Teju Cole won every prize under the sun for his first book, Open City. I haven't read that one, so I don't know how Every Day is for the Thief compares, but I thought it was a fantastic book. It's called a novel but surely has lots of autobiographical elements, as it's set in Nigeria, where the author was born, and the details are so intimate that you can't imagine them being imaginary. I read about this author in a book about transnational literature that I was editing.
I don't normally like reading about Africa, and I wouldn't say I outright enjoyed this, because it has some horrible stuff about how Nigeria operates and how cruel the people can be. I would have liked to say it was about Nigeria 50 years ago, but it's current, and the day I finished it I read a news story about a ghastly cruelty in Nigeria which resulted in hundreds of deaths. The main theme of the book is graft. According to the story, bribery is endemic all over Nigeria and protection payments are common. Even an ordinary person just trying to get from one street to another might be accosted and told to "share the wealth" and that they'll be killed if they don't pay. I'm trying to remember that this is a novel, but it didn't seem so.
July 15, 2015
The Go-Giver
This little book is a parable about how to do well in business but I'd say applies equally well to how to do well in life. The five tips are:
1) your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment
2) your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them
3) your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first
4) the most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself (the law of authenticity)
5) the key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving
The book is fun, and comes across as kind of hoky, with not a single scientific study to back up its claims, but nevertheless I found it entirely convincing and figured I should read it every night for a week to see if I could get it into my head. The principles are biblical, although there's no mention of the Bible or religion. You just kinda know that if you'd operate this way, it would work.
1) your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment
2) your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them
3) your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first
4) the most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself (the law of authenticity)
5) the key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving
The book is fun, and comes across as kind of hoky, with not a single scientific study to back up its claims, but nevertheless I found it entirely convincing and figured I should read it every night for a week to see if I could get it into my head. The principles are biblical, although there's no mention of the Bible or religion. You just kinda know that if you'd operate this way, it would work.
October 13, 2014
A Diamond in the Desert by Jo Tatchell
Subtitled "Behind the scenes in the world's richest city," this is a book about Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest state of the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi is both a state and the name of its major city, a sister city to Dubai, which is only a two-hour drive away.
The average net worth of the 430,000 citizens of Abu Dhabi in 2008-09 when this book was written was $17 million. The author points out that not everyone is this wealthy, but the people of Abu Dhabi are generally very comfortable, and many of them are wealthy beyond imagination.
Tatchell grew up in Abu Dhabi with expatriate, consultant parents, and now has returned to see an amazing shift from the nomadic culture of the past to a vibrant and very ambitious city. The wealth comes at an enormous cost. She describes the moral abyss of a generation of wealthy young Abu Dhabians who reach ever lower in their boredom and cynicism. The state is highly regulated, with both laws and an unspoken culture that prohibit criticism. A fascinating book.
The average net worth of the 430,000 citizens of Abu Dhabi in 2008-09 when this book was written was $17 million. The author points out that not everyone is this wealthy, but the people of Abu Dhabi are generally very comfortable, and many of them are wealthy beyond imagination.
Tatchell grew up in Abu Dhabi with expatriate, consultant parents, and now has returned to see an amazing shift from the nomadic culture of the past to a vibrant and very ambitious city. The wealth comes at an enormous cost. She describes the moral abyss of a generation of wealthy young Abu Dhabians who reach ever lower in their boredom and cynicism. The state is highly regulated, with both laws and an unspoken culture that prohibit criticism. A fascinating book.
October 10, 2014
Running for the Hills: Growing up on my Mother's Sheep Farm in Wales by Horatio Clare
This is a gorgeously written biography. Before he was born, Horatio Clare's parents bought a sheep farm in Wales as sort of a hobby farm/retreat from their jobs as journalists in London. His mother fell in love with the farm, but his father didn't. Eventually she and their two sons stayed at the farm, at the cost of her marriage.
The struggles were tremendous - the house was a wreck, she was an impractical and horribly messy but very outgoing and popular farmer, and there was never enough money. But the descriptions of the natural beauty of the countryside are amazing, Dylan Thomas-style, and the sheep, even to a non-animal-lover like myself, are appealing, sometimes pathetic, sometimes hilarious characters all by themselves, bringing to mind James Herriot's tales, set in a similar landscape.
The author skilfully sharpens the focus on the dynamics between his parents, and on the picture of his father, mirroring a child's growing awareness of what's really going on, and whose fault it might be (both, in this case.)
I looked forward to this book every night and was sad when it ended. I hope he has written some more.
The struggles were tremendous - the house was a wreck, she was an impractical and horribly messy but very outgoing and popular farmer, and there was never enough money. But the descriptions of the natural beauty of the countryside are amazing, Dylan Thomas-style, and the sheep, even to a non-animal-lover like myself, are appealing, sometimes pathetic, sometimes hilarious characters all by themselves, bringing to mind James Herriot's tales, set in a similar landscape.
The author skilfully sharpens the focus on the dynamics between his parents, and on the picture of his father, mirroring a child's growing awareness of what's really going on, and whose fault it might be (both, in this case.)
I looked forward to this book every night and was sad when it ended. I hope he has written some more.
Under the Spell of the Yukon by Enid Mallory
A well-written and highly personal biography of Robert Service. Although I'm not a huge fan of his poetry, who can resist a rousing recitation of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" or "The Cremation of Sam McGee," poems with which my friend Wendy has occasionally regaled our writer's group.
The author persistently tries to get at who this man was - what made him tick. Service was an odd combination of rather shy bank clerk and absolutely crazy adventurer. He mostly got his poems from listening to people's stories, first in Scotland where he was born, then in California and the American Midwest, then on Vancouver Island and finally in the Yukon where he arrived just at the tail end of the gold rush and wrote his most famous works.
He became wealthy enough to live off the royalties from his books of poems, and it was during his early retirement that he took a bizarre trip from Edmonton north through the NWT and finally entering Yukon from the far north. It was a trip that most natives said could not be done, and that he would die if he tried it alone. He survived, gleaning further material for his poetry.
I really liked this book. It is fast-paced, and has lots of nice sharp pictures. It's inspirational because although he was kind of a bland guy, his work was anything but.
The author persistently tries to get at who this man was - what made him tick. Service was an odd combination of rather shy bank clerk and absolutely crazy adventurer. He mostly got his poems from listening to people's stories, first in Scotland where he was born, then in California and the American Midwest, then on Vancouver Island and finally in the Yukon where he arrived just at the tail end of the gold rush and wrote his most famous works.
He became wealthy enough to live off the royalties from his books of poems, and it was during his early retirement that he took a bizarre trip from Edmonton north through the NWT and finally entering Yukon from the far north. It was a trip that most natives said could not be done, and that he would die if he tried it alone. He survived, gleaning further material for his poetry.
I really liked this book. It is fast-paced, and has lots of nice sharp pictures. It's inspirational because although he was kind of a bland guy, his work was anything but.
April 22, 2014
My Life on Eart and Elsewhere by R. Murray Shafer
I quite enjoyed this very quirky autobiography of Canadian composer and dramatist Murray Shafer. I'd never heard of him before (probably embarrassing to admit, but I just hadn't) but he apparently was quite well-known and has won a number of honorary doctorates and awards, including the Order of Canada in 2013. It's a good read, reminiscent for me of the biography of John Hirsch I read some time ago, in that it's a revealing insider look at the Canadian arts scene over the past half century.
I suppose "avant-garde" would describe Shafer's work. He wrote modern music for orchestras and voice - operas/musicals that were so difficult artistically that some of them were never staged at all, and others only once. He drew complicated mythological pictures to illustrate his works, which were rooted in the mythologies of cultures ranging from North American First Nations to Greek to Japanese to Inca. Shafer worked in many universities and schools, teaching the lessons of "soundscape" to students. He sometimes worked with towns or cities to stage massive dramatic and musical festivals, with thousands of local participants in scores of venues throughout the town.
I didn't really like the main character very much. He seemed prickly, cocky, confrontational and judgmental. From the outside, his personal life looked like a mess. He left his first wife weeping on the floor because he'd found someone younger and prettier. Then he left that woman too, (she was also devastated) for his third relationship, but took his second partner back for a time when the third woman was busy in Europe with her work and another partner. He admits to feeling terrible about these things and never writes a word of criticism about any of the women. But loyalty was obviously not his strong point.
On the other hand he was wildly creative and passionate, and I was fascinated by the arc of a career that leaped from one new project to another, each one upping the ante on the last for bizarreness. He got commissions from various Canadian symphonies throughout his career, some perhaps because of the requirements of Canada Arts Council grants.
His main success seemed to have been in his soundscape teaching, and it was also in this that the book most resonated with me. I've become more aware of the sounds around me since I read it, and more appreciative of the very serene soundscape of my own little piece of paradise here on Caldwell Street.
I suppose "avant-garde" would describe Shafer's work. He wrote modern music for orchestras and voice - operas/musicals that were so difficult artistically that some of them were never staged at all, and others only once. He drew complicated mythological pictures to illustrate his works, which were rooted in the mythologies of cultures ranging from North American First Nations to Greek to Japanese to Inca. Shafer worked in many universities and schools, teaching the lessons of "soundscape" to students. He sometimes worked with towns or cities to stage massive dramatic and musical festivals, with thousands of local participants in scores of venues throughout the town.
I didn't really like the main character very much. He seemed prickly, cocky, confrontational and judgmental. From the outside, his personal life looked like a mess. He left his first wife weeping on the floor because he'd found someone younger and prettier. Then he left that woman too, (she was also devastated) for his third relationship, but took his second partner back for a time when the third woman was busy in Europe with her work and another partner. He admits to feeling terrible about these things and never writes a word of criticism about any of the women. But loyalty was obviously not his strong point.
On the other hand he was wildly creative and passionate, and I was fascinated by the arc of a career that leaped from one new project to another, each one upping the ante on the last for bizarreness. He got commissions from various Canadian symphonies throughout his career, some perhaps because of the requirements of Canada Arts Council grants.
His main success seemed to have been in his soundscape teaching, and it was also in this that the book most resonated with me. I've become more aware of the sounds around me since I read it, and more appreciative of the very serene soundscape of my own little piece of paradise here on Caldwell Street.
April 13, 2014
Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlman
When I see that I haven't posted since last October, I feel as though I've been in some kind of gap in the time-space continuum. I have read books, but maybe not very good ones or maybe I just haven't had the bandwidth to post about them.
This was a really good book, by a young Austrian writer. He fictionalizes the lives of 19th century explorer/scientist Alexander Humboldt (the Humboldt current) and brilliant mathematician Carl Gauss. The novel revolves around their meeting at a conference, with Gauss a hilariously reluctant participant because he just wanted to stay home, whereas Humboldt traveled all around the world.
There are a lot of interesting ideas about the nature of genius, curiosity, measurement, and how new things are discovered. The author draws fascinating pictures of life in the 19th century, almost unbelievably harsh.
I haven't yet looked up the lives of these two men on Wikipedia, but I'll be interested to do so to see how much of the book is true. This book would make a fabulous movie if it hasn't already been made into one. I couldn't put it down. It's smart and funny.
This was a really good book, by a young Austrian writer. He fictionalizes the lives of 19th century explorer/scientist Alexander Humboldt (the Humboldt current) and brilliant mathematician Carl Gauss. The novel revolves around their meeting at a conference, with Gauss a hilariously reluctant participant because he just wanted to stay home, whereas Humboldt traveled all around the world.
There are a lot of interesting ideas about the nature of genius, curiosity, measurement, and how new things are discovered. The author draws fascinating pictures of life in the 19th century, almost unbelievably harsh.
I haven't yet looked up the lives of these two men on Wikipedia, but I'll be interested to do so to see how much of the book is true. This book would make a fabulous movie if it hasn't already been made into one. I couldn't put it down. It's smart and funny.
October 9, 2013
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
This novel is written in an autobiographical style in the first person but is entirely fiction. That isn't unique but Ondaatje takes it to a level I haven't encountered before, with subtleties so clever that I was sure it was biographical until I read the Author's Note at the end. I could have checked online at any time but resisted, wanting to keep puzzling out the strong autobiographical clues with the increasingly surreal storyline.
It's an amazing, complex book about three 12-year-old boys who travel more or less on their own on a ship from India to England. Ondaatje's inventiveness almost defies the imagination; fiction is definitely stranger than life in this instance but yet so lifelike that my mind was messed around quite a bit. The Alice-in-Wonderland strangeness of the characters and the constant loose ends of the plot (as in life) reminded me somewhat of Life of Pi, but this book is much richer in human interest, character development and relationships. In the last third of the book Ondaatje switches back and forth between present, past and future, but very well, so you always understand where you are and how many years ago something happened.
It's a unique read. I loved the last two lines of the book, which he writes as a dedication to two of the characters, one of them a dog:
The boat came breasting out of the mist and in they stepped.
All new things in life were meant to come like that...
This is a beautiful description of some of the new things that have happened in my life this past year. Although I feel a healthy sense of agency and know I shaped events, in the end they emerged naturally out of the mist, and I stepped in with no extended agonies of decision. All new things in life were meant to come like that.
It's an amazing, complex book about three 12-year-old boys who travel more or less on their own on a ship from India to England. Ondaatje's inventiveness almost defies the imagination; fiction is definitely stranger than life in this instance but yet so lifelike that my mind was messed around quite a bit. The Alice-in-Wonderland strangeness of the characters and the constant loose ends of the plot (as in life) reminded me somewhat of Life of Pi, but this book is much richer in human interest, character development and relationships. In the last third of the book Ondaatje switches back and forth between present, past and future, but very well, so you always understand where you are and how many years ago something happened.
It's a unique read. I loved the last two lines of the book, which he writes as a dedication to two of the characters, one of them a dog:
The boat came breasting out of the mist and in they stepped.
All new things in life were meant to come like that...
This is a beautiful description of some of the new things that have happened in my life this past year. Although I feel a healthy sense of agency and know I shaped events, in the end they emerged naturally out of the mist, and I stepped in with no extended agonies of decision. All new things in life were meant to come like that.
September 23, 2013
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie
The title of this biography of Marie Curie rang true for me in only one of its words. The author fully convinced me that Curie was an obsessive scientist. Although I believe she was also a genius, I didn't see a good case made for that in this book. She seemed more like a slogger to me, working night and day and never, ever quitting. That single-mindedness can be a characteristic of genius, but in Curie's case, it resulted in a life I would call meagre. If that word can be applied to someone who won two Nobel Prizes.
The subtitle doesn't reflect the book at all. The author doesn't manage to get into the Inner World of Marie Curie, unless by that she just means Curie's milieu. I was looking for what made her tick, how she thought, and I couldn't figure it out, except that she thought about science, and in particular radioactivity.
The biography does show how Curie was worthy of the two Nobel Prizes she won (Physics in 1903, with her husband Pierre, and Chemistry in 1911) and how her work was a springboard for other scientific discoveries.
Curie was born and raised in Poland, but worked most of her life in Paris. She was one of only 23 women among 2000 students at the School of Science, Sorbonne, and she lived in dire poverty in unheated rooms. The fascinating aspect of the book is the description of her lab work - the radioactive substances she isolates are the elephant in the closet. We know it's there and we know it's killing her, but she and her partner apparently don't. They'd done the tests on lab rats and knew that they died from radioactivity, yet the Curies so loved their work and were so intrigued with radioactivity that they couldn't imagine it harming them. They kept a glowing vial by their bedside because they liked the look of it. They both died too young and in terrible pain.
I wish I could say the story was inspiring but I didn't find it so. Either the author didn't show Marie Curie's human, womanly side, or she just didn't have one. The latter seems possible, from what is revealed of this serious, driven woman who cared not at all about clothes, friends, or the comforts of life, and who left her two children in the care of servants, friends and relatives for most of their lives. Curie was not a generous scientist - she guarded her work and didn't care to share ideas, and this in the end was how the story of Curie's life affected me. It felt like an ungenerous life, a claustrophobic existence with astounding results for science but with little joy.
The subtitle doesn't reflect the book at all. The author doesn't manage to get into the Inner World of Marie Curie, unless by that she just means Curie's milieu. I was looking for what made her tick, how she thought, and I couldn't figure it out, except that she thought about science, and in particular radioactivity.
The biography does show how Curie was worthy of the two Nobel Prizes she won (Physics in 1903, with her husband Pierre, and Chemistry in 1911) and how her work was a springboard for other scientific discoveries.
Curie was born and raised in Poland, but worked most of her life in Paris. She was one of only 23 women among 2000 students at the School of Science, Sorbonne, and she lived in dire poverty in unheated rooms. The fascinating aspect of the book is the description of her lab work - the radioactive substances she isolates are the elephant in the closet. We know it's there and we know it's killing her, but she and her partner apparently don't. They'd done the tests on lab rats and knew that they died from radioactivity, yet the Curies so loved their work and were so intrigued with radioactivity that they couldn't imagine it harming them. They kept a glowing vial by their bedside because they liked the look of it. They both died too young and in terrible pain.
I wish I could say the story was inspiring but I didn't find it so. Either the author didn't show Marie Curie's human, womanly side, or she just didn't have one. The latter seems possible, from what is revealed of this serious, driven woman who cared not at all about clothes, friends, or the comforts of life, and who left her two children in the care of servants, friends and relatives for most of their lives. Curie was not a generous scientist - she guarded her work and didn't care to share ideas, and this in the end was how the story of Curie's life affected me. It felt like an ungenerous life, a claustrophobic existence with astounding results for science but with little joy.
July 2, 2013
The Perfection of the Morning by Sharon Butala
Around the age of 40, Sharon Butala made a big life change, from being an upwardly mobile hard-striving urban academic in Saskatoon to rural life in southwestern Saskatchewan with her new husband, a lifelong rancher. The culture shock, isolation and the difficulty of finding common ground with the local women drove her to much contemplation. She began to spend hours every day outside, in the fields and hills surrounding their ranch near Eastend, SK in the Cypress Hills, and eventually she did a lot of reading about people and their relationship to the natural world.
This book is subtitled "An Apprenticeship in Nature." Butala gradually discovered the validity of nature as a part of her life. She writes strongly about the potential for being one with all that surrounds us, and about the possibility for taking seriously the signs that nature gives us. When I first read this book years ago, I thought she was kind of flaky. Now I don't. While driving to Northern Ontario years ago, we had some amazing encounters with wildlife, especially a fox who looked at us long and hard. When we told about this at an Ojibway council meeting, one councillor said simply, "he was showing himself to you." Butala believes in this kind of event as well. It has nothing to do with anthropomorphizing animals or animating flora or any other part of nature. Rather, she shows that this kind of awareness comes out of a vast humility and understanding of our place in nature.
This isn't an easy read. It's organized roughly in a thematic way - e.g. First Nations, animals, community - and how all these things fit together isn't clear throughout, but comes together at the end. She's a brave woman, sharing her initial arrogance, self-centredness, confusions and joys. Her depiction of her husband and his family is fascinating in its carefulness and spareness. I found myself re-reading all the parts about him, trying to glean clues about their relationship, but in this she mostly draws a respectful line.
Thanks to my cousin Joyce for recommending that I re-read this book. I had planned to stop at the Cypress Hills on my way to Manitoba, but I flew instead, so it is a trip for another time.
This book is subtitled "An Apprenticeship in Nature." Butala gradually discovered the validity of nature as a part of her life. She writes strongly about the potential for being one with all that surrounds us, and about the possibility for taking seriously the signs that nature gives us. When I first read this book years ago, I thought she was kind of flaky. Now I don't. While driving to Northern Ontario years ago, we had some amazing encounters with wildlife, especially a fox who looked at us long and hard. When we told about this at an Ojibway council meeting, one councillor said simply, "he was showing himself to you." Butala believes in this kind of event as well. It has nothing to do with anthropomorphizing animals or animating flora or any other part of nature. Rather, she shows that this kind of awareness comes out of a vast humility and understanding of our place in nature.
This isn't an easy read. It's organized roughly in a thematic way - e.g. First Nations, animals, community - and how all these things fit together isn't clear throughout, but comes together at the end. She's a brave woman, sharing her initial arrogance, self-centredness, confusions and joys. Her depiction of her husband and his family is fascinating in its carefulness and spareness. I found myself re-reading all the parts about him, trying to glean clues about their relationship, but in this she mostly draws a respectful line.
Thanks to my cousin Joyce for recommending that I re-read this book. I had planned to stop at the Cypress Hills on my way to Manitoba, but I flew instead, so it is a trip for another time.
February 16, 2013
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Much has been written about this famous book, which I'd heard about all my life but never read. Lucille recommended it, and I thought it was amazing, most particularly for its style, and also for its illumination of the beatnik subculture of the late 40s that I had never understood.
On the Road is autobiographical, describing Kerouac and his buddies (who include Alan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs) on their travels across the U.S. as part of the Beat Generation (a term Kerouac coined). Kerouac changes the names; he himself as the narrator is Sal Paradise and the other main character is Dean Moriarty, based on the real-life Neal Cassady.
To illustrate Kerouac's style, I'll quote from a wild scene at a jazz club in San Francisco:
The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from "EE-yah!" to a crazier "EE-de-lee-yah!" and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn't give a damn about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom, crash. Uproars of music and tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Dean was clutching his head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging the tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor. A six-foor skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man's hornbell and he just jabbed it at her, "Ee! ee! ee!"
Kerouac himself made a comparison between his writing style and the style of Impressionist painters who tried to create art through direct observation. In1950 he wrote in the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" about the form he was developing that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
The book is about jazz, enjoying everything, sex, drugs, and finding meaning in life. Kerouac once said "It was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him."
I had to read this book fast as it couldn't be renewed, but my thought is I will buy it so I can re-read the best parts whenever I want to. And there's a 2012 Francis Ford Coppola movie that I can't wait to see.
On the Road is autobiographical, describing Kerouac and his buddies (who include Alan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs) on their travels across the U.S. as part of the Beat Generation (a term Kerouac coined). Kerouac changes the names; he himself as the narrator is Sal Paradise and the other main character is Dean Moriarty, based on the real-life Neal Cassady.
To illustrate Kerouac's style, I'll quote from a wild scene at a jazz club in San Francisco:
The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from "EE-yah!" to a crazier "EE-de-lee-yah!" and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn't give a damn about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom, crash. Uproars of music and tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Dean was clutching his head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging the tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor. A six-foor skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man's hornbell and he just jabbed it at her, "Ee! ee! ee!"
Kerouac himself made a comparison between his writing style and the style of Impressionist painters who tried to create art through direct observation. In1950 he wrote in the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" about the form he was developing that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
The book is about jazz, enjoying everything, sex, drugs, and finding meaning in life. Kerouac once said "It was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him."
I had to read this book fast as it couldn't be renewed, but my thought is I will buy it so I can re-read the best parts whenever I want to. And there's a 2012 Francis Ford Coppola movie that I can't wait to see.
February 4, 2013
The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock
This wonderful book is subtitled Mrs. Delany [begins her life's work] at 72. It's the true story of an upper-class woman of the 1700s who at age 72 invented an art form that we now know as collage or mixed-media art.
One day Mary Delany watched as a geranium petal fell beside her onto a table, near a piece of paper of the exact same colour. She picked up her scissors, began to snip petals out of the paper, pasted them down with flour and water glue, and so began a project that absorbed her for the next 10 years until her eyesight failed. In all she made 985 exquisite collages of hundreds of different flowers, all from real life, and grew quite famous with them. The whole collection is at the National Gallery in London.
This is a beautifully, densely written story which kept me completely absorbed. Peacock, who is a poet, writes the book in prose but with many poetic turns of phrase and surprises. She weaves her own story throughout with the story of Mrs. Delany and also the stories of some of the ancestors who preserved Mrs. Delany's work. She deftly shapes the chapters around 14 of the collages from which she gleans life themes and stitches in historical details.
The book is beautiful to hold - a thick, compact 5"x8" volume with graphics from three of the collages on black on the cover. All the pages are smooth and glossy, and the book contains 14 colour collage pages along with a detail picture for each one later in the chapter, and several portraits of the key characters. The pages are gorgeously laid out with lots of space between the lines, wide margins, and pretty details like page numbers in the lower outside margins and funky subtitles in parentheses.
Peacock illustrates so skilfully from start to finish how all the things Mrs. Delany experienced in life, including a strict upbringing, posture boards, insistence on perfection in school, a terrible marriage, wealth, relative poverty at times, free time, a love for flowers, the endless stitchery that was part of 18th century life for women, added up quite unexpectedly to a whole new art form. Another theme she stresses at the end is that Mrs. Delany had two supporters - her husband and her best friend - without whose encouragement she likely could never have done the extraordinary art that she did.
It makes me think about how we encourage each other to create, and how we receive that encouragement. Also of course the book reminded me that you're not necessarily on a big downhill slide just because you've turned 60. Altogether a marvelous and inspiring book.
One day Mary Delany watched as a geranium petal fell beside her onto a table, near a piece of paper of the exact same colour. She picked up her scissors, began to snip petals out of the paper, pasted them down with flour and water glue, and so began a project that absorbed her for the next 10 years until her eyesight failed. In all she made 985 exquisite collages of hundreds of different flowers, all from real life, and grew quite famous with them. The whole collection is at the National Gallery in London.
This is a beautifully, densely written story which kept me completely absorbed. Peacock, who is a poet, writes the book in prose but with many poetic turns of phrase and surprises. She weaves her own story throughout with the story of Mrs. Delany and also the stories of some of the ancestors who preserved Mrs. Delany's work. She deftly shapes the chapters around 14 of the collages from which she gleans life themes and stitches in historical details.
The book is beautiful to hold - a thick, compact 5"x8" volume with graphics from three of the collages on black on the cover. All the pages are smooth and glossy, and the book contains 14 colour collage pages along with a detail picture for each one later in the chapter, and several portraits of the key characters. The pages are gorgeously laid out with lots of space between the lines, wide margins, and pretty details like page numbers in the lower outside margins and funky subtitles in parentheses.
Peacock illustrates so skilfully from start to finish how all the things Mrs. Delany experienced in life, including a strict upbringing, posture boards, insistence on perfection in school, a terrible marriage, wealth, relative poverty at times, free time, a love for flowers, the endless stitchery that was part of 18th century life for women, added up quite unexpectedly to a whole new art form. Another theme she stresses at the end is that Mrs. Delany had two supporters - her husband and her best friend - without whose encouragement she likely could never have done the extraordinary art that she did.
It makes me think about how we encourage each other to create, and how we receive that encouragement. Also of course the book reminded me that you're not necessarily on a big downhill slide just because you've turned 60. Altogether a marvelous and inspiring book.
January 13, 2013
Elsewhere by Richard Russo
It must have taken a lot of courage for Pulitzer-prizewinning author Richard Russo to write this searing memoir. It even takes some courage to read it. It is more the story of his mother's life than his own, although the level to which the two were intertwined is the disturbing element of the book. Russo realized only after his mother's death that she had been mentally ill all her life with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that rather than helping her, he may often instead have been enabling.
His father (separated from his mother since Richard was a young boy) and other relatives had tried to tell him in various ways over the years that his mother was "nuts," and "crazy," - the lingo for mental illness in the mid-20th century. But Richard loved his mother who had convinced him that he was her rock and that her happiness depended on him. He writes wrenchingly of the cost (both horrendous financial as well as emotional costs)of this dysfunctional relationship to his marriage and family and most of all to himself.
Other themes that wend themselves through the book are the death of the industrial towns of the northeastern US, the terrible toll manufacturing took on workers in the early part of the last century, and of the conflicted relationships we have with our hometown.
A highly worthwhile read.
His father (separated from his mother since Richard was a young boy) and other relatives had tried to tell him in various ways over the years that his mother was "nuts," and "crazy," - the lingo for mental illness in the mid-20th century. But Richard loved his mother who had convinced him that he was her rock and that her happiness depended on him. He writes wrenchingly of the cost (both horrendous financial as well as emotional costs)of this dysfunctional relationship to his marriage and family and most of all to himself.
Other themes that wend themselves through the book are the death of the industrial towns of the northeastern US, the terrible toll manufacturing took on workers in the early part of the last century, and of the conflicted relationships we have with our hometown.
A highly worthwhile read.
Upcoast Summers
I can't highly recommend this funny little book but will write some thoughts just to remember it. Upcoast Summers is a combination of journals, commentary, pictures, maps and diagrams about the boating adventures of a couple named Francis and Amy Barrow in the 1930s along the Sunshine Coast.
A common category of newcomer to Canada in its early history was the "remittance man." These were usually the sons of wealthy English gentry who'd been sent to Canada to seek their fortunes, and who got regular remittances from home. In this case, Amy Barrow was a remittance woman, leaving the couple free to have a hobby farm in Saanich, try various ventures and generally lead a life of leisure. In the summers they took their "little ship" Toketie (a 35-foot cabin cruiser/fishing boat) up and down the the endless channels, islands and waterways between Vancouver Island and mainland BC.
Francis and Amy had a great interest in aboriginal history. Francis had a camera with "plates" so had to be fussy how often he snapped, but he took hundreds of pictures of native pictographs and artifacts. By the 1930s most of the beautiful totem poles had already been carted away by museums and tourists, but the Barrows visited old village sites that still had the odd decaying totem or fallen-down structure with carved beams. The sites also invariably included clamshell middens, some 15 feet high. Besides being a rich source of artifacts, this clamshell detritus apparently also made fantastic garden soil and the journals contain many descriptions of the wonderful fresh vegetables people gave them when they visited.
Of the original coastal dwellers Francis says almost nothing. The book justaposes the Barrows' apparent keen interest in "Indian" artifacts with an almost complete lack of interaction with Indians themselves. Francis mentions them only in passing, spending many more pages describing his two dogs, all the white people they meet, and the workings and re-workings of the two ancient motors that powered his boats. It's an eerie omission and as I read I saw the aboriginals like a ghostly presence hovering somewhere up the beach, watching this elderly couple poking through their middens and peering up into the remnants of their coffin platforms in the trees.
The truly fascinating thing for me once again is the arc of a life, a theme that's become significant to me over these last years as I get older and especially as I've written various life stories and edited the journals of Susanna Reimer and others. It's this theme that kept me reading through this leisurely account of what seemed like two rather self-absorbed and unremarkable folk. It strikes me over and over that most lives just begin, proceed along pretty quietly, and then end. My own life seems long and important to me, as no doubt it should, but in fact greatness eludes most people. Francis Barrow was touchingly proud, shortly before he died, of an award he got from a local Elks' club acknowledging his community work and also a letter from an anthropologist thanking him for his artifact contributions. The humble arc of his life helps me to appreciate the beauty and joys that are granted to me each day and be satisfied with what is, rather than thinking everlastingly about what could or should be.
A common category of newcomer to Canada in its early history was the "remittance man." These were usually the sons of wealthy English gentry who'd been sent to Canada to seek their fortunes, and who got regular remittances from home. In this case, Amy Barrow was a remittance woman, leaving the couple free to have a hobby farm in Saanich, try various ventures and generally lead a life of leisure. In the summers they took their "little ship" Toketie (a 35-foot cabin cruiser/fishing boat) up and down the the endless channels, islands and waterways between Vancouver Island and mainland BC.
Francis and Amy had a great interest in aboriginal history. Francis had a camera with "plates" so had to be fussy how often he snapped, but he took hundreds of pictures of native pictographs and artifacts. By the 1930s most of the beautiful totem poles had already been carted away by museums and tourists, but the Barrows visited old village sites that still had the odd decaying totem or fallen-down structure with carved beams. The sites also invariably included clamshell middens, some 15 feet high. Besides being a rich source of artifacts, this clamshell detritus apparently also made fantastic garden soil and the journals contain many descriptions of the wonderful fresh vegetables people gave them when they visited.
Of the original coastal dwellers Francis says almost nothing. The book justaposes the Barrows' apparent keen interest in "Indian" artifacts with an almost complete lack of interaction with Indians themselves. Francis mentions them only in passing, spending many more pages describing his two dogs, all the white people they meet, and the workings and re-workings of the two ancient motors that powered his boats. It's an eerie omission and as I read I saw the aboriginals like a ghostly presence hovering somewhere up the beach, watching this elderly couple poking through their middens and peering up into the remnants of their coffin platforms in the trees.
The truly fascinating thing for me once again is the arc of a life, a theme that's become significant to me over these last years as I get older and especially as I've written various life stories and edited the journals of Susanna Reimer and others. It's this theme that kept me reading through this leisurely account of what seemed like two rather self-absorbed and unremarkable folk. It strikes me over and over that most lives just begin, proceed along pretty quietly, and then end. My own life seems long and important to me, as no doubt it should, but in fact greatness eludes most people. Francis Barrow was touchingly proud, shortly before he died, of an award he got from a local Elks' club acknowledging his community work and also a letter from an anthropologist thanking him for his artifact contributions. The humble arc of his life helps me to appreciate the beauty and joys that are granted to me each day and be satisfied with what is, rather than thinking everlastingly about what could or should be.
December 30, 2012
An Okanagan History: The Diaries of Roger John Sugars, 1911-1919
This lovely book chronicles eight years in the life of Roger John Sugars, who lived with his parents at Fintry on the west side of Okanagan Lake through his teenage years. Sugars was only 14 years old in 1911, and yet the diaries are beautifully written with the concision of a mature naturalist. Rogers had an apparently insatiable curiosity about trees, birds, animals, weather, the lake, watersheds, and geology. He had access to books which he seemed to know backwards and forwards, and even sent updates to the authors sometimes, e.g. about a certain conifer he found growing outside of the range mentioned in the book. This guy had a amazing brain for numbers, measurements, details of all kinds, and a great ear for the dialects of the various colourful characters who populated Fintry at the time.
The diaries chronicle a time in our valley of which I'd until now only heard bits and pieces. We spent some time at Fintry this past summer and it's now a park, with some residences just outside the park to the south. But in 1911, there wasn't even a road to Fintry - from anywhere. The remnant of the old Hudson's Bay Trail passed the Sugars ranch, but the trail, which had carried furs during the fur trade era and prospectors during the Gold Rush, was little used by then. All supplies and communication with the outside world came by steamers like the SS Sicamous, now a lakeside museum in Penticton.
Roger's father John had been a scholar with a Master's degree in the classics and a good job in England, but he married an adventurous woman who convinced him to pull up stakes and move to Canada. At Fintry John made a living at whatever he could - roadbuilding, fishing, hunting, working in the orchards, lumbering - and Roger worked alongside him.
In 1917 Roger joined the armed forces as a forester and was shipped to Europe for the last two years of the war. When he returned, he moved to Salmon Arm, farmed there for a while, then eventually became an insurance salesman.
One of the most interesting things in the book for me is the foreword by his daughter, in which she says:
According to his diaries, he was a fine woodsman, a hunter, a horseman and a builder. He was capable of inventing useful articles and doing a hard day's manual labour. He brought none of those skills to his married life. His ability to run a farm and a store were left in Salmon Arm. His army experiences were never discussed with us, but were described in his diary. We knew our father as a top notch salesman, a perfect gentleman with impeccable dress, a well-liked friend to many with a marvelous sense of humour, a soft hearted dad and a total loss at fixing anything whatever in our home.
This really freaks me out! These two pictures don't match at all. The diaries depict an absolutely intrepid, fearless young man, very strong and capable and infinitely curious about nature. His daughter's description of him doesn't seem to be about the same person. The war stands between these two pictures, and maybe that's a clue to this strange dissonance.
In any case, I loved the diaries - thanks to Jeremy who ferreted this book out of the library. It's well written and sheds a lot of light on the early years of the 19th century in the Okanagan. I learned, for example, that the wide open meadow on the West Side that we see from Kelowna and call "Stocks Meadow" was settled in the early 1900s by the Stocks family. This is good to know and their story will add a whole new dimension for me now when I look at that meadow.
One local reviewer said the Sugars diaries are the "Sunshine Sketches of the Okanagan." I wouldn't have thought of them exactly that way, but they are really good, and deserve the sharp eye of a good editor (me!) to make this edition even better.
The diaries chronicle a time in our valley of which I'd until now only heard bits and pieces. We spent some time at Fintry this past summer and it's now a park, with some residences just outside the park to the south. But in 1911, there wasn't even a road to Fintry - from anywhere. The remnant of the old Hudson's Bay Trail passed the Sugars ranch, but the trail, which had carried furs during the fur trade era and prospectors during the Gold Rush, was little used by then. All supplies and communication with the outside world came by steamers like the SS Sicamous, now a lakeside museum in Penticton.
Roger's father John had been a scholar with a Master's degree in the classics and a good job in England, but he married an adventurous woman who convinced him to pull up stakes and move to Canada. At Fintry John made a living at whatever he could - roadbuilding, fishing, hunting, working in the orchards, lumbering - and Roger worked alongside him.
In 1917 Roger joined the armed forces as a forester and was shipped to Europe for the last two years of the war. When he returned, he moved to Salmon Arm, farmed there for a while, then eventually became an insurance salesman.
One of the most interesting things in the book for me is the foreword by his daughter, in which she says:
According to his diaries, he was a fine woodsman, a hunter, a horseman and a builder. He was capable of inventing useful articles and doing a hard day's manual labour. He brought none of those skills to his married life. His ability to run a farm and a store were left in Salmon Arm. His army experiences were never discussed with us, but were described in his diary. We knew our father as a top notch salesman, a perfect gentleman with impeccable dress, a well-liked friend to many with a marvelous sense of humour, a soft hearted dad and a total loss at fixing anything whatever in our home.
This really freaks me out! These two pictures don't match at all. The diaries depict an absolutely intrepid, fearless young man, very strong and capable and infinitely curious about nature. His daughter's description of him doesn't seem to be about the same person. The war stands between these two pictures, and maybe that's a clue to this strange dissonance.
In any case, I loved the diaries - thanks to Jeremy who ferreted this book out of the library. It's well written and sheds a lot of light on the early years of the 19th century in the Okanagan. I learned, for example, that the wide open meadow on the West Side that we see from Kelowna and call "Stocks Meadow" was settled in the early 1900s by the Stocks family. This is good to know and their story will add a whole new dimension for me now when I look at that meadow.
One local reviewer said the Sugars diaries are the "Sunshine Sketches of the Okanagan." I wouldn't have thought of them exactly that way, but they are really good, and deserve the sharp eye of a good editor (me!) to make this edition even better.
I'll Mature When I'm Dead by Dave Barry
This hilarious book deserves at least a passing mention here. I used to read everything I could get my hands on by Dave Barry, then after a while it seemed as though he was recycling the same old kinds of jokes, just with different topics or characters. Sample joke: "What would you say if I told you that, since the year 2000, [Miami's] overall rate of violent crime is down 17.3 percent and crime against tourists is down by 36.8 percent. If you would say, 'You are totally making these numbers up,' you would be correct. But I'm pretty sure things are better." Sample joke #2 (based on his favourite technique, exaggeration): his wife, a typical woman according to him, gives "gifts and/or thoughtful cards for virtually every occasion including the onset of daylight saving time."
We saw Dave Barry live a few years ago in Florida, and we did thoroughly enjoy the evening, but I had that seem feeling - that I'd heard most of it before. Barry has always been heavy on bathroom, sex and nose-picking jokes; these were all featured in the standup routine too, and this apparently hasn't changed, hence the title of this 2010 book.
But the book has some pretty original stuff in it. It's a series of chapters that don't really hang together, including a hilarious young adult melodrama ("Stewart and Sven moved their heads vertically up and down in nods of agreement"), and the story of how he tried to write a screenplay about mutant chickens with a friend (and notes from that effort: "Mark notices there are chickens in the street, giving him the eye."). To me the funniest chapter was the first one, on the well-worn topic of the differences between men and women. My favourite sentence: "A typical woman's brain is swarming, night and day, with vague feelings of guilt caused by the nagging worry that somebody, somewhere in her vast complex network of family and friends needs more nurturing."
Good for a giggle and a even few guffaws if you're nimble enough to skip the off-colour parts.
We saw Dave Barry live a few years ago in Florida, and we did thoroughly enjoy the evening, but I had that seem feeling - that I'd heard most of it before. Barry has always been heavy on bathroom, sex and nose-picking jokes; these were all featured in the standup routine too, and this apparently hasn't changed, hence the title of this 2010 book.
But the book has some pretty original stuff in it. It's a series of chapters that don't really hang together, including a hilarious young adult melodrama ("Stewart and Sven moved their heads vertically up and down in nods of agreement"), and the story of how he tried to write a screenplay about mutant chickens with a friend (and notes from that effort: "Mark notices there are chickens in the street, giving him the eye."). To me the funniest chapter was the first one, on the well-worn topic of the differences between men and women. My favourite sentence: "A typical woman's brain is swarming, night and day, with vague feelings of guilt caused by the nagging worry that somebody, somewhere in her vast complex network of family and friends needs more nurturing."
Good for a giggle and a even few guffaws if you're nimble enough to skip the off-colour parts.
December 9, 2012
Kelowna Community Chorus
I went to another pre-Christmas event last night which was so much fun. It was a three-set evening kicked off by a 4-piece group called "The Early Music Band," then songs by beautiful young classical singer Stephanie Nakagawa, and finally a set by the Kelowna Community Chorus, which was the reason I'd come.
The highlight of the evening for me was The Early Music Band, because during their set I had a completely out-of-control fit of giggling such as I haven't had in a decade or more. Bless their hearts, I give them full credit for being up there, and you're not seeing me in any sort of band - I know how hard it is, but they did miss a few notes, and I'd invited Brenda so maybe I was a little tense wanting it to be good, so when the guitarist lost his music pages in the middle of a song and had to go scrambling around to gather them, I just completely lost it - quietly, but nevertheless completely. I was shaking and snuffling, and Brenda was hissing "Dianne, you can't do this" in my ear, being pretty close to the line herself and having had a similar experience with her friend Terry once in which they had to walk out in disgrace. I was madly trying to recite "I wandered lonely as a cloud" in my mind, but it kept slipping away as I'd start giggling again, and finally, finally, they finished their set and I was slowly able to pull myself back together.
Stephanie Nakagawa was truly amazing, smashing in a strapless black ruffled ballgown and a fabulous voice with great dramatic flair. Accompanied by the very accomplished Ursula Pidgeon, she sang some Mozart, Schumann and Puccini, but the highlights for me were "O Holy Night," "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, and the best of all, a comic piece called "Art Is Calling for Me" from a 1911 operetta called The Enchantress. It intrigues me no end all the fun and lovely art there is in the world that I've never even heard of. This young woman is working on her doctorate of music in voice, and one wonders where she might go with talent like this. Although I'm no expert, I had a sense that we could be seeing some history in the making.
I sang in the Kelowna Community Chorus years ago, and was considering it again, so thought I'd go hear what and how they're singing nowadays. It's a 100-member non-auditioned choir directed by Leroy Wiens and he has certainly done a beautiful job with this random assortment of community members who just want to sing. They sang melodic and fairly complicated versions of Christmas songs, with a particularly beautiful and meaningful adaptation of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," and a lively and lovely "Mr. Santa." Maybe I'd like to have heard a little more punch and volume, but with a choir of this size and with many untrained singers, getting a great, relaxed and mellow tone is quite an achievement and Leroy knows what he's doing.
The highlight of the evening for me was The Early Music Band, because during their set I had a completely out-of-control fit of giggling such as I haven't had in a decade or more. Bless their hearts, I give them full credit for being up there, and you're not seeing me in any sort of band - I know how hard it is, but they did miss a few notes, and I'd invited Brenda so maybe I was a little tense wanting it to be good, so when the guitarist lost his music pages in the middle of a song and had to go scrambling around to gather them, I just completely lost it - quietly, but nevertheless completely. I was shaking and snuffling, and Brenda was hissing "Dianne, you can't do this" in my ear, being pretty close to the line herself and having had a similar experience with her friend Terry once in which they had to walk out in disgrace. I was madly trying to recite "I wandered lonely as a cloud" in my mind, but it kept slipping away as I'd start giggling again, and finally, finally, they finished their set and I was slowly able to pull myself back together.
Stephanie Nakagawa was truly amazing, smashing in a strapless black ruffled ballgown and a fabulous voice with great dramatic flair. Accompanied by the very accomplished Ursula Pidgeon, she sang some Mozart, Schumann and Puccini, but the highlights for me were "O Holy Night," "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, and the best of all, a comic piece called "Art Is Calling for Me" from a 1911 operetta called The Enchantress. It intrigues me no end all the fun and lovely art there is in the world that I've never even heard of. This young woman is working on her doctorate of music in voice, and one wonders where she might go with talent like this. Although I'm no expert, I had a sense that we could be seeing some history in the making.
I sang in the Kelowna Community Chorus years ago, and was considering it again, so thought I'd go hear what and how they're singing nowadays. It's a 100-member non-auditioned choir directed by Leroy Wiens and he has certainly done a beautiful job with this random assortment of community members who just want to sing. They sang melodic and fairly complicated versions of Christmas songs, with a particularly beautiful and meaningful adaptation of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," and a lively and lovely "Mr. Santa." Maybe I'd like to have heard a little more punch and volume, but with a choir of this size and with many untrained singers, getting a great, relaxed and mellow tone is quite an achievement and Leroy knows what he's doing.
December 8, 2012
The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover's Caribbean Adventure
This book is a great follow-up to Ann Vanderhoof's An Embarrassment of Mangoes which I'd read and enjoyed some time ago. Both books are about years the author and her husband spent sailing around the Caribbean, and especially about the foods they discovered and learned to cook.
I admired the book immensely for its diligent focus and beautiful organization. The chapters really hang together, with themes like chocolate, spices, cocktails, seafood, foods eaten at Carnival, Christmas, etc. yet they are so well-written and varied, with trips to the various islands woven in, that I never got to thinking, "That's enough about chocolate." Well, OK, bad example.
It is a travel book and it does get you excited about visiting the islands of the West Indies, but more than that, it's a book about people and above all, about the food they cook and enjoy. Vanderhoof and her husband are sociable; they get to know people on the islands, visit them in their homes, and especially learn to cook their food. Every chapter ends with three or four or more mouth-watering recipes. I cooked two of them, and both were good, although the chicken one (with onions, tomatoes, chutney, peanuts, cilantro, coconut milk, lots of garlic, etc.) called for whole chicken pieces, so it was greasy, and next time I'd adapt it and use my usual boneless skinless.
True to its title, the book is an amazing chronicle of spices of all kinds, inspiring me to kick it up a notch with my seasonings. Fresh-ground nutmeg, which I have never used, is often featured, along with limes, ginger, cilantro, lots of hot peppers, and even surprisingly, curry, from the islands' multicultural past and present.
The author's website http://www.spicenecklace.com/ reflects the relaxed and happy tone of the book and includes gorgeous photos of her Caribbean adventures and even a few recipes.
I admired the book immensely for its diligent focus and beautiful organization. The chapters really hang together, with themes like chocolate, spices, cocktails, seafood, foods eaten at Carnival, Christmas, etc. yet they are so well-written and varied, with trips to the various islands woven in, that I never got to thinking, "That's enough about chocolate." Well, OK, bad example.
It is a travel book and it does get you excited about visiting the islands of the West Indies, but more than that, it's a book about people and above all, about the food they cook and enjoy. Vanderhoof and her husband are sociable; they get to know people on the islands, visit them in their homes, and especially learn to cook their food. Every chapter ends with three or four or more mouth-watering recipes. I cooked two of them, and both were good, although the chicken one (with onions, tomatoes, chutney, peanuts, cilantro, coconut milk, lots of garlic, etc.) called for whole chicken pieces, so it was greasy, and next time I'd adapt it and use my usual boneless skinless.
True to its title, the book is an amazing chronicle of spices of all kinds, inspiring me to kick it up a notch with my seasonings. Fresh-ground nutmeg, which I have never used, is often featured, along with limes, ginger, cilantro, lots of hot peppers, and even surprisingly, curry, from the islands' multicultural past and present.
The author's website http://www.spicenecklace.com/ reflects the relaxed and happy tone of the book and includes gorgeous photos of her Caribbean adventures and even a few recipes.
A Good Talk
Brenda and I were sitting around early this fall talking about the importance of community and our need to get together with a group of some sort to share ideas. We had only a vague idea what this might look like. Our idea was based somewhat on the care groups we used to have when we were part of a church, but it was not specifically spiritual needs we were thinking of. We thought of care, conversation, and community and decided to run the idea by some of our friends. The response was positive, so we set a date for November.
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, and so, apparently, does good conversation. I read A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker in preparation for this group and among many other interesting things, I learned that good conversation between friends raises the level of the hormone oxytocin in your body, increasing a feeling of bonding, empathy and wellbeing similar to what happens in sex, breastfeeding, and affectionate touch. Conversation is good for you.
We had invited about 7 women, of whom only 3 came the first evening, making 5 of us at Brenda's house. It was what I would call a wonderful evening and everyone there seemed to agree. A Good Talk emphasized the importance of "aimlessness" in good conversation as opposed to having a strict agenda which can become business, foster competition and kill caring and community. I was the designated leader for that evening and I suppressed as best I could my natural tendency towards achievement and focus. At the same time, I wanted the time to be meaningful - I have so little interest in sustained small talk. The dynamic among that small group was excellent, with the conversation flowing easily and courteously back and forth. We introduced ourselves, and a theme of "why do we move and what is home?" emerged.
At the end of the evening, each of us said what we would hope for a group like this, and when Holly said, "I'd like intelligent conversation," my spirit soared. I suggested that the art of conversation could be our next topic, and Janice suggested "Sound and Silence" for January. We decided we'd meet 5 times in total, on the first Tuesday of every month between November and March. Then we could reinvent or restart the group if there was a will to continue in fall.
The December meeting was just as good or even better than the November one. Seven women came, and conversation once again flowed deeply and evenly. I'd handed out quotations from A Good Talk on slips to each person and told them they could fit them into the conversation if they saw a suitable place. This worked! Everyone had lots of their own thoughts about conversation and the ideas on the papers seamlessly merged into the discussion ("OK! Listen to this!"). There was a lot of laughter and for me, a feeling of being exactly in the right place at the right time.
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, and so, apparently, does good conversation. I read A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker in preparation for this group and among many other interesting things, I learned that good conversation between friends raises the level of the hormone oxytocin in your body, increasing a feeling of bonding, empathy and wellbeing similar to what happens in sex, breastfeeding, and affectionate touch. Conversation is good for you.
We had invited about 7 women, of whom only 3 came the first evening, making 5 of us at Brenda's house. It was what I would call a wonderful evening and everyone there seemed to agree. A Good Talk emphasized the importance of "aimlessness" in good conversation as opposed to having a strict agenda which can become business, foster competition and kill caring and community. I was the designated leader for that evening and I suppressed as best I could my natural tendency towards achievement and focus. At the same time, I wanted the time to be meaningful - I have so little interest in sustained small talk. The dynamic among that small group was excellent, with the conversation flowing easily and courteously back and forth. We introduced ourselves, and a theme of "why do we move and what is home?" emerged.
At the end of the evening, each of us said what we would hope for a group like this, and when Holly said, "I'd like intelligent conversation," my spirit soared. I suggested that the art of conversation could be our next topic, and Janice suggested "Sound and Silence" for January. We decided we'd meet 5 times in total, on the first Tuesday of every month between November and March. Then we could reinvent or restart the group if there was a will to continue in fall.
The December meeting was just as good or even better than the November one. Seven women came, and conversation once again flowed deeply and evenly. I'd handed out quotations from A Good Talk on slips to each person and told them they could fit them into the conversation if they saw a suitable place. This worked! Everyone had lots of their own thoughts about conversation and the ideas on the papers seamlessly merged into the discussion ("OK! Listen to this!"). There was a lot of laughter and for me, a feeling of being exactly in the right place at the right time.
December 7, 2012
Minds and Music
Last week I went to the first of a three-concert series at UBCO called "The Year of the Guitar." It's part of a program called Minds and Music envisioned and run by a philosophy professor at the university, a free concert/lecture series so far funded only for this year, from what I could gather.
What an absolutely lovely afternoon. This first concert/lecture featured guitarist Alan Rinehart, the husband of my new friend Janice whom I met at the beach this fall. Alan spoke very knowledgeably about the early history of the guitar in Spanish music, and showed us four different guitars built by his friend to the historic specifications of peak periods for guitar music between 1500 and about 1850. In between, he played music from these periods on his own concert guitar, beautiful and restful and thought-provoking all at the same time.
Just as with Romanza the week before, I went into this pretty grey, but came out feeling all mellow and happy and artsy. The event was held in the University Centre's airy ballroom, which has lots of tall windows overlooking the campus and a beautiful feature wall of different woods. There was an amazing buffet with all sorts of appetizers and drinks, all free.
Alan is playing and teaching again in Concert #2 of the series, featuring Spanish guitar music of the modern period, from 1850 to the present. This one happens at the same place on January 23, 2013, and the third concert features guitarist musician Daniel Bolshoy of UBC, on March 8. I don't want to miss either of them, and hope to take at least one or two of my friends with me next time.
What an absolutely lovely afternoon. This first concert/lecture featured guitarist Alan Rinehart, the husband of my new friend Janice whom I met at the beach this fall. Alan spoke very knowledgeably about the early history of the guitar in Spanish music, and showed us four different guitars built by his friend to the historic specifications of peak periods for guitar music between 1500 and about 1850. In between, he played music from these periods on his own concert guitar, beautiful and restful and thought-provoking all at the same time.
Just as with Romanza the week before, I went into this pretty grey, but came out feeling all mellow and happy and artsy. The event was held in the University Centre's airy ballroom, which has lots of tall windows overlooking the campus and a beautiful feature wall of different woods. There was an amazing buffet with all sorts of appetizers and drinks, all free.
Alan is playing and teaching again in Concert #2 of the series, featuring Spanish guitar music of the modern period, from 1850 to the present. This one happens at the same place on January 23, 2013, and the third concert features guitarist musician Daniel Bolshoy of UBC, on March 8. I don't want to miss either of them, and hope to take at least one or two of my friends with me next time.
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