Blithedale BAM BAM

Finished Blithedale the other day. Didn't remember the last half of the book nearly as well as I thought, but did remember the end of it very well. Stays on the list, but maybe I'll never have to read it again unless we plan on doing a miniature theater version of it. (That could be fun - I bet we could get it down to 5 or 10 minutes, max.) What was tedious in the book was all that exposition about the rights of women and the nature of men and women. But then, the book was written in 1852 and middle-aged Nat was saying some very frisky things in his staid way. Free love, anyone?

And that brings us to BAM BAM. After watching the swearing in on the big screen that was mounted below the library steps with friends and a few thousand upright citizens, we waddled off to Havana Central for lunch in the space that used to be the West End (and sat close to the photo of Ginsberg, Dylan, Robbie Roberston and... who? I can't remember), and then over to the Hungarian Pastry Shop for coffee. The shop was jammed, and they sat us next door in the sandwich shop and ran our orders over to us. About 15 minutes later, school must have let out and the place was jammed with kids. Doctor D starting asking kids if they did anything in school related to the inauguration. Yup. All of them either watched it at their own school or went to another school to watch it. Then there was a mom with a three month old kid in a stroller. D.D. asked the kid if he thought he'd ever live to see this day. Mom answered for him. She'd been thinking how this thing that was so incredible, so powerful for us, might be hardly understandable to her kid when he'd be old enough for it to matter.

From her lips to God's ear, as our friends are want to say. And that's probably how a lot of Nat's friends felt about all that jazz in Blithedale, too.

(PS: I used to think the narrator in Blithedale ruined it all in the very end. I don't any more. But still, a little creepy.)