes from the lives of famous (and not-so-famous) plant people. I’m glad I own a copy of this book (so I can lend it to other gardening book lovers I know), and I intend to track down some of her other books so I can treat myself to her wonderful talent for describing difficult-to-describe sensations and garden-inducing reveries.
Onward and Upward in the Garden (1979) by Katharine S. White
Knowing of my longtime subscription to the New Yorker (where Katharine White was an editor and occasional contributor) and my interest in gardening books, friends gave me this book last year. Having recently finished reading the collected correspondence between White and fellow gardener Elizabeth Lawrence, I was keen to read this collection of twelve years worth of White’s garden-related essays published in the New Yorker, especially since those columns were so often mentioned in the letters. Most of these previously published essays are reviews of gardening books (or of garden nursery catalogs), which, truth be told, I enjoy even more than gardening itself. Every one of the essays is lively, informative, and full of references to specific plants White was familiar with. Somewhat to my surprise, I enjoyed this book even more than the correspondence. The forward, written by White’s husband E.B. White after his wife died in the 1970s, was a delight, and also wonderful is the fact that there’s a list at the end of the book of all the books the author reviewed (with references to the relevant pages in the collection). Although I own some of the books White reviewed (including Lawrence’s A Southern Garden), there are several others I will want to get hold of after reading what White had to say about them.
Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence: A Friendship in Letters (2002) edited by Emily Herring Wilson
I’ve wanted to read this book ever since my friend Blanche Flanders Farley told me, decades ago (long before she died in 2018), that these letters existed. (Flanders knew about them because she once worked at the library in Atlanta where Elizabeth Lawrence’s correspondence is archived.) This book collects twenty years’ worth of letters between these two remarkable women (and remarkable writers). Reading these 150+ letters was a completely fascinating, pleasurable experience. The life circumstances and the settings these women gardened in couldn’t have been more different, and witnessing the unfolding of their epistolary friendship from 1958 to 1977 (they met only once, and briefly) was often moving. The fact that Lawrence lived in the South and that White was married to one of my favorite authors (and who both worked for many years at the New Yorker) was an added layer of this book’s appeal. Friends gave me a copy last year of White’s Onward and Upward in the Garden (1979), a collection of her garden-related New Yorker columns, and I already owned (but haven’t yet read) a copy of Lawrence’s A Southern Garden (1991), so one of those is likely to be the next gardening-related book I read (books by gardeners being one of my favorite types of books to read, and White and Lawrence being cited favorably by almost every author of the many gardening books I have already read). Highly recommended for anyone who loves gardening – or loves reading about it.
Philosophy
Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living (2022) by David Fideler
One of those rare books that I initially enjoyed, then got disenchanted with and thought about abandoning before I finished it, and then was glad that I persevered. My ambivalence was not about the subject matter: for at least the past ten years or so, I’ve become increasingly interested in learning more about Stoicism. No, I think my near abandonment of the book was caused by the feeling I was getting, halfway through it, that its author was padding his material with too much repetitiveness. The book’s final chapters, however, turned out to be some of the best ones (especially the chapter on the Stoic approach to handling grief), so I was right to keep going before returning the book to the library. (Fideler’s recommendation for further reading and his research notes are also worth reading.) Despite Fideler’s lapses into redundancy, he does an excellent job of summarizing the main principles of Stoic philosophy, and he certainly convinced me that Seneca (only one of several Greek Stoics this book draws upon) was a genius. Fideler also acquainted me with a Stoic teaching that I was unaware of from my previous investigations of Stoicism and that I am far from happy about discovering: the Stoics believed that complaining – under any circumstances – is a waste of breath, and clear evidence of betraying one of the key tenets of Stoic philosophy: gratitude. Being a habitual whiner, this sobering fact is going to make it much more difficult to thoroughly internalize every Stoic principle, which is precisely what I’d like to do.
Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey through Western Philosophy, from Plato to Popper (1999) by Bryan Magee
One of the best books I have ever read, by one of my favorite writers, on one of my favorite topics. I felt something similar after reading, in 2019, another of Magee’s books, Ultimate Questions (2016). Like that earlier book, this one resonated intensely with me on several levels: it re-ignited my longstanding enthusiasm for philosophy (one of my undergraduate majors); it filled in more than a few gaps in my education about the history of philosophy (especially post-Kantian philosophy); and almost all of Magee’s ruminations and conclusions about some topics I think about often coincide with my own. Magill writes with a flair that made me want to stop everything else I was planning to do during the time I was reading it, just so I could enjoy another chapter. That is high praise for a book of philosophy (or, in this case, a sort of memoir of Magee’s philosophical interests as they unfolded in his life). Magee manages to capture the almost visceral excitement of being fascinated by the profound questions and predicaments resulting from being human, and (like I do) of perpetually wondering why more humans aren’t similarly fascinated by these questions and predicaments. I loved every page (if not every paragraph) of this book, and will certainly read more books by Magee, who died in 2019 and who was far more well-known and well-regarded in Britain than in the United States due to several BBC radio and television series about famous philosophers. I am glad I own a copy of this book, so I can conceivably re-read it sometime, especially the chapters devoted to Schopenhauer and (much to my surprise) the music of Wagner (which I know zilch about, but now want to listen to because of the high regard Magill held him in, and why). Given my own passion for philosophy (and my lack of knowledge about philosophers after Kant), Magill is my philosophy hero and preferred teacher of the contributions of people like Wittgenstein, Russell, and Popper, whose work – along with Schopenhauer’s – I want to learn more about.
Psychology
The Book of Delights: Essays(2019) by Ross Gay
A collection of a hundred delightful moments, each articulately – and often amusingly, and always idiosyncratically – recollected by a poet I’d not known about before recently finding a reference to him in Maria Popova’s always-excellent weekly (free) newsletter, The Marginalian. My initial confusion with Gay’s deliberately, sometimes extravagantly run-on sentences was short-lived; I quickly grew to appreciate their creativity (and conversation-like tone and rhythm). I will definitely seek out Gay’s other books (including his poems), and consider giving a copy of this lovely, lively book to some of the people I know who love language and, like me, want to increase their capacity for discovering delight in everyday interactions with other people and the natural world. What a tremendously talented and discerning writer, this Ross Gay (who teaches at Indiana University). I am so glad my library system owned a copy for me to borrow!
When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981) by Harold S. Kushner
Although I had heard about this bestselling book for many years since its publication (and was reminded of it again when Kushner’s death earlier this year was reported in the news), I’d never gotten around to reading it until it was selected for the book club Randy and I are members of.
Kushner does a better job than any other writer (especially any writer who was a practicing Jewish rabbi all his life) when he describes – and thoroughly debunks – every single one of the dozens of platitudes I have heard people use to “explain” to themselves and/or to their friends and families, why horrible things sometimes happen to people (or to themselves). This achievement of Kushner’s – and the sheer articulateness and honesty that he displays in these debunkings – is reason enough to read this book. On the other hand, I disagree with Kushner’s clearly foregone conclusion, which, for me, betrays an unwillingness to entertain the possibility that, whatever the reasons for our misfortunes, no god plays any part in them, or has anything to “say” about them, or aligns himself/herself/itself with the victims of human suffering. Kushner refuses to question his belief in his deity (and in his deity’s solidarity with human suffering), thereby merely relocating the “meaning” of random suffering from one source to another. I wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed with how completely Kushner understands the depth of our bafflement in the face of what I feel to be unexplainable. My own belief is that human solidarity in the face of human suffering is all we can hope for, and that claiming that “God” is the source of our strength to (at times) be of use to ourselves when we are suffering or witnessing the suffering of others is to claim something we have no evidence for (other than wishing thinking). Kushner didn’t want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” but I think he did what too many Men of the Cloth do: ascribe characteristics and motives to a deity that they we zero access to knowing anything about, or saying anything about.
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005) by Eckhart Tolle
A group of gay men who have been meeting for several years to explore together various books and videos about the Enneagram decided two years ago to tackle the work of Eckhart Tolle: in 2022 we read The Power of Now; this year, we read and discussed, one chapter a month, the ten chapters of A New Earth. These monthly reading assignments and Zoom discussions have been very rewarding, partly because we are trying to learn about Tolle’s teachings together instead of separately, partly because we have been trying to relate what we learned together about the Enneagram to Tolle’s teachings, and partly because of the trust that the group members have in each other and our mutual commitment to becoming more intentional about how we’re living our lives. Tolle is an excellent writer (and speaker), and I don’t plan to give away his two books, as both bear re-reading. At the beginning of this process of learning about Tolle’s teachings, I suspected that I wouldn’t find them very helpful. I was wrong about that, and am very glad the group decided to read not one, but two of Tolle’s books. I highly recommend them both.
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment(1999) by Eckhart Tolle
Each month of 2022, Randy and I read and discussed a chapter of this book (via Zoom) with nine other Gay Spirit Visions friends who had previously been meeting to study various printed and online resources about the Enneagram. Reading and discussing a book chapter-by-chapter is a much different experience than reading it alone in installments of varying lengths. Our group found this book (and several videos of Tolle speaking that we watched) very thought-provoking. So much so that we decided to spend next year’s monthly Zoom meetings discussing another book of Tolle’s, A New Earth: Discovering Your Life’s Purpose (2006). Tolle is an excellent writer. His frequent allusions to or interpretations of various Christian teachings in support of his teachings are unusual and often persuasive. I have been surprised by how wise this extremely popular teacher/writer seems to be, and some of his teachings and recommended practices have been enormously helpful. I highly recommend looking into this man’s ideas on how to maximize human happiness, openness to one’s life experiences, and how to minimize the stress originating from the destructive aspects of one’s own ego-generated patterns.
Books about Books
How to Read Now: Essays(2022) by Elaine Castillo
The most disturbing book about reading that I’ve ever read. Disturbing in a good way, in the sense that its author has shattered more than a few of my (and other white readers’) lifelong delusions about how “unpolitical” reading habits are, or how “unpolitical” anyone’s reading – or writing – can be. It would be difficult to succinctly summarize Castillo’s arguments, but I hope that I (a white, privileged, child-of-the-American empire book selector and massively conditioned/propagandized book reader) will not be able to forget these arguments as I continue deciding which books to read (and why), which ones not to read (and why). What probably made the reading of this book so very uncomfortable to me was that, before reading it, I wasn’t aware how deeply white supremacy has always permeated not only civilization in general, but specifically the Anglo-based publishing industry, and the advice of scholars, teachers, and critics who have traditionally served (with my complicit cooperation) as the primary gate-keepers for what is often and widely considered “worth reading,” what voices are worth publishing, etc. According to Castillo – and she supplies abundant evidence for her claims, including alarming but persuasive critiques of some of my favorite authors – most of what we read leaves readers unchanged and is often selected by us specifically because it is so (ultimately) self-congratulatory and supportive of the status quo in terms of the various power imbalances in our culture(s). I don’t know whether I will ever read any of Castillo’s novels, but as an avid reader, I would certainly benefit from tracking down and trying to internalize Every. Single. Word. of any essay Castillo has written, or will write. And did I mention that Castillo has a wicked sense of humor, and writes with a vividness and brashness (meaning: honesty) rarely found in most contemporary writers? (She even makes interesting – and, in parts, hilarious – many pages of acknowledgments and her annotated list of “Works Cited.”)
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers (2022) by Emma Smith
Although this book is included in my list of nonfiction books about books, I had not gotten around to reading it it, so was glad to find it the other day on the New Book shelf at Emory’s graduate library. Immensely entertaining from start to finish, Smith’s book focuses on numerous (perhaps all?) aspects of the book as object and symbol (or projective device), rather than as a tool for communicating ideas. The sheer variety of topics she discusses is impressive, many of the topics selected for examination are unexpected, and Smith’s tone throughout is conversational and consistently engaging, despite the considerable research involved in assembling her stories. (Smith’s 14 pages of notes were as fascinating as the book’s 16 chapters and its epilogue). I’ve read a lot of “books about books,” but this is one of the best. I won’t be returning this library copy for a while yet: there are too many passages that I want to import into my Commonplace Book!
Essay Collections
Signs & Wonders: Selected Essays (2001) by D.J. Enright
Essays may be my very favorite literary form, and I am always excited to find an author whose writing is so excellent that I can enjoy his essays even when (especially when?) they are essays of pure literary criticism (instead of essays about, say, gardening, or art, or scientific topics). As with many other authors, this one I found out about via my favorite blogger, Patrick Kurp, at his blog Anecdotal Evidence. Enright, a poet and professor of English in universities in England and elsewhere, died a few years ago. This is the first collection of his essays that I’ve tracked down, but it probably won’t be the last. What’s remarkable about his writing is that he manages to engage my interest regardless of what (or, rather, who) he’s writing about: I have not read anything by Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, or Bertold Brecht – or by any of the Asian writers he discusses – among many, many other writers – in this wide-ranging set of essays, but Enright’s comments on their works make me want to read their novels, plays, and poems, and, for me, that is the highest compliment I can pay a literary critic. Enright’s combination of erudition and humor is absolutely perfect for my taste in essay reading; the mere existence of such essays makes me glad to be alive, and to be able to learn, in such a pleasurable manner, about so many writers whose names I know, but whose works I’ve not gotten around to reading. Loved, loved, loved this book.
These Precious Days: Essays (2021) by Ann Patchett
I am a perennial reader of essay collections, and this is one of the best I’ve ever come across. Reading Patchett’s 2001 novel Bel Canto was one of my peak (fiction) reading experiences, and I’ve long admired her for opening and operating a bookstore (as well as championing libraries and reading in general), so spying this collection of essays in the recently-published shelf of my local library made borrowing a copy a no-brainer. Little did I know how much I would enjoy it, including the essays that I’d already read which had originally appeared elsewhere. Patchett is such a good writer that I read all two dozen of the essays in this collection, even those about subjects I didn’t know would interest me. The woman cannot write a bad paragraph – which makes me want to seek out at least another one of her novels. And I certainly will make a beeline to her bookstore should I ever find myself in Nashville where she and her husband live. Much of Patchett’s material is autobiographical, and this writer has certainly lived an interesting life. Another unusual aspect of this book for me: unlike most other essay collections I’ve enjoyed, this one was written by an extraordinary writer who’s still living and still writing!
Points ofFriction (1920) by Agnes Repplier
The latest installment of my effort to read every essay published by Agnes Repplier (1855-1950). This collection I tracked down because I read somewhere that it contains Repplier’s most controversial essays, all of them originally published in newspapers or periodicals (especially The Atlantic Monthly). There are ten essays, ranging from Repplier’s musings about the importance of learning about history to “the consolations of the conservative” to Prohibition to women’s rights. As usual, Repplier is often persuasive and hilarious in her British-y, understated manner (although Repplier, an American, lived most of her life in Philadelphia). Reading any of her prose has been among the most enjoyable experiences of my adult reading life, and I’ve already embarked on reading yet another of her essay collections.
The Italians (1964) by Luigi Barzini
That a sixty-year-old, 350+-page book about the history and peculiar worldview of the inhabitants of Italy is still in print is a miracle. Most books I read are well-written, but reading this one was an extraordinarily pleasurable experience. It’s been quite a while since I was so enthralled with a writer’s erudition and prose style. Barzini, who died in Rome in 1984, was an Italian-born journalist educated partly in the United States and who spent a lot of time outside of Italy (and who was imprisoned by the Nazis for three years during World War II). Barzini’s book taught me about political, literary, artistic, scientific, and military figures from Italian history I’d never heard of, and a lot about such figures whose names I was familiar with because of my lifelong love affair with books about Italy (and several trips there). Barzini’s theories about the differences between the Italian national character and its European counterparts, and about the stubborn differences between the peoples of southern vs. northern Italy were fascinating, as was everything else in this unputdownable book. I’m so glad I stumbled across this book at a recent library book sale, and I’ve already made arrangements to borrow from Emory’s library three more books by this amazingly erudite and entertaining author. I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up buying copies of them, if they are half as good as this one!
Novels
Octavia Butler’s Kindred: A Graphic Novel (2017) by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
I read this for my book club. When the club’s members discussed it, they all agreed that, as one would expect, the original novel (vs. the graphic novel treatment I read) contains a lot more of the internal dialogue of the characters. Despite my missing out on that aspect of the story, the graphic novel version is certainly absorbing. The plot involves time travel back and forth between 1976 Los Angeles and a plantation in slave-era Louisiana. The plot twists and nuances of the main characters’ personalities were unexpected but thoroughly plausible. Although this was only the second graphic novel I’ve ever read (the other – also excellent, but technically a memoir rather than a novel – was Fun Home (2006) by the lesbian author Alison Bechdel), I was completely absorbed by the story – so much so that, very untypically, I was late to an appointment I’d made to be somewhere else because I was so forgetful of the time!
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/2 Years Old (2014) by Hendrik Groen.
On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen (2018) by Hendrik Groen.
Translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans.
My sister Gayle recommended this author’s books to me, knowing how much I enjoyed reading, a few years ago, A Man Called Ove. Like Ove, these books are narrated by an elderly curmudgeon from Scandinavia. Unlike Ove, the narrator of this book lives in an assisted living facility in the middle of Amsterdam. His diaries chronicle the often-hilarious comings and goings (and the prodigious bellyaching and wise-quackery) of his fellow inmates during each day of two different years. Because of the diary writer’s unique sensibility and his wry commentary, these novels are both page-turners! It was wonderful to come to know Hendrik and his co-conspirators (the other members of the self-proclaimed Old But Not Dead Club). The story is laced with sobering statistics and anecdotes about the predicaments/situations faced by the elderly not just in the Netherlands but everywhere. It’s no wonder the books were international bestsellers (having been translated into dozens of languages) – although I’d never heard before this year of either of them or their author. For this 75-year-old reader who fortunately is still living in his own house rather than in an institution populated with a motley crew of mostly-crotchety other oldsters, there were many squirmy moments, but reading these books was such fun. When I get even older, I hope I can manage the stoic perspective shown by the author of these lovely (if somewhat alarming) fictional memoirs. (Note to self: according to Amazon, there’s a third installment on the market – a prequel set nine years before the setting of the Diaries – entitled Two Old Men and a Baby: Or, How Hendrik and Evert Get Themselves into a Jam (2021).)
Dandelion Wine (1957) by Ray Bradbury
It’s been almost 40 years since I last read a book by Ray Bradbury, so I was glad that Randy chose one of his most successful books for the book club we’re members of. I’d forgotten how “poetic” Bradbury’s style is, and how well he captures the nostalgia of Times Gone By in (White) America. In this case, the setting is a small town in the Midwest, 1923. The events of the single summer recounted in the story center around this character’s coming of age. In this case, there’s no pubescent love story; instead, the narrative focuses on this 12-year-old’s coming to terms with the death of relatives and fellow townspeople and the transience (and glories) of nature and human existence. Bradbury’s prose is unusually vivid and evocative, his cast of characters is completely believable, and the events and moods he portrays were delightful to read about. As Bradbury (who died in 2012) was one of the most prolific and wide-ranging American authors I know of, I might end up suggesting our book club read another of his works. Dandelion Wine would be a great first choice for anyone new to Bradbury’s work.
The Keeper of Lost Things (2017) by Ruth Hogan
The author had a great concept: weaving together stories about how several disparate objects came into the possession of someone who found them with a narrative about how his hapless heir reunites those objects with their original owners. Alas, for me the concept was more clever than its execution. I found confusing the jumping back and forth among different sets of characters, between different time periods, and among different narrators – and some of the characters and stories themselves just weren’t compelling. Hogan is a good writer of specific paragraphs, but I felt this novel might actually have been better conceived as a series of short stories. (Full disclosure: The other people in the book club who read this liked the book much more than I did.)
Rules of Civility (2011) by Amor Towles
Because my book club a few years back had so thoroughly enjoyed one of Towle’s other novels (A Gentleman in Moscow), I chose Towle’s first book for our next selection. Although not as entrancing as Gentleman, it certainly held my interest (I read the thing in two days) and is definitely worth reading. Towles is an excellent storyteller, the historical setting is full of interesting and persuasive details, the plot has several very unexpected twists, and the voice and personality of his main character – a female in her twenties, looking back at two years she spent in Manhattan in the late 1930s – is intriguing and believable. Considering the many pleasures and surprises of this historical novel, my criticisms are minor: more than once, I lost track of the identity and relationship of a minor character to the narrator, and there were far too many coincidental and consequential path-crossings between the minor characters and the narrator to suit me, notwithstanding Manhattan’s reputation as a “small town” where you constantly run into people you know, including people from vastly different social classes. I also was vaguely dissatisfied by the novel’s ending, although what was believable about the ending is how it demonstrates, truthfully, how alien – and/or bittersweet – certain chunks of a person’s past can be to a person’s earlier – or later – circumstances. The novel is about, among other things, the powerful role of chance interpersonal encounters in the arc of a person’s life, and this theme is definitely developed in Towle’s tale of one woman’s late-life reflections on her first two years in The Big City.
Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague(2020) by Maggie O’Farrell
What an amazing writer! I don’t remember another author so skilled at describing, in detail, what her characters are noticing, are feeling. At first I found the wealth of detail off-putting – I was impatient for faster plot development – less dwelling on the meticulous construction of the world the novel’s characters inhabit – but eventually I surrendered to the spellbinding way O’Farrell immerses the reader in her recreation of small-town, middle-class life in England in the 1500s. Based on one of the few things we know about Shakespeare (that he and his wife had a son who died as a child), O’Farrell’s story is vivid in two respects: in the depiction of the vicissitudes of everyday life in that time and place, and in the subtlety and precision in which O’Farrell describes her characters’ thoughts, feelings, and reactions to what is happening around them. By the time I got to the last few pages of the book, I was reluctant to leave these characters: I wanted to know more about their lives after the crucial turning point in the author’s story. I cannot think of a higher compliment to pay to any novel (which, incidentally, I read for the book club Randy and I are part of). I would willingly read anything else written by O’Farrell, despite the fact that I read very few novels!
Later this year, my youngest sister Lori will retire from her teaching career in North Georgia and move to the house she had built on Amelia Island, the first barrier island beyond Georgia’s southern border.
Once again, I realized what a great place Lori had chosen many years ago to spend her retirement years. Her house is located midway between the island’s town, Fernandina Beach (located on a picturesque riverfront) and the ocean beach (which Lori visits almost every day she’s on the island, during holidays and school breaks).
The pleasant, walkable town is full of historic buildings, interesting shops and excellent restaurants. Lori’s cottage-sized house is super-comfortable, both for living in and for hosting guests. Lori’s still in the process of decorating, but her retirement house looks great already. Her choice of colors (turquoise and other shades of blue) are gorgeous and soothing.
Our week on Amelia passed very quickly. Our stay included an obligatory sit-down at the beach, where Randy took probably the only photo of the Gough siblings together at a beach since Mike and Inice got married on St. George Island (on Florida’s Gulf coast) decades ago:
In addition to several home-cooked and ordered-in meals we ate at Lori’s cottage . . .
. . . this trip to Amelia also featured of the best meals I can remember ever eating, at a Spanish-Portuguese place called Espana. Not cheap, but, man, was the food (and the sangria) ever delicious!
Randy and I spent a day of our week-long trip to Florida exploring two places in nearby Jacksonville (a city neither of us had ever visited). The first stop was the Jacksonville Arboretum and Botanical Garden.
A more rewarding stop than the Arboretum (we were disappointed that the numerous trails weren’t all paved) was the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens – definitely worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Jacksonville. The river-side garden is large and was pleasant to explore . . .
The art museum is surprisingly large, and its collections contain a few items from virtually every continent and century.
Fortunately for us, the Cummer complex is located in an interesting, historic neighborhood called Five Points (the only interesting neighborhood we found in Jacksonville, by the way). Near the St. Johns River, Five Points contains many blocks of beautiful homes and a funky business district where we had a scrumptious Greek meal after a pit stop at a nearby antique mall.
Speaking of antique malls, Randy and I broke up our drives along the back roads of Georgia to and from Amelia Island with stops at several such places, and at an antique mall on Amelia Island itself Calvin purchased an admittedly-only-semi-urgently-needed – but wonderfully sturdy and spacious – metal baking stand.
Gayle transported the (collapsible) baker’s rack back to her place in Blairsville, Georgia in her SUV, and I’ll be retrieving it when the Goughs reassemble at Gayle’s for Thanksgiving (assuming Michael and Inice, both recently retired from their jobs in Oregon and traversing the country in their new RV, stay in the Southeast until then).
I know Lori is counting the days until she can move permanently to her new house, and hope she already expects her sibs and their Significant Others will occasionally be wanting to visit her there!
Randy and I just returned from the 2023 Fall Conference of Gay Spirit Visions, held last weekend at a retreat center near Highlands, North Carolina. As has been the case whenever I’ve attended any GSV event, I’ve been wandering around in a semi-trance since coming back home to the so-called “real world.”
GSV launched its gatherings back in 1990 (a summary of our organization’s early history is here), and Randy and I were both there for that first gathering, and for numerous subsequent ones. My most recent attendance was in 2017, which I went to mainly to support Randy, who was for several years after we became partners on the GSV board of elders and who presided over the 2017 Fall Conference.
This year’s conference was presided over by Illinois-based Jonny Gray, aka “Mothra Stewart.” Jonny’s informative blogpost about the conference is here.
As usual, the gathering was, on multiple levels, enriching, rewarding, and delightfully disorienting. I tell people that I don’t attend every GSV gathering either because I don’t enjoy big crowds or because the retreat center fees are too expensive, the more important reason is that the GSV network and the values espoused by the gatherings have become, over the years, the primary source of most of my post-1990 friendships, a sort of taken-for-granted backdrop/context of most of my close relationships with the gay people in my life here in Atlanta. Fortunately, although GSV attendees hale from all over, many of the participants – approximately one-third of this year’s attendees – live in or near Atlanta, so I get to see some of these people throughout the year, and a few are among my dearest friends. We get to rekindle the spirit of the GSV gatherings whenever we get together – whether that’s for a meal together, or during periodic Zoom study group or yoga sessions or whatever, or assembling for a weekend of socializing at the cabin in the North Georgia mountains, or spending a week together every May, or otherwise rendezvousing. An even larger share of GSV folks are among my Facebook Friends, so I get little peeks into a lot of these people’s lives all year long.
In a very concrete sense, GSV is, for (lucky) me, the current manifestation of the large gay “tribe” I first stumbled onto back in the late 1970s, something that instantly and forever ended my fears at the time that I’d be very unlikely to ever find, anywhere, a group of like-minded gay men. Instead, way back in the mid-1970s I lucked into meeting that first small crew of the sweetest, kindest, bravest, smartest, wittiest, wisest, most resilient group of people I have been privileged to know these past 45 years. And whenever we get together in larger groups, such as these GSV “conferences,” something unpredictable and irrefutably magical occurs. There are invariably many moving moments, some venturing into unfamiliar territory, many a tear shed, and much belly-clutching bouts of laughter as well.
Although many photos were taken (by me and others) of the 82 guys at this year’s fall gathering (GSV also sponsors smaller winter and spring conferences/retreats/gatherings), I don’t have the energy to get permission from these folks to post on the Intertubes photos of their wonderful selves, so I’ll just post a few people-less photos of their retreat center itself, which is a Unitarian Universalist center called The Mountain. It is truly a remarkable setting for an always-unforgettable gathering.
(My thanks to Ben, Darin, Greg, Michael, and Neil for these images.)
The next and final photo is one I took of the item I received in the gift exchange that’s part of what I consider to be one of the most meaningful features of all GSV gatherings: the small groups (which meet several times during the weekend).
Not only was the story told by the man who gave me this gift a sweet story, but, because of the inscription on the rock, it reminded me of one of my favorite greek myths – the one about Pandora. The sentiment inscribed on the rock echoes my own feeling about all the men-loving men on the planet who have yet to find their own “tribe” of like-minded soul-mates: I am hoping many of them will do just that, somehow, someday. And sooner rather than later.
My ongoing love affair with tea-drinking has undergone a few changes this year.
The most radical change was stopping my routine of keeping a pitcher of sweet iced tea always on hand. My doctor has been muttering for a couple years now about my blood labs telling him I am “pre-pre-diabetic” and that Cal needed to Cut Back on His Sugar Consumption/Addiction. Last year I gave up buying lemonade; when that didn’t change the lab results enough, I decided earlier this year – and very reluctantly – to swear off the daily swigging of (sweetened) iced tea. A super-difficult change of habit there. Mind you, I still treat myself to sweet iced tea at some of my restaurant meals and whenever I’m visiting my sister Gayle (who, in my opinion, has always made the Best Sweet Iced Tea in the Galaxy).
The instance of my daily sugar consumption that I haven’t sacrificed upon the altar of Healthier Living: the spoonful of sugar I add to most of my morning cups of tea (or to any afternoon cup I might decide to enjoy).
Most days, my teas of choice have long been the two brands I have trumpeted in previous blog posts: Typhoo and Yorkshire Gold. Both of which I keep at all times a generous supply of not only in my own kitchen, but at Randy’s house also, for the three mornings each week that we spend there.
Both of these (black, caffeinated) teas require – for me, anyway – not only a teaspoon of sugar, but a dollop of cream as well. (So of course my tea-drinking habits present problems for my cholesterol labs as well . . . .)
As you can see from the variety of teas in the photo above, I can, when the mood hits me, partake of many other kinds of tea as well, including some herbal ones which I keep on hand mainly for Randy, who will drink no other kind.
Several (many?) months ago, Randy and I and some of our friends were visiting the mountain cabin owned by our friend Tom. (Tom, incidentally, is the guy who got me to using whipping cream instead of half-and-half with my British teas.) A friend of Tom’s had recently mailed him a box of Stash brand teabags the company calls “Breakfast in Paris.” I tried some of that, and loved how radically different it is from my two old stand-bys. Shortly after getting back to Atlanta, Tom mailed me and Randy two boxes of “Breakfast in Paris,” and ever since then I’ve been terribly unfaithful to Typhoo and to Yorkshire Gold. It’s probably the lavender that makes it so distinctive, but whatever it is that makes it so, it’s been a nice change from years and years of drinking the other (black) teas. I heartily recommend it – and I recently ordered multiple additional boxes of it from Amazon, as I couldn’t find a nearby store in Atlanta that stocks it.
Also semi-recently, when searching the grocery shelves for additional varieties of herbal teas for Randy, my eyes fell upon something I’d never noticed before: Stash’s (herbal) “Meyer Lemon.” I highly recommend this tea also, especially if, like me, you don’t always want to add cream to your tea. Most herbal teas are awful with cream, especially any citrus-based tea. So you might want to search out who in your area stocks the Stash brand o’ teas, and try it out!
Incidentally, I’ve also discovered that Stash sells something it calls “Christmas in Paris.” I can’t imagine how that would taste, but I’m looking forward to ordering a box of it whenever the weather turns cold again.
Having added two new teas to my world, I could no longer put off the chore of reconfiguring my “tea shrine” to better accommodate the teas I actually use (vs. the ones I rarely use); also, the number of herbal teas I keep on hand (for Randy) had multiplied so extensively during the almost-six-years since Randy and I have been together that all the shelves in my tea shrine had become annoying “double-deckers.”
My solution was to create an “herbal annex” of tea tins for Randy underneath the main shrine. My kitchen being the tiny space it is, several things I previously kept in that space had to be relocated (not an easy task). Anyway, here’s a photo of the reconfigured tea shrine and, below that photo, a closeup of the “annex.” No more tea tins crashing to the floor as I rummage around trying to find a particular type o’ tea.
One day, I might free up even more space in the shrine so I can consolidate all the teas that Randy and I use frequently, but this would involve disposing of all or most of the loose tea I have in addition to the (preferred) tea bag format. For now, such a thing would be A Bridge Too Far – but perhaps someday? (If that does eventually happen, I could theoretically also get rid of all the loose tea paraphernalia I own, which would free up even more room at/near the tea shrine.)
Meanwhile, what hasn’t changed at all is my enjoyment of at least one cup of (hot) tea every day. This now decades-long habit is not totally about the sugar addiction or the comforting ritual of the tea-brewing and tea-sipping: my enthusiasm for tea is forever associated with my fond memories of the person who introduced tea-drinking to me back in the late 1960’s, and tea’s association with All Things British that are way too internalized now for me to contemplate doing without it.
Earlier this month, Randy and I joined eight Gay Spirit Visions friends for a week’s house rental on St. George Island near Apalachicola in the Florida panhandle. (This year, seven of the ten of us renting the beach house happen to be part of a sub-group of GSVers who’ve been meeting monthly for the past several years to teach ourselves the Enneagram and, more recently, to explore together two books written by Eckhart Tolle.)
Groups of (mostly Atlanta or Asheville-based) GSV folks have been renting a house on SGI each year for over 20 years; this was Cal’s ninth trip (and Randy’s fourth trip) to SGI with this group. (Varying from year to year: the total number of renters, the specific cast of characters, the particular houses we’ve rented, and, lately, the volunteer trip planner/s.)
Again this year, Randy and I decided to break up the seven-and-a-half-hour drive from Atlanta to SGI with a stopover somewhere in Alabama.
This time our detour was to Montgomery, a town neither of us had visited before. We wanted to explore the town’s civil rights museums, its fine arts museum, its historic residential neighborhoods, and a park of wild bamboo in the nearby town of Prattville that we’d read about online.
Our pre-beach excursion to Montgomery was well worth the time and expense. Unforgettable was our visit to Montgomery’s Legacy Museum and the nearby (and affiliated) Peace and Justice Memorial. In fact, it’s my opinion that every American – especially every white U.S. citizen, including especially every white U.S. politician – should, if he/she hasn’t done so already, visit these two places.
A free shuttle bus runs between the two sites, and you can use the bus after buying (either online or on-site) a $2.50 [!] Legacy Museum admission ticket.
The museum is one of the most astonishing I have ever visited, and I’ve visited a LOT of museums in the U.S. and Europe. The amount of research that went into the museum’s exhibits is astounding, as is the manner and variety of the way the museum’s exhibits and exhibit spaces are constructed. (The ceiling-high video in the museum’s entry room alone is worth the admission price.) Before visiting the Legacy Museum, I thought I was already fairly well-versed in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but I was wrong.
The Memorial affiliated with the Museum is certainly as striking and moving and sobering as, say, the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.
Randy’s photo of Cal taking a break on our walk through the Memorial. Another visitor that day offered Cal “a thousand dollars” for his hat, as it was a hot day and the pathways through the outdoor sections of the Memorial are largely unshaded.
We started our second day in Montgomery with a drive to a protected bamboo forest in the suburb of Prattville, Alabama.
After our tour of this large and magical bamboo forest, we devoted the afternoon to touring Montgomery’s Fine Art Museum, located in a gorgeous and gigantic municipal park.
I didn’t have high expectations from our visit to this art museum but ended up marveling not only at the magnificent building itself (designed by a local landowner who was also an amateur architect; he later donated both the property, the building, and its initial collection to the city, which, amazingly, does not charge an admission fee) but in the range and quality of this art museum’s collections.
You can sample the museum’s contents at its website, but here are photos of some of the paintings, sculptures, and glassworks that Randy or I took during our delightful visit to this art museum:
The Week at Big Daddy’s Beach House
Multiple interior and exterior Internet photos of the seven-bedroom rental house on St. George Island are here.
One of the reasons we chose Big Daddy’s again this year: how unusually close it is to the beach:
Random photos of 2023’s SGI rental house co-conspirators:
Cal (with the Wizard that Jim crocheted for him)
Chase
Jim
John
Lashes (front) and Paul
Ralph
Randall
Randy (who coordinated the rental plans this year)
Ted
Although our week on St. George wasn’t structured by any particular agenda, many of us began each morning with a trek down to the beach to watch the sunrise . . .
Chase’s photo of one morning’s gathering of sunrise watchers. In the background: the banners that Chase so helpfully staked at the end of our rental house’s boardwalk to the beach. (Another photo of these makers is at the top of this blogpost.)
Another morning, another set o’ sunrise watchers (photo by Randy)
SGI cloudscape photo by Lashes
Each of the sunrise spectaculars was soon followed by a half-hour of group silent meditation back at the house, then breakfast (which, for most of us, featured Ted’s trademarked oatmeal).
Every evening a pair of us prepared dinner for the ten of us, and, man, were those memorable meals!
Between breakfast and dinner were various mostly-unscheduled activities that various ones of us participated in (or not):
numerous walks on the beach
a couple of bike rides
kayaking (in a craft rented for us all again this year by Chase)
some kite-flying (the kites also courtesy Chase)
trips into St. George or Apalachicola for lunch,
a card game tournament (Wizard, of course, invented by a Canadian in 1984 and introduced to GSVers in Asheville by a Radical Faerie whose name Chase remembers but I forget, although I am forever grateful to him for doing so!)
intermittent bits of solitary book reading and/or catch-ups on social media.
And lots of laughing.
And, of course, amongst all the snacking and laughter-laced yammering, most of us used part of our week taking multiple naps. (Average age of us SGI beach house-renters this year: 71.)
This year’s beach-goers also collectively managed to complete four (!) jigsaw puzzles by the end of our week together. (One of these puzzles – the one with the buoys – took us the longest to finish, despite the fact that I thought it would be the easiest!):
Photo by Ralph of some of us slaving over the most difficult of the four jigsaws we completed
More jigsaw puzzling (photo by Randy)
What didn’t happen this year at SGI was any tv-watching (or, for that matter, any DVD-watching), despite the fact that every room in our rental house (except the bathrooms) contains a television screen. (We used the counter in front of the huge tv screen in the living room for our meditation altar. Next year perhaps we should consider an additional altar feature: covering any giant tv screen above or near our altar with an attractive bedspread, beach towel, kimono, or sarong.)
As we’d done during previous annual expeditions to SGI, Randy and I on Friday afternoon hosted a “low tea” for our temporary household. This year’s tea table:
A newcomer to the beach this year – for us, anyway – was a blue heron that decided to strut along our stretch of the ocean several times throughout the week. John took an excellent photo of this magnificent creature who John christened “Earl”:
Off-Island Excursions
There were two major (optional) half-day trips off the Island:
Chase and Randy took a drive into a nearby national forest to explore an unnamed (but locally well-known) bog plant area:
The day before we left SGI, six of us took a boat ride up the Apalachicola River that Randy had arranged for us:
Boat captain Gill Autrey
[Top row, left to right:] The marsh landing near Apalachicola where we set out on (and returned to); a typical view of the marshlands along the river; one of several osprey nests along the river. [Bottom row, left to right:] Swiveling railroad bridge over the river; Paul on the boat; Randy on the boat.
A Great Week!
As I like to do every year, I find (or make) some sort of souvenir of our week together on the island. This year, I collected a bunch of shells on my walks along the beach and festooned them with some colored markers I’d brought along to the beach house. Each of us returned to Atlanta or Asheville with one of them:
This ninth trip of mine with GSV buddies to St. George was just as lovely, stimulating, and relaxing as the previous eight ones, and Randy and I both look forward to future rendezvouses there (and/or, perhaps, elsewhere).
Recently a cousin of Randy’s was in town to visit him and Randy’s mom, and we asked her to decide what local sites she’d like to take in during her visit. We did two outdoor things: the Atlanta Botanical Garden (which Randy and I had not visited for several years), and the Laser Show at Stone Mountain State Park.
The first thing that caught our attention as we started down the path to the Garden’s tree canopy was a pair of large bird sculptures made out of wire:
The current temporary exhibit at the Garden was a collection of five giant recycled-wood trolls by Danish artist Thomas Dambo. Here are Randy and his cousin Nancy Jo in front of the first one:
One of the other trolls, sans any visitors:
The ABG has purchased several Chihuly glass sculptures as permanent installations. Among them are twol I don’t remember seeing there before:
The most impressive part of the garden for me was wandering through the Garden’s Orchid House. We missed by a couple of days the Garden’s main annual orchid extravaganza, but there were still plenty of orchids (and non-orchid tropical wonders) to behold:
These beauties were interspersed among many other non-orchid wonders:
Before leaving the garden and threading our way out of the Park, which was jammed with cars of people trying to find parking for the Atlanta Dogwood Festival the day we visited the Garden), Randy and I decided to fork over $50 on top of the $28 per person per visit admission fee (which Randy generously treated me and Nancy to) for a joint year-long membership. The membership features free admission to an ABG-affiliated garden in Gainesville, Georgia (only an hour’s drive away), plus discounted admission to numerous other botanical gardens in the United States).
As for the Laser Show at Stone Mountain Park, the less said the better. Besides the cringeworthy (because of its cheesy patriotism-promoting theme) show itself, Cal was shocked to find that admission to the Park – once $5 per car – is now $20 ! (The tickets to the Laser Show run $5 if you want to watch it sitting on the grass in front of the mountain where the lasers are projected, or $15 for patio seats.)
The only nifty thing about the unfortunate amusement park vibe at the Park was this tree in the parking lot:
That, and the life-size plastic dinosaur with the perpetually waving tail (sorry, forgot to take a video)!
Ten years ago this month I retired from selling my labor and my time to 40 years’ worth of various employers.
I had two “careers”: the first (1970-1979) in the mental health treatment arena (first as an addiction treatment center employee, later in mental health treatment administration), the second (1980-2013) as a librarian in the Atlanta public library system (first as a reference desk librarian, later as a library collection development specialist, and finally as a branch library manager).
My plan was to retire before I reached age 65 (the age when most U.S. wage-slaves are eligible to retire), and I reached that goal, being 64 when I retired – after taking the advice of a financial planner that I continue working for an additional year beyond age 63 when I was already good and ready to leave my job at the time).
My using the term “wage-slave” is a bit misleading, as I thoroughly enjoyed many aspects of the jobs I got hired for, or was promoted into. In fact, I probably would have chosen to work several, if not many, additional years if I’d believed that the administration of the library system I was working in had not been, for too long, so appallingly dysfunctional. Once I became convinced that the bureaucracy I worked for would not be sufficiently improved in my lifetime, I began planning how I could support myself financially without working a 40-hour week.
I was so keen on gaining control over 100% of my time that I wasn’t considering taking up part-time work after retiring, and I ventured into that mode only once – and briefly.
Many American workers (especially males) find themselves uncomfortable with what they come to consider too much time on their hands after retiring, but fortunately I have not suffered in this regard, even to a slight extent. My guess as to why I was lucky this way is that, long before retiring, I had discovered enough long-term interests and hobbies to pursue indefinitely; I was already a part of multiple networks of friends (some of those networks overlapping, some of them not, some of the friendships very long-term vs. newish or work-related); I had/have supportive siblings; and I was blessed with a temperament congenial to enjoying dithering away entire hours of some days “doing”/”accomplishing” very little. Sure, there have been some boring or listless moments these past ten years, but they have been few and far between and were certainly short-lived whenever they did occur.
I do still have trouble, sometimes, balancing my need for solitude with my need for spending time in other people’s company. The good news is that I’ve abandoned the notion that someday I will – permanently – manage to get this balance the way I’d like it to be.
From this ten-years-on vantage point, my memories of the day-to-day satisfactions and frustrations (and accomplishments or disappointments) of working my various full-time jobs have faded almost entirely into oblivion. (Well, at least during my waking hours: occasionally – too often, in my opinion – my dreams still happen in a workplace scenario – especially scenarios with some sort of looming deadline, of which there were many throughout my working life).
On the other hand, even after ten years of uninterrupted freedom from the workplace, I am still often (as opposed to seldom) aware of how “lucky” or “fortunate” I feel about this. I remain, ten years into retirement, grateful that, barring some future apocalyptic disaster, it is unlikely that I shall ever find myself reporting to an employer again. It remains as amazing to me on Retirement Day #3,650 as it was on Retirement Day #1 that I am pretty much the master of my own little universe.
I realize that not having had any children to raise and/or worry about has certainly been a huge and unusual factor in how leisurely my retirement years have felt so far. Ditto my relatively good health: many retirees (at least many American ones of my acquaintance) spend numerous hours of their retirements meeting with various medical specialists, and/or coping daily with various chronic physical conditions or limitations that have so far eluded me. Surely my share of ailments, not to mention general decrepitude, will come my way, but the first ten years – even one with a pandemic in it – have been remarkably uneventful, healthwise, for Cal.
Another crucial – and also untypical – characteristic of my retirement years: since my 92-year-old mom died (in 2019), I’ve not been (as Randy is) spending some of my time and energy helping manage the care of an aging parent, or worrying about their welfare.
As I’ve remarked in some of my previous “retirement status reports,” the minimum-friction feature of most of the past ten years – and in particular the subtraction from my daily routine of all work-related stress – has been the single most enjoyable aspect of being retired. That and the existential thrill and privilege of deciding for myself how to spend most of my time and energy. (In recent years, I’ve learned how class and race figure into this sense of privilege: not all 73-year-old Americans – not to mention not all non-Americans – can enjoy their latter years the way I’ve been doing so far.)
On top of the serendipitous (because inherited) layers of class and race privilege featured in my retirement story, there have been many days during these past ten years when I’ve been unable to shake off the sense of having entered some sort of . . . aristocracy! No, I’m not wealthy (far from it), and, no, I have no staff of underlings to do my bidding (I don’t even have a Yard Guy), but I do feel – and am grateful for being – unconnected with the getting-and-spending, the frenzied to-ing and fro-ing, traffic-afflicted, many-people-to-please, many-burdens-to-shoulder, multi-tasking, many-balls-in-the-air-to-juggle features that beleaguer the working/commuting class.
The retirement era luxury I find myself noticing almost every day is having so much time to dispose of as I wish (vs. so much of my time being beholden to other people’s agendas), while also having enough money (i.e., sufficient return on my invested savings) to support my fortunately not-very-expensive hobbies and interests. (The only expensive interest being as-frequent-as-possible overseas travel.)
The main disappointment of retirement that springs to mind these days – and the most unexpected – is how I’d completely misjudged the amount of energy I’d have in retirement to do the things I now have more time to do.
For example, especially in the years immediately leading up to retiring, I was looking forward to devoting huge swaths of time in retirement to reading books (one of my favorite activities all my life). Who knew that, instead, I would find myself repeatedly interrupting whatever reading I had set out to do with yet another . . . nap? What happened to my ability, in younger years, to read for hours at a time, never once finding myself dozing off?
I’ve decided that becoming more sedentary is the main culprit in this primary Retirement Dilemma (more time, less energy – as well as: more time, less income). Despite what most people imagine, librarians – at least librarians in public libraries – get a lot of exercise in the course of their typical day (or even typical hour). With my lifelong aversion to any physical activity that isn’t dancing or gardening or roaming on foot in some unfamiliar landscape (especially some foreign one), or frolicking in some hardly-ever-nearby ocean, the amount of time I spend sitting – either in front of my computer or trying to read a book – has skyrocketed since I retired in March 2013.
The only regular exercise I am willing to do these days is to take an occasional walk -and I am blessed with living in a visually interesting neighborhood to do that in, so I have no excuses (other than cold or rainy weather) – not to do more walking. (The weekly tai chi classes I’ve taken the past 20 years, and, some days, practice at home or in a park nearby, don’t count as tai chi isn’t aerobic exercise, and I’ve unfortunately never enjoyed the routine of swimming laps indoors – especially in unheated or underheated pools). So, yes, an overly-sedentary lifestyle is a (theoretically) reversible choice I keep making, and probably totally accounts for the aforementioned loss of energy, including the energy necessary to sit and read, say, a hundred pages of a book at a single sitting. This energy-availability deficit (vs., say, a theoretical regret at not having children or owning a pet) is definitely one of the downsides of my tenth (and ninth, and eighth) year of Being a Retired Person.
Mitigating this unhappy discovery is the fact that I do enjoy, in addition to reading, a bit of gardening. (Although, full disclosure, most days I’d rather read about someone else’s gardening adventures than Get Out There Myself). What little gardening I do, however, gets me out of chairs or off the sofa, but I have discovered – especially in recent years – that there is only so much bending and weeding and hole-digging and raking and so forth that I can do at a single stretch – probably precisely because I am otherwise so sedentary. I remember, when I first retired, spending whole splendid afternoons working in the yard; nowadays, I limit myself to a strict maximum of two hours of garden work per day, lest I wake up the next day virtually paralyzed from my previous day’s exertions. This two-hour limit is not only unexpected, it is embarrassing, as well as inconvenient. Although I haven’t exactly scaled back my somewhat ambitious gardening/yard-tweaking fantasies these past few years, I’m finding that I must be more modest when speculating about how long Yard Project X may take me to complete. Very humbling.
On the proverbial other hand, one of the things I most enjoy about being retired is having plenty of time to procrastinate. No longer must efforts to complete any project – indoors or out – be stressfully shoehorned into a severely limited amount of “free” time. With few standing commitments (not to mention no daily schedule for showing up for work), I can be a lot more haphazard and spontaneous when deciding whether – and when – to do Any Particular Chore – whether that’s building a stone wall in the back yard or cleaning out a bedroom closet.
Retirement has certainly shown me how lazy I can be. In one sense, this discovery of my laziness is a positive thing: we all need to spend more time just sitting and appreciating things (and the miracle of our sheer existence) than we’re normally encouraged to do. I’ve come to feel good (vs. guilty) about the increasing amount of time I spend sitting on a bench in the back yard gazing at the visiting wildlife and at whatever plants I have finally managed to get out of their pots and into the ground. For me, especially lately, bench-warming time – just like my birdfeeder-watching time – is no longer considered “wasted” time.
I’ve also made progress (particularly in recent Retirement Years) in letting go of some previously-held notions of eventually creating a Perfectly Congenial Environment (both an indoor one and an outdoor one). I now do my tweaking (both indoors and out) minus the misguided hope or assumption that at some point I will have arranged things in such a way that I Shall Never Need Tweak Again. (When I read somewhere that gardening is a never-ending activity, the author was not being metaphorical. I’ve learned that even indoor nest-feathering is also a constantly-moving target. For one thing, sometimes one’s needs and preferences, including aesthetic ones, change over time. Who knew?)
Another surprise with retirement as it has unfolded for me so far has been my not having spent more of it traveling – especially traveling overseas. Recently, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic put the kibosh on most traveling fantasies of any kind. Still, in pre-2013 days, I imagined that with all the extra time on my hands after retiring, I’d spend quite a bit of it away from Atlanta.
What I can complain about: the number of people among my friends or acquaintance, all approximately the same age as (or even younger than) I am, who’ve died since I retired in 2013. This inevitable downside of Being of Retirement Age is something that makes logical sense, is universal, and has more to do with aging than retirement, but I still hadn’t fully anticipated the effect these deaths (especially among high school and college comrades) would have on my spirits. Of course, some of these deaths were more shocking or remain more difficult to metabolize than others. I certainly didn’t expect to spend so few years of my retirement with the companionship of my life-long friend Blanche Flanders Farley, who died in 2018. We only had five years together as fellow retirees.
Another significant aspect of the texture of the most recent half of my ten retirement years is the fact that I’ve shared the latter half of that time with Randy. Being around and romantically involved with someone, especially someone so different from me in certain ways, has definitely influenced what retirement has felt like for me, as well as how I’ve spent some of my time these past five years. Two further sub-factors within the relationship-having factor have been our decision to maintain separate houses (and yards) (with the considerable investments of our time and energy appertaining thereto), and the decision to spend mostly evenings together and most daytime hours apart, accompanied by the equally unusual arrangement of our spending one day each week and one night each week apart.
Apart from the obvious time-allocation and energy-allocation ramifications these decisions have produced are the inevitable psychological influence my being around Randy has had. Those influences (all positive ones) are too numerous and complex to go into here, but of course being with him these past five years has had a profound effect on the way I’m now spending my retirement – everything from the fact that we watch a lot more television than I’d ever watched pre-Randy, to the kind of trips we have undertaken or hope to make in the future, plus a lot of other things in between. Apart from these examples of the practical ramifications of being with Randy (vs., say, living alone or with someone else), the emotional joys of exploring a still-relatively young relationship with someone as interesting and companionable as Randy has infused this second five-year segment of my ten years of being retired with an additional level of interest and enjoyment and optimism. I feel very lucky not only to be retired, but to be spending my retirement with Randy.
I’ll end this lengthy reflection about what’s it’s been like to have been retired for a full ten years with the note that I’m glad I’ve long collected quotations from my reading about various topics that have interested me: perhaps you, too, may might find thought-provoking – or even useful – the quotations I’ve collected about aging and/or retirement.
Cal Gough's Blog 