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Text of the page (random words):
cribes the negotiation free tone of my childhood we were five kids who held second class citizenship status to the ultimate authority figures the old sarge and she who must be obeyed our self esteem was of so little importance as to not register a tremor on their richter scale of parental concerns our behavior however would sometimes result in seismic aftershocks we were lennards after all and expected to act that way behavior included table manners and the art of conversation both of which were honed during the sacrosanct dinner hour six o clock sharp lennards are always on time we d flinch a bit if the phone rang during dinner lennards my father would bark into the phone and then inform one of us to tell your damn friends not to call during dinner sound despotic maybe but with the tyranny always came tenderness flickering in my memory is the image of my young and handsome dad on saturday night with three big fingers shoved into a little shoe buffing away in prep for sunday church lennards don t wear scuffed shoes after all posted in random ruminations tagged armybrat dinner hour family family history old school parenting table manners 37 comments when books went to war posted on december 29 2017 by silver in the barn i read literature because i find traces of my private self within its pages all my qualities admirable and abundantly less so are there and in recognizing them i feel a lovely sense of relief that i m not entirely an odd duck but we read for more than mere self recognition don t we we read because sometimes books can change the course of one s life it s world war ii and a young us marine is in hospital recovering from malaria and the trauma of battle he writes to betty smith author of a tree grows in brooklyn i am 20 years old but feel twice that age i went through hell in two years of combat overseas i just wanted you to understand that despite my youth i have seen a little bit of suffering ever since the first time i struggled through knee deep mud carrying a stretcher from which my buddy s life dripped away in precious blood and i was powerless to help him i have felt hard and cynical against this world and have felt sure i was no longer capable of loving anything or anybody he went through the war with a dead heart and dulled mind but then he began to read i can t explain the emotional reaction that took place i only know that it happened and that this heart of mine turned over and became alive again i ll never be able to explain to you the gratitude and love that fill my heart in appreciation of what your book means to me it brought laughter and tears although it was unusual for a supposedly battle hardened marine to do such an effeminate thing as weep over a piece of fiction i m not ashamed i don t think i would have been able to sleep this night unless i bared my heart to the person who caused it to live again read when books went to war if interested in the fascinating uplifting story of the armed services editions put it this way while germany burned books the us went to incredible lengths to provide military forces with literature and romance novels hello forever amber they read in foxholes bunkers and submarines and as noted above in hospitals posted in books history tagged worldwartwo literature atreegrowsinbrooklyn bettysmith mollyguptillmanning readingmatters literaturematters whenbookswenttowar armedservicesedition 46 comments for better or worse posted on november 6 2016 by silver in the barn his books his booze his brooks brothers shirts are all at home but he is not in their eighties my once inseparable parents have been wrenched apart physically anyway by the disabling symptoms of parkinson s dad is in a veterans care facility where everything is top notch except the ghastly institutional food white bread served with packets of margarine doesn t fly with the old sarge long the appreciative recipient of my mother s excellent cooking she prepares brie and salami sandwiches on nine grain bread for his lunch on his nightstand sit little containers of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies sour cream cake and sliced apples tastes of home she wheels him into the parking lot to see what he thinks about her car tires when the aides dressed my always dapper father in appalling combinations she swooped in and hung matching outfits for the week in his closet garanimals style his room holds his civil war bronze soldier books fresh flowers pictures of his family a book of prayer she brings him a communion wafer each sunday after mass and they sit then and read the paper together life goes on so does love posted in random ruminations uncategorized tagged aging family health marriage 86 comments kyoto syndrome posted on august 7 2015 by silver in the barn you ve heard of paris syndrome often exhibited by the japanese it is a condition of anxiety bordering on hysteria upon realizing they have fallen prey to an extreme case of false advertising far from the romantic image portrayed in an american in paris and glamorous chanel advertisements the grittier realities of a loud grimy and often rude paris leave the tourist feeling betrayed confused and reeling from an enormous case of culture shock we ve all felt this to one degree or another haven t we my first keen disappointment in travel was a summer trip to cape cod many years ago living in massachusetts all one hears is going down the cape this weekend gotta leave early and beat the bridge traffic awesome trip to the cape even though our family had a sweet little cottage on plum island off the north shore one always had the suspicion it was the redheaded stepchild of vacation spots the really great place to be was the cape had to be right everybody said so and so we ventured down the cape giddy with expectations much like the japanese tourist assaulted by parisian smells in the metro station our bubble was burst immediately our rented cottage was fine but in a location where even a simple trip to get milk resulted in 45 minutes trapped in summer traffic the beaches teemed with people the restaurants overflowed onto the outside decks the stores were full of ticky tacky tourist merchandise i wanted to go home that was years ago and i ve become cynical enough now to expect that the best selling novel i simply must read will almost certainly be hurled onto the metaphorical kindling pile because it is the worst piece of dreck ever written the restaurant which simply must be visited for the next special occasion dinner served stale bread cold coffee and warm champagne paris syndrome abounds but hope springs eternal even in my lentil of a heart which was beating pitty pat as our plane touched down in japan at last far from a comprehensive travel guide i give you only the impressions gained from four days in kyoto an ancient city which served as japan s capital for 1000 years weeks after returning home i ve recovered from jet lag but not from the sensory overload of a culture so different from my own simply put japan is a nation of attention to the smallest detail which i know now appeals to every fiber of my being photographers urge us to look up i would tell you to do the opposite in japan not that looking up could possibly prove a disappointment the japanese are genius at combining beauty and utility as shown in this array of artful fences why not make them as beautiful as the garden they contain why not make everything in our lives as pleasing to the senses as we can but enough of flooring and fences what about food if a fence is given special care you can imagine how important a meal is as the waiter placed an assortment of salts each with a specific purpose on our table i knew i was in for a treat this one for seafood perhaps this one for your beef oh yes please food is celebrated here meticulously prepared and served the experience is the very definition of dining no server named jared loomed over our table mid meal to inquire if you guys are still working on that meal the horror dessert consisted of two chocolates from this tray i do think that s carrying minimalism to an extreme it was william morris who said famously have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful i can t help wondering if he ever visited japan because that ideal is deeply ingrained in every aspect of the japanese design aesthetic to my western eye accustomed to piles of books and other lovely clutter it felt spare and a bit cold at first but gradually i sank into the less is more aesthetic and began to appreciate the tiny details of the few things in the room a sumptuous fabric a delicately glazed pot an exquisitely trained bonsai the smell of sandalwood the only place i found clutter and a heavenly clutter it was was in a second hand bookstore i am here to say that no matter where you are in the world it seems used bookstores all smell the same and the books themselves oh my buttery soft paper and exquisite illustrations proved absolutely irresistible to me let me show you just two of the books now safely ensconced in virginia these are serialized romance novels each perfect little books on their own but to my amazement i saw that their covers join to form one image i couldn t communicate well enough with the shop owner to find out if a third or fourth book in the series would continue the size of the image but let s just assume they would there is a condition i dub kyoto syndrome one in which the reality far exceeds the expectation one where you find yourself transported into a culture so different from your own that your outlook is forever changed i may never return to this enchanted part of the world but i ll carry a piece of it with me forever suffering from an acute case of kyoto syndrome did you know that kyoto was on the target list for the atomic bomb along with hiroshima and nagasaki secretary of war henry s stimson had it removed in no small part because he had spent his honeymoon there it seems an enduring case of kyoto syndrome proved miraculous indeed for the residents of this ancient city oh just one more thing in the intervening years i ve learned the cape does have its abundant charms it s important not to let paris syndrome close your mind to second chances thanks for reading barbara posted in books food travel tagged atomic bomb cape cod fences henry s stimson japan kyoto paris syndrome william morris 126 comments leaving on a jet plane posted on june 5 2015 by silver in the barn cue the peter paul mary or better yet john denver he wrote the song you know even though we often associate it with the former this hilariously dated hippie dippie video is completely redeemed once john and cass elliot start singing what glorious harmony real life has a way of intruding into our blogging doesn t it and my blogging is coming to a screeching halt for a while bh and i are getting on that jet plane tomorrow for a long anticipated trip to taiwan and be still my heart japan i ve been yearning to see japan my entire life or at least since reading shogun back in the seventies to say i am excited would be an understatement i promise to bore you all thoroughly with tales of my adventures when i get home and maybe i ll even have some cool new airport carpets to show you i leave you with my most recent favorite shot of max apropos of nothing in this post but too cute not to share oh yes max will be staying with friends while we re gone who will take him boating and spoil him rotten as it should be zai jian and sayonara barbara posted in travel tagged cass elliot japan john denver max shogun taiwan travel 111 comments defending the chamois posted on may 30 2015 by silver in the barn the extraterrestrial has moved from the gardener to the blogger if the gardener baffled the blogger bewilders once again the human ambassador is summoned et why is the blogger frustrated and unhappy ha she feels pressure to remove some favorite things from her writing et what things ha words rich and lovely words words full of texture and life which she has been collecting since childhood you see she has been advised that her writing is inaccessible et inaccessible explain please ha not everybody will enjoy or understand her if she uses the words she yearns to she finds herself therefore practicing a form of literary self mutilation which is intensely painful et but this is illogical what if the intelligence levels vary in the human they do don t they ha rumor has it but no blogger wishes to post into a vacuum et ah yes the black hole i m familiar with it you know but tell me if a reader encounters a word with which he is not familiar are there not ways to define it ha of course in a matter of seconds actually the word can be defined and pronounced in all of our languages et why you have so many languages and a metric system are still beyond my understanding but i digress so let me get this straight the writer in order to attain a wider readership feels it necessary to strip the work of linguistic power and beauty by reducing it to a more facile and spineless version of its former self ha yup et and do you not see the parallels in this type of thinking with the decline of the mediocrian people in the neighboring galaxy ha excuse me et oh never mind a sudden surge of melancholy has me in its grip ha you mean you feel bad et look it up will you it s obvious where i fall in the discussions swirling about the blogosphere lately on using big words in our writing i first read of it on carrie rubin s blog she d been urged to remove the dastardly fugue from a novel she s writing as it slows the reader down too much evidently to be confronted with an unconventional word sigh there s plenty of room for all of us and our writing styles on the blogosphere from poetry to pâte à choux blogs vary as widely as we do ourselves some of us are just looking to have a good time posting our daily doings in a casual and loose format groovy but some of us are in danger of hiding our light under a bushel there s a term in real estate development highest and best use the writer who deliberately guts his work in hopes of attracting more readers is like the developer who builds a faceless storage unit on a prime piece of waterfront acreage the highest and best use potential is forever vanished worse if our writing becomes flat and tame we will lose the lovely self annihilation which author ian mcewan described as the sensation of sinking into words and leaving oneself behind wallowing blissfully in it all i d miss that terribly wouldn t you my writing hero mr p g wodehouse presumed his reader was equal to his own mental agility i can picture his arched brow and icy gaze at the very idea of making blandings blander what ho rubbish were old plum to have tried unfathomably to make his writing more universal we would be left with this atrocity like most american rich guys he married a lot going from one girl to another like a mountain goat jumping from rock to rock compare that to this sublim...
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