summer

Summer Vacation, Day 54: Call Me Trevvy

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Trevor turned four a little more than a month ago. As recently as two weeks ago, I was still sailing along through Moby Dick, and the kids were asking all sorts of questions about the book I always seemed to have with me.

Trevor, in particular, was interested in the white whale himself, and asked me to find a picture of a sperm whale on the computer (i.e., google it). I forgot a time or two, and then the little man came back from Target with a new Imaginext toy purchased with his own birthday money. “That,” I told him, “is what a sperm whale looks like!”

His whale is not white, but (based on countless pages of description) it’s clearly the same species. I told him I wanted a photo of his whale – he put the harpooneer in its mouth. The package called the whale Hefty, but over supper, our son proclaimed him Moby Dick …

Today I returned to Jacqui’s Room to watch her critically acclaimed video review of the Melville classic, and thought perhaps she’d enjoy Trevvy’s staging.

Summer Vacation, Day 53: Good Housekeeping?

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Is it a bad sign when the living rooms are just picked up enough that they don’t look like bedrooms, when the bedrooms are just picked up enough that you can make out a trail from bed to the closet to the door, when kitchen is just clean enough that you’d consider crossing the floor barefoot, and when the bathrooms have no standing water – and the children are gushing about how great the house looks?

We’ve worked all weekend, and it still feels like an uphill battle to Jodi and me. Meanwhile, Brendan is declaring victory: “Now all we gotta do is keep it this way!”

Summer Vacation, Day 52: Are Books Sinful?

/ J. Thorp / 4 Comments

Hey, 52 was my number in football!

Spent today cleaning and reorganizing for the most part. Put up new shelves downstairs for additional books. I’m taking a great deal of pride and pleasure from the sheer volume of books in this house. Is that wrong? I mean, attachment to material possessions isn’t a good thing, right, but books are different … aren’t they?

Good books, I mean? And educational ones? And some that are twisted and scary but well written? And some I just like?

Summer Vacation, Day 51: Better World

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Brendan, our oldest, came to work with me today. On the way in, we talked about all sorts of stuff – not typical 10-year-old stuff, but grown-up things, like whether people who don’t believe the same as you should still respect your beliefs. Super cool!

Then The Current spun “War!” – “Ughn! Good God, y’all! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’! Say it again!” – and the boy began to philosophize:

“I wish we could find a better way to deal with problems that wars or the death penalty and stuff. … I wish that there wasn’t all the really bad stuff in the world – but not perfect, because nothing would be funny. If everything were perfect, there would be no laughter. … I wouldn’t want it to be perfect, and I would change the things I’ve done wrong that have gotten me in trouble because how would I learn about right and wrong? … And if we were all perfect, what would we laugh about?”

O wise child! Thy father loves thee!

Summer Vacation, Day 50: Hemingway

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Boy, that went well. Seems like I just got underway, and already here is my two-cents’ worth of analysis – Three Things to Love about The Sun Also Rises:

  1. The Hapless Romantic. Our hero doesn’t get the girl. Sure, he’s with her at the end, but he knows he can never have her, keep her, please her; he watches as those who love her less get more of her attention and affection; and time and again he helps her to hurt him (and herself, as well). Now that’s love – sort of …
  2. Great Conversations. I’m always impressed with people who write great dialogue. Tarantino, for example, writes witty exchanges that can make brutal, nearly unwatchable, movie scenes engaging and memorable. Hemingway does something different. He dares to write close to the way people talk – not dialect or slang so much, although that’s there, too – but the random, repetitious, and often interrupted flow of social interactions between acquaintances. He often doesn’t tell you who’s speaking, and sometimes even counting back through the quotations doesn’t clear it up. But just like barstool conversations in real life, at the end of the night, most of “who said what” doesn’t matter – and in those cases when it does matter, it’s invariably clear.
  3. Write What You See. People often talk about Hemingway’s simple, declarative sentences. He does things my high-school writing instructor drilled out of me – stringing a serious of sentences together with multiple conjunctions. Starting sentences with “There was …” and “There were …” And you know something? The effect is that of seeing things through Jake’s eyes, just as they appear to him.

Next is East of Eden – I figured on reading Steinbeck, but didn’t know which one, until I met Hubba of Hubba’s House. His last name is Trask, which was too big a coincidence to overlook at the time. Jacqui of Jacqui’s Room and Deacon Tyler at Future Priests of the Third Millennium both loved it. Can’t wait!