I had two instances of yearning this week.

My nephew's Facebook status was "Off to Top of the Rock and MOMA"  His days as a resident of New York City are almost complete; he's playing the tourist before he goes off to grad school. MOMA is the Museum of Modern Art, home of van Gogh's famous piece The Starry Night. Oh. (sigh) Wouldn't it be grand to stand in front of that painting and absorb it? To see the brush strokes and shades of blue?

I lunched with a friend back from a visit to Scandinavia and northern Europe. She spoke of the glory of seeing several Rembrandts at the Hermitage. The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. Thank you very much, Catherine the Great! [Saint Petersburg is quickly inching its way up into my top cities I want to visit.  Florence is first. Then it's a scramble between Budapest, Paris, London, NYC, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Athens, Dubrovnik, Ephesus, Cape Town...and, of course,...Saint Petersburg.] I sat there, sipping iced tea, and imagining a day at the Hermitage, the leisure to linger in front of Return of the Prodigal Son examining details like the bottom of the prodigal son's feet. I yearned.

Then, mirabile!, thanks to Meghan at Pink Peppers I learned about Google's Art Project. Start by watching the Visitor's Guide.

Oh, people! Do you see the possibilities?  The challenge is that there is so much to see.  It's like getting a set of Harvard Classics delivered to your door; it's easier to look at them than to begin reading. I've been wanting to revive Fine Art Friday and this seems like the perfect vehicle. Next week I will start a visit to The Hermitage. I have a focus. 

Life is beautiful. 

What about second sons?

When they figure out their older brother has secured the patent on proper, compliant behavior (or, shall we say, the appearance of proper, compliant behavior), they know—by instinct it seems—that to gain a purchase in the attention-grabbing game they will have to be creative. There is a gleam/spark in a second son's eye, a certain kind of jaunty grin on a second son's face. I saw that grin on Prince Harry's face during the Royal wedding. Yeah! That grin! I think the jockeying for position gives second sons dexterity, elasticity, jocularity.

You, Carson, my beloved son, are a second son.

I wish now that I had been given a manual tucked into the swaddling clothes when they laid you in my arms.  "This one is different. You need to be different with this one."  That I didn't adapt my parenting, that I didn't change is my regret. And, shame, I can't get a do-over, can I? 

You come from some solid second-son stock. Grandpa, whom you resemble, is a second son. Your Uncle Scott, part of the SS Society, was always rooting for you, sort of a co-belligerent against your dad. He would boom, "I understand that boy!" 

And now your nephew. The one whose mom called you up and asked, "How did I get your son?"  Oh my, how we delight in that kiddo. It is pure fun to recognize his personality as it emerges. We know Preston; we can predict what he will do, the looks he will give, the shrugs, the determination, the focus. Because he is you.  And—glory!—you now have your own little Levi, that boy who knows what he wants and can't sit still. 

You probably don't know that your other grandpa, my dad, was also a second son. I hear he gave his mom a run for her money. Especially since his dad was gone all the time. Here's one story: he spouted off in the car and his mom responded, "Johnny, we are going to stop for ice cream cones, but you will not be having any."  As they continued driving, they almost passed the Red Robin. Little Johnny piped up, "Oh Mother! Do make sure you stop for ice cream for everyone else!"

God surely likes second sons. That would be an interesting study, wouldn't it? Isaac, Jacob, Ephraim, Solomon.

It is a mercy that our troubles are behind us. That I can look at our differences with wonder and delight. That you can see our similarities...and smile. That we love each other and love to hang out with each other. That your dad enjoys you immensely. We like to talk about you, you know.

Oh my son, you are truly blessed.

What I see in you are the same characteristics you had as a lad. Back then, your stubbornness was frustrating; now it looks more like persistence. Back when I disciplined the Stoic you, nothing made you flinch. Or blink.  But a few weeks ago, you allowed yourself one yelp when you hurt your hand, and then determined to not make another peep about the pain.

You notice details.

You like systems.

You don't complain.

You are generous.

You take risks.

You are fun to be with.

You take charge of your sons.

You bring flowers to your wife.

And life is so full of surprises.  You—the kid whom I had to force to read a book—regularly read to your son.

Happy Birthday, Carson. I love you more than all the books in the world.

20 Celebrities with Stunning Home Libraries

Pictures of books make me sit up and pay attention.

I can critique libraries as enthusiastically as any fashionista can pan and praise the red carpet dresses.

Here are my favorites:

Nigella Lawson's library is definitely used.

It could use a little order, but this picture makes me comfortable.

I understand the stacks.

The books look read. I like this. I like the guitar playing too.

Well done, Keith Richards!

Jimmy Stewart's - I loved the books, but not the furniture.

Too much chintz, it that's what it is.

Julianne Moore's - Light and inviting space.  Good chairs.

Tory Burch's - Comfortable. I could see some serious reading

at the table, and casual reading in the chairs.

Michael Jackson's - Polished wood, fireplace, chairs.

What's not to like?

I did not like:

Oprah's - I know Oprah reads.

But, a designer did this library based on color.

So many linear feet of red books.

While I like the idea of books as decoration,

I don't like it when they are *solely* for decoration.

Meh.

Jane Fonda's - The books do look read, but the space

is sterile and barren.

Sting's - I love the idea of a two-floor library.

But. This looks like it is strictly for show.  No thanks.

The airport and the DMV are the two best places in the world for the sport of people-watching. For diversity, there is no better place in the world than London's Heathrow airport.

Alain de Botton was hired by British Airways to spend a week at Heathrow's Terminal 5 and write a book about his experience. It is an engaging read, easy enough to complete in one sitting, but worthy of a slower pace. It examines why we fly, the intersection between art and commerce, the choreography of an ediface that took 20 years to build. You might think of it as "light plus" reading. There are photos on every page (that's the light). With the book classified as Travel/Philosophy, there is more commentary on life than on luggage (that's the plus!).

The book reminded me of reading The Geography of Nowhere. Of course it did! There's a full-circle connection: LaurieLH remarked that Geography of Nowhere was similar to a book she was reading by Alain de Botton, ">The Architecture of Happiness. It was in looking for The Architecture of Happiness at my public library, that I found A Week at the Airport!

From the management required to keep airline employees congenial
 to the elegance of the steel columns supporting the 18,000 ton roof
 to the devastation of parting lovers
 to the way a domestic squabble so quickly erodes the joy of a vacation
 to the expectations of travelers arriving at the reception zone,
I found it delightful. Not earth-shattering, nor life-changing, but a mixture of trivia and truth.

Some quotes:

Despite its seeming mundanity, the ritual of flying remains indelibly linked, even in secular times, to the momentous themes of existence—and their refractions in the stores of the world's religions. We have heard about too many ascensions, too many voices from heaven, too many airborne angels and saints to ever be able to regard the business of flight from an entirely pedestrian perspective, as we might, say, the act of traveling by train. 62

Considered collectively, as a cohesive industry, civil aviation had never in its history shown a profit. Just as significantly, neither had book publishing. 79

The notion of the journey as a harbinger of resolution was once an essential element of the religious pilgrimage, defined as an excursion through the outer world undertaken in an effort to promote and reinforce an inner revolution. Christian theorists were not in the least troubled by the dangers, discomforts or expense posed by pilgrimages, for they regarded these and other apparent disadvantages as mechanisms whereby the underlying spiritual intent of the trip could be rendered more vivid. 104

I appreciated de Botton's thoughts about setting up a desk smack dab in the middle of the terminal:

Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way—towards a busy street or terminal—before they run out of their burrows. 42

 
 
The Prince's name—Dolor, which means grief—sets the tone. When his nurse was carrying the infant she dropped him, causing him to be lame. Here is a tale with a fairy godmother, a wicked king and a magic cloak. There are no instant fixes. The godmother tells Prince Dolor "I cannot alter your lot in any way, but I can help you to bear it.". Many children's books from the Victorian era can be sickly sweet and cloying—treacle—or tediously preachy. This book, thankfully, was light on both counts.

The sense of the inevitable, as the grown-up people call it—that we cannot have things as we want them to be, but as they are, and that we must learn to bear them and make the best of them—this lesson, which everybody has to learn soon or late—came, alas! sadly soon, to the poor boy. He fought against it for a while, and then, quite overcome, turned and sobbed bitterly in this godmother's arms.

Where Dinah Mulock sees the inevitable (Fate), I see divine providence. If I were reading this to a child, we would talk about the difference between fate and providence and how those differences would affect our responses.
 
When we see people suffering or unfortunate, we feel very sorry for them; but when we see them bravely bearing their sufferings, and making the best of their misfortunes, it is quite a different feeling. We respect, we admire them. One can respect and admire even a little child.

[My edition had two other stories by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. I found The Adventures of a Brownie, (a foot high old man who can only be seen by children) bland and blah. The lack of conflict or tension provided no hooks to hold my interest. Poor Prin was perhaps the ghastliest children's story I have ever read. In those days an annual tax was levied on pet owners which the parents couldn't pay. When a girl is instructed to take the dog to the landlord, she drowned the dog she loved to prevent him from going to a questionable home.  End of story. Ghastly, I tell you.]

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Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? The answer, Huck Finn tells us, is no. Instead of a good float down the Mississippi, Jim, Huck and Tom glide in hot air balloon across the Atlantic and over Africa. It's a fun romp—it is supposedly a parody of Around the World in 80 Days—with laugh out loud humor. Don't get your knickers all knotted because Twain puts tigers in Africa or the balloon's fuel and food are never replenished. Some sections are dicey for younger ones: the mad (in all senses) inventor is pushed out of the balloon over the Atlantic; they come across dead bodies in the desert.

Jim begun to snore — soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones, like the last water sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears.

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo...

"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?"

They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne retells six Greek myths [The Gorgon's Head, The Golden Touch, The Paradise for Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher and The Chimæra] in A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys. Eustace Bright, the gifted poetry-writing college-aged narrator who calls his cousins Primrose, Periwinkle, Cowslip, Clover, Sweet Fern, etc. tells the myths with humor, intelligence and grace.

Sit down, then, every soul of you and be all as still as so many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from the great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I shall bite the story short off between my teeth, and swallow the untold part.

Hawthorne writes an interlude chapter before and after each myth that responds to the previous story and introduces the next.  There isn't enough material in these interludes to give me a sense of each child's personality (it would have been easier for me if their given names—Susan, Peter, David and Sally—were used); nevertheless, I enjoyed these chapters as much as I did the myths.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For, one of the hardest things in this world is, to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones.

Oh, how heavily passes the time, while an adventurous youth is yearning to do his part in life, and to gather in the harvest of his renown! How hard a lesson it is to wait! Our life is brief, and how much of it is spent in teaching us only this!

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