Katherine Keenum

During Massachusetts' stay-at-home order, I have been sorting family papers and came across these two vibrant, witty little watercolors by Knoxville artist, Mary Etta Grainger (1880–1963). I knew they were souvenirs from a bridge party; but, not being a bridge player myself, I did not know what to call them. A little poking around on the web introduced me to "bridge tallies." They are like dance cards. At a bridge party, guests sign each other's cards to assure a rotation at different tables. Sets of printed tallies were all the rage in the 1920's, and you can see scads of them at the Laura M. Mueller Bridge Tally Card Collection. But how much more delicious to receive a unique, individualized card!

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Website alert: The British Library has posted a children's activity that could be fun for anybody: Make a miniature book. The post includes images of one by Charlotte Brontë and other historic miniature books, links to more information, and instructions for making your own. Worth exploring!

Okay, a follow-up to the follow-up. When I was looking at Šimon's prints of Paris, I chuckled over this one as an example of, what?—early Parisian "social distancing"? Notice that not only are the people in the picture widely spaced, but we're looking at them from waa-aaay across the street. Anyway, that set me thinking how much I dislike the phrase social distancing. It's so vague! Six feet apart is explicit and emphatic. Say it and mean it: the more we keep six feet apart now, the sooner we'll be filling up those empty streets again.

Yesterday, I was tempted to illustrate the post on Bookshop with an image of Paris booksellers along the Seine but couldn't think of a particular one, so I went with the organization's logo instead. But isn't this print by Tavik František Šimon a lovely follow-up? If my character-in-progress Mattie went to Paris in 1908, she would find such a scene, which would have little changed from when Edward browsed there in Where the Light Falls—and booksellers on the quai are still there, for that matter, in the real Paris, not fictional at all. Since it may be a while, however, before any of us are traveling much except in imagination, try browsing the graphic art of Tavik František Šimon as if you were at a print seller's stall.

The very real need to close bookstores and libraries during the coronavirus pandemic has been a frustration. It will be a while before they can reopen, but, hurrah! I have now discovered Bookshop. It's a way to buy books on line and support independent local bookstores at the same. I've just placed my first order.

My sister mailed me Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic just when I had run out of library books (yea, Janet!). I was primed for it because, as it happened, I had recently read Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of the poem (more about that in a minute). Mendelshohn has written a multi-threaded memoir of his teaching Homer's Odyssey to a freshman seminar at Bard College, his eighty-one-year-old father's attendance in that class, a Mediterranean cruise the two men took together afterwards, explorations of the poem's themes, and many circlings back to each of their earlier lives. It is artfully written, deep and rich, while all while seeming (only seeming) to be a candid, easy retelling of one unusual semester. I recommend it highly to anyone who has ever taught, or grew up on Long Island, or loves the classics, or is fascinated by the relations between a father and a son.
 
But, wait, isn't this blog mostly about women's creativity? Well, yes, and that's where An Odyssey pointed me in the end. Enough of fathers and sons! Let's reframe the picture to highlight wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers, and slave girls.

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The small New England town where I live operates as a pure democracy. Every year, we have (1) a caucus to place the names of candidates for boards and committees on a ballot for (2) the town election, which is followed by (3) the annual Town Meeting at which every citizen votes on every bylaw and the budget. In these coronavirus days, our weekly newsletter just announced how we'll proceed with Step 1:
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Author and editor Caroline Sloat alerted me to this announcement of the Sarton Women's Book Award for 2019. Thank you, Caroline! And congratulations to Eve M. Kahn.

I must admit that although I ought to have known about Mary Rogers Williams (an almost exact contemporary of my Jeanette), I didn't. Luckily, in these self-isolating days when bookstores and libraries are closed, we can all get a foretaste of Forever Seeing New Beauties from excerpts with illustrations available on line. One is on why Williams matters Another is on her European trip of 1891.

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Website alert: An update on the Getty Challenge. For everyone trapped at home by the coronavirus (or at work in hospitals!), Artnet offers Here Are 27 (More) Ridiculous Images of Bored People Around the World Using Household Objects to Recreate Famous Historical Artworks to supplement its earlier See 15 Ways Bored People Around the World Have Used Household Objects to Recreate Famous Paintings From Art History.

In this troubled time, those of us who live in country towns are lucky to be able to get outdoors safely for exercise or contemplation or, oddly enough, a little sociability. One of my regular walks takes me down a back road where I see neighbors, working in their yards or walking like me. We chat as usual—only six feet apart. A couple of days ago, a friend from a different part of town stopped his car beside me. From the back seat, his nine-year-old son said, "This is the first time I've been in a car since March 8th." The last time I had seen them they had been on bicycles.
 
Experiencing real physicality directly is important for knowing the world fully, and slowing down helps. Terri Windling has pulled together what several writers have said about Living at a walker's pace.

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