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In the Kitchen with Bella

In the Kitchen with Bella

I snapped these photos a while back.

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Bella helps Daddy make dinner.

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I’m not in the mood for smiling, mama.

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Isabella is clearly fascinated by the cooking process. Our future food critic.

Note: We really don’t make a practice of holding Bella near the stove. This was a case of fussing baby, mommy needing to run out of the room, and daddy needing to keep the food from burning. Most of the time when she’s in the kitchen, Bella is playing in her rocking chair or the exersaucer.

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5 comments
  • Melanie:

          Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite authors. What he was trying to do through the Sword of Honor Trilogy was to show his disillusion with the way WWII was fought by the Allies (especially when the Soviet Union, who actually signed a pact w/the Nazis to split up Poland, entered the Allied side) and how British society changed and not for the better (this was when “the common man” was being championed on both sides of the Atlantic; the character Trimmer in the novels was a personification of this). A lot of the trilogy was based on his actual experiences during the war, which included being in the former Yugoslavia w/Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son, when the British withdrew their support from the non-Communist resistence to Tito. I would recommend that you read some of his earlier novels like Scoop and Black Mischief, both of which still rings true, Decline & Fall or A Handful of Dust. I also think you should read a biography of Waugh to get a better understanding of the background of Brideshead & The Sword of Honor Trilogy.

                      Ta & G’d Bless
                      diskojoe

  • Yeah, I understood what he was trying to do. I’ve read Handful of Dust and Vile Bodies and I think Decline and Fall too and am still not sure about how I feel about them. Maybe they just fly past me because they satirize a world which is so foreign to me? Maybe I just read them too fast and without thinking about them enough?Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

    My ambiguous reaction to Sword of Honor is not a lack of intellectual understanding; it is more about a lack of emotional connection. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Whether I like it or not. And I’m not sure if it has anything to say to me. But, like I said, I felt that way about Brideshead too.

    I agree that a biography might help. I’ve wanted to read a biography of Waugh for some time but haven’t got around to looking for one yet. Is there a good one out there? I know something about his life, and definitely some of that contextualization helped me come to terms with Brideshead. As did reading other people’s reviews, especially those from a Catholic perspective.

    Mostly, I think I need time to digest and then come back to re-read with a different perspecitve.

  • Melanie:

          The major Waugh biographies are those by Martin Stannard (two volumes), Christopher Sykes (who was a friend of Waugh’s) & Selma Hastings. I believe all three are available in one form or another from a bookstore or library. As for the issue of whether Waugh’s works have something to say to you, all I can say is that I think that one of his themes is how the modern world is shapeless and deformed without the structure of the Church & ultimately God. As you know, Waugh was a convert to Catholicism & he thought made a big sacifice in doing so because he was divorced from his first wife when he was received & he thought he could not marry again (the first marriage was annuled). Anyway, the times that Waugh lived through were just as politically and socially in chaos, if not more so, as today.  Just my thoughts.

    Ta & G’d Bless diskojoe

  • Patrick,
    Thanks for the links.

    The jury’s still out about Waugh, as far as I’m concerned. He may end up being one of those authors whose worth I can appreciate intellectually but that (with the exception of BR) I don’t really enjoy reading.

    But I think to make a determination I’ll have to let the ones I’ve read sit for a while and then give them a good re-reading.

    I guess maybe it that I’m disappointed that what I loved about BR is missing from Waugh’s other novels. And I can’t quite put my finger on what that element is. One of my favorite bits though is at the very end when Ryder makes his visit to the chapel. That passage chokes me up. One of the best in English prose. Sadly, I have yet to come across anything quite so fine in his other books. They have the sharp wit but to my mind lack that sense of the intersection of the timeless with time.

    There are places where SoH approaches but it seems to shy away.

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