Journal Your Way by Gwen Diehn

Since taking the weekend journal-making workshop last month, I have been raiding the library for books that offer more examples and ideas not only for handmade journals but for what to fill their pages with.

(If you are interested, I wrote about the workshop here.)

What appeals to me - and has always appealed to me although I couldn't really say what it was until now - is the layering of papers, colors, words, images, sketches, watercolors, pen and ink drawings, calligraphy, and textures on the pages.

Journal Your Way: Designing & Using Handmade Books offers the best instructions and examples in all of the four or five books I have found on the subject. Not only does author/artist Gwen Diehn give clear instructions on making different journals, she guides the reader through a series of questions to discern what type of journal would best fill his or her needs.

She asked eight people to choose a journaling activity that appealed to them - creating a travel, garden, new project, or learning journal. She then designed a book for each of them to use for three months and presents their reflections on how the journal worked for them and photos of the finished/ongoing project. 

It is fascinating to see the different types of books that Ms. Diehn created for each person. For example, one holds daily watercolor paintings; one incorporates information about different spices and tiny vials containing certain seeds and herbs; and one uses tiny envelopes within its pages to store memorabilia.

The section on The Basics explains the tools and materials needed for creating your own journal. The Page Building Materials and Techniques section is full of great ideas on paper choices, using colored pencils, watercolors, stencils and stamps, and crayons. There is even a quick tutorial in drawing. 

Ms. Diehn then offers instructions for making sixteen different journals from a simple pamphlet type to sewn hardcover books. Although some look quite complicated (the finished products are gorgeous), the instructions offered are clear and one could work up to the more sophisticated journals and covers.

There is a wonderful section on journal keeping past and present with samples from ships' logs to Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Trevelyon's Miscellany from the 1600s. Photos of present-day journals are rich with images and ideas.

This is a terrific book to have on hand. I love looking at the photos showing how other people have used their journals to document their lives and they have certainly given me ideas for my own artistic journal endeavors.

Heading to Warmer Climes

Like in many parts of the country, we have had snow on the ground now for so long I cannot remember what grass looks like. And today, more is on the way. I wish it were going to snow pink for Valentine's Day!

Bundled up in my reading chair, I am headed for warmer climes. First stop, Provence with Peter Mayle and Hotel Pastis. It is the story of a successful but fed up London advertising executive who buys an abandoned L'Ancienne Gendarmerie in a small town in Provence with the idea of turning it into a first-class hotel. Sounds delightfully warm.

To keep me cozy in bed at night, I am tripping to Miami, Florida with Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, a comic mystery involving a dead Shriner, a reporter turned private detective, a terrorist group, and a rubber alligator. Only Hiaasen could pull all those elements together in one place.

What are you doing to stay warm?

Bad News by Donald Westlake

The bad news is that now having finished reading Bad News I am that much closer to the end of the Dortmunder capers written by Donald Westlake. It is number ten in the series and I only have four to go. 

Of course, Mr. W. penned many stand-alone capers and mysteries, some not always humorous, but I have a certain fondness for John Dortmunder and his cohorts.

In this tale John and his boys conspire with a couple of con artists trying to lay claim to the ownership of a casino run by two Indian tribes near the Canadian border. This involves trying to prove that one Little Feather Redcorn is the last living descendant (she's not) of a third tribe that once shared in the profits of the casino. Along the way there is the digging up of bodies, the switching of headstones, and DNA tests.  The cast includes high-powered New York attorneys, a small town judge who has seen enough 'stupidity' in his courtroom to last a lifetime, and the public defender appointed to defend Little Feather, actually a former Las Vegas showgirl and blackjack dealer, when the casino owners have her arrested for extortion.

Oh, yes. There is also the theft of a snow plow and the stealing of some valuable and fenceable objects from a historic home. Only Dortmunder could plan a successful robbery that depended on a blizzard.

As usual, it is all great fun and Westlake writes his characters in and out of situations faster than you can spin a roulette wheel. 

In Which Belle Visits A Grand Old Hotel

The Seelbach Hotel circa 1907

Yesterday, I had lunch at one of our local literary sites. 

The Seelbach Hotel has graced the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets in Louisville since 1905. Governors, presidents, prime ministers, and even puppets (Miss Piggy) have stayed in the elegant hotel. Rock stars, fire, and flood have assailed its hallways. In the 1920s, certain gangsters - most notably Al Capone - did a little high-stakes, illegal gambling in a room with a hidden door that opened onto an underground escape tunnel in case the police raided the place.

The hotel has seen many owners over its 100-year history as well as major restorations and hard times. At one point in the 1970s,  the hotel was closed totally.  

A view of the lobby's grand staircase

Yesterday though, its lobby was filled with the scent of bouquets of fresh white lilies and contained comfortable couches and chairs for the ease of the weary traveler. The polished wooden railings of the lobby's grand staircase glowed with pride. The Old Seelbach Bar, where I had my first legal afternoon cocktail many years ago, was empty on this snowy afternoon save for the bartender and his shot glasses and bottles of spirits. 

I went downstairs and took a look inside the hotel's famous Rathskeller, decorated with Rookwood Pottery, which had been the scene the night before of a private banquet and party. I'll bet the pelicans that decorated the columns and the decorative tiled walls and vaulted ceilings could tell some stories from the time this room served as a nightclub after Prohibition was repealed and later as a private club.

The Rathskellar

I learned all this from a small hardcover book that the handsome fellow at the front desk gave me...probably so I would stop pestering him with my questions about the history of the hotel. The book is simply titled The Seelbach - A Centennial Salute to Louisville's Grand Hotel. It relates the history and stories - including at least one ghost story - of the hotel and recounts some of its famous and infamous guests. All this information was compiled by Larry Johnson, former bellman and current concierge for the Seelbach.

The book showing the hotel's entrance on the cover

The 125-page book contains some marvelous vintage photographs of the hotel through the years. It was fun to read about some of the goings on in the old place.

But as to its reputation as a literary site? 

Well, in 1918, a certain 2nd Lieutenant was stationed at Camp Taylor, an Army training camp near downtown Louisville. He often visited the Seelbach - its Rathskellar served as the local USO during World War I. One night, this young soldier must have been a little too homesick and he had a little too much to drink. His rowdy behavior got him kicked out of the hotel.

Years later, the young man was making his way in the world as a writer. His memories of Louisville and the Seelbach Hotel show up in his tale of a young woman from Louisville and a gentleman from New York and their wedding that is held in the Grand Ballroom of the hotel. The couple are registered as Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The book, of course, is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The lobby restaurant, in which I had lunch yesterday, is called Gatsby's. Now, it doesn't get much more literary than that, does it.

In Which Napoleon Bonaparte Makes a Surprise Appearance

Ida M. Tarbell's autograph in a copy of
A Short Life of Napoleon Bonaparte

This is a report on the odd way that two unrelated things sometimes intersect. I have become interested in journalist Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) through my reading in The Bully Pulpit. She wrote for McClure's magazine and was one of the muckrakers that helped bring about progressive reforms in President Theodore Roosevelt's era.

She investigated John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company and wrote a not-so-complementary series of articles on the business practices of that robber baron and his organization.

She also wrote for the magazine a best-selling series on the life of Abraham Lincoln and one on Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Both of which I would be interested in reading - the one on Lincoln because he was born in Kentucky and we do like to claim him. The one on Napoleon because I am fascinated with almost anything that has to do with France. And, I have visited his elegant tomb in Paris.

I found that Ms. Tarbell's biography, A Short Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, is available online here with its original illustrations and portraits included, and although it looks like it might be difficult to read in this original form, I will make the effort. If I can figure out how to get it onto my Kindle from the American Libraries archive site so that I don't have to read it on my laptop,  it would make my life a lot easier. 

As it turns out, and here is where the intersection comes in, I just discovered that the Frazier History Museum here currently has an exhibit, The Eye of Napoleon, which takes a look at the emperor's influence on the creative arts. There are on display over 200 works of art and craftsmanship - silver, porcelain, jewels, and bound books - that Napoleon used and gave as gifts. 

Eh! Voila! What a treat to read about the French Emperor and at the same time have a chance to view some of the fine objects and art that he collected. The exhibit runs through March 2 which gives me some time to arrange my reading and my calendar. 

I do love having a book and an outing to look forward to, don't you?

Once Upon a Timepiece by Starr Wood

I have a weakness for timepieces - I treasure the two gold pocket watches that belonged to my grandfather and a smaller gold watch that belonged to my grandmother. My mother must have had ten or more wristwatches in her jewelry box when she died and I still have them although I don't think any of them still tick. I have a clock in every room of my house. When I visit a historic home I am always on the lookout for an antique mantel clock or grandfather's clock to admire.

So the debut collection of twelve short stories by Starr Wood, Once Upon a Timepiece, intrigued me. Each story finds the timepiece - "a 1946 Breitling Chronomat made from rose-colored gold" - in the possession of someone new. The reader is carried along as each month the watch passes from wrist to drawer and from pocket to pawnshop over the span of a year. The telling of how that person - each a stranger to the others - came to have the timepiece is what makes this book such fun to read.

"Well, I didn't see that coming!" is what I found myself thinking often in the reading of these stories. Each one has a twist at the end and it was amusing to see how Mr. Wood gets his main character - the timepiece - into the life of someone new.

Mr. Wood is a journalist and his prose is crisp and uncluttered. His characters are drawn with just enough telling details - the woman with the gorgeous red hair, the obsessively tidy accountant, the self-righteous newspaper editor - as to make them quite distinguishable from each other. 

I am glad I was able to devote some 'time' in my reading schedule to these tales. There really is a 1946 Breitling Chronomat, a watch designed during World War II for aviators. Perhaps Mr. Wood's traveling timepiece looked something like the one below. If so, I would be happy to add it to my collection, but I certainly wouldn't like to let it go!

In Which Belle Celebrates Candlelight

I have been re-watching Cranford, that delightful series based on the novels by Mrs. Elizbeth Gaskell. It portrays life in a small village in England in the mid-1800s. The sight of all the ladies enjoying tea and scurrying about their business makes me want to don a lace cap and do my reading and writing by candlelight. 

This would be the day to do it as it is Candlemas, the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is a festival of light and although I long ago gave away all my wax candles, I do have a fireplace and a couple of faux candles powered by battery.

Those will just have to do.

It is a day of new beginnings - in some traditions it is considered the beginning of spring and is a day when grain-based foods - pancakes and crepes - are to be enjoyed. I am sure that brownies and scones count as well.

It is cloudy and rainy here today and I plan on sitting in front of the fire, doing some reading, and reflecting on the coming year. I will sip my afternoon tea from a fine china cup and use a lace handkerchief in honor of the Ladies of Cranford.