June 28: Interview, Approving Affability, Book Club

My interview yesterday evening with the woman making the documentary on U. P. writers went really well.  I think.  We set up near Lake Superior.  It was humid and sunny.  (I believe Anne Ramsey of Throw Momma from the Train fame would have described it as "sultry.")  The interview lasted around 40 minutes.  We spoke about poetry and blizzards and bipolar disease.  She made me feel pretty smart.  She even set up her camera a second time to record  a off-hand comment I made about alcoholism and mental illness in the Upper Peninsula.  The whole experience was pretty thrilling.  We'll see if I actually end up in the finished product.

It is the fourth Thursday of the month, and everyone knows what that means.  Well, at least everybody who reads this blog.  Well, everybody who reads this blog and pays attention.  Well, everybody who...Oh, never mind.  Tonight, my book club meets at my house for our monthly gathering, which brings me to today's Dickens quote:

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death:  it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh.  It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise is as his own nephew's and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at the same nephew with approving affability.

What follows this paragraph in the book is a description of Fred's annual Christmas party.  Games.  More laughter.  Singing.  Food.  Scrooge has a helluva time, so much so that, when the Ghost of Christmas Present informs him that they must depart, Scrooge begs the spirit for more time at the gathering.  The spirit relents.

The people in my book club love to eat.  To talk.  To eat some more.  Talk some more.  Above all, we like to laugh.  This month's read was Michael Chabon's The Wonder Boys.  Tonight, we will not just be discussing the book.  We'll also be watching the movie adaptation with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire.  And we'll be talking and eating and laughing.  It promises to be a really good night.  Scrooge would have enjoyed himself immensely.

So, as you may be able to tell, my day is off to a good start.  Hopefully, it will stay this way.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is looking at Saint Marty with approving affability.

Just Mike and a few friends coming over tonight