New Year's Day, 2011

Good morning, and a HappyNew Year's Greeting to all!

Names are words, and the word today is that not one of my sisters nor nieces has chosen to be mentioned on the blog by name. So be it; I don't blame them. The blog will be the less for it, but that is okay. It is dangerous to allow your name into the hands of another.

Right now I am reading Harold Bloom: The Western Canon
                                      Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why
                                      And my book club book, which is drifting aroound here somewhere and is entitled--barely got a  chance to look at it, as it arrived in the mail a couple of days ago--something like, Where the World Turns...oh, surely not.

Right now I am playing on the piano Haydn's Sonata no. 2, the first movement. I have read the second and third movements so need to get on with them before I get TOO GOOD on the first part and get stuck there.
Also on top of the piano is a big fat book, The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols, a wonderful compendium of seasonal music. It's still Christmas until January 6, so can keep playing them.

 I should say that I am playing at, rather than playing, these works. This morphs us right conveniently into memory, as it was my  mother's term. "She played AT it," was her description of an over-ambitious lady's rendering of some piece of music.  It's a handy and true phrase. Some nights I cook, but there are nights when I just cook at a dinner. 

Last night we went to a party where we saw people we had not seen for twenty five years or more--since I lived in that neighborhood. Everyone looked beautiful and happy, mostly because they are the children's generation with their growing children. The house was ablaze with candles, and the food was good. Frijoles, arroz, homemade tamales El Paso style. I make tamales too and will talk about those at some later time. It was a good beginning to the new year. YAZZYBEL