Sunday, December 23, 2007
The Buffet comes to the river for Holiday
Holiday trips to my wife's family, the Pamily, as I call it. Are in this lovely semi-remote location that when you look at a map is basically an outpost along a river in a sea of US Forest Service holdings in Northern California. The elevation is low at the destination so there is no issue of snow, just wet cold, which as native Western Washingtonian, is not really a reach.
It is a lovely kind of remote. An hour and a half to the full slate of amenities we associate as being civilization these days such as 7-11s, multiplexes, and Bed Bath and Beyonds (the latter a true curiosity to me, how did it come to pass that there three of these stores within ten miles of my house)
Anyway, between the wonderful family meals and great cycling of stories from relations (so fortunate to have married into a family of story tellers and story readers) I kind of play desert island, bringing gear to read, listen to, and watch. Discretely (more discrete than the portions I tend to consume of fine family dining and treats during these holidays) I bring bags of riches to consume. It is the well-executed buffet on the road in To go mode. Here is this week's menu:
Bill Evans The Complete Fantasy Recordings An emusic download of nine albums I didn't even really know I had on my laptop til about an hour ago. Sure it was later in his career, recorded in the early seventies, but I am surely a seventies guy, and that was the era that jazz began to play a serious role in my personal sensibilities, so it is quite a treat. I recall that Evans ventured into the electronic base and piano during this period so am looking forward to working my way with him through these years.
Edmund Wilson Literary Essays and Reviews 1920s and 30s This was a last minute grab from Clark's Cannell Library, one of those beautiful and fine Library of America volumes that are an elegant privilege to handle with acid free paper, complete with ribboned bookmark that when I play with it reading on the in-laws' couch fascinates Friendly the cat. The essays were written at a time before modern media took hold and when American letters really mattered. It is a joy to read the first published review of Hemmingway and contemporary responses to work by Fitzgerald, e.e. cummings, Eugene O'Neil, and Ezra Pound.
Late Ozu: the Eclipse Collection Five Yasujiro Ozu films from the fifites and sixties. These are lovely explorations of the nature of family and human nature, in general. And just the kind of thing worth immersing yourself in between walks and talks and meals. The stories of Ozu's protagonists could fit right in with the tales of friends and family that are recounted post-fine dinners here during the holiday.
And, of course, I brought some materials related to a class I teach once a year which I will *try* to fit in between probing the work of Evans, Wilson, and Ozu, but I am taking liberty to relegate them to side dish status for the next few days. It looks like the weather will break and I also want some chances to move outside in this lovely place.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:31 PM
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