Deeds & Words

US Senator Amy Krobushar, the junior/senior/only senator from Minnesota, was grinning, as the saying goes, from ear to ear on the Rachel Maddow show tonight. Her first words to the guest host–”I can’t believe Rachel’s not here to see this!”

Since November, while the contest between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norman Coleman dragged on, Krobushar has been an occassional guest on Maddow’s show. Each time, Rachel would ask her when she thought this would be resolved. The first time, Krobushar said something like, “When the ice breaks up.” The next time she had another answer–I don’t know what it was. The last time I saw her (until tonight) she was looking a little tired and she said, “This is my last answer. I’m going to say, when the corn is knee-high on the Fourth of July. And if this isn’t over by then, I’m out of kitschy sayings, and I’m going to be mad.”

Well, she just about called it. Today the Minnesota Supreme Court, by a ruling of 5-0 declared Al Franken the winner of the senatorial election. Their conclusion was elegant, detailed, and specific, kind of like this; “Mr Franken got the majority of the legal votes. He won.” Never ones to mince words, those Minnesotans.

The weird thing about the spot on Rachel Maddow was that I was hugely impressed with Amy Krobushar–like maybe she’s someone to watch in 2016? Or maybe it was just that she was relieved and happy, and couldn’t keep it off her face.

On Reading the Leaves, Terry Weyna issued this challenge: Take no more than 15 minutes to write down 15 books that have most influenced your thinking; that you refer to in your own writing, conversation or reflection. (Terry changed the idea slightly from the blog where she found it, A Commonplace Blog.)

Here’s my list. To be fair, it could change tomorrow, but if it did, a lot of these names would still show up. They are in approximate alphabetical order, not in order importance. I don’t think I could rank them in order of importance, anyway.

After I came up with them, I started thinking about what they did for me. Several of them changed my understanding of what a writer is/does. Some gave me direction in areas I was struggling with, like Christianity or feminism. Some do nothing more than fill me with awe.

Aegypt: John Crowley—Still not sure why this book holds onto me, when Crowley has written better books. It’s something about the full-moon party at the Blackberry River, what happens to Pierce after, that has burrowed into my mind and will not let go.

American Gods; Neil Gaiman. Belief and sacrifice. Honor and deception. Gods and con artists. Death. Need I say more?

The Gnostic Gospels; Elaine Pagels—Pagels is a bible scholar and this was the book that talked about the scriptures that got left out of the Christian bible. For the first time I started thinking of the bible as an anthology assembled by a committee with a definitive point of view and agenda and less as a cosmic “given.”

Jane Eyre; Charlotte Bronte—how to be a rebel. Plus, remember that awe thing? Some of her writing here is simply amazing. A hundred fifty years later and I hear a woman’s voice in my head, speaking those words, and they are just as valid now.

The Least Worst Place; Karen Greenberg—the struggles of the decent men and women who were ordered to prepare Guantanamo Bay for prisoners in 2002. The book is non-fiction. It gave me insight into just how serious true corruption is. Let’s hope I never forget that.

Left Hand of Darkness; Ursula K LeGuin—Lessons about tolerance, sex roles and anthropology in a cracking good story.

Little, Big: John Crowley– This is, simply, the Great American Fantasy Novel.

Lord of the Rings; JRR Tolkien—these books were a refuge for me as a teenage (of course) and they taught me about language.

Pride and Prejudice; Jane Austen—how to use the simplest and most mundane occurrences in a daily life to tell a good story, and the truth.

Sandman; Neil Gaiman. I came to Sandman decades late. Here again, another way to tell a kind of story. It doesn’t always have to be words. Besides, how can you not love the Endless?

Time Traders, Andre Norton. This book made me know that I could write books with adventure in them even if I was a girl.

The Translator; John Crowley. Awe and wonder. In the middle of his long, meandering series that started with Aegypt, Crowley took a break to write this. It’s as if everything he was struggling with in the other series suddenly distilled into one glass’s worth of pure, crystalline spirit.

Villette; Charlotte Bronte—ditto Jane Eyre. My sixteenth book, if I could have had one, would be a biography of Bronte called Unquiet Soul.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: Lee Ly Hayslip—memoir of a Vietnamese girl growing up in a rural village during the American-Vietnamese war. For the first time, ever, I began to understand why we could not have won that conflict.

A Wrinkle in Time; Madeline L’Engle—Later in life, I read some of her adult novels. This is the one I first remember a teacher reading to me. This is the book where I made the connection to the conscious power of words to carry us away.

There are three non-fiction books on the list. That’s three more than I expected.

Are you ready to try this yourself? Fifteen books in fifteen minutes. Go!

So you know it’s going to be from the Amazing Disappearing Governor. Because, really, who else?

I started to put just the emphasized words (emphasis mine) because they are so strange, almost koan-like, but that didn’t seem fair, so I included the entire paragraph. It makes everything so much . . . clearer.

“But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and don’ts, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.”

Plainly the man was upset and rambling, but even so, I don’t what is scarier; the “the biggest self of self is indeed self” bit, or the view of God’s law, not as a pathway to help us deal better with each other, to find the best parts of ourselves, the angels of our better natures, so to speak, and make the world better; but a series of security protocols designed to wall us in a protect us from the dark ravening urges.

This concept explains a lot.

(Update/Letdown/Spoiler Alert: He was just having an affair, the big idiot.)

I put on my Facebook page that I was loving the unfolding saga of the Mysterious Disappearing Governor of South Carolina. I mean, now that we know he’s alive and well, what’s not to love?

(Well, see the first line of this post. Other than that. . .)

Governor Mark Sanford had a difficult legislative session. His Republican-majority legislature (and he’s Republican) over-rode ten—count ‘em, ten—vetoes of his, including the ones to reject federal stimulus dollars despite the fact that his state had, at the time, the highest unemployment rate in the nation. A teenage girl beat him in court, suing him over his plan to turn back ARRA money meant to refurbish sub-standard school buildings. After this taxing period—in the south, is it bad to be beaten by a girl?—he needed some time to “recharge,” according to his staff, so he went away.

He told his wife that he needed “some space” because he had to “write something,” and he drove off the Thursday before Father’s Day in a black government-issue SUV. His government-issue cell phone and his personal cell phone were turned off, although someone got a signal hit from a repeater tower near Atlanta Georgia, so I guess his phone was on then. On Monday, when people started asking where the governor was, his staff said he was okay but they hadn’t really talked to him. Then the story leaked, and the rest, as they say. . . was mystery.

Late Monday afternoon his staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Someone else reported that the black SUV had been found in a airport parking lot. His staff clung tenaciously to the Appalachian Trail story.

On Wednesday, when the governor flew back, he said he had been in Argentina, saying that Buenos Aires was “a beautiful city” and that he’d spent some time “driving along the coast.” The South Carolina newspaper The State observed that a scenic drive along the Argentina coast could be frustrating since there is no coast highway.

The governor also tossed his staffers to the wolves without a second’s hesitation, saying he didn’t know why they’d said he was hiking the trail. (Could it be because you didn’t bother to give them a decent cover story before you Judge-Cratered, you ignoramus?)

So, he planned to go hiking, decided at the last minute to go to Argentina—how convenient that he had his passport—and, once in Argentina, drove along an imaginary scenic road, missing Father’s Day with his four sons who supposedly mean the world to him.

Imagine what a great story is could have been lurking behind the lame lies in this story. An eccentric governor who ditches his security team to go walkabout, a long-suffering wife who’s. . .maybe not so suffering? Wouldn’t that make a great novel?

It would, and it has, or at least a great character in some novels. Carl Hiaisson’s grimly comic weird-Florida books have this reclusive, gallant whack-job who periodically comes out of the ‘glades to help the protagonists and slap around the bad guys. He lives in a decommissioned lighthouse, I think. Periodically, a beautiful, stylishly dressed woman in a 4-wheel drive vehicle with State House plates visits him. He is a retired governor—or maybe a governor who just went walkabout and never came back.

I know he shows up in Skinny Dip and maybe in Sick Puppy. I’m sure there is a book devoted to him and his story, but I don’t know which one it is. I invite you to explore.

Now that we know what Governor Sanford was really up to, it makes Hiaisson’s books even more attractive by comparison. Hiaisson has seen the future, and found a way to make it much less tawdry.

My friend Lillian met me in Montgomery Village yesterday. Our plan was to attend a book event at Copperfield’s. By “book event” I assumed some discussion, some signing, etc. When I got there early and read the store’s white-board, they called it a Meet and Greet. But more later.

We had lunch at the Sea Thai Bistro. This restaurant moved into the space the East West Café used to be in. I got there first and went inside—whoa, complete décor change. The soothing musical babble of the rustic fountain outside the door should have been my first clue. They have painted the interior a deep red and have dark wood tables and chairs, covered with white tablecloths. On the walls they have some lattice designs made from painted white wood and artificial acorns, pears, pine boughs. I’m not sure the lattice designs completely work but the dark wood and dark walls create a sense of “otherness” and tranquility that is very effective.

We had a wonderful server, who was personable, funny, and attentive without hovering. Lillian ordered the salmon curry with a bowl of seafood soup with shrimp as a starter. My attention had been snagged by the red pumpkin chicken curry, so I ordered that, and the spicy coconut soup.

This soup was perfect. It epitomized the mystery of Thai cooking, hitting every taste-bud colony on my tongue. Sweet/hot, sour/savory. The chewiness of the baby mushrooms and the pop of the yellow cherry tomato halves provided a nice contrast to the creaminess of the broth.
Lillian’s broth was rich red in color (nearly matching the maroon walls), with several plump glistening shrimp, some cucumber slices, bay leaf, tomato and numerous other spices. She said the shrimp had just enough time to soak up the flavors.

She gave her salmon dish rave reviews and I must say it looked wonderful. My pumpkin curry was very good, but I have to confess, the salmon looked better (and frankly, after you’ve had the perfect soup, anything would be a bit of a let-down).

This is a pricey place. I wouldn’t go there every week, but for a special occasion I recommend it highly. You could also go less expensive by ordering soup and salad or soup and an appetizer.

For dessert, we each had a Thai iced tea. These came in tall, tall glasses, the liquid itself a rich reddish-orange color. Their iced tea is excellent, not too sweet. This was the perfect, indulgent ending to the meal.

After lunch we walked over to Copperfield’s and browsed until 1:30, when Anne Hill showed up for the “meet and greet.” Anne Hill is a Sonoma County writer/blogger who does dream work. She contributes to Huffington Post, and hosts local dream events. She has written a short book—maybe it’s a booklet—on nightmares called “When Dreams Go Bad.” Check out her stuff on www.annehill.org. Anne has a great smile and welcoming manner. We discussed dreams and her dream pouches, stuffed with herbs she has either grown herself or wild-crafted.

Anne also has a blog called Blog o’Gnosis which transcends dreams and is interesting reading. She reminds me somewhat of Carolyn Casey. She’s thought-provoking. Check out the website and the blog.

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?
Brian Fies
Abrams Comicarts, 2009

“. . . and then, without even meaning to, they built it.”

Full disclosure: I know Brian Fies and I consider him a friend. My copy of this book is already personalized and has a sketch of the Cosmic Kid at the bottom of the page.

Having said that, I still think that Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow is a winner, a deep, sweet meditation on America’s conflicted loved affair with science and space.

The book begins with the 1939 World’s Fair, and each subsequent chapter covers a decade. We meet Buddy and his Pop on their way to the fair, and see the vast, optimistic, post-Depression worlds of the future through Buddy’s eyes. Buddy and Pop do not age in real time, and the phases of human development match the phases of technological advancement as the book progresses.

While Fies tells us the smaller, personal story of Buddy’s growing up, he uses Buddy’s favorite comic book, Amazing Space Adventures, to show us what is happening in society. The escapades of Commander Cap Crater and the Cosmic Kid parallel Buddy’s relationship with his father, and it is in these pages the Fies lets his subversive sense of humor roam. Crater faces giant robots, mutated prairie dogs, and a shrinking-ray in his quests to save the world, while the arch-villain spouts the purplest of comic-book prose. I don’t know if Fies read comics as a kid, but that is the most reasonable explanation for his loving detail in these pages, and his firm grasp of the stylistic changes through the decades.

We see Buddy waiting through World War II for his dad’s return; confronting the H-bomb paranoia of the fifties; the sporting-event competition of the sixties space race and the disillusionment of the seventies. The book could have ended there; Buddy, a young adult, still loving science, but feeling cynical and betrayed. This isn’t Fies’s style. He makes a quantum leap at the ending of the book, pointing out that tiny, everyday choices build the world of tomorrow, in ways the pioneers and visionaries of the fifties and sixties would never have imagined. The world of tomorrow didn’t abandon or betray us. It just doesn’t look exactly like we expected it to.

Fies weaves together every narrative element of a graphic novel in service to his parable. His color palette is deliberately chosen to create a sense of each decade. The depiction of Buddy and Pop is deceptively simple and you might not realize on first read just how fine an artist he is. Once you’ve read it, go back through and linger on the images and the composition.

Since this is, ultimately, a book about a boy and his dad, I shouldn’t be too surprised that Buddy’s mother appears nowhere on these pages. Still, it left me with that feeling you have when you’re walking down a flight of stairs and you step out, thinking you’ve reached the last step—only you hadn’t. The feminine principle is represented, and quite ably, by a character in Amazing Space Adventures, named Mooney. “Policewoman Mooney,” as she is introduced to us, functions somewhat as a mother-figure for Buddy’s alter-ego Cosmic Kid, and more as the voice of practicality and reason. Mooney points out that the giant robot, which runs on treads, could probably be quite easily tripped, only to be pooh-poohed by her clueless male boss. When the heroes go to confront an unknown danger in the mountains, she is the only one who thinks to bring a firearm.

The feminine is also acknowledged in the last chapter of the book, with Buddy’s daughter.

As an object, the book itself is beautiful. It’s hardback, with a die-cut wrap-around dust-over that I can’t describe adequately. Suffice it to say that the neighborhood of the past embraces the world of tomorrow. Inside, the pages of Buddy’s story are on glossy paper, while his comic is printed on a high-quality paper that has the look and feel of newsprint. It recreates that sense memory of the old, cheap comics some of us grew up with, without leaving ink on your fingers.

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow is thoughtful, touching, sad, hopeful, funny, deeply personal and universal. It could be translated into any language and still resonate with those audiences, because at its heart it’s about a father and son. There are some emotions that are difficult to depict in art. Surprisingly, they tend to be the good ones; love, joy enthusiasm. Clearly almost anyone can depict terror or rage in prose or pictures. Fies manages, at several points in this book, to capture enthusiasm. I’m impressed by that. (I mean, it’s hard enough to maintain in real life, let alone in a book).

This may not be the summer beach-book you’re looking for. It’s a great book to share with your dad, or you kids, or your astronomy-geek friends. It’s a book to go back to, dip into, and ponder. It’s a book to treasure.

I joined Facebook. I did it because I wanted to see pics of my friends’ grandchildren. It was so easy, even I could do it without help.

Too easy, I’d have to say.

I decided I would check it once a day, in the evenings.

But then there were all these e-mails and I had to visit all my friends’ pages.

Then I thought maybe I’d write something each evening, just a sentence or two.

That’s how it starts.

UPDATE:

I got a letter from the YWCA today letting me know that at “Wine, Women and Cheese,” they raised over $150,000!

Dead Until Dark
Charlaine Harris
Ace Fantasy/Mystery, 2001

Whatever else I may think of this series, Charlaine Harris gets big points for one of the best titles in the vampire romance/vampire mystery/vampire comedy sub-sub-sub-genre. Maybe it’s just the alliteration, but it works.

Dead Until Dark is the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series. A TV series based on the books is currently playing on HBO under the more boring title True Blood. I must admit that when these books came out I was completely put off by the name Sookie Stackhouse. I still am. I mean, southern, I know, but Sookie? Stackhouse? Really? Still hard to get past, even though I enjoyed most of the book.

Before I read this book I was wondering what tiny scrap of vampire romance/ vampire mystery territory had been left untrampled by Laurel K Hamilton’s (metaphorical) size-twelve waffle-soled boots. It turns out it’s Southern Gothic Humor. Basically, the Sookie Stackhouse debut has two things going for it—High Concept, (“What if vampires were real? And they were just people like us?”), and an engaging, funny, first-person narrator.

The first ingredient was well established by Hamilton, but by setting her book in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisianna, Harris has created a metaphysical St Mary Meade, with Sookie as a telepathic Miss Jane Marple, if Jane Marple were a blond, sexed-up, twenty-something hottie who wears short-shorts and shorter skirts.

As a closeted telepath, Sookie has made herself a recluse. She never progressed beyond high school, because concentrating in a room full of other students was impossible. She doesn’t let herself date because it’s awkward to pretend she doesn’t hear the blatantly sexual thoughts of the men she’s around (blond hottie, remember?) Why she chooses to work in a bar, then, is something of a mystery, but we’ll let it go because it works so well.

When a vampire moves to town, however, Sookie realizes to her relief that she can’t hear his thoughts. Vampire Bill—and here’s another reason the book works; not Rene, not Jean-Michel, not Antoine, Vampire Bill—is attacked by human ne’er-do-wells. Sookie, who has telepathically overheard their scheme, rescues Bill and thus begins their relationship. The availability of synthetic blood and the legal “outing” of vampires generally makes them more like citizens and slightly less like predators. It’s like adopting a tiger cub because it’s so cute. This, we know, is the major thrill of the vampire romance; the exciting thought that your lover may lose control and kill you. Thrilling, no?

Because it is so gosh-darn thrilling, there are many “fang-bangers,” or humans who let vampires feed off of them just for the extreme thrill of it. In Bon Temps, we quickly realize, somebody is not happy about that, as two local fang-banger women are soon found dead.

Danger mounts for Sookie as we meet other vampires who just aren’t as. . . well, let’s say socialized as Bill, and the body count continues to climb. At the same time things heat up between Sookie and Bill in the best bodice-ripper tradition.

The plot itself is fairly predictable with lots of foundation-laying for future books. About three-fourths of the way through I suddenly thought, “Oh, no! Don’t let that person be the murderer! I really like them!” Alas for me.

Sookie’s convincing, homegrown voice and the cast of quirky characters, including a cameo from an undead celebrity, keep the book chugging even if the tale did start to go flat about two-thirds of the way through. I also liked Sookie’s observations about telepathy—some people’s thought are chaotic and she often can’t track them in a linear fashion.

The book is least exciting when it’s following the vampire stuff. Vampire bars, vampire bureaucracy, the tedious—and spurious—vampire Code of Etiquette, the uneasy status of humans—meals on legs? Walking decanters?—the sense that you could be ruthlessly passed around by stronger beings who can Do What They Will With You (oooh! Guilty shiver of pleasure!) now plays more like a buck-ninety-eight Marquis de Sade knockoff than anything dangerous or new. Because it’s obvious where the series is headed, I probably won’t read any of the later books. Dead Until Dark is best when Harris leaves behind the vamp-trappings and delves into southern mythos, as in this golden scene where Bill addresses the local Civil War history group, telling them about their ancestors:

“An ancient man in the first row raised his hand.
‘Sir, by any chance did you know my great-grandfather, Tolliver Humphries?’
‘Yes,’ Bill said after a moment. His face was unreadable. ‘Tolliver was my friend.’
Just for a moment there, there was something so tragic in his voice that I had to close my eyes.” (CH,123)

It is bits like that that kept me reading Dead Until Dark until way past dark.

I’m being a curmudgeon today.

Dictionary.com gives the following as one definition of decadence: “unrestrained or excessive self-indulgence.” I bring this up because periodically things emerge in popular culture that scream, “Decadent! We’re decadent! Look!”

One of these is gourmet dog food.

I mean, I get that our relationships with our dogs are already seriously out of control. We breed them down to tiny sizes so they could be fashion accessories. We dress them up in human clothes. We feed them human food from human utensils and wonder why canines are getting the same kind of systemic diseases humans get, like diabetes and liver problems.

But now we have gourmet dogfood.

For a while we’ve had a brand of catfood that advertises as if it’s gourmet; the spokes-cat is a white longhair with a pushed-in face, lounging on designer furniture, and the food is served in a crystal parfait dish, but it’s still just catfood. That’s an ad.

There’s a specialty dogfood out with Rachel Ray’s name on it, as if she somehow “designed” it. And today I saw another ad for “Chef Michael’s Dog Food.” Gourmet dog food. Next there will be a reality show on the Food Network; America’s Next Doggie Gourmet.

I don’t have a problem with designer dog food like Beneful, IAMS or Science Diet. We have corrupted dogs’ natural digestive systems so badly with our desire to make them just like us that those are probably necessary. They may be “veterinarian designed,” but they aren’t “culinary-academy chef designed.”

Our dogs at home ate canned food, usually a midrange brand, not necessarily the cheapest. Sometimes they got table scraps added to the bowl. They were never fed from the table. Sometimes they would get a treat when they were hanging out with us in the backyard. Our German Shepherd lived to be nine, and Matilda, my parents’ Aussie shepherd, was eleven when she died. These dogs didn’t need a fancy kind of food to know they were loved. Their humans walked with them, threw the stick for them, and in Matilda’s case, let her herd us like the sheep we probably were to her. Up in canine heaven, do those two dogs weep because no one ever gave them Rachel Ray dogfood? I have no way of knowing for sure, but somehow, I doubt it.