There and Back Again

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, I wish I had hobbit feet, given the amount of trekking around I’ve been doing lately. Nothing so interesting as Middle Earth, however. I’ve been sightseeing nursing homes and extended care facilities for my dad, thus, the hiatus in these blog posts lately. So it is with delight that I return to an exotic voyage, and wind up my reviews of books on India with Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitizer Prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.

The fact that I’m commenting on this now is a sad demonstration of how little I am caught up with modern authors. Lahiri published this in 1999, but by the time I get to it, it’s already enshrined in the modern canon. I first heard about it while wiling away the hours driving the Nikipedia back and forth, back and forth. There has to be something worthwhile to do with all that car time and given my proclivity for productivity, we were listening to the Teaching Company’s Art of Reading. If it hits the sonorous products of the Teaching Company, you can be certain it’s gone from trendy to enshrined.

While the three previous books I’ve mentioned about India mostly dealt with India and people arriving there, this one pretty much concerns people who’ve bought a one way ticket and landed in the other direction—Indians lost and wandering around the U.S.

Ms. Lahiri’s spare use of language nevertheless manages to create some resonant tone poems. I’m always interested in finding a way to understand people whose culture, values and choices appear very foreign to me, and Ms. Lahiri really gives voice to a subgroup that is sometimes voiceless in the juggernaut of American culture. Even though I think I’m pretty much a squeaky liberal, I am certainly guilty of thinking of some groups as “those people”, and find it really soul-expanding to be helped to understand. Both Ms. Lahiri (and another writer I love, Nahguib Mahfouz) really help to create a feeling of commonality, without betraying their culture’s uniqueness.

I just wish her characters weren’t so sad. Wow, it’s really bleak for Indians in the U.S. Even with family and a good income, Ms. Lahiri’s characters are really in a struggle to define themselves, eke out happiness, achieve authentic relationships, and they have a tough time succeeding, if at all. For anyone who has trouble wrapping their mind around arranged marriages, Ms. Lahiri offers a window into what they might be like—i.e., not much different than the Western choose-for yourself-and-be-miserable. I wouldn’t say either system has a lock on the secret to happiness or misery. Maybe people operate much more out of their own characters, even within different cultural contexts.

The stories are soulful and ambiguous, and normally I really like narratives that serve up stuff you’re still chewing on later. But jeez, couldn’t she have left some of them at least a little happiness? Maybe it’s the economy now compared to 11 years ago; maybe it’s my own personal life experiences lately. But I’d like to see a little hope, a little romance, or, gosh, the tiniest touch of humor. I’ve heard Lahiri compared to Raymond Carver, but no dice, in my opinion. I mean, Lahiri’s characters have jobs, families, spouses, big houses—couldn’t they enjoy a little of it? Carver’s characters are often busted, sick, broke, and they still sometimes have hope and happiness. Okay, what Carver and Lahiri have in common is—they both write/wrote short stories.

All said and done, it’s a helluva first publication (although my guess is she’d been cranking the hard disc for a good long time.) She’s gone on since the 2000 prize to become a literary lion with a veritable bookstore shelf all to herself. Yeah, I’m jealous. She’s a good read. Just not on a dreary day.

An Indian Epic

It’s harder to comment on excellence than on the mediocre or mundane, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Paul Scott’s magnum opus, The Raj Quartet, is just that: excellent in every way. The characters will haunt your thoughts for years, the setting is so vivid you’ll look for turmeric stains on your fingers, you’ll never be able to hear the sound of a sitar again without it meaning something to you, and seeing Indian locations in the news will forever after remind you of defining incidents in the book.

The Raj Quartet is, obviously, four books that make up an entire saga. All of the characters are somehow inter-related, and many know each other. Spanning the early part of the 1940’s, the past events in the lives of the characters keep intruding on the lives of others. What emerges is a portrait of Anglo-Indian relations and relationships, the political and the private, as complicated as a mandala. There are enough broken love relationships for a Hindu epic; characters who could behave well but choose the opposite; rather ordinary people who somehow rise to greatness; the silly, the sordid, and the sots. You’ll find yourself in love with a few of the characters, and some of them you’ll wish you could shake firmly (or worse). Good people are not necessarily rewarded, and by the end you feel sorry for even the worst villains, or at least understand them a bit.

Yeah, it’s long. Like everyone, I hope for short books that give me a satisfying sense of accomplishment—gee, I actually completed something. But, fond though I am of my blue pencil, I don’t think an editor could have cut a word in the 1,984 pages that make up my edition. Don’t let it stop you—consider it a cheap vacation. You might even learn more than you would on an actual trip to India, at considerably less cost. Although once you read this work, you’ll be looking at airfares the same way I am.

In the interest of honesty, I must admit that I saw the 14 episodes of The Jewel in the Crown before reading the books. This PBS series from the 80s is also terrific. Because I saw it first, I don’t know if the visuals would have matched my imagination, but I will say that the series is worthy of the book—subtly acted, not too many pretty boy actors, minor characters and subplots given their due. Fourteen episodes are a lot, but I’ve seen it twice now, and truthfully I’m thinking about watching it again with the Nikipedia. She won’t get all the subtlety at 16, but it’s no bad thing to see how complicated life can be, and what a variety of choices people make, with sometimes appalling consequences.

Along with Kristin Lavransdattir and Middlemarch (gosh, maybe I really do like LOOONNNNGGG books) this is probably in my 10 top list of all time. Read The Raj Quartet and expand your soul.

More ladies in distress—India

It’s tough out there. My previous post was about the plight of young Indian widows. It wasn’t so hot (or maybe it was, groan) for Western women who made their way there, either. East of the Sun, by Julia Gregson, is a chunky bedtime read about three women who travel to India pre-World War II to find husbands.

I didn’t love these characters, but I did find myself reading to the end because, ultimately, I did care what happened to them. Not all of the women are equally appealing, nor are they all as thoroughly fleshed out as one might wish, but you know all of them—everyone with female friends does, although I had some trouble actually identifying with any of them. I suppose I have a blind spot that happily ever after doesn’t necessarily mean getting married.

What Ms. Gregson has done superbly well, in my opinion, is handle point of view in an extremely interesting way, and anyone working on fiction should have a look. She does a masterful job of switching between how her characters see themselves (in chapters where one woman dominates) and then how other people see them. She does this quite well with one character in particular, Viva, whose interior monologue is confused and scared, but whom others see as, well, their mom or big sis.

One plot strand that was unusual in such a gal pal book was the introduction of a whacked out stalker for whom Viva has become responsible. His mental illness is never really specified, but Gregson does a great job of portraying his behavior and how the other characters understand and react to it.

Despite the exotic local, India just provides the excuse for a story that is really closer to Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants than it is to the Jewel in the Crown. But more about that in my next post. East of the Sun is a great book to read under an afghan with a cup of Darjeeling, when the Sunday New York Times is just a bit too much reality.

Booking a passage to India

Ever notice how ideas cluster? I didn’t actually set out to read a ton of material on India, but for some reason several books have recently insinuated themselves into my six foot high bedside stack. So, the next few blog posts will be discussing books set in India or about Indians. For some reason, most of these have a 20th or 21st century setting, so I’m going to skip the Mahabharata and Ramayana retellings which both Nikipedia and I read last year. If you’re interested, the R. K. Narayan versions were terrific.

I don’t read anywhere near as many YA novels as I should, given that I’m working on one, but those I read I generally enjoy, and highly recommend them to adults as well. Usually they’re easy to follow, tell a good story, and can be completed in two or three nights of bedtime reading. Homeless Bird, by Gloria Whelan, is one such and it won a ton of prizes, including the National Book Award in 2000. Spoiler alert—don’t read further if you don’t want to know the plot of the book.

Homeless Bird is about Koly, whose dirt-poor parents marry her off at a very young age to the son of a family they barely know. He turns out to be hopelessly ill (the family is trying to use dowry money for one last desperate attempt to save him).

After he dies, she has a miserable existence with her mother in law, who’s in pretty desperate straits herself, and who ultimately abandons her on the streets of Vrindavan, a city known as the City of Widows. Widows become a huge economic liability, and this is a city where some can stave off starvation by chanting at temples all day long. It’s a hopeless survival. There are several twists of fate, and Koly ends up (presumably) living happily ever after.

To some degree, this is a Cinderella trope. At first, I had a hard time placing what era the story was set in, until I started to see mention of computers and realized to my horror that Ms. Whelan was describing present day conditions. It’s particularly horrifying to be reminded that in this huge country there is no real social safety net and that in a place where I talk to well spoken people every day in call centers, other people—young and helpless girls—can starve to death any day of the week. It’s easy to shrug off horrors set in the past, but Ms. Whelan’s choice to set this story in the present day is arresting and impactful.

Ms. Whelan does an excellent job of portraying three dimensional villains. Her bad people make cruel choices, but you do have some understanding of why they make those choices, and you find yourself pitying or at least being able to forgive them. Also, characters are introduced subtly, and unfold over time, rather than the stock and unchanging minor characters one often encounters in a short novel.

The introduction of Vrindavan is fascinating—well off the familiar settings Westerners might stereotype as India. It had me running to a map and doing an internet search for more info. I think she includes the right amount for the average YA reader. However, I always wish for notes in the back of any novel that deals with historical or foreign settings. At least some links on the writer’s website would be nice. It’s a quibble. Maybe it’s a tribute—the writer has made you want to know more. To her credit, Ms. Whelan does supply a page of further information, but no links. Maybe that’s appropriate for YA readers. On second thought, maybe this book is intended for middle grades—I’m never quite sure where the cut point is.

I’m not very fond, any more, of books where the happy ending is that the girl gets the guy. Based on my own experience, that’s neither the end, nor necessarily very happy in real life. Given the realities of poor women in India, it appears that was one of the few resolutions available to the heroine, but I’m glad Ms. Whelan also gives her a trade where she can earn money and have some independence.

This book might be distressing to sensitive readers, adult or YA, but it provides a rich and thoughtful picture of a contemporary culture with troubling issues. It caused me to think a lot about the differences and, more disturbingly, the parallels between women’s situation in India and my own home culture. BTW, I've classified this as historical fiction, even though in my estimation it's not, because that's what the librarian who told me about the book billed it as.

Cookbooks for when you’re broke

Which is nearly always for us, mostly due to the amount I spend on food and books! February’s “cookbook of the month” experiment turned out to be two: Ann Rogers’ The New Cookbook for Poor Poets (and others), and Mary Ostyn’s Family Feasts for $75 a Week, which I picked up for about $10 while shopping at Sam’s Club to “save” money. (BTW, for the Rogers book I have the earlier version, but since Amazon is currently selling that one for $50, the link is to a cheaper one.)

Let’s attack the $75 a week one first. Can’t be done in my house. Ms. Ostyn seems like a terrific person, and in addition to 4 biological kids, she’s adopted 6 from other countries—Korea and Ethiopia. Since I’ve barely been able to cope with one child, I’m surprised all her recipes don’t start out with, “First, take a large swig of whiskey”, but she seems a more sensible and able person than I am. Some weeks, I’d be doing well to feed us each on $75 a week, and when we decide to try some new diet book with prescribed menus, well, checkout sticker shock can be pretty devastating. Too bad anxiety doesn’t cause me to lose weight.

If you buy organic food, I just don’t believe you could possibly feed 4 people on $75 a week, and I’d like to hear from anyone that can and how you do it. Maybe if you grow all produce yourself. However, I must admit that following Ms. Ostyn did cut the grocery bills somewhat. I’ve also noticed that if I actually make out a week of menus, this in itself cuts down what I spend dramatically. Even though she didn’t save me a ton of money, her recipes were interesting, as they include a lot of Ethiopian dishes, and a few techniques I’d never heard of, like dry frying onions, then adding oil. Surprisingly, it didn’t not end up being “Cajun blackened” frying pan.

Except for the addition of cayenne pepper, we found the recipes to be somewhat bland. As Nikipedia put it, this is food kids would eat. Just not MY kid, who has always liked highly seasoned food. For example, we tried the white chicken chili recipe, but it just lacked something—maybe a handful of cilantro? And the portions are small (unlike a lot of cookbooks). Now, you have to remember that my idea of portions is pretty skewed. As a kid my aunt used to cook 3 pounds of pasta for 5 people. Even so, I need more than a scant cup of chili for dinner. Hats off to Ms. Ostyn for what she is doing, and her “front of book” is interesting, but the recipes need some work.

Whenever I open Poor Poet’s cookbook, I feel 40 years younger. I bought this book as a teenager when I first ran away from home (something I still would like to do at times). I spotted it in a bookstore in Berkeley, and it was my introduction to budget cooking. At a time when I was lonely, lost and broke, she taught me that style was not necessarily linked to money.

I remember showing it to my mom several years later. She was unenthused—“they’re cheap recipes”. Yeah, well…after a childhood spent gnawing bones clean, Mom believed in MEAT on the table. The rest of us have since realized that maybe that isn’t always such a hot idea.

The Poor Poet eats well—lots of flavor, interesting ingredient mixes, easy to make with ingredients I tend to have on-hand, and cheap for the most part. Ms. Rogers believes that food should feed the soul, and a good meal inspires the creative spirit. I’ve enjoyed this book for many years, but this last month I tried many recipes I’d ignored, although I already had plenty of favorites in the book. Only one flatbread recipe was kind of a dud—it ended up being 4 inch crackers rather than any kind of bread.

My one quibble with this book is that it often substitutes easily available ingredients for authentic ones. Since this book was written in the 1960s, it’s an interesting time travel to realize that most of these ingredients simply weren’t available in the U.S. at that time. These were the days when dinner at a restaurant was your choice of roast beef, ham, fried chicken or roast turkey, not matter paneer or pesto something-or-other. So, Ms. Rogers paneer uses cottage cheese, her Noodles Basilico is delicious, but not pesto, etc. The flavors, if not the ingredients, have stood up well to the test of time. If you can get your hands on a copy (it’s long out of print) I recommend it just to absorb Ms. Rogers’ attitudes toward the art of food. The recipes are a great bonus.

Columbia University College Tour

It’s hard to be running late when you’re in charge of the deadlines, but somehow I manage. So, this is late—in the sense that I’m writing a report about a month after we toured Columbia. Assuming, however, that the throes of college applications have passed by this time of year, perhaps I can just declare that this is EARLY for the next admissions season. There, I feel better.
The Nikipedia is only sophomore-level, but given how LATE we are on just about everything, it seems reasonable to check things out when we’re in an appropriate city. Thus, trip to New York = visit to Columbia. Why were we interested? Okay, I feel a digression coming on.

In the few schools we’ve so far toured (Oberlin, Peabody, Northwestern & Univ. of Chicago) there seems to be two prominent methods of organizing an education. First method: have few to no required courses—student is free to concentrate heavily on major or professional training. This method often allows the student to double or triple major. One might wish, as a parent, that this would result in complementary majors—say, French and Education, or Marketing and Art—you know, something that is likely to enhance the probability that Junior will actually be able to pay off those college loans. Unfortunately, in my observation, it usually results in bizarre mash ups, like French and Accounting, or Piano and Biology, where the kid is majoring in what they really love, and double majoring in something they force themselves to take to get a job. Not so good.

The other route is to require a significant core curriculum, which nearly everyone takes. These often feature heavy reading of classics, along with math and science, or at least enough math and science that the kid will graduate with some idea of the topics (at least enough to discard all the creationist/intelligent design crap.) The idea is that the student will have a depth of cultural knowledge that they can then apply to a concentration in the last two years.

We can argue about the benefits of each until the gargoyles fall off their perches, but at least right now, the Nikipedia’s (and my) strong preference is for the core curriculum approach, à la University of Chicago and Columbia.

Okay, we already all know Columbia is a terrific school. I mean, it’s Ivy League (which really only speaks to sports, but who cares?) and has a roster of famous alumni as long as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (including our beloved Barack, who by the way was a dorm daddy while there). If you want to know more about the core curriculum, check out the book Great Books, by David Denby. He’s a journalist who graduated from Columbia, then went back as an adult and retook the curriculum. Education is so wasted on the young.

My top concern in sending my precious to Columbia was safety and security. For a lot of people, that’s a concern for the Univ. of Chicago, too, but I live here and even went there in the bad old days—it wasn’t all that scary then, and it’s a lot safer now. Same with Columbia. I was really impressed with the attention to security, especially in the dorms. Something like 98% of students live on campus—no duh there, given the price of New York City housing. Even better, the admissions counselor said the overwhelming majority of professors live within walking distance of campus.

Mostly what I was impressed with at Columbia was the sense of a real campus community. The layout of buildings tends to feel like a giant hug around the main plaza, with the dorms anchoring the corners and edges. The architecture is interesting with a nice mix of old and modern (engineering, what else?) We ate in a dining hall that could have been lifted from Harry Potter (lots of wood paneling) and the food was terrific. Ever had dessert pizzas? Pineapple, coconut, omigod.

What we both especially liked about the dining hall (okay, after the food) was the interactions we observed. Columbia touts the number of minorities it admits, and that’s lovely, but I always watch to see if all groups appear to be interacting. I mean, it’s not fostering communication if all the Asian or African American kids sit off at their own tables. Not so here—totally interactive.

One interaction we couldn’t help but observe. We happened to sit down next to an African American girl (girl to me, at least, given what an old bat I am). She calmly checked us out, then began talking to Niki—obviously recognizing us as on visit. Her boyfriend appeared, she had a quiet set to with him where she read him the riot act for keeping her waiting—lots about honoring commitments. Yay! just the kind of girl I want my girl to be! After he left, she calmly picked up a book, then kindly spoke a little more to Niki and left—what self possession!

As 1 o’clock approached, the dining room emptied—another yay! No lolling about cutting class. In fact, my dominant impression watching students was, these kids are moving.

The admissions counselor cautioned everyone not to say in their application that they wanted to come to Columbia because it’s in New York, but let’s be real—that’s a huge attraction. I mean, the museums, the arts, the business—geez, imagine the internships. There’s a subway stop right at the entrance to campus, and you can be in midtown in about 15 minutes. My main worry is that Niki would skip class to inhale museums (I guess that’s better than the other stuff you can inhale). With most everyone living in dorms, and not a big Greek scene, it didn’t appear that drugs or alcohol were much of an issue. Or as the tour guide said, who has time? There’s just too much to do.

How would I compare Columbia with other schools we’ve seen? Well, the most comparable would probably be the University of Chicago. My totally unscientific feel is that there’s more eccentricity at the U of C. More kids look like mad scientists or poets, the purple hair quotient is higher, discussions overheard are more serious and esoteric at the U of C. The kids at Columbia look more normal and, dare I say, attractive, with more conventional albeit big city style. Not the chi-chi coed look you see at Northwestern, but polished and clean. I bet Columbia is more fun for social kids than the U of C would be, and U of C a better fit for real academics on the geeky side.

What they have in common is that kids at both campuses seem to love and cherish the common core. But then, if you didn’t want that already you most certainly would not go to these schools. I dunno, but to me it seems to produce an intellectual confidence that allows them to tackle further studies with direction and assurance. I was very impressed that our tour guide had a clear plan for graduate school, was carefully assessing how much money she could land to pursue it, and also had a Plan B that she was enthusiastic about if Plan A didn’t work out. That’s what I’d like to see in Nikipedia by senior year.

As a good daughter of the U of C, I still hope the Nikipedia might get in there, especially because, sniff-sniff, she’d only be a 45 minute drive away. But we’d do a very happy dance if the fat envelope eventually comes from Columbia.

Cooking up January

Julia Child apparently could not get it together enough to send out her Christmas cards in December, so she and hubby made a practice of sending out Valentines instead. Boy, can I relate. Forget the cards, ain’t going to happen. However, I do feel the need to catch up, since I’ve had precious little time to post here since January, due to actual big paying writing gig, trip to New York, class, and grandpa canning himself while I was away and breaking his collar bone. But you don’t want to hear about this, right? Let’s talk about what’s to eat.
As I mentioned in the last post, we are going to select one cookbook a month and actually cook from it. I absolutely have to pay homage to Julia, so the first one (January) was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. I’ve mentioned before how Julia Child taught me to cook. Back when I was in college, I actually had a printed copy of the television show recipes in paperback, which I still have of course. But for most of college and grad school I was way too broke to afford the actual bible, which was not then available in paperback in the U.S. To my extreme delight, I discovered that it was available in England in a Penguin edition and snatched up a copy when I spied it in a bookstore in Salisbury. This became my bedtime reading for the rest of the trip.

By the time I got home, I’d learned a lot about technique and treatment of ingredients, but I can’t actually say I cooked much from the book. Somewhere I read an article that it took more than two days to make the Beef Wellington preparation. About this time I had also discovered the cookbooks of Elizabeth David, and her somewhat sketchy directions and loose approach seemed much easier to me. I understand now (especially after January) that Julia Child’s recipes are not so much difficult as they LONG and precise, but who has time as a grad student, or for the rest of life, for that matter? So MAFC became the go-to if I didn’t understand a technique or wanted the definitive recipe for Gateau Pithiviers or some such, but I generally used someone else’s recipe.

I used it enough that the Penguin edition began to yellow (rapidly) and lose pages (slowly but consistently). Finally, 20 years later, I looked at my baby daughter and wondered what legacy I would leave her. Seriously, she was in danger of not inheriting a copy of MAFC. Cannot be. This was just about the time that there was a buzz about re-issuing MAFC, and when I saw the pre-publication price, I started combing used bookstores, nabbing both volumes for about $5 each (made me happier than a good stock pick).

From the condition of the books, it became obvious that using MAFC is like saving money or losing weight—everybody talks about it but nobody actually does it. So, when Nikipedia and I began this cookbook-of-the-month project, the very first one obviously had to be MAFC, volume 1.

My conclusion after about a dozen recipes? If you have any interest in eating, you must have this book. Notice I did not say “cooking”. You don’t need to know anything about cooking. Believe me, Julia will tell you everything you need to know—don’t think about it, don’t try to improve, don’t skip any ingredients—just do exactly what she says and you’ll have a taste orgasm. I mean, the Casserole-roasted Chicken with Tarragon smelled so good and tasted so transcendent I wanted to take a bath in it, smear it on my face, take the pot into a corner and snarl away my beloved child, eating it all myself.

I’ve been making omelets for more than 30 years, but never tried them Julia’s way. Who knew two crummy eggs in a pan could cause your eyes to fly open? And the Gratin of Creamed Salmon! We barely got that one to the table and when we did, it already had two forks sticking out of it.

Maybe there’s a bad recipe in there somewhere, but we didn’t unearth it. A lot of people have joked that you can make anything taste good with enough butter, but canned salmon? These recipes are just superb, and represent a kind of cooking that can rarely be beat, here in the U.S. or even in much of Europe, any more.

There were a few things I didn’t like about the book, however. The recipes are set up with ingredients running down the left column, and how and when you use them running parallel in the right column. Myself, I like recipes to list all the ingredients at the beginning, in order of use. Just easier for me. The instructions are LONG, however simple their actual execution, and this may be either intimidating, comforting, or over-kill depending on your level of cooking expertise. I’ve been cooking for at least 40 years now (I started in infancy), but I have to confess I learned a few things. I hate the index for several reasons—the typography is just horrible—can’t distinguish heads and sub heads. The recipes are not listed by exact title: if you want the Chicken casserole I mentioned above, you have to look it up under Casseroles, where you’ll find “Chicken Fricasees”, or under “Chicken” or under “Poulet”. For me, a pain.

This is not a budget cookbook. But, even with the butter, floods of vermouth and cognac, and all the très cher seafood, it’s not terribly expensive or caloric either. Why? portions are small to reasonable. In fact, Julia mentions that the portions are even larger than she wished, but her editors convinced her to change her expectations from the multi-course French way to the fewer, larger American expectations. If you can control your gluttony and stick to the portions sizes, it’s not so bad.

What about the time factor? As long as you read the entire recipe beforehand, and that’s an important caveat, the recipes weren’t bad at all. I wouldn’t attack a major entrée at 6:45pm on a week night, but many of the recipes are minutes to prepare—takes longer to read them.

January with Julia was great. We didn’t put on an excessive amount of weight. The Nikipedia groaned when I announced February would have a cookbook of its own. Onward and upward.

Shop at home

First, shop at home. This is one of my mantras for 2010. Actually, I’ve been telling myself this for much longer, but I’m hoping it will actually sink in this year. Have you ever been really hot to buy something, and then, by the time you get it home, you don’t have the time to read the instructions, or the book goes on the shelf for later, or it’s just too good to use? Well, at least one of those describes my software shelf, probably one third of my book collection, and my entire stash of fabric and yarn, to say nothing of the grand piano. So this year, I’m going to try to use some of this stuff to create beautiful things and beautiful experiences (and finally understand how some of this software works, beyond just the basics.)
Is this really about art? Well, gee, it’s my blog, so I guess I can write about what I want to. But isn’t at least one of the purposes of art to beautify life? To lend creativity to the mundane? To spin dross into gold?

Where to begin? Just choosing what to get to is an overwhelming project in itself. However, I happened to be wringing my hands while in the kitchen, and realized that I was facing my wall of cookbooks. I have upwards of 220 cookbooks; depending on how you count pamphlets and specialized guides, even more. And how many of these do I ever use on a regular basis? Maybe 5. Okay, you clutter control freaks are now saying, get rid of the rest. But I must tell you, if there were a fire, after getting my kid out of the house, and making sure the pets were safe (with the possible, er, exception of one cat) I’d grab the cookbooks and run out naked. For certain, these are the possession my child will need to sort through when I croak. She doesn’t get rid of anything either, but I digress…

Possibly still inspired by envy at Julie & Julia, which everyone knows I should have written, better (and been cashing the checks on by now), I decided to select one cookbook per month for the next year, and cook a recipe from it at least twice per week. I’ve run out of shelf space, so I’m hoping this “shop at home” will stem the tide, although truthfully I bought 2 more cookbooks over last weekend.

I can dine in for years with this. Of course, the Nikipedia, dedicated foodie that she is, was ecstatic. And she uttered those fatal words, “Mom, I can HELP you,” more than doubling the potential workload of this project.

Next post will be about our January experiments. Let me know if you have any nominations for a cookbook you’d like to see tested—chances are, I probably have it!

Magic in the kitchen

I’ve fallen in love again. Maybe I’m particularly susceptible and lord knows I’ve made some bad choices in the past, but this time I think it’s the real thing.




I’ve fallen in love with Paul Child. If you’ve seen the movie version of Julie & Julia (not, for heaven’s sake the dumb and self serving book) or read My Life in France by (somewhat) Julia Child and (mostly) Alex Prud’homme, well, you can’t help but know what I mean.




A dear and now deceased friend of mine used to say, when looking at potential dates or other women’s husbands, “Where are the new men for the new women?” Well, Paul Child was that new man, and Julia was that new woman. Here was a guy who could fall madly, passionately in love with a gawky, quirky, strident woman at least a head taller and not be threatened. Nay, it appears that he felt himself among the happiest of mortals, and so was she. I wish she were still around, there’s a lot I’d like to learn and I don’t mean French cooking.



What strikes me particularly is how their marriage seemed to blend an impish sense of fun with the ability to endure, persevere, and make the best of some not-so-good situations. So little ego involved—she supported his career through a lot of ups and downs, and he plunged into assisting hers when, after many years, she actually had one and it became the better of the two. And which of us cannot cheer on a woman whose best career years were after fifty (and she didn’t even have the excuse of raising kids)?



Meryl Streep chews on the scenery a bit, and Julia wasn’t really that weird. I know; I learned to cook by watching her every day when I got home from college classes. She and I share a birthday (along with Napolean, hmmm) so I’m sure we share a connection. I hope some of that fairy dust will sift my way. Think I’ll go watch it again.

Avatar—Second Coming?

I figured I had to like it—if it’s got the Fox News guys’ shorts in knots, well, generally it’s my kind of movie. Plus, if it’s supposedly quality science fiction, the Nikipedia is all aflutter, so I agreed to pop for the tickets.


We haven’t been serious movie goers since acquiring the big screen tube and Netflix, but the availability of 3-D got us into those new reclining seats. All the while we were waiting, I kept feeling like I was going to slide off the pseudo leather, and spent my time grumbling about the $30 for the movie, for which we could have had 2 months and 24 movies from Netflix, which is why we’re not big customers any more. But if I needed any further nudge in the direction of my own comfortable couch, it was the rest of the audience. Now, I’ve complained about bad behavior before, but, jeez, EVERY TIME? The elderly couple next to us got up 4 times during the movie--why don’t these people sit on the END of the row if they need that many bathroom breaks? Or maybe consider not drinking the super humongous size? The little lady behind me hung her feet, with drippy boots, over the empty seat next to me. I wonder what her house looks like. Actually, no I don’t.



If my fellow audience members aren’t bad enough, well, the theater had more in store for us. Now I admit that I haven’t been to the movies since seeing Star Trek this summer, but the previews before Avatar made my fillings ring from the volume, steady stream of gorey mayhem, and the actual shaking of the seats from explosions and car crashes. The Nikipedia was ready to post a picket sign for the very lengthy National Guard recruiting ad. Apparently, the only people worth marketing to are adolescents so dumb that they can be induced to be cannon fodder by a good ad campaign. Anyone thrilled by this “preview” ought to take another preview. Say, sit in the lobby of the new Marine Corps museum and watch all the injured 18 year olds with missing limbs wheel around the lobby for the day. Find out what the price really is, how glamorous it really is, and, I guess, go watch a movie instead if you need a quick pumping of adrenalin.



Apparently Fox News thinks that the tough, virile, technologically savvy guys should not be beating up on the skinny, primitive natives. At least, that’s what I hope, and I’m glad to hear it. However, not so glad about the movie.



It’s some kind of mishmash of pseudo earth goddess worship, cowboys and Indians, sweet sassy chick transforms tough dope, and bad guys who keep on coming finally get creamed after the good guys’ world is flattened. Yadda, yadda, I mean couldn’t we have the tiniest shred of a decent plot? How about a hero that’s not a complete meathead? Plus, everything in history tells us that superior technology usually wins—just ask any group of native peoples. By the middle of the movie I could barely suppress the, “OOOHH PUUHLEEZ”



Okay, it is gorgeous. The world is one almost anyone with a shred of nature-loving would adore. I haven’t seen such a visually gorgeous “world” since What Dreams May Come, and you have to die to get to that one.



If you can see Avatar in 3-D, bring ear plugs and enjoy the light show. Otherwise, believe me, you can wait for the DVD.

Off we go

I just took a caravan to Afghanistan, didn’t buy an airline ticket, and thank heavens didn’t get shot at. Rather, I’ve been snuggled under the cover of my very own down comforter, reading about other people getting knifed, mummified by desert winds, running off with tribal chieftains, and marrying men who already have several other wives in tow. Sometimes you just have to get out of yourself, know what I mean? If you want to know a whole lot about any number of countries, check out James Michener’s oeuvre. Chances are, he wrote about it.



The Michener book that’s been keeping me up nights is Caravan, published in the early sixties. It just goes to prove that if you do enough research, you can look prescient, even if the information was there all the time. Michener accurately predicted tribalism resulting in near civil war, Soviet invasion, extreme abuse of Afghani women, and a whole host of stuff you can read about any day in your newspaper’s front page. And if you want to get a really good perspective on why a war in Afghanistan is probably even more unwinnable than one in Iraq, why, look no further than this 40 year old book. The Afghanistan of Caravan makes other messed up countries, like Somalia and Nigeria, look like child’s play to get organized.



Nobody will ever accuse James Michener of intricate plots, psychodrama, or brevity (my soul mate!), but he knows how to amass a mountain of data as high as the Hindu Kush, twist it into a forthright yarn that shadows real characters, and by the time you plow through 300 to 1,000 pages, you know everything he knows about the subject. He wrote big books, but ones where the storytelling is so engaging that you find yourself reading over lunch, carrying the brick into the bathroom, and, in my case, burning yourself because you were stirring something with one hand while holding the book in the other.



In addition to Caravan, I’ve read Tales of the South Pacific, Hawaii and Caribbean. Hawaii is fun and poignant (don’t bother with the awful movie they made from part of it). After reading the horrifying Caribbean, I don’t think I’d ever be able to vacation there again. Best of all, though, was Michener’s autobiography, The World Is My Home. It was a pleasure to visit with this seemingly kind, self made guy who seldom has a bad word to say about anyone. Whether he was really that way in person (hmmm, he was married 3 times), we’ll never know. It’s a big book, but it leaves out perhaps as much as it includes. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for an easy read that will give you more entertainment than whatever you just rented from Netflix, check out Michener, any Michener. Years ago any of his books was eagerly awaited and an instant bestseller. You don’t hear about his work much since he passed away. More’s the pity.

A Christmas sugar plum

I went to the opera recently and nobody died. Franz Lehar just isn’t like that. The Merry Widow is a huge whipped cream torte of music, frivolity, and child-like swirls of emotions. The Lyric Opera of Chicago has done it up right, with great costumes, beautiful voices, and a cast that makes a serious stab at acting.

It does seem that these financial times have returned us to more conventional productions. A number of years ago the Lyric was experimenting with “modernizing” some operas. For me, the nadir was reached in their production of Gluck’s Alceste, where everyone was costumed in beige and gray. At one point there was a pile of naked, writhing bodies on stage that, far from being erotic, resembled a plate of Klingon Gagh, or the earthworms in my compost heap. My guess is the people who pay for the big ticket seats didn’t exactly relish it either.

Opera, well done, can be the best of all theater experiences: music, dance, plot, lyrical language, voice, orchestra, acting—it CAN have it all. Okay, sometimes it’s a little weak on a few of those things. Acting can be a bit dubious when the two “young lovers” are pretty clearly pushing fifty under the spackled on makeup, or when they’re as big as two belugas circling each other. And the plots, well, I’ve been meaning to write “the three plots of all operas” for a long time. But sometimes the lyricism can move me to tears. Maybe it’s my age, but the regret of getting older in the words of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, or just about any line in La Bohème, have me crying like I’m peeling onions.

The Nikipedia only likes happy endings, and by that standard Lehar ought to be her favorite composer (he’s not, but that’s another blog post). Both the Merry Widow and his other well-known work, The Student Prince, have all the problems you’d like to have, and even the villains are not so bad and have good reasons to oppose the hero/heroine. If only life were like that.

I have one horrible problem in viewing opera, and that is that after nearly freezing to death getting to the production (never once have I bought tickets that the day didn’t turn out to be a ride on the polar express), once I sit down and the overture starts, the combination of warmth and relaxation often puts me right to sleep. Usually, I have the Nikipedia to poke me in the ribs ruthlessly, but sometimes the Sandman even affects her. Not so this time—the constant action, the music, the dance, the colorful costumes kept me charged from beginning to end, and that’s saying something because it’s a 3 hour production. However, thanks to this somnambulance affliction, I’ve discovered that I quite enjoy opera on DVDs as well, where you don’t have to watch the entire thing at once. Also, while nothing compares to the live experience, you can wait a long time to see the opera you want produced within driving distance. DVDs fill the gap, and may be an easier introduction for squirmy kids. I haven't seen either the Merry Widow or one of the available versions of The Student Prince on DVD (the old version is available on Netflix), so let me know how they are if you check 'em out.

NaNoWriMo: alas, No Mo’

NaNoWriMo wound up on November 30th, so I think I’ve finally recovered enough to pontificate. Some have said it’s pretty hard to teach me anything, but I did learn a few things about writing and life from the experience.

Writing a novel is a humbling experience.
As is probably evident from the length of some of these blog posts, I’m no slouch at spewing words. I’d thought about my novel, researched it for months, even translated tons of material from French reference books. I’d outlined it, summarized it, plotted crises and down time. None of it was enough—I was done with my first draft at 40,000 and really had to struggle to make it to 50,000. Sure, it’s a teen historical novel (also known as YA), and they can be shorter, but probably not that short. Halfway into my story, which is set in a girls’ school during the time of Louis XIV, I felt like all my characters did was eat meals and walk around the corridors. My respect for another author, who sets her story in a similarly closed environment, went up a thousand per cent. Hats off, J.K. Rowling.

Forget the research until you’ve written the first draft
I know this is heresy for historical fiction. Okay, maybe you can read a Time Life book or some background piece so you don’t make glaring mistakes. Even though I have a file drawer and several shelves worth of books on Louis XIV, everyday life in the period, carriages, maps, etc., I couldn’t remember any of it while writing at the speed required by NaNoWriMo. Far from combing through files, I didn’t even have time to look at the binder I put together of essential details. Know what? Didn’t matter. I just stuck in brackets and moved on with the story. Now I can see exactly what details I need to round out the story, rather than trying to cram in all the interesting facts just because I spent so much time accumulating them. Plus, I could have saved myself months of work.

I think historical novelists need to distinguish what is fun to know from what is essential to the story. Unless you have a publisher that is willing to print a brick, your attention is better focused on the plot and characters rather than your file cards.

Forget the outline
I had an extensive outline which was little help in gauging how much needed to be written to get my characters from plot point to plot point. Also, it encouraged me to feel that I had to begin at the beginning and work through to the end. Not much room for innovation there.

Maybe if I wasn’t working on the thirty day deadline, an outline would have worked better. But if I ever do NaNoWriMo again, I’m just going to have 30 sections that I can write 1,667 words on, probably also called “chapters”. The whole point of this speed writing exercise is that you finally get something down. It doesn’t have to be good, and believe me, mine isn’t. But you have something to work with. Either an outline or a 30-points list works for that, but the 30 points would have had me writing faster, and better spread out over the time period.

If something’s too hard, make it harder
For most of my life I’ve been the type who can only write during the day (preferably morning) with significant quiet. During NaNo, I wrote while in coffee shops with kids screaming next to me, wrote while the Nikipedia clacked along on her keyboard, wrote at 12:30 at night and woke up with my hands still on the keyboard. You can type in unexpected places like the bathroom, as long as you’re sitting down (eeuw, gross).

Also, making it harder really cures writer’s block and perfectionism. I wrote 6,000 words the Saturday before the deadline. There wasn’t any time to think or worry. As my friend Pat Bracewell (another historical novelist) advised me, “Bang it out, baby”—four sage words of advice.

On the other hand, you can’t keep up that kind of pressure
One of the reasons it works is because it’s time-limited. You can’t go forever without cleaning the bathroom, or ever reading a book, or eating Spam and lettuce for dinner. A month a year, yes, but it isn’t a lifestyle.

Even though I can dither for a long time about a single sentence, not thinking at all just isn’t fun. It’s a fine first draft method to crank, but a little slower and I’d have enjoyed the writing. Actually, 1,700 words would be doable, but what with Thanksgiving, house guests, etc. I missed several days. Which brings me to the next principle…

Front load it
I knew there would be days when I couldn’t write, but I didn’t realize how fast they’d pile up. Hey, it’s been a year or two or 30 since I’ve been in grad school. If I do NaNo again, I’m going to lock myself in my room for the first weekend at least. They tell you this, but until you’ve lived it, you won’t realize the number of ways things interfere.

Don’t be intimidated by what other people seem to be doing
One of the virtues is the buddy system, where you can see how much your friends are writing every day. One of my buddies wrote about half her novel the first weekend. She never wrote another word. She’s not a close friend, and I haven’t had the heart to ask her what happened. Other people made extraordinary leaps at times when I was grinding along. But out of the 8 people I watched, only 3 finished (one being the Nikipedia). So, don’t assume everyone else is having an easier time with anything than you are. And maybe don’t front load so much you never want to see the thing again.

You will be very proud of yourself if you accomplish something hard
The Nikipedia has been so excited she’s been carrying her printed copy everywhere. It’s hard to resist the urge to buttonhole total strangers in coffee shops and bookstores and tell them all about it. I was sure I could write a novel, but not sure I could produce a first draft of 50,000 words in a month. Now I know. I have the winners’ certificate right in front of me.

Nobody wants to hear about your great idea
I learned this at the final party when one woman talked me cross eyed. Even I didn’t want to hear the whole thing, which she seemed determined to punish me with, line by line. You need an elevator speech for any great idea, and those were quite interesting to hear. But the idea isn’t the product, the manuscript (or invention, or report, or new business) is, and unless that is produced in finished form, the draft is pretty useless to anyone but the creator.


Nothing is as famous as you think

NaNo has over 120,000 participants a year. Except for few friends and some other writers, no one I mentioned it to had ever heard of it. Think about that the next time you make a gaffe or mistake and think "everyone will know". Also, no matter how much publicity you generate, there will still be plenty of people to reach.


Now…on to revisions.

What do you want for Christmas?

If your answer is more time, world peace or true love, well, mine too. But I don’t think I can do a whole lot to get them, so I have a few other ideas for gifts that might do a tiny bit of good in this world. Since I’d almost prefer being run over by a Hummer (at least it’s quick) to having to brave the mall on a Saturday, I’ve come up with a different list. This is a tough Christmas for a lot of people, and an awful lot of businesses, too, and I’d like to see people who put out a creative and useful product stay afloat.

My first suggestion is, shop locally. No, I don’t mean your local Ann Taylor or Coldwater Creek (okay, please shop at Coldwater Creek—I have stock in them and it stinks lately), I mean creative, single store merchants that have a personal vision and are selling something unique—the individual clothing shop, the local antiques merchant, the floral or plant store. People that own and run these stores are doing it as much for love as money, and they’ll be willing to talk over your problem giftees and help you come up with something. Shop there before all individuality is eaten alive by mega-corporation homogenization.

Second idea is, how about donating to a charity that has a nifty premium for a gift? National Wildlife Federation has a lot of adorable plushies and great magazines for adults and kids. Ditto World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, etc. I admit I don’t get a real gift thrill out of just making a donation, but these organizations have figured out that it’s a lot more fun if you have something to wrap up, or a nifty magazine.

While we’re on the subject of magazines, most of them are struggling. You can find a magazine for nearly anyone on your list—New Moon is terrific for tweens, and Carus publications has a ton for different age brackets (literary, social sciences and science). For adults, too—go to your local (preferably independent) bookseller, look through the racks and racks, pick one out, mail one of the hundreds of blown-in subscription cards and wrap up the sample. Me, I love Somerset Studio, Belle Armoire, Threads, The Washington Monthly, Marie-Claire Idées, Poets & Writers, Piano, and an armload of others (hint, hint).

A more unusual variation of the magazine gift is the literary journal subscription. In my book these have some distinct advantages: they don’t publish as frequently, hence they don’t remind me of the kind of machine that keeps spitting tennis balls at you, and I don’t add to my six foot bedside stack; and they’re smaller and you can stuff them in a pocket or purse more easily. Ones that I really like or have liked in the past include Alimentum, Granta, Glimmer Train, The Believer, and The Sun. I’ll be reviewing these in more depth one of these days.

If you’re really broke and live near a major city, I have three ideas. Do a search of second hand stores and library used book sales. The stuff at second hand stores can be unbelievable—recent finds include an Irish fisherman handknit sweater for $5, a sequined top for $1 and a Kenneth Cole dress for $5. Call it “vintage” not used and add instant chic. The Nikipedia is the queen of finds, but it really just takes a little browsing, particularly if you can find one that specializes in upscale second hand. Library book sales are amazing—it just makes me heartsick to see books for which I’ve paid $29.95 (still unread) going for $1. A lot of libraries in our area have permanent for-sale shelves or even for-sale rooms. You can come up with a nice armload of mysteries or historicals or biographies, wrap it in a big box and give a huge present for $10, while helping the library. Cheaper than the fines some of us pay, ahem.

Those same libraries, or nearby universities, have concert series for no or very low cost. How about making up a schedule and buying tickets, or designing some fake ones and provide the transportation and companionship to go with them. Me, I’d be delighted to have a friend make a commitment to attend a free series with me—so often I don’t go if I don’t have someone to go with me. And wouldn’t it be fun to have a regular “date” with a friend to do such a fun thing? Or if you’re going to purchase tickets for someone, how about favoring small theater groups, new music or early music ensembles, or student performances? These people can really use support in building an audience, and you’ll be giving something a lot more original than a gift card to the local megaplex.

Finally, don’t buy jewelry as gifts until you check out your local crafts fair or bead store. To my intense aggravation when I’m a seller, people at craft fairs often price jewelry ridiculously low, and have said to me that they just want to get their materials costs back so they can make some more. Grrrgh, but it’s great if you’re the buyer. Also, if you have the slightest jewelry making skills, at a bead store you can put together a nice gemstone bead necklace (often with loaner tools on the premises and the help of the owner) for a fraction of the department store cost. One of the bead stores in my town used to display pictures from the Sundance catalog next to nearly identical beads that you could use to make your own for about 25% of the cost. Also, take a look at the stuff on Etsy.com. My New Year’s resolution is to put stuff in my own “store” there, but in the meantime, there’s plenty of nifty things to buy, all made by highly creative kitchen table entrepreneurs.

Now, do I get an award as Santa’s little helper?

It’s a living

It ain’t easy making a living as any kind of artist. I wish I had a signed contract for every time I’ve heard a parent tell me, “Oh, my kid is so creative [fill in artist, actor, writer, dancer, whatever] but I’m telling him or her to major in [physics, accounting, chemistry, education—whatever the parent thinks is “practical”] because, of course, you can’t make a living at it.”

Well, the truth is, you can and this is dumb advice. Tons of people make a living every day at these professions, and there are plenty of out-of-work computer science majors. But, the employment path is fairly clear for computer science or chemistry: get the degree and get someone to hire you. The path for the arts is not: get the degree (or maybe not), get someone to hire you (or maybe not), sell your services, get a day gig (or maybe not)…but just because it’s not clear doesn’t make it un-doable. What does it require? Well, duh, it requires CREATIVITY.

If you want to eat and be any kind of artist, you need to think outside the box, not only with your art, but with your marketing, packaging, and bill paying. Maybe you will need to cobble together several jobs, sell several different versions of what you do, find a non-demanding dumb job (plenty of novelists have worked for the customs house, or the post office, or waiting tables) so you can still think and are raring to go when you get home.

But what these parents don’t tell their kids, what actually would be worthwhile advice, is that if you want to live by art, you'd better minor in business or plan to teach at some level. Acquiring the acumen to run a business, market, set up your website and social networking blitz—they’re all essential or no one is ever going to hear about your art.

Just like dating. It’s unlikely that anyone is ever going to arrive on a white horse. And if they do, it’s because you already have the door open and are looking out for the whinnying.

Two good books about making a living in one of the arts (writing):

NaNoWhat?

On November first I transformed my writing life. No, I didn’t get the advance I think I deserve, no super agent has had the good sense to sign me yet, and I didn’t land that million dollar corporate communications contract. I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

For anyone (like me) who’s been living under a rock for the last several years, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, where you take leave of your senses and actually volunteer yourself to produce 50,000 novel words in 30 days. Yes, I already know it’s impossible, but that didn’t stop me. After all, the Nikipedia joyously plunged in and I’m not going to be outdone on my home turf by a 15 year old. Well, okay, she outdoes me on nearly everything, but I’m not just going to lie down and die, right?

We went to a kickoff party November 1, where the average age was a whole lot closer to hers than mine, but it was awesome to be with a lot of writers talking about writing. Of course, they weren’t actually doing it, which is similar to a lot of people that get together and TALK writing. However, I had smugly banged out 2500 words that first day, and believe me that entitled me to a drink.

You already know how this story is going, right? It’s been dang near impossible to make the daily quota, 1,667 words if you are to have any hope of actually finishing up in the allotted time. I’m talking headaches, evening meetings, assignments where someone actually called ME, missives from the divorce lawyer, and other unpleasant, time wasting events. This morning, when the cat decided to run away, I was certainly tempted to shake my fist at heaven.

Now, note I did not say you had to produce 50,000 good words, and believe me, I have not. But what has astounded me is how much I have produced. I’ve been yammering about this novel for at least 5 years, spent months doing research, translating material from the French, making what I thought was a detailed outline, but written nary a word in that whole time. Well, okay, I wrote a first chapter which I labored over for several months for a contest. It’s horrendous, and I tossed it and started over for NaNoWriMo. Just goes to show the stuff you agonize about ain’t necessarily any better.

So, what have I discovered so far? I don’t have to be in a good mood, or inspired, or know where I’m going with the chapter, or even awake. What I have written has mostly happened at 6 am, or 9:45 pm with the Nikipedia sitting next to me on the couch and both of us clacking away. The stuff is awful, but there’s no way to go back or you can’t possibly finish the word count. I’m 2 days behind and hope to catch up this weekend, but I’ve written over 15,000 (hopefully revisable) words. This is the most I have ever written on one subject in my life.

I’m determined to win this, although my writing buddies (on the NaNo site) must be related to Road Runner as some of them have far EXCEEDED the needed daily count. I wonder if they would like my pets for a month? Next year (or next novel) I’m not going to bother with research, or outlining, until I write the first 50,000 words. I haven’t had time to go look up the details I recorded, name all the characters authentically, consult the timelines, nada. But I am going to have 30 distinct “talking points” so I’ll be able to figure out what the heck to write about. It ain’t easy getting my characters from chapter to chapter.

Now, if I could just add the 600 and some words from this post to my NaNoWriMo total...

Modern Romance

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has an interesting article on “The First Marriage”. No, that’s not Adam and Eve; they’re talking about the Obamas. It was a delightful thing to read in bed on Sunday morning, almost as good as a juicy romance novel. I mean, wouldn’t we all like to be tall, thin, rich (well moderately, anyway), have a great career and a spouse that adores us?

Oh, I meant Barack. No, seriously, I think the Obamas are a great example of middle aged love, one to be admired and emulated insofar as possible, just like I hold up Barack’s life story to my daughter as an example of someone who can take bad life events and make something beyond the ordinary out of them. But the story in the Times is really about effort, not romance. Here are two people with ferocious intelligence, significant ambition, and apparently tons of energy. That combination can equal fireworks or synergy, and it clearly works because of real effort to understand, make compromises and trades, and take the best available to them (as opposed to seeking perfection.)

Unlike the bombastic buffoon we were beset with for the previous 8 years, one of Barack’s salient traits seems to be the ability to shut up and listen. How incredible to have a President who actually thinks he has something to learn from other people, maybe even his wife! As is obvious from the interview, Barack is still struggling to understand Michelle’s needs, and she struggles to mesh her personality with the needs of his role.

It ain’t easy being a mom and having a brain. Michelle’s career has certainly suffered for her support of Barack. It strikes me as so sad that, although feminism has certainly opened doors for women never possible before the ‘70s, it ended up costing women a lot as policies were implemented. Traditional work place protections were swept away, women who had spent many years raising children suddenly found themselves eligible in a divorce for only “rehabilitative” maintenance (as if motherhood made them handicapped…well, come to think of it…) or (very temporary) alimony, and now we are expected not only to have a career, be a spouse and bear children, but also do all the housekeeping and nurturing that used to be considered already a full time job. When my mother was a single working woman in her 20’s, she lived in an apartment building that was designed for working women and had maid service, because someone working a full time job couldn’t be expected to clean a (small) apartment! Dream on…

The other societal support that feminism did not achieve was the establishment of quality, easily available child care. Any woman that wants to pursue a career usually has a part time job arranging for the safety and well being of her children. Here’s where Barack and Michelle really won lotto. Michelle’s mother, Marilyn Robinson, is the unsung hero of their marriage.

Think about it—if you had a devoted, non-working grandmother who adored your kids, probably didn’t need to get paid, and was still spry enough to chase after them and young enough to drive without running over people on the sidewalk, wouldn’t you feel a great sigh of relief? Okay, if you have that, I’m green with envy. My mom was 80 years old when I had the Nikipedia, and she babysat a total of 4 times during Nikipedia’s childhood.

So now we know the secrets of the Obama marriage. Well, it wasn’t exactly a big secret—they love each other and work at it. It may not be perfect, but, gee, I’d take it. Now, what’s the other secret about the Obamas that I’d really like to know? What exercises does Michelle do for those arms?

Not born yesterday

Commercials seldom sell me anything. We don’t watch TV much anymore, preferring to control the images and pursue our obsessions by Netflix. After watching all seven years of Star Trek Voyager and half the French movies of the last decade, it seemed time to check out broadcast TV for an evening or two. What we ended up watching was, sigh, more Star Trek (Next Gen, this time) on something called MeTV. That’s when I fell in love.

No, not with Data. With the commercials. Specifically, with all the commercials for E.D. prescription products. (If you don’t know what that is, think Bob Dole.) The guys in these commercials look great—slim, intelligent, relaxed, successful and, well, juicy. Like, maybe you wouldn’t even care if they had a problem or two, no? But it’s not the guys I’m so in love with.

It’s the image of the women “in their lives” that blows me away. These women look like no other media image I’ve seen. There’s always plenty of fairly good looking if weather worn guys in the movies, but they usually have arm candy young enough to be their granddaughters. (Don’t these over the hill actors ever feel just a teensy bit silly and embarrassed?) But where have you seen a decent looking, tastefully dressed older guy lusting after (gasp!) a woman about his age? Oh, thank you, thank you advertising agency!

What I especially like about these women is that the air brushing isn’t obvious—they have lines around their eyes (albeit nice straight ones, not crinkly puffs), they don’t appear to be wearing Miracle Bras, and they’re relaxing in tasteful settings with guys who look happy. Sure, there’s no teenage kids begging for the car keys or slamming doors, we don’t see what the women look like first thing in the morning, and they’re not standing at the refrigerator gulping a pint of ice cream. They’re not annoyingly slim, but they certainly aren’t plump.

It’s fantasy land, but it’s a tiny blow for women who aren’t on their first round. Oh my gosh, it might be possible to be desirable after, say, 25 years old.

And if it’s all too much, you can always wait for the ads telling you how to get Medicare to pay for your electric “scooter”…

Maybe it's NOT the schools

The recent talk given by Dr. Edward Gordon at the Independent Writers of Chicago (IWOC) meeting made my brain hurt. The talk was supposed to be about how independent writers can thrive in the global marketplace. I had hoped Dr. Gordon was going to talk about how to get out of cold, grey, drizzly Chicago and catch the transporter beam to Paris or Amsterdam (which are equally cold and grey this time of year but who cares?)

Unfortunately for me, Dr. Gordon’s talk was not exactly nuts and bolts. He focused on what workers need to compete in the coming world order as he sees it. His central point was that there is more demand for certain kinds of skills than people to fill them. No duh there. But then he started sawing away on the same old, “Schools need to educate our kids better. We need more math and science. We need to teach writing skills.” Doesn’t anyone ever question this? Even my beloved Barack Obama has been known to blather about these tired chestnuts.

I never got to argue with Dr. Gordon as he was beset by other writers handing him their business cards and giving their elevator speeches (which I usually do and I’m only mad that so many beat me to it this time. ) As with so many examples of entrenched wisdom, maybe the reason we can’t solve this issue is that we’re starting from the wrong premise. What if, in fact, the schools ARE doing a (fairly) good job and the problem is entirely elsewhere?

I live in Evanston, where the schools are supposed to be good to excellent, the median income is nearly $70,000, and the poorest segments of the community are not living anywhere near the level that they are in, say, Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where the median income is more like $19,000. No matter which school your kids attend, they’re sitting side by side with kids of other races and income levels. Let’s put it another way, though—no matter the race or income level, from first grade on, kids are sitting in the same classes, with the same (multi-racial) teachers, using the same materials, for the same amount of time a day. However, from the early grades through high school, testing shows a gigantic gap between the achievement of African-American and Hispanic students, and Caucasian students. The most recent data, for example, on Evanston Township High School seniors’ ACT scores shows Black students (their term) attaining an average score of 19.2, Hispanic students averaging 19, and white kids getting 27.2. Folks, this is a GIGANTIC difference. These kids had the SAME schooling.

Even more interesting is to look at the pre-high school statistics. From third grade on (the first time the kids are tested) on through 8th grade, African-American students lag the performance of white students by 20 points or so, and for the most part the gap gets worse the longer they’re in school. (I’m omitting Hispanic kids here, because I have no way of gauging the impact being a non-native speaker might have. Cop out, I know.) Now, in third grade you can hardly blame the schools—they haven’t had the kids long enough to “fail” that dramatically. Is it biological inferiority of one race over another? Oh come on, only Southern Republicans and Fox News fans are dumb enough to believe that garbage anymore.

So what is it? If you give kids functionally identical education and they score wildly differently, maybe it isn’t the schools. I think Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, has a clue. In it, he talks about the difference between music students who go on to study and become performers (his elite) versus those who either do not go on, or go on to music education programs. The difference is, he says, the amount of time each practices. The magic number, according to Gladwell, is 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours spent doing anything is a gigantic amount of time, but some kids achieve it early on (practicing 6 or 7 hours a day from early childhood) and some never make it. Figure it out—a kid practicing an hour a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year is only going to put in 250 hours a year, and is going to need 40 years to reach that 10,000 hours mark. A kid practicing 4 hours a day will need only 10 years. Butt-in-seat time makes a huge difference.

My proposition is that it’s the exposure that kids gain outside of class that makes all the difference. Put another way, it’s the haul-your-kid-around factor. Evanston is filled with anxious white parents with eyes on the prize—an Ivy League education for the little darlings, or as close as they can get. From kindermusik on, (white) Evanston parents begin hauling the kids to library story hour, crafts day at museums, soccer, Northwestern kiddie concerts, music lessons, ballet lessons, theater performances and workshops, you name it. Schools eliminated music and art? The parents find it, whether at the lower cost park district or the private music and art programs. Let’s not even get started on all the play groups, support groups, and better parenting seminars. And show me the parent who hasn’t got the kid’s summer all laid out—camp, enrichment, language or creative writing intensive. You can go all summer before you see white kids riding their bike in the street (unless they have an instrument slung over their back on the way to music lessons.)

As a battle scarred veteran of the hauling routine (those moms have sharp elbows) I can attest to the overwhelming color of the participants: white. I don’t know why black kids don’t show up at free storybook programs, or library science night, or why music scholarships go begging. But they don’t show up, at least here. Every once in a while there’s an exception (I bet the Obamas are fine “haulers”), but for the most part, the crowd of kids at any cultural activity is 98% white, even though Evanston itself is nearly 30% African-American. It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out that white kids in my neck of the woods are getting exposed to, and have the opportunity to learn far more than kids who don’t constantly participate in these enrichment activities.

Wealthy parents know it. Pick out any high priced private school and you’ll see floods of art, music and literature classes, and enough afterschool and before school activities to fill just about all the waking hours of the kids, and the parents or au pairs that drive them. Pick any Saturday at the Evanston Arts Center or Piven Theater workshop and you’ll get run over by all the parents driving Hummers and Mercedes SUVs.

Maybe what we need (with apologies to Dr. Gordon) is to stop wringing our hands over providing “the basics” in schools. Maybe all the enrichment that some kids get really makes the difference—gives them a broader context and a head start on absorbing what schools actually can accomplish. Maybe all the stuff we’ve eliminated from schools (art, music, Great Books clubs) is what really makes the difference. I don’t know how to get all kids participating in enrichment. At least here in Evanston, it’s been “built” but they haven’t come. And there might be a topic for some worthwhile research.

Writing Mentor

I’m always on the lookout for mentors. I’ve had the privilege of a few good ones over the years: professors, an editor, a therapist or two. But as I get older, it’s increasingly difficult and depressing—I see from my alumni magazine many of my old professors are passing on, ones I wish I could have one more talk with. Perhaps I’ve arrived at an age in life where I shouldn’t need a mentor, but such is not the case.

Being a devotee of the printed word, my natural ecosystem involves books, and increasingly I find that they can serve well as mentors. I read a lot of books by writers on writing, but I find most of them are aimed at beginners and the never published. Like knitting books and jewelry craft books, the first third or half seems to be devoted to the same basic instructions, instructions I could have written myself long ago. No time anymore to wade through all that, especially given what books cost. So it was with great delight that I came across Word Work, by Bruce Holland Rogers. No idea where I heard of it.

Rogers considers so many facets of a writer’s concerns and issues that his book ought to be shaped like a dodecahedron. Each of the 35 chapters is short (3-4 pages) and many were apparently written as magazine columns. Don’t let the length fool you—these are nuggets that profitably can be read 3 or 4 times. I got it out of the library, but it’s a compelling buy—you just can’t absorb it all in one reading.

Rogers considers topics such as how to get started, how to fight for your identity, how and whether to form relationships with other writers, fighting negative feelings, and all the usual topics, but always with something fresh to say, or something which recasts the traditional wisdom, or something that draws from other fields in the service of the writer. Rogers must read a lot, and omnivorously, because he draws in wisdom from Kierkegaard to Maslow to S.I. Hayakawa, with a lot of stops in between. I found nearly every chapter worthwhile, so I’ll just pick out a few examples.

I’ve heard people prattling on about affirmations for years, but they always felt silly and self-deluding to me. Rogers explains how to write ones that won’t make you throw up, and why they work (hint: it ain’t magic). His discussion of time management showed me why I can stop feeling guilty about not writing much when the Nikipedia was younger—he says that you can only fulfill so many segments, and , “If your multiple callings require conflicting sacrifices, you probably won’t be able to balance them perfectly…” How many heroic roles can you take on? Parent, lover, friend, writer, and a full time job? Something’s got to go. I found this oddly comforting. In order to write, you will have to find ways to defend and protect your identity, and this book gives many techniques that show how. In fact, in most of the book musicians, artists, etc. could profitably substitute their own art every time Rogers says “writer” and probably find the techniques just as relevant. It’s all just very wise, fresh and, well, creative.

I tried to find more info on Rogers, but the web results were pretty thin. Apparently he’s living and working in Europe, having landed a Fulbright for 2010. I hope he comes back soon. I want to move in with him. Darn, he’s already married.