gospodarstwo domowe

Amelia to Belle, 10 March 2007

... Anyway, while I feel quite sturdy on the outside, I'm feeling a little fragile on the inside. There's so much ice everywhere here. I take great care not to fall. Don't want to rupture anything. (Another bad word: "rupture.")
To take my mind off worries, I'm grateful to have absorbing mental work. I've been thinking a lot about the word "husbandry" lately (a beautiful word). When Charles Lindbergh flew over England on his to Paris during his famous flight, his young mind just couldn't grasp the tiny scale of English fields and farms, the very human scale. He couldn't comprehend how a farmer could have earned a living without tractors or machinery. 100 little English farms would have fit into the Kansas wheatfield. The answer to his question, as I explore the history of the land he and Anne later came to find refuge in, is the concept of husbandry...


Belle to Amelia, 29 March 2007

P.S.4 I loved what you wrote about "husbandry" and the human scale of small farms and gardens. There's a word in Polish - gospodarstwo - that means just that. I learned it from my grandparents, who took great stock in it. That is, they took great stock in tending to the house and the garden, and keeping things modest, tidy, and in good repair. It was a way to be, a way of life. Care Taking. My grandfather swept the walk nearly every day, if not daily. The sweeping was a symbolic act. Gospodarstwo. I love it. It's very much the spirit D and I have about this house, trying to bring it back into the state of good repair and peaceful contentment.

Hudson Light

From "Light Shadows: Remembrances of Light at Yale in the Early Fifties," by Gian-Carlo Rota

There is a fundamental difference between the quality of light in Northern New England and in Southern New England. It comes from the shadows. On a Cambridge Sunday, the sharp shadows across the Charles River cut out the outlines of the distant buildings of Boston as if made of stiff cardboard, and deepen the blue of the water. In New Haven, by contrast, the light shadows are softened in a silky white haze, which encloses the colleges in a cozy aura of unreality. Such foresight of Mother Nature bespeaks a parting of destinies.

***
I have no intention of renouncing Love for Art.
Vitruvian Woman, I wish to be. And he's my ideal man.
Let Art & Science be friends - and lovers again!

City Islands

Journal notes from 8 Sept. 2009
amazing cobwebs in the morning
whole constellations
and galaxies of them
a harbor of miniature
ghostly clipper ships
and suspension bridges
afloat in the woods
cobweb sheeting draped over (milkweed?) scaffolds


Lynn Barber, An Education (memoir)
her rebellious nature is what saved her
from being sucked into his thrall
her ability to think for herself