Friday, 25 May 2012

  • Heart of a Soldier

     

    Heading out the door, remembering that my iPod needed to be re-charged, I swung by the library to pick up audiobook. As I scanned the shelves, someone bumped into me and apologized. "Oh, it's you!" my dear friend Jan said. We were both in the same lane: looking for a good listen on a long, solo driving trip. In her hand was The Heart of a Soldier, which she pressed into mine. "I just finished this: it's quite good, you'll appreciate it," she assured me.

    That's how I came to listen to Kate Blaise's memoir of a military marriage. The first half could be the story of any bright-eyed spunky grand-daughter of a Lutheran minister raised in a small town. I had read David McCullough's Truman last summer, so I connected with the flavor of Missouri.

    My interest was peaked after Kate and Mike—high-school sweethearts—combine marriage and the military. I am neither a fan of women in combat positions nor of married couples living in separate quarters; yet I found Kate's story compelling. She is honest about the stress of dual military careers. Because she held a higher rank than her husband, he saluted her in public. They were stationed in Korea when the 9-11 attack was made; later they were deployed in Iraq. I had just started the last disc when I arrived home. The next morning I sat down and wept—unable to combine listening with cooking or housework—as I came to the heart-breaking conclusion. Like all good stories, this one stuck with me long after I had finished it.

    When Mike and I did manage to squeeze in a weekend together, we fought over even the smallest things: where to eat, what movie to see. We had fallen out of the habit of being together. Our visits, thought short, were extremely stressful. There was the pressure to get along because we didn't know when we would see each other again; the pressure of squeezing a month's worth of good times into a weekend when what we needed to do was resolve countless problems and issues. There was simply too much catching up to do and too little time to do it. We were fighting and clawing to feel needed in each other's lives. 125

    You won't find a gushy, sentimental story: Kate strikes me as a stoic. You won't agree with all her opinions. But if you are interested in a military memoir that isn't so edgy that you might lose your lunch (there is mild profanity), if you are curious about a life as a woman in the military, if you are interested in a ground-level view of Iraq, I would recommend The Heart of a Soldier. Reading it was a vivid reminder to me of the risks our soldiers take and the sacrifices they make.   

  • In Praise of The Teaching Company

     

    Here is the loot I brought home from my brother's house. He must love me: he let me borrow anything from his vast Teaching Company library.

    David and I share a thirst for learning. Several years back, I bought a suitcase in Pennsylvania and filled it with bulky Teaching Company courses—mostly Medieval studies and music history—on cassette. Did you know that you can replace the cassettes with CDs for $10?

    Luther, Literature and Lee. How is that for good stuff?

    Color me happy.

    Label me loved.

    Thank you, David.

Tuesday, 22 May 2012

  • Flush

    Forget Facebook.

    There is a new trend. It is rapidly rising within airport bathrooms. I blush to tell you that many do not flush the toilet.

    It is anecdotal evidence, but on Monday—across the country—four out of four toilets needed a cleansing flush before use. Ever the cultural analyst, I've been swishing this trend around my head. Why no flush?

    1. No time.  Not one second to lose! Onward! She wants the front of the line at the baggage carousel, the prime seat at the gate...to hurry up and wait.

    2. Conscientious objector. Some folks oppose the draft. Others oppose the drift of water down the pipes. It is the public expression of this conviction to which I object.

    3. Dayists. They believe you should only flush on Thursdays.

    4. Phobias. There is a fear of flushing. A fear of centrifugal force. The fear of drought. Fear of sudden loud noises. Fear of tight places. There is a lion in the pipes.

    5. Temporary blindness. None is so blind who will not see. Have you ever heard of acute-onset macular degeneration? There is no looking back.

    6. Mild dementia. An entire generation of boomers find the sequence of sit-stand-flush-leave confusing. These are the gentle souls who gaze at the mirror wondering why they came to this spot, with a strong suspicion  there is something they forgot. Yes, darling, there is.

    7. Technical assumptions. Not every potty is a smart potty. Not every smart potty is that smart.

    8. Pigishness. Not to put down swine, but some folk are that way.

    There is no easy way to arrest this stagnation. If love covers a multitude of sins, then courtesy flushes when others don't.

Monday, 07 May 2012

  • Dear Mom

     

    Dear Mom,

    We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

    Even though we are separated by that grand canyon between mortality and immortality, our love for you continues. You left an enduring imprint on us. We all have ways that embody Nellie Harper. Your kindness is part of each of our DNA. It would be fun to tell you about the kindness of your children, exhibited just this year. That quiet kindness abides in each of your grandchildren, too. It isn't always evident between siblings (wry grin), but they are kind people.

    We all have wishes.

    We wish we could honor you, our mom, face to face. As the years accumulate, we see with greater clarity what we owe you. What was a given—your smile, your excellence, your steadfastness, your encouragement—when we were kids, we now know was such an immense gift. You shaped us into who we are. We all would love to 'praise you in the gates'. To have you hear our gratitude, feel our hugs.

    We wish our kids knew you...beyond the stories we tell. Ditto, for the husbands and wives who never met you. They get the trace elements of you through us, but we'd love them to know the real you.

    And Mom? We all wish we were more like you. Sometimes that is the grief we silently share, more than missing you. Your wisdom: your sweet, practical wisdom. Your generosity. Your faith. You made such an impact on more than one community. You were extraordinary in such an ordinary way. 

    We're getting together for Anne's wedding soon. A large, unruly, talkative, loud crowd of relatives. It will be a great time.

    It always comes round to thanksgiving. The hollow years without you can't compare to the full years of having you. You filled us up; you fed us; you nurtured us; you made each of us know how special we were to you. The tears have slowed to a tiny trickle. We all get throat-lumpy in May. But it is thanksgiving that we feel in the end. Another of your legacies is the lack of bitterness in your children.

    Mom. We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

    Carol, for all of us

     

     

Wednesday, 02 May 2012

  • Outliers

    Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software engineers appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.

     

    Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, strikes a blow against individualism. When he looks carefully at the super successful—outliers—he examines the generation, class, ethnicity, and culture of the outlier. Granted, an outlier like Bill Gates has genius.  But that alone cannot explain Gates' success. Gladwell tells us why. This engaging book is a string of stories illustrating both the opportunities and the legacies given to many outliers, some whose names are household words, others more obscure. Gladwell discusses the 10,000 hour rule: that to excel at anything you must spend at least 10,000 hours working at it. In the story of Korean pilots, Gladwell discusses frankly how our ethnicity affects our success and/or failure.

    While I've been digesting this book, I thought of an outlier in the blogging world: Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman. Many of you knew her as a homeschool mom on the Well-Trained Mind forum. She started a blog in 2006 that quickly exploded into a Big Deal. If you look at Ree's gifts, you will find a writer whose appeal crosses cultural lines, a little naughty for some and wickedly funny to the rest. She parlayed her story of city girl transplanted to a cattle ranch into an entertaining story compete with cliff hangers. But Gladwell would urge us to look at where Ree is from, what opportunities she was given. My theory is that she is a marketing genius. In one sense she bought her audience, offering regular giveaways for high-ticket items. She had the capital to give away Nikon cameras and $500 Amazon gift cards, converting the number of clicks into advertising revenue. That alone would not have been enough to keep her audience, but it attracted them in the first place. The daughter of a surgeon, she was raised with the expectation of hard work and excellence. This does not  diminish Ree's writing, Ree's photography, Ree's cooking, Ree's everything: she just didn't do it alone.

    Happily, my favorite part of this book is the introduction. Happily? Yes! Because you can go Amazon click on Look Inside! and read it yourself. It tells the story of Roseto, PA, a community whose medical history is so much better than the norm that researches spent years working to crack open its secret. The answer, revealed in the eleven page introduction, is profound. I urge you to read it.

     

    In the continuing saga of synchronicity, in one of my current reads, The Creative Habit, which predates Outliers, Twyla Tharp employs the same reasoning of Outliers to explain Mozart's success. You can also read this by following the link, clicking Look Inside!, and entering Mozart in the search box.

Wednesday, 25 April 2012

  • Musings of a Bibliophile

    In my dream house, I would have a library: walls of floor-to-ceiling, glass-fronted bookcases. In reality I have six open bookcases and a woodstove, a dust procreator. Periodically I remove all the books, vacuum the top edges of them, wipe them, and cull out the books I don't need to keep. It is my favorite cleaning project: old friends are fondly acknowledged, unread books are opened and sighed over. There are discoveries and dialogs. Yes, I talk to myself.

    Here then, are my thoughts while cleaning and shelving books.

    • What discoveries! Many books have Post-it flags dotted across the top; I found (and removed) other forms of bookmarks. One square of toilet tissue. A white plastic flosser. A register receipt. Bear that in mind if you want to borrow my books.

    • I moved Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare from the Shakespeare shelf down to the kids' books on the bottom. All things Greece gave up the glorious Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of The Iliad and The Wanderings of Odysseus to the same location.  Which prompts me to say how much I love the illustrations of Alan Lee.

    • There is the problem of the Norton Anthologies. What if? I whisper.  What if? I repeat.  What if I started working through these, reading sections in between other books? I pick one up and flip to the last page. Page 2579. Well, that's a happy thought, I conclude.

    • I love the idea, and occasionally the practice, of deep reading. Reading through all the works of a great author. Ignatius Press has issued The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. How I would love to own all 36 volumes! Seven are still to be published. But I have Volume 1 on my shelf; I remember the splurge of purchasing it at Twice Read Books in Chambersburg, PA. Even though I haven't read all of Volume 1, I like to imagine having read all 29 published volumes.

    • The internet has made so many reference books redundant. Take The New York Public Library Desk Reference. I imagine that every tasty bit of information (TBOI, for short) could be found online. But oh, what a glorious source of whimsical reading. And how many hours have I enjoyed between the covers of TNYPLDR. Browsing isn't the same online. Alas, it is on the "out" pile.

    • I couldn't just dust the art books without some lookie-loos. Winslow Homer, I love you. 

    • I've been called a Grammar Nazi a few times lately, a label I protest. This shelf, however, tells a different story.

     What tales do your bookshelves tell?

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

  • Marriage Bureau for Rich People

    If Alexander McCall Smith were to write a book about an Indian matchmaker, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People would be the book. Light and delightful, exotic yet familiar, this cheerful book charmed me.

    Through Mr. Ali, a retired government clerk, and owner of a newly opened marriage bureau, and his assistant, Aruna, the details of daily life in India are displayed. How, for instance, offering a drink of water to a guest is traditional courtesy, necessary for basic hospitality. That doesn't sound earth-shattering, but if you fail to offer the glass of water, great offense is given/taken. Zama names many of the Indian dishes/customs, but always offers an explanation. Some of the caste and religious distinctions are harder to grasp, but don't distract from the flow of the story.

    Gentle humor pops up like marshmallows in hot chocolate.

    He scowled and turned to Ramanujam and said, "Take a seat." He added, sotto voce, "You are taking our daughter, what's a seat?" 

    What I appreciated the most about Marriage Bureau is the perspective it gave me on arranged marriages. 

    I never expected this of you.... Have you no thought of your family's honor? And what about [her sister's] future? Which respectable family will accept her into their household if you have a love marriage? I am disappointed in you. You are the last person I expected to do something like this.

    We don't marry for love. You know that. Love is supposed to follow marriage, not the other way around. A marriage is not just about two people. It is about two families.

    Even better for understanding arranged marriage was this first-hand essay, First Comes Marriage, which Zama wrote for the New York Times. I am impressed and intrigued by Farahad Zama. Raised in the slums of an Indian coastal city, he was raised from the slums by the encouragement of his parents and his love of books. His acknowledgement at the end of the book made me smile: This book would not have been possible, but for [...] My two boys, who think that all writers will be as famous and rich as J. K. Rowling. If only. 

    Thank you to Laura, without whom, I would not have known about this title.

Friday, 13 April 2012

  • Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees

     

    I remember the moment. The cover beckoned, winked, seduced me. I was browsing the shelves at Sunflower Books, a charming local book shop. And, full price or not, I had to have it. Unwittingly I had purchased a book by Madhur Jaffrey, the celebrated author of Indian cookbooks. Once obtained, I held it in reserve, a hoarded treasure which continued winking from the shelf. I almost enjoyed the five years of anticipating the read as much as the cozy evenings with my nose in this book. Memoir, ethnic, family, foodie—it has all best ingredients for a delightful read. 

    The child of a happy marriage, she begins by explaining her name:

    My father, ... , firmly named me "Madhur," which means "Sweet as Honey," an adjective from the Sanskrit noun madhu, or "honey." My grandfather, apparently, teased my father, saying that he should have named me "Mahbhari," or "I am sated," instead, as I was already the fifth child. But my father continued to procreate, and I was left with honey on my palate and in my deepest soul.

    Jaffrey's is the life of privilege with a curious blend of cultures. She describes her family as Hindu by origin but heavily veneered with Muslim culture and English education. Two motifs spiral through the book: her father's quest for the best education for each child and her mother's preparation of the most delicious food for every occasion. 

    All of us sisters liked to read. we could be caught all over the house in the weirdest positions: legs flung over the back of a wicker chair, books on chest; lying flat on the takht (divan) on our stomachs, book on floor; head down on the desk, book an inch from eyes.

    Mrs. McKelvie was my history teacher. She didn't just teach me Indian history and British history, which were part of the set curriculum; I also learned from her that any subject could be fascinating if I delved into it deeply enough. She showed me how history, for example, could be researched from a hundred angles, some obscure and seemingly unrelated; that the study of maps and drawing of maps led to ever-greater clarity; that understanding the character of emperors and generals was sometimes as important as memorizing the dates of their battles.

    During her school days (before India was divided) Madhur and her girlfriends shared their lunches: some Hindi, some Muslim, some Punjabi, one Jain.

    It was not so much the ingredients—the ingredients we used at home were not all that different, though we did use less chili powder—as the hand that put these ingredients together, and the order and timing it chose to use. That hand had a different rhythm, a different energy from my mother's, and from our own Hindi cooks from Himalayan villages. It produced a Muslim result.

    Her family participated in a prayer gathering with Gandhi days before he was assassinated. Anyone interested in 20th century India would benefit from reading this book. A bonus for those interested in Indian cuisine is the fifty pages of family recipes included in the back.

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

  • An Afternoon in a Graveyard

    I'm eating my lunch in a graveyard.
    Human seeds have been planted in neat little rows. Stone stakes label the crop.

    ~ N.D. Wilson in Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl

     

    I like cemeteries.
    The names, the epitaphs, the iconography, the quiet.
    I like the sadness, the melancholy, the stab of pain, the bracing reality of death.

    I hate death.
    I hate the ripping and tearing, the long separation, the disruption, the destruction.
    Death is my enemy.
    I whisper John Donne's words, "Death, thou shalt die."

     

    But.
    I believe.
    Weekly, we quote the Apostle's Creed:
    I believe in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

     

    Grief for Little Charlie. Grief for Little Charlie's mom.

     

     

     

    So personal: My Mother. Our Son.

    A hollow emptiness.

    Spring time is perhaps the best time to visit a cemetery.

     Spring's blossoms sing an ancient melody ~
    after death comes the resurrection.

     

    Our favorite epitaph.

     Your life in five words?

Friday, 09 March 2012

  • To Say Nothing of the Dog

    Whenever I've mentioned Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 classic, Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog), a small chorus of readers entreated urged me to read Connie Willis' science fiction book To Say Nothing of the Dog.

    This chorus included readers I trust, those with whom I share a kinship in books. But, really. Look at the cover. I ask you: would you feel compelled to read this book? And when was the last time I read science fiction? I just don't have the stamina or brain power to keep all the galaxies and unfamiliar creatures straight.

    But I have a personal reading philosophy: deep and wide. I choose to read a few books that require patience and effort. Similarly, I like to widen the scope of my reading so I'm not stuck in one genre, one century, or one culture.

    So.

    I read the book.

    And, dear chorus of friends, dear ones...I LOVED IT.

    How can an author born in 1945 write so timelessly? With such humor and grace?

    And how does one describe this book? The story is set in Oxford in 2057. Historians use a time travel machine to research historical periods. They are not allowed to change history. Ned, a specialist in 20th century history, is transported to 19th century Victorian England. So the book is much more Victorian, more literary than sci-fi. As he mingles and converses with Victorian-era people, Ned runs his thoughts through a mental screen to see if they would make sense. Before he can reference a poem, a piece of music, or an historical fact, he must make sure it is truly historical to 1888.

    My delight gurgled when Ned is boating down the Thames with Terence, an Oxford student he met, and he sees three men in a boat, and breaks the cardinal rule of time-travel behavior.

    "It is them! I said. "Terence, do you know who that is? It's Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog."

    "Dog?" Terence said contemptuously. "You call that a dog?" He looked fondly at Cyril, who was snoring in the bottom of the boat. "Cyril could swallow him in one bite."

    "You don't understand," I said. "It's the Three Men in a Boat. The tin of pineapple and George's banjo and the maze."

    "The maze?" Terence said blankly.

    "Yes, you know, Harris went in the Hampton Court Maze with this map and all these people followed him and the map didn't work and they got hopelessly lost and they had to call out for the keeper to come and get them out."

    I leaned out for a better look. There they were, Jerome K. Jerome and the two friends he had immortalized (to say nothing of the dog) on that historic trip up the Thames. They had no idea they were going to be famous a hundred and fifty years from now, that their adventures with the cheese and the steam launch and the swans would be read by countless generations.

    Each chapter has a dozen or so sub-headers listed at the beginning, the kind of delightful detail one seldom sees in modern books. Here's an example from Chapter Seven:

    Importance of Locks in the Victorian Era—"Loose lips sink
    ships"—Tristan and Isolde—Pursuit—The French Revolution—An
    Argument Against Tipping—A Traumatized Cat—Soot—The Bataan
    Death March—Sleep—The Boat Is Found at Last—An Unexpected
    Development—Importance of Meetings to History—Lennon and
    McCartney—I Search for a Tin-Opener—What I Found

    If you are an Anglophile, if you like Jeeves, Holmes, Jerome, Chesterton or Agatha, you would enjoy this book. If you like books with the interjections Pshaw! Balderdash! and Rubbish!, you'll like this one. It isn't necessary to have first read JKJ's Three Men to enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I recommend you read it sometime. Here is a generous sampling of quotes from Three Men

    Connie Willis has made me eager to read more science fiction. I want to re-read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and I definitely want to read more Connie Willis.

Magistra (Teacher) Mater (Mom)

  • Hi, I'm Carol. I love to read, sing, and study. My goal is to make my home a light, a sanctuary, a dwelling filled with the aroma of good things, a place where friends and family can flourish. Come on in and stay for a while. On a good day you'll smell whole-wheat bread baking and listen to Yo-Yo Ma playing.
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May I Recommend a Book?

Title → Amazon│Author →MM review

84, Charing Cross Rd │H. Hanff
1776 │David McCullough
A Thread of GraceMary D. Russell
A Year in the WorldFrances Mayes
All But My LifeGerda Weissman Klein
Ω Apprentice, The │Jacques Pépin
Auntie RobboAnn Scott-Moncrieff
Barchester TowersAnthony Trollope
BeowulfSeamus Heaney
Ω Book Thief, TheMarkus Zusak
Cold Sassy Tree │Olive Ann Burns
Confessions │Augustine
Crampton HodnetBarbary Pym
Crossing to SafetyWallace Stegner
Cry, the Beloved CountryAllan Paton
Discarded Image, TheC.S. Lewis
Doctor ThorneAnthony Trollope
EleniNicholas Gage
Emma │Jane Austen
Evening in the PalaceJames Gaines
Flame Trees of ThikaElspeth Huxley
Framley ParsonageAnthony Trollope
Garlic and SapphiresRuth Reichl
Green Journey │Jon Hassler
Guns of August, The │B. Tuchman
Ω Half Broke Horses │Jeannette Walls
Hannah CoulterWendell Berry
Herb of Grace, The │Elizabeth Goudge
Ω Home │Julie Andrews
How to Cook a WolfMFK Fisher
How to Read SlowlyJames Sire
Imitation of ChristThomas à Kempis
Island of the WorldMichael O'Brien
Jayber CrowWendell Berry
Kite Runner │Khaled Hosseini
Kristin LavransdatterSigrid Undset
LaddieGene Stratton Porter
Letters of Samuel RutherfordS. R.
Omnivore's DilemmaMichael Pollan
On Writing Well │William Zinsser
Out of AfricaIsak Dinesen
Pianist, The │Wladyslaw Szpilman
Proud Tower, The │Barbara Tuchman
Rachel RayAnthony Trollope
RememberingWendell Berry
Safe PassageIda Cook
Schindler's List │Thomas Keneally
Ω Simple CourageFrank Delaney
Some Lovely IslandsLeslie Thomas
Ω Their Eyes Watching God │Hurston
To Kill a MockingbirdHarper Lee
Warden, The │Anthony Trollope
Where Nights Are LongestThubron
WhitefootWendell Berry
Ω = audio book
Title → Amazon│Author →MM review

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