Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Partytime

WALGREENS has a two-for one sale on Theraflu (Daytime – Severe Cold) so if you have what Rebel Girl has, you might want to motor over to the nearest one and stock up. The drippy weather has aggravated her cold, recently inherited from her son, so this week finds her practicing the Theraflu diet. It's not bad but her knees give out mid-afternoon just about the time her voice drops into the basement. Before that time, Rebel Girl can speak but she sounds like her mother, a lifelong long smoker and drinker (think of the vocal stylings of Marge Simpson's sisters, Patty and Selma). Often when she is sick like this, Rebel Girl calls up her sisters and scares them, pretending to be their mother. Some fun.

PARTY ON
Meanwhile, the party for Doris Lessing continues. Contrarian Christopher Hitchens celebrates in his article, "Prizing Doris Lessing" in Slate.

excerpt:
To review the depth and extent of Lessing's work is to appreciate that some writers really do live for language and are willing to take risks for it. It's also to understand that there is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it…I was touched and interested to see Doris Lessing photographed last week, outside the same row house in the rather rough and plebeian district of North London where she has lived for so many decades. Having been an avenging angel of sexuality in her youth, she doesn't mind in the least looking a bit like a bag lady or a cat collector as she approaches her 90th year. (Actually, she once did produce rather a good book about felines.) There was a serenity to the scene: a person who has just happened to get the Nobel Prize but who really doesn't need that sort of confirmation.


But my favorite Lessing notice came from a reader of this blog (Yes, we have readers, averaging 140 per day! Imagine!) who shared that a family member once worked with Lessing in Southern Africa on various political campaigns. It's a small world sometimes. Rebel Girl likes that.

MORE TO PARTY ABOUT
For those of you who think we have overlooked Al Gore's share in the Nobel Peace Prize, check out what James Fallows in The Atlantic.com has to say in his article, "About self-righteousness and Al Gore." This is how he begins:
"I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence, but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Get well soon!

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...