Sisters
A trip out of town
Niece, her husband
and grand niece
Visiting, jigsaw puzzles
and stories
A loop around home town
before return to city
Supper out with brother
(more stories and memory work)
Scrabble (I won)
Sisters
“When you finally go back to your old home, you find
it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood.”
~ Sam Ewing, baseball player
Alone with
my thoughts
that swirl,
dip and dive
I am comforted
when
they shuffle
and regroup
like a puzzle
coming into focus.
Letting them play
their games in my head,
I can choose
which to keep and
which will serve
me in this life.
“The best thinking has been done in solitude.”
~ Thomas Edison
Procrastination:
“the act of delaying
something that must be
done often because it is
unpleasant or boring” ~
Cambridge online dictionary
~~~~~~
Dust has been banished,
soap scum put in it’s place ~
down the drain,
mirrors polished,
floors devoid of cat hair, ……
and all the while I wondered:
“What are you procrastinating about?
You dislike finicky housework?”
Not the first time with the puzzle,
but now I know.
I know that problems need sorting.
The sorting that arises from
the act of ‘finicky cleaning’
You may laugh,
you may guffaw,
you may snort in disgust
but I see my thoughts
attached to the vacuum,
the rag that scrubs grime,
the folding of stray tablecloths
until I have an orderly list of to do’s.
Tax time is always confusing!
“Organizing is what you do before you do something,
so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.”
~ A.A.Milne
Author’s note: This mystery novel is indeed beautiful. I reread it again this year while working on a project. Needing a refresher for my over worked brain and a different puzzle to solve I choose this book at random. Having run out of time and inspiration, I turned to a second repost of this novel by Louise Penny.
~~~~~
It’s been ten years since I read The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. Fortunately, I’ve read a lot of books in those ten years. The mystery was just as fascinating now as it was then. Even more so! It began centuries before when far away monks had resurrected Plainchant in their music. The written works were disputed and findings suppressed by the Church. Most monasteries had their own books of the beautiful music of Plainchant, but where was the original.
Being ferried across a quiet lake to a monastery hidden deep in a Québec forest begins another mystery. The boatman was sceptical about all the equipment that Inspector Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir brought with them when he knew that no one was ever admitted to the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Twenty four monks lived within its stone walls constructed by monks escaping the Inquisition centuries before. Behind the heavy oaken door of the monastery was a murder. The musical director and prior, Frére Mathieu, had been found in the abbot’s garden. The abbott recognized the significance of Frére Mathieu’s brutal death and contacted the police. Gamache knew they would be admitted and over the next days investigated all the suspects. All the monks. Gamache and Beauvoir, his second in command and trusted colleague, studied the monastery, looked at plans, attended services, ate with the monks and found the fracture in the community. Only one person interrupted the investigation - the Chief Superintendent of the Surête, Sylvain Francoeur. He arrived unannounced with his own agenda. The friction between Gamache and Francoeur was an old one and was not resolved but escalated. The mystery of the Monastery was solved, but the old friction between Gamache and Francoeur remained. In reading my review of 2014, some members of my book club were unhappy with the book’s ending. I thought some characters were unnecessary, but at this reading I disagree. Each character had his place in the mystery. I have included that review on this post.
I hope to read many more of Louise Penny’s books, several that are on my bookshelves and the many others in the Inspector Gamache series. This re-read held me fast as the Louise Penny told me the history of Plainchants and the monastery, led me down solid stone halls of the monastery, showed me the beautiful music of Plainchants, and the architecture that allowed dancing prisms of light to float through the high windows.
~~~~~
Review from January 14, 2014
A brutal murder occurs. In a beautiful old monastery deep in Québec. Not just any monastery, but a closed monastery with a vow of silence. Silence was only broken during services when Gregorian chants were sung. It is in the music that the mystery develops. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surête du Quebec unravel this mystery. They have come out of their usual community of Three Pines, with completely new characters. The monks and their lives are completely foreign to the two officers, especially to Inspector Beauvoir.
Not all of our book group members were completely pleased with Louise Penny’s novel, missing the characters from Three Pines. A first reader of Louise Penny, the concept of a murder in a monastery was fascinating. Openings to a solution appear and then disappear in the twists and turns that follow the halls and rooms of the old monastery. And, although certain characters seemed unnecessary, I enjoyed this Beautiful Mystery.
“To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be
was a writer - since I read “Charlotte’s Web” as a child.”
~ Louise Penny
Title: The Beautiful Mystery
Author: Louise Penny
Copyright: 2012
Publisher: Three Pines Creations Inc.
Type: Mystery fiction
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN - 978-0-312-65546-4 (hard cover)
ISBN - 978-1-250-01527-3 (ebook)
ISBN - 978-1-250-03112 (trade paperback)
books, books & more books!
categorized and sorted
trays of books on long tables
trays of books stacked beneath
That’s not all:
Jigsaw puzzles, word games,
children’s games, LP vinyl
categorized and sorted
trays of them on long tables
trays of them stacked beneath
Last year I went without focus,
this year - yesterday - I knew what I wanted:
Louise Penny novels and jigsaw puzzles
weaving and wandering tables stretching the length of the rink,
I found my prizes: $10.00 for the lot!
An added treat:
the rink’s concession was open for business
my business: a bacon cheeseburger, fries and coffee
after all that hard work
I needed a rest…..
But the volunteers need more rest than I!
Cheerful women and men who organized
thousands of books, games, vinyl recordings,
CD’S, DVD’S and more…….
sorting, stacking, directing traffic ~
the traffic of buyers filling bags and boxes
and happily accepting the few dollars charged.
“Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.”
~ Elizabeth Andrew
The Big Book Sale in Regina, Sask
The major fundraiser for the Seniors’ University Groups
Wednesday, June 21 - 24, 2023
When the screen is blank, the page is too white, when imagination has gone missing or disjointed thoughts whirl out of control, I am lost, frustrated, annoyed ~
dishes in the sink always there for me to sink my hands into soapy hot water, one dish, pot or fork at a time slows my mind and words begin
to shimmy and shiver into place
with each dish washed and set to dry
a piece of the puzzle not yet written
~ words set to dry on the page.
“My creative process is quite slow. I hear melodies in my head
while I’m washing dishes and I allow my subconscious to do the work.”
~ Sinead O’Connor
In the Prologue, three children, on a ramble in the woods on March 23 1940, stumble upon a dead body. “Because though they were young, one thing they’d already learned. Colored boy found with a dead white body? That didn’t look good to nobody.”
Diane Chamberlain develops two stories that pose the questions: How do they connect; when do they come together. Anna Dale, a young artist in 1940 and Morgan Christopher, a young artist in 2018 share the same painting. Morgan is in jail in Raleigh, North Carolina for a crime she didn’t commit. Anna, from Plainfield, New Jersey, has just lost her mother and has won a contest to paint a mural for the Edenton Post Office in Edenton, North Carolina. In June of 2018, Morgan is released on bail on with an ankle bracelet on the provision that she finish restoring a mural in two months. A benefactor, unknown to her, has just passed away leaving those provision in his will. She has no idea how he knows her but is glad to be out of jail ~ and she knows nothing about art restoration, merely painting. In December of 1939, Anna Dale receives notice of the contest winnings. She is completely unfamiliar with the culture ‘south of the Mason Dixon line’ and is unprepared for the racism that was prevalent there.
Anna Dale’s mural depicts the character and history of the town of Edendale. The Edenton Tea Party, a local woman's movement, is central to the mural ~, the Mill Village, the Cotton Mill and the fishing boats were all parts of the mural. Decades later, as Morgan works on restoring that same very damaged mural, strange other images came through - a motorcycle, tiny skulls in the Mill Village windows, a hammer with blood drops coming from it. What do they all mean? Had Anna Dale lost her mind? With each chapter, one for Anna and the next for Morgan, the story becomes more convoluted and tangled.
Their benefactor, Jesse James Williams, connects both women. To Anna, he was a young black boy who had great artistic potential. To Morgan, he was only known as an admired and impressive artist but did not know how or why he knew of her. Another conundrum. In 1940, to protect Anna, he took the mural and kept it for decades. Only when he passed, did he bring it out of hiding for Morgan to restore in 2018.
“You have to make peace with the past or you can never move into the future.”
Diane Chamberlain, Big Lies in a Small Town
Title: Big Lies in a Small Town
Author: Diane Chamberlain
Copyright: 2019
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
Type: Novel
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN - 978-1-250-08733-1 (hardcover)
ISBN - 978-1-250-08735-5 (ebook)
ISBN - 978-1-250-27052-8 (international, sold outside the U.S. subject to rights availability)
Ideas are mere design fragments ~
pieces of greater puzzles
falling into consciousness
corner pieces here and there
edge pieces one at a time
random pieces fitting
~ or not ~
the final picture can be
whimsical or grand.
One missing piece does not
ruin all the other ideas.
“These fragments, these shivers of my heart
are mere lifetimes enclosed in a minute.”
~ Zubair Ahsan, Of Endeavours Blue
Puzzled
By my own indecision
The sun shone
Snow glittered
Through the window
Is the cold still snapping at our noses and toes-es?
It is only the trash to take out
Maybe it could wait.
I’ll poke my head out the door.
What?!
Porch boards soaking wet!
Only patches of snow remain!
Puzzle solved
Decision: walk in the sun
Even if it is just to take the trash out.
“It’s not about making the right choice.
It’s about making a choice and making it right.”
~ J.R.Rim, Better to be able to love than be loveable. ~
(a collaboration with other authors)
