“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

— Maya Angelou

There’s a sweetness in the way my grandmother says “I’m too cowardly to go anywhere” when I ask her to visit England.

Not so much in the bellicose bully who deepens his voice and growls “I don’t understand why n’the world anyone’d want to go to any other countries when they can just stay in America. There’s some bad things goin’ on there. Bad people. I ain’t never wanted to go nowhere but here.”

There’s a really good Telegraph article in there somewhere. I just have to write it.

“Like all notable English novelists, he was a tricky bugger. He made a faith of personal sincerity and a career of disingenuousness. He was an Edwardian among Modernists, and yet—in matters of pacifism, class, education, and race—a progressive among conservatives. Suburban and parochial, his vistas stretched far into the East. A passionate defender of “Love, the beloved republic,” he nevertheless persisted in keeping his own loves secret, long after the laws that had prohibited honesty were gone. Between the bold and the tame, the brave and the cowardly, the engaged and the complacent, Forster walked the middling line.”

Have been meaning to mention Zadie Smith’s article on the talks of E.M. Forster from earlier this month: The New York Review of Books. She’s never sounded so much like the man himself…even when she tried. If anyone knows where I can find the actual recordings. Email me at buffy holt at gmail dot com.

“Because that’s what death is. Where the sun don’t shine. An un-illuminated image that creeps up and cuts the ties that bind us in one cold, sharp swing…”

–Buffy Holt

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I’m not a morbid person. It’s mortality that fascinates me. Life is what it is because it’s fleeting. Temporary. Transient. It wouldn’t be half as poignant if we were stuck with it for eternity.

My grandmother once told me she didn’t understand how people could write about death all the time and not be consumed by its ugliness. But the truth is, death isn’t ugly. It just IS. And it’s the only real thing humanity has in common. The being-born bit doesn’t matter so much because it’s not part of our consciousness. It gave us what we got. That’s all.

It’s not how we started but where we’re going that’s important. And the story is in the getting there.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain

These links are more for me than anything. I use to print and bind articles of interest into a journal. I’ve now gone digital. And yeah, I still have a crush on my pink western digital passport, but it’s no comparison to paper. Nothing really is.

The diaries of the novelist George Orwell are now published online as a daily blog.

Interesting video interview with Ray Bradbury on Literature and Love.

And in The Economist…Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. His and Hers.

Most favoured of all the Man Booker award winners. Salman Rushdie’s recent CNN interview.

Just watched Boris Johnson discover his Hanover Heritage in BBC One’s Who Do You Think You Are?

Fascinating.

When I finish putting together our latest “YES WE’RE FOR REAL AND HERE’S YOUR PROOF” package for Homeland Security I’m gonna mount everything on etsy-esque paper and bundle it together with tiny clips and bows and turn it into a scrapbook. My. First. Ever.

We prepared for all of this before, when we had our interview at the embassy in London. I remember telling him “You’ll probably need to know my birthday.” Because we’d been together for four or five years by then and he still relied on his parents to remember the date, i.e. he knew to buy a present when they called to asked what I wanted. But I digress…

Speaking of presents….yesterday I got a package from my mother in law. He keeps saying “I wonder if you can wait that long to open it…have you ever waited that long?” And I keep thinking he’s fishing because he’s forgotten what day your birthday’s on.

In the lead up to our first embassy visit I told him to have a look at my bathroom and bookshelf. Just in case. I only use Decleor skin products and I like Mark Twain. A lot.

On the day of the interview they only ask him one question. “When were you married?”

He gets it wrong.

A few months ago I wrote about the wayfaring stranger. I’ve heard it all my life but it wasn’t until the White Stripes’ Jack sang it in Cold Mountain that I fell for it. I’m listening to The Raconteurs right now. But I thought I’d post a little video of their lead boy singing bluegrass. Live. (AND VERY LOUD)

People have been preparing for the end of the world since the beginning of time.

These words caught my attention tonight as I stood microwaving tuna, hard cheese and my grandma’s chow chow.

Survivalists. Learning how to live off the land. Stock piling food.

People are calling them fanatics. I don’t see a thing wrong with them until they open their mouths.

It’s a shame really. How ill prepared we are. I’m not suggesting we should sit around praying for a natural disaster to prove our purpose, but when did self sufficiency become so radical?

Growing up I ate organic because that’s what my mother grew. Not because it was good for us. But because there was space and dirt and air to grow it with. Natural springs were tapped up the holler and piped into the house. Because they were there. For using.

I remain…remain…traumatised by the sheer number of blackberry bushes that ripened around this time every year. I hated…dreaded until I was blue in the face….being sent out into the acres to pick those little black buggers.

The apples that fell from the trees that I’d rather eat than lug home. The greens that grew wild and shriveled down from a bucket to a bite and made me wonder why anyone ever wasted their time in the first place. Warm milk from a stripped cow called Jersey. Eggs, when my mother wasn’t going crazy at the chickens. (I hate chickens. Almost as much as my mother does.) And all those poor little bulls and regular sized hogs who always arrived home in butchers paper with “Beef” and “Bacon” stamped on the side.

I’d live on a farm again if I didn’t have to live there. If I had someone else to do all the work. To catch the pigs. To clean the barn. To corner the cows and deal with those little green worms on the corn.

I like the idea of it all. From a couple thousand miles away. Maybe when I’m older I’ll warm to the reality.

As long as it doesn’t involve squirrels.

“…If he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge, and leant over, and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him, then he would suddenly know everything that there was to be known…”

- A.A. Milne (Christopher Robin)

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Alongonquin-ette Dorothy Parker once criticised A.A. Milne for using Pooh to dumb down children. I really don’t know what to say to that.