Doing My Homework

I really haven’t known what to say. 

But that's the thing about white privilege that I'm beginning to understand. I haven't had to say anything. 

So I’ve been doing my homework: listening to and reading work from political and religious leaders and writers. And the plan for now is to do more reading and talking with my kids, praying, and offering financial support.

In looking for books about combating racism, I started here. The consensus of what to read first, from a variety of sources, seems to be White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. I'll start there.  

“Close enough to hear the cameleers’ campfire snap”

“Well, then, that’s so. What we see with our hearts is often far truer than what we see with our eyes.” 

Lurie Mattie is an orphan.  While fleeing a marshal who has a warrant for his arrest, he hides himself among a group of soldiers traveling west with a herd of camels. Eventually he parts ways with this group but gains a new traveling companion in Burke. Theirs is a journey of rivers which Lurie chronicles by drops added to his canteen throughout the pages of Inland by Téa Obreht.

Meanwhile in the Arizona Territory, Nora and Emmett Lark have been trying to subsist on a desert homestead by running a community newspaper. They soon find themselves in the center of the controversy of where the county seat should be established.  As the day of this novel unfolds, Nora slowly realizes that her husband and sons have been caught up in the violence of this controversy. As she is trying to figure out their whereabouts, Nora is also desperately trying to find water as their household is literally down to the last dipperful. Adding to the chaos is the appearance of a mysterious beast which only the most unreliable members of her household have claimed to see.

Having just been charmed by Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, I was delighted to find similar twists of magical realism, tenacity, and humor in her latest work. 

“ 'Where in all of Christendom did you get a camel?’ she said. ‘Texas.’ There was no truer answer.”

"this bearded, prophetic figure in sandals walks in"

Reading this article about Sesame Street, reminded me of this post I wrote back in 2016.

Taking on a new reading challenge this year found me in the biography section of our new library. Having just watched this movie with my kids, I was drawn to Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones. 

Starting with Henson's childhood, Jones illustrates both the nurturing influences of his fun-loving cast of extended relatives and the natural influences of a childhood spent exploring the creeks of Mississippi. An early fan of television, Henson soon sought out ways to appear on the small screen. He found an opening through puppetry and would spend the rest of his life fighting a reputation of being a children's performer.

Since I spent many of my own childhood afternoons watching repeats of this Muppet movie and introduced my own daughter to television with YouTube clips of this show, I was fascinated by reading the chapters outlining the debut of Miss Piggy’s karate chop and Fozzie’s bad stand-up jokes.

Even more striking, though, is the sheer amount of projects Henson was able to work on at one time. Although there are numerous accounts of Henson's gentle nature in directing these projects, Jones also points out Henson’s characteristic “whim of steel” that allowed many of his projects from The Muppet Show to Labyrinth to go forward.  

Fans of Fraggle Rock or The Dark Crystal will learn much about the script writing and creature crafting of these shows in reading this book. But they will also learn a lot about the determination, charisma, and joys of the man behind their creations.

Virtual Reality

When I was in middle school, all 8th graders were required to take a computer science class. At the beginning of every class the teacher would have us recite the history of computing with a chant.  I vaguely recall the lyrics including Babbage! and FORTRAN!  What I can’t forget is the enthusiasm of the teacher as she punctuated every lesson with a multitude of exclamation points and cheerleader-like excitement.

Something of that enthusiasm for learning is captured in The Unseen World by Liz Moore. Ada Sibelius is a precocious 12-year-old being raised by a single father who isn’t called Dad, but David. Each day, David and the homeschooled Ada go to the computer science lab he directs at the Boston Institute of Technology.  Her favorite parts of the day are when she gets to spend time on the lab’s key project, a chatbot program called ELIXIR. 

One Saturday, Ada wakes to find her father missing. When he reappears late the next day, Ada begins to suspect something is wrong with his memory. Enlisting the help of David’s colleague Liston, Ada concedes that he may more need care than she can provide. Just before he’s placed in a care facility, he hands her a floppy disk that contains a puzzle for her to solve.

Two decades later, we see the adult Ada preparing to meet with investors to demonstrate a virtual reality headset she has helped develop. As she tries to escape her present, she delves deeper into her past, finally cracking the code her father left for her to figure out his true identity – and hers.

Fans of Wrinkle in Time and Anastasia Krupnik will find that Moore’s characters embody the awkwardness of adolescence and the magic of discovery. She also conveys the pain of trying to remain true to one’s identity when the world hasn’t quite caught up as well as the elixir of escaping reality that is all too tempting.

Don’t be too alarmed if when you reach the book’s satisfying conclusion, you find yourself cheering…Gimme an A! Gimme a D! Gimme an A! ADA!

Julie and Julia - Reread

Reorganizing the bookshelves, as one is wont to do in times of crisis, I came across Julie and Julia. It's just the thing for vicarious cooking (and cleaning up), especially when the stores are still out of flour. Haven't checked on the whole marrow bone thing.

The following is a repost from 2009.

“Sometimes I just made stuff up.” Despite the disclaimer on page one, Julie Powell serves up a humorous account of her attempt to follow all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Faced with conception complications at home and the endless files to be copied at work, she began the cooking project (and blog documenting the project) in August of 2002. Interspersed throughout the book version are imaginary scenes between Julia and Paul Child. I skimmed these for the most part to get back to the meatier narrative.

Powell recounts her successes – skinning a duck and flipping a flawless crepe - but more entertaining are her mess ups – one memorable description likens her homemade ladyfingers to “so many sunk mastodons” in a “tar pit” of caramelized sugar. She also relates how she connected with her blog readers with proficient swearing and as ifs which resulted in donations of funds and jars of her favorite salsa. You might recoil with her in the discovery of a maggot colony under the drainer, but you’ll marvel at her chutzpah at leaving an offering of butter at the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian.

 If you missed the blog, then read the book. If you missed the book, there’s always the Nora Ephron movie.

The book by Julie Powell is called Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living.

Reprieve from Real Life

This is not the time for Station Eleven or The Road. Nor should you pick up The Stand or, heaven forbid, One Second After. However, if you must go there, go here.

For me, turning off the news and escaping into fiction has done wonders for my mental health – and probably irreversible damage to my back.

Before turning to this week’s list of recommendations of escape fiction, I’d like to give a shout out to Libby. Since my Kindle seems to be on the fritz, I’ve relied on her more and more to access free books from the library.

Some are light-hearted, a few are well-written, but in all of them you’ll notice the absence of social distancing and the novelty of well, going places. Best of all, they offer a short reprieve from real life.

Maybe in a Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

The Confession Club by Elizabeth Berg

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

The Dutch House by Anne Patchett

The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

Will you be mine?

You know that feeling? Butterflies in the gut excited feeling. Counting down the minutes until the next meeting feeling. Time stopping in the moment when you are together feeling. That staying up until all hours of the night replaying key moments feeling.

Even though it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m not talking about that feeling.In this case, it's the feeling of discovering a new author.  

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a book called 26a by Diana Evans when I was scrolling through Libby looking for that little sticker they put on the covers of award winning books.

From the first pages, I was hooked. Not only on the story of growing up in eighties England, but on Evans’ style. The description of twins Georgia and Bessi’s birth likened to roadkill (as weird as that may sound) is gorgeously brutal. The trauma of this beginning foreshadows later moments of darkness. Unfortunately, it’s a darkness that in the end proves unbearable for at least one of the characters. And more poignant when you learn some of Evans’ own story.

I’ve just picked up Evans’ 2018 work – Ordinary People. And haven’t yet been disappointed. Where the focus of 26a was from the perspective of the kids, this novel looks at life from the standpoint of the parents. In chapter two, a wife asks her husband if he’s seen a purple fitted sheet. This seemingly mundane exchange manages to capture perfectly the dissatisfaction both partners are feeling in their relationship. 

Forget chocolate and roses. My heart rests in the pages of a decadently written book.