Today's lesson - G

The Teach Erica Something World Tour: New England Edition has mostly consisted of teaching Erica to use power tools.  Today, however, something a little bit different:

In a sense, I am Edward Gorey.

An excerpt from Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer:

Of the two men, Gorey emerges as the more avid correspondent, and the more confessional — a startlingly out-of-character turn, given the solitary artist’s notorious evasiveness in interviews and disinclination to answer mail or, for that matter, return calls. In Elephant House, a book of photographs of Gorey’s home, the photographer Kevin McDermott recalls “boxes of opened and unopened mail, much of it from fans,” surrounding Gorey’s sofa. Typically, Gorey replied to such letters, if he replied at all, with a postcard of his own design. Featuring a Gorey cat dozing on top of a mound of correspondence, it informed the recipient, “You’ve written me to no avail, because I never read my mail.” The novelist and critic Alexander Theroux notes, in his memoir of their friendship, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, that the artist’s “doors lacked knobs, and I am convinced they were intentionally left that way.” When the telephone rang, Gorey was often heard to shout, “I am not here.”

Indeed, I am not.


(Also, I may have once memorized The Gashlycrumb Tinies.  But I've since forgotten most of it, and that's a different story altogether.)

NH Day Two: THE MAN HIMSELF

I know there's a perfect West Wing quotation to put here, but I don't know what it is.

YES HE IS WAVING AT ME

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Day One

So, having driven cross-country and dropped off the car, my original plan was for Road Trip 3 to begin.  However, I find myself without an actual car, and that makes road tripping a little more difficult.  I'm planning to spend some time out here slowly making my way down the East Coast nonetheless, visiting friends from NH to FL.  First stop:  the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH.  Closed for the season, but we found the yellow wood anyway.

Stats, stet, take two

Road Trip 2 of 3 Complete! 

Number of nights spent at friends' places: 2 (in OK and IL)
Number of nights spent in motels: 6  
Number of states visited:  11! (AZ, NM, TX, OK, MO, IL, IN, OH, PA, NY, MA)
Total miles driven: 3400 (almost exactly the same as trip 1)
Minimum total number of Diet Cokes consumed: no really, you don't want to know
Number of gas fill-ups (but not full tanks): 10
Highest price paid for gas: $3.99/gallon (lower than trip 1)
Lowest price paid for gas: $3.32/gallon (also lower than trip 1)
Average miles per gallon:  29 (in someone's early-2000s Honda Accord)
Number of hours of the audiobook of Game of Thrones listened to: 7 hours, 20 minutes (arrgh)

Number of hours of the audiobook of Clash of Kings listened to: 5 hours, 29 minutes 

(Number of hours of the audiobook of Clash of Kings still to go:  31 hours.  Not gonna happen.  Maybe.)

Number of college campuses visited: 1 (Harvard)

Number of New Jew alumni met, on the other side of the country:  1

Number of speeding tickets received:  0 (Thank God)

So, I completed Trips Up and Over.  Now for Down... and maybe Back!

(I mean, yes, Back, but that'll probably be a flight, not a road trip!)

OHIO / PENNSYLVANIA / ON THE ROAD

LOOKING UP

ILLINOIS

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?

You guys, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is GREAT.  Extremely well done, and far more interesting than I could have predicted.

MISSOURI

ARCHING

TEXAS

DRILLING

NEW MEXICO

FIESTA

Also:  finished listening to the last ten hours of the first book of Game of Thrones and let me say this:  Fuck you.  HOW ABOUT WRAPPING UP EVEN ONE LITTLE STRAND OF SOMETHING, IT'S CALLED THE *END* OF A BOOK FOR A REASON OMIGOD.