x + y =z

I loved this article in the Sunday NYTimes.  I am mathematically challenged to say the least--I barely remember my times tables--and algebra in 9th or 8th grade (?) was a huge challenge.  So well I remember trying fruitlessly to solve word problems.  The key to the solution always seemed to escape me, the use of words and not just numbers only adding to my confusion.  Fifty years later, I still recall the humiliation and panic caused by my abysmally low SAT math scores.  Would I ever get into college? 

And yet, one of my pleasantest memories is sitting with my dad at our dining room table doing my algebra homework together.  I'm thinking how handsome he is and how he knows everything.   He is patiently explaining to me how to read a word problem and create an equation that finds the answer.  x + y + z.   I get it! I get it!. . . but only here at the dining table with my dad sitting across from me.

Years and years later, I sat with my son at the table in our kitchen and coaxed him, begged him, entreated him  to do his homework, all of which was a challenge he deemed impossible.   Once in frustration he tore up his assignment into little pieces and scattered them on the floor.  I patiently picked up all those little papers and pasted them together for him to bring into school the next day, so desperate was I that he not fail.  Who knows if he remembers. 

When We Were the Kennedys

I started it one night and finished it in the morning before getting out of in bed--When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood.   It's a memoir by a woman who grew up in Mexico, Maine, a rural town not far from Otisfield where I've spent so many summers.  It opens with the death of her father when she was just nine and ends with the assassination of President Kennedy six months later.  It never strays from the small community of largely Catholic, working class families whose livelihoods are tied directly or indirectly to the paper mill that dominates, pollutes but at the same time feeds the life of the town.  Its main characters are the members of her family, her childhood friends and their families, the nuns at the Catholic school she attends.  There's a large cast of characters--every one of whom is described with love and compassion and telling detail.

Tragedy occurs right at the onset--her Dad dies suddenly on his way to work one day--but the book isn't steeped in depression or ugliness.  When I was finished reading it, I felt that I had been privileged to read a private account of crucial events in this one family's history, a gift by the writer to the people who loved her and whom she loved.

The definition of the word heartfelt is "Sincere; Deeply and strongly felt".  This is a heartfelt book.

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West Philly

I've spent a  portion of the last two days in West Philly.  Yesterday Liz and I rode the #13 trolley out to 40th and Baltimore to have dinner at the Chat House.  I hadn't ridden on the trolley since I was a teenager and living in Yeadon with my parents.  The #13 trolley was our way into center city.  We hiked down the hill to catch the trolley then rode all along Chester Avenue and finally down into the tunnel at 40th Street and into center city.  In those days, the trolley wasn't air conditioned.  On hot days, all the windows were wide open so you could lean out and feel the breeze on your face and look out at the street.  The cold air was pumping in last night's trolley but it was filled with hot and sweaty passengers coming home tired and cranky from a long day at work. I remembered getting off at my stop just past Cobbs Creek and having to trudge up that long hill to my house on the corner of Church Lane and Darnell Avenue.  After dinner, Liz and I walked back to center city past beautiful old homes with big porches and flowering trees along the sides.  I didn't think these houses were the homes that most of the passengers on the #13 trolley were going back to.

This afternoon I walked out to West Philly following Walnut Street across the Schuykill to spend a couple hours at the Institute of Contemporary Art.  It was really hot crossing the bridge from center city and I felt the sweat trickle down my back.  It was a relief to step into the cool and dark of ICA.  The guard laughed and laughed when I told her I had walked all the way from center city.  "I did that when Septa was on strike," she said, "and then I had to stand all day here.  I was tired."

Upstairs was the exhibit I had come to see: Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show,  a mash up of videos, graphic displays of information, interactive installations by an Austrian graphic designer exploring his search for the meaning of happiness--how to define it, how to feel it, what causes it.  The gallery was nearly empty so I took my time, happy to be alone in a cool, dark space.  I laughed, I listened, I watched, I read,  I felt happy, bored, interested, even sad at one point.  It made me think which I guess was the point after all.  Then I walked back home crossing the new South Street Bridge (that's what the banners say) which I really like, with views of the river and the city on either side.   

Feeling the Heat

I haven't posted for over two weeks (I'm feeling ambivalent about continuing this blog (Is it too trivial, a waste of time? Should I be doing something more serious?) and it's kind of pathetic to make my return to blogging a post about the weather.  But I just came back from running a short errand that took me outside for maybe 30 minutes tops.  I hadn't been outside since the early morning when it was hot but within acceptable parameters.  This afternoon it felt literally painful to be moving let alone breathing. 

I hate when commentators like right wing fundamentalists start blaming natural disasters on our supposed sinfulness.  But this heat spell really does feel like a punishment.  And it's so clearly one we've brought on ourselves by willfully ignoring the evidence of climate change and steadfastly refusing to do what is necessary and right to save our planet. . .if that is indeed possible.

My depressing, maybe even despairing, mood has only been intensified by reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I was surprised to learn that it was written in 1951.  The grim and dystopian world it describes--on the brink of nuclear destruction, hostile to ideas and learning, devoid of joy and real emotion--feels way too close to the world we live in now.   

Weather Report

We've been having weird but wonderful weather here--sudden storms that tear across the lake without warning followed by brilliant sunshine and cloud swept skies.  Last night at sunset time, we could view a double rainbow at one end and then a dramatic, smoky end of day sky at the other end.

Then this morning I woke up around 4 am to the full moon pouring a golden path right across the lake and into my bedroom.  I went out on the deck and watched it descend slowly into the water.  There was complete silence except for the weird call of loons who I imagine were appreciating the view as well.  Then the skies began to lighten and it was just an hour to morning.  Somehow I managed to get back in bed and go to sleep for awhile.