Christmas Books

My new shelves ~ just for Christmas Books!

Recent additions to my collection include . . .

~ something new ~

Santa Lives!
Five Conclusive Arugments for the Existence of Santa Claus

by Ellis Weiner

"But while we often like to comfort or flatter ourselves
with the thought that the future is now,
the brute truth is, the future is not now.
The present is now. The future is later --
in some cases much later."
~ Ellis Weiner, from Santa Lives
A delightfully droll and witty philosophical mock - up, including The Ontological Argument, The Causal Argument, The Argument from Design, and so forth. My older son Ben gave it to me for Christmas last year because he has just been assigned to read it in his philosophy class at Purdue. I gave several friends a copy this year, along with Yiddish with Dick & Jane and The Joy of Worry, also by Weiner and equally clever!

and . . .

~ something old ~

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot

&

Maple Sugar for Windy Foot

by Frances Frost



Thanks to my cousin Maggie for introducing me to Windy Foot last year, calling my attention to these books, and sharing her memory of reading them aloud with her mother (my Aunt Frances) every Christmas as she was growing up. Sleigh Bells is a charming story of getting ready for a rural American Christmas in the late 1940s.

Speaking of the good old days . . . Check out these wonderfully nostalgic images!

The Martha Beale Mysteries

Historic St. Peter's Episcopal Churchyard, Philadelphia,
~ as it was in the 19th Century, so it is today ~
(looking west toward Old Pine Presbyterian)
If you're in the mood for a murder mystery, the novels of Cordelia Frances Biddle, with lots of old Philadelphia history and a strong female lead named Martha Beale, are just the thing for a long winter's night with the snow whirling and wind howling.

Back in September 2010, I mentioned The Conjurer in a list of titles by friends and friends of friends. Cordelia was one of my Philadelphia neighbors, and her research of the city is impressive. If you've never been, it will come to life for you; if you've been already, you'll be transported right back to those time - honored streets once more.

A couple of dark and stormy November afternoons provided the perfect background for the hours I spent immersed in Deception's Daughter. In the opening chapter, entitled "In the Wind, Ghosts," Martha's young daughter Ella explains earnestly: "But the wind cannot be wretched, Mother . . . It bears the ghosts of all the souls who have gone before us" (3). When little brother Cai "begins to whimper about invisible demons winging through the air . . . Martha . . . tries to convince him that the unseen spirits are not ghouls or wraiths come to haunt and harm him, but angels with enormous and shining wings flying close to earth in order to protect him." Even so, "Cai remains steadfast in his belief that ghosts are riding in the wind. . . . " Ghosts are everywhere, and they especially enjoy spiriting through cold chimneys and terrorizing small, defenseless boys" (6 - 7, 127).

One of the Fairmont Mansions
Artist Unknown
Additional favorite passages:

" 'Oh, bosh! Should have. Could have. Would have. What an odious trio. When I was forced to keep to my rooms these past days, I made a promise to ignore those gloomy villains. I suggest you do the same' " (from Deception's Daughter, 108).

"How is it that our solitary existences are so dependent upon others? We believe we're self - governing, but circumstances continually work to remold us; and we grow like trees clustered in a forest: bowed down by prevailing winds, stunted within the shadow of larger plants or flourishing because a neighbor has toppled and relinquished its proprietary ownership of light and air" (from The Conjurer, 206).

Continuing saga:

The third Martha Beale mystery, Without Fear features thespian Becky Grey, who first appears in Deception's Daughter. Biddle writes that "Becky is able to descend deep into the depths of dark Philadelphia. Loosely based on Fanny Kemble, married to arch-conservative slave-owner Phila gent Pierce Butler."

And fourth: The Actress

If you are interested in learning more, check out Cordelia Biddle's fabulously informative website.

Map of Gray's Ferry, 1790
Just a few blocks from where our West Philly House
at 48th & Baltimore was built 100 years later!

Meat and Potatoes

Les pommes et les pommes de terre
dans mon évier de cuisine
In continuation of yesterday's post of food - related reading, I have to say a little bit about one of my favorite novels of the 90s:

My Year of Meats
by Ruth L. Ozeki.

The narrator, Jane Takagi - Little, has been hired to write a television series sponsored by "the Beef Export and Trade Syndicate, or, simply, BEEF - EX" (9). The goal of the weekly show -- entitled My American Wife! -- is to promote the American beef market in Japan. Jane's job is to find and film fifty - two ideal American families, i.e., white, middle - class, 2.5 kids, no deformities, no irregularities -- who eat lots of home - cooked beef at every meal. As her agent in Japan explains, "You must catch up healthy American wives with most delicious meats" (10).

However, as her "year of meats" progresses, Jane grows more and more disgusted with the beef industry (kind of like The Jungle in this respect) and her programs begin to veer off course. First, she annoys her boss by featuring a less than perfect family (the parents are Mexicans and the father has lost a hand to an accident at work), but at least they eat Beefy Burritos. Next, it's a large Louisiana family with two biological children and ten adopted Amerasian and Korean children, in which the husband instead of the wife prepares the meal of roast pork! After that, it's a family with a wheel - chair - bound daughter who craves lamb chops; then a "biracial vegetarian lesbian couple" who choose to demonstrate Pasta Primavera for the Japanese viewers. Oops! Jane is in big trouble with the higher - ups at BEEF - EX!

I love the organization of Oseki's novel: twelve chapters, given the Japanese names for the months (e.g., "The Ever - Growing Month," "The Poem - Composing Month," "The Gods - Absent Month") and each beginning with an appropriate passage from The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon that is then somehow woven into the chapter's meaning:

"On the day after a fierce autumn wind
everything moves one deeply.
The garden is in a pitiful state
with all the bamboo and lattice fences knocked over
and lying next to each other on the ground.
It is bad enough if the branches of one of
the great trees have been broken by the wind;
but it is a really painful surprise
to find that the tree itself has fallen down and is
now lying flat over the bush-clover and the valerians."

"The Pillow Book"
Sei Shonagon, painted by Hisashi Otsuka
************************************************************
A few additional points gleaned from
recent food - themed texts such as

Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation
~~ also the film version
~~ also Chew On This, with Charles Wilson

and

Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

1. the American French Fry as we know it is a truly evil force

2. ditto: high fructose corn syrup

3. if you have any self - respect,
you will never eat at McDonald's again

4. eat little or no meat

5. buy local eat seasonal (well, I already knew this)

6. shop at the Farmer's Market as often as possible,
even if the prices are higher than the grocery store

P.S. Ruth Ozeki also writes of french fries
in her novel about the potato: All Over Creation
(which I read back in 2006)

Also worth watching:

You Are What You Eat

The original book jacket:
not the usual offering of fresh fruit, flowers, and candles
but candy, ice cream, and Pringles Potato Chips instead;
similarly, I admire the cellophane wrapped cupcakes
that I sometimes see on the altar at the Vietnamese
manicure shop where I like to get my nails done!
Alison McGhee's haunting, tender novel, Shadow Baby appeared on my list of Highlights from 2007; but I can't resist mentioning it once again, this time in connection with Bich Minh Nguyen's humorous yet serious memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner, an exuberant ode to all the foods kids love. If I had been organized enough to list "Highlights" in 2008, Nguyen's book would have been a frontrunner. Nguyen, who came to Michigan from Viet Nam in 1975, tells the entertaining story of how, as little children, she and her sister learned about American culture through American food as it appears in TV commercials, school lunches, restaurants, fast food, family gatherings, grocery stores, endless snacks, holidays -- delicious food everywhere you turn, even in literature!

The funny and wonderful thing is that I knew exactly what she was talking about! Even though I'm older than Nguyen by nearly twenty years and was raised from the start on typical midwestern fare, her longing references to the tantalizing foods of childhood spoke straight to my heart. We American kids born in the late 50s and early 60s also craved (at least until we tasted them) the novelty cereals, packaged desserts, and highly processed convenience suppers that appeared so appealing in their boxes and trays. Over the years, a few of these things came our way (Pop Tarts, for instance) but others (like Jiffy Pop) just never did. And never did Mrs. Butterworth or Mr. Kool - Aid, or the Pillsbury Doughboy speak to us in our kitchens as they did on television. When I read Nguyen's description of waiting for these miracles to occur, I felt at one with her disappointment.

What Nguyen's memoir shares with McGhee's novel, in addition to an earnest, adorable, intelligent, girlish narrator, is an extended tribute to the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Both real - life Bich (pronounced "Bit") and fictional Clara from Shadow Baby have grown to admire Laura's confidence and determination. In addition, Bich likes the way that "Laura never stints on food. The scraping of butter on a dry slice of toast merits her attention as much as a holiday feast" (154 - 55), and Clara likes Laura's straightforward way of addressing her mother. Emulating Laura, Clara says, "I'm the only girl I know who calls her mother Ma" (8).

Throughout the novel, whenever a crisis arises, Clara asks herself what Laura the Pioneer Girl would do; and in Buddha's Dinner, Nguyen analyzes the entire Little House saga in light of the food eaten by the Ingalls family: "All of my fictional friends liked to eat, but perhaps no one did more than Laura Ingalls Wilder" (153, see Chapter 11, "Salt Pork"). Never a true Little House follower myself, I still relished these allusions and admired the way in which both authors have so skillfully woven the intertextual references into their work.

Sadly, both young narrators also grow to realize the prejudice in the Little House chapter of American history. Clara says, "When I started reading about Indians, I had to revise my initial impression of Laura. It was hard to do that. I loved Laura so much. At first I tried to defend her . . . Then I had to admit it: the pioneers were awful to the Indians" (30). Bich experiences the unkindness at a personal level, feeling certain that Ma "would never have let Laura consort with me. . . . As I grew older, I had an increasingly uneasy time reading the books. . . . Not just Ma Ingall's hatred of Indians . . . I knew that people like me would also have been considered outcasts, heathens, and strangers; we didn't even count" (157, 160).

Why I didn't read more of the Little House series as a child I do not know. Of course, I was aware of them, but they didn't capture my imagination the way they do for some. However, I did read a couple of them with my own children, and once upon a snow day, we looked up the Little House recipe for gingerbread and did some baking.


Another memorable food - related episode in Shadow Baby is Clara's "show of nonreading solidarity" with her elderly friend who cannot read, a gesture which takes the form of removing the labels from all the canned food in the pantry. Her mother, Tamar, who "prefers to eat out of cans and jars" is annoyed and mystified, though not angry, even though Clara refuses to explain the nature of her experiment. Clara concludes that it wasn't a very effective exercise in solidarity after all, but I don't know -- it has stayed with me long after reading the book. I also remain amused by Tamar's pronouncement that "Margarine is science run amok" (160); though she doesn't draw the line at eating processed foods unheated, straight from the can, she does draw the line at margarine!

"Science Run Amok!"

Local Peace

ANNOUNCEMENT
Engine Books is offering a discount on bulk orders of Other Heartbreaks for reading groups / book clubs. In addition, Patricia Henley would be happy to SKYPE with book clubs who read the book and want her to talk about it. In fact, if there are groups in our local area, she would be happy to attend.

Please feel free to contact Patricia Henley via facebook,
and THANKS for spreading the word!

"Sandra's love for Kelly is not the sort you hear about in songs on the jukebox. It's not desperate or crazy. They met three years ago and it was one year before they made love. Kelly said he wanted to get to know her first and Sandra thought that was a novel idea. When she remembers that year going by, she imagines ranging in the high country on a long hike, when it's tough-going at first and you don't know what to expect. Maybe you slip and fall when the trail crosses a creek bed, maybe the first lake is small, disappointing, but you push yourself, you glory in the little things along the way, the shooting stars and glacier lilies, the marmot whistling, and before long, just as you are simply traveling, putting one boot in front of the other, for the bliss of it, you come upon grand peaks and a string of alpine lakes so rare and peaceful that you imagine no one else has ever been there before you. It's where you belong. That's what being with Kelly is like. Easy, once you reach cruising altitude. Paradise, kind of. And ordinary. Common pleasures renew them. Razzing one another; watching a video in their bathrobes; dividing a foxglove in the fall; lying awake in one another's arms at midnight, waiting for Desiree [Sandra's teenage daughter] to come in from some breakneck double date. Love you can't imagine when you're young, when you think that love is you winning him over, a treadmill of pursuit and chicanery."

from the story "Love You Can't Imagine"
by Patricia Henley

The above quote is one of my all - time favorites, from a short story that I read twenty years ago and never forgot. These characters, Sandra and Kelly and Desiree, do not appear in Henley's upcoming collection, Other Heartbreaks; yet I felt compelled to mention them here because the women in these latest stories -- June, Jenny, Meg, Ellen, Bonnie, Barbara, Emma, Sophie -- are heartbreak survivors. If they re-discover love, it will not be about pursuit and chicanery. It will be a love they could not have imagined when young. In the opening story, Henley writes, "Some forks in the road no one knows about but the two people involved" (20). Other Heartbreaks is a book about those forks, those divergent paths.

A few months ago I had the good fortune to meet Patricia Henley, virtually on facebook and actually out on the sidewalk, since, as it so happens, we live only a few blocks apart. Whenever I read a book of short stories, I always wonder if the various characters know each other. Is the book of stories a little world, a little community, where the inhabitants wander from page to page? Do they encounter each other while out walking or biking, or stopping by the post office? I like to think they do!

In this collection, I particularly relished the local color in a few of the stories: the Wabash River, Tippecanoe County, Battle Ground, Brookston, Delphi. I was transported by the mention of vintage perfumes, Tabu and White Shoulders. I chortled over the absurdly symbolic professions assigned to a couple of lesser characters: the emotionally distant "attorney specializing in outer space law" and the "professor who had devoted herself to her scholarly career -- she studied companion animal behavior -- until she found herself still alone . . . " (13, 69). And then there's Ellen's dream job: "Something temporary that would not require new clothes or even an attitude adjustment" (67).

If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the first story in the book, "Rocky Gap," about four adult siblings, June, Jimmy, Anne, and Peggy. The occasion is the first family gathering since the death of Peggy, the youngest sister. Henley's description of their childhood reminded me of growing up with my own five siblings: "They got into plenty of trouble. [Well, we didn't really, not all that much.] Setting field fires. [In fact, this did happen to my little brother -- an accident!] Grinning innocently. They were innocent. Six miles from town, with only network TV" (23). Yes, that was us!

And so was this: "They survived their parents' excess, their imprudence, their disorganization, their inability to harness their darkest energy. That generation, they didn't know much more about psychology than people who lived during the Civil War" (20).

Just the other day, my twin brother and I were discussing the eerie reality that one day, one of us six kids will be the last one standing; one of us will bury the preceding five. Then I opened Henley's book to find one of those well - timed reading coincidences that seem so often to grace our lives. As the family gathering and the story itself draw to a close, June and her partner Tanya discuss Peggy's passing:

"Don't take it wrong. What she said helped."
"What'd she say?"
"She said, 'Someone in your family has to die first.'"
Someone may beg to be released from pain with morphine.
Someone may suffer head injuries in a car crash.
Some fortunate one might keel over in a vegetable garden from heatstroke. . . .
The last sib will have to watch it, and scatter ashes. Or ride in a car behind the hearse, to and fro. (23 - 24)

Yes, that will be us . . .

Other Heartbreaks is due out in mid - October. So as the seasons are changing, why not pick up a copy on one of those "Sunday afternoons, in the bittersweet hours from three to seven," curl up in a sunny window seat, and lose -- or find -- yourself in the community of these heart-broken souls. Share their quest for local peace and tenderness and love you can't imagine.

More Favorite Passages

16: "They toss little scraps of origami wishes into the fire. June thinks she should wish for World Peace, but she doesn't. She wishes for Local Peace."

69: "On Sunday afternoons, in the bittersweet hours from three to seven, they held an open house for friends and students and neighbors."

81: " 'We've been building a bridge, right? . . . I thought -- when I saw you -- that the last little bit of the bridge would click into place. . . . But there's still a gap.' "

101: "Her house was like a Carl Larsson watercolor, homey, cheerful, some earthy potpourri simmering atop the woodstove, the colors of her second-hand linens and furniture Swedish-pastel, chosen to ward off the chill of the long winters."

148: " . . . it's a fallacy to think that a mother can travel alone. If you have children, you're never quite whole again. There's a reason why they're called your flesh and blood . . . "

ANNOUNCEMENT
Engine Books is offering a discount on bulk orders of Other Heartbreaks for reading groups / book clubs. In addition, Patricia Henley would be happy to SKYPE with book clubs who read the book and want her to talk about it. In fact, if there are groups in our local area, she would be happy to attend.

Please feel free to contact Patricia Henley via facebook,
and THANKS for spreading the word!

Favorite Quotations from the Latter Potters

Sam as Shepherd Boy and
Ben as Harry Potter (December 2000)

See also my recent post
on the Quotidian Kit:
"Happy Birthday Harry Potter"
In preparation for this summer's movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, I spent the month of July re-reading the last three Harry Potter novels, finishing up just in time for Harry's birthday.

It was a worthwhile memory - refreshing endeavor; and in the process, I jotted down a few favorite passages:


Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

269: "He only knew that he did not want to see their looks of horror; that would make the whole thing seem worse and therefore more difficult to face."

459: " 'Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have.' "

482: " ' I suppose it's not really prophecy you're doing, is it? I mean, you're not seeing the future, you're seeing the present. . . . it's odd, isn't it? Useful, though . . . ' " (ellipses in original).

509 - 515: " 'Now, how many autographs would you like? I can do joined - up writing now, you know! . . . Look, I didn't learn joined - up writing for nothing, you know!' "

655: " 'The thing about growing up with Fred and George,' said Ginny thoughtfully, 'is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.' "

847: "According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else."

[Likewise, StoryPeople storyteller Brian Andreas describes: "sharp things that hurt for years afterwards every time you think of them."


Harry Potter and the Half - Blood Prince

46: " ' . . . sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often . . . ' "


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

44: "It felt most strange to stand here in the silence and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time. . . . It gave him an odd, empty feeling to remember those times; it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost."

325 - 26: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

[J. K. Rowling includes this passage from Matthew 6:21 as the inscription on the gravestone of Ariana Dumbledore. I like it because it also happens to be one of the readings that Gerry and I chose for our wedding ceremony, twenty - two years ago; see also Luke 12: 31 - 36.]

718: " 'It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.' "

723: " 'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?'

"Dumbledore beamed at him . . . 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean this it is not real?' "

Artisanally!

A Favorite from the New Yorker
I recently had the following query from someone who read (but perhaps did not fully grasp) my
Trilogy of Homebody Thoughts:
Homebody Anybody
Homebody Somebody
First Fiddle
Question: "Are you suggesting that, because I work full time outside the home (as does my children's father), that we don't "take care of our own children?"

Answer: Well, none of us can be two places at one time. If you are at home full time taking care of children, then you are obviously not at a workplace full time. If you are working outside the home full time, then someone else must be taking care of the children -- unless they take care of themselves or are left unattended. The fact is, if you are away from your children, then, no, you are not taking care of them. Someone else is. Perhaps you have provided for their care, but you are not working as their full - time caregiver for the simple reason that you are working somewhere else, doing something else.

As Neil Gilbert observes in
A Mother's Work:
How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life:

"The analysts interpret the declining magnitude of behavioral adjustments as a sign that the extent to which men and women can rearrange their livs to accommodate both paid and unpaid work has hit a ceiling. Ultimately, there are only so many hours a day available for a reallocation by people who are employed full-time.

" . . . From the rational-choice perspective it comes as no surprise that as women invest more time and effort in developing human capital to boost their market value, they devote less time and effort to household productivity associated with the long-established sexual division of labor." (73)