Wednesday, January 12, 2005

January insanity

I am assuming that there are a handful of readers who do not live in Madison. Aren’t you the lucky ones! You are thus spared the freakish weather patterns that have confounded and confused everyone, even those who do not believe that one should ever take note of, let alone TALK about, the weather.

Normally, I take great pleasure in looking outside my office window. Here, take note of the view, while I am still reveling in the neatness of my office desk after the Great Tuesday Clean-up:


Take note: it's so *organized* !! My various little birds on the windowsill can't believe the transformation. Posted by Hello
But wait, zoom the lens a little closer: what’s that over there, across Bascom Hill?


It can't be... Umbrellas? In January? Posted by Hello

Do they look happy to you? Posted by Hello
It is January 12th and it is pouring rain outside. But we needn't go digging for our little Totes because the deluge is about to end. Tomorrow we start the plunge. I was to visit a friend in Minneapolis this week-end. Not anymore! The high there will be – 10 F! (In the negatives here as well.)

Listen, I’m all for bypassing weather talk. After the horrors of South East Asia and the disastrous flooding in Southern California, I want to do away with this topic. But my eyes keep straying outside to the flash of umbrellas... Yuk.

Do you wonder why a Wisconsinite has to find ways of amusing herself during this bleak and troubling month – with, for example, taking great pains to arrange the top of the shelf next to her desk, just so that the eye can roam to the warm, soft glow of the lamp over the two wooden figures from Poland? A pleasant distraction from the damp gray slush outside.


Office adornments: that's an etching of "Zelazowa Wola" (Chopin's birthplace, considered one of the three must-see places in Poland) in its new frame. Posted by Hello

I am open-minded, but what’s a Southern Living Party doing in a place like Wisconsin?

I got an invitation to a “Southern Living At Home” party. From what I can tell, you go to it for the purpose of socializing with like-minded people and acquiring “beautiful accents” for your home. I imagine the accents are somehow “Southern,” even as the attendees are themselves very “Northern.”

My impulse was to put this aside. The invitation has frothy lemonade in polka-dot glasses on it and candles and flowers in assorted containers. It’s just not me.

But then I thought: how rigid on my part!

And so I rejected the invitation NOT because it threatened to introduce Southern Themes into my home or office, but because I am done with looking at/procuring adornments. At some point one has to get to the substance of things.

Do your politics have to agree with the politics of the bus-driver?

No, of course not. But do you shop at stores that are owned by, say, someone with extremely divergent political beliefs (Whole Foods comes to mind)? I do. Do you go to gyms whose owners profess an ideology inconsistent with your own? But of course. Do you read and admire books written by authors with reputations that are nowhere near where you see yourself on the political spectrum? Sure!

Someone asked me today if I followed the politics of the author (Virginia Postrel) of the book I’d been amusedly blogging about recently. My answer: enough to know that she has taken some *interesting* positions on a number of political issues. That does not detract from, or even speak to her writings on the topic of aesthetics.

Ocean and its author do not discriminate on the basis of which ocean we’re talking about. We here even like an occasional sea once in a while (love that cold splash of the Baltic on the ankles, so long as we're in the middle of a heat wave). And lakes have a considerable amount to offer as well. So peaceful, serene (I'm thinking of little lakes). Not salty enough you say? But how else can you develop your palate if you don’t examine, swim in and savor all bodies of water? [I’m not a fan of excessive chlorine in swimming pools though, just so you know.]


UPDATE: Oh come on, I should NOT have to say this: obviously I avoid cosmetics that use animals for testing and I'm not a fan of sweatshops. And I draw the line at dealing with fascists, racists and many other extremists. So, not too much chlorine and no thank you to any of the above.