Category Archives: BTW

BTW

Jackie’s Promise

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I thought I started the Round Barn book by telling Grampa when I was 15 that I was going to write it – I’m not quite finished with it yet. But I’ve just found in an old notebook from my room at the farm that I wrote, at 13, a note to myself saying “Grampa I am going to give you a book of my drawings for Christmas. I will call it ‘Being on the Farm’” This one I really followed through on. I have that little book with a cover I made in art class. A few of the drawings I like are of myself; the ones I did of others are mostly sloppy cartoons of detasseling. I wish I’d tried to draw Grampa. But here are a few of mine:

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BTW

There’s no explaining…

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A couple of contrasts at the YMCA, where I swim a couple of days a week: I was accosted in the lobby by a woman I vaguely recalled, but she recalled me enough to button-hole me and announce that I had sold her the first Round Barn book two years ago for her farmer father and told her if he didn’t like it she could have her money back. Now she wanted her money back, he hadn’t even read it. I said, “But you could read it. It’s a good book.” She replied, “I don’t like big books.” I returned her money — all of $15, she’d had a discount – and I refrained from any caustic comments. In contrast, the next day a retired judge who’d bought all three books at the Y was waiting for me with the money and with that big first book all thumbed and 5/6 read, telling me that this was the most fantastic book he’d ever read! Go figure.
BTW

Boxing Day…Boxing Day…Boxing Day

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Boxie the Boxer celebrates Boxing Day in the kitchen of Chez Nous
Boxer celebrates Boxing Day in the kitchen of Chez Nous

The year I lived in England, we celebrated Boxing Day. Everyone did. I don’t have much to say about Boxing Day, except that they played a recording in the Unitarian Universalist Church last week to a familiar Christmas tune that included lots of things, like “I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwaanzai etc etc AND Boxing Day.” It was sung in a round so it always came back on a high note to “Boxing Day, Boxing Day, Boxing Day,” which really stuck out and was so funny to me. I suspect most of the church had no idea what Boxing Day was, but since I have read so much English literature and, as I’ve said, lived in England for a year, so that I experienced Boxing Day, I could have told them. It was really when the landed or richer families presented their Christmas presents to the help and to the poor – maybe it’s on Downton Abbey and you all know this anyway. 🙂