Until We Seek Until We Find Ammonia Avenue

". . . we can't all move to the moon . . . "
from Voices From Chernobyl (100)
by Svetlana Alexievich (b 1948)
Nobel Prize in Literature ~ 2015
So Many Memorable Passages:

61: "Is there anything more frightening than people?"

164: "And still we had a great time on May 1.
We came home late at night, and my window had been
blown open by the wind. I would remember that later on."

173: " . . . maybe the moral is simple . . .
You should come into this world on your tiptoes,
and stop at the entrance? Into this miraculous world . . . "

193: "And then the conversations begin again, until midnight. First about him, the deceased. But after that? Once more about the fate of the country and the design of the universe. . . . We’re metaphysicians. We don’t live on this earth, but in our dreams, in our conversations. Because you need to add something to this ordinary life, in order to understand it. Even when you’re near death."

213: "We read Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, went to each other's houses, had endless talks in the kitchen. We wanted something more from life. What? Somewhere there were movie actors -- Catherine Deneuve -- wearing berets. We wanted freedom."

214: "And the May Day parade? No one forced us to go -- no one forced me to go there. We all had a choice and we failed to make it. I don't remember a more crowded, cheerful May Day parade. Everyone was worried, they wanted to become part of the herd -- to be with others. People wanted to curse someone, the authorities, the government, the Communists. Now I think back, looking for the break. Where was it? But it was before that. We didn't even want to know the truth. We just wanted to know if we should eat the radishes."

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124: “Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.”

168, 191: "People didn't understand. They'd been frightened over and over again about a nuclear war, but not about Chernobyl. . . . We'd been afraid of bombs, of mushroom clouds, but then it turned out like this . . . this wasn't like anything else."

180: "The apocalypse — nuclear winter — has already all been described in Western literature [and music, e.g., Ammonia Avenue], as if they were rehearsing it, preparing for the future. The explosion of a large number of nuclear warheads will result in enormous fires. The atmosphere will be saturated with smoke. Sunlight won't be able to reach the earth, and this will ignite a chain reaction -- from cold to colder to colder still. This man - made version of the end of the world has been taught since the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. But atom bombs won't disappear even after they destroy the last warhead. There will still be the knowledge of atom bombs."

Cases in point, of post - apocalyptic fiction, prefiguring (or attempting to prefigure) the real thing:

1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) ~ Philip K. Dick ~ I have always meant to read this precursor to the movie Bladerunner, if for no other reason than to make sense of the bizarre title. No matter how many times you've seen the movie, try reading the book then re - watching the film with the text fresh in mind, in order to see how much the screenplay has been altered from Dick's original novel.

It was quite touching to overhear the replicants discussing the nature of fiction and the mysterious concept of imagination:

" . . . pre-colonial fiction."
"You mean old books?"
"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."
"How could there have been stories about space travel before — "
"The writers," Pris said, "made it up."
"Based on what?"
"On imagination." (150 - 51)

Made it up! Imagine that!

The movie devotes little time to one of the more important themes of the book -- the human desire to own a living pet, as a status symbol, if nothing else, in this nuclear - damaged world where animal life is so scarce that most pets are battery - powered imitations. Thus the query, if humans dream of real sheep, do androids dream of ersatz sheep?

At the close of the novel, Rick Deckard finds what he at first believes to be a lone living specimen of an extinct variety of toad:

237: "The toad, he saw, blended in totally with the texture and shade of the ever - present dust. It had, perhaps, evolved, meeting the new climate as it had met all climates before. . . . only the top of its flat skull and its eyes projected above the ground. . . . The eyes held no spark, no awareness . . . But it had moved."

238: " . . . he felt its peculiar coolness; in his hands its body seemed dry and wrinkled -- almost flabby -- and as cold as if it had taken up residence in a grotto miles under the earth away from the sun. Now the toad squirmed; with its weak hind feet it tried to pry itself from his grip, wanting, instinctively, to go flopping off. A big one, he thought; full-grown and wise. Capable, in its own fashion, of surviving even that which we’re not really managing to survive. . . . Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world."

As John Isidore explains: "Even animals -- even eels and gophers and snakes and spiders -- are sacred. . . . Insects . . . are especially sacrosanct." Spiders have become so rare that any one of them might be "the last spider . . . The last living spider on Earth" (161, 210). A similar reverence for animals is repeated throughout the testimonials recounted in Voices From Chernobyl, from dogs to bird, all the way down to flies, wasps, and cockroaches (see my previous post "Birdwatching"). Chernobyl actually has a lot in common with Androids, in a weirdly ironic way.

2. Roadside Picnic (1972) ~ Arkady & Boris Strugatsky ~ Similar to Androids & Bladerunner, this 1970's novel of existentialist science fiction -- in which alien travelers have stopped by Earth for a brief visit, leaving behind a contaminated Zone -- bears a fictional but striking resemblance to real - life Chernobyl. In the novel (and the related, but very different, movie Stalker) the aliens have left behind a scattering of curious debris -- copper discs, batteries, metal hoops and bracelets -- much as careless Earthlings might litter the site of a Roadside Picnic. Did the aliens even notice that they might be disrupting someone else's habitat in a potentially harmful, even devastating, way? Perhaps not.

131 - 132: “A picnic. Imagine: a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car pulls off the road into the meadow and unloads young men, bottles, picnic baskets, girls, transistor radios, cameras . . . A fire is lit, tents are pitched, music is played. And in the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that were watching the whole night in horror crawl out of their shelters. And what do they see? An oil spill, a gasoline puddle, old spark plugs and oil filters strewn about . . . Scattered rags, burnt-out bulbs, someone has dropped a monkey wrench. The wheels have tracked mud from some godforsaken swamp . . . and, of course, there are the remains of the campfire, apple cores, candy wrappers, tins, bottles, someone’s handkerchief, someone’s penknife, old ragged newspapers, coins, wilted flowers from another meadow . . . A roadside picnic.” [Ellipses in original text.]

128: "How do you think it is all going to end? . . . for humanity as a whole. . . .

"That depends on our luck . . . We now know that for humanity as a whole, the Visit has largely passed without a trace. For humanity everything passes without a trace. Of course, it's possible that by randomly pulling chestnuts out of this fire, we'll eventually stumble on something that will make life on Earth completely unbearable. That would be bad luck. But you have to admit, that's a danger humanity has always faced. . . . You see, I've long since become unused to discussing humanity as a whole. Humanity as a whole is too stable a system, nothing upsets it."

132: " . . . what makes us great? . . . Is it that we re-created nature? That we harnessed forces of almost - cosmic proportions? That in a brief time we have conquered the planet and opened a wndow onto the universe? No! It is that despite all this, we have survived, and intend to continue doing so."

139: " . . . statistics is a very precise science, despite the fact that it deals with random variables. And furthermore, it's a very eloquent science, very visual."

3. Only Begotten Daughter (1990) ~ James Morrow ~ A feminist revision of New Testament Christianity, with a futuristic (2012!) New Jersey - Philadelphia setting, featuring not a nuclear annihilation but one of fire and brimstone.

The novel opens with some clever parallels: Murray Katz & his daughter Julie = Mary & Jesus; Georgina Sparks & her daughter Phoebe = Elizabeth & John the Baptist; New Jersey = New Jerusalem; The Garden State = The State of Israel; Atlantic City (that "burning, outsized Monopoly board") = Anti - Christ; the lighthouse beam = the Star of Bethlehem; the three paramedics = the three Wiseman (64, 125, 151, 29, 35). Instead of “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here” written over the Gates of Hell, it's "All Hope Embrace, Ye Who Enter In" flashing across the entrance to Dante's Casino (64, 127, 169).

Julie Katz is not just a "flash in the pantheon" but may be the one to bring "a new religion, a faith as apocalyptic as Christianity, fierce as Islam, repressive as Hinduism, smug as Buddhism" (57 - 58); or, better yet, she has come "to rescue the masses from nostalgia . . . [to] topple the empire of nostalgia" (110-11): "My mother is outside the universe . . . the God of physics . . . The tragedy of my species . . . is that it does not live in its own time. Homo sapiens is locked on history's rearview mirror, never the road ahead, bent on catching some presumed lost paradise . . . the human race is destroying itself with nostalgia . . . My mother wants us to live in our time. When a species fixates on the supernatural, it ceases to mature. . . . You must live in your own time! . . how can you bring about utopia with one eye cocked on eternity?" (94, 100, 118, 160, 186).

103: "In the beginning was the Word, but now God's vocabulary was growing. The first Word was an English noun, savior, but the second would be a French verb, savoir, to know: at long last . . . we can know things. Three more years of college, and then she'd buy a word processor (no, Word processor) and publish her covenant of uncertainty, declare her kingdom of impermanence, topple the empire of nostalgia -- teach the truth of the heart. The heart was a pump? Yes, true enough, provided one meant: at the present moment in history, pump is the best metaphor we have for what a heart is."

104: "And the kidney was a filter. Earth orbited the sun. Microbes caused disease. Yes! The time of her ministry was at hand. She would take neither the high road nor the low, but a byway of her own devising; she would beam her message onto every television screen in creation, etch it onto every phonograph record, smear it across every printed page. In the beginning was the Word, and in the end there would be a million words, ten million words, a hundred million words, all authored by the only begotten daughter of God herself."

138: "You wanted the masses to embrace reason and science. It will never happen. They can't join in -- there's no point of entry for them. . . . The problem is, only a few people get to be scientists. You see the dilemma? Given the choice between a truth they can appreciate and a lie they can live, most people will take you - know - what."

[And from Chernobyl, 181: " . . . humans do not accommodate science very very much -- they get in the way of it."]

90, 187: "Science does have all the answers . . . we [just] don't have all the science . . . that's the beauty of science. It's self - correcting. It welcomes new data." [And perhaps grants us access of knowledge already revealed but not yet known.]

P.S. The human dilemma:
"WELCOME TO FLESH.
UNCERTAINTY ZONE AHEAD."
(312)

Could it be . . . Ammonia Avenue?

Challenges: Special K & Ten Favs

The Novel Reader by Vincent Van Gogh
See more Paintings of Readers
A few months ago my niece Brittany challenged her facebook friends and family to play the "First Letter of Your First Name Game." Thanks Brit, for getting my mind going on an otherwise lazy day! Here are my results, complete with a few readerly references:

My Name ~ Kitti

Girl's Name ~

Kevy ~ from favorite junior high novel,
A Crack in the Sidewalk by Ruth Wolff

and

Kezia ~ from favorite short story sequence,
"Prelude" by Katherine Mansield

Had I ever become the parent of twin girls, wouldn't
Kevy and Kezia have been the perfect names? Yes!

Boy's Name ~ Kerry
Animal ~ Kitten
Color ~ Khaki
Movie ~ Kill Bill (I would never watch this movie!)
Television show ~ Kotter, Welcome Back (inverted)
Something you wear ~ Kilt (have never worn kilt!)
Drink ~ Keifr (would not drink this stuff!)
Food ~ Kelp (would not eat!)
Something found in bathroom ~ Kleenex (ok, use lots!)
Occupation ~ Keyboard Player
Hobby ~ Knitting
Game ~ Kick - the - Can (Clover Meadows)
Place ~ Kingdom Come (or Kiev)
Country ~ Kenya (Mumbi!)
Reason to be late ~ Kept getting distracted . . . by facebook challenges!
(Peg, remember this one?)
Author(s) ~

Franz Kafka
Nikos Kazantzakis (see below)
Ken Kesey
Sue Monk Kidd (see below)
Stephen King
Barbara Kingsolver (see below)
Rudyard Kipling
Milan Kundera

Poem ~ "Kubla Khan"

Novel(s) ~

Katherine ~ Anya Seton
King Dork ~ Frank Portman
Kitchen ~ Banana Yoshimoto
Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini

and, cheating a little bit:

Karenina, Anna
Kisses, Parachutes and ~ Erica Jong

Song(s) ~

"Keep Christmas With You"
"Killing Me Softly"
"King of the Road"
"Kiss Me"
"Knowing Me, Knowing You"
"Kumbaya"
"Kyrie Eleison" (aka "Carry a Laser")

Play ~ King Lear

Musical ~ Kiss Me Kate, Kismet

Fictional Character ~ Knave of Hearts

Four-letter word ~ Know

Still Life: French Novels
See this Van Gogh and many more
Also awhile back, my friend Milly wrote to say "I have been challenged by a couple of people to list my ten all-time favorite books. Impossible! I have put together a short list in no certain order of books that I loved! I challenge Kitti to do the same!"

Here's Milly's List

1. To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
2. Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte
3. Me Before You ~ Jojo Moyes
4. My Losing Season ~ Pat Conroy
5. The Diary of Anne Frank
6. Gone With the Wind ~ Margaret Mitchell
7. The Orphan Train Quartet ~ Joan Lowry Nixon
8. Reach for the Summit ~ Pat Summitt
9. Plainsong ~ Kent Haruf
10. Rome Sweet Home ~ Scott Hahn

Still Life with French Novels and a Rose
Vincent Van Gogh

Here's My List

I'm going to be a copycat on
1. To Kill a Mockingbird

and since Milly mentions Pat Conroy, I'll add
2. The Water is Wide (also, the movie Conrack)

3. The Master and Margarita ~ Mikhail Bulgakov
4. Out of Africa ~ Isak Dinesen
5. The Last Temptation of Christ ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
6. The Secret Life of Bees ~ Sue Monk Kidd
7. Animal Dreams ~ Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Alphabet and the Goddess ~ Leonard Shlain
9. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ~ Betty Smith
10. Mrs. Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf

So hard to stop at ten!

Blossoming Almond Branch
in a Glass with a Book
Click here for Van Gogh Slideshow

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If you're not all quizzed out already, here are a few more:

Quarantine Quiz Shows

Class of '75

[Challenges: Special K & Ten Favs]

Possible ~ Plausible ~ Improbable

"Christmas Quiz"

"You're Out Walking"

"Take This Quiz!"

"Monday: Pop Quiz"

Talk to Me

Climb Inside and Live There

Thanks to my brother Bruce for this Reading Poster!

A few holdovers from 2015, including
Two Thought Provokers
Ghost Boy ~ Martin Pistorius ~ almost impossible to believe, except that it's true! An autobiography of admirable triumph over astonishing odds. By the end, though, I wish the diagnosis of his illness had been revealed. Then again, perhaps it remains unknown to this day.

Homer & Langley ~ E. L. Doctorow ~ the quest for truth is hard enough as it is, why does Doctorow have to complicate matters with make believe facts (in manner of March and Caleb's Crossing -- I do not approve). Even so, his prose is mesmerizing!

On hoarding:

" . . . in our home, a monumental tribute to late Victorian design . . . with its big upholstered pieces, or tufted Empire side chairs, or heavy drapes over the curtains on the ceiling - to - floor windows, or medieval tapestries hung from gilt poles, and bow - windowed bookcases, thick Persian rugs, and standing lamps with tasseled shades and matching chinois amphora . . . it was all very eclectic . . . and cluttered it might have seemed to outsiders, but it seemed normal and right to us and it was our legacy, Langley's and mine, this sense of living with things assertively inanimate, and having to walk around them" (6 - 7, emphasis added).

On life after death:

" . . . remembering my trips to the Woodlawn Cemetery to bury my parents, I could only think of how easily people die. And then there was that feeling one gets in a ride to a cemetery trailing a body in a coffin -- an impatience with the dead, a longing to be back home where one could get on with the illusion that not death but daily life is the permanent condition" (67, emphasis added).

" . . . on Armistice Day 1918 . . . Of course I was as relieved as anyone that the war was over. But underneath all this gaiety I found myself in an awful sadness. What was the recompense for the ones who had died? Memorial days? In my mind I heard taps.

"We had a joke, Langley and I: Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours" (100 - 01).

[Along the lines of "The King is Dead! Long Live the King!" For further comparison see Sue Miller's novel Family Pictures, 42 - 43]

and
Three Mysteries
The Tinen Killings: A Novel of Civil War Veterans ~ J.D. Solomon ~ like taking a walking tour of my favorite city! I loved the post - Civil War Philadelphia setting, and the humorous telephone scenes [reminded me of asking my kids to help me figure out my cell phone]:

"But the real reason [Roberts] wouldn't seek out the Bellevue's telephone, he admitted to himself, was that he was totally intimidated by the idea. . . . He'd used a a telephone exactly three times in his life . . . And each time he's had to enlist the help of the youngest deputy in his department. . . .

" 'Why not just call him?' Megan said. 'We can do it from the hotel right after lunch.' She noticed the men seemed reluctant to accept the suggestion. 'For heaven's sake, gentlemen, relax,' she said. 'It's just a telephone call; I'll show you how to do it' " (132, 171).

The Player's Boy is Dead: An Elizabethan Mystery ~ Leonard Tourney ~ a bit disappointed that this was not really about Medieval theater troops, as I was hoping, but still fun.

County Constable Matthew Stock & his wife Joan: "They contemplated this mystery together, neither willing to interrupt the other's thought" (34).

When Matthew & Joan are invited to dine at Saltmarsh Hall:

" 'Tis what you've been waiting for, is it not -- what comes of success in trade, a mingling with a better sort of folk?"

"Aye," she replied thoughtfully. "And yet had I thought the entertainment might make you restless beyond endurance, I would have rested content by our own fire" (58).

Joan assesses Matthew's nature:

"You love the plain road, husband, and could not see perversion were it hanging on our strong oak like a child's bauble. Did it not the more make you fit for my husband, I would lament that your very innocence should so undermine your ability as constable...."

"I have never thought of myself as such, but as a plain man, no better or worse than my fellows."

" 'Tis not virtue I am accusing you of but innocence. They be different."

He laughed again. "And now who plays the moralist?" (70).

The Willow Pattern: A Judge Dee Mystery ~ Robert van Gulik ~ fun to read but just a bit disappointed to find that this novel is not really about the Blue Willow China pattern, as I was hoping -- even the author knows exactly what I mean:

"I admit that the clue of the Willow Pattern
is a very tenuous one" (63).
Eerie vision of the plague of A.D. 677:

"Now the Spirit of Death rules over the Imperial city. A city of fear. . . . In the daytime the only people one sees about are the hooded scavengers dragging along the carts of the dead. And now, at night, there are only shadows. A city of shadows, died out. . . . Yet, deep down below . . . in the slums and cellars of the old city, something is stirring, in the brooding darkness. Can't you feel the mounting miasma of death and decay? It seems to spread over the city like a suffocating shroud" (10 - 11).

"Following the youngster through cavernous halls and long, silent corridors with raftered ceilings blackened by age, he felt increasingly ill at ease. The meeting with this pitiful old lady, sick of body and mind, leading a shadow existence amidst the relics of a phantom - past had shocked him deeply. Even more disturbing, however, was the uncanny, threatening atmosphere of this old, deserted mansion. One fleeting moment he had a vision of himself as an unreal visitor to a very real world that existed one hundred year ago, a sinister age of brutal violence and revolting bloodshed. Was the past usurping the present? Were the dead of the past rising to join the errant souls of the victims of the plague, was this ghostly horde going to take over the silent, empty Imperial capital? And was this then the reason for the strange feeling of fear and foreboding that had got hold of him earlier in the night, when from his terrace he was looking out over the dead city?" (49).

Uncanny description of puppeteer and puppets:

"The only other customer was an elderly man who was sitting alone at the corner table . . . engrossed in the contemplation of the gaudily dressed marionette he held in his hand. Two other puppets were lying on the table in front of him. . . . The puppeteer gave him a scornful look.

"That's because they are only stage villains. In the theater, all actors and actresses are sharply divided into good and bad characters. But my puppets are more than actors, soldier. I want them to be real human beings in miniature. Therefore I don't want a stage villain. Do you get me?" (26 - 27)

The inequitable distribution of the "Five Blessings":

"Money, high office, long life, good health and many children. Why not call this tavern after them, soldier? It's built against the back wall of the last big house of this quarter. Across the streets the slums begin. So this tavern is the boundary stone, so to speak, dividing the five blessings between the rich and the poor. Money, high office, long life and good health for the rich. Many children, too many, for the poor. Four to one. But the poor don't complain, not they! One is enough and to spare -- for them!" (27).

"There'll always be the rulers and the ruled, and the ruled will always come off losers!" (117).

And in closing, sadly:
"She must have done it an hour or so after midnight,
the time when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb" (102).
Chinese Legend

See my previous post:
That Old Blue Willow Has Me in Its Spell

Young Adult

Two Young Readers
from the Belvedere Museum ~ Vienna

Left: Lesender Knabe ~ Reading Boy, 1860
Johann Baptist Reiter, 1813 - 1890 (to see more)

Right: Lesendes Madchen ~ Reading Girl, 1850
Franz Eybl, 1806 - 1880 (to see more)
You can pretty much count on Young Adult Fiction to contain existentialist themes and family conflict, inward ramblings and outward confrontations. The main characters are never less than properly tormented (a phrase I learned from one of my professors at Notre Dame, James Walton). The length is just right for an afternoon or an airplane journey, and subplots of animals real and imaginary, Arthurian legend, mystery, history, and time travel are enough to hold my attention in between weightier assignments.

In 2015, I enjoyed several YA titles suggested by my niece Kiyah. Here are a few more that one way or another found their way onto my reading list before the year ended:

Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

p 135: "So we said good-bye to each other the best way we could. We said: I promise to always turn back toward you.”

p 166 - 67: " . . . I do like the last part, the part about turning back. That has some emotional heft to it. . . . Oh, those last lines are beautiful, heartbreaking."

p 191: "Although to be perfectly frank, I had trouble navigating the world even before the advent of the blindness. I've never been what you call coordinated or spatially intelligent. . . . My mother says that this is because I live in my head as opposed to living in the world. But I ask you: Don't we all live in our heads? Where else could we possibly exist? Our brains are the universe. Don't you think that's true?"

p 199: "This, Flora knew . . . was magical thinking, or mental causation. . . . a dangerous way to think. It was dangerous to allow yourself to believe that what you said directly influenced the universe.

But sometimes it did, didn't it?"

I Am Morgan Le Fay by Nancy Springer

p 6: "Although Morgause was a year older, we might as well have been twins."

I Am Mordred by Nancy Springer

p 22: "Morgan le Fay might have been mistaken for a peasant woman. She had a coarse nose, and she was older than her sister, plump and beginning to wrinkle."

Unclear which sister is intended to be younger / older.
[See above]Oh well, maybe it doesn't matter. Hmmmm???
Lots of favorite quotes from the second novel in this series:

p 92: "King Arthur said softly, "Mordred, there's small freedom in being a King. Most often a King does not what he wishes, but what he must."

p 113: story of the ill - fated goblet -- very like "Appointment in Samarra"

p 114: "The candles had burned down and were trickling runnels of wax at first limpid like tears but then like cream and then flat white like the blind harper's eyes. I felt the wine buzzing in my head like bumblebees, like arrows shot to try to to kill me, and in a kind of trance I watched the candles dripping. . . . I spoke without raising my eyes from the tears of the candles . . . "

p 134: "Morgan le Fay is one who could have been our blessed liege King Morgan had she only been born a man." [Mordred doesn't grasp the concept of gender equity.]

p 139: "I began to grow so weary of my own fear that I relaxed."

p 140: ". . . in that moment I knew, I understood, it all seemed so simple. I did not need sword and shield and armor for this quest; I did not need to fight. I needed only to live. Just to be, like a swallow o the wing or a turtle sunning. Just to be happy."

p 152: "Maybe that was the answer to my quest, just to do good and be happy. Maybe there was no need to go on looking for Merlin."

p 146: ". . . I had done nothing evil except to be born. . . .

I ached all over as if I had been in mortal combat, when all I had been fighting was --

My fate? My fate? King Arthur's fate. It was for his sake that I was locked in this losing battle, and no one cared. Even Merlin's prophecy took no account of me. After I killed King Arthur, would I live? Would I be King? . . . King Arthur had started off his reign with a bloody deed, and look at him, so golden, look how folk adored him."

p 163: "He looked at me, bleak. 'I have done wrong. I must accept my punishment.' . . . 'But what have I done?' I cried at him."

p 155: "Fate has no heart."

p 169: "But I would like to save what is left of my soul. The poor, defeated thing.

See a holy man.

No. I mean rally save it . . . "

p 170: " 'Your soul must be given to someone whom you trust,' the harper told me, 'or it cannot be given at all.' "

p 171: "Remembering that bright - eyed young knight, Mordred, was like remembering a friend who had died." [As Harry Potter says!]

p 176: "Night is perilous always . . ."

Mystery of Kranepool High by Dick Donley

Like father, like daughter! This intriguing high school drama club mystery comes from the father of my friend Jan Donley. Obviously, the talent runs deep!

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Oddly narrated holocaust fiction -- could probably use more history.

They Loved to Laugh by Kathryn Worth

Say what you will about this wonderful Quaker family, they are actually kind of mean; but I liked the silk - worm subplot.

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
All - of - a - Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

These last two re -reads -- from my previous post: Even Older Favs -- were not quite as I remembered. Well, it was a long time ago!

And finally:

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

pp 76 - 77: Tom and Hatty looked through "the coloured panes that bordered the glass panelling of the upper half [of the doorway of the greenhouse]. Through each colour of pane, you could see a different garden outside. Through the green pane, Tom saw a garden with green flowers under a green sky; even the geraniums were green-black. Through the red pane lay a garden as he might have seen it through the redness of shut eyelids. The purple glass filled the garden with thunderous shadow and with oncoming night. The yellow glass seemed to drench it in lemonade. At each of the four corners of this bordering was a colourless square of glass, engraved with a star.

'And if you look through this one -- ' said Hatty. They screwed up their eyes and looked through the engraved glass.

'You can't really see anything, through the star,' said Tom, disappointed.

'Sometimes I like that the best of all,' said Hatty. 'You look and see nothing, and you might think there wasn't a garden at all; but, all the time, of course, there is, waiting for you.' "

. . . so similar to Madame Bovary!

. . . and kind of like my stained glass suncatcher
from Beata!

See:
"Colored Panes: Flaubert & Pearce"

"Would you like anything to read?"

"Where's the fire?
Fire engine menorah arriving on the scene."
~ Michael Lipsey ~

I love everything about this picture
of my friend Michael's favorite menorah,
right down to the reflection of the row of flames,
along the edge of the counter top -- what a great touch!

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But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said: "Would you like anything to read?"

from A Child's Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas

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If you'd like something to read amidst all the year - end household chaos, or if you're simply looking for some good holiday gifts, here are a few ideas from my recent reading, giving, and receiving:

1.Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir

& What I Hate: From A to Z

both by Roz Chast

A Brush with Greatness! Marguerite writes:
"Roz Chast signing your book. She signed your copy first!"

Can you imagine my surprise when I received the very book you see in this photo, totally unaware that Marguerite had been to a recent Roz Chast lecture, or met her afterward, or purchased a copy of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant for me, or had it autographed -- none of that!

I have been a Roz Chast fan since forever (1980 or so)! Last year, she visited Purdue, but at a time when I was out of town. Regretfully, I felt that I had missed the chance of a lifetime -- until the moment when I discovered in my mailbox not only her latest book but her autograph!

I was overwhelmed, star - struck, and tear - struck by the kindness and generosity of this amazing present, and I had to sit right down, right then and there, and read Chast's memoir and every cartoon from cover to cover -- and then immediately order another copy to send to another friend, who I just knew would love it as much as Marguerite and I did. It's a most timely text for anyone dealing with the unpleasant realities of aging and parental issues -- which, these days, is practically every one I know, even my own dear children!

I couldn't be more thrilled that Marguerite got to meet and visit with Roz. Nor can I imagine that any gift I receive this season is going to top my very own autographed copy of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant! Thanks again, Marguerite!

Update ~ October 2017
Great interview with Roz Chast!
And Epilogue ~ July 25, 2016

Upon re-reading recently, I was reminded of
many similarities between her situation and mine,
even though Brooklyn is so far away from rural Kansas.

Particularly this:
"From 1990 to 2001, I had not set foot in Brooklyn ONCE"
[for me it was 1991 - 2007].

Then she talks about
"the Brooklyn of people who have been left behind
by everything and everyone"
-- just like small - town mid - America!

"If you pick up a sponge and start cleaning
it will not necessarily be perceived as helpful" --
as I learned the hard way a couple of years ago!

And so forth! Such a great book!

2. The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
by Robert A. Heinlein

My oldest brother Dave and I have been Heinlein fans from way back, but I didn't know about this beautifully illustrated / illuminated gift book until just a couple of months ago when Dave passed his copy on to our brother Bruce. I took an introspective hour to read through and admire it and knew that I would be ordering more copies to share with like minds.

3. Franzlations [the imaginary Kafka parables]
by Gary Barwin and Craig Conley

The perfect gift for anyone who loves Kafka, especially the parables.

A few of my favorite franzlations:
"There are more stories than could be read in a single lifetime. And even if you, dear reader, began reading, by the time you read even a fraction of them, the meanings of the previous stories would have changed. . . . Now all we need to create is more time, more memory, and a few more infinite readers like you." (57)

"Everyone carries a TRAIN about inside of him. Sitting across the table from someone, when all is quiet, sometimes you can hear the whistle blow."

"We were SNAKES. Around us the jungle sighed. A woman offered us fruit. We ate and knew that we were not naked, nor human. She and her companion left. We remained."

"'We are old friends,' I said. 'We do not need a destination.' . . . 'The journey is so long that I must go hungry. No provisions can help me. It is, fortunately, a terribly long journey.'" (44, 62)


"If you were walking across a barren plain and had an honest intention of walking on, then it would be a desperate matter, but you are flying, gliding and diving, SOARING and swooping, high above the plain, which, seen from above, is a tiny blot on a vast and various landscape." (85)

4. A Cat's Little Instruction Book
by Leigh W. Rutledge

Plenty of great advice, for cats -- and humans!

Thanks Megan!


5. Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors
[for little kids]
& What The Heart Knows: Chants, Charms & Blessings
[for medium kids]
both by poet Joyce Sidman & illustrator Pamela Zagarenski

"But we still believe in the power of the words themselves. . . .
Finding phrases to match the emotion inside us still brings
an explosive, soaring joy

"See how many other hearts are burning,
burning as brightly as yours."
"When Death Comes"
6. Christmas on Jane Street: A True Story
by Billy Romp

Rural, urban, and seasonal!

7. The Flair Annual 1953
by Fleur Cowles ~ Editor
Those with a true flair for giving and receiving, might like to peruse this fabulous book given to me last summer by my friend Nikki:

For more on these last two titles,
see my current Fortnightly Blog: "A Story About a Tree"

HAPPY BOOKGIVING!

Mr. Pumpkin, Mr. Halloween & Mr. Moundshroud

Some books for the long weekend:
All Hallows Eve, All Saints, All Souls


from Fears of Your Life

by Michael Bernard Loggins

A winsome, artful turn of phrase is Michael's gift. In addition to his Fears, take a look at Imaginationally: Michael's Lovable Fun of Dictionaries, where you'll find some great concepts such as

unclude ~ the act of keeping things
that you don't appreciate out of your life

foodful ~ like food but not as good,
e.g., cheese - food - products and hot dogs
(kind of like Colbert's truthiness!)

you - ness ~ what makes you special and unique
(what Czeslaw Milosz calls my - ness: "our tiny, tiny my-ness")

Book & Movie & More

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. . . . Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. . . .

"In old times, the first of November was New Year’s Day. The true end of summer, the cold start of winter. Not exactly happy, but, well, Happy New Year!" . . .

"Always the same but different, eh? every age, every time. Day was always over. Night was always coming. And weren't you always afraid . . . that the sun will never rise again?" . . .

"Night and day. Summer and winter, boys. Seedtime and harvest. Life and death. That's what Halloween is, all rolled up in one. Noon and midnight. Being born . . . racing through thousands of years of death each day and each night Halloween, boys, every night, every single night dark and fearful until at last you . . . could get your breath.

"And you began to live longer and have more time, and space out the deaths and put away fear, and at last have only special days in each year when you thought of night and dawn and spring and autumn and being born and being dead.

"And it all adds up. Four thousand years ago, one hundred years ago, this year, one place or another, but the celebrations all the same -- "

"The Feast of Samhain -- "
"The Time of the Dead Ones -- "
"All Souls'. All Saints'."
"The Day of the Dead."
"El Dia De Muerte."
"All Hallows'."
"Halloween."

The boys sent their frail voices up, up through the levels of time, from all the countries, and all the ages, naming the holidays which were the same. . . . Trick or Treat!

( ~ 4, 68, 136, 138-39 ~ )
Happy Celtic New Year!
Sung by Van Morrison

P.S. See also
"Godspeed October"
"Lurking and Lingering"
"Day of the Dead"
A Year of Reading

The Not So Grand Test of Virtue

"Once again it was jolly autumn weather,
and the road was quiet, with few cars passing.
The air was like sweetbriar . . .
We two seemed the only tramps on the road."

~ from Down and Out in Paris and London (177)

Fuqua dozing and reading his Orwell
Despite the autumnal charm of Orwell's irresistible imagery, his grim account of underemployment in Paris and unemployment in London in the early 1930s is anything but jolly; and I admit to pulling out just about the only romantic sentence in the entire book for my epigraph above.

More in keeping with the tone of his book is this sad conclusion:

It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary "working" men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men "work," beggars do not "work"; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not "earn" his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic "earns" his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable.

Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except "Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honor; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

See Chapter 31, 153 - 155
in Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell (1903 - 50)
English writer and social critic

Now, compare what Orwell wrote in 1933 to Wayne Muller, writing in 1999 about the mathematical formula of the Gross Domestic Product:

For when wealth is measured only in terms of goods and services bought and sold, only those actions involving money are seen as good and useful. Anything done in time is seen as useless. . . .

This horrific paradox is the very foundation of the world's official economic policy. It is repeated a billion times a day, everywhere on earth. Actions performed with love are dismissed, while actions performed with money are honored and rewarded.

What is the true measure of the wealth of a people? The creation and preservation of beauty? A strong and healthy citizenry? An educated and compassionate leadership, ensuring justice for all? A palpable sense of civic joy? A collective sense that serving our neighbor is our highest civic good? Sadly, none of these rises to the top of our list. By current standards, the Holy Grail on the altar of civilization is the health of the economy, measured by the G.D.P. Economic growth is the measure of a life well lived, a nation well run, a civilization well built. . . .

Waste, stupidity, and evil all cost money, and are, by extension, economic goods; each feeds the machine of growth.

Today we are relearning to assign economic value to parks, endangered species, air and water quality, and even solitude and sunsets. We estimate the ratio of benefits to costs when we build roads and parks and reservoirs. But these "nonmarket" values are not reflected in overall measures of the national wealth. In fact, G.D.P. rises if we replace a park with a factory, and it rises even more if the factory happens to pollute the environment. Paying for the cleanup adds yet another monetary benefit to our total.

What have we done? How have we so disordered the value and meaning of human endeavor? . . .

How do we value these simple acts of kindness? This is what the official statistics will show: Nothing. Nothing noteworthy, nothing of any value was achieved through these actions.

Yet every time someone gets cancer, the G.D.P. goes up. Every time an infant dies, the G.D.P. rises. A drive-by shooting improves the economy by $20,750. If the victim dies, and there is a murder trial, the benefit to the economy leaps to well over $100,000. . . .

But anything that grows without money changing hands--parents who care for their children, people who voluntarily care for the sick, the dying, or the homeless, people who pray or meditate or walk in the woods--these, at best, have no value. At worst, they take away precious time and energy that could be used to grow the G.D.P.

. . . [without these] things that grow only in time, we will become more impoverished than we will ever know.

See "Why Time is Not Money," 108 - 112
in Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
by Wayne Muller (b 1953)
Contemporary American author and community advocate

As my friend Len wrote:
"It's important to give cats access to the great books."