Sunday, June 8, 2008

Jane Austen and miscellany

What's my favorite Jane Austen novel? I love Persuasion, but my favorite is Sense and Sensibility, which is not her best, I know, I know! I also love Pride and Prejudice, and have spent a lot of time struggling with Mansfield Park, so that I know it very well.

Roger is concerned that I'm losing interest in religion by blogging about Jane Austen. Nothing could be further from the case!

In fact, this morning I went with the First Day students to a three-hour service at Israel Baptist Church. It was a rousing African-American-style worship. The women wore the most beautiful hats. It was about as different from Quakerism as you can get and a treat to experience.

We continue to sort through the basement, which has the advantage of being about 30 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. We found a box of stuff we moved here 13 years ago and never opened. That will be part of the yard sale. Roger also brought a van load of stuff to the dump. As I may have said before, the overhead of keeping stuff changes when you have to move it: for example, I had about 20 spare gift boxes in the basement but there was no way I was going to move them to Barnesville, so out they went.

I am keeping the faith that we will find a renter, Sophie's situation will work out and somehow we'll arrive with our furniture in Barnesville at the appointed time. And praying that the price of crude oil doesn't inflate to $150.00 a barrel by July, as some are predicting. If so, that will make driving a moving van of furniture to Barnesville cost a small fortune. I look back with longing on the wonderful days of just a year ago, when I had no idea what the price of crude was. And as I keep saying to myself, (leaving aside the personal inconvenience to *moi!*) if spiking gas prices really do cause some changes, such as widespread use of public transportation, that would be a good thing.

I fantasize about a country in which we transport ourselves and our goods in new ways. We gently float down rivers to get from point A to point B. We travel by train. Small towns that were once fueled by train traffic are revitalized. We use the streetcar to get to work and buy our houses based on proximity to the streetcar line. This use of public transportation has the effect of bringing us together as communities, and helps the have nots and the marginalized join the larger society. The threat of global warming begins to fade. Sounds like the New Jerusalem, huh?

But as long as I'm fantasizing, I might as well get back to Jane Austen, who at least incorporated a lurking dark side into her fictions.

What is your favorite Jane Austen? And why? Maybe I'll explain my Sense and Sensibility preference in another post.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Di,

I would point out to you and your many lurkers -- er, readers -- the great graphic in the NYTimes today showing the percent of average personal income going to gasoline across the country. The south gets it worst -- gas is expensive everywhere, but incomes are low, and everyone drives a pickup.

As far as Austen goes, I would encourage you to comment on Austen's treatment of religion in her books.