Essays on Last Great Places edited by Joseph Barbato and Lisa Weinerman of The Nature Conservancy.
Introduction by Barry Lopez
Terry Tempest Williams
Rick Bass - I loved this remembrance about the Hill country of Texas. One vignette tells of geese getting lost in fog one winter night and "honking and flying in circles, not a hundred foot over our heads. I'm sure they could hear the gurgle of the creek below. I stared up into the fog, expecting to see the first brave goose come slipping down through that fog, wings set in a glide of faith for the water it knew was just below. They were so close to it."
Bill McKibben
David James Duncan - Stillwater Marsh and Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Joel Achenbach
Thomas McGuane
William W. Warner - A lovely essay on the Atlantic Barrier Islands of Virginia, full of water and birds and sand and salt marshes.
Carl Hiaasen
Gioconda Belli - A trip into the jungles of Belize
Gary Paul Nabhan
Linda Hogan
Teresa Jordan - "We have come to this spot in the Flint Hills of northern Oklahoma to watch [bison] released onto 5,000 acres of native tall grass prairie."
William Kittredge - I've always liked reading Kittredge when he talks about growing up on a ranch in southeastern Oregon. His essay is an apology for what his family did to the land. "We need to give some time to the arts of cherishing the things we adore, before they simply vanish. Maybe it will be like learning a skill: how to live in paradise."
James Welch - Welch writes about the Rocky Mountain Front, one of the most beautiful places I've seen.
Jim Harrison
Louise Erdrich
Ann Zwinger - Zwinger writes an evocative essay about 78-mile long Darby creek in southeastern Ohio. "Yellow moneywort weaves through the base of grasses and herbs, waxy five-petaled yellow flowers the size of a quarter named, I assume, because they look like gold coins scattered in the the grass...The buzzing of summer's cicadas vibrates the air…a huge yellow and black bumblebee….a mourning dove…"
Philip Caputo - For Faith: Caputo writes of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts. (I'll be mourning vicariously with you this weekend…"
Jill Nelson - A short piece about Block Island "12 miles off the coast of Rhode Island."
John Jerome - Central Florida: "February nights are long, but a full moon lit the scrub so brightly that the difference between twilight and midnight was not of order but of degree." The Florida Scrub Jay lives here in central Florida in an ecosystem dependent on periodic burning. "Understanding scrub requires information, detail, background--a kind of hands-and-knees biology, or what one researcher like to call 'an elfin point of view.'"
Pam Houston
Annick Smith
Victor Perera - Guatemala in The Quetzel, the Parakeet, and the Jaguar.
Dorothy Allison
William Least Heat-Moon
Charles Wilkinson - My favorite in this book, as Wilkinson recounts another tale of our government's disgraceful behavior towards Native Americans, in this instance, the Utes of northern Colorado in the mid-19th century.
Homero Aridjis
Paul Theroux - Theroux never disappoints. His contribution here is about the Rock Islands of Palau, Micronesia. "They [non-poisonous jellyfish] were so thick in the water that they softly crowded me and slid against my face and arms--my whole body. I found this a truly disgusting swim." Honestly and sadly he notes that "It is paradise to me, but it would be wrong to portray it as unviolated."
Peter Matthiessen
Barbara Kingsolver - Barbara and her daughter, Camille mosey along Horse Lick Creek in Kentucky and she talks about how her "parents taught me this--to gasp, and feel lucky. They gave me the gift of making mountains out of nature's exquisite molehills."
Monday, February 24, 2014
Book: This Is the Story of A Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
What it actually is, is a collection of essays, most, if not all, previously published. But still a good book because Ann Patchett really can write well about anything she chooses. So the subjects are diverse: how to get into the LAPD Academy; how to befriend to an aging nun; why short stories stand on their own merit and deserve serious consideration; how and why Clemson University gets embroiled in a "burning book" controversy; how a successful author decides to co-own an independent bookstore (Parnassus in Nashville, TN); how to figure out it's time to get married; how to escape for a week; how to love a grandmother…..and how to love a dog.
All of them were worthy of reading, but considering my plans for the next year, I especially liked My Road to Hell Was Paved, about her week-long Winnebago trip in Wymoing and Montana.
"And so we go outside, climb the ladder to the top of the Winnebago, and stretch-out flat on the metal roof to look at the stars. So many stars fall on this night it's impossible to think we won't eventually run out of stars. After the deaths of a million stars we are sleepy, and we climb back down to bed."
They meet a woman "in her mid-sixties who has been traveling in her thirty-seven-foot Winnebago for eight years. Her husband died last January, and she's driven alone ever since…Life is short, she tells me. She plans to go from a motor home to a nursing home."
Obviously Ann has the curiosity, wisdom and gifts to write books like State of Wonder or Bel Canto. This book is not exactly like those but is more a revelation of who she is, how she lives, where she lives, along some of the seminal events and people in her life.
She has no children but she has a dog, Sparky, about whom she writes nothing as he quite new. She does, however, write a lot about Rose, her totally, absolutely beloved dog for sixteen years, a dog who slept with her and her husband….make of that what you will. I'll kind of file that behind all her other passions.
A lively, smart, attractive, rich, happily married woman….she comes close to having it all, right? Perhaps….
All of them were worthy of reading, but considering my plans for the next year, I especially liked My Road to Hell Was Paved, about her week-long Winnebago trip in Wymoing and Montana.
"And so we go outside, climb the ladder to the top of the Winnebago, and stretch-out flat on the metal roof to look at the stars. So many stars fall on this night it's impossible to think we won't eventually run out of stars. After the deaths of a million stars we are sleepy, and we climb back down to bed."
They meet a woman "in her mid-sixties who has been traveling in her thirty-seven-foot Winnebago for eight years. Her husband died last January, and she's driven alone ever since…Life is short, she tells me. She plans to go from a motor home to a nursing home."
Obviously Ann has the curiosity, wisdom and gifts to write books like State of Wonder or Bel Canto. This book is not exactly like those but is more a revelation of who she is, how she lives, where she lives, along some of the seminal events and people in her life.
She has no children but she has a dog, Sparky, about whom she writes nothing as he quite new. She does, however, write a lot about Rose, her totally, absolutely beloved dog for sixteen years, a dog who slept with her and her husband….make of that what you will. I'll kind of file that behind all her other passions.
A lively, smart, attractive, rich, happily married woman….she comes close to having it all, right? Perhaps….
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Book: Annie's Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg
A Journey into a Family Secret
This book was chosen by the Michigan Humanities Council as the 2013-2014 Great Michigan Read and was a Michigan notable book for 2010.
In 1995, Steve Luxenberg gets a telephone call from his step-sister one day asking if he knew his mom had a sister. No, he didn't and, although his mother was living, he never asked her about this. Beth Luxenberg died in 1999 with her secret intact, or at least she thought so.
But Steve was shocked and disturbed and spent the next several years learning what he could about his mother's sister, his aunt. He begins researching...
"On a bleak day in March, I visit the National Archives and the Library of Congress to make a list of every family living on the same block as Mom and Annie in the 1930s, using census records and Detroit city directories."
Her name was Annie Cohen, and this fascinating book is Steve's tribute to her, as he makes his way to as much truth as he can. Annie's story is mostly a very sad one. She was born to Tillie and Hyman Cohen in Detroit in 1919. The family was Jewish, although they weren't especially observant. Still, they lived in a community of other Jewish immigrants and their relatives were Jewish, so it was inevitable that Steve also hears stories of the Holocaust as he finds his way deeper and deeper into his family history. He meets and talks to friends and family members all over the country. Many possible sources were no longer living, but he learns enough to piece together Annie's life, and finds out she was committed to Eloise, (formerly known as the Wayne County House and Asylum) when she was 21 years old. Beth (or Bertha before she changed her name), was two years older than Annie.
Annie was born with a deformed leg which was eventually amputated. She was also noted to be (in today's terminology) cognitively challenged, although there remains some question as to the degree. When she reached puberty, she became increasingly troubled. Tillie and Hyman were poor, lacking the confidence and education to be an advocate for their daughter, and she was committed to a mental hospital where she remained institutionalized until she died 32 years later.
This book, then, is a tale of what has changed in treating the mentally ill and those with cognitive deficits. Annie certainly would not have had the dismal life she had were she living today. Steve was eventually able to gain access to much of Annie's sparse and spotty paper trail which only supports how little was needed to commit someone in the early 20th century.
The book also is about his mother and why she kept Annie a secret. It is to his credit that he loves her unconditionally. He does not judge her. This wasn't so for some (and me actually) who knew Beth when she was a young woman and who knew that she never talked about or visited or acknowledged her sister. Beth was vivacious, romantic and above all determined to not let the fact of her unfortunate sister affect her future. So she ignored Annie for the rest of her life. Not even her husband knew, a man with whom she fell in love first time she saw him. Steve remembers his parents as good, hard-working and caring, much like most of the post-war parents of that era. But he also learns other secrets as he talks to relatives and friends and reads reports.
Definitely a book for discussion….
This book was chosen by the Michigan Humanities Council as the 2013-2014 Great Michigan Read and was a Michigan notable book for 2010.
In 1995, Steve Luxenberg gets a telephone call from his step-sister one day asking if he knew his mom had a sister. No, he didn't and, although his mother was living, he never asked her about this. Beth Luxenberg died in 1999 with her secret intact, or at least she thought so.
But Steve was shocked and disturbed and spent the next several years learning what he could about his mother's sister, his aunt. He begins researching...
"On a bleak day in March, I visit the National Archives and the Library of Congress to make a list of every family living on the same block as Mom and Annie in the 1930s, using census records and Detroit city directories."
Her name was Annie Cohen, and this fascinating book is Steve's tribute to her, as he makes his way to as much truth as he can. Annie's story is mostly a very sad one. She was born to Tillie and Hyman Cohen in Detroit in 1919. The family was Jewish, although they weren't especially observant. Still, they lived in a community of other Jewish immigrants and their relatives were Jewish, so it was inevitable that Steve also hears stories of the Holocaust as he finds his way deeper and deeper into his family history. He meets and talks to friends and family members all over the country. Many possible sources were no longer living, but he learns enough to piece together Annie's life, and finds out she was committed to Eloise, (formerly known as the Wayne County House and Asylum) when she was 21 years old. Beth (or Bertha before she changed her name), was two years older than Annie.
Annie was born with a deformed leg which was eventually amputated. She was also noted to be (in today's terminology) cognitively challenged, although there remains some question as to the degree. When she reached puberty, she became increasingly troubled. Tillie and Hyman were poor, lacking the confidence and education to be an advocate for their daughter, and she was committed to a mental hospital where she remained institutionalized until she died 32 years later.
This book, then, is a tale of what has changed in treating the mentally ill and those with cognitive deficits. Annie certainly would not have had the dismal life she had were she living today. Steve was eventually able to gain access to much of Annie's sparse and spotty paper trail which only supports how little was needed to commit someone in the early 20th century.
The book also is about his mother and why she kept Annie a secret. It is to his credit that he loves her unconditionally. He does not judge her. This wasn't so for some (and me actually) who knew Beth when she was a young woman and who knew that she never talked about or visited or acknowledged her sister. Beth was vivacious, romantic and above all determined to not let the fact of her unfortunate sister affect her future. So she ignored Annie for the rest of her life. Not even her husband knew, a man with whom she fell in love first time she saw him. Steve remembers his parents as good, hard-working and caring, much like most of the post-war parents of that era. But he also learns other secrets as he talks to relatives and friends and reads reports.
Definitely a book for discussion….
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Book: Birding on Borrowed Time by Phoebe Snetsinger
There is a listserv named 10,000 Birds but the current list is now nearly 10,400 species globally. Phoebe came to serious birding at the age of 34. She was married with four children and lived in St. Louis, Missouri. One day she went walking in the woods with a friend who came "with binoculars and a Peterson field guide…and she handed me her binoculars to try…The first bird I really saw through those binoculars was a fiery-orange male Blackburnian warbler that nearly knocked me over with astonishment--and quite simply hooked me forever." For you non-birders, this is a bird that could do that!
And what an absolutely amazing birding life she had. She definitely saw birds (over 8000 and the first person to have seen that many) in countries all over the world, traveling several times a year, usually with knowledgeable guides. While she doesn't talk much about the expenses of these trips, I kept thinking about it. She apparently had money of her own from her wealthy parents. She does allude to that but very briefly.
While not a book that is utterly captivating and hard to put down, it is written well, very matter-of-factly about some very extraordinary happenings…like getting raped or shipwrecked, trekking through jungles, visiting politically unstable countries. For instance I opened the book at random to this page:
"En route back to Burundi, we took a one-day swing through the Nyungwe Forest of southern Rwanda, mainly to pick up the Ruwenzori Turaco, which we'd missed in the mountains of Zaire, and stumbled across one of my all-time most-wanteds--a flock of Red-collared Mountain-Babblers, as well as the turaco. We did this trip in the nick of time, while the gods were smiling. It was repeated once more the next year, and the participants got out of Burundi with some difficulty, just as war and all the ensuing human horror tales were beginning."
Or, "I was somewhat appalled to realize that I had signed up to go across the Tibetan Plateau in search of endemics with Ben King in the summer--a trip which would doubtless surpass everything in my experience for miserable and grueling conditions (with, I hope, the exception of Irian Jaya!). There are those who think I'm a masochist--and they may be right!"
Much of her birding was done after a diagnosis of malignant melanoma with a prognosis of three months of reasonably good health but death within a year (thus, the title). And even though she had recurrences, she did not die of melanoma and lived many more years.
The book is also, of course, a travelogue but her focus was always on the next lifer: a Carmine Bee-eater or Stripe-headed Antpitta or Ash-breasted Tit-Tyrant, the Northern Pygmy Owl, the Harpy Eagle, Five-colored Barbet….the exotic lovely names are on every page.
And how fortuitous her name...
And what an absolutely amazing birding life she had. She definitely saw birds (over 8000 and the first person to have seen that many) in countries all over the world, traveling several times a year, usually with knowledgeable guides. While she doesn't talk much about the expenses of these trips, I kept thinking about it. She apparently had money of her own from her wealthy parents. She does allude to that but very briefly.
While not a book that is utterly captivating and hard to put down, it is written well, very matter-of-factly about some very extraordinary happenings…like getting raped or shipwrecked, trekking through jungles, visiting politically unstable countries. For instance I opened the book at random to this page:
"En route back to Burundi, we took a one-day swing through the Nyungwe Forest of southern Rwanda, mainly to pick up the Ruwenzori Turaco, which we'd missed in the mountains of Zaire, and stumbled across one of my all-time most-wanteds--a flock of Red-collared Mountain-Babblers, as well as the turaco. We did this trip in the nick of time, while the gods were smiling. It was repeated once more the next year, and the participants got out of Burundi with some difficulty, just as war and all the ensuing human horror tales were beginning."
Or, "I was somewhat appalled to realize that I had signed up to go across the Tibetan Plateau in search of endemics with Ben King in the summer--a trip which would doubtless surpass everything in my experience for miserable and grueling conditions (with, I hope, the exception of Irian Jaya!). There are those who think I'm a masochist--and they may be right!"
Much of her birding was done after a diagnosis of malignant melanoma with a prognosis of three months of reasonably good health but death within a year (thus, the title). And even though she had recurrences, she did not die of melanoma and lived many more years.
The book is also, of course, a travelogue but her focus was always on the next lifer: a Carmine Bee-eater or Stripe-headed Antpitta or Ash-breasted Tit-Tyrant, the Northern Pygmy Owl, the Harpy Eagle, Five-colored Barbet….the exotic lovely names are on every page.
And how fortuitous her name...
Book: Flood of Lies by James A. Cobb, Jr.
The St. Rita's Nursing Home Tragedy
It WAS a tragedy. Thirty-five elderly residents died in a horrible way as a wall of water inundated the nursing home. It took only 20 minutes for the flood waters to rise nearly to the ceilings. The levees in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans failed. Sal and Mabel Mangano, the owners of St. Rita's, were immediately vilified in most of the media for their actions, beginning with their decision not to evacuate. This is the Mangano's story, written by their lawyer.
The Mangano's made a decision to "shelter in place," not to evacuate.
"The home prospered and was an operational and financial success. It gained a reputation as the best home in the parish. There were only three others. During their twenty years of operation…they had never evacuated the facility...The complicated and gut-wrenching decision of whether or not to evacuate the elderly in the face of a storm, how to evacuate them, and to where, had suddenly become more than simply a healthcare policy decision."
Mr. Cobb is outspoken, never holding back his contempt for the Attorney General who forced this case to trial and for certain members of the news media who quickly went into feeding-frenzy mode, not bothering to wait for facts. He is an excitable, hard-drinking, passionate man. His own home was destroyed by Katrina, and in the aftermath of the hurricane, he and his family lived in hotels and small apartments and endured their own losses and trauma.
Cobb says he was inspired by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird. So this case came his way, and he saw a chance perhaps to rectify some of his guilt. He had spent his career "defending those who were, at law, entitled to a defense but were often unworthy of one. I had represented large corporations and insurance companies regularly accused of negligence and greed in causing some calamity that took a worker's life or left him crippled and unable to provide for his family. Occasionally, it was my calling in life to deprive widows and orphans of compensation for the deaths of their husbands and fathers…."
Honest, but no one MADE him do that kind of lawyering. Still, he admits it, and often half-apologizes for his sometimes less than stalwart character, which is disarming. I did wonder at times while reading the book what this man is REALLY like? He does not have an ego problem.
The story he tells is fascinating as he explains the legal process that governs the lives of the Manganos for two years. A criminal trial eventually takes place in "quaintly gorgeous St. Francisville, Louisiana…the courthouse on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River."
While the book is about Sal and Mabel, it is also about what happened when politics, television and lawyers collided as the levees failed after Katrina.
It WAS a tragedy. Thirty-five elderly residents died in a horrible way as a wall of water inundated the nursing home. It took only 20 minutes for the flood waters to rise nearly to the ceilings. The levees in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans failed. Sal and Mabel Mangano, the owners of St. Rita's, were immediately vilified in most of the media for their actions, beginning with their decision not to evacuate. This is the Mangano's story, written by their lawyer.
The Mangano's made a decision to "shelter in place," not to evacuate.
"The home prospered and was an operational and financial success. It gained a reputation as the best home in the parish. There were only three others. During their twenty years of operation…they had never evacuated the facility...The complicated and gut-wrenching decision of whether or not to evacuate the elderly in the face of a storm, how to evacuate them, and to where, had suddenly become more than simply a healthcare policy decision."
Mr. Cobb is outspoken, never holding back his contempt for the Attorney General who forced this case to trial and for certain members of the news media who quickly went into feeding-frenzy mode, not bothering to wait for facts. He is an excitable, hard-drinking, passionate man. His own home was destroyed by Katrina, and in the aftermath of the hurricane, he and his family lived in hotels and small apartments and endured their own losses and trauma.
Cobb says he was inspired by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird. So this case came his way, and he saw a chance perhaps to rectify some of his guilt. He had spent his career "defending those who were, at law, entitled to a defense but were often unworthy of one. I had represented large corporations and insurance companies regularly accused of negligence and greed in causing some calamity that took a worker's life or left him crippled and unable to provide for his family. Occasionally, it was my calling in life to deprive widows and orphans of compensation for the deaths of their husbands and fathers…."
Honest, but no one MADE him do that kind of lawyering. Still, he admits it, and often half-apologizes for his sometimes less than stalwart character, which is disarming. I did wonder at times while reading the book what this man is REALLY like? He does not have an ego problem.
The story he tells is fascinating as he explains the legal process that governs the lives of the Manganos for two years. A criminal trial eventually takes place in "quaintly gorgeous St. Francisville, Louisiana…the courthouse on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River."
While the book is about Sal and Mabel, it is also about what happened when politics, television and lawyers collided as the levees failed after Katrina.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Book: The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Ah... this woman can write. Here is a story with a beginning and an ending, the kind of novel that leaves one satisfied. Not all writers know how to finish what they start, but not so Louise.
It could perhaps also be called Indian Boys. Joe is 13 years old and has three good friends, Cappy, Angus and Zack. They ride their bikes all over the reservation…the rez. Joe is an only child and lives at home with his father, a judge, and his mother who works for social services. It is 1988.
One day his mother is raped. And from this point, the novel explores the ways of living on a reservation, the homes, the way time passes day after day in families with beautifully drawn characters. There is a comfort here. There are also drugs, alcohol, religion, a Catholic priest, the elders, convoluted relationships, and the rape, the rape victims, the rapist.
An Amnesty International report "included the following statistics: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape); 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted."
I sometimes purposefully detour while driving across country to pass through a reservation. Last June, it was Pine Ridge in South Dakota. All day the weather had been making me uneasy. The sky would turn very dark, and I drove to avoid the storms, the possible tornados. But it is impressive and delightful to drive on two-lane roads across land that undulates gently and has few trees but a sky that goes forever and little creeks and sloughs. I came up from the south through Whiteclay, Nebraska, which is off the reservation and therefore able to sell alcohol, into Pine Ridge, South Dakota, just a few miles over the border. I had intended to stop at Wounded Knee but missed the turn off and was fretting too much about the weather . There were constant reports of significant hail in the storms moving vaguely north and east. I drove through Pine Ridge. These rez towns are always busier than white people towns, with more kids and bikes and dogs…lots of wind-blown litter, modest pastel rectangular homes, old cars….teenagers, people hanging around near the convenience stores, or small grocery stores and gas stations.
Along the road east of town, there were places to fish...small ponds, with a car or truck parked in the grasses and a few kids and an adult or two at water's edge or having a picnic. One time I saw a small rowboat on the water. It struck me how unconcerned they were (as opposed to me freaking out) about the ominous skies which would shift now and then to let the late afternoon sun light up the land making it (to me) wildly beautiful, tugging at my heart.
I am curious about who would or would not love this novel. Who else writes about Native Americans like this?
And I also think about Louise Erdrich and her real kids and her real life. She is a strong force, I suspect, but not immune to the charms of men.
"The fluttering energy that had possessed my mother was burnt out and she was resting--but on the couch, not locked in her room. After I got home, my father invited me to sit alongside him on an old rusted kitchen chair next to the garden. The evening was cool and the air stirred the scrap box elder bordering the yard….The round house is on the far edge of tribal trust, where our court has jurisdiction, though of course not over a white man. So federal law applies. Down to the lake, that is also tribal trust, But just to one side a corner of that is state park, where state law applies. On the other side to that pasture, more woods, we have an extension of round house land."
"Cappy's mother had died when he was young, leaving Cappy and his older brother, Randall, and his father Doe Lafournais, to a life that had worn itself into bachelor grooves and a house of womanless chaos….Zack Peace's family was split up now for the second time…Zack was almost a decade older than his baby brother and sister, because his parents had married young, divorced, then given it a second try and found out they were right the first time they divorced. Zack was musical, like his father and always brought his guitar to the icehouse. He said he knew one thousand songs….As for Angus…his aunt Star had moved Angus, his two brothers, her boyfriend's two children, and a changing array of pregnant sisters and bingeing or detoxing cousins into a three-bedroom unit. Aunt Star managed an epic amount of craziness. It didn't help that besides no steps, the building itself was a low-bid nightmare…Star was always bribing us with frybread to do house repairs or rig up satellite reception off a dented hubcap or some such thing."
It could perhaps also be called Indian Boys. Joe is 13 years old and has three good friends, Cappy, Angus and Zack. They ride their bikes all over the reservation…the rez. Joe is an only child and lives at home with his father, a judge, and his mother who works for social services. It is 1988.
One day his mother is raped. And from this point, the novel explores the ways of living on a reservation, the homes, the way time passes day after day in families with beautifully drawn characters. There is a comfort here. There are also drugs, alcohol, religion, a Catholic priest, the elders, convoluted relationships, and the rape, the rape victims, the rapist.
An Amnesty International report "included the following statistics: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape); 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted."
I sometimes purposefully detour while driving across country to pass through a reservation. Last June, it was Pine Ridge in South Dakota. All day the weather had been making me uneasy. The sky would turn very dark, and I drove to avoid the storms, the possible tornados. But it is impressive and delightful to drive on two-lane roads across land that undulates gently and has few trees but a sky that goes forever and little creeks and sloughs. I came up from the south through Whiteclay, Nebraska, which is off the reservation and therefore able to sell alcohol, into Pine Ridge, South Dakota, just a few miles over the border. I had intended to stop at Wounded Knee but missed the turn off and was fretting too much about the weather . There were constant reports of significant hail in the storms moving vaguely north and east. I drove through Pine Ridge. These rez towns are always busier than white people towns, with more kids and bikes and dogs…lots of wind-blown litter, modest pastel rectangular homes, old cars….teenagers, people hanging around near the convenience stores, or small grocery stores and gas stations.
Along the road east of town, there were places to fish...small ponds, with a car or truck parked in the grasses and a few kids and an adult or two at water's edge or having a picnic. One time I saw a small rowboat on the water. It struck me how unconcerned they were (as opposed to me freaking out) about the ominous skies which would shift now and then to let the late afternoon sun light up the land making it (to me) wildly beautiful, tugging at my heart.
I am curious about who would or would not love this novel. Who else writes about Native Americans like this?
And I also think about Louise Erdrich and her real kids and her real life. She is a strong force, I suspect, but not immune to the charms of men.
"The fluttering energy that had possessed my mother was burnt out and she was resting--but on the couch, not locked in her room. After I got home, my father invited me to sit alongside him on an old rusted kitchen chair next to the garden. The evening was cool and the air stirred the scrap box elder bordering the yard….The round house is on the far edge of tribal trust, where our court has jurisdiction, though of course not over a white man. So federal law applies. Down to the lake, that is also tribal trust, But just to one side a corner of that is state park, where state law applies. On the other side to that pasture, more woods, we have an extension of round house land."
"Cappy's mother had died when he was young, leaving Cappy and his older brother, Randall, and his father Doe Lafournais, to a life that had worn itself into bachelor grooves and a house of womanless chaos….Zack Peace's family was split up now for the second time…Zack was almost a decade older than his baby brother and sister, because his parents had married young, divorced, then given it a second try and found out they were right the first time they divorced. Zack was musical, like his father and always brought his guitar to the icehouse. He said he knew one thousand songs….As for Angus…his aunt Star had moved Angus, his two brothers, her boyfriend's two children, and a changing array of pregnant sisters and bingeing or detoxing cousins into a three-bedroom unit. Aunt Star managed an epic amount of craziness. It didn't help that besides no steps, the building itself was a low-bid nightmare…Star was always bribing us with frybread to do house repairs or rig up satellite reception off a dented hubcap or some such thing."
Book: Tear-Down by Gordon Young
Memoir of a Vanishing City
The city being Flint, Michigan.
(Richard, I forgot to tell you about this book yesterday but perhaps you would like it…having lived and worked there.)
The author grew up in Flint but eventually settles in San Francisco and he and his girlfriend even manage to buy a small home there for over $500K. Still, Flint is always in his heart and soul. He begins a blog, Flint Expatriates, which keeps his lost but beloved city in his mind, and is gratified by hundreds who follow the blog and who obviously also have an affection and affinity for this beleagured city, which was, not so long ago and because of the auto industry, an economically healthy place to live.
"In 1954, more than a 100,000 people crowded downtown Flint for a parade celebrating the 50-millionth car produced by General Motors."
Alas, the auto industry left, abandoned Flint and in 1987, "Money magazine ranked Flint dead last on its its of the best places to live in America." It has lost "more than GM jobs since peak employment in 1968." Thousands left, "half its residents…from 200,000 to just over 100,000 in five decades."
And this led to a train wreck of a city with reductions in police and fire-fighting forces, street maintenance and garbage pickup services, school closures and no jobs. For the most part, only those without options remained.
But Gordon just cannot get Flint out of his mind and at one point, in his beautiful City by the Bay, he begins to think about buying a house in Flint.
"I wasn't sure if this would be a permanent residence, an probable 'vacation home,' a low-cost rental for a needy family, or a rehab project that Traci and I would give to charity."
From these thoughts, follows the book. Gordon returns to Flint, making summer-long visits, checking old neighborhoods, reporting on what he finds, looking, looking for a house to buy. He talks to people: the mayor, an urban visionary by the name of Dan Kildee about his land-bank ideas, a dynamic, hard-working preacher man who buys a beautiful old church in a derelict neighborhood and works every day to make a difference in his community; he talks to those who have already committed to living in Flint and have bought homes…
He goes back and forth between the extremes of living the urban life…San Francisco, California and Flint, Michigan:
"Obviously, I was having a hard time letting go now that I'd rediscovered my hometown. It was like I lived there, except I didn't. I was wearing out my welcome in my current home by obsessing about my old home and the possibility of a future home. I was becoming the real-estate equivalent of a model-train enthusiast or a Trekkie. This had to stop."
He didn't have much money to spend to buy even a Flint house, but he keeps looking and dreaming. He has a friend, also living in California but with the same mind-set towards Flint, who had bought houses there with the idea of helping the economy and also hoping to make money. This friend had an "attraction to historic homes…which prompted to buy a big-dilapidated two-story house on University Avenue across the street from Michael and Perry in 2008. He paid $6,250 cash for it, and scrappers hit the place before he could secure it, making off with the light fixtures, door hardware, and even the built-in butler's pantry." He tries to explain: "People might say I'm a fool, but too many people left Flint and never looked back. If every Flint expatriate did something to help, we could turn the city around."
And Gordon is thinking: "Well, maybe. But how many people could fork over a hundred grand and risk financial ruin? I was struggling to commit just three thousand dollars."
What ultimately happens? Read the book to find out.
The city being Flint, Michigan.
(Richard, I forgot to tell you about this book yesterday but perhaps you would like it…having lived and worked there.)
The author grew up in Flint but eventually settles in San Francisco and he and his girlfriend even manage to buy a small home there for over $500K. Still, Flint is always in his heart and soul. He begins a blog, Flint Expatriates, which keeps his lost but beloved city in his mind, and is gratified by hundreds who follow the blog and who obviously also have an affection and affinity for this beleagured city, which was, not so long ago and because of the auto industry, an economically healthy place to live.
"In 1954, more than a 100,000 people crowded downtown Flint for a parade celebrating the 50-millionth car produced by General Motors."
Alas, the auto industry left, abandoned Flint and in 1987, "Money magazine ranked Flint dead last on its its of the best places to live in America." It has lost "more than GM jobs since peak employment in 1968." Thousands left, "half its residents…from 200,000 to just over 100,000 in five decades."
And this led to a train wreck of a city with reductions in police and fire-fighting forces, street maintenance and garbage pickup services, school closures and no jobs. For the most part, only those without options remained.
But Gordon just cannot get Flint out of his mind and at one point, in his beautiful City by the Bay, he begins to think about buying a house in Flint.
"I wasn't sure if this would be a permanent residence, an probable 'vacation home,' a low-cost rental for a needy family, or a rehab project that Traci and I would give to charity."
From these thoughts, follows the book. Gordon returns to Flint, making summer-long visits, checking old neighborhoods, reporting on what he finds, looking, looking for a house to buy. He talks to people: the mayor, an urban visionary by the name of Dan Kildee about his land-bank ideas, a dynamic, hard-working preacher man who buys a beautiful old church in a derelict neighborhood and works every day to make a difference in his community; he talks to those who have already committed to living in Flint and have bought homes…
He goes back and forth between the extremes of living the urban life…San Francisco, California and Flint, Michigan:
"Obviously, I was having a hard time letting go now that I'd rediscovered my hometown. It was like I lived there, except I didn't. I was wearing out my welcome in my current home by obsessing about my old home and the possibility of a future home. I was becoming the real-estate equivalent of a model-train enthusiast or a Trekkie. This had to stop."
He didn't have much money to spend to buy even a Flint house, but he keeps looking and dreaming. He has a friend, also living in California but with the same mind-set towards Flint, who had bought houses there with the idea of helping the economy and also hoping to make money. This friend had an "attraction to historic homes…which prompted to buy a big-dilapidated two-story house on University Avenue across the street from Michael and Perry in 2008. He paid $6,250 cash for it, and scrappers hit the place before he could secure it, making off with the light fixtures, door hardware, and even the built-in butler's pantry." He tries to explain: "People might say I'm a fool, but too many people left Flint and never looked back. If every Flint expatriate did something to help, we could turn the city around."
And Gordon is thinking: "Well, maybe. But how many people could fork over a hundred grand and risk financial ruin? I was struggling to commit just three thousand dollars."
What ultimately happens? Read the book to find out.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Book: To the Moon and Timbuktu by Nina Sovich
A Trek Through the Heart of Africa
Well, not really a trek and mostly West Africa but still, this was quite an adventure.
Nina was raised an only child in relative affluence on the East Coast. Her Swedish mother had a wanderlust and would often take trips to faraway places. Nina writes that these trips of her mother's were "magical and infectious and divine, but…[it] never lasted, in part because she never went away for long enough." Nina obviously inherited the restlessness...
She grew up and worked as a journalist traveling and living abroad. Then one day, she meets Florent, eventually marries him and they settle in Paris. I doubt I've ever read of someone who doesn't adore living in Paris, but Nina didn't. She gets more and more uneasy, fidgety and unhappy, and then one day decides to go to Africa, by herself, for several weeks. She starts from Morocco and travels south through Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and then east to Mali and Niger.
She is not with a group, and generally makes day-to-day transportation and sleeping arrangements. It's hot, not particularly safe; she's a single white female, and at one point, she goes back to Paris but then returns to Africa, as her goal is to visit Timbuktu, for the romance of the name, for the sake of her soul. She is pregnant on her second trip which adds to the complicated way she travels.
"There are two taxis leaving for Mauritania that day. One is a white van that usually transports bottled water and cigarettes but has been co-opted for human transport. Someone has laid a carpet on the floor and thrown in a flashlight, but the interior is basically a dark, empty box with a rear sliding door that opens from the outside. It has no windows, no air conditioning, and no way for passengers to get out if the driver has a heart attack or abandons the van before the border. I poke my head inside and two small, very round Sahrawi women blink back at me like badgers in a hole."
"I've never been alone in a desert before. Not like this. I always went with people, afraid that the heat, dirt and dust, the sheer emptiness could somehow swallow me. I had spent so much of the past years in cities, running around, dodging rainstorms, ducking into cafes, that I forgot the leveling aspect of nature...Here toughness, wit and luck mattered more than birth or money…Strip away the comfort of Paris or New York, and there was just desert, where everything could change faster than we imagined and in ways for which we had not prepared. This notion was a little scary, but not, by definition, bad. The essential message was one of liberation."
She does get a little crazy though:
"At a certain point, traveling loses all of its appeal and the traveler who dreamed of discovery and escape becomes a little demented…I'm aware of how far gone I am. I live in dirty clothes that I have all but stopped trying to wash. When I bathe at all it is under a tap of either stale hot water or sludge that smells often of sulfur. I have eaten so many mango I always have light diarrhea…And I have pretty much stopped trying to talk to the people around me. My mission is to keep moving, keep ahead of the rains and cross the border into Niger before they come… I look like hell. I feel like hell. I am in hell…My world has been pared down to the smallest concerns--decent water, a safe place to sleep, the occasional kind word from a passerby--and I am free in the way I have ever been before."
This is how she writes. There is a lot of introspection. She loves her good and kind husband; it's not that exactly.
And along with trying to answer the eternal questions, Nina tells of the people and geography she encounters, vividly, descriptively:
"The sun rises huge, soft and cool. My taxi driver prays while I lean out of the side of the car and eat a block of cheddar cheese like a candy bar. Nearby a tree with gnarled branches reaching to the sky has been carved out as a cistern for collecting water. I slip off my sandals and run red dust through my toes, considering the scrubland before me. Flecks of straw glitter in the morning haze like gold thread woven into a dress…I'm exhausted and spacey and on my way back to Niamey after three weeks of terrifying travel across the savanna…As people filter in for the bus, they pull out loaves of yellow bread and cans of condensed milk. Green lizards crawl up the walls."
Much of her inspiration was Mary Kingsley who "explored Gabon's jungle in the 1890s" and of course, Karen Blixen. Nina, too, loves Africa, dreams of Africa and this book is that love story.
Well, not really a trek and mostly West Africa but still, this was quite an adventure.
Nina was raised an only child in relative affluence on the East Coast. Her Swedish mother had a wanderlust and would often take trips to faraway places. Nina writes that these trips of her mother's were "magical and infectious and divine, but…[it] never lasted, in part because she never went away for long enough." Nina obviously inherited the restlessness...
She grew up and worked as a journalist traveling and living abroad. Then one day, she meets Florent, eventually marries him and they settle in Paris. I doubt I've ever read of someone who doesn't adore living in Paris, but Nina didn't. She gets more and more uneasy, fidgety and unhappy, and then one day decides to go to Africa, by herself, for several weeks. She starts from Morocco and travels south through Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and then east to Mali and Niger.
She is not with a group, and generally makes day-to-day transportation and sleeping arrangements. It's hot, not particularly safe; she's a single white female, and at one point, she goes back to Paris but then returns to Africa, as her goal is to visit Timbuktu, for the romance of the name, for the sake of her soul. She is pregnant on her second trip which adds to the complicated way she travels.
"There are two taxis leaving for Mauritania that day. One is a white van that usually transports bottled water and cigarettes but has been co-opted for human transport. Someone has laid a carpet on the floor and thrown in a flashlight, but the interior is basically a dark, empty box with a rear sliding door that opens from the outside. It has no windows, no air conditioning, and no way for passengers to get out if the driver has a heart attack or abandons the van before the border. I poke my head inside and two small, very round Sahrawi women blink back at me like badgers in a hole."
"I've never been alone in a desert before. Not like this. I always went with people, afraid that the heat, dirt and dust, the sheer emptiness could somehow swallow me. I had spent so much of the past years in cities, running around, dodging rainstorms, ducking into cafes, that I forgot the leveling aspect of nature...Here toughness, wit and luck mattered more than birth or money…Strip away the comfort of Paris or New York, and there was just desert, where everything could change faster than we imagined and in ways for which we had not prepared. This notion was a little scary, but not, by definition, bad. The essential message was one of liberation."
She does get a little crazy though:
"At a certain point, traveling loses all of its appeal and the traveler who dreamed of discovery and escape becomes a little demented…I'm aware of how far gone I am. I live in dirty clothes that I have all but stopped trying to wash. When I bathe at all it is under a tap of either stale hot water or sludge that smells often of sulfur. I have eaten so many mango I always have light diarrhea…And I have pretty much stopped trying to talk to the people around me. My mission is to keep moving, keep ahead of the rains and cross the border into Niger before they come… I look like hell. I feel like hell. I am in hell…My world has been pared down to the smallest concerns--decent water, a safe place to sleep, the occasional kind word from a passerby--and I am free in the way I have ever been before."
This is how she writes. There is a lot of introspection. She loves her good and kind husband; it's not that exactly.
And along with trying to answer the eternal questions, Nina tells of the people and geography she encounters, vividly, descriptively:
"The sun rises huge, soft and cool. My taxi driver prays while I lean out of the side of the car and eat a block of cheddar cheese like a candy bar. Nearby a tree with gnarled branches reaching to the sky has been carved out as a cistern for collecting water. I slip off my sandals and run red dust through my toes, considering the scrubland before me. Flecks of straw glitter in the morning haze like gold thread woven into a dress…I'm exhausted and spacey and on my way back to Niamey after three weeks of terrifying travel across the savanna…As people filter in for the bus, they pull out loaves of yellow bread and cans of condensed milk. Green lizards crawl up the walls."
Much of her inspiration was Mary Kingsley who "explored Gabon's jungle in the 1890s" and of course, Karen Blixen. Nina, too, loves Africa, dreams of Africa and this book is that love story.
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