One week past my due date, I was still pregnant. I had an appointment with the midwife, where we confirmed that I was still pregnant and that the baby was fine, just on its own schedule. She offered to do a membrane sweep, which is where she takes her finger and sweeps it around the cervix to separate the membranes around the baby from the cervix. This releases prostaglandins, which tell your body to get that other little body out. I wanted that little body out. To everything there is a season and all that, but Mama says it's time to be born now.
This is a birth story.
I wanted to induce labor for two reasons. One, if I did not have this baby within the next week, they were going to check me into the hospital to induce me with drugs. All I knew about being induced with drugs was that the contractions came hard and fast, and it would be unlikely that I'd be able to have a med-free birth. I have always known, nay, assumed that I would give birth without chemical pain relief. It was the way my sisters did it, the way my mother did it, the way her mother did it. People respond to this in two ways - by nodding and saying of course, that's the way to go, or by looking at me like I've lost my mind. Finally, someone asked me why. And the answer was pride: ours is a competitive family. Then I looked up some other reasons so I would have something to say (bottom line: use of drugs increases uses of interventions such as forceps or c-section, so you get a snowball effect of increased risk to mother and baby).
I took a childbirth class that spent a lot of time discussing natural pain management - not say pain relief, but management. The midwife teaching the class talked about pain versus suffering. Most of the time, when you go to the hospital in pain, it is because something is wrong. But when you're having a baby, it's supposed to hurt. It is productive pain, as it is your body preparing to do something momentous. Labor requires pain. It does not require suffering. Pain is a physical phenomenon, suffering is mental. I felt prepared to handle pain. Being induced meant letting go of my med-free childbirth plan. While that wouldn't be that terrible, it wasn't what I wanted.
The second reason I wanted to get that baby out was because of my grandmother. Ninety-four years old, her short-term memory was not great. The past couple of visits, she looked at me and apologized for not quite being able to place who I was. But she knew that her granddaughter, Sandra, was going to have a baby soon. She asked my mother every day if I'd had that baby yet. She always forgot that we didn't know the sex, and she had it in her head that it was a girl.
I read somewhere that there are three ways to enjoy something - in anticipation of it, experiencing it, and remembering it. When we are born, everything is anticipation. As we live, things move from anticipation to experience and finally to memory. For my grandmother, most of her enjoyment was in memory, and this was apparent as she fondly told us stories from decades past. But my baby was something she could enjoy in anticipation. I was never hurt when she momentarily forgot my face, but I was deeply moved that she remembered there was a baby coming.
Aside from her memory, my grandmother's esophagus was no longer working. She had been having problems with phlegm for a while, and it finally got to the point where she could no longer swallow any food. Her esophagus finally wore out. Of all the parts in the body that serve us tirelessly, I never thought about the esophagus giving out. The doctor said that they could put in a feeding tube to buy her some more time, or they could make her comfortable. My mom had to make a hard decision. She thought about pain and suffering and made a call to hospice.
This is a death story.
The morning hospice was setting up a bed at my parents' house was the same one where I was having my cervix swept. My siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles were coming from all over the world to my hometown. I was sitting at my house, four hours away, maybe going to have a baby. I knew that I would never see my grandmother again, and she would never get to meet the new baby. But I promised my mom to send a picture of the baby as soon as it arrived so that she could print it out for Grandmother. It was important to me that Grandmother get to experience what she'd been anticipating. I wanted the baby out.
The cervix sweep doesn't automatically start labor. To be honest, I'd had my cervix swept the week before on my due date. I'd felt some cramps for a few hours, but that was the end of it. This time, the cramps came sooner, and they never really went away. They went from a constant dull ache to having peaks and valleys. The midwife had told me to come to the hospital when I was having contractions lasting a minute, five minutes apart. I downloaded a contraction timer app to my phone and lay down on the couch to watch X-Files while Josh showered. I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Josh put on a button-up shirt and a bow tie to look nice for the baby.
We left for the hospital at around 7. According to my timer app, the contractions were five minutes apart and one minute long. I called my mom to let her know it was go time. I texted my brother-in-law to ask him to look in on the dog. I was in pain for one minute out of five. I was not suffering.
Josh dropped me off at the emergency room entrance and parked the car. I went inside, declined the wheelchair, and walked over to admitting. Josh came in while they were asking me questions and checking my insurance. A nurse came down to escort us to the maternity ward. They showed us to Room 2, where I was told to undress and put on a gown to wait for the midwife. When she arrived, she checked my cervix.
I was dilated 3 cm, which was exactly what I had been that morning. They told me I was probably not in labor, that this was just cramping caused by the membrane sweep. I could wait a couple hours and they'd check again, but really, I ought to just go home, take a Tylenol, and go to bed. Dejected and embarrassed, I did. I felt like a moron, and I was still in pain. But I had been told that it was not productive pain, just pain.
Thus began my suffering.
I went home, changed into pajamas. Josh moved the TV from the living room into the bedroom so we could watch March Madness. I lay in bed but did not sleep. I threw up the PBJ and Tylenol. The pain sharpened. I paced, I rocked, I sat, I stood, but nothing helped. As the contractions worsened, I concluded that if this was not labor, then I was not going to be able to stand actual labor.
My wounded pride told me many lies. It told me that I was stupid for thinking I had been in labor before. It told me that I was still not in labor, and I should be able to handle this. It told me that if I went to the hospital now, they'd just give me a Tylenol and send me back here. Labor was causing me pain, and my ego was making me suffer. I cried out, shaking my head, "I can't do this I can't do this."
Finally, five hours after we'd left, I told Josh to take me back to the hospital. If this wasn't labor, well, I still needed medical attention, because something was happening to me.
The second trip to the hospital was remarkably different. Josh had changed out of his bow tie. I only changed out of pajamas into essentially different pajamas because there was vomit on the first set. I didn't call or text anyone on the way, but instead moaned. When he dropped me off at the door, I sat down immediately in a wheelchair that was parked outside and shivered in the cold until he got back. Being admitted was quicker this time because they still had my information, but I was much less helpful. When the nurse came to get us this time, I'm sure she thought, now that lady is about to have a baby.
When the midwife checked me this time, I was at 9 cm. I would have pumped my fist in the air and shouted "TOLD YOU SO" but I was busy shaking and moaning. She told me to moan in a lower register, to direct the sound down. I don't know if that is real science, but it helped. Or maybe finding out that my pain was productive helped. I was no longer suffering. Josh told them that I had said something about an epidural back at the house. The midwife said we could do that, or we could just go ahead and start pushing this baby out. The epidural would make things take longer. I said let's do this.
Somehow, in ten hours of birthing class, I never picked up that pushing a baby out takes hours. Birth videos and sitcoms alike edit that part down. In the movies, it takes three pushes tops. I'm here to tell you that it takes many, many pushes. It took me two hours of pushes. A contraction would come, I would PUUUUUUSH for a count of ten, let out my breath in a scream and then do it again, and again before finally collapsing as the contraction ebbed. In between, I lay there as if dead, out of my head with exhaustion and pain. I was there and yet not.
Two hours of pushing sounds like a lot, and it is, but pushing was a million times better than not. This was something I could do to fight back. In those seconds where I would get my breath back to start a new push, the pain was crushing. So I pushed back.
In the movies, they say, "I can see the head!" and then whoosh! the baby is out. No. That baby's head was just chilling out in my vagina for a half hour, easy. The midwife said I could put my hand down and touch it, which I did, and it was too weird. They wheeled a mirror over so I could see. I thanked them and asked them to take it away again.
Time goes strange in the delivery room. There was a clock on the wall, so I could do the subtraction and tell you how long it had been. But it felt like minutes, and it felt like years. I counted time by the signs that the midwife was preparing for the delivery. The nurse wheeled in a table of instruments. Part of the bed at my feet was removed. A ceiling panel was removed and a giant spotlight pulled down. A group of pediatricians arrived and began setting up in the anteroom in case of emergency. I could tell we were nearly there, but I had no concept of when it would be over.
So when at last, at last, there was a baby, it seemed oddly sudden. There was a little cry, and the pediatricians smiled, packed their things, and left. The midwife handed the tiny, wiggly, goo-covered person to me. The umbilical cord was blocking my view, so Josh had to tell me that I had a daughter. I had a Susanna.
I held my little girl while cleanup and damage control went on below my waist (so. much. blood). Josh took some pictures of the squinting new person, then emailed them to family. When the midwife and the nurses were done, they dimmed the lights and our new little family was left alone. Josh collapsed on the couch in the corner, but Susanna and I were wide awake. I held her to my chest, skin to skin. She made gentle snuffly noises and blinked in the light of her first day. I could've watched the expressions flicker across her tiny face all day. So it was you, I thought. It's been you in there all along.
I can imagine the scene at my parents' house when the email arrived. One of my mom's favorite things to do is tell people good news. I can hear her talking in excited not-really-whispers about her daughter's new daughter while my dad sings "Oh! Susanna." She told Grandmother and showed her the picture. Maybe she got to tell her a few times.
Someone sat with Grandmother all the time. She wasn't allowed to eat because of the danger of her aspirating it into her lungs, which would be traumatic. She couldn't even have water. My mom used q-tips to keep her mouth wet. Grandmother, forgetting, would say she was thirsty, and my mother, her daughter, would have to tell her she couldn't have a glass of water. Grandmother would ask if that was what the doctor had said to do, and then accept it calmly.
She was awake and lucid for a couple of days, as the parade of visitors came through. She'd tell the same stories over and over and then laugh at herself when she realized it. She got weaker. The hospice people gave her some morphine, so there was no pain, no suffering. She died early in the morning, three days after her 78th descendant was born.
I missed the funeral. I heard it was well-attended.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. For Susanna, a time to be born. For my grandmother, a time to die. For mother and I, a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. It's jarring to process it at once: my grief while I hold my new daughter, my mother's joy as she makes funeral arrangements. Birth and death are not opposites so much as complements; we all have to do both to experience any of the things in between, hopefully with as little suffering as possible.
5.04.2015
working mother.
I walked into the office this morning with my purse, a grocery bag containing my lunch, and a black shoulder bag containing a breast pump. I was surprised when I got to my cube and found it exactly the same; the rest of my life had changed so much.
Everyone stopped by to welcome me back asking how I'm doing and whether I've slept at all in the last six weeks. One coworker asked gently how I was doing and then looked at me with concern, as if to let me know that I could feel free to open up. I replied that I was doing fine, and he turned away, almost disappointed, mumbling something about women having trouble leaving the baby.
I did not have trouble leaving the baby. I told my husband where he could find the milk and then reassured him that taking care of an infant was not hard. Well, it's not complicated. And then I just left with my discrete black shoulder bag, off to bring home the bacon. And the milk.
Mid-morning, I decided to investigate my options. I went into the ladies' room and discovered that there is one outlet located by the sink. To pump in the relative privacy of a stall, I'd need an extension cord. My other option appeared to be a storage room, which was more private in that it had a lock on the door and no one would be able to hear the telltale whirrr-click whirrr-click. However, I'd have to put some kind of sign on the door to prevent others with a key from coming in to get the old accounting records, which felt pretty conspicuous. Also, all the outlets were hidden behind shelves of boxes. There were a couple of empty offices and conference rooms, but they all had windows. The only other woman at work recalled that when she'd gone through the same thing a decade and an office ago, the maintenance crew had come in and installed blinds on a window.
It seems like there are laws about accommodating working mothers who need to breastfeed. Installing blinds would be accommodating. Had I brought this up more than half an hour before I needed it, that might have been possible. Since I did not do that, for the time being, I was given an extension cord. A bright orange, thirty-foot extension cord. Itis not ideal, but it works.
So I sat on the toilet, pumped, emptied the full containers into the jar, and then pumped some more. I got milk on my shirt, and the jar I brought was too small. I left the pump parts drying on a paper towel by the bathroom sink, but I had to put the milk jar in the company fridge. I thought about labeling it, in case someone thought about using it for their coffee. Being a working mother is so glamorous.
In the afternoon, I texted my husband to ask what time he would be bringing the baby by to meet my coworkers, because it is apparently a crime to have a baby and then not show it to everyone. He responded that he was at the store, picking up ingredients for dinner. I admired his ambition, as I have only been on a solo excursion with the baby one time, and it was for a required doctor's appointment. I wondered if the baby would fuss or if he would have to change a diaper in the men's room, where there was probably not a changing station. Being a stay-at-home dad is so glamorous.
Today my old life met my new one. It was the first day of the new normal.
Everyone stopped by to welcome me back asking how I'm doing and whether I've slept at all in the last six weeks. One coworker asked gently how I was doing and then looked at me with concern, as if to let me know that I could feel free to open up. I replied that I was doing fine, and he turned away, almost disappointed, mumbling something about women having trouble leaving the baby.
I did not have trouble leaving the baby. I told my husband where he could find the milk and then reassured him that taking care of an infant was not hard. Well, it's not complicated. And then I just left with my discrete black shoulder bag, off to bring home the bacon. And the milk.
Mid-morning, I decided to investigate my options. I went into the ladies' room and discovered that there is one outlet located by the sink. To pump in the relative privacy of a stall, I'd need an extension cord. My other option appeared to be a storage room, which was more private in that it had a lock on the door and no one would be able to hear the telltale whirrr-click whirrr-click. However, I'd have to put some kind of sign on the door to prevent others with a key from coming in to get the old accounting records, which felt pretty conspicuous. Also, all the outlets were hidden behind shelves of boxes. There were a couple of empty offices and conference rooms, but they all had windows. The only other woman at work recalled that when she'd gone through the same thing a decade and an office ago, the maintenance crew had come in and installed blinds on a window.
It seems like there are laws about accommodating working mothers who need to breastfeed. Installing blinds would be accommodating. Had I brought this up more than half an hour before I needed it, that might have been possible. Since I did not do that, for the time being, I was given an extension cord. A bright orange, thirty-foot extension cord. Itis not ideal, but it works.
So I sat on the toilet, pumped, emptied the full containers into the jar, and then pumped some more. I got milk on my shirt, and the jar I brought was too small. I left the pump parts drying on a paper towel by the bathroom sink, but I had to put the milk jar in the company fridge. I thought about labeling it, in case someone thought about using it for their coffee. Being a working mother is so glamorous.
In the afternoon, I texted my husband to ask what time he would be bringing the baby by to meet my coworkers, because it is apparently a crime to have a baby and then not show it to everyone. He responded that he was at the store, picking up ingredients for dinner. I admired his ambition, as I have only been on a solo excursion with the baby one time, and it was for a required doctor's appointment. I wondered if the baby would fuss or if he would have to change a diaper in the men's room, where there was probably not a changing station. Being a stay-at-home dad is so glamorous.
Today my old life met my new one. It was the first day of the new normal.
3.17.2015
baby dreams.
Still pregnant. Moving on.
Some pregnant women have dreams about their babies. Sometimes, these dreams even reveal insights, like the baby's gender. When we tell people that we are waiting until the birth to find out the sex of the baby, some of them ask me if I have any intuition about it. I'm really not sure how that would work. Even assuming there are noticeable differences in carrying a boy versus carrying a girl, how would that be communicated to my brain? While I'm pretty confident dismissing most old wives' tales about telling the gender, I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm just not the intuitive type.
I know another pregnant lady who is about 3 months behind me. She felt that the baby was a girl before they had the ultrasound confirming her intuition. She said she had a dream about her daughter and she just loved her so much. Isn't that nice? I'm sitting here agonizing over my ambivalence towards my baby, and she has a dream where she just loves it so much.
Let me tell you about my baby dreams.
Dream 1: I drop the baby (just "the baby," not a son or a daughter, just some anonymous swaddled infant). It rolls under a table, and I can't find it.
Dream 2: The baby has weird yellow eyes. Special Agent Mulder is there, probably because the yellow eyes indicate that the baby is an alien or a part of a government conspiracy.
Dream 3: The baby is crawling and has a comically large head, like the size of a balloon.
See? Just not the intuitive type. Or maybe our dreams reflect what we're already feeling, rather than revealing any secrets. Also, no more X-Files before bed.
Some pregnant women have dreams about their babies. Sometimes, these dreams even reveal insights, like the baby's gender. When we tell people that we are waiting until the birth to find out the sex of the baby, some of them ask me if I have any intuition about it. I'm really not sure how that would work. Even assuming there are noticeable differences in carrying a boy versus carrying a girl, how would that be communicated to my brain? While I'm pretty confident dismissing most old wives' tales about telling the gender, I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm just not the intuitive type.
I know another pregnant lady who is about 3 months behind me. She felt that the baby was a girl before they had the ultrasound confirming her intuition. She said she had a dream about her daughter and she just loved her so much. Isn't that nice? I'm sitting here agonizing over my ambivalence towards my baby, and she has a dream where she just loves it so much.
Let me tell you about my baby dreams.
Dream 1: I drop the baby (just "the baby," not a son or a daughter, just some anonymous swaddled infant). It rolls under a table, and I can't find it.
Dream 2: The baby has weird yellow eyes. Special Agent Mulder is there, probably because the yellow eyes indicate that the baby is an alien or a part of a government conspiracy.
Dream 3: The baby is crawling and has a comically large head, like the size of a balloon.
See? Just not the intuitive type. Or maybe our dreams reflect what we're already feeling, rather than revealing any secrets. Also, no more X-Files before bed.
3.12.2015
horizon.
Last week, I hit 39 weeks, which is full term. That means the baby is basically done cooking, and now we are just waiting for it to decide that the confines of my body are not enough anymore. I can't imagine how that decision hasn't already been made, as I can feel little parts pushing outward, often at two different points, like someone stretching at the beginning of the day. I wonder if maybe the baby is trying to burst out, not knowing that the gate is down.
Before 39 weeks, the baby was coming soon, and now it's coming at any time. I hate open-ended plans, where a punctual person like me is ready at the earliest possible point, and then is forced to kill time in such a way that doesn't mess up the existing preparations nor causes me to be too involved that I can't just drop everything. Baby is not yet late, so the fact that the crib is still in pieces is fine. Lateness in this case is not even accurate, as due dates are not an exact science, and really, Baby comes when Baby is ready. But I can't help thinking that when Baby shows up in relation to the due date will be the first test of whether it is his mother or his father's child.
I am in limbo. I am ready to not be pregnant anymore. I am tired of sleeping with a pillow between my knees and having to do a 20-point turn just to roll over. I'm tired of being limited to my five maternity outfits. I am tired of getting out of breath from putting on my shoes. I'm ready for something else now.
Ready to not be pregnant, but ready to be formerly pregnant, i.e. a parent? After the birth is a horizon I can't see over. I can't imagine it. The most I can muster is to picture my life as it is now, but there's a baby hanging out in the corner. I don't think that's accurate. Maybe that's why it feels like time has stopped. Before, there was a clear distance before the horizon, where I had time: time to get supplies, time to go to San Francisco, time to read books on birth and raising children. Now there is just that horizon, suddenly very close, and then nothing, like what flat-earthers must picture coming to the edge of the world must be like.
Every night I go to bed and think, well, it wasn't today. And then I wake up in the morning and wonder if today is the first day of the rest of my life. Or rather, I wonder if it's the opposite, the last day of the first part of my life. I had a teacher in high school who talked about life changes as the death of the person you were before. Graduation is the death of your grade school selves, marriage is the death of your single self, etc. My non-parent self is dying, along with my husband's non-parent self. Is this the last time we'll hit the snooze button to get nine more minutes of quiet snuggling?
My mother-in-law tells me to treasure this time, but she is the type to say that about every period of life. Her advice is really about awareness and gratitude. I'm aware, but I'm not sure I'm grateful. I appreciate these last few days, just the two of us, but without being able to picture what comes next, I'm scared and even a little bitter that it has to end. My non-parent self does not want to die, though she is on the verge of killing my pregnant self.
This is melancholy, I know, and no one wants to hear a monologue on dying selves when they ask if I'm excited to have a baby. It's just the waiting. I just need to get past this horizon.
Before 39 weeks, the baby was coming soon, and now it's coming at any time. I hate open-ended plans, where a punctual person like me is ready at the earliest possible point, and then is forced to kill time in such a way that doesn't mess up the existing preparations nor causes me to be too involved that I can't just drop everything. Baby is not yet late, so the fact that the crib is still in pieces is fine. Lateness in this case is not even accurate, as due dates are not an exact science, and really, Baby comes when Baby is ready. But I can't help thinking that when Baby shows up in relation to the due date will be the first test of whether it is his mother or his father's child.
I am in limbo. I am ready to not be pregnant anymore. I am tired of sleeping with a pillow between my knees and having to do a 20-point turn just to roll over. I'm tired of being limited to my five maternity outfits. I am tired of getting out of breath from putting on my shoes. I'm ready for something else now.
Ready to not be pregnant, but ready to be formerly pregnant, i.e. a parent? After the birth is a horizon I can't see over. I can't imagine it. The most I can muster is to picture my life as it is now, but there's a baby hanging out in the corner. I don't think that's accurate. Maybe that's why it feels like time has stopped. Before, there was a clear distance before the horizon, where I had time: time to get supplies, time to go to San Francisco, time to read books on birth and raising children. Now there is just that horizon, suddenly very close, and then nothing, like what flat-earthers must picture coming to the edge of the world must be like.
Every night I go to bed and think, well, it wasn't today. And then I wake up in the morning and wonder if today is the first day of the rest of my life. Or rather, I wonder if it's the opposite, the last day of the first part of my life. I had a teacher in high school who talked about life changes as the death of the person you were before. Graduation is the death of your grade school selves, marriage is the death of your single self, etc. My non-parent self is dying, along with my husband's non-parent self. Is this the last time we'll hit the snooze button to get nine more minutes of quiet snuggling?
My mother-in-law tells me to treasure this time, but she is the type to say that about every period of life. Her advice is really about awareness and gratitude. I'm aware, but I'm not sure I'm grateful. I appreciate these last few days, just the two of us, but without being able to picture what comes next, I'm scared and even a little bitter that it has to end. My non-parent self does not want to die, though she is on the verge of killing my pregnant self.
This is melancholy, I know, and no one wants to hear a monologue on dying selves when they ask if I'm excited to have a baby. It's just the waiting. I just need to get past this horizon.
3.10.2015
snow day.
A few weeks ago, I said it would be really nice to have one good snow. The winter looked to be almost over, and we'd had promises of the white stuff, but nothing had happened. I like one good snow a year. The first snow is pretty and fun, but anything after that is just cold and inconvenient. So if you only have one a year, you're set.
A couple of weeks ago, the forecast was calling for a good snow. And then it was calling for a great snow, 8 - 12 inches. I'm honestly not sure if I've seen that much snow in my life. It was supposed to start around 8 pm. In the afternoon, I went to the store and stocked up. I can't speak for other locales, but going to the store before a winter weather event is a Southern tradition. The joke is that everyone freaks out, buys bread and milk, and then we get a dusting. I went to two stores, because Josh wanted his special mouthwash that only Harris Teeter carries. Fresh breath is very important when you can't leave the house. Food Lion was busy, but orderly. Harris Teeter was a madhouse. I bought plenty of produce and some bottled water, plus things like mouthwash that we were just out of. Thinking of having a good ole fashioned snow day, I made sure we were stocked up on pancake ingredients. I did not buy bread or milk, because we already had those at home.
Of course, telecommuting has all but ruined the good ole fashioned snow day. Our office tends to go by whatever the public school system says, so if the schools are closed, so is the office. That just means we have to work from home. Thank goodness our productivity has not been ruined by a little ole snow storm. There was a day last year when the temptation was too much, and I spent the day watching a Harry Potter marathon with my husband and brother-in-law instead of working. The next day, I had to report that I had taken a personal day. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?
The night the snow was due to start, I went out to dinner with some friends. The weather was, of course, the big topic of conversation. We were talking about storms of years past, and one lady mentioned how awful it was when some hurricane came through, because she was living with her parents, who were on a well. For all you city slickers out there, when you get your water from the ground instead of from the city, you rely on a pump to get the water from Mother Earth to your faucet. And when the power goes out, the pump goes out, too. This means no drinking water, no showering water, and no flushing water.
That was the first time it occurred to me that 8 - 12 inches might make the power go out. A fun snow day is when you can lie on the couch and watch Netflix, maybe go outside to tromp around and throw snowballs before coming back inside for pancakes. A not fun snow day is when there is no power. No pancakes, no Netflix, no heat.
We were asleep at the time, but the best we can figure is that the power went out at around 2 AM. We woke up, and the house was silent. We were warm, but we were snuggling under a blanket. Outside, the world was covered (only 6 inches).
Well, I couldn't work from home.
We set up in the living room, pushing the futon into position about two feet from the fireplace. With the remains of an oak tree that killed our car a few years back, we stayed comfortable, if not cozy. We snuggled on the couch and read. We played a board game. We sat and stared at the fire. The dog had to be coaxed onto the couch, and every time the fire popped, she jumped down and ran to sit in the hall. I wanted to take a nap, but I knew that we'd run out of distractions when the sun took its feeble light away, and I needed to stay up.
Lunch was peanut butter and jelly with a side salad. I had some ice cream, too, to save it from melting. We packed ziplock bags full of snow and put them in the fridge to help keep things cool.
We had our cell phones. Josh's wasn't fully charged, and so after a few minutes of use, the red light started to show. Mine was charged, but I was keenly aware that we needed to save it in case there was an emergency, like my water breaking. So I limited my use to checking the power outage map. Yup, there was our neighborhood, out of power. The first morning, it reported over 200,000 homes were out of power. I made myself only check it every hour or so to see the progress of the work crews. The number came down rapidly, then more slowly, as the big neighborhoods were taken care of. Ours had a blue dot, which meant less than 50 houses affected. It would be a while before they got to us.
We had an emergency light and radio that worked by using a crank to charge the battery. Supposedly, you could also charge your cell phone by plugging it in and using the crank. Probably this is just for emergencies, rather than web browsing, as it seems to be pretty difficult to get much juice this way. At least, that's the conclusion I came to after watching Josh attempt to simultaneously crank the handle and scroll his Facebook feed.
Dinner was more of the same. We prepared and ate it by candlelight. And then we sat on the couch, watched the fire, and alternately talked or sat in comfortable silence. It wasn't so bad. There's no one I'd rather be stuck in a powerless house than my husband. I was thankful the baby was still inside me and thus required no maintenance. Josh put a big log on the fire to last the night, and we went to sleep on the futon.
I used to sleep on that futon every night. I was ten years younger and not pregnant at the time. I would not recommend it.
Day two, still no power. The outage map showed 15,000 homes still without power. I wondered how far down the list we were. By noon, the cabin fever was setting in. We decided to find someone who would let us use their shower, and if that didn't happen, we'd go be smelly at Starbucks and charge our devices. Josh's brother was at work, but told us to feel free to use our key to let ourselves in and take advantage of lights and hot water. He hadn't lost power at all and had spent the day before watching Netflix. He'd had eggs and crabcakes for breakfast. Jerk.
It was nice to get out and nicer still to get clean. We dawdled a little bit to charge our phones and see what we'd missed on the internet in the last day. Spock died.
We reluctantly headed back to the house. We could only get a third up the driveway. As we walked in, something felt different. It was cold, but not as cold. And there were humming noises. Hark! The power was on. We cheered, flushed the toilets, and had a hot lunch. Our adventure was over.
A couple of weeks ago, the forecast was calling for a good snow. And then it was calling for a great snow, 8 - 12 inches. I'm honestly not sure if I've seen that much snow in my life. It was supposed to start around 8 pm. In the afternoon, I went to the store and stocked up. I can't speak for other locales, but going to the store before a winter weather event is a Southern tradition. The joke is that everyone freaks out, buys bread and milk, and then we get a dusting. I went to two stores, because Josh wanted his special mouthwash that only Harris Teeter carries. Fresh breath is very important when you can't leave the house. Food Lion was busy, but orderly. Harris Teeter was a madhouse. I bought plenty of produce and some bottled water, plus things like mouthwash that we were just out of. Thinking of having a good ole fashioned snow day, I made sure we were stocked up on pancake ingredients. I did not buy bread or milk, because we already had those at home.
Of course, telecommuting has all but ruined the good ole fashioned snow day. Our office tends to go by whatever the public school system says, so if the schools are closed, so is the office. That just means we have to work from home. Thank goodness our productivity has not been ruined by a little ole snow storm. There was a day last year when the temptation was too much, and I spent the day watching a Harry Potter marathon with my husband and brother-in-law instead of working. The next day, I had to report that I had taken a personal day. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?
The night the snow was due to start, I went out to dinner with some friends. The weather was, of course, the big topic of conversation. We were talking about storms of years past, and one lady mentioned how awful it was when some hurricane came through, because she was living with her parents, who were on a well. For all you city slickers out there, when you get your water from the ground instead of from the city, you rely on a pump to get the water from Mother Earth to your faucet. And when the power goes out, the pump goes out, too. This means no drinking water, no showering water, and no flushing water.
That was the first time it occurred to me that 8 - 12 inches might make the power go out. A fun snow day is when you can lie on the couch and watch Netflix, maybe go outside to tromp around and throw snowballs before coming back inside for pancakes. A not fun snow day is when there is no power. No pancakes, no Netflix, no heat.
We were asleep at the time, but the best we can figure is that the power went out at around 2 AM. We woke up, and the house was silent. We were warm, but we were snuggling under a blanket. Outside, the world was covered (only 6 inches).
Well, I couldn't work from home.
We set up in the living room, pushing the futon into position about two feet from the fireplace. With the remains of an oak tree that killed our car a few years back, we stayed comfortable, if not cozy. We snuggled on the couch and read. We played a board game. We sat and stared at the fire. The dog had to be coaxed onto the couch, and every time the fire popped, she jumped down and ran to sit in the hall. I wanted to take a nap, but I knew that we'd run out of distractions when the sun took its feeble light away, and I needed to stay up.
Lunch was peanut butter and jelly with a side salad. I had some ice cream, too, to save it from melting. We packed ziplock bags full of snow and put them in the fridge to help keep things cool.
We had our cell phones. Josh's wasn't fully charged, and so after a few minutes of use, the red light started to show. Mine was charged, but I was keenly aware that we needed to save it in case there was an emergency, like my water breaking. So I limited my use to checking the power outage map. Yup, there was our neighborhood, out of power. The first morning, it reported over 200,000 homes were out of power. I made myself only check it every hour or so to see the progress of the work crews. The number came down rapidly, then more slowly, as the big neighborhoods were taken care of. Ours had a blue dot, which meant less than 50 houses affected. It would be a while before they got to us.
We had an emergency light and radio that worked by using a crank to charge the battery. Supposedly, you could also charge your cell phone by plugging it in and using the crank. Probably this is just for emergencies, rather than web browsing, as it seems to be pretty difficult to get much juice this way. At least, that's the conclusion I came to after watching Josh attempt to simultaneously crank the handle and scroll his Facebook feed.
Dinner was more of the same. We prepared and ate it by candlelight. And then we sat on the couch, watched the fire, and alternately talked or sat in comfortable silence. It wasn't so bad. There's no one I'd rather be stuck in a powerless house than my husband. I was thankful the baby was still inside me and thus required no maintenance. Josh put a big log on the fire to last the night, and we went to sleep on the futon.
I used to sleep on that futon every night. I was ten years younger and not pregnant at the time. I would not recommend it.
Day two, still no power. The outage map showed 15,000 homes still without power. I wondered how far down the list we were. By noon, the cabin fever was setting in. We decided to find someone who would let us use their shower, and if that didn't happen, we'd go be smelly at Starbucks and charge our devices. Josh's brother was at work, but told us to feel free to use our key to let ourselves in and take advantage of lights and hot water. He hadn't lost power at all and had spent the day before watching Netflix. He'd had eggs and crabcakes for breakfast. Jerk.
It was nice to get out and nicer still to get clean. We dawdled a little bit to charge our phones and see what we'd missed on the internet in the last day. Spock died.
We reluctantly headed back to the house. We could only get a third up the driveway. As we walked in, something felt different. It was cold, but not as cold. And there were humming noises. Hark! The power was on. We cheered, flushed the toilets, and had a hot lunch. Our adventure was over.
3.07.2015
lentil soup.
Josh is currently doing a Daniel Fast for Lent. The Daniel Fast is based on a passage in the Bible where Daniel and the other good Jews ate a strict diet and still were big and strong and handsome. It's a vegan diet, but also no fried foods, leavened bread, additives/preservatives of any kind, and you can only drink water. I did this with him once, right before we got married, and it was totally just a way for me to lose weight. I hated it. I was always hungry, and finding something that I could eat was just such a chore. He's done it a few times. Generally, you do it for three weeks, but he's going the whole forty days. I decided that having a baby during Lent was enough of a sacrifice, so pass the ice cream, I need calcium.
Anyway. For the most part, I let him fend for himself. He eats a lot of apples with peanut butter. But Saturday soup is a standing tradition now, and so I still try to do that. The first time, I made a roasted sweet potato soup which he ate, but did not really care for (little did he know that it is improved with a dollop of sour cream). But last week, I realized that I already had a Daniel-friendly soup recipe in my binder. See? We eat healthy things sometimes. It's not all Paula Deen recipes.
Lentil Soup
My changes: Decrease olive oil to 1 T. I used a 10 oz pack of frozen spinach. I added 1 t cumin and a sprinklin' of cayenne. For the vinegar, I used balsamic. If you are on the Daniel Fast, you'll probably need to use fresh tomatoes, as canned tomatoes almost always have additives of some kind.
Do you like lentils? They're funny little things, and they always remind me of Cinderella, whose step-mother threw some lentils in the fireplace and made her sift through the ashes to find them. They're also really very good for you, full of protein, fiber, and iron. Coupled with the ice cream, that's all a pregnant lady needs.
This soup is really good. I'm sure there are excellent lentil soup recipes out there that start with some kind of pork fat, but I do not miss the meat when I eat this one. Whip some up for your favoritecrazy person Daniel faster today.
Anyway. For the most part, I let him fend for himself. He eats a lot of apples with peanut butter. But Saturday soup is a standing tradition now, and so I still try to do that. The first time, I made a roasted sweet potato soup which he ate, but did not really care for (little did he know that it is improved with a dollop of sour cream). But last week, I realized that I already had a Daniel-friendly soup recipe in my binder. See? We eat healthy things sometimes. It's not all Paula Deen recipes.
Lentil Soup
My changes: Decrease olive oil to 1 T. I used a 10 oz pack of frozen spinach. I added 1 t cumin and a sprinklin' of cayenne. For the vinegar, I used balsamic. If you are on the Daniel Fast, you'll probably need to use fresh tomatoes, as canned tomatoes almost always have additives of some kind.
Do you like lentils? They're funny little things, and they always remind me of Cinderella, whose step-mother threw some lentils in the fireplace and made her sift through the ashes to find them. They're also really very good for you, full of protein, fiber, and iron. Coupled with the ice cream, that's all a pregnant lady needs.
This soup is really good. I'm sure there are excellent lentil soup recipes out there that start with some kind of pork fat, but I do not miss the meat when I eat this one. Whip some up for your favorite
3.06.2015
young people church friends.
I started attending a weeknight Bible Study at church. Suddenly, I figured out where the young people were. All the friends we've made at church have been of an older generation. Either through the couples-only supper group or through the choir, all the folks we spent our time with were just in a different stage of life. It was surreal listening to their stories and realizing they had whole other lives they'd already lived, in other places, doing other things. All their children were grown, which in my present state makes them seem like superheroes.
Sunday morning sees a pretty wide variety of ages in attendance, but there doesn't seem to be much intergenerational mingling. We saw that there were other people our age, but because we were involved in older people activities, we didn't interact with them. Until Bible Study.
Every other Wednesday we meet to discuss the scripture readings for the upcoming Sunday. In the Episcopal church, we have an official three-year calendar of readings. So each Sunday, we hear something from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the New Testament. Then the priest gives a sermon inspired by one of those readings. It's a pretty good system. It keeps the focus on scripture, while making sure that the whole book gets covered, rather than the same old favorites over and over again.
And it's predictable, so we can have a meeting on Wednesday night that talks about passages that will come up again Sunday. For the record, I also go to a Sunday school class that discusses the passages again. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, to see how much variation can come from talking about the same short excerpts.
Anyway, Bible Study is a young folks activity, for those who consider thirty-year-olds young. It's mostly couples. Actually, it's all couples, except for me, because Josh has other obligations on Wednesdays. Some of the couples have children, and for them, childcare is provided in the room next door. There are usually snacks.
It's really, really nice to be around people my age. We have plenty of friends outside the church, mostly picked up in the orbit of Josh's band. But when we started going to church again, many of them thought we'd lost our minds. Me, I'd always intended to get back into the church habit someday. I'd had a pretty good experience in the church growing up, which I know is not the case for everybody. While I've definitely outgrown my childhood faith, I still feel very at home within that atmosphere. Josh wanted to go back so he could represent himself well to the preacher who was going to be marrying us, but he got sucked in by the nice people and the cookies and the singing and what some would call the Holy Spirit. We still have our old friends, and they just know that church is something we do, like some people are into hiking or poker. None of them seem to have any interest in that area, and that's fine.
But now we have young people church friends, and it's awesome to be at the same stage of life with people and also share this thing that we do. And we still have our older people church friends, too. So many friends!
Last week during Bible Study, one of the men excitedly held up a grainy black and white picture: an ultrasound. And there was a great swarm around them, high-fiving the beaming father and asking the mother how she was feeeeeeling (I refrained from asking this specific question, but found that I had no idea what to ask. Working on that). So there was their little bean, my much larger bean, plus another infant sucking from a bottle, and one more bouncing on dad's knee. Rather than looking at our older people church friends and wondering if we will ever make it to the other side of parenting, we will be making this journey along with our young people church friends.
What's more, our children will be growing up together. I do not know why that thought makes me happy, but it does. For me, both as a child and an adult, church has largely been about community. My baby will have a community just by being born - young people church friends and their parents, plus a whole choir full of extra grandparents. Lucky kid.
Sunday morning sees a pretty wide variety of ages in attendance, but there doesn't seem to be much intergenerational mingling. We saw that there were other people our age, but because we were involved in older people activities, we didn't interact with them. Until Bible Study.
Every other Wednesday we meet to discuss the scripture readings for the upcoming Sunday. In the Episcopal church, we have an official three-year calendar of readings. So each Sunday, we hear something from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the New Testament. Then the priest gives a sermon inspired by one of those readings. It's a pretty good system. It keeps the focus on scripture, while making sure that the whole book gets covered, rather than the same old favorites over and over again.
And it's predictable, so we can have a meeting on Wednesday night that talks about passages that will come up again Sunday. For the record, I also go to a Sunday school class that discusses the passages again. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, to see how much variation can come from talking about the same short excerpts.
Anyway, Bible Study is a young folks activity, for those who consider thirty-year-olds young. It's mostly couples. Actually, it's all couples, except for me, because Josh has other obligations on Wednesdays. Some of the couples have children, and for them, childcare is provided in the room next door. There are usually snacks.
It's really, really nice to be around people my age. We have plenty of friends outside the church, mostly picked up in the orbit of Josh's band. But when we started going to church again, many of them thought we'd lost our minds. Me, I'd always intended to get back into the church habit someday. I'd had a pretty good experience in the church growing up, which I know is not the case for everybody. While I've definitely outgrown my childhood faith, I still feel very at home within that atmosphere. Josh wanted to go back so he could represent himself well to the preacher who was going to be marrying us, but he got sucked in by the nice people and the cookies and the singing and what some would call the Holy Spirit. We still have our old friends, and they just know that church is something we do, like some people are into hiking or poker. None of them seem to have any interest in that area, and that's fine.
But now we have young people church friends, and it's awesome to be at the same stage of life with people and also share this thing that we do. And we still have our older people church friends, too. So many friends!
Last week during Bible Study, one of the men excitedly held up a grainy black and white picture: an ultrasound. And there was a great swarm around them, high-fiving the beaming father and asking the mother how she was feeeeeeling (I refrained from asking this specific question, but found that I had no idea what to ask. Working on that). So there was their little bean, my much larger bean, plus another infant sucking from a bottle, and one more bouncing on dad's knee. Rather than looking at our older people church friends and wondering if we will ever make it to the other side of parenting, we will be making this journey along with our young people church friends.
What's more, our children will be growing up together. I do not know why that thought makes me happy, but it does. For me, both as a child and an adult, church has largely been about community. My baby will have a community just by being born - young people church friends and their parents, plus a whole choir full of extra grandparents. Lucky kid.
3.05.2015
february 2015 books.
Three Men on a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
Jerome K. Jerome
This was kinda fun. It's the story of three Brits taking a little boating vacation down the Thames. Nothing really happens other than various minor misadventures that happen on outdoor excursions, but the narration was very funny. There's lots of tangents and anecdotes, which makes up for the basic lack of plot. Overall, I would call it droll, which I don't get to say nearly enough.
Fun fact: The 'K' stands for 'Klapka.' He changed it later in life to honor the Hungarian general György Klapka.
The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis
I bought this book because it was written by Kazantzakis, who I like a lot. I had no idea there was any controversy about it, whatsoever. So I read it, and I noticed that there were definitely parts that some folks might consider heresy. And then I started doing a little research, and holy cow. Most of the controversy seems to be centered around the movie, which I have not seen. I found some really angry stuff from Christians, who mostly saw it as an attack by Hollywood and Liberal America on their faith. I even found a guy who blamed it on the Jews (because they run Hollywood, remember).
So, this is the story of Jesus. You know, that guy. At the beginning, he is simply a carpenter who is suffering from what we would now call mental illness. He senses a birdlike creature following him always, sometimes clawing at his head because he is not on the right path. Everyone in town is also very upset with him, because he's been making crosses for the Romans to crucify various Zealots that the people hope might be the Messiah.
One thing that struck me throughout the book was what people expected to be the Messiah. I knew they were expecting a king and a warrior, but it didn't occur to me that they were looking for someone to save them from the Romans, and by "them," they meant specifically Israel, or the Jews. Part of what was so revolutionary about Jesus' message was that the Romans were our brothers. This is probably obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me before, having grown up with the idea that Jesus is for everybody.
Finally, Jesus gets tired of this birdthing on his head, and he goes out to a desert monastery. The birdthing goes with him, but stops hurting him, so it seems to approve of this task. Judas also follows him there, with the intent to kill him for making all those crosses. But Jesus, having made peace with his birdthing, is ready for whatever, and Judas thinks he might be the Messiah, so he's gonna just follow him around until he's sure.
I really liked what Kazantzakis did with Judas in the book. I've always felt conflicted about old redbeard. He's the bad guy, right, because he betrayed Jesus for some money. But the whole point of Jesus was that he died. Someone had to play this Judas part, and then we get all mad at him for it and a perfectly good name is ruined forever. In the book, however, Jesus tells Judas to betray him because he is the only one strong enough to play this role. None of the other disciples know about it. I'm not sure if this scenario is considered heresy. It's not in the Bible, but is it unBiblical?
Jesus comes out of the monastery and starts being that guy we all know. He saves a prostitute from being stoned, he preaches about love and brotherhood, he heals some people, he talks about the poor getting theirs, he picks up some disciples along the way. There is a great scene where Barrabas, another of the Zealots, has been sent to murder him, again for that cross-building thing. He slaps him, and Jesus turns the other cheek. The nonviolence of it just stops Barrabas and the assembled crowd in their tracks.
One of the disciples that starts tagging along is Matthew, who takes it upon himself to write all their adventures down. He has an angel over his shoulder, guiding him and telling him him what to write. And some of the stuff that he writes is not true, but the angel told him to write it, so he does. At some point, Jesus reads some of it, and gets really mad that Matthew is making up stories about virgin births and Bethlehem and Magi. Matthew defends himself with that old chestnut, "an angel made me do it," and Jesus says okay, whatever. It's implied that the angel does this to align Jesus' birth with prophesies in the Old Testament. I've heard that the gospel of Matthew was likely used to speak to Jews to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore there is a lot of stress on fulfilling prophecy. This seems to be actually controversial to me.
At some point, Jesus realizes that he has to die, as he says that death is the door to immortality. He sets up the betrayal with Judas, gets arrested and tried. Meanwhile, Barrabas has also been arrested for killing Lazarus. Kazantzakis apparently wondered whatever happened to Lazarus after he came back from the dead. It wasn't pretty. He's all brittle and decayed and smelly. He seems to be recovering slowly, but Barrabus kills him to prevent him from walking around and being a living reminder of Jesus.
While Jesus is on the cross, his guardian angel comes to him and takes him away, saying that God is rescuing him because he did the right thing. He is swooped off to Mary Magdalene, who is a sort of childhood sweetheart figure for Jesus. They make sweet love before she is killed by an angry mob, led by the hunchbacked Saul. Jesus is not overly upset about that, but goes to Mary and Martha, where he marries the pair of them and lives a normal, happy life as a carpenter and patriarch.
This whole life is a dream that the devil (the guardian angel) has set up for him to tempt him to choose a normal life as a man, rather than dying young to save everybody else. This is the last temptation of Christ. We have a title, folks!
During this life, he is visited by Saul, now Paul. Jesus gets kinda pissed off that Paul is telling everyone that he died and was resurrected, but Paul tells him that it doesn't even need to have actually happened, because the story is working anyway. Again, this part seems pretty controversial to me, but more people seemed to be up in arms about the sex with Mary Magdalene.
Finally, when he is an old, old man, he is visited by the apostles, who are also very old and very sad. Except Judas, who is royally pissed at Jesus. Judas held up his end of the bargain (betrayal), but Jesus did not (dying). And this is what makes Jesus realize that it's all been some kind of alternate history dream put on by Lucifer. He rejects it and immediately his nice life disappears and he's back on the cross in agony.
And that's the happy ending.
The parts that I found controversial were not the parts that the greater public got upset about. I can see people being offended by a movie sex scene featuring their savior. But as far as I can tell, people were mostly up in arms that Jesus would've rather had a nice, simple life with wives and children than die in agony in his thirties. Seems pretty relateable and also biblical. Jesus prays the night before his arrest to please let there be another way to save humanity, because this way sucks, Dad, c'mon.
Being tempted is a part of being fully human, which is again, the big deal about Jesus. He goes to the desert and the devil tempts him. Maybe it's a misunderstanding of the word. Like, the devil could hold out a nice juicy cantaloupe to tempt me. But cantaloupe is gross, so it would not actually tempt me. I could reject the devil and his cantaloupe, no problem. It's not being tempted if you don't want the thing, and it's not a virtue to reject it. The importance of Jesus being sinless was not because he never wanted to sin, it's that he definitely wanted to, just like the rest of us.
I dunno. I'm sorta having to glean what I can of what the controversy was, so maybe I am not representing it in its most coherent light. I liked the book, is what I'm saying. Sorry about all the plot summary.
Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
You know, when I think back about the plot of this book, I'm sorta at a loss as to what I liked about it. A lady goes back to her home town, finds redemption and forgiveness and belonging. It's set in Arizona, so there's lots of Native American spiritualism. None of that would appeal to me particularly, but somehow in Kingsolver's hands, I am always sucked in.
Part of it is her actual prose. As Josh says, I read like a scientist, which means for content rather than form. I really have to make myself slow down and notice the individual words and how they interact. A few times while reading this book, I found myself noticing a really good metaphor. It'd be great if I had written one down for you to see, but I did not do that. Kingsolver does a good job of conveying a feeling by comparing it to something more relateable. Apparently, I'm into that.
Her books also have a very strong sense of place. The characters visit a reservation and a couple of old Pueblo villages. The landscape seems dry and mostly red-brown, yet the people make it vivid and beautiful.
And there are peacocks. I'm pretty sure they're symbolic peacocks.
Josh says it's not important to be able to pick out individual literary devices; that you just read, and you'll feel them intuitively. I am skeptical of this. I am sure it's true for him, but he has some kind of special relationship with words. But Kingsolver makes me think it could be true for people like me, too.
Jerome K. Jerome
This was kinda fun. It's the story of three Brits taking a little boating vacation down the Thames. Nothing really happens other than various minor misadventures that happen on outdoor excursions, but the narration was very funny. There's lots of tangents and anecdotes, which makes up for the basic lack of plot. Overall, I would call it droll, which I don't get to say nearly enough.
Fun fact: The 'K' stands for 'Klapka.' He changed it later in life to honor the Hungarian general György Klapka.
The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis
I bought this book because it was written by Kazantzakis, who I like a lot. I had no idea there was any controversy about it, whatsoever. So I read it, and I noticed that there were definitely parts that some folks might consider heresy. And then I started doing a little research, and holy cow. Most of the controversy seems to be centered around the movie, which I have not seen. I found some really angry stuff from Christians, who mostly saw it as an attack by Hollywood and Liberal America on their faith. I even found a guy who blamed it on the Jews (because they run Hollywood, remember).
So, this is the story of Jesus. You know, that guy. At the beginning, he is simply a carpenter who is suffering from what we would now call mental illness. He senses a birdlike creature following him always, sometimes clawing at his head because he is not on the right path. Everyone in town is also very upset with him, because he's been making crosses for the Romans to crucify various Zealots that the people hope might be the Messiah.
One thing that struck me throughout the book was what people expected to be the Messiah. I knew they were expecting a king and a warrior, but it didn't occur to me that they were looking for someone to save them from the Romans, and by "them," they meant specifically Israel, or the Jews. Part of what was so revolutionary about Jesus' message was that the Romans were our brothers. This is probably obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me before, having grown up with the idea that Jesus is for everybody.
Finally, Jesus gets tired of this birdthing on his head, and he goes out to a desert monastery. The birdthing goes with him, but stops hurting him, so it seems to approve of this task. Judas also follows him there, with the intent to kill him for making all those crosses. But Jesus, having made peace with his birdthing, is ready for whatever, and Judas thinks he might be the Messiah, so he's gonna just follow him around until he's sure.
I really liked what Kazantzakis did with Judas in the book. I've always felt conflicted about old redbeard. He's the bad guy, right, because he betrayed Jesus for some money. But the whole point of Jesus was that he died. Someone had to play this Judas part, and then we get all mad at him for it and a perfectly good name is ruined forever. In the book, however, Jesus tells Judas to betray him because he is the only one strong enough to play this role. None of the other disciples know about it. I'm not sure if this scenario is considered heresy. It's not in the Bible, but is it unBiblical?
Jesus comes out of the monastery and starts being that guy we all know. He saves a prostitute from being stoned, he preaches about love and brotherhood, he heals some people, he talks about the poor getting theirs, he picks up some disciples along the way. There is a great scene where Barrabas, another of the Zealots, has been sent to murder him, again for that cross-building thing. He slaps him, and Jesus turns the other cheek. The nonviolence of it just stops Barrabas and the assembled crowd in their tracks.
One of the disciples that starts tagging along is Matthew, who takes it upon himself to write all their adventures down. He has an angel over his shoulder, guiding him and telling him him what to write. And some of the stuff that he writes is not true, but the angel told him to write it, so he does. At some point, Jesus reads some of it, and gets really mad that Matthew is making up stories about virgin births and Bethlehem and Magi. Matthew defends himself with that old chestnut, "an angel made me do it," and Jesus says okay, whatever. It's implied that the angel does this to align Jesus' birth with prophesies in the Old Testament. I've heard that the gospel of Matthew was likely used to speak to Jews to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore there is a lot of stress on fulfilling prophecy. This seems to be actually controversial to me.
At some point, Jesus realizes that he has to die, as he says that death is the door to immortality. He sets up the betrayal with Judas, gets arrested and tried. Meanwhile, Barrabas has also been arrested for killing Lazarus. Kazantzakis apparently wondered whatever happened to Lazarus after he came back from the dead. It wasn't pretty. He's all brittle and decayed and smelly. He seems to be recovering slowly, but Barrabus kills him to prevent him from walking around and being a living reminder of Jesus.
While Jesus is on the cross, his guardian angel comes to him and takes him away, saying that God is rescuing him because he did the right thing. He is swooped off to Mary Magdalene, who is a sort of childhood sweetheart figure for Jesus. They make sweet love before she is killed by an angry mob, led by the hunchbacked Saul. Jesus is not overly upset about that, but goes to Mary and Martha, where he marries the pair of them and lives a normal, happy life as a carpenter and patriarch.
This whole life is a dream that the devil (the guardian angel) has set up for him to tempt him to choose a normal life as a man, rather than dying young to save everybody else. This is the last temptation of Christ. We have a title, folks!
During this life, he is visited by Saul, now Paul. Jesus gets kinda pissed off that Paul is telling everyone that he died and was resurrected, but Paul tells him that it doesn't even need to have actually happened, because the story is working anyway. Again, this part seems pretty controversial to me, but more people seemed to be up in arms about the sex with Mary Magdalene.
Finally, when he is an old, old man, he is visited by the apostles, who are also very old and very sad. Except Judas, who is royally pissed at Jesus. Judas held up his end of the bargain (betrayal), but Jesus did not (dying). And this is what makes Jesus realize that it's all been some kind of alternate history dream put on by Lucifer. He rejects it and immediately his nice life disappears and he's back on the cross in agony.
And that's the happy ending.
The parts that I found controversial were not the parts that the greater public got upset about. I can see people being offended by a movie sex scene featuring their savior. But as far as I can tell, people were mostly up in arms that Jesus would've rather had a nice, simple life with wives and children than die in agony in his thirties. Seems pretty relateable and also biblical. Jesus prays the night before his arrest to please let there be another way to save humanity, because this way sucks, Dad, c'mon.
Being tempted is a part of being fully human, which is again, the big deal about Jesus. He goes to the desert and the devil tempts him. Maybe it's a misunderstanding of the word. Like, the devil could hold out a nice juicy cantaloupe to tempt me. But cantaloupe is gross, so it would not actually tempt me. I could reject the devil and his cantaloupe, no problem. It's not being tempted if you don't want the thing, and it's not a virtue to reject it. The importance of Jesus being sinless was not because he never wanted to sin, it's that he definitely wanted to, just like the rest of us.
I dunno. I'm sorta having to glean what I can of what the controversy was, so maybe I am not representing it in its most coherent light. I liked the book, is what I'm saying. Sorry about all the plot summary.
Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
You know, when I think back about the plot of this book, I'm sorta at a loss as to what I liked about it. A lady goes back to her home town, finds redemption and forgiveness and belonging. It's set in Arizona, so there's lots of Native American spiritualism. None of that would appeal to me particularly, but somehow in Kingsolver's hands, I am always sucked in.
Part of it is her actual prose. As Josh says, I read like a scientist, which means for content rather than form. I really have to make myself slow down and notice the individual words and how they interact. A few times while reading this book, I found myself noticing a really good metaphor. It'd be great if I had written one down for you to see, but I did not do that. Kingsolver does a good job of conveying a feeling by comparing it to something more relateable. Apparently, I'm into that.
Her books also have a very strong sense of place. The characters visit a reservation and a couple of old Pueblo villages. The landscape seems dry and mostly red-brown, yet the people make it vivid and beautiful.
And there are peacocks. I'm pretty sure they're symbolic peacocks.
Josh says it's not important to be able to pick out individual literary devices; that you just read, and you'll feel them intuitively. I am skeptical of this. I am sure it's true for him, but he has some kind of special relationship with words. But Kingsolver makes me think it could be true for people like me, too.
2.13.2015
no way out but through.
My sister asked if I was scared of giving birth. I am not, particularly. I don't expect it to be pleasant, in fact I am quite certain it will suck more than most things that have ever sucked before. But there's no way out but through at this point. My sister has given birth six times, so maybe you need the experience to have the dread.
I am also not scared of taking care of the baby. Not that I feel confident about it, but it does seem that there are complete morons out there who manage to keep a baby alive. I am not a complete moron, so my husband and I will probably muddle through with only light scarring. There will be mistakes, things that I feel bad about for an hour or a day or a week even, but then will tell as a reassuring story to some pregnant woman someday.
I am scared of other things. My continued ambivalence scares me. I thought I'd be more excited by now. I read a pregnancy forum that has been really helpful for me in that whatever symptom I'm having, other people are having it too. Plus, some women are having worse symptoms, plus relationship issues and dealing with controlling parents. A good story about a mother-in-law throwing a hissy fit about a baby shower really helps my pelvic pain. And there are threads where women fearfully ask if anyone else isn't excited "enough." So I'm not alone there. Other women, who already had babies, reassure the rest of us that they never felt particularly excited, but they're happy with their babies now.
That is reassuring. My lack of excitement makes me worry that I'm going to hate this motherhood thing. I asked a friend who already has a baby whether she bonded with her baby immediately upon birth. She did not really understand the question and reassured me about the keeping the baby alive part of it. That leads me to believe that new parents are too busy to worry about whether or not they actually like parenting. That's actually a bit comforting. Misery is worse when you have time to dwell on it. If I feel the cold grip of regret on my soul, I'll just start a load of laundry.
I have trouble picturing my life with a kid. It's like my due date is the horizon; after that, I can't see anything. I know my life will be drastically different, but I can't picture what it will look like. I try to insert a baby into it, but that just looks like my existing life with some random baby hanging out. I can't picture my baby. Maybe this would be easier if we knew the gender, then I could at least picture a baby with a bow on its head or something. I don't know how to be excited about spending 18 years with someone I don't even know.
Still, no way out but through.
I am also not scared of taking care of the baby. Not that I feel confident about it, but it does seem that there are complete morons out there who manage to keep a baby alive. I am not a complete moron, so my husband and I will probably muddle through with only light scarring. There will be mistakes, things that I feel bad about for an hour or a day or a week even, but then will tell as a reassuring story to some pregnant woman someday.
I am scared of other things. My continued ambivalence scares me. I thought I'd be more excited by now. I read a pregnancy forum that has been really helpful for me in that whatever symptom I'm having, other people are having it too. Plus, some women are having worse symptoms, plus relationship issues and dealing with controlling parents. A good story about a mother-in-law throwing a hissy fit about a baby shower really helps my pelvic pain. And there are threads where women fearfully ask if anyone else isn't excited "enough." So I'm not alone there. Other women, who already had babies, reassure the rest of us that they never felt particularly excited, but they're happy with their babies now.
That is reassuring. My lack of excitement makes me worry that I'm going to hate this motherhood thing. I asked a friend who already has a baby whether she bonded with her baby immediately upon birth. She did not really understand the question and reassured me about the keeping the baby alive part of it. That leads me to believe that new parents are too busy to worry about whether or not they actually like parenting. That's actually a bit comforting. Misery is worse when you have time to dwell on it. If I feel the cold grip of regret on my soul, I'll just start a load of laundry.
I have trouble picturing my life with a kid. It's like my due date is the horizon; after that, I can't see anything. I know my life will be drastically different, but I can't picture what it will look like. I try to insert a baby into it, but that just looks like my existing life with some random baby hanging out. I can't picture my baby. Maybe this would be easier if we knew the gender, then I could at least picture a baby with a bow on its head or something. I don't know how to be excited about spending 18 years with someone I don't even know.
Still, no way out but through.
2.09.2015
mommy friend recommended.
Disclaimer: This is seriously some first world problem nonsense. I am very lucky to be able to afford nice things for my baby which will keep him/her safe and ease my life as a parent. Furthermore, I am lucky to have a choice in these things. Finally, I am the luckiest because other people buy me this stuff, so I don't have to consider cost as a huge factor in deciding which thing to use.
Baby stuff is a racket.
I sent an email to some mommy friends (because I have mommy friends), asking what sort of items I will need to care for a new baby. My frugal heart tried to get out of buying/registering for as much as possible. For example, I wanted to just skip the whole infant car seat. I mean, you have to buy another car seat when they get older, and some of those big kid car seats say they support newborns. It seemed like the whole infant car seat thing was a scam. Of course, pretty much no one recommended doing this, and everyone said you had to get the infant one. For safety reasons, and also so you can carry the sleeping baby from the car without waking it up.
Yeah, well, what if I want to wake my baby up? You know, to teach it about the inherent chaos that is life? What then?
FINE, I'll get an infant car seat. Also, did you know that you're not supposed to buy used car seats? It's because the seat might have been in an accident and therefore compromised. Also, they expire after six years. A scam, I tell ya.
So I started looking at car seats. And as bad as it was when I started adding up the cost of each of these items, when I started trying to figure out which one to buy was when my head started to spin. There are approximately 42 billion different options, and they each have very slight differences. These variations may seem minor, based on personal preferences even, but if you read enough product reviews, you'll find that it makes the difference between life and death. If you buy a car seat that doesn't have good LATCH support, then your baby will die or at least grow up to hate you. Then again, if you buy one without adequate belt connections, then your baby will become maimed and never be able to form meaningful relationships. Either way, most car seats are not installed properly, and it's really a wonder anyone survives the ride home from the hospital.
I was stressing out about all this stuff, venting to my husband first about the expense and then about the choices. After describing various seemingly trivial options in car seats to him, he smiled and said, "See? You're starting to get into this."
I glared at him. "No, but someone has to make this decision, and you'd quit after five minutes." That is true, but I can't even tell whether that might be a better strategy. Go to Amazon and pick the best reviews or just ask a mommy friend. You'd probably end up feeling like you did okay, you'd likely never know if other versions were better, and there is no way you'd tie your child's future emotional instability to a poor car seat choice.
I finally picked a car seat. I was oddly reassured to see a picture of the Duke of Cambridge carrying the baby prince in the same model. Yup, we went with this one because my royal mommy friend recommended it.
And repeat, with each item. We received as gifts two baby carriers. One of them seemed nicer, as it supported a front-facing position, because who doesn't like to see babies bobbing on their dad's chest, smiling at the world? As it turns out, front-facing has a danger of over-stimulation, because babies just aren't ready for the world. Also, the way certain carriers support the baby possibly leads to hip dysplasia. Hip dysplasia. I thought that was just something dogs got from being inbred. I yearn for the days before internet reviews, where you just asked your mommy friends what they had and liked and then you bought it and babies had hip dysplasia and liked it. Babies were tougher then.
Last night, when I was explaining the carrier dilemma to Josh, he began to see the insanity that is deciding on anything, ever. He was inclined to choose one model because someone who is more his friend gave it to us, as opposed to the one given to us by someone who is more my friend. But then he found out about the hip thing, and how one was designed with input from baby hip specialist-type people. Whole worlds of frightening possibilities opened up to him with the realization that there are people who study baby hips. Just when you think you can trust your mommy friends, you find out they're trying to give your kid hip dysplasia.
Baby stuff is a racket.
I sent an email to some mommy friends (because I have mommy friends), asking what sort of items I will need to care for a new baby. My frugal heart tried to get out of buying/registering for as much as possible. For example, I wanted to just skip the whole infant car seat. I mean, you have to buy another car seat when they get older, and some of those big kid car seats say they support newborns. It seemed like the whole infant car seat thing was a scam. Of course, pretty much no one recommended doing this, and everyone said you had to get the infant one. For safety reasons, and also so you can carry the sleeping baby from the car without waking it up.
Yeah, well, what if I want to wake my baby up? You know, to teach it about the inherent chaos that is life? What then?
FINE, I'll get an infant car seat. Also, did you know that you're not supposed to buy used car seats? It's because the seat might have been in an accident and therefore compromised. Also, they expire after six years. A scam, I tell ya.
So I started looking at car seats. And as bad as it was when I started adding up the cost of each of these items, when I started trying to figure out which one to buy was when my head started to spin. There are approximately 42 billion different options, and they each have very slight differences. These variations may seem minor, based on personal preferences even, but if you read enough product reviews, you'll find that it makes the difference between life and death. If you buy a car seat that doesn't have good LATCH support, then your baby will die or at least grow up to hate you. Then again, if you buy one without adequate belt connections, then your baby will become maimed and never be able to form meaningful relationships. Either way, most car seats are not installed properly, and it's really a wonder anyone survives the ride home from the hospital.
I was stressing out about all this stuff, venting to my husband first about the expense and then about the choices. After describing various seemingly trivial options in car seats to him, he smiled and said, "See? You're starting to get into this."
I glared at him. "No, but someone has to make this decision, and you'd quit after five minutes." That is true, but I can't even tell whether that might be a better strategy. Go to Amazon and pick the best reviews or just ask a mommy friend. You'd probably end up feeling like you did okay, you'd likely never know if other versions were better, and there is no way you'd tie your child's future emotional instability to a poor car seat choice.
I finally picked a car seat. I was oddly reassured to see a picture of the Duke of Cambridge carrying the baby prince in the same model. Yup, we went with this one because my royal mommy friend recommended it.
And repeat, with each item. We received as gifts two baby carriers. One of them seemed nicer, as it supported a front-facing position, because who doesn't like to see babies bobbing on their dad's chest, smiling at the world? As it turns out, front-facing has a danger of over-stimulation, because babies just aren't ready for the world. Also, the way certain carriers support the baby possibly leads to hip dysplasia. Hip dysplasia. I thought that was just something dogs got from being inbred. I yearn for the days before internet reviews, where you just asked your mommy friends what they had and liked and then you bought it and babies had hip dysplasia and liked it. Babies were tougher then.
Last night, when I was explaining the carrier dilemma to Josh, he began to see the insanity that is deciding on anything, ever. He was inclined to choose one model because someone who is more his friend gave it to us, as opposed to the one given to us by someone who is more my friend. But then he found out about the hip thing, and how one was designed with input from baby hip specialist-type people. Whole worlds of frightening possibilities opened up to him with the realization that there are people who study baby hips. Just when you think you can trust your mommy friends, you find out they're trying to give your kid hip dysplasia.
2.04.2015
january 2015 books.
Genesis: Memory of Fire, Volume 1
Eduardo Galeano
A brief note to say that Galeano is Uruguayan! I'm not sure that I've ever read anything by a Uruguayan author before. I should get a map and put pins in it.
So, I'm not sure what you would call this book. It's non-fiction, with short chapters detailing events that happened during the discovery and colonization of the New World, with particular focus on Latin and South America. There are footnotes for each chapter that lead to the original sources. Galeano retells these events in his own voice. There are threads running through, like there might be several chapters about the life of an individual, but those chapters are intermixed with other chapters that occurred at the same time. So the narrative is about the whole period, rather than any particular set of characters.
The first section is full of creation myths from various peoples across North and South America. These varied from creation of the Sun to some just-so stories about how animals got certain characteristics. My favorite of these was when a meeting of the animals was interrupted by the sunrise, and the bear, leaving in a hurry, put his moccasins on the wrong feet, and that's why the bear walks that way. There were even a couple about how the men came to be in charge. One story said the women used to be in charge, but then the men killed all the women and then raised the now-motherless children to believe that men were supposed to be in charge. That is not as hilarious.
And then the Europeans came. The stories then were full of blood and betrayal and gold.
I did learn about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Poor Sor Juana. She was apparently brilliant, but learning was forbidden for females at the time, so she was self-taught. She ended up joining a convent as an alternative to marriage (pretty much the only choice for her). She joined a sect that was more lenient about women studying, but she was still censured by the church for "waywardness." Much of her written work ended up being destroyed by church officials. Just think what she might have done had she been allowed, even encouraged to use her mind.
Also, I learned that the Spanish king in charge of much of the westward expansion, Charles II, was disabled physically, intellectually, and emotionally, from all the inbreeding. Because he was completely incompetant, the fate of Spain, new and old, was left to his advisors, court, and foreign influence. I know, it's kinda dumb to rail against the monarchy now, but dang, that was screwed up.
This book is the first of a trilogy, and thus covered only up to 1800. I enjoyed it, but found all the names and places a bit confusing. I think that's okay, as the point was more to weave an overall picture, rather than teach names and dates. It was frequently infuriating. I might pick up the other two books if I found them, as I think more recent history would appeal to me more.
Crabwalk
Günter Grass
I came to a realization while reading this book, and I'm going to cop to it, though it makes me look kinda stupid. I knew that the Nazis were also called the Nationalist Socialist party, and I got that they were all about Germany and Germanic people (the "nationalist" part). But I guess I never really thought about the socialist part. It kinda gets lost in the shuffle, what with the genocide and all.
The story centers around the sinking of a ship, the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, which was originally commissioned as part of the Strength Through Joy program. This was a government leisure program, meant to boost tourism and make nice things like cruise trips available to everyone, regardless of social status. The characters in the book take a cruise on the Wihlem Gustloff, and they keep remarking about the concept of a classless ship. So everyone gets to eat the same food and see the same sights and attend the same shows. A classless ship! It sounds nice, doesn't it? Socialism always sounds so nice.
Then the war came, and the Wilhelm Gustloff was turned into a navy vessel, then a hospital ship and floating barracks. Finally, it was used to evacuate troops and civilians to escape the advancing Red Army. During one of those transports, it was sunk by a Soviet submarine. Over 9,000 people died, which is the largest death toll from the sinking of a single ship (in comparison, about 1500 people died when the Titanic sank).
The action of the novel itself takes place 50 years after the sinking of the ship and the end of the war. The narrator is a German who was born right as the ship was sinking - his mother had been rescued and gave birth on one of the rescue ships. She has been very insistent all his life that he needs to write about the ship, as the news of it was suppressed by both the Germans and the Soviets. Since he has not done so, she turns to his estranged son, who starts up a website about it. The topic, because the ship was named after a Nazi martyr and because it was suppressed tragedy, attracts a Neo-Nazi following which is keen to point out how the Germans suffered (question: are Neo-Nazis socialist, or is it really about the anti-semitism with those guys?).
My understanding is that Grass thinks that the Germans have not properly dealt with their Nazi past. How can you say that, Günter? Everybody knows that the Germans have bent over backwards to show that they are ashamed and sorry over what went down. His point seems to be that everyone has forgotten the socialist aspect of it - that the masses were suffering, which is when Socialism sounds the nicest of all. By being silent about how the Nazis came to power, how nice Socialism sounded at the time, the only voices on the topic are the extremists.
I don't feel so bad about not realizing the Nazis were socialists now.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Supposedly, this is the greatest novel ever written. It was okay?
The characters were certainly well-written. As people, they were familiar, and their actions in the story all seemed inevitable, like that is just what they would do. By the end, that was frustrating. While I can see why Anna completely lost it, it is never pleasant to see anyone acting out that way.
I was never particularly compelled by Anna, actually. Half the book is about another person in her extended social circle, Constantin Levin. I much preferred him and his story arc. There are beautiful scenes with his dying brother and the birth of his son, and he even has a happy ending. I'm not really sure how to fit the stories of the two main characters together. They are related because they deal with a lot of the same people, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't work as well as two books. And then I could skip the book about the sad lady who has an affair and goes nuts and just read about the hard-working farmer guy who finds love and faith.
There is a lot of historical context in the book, and so there was a great deal of discussion about land policy, the peasant class, and education reform. I find that I have a hard time with books where smart people sit around and have a discussion about a topic, particularly when I don't know anything about that topic. I suppose if I were a real scholar, I could have easily educated myself on the topic of the role of the peasant in Russian society. I did not do that. Instead I just got frustrated during those parts. Apparently, these sections were Tolstoy's way of holding forth on topics of his day. While it does serve to paint a very broad picture of Russia at that time, I found it distracting and taxing.
So yeah. I guess I don't get it. I hate when that happens.
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer
This novel centers around Rosa Burger, a young South African woman whose parents were white people in the Communist anti-apartheid movement. She is now orphaned and is unsure of what to do with her life. Since childhood, she was raised to see injustice and to fight it. She was even sent to sneak messages and papers into jail or to other revolutionaries.
But now she is on her own. She doesn't seem to think that the cause will do any good. Her parents' old comrades try to get her to continue in the work. She mostly wants to leave the country. She is listless and uninvolved with her life and can't seem to build any sort of intimacy with anyone.
It's interesting to think about, particularly with a brand new human forming in my tummy. Our kid will be brought up to view the world a certain way, because we view the world a certain way. And they may eventually accept, modify, or rebel completely against that view. Obviously, we think our perspective is right, and we want our child to go ahead and have this perspective, without having to go through all the hard work of eliminating the perspectives we eliminated to get here. But that doesn't always work. Actually, does it ever work?
In the end, Rosa is arrested and sent to jail without having done anything. Maybe the lesson is that you can't escape your parents. So there, kid.
The Algiers Motel Incident
John Hersey
Oy.
Back in the summer of 1967, there were some riots in Detroit, started by the raid of an illegal bar (called a blind pig). On the fourth day of the riot, someone called in a report of a sniper at the Algiers Motel (no sniper was ever found, it seems the report was based on someone hearing gunfire and then seeing someone else hit the dirt for cover). Police and National Guardsmen stormed the motel, leaving three young black men dead and several other people badly beaten, including two women who were stripped nearly naked.
Hersey goes to Detroit and interviews anybody he can find that had anything to do with the case. In writing up reports about the incident, two of the cops stated that they shot and killed two of the young men. However, these reports were thrown out of court as inadmissable, as the cops had not been informed that anything they stated might be used against them. Witness testimony was often confused and conflicting, due to the events being confused and often terrifying, and in the end, no one went to jail.
There is a particularly interesting passage where one of the cops talks about working vice, mostly busting prostitutes. He wonders whether his job is interfering with his ability to have a close relationship with a woman. This is wonderfully self-aware of the guy, though it's not entirely clear if he thinks of his wariness of women as justified or not. Hersey asks whether he thinks it's influencing him to see women as more prone to evil, and he responds, "Who offered who the apple?" So working in a poverty-stricken, high-crime, black community might also give one the idea that black people are all criminals. That's a completely understandable and very human reaction. But the opinion is not based on a representative sample of either black people or criminals. It is understandable, but not justified.
On the other hand, many members of the black community do not have much respect for law enforcement. They are often treated like criminals, whether or not they've done anything. They don't feel the law respects them, so why should they respect it? During the trial, at least one of the witnesses was just plain uncooperative, as if he didn't think it mattered one way or the other what he said, as the outcome was pre-determined. It is hard to read his testimony and not want to yell at him, but you also wonder whether it would've made any difference had he played it straight.
It was certainly a very timely book to read, what with recent events in Ferguson and Staten Island. I'd like to think that the situation has improved, but I can't help but think that under similar riot conditions today, kids would still die and be beaten and no one would ever be punished for it.
Eduardo Galeano
A brief note to say that Galeano is Uruguayan! I'm not sure that I've ever read anything by a Uruguayan author before. I should get a map and put pins in it.
So, I'm not sure what you would call this book. It's non-fiction, with short chapters detailing events that happened during the discovery and colonization of the New World, with particular focus on Latin and South America. There are footnotes for each chapter that lead to the original sources. Galeano retells these events in his own voice. There are threads running through, like there might be several chapters about the life of an individual, but those chapters are intermixed with other chapters that occurred at the same time. So the narrative is about the whole period, rather than any particular set of characters.
The first section is full of creation myths from various peoples across North and South America. These varied from creation of the Sun to some just-so stories about how animals got certain characteristics. My favorite of these was when a meeting of the animals was interrupted by the sunrise, and the bear, leaving in a hurry, put his moccasins on the wrong feet, and that's why the bear walks that way. There were even a couple about how the men came to be in charge. One story said the women used to be in charge, but then the men killed all the women and then raised the now-motherless children to believe that men were supposed to be in charge. That is not as hilarious.
And then the Europeans came. The stories then were full of blood and betrayal and gold.
I did learn about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Poor Sor Juana. She was apparently brilliant, but learning was forbidden for females at the time, so she was self-taught. She ended up joining a convent as an alternative to marriage (pretty much the only choice for her). She joined a sect that was more lenient about women studying, but she was still censured by the church for "waywardness." Much of her written work ended up being destroyed by church officials. Just think what she might have done had she been allowed, even encouraged to use her mind.
Also, I learned that the Spanish king in charge of much of the westward expansion, Charles II, was disabled physically, intellectually, and emotionally, from all the inbreeding. Because he was completely incompetant, the fate of Spain, new and old, was left to his advisors, court, and foreign influence. I know, it's kinda dumb to rail against the monarchy now, but dang, that was screwed up.
This book is the first of a trilogy, and thus covered only up to 1800. I enjoyed it, but found all the names and places a bit confusing. I think that's okay, as the point was more to weave an overall picture, rather than teach names and dates. It was frequently infuriating. I might pick up the other two books if I found them, as I think more recent history would appeal to me more.
Crabwalk
Günter Grass
I came to a realization while reading this book, and I'm going to cop to it, though it makes me look kinda stupid. I knew that the Nazis were also called the Nationalist Socialist party, and I got that they were all about Germany and Germanic people (the "nationalist" part). But I guess I never really thought about the socialist part. It kinda gets lost in the shuffle, what with the genocide and all.
The story centers around the sinking of a ship, the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, which was originally commissioned as part of the Strength Through Joy program. This was a government leisure program, meant to boost tourism and make nice things like cruise trips available to everyone, regardless of social status. The characters in the book take a cruise on the Wihlem Gustloff, and they keep remarking about the concept of a classless ship. So everyone gets to eat the same food and see the same sights and attend the same shows. A classless ship! It sounds nice, doesn't it? Socialism always sounds so nice.
Then the war came, and the Wilhelm Gustloff was turned into a navy vessel, then a hospital ship and floating barracks. Finally, it was used to evacuate troops and civilians to escape the advancing Red Army. During one of those transports, it was sunk by a Soviet submarine. Over 9,000 people died, which is the largest death toll from the sinking of a single ship (in comparison, about 1500 people died when the Titanic sank).
The action of the novel itself takes place 50 years after the sinking of the ship and the end of the war. The narrator is a German who was born right as the ship was sinking - his mother had been rescued and gave birth on one of the rescue ships. She has been very insistent all his life that he needs to write about the ship, as the news of it was suppressed by both the Germans and the Soviets. Since he has not done so, she turns to his estranged son, who starts up a website about it. The topic, because the ship was named after a Nazi martyr and because it was suppressed tragedy, attracts a Neo-Nazi following which is keen to point out how the Germans suffered (question: are Neo-Nazis socialist, or is it really about the anti-semitism with those guys?).
My understanding is that Grass thinks that the Germans have not properly dealt with their Nazi past. How can you say that, Günter? Everybody knows that the Germans have bent over backwards to show that they are ashamed and sorry over what went down. His point seems to be that everyone has forgotten the socialist aspect of it - that the masses were suffering, which is when Socialism sounds the nicest of all. By being silent about how the Nazis came to power, how nice Socialism sounded at the time, the only voices on the topic are the extremists.
I don't feel so bad about not realizing the Nazis were socialists now.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Supposedly, this is the greatest novel ever written. It was okay?
The characters were certainly well-written. As people, they were familiar, and their actions in the story all seemed inevitable, like that is just what they would do. By the end, that was frustrating. While I can see why Anna completely lost it, it is never pleasant to see anyone acting out that way.
I was never particularly compelled by Anna, actually. Half the book is about another person in her extended social circle, Constantin Levin. I much preferred him and his story arc. There are beautiful scenes with his dying brother and the birth of his son, and he even has a happy ending. I'm not really sure how to fit the stories of the two main characters together. They are related because they deal with a lot of the same people, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't work as well as two books. And then I could skip the book about the sad lady who has an affair and goes nuts and just read about the hard-working farmer guy who finds love and faith.
There is a lot of historical context in the book, and so there was a great deal of discussion about land policy, the peasant class, and education reform. I find that I have a hard time with books where smart people sit around and have a discussion about a topic, particularly when I don't know anything about that topic. I suppose if I were a real scholar, I could have easily educated myself on the topic of the role of the peasant in Russian society. I did not do that. Instead I just got frustrated during those parts. Apparently, these sections were Tolstoy's way of holding forth on topics of his day. While it does serve to paint a very broad picture of Russia at that time, I found it distracting and taxing.
So yeah. I guess I don't get it. I hate when that happens.
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer
This novel centers around Rosa Burger, a young South African woman whose parents were white people in the Communist anti-apartheid movement. She is now orphaned and is unsure of what to do with her life. Since childhood, she was raised to see injustice and to fight it. She was even sent to sneak messages and papers into jail or to other revolutionaries.
But now she is on her own. She doesn't seem to think that the cause will do any good. Her parents' old comrades try to get her to continue in the work. She mostly wants to leave the country. She is listless and uninvolved with her life and can't seem to build any sort of intimacy with anyone.
It's interesting to think about, particularly with a brand new human forming in my tummy. Our kid will be brought up to view the world a certain way, because we view the world a certain way. And they may eventually accept, modify, or rebel completely against that view. Obviously, we think our perspective is right, and we want our child to go ahead and have this perspective, without having to go through all the hard work of eliminating the perspectives we eliminated to get here. But that doesn't always work. Actually, does it ever work?
In the end, Rosa is arrested and sent to jail without having done anything. Maybe the lesson is that you can't escape your parents. So there, kid.
The Algiers Motel Incident
John Hersey
Oy.
Back in the summer of 1967, there were some riots in Detroit, started by the raid of an illegal bar (called a blind pig). On the fourth day of the riot, someone called in a report of a sniper at the Algiers Motel (no sniper was ever found, it seems the report was based on someone hearing gunfire and then seeing someone else hit the dirt for cover). Police and National Guardsmen stormed the motel, leaving three young black men dead and several other people badly beaten, including two women who were stripped nearly naked.
Hersey goes to Detroit and interviews anybody he can find that had anything to do with the case. In writing up reports about the incident, two of the cops stated that they shot and killed two of the young men. However, these reports were thrown out of court as inadmissable, as the cops had not been informed that anything they stated might be used against them. Witness testimony was often confused and conflicting, due to the events being confused and often terrifying, and in the end, no one went to jail.
There is a particularly interesting passage where one of the cops talks about working vice, mostly busting prostitutes. He wonders whether his job is interfering with his ability to have a close relationship with a woman. This is wonderfully self-aware of the guy, though it's not entirely clear if he thinks of his wariness of women as justified or not. Hersey asks whether he thinks it's influencing him to see women as more prone to evil, and he responds, "Who offered who the apple?" So working in a poverty-stricken, high-crime, black community might also give one the idea that black people are all criminals. That's a completely understandable and very human reaction. But the opinion is not based on a representative sample of either black people or criminals. It is understandable, but not justified.
On the other hand, many members of the black community do not have much respect for law enforcement. They are often treated like criminals, whether or not they've done anything. They don't feel the law respects them, so why should they respect it? During the trial, at least one of the witnesses was just plain uncooperative, as if he didn't think it mattered one way or the other what he said, as the outcome was pre-determined. It is hard to read his testimony and not want to yell at him, but you also wonder whether it would've made any difference had he played it straight.
It was certainly a very timely book to read, what with recent events in Ferguson and Staten Island. I'd like to think that the situation has improved, but I can't help but think that under similar riot conditions today, kids would still die and be beaten and no one would ever be punished for it.
1.24.2015
saturday soup.
On Sundays after church, Josh wants soup. Our church is across the street from Food Lion, so we used to just stop on the way home and pick up some Campbell's for lunch. I quickly got tired of this ritual, because as it turns out, canned soup is not very good. Has no one else has noticed? Also, we usually have perfectly good homemade leftovers at home. Why are we spending money on bad food when we have free, good food at home? That sounds like something my mother would've said to me twenty or so years ago, and she had a point.
The solution was for me to start making soup on Saturday night. Then the free, good leftovers would be soup, which was just what my sweet man wanted. Sometimes, they were even better Sunday afternoon, after the flavors had had a night to mingle and marry.
So now we go sailing on past the Food Lion, no need to stop and get oddly-metallic tasting soup filled with meat-like lumps. Except last Friday, I got a text in the middle of the day which pathetically said only "soup?" I had to inform him that there was no soup, there would be soup tomorrow, but not today because he already ate it all. However, I have yet another solution. Each week, I will take a couple of portions out of the soup pot and freeze them, such that my poor, darling husband need not suffer from a soup emergency.
Anyway, I have a lot of soup recipes.
Today, I'm sharing my chicken noodle soup recipe. It starts with "throw a chicken into a pot." I follow the recipe as-is, though I leave out the mushrooms because they are gross. It is a Paula Deen recipe, so it is a bit decadent. No butter, but there is parmesan cheese and heavy cream. But it makes a huge pot of soup, so I like to think that the unhealthy elements are only a small part of the whole.
Note that the recipe calls for a 2.5 - 3 lb chicken. Well, this must've been in the days before chicken growth hormone, because even the smallest birds at the grocery store are 5 pounds. So as a bonus, I am left with a couple of cups of already-cooked chicken meat that I can throw into some other recipe or even freeze and save for later use.
This soup tastes like someone loves you. Even though I make the soup, when I eat it, I feel loved. I'm pretty sure it's the fact that you're making homemade stock when you think you're just making soup. Homemade stock tastes like love, which is why the pioneers had much higher self-esteem (I made that up).
Make some for someone you love today (including yourself!): The Lady's Chicken Noodle Soup
Oh, and I have one more thing to say about soup. Once, when I was a kid, we were eating chicken noodle soup at the dinner table, and my dad sneezed a whole mouthful of it all over my face. It was truly spectacular and disgusting. That event finally taught a man in his 60s that he needs to turn away or cover his mouth when he sneezes, at least at the dinner table. Every time he sneezed at the table after that - he must use a lot of pepper - he would turn away, and then give me a Look.
The solution was for me to start making soup on Saturday night. Then the free, good leftovers would be soup, which was just what my sweet man wanted. Sometimes, they were even better Sunday afternoon, after the flavors had had a night to mingle and marry.
So now we go sailing on past the Food Lion, no need to stop and get oddly-metallic tasting soup filled with meat-like lumps. Except last Friday, I got a text in the middle of the day which pathetically said only "soup?" I had to inform him that there was no soup, there would be soup tomorrow, but not today because he already ate it all. However, I have yet another solution. Each week, I will take a couple of portions out of the soup pot and freeze them, such that my poor, darling husband need not suffer from a soup emergency.
Anyway, I have a lot of soup recipes.
Today, I'm sharing my chicken noodle soup recipe. It starts with "throw a chicken into a pot." I follow the recipe as-is, though I leave out the mushrooms because they are gross. It is a Paula Deen recipe, so it is a bit decadent. No butter, but there is parmesan cheese and heavy cream. But it makes a huge pot of soup, so I like to think that the unhealthy elements are only a small part of the whole.
Note that the recipe calls for a 2.5 - 3 lb chicken. Well, this must've been in the days before chicken growth hormone, because even the smallest birds at the grocery store are 5 pounds. So as a bonus, I am left with a couple of cups of already-cooked chicken meat that I can throw into some other recipe or even freeze and save for later use.
This soup tastes like someone loves you. Even though I make the soup, when I eat it, I feel loved. I'm pretty sure it's the fact that you're making homemade stock when you think you're just making soup. Homemade stock tastes like love, which is why the pioneers had much higher self-esteem (I made that up).
Make some for someone you love today (including yourself!): The Lady's Chicken Noodle Soup
Oh, and I have one more thing to say about soup. Once, when I was a kid, we were eating chicken noodle soup at the dinner table, and my dad sneezed a whole mouthful of it all over my face. It was truly spectacular and disgusting. That event finally taught a man in his 60s that he needs to turn away or cover his mouth when he sneezes, at least at the dinner table. Every time he sneezed at the table after that - he must use a lot of pepper - he would turn away, and then give me a Look.
1.23.2015
romanian spy.
Last Sunday after church, there was a note stuck on our door when we got home. It was vague and odd.
"Does Sandra live here? If so, I have something that belongs to you."
Followed by an unfamiliar name and phone number.
I considered my options. The only thing that I had lost recently that would lead someone to my front door was my wallet, which I lost back in November at the Charlotte airport. It seemed unlikely that someone had found it and wanted to return it two months later and 165 miles away. Then again, I couldn't figure out what kind of scam someone could be running here. Had the note been composed of cut-out newspaper letters and made some demands, that would be different. Also, it seemed like a proper ransom note would at least tell me what they had, to make sure that I understood the urgency of the situation. It could be blackmail, like maybe they had evidence of my shady dealings. But I don't have any shady dealings. Possibly they were casing the joint? Well, I don't want to spread misinformation about the viciousness of pitbulls, but I really haven't worried about the safety of my home since I got one.
So I called the guy. No answer, and his voicemail was full. A minute later, he texted me to say that he'd call me back after his meeting. Alright, then. In the meantime, I googled the guy's name. I found a dude that used to live in Florida but now was in Charlotte. He used to be in TV, but now seemed to be in some kind of vague get-rich-by-doing-something-unstated business. Now my thought was that he was going to try and sell me something.
Enter my husband. Have I ever told you about his imagination? It's vivid. Our unknown visitor was in some kind of group of television professionals named TVR. As far as I could tell, it was a group specifically associated with the social media platform. But Josh googled it and came up with the Romanian state television. Ergo, this man was a Romanian spy. He wouldn't say why the Romanian government would be interested in me, but he felt that any association with a former Soviet satellite country was very fishy.
The Cold War was very formative on my husband.
Josh complains that I make him sound like an idiot on my blog. I am guilty of that, usually because making someone else sound like an idiot is funny. But he's not. He's brilliant. His curiosity is insatiable, and so he knows a lot about a lot of different subjects because he happened to have a question one day and then spent hours reading everything about it. He sees patterns and connections that I would never notice. I have a pretty high opinion of my own intelligence, and we are evenly matched when we debate (except for all that knowledge, he just has so much). But it's like he's seeing whole different layers of the world than I am.
It's just that sometimes those layers aren't really there, in a strictly objective sense. I think sometimes he looks at reality and then at the magical world painted inside his head, and I guess he concludes that the latter is more interesting and thus probably what's really going on. And so, I'm sorry, my sweet beloved man, but there is no way to say that you thought that guy was a Romanian spy without making you sound a little off.
Obviously, I find this trait of his frustrating and occasionally maddening, like when he's sternly telling me that I shouldn't have called that guy because something-something-Romania. There are times when I wonder if this is going to be something that gets worse with age, and I'm going to be sitting at the nursing home, too old and tired to argue anymore. And there are still other times when I grimly realize that I have married my own father, who also sees plots where the general chaos of the world and incompetance of the human race will do.
Like I said, a wonderful and brilliant man. His imagination is magical, and I love him for it. I am happily passing on his shimmering, multi-colored genes. It's just hard that the very things you adore about a person in some cases are the things that make you want to throttle them in others.
I have never been attracted to logical men. The computer science department was lousy with single men, but they just weren't interesting to me. The world was the world, and that was that. They had no imagination. Boooo-ring. Obviously, I'm into crazy painted brains. And Josh's dating history is a series of sensible women. Aside from the attraction, we're just good for each other. I assist him in navigating the world as it exists, and he keeps me from being mired in technicalities. I can be excruciatingly pedantic. I probably used to call it being precise (and RIGHT!), but really it's just being a jerk.
So he's crazy, and I'm a jerk. And somehow it turns out that crazy and jerk attract each other and help one another become a little less crazy and a bit less of a jerk.
ANYWAY. The note guy came by later and gave me my wallet. It had everything in it, all the cash, cards, gift cards, and even my used book store credit. Romanians are A-OK in my book.
"Does Sandra live here? If so, I have something that belongs to you."
Followed by an unfamiliar name and phone number.
I considered my options. The only thing that I had lost recently that would lead someone to my front door was my wallet, which I lost back in November at the Charlotte airport. It seemed unlikely that someone had found it and wanted to return it two months later and 165 miles away. Then again, I couldn't figure out what kind of scam someone could be running here. Had the note been composed of cut-out newspaper letters and made some demands, that would be different. Also, it seemed like a proper ransom note would at least tell me what they had, to make sure that I understood the urgency of the situation. It could be blackmail, like maybe they had evidence of my shady dealings. But I don't have any shady dealings. Possibly they were casing the joint? Well, I don't want to spread misinformation about the viciousness of pitbulls, but I really haven't worried about the safety of my home since I got one.
So I called the guy. No answer, and his voicemail was full. A minute later, he texted me to say that he'd call me back after his meeting. Alright, then. In the meantime, I googled the guy's name. I found a dude that used to live in Florida but now was in Charlotte. He used to be in TV, but now seemed to be in some kind of vague get-rich-by-doing-something-unstated business. Now my thought was that he was going to try and sell me something.
Enter my husband. Have I ever told you about his imagination? It's vivid. Our unknown visitor was in some kind of group of television professionals named TVR. As far as I could tell, it was a group specifically associated with the social media platform. But Josh googled it and came up with the Romanian state television. Ergo, this man was a Romanian spy. He wouldn't say why the Romanian government would be interested in me, but he felt that any association with a former Soviet satellite country was very fishy.
The Cold War was very formative on my husband.
Josh complains that I make him sound like an idiot on my blog. I am guilty of that, usually because making someone else sound like an idiot is funny. But he's not. He's brilliant. His curiosity is insatiable, and so he knows a lot about a lot of different subjects because he happened to have a question one day and then spent hours reading everything about it. He sees patterns and connections that I would never notice. I have a pretty high opinion of my own intelligence, and we are evenly matched when we debate (except for all that knowledge, he just has so much). But it's like he's seeing whole different layers of the world than I am.
It's just that sometimes those layers aren't really there, in a strictly objective sense. I think sometimes he looks at reality and then at the magical world painted inside his head, and I guess he concludes that the latter is more interesting and thus probably what's really going on. And so, I'm sorry, my sweet beloved man, but there is no way to say that you thought that guy was a Romanian spy without making you sound a little off.
Obviously, I find this trait of his frustrating and occasionally maddening, like when he's sternly telling me that I shouldn't have called that guy because something-something-Romania. There are times when I wonder if this is going to be something that gets worse with age, and I'm going to be sitting at the nursing home, too old and tired to argue anymore. And there are still other times when I grimly realize that I have married my own father, who also sees plots where the general chaos of the world and incompetance of the human race will do.
Like I said, a wonderful and brilliant man. His imagination is magical, and I love him for it. I am happily passing on his shimmering, multi-colored genes. It's just hard that the very things you adore about a person in some cases are the things that make you want to throttle them in others.
I have never been attracted to logical men. The computer science department was lousy with single men, but they just weren't interesting to me. The world was the world, and that was that. They had no imagination. Boooo-ring. Obviously, I'm into crazy painted brains. And Josh's dating history is a series of sensible women. Aside from the attraction, we're just good for each other. I assist him in navigating the world as it exists, and he keeps me from being mired in technicalities. I can be excruciatingly pedantic. I probably used to call it being precise (and RIGHT!), but really it's just being a jerk.
So he's crazy, and I'm a jerk. And somehow it turns out that crazy and jerk attract each other and help one another become a little less crazy and a bit less of a jerk.
ANYWAY. The note guy came by later and gave me my wallet. It had everything in it, all the cash, cards, gift cards, and even my used book store credit. Romanians are A-OK in my book.
1.22.2015
how are you feeling?
When you are pregnant, people ask how you are feeling. Whereas normally, small talk would start with "How are you?," growing a baby means that suddenly everyone asks, "How are you feeling?" with a lot of emphasis poured into that last word. I was surprised when this started happening, and even more amazed to realize how universal it is. Everyone wants to know how I am feeling.
Sometimes, I pretend to not know what they are asking. Pleasant obliviousness is my favorite form of passive aggressive behavior. I brightly say, "Fine! How are you?" Most times they respond and we have a normal conversation. Sometimes they blink in confusion, say they are fine, then ask again about me, being more explicit that they want baby information.
Other times, I tell them how I am feeling. Usually, it's when I feel crappy. But no one likes this either. Just like when someone asks how you are, you're supposed to just say something short and generally positive, no one likes to hear a pregnant lady complain. They don't want to hear about nausea or back pain, much less some of the more, ahem, intimate symptoms of pregnancy.
Recently, I have hit upon the perfect answer. I just say I feel pregnant, with a touch of weariness. Pregnancy is a whole-body condition. Countless times in the last six months, I've googled a symptom, and the second auto-suggestion is always the symptom followed by the word "pregnancy." And then when I research further, the answer is always hormones. I've started to get used to this, but my sweet husband always wants to diagnose me with something else.
Gastrointestinal issues, including heartburn and any-time-of-day sickness, are caused by progesterone. See, my organs have got to move around a bit, so the hormones make them a bit more malleable. I haven't had problems with any of that for a few months, but I hear it can come back. I honestly don't even know where my stomach is at this point, as my innards are all rearranged. I've also had a stuffy nose for months, which is apparently estrogen's fault.
And the itching. I've had dry skin issues during the winter since I was a teenager, but this is a whole new level. It has to do with my skin stretching. So not only do I writhe around like a bear against a tree, I get to imagine that my scratch marks will eventually turn to stretch marks. I make Josh slather me up with moisturizer every night. The lotion I bought didn't seem to be helping, so we started using the Bag Balm we already had in the house, which was made to be used on cow udders. It helps, but I smell like bovine medicine.
And then there relaxin, which is a hormone and not some kind of OTC pain relief. See, normally, the bones in the pelvis are stable and all tightly connected. But at some point, I'm going to try and push a person through there, so relaxin loosens up my joints so they can open up to allow passage of a big-headed baby. I'm sure I'll appreciate the relaxin then, but for now, it sucks. It makes my crotch bones hurt, which is basically a new kind of pain for me. There are lots of positions that I can no longer be in without pain. The worst is trying to sleep. Sleeping on my stomach is right out, and sleeping on my back means the baby is cutting off blood vessels that bring blood...to the baby (way to go, Baby). But if I turn on my side, I have to have a pillow between my legs, because of the crotch bone pain. A night's rest is now waking up every couple of hours to roll over (increasingly difficult) while keeping the pillow. Also, I may have to blow my nose and apply some chapstick. Sometimes I go back to sleep, and sometimes I stay awake awhile and panic about the approaching end of my life as I know it.
Also, there is something in my body poking me. Sometimes it's a quick jab, like lunch returning on you. Other times, it is a punch to the bladder. Lately, it's been more like a push. It's uncomfortable, so I push back on the little foot or knee or whatever, and it will retreat. I feel a little guilty when I do this, because clearly someone is just running out of room in there, but seriously kid, that feels really weird. It's uncomfortable, but it does bring it home that there is an actual tiny person in there with actual tiny body parts. I can't compare this to getting some bad Taco Bell, unless you've ever had a gordita try to escape through your abdominal wall.
So that is how I am feeling. You didn't really want to know, did you?
Sometimes, I pretend to not know what they are asking. Pleasant obliviousness is my favorite form of passive aggressive behavior. I brightly say, "Fine! How are you?" Most times they respond and we have a normal conversation. Sometimes they blink in confusion, say they are fine, then ask again about me, being more explicit that they want baby information.
Other times, I tell them how I am feeling. Usually, it's when I feel crappy. But no one likes this either. Just like when someone asks how you are, you're supposed to just say something short and generally positive, no one likes to hear a pregnant lady complain. They don't want to hear about nausea or back pain, much less some of the more, ahem, intimate symptoms of pregnancy.
Recently, I have hit upon the perfect answer. I just say I feel pregnant, with a touch of weariness. Pregnancy is a whole-body condition. Countless times in the last six months, I've googled a symptom, and the second auto-suggestion is always the symptom followed by the word "pregnancy." And then when I research further, the answer is always hormones. I've started to get used to this, but my sweet husband always wants to diagnose me with something else.
Gastrointestinal issues, including heartburn and any-time-of-day sickness, are caused by progesterone. See, my organs have got to move around a bit, so the hormones make them a bit more malleable. I haven't had problems with any of that for a few months, but I hear it can come back. I honestly don't even know where my stomach is at this point, as my innards are all rearranged. I've also had a stuffy nose for months, which is apparently estrogen's fault.
And the itching. I've had dry skin issues during the winter since I was a teenager, but this is a whole new level. It has to do with my skin stretching. So not only do I writhe around like a bear against a tree, I get to imagine that my scratch marks will eventually turn to stretch marks. I make Josh slather me up with moisturizer every night. The lotion I bought didn't seem to be helping, so we started using the Bag Balm we already had in the house, which was made to be used on cow udders. It helps, but I smell like bovine medicine.
And then there relaxin, which is a hormone and not some kind of OTC pain relief. See, normally, the bones in the pelvis are stable and all tightly connected. But at some point, I'm going to try and push a person through there, so relaxin loosens up my joints so they can open up to allow passage of a big-headed baby. I'm sure I'll appreciate the relaxin then, but for now, it sucks. It makes my crotch bones hurt, which is basically a new kind of pain for me. There are lots of positions that I can no longer be in without pain. The worst is trying to sleep. Sleeping on my stomach is right out, and sleeping on my back means the baby is cutting off blood vessels that bring blood...to the baby (way to go, Baby). But if I turn on my side, I have to have a pillow between my legs, because of the crotch bone pain. A night's rest is now waking up every couple of hours to roll over (increasingly difficult) while keeping the pillow. Also, I may have to blow my nose and apply some chapstick. Sometimes I go back to sleep, and sometimes I stay awake awhile and panic about the approaching end of my life as I know it.
Also, there is something in my body poking me. Sometimes it's a quick jab, like lunch returning on you. Other times, it is a punch to the bladder. Lately, it's been more like a push. It's uncomfortable, so I push back on the little foot or knee or whatever, and it will retreat. I feel a little guilty when I do this, because clearly someone is just running out of room in there, but seriously kid, that feels really weird. It's uncomfortable, but it does bring it home that there is an actual tiny person in there with actual tiny body parts. I can't compare this to getting some bad Taco Bell, unless you've ever had a gordita try to escape through your abdominal wall.
So that is how I am feeling. You didn't really want to know, did you?
1.21.2015
birth center.
The sign directed us downstairs to the first floor. As we waited for the elevator, another young couple came up behind us, then another. I looked at the other ladies and smiled to myself. As we all got into the elevator, one of the other men said, "I reckon we're all going to the same place." We laughed. Three visibly pregnant women and their men.
We were told to schedule a tour of the birth center at our very first appointment. We finally got around to it this week. Judging by the conditions of the other women, we weren't the only ones to wait. I came late, but prepared. Earlier that day, I'd done some research on what questions to ask at a hospital tour. I'd found lots of lists prepared by what I can only assume are the super-prepared, super-involved type. These sorts of questions varied from basic (Where do we park?) to the possibly-confrontational, patient advocate type (Can we refuse an IV?). Josh, confused by my calling it a "birth center," only wanted to know how far it was from the hospital. It's in the hospital.
We arrived at Classroom I, at the far end of the main dining hall. We were given a folder full of materials and directed inside, where more pregnant ladies and their companions waited. It was a diverse crowd; everybody has babies. It was nice being there with them all, with our individual lives and backgrounds, yet sharing these same feelings of shy nervousness and excitement.
The nurse at the front went through a powerpoint presentation, referencing various forms in our packets. As the questions on my sheet were answered, I checked them off. I'd been concerned by reading the question lists, which gave the impression that giving birth is basically like being on an assembly line - go here, put this on, take this, don't do that, wear this, here's your baby, go home. But a lot of the things that the websites implied that we would have to demand with angry fists were standard practice here, or at least a common enough request that it's stated up front in the orientation. They seemed to be about providing us with options rather than directions.
Next, we split up into two groups to go on a tour of the center itself. The rooms were all private and spacious. The decor was a bit dated, but everything looked clean and reasonably comfortable (the beds looked good, the recliner for the husband not so much). This part of the tour was conducted by a different nurse, one with a thick Southern accent who obviously loved babies. She mentioned that they'd had a lot of especially cute babies there recently. The ward was mostly empty, but behind a door bedecked with a blue ribbon came a wail.
By the end of the tour, all my questions had been answered. I'm not particularly looking forward to giving birth, but I feel pretty good about doing it there.
We were told to schedule a tour of the birth center at our very first appointment. We finally got around to it this week. Judging by the conditions of the other women, we weren't the only ones to wait. I came late, but prepared. Earlier that day, I'd done some research on what questions to ask at a hospital tour. I'd found lots of lists prepared by what I can only assume are the super-prepared, super-involved type. These sorts of questions varied from basic (Where do we park?) to the possibly-confrontational, patient advocate type (Can we refuse an IV?). Josh, confused by my calling it a "birth center," only wanted to know how far it was from the hospital. It's in the hospital.
We arrived at Classroom I, at the far end of the main dining hall. We were given a folder full of materials and directed inside, where more pregnant ladies and their companions waited. It was a diverse crowd; everybody has babies. It was nice being there with them all, with our individual lives and backgrounds, yet sharing these same feelings of shy nervousness and excitement.
The nurse at the front went through a powerpoint presentation, referencing various forms in our packets. As the questions on my sheet were answered, I checked them off. I'd been concerned by reading the question lists, which gave the impression that giving birth is basically like being on an assembly line - go here, put this on, take this, don't do that, wear this, here's your baby, go home. But a lot of the things that the websites implied that we would have to demand with angry fists were standard practice here, or at least a common enough request that it's stated up front in the orientation. They seemed to be about providing us with options rather than directions.
Next, we split up into two groups to go on a tour of the center itself. The rooms were all private and spacious. The decor was a bit dated, but everything looked clean and reasonably comfortable (the beds looked good, the recliner for the husband not so much). This part of the tour was conducted by a different nurse, one with a thick Southern accent who obviously loved babies. She mentioned that they'd had a lot of especially cute babies there recently. The ward was mostly empty, but behind a door bedecked with a blue ribbon came a wail.
By the end of the tour, all my questions had been answered. I'm not particularly looking forward to giving birth, but I feel pretty good about doing it there.
1.05.2015
december 2014 books.
The Sot-weed Factor
John Barth
The back cover uses the word "Rabelasian," and I groaned when I saw it. I got about one-fifth into Rebelais before the Rabelasianness just got to me. So much peeing and farting and eating and having sex. However, I found this to be acceptably Rabelasian. There was indeed a lot of bodily functions, and the plot turned on genitalia, but it was not so much that I couldn't finish it. There was also a lot of philosophy, wordplay, politics, and secret identities. There was even character development. Our protagonist starts off a directionless poet. He is forced to come to Maryland to take over his father's farm, but he gets himself commissioned as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, even though he hasn't actually written any poems. He just emotes a lot. He's a selfish, bumbling nitwit who composes odes to great Maryland before he ever gets there. Then he has a lot of terrible adventures, because colonial life is freaking rough. He writes an actual poem (not flattering to Maryland) and becomes a man (in every sense, because Rabelais).
This was not intentional, but this book was a good choice to read so soon after the book about the Pilgrims. Set in the late 17th century, John Smith's secret journal was a plot device, so the language and the setting and the colonial politics were all familiar. I can't imagine the amount of research that went into this, just to write using that sort of language.
The style is verbose and twisting. The main characters are going around having adventures, but there are lots and lots of tangential stories. I enjoy this style, though it was confusing in this case because a few of the characters kept popping up disguised as other characters. It really paid off in the end, though, when the main story came together with all the little side stories. It was all very neatly done. So neatly, in fact, that the protagonist remarks that "Fate is a shameless playwright." Heh.
I wrote down a quote to give an example of how filthy and yet literary this book is: "...whose astrolabe had already taken the alnicanter of her constellation." I don't even know what some of those words are, but I understood that it was about a man taking a lady's virginity. I looked up "alnicanter" and discovered that it was an archaic spelling of almucantar. The third search result was an excerpt from John Smith's actual writings. See? That's a lot of research for a dirty joke.
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
An upper class wife and mother realizes that she is unhappy in this life, stops doing the things expected of her role, takes a lover, dies sad.
Edna sort of looks around at her life and isn't all that sure how she got there or if it's what she wants. This book was written over 100 years ago, and this still happens. When I was growing up, life seemed like a set of checkmarks. Since I was a modern woman, these checkmarks included things like college and a job (though not necessarily a career), and then marriage and children. I like lists, and I like checking things off, so it didn't occur to me that I hadn't really made the list in the first place.
When I was about to graduate from college, I tried to bring up the subject of marriage to my long-term boyfriend. He was pretty uninterested in that, to the point where we were not able to even have a conversation about it. The subject itself became taboo. I felt pretty frustrated and thwarted by this, because what else were we supposed to do? That was clearly the next check. Of course, he was very right not to want to get married, because our relationship was pretty busted at that point, as you might have figured from us not being able to even talk about our future together.
After we broke up, I realized that I had this idea that there was exactly one path to a happy and fulfilled life. I still thought that I probably wanted to get married and have kids someday, but those options were not open right now, so I would need to figure something else out.
So Edna has this same sort of realization, except she has already gotten married and had children. It being the time that it is, though, she definitely did not have many other options. I had lots of options, I just didn't really consider them. Edna realizes that she does not love her husband, and while she loves her children, she doesn't seem all that attached to them. Being the wife of a rich man, they have a nanny that seems to do most of the motherly type things.
Of course, there was much outrage at the book and at the idea that women might have desires and ambitions that were not fulfilled by motherhood. At best, reviews said that it was beautifully written but immoral. The book is set in Louisiana, where women were still legal property at the time, so you can see how the establishment might have been threatened by the idea of the property getting ideas. Chopin's career collapsed after publication, and she herself died not long after. Her work was basically forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 1960s.
I heard someone say once that art should be "uplifting." I am not sure what an uplifting version of this story would be. Once you figure out that you're miserable, where do you go? The best I can get to is acceptance, which is also not uplifting and smacks of condescension. Chopin is not lifting Edna up to be idolized, but rather to put it out there that women want to and could do other things. Maybe not all women should be mothers. An etiquette book of the time says that "if she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her children will be the society which she will prefer above that of all others." And if she doesn't? That possibility doesn't seem to be considered.
I think non-uplifting art is important. It's important that other women who might recognize themselves in Edna be told that they are not alone or not real women. They might even be able to make real changes in the world. And it's important that men are able to see it from the other side. Art is not just to uplift, it is to enable one to empathize.
Tempest-Tost
Robertson Davies
This was my second novel of Davies, which I did not enjoy as much as his other one. He seems to like to take little groups of people who are thrown together in small cultures. In this case, it was a community theatre troup putting on a Shakespeare play. I have some experience in local theatre, and the characters and little dramas in this story are bang-on. There are the scandalous affairs, those pining in the wings, the power plays, and of course, the show.
Not much to say. It was a fun read.
A Fan's Notes
Frederick Exley
Sigh.
So, there is a genre of books that I call Sad Man books. I can read them, I think I understand them, but I can never really get on board with them. Sad Men often have fraught relationships with their fathers. They like women, but do not understand them or even necessarily see them as people to be understood. They drink a lot, and they are very lonely. Josh says that Sad Men think their solitude is part of being a man. A man does not need other people, except for Jack Daniels.
Exley is a Sad Man. He is a drunk and is possibly suffering from mental illness. He has several stints in a mental institution, but his only goal while there is to get out, and he doesn't say whether he thinks anything is wrong with him. He lives in the shadow of his father, who was a high school football star before becoming an upstanding family man and hero of the community and then dying young. Exley spends the whole book coming to the terms that he will never be a hero, like Frank Gifford, or even his dad. Why he can't become a pillar of the community is unsaid, though maybe it has to do with his likely depression.
Exley writes very well. He paints vivid pictures of the kinds of interesting characters you meet as a drunk. It's funny and poignant and sad. But a few chapters in, he tells about his years of seduction. By seduction, he sometimes means rape. He is having a lot of sex with women he doesn't care about, sometimes against their will, and then he wonders why it doesn't make him happy. And that's the momentous realization he gets out of it - it doesn't make him happy. At no point does it occur to him to consider how anyone else who was involved might feel about it. Sad Men are self-absorbed.
I didn't get the impression that he thought of what he was doing as rape, possibly because that would mean looking at it from the woman's perspective. He seems to believe that the women gave consent by coming to his apartment, and the fact that they were crying and saying "no no no" later doesn't matter. I don't think he would be alone in those assumptions, particularly for his time (50s and 60s). Anyway, he lost me at that point. I understand that this is a person that exists in the world, and as a fellow human being, I owe him my empathy and compassion. We need people who are adept with words to put these experiences out there, as eloquently as possible. And the fact that there seem to be several writers like this out there indicates that he's not alone. I still believe in art as a path to empathy.
But I did not enjoy his company.
John Barth
The back cover uses the word "Rabelasian," and I groaned when I saw it. I got about one-fifth into Rebelais before the Rabelasianness just got to me. So much peeing and farting and eating and having sex. However, I found this to be acceptably Rabelasian. There was indeed a lot of bodily functions, and the plot turned on genitalia, but it was not so much that I couldn't finish it. There was also a lot of philosophy, wordplay, politics, and secret identities. There was even character development. Our protagonist starts off a directionless poet. He is forced to come to Maryland to take over his father's farm, but he gets himself commissioned as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, even though he hasn't actually written any poems. He just emotes a lot. He's a selfish, bumbling nitwit who composes odes to great Maryland before he ever gets there. Then he has a lot of terrible adventures, because colonial life is freaking rough. He writes an actual poem (not flattering to Maryland) and becomes a man (in every sense, because Rabelais).
This was not intentional, but this book was a good choice to read so soon after the book about the Pilgrims. Set in the late 17th century, John Smith's secret journal was a plot device, so the language and the setting and the colonial politics were all familiar. I can't imagine the amount of research that went into this, just to write using that sort of language.
The style is verbose and twisting. The main characters are going around having adventures, but there are lots and lots of tangential stories. I enjoy this style, though it was confusing in this case because a few of the characters kept popping up disguised as other characters. It really paid off in the end, though, when the main story came together with all the little side stories. It was all very neatly done. So neatly, in fact, that the protagonist remarks that "Fate is a shameless playwright." Heh.
I wrote down a quote to give an example of how filthy and yet literary this book is: "...whose astrolabe had already taken the alnicanter of her constellation." I don't even know what some of those words are, but I understood that it was about a man taking a lady's virginity. I looked up "alnicanter" and discovered that it was an archaic spelling of almucantar. The third search result was an excerpt from John Smith's actual writings. See? That's a lot of research for a dirty joke.
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
An upper class wife and mother realizes that she is unhappy in this life, stops doing the things expected of her role, takes a lover, dies sad.
Edna sort of looks around at her life and isn't all that sure how she got there or if it's what she wants. This book was written over 100 years ago, and this still happens. When I was growing up, life seemed like a set of checkmarks. Since I was a modern woman, these checkmarks included things like college and a job (though not necessarily a career), and then marriage and children. I like lists, and I like checking things off, so it didn't occur to me that I hadn't really made the list in the first place.
When I was about to graduate from college, I tried to bring up the subject of marriage to my long-term boyfriend. He was pretty uninterested in that, to the point where we were not able to even have a conversation about it. The subject itself became taboo. I felt pretty frustrated and thwarted by this, because what else were we supposed to do? That was clearly the next check. Of course, he was very right not to want to get married, because our relationship was pretty busted at that point, as you might have figured from us not being able to even talk about our future together.
After we broke up, I realized that I had this idea that there was exactly one path to a happy and fulfilled life. I still thought that I probably wanted to get married and have kids someday, but those options were not open right now, so I would need to figure something else out.
So Edna has this same sort of realization, except she has already gotten married and had children. It being the time that it is, though, she definitely did not have many other options. I had lots of options, I just didn't really consider them. Edna realizes that she does not love her husband, and while she loves her children, she doesn't seem all that attached to them. Being the wife of a rich man, they have a nanny that seems to do most of the motherly type things.
Of course, there was much outrage at the book and at the idea that women might have desires and ambitions that were not fulfilled by motherhood. At best, reviews said that it was beautifully written but immoral. The book is set in Louisiana, where women were still legal property at the time, so you can see how the establishment might have been threatened by the idea of the property getting ideas. Chopin's career collapsed after publication, and she herself died not long after. Her work was basically forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 1960s.
I heard someone say once that art should be "uplifting." I am not sure what an uplifting version of this story would be. Once you figure out that you're miserable, where do you go? The best I can get to is acceptance, which is also not uplifting and smacks of condescension. Chopin is not lifting Edna up to be idolized, but rather to put it out there that women want to and could do other things. Maybe not all women should be mothers. An etiquette book of the time says that "if she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her children will be the society which she will prefer above that of all others." And if she doesn't? That possibility doesn't seem to be considered.
I think non-uplifting art is important. It's important that other women who might recognize themselves in Edna be told that they are not alone or not real women. They might even be able to make real changes in the world. And it's important that men are able to see it from the other side. Art is not just to uplift, it is to enable one to empathize.
Tempest-Tost
Robertson Davies
This was my second novel of Davies, which I did not enjoy as much as his other one. He seems to like to take little groups of people who are thrown together in small cultures. In this case, it was a community theatre troup putting on a Shakespeare play. I have some experience in local theatre, and the characters and little dramas in this story are bang-on. There are the scandalous affairs, those pining in the wings, the power plays, and of course, the show.
Not much to say. It was a fun read.
A Fan's Notes
Frederick Exley
Sigh.
So, there is a genre of books that I call Sad Man books. I can read them, I think I understand them, but I can never really get on board with them. Sad Men often have fraught relationships with their fathers. They like women, but do not understand them or even necessarily see them as people to be understood. They drink a lot, and they are very lonely. Josh says that Sad Men think their solitude is part of being a man. A man does not need other people, except for Jack Daniels.
Exley is a Sad Man. He is a drunk and is possibly suffering from mental illness. He has several stints in a mental institution, but his only goal while there is to get out, and he doesn't say whether he thinks anything is wrong with him. He lives in the shadow of his father, who was a high school football star before becoming an upstanding family man and hero of the community and then dying young. Exley spends the whole book coming to the terms that he will never be a hero, like Frank Gifford, or even his dad. Why he can't become a pillar of the community is unsaid, though maybe it has to do with his likely depression.
Exley writes very well. He paints vivid pictures of the kinds of interesting characters you meet as a drunk. It's funny and poignant and sad. But a few chapters in, he tells about his years of seduction. By seduction, he sometimes means rape. He is having a lot of sex with women he doesn't care about, sometimes against their will, and then he wonders why it doesn't make him happy. And that's the momentous realization he gets out of it - it doesn't make him happy. At no point does it occur to him to consider how anyone else who was involved might feel about it. Sad Men are self-absorbed.
I didn't get the impression that he thought of what he was doing as rape, possibly because that would mean looking at it from the woman's perspective. He seems to believe that the women gave consent by coming to his apartment, and the fact that they were crying and saying "no no no" later doesn't matter. I don't think he would be alone in those assumptions, particularly for his time (50s and 60s). Anyway, he lost me at that point. I understand that this is a person that exists in the world, and as a fellow human being, I owe him my empathy and compassion. We need people who are adept with words to put these experiences out there, as eloquently as possible. And the fact that there seem to be several writers like this out there indicates that he's not alone. I still believe in art as a path to empathy.
But I did not enjoy his company.
12.20.2014
november 2014 books.
Hey, we're almost caught up here!
The Double
Jose Saramago
A depressed history teacher watches a movie and sees one of the actors is an exact duplicate of him. He becomes obsessed, tracking down the actor by watching other movies (it's a bit part, so the role is not credited directly) from the same company. By cross-referencing movies, he's able to figure out the actor's name, though he finds it's only a screen name and then he has to track down the real name. Finally, he contacts the actor directly to tell him that he, a stranger, is apparently his exact double.
It's such a thin premise on first glance. The whole time he is seeking out the actor, I'm yelling at him in my head. Dude, just let it go and mind your own business. What difference does it make that this guy exists? But I can see how it would bug someone, particularly someone who didn't have much else going on in his life at the moment. Even he doesn't really know where he's going or what he will do once he finds the actor, he just feels the compulsion to follow the trail.
It's a strange sort of thriller, and the ending has a great twist. I enjoyed it, though it did not strike me nearly as much as another work of Saramago's, Blindness.
The News From Paraguay
Lily Tuck
This was historical fiction, based on the lives of President Francisco Lopez and his long-term mistress. This guy apparently ruined Paraguay by starting a war he couldn't win or pay for. Spoiler alert, he dies in the mud. After getting 60% of the population killed and devasting the economy, of course.
You know, this book won a National Book Award, but the Amazon reviews are pretty mixed. I'd have to agree. It didn't really stick to me, one way or the other. It's clearly about the mistress, and I think I was supposed to feel...something about her involvement with the politics of killing a lot of people for the sake of vanity. But it wasn't really clear what her involvement was. She has children and affairs and sometimes she sit there while the President rants about politics to her. She did not seem to have any actual power. I would've preferred an alternate history where she kills the guy before he breaks Paraguay.
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
Mark Vonnegut
I read this on the way back from San Francisco. It's all about hippies, so it was entirely appropriate. These hippies do not live on the street, but instead take to the woods to build a commune. They buy some land in British Columbia, work all day at building a house and growing/catching food and try to make a real go of the simpler life.
The only problem is that the author comes down with a bad case of schizophrenia. His friends try to contain and help him for a while, but at some point they have to put him in an institution for his safety and their sanity. I fortunately have had very little experience with schizophrenia, but it sounds pretty terrible. He talks about receiving information, but it comes in so fast (and from where, exactly?) that his brain cannot process it. At least some of it is outright untrue, though much of it feels like revelation. It sounds sorta poetic and magical, except for the not eating or sleeping and the suicide attempts. Maybe he is having revelations, but a body cannot function that way.
What struck me was the stigma about mental illness within his group. When I think about a mental illness stigma, I think about people saying that the mentally ill just need to get over it, that we all go through crap and those people just want attention or are too weak to suck it up and get on with living. That's essentially saying that mental illness itself does not exist. These hippies also believed mental illness did not exist, but for different reasons. They thought that the mentally ill were just super oppressed. A quote he uses frequently is that "schizophrenia is an appropriate reaction to an insane world." Basically, this person is not sick, the world is.
Vonnegut himself has this view, and has a really hard time resolving it with his own experience. In fact, he is terribly disappointed to find out that it's about brain chemistry, not oppression and society. It makes him feel like a bad hippie. He wants this poetic condition to have a poetic cure. But in the end, he has to admit that treating it as a brain chemistry problem seems to work.
I think we can all agree that the world is quite sick, but I'm pretty sure some people have something in their brains that does not let them function. The more I read or listen to accounts of mental illness, the more I realize that I don't know anything, and the best course is to just be compassionate and also thankful that I haven't had to deal with it.
The author is the son of American author Kurt Vonnegut. That's the first thing that is mentioned in the author bio in the book, and I felt kinda bad for the guy about it. That being said, I think it's the very reason I picked up the book in the first place.
Saints and Strangers: Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Fathers and Their Families, with Their Friends and Foes, and an Account of the Posthumous ... and the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock
George F. Willison
I picked this up right before Thanksgiving - how appropriate! I don't guess I had any strong ideas about the Pilgrims, other than a vague notion they wore buckles on their hats and that colonizing a new world sucks. As it turns out, the whole black clothes with buckles thing was the Puritans, who were farther north. The Pilgrims were also not hardcore believers in religious freedom. They were in disagreement with the Anglican church about a lot of things, and they resented the way that the state was able to enforce religious belief. So they went off, first to the Netherlands, and then to the New World, to practice their religion the way they wanted to. Anyone else who lived with them was also forced to practice religion that way. So their disagreement was not in the intermingling of church and state, but that it was the wrong church.
If you are interested in a actual pioneer of religious freedom, check out the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Willams.
Not all of the Pilgrims were even religious types. Many of them had just signed onto the voyage to make their fortunes. In fact, the only Pilgrim most people could name, Myles Standish, was among these. And once they all got to the New World, there was a lot of politics and backstabbing and a bit of unnecessary killing of natives. You know, regular human stuff.
What was interesting to me was how much the reality differs from the myth. Our popular notion of the Pilgrims comes from a poem that a lady in England wrote after reading an article about some journals that had been rediscovered. She did not read the journals, nor did the article she read have very much information about the settlement and its inhabitants. I don't know if you know any poets, but it really does not take much for their minds to just take off, filling in the holes with imaginative details. In fact, they don't even need holes to make stuff up. Sometimes they just make something sound better. That's not this lady's fault. If you'd asked her, she would've told you that she was a poet, not a historian, you silly goose. And that's how legends and myths are born, with a bit of fact and a smattering of poetry.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
I read The Handmaid's Tale not too long ago, and we talked about speculative fiction. It's sorta like sci-fi in that the world described does not exist, but while science fiction is often talking about other worlds entirely, speculative fiction deals with what could happen, if certain human tendencies were taken to their extremes. The Handmaid's Tale was about a society of extreme oppression of women. This one deals with genetic modifications.
We follow the thoughts and actions of Snowman, who appears to be the last man on earth. There are other "people," called the Children of Crake, but they are clearly not like people we would recognize, in either their physical form or their society. In the course of Snowman's narrative about his days, where he is barely surviving, he relives his past and just how the human race came to this. Hint: it was our own dang fault.
While the world that Snowman describes is completely unrecognizable from ours (bizarre weather, no civilization, weird critters), his flashbacks sound sorta familiar. It's like our world, except certain things are amplified. Enormous resources are put into science and technology, while the arts founder. The rich and educated are kept in sterile compounds associated with their science-based jobs or institutions of learning, where there is abundant food and recreation. The rest of humanity lives in dirty, crime-ridden cities. Porn is everywhere. Food is largely synthetic; even chicken nuggets are grown on weird nugget trees. Everything sounds just a little bit familiar.
And then it all goes bad. There's a plague, the genetically modified creatures get out, all those neatly sealed barriers between the rich and the poor break down.
While this was interesting, I did not enjoy it as much as The Handmaid's Tale. I was not particularly attached to the characters. However, I did like the ending, when the Children of Crake, which were genetically designed to not be the screw-ups that we regular humans are, start making art. Their creator, Crake, implied that if that happened, they were doomed. And maybe they are, but after all, they were designed by a screw-up.
The Double
Jose Saramago
A depressed history teacher watches a movie and sees one of the actors is an exact duplicate of him. He becomes obsessed, tracking down the actor by watching other movies (it's a bit part, so the role is not credited directly) from the same company. By cross-referencing movies, he's able to figure out the actor's name, though he finds it's only a screen name and then he has to track down the real name. Finally, he contacts the actor directly to tell him that he, a stranger, is apparently his exact double.
It's such a thin premise on first glance. The whole time he is seeking out the actor, I'm yelling at him in my head. Dude, just let it go and mind your own business. What difference does it make that this guy exists? But I can see how it would bug someone, particularly someone who didn't have much else going on in his life at the moment. Even he doesn't really know where he's going or what he will do once he finds the actor, he just feels the compulsion to follow the trail.
It's a strange sort of thriller, and the ending has a great twist. I enjoyed it, though it did not strike me nearly as much as another work of Saramago's, Blindness.
The News From Paraguay
Lily Tuck
This was historical fiction, based on the lives of President Francisco Lopez and his long-term mistress. This guy apparently ruined Paraguay by starting a war he couldn't win or pay for. Spoiler alert, he dies in the mud. After getting 60% of the population killed and devasting the economy, of course.
You know, this book won a National Book Award, but the Amazon reviews are pretty mixed. I'd have to agree. It didn't really stick to me, one way or the other. It's clearly about the mistress, and I think I was supposed to feel...something about her involvement with the politics of killing a lot of people for the sake of vanity. But it wasn't really clear what her involvement was. She has children and affairs and sometimes she sit there while the President rants about politics to her. She did not seem to have any actual power. I would've preferred an alternate history where she kills the guy before he breaks Paraguay.
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
Mark Vonnegut
I read this on the way back from San Francisco. It's all about hippies, so it was entirely appropriate. These hippies do not live on the street, but instead take to the woods to build a commune. They buy some land in British Columbia, work all day at building a house and growing/catching food and try to make a real go of the simpler life.
The only problem is that the author comes down with a bad case of schizophrenia. His friends try to contain and help him for a while, but at some point they have to put him in an institution for his safety and their sanity. I fortunately have had very little experience with schizophrenia, but it sounds pretty terrible. He talks about receiving information, but it comes in so fast (and from where, exactly?) that his brain cannot process it. At least some of it is outright untrue, though much of it feels like revelation. It sounds sorta poetic and magical, except for the not eating or sleeping and the suicide attempts. Maybe he is having revelations, but a body cannot function that way.
What struck me was the stigma about mental illness within his group. When I think about a mental illness stigma, I think about people saying that the mentally ill just need to get over it, that we all go through crap and those people just want attention or are too weak to suck it up and get on with living. That's essentially saying that mental illness itself does not exist. These hippies also believed mental illness did not exist, but for different reasons. They thought that the mentally ill were just super oppressed. A quote he uses frequently is that "schizophrenia is an appropriate reaction to an insane world." Basically, this person is not sick, the world is.
Vonnegut himself has this view, and has a really hard time resolving it with his own experience. In fact, he is terribly disappointed to find out that it's about brain chemistry, not oppression and society. It makes him feel like a bad hippie. He wants this poetic condition to have a poetic cure. But in the end, he has to admit that treating it as a brain chemistry problem seems to work.
I think we can all agree that the world is quite sick, but I'm pretty sure some people have something in their brains that does not let them function. The more I read or listen to accounts of mental illness, the more I realize that I don't know anything, and the best course is to just be compassionate and also thankful that I haven't had to deal with it.
The author is the son of American author Kurt Vonnegut. That's the first thing that is mentioned in the author bio in the book, and I felt kinda bad for the guy about it. That being said, I think it's the very reason I picked up the book in the first place.
Saints and Strangers: Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Fathers and Their Families, with Their Friends and Foes, and an Account of the Posthumous ... and the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock
George F. Willison
I picked this up right before Thanksgiving - how appropriate! I don't guess I had any strong ideas about the Pilgrims, other than a vague notion they wore buckles on their hats and that colonizing a new world sucks. As it turns out, the whole black clothes with buckles thing was the Puritans, who were farther north. The Pilgrims were also not hardcore believers in religious freedom. They were in disagreement with the Anglican church about a lot of things, and they resented the way that the state was able to enforce religious belief. So they went off, first to the Netherlands, and then to the New World, to practice their religion the way they wanted to. Anyone else who lived with them was also forced to practice religion that way. So their disagreement was not in the intermingling of church and state, but that it was the wrong church.
If you are interested in a actual pioneer of religious freedom, check out the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Willams.
Not all of the Pilgrims were even religious types. Many of them had just signed onto the voyage to make their fortunes. In fact, the only Pilgrim most people could name, Myles Standish, was among these. And once they all got to the New World, there was a lot of politics and backstabbing and a bit of unnecessary killing of natives. You know, regular human stuff.
What was interesting to me was how much the reality differs from the myth. Our popular notion of the Pilgrims comes from a poem that a lady in England wrote after reading an article about some journals that had been rediscovered. She did not read the journals, nor did the article she read have very much information about the settlement and its inhabitants. I don't know if you know any poets, but it really does not take much for their minds to just take off, filling in the holes with imaginative details. In fact, they don't even need holes to make stuff up. Sometimes they just make something sound better. That's not this lady's fault. If you'd asked her, she would've told you that she was a poet, not a historian, you silly goose. And that's how legends and myths are born, with a bit of fact and a smattering of poetry.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
I read The Handmaid's Tale not too long ago, and we talked about speculative fiction. It's sorta like sci-fi in that the world described does not exist, but while science fiction is often talking about other worlds entirely, speculative fiction deals with what could happen, if certain human tendencies were taken to their extremes. The Handmaid's Tale was about a society of extreme oppression of women. This one deals with genetic modifications.
We follow the thoughts and actions of Snowman, who appears to be the last man on earth. There are other "people," called the Children of Crake, but they are clearly not like people we would recognize, in either their physical form or their society. In the course of Snowman's narrative about his days, where he is barely surviving, he relives his past and just how the human race came to this. Hint: it was our own dang fault.
While the world that Snowman describes is completely unrecognizable from ours (bizarre weather, no civilization, weird critters), his flashbacks sound sorta familiar. It's like our world, except certain things are amplified. Enormous resources are put into science and technology, while the arts founder. The rich and educated are kept in sterile compounds associated with their science-based jobs or institutions of learning, where there is abundant food and recreation. The rest of humanity lives in dirty, crime-ridden cities. Porn is everywhere. Food is largely synthetic; even chicken nuggets are grown on weird nugget trees. Everything sounds just a little bit familiar.
And then it all goes bad. There's a plague, the genetically modified creatures get out, all those neatly sealed barriers between the rich and the poor break down.
While this was interesting, I did not enjoy it as much as The Handmaid's Tale. I was not particularly attached to the characters. However, I did like the ending, when the Children of Crake, which were genetically designed to not be the screw-ups that we regular humans are, start making art. Their creator, Crake, implied that if that happened, they were doomed. And maybe they are, but after all, they were designed by a screw-up.
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