Open Book: on completing a commonplace notebook

A few evenings ago, I picked up a well-worn notebook from my desk and began to copy a short passage from the work of fiction I was reading. I wrote to the bottom of the page in the notebook, turned the page, and found I’d reached the end of the volume. 

photo: pixabay.com

It had taken 20 years, but I had finished my first commonplace book.

Commonplacing: when I started doing it, I didn’t even know it had a name. I was simply scribbling down tidbits that left an impression on me, gathered from the various things I read. There were gems and oddities and words of startling relevance, sometimes in unlikely places. I found material in news reports, classic literature, and the nonfiction that dominates my reading list. There was no plan or structure. I simply had to write things down.

Why? Some words resonated within me. Others entertained or warned or comforted me. I wanted to remember the words and the writers who wove them into larger works. 

Physically, my commonplace book is a mess, or it has character, depending on how you look at it. That’s what comes of years of different inks, varying penmanship (I sometimes scrawl when I’m in a hurry to get something down), and things crossed out or underlined. Some of the pages look jumpy and unsettled. Any resemblance to my own character is coincidental. 

I copied liberally from books by and about my sisters and brothers in the Catholic faith. Dorothy Day is in that commonplace volume, and so is Flannery O’Connor, along with Popes, saints, and strivers. Deep spirituality marks some entries, but I especially like the ones with down-home practicality.  St. Francis Xavier: “The best way to acquire true dignity is to wash one’s own clothes and boil one’s own pot.” 

Working as a pro-life advocate in a political environment, I read a biography of Chief Justice John Marshall, and came upon this from a letter he wrote in 1801 to his friend Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. It’s an evergreen reminder that political chaos didn’t start with our last election. “There is so much in the political world to wound honest men who have honorable feelings that I am disgusted with it & begin to see things, and indeed human nature, through a much more gloomy medium than I once thought possible.”  

From John Adams to his soulmate Abigail came another political sentiment that I could understand. “I am weary of the game. Yet I don’t know how I could live without it.” 

I have written extensively about my favorite places to hike in my state. In all those thousands of words, I’ve never managed to convey the depth of my love for this land as succinctly as did Stacey Cole, a columnist for my local paper. “New Hampshire has been good to me and good for me. Here it has been that I have feasted on the marrow of life.”

There’s much more in my old commonplace book, and I can revisit it at my leisure. It’s time to start a fresh volume. It’s a small blue bound notebook, a gift from a friend. It might be the only commonplace book I’ll need from now on; after all, the last one made it through two decades. At the moment, this new blank book is pretty and tidy – too tidy. I’m eager to put it to work. 

This post is shared to the monthly Open Book linkup hosted at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com.

Making good news, close to home

I’ve headed to the State House a few times during this legislative session, since things like assisted suicide and medical conscience rights are up for debate. Urgent national news presses in from all sides as well. It’s almost enough to pull me back to where I was in my lobbying days, certain that politics was where the action was.

Almost. Not quite. Action that matters in the long run isn’t happening under a golden dome. It’s happening close to home, where people live out pro-life vocations as far away from politics as they can get. 

I’m thinking about the faith-based pregnancy care agencies whose staff and volunteers provide resources and referrals for pregnant and parenting women, and who choose to do so without providing or referring for abortion.

There’s room for you in that work, close to home, whatever your experience, background, or resources.

Head to my latest Braided Trails post on Substack for more about this good news – plus a bit of inspiration to take you into Lent, and a look at a fire tower that will make you want to take an uphill hike.

Open Book: a classic outside a classroom

I was casual about the reading lists from my English courses in high school. “Recommended” reading looked different to me from required reading. I interpreted recommended as “not quite assigned.” When I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology – the required starting point for what was at the time a 3-year Advanced Placement English curriculum – I was urged to pick up the Iliad and Odyssey as well. Nope. I had other things to do.

Half a century later, I am taking up Homer for real. My Substack adventures have led me to Matthew Long’s edifying Beyond the Bookshelf site. Mr. Long’s creativity extends to sharing classics with his readers and hosting online discussions. Under his tutelage and organization, we’re spending 2025 on the Iliad and the Odyssey, a bit at a time.

No grade looms. No one’s going to call on me. There’s no one to impress. We’re just a bunch of adults exploring these works of art and literature, some of us for the first time.

We’re reading the Iliad first. I knew the gods of the tale would be meddlesome and flawed. Other aspects of the story catch me by surprise, such as the pitiless violence of the battles between Greeks and Trojans. As I read, I shudder at what must have been the fate of the wives and children of fallen warriors. (Yes, I’ve seen Euripides’s The Trojan Women performed. It will henceforth hit me harder.)

The story touches me differently than it would have half a century ago. I’m a more experienced and somewhat more discriminating reader. I’m a mother, and I’ve felt the apprehension that comes with seeing a child off to war. The cultural heritage of which the Iliad is a part can only be a vague thing to a tenth-grader; it’s of keen interest to me.

I’m reading with humility and gratitude, two things I had yet to develop back in the days when a teacher suggested that I read Homer. She knew what she was doing, even if it took me a long time to appreciate her efforts.

You won’t regret subscribing to Matthew Long’s Beyond the Bookshelf. Neither will you regret reading Hamilton’s Mythology, to which I return for reference time and again.

Mr. Long helpfully recommended translations of the Iliad by Fagles and Wilson. I had a free edition on my Kindle, an 1864 translation by the Earl of Derby, which I found difficult to read. I’ve settled on reading a prose translation by Butler which I found in a forgotten volume on a downstairs bookshelf, a hidden treasure in my own home.

This post is shared on the #OpenBook linkup hosted monthly by My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com. Header image: attributed to the Hattat Painter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.