Stepheny Houghtlin's Blog, page 21
June 16, 2015
The Cotton is High – June 17
“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.”
Anna Godbersen, Bright Young Things
This series of summertime posts have been about remembering a younger time in our lives, when in my generation at least, we were free to roam and play, to use our imaginations and pretend all manner of things. Because I am an addicted reader I have used the writing of others to highlight the posts with thoughtful quotes from their work. How surprised they would be to know that their words have influenced our own introspection about the summer in each of our lives.
In my mind, I can only think of summers rolled into one, where things happened over and over, yet are highlighted with memories like the summer I learned to ride a bike and kept falling into the neighbors bushes. All the twilight times that signaled it was time to go home. Many first two weeks in August when the girls took over Camp Echo, the YMCA camp in Fremont, Michigan. All the times of sunburn, new shorts and sleeveless blouses. The summers I went to Hobby Horse Stable to ride my horse; summer horse shows, and a few ribbons. Falling in and out of love on a regular basis. I was effervescent then and if that translates to enthusiasm, eagerness, and curiosity, than I am still that way. This June we are all free to recapture some of the things that summers were once about. Thank you for joining me and leaving wonderful comments about how this summer is working out. See you tomorrow if you are free to come out to play.
June 15, 2015
The Cotton Is High -June 16
“The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don’t, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper.”
Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures
You have to catch your breath after reading this long sentence, but I liked the reminder of what it was like to visit the library during summer. When we moved two years ago to ‘the cottage for two,’ I headed to the little library in town to get a library card. I didn’t have my new drivers license yet, and was told I would need to return with a piece of mail, a bill, that showed my address in order to prove residency. You don’t know me well enough to know that I am a political junkie, so this rule in order to get a library card made me want to lean over the counter and kiss the woman behind the desk. It was either that or stand there bent over laughing. You can tell which side I come down on when it comes to Voter ID. Get the damn photo taken or whatever, if you want to vote!
But I have strayed from the gentle thoughts of selecting library books to bring home for the week, able to read at my leisure, morning, noon, or night. A life long habit of reading started in the school library, taking me on to the big Evanston Library, and beyond.
Here are a few book titles I recommend for this summers reading. #1 Facing East-Stepheny Forgue Houghtlin, #2 Magic Time-Doug Marlette #3 Under An English Heaven-Alice Boatwright #4 Death at La Fenice- 1st in the Donna Leon Series #5 Bury Your Dead- Louise Penny series, but do read them in order. #5 The Death of Santini-or anything else written by Pat Conroy. Please add your recommendations in the comment section.
Don’t forget, you can’t have a LIBRARY CARD without identification, needed for most everything else in life anyway, except maybe to vote! Go figure.
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Tagged: Author Alice Boatwright, Donna Leon, Facing East-Novel, Libraries, Louise Penny, Magic Time-Doug Marlette, My One Hundred Adventures, Pat Conroy, Polly Horvath-author
June 14, 2015
The Cotton is High – June 15
What Does Summer Look Like? Here is a wonderful description that I LOVE. It helps me find my own language in order to write about a time gone by and the summers that I hope still to have. I hope you will add a line in the ‘comments’ to further Jones’ description.
“It looks like fallen petals, and it looks like rain. It looks like the sounds the birds make at dawn. It looks like the aisle of grocery stores when a song I love suddenly begins to play overhead, and I cannot help but dance a little dance. It looks like a sigh, a kiss, an unmade bed. It looks like Cheerios in a white bowl with a bit of silence on the side. It looks like a plain vanilla cupcake in white paper, a dance with the wind, pink toenails, warm socks. It looks like a fire against the cold of winter, and a deep lake cool against a summer sky. It looks like chick flicks, books that make you cry, and all the candles blown out on the first try.”
D. Smith Kaich Jones
Tagged: D. Smith Kaich Jones
June 13, 2015
The Cotton is High – June 14
“Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.”
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
I have changed the photograph for this third week of posts about summertime. I selected it from my Pinterest boards because it reminds me of the architecture in Evanston, IL. where I grew up. The Dickens quote could have been written about Evanston too.
This series of posts has been like looking at a slide show of old photographs, slowly clicking by. I see myself walking beside my mother down Asbury Avenue to Davis street where the grocery once was. I recall the neighborhood children from several blocks around, some days incurring skinned knees from some escapade or another. I remember the used Hudson car I was given for my 16th birthday, and the high school friends that gathered that day for a surprise birthday party. Some of those precious friends are still woven into the tapestry of my life.
I read that the name, Stepheny, means ‘crowned one.’ Growing up when I did, a summer free child, I realize how blessed I was then and remain today. I may not celebrate summers in the fashion I once did, but the Dickens quote seems a perfect description of once upon a time, not so very long ago…and reminds me of the crown I have been given. My summer has been enriched by writing these posts. I hope they have helped you approach this summer more intentionally, and that you are having a great June.
Tagged: Charles Dickens-Oliver Twist
June 12, 2015
Fish Are Jumpin’ – June 13
“Cricket to us was more than play,
It was a worship in the summer sun.”
Edmund Blunden
I didn’t grow up with cricket, though Downton Abbey has provided a window into how important it is to those who play and watch the sport. Cubs baseball in Wrigley Field is another matter. My parents took me to see the Cubs play, and in old age, they sat in front of the TV watching every game. Their great grandson, Sam, is a Cubs fan.
Who can forget Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) in the movie, Bull Durham? This is what the ‘boys of summer,’ young and old alike, believe about the sport.
Walt Whitman once said, “I see great things in Baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.”
— Annie Savoy
Annie Savoy also said, “I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball…You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring… Sometimes when I’ve got a ballplayer alone, I’ll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen…Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball… It’s a long season and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.”
Hope you get to watch YOUR team play a ballgame this summer from a good seat, eating a great hot dog, with a win.
Tagged: Bull Durham-movie, Chicago Cubs, Edmund Blunden, Susan Sarandon-Annie Savoy, Walt Whitman, Wrigley Field
June 11, 2015
Fish Are Jumpin’ – June 12
“Summer vacation is about watermelons, shaved ice, popsicles, summer festivals with fireworks, and the ocean!!! That’s what summer has been about for elementary school kids since the dawn of time!
Peach-Pit, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need
Today, thinking of our memories of summer, let’s make a list and begin to replicate them. I think we can all begin with the items mentioned above: Watermelon, popsicles, fireworks…
I am going to add…ice cream cones, picnic food, picking blackberries, catching fireflies, tennis games, parades, sitting on a beach towel, wet feet from dew on the grass, roller skating, putting air in my bicycle tires, Camp Echo-girl’s camp in Fremont Michigan, reading on the screen porch…to name a few.
Some of my list will be impossible to repeat. I can no longer walk to the corner to buy my Dad’s newspaper for a dime, but I can serve dinner outside tonight, a menu that includes food off the grill, and watermelon for desert. What’s on your list that you would like to do tonight?
June 10, 2015
Fish are Jumpin’ – June 11
“After all, we were young. We were fourteen and fifteen, scornful of childhood, remote from the world of stern and ludicrous adults. We were bored, we were restless, we longed to be seized by any whim or passion and follow it to the farthest reaches of our natures. We wanted to live – to die – to burst into flame – to be transformed into angels or explosions. Only the mundane offended us, as if we secretly feared it was our destiny . By late afternoon our muscles ached, our eyelids grew heavy with obscure desires. And so we dreamed and did nothing, for what was there to do, played ping-pong and went to the beach, loafed in backyards, slept late into the morning – and always we craved adventures so extreme we could never imagine them. In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.”
Steven Millhauser, Dangerous Laughter
Don’t wait this summer for something to happen, go out and make it happen. Take a walk at dusk for inspiration, remembering scents and sounds of summers past. See what comes to you that you would like to do this summer, which you will remember in January and be glad in it.
Tagged: Steven Millhauser-Dangerous Laughter
June 9, 2015
Fish are Jumpin’ – June 10
“Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong – the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to?”
― Fredrik Sjöberg, The Fly Trap: A Book about Summer, Islands and the Freedom of Limits
Ten days into June, I wonder if you have had a perfect summer night yet? Do you remember having to go to bed when it was still light outside? I was raised when bedtime meant bedtime, be it summer or not. It didn’t matter that you could hear the older children still playing outside, or how much light remained, or that summer ought to change such rules. I remember sneaking out of bed to sit on the radiator cover my father built, which gave me a perch to look out on Asbury Avenue through the open large double-hung windows. There, I would watch dusk descend, and notice the birdsong dying away for the night, while fireflies began to light up the shrubs. Straining to eavesdrop, the mummer of the neighbor’s voices were indistinguishable, but comforting. A few cars always passed by, and leashed dogs went round the block for their last walks.
It was perfect, the light, the warmth, the smells, where I practiced the art of being alone, of listening, and taking into my future this scene I now share with you, and can revisit anytime. Tonight, just before bedtime, remember what a perfect summer night was like while you were growing up; it was a blessing then and can be again.
Tagged: Fredrik Sjoberg-The Fly Trap: A Book about Summer, Islands and the Freedom of Limits
June 8, 2015
Fish are Jumpin’ – June 9
“To me, summer has always been about potential. This was especially true when I was in high school. Those three or so months between one school year and the next always meant change. People got taller or wider or smaller. They broke up or came together, lost friends or gained them, had life experiences that you could tell had transformed them even if you didn’t know what they were. In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible. As a teenager, I was always hoping to change, to become someone other than who I was. Each summer, I felt I had the chance to do that. All I had to do was wait and see what happened.”
Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
Sarah Dressen’s paragraph is my gift to you today. I can add very little that will enhance her wonderful description of summers while growing up. But I can tell you a true story. My freshman year at Evanston Township High School in Evanston, IL., I fell in love with a boy that had his locker near mine. He looked great in the short basketball pants worn in those days, and he could hit from the corner. A terrible thing happened. He went to summer school to take a biology class. There he fell in love with someone else. I didn’t know then that all I had to do was wait and see what happened. You will understand why my father said what he did, when years later, I married that boy. “The two of you have come a long way around to get to this.” Sarah Dessen remembers well what potential summers can have. THIS summer remember that you can change if you like, and anything is possible.
Tagged: Sarah Dessen-Along for the Ride
June 7, 2015
Fish are Jumpin’ – June 8
“Seven a.m. on the first day of summer vacation was, to her mind, a dangerous time to be awake. Even God had to be sleeping in.”
Victoria Kahler, Luisa Across the Bay
We have little time these days to reflect on the innocence of our earliest memories. Today I am inviting you to join me on an arm chair archaeological dig, digging for memories that ultimately got buried by the years. It has been a long time since we awakened at 7:00AM on the first day of summer vacation when it seemed logical that God was sleeping in.
Once the shadows on my bedroom wall seemed real and dangerous. Once I believed that after I put the dollies in their beds for the night, like Raggedy Ann, they had adventures while I slept. It has been a long time since I sneaked a cigarette at a slumber party or made telephone calls asking, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can? Well, let him out.” A long time since I lay on my back looking up at the northern lights in a Michigan sky, or was kissed in the shadows of the front porch just before my curfew.
If we dig down and retrieve these innocent times, bringing them to the surface of this June summer day, I believe it will help us have a great summer. Take the hand of the innocent child you once were and follow he or she out the door to play.
Tagged: Luisa Across the Bay, Victoria Kahler
