bits and bants vol.15

the sliding slope of summer

We’re on the downslope of summer, past peak, barrelling towards a new school year. I’ve told myself I wasn’t going to think of school, do any school planning or book ordering until August 15 and I’ll be damned but it’s coming for me all too quickly.

Nikolai Astrup, Summer Wind and Playing Children

Summer goes by too fast, but I don’t want to already live with the upcoming grief of mourning it. I will not grieve until after it frosts. Or maybe not until after thanksgiving in October. And then maybe November won’t make me resentful. But I do become rageful at back to school adverts, pumpkin spice anything, and everyone wishing away summer by looking for fall decorations. Let us live in the actual season we are in, please! I sometimes wish for strict Regency era-like rules concerning when and how we discuss seasonal changes. Wait. Who are we kidding, I wish for that kind of society full of rules all the time.

This week I have not much to report because it seems like it went in a completely unexpected way. After last weekend of a lot of fun with our local rodeo, parade, then dinner and a movie out with friends, and a holiday Monday, the rest of the week was spent trying to catch up but having a lot of unexpected problems arise that needed to be dealt with. There was a lot of helping out family, driving kids to unexpected appointments, septic systems failing, cutting a fast order of flowers for a florist, husband working late, packing kids for camp. So many things that needed attention, yet when I thought to where my time was going it wasn’t done for things that seemed to accomplish a lot. Still fighting that weird paradox of the necessary not being the productive. Will be fighting it until I’m in my eighties I expect…

bants:

• I thought this was such a well articulated piece on therapy-speak invading our culture. As you know from my piece last week, it’s just one of those ever present ideas circulating in my mind, but this writer does an expert job of examining what boundaries do to relationships.

• Also from Plough, this wonderful piece on Madonna House and feasting. I know I shared his last column on life at Madonna House and it at once made me nostalgic for the short time I spent there, but to love Catherine Doherty even more.

• I don’t mean to share Larry Chapp every week, but I can’t help it if his stuff is consistently the best I read in any given week.

• I found this description of attending a clandestine Mass in China to be riveting. The Church in China is often in my prayers, and I wish I would remember to pray for it more often.

• And I might as well go for my whole bingo card of stuff I always share about: here’s an excellent thought on gardens as a third place. I love thinking about places that are more than just third places. And she gets bonus points for the Wendell Berry tie in. Gardens, Wendell Berry=automatic share.

reading, watching, what have you:

• I need to be better at this category because I’ve actually read so much and haven’t talked about it enough!

• Right now I’m reading Talking At Night for fiction, Caryll Houselander: The Divine Eccentric for nonfiction, and listening to The Picture of Dorian Grey.

• Just started season two of The Bear and I just love it so much. Holding myself back from Only Murders in the Building because it’s one of the funnest, comforting shows around. Not the best. But fun and comforting.

• Saw Oppenheimer last weekend, I have nothing to say you haven’t already read a million times already other than just give Robert Downey Jr. an Oscar right now, he has such a watchable face. Cillian Murphy forever. Can anyone play someone emotionally distant and complex like he can? No. And yeah, the last third of the movie could have been condensed but also I was completely riveted, so maybe not?

And that’s it. I’ve got a weekend of a lot of driving ahead of me with kids going to camp, and then next week more kids here, there, and everywhere? Because it’s summer. It’s summer people!!

to summer walks and cool nights,

Christy