Lois and a few of her friends managed to make Eugene O'Neill's, Tao House, into a National Monument. It is located in Danville, Ca, and it is the place where he wrote five of his most famous plays. There may be four or five errors in the previous sentence. The spelling of Eugene's name might be one, calling the Tao House a national monument another. So take it with a dose of salts.
But Lois and her husband Wesley were coming for a visit. And I knew we would have fun.
I called Tess Gallagher and asked if she and Ray could come for dinner the following night and they were happy to come. Dinner conversation was mostly about the availability of finding Ray's books in the two bookstores in town. We had already searched, finding only one of his. We told him we would go to Canada the following morning to see what we could find there. I knew Lois would fall in love with Munro's Bookstore in Victoria. And then the conversation centered about Ray and Tess and the teaching jobs they both had during the school year.
Next day we visited the Butchart Gardens, the bookstores. and a wonderful place for a Japanese lunch. Tired but happy we returned on the afternoon Ferry. We had enough leftovers that we did not have to cook supper. Sam and Wes were pouring their drinks when the phone rang. It was Ray who wanted to know how our day had been. I told him that Lois had found three of is books. He said 'I would like to drive down the hill and sign the books for her. This generocity was typical of Ray. He was a lovely man.
There will be more about Raymond Carver later. One month before he died he come to our 4th of July party on the beach.
6 comments:
I love your stories, and recent ones about family history have led me to research and confirm that my husband's family arrived in North America (to the Spanish colonies in what is now New Mexico) from Spain in the 1600s.
I think you may have used the wrong idiom, "a dose of salts." Taking a dose of salts is something you do when you are constipated, to clear everything out of you very quickly. A pinch of salt refers to an old superstition to keep the devil away and means to be a bit skeptical about information, which I think is what you intended.
English is full of sayings that do not make much sense literally!
I have always known and used the expression "take it with a dose of salt" as meaning, "don't take it too seriously," which is, I think, what you meant when you used it here. I think that many, if not most, people would understand the phrase as I do.
The phrase is "grain of salt." See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_of_salt
But that's irrelevant as far as your writing is concerned, Svensto. Your blog is one of the most interesting and charming on the internet. When I see that you've posted a new entry, it gets my day off to a great start. Please don't stop. And whatever you do, don't be inhibited by insignificant matters like this. Just take them with a grain of salt, or a dose, or a pillar, and keep writing.
Ditto Joe, Svensto your little mistakes are part of your charm, but it is nice for folks to let you know the difference.
Keitha
I like "take it with a dose of salts." Stick with it! It's a nice play on the phrase, and I would like to think that the transposition is intentional. I will use it from now on.
Svensto, don't change a thing about the way you write. I'm with Joe on this. You brighten my day.
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