10 things I love that begin with the letter V

Happy New Year to all - let's begin the year with a meme (from Stefanie (So Many Books) : ten things I love that begin with the letter V.

Violets, especially in the spring, when they first appear amongst the baby grasses.

Virginia Woolf, whose vision and flow broke through the brittle logic of literary expectation.

Gore Vidal: sage, seer, brilliant author, wit, and the living writer whose thoughts have most influenced my political understanding.

Venice. I have never been to Venice, and I am told that I would not love it in person as I love it in photographs, paintings, film, and literature. It is, however, one of my life goals to see the way the reflections of the water play on the architecture.

Violas. I used to play viola, and I still love the alto beauty of its tone. ( "Harald in Italy" by Berlioz is a lovely example of how the viola sings.)

Ralph Vaughan Villiams: "Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus," one of the folk tunes collected by Vaughan Willaims and one of my musical touchstones.

Velvet. When I have a migraine, one of the ways I try to soothe myself is to imagine the touch of dark green velvet. (I still regret the green velvet gloves I decided not to buy in Harrod's. )

Vincent Van Gogh. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had two huge exhibitions of his paintings and drawings in the 1970s. I did not expect to become emotionally unhinged in the presence of "Starry Night," nor to be swept into the whirlwind of his creativity by seeing how the blue of water in one late painting was swept into the sky in the next.

Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight, a weekly free-form radio program on VFUV Public Radio. that includes such an eclectic range of music that you can listen to Laurie Anderson, Aimee Mann, Joshua Bell, Marianne Faithfull, Yo La Tengo, a string quartet playing Shostakovich, ragtime, jazz, show tunes... plus interviews with Leonard Cohen, Pete Hamill....

and....Peace.


Would anyone else like to play? The original version would have me assign you a letter. Instead, assign one to yourself using the first letter of your first-grade teacher's first name... And leave me a comment when you do the meme, so I can visit.