NOW I DO HAVE GET ONE…

The New York Public Library is doing a fantastic Candide exhibit with a lot of online stuff, to which, if I can write something worthy, I’m going to contribute. But check out this 2 minute Candide. It’s brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk0XY199svk

A happy dog cruisin’ in California on his way to Thanksgiving dinner.

When we got back to the city, all the leaves had been summarily removed from the trees and deposited on the ground, making Riverside Park look gray and wintry and dull. And the idea of moving to California seemed like a brilliant incontrovertible idea. But then…the tree that blooms every December 1st…

and then I heard a red tailed hawk and looked up and there were two of them sitting in the trees, Here is a bad iphone picture of them.

As for this storied move, it hasn’t yet happened. The apartment is not yet sold, and so we live in limbo, which is to say we live exactly as we have been but we have to make the beds every day.

Most important of all, for me, is that I have just read My Antonia for the first time! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am so lucky to have grown up so illiterate. This is a book most people read in junior high school. I was much too pretentious in junior high school to understand this subtly simple book. Now on to O Pioneer! I think. Maybe we should move not to LA but to Nebraska. Waddya think?

A female cardinal landed on our balcony today and wanted very much to get in. There are birds you just fall in love with and the female cardinal is one, partly because as a child I watched one hatch her eggs in a nest visible from our porch (the cat unfortunately ate all her babies), partly because they are just so beautiful, so subtle and elegant in their plumage and then, pop!, that orange bill.

When I went to take the dog out tonight, the elevator door opened and three teenage boys were huddled around something I imagined must be a joint until they moved apart to make room for Hector and me and I saw it was a book. They were hulking in that teenage boy way and they smelled of beer.
“No, listen, Crime and Punishment was published in 1866. There was so much going on then with him…”
“Just back from Siberia…”
“1866, man.”
They all shook their heads in grave agreement and held the door for me as I exited. I love boys.

That scruffy being above is a cairn terrier, which would be quite enough to make me turn to Justin Smith’s wonderful piece on 3quarks daily, but the piece itself, about dogs and philosophy, is fascinating. click here to read it.

Today I went through the book shelves trying to find duplicates and other books I could donate to Betterworld.com so that I can make the bookshelves look nice and not so haphazardly crowded so that someone will see the apartment on Sunday and say, “What lovely orderly bookshelves! Why, I think I’ll buy this apartment!” I was only able to cull about 30 books, and betterworld.com would only accept 3 of the first 10 whose isbn numbers I entered, so I think I may just give them to Paul, the guy who sells books outside of H&H bagels. He picks them up and he always brings me a bagel and coffee. Getting rid of books is very hard. The two things I hoard are books and shoes. Because…you never know when you might just have a yen to read The Hapsburgs by Andrew Wheatcroft wearing the cream-colored suede sneakers that look like bowling shoes that you bought at the Tod’s outlet in Tuscany. What was I thinking? They’re both coming out of their respective reject bags right now. Well, the book is, anyway. It’s illustrated. There’s a wonderful photograph of Emperor Franz Joseph I in hunting clothes that I could not find on google, but while looking for it I did find this photo (See the guy peering out the window?):