Good music by local musicians: Screen Door at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts

It's nice to go out on a summer evening and hear some good music by local musicians. In this case, my sister, my daughter, and I went to Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts, and heard a duo from nearby Holden called Screen Door, two vocalists playing accordeon and acoustic guitar (with subtle touches from an electric hi-hat pedal). They offered an excellent selection of covers, from Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" and Paul Simon's "Me And Julio Down by the Schoolyard" to songs by The Decemberists and Ray LaMontagne, as well as a number of tunes I didn't know but others in the audience did. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 July 2024)

Doing a lazy breaststroke while listening to music, then remembering Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude” (1971)

 The air temperature where my sister lives is 24° C (75° F), and the water temperature in her pool is 26° C (79° F). Still, in the water, I kept moving to not be chilly. With music playing from my phone, I swam the crawl a bit. But I don't like swimming laps, so I did a lazy breaststroke with my head out of the water to hear the music. I felt like Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles) slowly swimming to the first movement of Tschaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and merely glancing at her well-dressed son Harold (Bud Cort) floating like a drowned corpse in Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (1971). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 July 2024)

On United States President Joe Biden’s decision to serve out his term

One of my first thoughts when I heard that United States President Joe Biden had withdrawn from the Presidential campaign was that he should also resign the presidency now, but of course he rejected that idea in his official statement with his decision "to focus solely on my duties as President for the remainder of my term." In the meantime, I think that was the right move, as it frees up Vice President Kamala Harris to focus on campaigning. Still, if Harris were now the 47th President of the United States, that would have had the ironic side effect of ruining former President and convicted felon Donald Trump's "Trump 47" merchandise. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 July 2024)

From Biden’s poor debate performance to his withdrawal from the Presidential campaign

I was incredibly annoyed by the public discussion in the United States of President Joe Biden's poor performance in his debate with convicted felon Donald Trump on 27 June 2024. As has happened so often lately, everything seemed to be about criticizing the flaws of the Democratic Presidential candidate while ignoring the Republican candidate's weaknesses. So I'd been hoping Biden would stay in the race. But when he withdrew yesterday, he chose a good time for the decision: after the Republican convention last week. Vice President and likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will surely face similarly unbalanced coverage, but the age issue Republicans have been emphasizing now only applies to Trump. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 July 2024)

Word Salad: A writing activity for groups

At our family reunion this evening, I did an activity I adapted from a project by German poet Thorsten Krämer. My brother-in-law dubbed it "Word Salad": I asked everyone to write their name and six words on an index card. I then wrote each of them a short text that contained their six words. After dinner, I read all those texts out loud to the group. An alternative would be to have the group guess whose words were used in each text. I've also used this near the end of the semester in creative-writing classes, with each student writing a poem based on six words chosen by one of their classmates. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 July 2024)

Deciding to read Emily Dickinson’s letters, then stumbling on a new edition a few hours later

When I took the train into Boston yesterday, I alternated between reading R. W. Franklin's "Reading Edition" of "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" (1999) and Alfred Habegger's "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson" (2001). In the latter, I read about letters Dickinson wrote in 1850, the year she turned twenty, and I decided that I wanted to finally read an edition of her letters. In the evening at the Booksmith bookstore in Brookline, I was browsing the "new non-fiction" section, and there was a brand-new 2024 edition of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson", edited by Cristanne Millear and Domhnall Mitchell. I bought it, of course. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 July 2024)

A very minor incident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

In the Dutch Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston today, I wanted to take a picture of the oil painting "A Lesson on the Theorbo," from the workshop of Gerard ter Borch the Younger (1617–1681). When I pulled my phone out of my pocket, the plastic number I'd been given when I checked my backpack fell behind a set of early 19th-century French chairs of walnut and gilded bronze. Given that the room is where two Rembrandts were stolen in 1990, I did not go down on my knees to get the number, but a security guard reached behind the chairs to pick it up for me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 July 2024)

Finding an affectionate English expression for an old woman to translate a bit of German word play

In a graphic novel I'm translating from German into English, an old man on his sixtieth wedding anniversary calls his wife "meine Faltenschnitte". I played around with this word for a while to try to figure out what to do with it, but when I finally admitted I was stumped, I consulted with my wife Andrea, a native speaker of German. She associated it with "Sahneschnitte", which is both a type of pastry or cake and a word for an attractive young woman. So she made several suggestions for a possible English translation of "Faltenschnitte" as a term of endearment for an old woman, of which my favorite was "sugar wrinkle". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 July 2024)