Cover Girl

Okay, maybe it’s true that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I think it’s fair to say that at a literal level, if we’re talking about actual books and not metaphorically applying the aphorism to people, a compelling face often provides a good suggestion about what the inside holds. A comely cover, or sometimes just an appealing spine, is almost always the first thing that prompts me to pull an unfamiliar book off the shelf. While a “good cover-to-good contents” correlation may not always hold true, I’ve learned it’s a better than decent bet that if the face of a book catches my attention, its innards will be worth a gander as well.

I’m posting this from my parents’ home, where books—and a supply of intriguing book covers—abound. I’ve been hanging out here over the Thanksgiving weekend. This holiday is always a big reunion time for the Richardson relations. These past few days of paddling around the gene pool have included the annual Thanksgiving feast that nearly everyone in our hometown comes to, along with lots of out-of-town folks who come back for the festivities. We normally have our noontime chowdown in the community park, but this year, for only the second time in the feast’s half-century history, we got rained out of the park. Fortuitously, the local United Methodist congregation completed the construction of a fellowship hall earlier this year (its first building project in almost 100 years), and, while eating pecan pie isn’t quite the same indoors as under sunny skies, it was another splendid gathering.

I’ve lingered with my folks in Gainesville, grateful for the chance to spend more time with family and friends over the weekend and to catch up on my sleep. I’ve been poking around my parents’ bookshelves while I’ve been here. Many of the books were part of the landscape when I was growing up; I imagine lots of them arrived in the magical book boxes I wrote about previously. This weekend I pulled out some books whose spines had caught my eye on earlier visits. They contain collections of poems by Ogden Nash, the 20th century poet known for his agile handling of light verse. I first became acquainted with him through some of his short poems that I’ve heard my Dad recite, such as his “Reflection on Babies.” (“A bit of talcum/Is always walcum.”) Nash also brought us “Further Reflection on Parsley” (“Parsley/Is Garsley.”) and “The Cow” (“The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk.”) If you know only one Ogden Nash poem, it’s probably this one, which occasionally gets attributed to Dorothy Parker:

Reflections on Ice-Breaking

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

The Nash books on my parents’ shelf were first published in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and there’s something about their simply designed covers that my eye finds really pleasing. Even their spines, cozied up together on the shelf, form an appealing line. When I pulled out one of the volumes on this visit, I was intrigued to see that the jackets were designed by Maurice Sendak. It was one of those occasions where I could see it once I knew it; the images are pretty different from his other work such as we find in his famous book Where the Wild Things Are, but it’s certainly kin.

I haven’t spent enough time with the appealingly attired Ogden Nash books to know whether they bear out my general rule that a good cover suggests good innards (although they did provide some enjoyable recitation and conversation at the dinner table tonight). But I’ve enjoyed this confirmation of what good covers can do for good books (and sometimes not-so-good ones), and how books are more than just words slapped on pages sandwiched between two boards. Some books are presences over time, part of the landscape that helps orient us in this world; they offer a visual feast that can sustain us even if we only infrequently partake of what they contain.

This holiday weekend, I give thanks for that.

In the Cards

In the “Random Bits from the Studio” Department…

These are a few wee collages I pieced together on playing cards, inspired by a friend who took a class where the instructor had them do this kind of exercise. Being much smaller, more spontaneous, and much speedier than my customary creative fare, these are a good diversion from my usual way of working; they don’t ask for a lot of planning and pondering and attention. I did these a couple of years ago. I’m thinking that in the wake of my most recently finished artwork, the mondo Welcome Table piece, it might be good to scale things way back and pull out the deck of cards and box of scraps again.

Here’s what else I’m thinking: in 2008, lots of small collages instead of one huge one…

Collage was my path into becoming an artist. I continue to find that in the practice of working with the pieces of paper, I’m also, at some other level, working with the pieces of my life. Play with the bits long enough, follow the unlikely juxtapositions, something new always emerges.

And everything can be used. Everything. I figured out long ago that God is the consummate recycler: in God’s economy, nothing gets wasted.

The wild preacher-painter Howard Finster put it this way, on a hand-lettered sign in the art-drenched Paradise Gardens Park he created in Georgia:

I TOOK THE PIECES YOU THREW AWAY
AND PUT THEM TOGETHER BY NIGHT AND DAY
WASHED BY RAIN AND DRIED BY SUN
A MILLION PIECES ALL IN ONE.

The Magical Book Box

I come by my penchant for books honestly; doubtless it’s a combination of nature and nurture from both of my parents. When I was growing up, my dad would periodically order a box of books. This was in the days before Amazon, when ordering books required a wee bit more effort. My recollection is that he’d have them delivered to his office in town and would bring them home from work. After supper, we’d clear the dishes, Dad would bring the box of books to the dining table and slice it open with his Craftsman pocketknife, and we’d lift out the new arrivals, one by one. The boxes always contained an assortment that reflected my parents’ varied tastes: astronomy and other sciences, photography, explorations of the English language, humor. (I remember spending a good bit of time with the books of both Charles Schultz and Charles Addams when I was growing up, which probably explains a few things.)

For a long time, I thought all families did this kind of book stuff.

I still love boxes with books. I always get a happy jolt when I see the mailman or UPS guy pull up, bearing a package with the imprint of any of the several places I order from, occasionally including England or Canada (when I’m too impatient to wait for a book to be published in the U.S.). I still love opening the box and pulling out the volume I’ve been anticipating, sometimes for weeks.

Here are a couple of the most recent tasty treats that have arrived on my doorstep.

St. Margaret’s Gospel-book by Rebecca Rushforth (what a great name!) Subtitled The Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen of Scots, this recently published book is part of the wondrously well-illustrated “Treasures of the Bodleian Library” series. St. Margaret was a relatively rare creature: a married woman who was later designated a saint. (Yes, I gather that marriage makes unofficial saints of lots of folks…) According to one source, Margaret desired to live as a nun rather than marry King Malcolm (whom Shakespeare portrays in Macbeth as the rightful heir to the throne of his murdered father Dunstan). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that God would not allow Margaret such a life because she would do more good as a queen. She gained status as a saint largely for her reputation as a woman of deep faith and good works; only one miracle is connected with her. Charmingly, it involves a book. It’s said that Margaret, who spent much time in lectio divina (sacred reading), had a book that she treasured above all others, a small, jewel-encrusted volume that contained excerpts from the Gospels. Once, as she was traveling, the person who was carrying the book carelessly let it fall into a river. Lost for some time, the book was later discovered miraculously intact and virtually undamaged, “so much so that it scarcely seemed to have been touched by the water!” her biographer exults. “At once,” he goes on to tell, “the book was brought back to the queen, and the miracle related to her, and she gave thanks to Christ; and from then on the queen loved the book even more than she had before.” (From the Life of St Margaret, attributed to Turgot.)

In the 19th century, a woman scholar was the first to piece together the historical evidence that the book described in this miracle is the one that resides in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.

Also in a recent magical book box:

Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Spain by Mireille Mentré. Published in 1996 by Thames & Hudson, this yummy volume offers a lavish look into the manuscripts that emerged from the intriguing confluence of cultures in medieval Spain, particularly between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Some of the most impressive illuminated manuscripts, and the most prevalent, were created by monastic scribes and artists who turned their attention to the Apocalypse, also known as the Revelation to John. Drawing influence from the visual culture of the Islamic community that ruled Spain, as well as from Byzantine, Celtic, and other styles, the Spanish monks created an art form that came to be known as Mozarabic.

It’s pretty wild and wonderful stuff. With their energetic style and vivid palette that differ markedly from the more staid (but also charming and powerful) illuminated Apocalypses that would later emerge in England, the Spanish manuscripts give the impression that their artists absorbed John’s otherworldly visions directly into their veins and poured them straight onto the page.

See for yourself. There are great online resources that offer images and background on the Spanish Apocalypses, including the British Library’s Online Gallery page about the Silos Apocalypse and the current online exhibition “Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan” at the Morgan Library’s website.

Or, better yet, you can order a book in a magical box.

The Welcome Table

This summer, I completed a piece of art that I had begun nearly two years earlier. There are several reasons it took so much time to complete, including the fact that the finished size is more than 4 x 6 feet (and was an interesting challenge to create in my 300 sq. ft. apartment!). Commissioned by St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando, where I used to serve as one of the pastors, the piece is titled The Welcome Table. With paper collage and acrylic paint, the piece depicts Jesus sharing a meal with a colorful array of women, men, children, and a couple of pets. (Visit the enlarged view.)

I pieced together the artwork on a table that, when it’s not serving as an extension of my art studio or office, is my dining table. As I created The Welcome Table there over a couple of years, I had lots of opportunities to think about tables I’ve shared with family and friends. I thought of the elaborate Thanksgiving feasts in my hometown, where nearly everybody who lives there joins in, and the town’s population swells as far-flung friends and family travel back to share in the festivities. (Pecan pies as far as the eye can see!) I recalled and re-savored the generous tables my grandparents offered as I was growing up. I thought of how my parents kept (and still keep) the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary beside the dining table, and how often the dictionary came out during our mealtimes as we tracked down a word, often stopping to visit other words en route. To this day, food and words are intimately intertwined for me, each of them providing food for body and soul.

I remembered tables from my trip to Italy a couple of years ago, many of them in the company of Eric, my pal from college who now lives in Rome (and whose areas of expertise as a journalist include, wondrously, food and wine). On the day I arrived in Rome, Eric took me to a sunny patio table where we feasted with friends in four languages. He led my sister and me to a splendid table overlooking a lake outside Rome, and to a tiny neighborhood restaurant where the owner simply sets up four tables along the narrow street outside his home. But one of my favorite tables was the one in Eric’s apartment, where one day for lunch he pulled out a loaf of bread, some cheese, marinated artichokes, roasted red peppers…and we savored the simple fare as the sounds of the Eternal City wove through our words.

In the introduction to her book The Gastronomical Me, famed food writer M.F.K. Fisher observes, “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” Communion happens in all kinds of ways, not only at the table of the altar but also beyond it. There’s something about sharing a meal that invites us to notice the generosity of God in the gifts of the earth and to encounter the presence of Christ in the hospitality of friends.

The Gospels make it really clear how much Jesus loved to eat with folks. All kinds of folks. So much was he known for hanging out at tables with sometimes questionable dining companions that his critics said, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matthew 11.19) I think one of the many reasons that eating with folks was important to Jesus is that it was a way of inviting them to think about what they were really hungry for. Jesus urged people to consider what would sustain them not only in body but also in soul. And he challenged them to consider how they would offer sustenance to one another.

What are you hungry for? Are you giving yourself the time, the space, to notice what kind of sustenance you’re craving these days?

Maybe you’ve already noticed that among the women and men and pets who have gathered at The Welcome Table, there’s an empty space.

We saved it for you.