april 2014 books.

Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
This is a graphic memoir of a Persian woman's life growing up during the Islamic Revolution and then the Iran-Iraq war. A small child when the revolution happens, she is sent to Europe during the war. Her parents want to get her out of the war zone and allow her to grow up a liberated woman. Being alone in a foreign land comes with its own hardships.

My knowledge of Iran is pretty nil. This book had some history in it - ancient history, and also events leading up to the revolution and the overthrow of the Shah - plus we see more recent events through Marjane's eyes as they occur. From this and another book I read a while back, Reading Lolita in Tehran, I can't imagine going from a fairly liberal society to one that restricts people so harshly. And of course, the rules becamse far stricter on women. There is a scene in the book where Marjane, as an adult student completely covered from head to toe, is running to catch her bus. Some guards call her down because her running makes her butt wiggle. Angry from missing her bus, she yells at them to stop looking at her butt, then.

I guess what's amazing is that life continues, no matter what. She goes to school, she has friends, there are parties even though drinking is illegal.

My Name is Red
Orhan Pamuk
This was really lovely and amazing, and I'm probably going to do a very bad job of trying to explain it.

Just in terms of the reading experience, it was a bit hard to follow at first. The point of view switches around by chapter, and sometimes the narrator is rather unorthodox - a corpse, a fake gold coin, a picture of a tree (not a tree, a picture of a tree). The action centers around a group of miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire who work for the Sultan. The pictures are extremely intricate, and it is considered an honor for a master miniaturist to go blind from working so long on such tiny pictures. Since the pictures are copied, a master should be able to paint without being able to see, as he is now painting from memory. The point of art is not to reproduce reality, but to attempt to show what God sees.

Some of the masters just end up blinding themselves, which seems like cheating, but I guess it's on their own heads.

It seems to be cheating that these guys are painting anything at all. Art is a tricky thing in Islam, and it seems like the only reason they are allowed to do this job is because they are illustrating stories, often religious ones. Of course, there is plenty of black market art (lots of dirty pictures). Even this sanctioned art is all kept locked up in the palace.

The miniaturists are working on a book for the Sultan that is being kept secret because it is possibly immoral, because it is illustrating anything. In fact, the pictures were drawn first, and a writer has been hired to make up stories to go with them. This is new and crazy and reeks of Western influence, therefore it's probably evil. The plot of the book revolves around someone who is murdering those who are working on the book. There is particular obsession with portraits, which many see as evil as they could be idols. Previously, people in pictures had been drawn as archetypes - an villain, a soldier, a pretty lady, a king. But with a portrait, it is an individual. You could see the portrait and then recognize the person in a crowd.

I am sure that I missed/misunderstood a lot in this book, but it was a fascinating to see how cultural assumptions can become like facts. I never thought about whether the subject of a painting should be in the center and what that meant. I knew Islam had restrictions about portraying the prophet, but apparently there are fundamentalist interpretations that forbid painting completely. The book takes place just after a golden era of Islamic art. There are long discussions about style and how having a style is vanity. The artist is supposed to be anonymous. The miniaturists' work basically amounts to copying art done by previous masters.

Did that make any sense? I'm sorry, but it's hard to explain God and Art at the same time. Maybe I should've spoken from the point of view of a picture of a tree.

The Bellarosa Connection
Saul Bellow
This was a short little book about a guy who was saved from a concentration camp by a benevolent and anonymous helper, who turns out to be a successful American Jew. Now a moderately successful businessman in America, he wants to thank his savior. However, his benefactor wants nothing to do with him and won't even consent to have his hand shaken. He doesn't want to be reminded of it at all. The narrator, a third Jew, also American, talks about how he thinks it is a form of guilt or shame - the Jews who did not have to survive the Holocaust felt guilty for being in that position. There is a lot of discussion of memory, and how the only escape from regret is forgetting, and sometimes the only way to forget is to die.

I'm not sure this book had a point.

The Husband's Secret
Liane Moriarty
Our book club selection this month was okay. Plotwise, there was a lot of romance and mystery and typical thriller elements, but unlike some of the other thriller books we've read, there was some substance to it. Mostly, it was an exploration of what happens to long-lasting relationships in the kinds of circumstances that come up in thriller novels. The conclusion I got from it is how little we really know each other. We think we know each other completely, and so we don't talk or listen to each other, and therefore the person we think we know and the person that exists continue to grow farther and farther apart. And then we wake up one day and realize we have no idea who this person is.

Something that I found interesting - this book was very prominently set during Holy Week, that is, the week before Easter. It is centered around a Catholic school and the community of children, parents, and employees. But it was completely secular. There are Easter events at the school, such as a hat parade, but there is no churchy stuff and nothing about the religious significance of Easter. At one point, a character talks about Hell and whether a murderer would be condemned there, but then she stops and thinks, what am I talking about, I'm not that kind of Catholic. No one else in book club found this at all remarkable.

Someone else stepped up to be the Wednesday night moderator, and this month, I handed over the reins. I am not interested in next month's book, so I'm just not going to read it. Fantastic. There are a couple of books coming up that look interesting, so I may read those. Or I may not! Whatever I feel like!

If Not Now, When?
Primo Levi
This book was about Jews during World War II. But wait, it's not what you think it is!

It follows a band of Jewish partisans. I had never heard of partisans of any kind, at least not by that name. Partisans are fighters who are behind the front line, challenging control of an area that has ostensibly already been conquered. The many resistance movements during the war could count as partisan forces.

The book follows Mendel, a Russian Jew who was an artillery man in the Russian Army before being cut off from the rest of his regiment. He lives in the woods until he meets another stranded soldier. Together they wander, and their duo groups into a community as they pick up people along the way. They live with a community of Jews living in an abandoned monastery, then join up with a series of partisan bands. They cause mischief for the Germans, walk a lot, and are cold and hungry most of the time.

What makes their position so tenuous is that they are foreigners everywhere. The Russians and Poles are fighting the Germans, but no one really likes the Jews. Mendel says that after the revolution, you had to choose between being a Russian and a Jew. Nor could you be a Communist and a Zionist. Their aim is to survive the war and then get to Palestine, where they won't be foreigners anymore.

The title is taken from an old rabbinical saying: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?" I'm not sure about the original meaning, but in this form, it was turned into a song that was a sort of battle cry for the partisans. At the end of the war, they become part of the sea of refugees. Only then do they find out about the gas chambers. They seem to come out of it in better shape than those who were in the camps, having retained their humanity throughout. So even when you get to the end of reading a pretty awful tale of woe, you're reminded that this was better than some other guys had it.

picnic.

Last night, every time I opened the fridge, a ball of stress would immediately form in my stomach.

One of our church members owns a Chick-fil-A, and let me tell you, I would recommend a restaurant owner in every church. Every week he donates tea for the cookie hour following the service. And for the church picnic, he donated tea and lemonade, plus cups, utensils, napkins, and plates. It fell to us to pick up the beverage donation yesterday afternoon, and as we drove away, it looked like we had robbed a Chick-fil-A. Except we're not very good at robbery, so we took gallons and gallons of tea, instead of money. We put the drinks in coolers on ice, and when the coolers ran out, we stuffed tea in the fridge. I ended up cooking the baked beans overnight in the crock pot, because I realized if I cooked them any earlier, I wouldn't have any place to put them.

It is no fun for a fridge to give you stress. Fridges should be full of comfort.

By the time we got to the county park at 8:30 this morning, my stress was mostly dissipated, because the planning period was over. For better or worse, we had done what we could, and now things were just going to happen. We unloaded everything - we had surprised ourselves by making it in one trip - and then our helpers started showing up.

I got credit for a lot of today, but I don't feel like I deserve it. Even when the ball of stress was building inside me, logically I knew it would be fine. The congregation is full of people eager to help and accepting of whatever limitations occur. People just rolled up and pitched in, and the work got done when I wasn't even looking. Our proud grill volunteers readied their stations for the meat, proud to be serving the Lord with charcoal and tongs. The tables got set up, and then the food started arriving: salads and cobblers and sandwiches and fruit and brownies for miles.

The weather was beautiful, and everything went on without a hitch. While our grillers worked, we had a service sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets in a soccer field. I took communion, then headed over to the tables to start uncovering all the dishes in preparation for the rush of hungry Episcopalians. By the time I went through the line, some of the choices had been eliminated, but there was still plenty to fill my plate. We sat with our fellows and listened as they congratulated us for a job well done, then talked about other great events they thought we should organize.

Today, my fridge has a half-gallon of lemonade and a dozen cooked burgers and hot dogs, wrapped together in a foil ball and then stuffed into a hamburger bun bag. We had leftover gallons of tea, which we passed out to everyone who was still there at the end of it all. This is one of the things I enjoy about helping out at church functions - you usually get rewarded for your efforts with leftovers, and you never know what you will end up with. Someone took home a package of cheese, another got the rest of the bulk bag of charcoal. Everybody left happy. I got home just in time for my Sunday afternoon nap.

signed up.

My beloved husband, enthusiastic joiner that he is, volunteered us to help with the church picnic. I'm all for pitching in by bringing a plate of deviled eggs, but the job turned into us being in charge of organizing the food for the whole thing. I say "us," but in terms of organizational tasks, one of us is much stronger than the other (hint: it's the engineer, not the poet). So I've been doing all the emailing and strong-arming of more volunteers. He'll help carry and clean up, as long as it doesn't interfere with the other things he volunteered to do that day (read the lesson of the day and be in the band).

We've been members for less than a year, and somehow we are pillars of the dang community.

Luckily, being head of the Food Committee hasn't been too much work. One of my tasks was to set up an online form so that people could sign up to bring food. Not long after doing so, I listened to a conversation among church ladies who talked about how having to sign up for a potluck was just the worst, as the whole point of a potluck being that it's left to fate what you end up with. I absolutely agreed with everything they said. That's the whole spirit of the thing: if everyone shows up with a plate of deviled eggs, so be it! I am prepared to make the best of it.

But I've never organized a picnic before, and the copious notes from the previous years said to make the signup sheet. Supposedly, it would help us gauge how many people were coming. I did try to be leave room for chance by allowing people to sign up for "side dish" or "dessert" without forcing anyone to even say what they were bringing.

However, other church members must've had similar feelings about potluck signups, because only a few bothered to do by the week before showtime. We're supposed to go shopping for the burgers and hot dogs tomorrow, and we really have no idea how many people will be there Sunday. So it may be ten people and two hundred burgers. I am prepared to make the best of that, too.

Today, there were a slew of last-minute volunteers to bring unspecified side dishes and desserts (also, one person is bringing leftover ham). I'm relieved that it won't be just me and Josh, eating two hundred burgers by ourselves in the bounce house. The only thing is that people seem to be signing up pretty evenly for side dishes and desserts. So everyone will have a burger, one deviled egg, and four brownies. We'll make the best of it.

parrot enthusiast.

Back when I first bought my house, I was driving down my street one night, checking out the other houses. I can't remember for sure anymore, but I may not actually have bought the house yet. I think was I under contract at that point, impatiently waiting until the end of the month when all my first time homebuyer dreams would come true. Two houses down from my house was a neatly-kept two-story with a great big window into the living room. It was dark, but there was some kind of dim light source in the room, and I could see the silhouette of a tall perch with a bird. A large bird. Parrot-sized.

I may have squealed.

If I were to be the winner on the Win An Exotic Pet Of Your Choice show, I would surely ask for a parrot. Or a llama! Maybe a wallaby. Most likely, I would start shaking and stammering and yelling out all those animals at once, plus a few more, before fainting dead away. Since the smiling host would be unable to decipher my response of "parlamaby," they would likely just give me a goat. What a stupid game show.

Anyway, I took this brief glimpse of a parrot as a sign that I had made the right choice in buying the house. I mean, these were clearly my people: Parrot Enthusiasts. Or rather, I was an enthusiast, but they had achieved the lofty title of Parrot Owner.

Some of you who thought you knew me well are wondering what I'm even talking about, as you are fairly sure that I have never mentioned any but the regular amount of appreciation for parrots. But it's true! I like birds in general. I didn't even realize that about myself until I happened to notice that my house was littered with bird knick-knacks and pictures. Give me a loaf of bread and a group of ducks and I am happy as, uh, a duck being fed bread. Exotic birds are particularly fun, and brightly colored feathers are just the best.

I had only had one previous encounter with a parrot. Once, I went to a pet shop that had a scarlet macaw set up right in front of the door. I'm sure it really brought in the customers; in fact, that might have been why I went inside. It talked, like something out of a cartoon. It also jumped on my shoulder, which was terrifying and wonderful.

Anyway, I became obsessed with my new parrot neighbor. Similar to the rubber-necking I do every time we go past our very rich neighbors with the llamas, I always looked in that same front window for the parrot as I passed. Usually, I saw an empty room or a kid sitting too close to the TV. I suppose I could've, you know, asked or something, but that would require developing an actual relationship with the neighbors, rather than being on a head-nod-basis only. I began to have doubts that I had seen a parrot at all. It just seemed too crazy. I eventually forgot all about it.

You know where this is going. It would be a really pointless story if I just imagined a parrot because I'm some kind of Parrot Enthusiast. This story is overlong, but it does have a point.

A couple of weeks ago, we were walking the dog around the neighborhood, which, based on my stories, is all I ever do anymore. It was a magnificent day, warm and right off a refreshing rain. The pollen had all been washed away and it seemed as if overnight the plants had all taken a great big drink of water and just popped out of nowhere. Everyone was making good use of the weather by doing yard work (except for us, because yard work - ha!), including the people who I once thought were Parrot Owners. We waved.

And there it was: a scarlet macaw, just sitting on the rail of the front porch. It squawked.

It was really hard to play it cool, as inside my head, it sounded like Beatlemania. Keep it casual, don't stare, just look over there nonchalantly, like it's totally normal for a giant tropical bird to be sitting on the porch of suburban Raleigh.

We really need to make better friends with our neighbors.

neighbor-dogs.

A couple weeks ago, I was walking my pitbull around the neighborhood. We were coming up on the last turn before getting back to our house when we encountered a neighbor-lady and her neighbor-dog walking in the opposite direction. I smiled and waved while holding the leash close to keep Remix walking nicely next to me. The leash, by the way, is always wrapped four or five times around my hand. This serves two purposes: 1.) it's easier to control a muscle beast of dog with a short leash, and 2.) to let her know that I am in control of her, even though she is a muscle beast of dog.

Remix looked at them eagerly, like brand new friends. The neighbor-dog plodded along with its head down, not interested in new friends.

"Watch out around the corner, that pitbull is loose again," the neighbor-lady said.

I had no idea what they were talking about. I've seen two dogs loose in the neighborhood before. One was a St. Bernard, which could in no way be mistaken for a pitbull. It was gambolling joyfully about. The other was some kind of pointer with white, flowing hair. It was named Domingo. I know, because its leash was stuck between the boards of my porch, and I had to consult the tag to call the owners. Now that I think about it, I guess it wasn't loose in the neighborhood at all.

I felt sort of embarrassed about having my pitbull right there, even though it was clearly contained. Anyhow, we continued on our walk and did not meet the loose pitbull.

Last night, Josh and I were walking our pitbull together. We heard a shout and looked up to see a brown mass barrelling toward us, a leash trailing behind it. It looked like a pitbull that was loose, again. His owner-lady came after, way behind, still yelling.

I tightened my hold on the leash and Remix stood prepared, looking interested with her hackles already raised. As he got closer, I realized he was snarling. The brown dog went straight for her, bit her on the head, and did not let go. Remix sort of cowered. Josh grabbed the brown dog by the body and then by the collar, pulling him off. It was over in seconds.

I have seen a scary dogfight. This was not too scary. I'm not even sure that he was trying to fight or if this was his way to meet-and-greet. Establish dominance first? I dunno, I'm not a dog.

"Keep hold of him!" yelled the still-running neighbor-lady. Yeah, because we were just going to let this one go. I got a closer look at the brown dog and decided that he was made of many kinds of dogs, possibly some pitbull. I held Remix several feet away, where she watched with interest, her tail wagging. Her head was slobbery, but she seemed completely unfazed. Thick skull.

"Oh, I am so so sorry. I just let him go, I mean, I just finished walking him," neighbor-lady explained as she finally got close enough to take her dog from Josh. We shrugged and continued on as she yelled at her dog all the way up the driveway.

Later, I found some dried blood and a tiny puncture wound on Remix's head. We praised her with much ham for being submissive and not killing that other dog on the spot, which we were confident she could do. And while it turned out okay for us, because we have a muscle beast, a little dog would not have fared so well, not to mention any of the other little things that might be walking in the neighborhood.

dinner and the tonight show.

During our company holiday party, we have casino games, after which we can take our earned chips and turn them into raffle tickets for various prizes. I always go for the "Dinner and A Show" package. There are better rewards, usually a huge gift card to Amazon or the fanciest new iWhatever. But I find that most people put their tickets into the high dollar items, and maybe a few of them throw a ticket in the smaller buckets just to diversify. I go and throw all my tickets into the dinner/show bucket. Even with my meager winnings, this manages to dissuade others from putting tickets in, as it looks like their chances are rather poor for a prize they are indifferent about.

I am generally indifferent to the actual show, but I like free theater tickets. Besides, free dinner is always worth it.

Anyway, using this strategy, I have won the dinner/show package 3 out of the last 4 years. We saw Spamalot and The Addams Family in years past. This year, the prize was tickets to see Jay Leno on his speaking tour.

I had no idea what to expect. I'm familiar with Jay from the Tonight Show, of course, though I'm not sure if I've ever actually watched an episode.

For the first part of the show, he did a version of his opening monologue from the show, which means cracking jokes about various news items. The jokes were fine, but what bothered me was that the news items were no longer new. He brought up political scandals from years ago. And while the jokes were fine, they were the same lines that were used back when those scandals were current. In fact, I am pretty sure that Jay's writers wrote those jokes for his show, which sorta makes me wonder why people pay to see this guy anyway. Can I have a team of people write jokes for me and then I'll go on tour? I know some funny people, I bet they could come up with some great lines about Reagan. You go far back enough, and your audience won't even remember the relevant scandals, and it will even seem like news. Of course, then you have to explain about things like supply-side economics, the evil empire, and the contras, so it might be more of a comedic history lesson.

After the not-news, he did more of a stand-up routine. I enjoyed this more, even if I wasn't really in the target demographic of old men.

But hey, free show.

Now that I'm done complaining, I'll say what I wish he had done. Jay Leno has been in show business for decades, and I bet he has some stories, fantastic stories about Hollywood parties that have never been told before except at other Hollywood parties. That's what I would liked to have heard. But Jay Leno can do whatever he wants, and he probably does.

yard gargoyle.

I was driving through the country, amusing myself with my own commentary. I was looking specifically for dogwood trees, easy to recognize this time of year with their white flowers. We have a dogwood tree in the backyard. It's a sad and spindly tree, with only a smattering of blossoms on its puny branches. Our dogwood loses the battle for sun up against the oaks and maples. Josh said it was because dogwoods are all scrawny, and I felt it my duty to find all the dogwoods in a two hour drive that were actually quite sturdy, thank you very much.

I found that an awful lot of dogwoods are pretty scrawny. We'll just chalk that up to being able to survive, no matter how dimly, in disadvantageous circumstances. I did find a few that were showing just a dogwood could do, but Josh was reading and I felt pretty stupid pointing at every other white-flowered tree I saw.

Somewhere about three-quarters in, I saw a concrete statue of a rooster. "Chicken statue!" I called out, as if we were playing a game where you get points for finding chicken statues and flowering trees of a certain girth. I noticed then that the statue was perched on top of a lidded cylinder made of cement. Having a similar structure at my own house, I recognized it as the well. What a great idea! A chicken statue on top of the well!

There are a variety of ways to disguise your well, as if you should be ashamed to get free water right out of the ground. I think the city folks out to buy fake wells so they can look like they drink fresh clean water from the spring, but whatever. There are those fake rocks, which, no offense to anyone who might own them, are not fooling anyone. Even before they became popular and instantly recognizable, they were ugly. You'd be better off with the regular old cement cylinder. A neighbor down the street has a wishing well sort of structure around his, which is nice, but a little bit fancy and expensive for my tastes.

But! If you set a statue on top of the well, it would look like a pedestal for the statue. You could even put up a plaque, like it was a piece of art at the museum. Here, I call this one "The Well." It's a metaphor, you probably wouldn't get it.

Josh said he didn't want a chicken statue. Some other kind of statue, then. Last month, I had seen a gargoyle statue at a quirky bar in Chapel Hill It was a dragon-type creature with a raised paw and open mouth. I sighed, because now I really, really wanted a gargoyle, when five seconds before my life had been serene because I hadn't known I could have such a thing. You can never go back to not wanting a gargoyle. You can only obtain one.

And see, now I even have the perfect perch for a gargoyle. I am ready for yard art. Some other neighbors, not the classy wishing well people, have a sea serpent in their yard (yard serpent?). Of course, I really would like to have a yard serpent, but two in the neighborhood would be silly, and if I stole theirs, well, it would be pretty obvious. So we'll just have to up the tacky yard art game. There is a yard art place across the street from the farmer's market that I've always been curious about, so maybe someday soon we'll go have a look at their stock. We may yet drive the fake rock right out of the well-embellishment business.

march 2014 books.

The Sea
John Banville
This was...quiet. A man who is recently widowed returns to the shore where he spent a formative childhood summer. He is supposed to be working on a book about art history, yet he spends his time writing recollections about his wife's illness, his childhood, and his current life.

When I say that this book is quiet, I mean that nothing happens. Something sorta happens at the end, or rather something happened years ago in his childhood and he finally gets around to telling you about it. But mostly it is him, processing his grief. As you read, you figure out just how bad a state he is in. He mentions drinking some, and drops a few details about carrying around a flask, but by the end you find out he's drinking quite a lot. And in the middle of one of his stories is just an angry outburst at his wife for dying and abandoning him this way. I guess that's what you call an unreliable narrator.

Still, the writing is very beautiful. I made myself go slow and appreciate the pictures he was painting, rather than try and skim for the plot. The grief felt very real to me. Still, while I will say that Banville is an excellent writer, I don't think I'll be picking up any more of his books. Too quiet.

We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
You know what I love? A good dystopia. Not only is this book an excellent one, but it predates both Brave New World and 1984, plus probably most of the other dystopias you've ever read. It was predated only by Jack London's The Iron Heel, which I had never heard of until just now, and I definitely want to read. All I know about Jack London are his books about wolves; I had no idea he wrote social commentary.

The book is a record kept by the head engineer of the world's first spaceship, the Integral. It is set a thousand or so years in the future, in a very tightly controlled society made mostly of glass. Everyone's life is scheduled by the Table of Hours, and they all live in glass apartment buildings so that the overlords can keep an eye on them. There are Guardians, which are like secret police, and then the Well-Doer, a robot leader. A giant wall surrounds the populated areas, while nature keeps on with her business outside. Our narrator, D-503, is happy and contented in this world, where everything has structure and is maximally efficient. I really related to his engineering mindset, which leaked into his phrasing, and I could see how such a controlled society would be comforting in a lot of ways.

Ah, but then our hero meets a mysterious lady and falls for her. He begins having dreams and breaking rules. He goes to the doctor, and they tell him that he has developed a soul. It's apparently chronic. The book was pretty funny in its treatment of the ancients (which means us, basically) and how the narrator perceives our lives to have been. They have an election day, which they call the Day of Unanimity. He wonders at the ancients, who used to have elections without knowing what the outcome would be. How foolish! He talks about something called "inspiration," which he describes as a form of epilepsy that went extinct. The OneState offers operations to people who are plagued by dreams and dissatisfaction, promising to remove their "fancy," which is apparently located in the frontal lobe. The OneState is similar to the government in The Handmaid's Tale, in that they say that it is free will that makes people unhappy - having the ability to choose means you can choose wrong.

The mysterious woman who causes the narrator to develop a soul is trying to start a revolution. D-503 doesn't understand - he says that they already had the revolution a long time ago and that's how they were able to live optimally now. She uses the concept of infinite numbers to explain that there is never a last revolution. Heck yeah.

Zamyatin never really wrote anything more. He was a Socialist who quickly became disillusioned with the communist revolution. He was able to get out of the USSR before they started killing artists for not creating Soviet-positive art (in the book, there are creative types, but their topics are assigned), but he apparently stopped writing completely while in exile. We was written to satirize communism, showing the outcome when you elevate the collective we over the individual I. Also, that it doesn't work, because those darn souls always pop up again. The book was first published in English in 1924, being the first work banned by the Soviet censorship bureau. It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988.

The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan is a political blogger who I have read nearly daily since the 2008 campaign. I had never followed politics really at all. I'm still no junkie, but I am relatively aware of what is going on...which is a good feeling! It's nice to know what is going on and be able to say something about it. He writes a lot about the experience of being gay, and through him, I have come to a much better understanding about what being gay is about (hint: pretty much the same thing as being straight is about).

Sullivan considers himself a small-c conservative, but has parted ways with the Republican Party, particularly since the Iraq War (which he initially supported vehemently, but has since decided that it was a really terrible idea). He has also found that he does not have much in common with the party in terms of social issues. The marriage equality movement gives him a lot of credit for starting that push nearly way back in the 80s.

So this book is an exploration of how the American Republican party has gotten away from conservatism by fusing with fundamentalist Christianity. Sullivan says real conservatism is about skepticism - skepticism about the ability of humans to know or do anything, and therefore skepticism about government to know or do anything (seeing as how it's made up of humans). So the best the government can do is basically get out of the way. The government should provide security only, and that security allows maximum freedom of the individuals to pursue happiness as they define it. How he defines security, by the way, includes education and healthcare (reminds me of the line from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about helping people to live healthy, productive lives).

Sullivan's problem with fundamentalism is that it says it knows what is best and how we should all be living, and it claims to come from the highest source. Sullivan is a faithful Catholic, and he often writes movingly about his faith. In reading this book, I realized that he is kind of a mystic. I guess I already knew that from his blog, since he often talks about the mysteries of faith. I definitely relate to the mysteries of faith rather than the certainties, so maybe I'm a small-c conservative, too, and just never knew it.

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This was probably a terrible first book to pick for my first Dostoyevsky, but it's too late now. Wiki says that a lot of his themes here pop up again in his novels. This book, which is actually a very long essay, is an account of his travels through Europe, where he complains about the bourgeoisie. He says that the revolution (meaning the people's revolution, i.e. socialism) is possible in France, but will take time because the society is too individualistic.

Understand me: voluntary, fully-conscious self-sacrifice utterly free of outside constraint, sacrifice of one's entire self for the benefit of all, is in my opinion a sign of the supreme development of individuality, of its supreme power, absolute self-mastery and freedom of will.

He may be right about that. But it seems like you'd need a society that works to develop the individual for any person to get to that point of supreme individuality. It was an interesting read when paired with We. Dostoyevsky was writing in the 1850s, while the revolution in his Russian homeland was still a long ways off. Of course, it's all doomed to fail because it's being put on by stupid humans, who can't do anything right and usually corrupt everything anyway.

The Stranger
Albert Camus
I was really excited to read this, because I liked The Plague so much. In fact, I searched for and bought this book at a used book store, rather than wait for the thrift store gods to favor me.

I did not enjoy this as much. It was stark. A man's mother dies. He gets involved with a friend who beats his girlfriend. The man shoots the girlfriend's brother. He is tried and convicted, sentenced to die by the guillotine. The end.

Yeah. I already gave away the whole plot, but I guess we can try and break this down some. The narrator, Mersault, is unmoored from society. He lives, but seems to have no real emotional attachments. He has a girlfriend who says that she loves him, but he shrugs in response. His mother dies, but he shows little response. He goes to the funeral, but does not cry and behaves "inappropriately," according to society's rules of How To Be Sad. During his trial, his lack of visible grief ends up convicting him to death, as the prosecutor pegs him as a monster who puts his mother away in a home and then smokes cigarettes at her wake. I had a bit of trouble on this part - yes, it was silly that his lack of emotion was the deciding factor in his sentence, but he was actually guilty of straight-up killing a man. It was implied that, if not for the dead mother issue, he would have gotten off easy because the dude he'd killed was "just an Arab" (book is set in French-ruled Algeria).

Camus is lumped in with the existentialists, but he did not say that existence was meaningless. Rather, he said the question of meaning was absurd, because of our tiny human brains. Either way, the result was the same - you gots to make your own meaning. Mersault, unable to find meaning in his own life, gradually realizes that there is none to be found and became accepting of the "gentle indifference of the universe."

I did a bad job on this one, I'm sorry. The Plague was so much better.

The Rise of Silas Lapham
William Dean Howells

This is a rags-to-riches story about Silas Lapham, who inherits some land which has a paint mine on it. He starts up a mineral paint business and becomes filthy stinking rich and attempts to join society by buying his way in. He is uncouth and uneducated, but also immoral, as his professional success is partly due to forcing a former partner out of the business. As a result of shady dealings and lavish spending, he is faced with a choice to save his fortune and his business by selling some misrepresented worthless property. So the "rise" referred to in the title is not his rise in fortunes, but his moral rise.

Howells is considered the father of American Realism. He is hard on the sentimental novel, where nothing happens but people feel very strongly about things. There is a tragic love triangle in the book, and the characters sit around discussing a sentimental novel with an identical tragic love triangle in it. In the sentimental book within the book, no one in the triangle ends up happy, which the characters in the realist book think is stupid and silly. But then it happens to them and they do the same sort of wailing and dramatic room-leaving for a while, until finally the two people who love each other get together and the other person just gets over it. American Realism, ladies and gents. Still has goofy love triangles which cause a lot of silly moaning and moping, but at least it was resolved sensibly.

This book was okay.

***

You'll notice that there is no book club selection this month. Our club leader asked whether the current moderators would like to continue to be so, and I declined. Now free from obligation, I was able to decide whether or not to attend the meeting based on how interested I was in the book. It sounded stupid and terrible, so I svaed my money and my time. While I did not enjoy The Stranger, at least I picked it for myself so it is my own fault.

estate sales, march 29.

I get a weekly email with details about all the local estate sales. I generally look through the pictures, and sometimes we end up going to a sale if the pictures are interesting and we didn't stay up too late the night before. Friday, one of the pictures featured a gray metal box with a NASA sticker on it, along with the words "METEOROID DETECTION EXPERIMENT, LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER." I was not necessarily interested in going to the sale, but I sent the picture to Josh, because he likes space stuff.

I should not have been surprised the next morning when Josh wanted to get up and go to the sale. That was entirely predictable and my own fault. So this was our day.

Most of the NASA goodies were gone, but there were tons of prints of space pictures. The guy whose stuff we were looking at had worked at NASA as an engineer and photographer for thirty years. Some of the pictures were printed on transparencies, maybe for some kind of educational presentation? Anyway, I bought two of them. A couple other people looked through them, remarked that they were neat, and then put them back down. They couldn't imagine what to do with them.

Uh, put them on the wall! I mean, they come with their own frames.

As long as there is a light-colored background behind the pictures, you can see them. If you only had dark walls in your house, you could use a light piece of paper. But I really like the wall color behind them, because it draws attention to the fact that part of the picture is see-through. The top picture of the rocket launch is marked "9/13/61 first orbit of capsule," which refers to the Mercury-Atlas 4. No idea about the bottom picture. Just some scientists doing sciencey things.

This is dumb, but I've been looking for a new kitchen rug. We have two, and they are getting increasingly ratty. I've been looking for new-to-me ones, but it turns out that small rugs are just kinda hard to find used, or maybe I haven't been looking in the right place. I was even thinking of - gasp! - buying one new, that's how bad my old ones were. But the secondhand gods smiled on me yesterday, and I find a nice big one for just a dollar.

I felt stupid taking a picture of the kitchen floor, so I made the dog sit on it first. Now it's a picture of a dog.  Doesn't she look especially cute on the new rug?

At another estate sale, which was just packed with stuff, there was a room with tables along three walls and a rack of clothing on the fourth. Dumped in the corner was a pile of books, where I found this art book.

It looked intriguing, so I squeezed myself between a lady perusing the clothes and a dude playing with an abacus on the table. Upon opening it up, the first thing I saw was a small poster print of this painting.

I know this painting! The artist is Gérôme. I came across his name in another book a few months ago and spent an evening googling his art. I think my favorite is this one, with the soldiers stomping on the tulips. The informational blurb in the art book about him is fairly insulting, calling him technically impeccable but basically a hack. If I were him, I'd be going "Pfft! And yet here I am in your silly little art book."

So I figured that having a nice frameable print of a painting that I liked was worth the $2 for the whole book, whatever else might be in it. It turns out that the book itself is pretty amazing. There are twenty-four prints of paintings, and the text goes through them and talks about why each one could be considered under the umbrella of Realism. The paintings vary a lot in style and subject, yet they are curated such that you can see what is "real" about each one. The writing is geared toward the layman, and hey! that's me. It's like taking a little class at the museum. I was so impressed that I came very close to buying the whole twelve volume set used off Amazon from a thrift store. Update: have now bought the whole set. Have extra volume 2 to spare.

I never received much in the way of art instruction. We had some art classes in grade school, but they were mostly about making art and not about studying existing art. I learned a bit by dating an artist, but my education was limited to the things he was interested in (which meant a lot of surrealism and African religious folk art). I've learned some by going to museums, but that was mostly self-guided. For a long time, I've found art to be very intimidating. I spent so much time worrying about what a picture was supposed to mean (and having no idea) that I was often unable to just enjoy it or take my own meaning from it. Art should not be scary. I'm hoping that these books will help my poor malnourished art brain.

Finally, about two and a half years ago, my sister-in-law asked me to be on the lookout for Club cookware for her. I'd never heard of it, and couldn't say that I'd even seen it before. Yesterday, I finally found some. I was about to just pass it by, figuring that since so much time had passed, my sister-in-law was probably not interested anymore. But this is the age of instant communication, so I texted her a picture of what they had and the price information. She did want it, so after all this time, I was finally able to fulfill her aluminum cookware dreams. Don't say you can't find good stuff used! It just takes a while sometimes.

klezmer anniversary.

"What are you doing the 16th?"

"Spending it with you, I hope."

"Want to go to a klezmer concert?"

"Uh...anything with you. Don't you have to work?"

"Oh, I already got off that day anyway."

I do not have a particular interest in klezmer. My only exposure to it was in a movie where a punk lady joined a klezmer band and made it a punk klezmer band. Klezmer started as dance music of the Ashkenazi Jews. As people immigrated to the States, klezmer met jazz and never was the same again.

I learned most of that by looking it up. So I have never expressed interested in Jewish folk music, and as far as I can remember, neither has my husband. Why would he pick that event for the first anniversary of our marriage? I did not know, but I was going with it. See, Josh has never planned anything for us before. I have a friend who complains that her boyfriend never plans anything, and she just wants him to sweep her off her feet once in a while. In listening to her, I realized that Josh was not a planner either. I was beginning to be a little grumpy about never being swept off my feet, but then I remembered that it hadn't bothered me before that day, and I should just go back to that state.

Now, while you can't make someone change, that doesn't mean they won't change on their own. So you could be tripping along thinking you don't have the planning type and then all of a sudden, you're being swept off to a klezmer concert. We talked about dinner afterwards, and I suggested we keep with the theme of...Jewish...stuff? I guess, and eat something along that line. He assured me that he would take care of that, too. My heart fluttered.

The concert was being thrown by the the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild. I'd had no idea there was such a thing as a Raleigh Chamber Music Guild. I had to ask Josh what chamber music was. It's music played by a small number of performers. It's often called the "music of friends," due to the intimate nature of the performances.

The show started late, and there were several announcements about filling empty seats in the middles of rows. It turns out that RCMG does not get a lot of sold-out shows. Apparently, the secret was klezmer. If only they'd known earlier about Raleigh's hidden passion for Jewish dance music!

As the performers walked onstage, one of them stepped up to the mike. "My ninety-seven year old grandmother died last week, and if it hadn't been for her, I never would've picked up a violin. So this is for her." It was a bit jarring and kind of a downer, but then - but then - they started to play. By the end of it, I wanted to thank that guy's grandmother.

What can I say about the music? It was marvelous. Klezmer is noted for being very expressive, including sounds that mimic the human voice. Indeed, I had noticed the clarinet laughing. I hadn't known a clarinet could do that. Maybe I just haven't told a clarinet a good joke before.

I love to watch performers. Musicians seem to enter a trance-like state when they play. The violinist, the one who'd lost his grandmother, looked like he got more exercise playing music than some people do all day. I watched how they communicated between each other, using eye contact to start their parts in unison. These guys were having a fantastic time, which is one sure-fire way to entertain your audience. Fun is catching. During one song, a few people started clapping to the beat and then more and more joined in. Music of friends, indeed.

During the reception, I was all juiced up on chamber music, so I picked up a survey for the Chamber Music Guild. Participants would be entered into a drawing for free tickets to their next event! However, I soon found myself out of my depth on the survey. What is my favorite type of chamber music? What types of chamber music ensembles do I prefer? Does the architecture of the chamber affect my enjoyment of chamber music?

After a stop at the grocery store for corned beef, rye bread, and sauerkraut, we went home and made delicious reuben sandwiches. It was not an extraordinary day, but a very good ordinary day spent with the person who makes every day better.

not myself.

My last Stephen class was about crises. They had several definitions of a crisis, including that old chestnut about the Chinese character for crisis being a combination of danger and opportunity (which is apparently not true). The one that I like is that a crisis is something that makes you reconsider your place in the world. You had a certain idea of how things worked, right or wrong, and then something happened, and now you have to figure everything out all over again just so you can go back to some kind of daily existence. You are not yourself, and you may not be sure who your self is anymore.

Everything in Stephen class is broken down in various ways, which I find really helpful. There are accidental crises, like a sudden illness or a job loss. And then there are developmental crises, meaning they are caused by expected changes in life, but they can still knock you over. They can even be good things, like getting married or having a baby. A crisis can affect you socially, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually . Dealing with a crisis, or multiple crises, can make you overwhelmed and disorganized. Your decision-making will likely suffer.

We had to do a workbook exercise where we answered a sort-of survey about a crisis that we had experienced and how it affected us. For my crisis, I picked something that happened nine years ago - the break-up of a long-term relationship. In answering questions about how this event affected me, I remember feeling like I'd lost my mind. I was not myself, and I was not sure who my self was anymore.

I realized that the people I will be helping as a Stephen Minister are going to be in the middle of all this. I will meet someone for the very first time on a bad day in the midst of bad days.

I met several brand new-to-me people at my own wedding. I don't always make good first impressions, but I think I knocked it out of the park that day. Radiantly happy, in a fancy dress with my hair done, handing out free food and alcohol. I felt like I needed to explain to these new friends that I was actually a regular person and not always like this, otherwise they were going to be very disappointed the next time.

In a way, I was not myself that day. Well, I was myself. I was incredibly myself. Just the happy parts, though. And nobody would expect me to be that version of myself all the time, even if they had just met me that day. And yet, had I met someone when in the course of losing my mind, they might think that I was always that version. I was incredibly myself then, too, but again, a very specific subset of myself that is constantly confused and makes rash decisions.

Dude, rash decisions. I mean, everything turned out great for me, but that was probably luck.

It is with good reason that openness and acceptance are stressed in Stephen Ministry. You can't help someone if you are obviously horrified by the ways they are handling their situation. Nor can you help them if you write them off as basically bad people. Maybe it's easier if you know up front that this person is having some kind of crisis, whereas if that crisis just manifested itself by making them cut you off in traffic, you might not be so generous. Every person is walking around right now in a specific context of their own lives. You never know which version of yourself will be the one people meet that day.

arizona rangers.

When Josh's band started touring, they bought a used van from a church. They probably had grand dreams of painting it with some super cool design, but in the end, it just continued to say INTERDENOMINATIONAL WORSHIP CENTER. They did add a bunch of stickers, from anywhere that gave out stickers. Bars, other bands, tourist stops, anywhere that had a sticker was represented on the band van.

I don't know how or where, though I can assume it was in Arizona, but they picked up a great big magnet that said ARIZONA RANGERS on it. Josh told me they had to take it off while actually in the state of Arizona. I guess the Arizona Rangers don't have any authority in the other states, or maybe the residents of other states are smart enough to figure out that a church band covered with stickers was probably not actually a vehicle for the Rangers.

Now, I liked that magnet. I really liked it. Blame it on my mother, but I like magnets. Plus, this one was big, shaped like a badge, and said ARIZONA RANGERS on it. I mean, even if you didn't have a magnet-mad mother, you would think it was a pretty cool magnet. You might want it so bad you want to sneak out in the night and take if off an unsuspecting band van.

But I know my place with regards to the band, so I knew that I couldn't take it or even ask for it in exchange for a some passionate kissing with the bassist. But then, the band broke up. The sticker-covered van is sitting in my driveway, waiting to be hit by a tree. It still mostly runs, but the back door doesn't seal quite right, and so water gets in and mold develops.

I saw my opportunity. I asked my husband, "Can I have that ARIZONA RANGERS magnet?" and he loves me, so he said, sure it's in the van. He did not love me enough to run out to the van immediately and fetch it. He did not love me enough to fetch it from the van within the next few weeks. It's almost like getting into a moldy van and digging out a busted magnet for his beloved wife wasn't his top priority.

The van's name is Wapakoneta. Have I mentioned that yet? It's a good detail.

Despite my husband's lack of commitment to obtaining his life partner's heart's desire, I was still very invested in the magnet. I was also invested in maybe getting the van out of driveway, and cleaning it out was a first step. It was a dirty deed done dirt cheap, retrieving anything that might be salvageable and not too moldy. There was mold, and it probably got in my lungs. There were also some t-shirts, CDs, and a water bottle full of what I think was urine.

Band vans are gross.

However, there was not a giant ARIZONA RANGERS magnet. So I got spores in my lungs for nothing, and the van is still in my driveway.

Last week, a friend called to tell us that the band had left some stuff in his basement. Maybe it's just this band, but they seem to accumulate a lot of stuff that then gets left on other people's property. There were two large crates worth of stuff, most of it bits and pieces of metal from the drum kit. There was also a giant ARIZONA RANGERS magnet.

I washed it carefully and pressed it between books to flatten out the kinks developed in storage. I can't do anything about the one missing tip or the cracking, but at last, I have fulfilled my novelty magnet dreams. Huzzah!

february 2014 books.

Amsterdam
Ian McEwan
I see a lot of McEwan books in the used marketplace, so I picked one up to see if he was any good. The answer is yes, he is, though I'm not going to start seeking him out. The book was short, funny, and said true things about human nature, but it did not knock my socks off.

And this is what happens if I wait until the end of the month to write down what I thought about a book I read at the beginning of the month.

Christian Caregiving: A Way of Life
Kenneth C. Haugk and William J. McKay
My Stephen Ministry training involves a lot of reading. Between this and the book we are reading in Sunday School, I have a lot of dang church homework. For Stephen classes, we have two workbooks, which have pre-class reading and then in-class activities. We also have three other books, this being the first one. It's about how caring for someone is different when it's from a Christian standpoint. Spoiler alert: the answer is love. Christians are called to love everyone, and so our motivations as Stephen Ministers is following that.

To be honest, the thing that I am most nervous about this whole Stephen Minister thing is the churchy part. Yes, I have much church homework, but I am not in the habit of talking about faith, and I am generally kinda cagey on theological specifics. I'm even a little nervous about working with people who are outside my church - while we are very accepting of different takes on Christianity, I'm not sure that's true of the other congregations. I will be expected to pray with people, which I find terrifying. I'm just waiting for a greiving widow to ask me whether her husband is in heaven now, and...I mean, geez, lady, how should I know? I'm just a peer helper!

But most of this book and the whole program is about doing what Jesus said to do, that whole loving each other stuff, rather than knowing answers to the universe. I think I can handle that.

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, Erin Torneo
Our book club selection this month is about wrongful convictions. A lady is raped, and with her testimony, a man is put behind bars for the crime. Except it turns out he didn't do it, and eleven years later, he is finally released. The lady and the falsely convicted dude later become friends. The book raises a lot of questions about the reliability of memory and eyewitness evidence.

Interesting story, and it all took place in Burlington, NC, which is about an hour from Raleigh. The writing was sort of ho-hum, a straight-forward retelling of facts. But I am always happy for some light to be shed on the issues of incarceration.

A Room with a View
E.M. Forster
I read this as part of an online book club. Remember how I complain all the time about book club, because we never pick anything challenging to read? I joined the online book club partly because they pick two books a month, one of which is in the public domain. So it's old and has stood the test of time and chances are, either Josh and I already own in our extensive library. That's actually why I read Great Expectations last month. I read it and then did not participate in any of the discussions, which was still better than the month before, when I got the book off the shelf and then did not read it.

All that, yet I was not very excited about A Room With a View. I read Howard's End by the same author a few years ago. I do not remember very much about it, except that it was about high class society and how much it sucks to be a woman. I am always happy to see some feminism injected into literature, but honestly, those books can be pretty depressing.

This one also deals with high class society people and their high class rules, which I found occasionally frustrating. There was a lot of drama about people not following the high class rules, but the rules are so fussy and subtle that I wasn't always sure what all the tension was about. Part of that is the joke. For instance, there is a scene where a group of women are scandalized by the fact that a man used the word "stomach" around them. However, they can't even tell the story and use the scandalous word because there is a man in the room.

Isn't it wonderful to live in the 21st century, where we can refer to our innards around men? STOMACH! PANCREAS! SPLEEN!

The book associates different people with either rooms or views, with the clear message being that it's better to be a view. There is a theme of honesty - not just being truthful, but being open as well. The main character, Lucy, has a problem, but she lies about it to everyone as a way of lying to herself. She's not really even lying outright, but avoiding the real truth and running away to Greece (which is what you can do when you're high class). Luckily, she finds someone she can't bear to lie to, the truth comes all stumbling out, and she is saved from a lifetime of being a room. Being a view is about light and truth, while being a room is about darkness and deceit.

I found this book to be incredibly relevant to my Stephen training. While the Christian Caregiving book was sort of an instruction manual, this was a literary take on very similar subject matter. It's not at all explicitly Christian, in fact it's a bit humanist, but the lessons for life are pretty much the same: love! I wrote down a quote about an old man who does not fit into society because he is kind. Lucy remarks that we all try to be kind, and the response is that we do that "because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out and are offended, or frightened."

I feel like I am in the state where I try to be kind because it improves my character, because I want to be a kind person. It's still about what I want to be, not about how I actually feel about other people. I generally like people, which has not always been the case (progress!), but I don't think I can say that I love people yet. I really want to, if that counts for anything.

The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
I saw people all over the internet talking about how awesome this book is, and it really sounded like something I'd love. Russian - I love foreign writing. Magical realism - what fun! Retelling of Faust and Jesus - supernatural stuff is awesome!

And yet, I kinda wish that I had waited and read it later. I enjoyed it, because it's vivid and interesting, but I felt the whole time that there was something I wasn't appreciating, just out of my reach. Also, based on the commentary in the back, I would've benefited a lot by reading Faust first. It makes me a bit sad when this happens, because I may never go back and read it again. But still, how can one know when one is ready for a piece of literature? Sometimes things hit at just the right time, and sometimes it's too soon. Ah well, better too soon than not at all.

But let's talk about it, rather than just saying I maybe wasn't ready yet. So! We start out in Moscow, when the Soviets have outlawed Jesus. A couple of writers are sitting on a bench at a park, talking about the best way to write a poem about the non-existence of God when the Devil comes and sits with them. He predicts one of their deaths and tells a story about Pontius Pilate. Chaos ensues. There are parallel chapters throughout the book describing the death of Jesus (well, a Jesus, but not That Jesus), while events in Moscow often match tales from the gospels.

The thing that struck me about the Devil is that he seems to be more about mischief than evil. He has a reason for being in town, but it is never clear what the goal is or how it helps his ultimate ends. While he is there, the various members of his entourage cause a great deal of trouble, and many people go mad from trying to resolve what they are experiencing (which is frequently magical and impossible) with reality. A couple of people die, some fires get started, and fake money gets passed about, but it really seems like he's just spreading chaos. I feel like I don't understand who the Devil really is in this story. It's a Faust story, so he makes a deal with someone, but it seems to be a pretty reasonable deal. Bad things happen to people, but a lot of times it's due to their own actions - in this case, the Devil is more punishing people for evil they've done, rather than trying to coerce them into doing it. In the end, a lot of them are forgiven.

So, yeah, there is a lot going on in this book, and I didn't even mention the slams on the Soviet government. There are some truly magnificent scenes, and I definitely enjoyed it. I had to read more slowly than usual, and I was happy to do so. Just felt like I was missing something.

Unrelated note: Before I read the book, I looked up info about various translations. Some of them apparently miss the humor of the book. One disparaging comment about a particular translation says that "the cat doesn't even handle the firearms!" I mean, wouldn't you like to read a book where a cat handles fireamrs? Turns out he's a terrible shot.

coats of many colors.

For years, I have worn dark wool coats. A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted something with a little more personality, you know, so people could see me coming from far off and leave if they needed to. I started looking for a brightly colored wool coat.

Most people, when they decide that a brightly colored wool coat is their heart's wish, go to the store and buy one. If their heart's wish is discovered during the summer, then they might have to wait a few months until the stores put out their winter stock again. When you shop at the thrift stores, however, you can't count on there being any wool coats at all, much less the bright purple one you've always secretly wanted. As it happened, there were a fair amount of brightly colored wool coats, but they were always shin-length and frequently stuck in the 1980s. For two or three years now, I've been hopefully looking through racks of coats, pulling out the colorful wool ones and then putting them back, disappointed.

Ah, but it's been a good winter for outerwear. I have acquired three, three!, exciting coats with lots of personality.

Coat 1: Upholstery
Here is the coat I'd be searching for! Well, it turned out to be the coat I bought.

Josh makes fun of this coat regularly, saying it looks like 70s upholstery. I tolerate his comments, and then smile triumphantly at him whenever I get complimented on it. Lots of people have recognized that while they may have seen this fabric on an unfortunate couch once, it clearly makes for a nice coat. I adorned it with a flower brooch I picked up at another thrift store.

Coat 2: Navy
One morning, Josh went out and hit a few thrift stores. He called me on the way home, obviously excited about some good finds. I cheekily asked him if he'd bought me any presents. He replied that he had.

What he bought was a black pea coat. I know, not brightly colored at all. But, it was formerly owned by someone in the Navy, and the arm patch makes up for the sensibility of the color.

I tried it on, and it fits just right, though it is rather masculine. I wore it a few times, Josh tried it out a few times, and then a few days later, Josh announced that I could have it. Apparently, he'd bought it, maybe with the idea of keeping it for himself, though noting my preference for pea coats. Then, when I'd asked about a present, he said yes and locked himself in.

The moral is to always ask if he's bought me a present. Or the moral is that when you're married, close to the same size, and you've both got like four coats, you can share the newest one.

It is seriously the nicest coat I've ever owned. The lining is thick and soft. It's just altogether sturdy, well-made, and warm. When the weather outside is too frightful for my upholstery coat, I wear this one. The lining is stamped at the bottom with the name "ROBERTS," who I assume was the original owner. According to the patch, he was a machinist's mate, petty officer, first class.

Coat 3: Cape
You know, I should not have even been in the coat section. I already fulfilled my need for interesting outerwear, so there was no need for me to even go to that rack and start poking through the selection. And it was completely unnecessary for me to see the bright royal blue wool fabric and then go pulling out the hanger.

But I did. And it wasn't a coat! It was a cape, with an attached scarf. I bought it, like immediately. I felt the need to hurry up and make the purchase before I came to my senses, because this right here is pretty ridiculous, even for someone who wears dated upholstery.

Having bought a cape, I need to wear it. I have several silly items of clothing in my closet that never get worn, but I only paid a dollar or so for each of them. I paid fifteen whole dollars for this cape, which means I need to make the price-per-wear cost worth it. At least, that's the kind of silly justification math I did while standing impatiently in line at the Goodwill.

I have been wearing my cape to the only place where that kind of fanciness is at all appropriate - church. And since I can't wear just any old outfit with a nice wool cape, my outfits have gotten snazzier, too. Josh usually makes me feel like a slouch at church, because while I put on pants and a sweater and call it done, he's going all out with a jacket and bowtie. He's even been talking about suspenders lately.

I dug deep into my closet and found some neglected skirts. Then I dug deeper and found a box of tights from my business casual days. With my cape and my coordinating tights, I AM THE FANCIEST. I've gotten several appreciative comments, but the best response I've gotten has been from Josh himself, who apparently loves his wife in a cape. He said I looked like a beautiful detective.

Just in case you ever see a be-caped woman out in public, and you think to yourself that she is wearing a ridiculous garment, I assure you, she knows. I feel like a Grade-A Crazy Person in that cape, even as I admire the lovely blue wool and the purple satin lining. Josh told me that his Mom once owned a winter cape, but she ended up getting rid of it because she did not like getting so much attention.

Now, I do not really care for public attention. However, I do wear things that get attention, for example, my penguin hat and now my cape. I do not wear these things because I want the attention, but because I like the thing itself. After buying my penguin hat, I was surprised and a little dismayed at how much notice it attracted, but I sure as heck was not going to stop wearing it. I can't argue with people who want to come up and tell me what a great hat I'm wearing. They are right, it is a fantastic penguin hat. So far, I can say that a cape gets less attention than a penguin hat. I think the only difference is that while I often forget that I have a penguin on my head, I am acutely aware of the cape at all times.

But I take it as a challenge. By having the social courage to wear my most excellent cape, I can encourage others to wear the capes languishing in their closets. Life is short, be fancy.

And now I will really stop looking for a coat. Promise.

sorry, ruth.

Today, driving back home a bit after noon, Josh asked what we should have for lunch. It was a marvelous day, and marvelous days make us want to use the grill. We've had several marvelous days this week, which is why Josh had grilled burgers for lunch on Wednesday and grilled chicken wings on Friday. This afternoon, he suggested burgers. The only problem was that we ran out of ground beef on the marvelous day that was Wednesday. I try to stock up on hamburger meat when it's on sale so we don't have to pay the regular price in case of a marvelous day.

"We're out of ground beef."

"Oh yeah."

"How about we make pimento cheese and have that on sandwiches with fries?"

"Okay."

We continued on down the road, with me feeling smug about having talked him into a cheaper option. We pulled into the parking lot of the Harris Teeter to pick up some potatoes for the fries.

"What if we grilled burgers and made pimento cheese? Pimento cheeseburgers!"

Clearly my optimism came too soon, though on the bright side, I would be enjoying pimento cheeseburgers very soon. I sighed and said that we could do whatever he wanted. But it was my lucky day, too - ground beef was on sale! Bring on the pimento cheeseburgers!

Anyway, this humdrum tale of marital compromise is just to tell you about my recipe for pimento cheese. Any readers from parts other than the American South may not even be familiar with this wonderful gloppy spread, but today is your lucky day. Round here, you can buy pimento cheese in a clear plastic container in the deli section of your local grocery store, and I seem to remember the prominent brand was Ruth's. The thing about Ruth's pimento cheese (and any other store-bought brand) is that it is sort of mysterious. Looking at it, you can tell that there are both pimento and cheese involved, but the rest of it is up in the air. There are questionable lumps. Your best bet is to encase it in a sandwich, where you don't really have to look at it and wonder what you're even eating.

The nice thing about making your own version is that you know what the lumps are. Not only is my version is less mysterious-looking, it also tastes fifty million times better. Sorry, Ruth. Aside from eating by itself on a plain sandwich or crackers, it's delicious on burgers or as the center of a grilled cheese sandwich. I have served it to many Southerners and heard nothing but happy eating noises.

A final note: I do not used pimentos in my pimento cheese. I used diced roasted red peppers, which makes a huge improvement in the flavor. And sometimes the peppers sort of smush in with everything else and turn the whole thing a bit pink.

Roasted Red Pepper Cheese

8 oz cheddar, grated
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 c mayonnaise
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t cayenne pepper
4 oz roasted red peppers, diced

Mix it all up real good. Eat on everything.

stephen ministry.

I have a friend who has been having a rough time of it recently. What is interesting to me is that we would not ordinarily be more than acquaintances, because we really don't have all that much in common. But she was having a crisis one day, and I was there. So I made use of my Peer Helper training, and we became friends. I've discovered that she does not have very many others to just listen to her. Her family members are not interested in providing emotional support. She has friends, but from what I gather, they are friends that you go out and have fun with, not ones who sit with you after a bad day.

It seemed like she had no one, except me, and I felt like an accident in the first place. Me, I don't have very many problems in my life, and I don't really talk about the ones I do have. But I know that if I wanted to, I have a long list of people I could call up. Which of us is the exception and who is the rule?

I found it amazing that something that was so simple for me to do was so helpful to her. I wondered how many other people are out there who need someone to listen to them. I tried to think of ways that I could do this for more people, like being a counselor but without having to get a degree. Maybe some kind of texting or instant messaging service? How could I find people who needed a shoulder and then volunteer to be that shoulder?

The answer was at church. Which sorta answered another question I had been noodling - where could I serve in the church? Josh joined everything that anyone asked him to, but I held back, waiting for something that was a better fit. I volunteered for the nursery a couple of times and hated it. I bake cookies once a month, which I like, but I wanted something a little more intensive.

Then I found out about Stephen Ministry, and it sounded exactly right.

Stephen Ministry is a nationwide program, active at 11,000 churches across the country. When a person is going through a difficult time, they ask for a Stephen Minister, who then visits with them weekly and just lets them talk. Okay, the Stephen Minister speaks a bit, too, but it's pretty funny how much of our training is about not talking. Most of what we say is meant to encourage the other person to talk more. We are encouraged to use open-ended questions and to never see a silence as awkward. During one class, one of my fellow trainees asked how long we should wait after a person finishes speaking before we say something. The response? "I don't think you can wait too long."

You can always tell a Stephen Minister. They're the ones sitting silently with a friendly expression and open body language.

Right now, I am just in training. I go to weekly classes that run through May, at which point I decide whether to commit at least two years to being a Stephen Minister. There are ten people in our class, mostly older women, but with one man and one eighteen-year-old young lady. Our church is not big enough to support its own program, so we share with local Presbyterian and Methodist churches. In the course of our classes, I expect to become close with my fellow trainees. Already, a couple of people have shared personal stories as they related to the material we were going through. Similar to my unexpected friendship, it feels sort of surreal to know how much will be shared between us, people who might not have much more in common than being interested in listening. Already I have shared things I wouldn't have otherwise. Not secrets, really, just regular daily stuff that I would have kept to myself ordinarily. It's a little scary.

The material so far is simple to understand, if challenging to always put into practice. Since I'm not yet a Stephen Minister, I don't have anyone assigned to me. But these are skills that can be applied to any relationship, and I'm frequently surprised at how relevant the information is to my daily life. I'm working on reading non-verbal communication and resisting the urge to respond to one thing when the other person wants to talk more about something else. It is hard, but now that I am aware of it, I can practice, and practice makes better.

I feel like this is the start of something new in my life, or maybe a continuation of what got started years ago in Peer Helpers. I am nervous and excited about where it will take me next.

dame peer helper.

When I was in high school, I was part of a club called Peer Helpers. To be in the club, you had to be nominated by other students as being a good person to talk to about problems. I was in a lot of clubs, because it was important to appear over-committed well-rounded to scholarship committees, but Peer Helpers was the only one I actually cared about. My reluctance to share seems to have made me ideal for listening. It turns out that other people really like to be listened to. Sometimes they like it so much that they nominate you for a club.

At the beginning of the school year, we peer helpers would go on a weekend retreat to the mountains, where we'd be trained in helping our peers. I am not an official Peer Helper Trainer™, but I'll give you the little of what I remember of my training.

First, listen listen listen. Do not give advice. Instead, ask questions that encourage the person to think out loud about their issue.

Peer talks about problem.
Peer Helper: What do you think you might do about it?
Peer talks about possible action.
Peer Helper: What do you think might happen if you did that?
Peer talks out the results of said action.
(Repeat until Peer has a workable course of action)
Peer Helper: Let me know how it goes.
(Later)
Peer Helper: What happened with <your problem>?

This concludes your training. Now, go out and help your peers!

For the retreat, we were told to bring an object that was significant to us. One evening, we'd sit in a circle and talk about our significant item. A lot of kids brought pictures of pets or loved ones, one kid brought a shotgun shell from his grandfather's 21-gun salute, another kid apparently forgot the assignment and ended up talking a lot about his stick of deodorant. And then we'd keep going around the circle and whoever wanted to say something, about themselves or in response to something another person said, would talk. There was much crying, but it was the good, cleansing type of cry. It was strange to be so open and honest with people you might not ordinarily hang out with. There were popular kids and not-so-popular kids in there, but for one weekend, we were all just peer helpers.

We did not do much in the way of outreach. I remember helping with a bulletin board in the hall once, but who looks at those? The training was good, but I suspect that it was mostly used in the same way we'd gotten into the club in the first place - one of our existing friends would talk to us about a problem. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and the skills certainly can go beyond high school. Maybe the other Peer Helpers were consoling crying strangers in the bathrooms left and right, and it was just me that never reached out to anyone new.

I am oddly proud of being a Peer Helper, more proud than anyone should be of membership in a high school club. And just so you know, I was actually the President of the Peer Helpers during my senior year. I attribute my election to having made a bunch of sarcastic quips during the training retreat. But the pride is about being seen as caring and trustworthy and objective by some peer, possibly even multiple peers! I never tell anyone anything, so when someone shares with me, it's pretty much like being knighted. I dub thee Dame Peer Helper!