Yesterday was pretty tedious. I spent the morning piecing together some information on early women violinists. I am constantly amazed at the biographies I encounter. Some of these women sound more like the heroines of novels than real people. Yesterday yielded an obituary detailing the life story of a violinist named Leonora von Stosch who was a child prodigy. Her father was a Prussian count. He married a woman from a prominent New England family and settled in Washington D.C. where von Stosch grew up. She studied in Belgium and Paris and toured the U.S. for several years before marrying, when her career came to an abrupt halt. She would never play in public again. She divorced her first husband and moved to Paris where she met her second husband, Edgar Speyer, an American-born British banker of German-Jewish descent, who received a baronet for his service to the crown through Speyer & Co. Bank. Von Stosch and Speyer lived in London but moved back to New York in 1915 when von Stosch took up writing. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1927. After her husband died, she continued to write. She also served for a time as the President of the American Poetry Society and taught poetry courses at Columbia University. She died at the age of 85, still active.

I, on the other hand, was not doing anything anywhere near as productive. In fact, I didn�t even manage to leave the house until about 4 p.m., when AJ and I took a walk down to the playground by the river. The river is swollen with recent rains. The trees that usually shade the shoreline are now well into the middle of the river. The pier where we usually stand to watch the boats has sunk several inches below the water and the only boats to be seen were police vessels patrolling to make sure no one else ventured onto the river. As we stood by the shore, we watched two young girls take off their shoes and run out onto the sunken pier � walking on water with the setting sun silhouetting them and shining through their blond hair like halos.

Last night, after putting AJ to bed, we watched The Triplets of Belleville, which I�ve been dying to see ever since I heard the sound track, which I�m completely enamored with. I was charmed, although my favorite part by far was the opening sequence, an homage to 1920s Paris � the place and era of my former dissertation topic. I�m not sure what was my favorite moment: Django Reinhardt compensating for his damaged hand by playing guitar with his toes? Fred Astaire being devoured by his alligator shoes, which turned out to be actual alligators? Or perhaps the bunch of monkeys storming the stage from the audience to attack Josephine Baker who was clad in nothing but bananas.

I think the latter wins by a hair. Just because I�m feeling, these days, like I know what it�s like to walk through the monkey house in a banana suit.

And with that, I must depart to heed the siren song of an overly tired AJ refusing to nap and shrieking in his crib.

Nothing but bananas.

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