Saving a Dragon Tree Plant; Sissy Jupe; Rosalynn Carter
In which I continue to steal the New Yorker column idea where a staffer summarizes three things they’re currently obsessing over. The New Yorker calls the column Take Three. I call my version I’m All Lost In... Here’s Week 7:
1. I’m 100% intent on saving the Dragon Tree plant that landed in my apartment this week. My friend D— X. handed over the drooping plant and its browning fronds in the hopes that my sun-lit apartment and my surprising, but at this point, convincing house plant skills, can revive it. Given the success I’ve already had A) turning my kitchen countertop into a lush terrarium of potted plants, B) coaxing a stubborn philodendron into a happy swirl of brisk leaves, and C) tending to the oversized jazz hands floor plant in my bedroom, I’m now doting over this orphaned outcast with my spray jar, my plastic blue Sesame St. watering can, and a top-priority corner window situation.
2. A few weeks ago, when I first started reading it, I included Charles Dickens’ quiet, biblical parable, his 1854 novel Hard Times, on this list. In those early chapters, I was taken with the story line about circus urchin, Sissy Jupe. When I finished the book this week, my thoughts were stuck on the way Sissy Jupe merged with her counterpart, the distant and rational Louisa Gradgrind, or Loo.
As the drama comes to a close, Sissy—who, in Dickens’ coloring-book-style, represents the humanist, emotional, and fanciful side of human nature—blurs into Loo, who represents the stifled side of hyper rationalism and its contorted allegiance with industrial capitalism. Or more accurately: Loo blurs into Sissy Jupe, as the circus side wins the dialectic.
The question becomes: Is this William-Adolphe Bougereau 1874 painting on the cover, The Fair Spinner—supposed to be Sissy or Loo?
3. Who would have thought Rosalynn Carter could bring the country together.
I was tearing up at the memorial service coverage—there’s my childhood crush, Amy Carter— and I ended up marveling at Rosalynn’s story. I had never fully grasped how cool, biting, sexy, and smart she was.
