labwriter: four of four for 2010

Half the year gone. I've been into some humongously long reads during July, so the ticker isn't moving much. But that's fine. I'm in a group read of Swann's Way, and I think I'll make it through the book this time. Certainly I'm farther along than I've ever been on any of my other attempts. I'm also trying out George R.R. Martin's first book. I like it, so now put me in the large group of people who say, "Finish the series, George!"

My first thread for 2010 is here

My second thread for 2010 is here

My third thread for 2010 is here

Books read from July 1

54) John Jay Chapman and His Letters ed. by M.A. DeWolfe Howe. 5-star
55) A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. 4-star
56) Still Life: A Mystery by Louise Penny. 3.5-star
57) When Giants Ruled: The Story of Park Row
58) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. 2.5-star

Books Read in August

59) This Is Graceanne's Book: A Novel by P.L. Whitney. 4-stars
60) The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva. 4-stars
61) Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. 5-star
62) Vermont Tradition: A Biography of an Outlook on Life by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. 4-star
63) Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel by John Irving. 4-star
64) The Occupied Garden by Kirsten den Hartog. 3.5-star
65) Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, by Brooke Kroeger. 2-star




The ticker and list numbers don't match because of "abandoned" books.

Good morning, Becky!

Hi Stasia!

As I've mentioned, my current non-fiction book is a Vermont "biography" written by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958). The book is Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life. Fortunately, DCF has included quite a bit of her own autobiography in the book. I think this might have been a back-handed way for a very private and humble woman of writing a memoir. Dorothy was not the kind of woman to toot her own horn, even though she had plenty to toot about.

Anyway, this book is just full of wonderful vignettes. One of my favorites so far is Dorothy's story about an old Indian woman who lived in the community named Icy. This woman didn't have a home of her own; instead, she went from place to place, and the people of the community would take her in--for as long as she wanted to stay, and then she would be off again. As Dorothy said, "There was always room in the big, old-time farmhouses, and Icy was not particular where she slept."

"All through my childhood Icy thus came and went . . . . Presently, of course, old age came, even to her. She could no longer tramp the roads in all weathers, as had been her delight.

"What happened then? The Ladies' Benevolent Society of the Congregational Church raised money to build her a little house of her own. It still stands. Our children and grandchildren know it by sight. Tiny, convenient, compact, it was just right for a very old person to manage" (30, 31).

Dorothy goes on to say that when Icy died, the Town provided for her in death just as they had provided for her when she was alive. She was given a burial and "a good funeral" at public expense. However, it seems that Icy herself provided her own marble tombstone. The inscription read:

Miss Icy Palmer,
Born September 1824
Died July 1911
Rest in Peace . . . asleep in Jesus

Dorothy concludes: "I never look at the epitaph without a remorseful qualm. How unimaginatively callous we were all those years. Why did she need to die before acquiring that title of respect? We should have called her 'Miss'!" (31)

Hi Becky, I rarely get to be a "first" visitor. Nice new thread. Back to the old one....just wanted to say that my favorite book by Margaret Atwood was Cat's Eye. Maybe because it was the first one of hers that I read?

It's not as hot here this morning as it has been for the last week. We're going to take the grandkids to the park as soon as breakfast is over to take advantage of clouds and a breeze!

ETA: Oh shoot! I must still be asleep not to have noticed Stasia beat me to your thread. I should have known better. :-)

Nice to see you here, Donna, first or not. The heat is getting me down a bit, but you're right, it doesn't seem as hot this morning. Misery--heh.

Thanks for the tip about Cat's Eye. I'll check it out.

#5: Sorry, Donna!

I don't mind being #3! I have to say that the DCF sounds like a lovely book, and she sounds like a lovely woman. Keep reading and posting, friend B.!

OK Becky you dangerous woman you, now I have the DCF in hand. Will I be able to resist it? Of course not. And if I get started I can read it with you. So I will do that ASAP.

And of course I took an Atwood home with me yestiddy - Handmaid

I can only read two or so of the Lessing essays a day anyway (none some days, ahem). BTW the last Lessing essay I read was about a book by Guy Sajer called The Forgotten Soldier a memoir of being (at the start) a 17 year old Nazi soldier in love with the idea of the disciplined military who then somehow lives through unbelievable hardships and torments and insanity and emerges broken and ruined but also, it seems, full of compassion and sorrow for the foolishness of mankind.....
I didn't go on to the next one. Lessing is masterful at burrowing deep into the heart of a book in a very few pages.

>9 sibylline:. Hi Sib. It would be fun to read the DCF Vermont book together. There's no hurry. I'm "trying" to read about 20 pages a day, and I'm mostly failing even at that. I'm only on page 40, and that's after about a week or so of having the book on my nightstand. However, I am committed to reading it. DCF is just wonderful. I can't for the life of me understand why this book isn't better known in the Cather community.

Oh woe, the new Daniel Silva is out tomorrow!: The Rembrandt Affair. It's part of a series, for those who don't know him--Gabriel Allon is the main character, "master art restorer and assassin." Heh. Silva uses great settings--mostly European cities. He's simply one of my favorite "summer reads" ever: very intelligent writer, great characters, plots that move. I think this is probably number nine or ten in the series. So.........my "planned reading for July" is trashed. This means I have to finish the George R.R. Martin book soon, which I'm really enjoying, but--I mean, really--800 pages! It would have been a better winter read, for a time when I just want to hunker down and ignore the world.

I'm catching up -- today had some interstitial moments where I could do nothing else but read -- waiting for a phone to ring sort of things. I won't be able to write more until tomorrow, but VT is a treat and a half. Believe it or not we had an "Icy" living here when I first arrived around 1980. She lived in a little trailer, walked everywhere, did odd jobs, was a total loner -- but people did make sure she got rides and had what she needed. There are still a few folks like that around, who people just keep an eye on.

#10: I did not know that the new Daniel Silva book comes out Tuesday! I will have to start hunting for it now. I own that entire series and really like it.

I’ve kept meaning to say that it doesn’t surprise me you aren’t too enamored of Proust...... I don’t need to explain, do I?

All I can say abt the Martin is that you might want to write out reminders if you aren’t going to pick up the next one until deep winter settles in -- there is something about fantasies that is a bit teflon so the facts just slide out of your head if the interval betw. books is too long. The Martin is so vivid that it has stuck in mine better than most do, but I know that there was a long interval betw. the 4th and 5th (or 3rd and 4th) and I had to spend quite some time thumbing through the previous to get back into the game.

Meanwhile DCF

In her preliminary remarks Dorothy gives a long speech about her background, justifying her grounds for making statements about Vermont’s character -- so I feel I should give my own, such as they are as I plunge into my comments.

More than half of my life since the age of 15 has been lived somewhere in New England and over half of that in Vermont ...... My paternal family has deep roots in Vermont although they all moved elsewhere by the late 19th century. I don’t have credentials like Dorothy’s, such as a long-term family homestead in Vermont although we did have a similar homestead in Barre, Massachusetts which except for a brief period of less than a generation, stayed in the family from its earliest days in the mid-1700‘s until the 1970’s when my father and his siblings sold it.

Like Dorothy, I was interested. I liked hanging about listening to older folks talk about the old days. There was a room in the barn stacked three feet high with old Christian Science Monitors where I would wallow away hot afternoons reading about old train wrecks, wars in Africa, the opening of new railroads out west..... in this amazing smell of dust and old paper and mold with the buzzing of flies as a distant accompaniment.

Here is what is still 100% true: “Vermonters are fiercely unregimented. They will argue with each other and with the Road Commissioner hour after Town-Meeting hour, about where to put a culvert. 6

‘The basic primary concern of Vermont tradition is with the conduct of life.’ 8
That is a huge statement to make -- general enough, also, to be open to very broad interpretation.

“But the ‘virtuous intention to give happiness to others,’ no. That would imply rearranging other people’s lives for them! Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person free as possible to arrange his own life.” 8

This notion, for better or for worse, has been modifed by cultural change in the last 50-60 years. Community responsiblity used to be a 'given'. Now it is something people have to consciously (and conscientiously) work at. It isn’t entirely changed, but has, somewhat contradictorily, become difficult to explain to an outsider: viz. Bernie Sanders’ enduring popularity with Vermont voters. Probably the only avowed ‘socialist’ beloved (or at the very least admired by) Vermont conservatives -- which should tell you they aren’t regular conservatives by current US standards. They, like other Vermonters, won’t be regimented.

“.. the Vermonter’s impulse is to distrust and dislike hasty short-cuts to intimacy.” 9
Having lived all over the Northeast I would say that is true of New England all over, not unique to Vermont. I would then say that one of the reasons I am moving back here so happily despite the endlessness of winter and mud-season is that over time I’ve realized that I have more good friends here than anywhere else I’ve lived. People you are always happy to see and talk to, thoughtful, independent and lively. Like LTers.

On p13 - the farmer who will leave the hay and run to a special town-meeting to argue about something. Yep, still true. Ideas come first.

Chapter 1 “For centuries Vermont had been empty, had not been for Indians a place of permanent habitation to be defended against against trespassers.”

DCF then goes on to speculate that perhaps some of the tolerant attitude of Vermonters is based in a peaceful occupation and cohabitation with the few Abenakis that were around..... Vermonters never had to endure any such trauma of fear and blood, and throughout its history the Vermont homicide rate has been extremely low. Is it entirely fantastic to question whether this difference can be due merely to coincidence - to wonder whether an important, perhaps the deciding, factor may not be the con- trasting emotional atmospheres during the character-forming early years of the two communities. 23 I don’t know really, but I have often thought about the fact that Vermont was settled peacefully, and was happy to see DCF stating this so boldly 60 years ago -- back then this was not such a fashionable position to take and it reflects well on her.

As a reader I loved this passage on 29 Inside the head of the child sitting cross-legged on the attic floor there began - I can feel it now - one of the most prodigious intellectual efforts a modern brain can make, a doubt of what is set down on the printed page........ No further comment needed. Needless to say, I think this is, generally, a Vermont trait, right and left, to be skeptical.

RE Icy Palmer -- Here in our village when I first moved here in 1980 there was an old woman, hunched over, wrinkled and ruddy with black black eyes who lived in a trailer near where I am now, just across the river and ‘did’ for more than a few people, including the Post Office, The General Store -- she would take out the mats and shake them and beat them, sweep steps, mop a little. She was isolated, yet people looked after her and she was very much a town person, recognized as such. She walked the mile to town and back unless someone gave her a ride, which many people did.

This is much longer than I meant it to be!

I finished George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first book in his Song of Ice and Fire (never finished) series. I enjoyed it a whole lot, more than I thought I would. I don't know enough about the genre of heroic fantasy to know what other writers have done with it, since I don't normally read in this genre. One reviewer writing about the series says that Martin systematically slaughters every sacred cow of the genre, and in so doing invests a vigor into it that hasn't been seen since Tolkien: heroes die, villains turn out to be not so bad after all, magic is used rarely, plots don't head down the expected roads, etc. I enjoyed the book for the rounded characters and extremely readable prose. This 800-page book read more like most 400-pagers, so I guess I would call it a page-turner. My favorite part of the book was the young girl named Arya, the youngest daughter of Eddark Stark, Lord of Winterfell.

I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the series, but I'm going to wait for awhile.

Hi Lucy. I think I'm safe waiting awhile to pick up the second Martin book because nowadays (I like that word today for some reason)--nowadays a person can find a nice, concise synopsis of plot and a listing of character who's-who on the internet. Otherwise, you're right, I'd be endlessly thumbing through the pervious one to pick up the thread.

Wow, what a nice post about the DCF Vermont book. A lot of things struck me about what you wrote, but one thing in particular stood out: “.. the Vermonter’s impulse is to distrust and dislike hasty short-cuts to intimacy.” 9

I must have something of that in me as well. I was just a few minutes ago on that site that I tolerate some days better than others, facebook, and was reading a post there by my youngest brother's "girlfriend" or "significant other" or "mother of his child" or whatever you call a person who feels like "wife" is too much of a commitment, evidently. I barely knew this woman's name when I was told she and my brother were moving in together. I hadn't heard much beyond her name when I was told, "Guess what, you're going to be an aunt." She refers to my cousin who she's known for about five minutes as "Cousin Joani" (not knowing that NO ONE but me in my cousin's life has ever called her anything but Joan). She refers to my mother as "Grandma," when NO ONE on the planet has ever referred to my mother that way. She refers to my father's brother as "Uncle Ted," as in "We're going to visit Uncle Ted at his cabin this weekend." I was sitting here trying to figure out why this woman fries me the way she does, when whammo!, I was hit by the "instant intimacy" thing. I'm offended by it. I want her to refer to my family less personally, at least until she has the grace to marry into the family. "John's Uncle Ted"; "John's mother, Dee"; "Joan, John's cousin"--that's what I would like her to write on facebook. Am I just a hopeless curmudgeon?

If you are a hopeless curmudgeon, then I am too.

Me three. And I think that distaste of shortcuts to intimacy is a Midwestern thing as well. People are friendly, but it takes a minute to be acccepted, and in small towns it takes longer than a minute.

Thank you, Stasia. Obviously, I felt a need to vent. I guess I'm going to call her "Andrea, the Girlfriend." That works for me.

And thanks to you too, markon (love the dog pic on your profile page--I'm hopeless about dogs). It also seems sort of common, as if she wasn't raised right or something. It just feels wrong. I don't like my neighbor's five-year-old calling me "Becky," either. Before you know it, I'll be one of those old ladies looking out the window and yelling, "Hey you kids, get off my grass!" heh

When my daughters came home and told me that their friend's mother was named Sheila, I told them they needed to call her Mrs. Mooneyham. Unfortunately, Sheila had already told them to call her by her first name. Sorry, but I would much prefer children refer to their elders appropriately.

I agree, Stasia. The twenty-something boys across the street were taught by their mother when they were little to call me "Mrs. Mihelich." They always did and they still do. I still call my best friend's mother "Mrs. Ribbing" even though I'm almost 60 and she's almost 90. There's nothing in the world that would induce me to call her "Peggy." The little girl next door--well, she's cute, I'll give her that. She yells at me from her bedroom window when I'm outside, "Hey, Becky!" Oh well. I guess I should be glad there's a little girl next door who likes to speak to people. It's sort of like jeans in church. I'm not a big fan of them, but I'd rather see a teenager in church wearing his/her jeans than not in church. Oh jeeze, I never thought I would get this way. But where does it end?

#21: I'd rather see a teenager in church wearing his/her jeans than not in church.

I would too. I think there are some things that I am willing to compromise on, but good manners are not one of them. lol

Well, I'm another. My favorite high school teacher is Mrs. Stephens who is 101. When I turned 63 or so she told me to call her "Mary." Being obedient, I call her Mary to her face, but refer to her as Mrs. Stephens any other time. This is the South though, so I got called Ms. Peggy a lot at school, and so long as the "Ms." is in place, I didn't mind a bit.

Having finished my current fiction book, I'm casting around for another. We're having a Missouri group read that starts August 1. The book is This Is Graceanne's Book, by P.L. Whitney. Sounds perfect, especially since it's not 800 pages long! ha.

The book is about small-town life in 1960s Missouri, told by a nine-year-old boy named Charlie who observes a year in the life of his older sister Graceanne. No reviews noted on the LT touchstone page for this book. Our Missouri readers group will change that once we get ahold of it!

Oh, and P.S. I'm having a party and everyone but Richard is invited. Nah, that wouldn't be nice. Richard, you are absolutely invited to my party.

I agree totally with your rants about modern manners. I won't trade my brother's "lady friend" for yours. She's in her mid-40's and has been "dating" him for several years now, but still calls our parents "Mr and Mrs Hill". I adore her. And whenever a friend of one of my kids calls me "Mrs McCreary", I'm torn between wanting to hug them and wondering what's wrong with that kid - it's practically unheard of.

I also don't like jeans in church, but prefer them to shorts anyday. And, no fair, I was going to be that old lady yelling at kids. Sometimes I feel like such a dinosaur!

I think you'll love Graceanne's Book. I had to read it last week and return it to the library, so I'm anxious for everyone else to read it, too.

Thanks, Sandy. I so remember the old lady who lived next door to us when we were little kids. We must have driven her batty. I have a different appreciation for her now than I did then, that's for sure. I was 8 years old in 1960, the time of this Graceanne book. I'm looking forward to it--and also to the Missouri reading group again as well.

>13 sibylline:. So Lucy, to get back to DCF & Vermont. I like Bernie Sanders. I think he's a fascinating guy. At least he's willing to call himself what he is--a "democratic socialist." I respect that. It is a bit difficult to reconcile Vermonters voting for a socialist with Dorothy's description of the community consciousness.

I like your description of reading the stacks of Christian Science Monitors in the barn.

This comes from Chapt. 3: "he had been rigorously trained to keep his mouth shut about what he did not understand" (60). I like that in a person, and I could use more of it in myself.

Well, I'm moving on into the chapter about the Yankee/Yorker dispute, "A Chat Between Neighbors." I'm stopping somewhere around p.75 this morning, just so you know.

I've read to p. 76, couldn't stop myself:

Chapter 2 A Chat Between Neighbors

This chapter was of great interest to me, having lived a few years in Western NY in an area with these very fiefdoms (some still in operation, though no more tenants, just big big farms) -- I’d read a little on this subject, but Fisher’s exegesis of it is the most clear -- putting it in the form of an encounter gives it an immediacy that takes your breath away. It does explain to me why New York is, in almost every way, so different in architecture, landscape and style from New England. Towns in agricultural areas, many of them, are socially VERY stratified with people who really are 'gentry' -- newer folks, say, who've bought houses in tracts may not be aware of the underpinnings -- but they are still there, going strong. Sure, the land itself if different geologically speaking, but it doesn’t begin and end there. As Fisher succinctly puts it -- in the province of New York the most coherent, purposeful, powerful and consistent attempt ever made on the soil of the North American continent to create an exact copy of the legalized caste system of rural England... The new Vermonters, surging up from Connecticut and Massachusetts would have none of it. I can’t wait to read the next chapter!

I am on the fence with the intimacy/informality thing. For me it is more about what the person actually divulges to me or expects me to divulge to them than what they call me. I've never cared one way or the other about that. But I have my reasons. Which I might tell you if you get to know me better! heh heh

Well, I think names matter. This too-familiar naming-calling convention that has taken hold everywhere (like in church, it's now "Bob," even for the children, instead of "Father Skinner") says a lot about our culture. But my main point was that this "girlfriend" who on the one hand has chosen not to make herself part of my family by marriage, has on the other hand given herself permission to adopt a familiarity with my family that I find quite obnoxious. That was my original point.

Oh, I stopped reading in DCF too soon. I didn't realize I was so close to the end of the chapter.

"Their struggle . . . was part of the world-wide battle for human rights--the plain people against enslavement by the crafty, the powerful, the ruthless. That war is never-ending. It started before recorded history. It is still going on. In it our old Vermont story, threadbare with familiarity to us, often totally unknown to other Americans, was only a small skirmish on the edge of the greater field. But no one can doubt under which flag it was fought" (76).

And on the very next page, in the new chapter, DCF quotes the Reverend John Taylor: 'Americans can never flourish when on leased lands; they have too much enterprise to work for others or to remain tenants' (77).

So my question remains: If there is even a spark or a flash of this original Yankee spirit remaining in the people of Vermont, why do they vote to send an avowed socialist to the U.S. Senate? Is it because they see him as some sort of Robin Hood? A person hitching themselves to the government trough is in some form a slave to economic handouts. Why don't Vermonters, of all people, push back against that all day long? Where are the Green Mountain "men" today?

I'm reading Chapt. 4 with a map in front of me, since my knowledge of the georgraphy of the New York / Vermont border is pretty hazy. This is fascinating stuff. I had no idea there was this rift in the fundamental ideals between the Yorkers & Yankees. Imagine, "border violence" (79) in that area. Heh.

I finished Chapt. 4, but now I need to move on. This is really fascinating stuff. More tomorrow.

I am no expert on Vermont politics, but I have voted here and attended Town meeting for 30 years..... Vermont voters as a rule are not all that attached to party lines. The tilt is slightly to the left at this point, the majority, so to have a republican governor means that lots of independents liked him (and there are lots of independents!). Jeffords switching parties meant less to folks here than it did nationally. EVERYONE votes for Leahy. To do something against the tide for personal convictions is often admired just for itself. EVERYONE votes for Bernie.

Why?

A critical issue that so far DCF takes for granted is the communitarian spirit that is the other side of the independence coin in Vermont -- it means that in your own community you are responsible for not only your own welfare but the welfare of those less well off than you or unable to care for themselves.... Of late, I think VT has experienced a strong statewide feeling of community and thus a lot of recent legislation has been in order to make sure that the whole Vermont Community offers the same basic things to everyone. Lots of conservatives and ultra-liberals HATE all this, of course, but the majority of voters obviously felt otherwise.
I am confident that for the most part VT voters really do think hard about the costs involved, about what autonomy they are willing to give up to ensure an overall fairness. And, as long as they feel it is their choice, and thus undo-able, then that's OK too. I think everyone is watchful and careful about that. And Bernie is a Vermont socialist. He is as concerned about privacy and independence as anyone else. There is a line no one here would cross.

Just to amuse you all: When I moved here in 1980 you only had to get car insurance AFTER you'd had your first accident.

Oops -- I gobbled up Chapter 5 along with my rice krispies this morning -- I have nothing much to say (I've said enough already, I think) -- she is obviously setting the background for how the new Vermonters approached their own settlement crisis. It IS fascinating though to think of battle along state lines, also to see how bit by bit anger and experiences were building up -- this was the first use of the phrase 'sons of liberty' for ex.

Well, Sib, I'm constantly guilty of shooting my mouth off, so I'll just copy and paste from my earlier post:

This comes from Chapt. 3: "he had been rigorously trained to keep his mouth shut about what he did not understand" (60). I like that in a person, and I could use more of it in myself.

I wish I had been so "rigorously trained" from a young age. That's part of my problem: I grew up with all the adult direction and supervision of a feral cat. It's a real discipline for me to shut my mouth and keep my cards close to my vest, so to speak. However, I can certainly see the value in it, and I plan to practice this assiduously with "Girlfriend." Sigh.

You're doing fine, gf, just fine.

I think it is important to ask questions about what you don't understand. Dishing out opinions about what you don't understand is another matter and I feel you are a person who makes a big effort in that regard.

Vermont doesn't, at first glance, always make sense to folks. Many come live here a little while and leave -- DCF has yet to mention how nosy people are! They might leave you alone, but they know EXACTLY what you are up to all the same, and believe you me, they have an opinion about it even if they rigorously stay silent! If you read between the lines, you can see that in just about all she says. It's a paradox and you either love it or loathe it.

Oh, jeeze, don't you dare call me girlfriend--ha. I have it on very good authority that "girlfriend" is the proper term for a female love-interest-in-a-relationship-with-a-guy person, regardless of her age. I don't know if that's true. Personally, I would be mortified to be called the girlfriend of the father of my child, especially if I were well into my forties. But that's just me. I'd be interested to know if anyone here has any knowledge or opinion on the issue.

OK, so the feral cat thing. I'm reading a book for my Missouri group read called This Is Graceanne's Book. It's about a family (loosely termed a "family," that is) living in a small Missouri town in the 1960s. I grew up in Denver, not a small town, but if you never left your own neighborhood because your mother didn't drive, then it might as well have been a small town. This second-oldest girl, Graceanne. Oh my Lord, I was her without the courage to dish it out to people the way she does--to simply haul off and punch someone upside the head. The emotional tone of this book fits me like a glove. I'm looking forward to our discussion, which I believe starts August 1.

Our group is here, and I'm sure you don't have to be from Missouri to join the group read.

Sometimes, when you're having a seriously lousy day, the best thing to do is just to throw in the towel and say "Screw it." That's when my Kindle can really come in handy. I've been wanting to read these Louise Penny Chief Inspector Gamache novels for months. So, I just bought Still Life: A Mystery. I'll be back later. . . . heh.

Back East calling a true woman friend 'girlfriend' is just a sort of ironic friendly greeting -- You have to get the right tone of voice and attitude. "Hey girlfriend, how you been?" Nobody says that out in the midwest??? It's kind of mid-Atlantic, Baltimore/Philly I bet. You hear it all the time in Phila.

I just noticed what you are reading, well, we won't see you for awhile.

>36 sibylline:. Oh, it was just a little joke. See, you can't see my face, so my "humor" isn't all that apparent. "Girlfriend" is how I've decided to refer to my brother's dreadful S.O.-who-doesn't-want-to-commit-to-being-wife. So don't call me that--heh. But yes, that word is also used here as you describe.

And yes again, I've taken refuge in a book--I've wanted to read this since all the rest of you here were reading it awhile back. I decided to throw up my hands at the 5 or 6 books I'm already reading and declare a "day off." Bye for now.

>24 labwriter: It would certainly be a lot easier for me to get to your party than to Richards...

Well, girlfriends (which I thought started down here as sort of a black thing), besides making me laugh out loud, you two have also been letting me read DCF vicariously. Don't get caught in Pennyland too long, Becky!

>39 tloeffler:. LOL--that's for sure, Terri. We ought to make a plan sometime. Lunch?

>40 LizzieD:. And Peggy, I only hope I don't start calling you Penny again. But no way will I lag on the DCF. I read my chapter or two every morning. I love the way she writes about Vermont--she loves the place, and it comes through in everything she writes. Plus, how cool is it to have my very own Vermonter to read with me through the book!

I think the gf thing was sort of a black thing here in St. Louis, too. I used to have a lot of young African American patients when I worked in labor & delivery in the 1990s, and I remember that being something they called each other all the time. Now I guess it's just sort of everywhere.

And I could live in Pennyland for a good long time. Isn't she great? I knew she would be, since so many of you here like her so much. Thank goodness for LT.

I'm enjoying the Louise Penny book quite a bit--Still Life: A Mystery. I always enjoy a new setting, and for me, this tiny village near Montreal is quite different and new. I like the French Canadian angle. I couldn't help but wonder as I read if there are different laws in Canada concerning things like obtaining a search warrant. I'm very intrigued by the murdered woman's painting. I'm wondering if that isn't somehow a key to the mystery. I'm enjoying the small town dynamics, and as I read about how these people negotiate the issues of living with so much intimate knowledge of each others' lives, I'm thinking of my friend Lucy here at LT and her Vermont village. As she says in post #33, you either love it or loathe it.

According to the dots on my Kindle, I'm about halfway through.

Glad you are enjoying the Penny series too, Becky. I am anxiously awaiting the release of the next book!

So at this point I'm juggling about 5 different books, but for now that's going pretty smoothly. Sometimes I want only to read one book and get through it--like my recent read of the George R.R. Martin book. Other times I'm perfectly content to have several going at once.

1. Still Life: A Mystery, the Louise Penny book. It's a very relaxing read. Something that strikes me this morning about the book: people are CONSTANTLY eating or talking about food or buying food. I think if Penny were to take out all the references to food in the book, it would probably only be the length of a robust novella. I wonder if she was conscious of doing that? I realize that part of her strategy for introducing the characters was to place them in a dinner party scene at the beginning of the book. She also uses the Bistro as a gathering place, which makes logical sense.

My favorite character so far is Ruth the cranky poet. She understands herself as being "obnoxious and disliked." I think she's a riot.

2. Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. I'm enjoying DCF's narrative in this book. She writes about her home state with knowledge and love. I just finished Chapt. 6. I think she's somewhere around the 1780s. Dorothy, you can move it along--heh.

3. Then there's my group read, Swann's Way, Vol. 1 of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I just finished the first section about Combray, which takes up about half of the book. We're reading at the rate of about 15 pages a day, so it will be another couple of weeks yet before we're finished with the first volume. The group has agreed only to this first volume. Some may continue, but I plan to drop out at that point, or at least that's how I'm leaning now. I'm not thrilled with Proust, but I think what's bothering me as much as anything is the boyish Narrator, Marcel. We'll see.

4. And then there's This Is Graceanne's Book, a short novel about being in kid in 1960 in a small town in Missouri. This one is for my Missouri group read. What we do in that group is finish the book first and then comment on it. The comments start Aug. 2.

5. Last is a small book that I'm working through to learn about early New York journalism: When Giants Ruled: The Story of Park Row, by Hy Turner. This is a relatively small book, 200 pages or so, but it's packed with information about the early years of papers like the Herald and the Tribune. It's really fascinating.

What a great round-up of your reading. I've gotten up to around five books too (If you count the Wendell Berry in which I read a poem about once every two or three weeks, if that) .... Right now the DCF is probably the one beckoning to me the most. I'm reading the "roll of thunder" chapter --btw pp 100-125.

I'm glad you are liking Still Life I'm hoarding the next ones now....but really, thanks to LT, I don't need to hoard anymore I don't think, I have enough 'sure things' lined up for decades.

I should probably do round ups of my reading, but it makes my head hurt to think about it :)

I am definitely going to have to find a copy of the Fisher book. It looks too good for me to pass up. Thanks for sharing tidbits from it, Becky!

Becky, I'm in "Pennyland," too. I am about to finish up A Fatal Grace, No. 2 in the Three Pines series. The touchstone comes up "Dead Cold" which I believe is same book, Canadian title. Now that I know the characters, I'm enjoying this one even more than the first one.

Unlike Lucy, I'm not hoarding this series. I want to have them read in time for the September (?) release of No. 6. I own #5, The Brutal Telling, but the rest are coming from the library.

I'll be reading This is Graceanne's Book next week. It sounds like a page-turner.

It's really true, no more hoarding necessary. I used to do that all the time, afraid that I'd have trouble finding something good to read. Now all I have to do is look at my LT wishlist which is growing all the time. Very cool. I didn't realize there were five in the "Penny" series--five and counting, I guess.

The one I'm really saving (and yes, I may be "hoarding" this one) --well, there's two actually: the new one by Daniel Silva and the new one by Nelson DeMille. I'm in fat city!

My wife laughs at how I used to complain that I could only find books to read just before the summer season and just before Christmas. Now I have piles everywhere.

I'm reading about Ethan Allen today, what a fine fellow!

>48 labwriter: Becky, do you know that Daniel Silva is going to be doing a book-signing at the St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh Thursday night? In case you're interested...

>48 labwriter:. Seriously? No, I didn't know that, Terri. This is the story of my life--ha--I am such a hermit that I never know anything about what's going on, even right under my nose. OK, then I'm there, but I'm just trying to imagine how early to go to get in. Thanks for letting me know!

>50 sibylline:. Haven't gotten to DCF yet today. It might not happen until Monday. But it's good to know it's there.

I was just wondering if anyone has read Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking?. It's been adapted as a play which is going to be performed here in January. I doubt that I'll see the play--this does not seem like an easy memoir to read, and I think the play would be--well, very difficult. She and her husband came home from the hospital where their only daughter lay unconscious with septic shock and pneumonia. They sat down to a quiet dinner together, and while sitting at the table, her husband died of a massive heart attack. Good grief. Life is definitely a bitch.

Ed. as usual for fat-finger typing errors.

I read The Year of Magical Thinking a year or two ago. It was not as difficult a read as you would think which is owed greatly to Didion's elegant writing style. I thought it was a very worthwhile book.

A play might be a different story, however...

>53 labwriter: I read The Year of Magical Thinking a few years ago and after getting through the horror of having her husband die at the dinner table, it really went on to be a gentle, reflective book and I was glad I read it.

>54 Copperskye:, 55. Thanks much!

I haven't read it; don't know that I can, but I saw a rather long interview that she did with ??? (I guess that's a good thing; I remember quite a lot about Didion, so the interviewer did his job well.) after her husband died. What a woman!

Still Life is up next for me, so I enjoyed reading your thoughts about it. I have yet to read a negative review about it.

I read The Year of Magical Thinking a couple of years back. I agree with Joanne - it is not as difficult to read as you would think.

I decided to order Didion's memoir. I haven't read all that much of her stuff, so I'm looking forward to it. I don't own her book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem--I suppose that will be next. Is it really, really possible that Bethlehem was published in 1968? Yes, it is, and good grief. Everyman's Library has put out an 1160-page edition of her essays that includes Bethlehem. I have a feeling that might be a bit too much Didion for me.

From one end of the personality spectrum to the other, I guess--Joan Didion to Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Heh.

Chapter 7, "Aftermath," the struggle between the Yankees and the Yorkers. DCF writes, "After every qualification has been raised and admitted, what stands out is the Vermonters' savage, exalted certainty that the Justice of their cause forbade compromise, that, in the words of Ethan Allen, they were ready 'to eat mouse-meat' before they would let their homes pass into possession of landlords backed by courts organized to protect their special privileges" (127).

Who among us today would eat mouse-meat to stand up for our principles? Let's hope we don't have to find out.

Chapter 8 is titled "Ethan Allen" (his dates: 1738-1789), mentioned by Sib in >50 sibylline:. He was as a young man influenced by Locke which was a "widespread" influence in New England at the time. DCF quotes some of Locke, imagining Ethan Allen looking over her shoulder. One quote that caught my attention: "Though the water running in the fountain is everyone's, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out. His labor hath appropriated it to himself" (138). And more: "The end of government is for the public good and safety." "The end of government is to preserve and enlarge freedom" (148, 149).

I guess what I can't understand, Sib, is why Vermonters are attracted to a socialist Senator rather than, say, a libertarian? Even if Bernie is, as you say, a "Vermont socialist," it would seem to me that nothing could be more antithetical to the Yankee spirit. Just sayin'.

DCF dismisses Ethan Allen's alcoholism and then mentions his profanity: a "specialty." She says he had a "great native gift for the use of language" (140), although he didn't write as well as he talked.

I love Dorothy's description of his wife: "His first wife was the kind of woman now called a pill, a lemon, a sour-puss. In Sunderland they said she got out of bed the wrong side every morning of her life. Somebody passing by the Arlington burying-ground and seeing the gravedigger at work, asked him who the grave was for. 'For Mrs. Allen,' said the digger with neutral intonation. He added reflectively, 'I never dug a grave I enjoyed more'" (142). EA seems to have been much more fortunate in his second wife.

More later.

I have 'Magical' on my non-fiction TBR shelf....... It hasn't been there as long as Henry Adams was, but it has been there since it came out in paper, because that is when I acquired it.

That last quote, is a classic VT tongue-in- cheek remark. There is very popular Irish jig called "I Buried My Wife and Danced on Her Grave" very lively and cheerful tune!

Ah -- but you see those two quotes show you it exactly: it's all about striking a balance.

1. "The end of government is for the public good and safety."
AND
2. "The end of government is to preserve and enlarge freedom."

Those two aims are quite different.

Having an avowed socialist as your congressman also proclaims loudly that you are free to elect whoever you damn well please, innit? Nobody actually wants socialism, good grief! It is pretty well proven to be disastrous approach -- anyhow there is no danger of that in this country. All but a few ravers would eat mouse-meat if it came to that. I know I would and I'm tilted to the left, for sure.

My favorite quote from yesterday's DCF reading is this: In the interminable discussions always needed before a sizeable group of equals can reach a decision.... that's where the reality of good governance lies, and Vermonters more than anyone know it, as they live it in their local government.

I was also impressed that the Green Mtn Boys having decided, during the above interminable discussions, not to kill anyone, didn't.

Anyway, Farley Mowat says in Never Cry Wolf that mouse meat is pretty tasty, just kinda crunchy.

Lucy, you make me laugh.

Here's a rousing rendition of "I buried my wife and dance on her grave," thanks to YouTube.

You say "nobody actually wants a socialist," yet that's what you twisted up Vermonters have done--why?--to show people? Try a libertarian next time. LOL

I'm still working my way through the Ethan Allen chapter. I really love this book. Later, again.

P.S. That's "twisted up Vermonters" meant in the very best way. When Don and I were driving somewhere in Vermont several years back, one guy had a sign on his property: "We're not all whacko liberals here!" Very "Vermont" of him, don't you think? Heh.

To finish up with Ethan Allen:

"Again and again in the Vermont-Yorker dispute, we hear the voice of Ethan Allen laughingly, furiously, contemptuously, eloquently saying what his comrades felt." I liked this chapter a whole lot.

DCF's next chapter, Chapter 9: "And Then What?" On to other things. Bye for now.

I peeked ahead and lots of sheep are lying in wait for us. First potash, then sheep. This stuff I know more about, god knows why!

Those guys on Youtube look like they are playing that tune inside a grave. Where the heck are they?

Oh yeah, I know why. I have a remarkable book around here somewhere called Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels, there's another one by somebody Cronin too, about why New England looks the way it does, the patterns of use etc. by native people and then by us. And I've read several histories, just haven't read much about the NY -VT thing or Mr. Allen, no good reason.

>66 sibylline:. It looks like they're inside a crypt or something. Nice sound, though.

>67 sibylline:. Another book for the list, Lucy.

Potash, I mean Dorothy is making potash interesting. In the field next to the house here we are pretty sure we found a potash burning set-up -- the soil is different there (darker) and we find bits of bricks everytime anyone ploughs it up -- but it is clear no one ever built a habitation there.... anyhow, that is what we decided.

You will see too, as you read along, that because VT has always had a small but vibrant industrial sector -- that has meant plenty of 'furriners' -- Italian granite and marble workers and so on -- they have had a strong tradition of supporting organized labor with all that implies. Right nearby in Richmond 'fine' woolen lingerie (I find that to be an oxymoron as anything with wool in it makes me break out in hives if it is on my skin) employed local people, french canadians, and recent immigrants from all over. BTW they sold their wares to John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia. St. Johnsbury had the Fairbanks scales, all over were small machine-tool factories. At present there are a number of very successful companies here from Ben and Jerry's to 7th Generation, Gardener's Supply and etc. I'm glad she's getting into this aspect of the state, less known outside the state - tourists think it's all cows and maple syrup and a nice holiday from 'real' life. Nope.

( B&J now a subset of some huge outfit -- but the product is still recognizable, made here, and it is not a business that can be exported to Madras)

Gardener's Supply--my favorite people, except for my local nursery here. I'm starting to realize how much I miss my gardens this year. Usually what I do is work really hard on them until about the middle of August, and then I pretty much let them go into "self-care." Maybe this year I'll work hard on them in the fall. Lots of good things you can do in the garden in the fall!

Call me crazy--potash & sheep--fascinating. I'm looking forward to it. (grin) Some of the best fun I ever had was working on my cousin's alpaca farm in middle Tennessee. We had "fainting goats"--you haven't lived until you've had a baby fainting goat come flying and cartwheeling at you out of the barn door, literally scared stiff as a board because one of the llamas gave him the evil eye. Seriously.

Hey, don't forget The Vermont Country Store--I've actually shopped there in person, not just by catalog or online--heh. Where else can you buy genuine oilcloth tablecloths?

P.S. My cousin named the goat "Johnny Rocket." Those were fun days.

Ed. to add the P.S.

I finished Still Life: A Mystery by Louise Penny last night. She did a good job of misdirection with the "who-dunnit?" I thought. I gave the book a 3.5-star rating. That might sound low to some who loved the book, but actually it fits right in there with my rating system and my response to her book. One of my criteria for 3.5 stars (I've written it out on my profile) is this: "A new writer who shows a lot of promise but who just isn't there yet." I thought she did a great job with this book, and considering it was her first (it was her first, right?), I'm going to bet that she gets even better.

I had a couple of problems with it. One was her somewhat uncontrolled third-person point of view. The writing how-to's I've read say that this is a common rookie issue. It wasn't constant, by any means, but Penny had paragraphs where the pov would shift three times. Reminds me of watching people watch tennis at Wimbledon. She also had places where the transitions were so klunky, I wondered if somehow the book had been transcribed badly into my Kindle. Fixing this stuff ought to be easy for her, and I bet she'll do it in the novels that follow.

Overall, an enjoyable read. I loved the setting.

#71: Becky, I consider Still Life the weakest book in the series, so I am hoping you give the other books a go.

Oh, I plan to Stasia. Overall, I liked it very much, but I thought I should explain the 3.5-star rating.

I am glad! I think you will like the others in the series better.

Reading the "Potash" chapter in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Vermont "biography" book. It really is fascinating, although I haven't been able to read too much today because my youngest black Lab is having a sick day. He evidently got into something--haven't figured it out yet, but I think he's finally gotten rid of it all and he'll be fine. He's such a baby, though, he just sits around looking at me like I should be doing something for him--ha. Our older Lab or the German shepherd we used to have would just sleep it off--but not this one.

So, I'm hoping for more reading tomorrow.

You know when you're filling out a profile for some online site like LT or facebook, and you're asked some question like, "If you could go back in history and have a conversation with anyone, who would it be? One of the people I would love to talk with would be Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

In her Vermont book, I'm up to Chapter 10, "Potash and the Will-to-Die." I've done a lot of reading in history books, family genealogies, etc. for the work I've done on my Illinois and Tennessee familiy trees, both of which have family going back to the mid-1700s in this country. But I don't think I've ever read a discussion about making potash. In fact, I just went through all of the tables of contents of all my Foxfire books, and I don't see a single mention of it. When Dorothy was doing the reading for this book, she came across statistics of huge amounts of potash--hundreds of tons--being exported. She knew from her great-aunt about the lye that was used from the year's supply of wood ashes for making wood soap. What she couldn't figure out was what was done with the export of hundreds of tons of potash--and that was from one Vermont county alone. So, being Dorothy, she set out to find out.

Potash was made by the early settlers from the trees that were felled to make clearings and fields. The trees were cut down and burned, the ashes were soaked in water to make lye, and then, in big kettles, the water was boiled out of the lye to make potash. The reason there was a market for so much potash was because of the English wool industry, which used a great deal of soap when making wool. What trees they had in England were too valuable to be burned for potash, so it was imported--much of it from America.

I love her explanation: "What they thus manufactured was worth a good price in cash money. And of prime importance, it was light in comparison to its value. Wheat grew splendidly in Vermont in the early days, and it also had a good cash value. But a pound of wheat had nothing like the value of a pound of potash. It took a good deal more of time and a great deal of hard work to transform a big elm tree into five tons of wood, then to burn the wood into ashes, then to extract lye from the ashes and thence, by evaporation, to produce thirty-nine pounds of potash." ("I know that this detail will not interest you," Dorothy writes, "but it cost me so much time and effort to find, I can't be restrained from putting it in.")

Don't you just love her?

>71 labwriter:: Becky, I also rated Still Life 3.5 stars. I probably won't explain this very well, but I thought the writing quality was just so-so, yet there was a lot of heart behind it.

You'd better get used to those awkward transitions because they're in Book No. 2 as well. I gave A Fatal Grace 4 stars because, after all, these people are my friends now!

I loved that too, Becky, (The parentheses) -- Who could get away with that now???

I thought is was amazing the way she managed to make this chapter be about an industrial process, some very compassionate and down to earth psychological analysis of chronic dysfunctional behavior, sensible child-rearing practices and probably ten other things without being the least bit annoying.

Next chapter is very short, hope to knock it off tonight before falling asleep --

Well, Donna, speaking of "people who are my friends"--I couldn't help myself, I've started the new Daniel Silva novel, The Rembrandt Affair. Silva is called by some the "gold standard" of thrillers--and I couldn't agree more. I love these Gabriel Allon books. His most recent books, like the last two or three, have been sort of up and down. Word is, Silva is back with this one.

In previous posts there was some back and forth discussion in Louise Penny's novels about the importance of minor characters. One of my favorites who appears in this series by Daniel Silva is eccentric London art dealer, Julian Isherwood. He's hilarious--and I hear he gets a bigger role in this one.

Gotta run--I might not be back for awhile. I'm starting this now because I'm going to the Thursday book signing. I might not have the book finished, but I'd like to at least have it well underway.

Happy reading!

love the comments in message #76...

>78 sibylline:. My impression of Dorothy, Sib, mainly from reading her letters, Keeping Fires Night and Day, is that she couldn't be annoying if she tried. She was quite simply one of those thoroughly "nice" people who seem to good to be true--but in truth are exactly what they seem.



DCF in 1917 at the age of 39. This is one of my favorite photos of her. The other one is of her yukking it up with Blanche Knopf, wife of the publisher Alfred Knopf. Blanche & Alfred "dropped by" for a visit one day at Dorothy's farm (how do you say, "We were in the neighborhood, and thought we'd drop by" in Arlington, Vermont--ha); Dorothy and Blanche are sitting under a tree, chatting it up, both smoking like chimneys, which everyone did at the time. I would love, love, love to hear what Dorothy really thought of Blanche. Ha. The only reason that photo exists is because Knopf was something of an amateur photographer, and I can well imagine he just couldn't help himself. I found the photo in Knopf's book, Sixty Photographs: To Celebrate the Sixtieth Anniversary of Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher. It's the only place I've ever seen it published or used. He was not her publisher and they were not "friends" in the usual sense. He explains that when he was a freshman at Columbia in the fall of 1908, his advisor was Dorothy Canfield's father, the University Librarian: "She became fond of me, I always felt, just because I had known and admired her father." I can't imagine two more antithetical women than Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Blanche Knopf.

Becky, let me return the thanks abundantly! I don't know whether I'll ever read Vermont Tradition, but I do have a feeling of vicarious participation. And wasn't DCF lovely!?!!!

Thank you for that picture Becky -- what a lovely looking woman. The 'smoking' photo sounds like fun. You can always 'collect material' from awful people, so for all we know DCF puckishly egged Blanche on. If she was as nice as you think, then she probably looked at her empathetically (I know nothing about Blanche) -- the same way she goes into her mild rant about child-rearing.

Blanche Knopf was a fascinating woman who deserves a good biography. She was very much a partner with her husband in his publishing business, responsible for discovering and publishing many writers. I think her particular specialty was European writers. I'll have to look at my notes on her to find some of them. I only know her because A. Knopf was Willa Cather's publisher. According to the letters I've seen, Cather treated Blanche like a secretary--and Blanche seems to have taken it with reasonably good grace. I think she was a good business woman who was willing to do what needed to be done to "jolly along" an eccentric, difficult author.

There--I've hijacked my own thread--haha.

I read almost 50 pages of the Silva book, The Rembrandt Affair, last night, and it felt like I was reading for 10 minutes. It's all I can do to leave the thing alone today. I'm so happy to have another Gabriel Allon book to read. Doesn't anyone here read Silva?

Then it sounds as though they might have a lot in common? Not least love of books?

I've never read Silva..... oh dear......

Doggone your time, woman! I ordered the first one from pbs this morning. I really don't need another series, except this one!

>86 sibylline:. Yeah, this is about number 10 in the Gabriel Allon series, but Silva will probably tire of him before I do. They are very intelligently written. The research he does for the background cities he uses is spot-on. Do you know who Jamie Gangel is--she did news, I think maybe for NBC. She's his wife.

Well, yes, I guess Blanche and Dorothy both had books in common, especially when you think of Dorothy's work on the Book-of-the-Month Club. They were also both Francophiles. But Blanche was this sort of fiercely social Manhattanite professional woman whose apartment was done in "tones" of white and beige. Alfred had his place in the country and she had hers in the city. She was one of those pencil-thin women who stayed that way by smoking all day long and eating only "clear soup" at lunch (and she was probably part of the 3-martini-for-lunch crowd, but Mencken doesn't write that). She also took some kind of injections to keep herself thin (as did a lot of other women at that time in her set), which had the very unfortunate side effect of cataracts. I got the information about her eyes from H.L. Mencken's diary. He would accompany her to see her eye specialist, who was in Mencken's city of Baltimore at Johns Hopkins. Since Blanche was too vain to wear glasses (!), there was no point in operating on her cataracts, and the only way she was able to read was by using a large magnifying glass. Eventually even that failed her. I don't know how she was able to do her work. Secretaries reading to her, I guess. Maybe she eventually relented on the cataract operation. Because the cataracts were a side effect of the diet injections, they began not in old age, but before she was even 50 years old.

Mencken is another guy I dearly love. Here's what he wrote: "Blanche pledged me to keep the news from her husband. They are both extreme neurotics, and given to hysterics."

Probably Blanche is about as interesting to most people as potash--ha--but I'm one of those people who love to collect bizarre facts.

OK, Peggy, I dare you to read one of his books and not read another one . . . and another. Double dare!

I'm very impressed with everything you're reading - oh, and I love the Three Pines series too. They DO get better as they go.

I'm enjoying your comments over on the Swann's Way group read...although I'm a bit behind schedule.

>90 BookAngel_a:. That's OK about being behind on the reading in Swann's Way, Angela. How do you eat an elephant? --One bite at a time.

At least I've finished with the Combray part and started Swann in Love...so I'm not impossibly behind! Thanks. :)

>92 BookAngel_a:. Well, Angela, if you've finished Combray, then by all means charge on!

Donna & I have been reporting the individual sagas of our moonflower vines. She showed a photo of her first bloom on her thread (see her photo at #163). My vine is slower than Donna's. I said in an earlier post that I've had a lot of blossoms that seem to be "aborting" for some reason. Well, I finally have a couple that seem like they're going to make it to the flower stage, so I thought I'd post my photo of that here. (I finally learned how to use Photobucket, so now I can post pics inside my threads, not just on my profile site. OK, I'm slow, but I eventually get there--ha.)



So where was I? Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life, Chapt. 11, "No Important Facts or Dates."

Dorothy writes of her own childhood (c.1890, when she would have been about 10 years old), "modern times," according to her grandfather's generation. She was often sent into the cellar with an old chisel and hammer to "chip off a week's supply of sweetenin' from the big barrel of dark crystallized maple sugar (white sugar was for company)" (186).

She writes of eating apples, "red-cheeked Northern Spies which later, polished to brilliance, would light up the side-table in the dining room."

And as someone who is just now reading Swann's Way, I love this: "Their presence would go far beyond the dining room, and pervade the house with an aroma which, mingled with the smell (not disagreeable to a child) of creosote from the chimneys, became the characteristic odor of home, bringing back childhood with as actual a presence as Proust's famous little madeleine cake" (186).

DCF writes of "animal comradeship," those "wordless, flesh and blood helpers that we took . . . for granted. . . . We have not realized that our personalities must have been altered by our responsibility for them, and our hearts molded by their dependence on us" (187). What will take the place of those working animals, she asks? "Our hearts, if not our minds, are dismayed to see them silently moving towards the exit sign, leaving us alone with the machine--and with each other" (188).

"The life of Vermont men and women has always been colored by the absence of immense numbers of human beings. Our relations with each other have been individual and personal. So with our animals" (188).

Dorothy's comments about the animals that were such a part of their lives, like the horses and the sheep, make me mindful of a poem by Donald Hall, called "Names of Horses." Anybody know that poem? That poem always makes me tear up, and I wonder if there isn't some sort of genetic memory at work, since so many of my grands and great-grands, and great-greats going back forever were themselves farmers.

She goes on to give a personal anecdote, "out of the old Canfield family talk," about sheep. It's a wonderful family story, passed down from her great-grandfather when he was a boy. What continues to strike me about Dorothy's life is how fortunate she was to have such access to her old family stories. I've been working on my own family history for about 20 years; it took me years of research (and also a good bit of luck) just to find the name of one of my great-grandfathers, let alone a personal story from his childhood, handed down: "Years later, the children who had heard that story told it to their children, repeated the comments of their elders and added others drawn from their own later observation of human ways" (190).

Tomorrow's chapter: Chapt. 12, "Boom and Bust."

OK, so I started reading another book (Yikes--this is either 6 or 7, I've lost count), but it came in the mail yesterday and I couldn't help myself: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This is the memoir she wrote about the first year after her husband's sudden death. I'm not too far into it yet, but it seems remarkable.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. (7)

Ed. for speling

Oooh, oooh. That blossom is ready to burst open! Lovely picture with the sun shining through the leaves. I'm looking forward to the pic of the actual bloom. Mine have started blooming in the late afternoon as our pop-up showers come through and darken the sky -- but they're still dead-as-doornails in the morning!

I thought Joan Didion's tale of grief in The Year of Magical Thinking rang true. She was so open in sharing the grief process of surviving the "double whammy" she endured. It was one of my Top Ten books of 2006.

That little chapter was so chocked with small and telling details, wasn't it?

I had so much fun tonight: a book signing by Daniel Silva, author of the Gabriel Allon series, newest book The Rembrandt Affair.



What struck me most about him is that he is incredibly nice. He answered questions he's probably heard hundreds of times with good grace. These book tours must be brutal--a different city, day after day. Yet you would think that he had just taken a short break from his writing to talk to a few of his "favorite" fans.

This was held at the St. Louis County Library. Evidently this is his fourth time to speak at this particular venue. I can't help but wonder if he went to the "trendy" bookstore in the Central West End if he wouldn't draw a younger crowd. These people were most 60-70+. At one point, when someone asked him how he remembers all the details of his main character's life, he admitted to a bit of short-term memory loss: "I'm going to be turning 50 pretty soon," he said, and the entire room broke out in laughter. He had the grace to laugh with them.

This was a fun night. I'm always afraid when meeting "famous" people like this that I'll be disappointed. Not this time!

I thought I would add that someone asked Silva what fiction he enjoyed reading. He said he reads somewhere between 50 to 80 books for the book he is writing, and since he publishes a book a year, he said he has no time for reading fiction. "I must be the only person on the planet who hasn't read The Da Vinci Code," he said.

I have all of the Allon series up to the latest. I have read all but 2. I love that series, Becky!

I read nine of them in about a year or so, Stasia, so they sort of all mesh together in my mind, but there were a couple of them, maybe the last two (?) that weren't up to the level of the others, mainly because of the character of Gabriel Allon. But people seem to agree that with this book, Silva's back. I was up half the night reading. Oof.

Glad to see you back here, too, Stasia.

hah! found you :)

No hope of me commenting intelligently on all the comments ..but Hello!

A book signing by Silva? That sounds like a great evening :)

>100 mckait:. "Waves hello." Cute gif.

#99: Thanks for the welcome back!

I have given in to temptation and bought Vermont Tradition. You are a bad influence :)

That moonflower vine is awesome... did you get a blossom yet?

The only plant I have with an interesting story (not good) is my "money tree". My hubby bought it for me as a surprise and told me I was to rub its leaves everyday to get money. Well, I did it faithfully and the more I petted that thing the more money we were spending... not receiving! When I left it alone, the budget slowly recovered. Now I'm afraid of it. I'd throw it out but it is actually growing and I fear the reprocussions of letting it die. I'm trapped with a terrorist tree!

I added Vermont Tradition to my wishlist. It's only a matter of time before I buy it. Oh dear... I'm being sucked in and lovin' it! Have a nice day! :)

Well, speaking of the Vermont book, Stasia, where the heck was I?

Chapt. 12, "Boom and Bust. Her epigram for the chapter is an Old Proverb: "If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money."

"Every farm had a flock of sheep; every farm boy learned how to take care of them" (191). One of the things that surprised me when I was working on the genealogy of my mother's family was that in the 1850s--around that time, somewhat before & somewhat beyond--the people in my ggg-grandfather's community in Flat Branch, Illinois all kept sheep. Maybe not a whole "flock" like Dorothy's Vermonters, but at least a few, enough to shear so that they could spin the fleece into wool and then make the wool into cloth on their looms. I know this because I've seen the probate records of these people; every one of them had at least a few sheep, a spinning wheel, and a loom.

Writes Dorothy, "Nobody gave more thought to them than to the mongrel hens picking up their living around the kitchen door" (191).

She goes on to explain how Merino sheep came to Vermont from Spain. I'm am positive that whatever kind of sheep my ancestors were cultivating in Illinois, they were not Merino--ha. Dorothy sometimes goes into her "natural provincial vanity" mode, as she calls it. She often writes as if she's pretty darned certain that Vermonters were somehow uniquely highly brained (I'm sure they were quite intelligent, I just doubt it was unique), and that's why they were able to thrive. She does it again in this sheep chapter: "the Merinos throve incredibly in the care, not of ignorant half-starved serf-shepherds, but of literate people who, with the help of their families, took care of their own animals" (196). In other parts of the country (she mentions "south of Pennsylvania," which would be pretty much all other parts of the country--ha), the "rare distinction" of the sheep being Marinos "did them no good. . . . The consignees were ignorant of the care and best management of them, and sheep were soon badly diseased" (195). But they "legendarily" throve(!) in Vermont. They called it "Merino mania"--ha.

It does sound, however, that these Vermont Merinos were something special, and they did thrive--families with flocks of a thousand sheep weren't unusual. There was a world market for Vermont Merino sheep.

DCF goes on to tell an interesting tale of these Vermont flock-masters, but my time for today is expired, so . . . Happy Reading!

Claudia and Stasia, I hope you enjoy Dorothy's book. She was in good form when she was writing this one.

I want to do a Friday afternoon book roundup of the books I'm reading now. This is my only reading journal, so it's as good a place as any to put this stuff. I'm experimenting, sort of "pushing the envelope," if you will, with the number of books I can reasonably read at one time. Right now I'm up to six, not necessarily because I want to be, but because it just sort of worked out that way. But it feels OK, mainly because LT helps me to keep track of them.

Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 of Proust. I've tried Proust 3 or 4 times before, and this is by far the farthest I've gotten. We're doing a group read, but it seems that except for the last faithful remnant, most everyone else has dropped out--or at least they don't post. Whatever. I'm reading this at about 15 pages a day, which is working out well. I wouldn't want to read it any faster. So far I haven't changed my mind about not going on, at least not just now. I'm almost three-quarters through this book.

Vermont Tradition, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. I'm really enjoying this one, reading Dorothy's account of what her wonderful Vermont home state meant to her. Very enjoyable, and Lucy is also reading along, which makes it even better. I'm almost halfway through this one.

This Is Graceanne's Book, a novel by P.L. Whitney about being a child in 1960 in rural Missouri. This is a beautifully-written book. The characters, particularly Graceanne, are amazing--she's gets the "kid thing" so right, as if she's channeling them. I'm about halfway done. It's not a big book; if I wanted to, I could finish it in a night.

Joan's Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir about the sudden death of her husband. Such a profound loss--they were married almost 40 years and worked at home together, since they were both writers. It must have felt like losing half of herself. Understandably, she's pretty whacked-out, and that's where the "magical thinking" comes in, sort of living that first year in her head as if she expected him to come back. It's a painful read. I'm about a third finished.

Daniel Silva's new Gabriel Allon book, The Rembrandt Affair, the 10th or 11th in the series. This is just pure fun and self-indulgence. I'm going to hate it when this book is finished. Unfortunately, I'm about three-fourths finished.

The last one I haven't started. I'm either going to read a monstrous biog of Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, or I'm going to read the newish one of Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power. I'll try the Bly book first; if it's poorly written, then I'll switch to the Pulitzer, since it looks really good.

I should follow your example and post my thoughts about the books I'm currently reading. I usually only post to my thread when I'm done with a book, but I really like your method. I'll have to work on that...

Whoo-hoo! Daniel Silva's new book, The Rembrandt Affair, is Numero Uno on The New York Times list of Best Sellers, category "Hardcover Fiction."

Second is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, the third volume of a trilogy "about a Swedish hacker and a journalist."

You've convinced me, I've just put Canfield's memoir on my hold list at the library.

>109 markon:. Hope you like it!

OK, so am I the last one here who hasn't read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? You can tell I don't get out much.

The 70+-year-old woman sitting next to me at the Daniel Silva book thingy was talking about this Larsson trilogy, but only to say that she didn't care for the last one, the one that is now second on the NYT bestseller list.

Daniel Silva evidently told the audience in Minnesota (where he went after St. Louis), that he was thinking of calling his next book, The Girl Who Kicked Picasso. Silva has a very nice self-deprecating sort of sense of humor.

I'm waiting on a moonflower bud that looks like it's going to open this afternoon. I've had two flowers so far, one Thursday and one yesterday. I missed yesterday's opening because of pouring rain, so I don't know what time in the late afternoon they open. Who knows, this one might not open until tomorrow.

So as I'm waiting I'm reading Joan Didion's memoir of the year after her husband's sudden death, The Year of Magical Thinking. She's an amazing writer, although I don't think I would care to know her as a person. I don't mean to be too critical of her, since I'm sure she wasn't presenting a "normal" face to the world during that year, yet I still don't believe that she's a person with whom I could have any sort of sympathetic relationship.

There's that quotation at #94 that I really like. I was prepared for more like that in the book, but I haven't run across too many other quotations that struck me the way that one did. What I did think about, as I was reading the book, is that quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, in one of his stories, something about the rich being different from you and me.

Not long after her husband died, their daughter Quintana, who had been in ICU at the time of her father's death, traveled to Malibu with her new husband in hopes of restarting her life, or some such thing. Instead, shortly after getting off the plane in California, she collapsed and was taken to the UCLA hospital. The finding was some sort of brain hemorrhage; the prognosis was dire.

Didion was in her New York apartment, talking with a family member, trying to develop a "plan." --"I remember calling Earl McGrath to see if I could use his house in Los Angeles. I remember him cutting directly through this: he was flying to Los Angeles the next day on a friend's plane, I would go with them." She said that many of the people she knew had such "management skills," which she herself shared. "If my mother was suddenly hospitalized in Tunis I could arrange for the American consul to bring her English-language newspapers and get her onto an Air France flight to meet my brother in Paris. If Quintana was suddenly stranded in the Nice airport I could arrange with someone at British Airways to get her onto a BA flight to meet her cousin in London." Etc. What struck me about that is that it was written, as well as many other examples like, with a completely self-absorbed sort of entitlement--as if this is the way "everyone" lives. The rich are different from you and me.

The moonflower opened tonight at 5:20 p.m. We had two flowers that opened, but one of them was "constrained" by the twisted vines and the gazebo, so it didn't open all the way. Well, actually neither of them did. I was expecting to see the one (pictured) open further, but it never did.

Here's a photo I took of our attempt at filming--note the tape and stick--professional photography, all the way--ha.



We were inside the house getting the movie camera ready. I had checked the bud and it was still tightly closed. I went out again about 10 minutes later, "just to make sure," and it was starting to open. So our efforts with the movie camera were hurried, and we didn't get the beginning.

Here's the bud, right before it opened.



Ta-da! Well, sort of. It didn't open all the way, for some reason. The smell is unbelievable--think gardenia, only stronger.

This comes from The Moonflower Vine, by Jetta Carleton, a book we read in the Missouri group read earlier this year, the inspiration for planting this vine.

"Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement. I turned quickly. Nothing stirred. The vine hung immobile. But I knew. It was beginning. I called to the others. They hurried across the yard, my mother snatching up the folding stool as she ran. She sat down to watch the show. My father squatted on his heels beside her. Little by little we stopped talking. The silence grew intense. Now, the next instant, the flowers would begin to open.

"There!"

"Where?"

"No, I guess not. Not yet."

"The watch resumed. Soon, now, a stem would tremble, a faint shudder would run through the vine, sensed more than seen. A leaf twitched. No, you imagined it. But yes, it moved! A light spasm shook the long pod. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the green bud unfurled, the thin white edges of the bloom appearing and the spiral ascending, round and round and widening till at last the white horn of the moonflower, visible for the first time in the world, twisted open, pristine and perfect, holding deep in its throat a tiny jewel of sweat."

The had 24 blooms that evening! Wow.

Another moonflower! Just beautiful and what could be better than gardenia fragrance.

Love the picture of the moonflower, Becky! Thanks for sharing it.

The moonflower is lovely!

(Must get round to reading The Moonflower Vine...)

I finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I guess she wrote and published this thing because that's what she does, but I ended the book wishing that a kindly, friendly editor had prevailed in encouraging her not to publish, or at least maybe wait until it had been longer than a year so that she would have had a bit more perspecitive on things. My response to this is that she was too vulnerable, brittle, and self-absorbed to be writing and publishing this book so soon after her husband's death. She ends up sounding like a crazy woman--which she undoubtedly was, and rightly so, but you would hope that time would round out the sharp edges and give her more to say about things that sound less like endless self-pity.

I gave it a 2.5-star rating, noticing that I don't have such a designation in my rating system. Nevertheless, that's where it best fit. I wouldn't recommend this book.

The descriptions and pictures are the next best thing to having my own moonflower - a sure impossibility! Thanks so much for sharing the excitement and the beauty! Love it!
Claudia

You're welcome, Claudia. Thanks.

I finished This Is Graceanne's Book for the Missouri group read that starts tomorrow. I'll discuss it over there. I gave it 4-stars. What a lovely book, well, except for the hag witch mother.

Hi Becky, I'm back from Dallas; still have 120 pages or so to read in This is Graceanne's Book. I'm glad it it so unputdownable. I'm looking forward to joining in the discussion tomorrow.

There is so much to catch up on here on LT. It feels like I've been away for a week instead of 3 days. Well, here goes....

>97 labwriter:: Great picture of Daniel Silva. He looks much friendlier than he does on the back of Moscow Rules. Was there a big crowd at the library for his talk and signing? When I saw Daniel Woodrell last fall, there were only about 20 people there so it was easy to visit with him. I love getting to meet authors.
>110 labwriter:: LOL at The Girl Who Kicked Picasso. Btw, I haven't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm skipping it; just couldn't get past the computer talk. I saw the Swedish movie and am patiently waiting for No. 2 from the library.

>103 -Cee-:: Claudia, you cracked me up with that story about your money plant. I think I'll stick to my Moonflower.
>113 labwriter:: I hope I can get an evening with 28 blooms. We counted 8 tonight. My niece's boyfriend must have put a spell on it. I told him the Moonflower Vine was second in importance to the dog!
>112 labwriter:: Wow, Becky! I am so very impressed with your pictures and would love to see the video you took. I have yet to see one open, but like you, I've noticed they open in late afternoon.

>117 labwriter:: I'm sorry you were disappointed in The Year of Magical Thinking. The book was a hodgepodge of raw feelings, but that's what made it seem so real to me. I do some grief mentoring (can't call it counseling because I'm not professionally trained; just holding someone's hand during the process) through my church, and this was a helpful book to me to give me an idea of what it would be like to lose a spouse.

Well, that's it for me. I'm eager to get back to Graceanne soon!

The Daniel Silva event was a packed house--SRO. I'm guessing about 400.

117- I agree with you that very wealthy people look at life differently than you and I...and sometimes that is disturbing to read about!

Like you, I would have hoped that by the end of the book she would have started to heal, even just a little bit. I know you never recover from losing someone you love, but you're right - I would have expected her to have more perspective at the end, as well.

I'm in Chapt. 13 of Vermont Tradition, "Morgans and Knee-breeches." The chapter is mainly about Vermont Morgan horses, a fascinating chapter for anyone who is a horse person. She writes about Vermont necessarily turning away from the breeding of Morgans, something that had been an important part of the economy and culture of Vermont.

She brings this incident in Vermont's history back around again to help explain the character of Vermont people: "it is honest, it is in accord with our deepest purposes, and it requires a kind of courage which we highly prize, the courage to ignore blame based on standards which we do not accept. Each of us must sort out as best he can those elements of the past which seem to him still valuable, and hence worth preserving" (223). . . . "you must get your nerve up to pay little attention to contemptuous blame from those who don't agree with you."

I'm just about halfway through the book, trying to read a chapter or so a day. I haven't changed my mind about DCF as being one of those people whom I would most like to meet.

It's interesting to note the book was published in 1953. She retired from Book-of-the-Month Club in 1951. According to her letters, her eyesight had become "very troublesome." She donated her papers to the U of Vermont in 1953, and she also suffered her first stroke that year. This book was the closest she would ever come (or want to come, I believe) to writing a memoir. I wonder if she didn't perhaps have a premonition that her time for writing was getting short. She was 72 years old in 1951.

I'm thinking that my negative response to Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking had much to do with reading Dorothy Canfield Fisher's "memoir" at the same time. Such different people!

I want to quote from a letter she wrote that I found in the Mark Madigan edition of letters when I was looking to see what she would have been up to in these last years (she died in 1958 of another stroke). I'll let the letter speak for itself:

Do you remember--but how would you?--once in that dreadful time after my dear lost son's death, when I was struggling to breathe, just to stay alive, when you said something kind and tender to my misery, that I tried to quote you, the rough old ballad, by which I was living in those days, "Ffight on, ffight on, my men" he said,

I'm wounded sore, but I am not slaine.
I'll just lie down and bleed awhile
And then I'll rise and fight againe"

That wound is still a sore one, it still gushes out great gouts of pain at--at so many things, at the look of the horizon just before twilight comes because that was once a joy we shared, at a line of a Goethe poem because we read it together.

Many years ago, when my children were still young, I saw my dear, quiet Quaker father-in-law standing out in the June sunshine trimming a hedge. I always loved him, and went over to stand near him. He stopped his work, bared his white head for a moment to the summer sun, and said, musingly "It was forty years ago today that Willie died." (That was the first child, the little boy who died at five, before my husband was born.) He went on, as if he were thinking aloud, "If I had known then, what I was to suffer from sorrow, I do not think I would have wished to live."

It frightened me. I went to look up my own little boy and took him into my arms.

But the old man who had so suffered that he could almost not bear it, did not die from that sorrow. I often reach my hand back over the years to take his wrinkled old hand in mine--old and wrinkled now, too. He was wounded sore, but he was not slaine.

And neither are you, --hallelujah!
Ffight on, ffight on--

I had 20 pages to go in The Rembrandt Affair, by Daniel Silva. Normally I read fiction only at night, but I decided to finish the book this morning since I was so close. It's an extremely worthwhile book, one of his best yet. I gave it 4 stars. There are only five or so reviews of this book on LT, some of them very minimal. I might write a review, although I honestly don't want to take the time to do it today.

>123 BookAngel_a:. Hi Angela! Well, I'm not sure I would have expected Didion necessarily to have perspective on her situation after only one year. But what I wonder is whether or not, had she waited longer, she might have written a somewhat different book. She was still so close to it, and her emotions about it all were still so raw. I'm interested in her responses to that first year, but I think it would have been a more interesting book for me if she'd given it more time and maybe found a little bit different slant on that first year.

About grief, Becky. I happened to catch a spot on *Morning Edition* this morning to the effect that the American something-about-psychology Association has changed its manual for doctors about grief vs clinical depression. Up to this point, they have said that severe depression during the grieving process is a normal reaction. Now (if I understood correctly), there is a note that indicates that severe depression for two weeks is normal, but after that the survivor should be coming out of it. If he's not, he should be treated for depression. Two Weeks!??!!!
I haven't thought this through, but I believe that I wouldn't accept being told that I was abnormal and ripe for treatment in such a situation. Dunno.

I heard the story this morning too and was, frankly, astonished that doctors would consider two weeks of severe symptoms the boundary between "normal" grief and treatable depression. Sounded like there's still considerable discussion about whether this is the right thing to do amongst those who study grief.

>127 LizzieD:: Two weeks? That's crazy!!! Granted, some people may need medication to help them function at some point in time, but honestly, what does it say about us in general if we're allotted only two weeks to mourn.

In Didion's case, she lost not only her husband but was also struggling with the illness of her daughter who, unfortunately, passed away less than 2 years after her father.

I think somewhere in the book Didion makes a distinction between grieving, which is acute, and mourning, which is more long-term. However, the distinction she was making didn't make much sense to me. I didn't see the TV spot you're referring to. It sounds absurd, though.

Yeah, Stasia, Didion's year was complicated by her daughter's severe illness--and then, as you say, eventual death. It's amazing JD is walking around. Such profound loss.

Yikes! Poor woman. Maybe it was too soon to write a book, then again, maybe it's exactly the kind of book someone who's grieving NOW needs to read. So they know they're not the only one feeling this way.

Perhaps she will write another book in the future - looking back on all of that.

Well here I am and the two on-going discussions here, DCF and Didion I can't resist, even though I should be labelling and tossing and packing (thank goodness for the last time.) I am in Phila. for one last push (spouse will come back for the closing and movers). Mostly I am tossing stuff out, trash or curb -- I'll do as much as I can stand then pack up the car and go.

I started the Didion and was also simultaneously moved and annoyed -- for me it isn't so much the wealth as the superiority complex -- what's icky is that certain types of 'famous' or just stinking rich people seem to seriously get off on being able to 'first name' basis with 'celebrities' -- believe me, she isn't oblivious, she's showing off. They are like the people who leave dog poop in the street, wrecking things for everyone else by being so obnoxious. It doesn't really help knowing that the worst offenders are the insecure ones either.

That said, I also slowed down because I was leery of the level of undigested grief. But I also got the impression that she was writing for herself, trying to capture that craziness -- that was what she wanted to publish, but maybe not such a great idea? (Too much of her process, not enough reaching out in that larger human way to all?)

I do remember some doctor or other explaining to me that there is a physiological element or degree where the person cannot sleep or get off the sofa or stop crying -- they are utterly paralyzed with grief and if that level goes on for more than 10-14 days things start to change in your body that make you very susceptible to illness and also that make it very hard for your body to get back to normal. It isn't really grief in the sense we mean, it is an extreme and very physical reaction they really get worried about. Otherwise I have observed people seem to have a one-year (approx) cycle after which more is possible. But after that first year people seem to 'recover' according to their own timetables, which means, sometimes never, sometimes with astonishing rapidity so that you wonder.....

Now I'm all fired up to get back to DCF! I'm not too far behind since you were on your Silva gallivant. On my next break, maybe!

>133 sibylline:. Ick. Some people shouldn't write memoirs.

The Vermont book, Chapt. 14, "Thrift Meets Apollyon Straddling Quite Over the Whole Breadth of the Way." As much as I'm enjoying this book, I need to move it along and get it off my desk.

Today it's about not spending more than you can afford. Let me guess: something no Vermonter would ever do. It's also about the terrible toll the Civil War exacted from the people of Vermont.

I like her story about the aunt who, only "acting sensible," put her brilliant nephew, John Dewey, through graduate study at Johns Hopkins with her small savings-bank account (228). And undoubtedly cut short her nephew's thanks, "That's what money's for, child."

Early anti-slavery sentiments in Vermont. Then DCF discusses how small Vermont towns had the money available for the Civil War (which would come to almost $10 million in the four years of the war) because of the practice of thrift. The adoption of the "Vermont system" for the care of wounded soldiers.

"This is what life is like," thought the father (but he did not say it aloud). "Tired as dogs, everybody's heart broken, but a long steep hill ahead you've got to stumble up, somehow--in the dark" (246).

She writes of after the war: "Lincoln was shot to death. The Capital was reeking with political corruption, especially despised of Vermonters because of the horrid waste of public money" (247).

The future after the Civil War looked bleak, not in the least because it was thought that the best of the younger generation ("it seemed to their elders") were going away. End of the chapter. Turn the page. First sentence of the new section: "Not at all. Not in the least" (251).

Just stopped by to say hello...

127 depression...*shakes head* talk about having no clue....

'Sticking to my muttons', I'll get on with my comments on the DCF now that I'm more or less back. First the 'Boom and Bust' chapter. First thing -- in our village there are three or four extremely handsome brick houses -- nothing that would stand out really in some swank suburb, but they really really stand out here. Connected with some of them, the lucky ones, are huge gorgeous barns and outbuildings (most have burned down -- there are spells of barn-burnings sadly). Inside, these houses have at least one room with tasteful and elegant woodwork, especially in the 'parlor' and maybe also the 'dining room' dating from exactly the period DCF describes. So, mystery elucidated, as I always wondered where the money came from for these houses. Now I know.

Impressed by DCF’s easy reference to the classics If it were no more than an account of the Vermont sheep industry, why should you know about it. That Hecuba would certainly be nothing to you. (p 204 in my copy Becky).

I was impressed with DCF's forward thinking on what continued sheep-farming might do to the landscape. But it is interesting that the clearing of trees for the potash industry, prepared the land for the sheep boom..... part of the reason it took hold so quickly is that there was a lot of open land ready and waiting.

13 Morgans and Knee Breeches etc

A charming chapter -- 25 minutes to go three miles -- including catching the horse, harnessing him up and the trip itself.

I'm not sure how to comment on the rest of this chapter, except it does seem to me that Vermont is different from many other rural states in that it does seem to have a naturally 'progressive' bent -- eg seems to be more interested in moving on and trying new and different things than getting mired in the 'old ways were good enough for me' mind-set. Many of the young people who moved up to VT, largely drawn from the northeast down to the mid-Atlantic region, in the late 60's and 70's did so because they were drawn to what they perceived as the 'spirit' of the place -- this seemingly paradoxical combination of independence and community-mindedness and egalitarian values. In VT you can't just retreat into your rich person stronghold, you are expected to contribute generously both time and money, to your village as a volunteer and to the state's needs (not just taxes but non-profits to feed and house and so on) nor will you suffer extreme poverty without someone turning up on your doorstep, sooner or later.

Let's see -- I have visited the Coolidge farm and it was very low-key and pleasant and may still be more or less privately funded. It made for a great afternoon -- a big barn full of astonishing old farm equipment was the best.

Impressed by DCF’s easy reference to the classics

Remember that her father was the librarian at Columbia University. Her mother, Flavia Camp Canfield, was an artist and also a patron of the arts. I remember in one of the biographies there's a fairly hilarious account of Dorothy accompanying her mother in a harrowing trip to Spain to see the art there. I think her mother was in Paris studying art when Dorothy was studying at the Sorbonne, which was in 1899 when she began graduate work in French at the Sorbonne. She received a PhD from Columbia in 1904. She also travelled frequently in Europe. After she was married, she and her husband continued to travel in Europe fairly frequently. DCF was one of those women who wore her education lightly.

P.S. I think Flavia was something of a whack-job. Willa Cather wrote a short story that had a character in it named Flavia, and from what I recall people said it was a spot-on characterization of her, something that did Cather no good in repairing her relationship with DCF.

--So I had to go look it up. Yes, the story was called "Flavia and Her Artists," and it was published in 1905. Flavia is described as "bossy and pretty, but somehow always ill at ease." Cather creates a remarkably ridiculous portrait of this woman with DCF's mother's distinctive first name. It probably wasn't one of Cather's best moments. She frequently had trouble with people, many times because she just couldn't seem to help herself from putting people like Flavia into her stories. What I mean is, it's fine that she wrote her into the story, and the woman is a wonderful, absurd portrait, but to call her Flavia was certainly asking for trouble. It's a great story, though.

OK, so don't hate me, Sib, but I have a wonderful biography of Mrs. Calvin Coolidge that you might want to read when you're finished with Dorothy's book--Grace Coolidge and Her Era by Ishbel Ross, who herself was an early female journalist. Talk about a role model for first lady--she was aptly named, let's put it that way. I wish people like her were better remembered.

I just followed the link for the book, where someone said about Grace Coolidge, "She was no Jackie O." Really? Well, who was? I loved the biography, both for its subject and the writing.

As you can see, I have added it to the wishlist -- it should be easy to requisition on ILL. Flavia (what were her parents thinking?) does sound like a prima donna -- Why am I guessing that maybe she did not hail from Vermont? The only Cather stories I have are in Youth and the Bright Medusa and I don't remember reading it there, but then, I don't really remember too many of those stories, to be honest.

LOL--how about Wisconsin? I think.

The Flavia story was published in The Troll Garden. I don't know if it was published again in something else during her lifetime. I think it's one of those early stories she thought better of later on. It was left out of Youth. Good call, Cather.

I needed a new fiction read, so last night I started one that I've been wanting to get to for some time, John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel. I'm about 20 pages into it and I'm still waiting for it to "sound" like Iriving. So far I've learned a considerable amount about the logging industry in northern New Hampshire in 1954. Nobody's better than Iriving when he's good; nobody's worse when he's bad. We'll see.

Is that a recent one or an old one? (Too lazy to look......) Never even heard of it, maybe not such a good sign? Though not always.....

I've finished Chapter 14, Thrift.

Got to give DCF credit for managing to be tart and opinionated while simultaneously being charming and sensible. Quite a combo, frankly. But very Vermont if my paradoxical theory holds up...... I don't know how those values have held up into the 21st century -- I would hazard that VT probably rates fairly high in terms of overall solvency and people salting away savings when and where they can. Except for in isolated bubbles I don't think most people care so much anymore what the Joneses are up to.... am I wrong about that? Maybe I live in my own little bubble?

Speaking of which. I just heard the most insane piece on the news -- The last few months more Americans have actually been putting their money away in Savings rather than Spending their money which is Bad for the Economy, so they are being bad bad bad, except, hunh?

I LOVED the venom vs VT for being so adamant about emancipation: Georgia passed a resolution to send Vermont communication back 'to the deep, dank, and fetid sink of social and political iniquity from which it came." Virginia voted a resolution that 'able bodied Irishmen (!!!!) be hired to dig a ditch all around Vermont, til the thing could be detached from the rest of the Union and towed out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.'

And so -- as belief resolves into action Vermonters first take the step to support settlers in Kansas, when war begins they vote not only to raise their own taxes but to raise them by a staggering amount -- %110 more than they had ever taxed themselves before. Even I am astonished at this willingness to pour not only heart and soul but their whole security into this belief in the dignity of each human being. And, not only that but every town, every village lost, on average, twenty sons. -- This out of towns with five hundred to a thousand residents means they lost virtually all their strongest young men. Those that returned, many of them, were wrecked or crippled. Vermont men were often put at the head of marches as they could be counted on to move fast and steady. I think they were tall and healthy due to several generations of excellent nutrition and good habits overall. Sigh. Years ago my husband and I when we used to have more time (where did it go?) would get in the car on Sundays and drive around to obscure little towns -- the cemeteries are very very sobering -- a total change in the population and fortunes of the state is so evident like a fault line -- before and after the Civil War. And everywhere there is a grim little row of names of men, some of them just memorials, some of them containing the bones of the young men, of those who died. Just staggering.

Twisted River is recent--2009, I think, which for Irving is very recent since he publishes on a longer schedule than many "popular" writers do--eg., of course, Daniel Silva. Until I Find You was 2005, which I did not read. This latest one--four years later. That's what I thought--something like four or five years between novels.

He does one of my favorite things in this book--a writer (Irving) writing about writing. One of the main characters, a young boy at the beginning of the novel, grows up to become a famous writer. It's gotten mixed reviews. There are some reviewers out there who simply hate this guy and pan everything he does--period. So I don't pay too much attention to the "professional" reviews. The passage of time is always a "character" in Irving's novels. This one covers 1954 to 2005 and takes place mostly in the northeastern U.S.

I ended up liking Twisted River, Becky. Typical Irving quirkiness. You are so right about the statement of when he's bad he's bad...or words to that effect. I could not get into The Fourth Hand, and I consider myself a true Irving fan.

It's killing me, but I am not really reading the threads on the Vermont book. (Well, only enough to whet my appetite.) I ordered this book and it's coming. When I start reading it, I'll come back to see what is said by chapter. That'll be fun. :) So, please keep 'em coming!

Claudia

Hi Donna & Claudia.

Hey, has anyone read Christopher Hitchens' memoir, Hitch 22? I would assume most people (who follow him) also know he's been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. There's an article by him in the online Vanity Fair: "Topic of Cancer." I knew he had esophageal cancer; what I didn't know was that his father died "swiftly" of it at the age of 79. Hitchens is 61. Cripes.

The article is here. Excellent read.

I think I need to get the memoir.

My next door neighbor has a beautiful moonflower. I looked it up online, and it belongs to the genus Ipomoea, and is related to sweet potatoes and morning glories.

"One of the largest flowering ipomoeas is the moonflower (I. bona-nox, or Calonyction aculeatum), a rampant, perennial climber with 15-cm (6-inch) white, fragrant, night-blooming flowers. It contains a milky juice used for coagulating Castilla rubber."

Ipomoea. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 5, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition: http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9042723

>148 markon:. Oh, thanks, that's very interesting info about the moonflower. In the past few years I've been seeing a whole lot of decorative sweet potato plants, both green and sort of a purple or eggplant color, that people plant in their hanging baskets. I'm not sure what they're called. I have a very sunny, hot spot where I planted some of those and was so happy when they took off--they looked beautiful. The next year I planted the same thing, and my dear black Lab ate them--every one. Sigh.

My moonflower produces maybe 4-6 blooms every afternoon. I'm a little bit worried that I may have introduced an aggressive "weed" into my garden that I won't be all that happy about next year--ha. We'll see.

If your moonflower is like ours (and they look the same), you needn't worry. It's an annual; save the seeds if you want it in the garden next year.
(Oh! I do have to say about M.Maron that I liked the 2nd Deborah Knott novel, Southern Discomfort better than the first. Whatever.)

Back to Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Vermont. Chapt. 15 is a short Introduction to the next section that (I think) is about the 100 years after the Civil War. She breaks the section down into four chapters:

1. Financial ruin. War debt. Weeds and brush taking possession of farm land.

2. Emigration to the cities and the West.

3. The obliteration of the Vermont way of life by "hordes of immigrants."

4. An anxiety about the ability of Negroes to take on the responsibilities of freedom.

As DCF is careful to point out, the ideas of 3 and 4 were not her words, but instead were words used by "serious books of the period."

Chapter 16: "Financial Ruin"

As I read this book, published in 1953, it seems as though the things that Vermonters were worried about are very like what we are dealing with in 2010. "Nothing new under the sun" is what comes to mind.

Dorothy begins the chapter, "Debt is a kind of servitude. A man cannot hold his head up (so our axiom goes) until he has paid what he owes."

What's the amount of debt the U.S. owes, just to China today in 2010? It's obscene--and our children and grandchildren will be paying it. And with that I think I'll return to reading John Irving, because sometimes you just can't face the bad news of the day--like the new unemployment numbers.

I am loving Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel. I'm only 80 pages into it after three days or so, but it's just that kind of novel. The writing is dense, but certainly not difficult. It reads as though this is his fifth or sixth or seventh draft--like he's gone back and endlessly added and massaged the details. And it's wonderful. And funny. Like this:

Her name was Dot; she was far too large to be a Dot, and she'd had so many children that she seemed to be a woman who had abandoned every other capacity she'd ever conceivably possessed, except her appetite, which the cook didn't like to think about at all.

I love what he's put in the book about the cookhouse, Cookie, one of the main characters, and food. It's absolutely worthy of Julia Child. Heh.

Becky, I'm enjoying your ongoing discussion about the Vermont book. What a good idea - talking about the books you are reading as you are reading them. I don't think I could manage it. Once I get involved in a book that I'm loving, I'd rather read it than talk about it.

>153 sjmccreary:. Thanks for stopping by. I often use this thread at LT as a reading journal, although I'm not really completely comfortable with the public component of it. In fact, I've started a private "group" where I can put thoughts about my reading that I'd rather not share with just anyone. So I'll probably actually be doing less posting about my books as I read them, the way I'm doing now with the Vermont book--less public posting, at any rate. It's mainly just a way to have a conversation with myself about what I'm reading. I could put my thoughts in a notebook or in OneNote on my computer, but I like being able to use the various components of LT that enhance book discussion--like touchstone, images, author pages, reviews, etc.

Becky, the private group idea is a good one. Sometimes I just want to write my thoughts down for myself. I miss my notebook journals that I kept for many years. I got tired of writing I suppose, or maybe I just didn't want to burden my children with tons of paperwork when I die -- they'll have enough stuff to go through as it is. ;-}

Question: did you actually start a new "group" or did you create a new "identity"? I think it would work either way.

A new group. You can make a group private.

That is a good idea. I would never have thought to use a private group as a personal journal. You're so smart!

I found that someone else had done this when I did a search at Groups on "reading journal." I wanted to see if there was a group of people who were using LT the same way I wanted to use it. That's when I found a couple of groups that were marked "private." If you want to set one up, you just go to "New Group," name your group, click on the boxes that say things like "by invitation only," and that should do it. Anyone can see the name of your group, but if a non-invited member clicks on the link, then all they see is "This is a private group."

I was just going to post some DCF comments and am wondering if you want them? I mean, I think probably yes, but..... I will miss seeing the rest of your notes, I confess.

Lucy, no, no! I planned to continue with the comments on DCF here, and of course I want your comments too. The truth is, I will probably continue to post quite a bit here about what I'm reading. It's just nice to have sort of a "garage" or a "cellar" for thoughts about books which are either political (nobody wants to hear what I "really" think about what's going on today, I learned that the hard way) or maybe too personal for a general audience.

I must say that I'm relieved. I was going to miss you here, Ms. Becky!

Oh dear, thank you Peggy. I set up my "private group" last week and frankly I haven't posted much of anything there. Maybe it just makes me feel better knowing that I have a place where I can "let it rip" without hurting someone's feelings or exposing my own "whacko right-wing" political point of view.

You know, Peggy, it's bizarre how people make assumptions about other people if they read a particular book or expose their political viewpoints--if they're the "wrong" point of view, that is. If you lean to the right then you must certainly think . . . "this." Well, maybe I don't. "You" out there don't know me, and who the heck are you to judge me, anyway. But it was fascinating to see which people here on this list quit posting to my thread once I read a "particular" book. So I'm not going to reveal myself that way anymore. Thus the "private" reading journal.

You are a dear, Peggy.

I'd better post quickly so I'm not in that category of people who judge others unfairly. I'm pretty much of a right-winger myself, mainly so I can keep my marriage going! My husband has very black-and-white opinions while I tend to see things in shades of grey. I'm the typical peacemaker...always looking for the good in people and books...and overlooking the parts I don't agree with.

Can't we all just get along????

*Heading off to my "private" place so I can unload how I really feel*...
;-)

Oh, thank Heavens! I was afraid I was gonna lose your postings on the Vermont book now that I finally got the brilliant idea to read the book and go back to your threads and comments as I progressed. *heavy sigh of relief*

I don't care what books anyone reads as long as I can choose my own reading material. I am so non-political I almost didn't take a job in the town office for fear of getting in the middle of something. (I would have missed a fun job and getting to know the residents in town.) I certainly have opinions - but to tell you the truth I can never remember which is left and which is right. I am purposely blocking it, I'm afraid. Sometimes I feel liberal and other times conservative... I think labels are just too limiting. It's a complex world.

Sorry - too much babbling here - just so relieved! :)

Donna--I obviously have no social skills. Ha. No, seriously, I'm a committed introvert who paradoxically doesn't know how to keep her mouth shut. The "private" group is probably a good strategy for me--now if I would just use it!

Whew! I thought you were leaving the group too. I am glad to hear that you are not! I would miss your posts. I read them all even if I do not comment on them.

Thanks Stasia.

There are certain political and religious books that I just don't post about here. Not because anyone has said or done anything, just that I would rather keep that part of my reading and life and thoughts to myself. So, I think your idea of a private group for use as a reading diary is a good idea.

Affirmation abounds! Obviously, you are a dear yourself!

>168 chinquapin:. Love your profile pic! I'm a fool for dogs, as my dear black Labs will testify.

>169 LizzieD:. And thanks to you too, "LizzieD"! Where does that come from, anyway?

So I thought I'd do a book roundup to see where I stand with this stack of books I'm reading.

Swann's Way--this is my group read. I'm very proud of our group, since we've managed to continue to make steady progress, probably mostly because of a very encouraging website that was recommended by an LT reader. If you're thinking of tackling Proust, I would recommend "The Corklined Room" website and Dennis Abrams. We have about another week or so and we'll be finished with this volume. I don't plan to continue on right away with volume two, but I'll get to it eventually.

Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Lucy, our Vermont connection on the 75 thread (AKA "sibyx") is reading along and commenting. We're about two-thirds of the way through the book.

Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, by Brooke Kroeger. The author is a journalist by trade, not a biographer. I think for this book she read too much of Nellie Bly's writing, since sometimes her sentences sound more like the 19th century than the 21st: "Bly's version, of course, was that the idea to girdle the globe faster than the fictional Phileas Fogg was hers"--you can only roll your eyes at prose like that. My biggest problem with this biography is that Kroeger almost certainly didn't leave out anything she found in her research. This is one of those huge baggy monster biogs, and for Nellie Bly, interesting as she is as a figure in the history of journalism, she just doesn't warrant this kind of comprehensive coverage--over 500 pages. On the plus side, Kroeger includes good notes and an excellent bibliography. This is a serious biography about an interesting person; however, I wish Kroeger had tightened it up. I'm about a third of the way through this thing.

I want to finish the Nellie Bly biog so that I can read a newish biography about Joseph Pulitzer: Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James Mcgrath Morris. I've just skimmed this one, but the writing looks very, very good. Unlike Kroeger.

There's a nice conversation with Morris about the book here.

And of course, my current fiction book, Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel, by John Irving. This one is very Irving-esque. I'm enjoying it a whole lot, but every once in awhile I'll find myself reading along and saying, "Oh for the love of God, John Irving, could you move it along a little bit?" Heh. Also, he's obsessed in this novel with large women. Apropos of nothing, I hear his wife is petite. I'm not quite a third of the way through. I'm obsessed while reading this novel with Irving's craft, with pulling this thing to pieces and seeing how it's done. Whatever else critics and readers say about Irving--and he has boatloads of people willing to pan anything he writes, probably without reading it--he is above all a craftsman. There's so much mediocre writing out there getting published today, that it's simply a pleasure to read an author who knows what he's doing.

I think that's all.

Here's an article from Jon Meacham writing in Newsweek: "Mysteries, Thrillers, and the Verities of the Heart.

Peggy, I think you, particularly, may like this article.

Here's how the article begins:

A friend I thought I knew well startled me the other evening with a sweeping literary judgment that led me, for the first time, to question how much I truly understand him. The subject was mysteries and thrillers. “Oh, I can’t stand books like that,” he said, flatly, leaving no room for argument.

My failure to detect such a colossal character flaw before that moment bothered me, but then—reminding myself that we are always to look outward, toward others, focusing not on the devices and desires of our own hearts—I realized that I should reach out constructively rather than simmer silently.

Meacham goes on to encourage a list of favorite, worthwhile mystery/thriller writers on his friend, acknowledging lists as "dangerous and arbitrary." Among those on his list:

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series

Anything by P.D. James (especially poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh)

Denise Mina's "tough" novels about Glasgow

Benjamin Blacks compelling novels about 1950s Dublin pathologist with--surprise!--a problem with the drink

Tana French, whos first two novels in his opinion are superior to the newest one, Faithful Place

Henning Mankell and Arnaldur Indrioason, from "the colder European climes"

Daniel Silva's first novel, The Unlikely Spy plus his Gabriel Allon series

Lee Child's Jack Reacher collection

Charles McCarry, especially Shelley's Heart --no Peggy, not thatShelley--ha

Alex Berenson's CIA series about the post 9/11 world

Love it.

Many Thanks, Becky! I haven't read that issue yet. I do believe I overlooked a $5 copy of Shelley's Heart at the local Roses this morning. I may have to go back. I certainly concur about Nero Wolfe and Adam Dalgliesh, and I've picked up some new names like Denise Mina and Benjamin Black. Just what I need!
(LizzieD is a leftover from The Readers Vine - my nod to Dickens: Lizzie for Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend and D for Dickens himself when I had to take the last name of a mystery writer. {I chose Sayers, so I was LizzieD Sayers, if anybody is still around from those old good times.} Much more than you wanted to know!)

One of my favorite mystery writers is the Italian.... Camillieri? Andrea or Andreas?

And nooooowwww.... DCF! I was soooo relieved! Not the only one who panicked Becky. I'm sorry folks dropped you based on yr. reading. I am, as you know a centralist liberal, and one of my deepest held beliefs is in the importance of conversation and civility.
****
So now we are in the ‘modern’ era -- that is, post Civil war. But as this was written in 1952 and that being just about 60 years ago, obviously the state has had plenty of time to undergo yet another transformation. Be all that as it may, in the intro to this section, she outlines the four ‘fears’ of older post civil-war Vermonters: that the state would never recover from its financial losses, that all the ‘best’ of its youth was dead or going west, that the new foreigners coming in would change everything and would never ‘get’ it, and that the war had been for nothing. This last fear, was based on reports from soldiers, who were shocked by the larger groups of blacks they encountered in the south. Staggered by the level of deprivation, they really could not see how much of it was caused by extreme circumstance. Individual northern long-time free black people had been part of communities for a long time and did not seem the least bit connected to those these men encountered in the South.

In ‘Financial Ruin’ I enjoyed DCF’s description of the mechanically minded blacksmiths -- my own mother’s family (Quaker, Phila area) were such and in fact applied for patents in the 1830’s that seem so humble and obvious (like the D handle shovel shape) to us now...... but they built a fortune (now gone with the wind, folks, so don't get overexcited) from those origins, fabricating things.

I don’t know any more how many of these old companies still remain -- but Vermont (and Connecticut) were famous for building the machines to make the machines....... exacting work and they were famous for it at one time.

I have seen the ruins of the marble quarries in West Rutland -- sobering and gorgeous. The Vermont Studio Center runs a marble carving studio there that is worth a visit if you are touring around VT.

In Barre the granite works are also totally worth visiting, also the cemeteries in the area where the granite carvers made themselves FANTASTIC monuments. Just whacky and wonderful and sometimes very touching.

Davenport's (the forgotten inventor) little shed has a memorial sign; we stopped and looked at it on some random road trip. I don’t remember when or where!

Happily, DCF's fears for the milk industry -- eg powdered milk, condensed milk never really caught on. However I am sure she never could have envisioned the dairy industry subsidies -- although I ended up wondering if we wouldn't all be drinking condensed and powdered if (more or less) local dairy didn't get help. I'd never thought of that, quite, before. In our town our one remaining dairy farmer rents most of the fields in the village - including ours -- (they have to be within 5 miles of his house for some of his loans) and has put up one of those new super-intense barns. I don't know how they do it.

I've also read the next chapter, 17, *The Lifeblood Drains Out*

Here I was struck by DCF's description of the European attitude vs the developing American one about leaving one's place of birth..... "up to the Black Death in England it was more than a calamity it was a punishable crime." The villein or serf really wasn't allowed to leave. She makes the point too that the more conservative american cities (Boston) had a lingering prejudice in this regard. But move on folks did, from Vermont, after the war. DCF describes how modern and connected people were -- traveling by train, writing letters and so on.....

This chapter felt very dated -- in that the whole story since the late 60's has been of an intense migration to Vermont (as I described, from s. new england and the mid-atlantic mostly) followed by the second generation of these migrants (now in their early thirties) NOT LEAVING but staying and putting down roots and having babies like mad and so on. What their children will do, will be very very interesting!

I'm half-way through 18 but not far enough along to comment. As part of a 3rd wave (known as flatlanders, btw) I am sure I will have all sorts of things to say!

I knew you would have great comments on this stuff, Sib! I'd better get reading--more tomorrow.

Glad to hear that you're not leaving.

You could probably tell my political slant by the occasional political book I read though, when I do read a political book, I will normally just describe what it was about and not discuss my opinions. I have plenty of other forums for that. This is about reading.

I can't imagine not reading someone's thread because I disagreed with him or her politically. My goodness. No one agrees with me 100 percent of the time.

That whole "private group" thing was a brilliant idea, though I'm sorry you don't always feel comfortable with posting what you really think on your own thread. I'm on the opposite end of the continuum when it comes to our politics, but I say stick with being yourself even if it does cost you some friends; the ones that are left will be the ones that are worth keeping.

>174 sibylline:. Sib, I love your comments on Chapt. 16, "Financial Ruin." Also, as someone who has spent many hours hunting for ancestors in cemeteries all over the country, I'm intrigued by your description of the granite monuments in Vermont.

So I went to a site that's a familiar one for genealogists, "Find-a-Grave" (fondly known as FAG), and I snagged this photo of Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro--just for some atmosphere.



Your question about what the children will do who belong to the current generation of migrants (who are "having babies like mad"--heh) is a fascinating one, and is a great segue into the next chapter:

Chapter 17, "The Lifeblood Drains Out," which Sib says feels very dated.

I love what Dorothy says here: "When I was a little girl, sixty-odd years ago {which would have been in the 1890s}, well-bred Americans did not, in the presence of a Vermonter, openly refer to the State's small and almost static population, any more than they would have referred to a dwarf or hunchback among the children of a family. The misfortune was so manifest that the only decently kind thing to do was to look the other way" (280).

I was interested in what Lucy had to say about Vermont's current population, so I checked Wikipedia to see "what's what" in Vermont. Here are some interesting "factoids" that I found:

In 2004, more than half of Vermont's population was born out of state.

In 2006 Vermont had the highest median age of the work force in the nation, 42.3.

In 2009 it had the fifth highest percentage of divorce in the nation.

According to the 2000 census, Vermont's population was 98.12% white.

In 2008, 34% of Vermonters claimed no religion, the highest percentage in the nation. Additionally, "Vermont may have the highest concentration of western-convert Buddhists in the country."

In May, 2010, Vermont's unemployment rate was 6.2%, the fourth lowest in the nation.

In 2005, Vermont's GSP (gross state product) was $23 billion, which places it 50th among the 50 states. (I wonder what it would be today in 2010?) So I looked that up, and I found that in the third quarter of 2009, Vermont's gsp increased 5.3% over the previous quarter, which tied Vermont with Washington, D.C. for second place nationwide in terms of growth. We know why Washington is growing--all those fabulous, "productive" (/sarc) bureaucrat overpaid underoutputting government jobs. But I digress. Why is Vermont's economy the second-fastest growing in the nation?

DCF goes on to give a wonderful description of the "conversations on paper" of the family letters, boxes and trunks of them, under the attic eaves. She just makes me laugh: "If we their descendants can summon the fortitude to keep on reading how many jars of currant jelly were put up by Great-aunt Helen in Iowa in the summer of '67, we do find an occasional informed comment, sometimes pungent and discerning, on the national elections of that year, and what folks in Iowa thought of them" (282).

I'm going to quote one more longish passage from Chapt. 17, and then I must move on with my day--move on with my reading into Chapt. 18, because I'm really interested to hear what Sib will have to say about the movement into Vermont:

There are those (I am one of them) who find something comforting in the unchangingness of an old, old background, who love to follow a road every turn of which is part of childhood memories, and for whom a certain ancient elm, growing out of a mossy rock split in two a century ago by the tree roots, is dear because it is one of the first things seen and remembered. There are others (my Vermont mother was one) for whom an unchanging and stable background has the monotony of a painfully well-known prison courtyard, and for whom emigration is freedom beckoning through open jail doors.

Have a great Sunday!

Ed. due to my compulsion to endlessly tweak everything.

Thanks for posting this photo

OK folks, Becky gave you rustic, but I give you this: Hope Cemetery

Those statistics are fascinating Becky --
I would guess that the 2010 census will show some changes -- a leap in the non-white population being the first.

A slight change in Vermont birth-rate as the second generation gets busy.

Probably little change in the median job holding age as our generation gets older but new younger folks start filling the work force. It might go down a hair.

No change in the divorce rate. My guess? High ideals often fuel the move to Vermont and then reality sets in. Many families really struggle to keep both members working at good jobs and that gets very stressful.

I'm not a card-carrying Buddhist (who is?) but if I had to sign up for something, that would be it, so guilty as charged!

If you don't have a 'normal' job here, you make one up. I'm not kidding. Entrepreneur hardly begins to describe what people cobble together.

The last bit is beyond my ability to comment on intelligently, but at a guess I would hazard that the tininess of the state and its population determines its GSP placement and is not really all that relevant. There's no oil or mining or anything like that to boost it either. As for growth -- that is a mystery -- except there is this new bunch of college grads who are everywhere making a go of it. Recessionish times can be helpful too, say, for VT tourism -- instead of that big trip to Europe you go for a cruise around VT etc. The 'artisan' thing is getting steadier too as VT goat cheeses and so on. etc. win prizes and get scooped up nationwide.... so little things add up.

Oh dear, and I haven't even posted about the next two chapters. I guess I will be back.

The Irish stuff was fascinating, but of course, now no more than history.

I enjoyed the comment about the English not liking the Flemish weavers brought in around the 14th -- they brought the ancestor to the Corgi with them, it is believed and that is my preferred sort of dog.

DCF works hard in this chapter and the next to state over and over again that each successive group was more or less composed of the same overall types, some above average, many average, a few below. Some wanderers, some stay-puts.

On reflection I think the generations that make the commitment to settle somewhere are the most likely to stay (at least one of them, keeping the divorce rate in mind) It is the subsequent generations official native-born Vermonters who feel freer to come and go. So my generation is likely to stick, but the children? If they can't make it work, they may go.

The next very short chapter is awkward and I commend DCF for throwing herself at it and not pretending it wasn't there. The truth is that Vermont has not really had to face any race issues directly, not until recently. Burlington in particular now has a sizable Cambodian and Vietnamese population, a growing black population and a fair number of emigrants from Central and South America. Growing pains? You bet. Black and hispanic faces are no longer quite so rare, on any given day even in my own tiny village there are black families in the PO or the Library or somewhere or other I might find myself. The tourists also show more ethnic diversity -- folks obviously from out of state wandering around at the charming "Farmer's Market's" that abound on village greens.

This story is a fascinating one. I've visited the granite school house up near Barton. (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Twilight">Twilight

In sum -- I would say that overall one of the distinguishing features of the latest influx is the high level of education. I would say the greatest source of conflict for the 'older' Vermonters -- themselves a mixed bag as you can now see -- was at first the seemingly perverse lifestyle, what seemed to be a willful rejection of modern conveniences and inventions -- logging with horses, say, making bread from scratch, having barn-raisings communally. Some older Vermonters backed off skeptically or nervously or quite angrily. Many embraced the new young people, esp. some older ones who were happy to see the attempt to learn how to do things from scratch.

Our own town went through an abrasive spell about fifteen years ago as the first of this generation began to move into public office, as selectman but that seems to have died down as everyone realizes that at the village level interests overlap a good deal of the time and change comes slowly if at all, no matter who is in charge. I'm not saying there aren't still some very uncomfortable moments at Town Meeting sometimes, but people say their piece and then you eat lunch together as I've said. The most radical changes have been at the state level, and that goes back and forth too. At the moment the state is in the throes of cutting back, so the pendulum is swinging in that direction, but I have no doubt it will swing back. That's what folks here do, to make sure nothing gets out of hand either way. Maybe that's what Bernie is, Becky, a corrective in the national scene.

That's enough out of me. I see that the last chapter of this section, 20, "One Way Social Street' is quite long. But we are getting there, not that I'm in any hurry!

Fascinating stuff, Sib. Thanks so much. Dorothy would be proud.

Bernie is kind of an interesting guy. I think we've had this conversation. I respect people who aren't afraid to say who they are--he says he's a democratic socialist and I take him at his word. Much better, in my opinion, than people who are somewhere to the left of Mao and call themselves "moderates."

OK, well I see I have some reading to do.

From the Vermont Tradition book. I'm in Chapt. 18, "They'll Vote Us Out of Town." As you say, Sib, the Irish stuff is now history. DCF says that the Irish were the first, by 30 years, people of another race to come in large numbers to live in Vermont, beginning in about 1850.

The refers to the "startled Vermonters who watched them come" (296). Most different about them seems to be that they were illiterate, as people in Vermont were not, they clung together in clans, and they gave "implicit obedience" to their priests and the leader of their political block, "shockingly alien to the American tradition. In their ignorant docility they presented a political danger such as Americans had never faced" (297).

It should be noted that she writes, "It must be understood that all this was not real news, it was no more than highly colored gossip." The newcomers, while not universally welcomed, were soon known as individuals, "mostly because there were so few human beings living along that mountain road that the ups and downs of everyday life there made them more or less personally known to each other (299).

In the 1890s, Italians began to appear in Vermont in considerable numbers, most from Northern Italy, many who were skilled stoneworkers from Carrara. She also discusses the French Canadians in Vermont. She says their "rather slower assimilation" to Vermont folkways "has never caused friction" (308).

"At no time was the total number of foreign-born residents here more than 15 percent of the population" (309).

I looked up "Quick Facts" from the U.S. Census Bureau. These are figures for 2008, except for the last number.

White, 96.4%
Black, 0.9%
American Indian, 0.4%
Asian, 1.1%
Hispanic or Latino, 1.4%
The percent of foreign born for the year 2000, 3.8%

I've caught up to Chapt. 20, "One-way Social Street, and now I must move on with my day.

I've been losing a lot of sleep at night reading the John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel. I share one LT reviewer's thoughts, that this one sprawls quite a bit and could have been improved by more work with the blue pencil.

For example, I'm pages and pages into set piece flashback that has nothing to do with anything else in the book, or maybe only barely tangentially--but even that is stretching it--about a naked female sky diver who lands in pig shit. Come on, John. Or as another reviewer said, "Too much detail about nothing."

I know, I know, this is what Irving does, but this thing is headed for 3 stars unless it sharpens up.

I'm 180 degrees from you on the political spectrum, but I enjoy your thread, and I especially enjoy your comments on the Proust thread. Please don't feel you have to hold anything back--people have something very special in common, the love of books.

>185 arubabookwoman:. Hi, thanks for visiting.

chapter 20

This chapter was very long but is easy to sum up! Fisher advocates that the life task is for each person to find the work to which he or she is suited, not make assumptions that moving ‘up’ is the only proper direction to strive for or, more importantly, to respect. My husband is what I call ‘a standing-up man,’ and dropped out of a great architecture school when he realized he just wanted to build things, not be a ‘personage.’. His parents were horrified. His mother never got over it, never understood how he could have thrown away ‘a brilliant career‘. In Philadelphia he was the guy who actually knew how to use a chainsaw at the school’s xmas tree sale..... and he astounded me by always managing to find work within the city limits that used his skills -- artist-in-residence at a nature centers, things like that. Any of those places often hired him back to consult and assist on various smaller projects and jobs. DCF is right, in my opinion that there is not enough respect for those that can do. Even as I write this a friend came into the library where I am (our internet at home has failed again) a woman with a graduate degree in education who decided she'd rather work building stone walls. So that is what she does. She has one of those great little dozers that do everything! Everything DCF says, in other words, still appears to hold true. That might be why so many people stay employed here -- they are doing what they want to be doing, and stubbornly keep on with it one way or the other.

Edited to improve content.

I am slogging through my book about Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. It's one of those biographies that is written by someone who believes that EVERY FACT in their research must appear in the book. My goodness, the woman only lived to be 58 years old; also, there's very little real analysis included by the biographer. So why in the name of the God of Blue Pencils should this book be over 500 pages long? Sigh.

Well, here's some analysis, anyway, which I finally ran into on page 213: Nellie quit the New York newspaper she was writing for and then three years later, for whatever reason, she was given a column and good money, so she returned to the World. Says biographer about her columns: "Most of the items were tedious." So why go into them in such great detail? Ach.

I was just outside for my two-minute constitutional of bringing in the trash bins from the curb. It is so STINKING HOT right now, 97 degrees/ 67% humidity. It was something like 88 degrees last night for a low. When it doesn't cool off at night, then the house just stays hot, and the air conditioner doesn't have a chance. I know, I know--I live in Missouri (Misery), what do I expect? Blah, blah. Don't ya know how lucky you are to have air conditioning? Meh.

When my son was doing his two tours in Baghdad (34 months) in the Army, I never, not once, ever let myself think about the heat in St. Louis, let alone complain about it. But now that he's back, I've returned to my previously crabby ways. Anyway, God bless our troops.



People in my family have called me Lucille Van Pelt all my life--with good reason. Pardon me, but week after week of this heat just flips me into crazy.

I just got Vermont Traditions in the mail today! Woo Hoo! Now... gotta round up all those comments I've been skipping on your thread so I don't lose them.
My "new" book looks and smells kinda old (used), but who am I to comment on age? Or smell, for that matter... Dang heat!

week after week of this heat just flips me into crazy... my sentiments exactly!


Claudia

#189 Our Chicagoland heat and humidity is not nearly as bad as yours, of course, and I hate to ever wish for cold weather, but I've had it with heat and humidity this summer.

I like to be outside and it's just too muggy for that most days this summer.

Thanks for the heads up re. St. Louis, MO weather. I'm heading to Kansas City for a conference this weekend.

#192 Linda, we're 200 miles from St Louis, but it's just as hot here. MAYBE a little less humid, but not so's you'd notice, I think. You're coming to KC at the worst possible time (weather-wise), but I hope you'll enjoy your stay here. Let me know if you need any restaurant rec's. The Yankees are in town, if you're interested in seeing a ball game.

>192 Whisper1:. Safe travels, Linda. We have beautiful falls and springs in the midwest, so maybe you can come back sometime. I'm sure your conference people will have that AC cranked up!

>190 -Cee-:. Claudia, I hope you enjoy the book!

>191 lindapanzo:. Linda, I'm with you. I like to garden, but even the early mornings are unpleasant, so the weeds are having their way with me--ha. I think I have a serious case of cabin feaver.

Chapter 20 of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Vermont book: "One-way Social Street."

I love Sib's comments about this chapter. See #187.

"All over America, class lines have been triumphantly thrown down, and the social thoroughfare opened to ability, as never before, anywhere" (320). But the social thoroughfare only goes one way, as she interestingly points out. "The son of a blacksmith can become President of the United States. . . . But would we have thought it fine for the President's son to earn a comfortable living as a mechanic, no matter how much he likes the work?"

She has some interesting things to say about "Vermont manners": "A Vermont farmer does not 'order' his hired man to do some specific piece of work. If he did, he would not have a hired man." So, she says, it comes out like this: "What say we get the upper field plowed this morning" (325).

I love Dorothy's use of "Vermont fables" to make her points in this chapter.

She tells a wonderful story of herself when she was young and just back from France and studying at the Sorbonne, when she unexpectedly was needed to help her a cousin help rake hay before it rained. Some "summer people" came along, and since she thought they were in need of directions and were "elderly or infirm," she stopped what she was doing and walked across the field to assist them. Finding out that they were "perfectly able-bodied," and only wanting to tell this gingham-clad girl how "picturesque" she was, like the peasant women in Europe, helping to harvest the grain, Dorothy gives a "picturesque" rendering of her response: "I was not seasoned enough yet to have at my tongue's end a correct Vermont formula for the occasion, but I was thoroughly trained in the Vermont tradition that it is not manners to tell even a very foolish person to go to hell"(327). She goes on, and the whole thing is a wonderful anecdote.

She ends the chapter this way:

Almost everywhere in our America, our nation has done wonderfully in laying out and hard-surfacing one lane of its inter-job highway. But one lane only. The sign on the other, which leads from White-collar to Overalls, still reads, "Road Closed. Proceed at Your Own Peril."

In Vermont, we are proud to post the notice--and try to live up to it, "Open for Traffic in Both Directions."

Oh dear, Sib, Chapt. 21 is a monster.

I just wrote a paragraph responding to your comment above and then 'forgot' and went off to look at something else, scary. Oh I know, to see if there are any famous Vermont women besides DCF herself and Madeline Kunin, first woman governor of the state. Answer: No. Don't know what that means, if anything.

Anyway I think I said that the 'indirect' approach to getting to whatever job you have in mind is certainly still the way in ordinary transactions. But there are plenty of high pressure jobs, branches of multinationals, where people probably do order around the employees -- and yet -- I have no doubt that the average Vermont employee who has been in the state longer than five or ten years is more likely to speak up than is usual around the country.

Chapter 21 By Their Fruits

An examination of four illustrious Vermont men, excluding Ethan Allen and a few notorious men like Jim Fiske, or who did not fit the Vermont mold for one reason or another. The four she chooses are Justin Morrill, he of the Morrill Act (providing the funding for and establishing state universities from the vast holdings of western public lands) - a program particularly powerful and meaningful west of the Alleghenies, she adds. Next, Warren Austin, first appointed US ambassador to the UN as an exemplar of a man who had learned to use the law to settle differences. Someone asks him if he doesn’t get bored to death at all the endless speeches at the UN and he says, “‘Yes I do, but it is better for aged diplomats to be bored than for young men to die.’” John Dewey, that philosopher and educator whose primary gift to us all was the idea the doing and learning go hand in hand. The piece on Frost moved me almost to tears, I can’t exactly call him my ‘favorite‘ poet, he is so deeply internalized in my soul, long before I ever came to live here as a young adult. She could have also added George Perkins Marsh, one of the foremost American naturalists of the 19th century profoundly influencing the environmental movement and a woman would have been welcome! But perhaps out of a sense of modesty she abstained?

Two chapters remain of the main part of the book, “A Look at the Record” and a postscript. After that is a long appendix that goes into great depth about the Vermont/New York conflict. Which I will read most likely, being compulsive, but which I won’t comment on unless there is something utterly fascinating! So most likely I will be posting just one last comment.

One more thing just bubbled up -- I don't have the book with me but apparently DCF was addicted to letter-writing and drove her family wild sitting at her desk writing 'just one more'. Hmmm... sound familiar?

Okay so this is definitely a takeover! I have finished the main body of Vermont Tradition. the last chapter and Postcript were a bit sappy but also interesting -- she published amid the McCarthy/Communist atmosphere of the early 50's and includes a piece on the Vermont response to the whole thing which sounded typical. "The idea that Vermont, because it has a sparse population and rough terrain, is a good place for Communists to hide in, could have occurred only to somebody who had never lived in a Vermont community, and so does not realize that everybody here knows at any hour exactly where everybody else in the town is, and what he is doing." That is not so true any more of course, now that people commute long-distances to work, but I'm still astonished by how people seem to know what I'm up to. "So, you're in charge of the Book Sale at the library, now," someone said to me at the P.O. or Town Office or someplace just a couple of days ago. ....

DCF's description of Town Meeting is spot-on -- NOTHING has changed. Here's a little taste of it:"Take them at their surface appearance, they are often tiresome and vexing. Talk about where to put the new bridge degenerates into quibbling, sometimes angry, unfair quibbling. The wrong people speak, always too long.... The man with a grudge against life once more airs it in the form of objecting to any action proposed, droning on to people sunk into apathetic despair about ever getting home to do the chores......" She then goes on to describe the feeling that comes on later, after you've gone home, at what a miraculous thing it is that people come together and, slowly and painfully make the decisions that need to be made. At long last she makes the point that is at the heart of the Vermont paradox, as I've been calling it (and she finally does too): ...'"Something else glints in the dark -- the paradox that out of a tradition which strictly enjoins letting the neighbors alone should emerge the actual practice of collective action." She goes on, "It only seems odd. It is not odd, it is logical. The point is that the traditions makes human contacts safe."

My latest bee in the bonnet is that Congress and the Senate need to have more pot-lucks. It should be a requirement that everyone must attend several of these get-togethers. Maybe even once a week during sessions. Preferably with their families present. The pot-luck party. Entirely non-partisan.

Ha--yes, it does. A quick look at Keeping Fires Night and Day (my favorite title of all time for a book of correspondence, and naturally it came from one of her letters) shows that not only did she write letters, she wrote loooong letters.

(Well, my "Ha--yes it does" makes no sense if it doesn't come right below post number 197. I was referring to Sib's comment, "sound familiar?")

In Chapt. 21 she's discussing, as Lucy shows, famous Vermont men. One point she makes is that men like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young "could never have achieved" in Vermont what they achieved elsewhere. Dorothy is pretty hard on Mormons, as being antithetical to the Vermont mold--"a single church, unquestioned, even undiscussed, upheld unanimously, submitted to in enthusiastic docility by all the community" (343).

In her discussion of famous people men from Vermont, had I been Dorothy, I would have added Grace Goodhue Coolidge. True, she was a "wife of," but she was a fascinating woman in her own right. The biography I read about her (I've mentioned earlier) is Grace Coolidge and Her Era by Ishbel Ross. Grace Coolidge was fortunate in her biographer, as Ross was a journalist and an excellent writer.

I find it curious that DCF included John Dewey, saying "Most people would agree that of all the men produced by Vermont, John Dewey's name is the most widely known" (366). Yet she leaves out Calvin Coolidge. In fact, he doesn't even make the list of the people she leaves out. If anyone demonstrated the qualities of Vermont that she's been writing of throughout the book, I would think it would be Coolidge. William Allen White wrote a very readable biography of him: A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge, published in 1938. In DCF's book of selected letters, Coolidge's name doesn't appear in the index--just an observation.

In her summing up of the chapter she writes, "That root has also produced some personalities who have served as leaders in the national field. In spite of their very small number, practically every generation of Vermonters has produced one figure known and useful to the nation. . . . In our own twentieth century . . ." --she mentions (again) Senator Austin, but (again) no mention of Coolidge. That can't be accidental. So what's with that?

What she writes about Frost is probably worth the whole book.

Ed. for fat-finger typing and a little added content.

Wow, how'd you get in ahead of me, Sib? So what's with her leaving out Coolidge?

Sib & Lab,
As the two of you are finishing up Vermont Traditions, I am just starting. Have only read Preliminary Remarks and a bit of Chapter 1, but I'm already finding it an enjoyable read. Good sign, I hope. :)
I don't know much about writing styles, but I'm finding DCF easy to read and quite interesting - especially from a Mainer's point of view. Can relate!
I love LT! So many books (treasures) are dug out and held up to the light of day - and I exclaim Eureka! Never would have found this book on my own. Thanks to both of you for sharing. Claudia

Hi Claudia,

I agree, DCF has an engaging style. She was one of those people who wrote on a daily basis, both letters and articles, novels, essays--whatever. I think she's wonderful, and I'm so glad she wrote the Vermont book. I'll be interested to hear what a Mainer thinks of her book!

LT is a treasure.

And Claudia -- I'd love to hear from your thoughts and reactions too -- esp what is different about Maine, here or over on my thread, whatever you like!

The absence of Coolidges is mysterious indeed. I have no idea. I will be looking a the bio of Grace, certainly. And pondering.

Since I've finished several books and am close to finishing another (the John Irving one, Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel), I thought I would start a biography that's been in my ASAP pile for a couple of weeks. It's a newish one about Joseph Pulitzer, and I have a feeling that it's going to be good. That's my hope, anyway, since my current Nellie Bly biog is bleak.

This one is Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power. I have big hopes for this one.

Happy reading, everyone. And for those of you suffering from the heat, stay safe and try to keep cool.

I received my copy of Vermont Traditions the other day, but reading it will be taking place some other time. I am committed to too many TIOLI books this month.

#205. Well, Stasia, I think it sat on my shelf for about five years--ha.

Right now in my town it's 99 degrees/60% humidity. This is not my dog, but he sure does have the right idea for coping with the dog days of summer.

Oh! I love it!
Bet the dog did too!

I can't wait for winter... you'll never hear me complain about cold/ice/snow!

#206: Since it has been 100+ here every day this week, I am with the dog!

I finished the John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel. For those who like straight chronological narrative, this one is definitely not for you. Irving is so good at the time shift thing, both backwards and forwards, that I think he uses it a bit too much. I found my head spinning at times, just trying to keep up with what year we were in.

I loved the characters--the father-cook, the boy Danny who grew up to be the writer, and Ketcham the cranky old logger were the main ones. Irving had plenty of smaller characters that he used to fill out the cast. I really enjoyed all the dogs he put in the book.

One thing I could have lived without and that really distracted me from a very nice ending, was all of the Bush-bashing in the last couple of chapters. I just don't understand why he thought that was necessary. I get plenty of politics, both in the NF I read and just in following along with what's going on day by day; I sure don't need it in the fiction I'm reading. Oh well.

I gave it a 4-star, and I don't plan to write a review. I rarely feel like spending the time reviewing a book, even if it's one I really like, maybe because I write a lot about most books as I'm reading them. Not so much about this one though, I guess. I hated to see this one end, and that's about the best thing I can say about a book these days.

#210: I just read a Sarah Vowell book that had a bunch of Bush-bashing in it and I have no desire to read another book in which politics has no place. I think I will skip the Irving book.

Stasia, if you skip the Irving book you will miss out on a wonderful wacky read! It's not a perfect book, but I thought it was much more like the old Irving that I loved back in his earlier years.

I agree with you, Becky, that it was a "head spinner." But I don't consider that to be a bad thing in a book. Maybe I'm a bit "twisted" in that respect!

I also don't like those books that throw in political commentary, especially when it doesn't further the plot and you know it's the author trying to get his (or her) digs in. Joseph O'Neill did the same thing in the not-so-loved-by-me Netherland.

I can't help but think that including current political comments into a novel is a mistake, at least not unless they are an intregal part of the plot. Won't that just insure that the book will age rapidly? In 20 years, no one will be interested in President Bush, but surely every author hopes that readers will still be interested in their stories, right? So why turn off a future generation of readers by inserting unnecessary political commentary?

I might (only might) be a little more tolerant of it if it went both ways. But I don't remember ever seeing an instance of an author taking an anti-liberal stance - do you?

PS - love the picture of the dog!

206- Someone emailed me that photo and I laughed out loud. It looks like the dog is melting into the sidewalk. He definitely has the right idea. :)

OOoo! OOOO! OOOOO!!!! Guess what, Becky! I am promised The Five of Hearts from pbs this afternoon. I'm excited......and I'm going to have to buy credits again since they are quickly running out.

Isn't he darling?

>215 LizzieD:. Cool, Peggy! I hope you enjoy it. I haven't read it yet, but it's sitting on my shelf where I can see it. That's great!

I heard about this book--where else?--here at LT; it's been sitting on my shelf for awhile, so I thought I'd give it a try: The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

I'm also reading a memoir, The Occupied Garden, a memoir of occupied Netherlands during WWII. I've recently been emailing a new-found family member on my father's side. My grandfather's brothers were part of the underground resistance during the war, and I'm just beginning, for the first time, to learn what the entire family went through. It's simply amazing. My great-grandparents were in their 80s at the end of the war. Food was very hard to come by, so they simply refused to eat, saying, "Give it to the children." And of course they died. My great-uncle and his wife were awarded a Certificate of Honour and their names engraved on the Wall of Honour in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem for their efforts to save Jews in their community during the Holocaust period.

Mine is a family that doesn't share its stories. So what I did was create a family website, hoping I could get some of my cousins to share pictures, stories, etc. Their response: not much. However, because of the website I've heard from people in the Netherlands whom I would never have known about.

So today I'm transcribing letters from my great-uncle. And reading the memoir. When I go into "genealogy mode," I tend to become consumed by it all, so my other reading may be put on hold for awhile.

That's the good one -- a great read, set at Bennington College. The second one The Little Friend doesn't work.

>219 sibylline:. Yeah, Sib, I'm pretty sure I heard about the book from one of your posts here. I thought maybe The Little Friend was her first book. Interesting. Maybe it suffers from "second book" disease?

#218: I read The Secret History several years back and liked it. I hope you do to, Becky.

Fascinating stuff about your family history. One of the books I am reading for TIOLI this month is called Among the Righteous.

Amazing stuff indeed. And what a great connection to foster! A trip to the Netherlands...... When I checked in ten minutes ago your post was only the first sentence -- oh -- I see you added the rest.

Probably it is 2nd bookitis -- it was long and dull and just not at all together. I tried and tried.

>218 labwriter:. There was also a bit of serendipity going on with one of my other reads, the Daniel Silva novel, The Rembrandt Affair. I just always assumed that most people in the Dutch communities were part of the resistance, since it's talked about in my family as if it were a given. But maybe not so much.

This is from the Silva book:

Only one-fifth of Holland's Jews survived the war, the lowest percentage of any Western country occupied by the Germans. Several factors contributed to the lethality of the Holocaust in Holland, not the least of which was the enthusiastic support given the project by many elements of Dutch society. Indeed, from the Dutch police officers who arrested Jews to the Dutch rail workers who transported them to their deaths, Dutch citizens were active at nearly every stage of the process.

Those who were part of the Dutch resistance were going against not only the Germans but also the majority of the people in their community. Brave souls.

What a great thing for you to be discovering -- and I would think it gives your project a whole new dimension.

I love that kind of serendipity -- it seems to happen a lot.

Hi Becky,
I know what you mean about "genealogy mode". I've missed meals and never felt hunger - too absorbed in the hunt and the mystery. But, oh! When you discover information you never imagined - and find missing pieces of a puzzle that makes up your family's story...
Good luck in your endeavors. Sounds like you have a fascinating story to explore. "A trip to the Netherlands...... " ahhh, but of course!
:)
Claudia

Hi Claudia. You too, huh? I know, it's like a disease. But it's so much fun, and I figure it keeps me out of the malls--ha.

For anyone interested in the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis in WWII and the resistance movement, The Occupied Garden by Kristen Den Hartog is an amazing read. I've never read about any of this before. It's particularly interesting to me because of my family, but I think it's also fascinating because of the Dutch people's response to the evil that had overtaken their country.

The author is writing about her grandparents. Her mother was a young child during the occupation, although it's clear that all the children of that time and place had their childhoods stolen from them. She says her mother smoked cigarettes from the age of 11, probably because smoking helped to assuage her constant hunger--and then she eventually died of lung cancer.

The Nazi occupiers changed the country using a strategy of "friendly" incrementalism. They started with small changes, but those small changes ended up with all the Jews rounded up into a small area in Amsterdam. And of course that wasn't the end of it. The author is referring to her grandmother when she writes, "What often struck Cor was how quickly her own family and others around them adjusted to the forced changes."

My grandfather's brothers were both part of the resistance. I'm trying to figure out their story, partly from letters that one of them wrote to the extended family. I also have a contact who is well-known to the relatives who remain in the Netherlands, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to learn more.

This is one of my favorite family pictures, my Great-uncle Gerrit Roorda, at the age of 76, protesting the Vietnam war. He was jailed once and put into a concentration camp once during the WWII for his work as part of the Dutch resistance. It's truly a wonder he wasn't shot by the Nazis, since that's what they did to people who worked for the resistance. I only met him once, when I was a little girl. My grandfather said they wouldn't give him a visa to visit this country because he was a communist and he "wouldn't keep his mouth shut." I can imagine that I wouldn't have agreed with too much of what Uncle Gerrit believed, but I think we would have had a great time arguing with each other. When Obama says that the right should sit down and shut up and let him "clean up the mess," let him "drive the car" since he now "owns" the keys to the car, this is the picture that comes to my mind. Sit down and shut up? I don't think so. No, that's not going to happen.

#227: Thanks for sharing the info on The Occupied Garden, Becky. I will definitely be looking for that one.

Terrific picture of your great-uncle! Now there's a man I would love to sit down and listen to, if only for his experiences in the Resistance.

I went to Holland about 12 years ago to visit my SIL and came home with a little book by Corrie Ten Boom called The Hiding Place. I would recommend this one to you as it is an example of a family who were part of the Dutch Resistance.

The Corrie Ten Boom book--yes, my dad had that on his shelf at one time. I'd forgotten about her.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in my family who hasn't been to visit the Dutch relatives. All my brothers have gone; can't think of a single cousin who hasn't. I think my dad might have been the only one of his siblings who didn't get there. Hmmm. I need to do something about that. It's a fascinating country. I'm in email contact with several cousins, one of which told me, "My wife Johanne and I were both born in 1948 and were both radicals in the sixties and seventies. We vote still left. Most Roordas do that in Holland." I've been an outlander all my life and always will be, I guess. I do love to mix it up, though.

Wonderful picture!

While driving around today I heard a very good piece on NPR about William Randolph Hearst on "On the Media" that you might want to track down. It featured a recent biographer (wrote one of those doorstoppers, sounds like, the interviewer teased him about how huge the book is.)

Edited to add the bit about Hearst when I remembered!

>231 sibylline:. Thanks for the heads-up on the Hearst. You're right, I took a look at it and it's gy-normous.

I just finished The Occupied Garden by Kristen Den Hartog. It felt like a 3.5-start to me, so I looked back to my rating system to see if that was about right. --"Something very good about the book, but also something not quite right." Yes, that's a good rating for this book.

Den Hartog told the story of the occupation of war-torn Holland during WWII; her historical facts kept my interest. She also told the story of her grandparents' family during that time, and again, she did a good job. Where the book fell down for me was the rather clumsy interweaving of the two stories. The transitions from one to the other were quite abrupt or even nonexistent. Another factor that made this a three-something read rather than a four for me was length: at times the story got bogged down in too much detail and would have benefitted from some editing and tightening.

But a 3.5-star rating is still pretty darned good in my system, and I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in the story of occupied Holland, told from a very human point of view.

#232: I have a copy of The Occupied Garden on the way to me now. Thanks for the input on it, Becky.

>218 labwriter:. For my fiction read, I had started The Secret Garden by Donna Tartt. I gave it the 50-page try, and I can see that it has possibilities. I think I'm just not in the mood for this one right now, so I've set it aside--not abandoned, just set aside.

Instead I picked up The Memory Box by Margaret Forster. I think readers have said that it's not her best effort, but it's a reasonably enjoyable read. I like Forster's writing a lot, and I need something now that's not going to be particularly challenging, so this one seems to fit the bill. I like it so far. I got as far as the Catherine character unpacking the box left to her by her mother. What a strange collection!

I finished a biography: Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist by Brooke Kroeger. I gave it a 2-star rating because reading through this thing was plodding and uphill work. One of the biographer's most important jobs is to discriminate between what needs to be included in the book and what doesn't. If there was anything that Kroeger left out of this book about Nellie Bly, I can't imagine what it might have been. I read it because I wanted the information for a writing project; otherwise, I wouldn't have finished this book. Not recommended.

#234: I have never read anything by Margaret Forster so I am looking forward to your review of that one when you are done, Becky.

#235: Putting the Nellie Bly book firmly on the 'Do Not Read' list!

Hi Stasia. Yep, do not read. It also occured to me to wonder with the Nellie Bly book at what point the biographer discovered she had a very unlikable subject for her biography. I've read biographers who discuss that very issue--is it necessary to like your subject? Generally, I think the answer is--no, it really isn't, although an unlikable subject is a lot trickier subject to write about, and frankly this writer of Nellie Bly, Brooke Kroeger, just wasn't up to the task. I've found that academics, particularly, but other writers too(I'm pretty sure Kroeger is a journalist), for whatever reason think that "anyone" can write a biography. Sigh. This was one of those.

Thoughts on The Memory Box. Well, it's first-person narrator, which Forster does a lot. One of the LT reviewers says her first-person narrators are "unlikable." I would instead call this one complicated. The basic story is that this woman's parents have both just died and she's an only child, so she's left with cleaning out the house, including an attic where nothing was ever thrown away. In point of fact, the woman she knew as her mother was actually her stepmother (a fact the narrator knew, so that's no surprise) who she accepted as her mother and loved very much. She had no memory of her real mother, and in the attic the narrator, Catherine, finds a box that her mother put together for her daughter before she died. The items in the box are numbered, but beyond the numbering there's no explanation, so Catherine is left to figure things out on her own.

I find the narrator's personality and response to the world to be very appropriate to the tone of the rest of the story. If Catherine were generally bubbly and bouncy and carefree, I'm not sure you would have much of a story. So I don't really get the "unlikable" criticism of the LT reviewer. That being said, the reader does need to have some kind of sympathetic understanding for this woman, since she's about 90% of the book. If as a reader you don't care for her, then you definitely won't like the book.

The other books I've read of hers are Lady's Maid, the fictionalized story of Wilson, Lady's Maid for Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Forster published a biography of Browning in 1988; then she published this novel about Browning's maid in 1990. She was inspired to write the novel because during her research on Browning she had found this woman Wilson, yet knew nothing about her. Forster shows how Wilson became the poet's defender and companion in what turned out to be a very complicated relationship. It's largely an epistolary novel, largely created from the (fictional) letters of Wilson to her mother in the North Country. I read the novel when it first came out, and it's stuck with me all this time. I guess I ought to go back and read it again to see what I think of it now. Additionally, her biog of Browning was excellent.

Forster has also written a couple of memoirs which I read earlier this year and enjoyed very much--Hidden Lives and Precious Lives. I'm very impressed by her range and also by the fact that she's still writing and publishing at the age of 72. Her latest novel is Isa and May, published this year.

Actually, looking at that again, I haven't read Precious Lives, so I ordered it from amazon.used. It's her memoir of a 56-year-old sister-in-law dying of cancer and a 96-year-old father dying of old age. What I find in her memoir writing is that she takes an unsentimental, humorous approach to things. Last year I went through my mother-in-law's last illness at the age of 90. She couldn't see, couldn't hear, pretty much couldn't move, yet she hung onto life with a tenacity that, frankly, I found hard to understand. The year before, I experienced the death of a neighbor and friend from ALS (also called Lou Gehrig's Disease). She was 56 years old and coped (at least outwardly) with her disease with the firmest denial I've ever seen. During her last days, she could move only her left thumb. She had a keyboard that allowed her to communicate in a limited way. The last word she typed was "content." When you go through something like that with a person, it causes you to wonder, if I were struck with a disease like that, what would I do? I'm looking forward to reading the memoir.

Stop! Oh, please stop! I want to read Forster's books now! Help! :)

ETA: I am loving the Vermont Tradition book. Am up to "A Chat Between Neighbors". Had no idea! Gotta get me a map of Vermont.

I copied over the notes that you and Sib wrote (23 pages!) and all your companion comments are interesting. Thanks, again.

Claudia, I'm so glad you're enjoying Dorothy's Vermont book. Twenty-three pages? Really? Ha. Sib and I do carry on--and me particularly. I never could "write short."

Margaret Forster has written tons of fiction. I don't know how or if it holds up. She started in 1964, for goodness' sake, and she's still at it. One of her novels that intrigues me is one called Have the Men Had Enough?. This one is about the dementia of the grandmother in the family who has always taken care of everyone. Now it's "everybody's" turn to take care of her. I think I put that one on my wish list.

23 pages! Am I horrified or pleased? A little of both, I think! I am so glad you are loving Vermont Tradition.

I love that Forster title, irresistible!

Becky, have you read Catherine Drinker Bowen's book Adventures of a Biographer? I really enjoyed it and think you might too.

Yes, Stasia, she's one of my favorites.

I thought you had probably read it already.

I'm surprised to see how long it's been since I last spoke to you. Hey, Becky! Thanks for your good comments on lots of stuff. Hope all is well with you!

Hi Peggy. I've had a few dog health "issues" for the past week that have kept me majorly distracted. Suffice it to say that my two Labs are about 85% on the mend and going in the right direction--hoping for 100% soon. I've been mostly lurking. Thanks for stopping by!

I'm about three-fourths the way through The Memory Box and it's holding my interest. This is a quiet, subtle novel that explores themes that include memory, mother/daughter relationships, the nature of family secrets and mythology and how relationships are distorted by them, and self discovery.

Personally, I love this rather difficult, complex, introverted narrator. She likes to travel by herself and actually enjoys spending time by herself, which some reader/reviewers really seem to punish her for. She doesn't have a lot of people skills, although if she has to she can step up to the occasion.

Some of the reader reviews: heavy going, a chore to read, depressing, a terrible downer, "superficially 'deep' and angst-ridden" (that one is hilarious), a vindictive tale of a spoiled brat, "Agatha Christie it's not." No duh.

>245 labwriter: Dog health issues are scary. Glad they are on the mend! I cannot look at what you're saying about *MemoryBox* just can't do it won't look better not look...... That does look good.

I've got the Forster memoir and I plan to begin with that -- but I do think you make an important point that many readers expect too much 'niceness' of the main character. Often that is so NOT the point, the point being to inhabit someone, warts and all, no?

Yours is such an interesting thread. I'm sorry I'm so darn far behind.

I love your description of The Occupied Garden. I'm going to buy this for a friend for Christmas!

So sorry that your dogs are not well. I hope they are better now!

>249 Whisper1:. Thanks, Linda, I appreciate your kind words, as always--always kind, and always appreciated.

>248 sibylline:. That's just brilliant, Sib, that the "niceness" of the main character is beside the point. Certainly that's true in The Memory Box. Although I suppose if a reader can't relate to this woman in any way, then the book probably wouldn't be worth the read.

This is either an incredibly dense book (from the standpoint of font size and words on the page, which it is) or else I'm so distracted by other things that I'm not getting much reading done. Both, I guess. I feel like I've been reading this thing forever, although it's not a bad experience. I think it was you, Sib, who said recently on your thread that sometimes even with a good book, you get to a point where you want to finish it and move on. My edition is only 275 pages, for heaven's sake.

Drat, time to start another thread, here