Archives

Abbeville by Jack Fuller

Jun7


Book #6 in Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge.

“Until the dot.com bubble burst, George Bailey never gave much thought to why his grandfather seemed so happy.” George Bailey goes back to visit his grandfather’s Central Illinois hometown, Abbeville, and perhaps learn the source of his grandfather’s strength and resilience. The novel skips back and forth between George’s story and that of his grandfather, Karl Schumpeter. It turns out that Karl’s story is a sort of serious, more believable version of It’s a Wonderful Life. (George Bailey says he owes his name to his mother Betty’s sense of humor.) And there’s more to Karl’s life than just a tale of endurance through the trials of the Great Depression and two world wars.

This novel can be enjoyed on many levels. It’s a family/generational saga about the ups and downs of twentieth century history as they affect one town and one family. It’s a story of four generations of young men coming of age, with a fishing trip on the river to anchor and serve as a metaphor for maturation and for the financial cycles that affect the family’s lives. It’s a spiritual narrative about a man’s rise to prominence, his fall to ignominy, and his redemption in the love of small things and of work done well.

It seems as if I’m always reminded of some other work of literature when I read a book. This one reminded me of The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, maybe because of the time period beginning in about 1910, and maybe because of the midwestern setting, or maybe because both books are about the rise and fall of a family dynasty in a small town. Abbeville is, however, filled with a grace and sympathy that Tarkington’s novel lacked.

Key quotation from a French cure (priest) to Karl during World War I:

“And as to your fear, remember that God’s grace is nothing you need to repay, nor is punishment the proof of sin. This is the first great mystery, my son, and it is only made bearable by the second, which is love.”

“You see,” the cure said, “fortune is not the outcome of a test. Good or bad, it is the test.”

Thanks to Unbridled Books for sending me a copy of this novel for review. I’ve never heard of Jack Fuller, although the back cover blurb describes him as “a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer who has published six broadly acclaimed novels and a book of non-fiction.” I don’t know about the other six, but I am seriously impressed with the novel Abbeville.

Celebrate the Day: June 4, 2008

Jun4

Aesop’s Day. Here’s a fable for today. I particularly liked this one since you get three morals for the price of one (story).

A Labourer lay listening to a Nightingale’s song throughout
the summer night. So pleased was he with it that the next night
he set a trap for it and captured it. “Now that I have caught
thee,” he cried, “thou shalt always sing to me.”

“We Nightingales never sing in a cage.” said the bird.

“Then I’ll eat thee.” said the Labourer. “I have always heard
say that a nightingale on toast is dainty morsel.”

“Nay, kill me not,” said the Nightingale; “but let me free,
and I’ll tell thee three things far better worth than my poor
body.” The Labourer let him loose, and he flew up to a branch of
a tree and said: “Never believe a captive’s promise; that’s one
thing. Then again: Keep what you have. And third piece of advice
is: Sorrow not over what is lost forever.” Then the song-bird
flew away.

Today is also the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 4, 1989. I realized in thinking about it that none of my children, not even the 22 year old, are old enough to remember what happened at Tiananmen Square when the Chinese students tried to gain some measure of reform and freedom through peaceful protest. 300-800 of the protesters probably died on June 4, 1989, and although the government has never told foreign journalists what happened to him nor has he ever been definitively identified, “Tank Man” probably died, too, shortly after this picture was taken on June 5th.

Tiananmen Square - BW




Tiananmen Square – BW

Poster

Buy at AllPosters.com


Chinese citizens in China who search on google for any information on the massacre or the protests at Tiananmen Square are greeted with no information and this message:

“According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown.”

More June Celebrations, Links, and Birthdays

Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Jun3


The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

“We dream of the faint gurgling sound of dry soil sucking in the grateful moisture, but we wake to another day of wind and dust and hopes deferred.” —Caroline Henderson, 1934.

“We are getting deeper and deeper in dust.” The Boise City News, 1934.

“Our country has been beaten, swept, scarred, and torn by the most adverse weather conditions since June, 1932. It is bare, desolate and damaged. Our people have been buffeted about by every possible kind of misfortune. It has appeared that the hate of all nature has been poured out against us.” —John McCarty, editor of the Dalhart, Texas newspaper, The Texan, 1935.

“Three little words, achingly familiar on a Western farmer’s tongue, rule life in the dust bowl of the continent —‘if it rains.'” —Bob Geiger, AP reporter.

“If God can’t make rain in Kansas, how can the New Deal hope to succeed?” —A U.S. congressman on ambitious government plans to renew the soil and bring rain to the Dust Bowl.

An amazing true story. My grandparents and my husband’s parents lived in West Texas during these times and must have experienced some of the drought, dust storms, and hard times chronicled in Egan’s book. But I never heard them talk about anything like the stories in the book: dust so thick that people got lost and ran their cars off the road, respiratory diseases caused by the dust, dusters, clouds of dust so tall they blotted out the sun. I remember dust storms when I was growing up in San Angelo in West Texas, but nothing like the cataclysmic storms of the 1930’s.

Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi

May26

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi.

Recommended by Laura at Musings: “In 1972, Moroccan defense minister General Mohamed Oufkir staged a failed coup d’etat against King Hassan II. Oufkir was reported to have committed suicide, but was found with five bullet wounds. In retaliation for the coup, his entire family was imprisoned: Oufkir’s wife, Fatima, and his children Malika, Raouf, Soukaina, Maria, Myriam, and Abdellatif. A cousin, Achoura, and a close family friend, Halima, joined them. Malika Oufkir was 17 years old; her brother Abdellatif was only 3.”

This nonfiction account of a family kept in cruel and unusual confinement in the desert of Morocco reminded me of nothing so much as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. The Oufkir family were so badly treated and so cut off from the world for so very long that they, like the fictional Dr. Manette, were impaired in body, mind and soul when they were finally freed from the prisons of King Hassan II.

Malika Oufkir’s story is that of the spoiled rich girl brought low by injustice and subsequently redeemed through suffering and finally freed to appreciate a new life and love. It’s a classic plot, and the fact that it’s a true story, as trustworthy as memoirs can be these days, makes it all the more compelling. Some parts of the story are difficult to believe: Malika says that as a nineteen year old, educated and well-travelled, she had no idea that her father was a murderer and a tyrant. Perhaps not, but then again, maybe she chose her own blind spots. She also describes scenes of treatment so horrendous during the twenty years of her imprisonment that I would choose to disbelieve her testimony if I could, not wanting to believe that man can be so cruel to his fellowman. Western law embodies the principle that no person’s family should be punished for that person’s crimes. Malika, her mother, and her five brothers and sisters are cruelly punished for the crimes of Malika’s father, a fate that Ms. Oufkir says was not uncommon in Morocco under Hassan II.

An amazing story human resilience and courage. Read it and weep.

African Food for Africans Who Are Starving?

May8

In Ethiopia in 2003, for example, widespread drought occurred in the low-lying areas of the country and the very dry northern highlands. Some 12 million to 15 million people were at risk of hunger and starvation. But in the central and southern highlands of Ethiopia, farmers were producing a bumper crop of corn and other cereals. Yet with no market for the locally produced grains, prices collapsed.

If USAID could have purchased and helped distribute some of this excess, up to 500,000 small farmers would have benefited, as well as the millions at risk of starvation. But its only option was to import surplus food grain from the U.S.”

Right now I’m reading Timothy Egan’s book about the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s in which millions of pounds of wheat, a bumper crop grown on the Great Plains in 1929 and 1930, sat in or near silos and rotted because the prices went down, and the wheat was worth less than it cost to produce. I don’t understand how this happens exactly, especially when people in the cities began to have trouble feeding their families at about the same time because of the collapse of the U.S. economy.

Eventually, under FDR, the U.S. government did purchase some of the surplus wheat and other grain crops and distribute it to the hungry during the Great Depression. But the dust storms and the lack of income for those first two years caused the farmers to go bankrupt and their land to lie fallow.

Now in this Wall Street Journal article, two food experts say that we, the U.S., are causing much the same problem as what helped to create the Great Depression in our food aid program in Africa.

The Bush administration has urged, rightly, that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) be allowed to buy food locally, particularly in Africa, instead of only American-grown food.

The U.S. government currently buys grain and other foodstuffs from American farmers for free distribution in poor countries where a disaster has occurred, or sells it in food-deficit nations to generate funds for food-security development programs. Under the law, the food must be shipped almost exclusively on American vessels.”

Why is Congress opposing this change in policy? Why not buy food there for distribution there and use our own grain surpluses here? Or sell the grain “surpluses” to the highest bidder since there seems to be a food shortage that I keep reading about? Is there something I’m not seeing?

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

May2

Recommended at The Reading Zone.

The Triangle Fire was a history-making event in America, and Margaret Peterson Haddix’s historical fiction novel, Uprising gives a good picture of the epoch and the culture that made the tragedy possible and made it influential as a precursor to change.

Wikipedia:

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11th, 2001. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.

Ms. Haddix gives the story a human face by making it the story of three girls: Bella, an immigrant from Southern Italy, Yetta, a Russian Jewish immigrant worker, and Jane, a poor little rich girl who becomes involved in the lives of the shirtwaist factory workers in spite of her rarified existence as a society girl. Of the three, Jane is the least believable as a character. She runs away from her rich father because she is appalled at his indifference to the working conditions of the poor. Instead of moving heaven and earth to find her, Jane’s father lies and says she’s gone away for a visit and assumes she’ll come back to papa in due time. Rich people, even cold, heartless rich people, don’t act that way, do they? If nothing else it would be socially unacceptable to misplace one’s daughter, wouldn’t it?

Nevertheless, it’s a good book with a bit of a mystery and a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. If you guess who’s telling the story within the first few chapters, you’re doing better than I did. Good solid historical fiction.

Tamar by Mal Peet

Apr11

I discovered that Grandfather’s world was full of mirages and mazes, of mirrors and misleading signs. He was fascinated by riddles and codes and conundrums and labyrinths, by the origin of place names, by grammar, by slang, by jokes —although he never laughed at them— by anything that might mean something else. He lived in a world that was slippery, changeable, fluid . . . ” p. 111

Tamar by Mal Peet is a story about spies and undercover espionage and the underground during World War II. It’s the story of a man who became so enmeshed in his world of subterfuge and code and disguises that he could no longer trust anyone or even function in a straight forward and honest manner.

What a scary, insecure sort of world to inhabit! And, to some extent, it is the world we live in. We live inside a cosmic joke, and if there is no central, unchanging, organizing Principle or Answer—if this world is completely “slippery, changeable, fluid”— the joke is not really very funny. There is no Standard from which to deviate, no center.

But with God at the center, the joke becomes at least bittersweet. We are promised a happy ending, and all of the riddles, conundrums, mazes and codes make sense because there truly is an answer, not just endless, chaotic, meaningless, perpetual change. We may not find all the answers or decode all the messages, but we are assured that the answers do exist, that all will be revealed in God’s time. And in the meantime, we can enjoy the Joke.

Tamar isn’t really about all these spiritual questions or about God or meaning in life. It’s a story about a family dealing with the aftermath of horrific events that happened during World War II but continued to shape the family and their relationships up through today. The sins of the fathers, or grandfather, are visited upon the third generation.
Nevertheless, the book made me think about change and deception and mirage and reality. So, I share those thoughts and recommend Mal Peet’s Tamar to anyone who has an interest in family dynamics and family secrets, the after effects of war, and the mysteries of ethics and forgiveness and repentance.

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

NPM: Poetry from the Desk Drawer

Apr8

Back in January, Becky at Farm School posted on Poetry Friday about a special poetry anthology, compiled by Alice Roosevelt Longworth and her brother Theodore (”Ted Jr.”) Roosevelt (1887-1944) and published in 1937. She made it sound so special that I had to see if I could find a copy at the library. My library system actually didn’t have The Desk Drawer Anthology, but they ordered it for me from afar (North Harris County College Learning Resource Center).

These are mostly the kinds of poems that one member of my family in particular despises: some sentimental stories and proverbial sentiments, classic poets such as Dickinson, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whitman. The emphasis is on American poems and poets. A radio host back in 1937 announced the anthology on his program and invited people to send in their favorites; they sent in so many favorites that Mr. Roosevelt and his sister had to cull it from 40,000 entries down to a few hundred published poems. Here are a couple that I particularly liked:

City Rain by Lola Mallatt

Behind this mist of whispering soft lace,
This silver silk, so silently let fall,
I think the city wears a dreaming face,
And wishes not to stir or wake at all.

There is no earth tonight–no heavens–nothing
But thin blown rain, and rows of lamps, gold-furred,
And quiet people going up and down
In shining coats, with faces sweetly blurred.

Men by Dorothy E. Reid

I like men.
They stride about,
They reach in their pockets
And pull things out;

They look important,
They rock on their toes,
They lose all their buttons
Off of their clothes;

They throw away pipes,
They find them again.
Men are queer creatures;
I like men.

Poet of the day: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Go here for a Celebration of Longfellow.)
Poetry activity for today: Find a poem that someone in your family clipped from a magazine or a newspaper and kept. D your grandparents have a favorite poem? Do you have a favorite poem in your wallet or purse or taped to your wall or mirror? If not, you should.

The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

Apr3

Organizer Daughter and a friend and I watched the movie version of this book by Jane Yolen this afternoon in conjunction with the urchins’ study of World War II. I read the book a long time ago and didn’t remember much about it. Hence, the ending quite shocked me, as I vaguely remember it shocking me when I read it.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s a tale of sixteen year old “typical teenager” Hanna Stern who, when she is forced to attend the annual family Seder, tries to avoid hearing the interminably long stories that her elderly relatives tell about their WW II experiences. However, during the Seder, a mystery intervenes (or is it a dream?), and Hanna is somehow transported back to Poland in the year 1940. She attends a Jewish wedding with some of her relatives who think she is a cousin who has been ill with a fever, and at the wedding, tragedy strikes. The Nazis come to take the Jews to “work camps”, and because Hanna has ben completely inattentive to her family’s history and heritage, she has very little idea of what will happen next to her and to her Polish, Jewish family.

I wouldn’t recommend the movie for any children younger than 13 or 14. Even my high schoolers were, I think, shocked by some of the scenes of brutality and horror that took place in the concentration camp. And that’s despite the fact that I think the movie sort of understates and even misrepresents the reality in some ways. The inmates of the camp are a lot more free to interact and a lot more warmly dressed than I would think was the true state of affairs. Anyway, this movie is for mature teen and adults, and I think it did my teens some good to see enacted some historical facts that they had only read about until now.

The movie stars Kirsten Dunst as Hanna and Brittany Murphy as her friend Rifka.

Bringing Back Kate, or What’s Up, Professor Grant?

Apr2

Brown Bear Daughter and I watched the 1938 Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby the other night, and I realized about halfway through the movie that one of my other favorite movies, What’s Up Doc?, made in 1972 with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, was just a take-off on Bringing Up Baby, practically a remake. Absent-minded professor meets lunatic girl who brings his ordered life crashing down around him—and coincidentally ends his engagement to the wrong, boring girl. Screwball comedy. Innocent mayhem. Lots of laughs in both movies.

I like Katharine and Cary better than Barbra and Ryan, but for some reason I think What’s Up Doc? is the funnier movie. Madeleine Kahn, as Ryan O’Neal’s boringly hilarious fiance, adds a new layer of comedy to the second movie and almost steals the show. Hepburn would never have let herself get upstaged by anyone. Don’t you wish The Great Kate were still around to make more memorable movies? I’d love to see What’s Up Doc?, revised and updated, but starring magically young again Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.