The Sidebar: The Book I Couldn’t Put Down + Slow-Sautéed Brussels Sprouts & Cuckoo Clouds
And: Dahlia IDs, a Dad report, and one for the sober playlist
“Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you will reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift, too.”
— (Carl) Frederick Buechner, from Grace: Quotes and Passages for Heart, Mind, and Soul by B.C. Aronson.
🎹🎸 Here’s an anthem for getting out there and reaching for grace:
Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Why Walk When You Can Fly.
⛅️ 1. One flew over the cuckoo cloud
Is anyone else fascinated by clouds? Wednesday in New England was cloud show-off day. As I drove home from Delaware through New Jersey and New York into Connecticut and Rhode Island, the puffy marshmallow cumulus clouds in the sky were so astonishing that I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road. The ability of tiny droplets of water to blithely rearrange themselves, transmogrifying into layers of wedding cake or Disney castles or Persian cats is something I can’t ignore.
I don’t know if I should be worried, as apparently this means that I may be exhibiting pareidolia – the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern (also called a nebulous stimulus in psych speak). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is the human tendency to see connections and patterns that aren’t really there. (Harumph! Who’s says they’re not there?!)
The trouble is that “self-delusional” apophenia in its extreme form can lead to undesirable behaviors like belief in conspiracy theories or habitual gambling (due to seeing patterns where they don’t exist).
Oh Lord, who knew cloud appreciation could be so fraught? I am going to ignore the dire consequences of using my imagination and pretend I am in a bouncy house of cotton balls the next time I see a cumulus cloud like the one in the photo I took (above). (Although now that I’m looking at it again, I think I see the face of Groucho Marx…)
FYI: Those four cloud types we learned in elementary school – cumulus, cirrus, stratus and nimbus – were first named by Luke Howard, a British chemist and amateur meteorologist, in 1802. From these, NOAA now recognizes 10 types of clouds in three categories: high-level, mid-level, and low-level. Altostratus anyone?
🙏🏼 🕺🏻 2. The Dad Report
For those of you who kindly inquired about my Dad after last week’s post, I’m happy to report that he is doing great and that all went well during his scheduled visit to Beebe Hospital on Monday. He received a successful treatment for his irregular heartbeat, and his doctor was able to look more closely at his leaky mitral valve and determine that Dad’s condition is moderate, not severe, and therefore doesn’t require MitraClip surgery. That’s all good with us.
I didn’t get a good picture of him on this trip. So here’s a nice one from oh, maybe 40 years ago.
📚 3. Reading for the sake of writing
📚 I couldn’t put it down: The Covenant of Water
Last night, I stayed up until 3 a.m. (persistent bad habit) to finish the 724-page The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. I loved it so much! I enjoyed it more than any book I’ve read in the last 10 years (including Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, which I also found completely absorbing.) It’s the story of a family across three generations in what is now Kerala, India. The family suffers from a mysterious medical condition that is passed on through generations, leaving tragedy and heartbreak in its wake.