In the Headlights

Gwen Roland

I recently did a post about the fact that Atchafalaya Houseboat, Gwen Roland's book was going to be the subject of a documentary on PBS, August 31 at 10:30 PM.

I said I couldn't find my 2006 post about the book, but just now found it. Thanks, Google.

I think one of the reasons for my fascination with Roland and the book is that it took us to a primeval Eden, one attainable, perhaps even today, with enough hard work. I guess I lived vicariously with Gwen and Calvin.  I found it interesting that her retrospectoscope, at least according to the documentary, doesn't view it quite that way.

A couple of days ago, I received, to my delight, an email from Gwen herself.  It was prompted by the fact that she thinks we look like we might be kin, maybe with a not-too-remote branching of the family tree.  Who knows?  It pleases me to think it might be so.

In the meantime, Gwen is a writer on a number of topics.  She pens a monthly piece on sustainable agriculture for Mother Earth News, and continues to live a responsible, seemingly idyllic existence.  In this case, the grass probably really IS greener.

Thanks for the email, Cousin Gwen.  I'll be happy to attend the next family reunion.

[Image via Mother Earth News]

Cheetah Lady

One of the coolest things about this staying at White Oak last weekend was meeting Laurie Marker.

Ms. Marker is the world's expert on cheetahs.  Deemed so by no less than Smithsonian Magazine, which has a feature article on her in the March issue.

This striking-looking woman is also striking in her intelligence and dedication.  Devoted to animal welfare all her life, she moved to Namibia in 1991, founding the Cheetah Conservation Fund.  Not only did she do research into breeding these difficult-to-rear animals, discovering a lack of genetic variability low sperm counts, she intervened on a grass-roots level, visiting farmers to help them find ways to protect their cattle without killing cheetahs.

Anyway, this very cool woman with the infectious smile partied with us for the weekend, and on Sunday, captivated the audience as we watched cheetahs chase a rabbit pelt around a track.  They didn't get up to the speed  they do in the wild.  They didn't have to, not being hungry.  But the cheetahs put on a great show, and Ms. Marker's comments gave us all a sense of understanding these magnificent cats.

She is also responsible for discovering the benefits of a breed of dogs called the Andalusian Shepherd.  These dogs are very protective and have been used to guard farmers' flocks from cheetahs and other predators in Namibia.  So it's not surprising that at White Oak, when they needed a companion to grow up with orphaned cheetah Hazari, they took Laurie's recommendation and got an Andalusian pup named Kadir to be her foil and playmate for life.  He outweighs her big time now, but she's got the attitude and agility to be his equal.  They're five months old now, playing tug-of-war; one of the most charming success stories you could ever hope to see.

[Image taken with my ATT Tilt, simply because I had nowhere to carry my Panasonic Lumix camera.]

Happy Birthday, Sandy

For Sandy's birthday Wednesday, she, Kathie and I went out to dinner.  We went to a restaurant called 1171, which opened recently.  Kathie'd been there for another birthday celebration, but it was the first time for Sandy and I.

The decor was modern and warm, the service was friendly without being smothering.  They had Hendrick's gin, so I had a very good dry gibson, straight up.  (Thanks for driving, Kath.) 

The food was excellent.  Sandy and I had appetizers;  she ordered escargot, I had scallops and polenta.  The others had salads that were so big, I got to help with those.  For dinner, I got butternut squash risotto.  I've made risotto before, but it never turned out to be as good as wonderful as I'd heard it should be.  This was.  There was the option of adding a piece of protein, and I got a piece of ahi tuna, rare.  Yum.  Sandy had homemade spinach fettucine with scallops and shrimp, and Kathie got braised shortribs.

After splitting a decadent chocolate dessert, we left the restaurant in time to see the beginning of the lunar eclipse.  We opened Kathie's moon roof so we could watch it on the way home.  By the time we got back to my house, it was about half eclipsed.  It was beautiful to watch.  Strange that the edge being eclipsed seemed to have a fuzzy, ragged quality.  It looked like a mouse was taking bites out of the side of it.  Kathie speculated that it was because the surface of the Earth, which was causing the eclipse, is irregular.  Maybe the ragged quality was caused by the shadow of the Andes or the Himalayas.  I don't know, but it was neat.  It started clouding over after awhile, so I gave it up, but it was great while it lasted.

Nice of the moon to do that for Sandy's birthday.

[Image from Garden Detective]

Naked

...is pretty much the last way I'd picture author David Sedaris.

Naked was published in 1997, and is typical David Sedaris.  Stories about his family and his life, warts and all, I read them, my mind saying the words in his voice.

The title story is about time he spent in a nudist camp.  I'd always pictured Sedaris a a pretty buttoned-up guy, which he was when he arrived there.  In his time there, he slowly became comfortable with public nudity, rendering it pretty much as boring as any vacation spent in a trailer park with a cross-section of humanity.  The nudity seems to add no fillip of excitement.  And so, I think my speculations about what a nude beach or nude club vacation have been quashed for eternity.

The stories about his mother, father, sisters and brother are my favorites.  I particularly like his mother, a dry wit (with drink and cigarette), who had her kids' number and managed them with humor and aplomb.

He talks about the jobs he held growing up, including as a paint stripper and a migrant worker;  he appears to have been quite adventurous, surprising again in view of the buttoned-up image I'd had of him.    Some of his tales have an O. Henriesque irony to them.  He talks about his homosexuality, and growing up with the dawning realization of his sexuality.  No mention of Hugh, who must have come later.  He also grew up with a number of obsessive-compulsive traits, which, while poignant, are so hilariously described that it maked me laugh until tears came.

Reading Naked was like taking a vacation, a much-needed break from my own reality.

[You can get it at BooksaMillion .  Or do what I do and support your neighborhood used book store.]

Literary Mystery?

   I had dinner with my folks this weekend, and my Dad asked me what the connection was between Snoopy and D.H. Lawrence, author of many novels including Lady Chatterley's Lover.

I couldn't figure it out.  He said Lawrence had been married to Frieda von Richthofen, who was a sister of the Red Baron. 

He added a wonderful story that he'd read.  It seems that after Lawrence's death, his wife travelled to the United States, bringing his ashes with her.  She brought them along when she went to a cocktail party where she lost the ashes, and they were never seen again.

I don't know why anyone would bring ashes to a cocktail party, but there you go.  It's a good story.  It may be apocryphal, but I hope it's true.

The links I found say that Frieda Lawrence was a distant relative of Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, Snoopy's nemesis, the Red Baron.

[Image of a grumpy looking David Herbert Lawrence from cswnet.com]

A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole. 

I just read it for the third time.  Those of you who know me understand that that's saying a lot.  I rarely read a book or see a movie more than once, even if I enjoyed it...there are so many more out there.  The only other book I can think of that I've read multiple times is Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

But when I ran into A Confederacy of Dunces in the stacks of my favorite used book store, Black Sheep Books, I felt an endorphin surge and a rush of happy memories.  Red and I had both read it a couple of times and enjoyed it very much.

Irreverent, funny as hell, gross, full of stereotypes, the book develops momentum as it rolls you from one rollicking adventure to another.  The common thread is Ignatius C. Reilly, morbidly obese, overeducated, damp, smelly, with a pyloric valve that shuts on him in times of stress.  He's misanthropic, and lives with his mother in a tiny flat in New Orleans.  He spends his time in bed, writing in his journal (yellow Big Chief pads, in pencil, strewn all over his room), and writing inflammatory letters to that minx, Myrna Minkoff, a radical hippie, and his erstwhile partner and nemesis from their days in college.

His mother finally throws him out and tells him to get a job.  He has no skills, and his attempts becoming gainfully employed are hilarious.  He continually thwarts himself with his constant subterfuge, his appetite, his plain inability to get along with people.  On the way, he becomes a rabble-rouser, espousing one cause after another in a Quixotic attempt to right wrongs (at least as he sees them).

The title, it says, is from Jonathan Swift, from "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting":  "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."  I guess Ignatius is that unrecognized genius.  He certainly thinks he is.

The book was copyrighted in 1080 by Thelma D. Toole, John Kennedy Toole's mother,  eleven years after Toole's death by suicide.  He connected a hose from the tailpipe of his car trough the window and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  He had been unable to find a publisher for his book, which posthumously won the Pulitzer prize.  Certainly a factor in his suicide was his depression, and his inability to have his novel published.  I find that unbearably sad.

The events take place in the early 1960's in New Orleans, a city in which Toole lived with his mother and held various jobs, working as a street vendor, and another time in a garment factory, jobs Ignatius holds in the book. Art imitates life.

Despite its age and familiarity to me, I found nothing dated or stale in reading it this third time.  Ignatius is no less outrageous than before, and, on rare occasions, almost, just almost, borders on the sympathetic.

I wonder if it would be a good movie.  Probably not.  Particularly not to those who've read the book.  I felt that way about the movie made from Catch-22...one of the best books ever, one of the worst movies.  It's tough to take a funny book, particularly if a lot of the humor is in the writing, and turn it into a funny movie.

[I found this Flickr photo from the web site of Zelda Go Wild.  It is a photo of a statue of Ignatius Reilly on Canal Streen in New Orleans.  I wonder if it's still there.]

Happy Birthday, Red!

Today would have been Red's birthday.  He died of multiple myeloma three and a half years ago, give or take.

This picture was taken when he was driving a tour bus for American Sightseeing in Miami.  He had a beard pretty much all the time we were together, except for when he had to shave it for a job, like here.

Happy Birthday, Baby!

The Professor and the Madman

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester is the most recent book I finished.  In fact, I finished it in bed this morning, drinking coffee.  Bliss. 

I enjoy reading Victoriana, and this true story of Victorian genius and insanity, murder and madness is a joy to read.

I'd give a ***spoiler warning*** now, except you'll know what I am about to say before you've finished the first two pages.

Broadly, it is the story of the conception through completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, and of some of the people who made it happen.  It is the story of Dr. James Murray, a visionary whose life was dedicated to editing the dictionary.  More than that, it is the story of Dr. William Chester Minor.

Dr. Minor was trained at Yale, became a fine physician, and joined the Union army during the Civil War.  By the time the war ended, he was behaving in a very strange manner.  After a brief stay in a mental hospital, he went on tour in Europe, landing in London.  The Army had retired him with a pension.  While there, his monomania manifested itself very publicly when his demons drove him to shoot and kill a complete stranger.

He subsequently was tried and found to be mad.  He was incarcerated at Broadmoor (formerly Bedlam) for almost four decades.  While there, his money and status as a physician bought him favors like a two-room suite, and writing and painting materials.

During his time at Broadmoor, he learned about the O.E.D. and started corresponding with James Murray, and became one of the most prolific researchers and contributors to what was to become the largest publication ever.  He compiled a large library and spent his days researching words and quotes for the dictionary, and his nights piling furniture against his doors to keep demons out of his room, and , in his version of reality, being violated in an unspeakable manner by young girls.

Quite the Victorian schizophrenic.  His preoccupation with sexuality led to further shocking complications in his fractured life, but one thing was clear and true.  His intellect and interst in the dictionary is what makes W.C. Morris a tragic character, and The Professor and the Madman a compelling read.

[Image of Dr. Minor from Vauxhallsociety.org]

But Will He Love Me Like Calvin Loved Alice

That's the question one woman asks herself when she looks at her fiance.  It's a pretty high bar.

I just finished About Alice by Calvin Trillin.  It's a short book. You can read it in an evening or two.  A tribute.  And a memorial.

It's loving, never maudlin. 

Alice was the voice of reason in an otherwise rather madcap household, which prompted one person to write to Trillin that she sounded "like a dietitian in sensible shoes."  In truth, she was as far from that as possible.  Intelligent, no, extremely intelligent, with the courage of her convictions, a sharp sense of humor, great physical beauty and a loving soul.  She was the perfect compliment to Trillin.  He says they were likened to Burns and Allen, except he was Gracie and she was George.

A lifelong non-smoker, she contracted lung cancer in the 1970's when she was in her 30's.  In the early 1990's, she had a recurrence, then in the early 2000's, her heart began to fail her, the effects of the radiation treatments on the muscle taking their toll.  They made the open heart surgery extremely difficult, and her recovery included a long readmission to the hospital.  She was discharged the day of their second daughter's wedding and was able to attend that, a goal she had set for herself. 

Unforunately, the damage to her heart wasn't reversible, and she died waiting for a heart transplant.

She died on 9/11.

Trillin walks a fine line with this book about a woman he clearly adored, and who, maybe with a bit of a wry grin, adored him.  It is warm, sweet and frank, but you never want to cry, for him or her.  Instead, it celebrates their life together and with their daughters (and now he spends his time with their grandchildren, one of whom, when she looks at him, looks just like Alice).

She was too young.  But they had what they had, and that, clearly, was exceptional.

Will he love you like Calvin loved Alice?  Probably not.  It's a high bar.

[image from SearchIndia.com]

Christmas Feast

Resting from a dance lesson the other day, I was speaking with one of the instructors, Monet.  She asked what I was doing for Christmas, and I told her I was spending Christmas Eve at my parents' house, and they were coming to mine for Christmas.  The truth is, I'll probably go to their house for both, and bring gifts and dinner on Christmas day.  My Dad's been in the hospital, and is probably more comfortable at home, now, than climbing in and out of a car.  I'll probably make meat rolls, but that's another story.

Monet,(her real name, by the way), who just entered her twenties, floored me when she said she was having family, about ten people, for dinner, and was making a turducken.  I thought turducken was something you graduated into trying when you tired after years of making turkey.  Sort of a midlife crisis of cooking.  She doesn't have the gravitas for turducken.  She does, though.  I got to know her better in Puerto Rico, and she's got a wicked sense of humor, and enough weight (figuratively only, Monet) to pull off turducken.  She had to find a butcher who'd bone the birds and assemble the chimera for her.

In case you don't know, turducken was popularized in the 1980's, though some versions have existed since the middle ages.  A deboned chicken is stuffed into a deboned duck, which in turn is stuffed into a partially deboned turkey.  Some fill any small existing space with stuffing or sausage.  You know those must weigh a ton!

The result is a dense as hell, large piece of meat.  I asked her how long it needs to bake, and she said "forever".  Even a turkey with a hollow cavity takes forever, Monet.  A turducken must take eons.

Go, Monet.  You rock.

[That's the back of Monet at the Dancesport competition in San Juan, Puerto Rico in November.  She and her amateur partner did great.]

"Boned" and "deboned", in cooking, mean the same thing.

[Image of turducken from Wikipedia]