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 Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:54 pm Post subject: Marbles |
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Marbles:
Long Before Forty
Hardcover
By C. S. Forester
| Quote: | | During the marble season in those days there were all sorts of ways of gambling for marbles. For ten minutes or so before school and during the ten-minute breaks (I can never forget how long those breaks seemed, and what an enormous amount we did during them) about two dozen boys would take up pitches in the playground sitting with their backs to the fence beside the railway. Between their legs they would each set up a screw on its head or else an 'alley' -- a glass marble. The screw merchants would shout, "'It 'im two" or "'It 'im three" or even "'It 'im four." That meant that anyone could come along and roll marbles at their screw from some mark decided upon by the screw owner; a couple of yards away perhaps for "'It 'im two" and half a dozen for "'It 'im four." All the marbles one threw became the property of the screw owner, unless you hit the screw, whereupon you were given two, three or four marbles as the case might be. Rolling the marble was always the rule: I never came across 'knuckle down" until twenty years later in France and in the North of England. (From p. 34). |
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editor
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Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:26 am Post subject: |
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Hang on ...
Long Before Forty nothing but a load of codswallup?
Apparently, according to the story, Tall Tales from the Sea: C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, by Jeet Heer in the National Post Nov. 13/03, on a new biography by Forester's son, John:
| Quote: | Forester had two sons from his first marriage, John and George. During his father’s lifetime, John Forester regarded his father as “the embodiment of the enlightenment, standing for truth, reason, and competence in every aspect of life.” Yet after his father died, John started coming across many facts that darkened this idealized image. In an important 1997 essay in The American Scholar, John described how documentary evidence, including many family letters, proved to him that “the stories that [C.S. Forester] had told me about himself and his family had a large admixture of lies.”
Among the more memorable tales that Forester concocted was the story that he himself was only half English because his mother had had an adulterous love affair with a prominent Egyptian. It’s difficult to know why Forester fictionalized his past, although John has offered the interesting speculation that his father “despised his parents” and all his life dreamed of having a better, or at least more colourful, lineage. |
Novelist and Storyteller:
The Life of C.S. Forester
Paperback
By John Forester
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Last edited by editor on Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:50 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
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Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: |
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One Hundred Years of Poetry for Children
Hardcover
Edited by Michael Harrison and
Christopher Stuart-Clark
| Quote: | in Just-spring
E.E. Cummings
in Just -
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisabel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
(From the section, Scenes, at p. 114) |
More selections from the book here.
A healthy mix of classics like this one and, of course, Fern Hill as well as lesser known works.
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Last edited by editor on Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:50 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Frida's Fiestas
Recipes and Reminscences of Life with FRIDA KAHLO
Hardcover
By Guadalupe Rivera and Marie-Pierre Colle
Photographs by Ingnacio Ruquiza
Recipes adapted by Laura B. de Caraza Campos
Text translated by Kenneth Krabbenhoft
Recipes Translated by Olga Rigsby
Book design by Julio Vega
| Quote: | The hot winds of March had begun to blow when Ash Wednesday arrived and with it the meatless meals of Lent.
When we sat down to eat one Thursday, I noticed that Frida was very upset. She had just read a newspaper article that linked my father romantically with an attractive Hungarian painter (Irene De Bohus). The reporter, who was a woman, declared that Rivera was going to marry the Hungarian as soon as he divorced his current wife, the painter Frida Kahlo. ...
In the library she took out her hidden treasures to show me. There, in two wood-and-glass cases, was the splendid pre-Columbian jewelry that my father had given her over the years. There also were her collection of folk toys and her retablos on votive themes. She showed me marbles made of old glass, in all sizes. The many-colored cat's eyes in the center made them seem like magical objects, whose shifting hues could predict the future. ...
Later Cristina drove us over a rough road to the edge of the holy city. Here was don Tomás's house, surrounded by magueys and organ cactus, agaves and prickly-pear plants. Don Tomás was tanding in his doorway, and when he saw us, he cried, "Doña Frida! We've been waiting for you since yesterday afternoon! I felt the sadness that brings you to us. I'm very happy to see you have arrived safely. Please come in, come in to my home."
He gave us something to drink, then asked Frida to go with him through the hallway to the garden. When he had finished speaking and the talk turned to other things, that simple, quiet man was suddenly transformed into a menacing creature like Quetzalcoatl, the Teotihuacán deity. A strange light shone in his eyes, and he spoke prophetic words.
"Niña Fridita," he said, "you have more suffering before you, but you will die sheltered and protected by the one who causes your present pain. You and don Diego will not be able to live apart. Sometimes you are united in love and affection, other times hatred keeps you apart. But you will die together and after your death be a single shining star, sun and moon in conjunction. Have no doubt, my dear girl; you are destined to live forever in this universe, each one merged with the other in eternal eclipse."
With these words, his prohecy was finished, and he was once again the humble, mild-mannnered peasant who had waited for us amid the agaves and magueys, in the doorway to his house, with the peace of time reflected in his face. (From March, Teotihuacán, Where Live the Sun and Moon, pgs. 145-147) |
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