Jules Renard

The French writer Jules Renard (died 1910) wrote, “Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”

Sounds nice, but I’m not so sure it’s true. Maybe in 1910. I suspect people find it easier to think I am really working when I tell them I manage a museum shop. When I say I write, they probably think I am just unemployed but don't want to admit it. In my own head, though, I am a writer. I happen to manage a museum shop at the moment.

Anyway, here are some quotes from Renard's writings.

It is not how old you are but how you are old.
Look for the ridiculous in everything, and you will find it.
If money does not make you happy; give it back.
We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it.
Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.

Stolen thunder

I was looking at the yard yesterday and thought I should take some pictures of some of the flowers. But Tom beat me to it, so I stole his photos and his text from his family blog:

Summer Garden

The early summer garden is coming in, and a combination of a cool, relatively wet spring and warm but moderate weather in the last two weeks has brought the gardens around the front of the house into full bloom.


The early summer daisies are doing well, with long-lasting blooms. I put the daisies in two summers ago, and they are finally taking hold. I'm of the "put them in and see what works" school of gardening, and I try to use native species.


A week or so ago, the bleeding hearts made a spectacular display. I brought one of the plants from Chicago, an older variety that my mother, and perhaps her mother before her, cultivated at the farm, and bought two more modern varieties from a local nursery in Bear Valley. The differences between the two strains are typical of developments in flowers over the last thirty-odd years. The newer variety is larger, but somehow coarser and less beautiful.


The iris have also come into their own, both along the walk to the front door and alongside the driveway. The differences between older varieties and modern varieties show up clearly in the iris beds. The small, delicate iris on the left are an old variety, given to my great-grandfather by Al Ringling, and the larger, and to me less interesting, iris on the right are more modern varieties from Betty Staron's garden.

I favor early summer gardens, before the green foliage has become dark and dusty looking, and the plants looking stressed from the heat. Early summer gardens epitomize the hope of youth, and every year I am caught up, once again, in the promise of things to come.

I suppose I should know better at my age, but I don't.

Al Ringling, BTW, is one of the circus Ringling Brothers, who lived in Baraboo. Tom's great-grandfather sold them horses or something, I think.

Anyway, with less time at the railroad, Tom is putting in lots of work on the grounds at the house, and it is looking very good.

Deaths

I just heard from Steve Payne that Fr. Joseph-Mary Flanery, one of the older friars at Holy Hill, died Sunday. This is the third death in the province in just a few months.

Fr. Joe had been an airman during World War II, then entered the Carmelites and spent many years as a missionary in the Philippines. After returning to the United States, he served many years as secretary to the Provincial before age (and computers) led him to retire. He was a voracious reader and kept up an exhaustive correspondence with people all over the world.

May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace!

I couldn't find a picture of Fr. Joseph to post, but those of you who visited the Hill may remember him as the very tall, thin man with a crew cut of reddish/gray hair.

Wordcrafty

Somehow this morning a conversation about songs led me to remember lines from the first Jonas Brothers song I ever heard -- "Year 3000":

I've been to the year 3000
Not much has changed but they lived under water

I love self-referential or weird things with words like that. Another example is the old Carly Simon hit, "You're So Vain":

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, Ill bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Or things like, "This statement is false."

There's even one in the Bible, where it says in Titus 1:12 "Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." Okay, if a Cretan says that Cretans are always liars, was he lying or telling the truth?

Or what about, "If you try to fail and succeed, did you fail or succeed?"