Meet Flavia: A Child You Won't Soon Forget

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. [No. 1 in his Flavia de Luce series]. 


It's surprising to find an adult novel with an 11-year old protagonist, but Alan Bradley's series introduces us to just such a little girl, Flavia de Luce. She's witty, she's great with the English language, she's a self-taught chemist with an interest in poisons, she's a nightmare of a little sister, and... she's altogether unforgettable. She made me laugh. A lot. 


She's also a bit of a lost child, missing her dead mother, emotionally neglected by her philatelist father, and unmercifully teased by her older sisters. Here is how the novel opens, with Flavia telling about the terrible situation in which she finds herself:


It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm. I tried counting to ten on every intake of breath, and to eight as I released each one slowly into the darkness. Luckily for me, they had pulled the gag so tightly into my open mouth that my nostrils were left unobstructed, and I was able to draw in one slow lungful after another of the stale, musty air.


I am such a fan of Bradley's use of language and the way he uses Flavia's narration to set an ominous scene in just a few words. Here are some more examples:


On the chimneypiece, [was] an ormolu monstrosity, its brass pendulum, like the curved blade in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” tock-tocking away the time and flashing dully at the end of each swing in the subdued lighting of the room.

.....

... [the rear wheel of my bike] gave off a noise like a den of enraged, venom-dripping rattlesnakes. I pretended they were right there behind me, striking at my heels. It was glorious!

.....

The strong scent of Father’s colognes and shaving lotions suggested open sarcophagi and conopic jars that had once been packed with ancient spices. 

By the way, did you guess which cruel persons had locked poor Flavia in the closet with no means of escape? Not to give away any plots, but I will tell you that the culprits were her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, mockingly referred to as Feely and Daffy by our heroine. Don't worry, little Flavia has a chemistry lab hidden deep in the bowels of the old country house. Little Flavia knows her poisons, and little Flavia has a plan. 

I hope that you will read this book, the first in the series. It is followed by No. 2, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag; and No. 3, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

Prince of Tides

She had a serenity that both troubled and attracted adults. Grownups always suspected that she was judging them and finding them ridiculous. They were usually right. She found adults both too large and too loud. She was perfectly happy being a child and taking her time about things. She worried that she had taken too much time with her father and that he had died without knowing how much she loved him. This knowledge troubled her and helped make a naturally quiet girl even more withdrawn and introspective. She would lie in the hammock in the front yard and stare out at the river. Her blue eyes looked fierce and seemed to burn with the fury of pure water or wildflowers in storm. But there was no fury there. Only the love of a father she would never see again, a father who did not know her and never would. 

These words are part of a story within the story of The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy. Someone at the Houston Chronicle said that "reading Pat Conroy is like watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel."

That's just about right. Why wouldn't you read this book as soon as possible?

Book Report: Mysteries of Medieval Ireland

   

I like my mysteries with a little "value added"--that is, I like to be learning a bit about an unfamiliar time and place while enjoying a good novel. These books, part of a series called the Burren Mysteries by Cora Harrison, are just about perfect as far as I am concerned.

They are set in the early 1500s on the Burren, on the western seaboard of Ireland. So far, I've learned about the stony fields there (look at the beautiful album of Burren photos on the Cora Harrison website to see what they look like); bits of the Gaelic language; a fair bit about Brehon--early Irish--law, which is very different from English law; and I have come to admire Mara, the female judge and heroine of the tales--I love the way her mind works!

Craig Childs on National Public Radio

I've been reading a lot of Craig Childs lately--House of Rain, The Secret Knowledge of Water, and now Finders Keepers; A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession--so I thought I'd gather up some links to his own website, some quotes, and his audio interviews on National Public Radio.*


Tracking a Vanished Civilization in the Southwest
About the book House of Rain
" ...This is where the Anasazi lived. Their ruins are everywhere out here, the remains of a great Neolithic civilization. Single buildings the size of the base of the Sears Tower. Huge, round ceremonial chambers with 90-ton ceilings. This was a landscape of monuments... The Anasazi lived here for more than 1,000 years. Then, within a single generation, they were gone. Between 1275 and 1300 A.D., they stopped building entirely, and the land was left empty.


Soul of Nowhere; Author Craig Childs Journeys into the Wilds of the Desert
"There are some landscapes in the desert Southwest where Craig Childs will walk for a month without maps, or even a compass. Maps often do no good in these wild reaches, the author and explorer says."


Archaeology: Not as Dry and Dusty as You Think
About the book, Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession
"...Childs says it can be difficult to strike the right balance between expanding archaeological knowledge and preserving historical sites. 'I've worked on quite a few archaeological excavations where you're down in a trench, digging with a trowel, and wondering, ‘What on earth am I doing, digging through some dead person's belongings?' "


The Civilizations Buried Beneath Us
"Once workers tore up a Phoenix parking lot and found nearly two hundred ancient human burial sites under it. Ceramic jars and finely crafted offerings were tucked among the dead, who rested beneath parked cars for decades. After hearing about that, I look at parking lots differently. I imagine the asphalt like a glass-bottomed boat. Skulls and bones and the blueprints of villages float below."


The Coyote I Didn't See
About the book The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"There was a faint shape in the snow, curved as an eggshell. It had been left by a sleeping coyote. I took off my glove and touched the slight glaze of ice from its body heat. It had lain here maybe three hours earlier. Sometimes you can see more of an animal's life in its tracks than face to face."


Craig Childs' own website: http://www.houseofrain.com/
Audio, photographs, guides to the books

*****

* National Public Radio is in danger of losing its funding. Please consider signing a petition to let Congress know that you support public broadcasting. 

We Get Running Water and Ponder the Lives of Those Who Never Had It

Well, now that I've depressed us all with that photo of the inside of our torn-apart hot water heater shed, I'm happy to report that all is back in order today--neat, tidy, and shipshape--and looking like nothing ever happened. It's too dark out still for me to get a photo of the little shed, all restored and looking much better, but it is so. We have water, blessed running water. We have it in hot, and we have it in cold. We don't have any yet to the back bathroom (this house has multiple additions, built on over time, and that back bathroom is pretty darned far from where I sit in the original front room of the oldest part of the adobe), but that will come once the plumber and his good men have made sure all their customers have running water of one sort or another.

In the meantime, I've been reading a book about people who lived in far more ancient adobe structures in this part of the world with no running water at all. The book is called House of Rain, and is written by Craig Childs, the wonderful Southwest nature writer.  According to the back flap, he is a "naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition."

The Ancient Puebloans, formerly called the Anasazi, disappeared from their elaborate cultural centers in the 14th century--leaving their cities pretty much intact, with the dishes still on the table, so to speak. Where they went has always been a great mystery in this part of the world, and Childs sets out to find what happened. Childs journeys through the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado; then down into northern Mexico, tracking this vanished civilization.

In following the trail of these "lost" people, he makes the reader aware of the abundant archeological record that they left behind, just under the surface of our own towns, cities, and agricultural fields. I have the sense now that every rise in the landscape must hold some key to the mystery, some other piece of this old civilization's ruins. It's a bit like when I was a child and convinced that every rock I found was a geode, full of wonders within.

We have personally experienced this link with ancient times most strongly at Pecos National Historical Park, where we were stunned to realize that the place was littered with artifacts. What we had first assumed were pieces of rock alongside the paths were, when examined more closely, actually thousands and thousands of pieces of ancient pottery sticking up out of the ground.

I also came away from reading this book with a feeling of admiration--real awe, to be exact--at how today's Pueblo peoples have continued their culture and kept their secrets in the middle of a modern American society. We still don't know what happens down in their kivas, and I don't think we ever will. After all, as Childs tells us: It was none of my business, really, the private rites of another civilization.... These were someone else's secrets, not mine.

Thinking About the Hard Stuff

They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy, by Francine Russo (Bantam Books, 2010).

*****

I first read about this book on the blog, greenchilesandroses, in a post called How to Deal When Parents Aren't Immortal. Charlotte, the blog's author, is a retired social worker who writes with great empathy about people. Even though we've never met, I feel as though I know her, and I didn't want to let her down by not reading this book, especially as she recommended it so highly.

It was hard for me to read, I have to admit. Oh, the book was fascinating and told the stories of people--real people--who were struggling with issues of aging parents, and that part was easy enough. For me, though, there were a couple of reasons why I found the book so difficult.

The first was point of view. Talk about feeling a part of the so-called "sandwich generation," and worrying about both aging parents and ourselves as parents to grown children! I had to read over many paragraphs more than once--the first time from the point of view of having elderly parents, and the second time from the point of view of being an older parent.

The second difficulty I had in reading the book was due to the subject matter of planning itself, because it is something I haven't really completely dealt with for my life. My own mother was a wonderful example of careful and thoughtful end-of-life planning--there was a living trust, and all aspects of health and finances had been taken care of; her wishes and plans were very clear. When she died it was, of course, a difficult time emotionally, but we "kids" didn't have to deal with any of the practical issues, so things went as smoothly as possible under the circumstances.

Me? Not so much. Beez and I do have wills, and have kept them updated through the years, but every time the doctor asks if I have made out a living will, also known as an "advance directive," or an "advanced health care directive," I mumble that I haven't, and look at the floor, the wall, anywhere but in his kindly face. I just haven't been able to summon the courage to examine what I want done medically if I find myself helpless and at the end of life.

Here's one reason. A few weeks ago, I read on another blog about an elderly lady in the emergency room of the hospital. Her son asked that no heroic measures be taken to prolong her life, as that was her wish. Perhaps lacking any signed paperwork on file, the hospital staff went ahead and revived her. That evening she was well enough to sit up and phone friends for a chat. Oops.

So, yes, I know there are some hard decisions to make and papers to fill out. This book makes it clear how necessary those decisions are, because I know that Beez and I don't want to leave a mess for our kids to clean up when we are no longer able to make our needs known. In this new world of families separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, of parents living longer than any previous generation, and of the loss of the extended family of several generations living under one roof and caring for each other, the last thing we want to do is to leave trouble and worry behind.

I will have a bit more to say on this subject in the next post. In the meantime, I am wondering how you have dealt with these issues. Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments. We're all in this together, you know.

Christmas Eve: Mind Tricks and a First Edition

As we strolled around the old Mesilla Plaza on Christmas Eve, we recalled that a friend had told us about a book store on one of the side streets, and so we made our way to the Cultural Center of Mesilla, which houses The Border Book Foundation and hosts the annual Border Book Festival. 


We were welcomed into the charming old adobe building, once a garrison and then a store (the faded sign on the side of the building remains, stating simply "Store"). The shop consists of a series of small rooms with an uneven brick floor leading from one room to another. The owners were serving a delicious kind of Mexican coffee flavored with cinnamon, chocolate, and vanilla; they had cakes and cookies, as well, in honor of their special Christmas open house. 

I borrowed this photo from the Viva Mesilla website 

As you can see from the photo, this is just the kind of bookstore that is perfect for browsing--there were books everywhere, in stacks and on shelves and tables. They were also selling records (remember them?) as well as all kinds of art work. 

I was pretty amazed to find that the co-owner chatting with us was none other than Denise Chavez, who I've been hearing about ever since we started visiting New Mexico. She "is widely regarded as one of the leading Chicana playwrights and novelists of the U.S. Southwest" and her book, A Taco Testimony, is on my list of books to be read. 

Ms. Chavez was an extremely intense person, to say the least. She performed a kind of Jedi mind trick (remember when Obi Wan said "These aren't the droids you're looking for") on Beez, who was gently handling a copy of Pueblos, Gods, & Spaniards, by John Upton Terrell. 

Denise: This book is a first edition, and it's only fifty dollars!

I watched, expecting Beez to put the book right down like a hot potato. Fifty dollars! Good grief!

Beez, in a dreamy voice: This book is a first edition

Denise: You really need that book

Beez: I really need this book    

I was, nevertheless, surprised when I met him at the register to purchase my bookmark (it was December and we were on a budget, after all!), to find that the total came to almost fifty-five dollars. There was Denise, slipping the fifty-dollar book into a bag, and there was Beez, muttering in a quiet, but amazed and kind of proud tone to himself: I have a first edition. I collect first editions now, I think. 

Books Read in 2011

Just as in the past couple of years, I will keep adding to this list of books that I have read. Last year, I finished 92 books, so I have quite a job ahead of me if I plan to keep up the pace. However, at the moment I have 299 books on my "to read" list (click on my Shelfari shelf at the side of the blog to see the books I have read and that I plan to read), so I'm not likely to run out of ideas for reading material.

Later note: For my favorite books from 2010, see the comments, below.

*****

Abbey: Desert solitaire

Agatston: The South Beach Diet

Alexie: Ten little Indians

Amador: Southwest flavor; Adela Amador's Tales from the kitchen

Andrews: The fixer upper

Barr: Borderline

Beaton: Death of a celebrity

Beaton: Death of a charming man

Beaton: Death of a gentle lady

Beaton: Death of a macho man

Beaton: Death of a maid

Beaton: Death of a prankster

Beaton: Death of a traveling man

Benjamin: Alice I have been

Binchy: Heart and soul

Binchy: Return journey

Binchy: Whitethorn Woods

Bradley: A red herring without mustard

Bradley: The sweetness at the bottom of the pie

Bradley: The weed that strings the hangman's bag

Byrne: The new adobe home

Cannell: The trouble with Harriet

Carr: Mexican country style

Carr: Mexican details

Chan: Mill River recluse

Childs: Finders keepers; a tale of archaeological plunder and obsession

Childs: House of Rain

Conroy: Prince of tides

Conroy: South of Broad

Crombie: All shall be well

Crombie: And justice there is none

Crombie: Dreaming of the bones

Crombie: A finer end

Crombie: In a dark house

Crombie: Kissed a sad goodbye

Crombie: Leave the grave green

Crombie: Mourn not your dead

Crombie: Now may you weep

Crombie: A share in death

Crombie: Water like a stone

Crombie: Where memories lie

Drabanski: Artists at home; inspired ideas from the homes of New Mexico artists

Ebershoff: The 19th wife

Edgerton: Lunch at the Piccadilly

Evanovich: Plum lovin'

Fairstein: Final jeopardy

Fairstein: Lethal legacy

Fuller: Cocktail hour under the tree of forgetfulness

Fuller: Don't let's go to the dogs tonight

George: This body of death

Goldhammer: Still life with chickens; starting over in a house by the sea

Grimes: Fadeaway girl

Grissom: The kitchen house

Harrison: My lady judge

Harrison: A secret and unlawful killing

Harrison: Sting of justice

Hawkinson: The desert home

Hensperger: Breads of the Southwest

Hertzberg: Artisan bread in five minutes a day; the discovery that revolutionizes home baking

Holland: Valley of the Kings

Hyams: Mexicasa

Jance: Injustice for all

Jance: Until proven guilty

Karon: Home to Holly Springs

Karon: In the company of others

Kerr: Burning desires; salsa, smoke, & sizzle from down by the Rio Grande

Kincaid: Eat, drink, and be from Mississippi

King: Mile 81

Larsson: The girl with the dragon tattoo

Levick: Mexicasa; the enchanting inns and haciendas of Mexico

McCall Smith: The Double Comfort Safari Club

McGonigal: Reality is broken; why games make us better and how they can change the world

Miller: The Lake Shore Limited

Picoult: House rules

Picoult: Songs of the humpback whale

Read: Summer at Fairacre

Russo: They're your parents, too! How siblings can survive their parents' aging without driving each other crazy

Seth: Adobe! Homes and interiors of Taos, Santa Fe, and the Southwest

Shaffer: The ladies of Garrison Gardens

Shaffer: The three Miss Margarets

Sibley: Antojitos; festive and flavorful Mexican appetizers

Siddons: Fox's Earth

Siddons: Outer Banks

Slesin: Caribbean style

Stockett: The help

Street-Porter: Casa mexicana style

A taste of enchantment; treasured recipes from the Junior League of Albuquerque

Taylor: An Irish country Christmas

Taylor: An Irish country girl

Thurlo: Changing woman

Thurlo: Plant them deep

Thurlo: Red Mesa

Thurlo: Shooting chant

Tolbert: A bowl of red

Walls: The glass castle

Walls: Half broke horses

Webb: Desert cut

Webb: Desert lost

Webb: Desert noir

Webb: Desert run

Webb: Desert shadows

Webb: Desert wives

Weinstein: Pizza; grill it, bake it, love it!

Wells: The crowning glory of Calla Lily Ponder

Wells: Ya-Yas in bloom

Wickenden: Nothing daunted; The unexpected education of two society girls in the west

Winspear: Among the mad

Wise: The well-filled tortilla cookbook

Witynski: Hacienda courtyards

Zweig: Hot kitchen and home collectibles (2nd ed.)

*****

The Secret Knowledge of Water

No water around here...

... or is there?

*****

                                                                                                                                                                

The Secret Knowledge of Water; Discovering the Essence of the American Desert, by Craig Childs.

I have always loved to read. When I was a child I read anything and everything and carried home armloads of books from the library. When I finished with those, my mom would hand me some of the books she used in her classroom. The books I read in those days always stayed with me, unlike some of the books I read now, and then accidentally re-read, having forgotten them!

There was a book, Our California Home,* used back then in California fourth-grade classrooms, that absolutely enchanted me. It presented the history of the state through its use and control of water. I never forgot the opening chapter, where a thirsty child on a hot summer night went into a bathroom gleaming with chrome and porcelain to get a drink of cold, sparkling water. After slaking her thirst, she let the water run over her hands and arms. It turns out that my childhood imagination embellished the memory, as when I went back to read the book again (that good Beez found me a copy on Alibris) the hot summer night scene was much smaller and less significant than I remembered it.

I have just finished the book, The Secret Knowledge of Water, and it was another beautiful experience. Childs shows us how desert lands are defined by water, rather than by their lack of it. He introduces us to hidden desert waters, fearsome floods, and to tiny springs that disappear underground during the heat of the day, only to reappear at night, fish and all. I loved this book so much that, when it was over, I read every single item in the pages-long bibliography; marveling that I had learned a bit about desert hydrology, hyporheic invertebrate assemblage, and geomorphology.

And I had loved every bit of it. Read this book and you will never see deserts in quite the same way again. I know that sounds trite, but it's all I can tell you.

*Our California Home, by Irmagarde Richards. California State Series, Sacramento, 1933. 

Getting Over the Color Green

Although I loved the mountains...

Barren, Wild, and Worthless; Living in the Chihuahuan Desert, by Susan J. Tweit (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003).

*****

You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale.

                                                                    ~Wallace Stegner,  "Thoughts on a Dry Land"

Although I was born near the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Maine, I was soon whisked away by my parents, who sought the good jobs in a growing economy out on the other coast. I found myself growing up just a block away from the Pacific Ocean, learning to ride my bike in the cool fogs of San Francisco.

Later, when I was eleven, we moved to the golden, rolling, live oak-studded hills of Marin County just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Because these landscapes were all I knew as a child, they seemed pretty "right" to me.

However, the older I got and the more books I read, the more I sought a different world--a place where the houses were old and creaking with history, the winters were snowy, the maple and birch tree woods hid mayflowers and fiddleheads and jack in the pulpit, and the gardens were full of lilacs, violets, and lilies of the valley--the land of my birth, New England. After moving back East in my forties, we lived in New Hampshire for over 20 years until the winters got to be too much for my arthritic joints, and that is how we came to be living in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Here in southern New Mexico, I find myself in a landscape so different from that of New England that I might be on another planet altogether. When we first came here, although I loved the mountains, I wanted to run from the desert. I couldn't see its beauty or its hidden life--I just saw rocks and dirt.

This book--Barren, Wild, and Worthless--spoke to me. It follows Susan Tweit, another non-desert dweller, from her shocked denial on arrival--the desert was "harsh," "unloveable," and colored in "a thousand shades of dry"--through a gathering of knowledge, understanding, and experience to a new feeling of being at home, at last.

A wash of green 

My own journey has been much like this one, so I read each page with recognition and delight. It has taken me a while, but now I don't think that I could live away from these open spaces and endless skies.

Here are a few quotes from Barren, Wild, and Worthless, just to give you the flavor of the book. The photos are mine.

Green is as rare as shade. The desert is neither soft nor appealing. Its shapes are hard and angular; the plants are studded with spines and thorns; the animals armed with venom and stingers...

Despite its enormous size, the Chihuahuan Desert is not well known. Nor is it a popular place. It does not inspire T-shirts, sun visors, or "I ♥" bumper stickers. Rarely do its landscapes grace calendars and coffee table picture books. Tourists do not flock to visit this desert. Deserts are hard to love, and the Chihuahuan is especially difficult... 

Plants grow, but only sparsely, each keeping to its own space, a decent interval of bare ground dividing it from the next. Green requires water, and water in the desert is scarce, ephemeral. Only after the infrequent rains does the earth blush with a wash of green... 

Each keeping to its own space

No Life for a Lady

No Life for a Lady, by Agnes Morley Cleaveland. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.

Litte Buckaroo

The whole time I was reading this old New Mexico classic, I was thinking, "Oh, this is the life I was meant to live!" I had been a little misplaced buckaroo, living out my early years in San Francisco, playing cowboys and Indians on sidewalks. Agnes Morley, some 70 years before, was the cowgirl I might have been, if not for the fact that I lived in the wrong time and place.

Agnes was born in New Mexico in 1874. She tells of her life on the family ranch near Datil, and what a life it was. Outlaws and six-shooters and horses and bears. Stage coaches and log cabins and cattle and long, lonesome trails. Here are a few of the chapter titles from the book, just to give you the flavor: While Clay Allison Shot Up the Town; A Fatherless Swiss Family Robinson; Cows Were Our Universe; Twelve Pupils: From Six to Six-Shooter; and Cowpuncher on a Sidesaddle.

In these modern days when children aren't allowed to play outside unsupervised, it just livened me up to read the chapter called "Put a Kid on a Horse," which tells of communication between far-flung ranches in the days before telephones. If a message or some letters or most anything else needed to be delivered over the next mountain, these early ranchers did, indeed, put a kid on a horse to deliver what needed to be sent. Starting when she was 11-years old, Agnes and her younger brother, Ray, made a twenty-mile round trip singly or together every week to Baldwin's (later Datil) to carry the mail bag to and from their ranch.

Much later, Agnes was driving a wagon to the town and back, all alone. Here is what happened:

Once, when I had stopped to 'noon' on a trip to town and my team was feeding, I climbed back into the high seat of the wagon and picked up a book [CZ note: She's a cowgirl and she loves to read, no wonder she's my heroine!]. I did not hear the silent footfall of a horse and was startled when one of the team snorted. I looked up to see a horseman beside the wagon. He was a Mexican, swarthy and begrimed. He looked at me curiously. 

'You all alone?' he asked in his own tongue. I told him I was. 

I could read puzzlement in his face. Mexican girls did not go about alone, even in our country. 

'Why you all alone?' he persisted.

          'Have to,' I told him.

This seemed to puzzle him all the more. He sat looking at me intently. 

'You not afraid?' he asked finally. 

          'No.'

'Why you not afraid?'

I reached under the edge of the Navajo blanket that covered the sea and pulled out my little thirty-two.

He nodded approvingly. 

'Bueno,' he said, and rode on.

If you can find a copy of this book (which is still being reprinted), I would highly recommend that you spend some time with it, dreaming about old-time New Mexico and the life that should have been mine.

No life for a cowgirl!

Librarian Needs Spelling Lessons*

Here is a picture of the storm that was taken while I could still open the front door

I was sitting out on the porch, watching a big monsoon rainstorm come in over the city in the distance. From time to time, strange white column-shaped clouds would form and reach down to the ground. I was watching these through the binoculars and wondering if they could possibly be tornadoes, when my neighbor pulled into his driveway and came over to the gate to tell me that he had just seen a tornado touch down when on his way home.

No, no, no. We moved far from Tornado Alley when we came to Las Cruces from Clovis, my mind protested. Couldn't possibly be a tornado. Could it?

Now, I have been reading Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, a book about a young wizard who doesn't yet understand how to control his powers; moreover, he uses them out of pride, and just naturally gets into trouble. Well, stay tuned for a real life lesson, right from the pages of Earthsea.

Knowing how much we needed rain, and idly thinking wouldn't it be great if I could cast a weatherbringer spell and summon some of that moisture over here, I tried holding my arms up in that classic wizard pose--but not too high, as the neighbors here are already worried about the-lady-who-drinks-wine-while-watching-the-sunset, and that nut who is always scampering around in her nightie, taking pictures of the sunrise. So, I got my arms just a teeny bit raised (while remaining seated in my rocking chair, of course) and tried to make some sparks shoot out of my fingers toward the distant storm.

You're not going to believe this, but it worked! The storm veered in my direction, and there I was out dancing in the rain, feeling like a goddess, and eating a few pieces of hail for good measure. Suddenly, the rains and winds and the general violence quotient strengthened about tenfold, and I realized it was time to grab my book and my binoculars and get inside before I blew away.

I could hardly open the door, but managed to take this one photo before things got way out of hand.

Tomorrow: A freight train passes through, and what is that awful hissing?

***

*Thanks to Auntie Bucksnort for the inspiration for this post title

Heatherstone Curtains Revisited

The master bedroom as seen from the road: Not a lot of privacy

I love having a blog. Where else can I talk about my new curtains? It is somewhat possible that you might be mildly interested; and it is entirely probable that you could care less. I'm not offended if you should choose to leave right now, but I do hope you come back later after I've gotten a few domestic-type posts published over the rest of the week.

Here's the curtain situation: Our new-old adobe house, although set away from other houses, is quite visible from a couple of roads. At first I had to keep up the ugly dark brown drapes that were here just to give us some privacy. But I was slowly thinking about a solution and looking around for inspiration. Because I am a Yankee and frugal at heart, I figured that I was going to have to do some creative recycling--in other words, this project would have to cost nothing at all.

Longtime readers (that's a joke) will recall that I have posted before about Heatherstone curtains--the kind that my used-to-be-husband used to tease me about. I hung some of those curtains up in the new bedroom and found that they were all at least two feet too short. They were plain, unadorned muslin and just not the sort of thing one should hang in the colorful southwest.

It just so happened that I was reading The Gentle Art of Domesticity, by Jane Brocket, a book that I highly recommend. Jane has a way with color and with piecing and quilting fabrics that would encourage anyone to try their hand at it. I looked at the too-short, too-plain muslin curtains, just hanging there and looking sad. I thought about the scraps of favorite and very colorful fabric that I had bagged up to take to the local senior center for some nice quilter to use. And that was my aha! moment.

The results: Old curtains were recycled, favorite fabrics were incorporated, curtains were lengthened, the room is much more colorful, and there is privacy, at last. And those longtime readers might recognize bits of old Heatherstone curtains, living a new life in an old adobe.

And, yes, the curtains on one wall feature some different colors and inset fabrics than the curtains on the other wall: More color! More fun!

Books Read in 2010

Abbey: Fire on the mountain

Arnosky: Watching desert wildlife

Beaton: Death of a cad

Beaton: Death of a dustman

Berg: Open house

Bradley: Imperial cruise; a secret history of empire and war (read a review from the New York Times)

Brocket: The gentle art of domesticity

Bryson: A short history of nearly everything

Burkett, Douglas W.: Amphibians and Reptiles of White Sands Missile Range; Field guide 2008

Cabeza de Baca: We fed them cactus

Carroll: From the teeth of angels

Carroll: The ghost in love

Chen: A year in Upper Felicity; life in a Chinese village during the Cultural Revolution

Childs: The secret knowledge of water

Cleaveland: No life for a lady

Cunkle: Kokopelli's cook book

Delany: In the shadow of the glacier

Delany: Winter of secrets

Doctorow: Homer & Langley

Evanovich: Fearless fourteen

Evanovich: Finger lickin' fifteen

Evans: Promise me

Flowers: A science odyssey; 100 years of discovery

Goudge: The golden skylark and other stories

Grimes: The Black Cat

Grimes: Dust

Grimes: The Old Wine Shades

Grimes: The Winds of Change

Hazen-Hammond: Only in Santa Fe

Hessler: Oracle bones; a journey between China's past and present

Hunner: Las Cruces

Jensen: The sisters from Hardscrabble Bay

Krumgold: ... And now Miguel

Le Guin: The farthest shore

Le Guin: The other wind

Le Guin: Tales from Earthsea

Le Guin: Tehanu

Le Guin: The tombs of Atuan

Le Guin: A wizard of Earthsea

Lin-Liu: Serve the people; a stir-fried journey through China

Livesey: Eva moves the furniture

MacDonald: Finding footprints; tracking the path of scientific discovery

MacLeod: Something in the water

MacLeod: Vane pursuit

Marcus: Golden legacy; how Golden Books won children's hearts, changed publishing forever, and became an American icon along the way

McCall Smith: The careful use of compliments (Isabel Dalhousie Novel, No.4)

McCall Smith: The comforts of a muddy Saturday (Isabel Dalhousie Novel, No.5)

McCall Smith: Finer points of sausage dogs (Portuguese Irregular Verbs, No. 2)

McCall Smith: Friends, lovers, chocolate (Sunday Philosophy Club/Isabel Dalhousie Novel, No. 2)

McCall Smith: La's orchestra saves the world

McCall Smith: The right attitude to rain (Isabel Dalhousie Novel, No. 3)

McCall Smith: The unbearable lightness of scones (44 Scotland Street Series)

Menzies: 1421; the year China discovered America (you will find interesting discussions of the book here and here)

Moore: Cricket in the web; the 1949 unsolved murder that unraveled politics in New Mexico

Moore: Dirty job*

Moore: Island of the sequined love nun

Moore: Practical demonkeeping

Moore: The risk of infidelity index

Moore: The stupidest angel

New Mexico farms and ranches: Folks and fixin's

New Mexico Magazine's More of the best from New Mexico kitchens

Niffenegger: Her fearful symmetry

Pillsbury: Roots in adobe

Pillsbury: Star over adobe

Powell: Julie & Julia

Priestley: Journeys of faith; the story of Preacher and Edith Lewis

Quinn: Dog on it

Quinn: Thereby hangs a tail

Rendell: Not in the flesh

Richardson: Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast

Richardson: Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast pillow book

Seton: Green darkness

Seton: Katherine

Seton: The turquoise

Siddons: Colony

Siddons: Downtown

Siddons: Hill towns

Siddons: Islands

Siddons: Off season

Siddons: Sweetwater Creek

Taylor: The Asey Mayo trio

Taylor: Counter culture; the American coffee shop waitress

Taylor: An Irish country doctor

Taylor: An Irish country village

Tweit: Barren, wild, and worthless; living in the Chihuahuan Desert

van de Wetering: Outsider in Amsterdam

Walsh: An Irish country childhood

Walsh: It's all too much; an easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff

West: Mermaids in the basement

Winspear: Messenger of truth

Winspear: Pardonable lies

*****

*Buck, this is the book for you. It may be perfect for you, too, Pat. Read it and tell me if you think that Mary would like it.

Something Nice for Readers

I am forever compiling little databases of book series by date of publication so that I can read about my favorite characters in chronological order. Just now I discovered that there is an online wiki that you can use and add to that does the same thing, but in a much broader and more spectacular way because so many people can contribute to it.

You may already know about this database, but just in case you don't, please check out The Internet Book Database of Fiction. It's a place to discuss your favorite books and to find more that you would like to read. Of great interest to me, of course, is the Series List, but there are many other ways to explore books (by author, genre, etc.).

Crazy Ladies

There is so much good in a garden, if you don't count what happened to Adam and Eve. ~Michael Lee West; Crazy Ladies

The air is full of strange light, like a photograph negative. ~Michael Lee West; Crazy Ladies

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I began reading Crazy Ladies--perhaps a comic romp through a Southern town? There was that quote on the cover, however, that indicated that the book was, among other things, "puzzling."

Indeed.

The characters were wonderfully drawn, all three generations of them. I wanted more, and was happy to discover that there is another book about these women (Mad Girls in Love), with all their "grace and outrageous flair." (Shelfari).

I love Southern literature--everyone is just a little (or a lot) off. From Bailey White to Fannie Flagg to James Lee Burke--I just can't get enough of those Southern authors.

A question to you: Do you have a favorite Southern author or a particular book that you can recommend?

Olive Kittredge

Olive Kittredge, by Elizabeth Strout. Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Oh, dear. This book is not always pleasant, but it tells some truths about life and the way people really are.

I read a book review in which the reader/writer said that she didn't like the book because she didn't like Olive. I thought, exactly--the things we don't like about Olive are just the kind of things that people wouldn't like about me if they only knew!

Revealed through a series of short stories, different truths about Olive begin to pile up. You might decide that your first impression was wrong, then you will be introduced to and possibly confused by yet another facet of this woman. You might decide you don't know what to think about her since she is, by turns, a person you want to sympathize with and someone you want to shake; someone you might trust with your secrets and someone you might not want to be in the same room with.

Here, laid out before you (like starfishes drying above the tide line), are all the arguments showing that a person has many facets and can only partially be known by any other single person. You might just have to admit some truths about life in general and about yours, specifically. It's that kind of book. But oh, dear, not pleasant reading. Just reading that keeps you up at night. As some of Olive's Maine coast neighbors might say, in that terse way of theirs: Might make you laugh. Might make you cry.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. They could be spoilers if I told you when and in what circumstances they appear, but I like how they resonate:

Didn’t plan on things working out like this.

But people endure things.

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.