An interesting woman indeed

Diana Athill

I'm not sure who it was that suggested I might be interested in reading Diana Athill's memoirs, but, curious, I went online and learned all about her. She died earlier this year at the age of 101. She was a skilled editor during her early years and began to write short stories and several other books in her 40s, and won several prestigious awards.

I just finished Instead of a Letter, written in 1962. I loved it, and I've got her most famous book on order: Somewhere Towards the End, written in her 90s. The New York Times published a revealing and fascinating obituary about her. There was one section in her book that resonated with me, which I share with you here.

  Marcel ... did not find objective reality a comfort. Once he leant out of a window in the Savoy Hotel, looked down on trees in which starlings were bickering their way to bed, and pavements over which people were hurrying, then slammed the window shut and exclaimed, "I can't bear it!"
  "What can't you bear?"
  "The thought that I might die in the night, and next morning everything would still be going on. All those bastards trotting up and down the street, and those silly birds chirping. It's horrible! Sometimes, when I'm at home, I wake in the middle of the night and start thinking about it, And then I have to telephone my sister."
  "What does she do?"
  "She comes over and makes tea for me, and talks. Sometimes I keep her up all night."
  He walked up and down the room, splashing whiskey out of his glass in his agitation, his mouth twitching, his eyes bilious: a sad little figure for whom the world would not come to an end.
  To me, on the other hand, the knowledge that everything will still be going on is the answer. If I die with my wits about me, not shuffled out under drugs or reduced to incoherence by pain, I want my last thoughts to be of plants growing, children being born, people who never knew me digging their gardens or telephoning their friends. It is the existence of other things and other people that I can feel the pulse of my own: the pulse. Something which hums and throbs in everything, and thus in me. (Instead of a Letter, pp. 236-7)

I look forward to reading more of her works, and I hope I've tempted you to check her out, if you didn't know about her before.
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The problem with sequels

Scene from The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

As anyone who saw the first movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, can see, most of the characters who are in the sequel returned three years later to make this second movie. Judy and I anxiously awaited its arrival in the theater so we could see it. Last weekend we were two of the mostly white-haired ladies who comprised the audience.

The link under the picture takes you to the Rotten Tomatoes site that confirms what we both felt when we saw it: it's nowhere near as good as the first one. But still... it was lovely to see some of my favorite actors again. Maggie Smith, who is also in Downton Abbey, had some great zingers in this as well. Maybe it's a problem with all sequels. But wait...

Last year I read a book that I truly enjoyed, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. It is a lighthearted romantic comedy written from the point of view of a man who obviously falls somewhere on the Asperger's Syndrome curve. Don Tillman (the protagonist) was someone who delighted me, and not only me, but Bill Gates as well. He says he gave the book to at least fifty people in this article on his blog. He also refers in the post to another book, which I just finished yesterday.

The book is entitled The Rosie Effect and is the sequel to the first book, and I really loved it. I was wary that it wouldn't be as good. I was wrong; I enjoyed this book every bit as much as the first one, maybe even more. In the first book, Don is looking for a wife and designs a 16-page questionnaire to filter out undesirable candidates for the position. Somehow he runs into Rosie, who doesn't even pass the first question. But in hilarious fashion, they end up falling in love and getting married. In this sequel, Rosie becomes pregnant, and Don must take up the Baby Project. So just because a book or a movie is a sequel to an enjoyed first edition does not mean it's not good. But it's not necessarily what you might have expected. If you read the Rosie Project and enjoyed it, I think you will enjoy this one, too.
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Great documentary and a good book

I just got back from seeing a new documentary, Pelican Dreams, with my friend Judy. It's so new that the link, which takes you to Rotten Tomatoes, doesn't give a rating. Yet. In my opinion, it will be a really good one, because it was not only inspiring, I simply loved getting to know about pelicans. The film follows a young female pelican that lands on the Golden Gate Bridge and is rescued, until her release back into the wild.

Plus you also get to know a whole lot more about pelicans than you would ever know otherwise. I am now a fan of these fine birds, although I knew very little about them other than having watched them dive for fish along the Florida beach when I was visiting my sister. I highly recommend it.

We are very fortunate here in Bellingham to have an independent theater in town that gives us what it calls "Doctober" showing lots of documentaries during the month, with only a single screening, or sometimes more than one (like this one, which sold out last night and was shown one more time today). I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more wonderful documentaries this month.

And the book? One of my blogging friends (I don't remember who it was) suggested a book, and I went immediately to the local library website and put a hold on it. Once it came, I delved into it and was completely floored by the historical information that is covered in the book. It's called The Burglary: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret F.B.I. written by Betty Medsger. It tells the story of eight regular people who broke into the FBI's office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971 and stole all the files. They not only burgled the place, but they were never caught. At the beginning of this year, Medsger released the book that outed six of the eight, for the first time. There is a fascinating article on the New York Times, Burglars Who Took on the F.B.I. Abandon Shadows, which pretty much tells the whole story.

The book is long, and covers some other similar events that just amazed me, mostly because I never knew about all this. I must have been busy raising kids and dealing with my own personal drama not to have known much of this history. Whoever it was that pointed me toward that book, thank you! And now I'm returning the favor.
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Celebrating Lammas

Balloon man at the Farmers' Market

Yesterday and today are the season of Lammas, according to the Saxons, anyway. It's the time right between the first day of summer and the first day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. I know that's a bit disheartening if you are a true summer aficionado. I myself will be glad for a little less outdoor heat. The Pacific Northwest is right now about 8–10 degrees F warmer than normal for the date.

The Celts called it Lughnasad after the God Lugh. It is the wake of Lugh, the Sun-King, whose light begins to dwindle after the summer solstice. The Saxon holiday of Lammas celebrates the harvesting of the grain. The first sheaf of wheat is ceremonially reaped, threshed, milled and baked into a loaf. 

I snagged that information from this website, which is filled with interesting tidbits about the holiday. This morning I got up and headed out to join the Fairhaven walkers, my usual Saturday morning routine, and we sat around afterwards, drinking iced coffee and looking at the pictures of Terry and me on our skydive, while the ladies chimed in about whether they ever would or wouldn't do the same thing. Terry said she's glad she did it but wouldn't do it again. The freefall was just too overwhelming. It's funny, that was the part I couldn't wait to experience again, but that said, I was always a skydiver. There was just a time when I hadn't made a jump yet. (smile)

Then I went to the Farmers' Market to see all the people out enjoying the sunshine. I didn't really have anything to buy, but I wasn't quite ready to come inside. It is 3:00pm and 79 outside, heading for 82, according to the weather gods. When there's no breeze, that's a tad on the warm side for me. At least I wasn't climbing any mountains today, and going into air-conditioned stores kept me comfortable.

I've got to water the garden really well this evening, since I just sprinkled it this morning and everything is parched and needing some attention. My second batch of lettuce is doing great, and my beets are happily coming into existence. This is the second planting of them, too. The month of August should be the last of the intense heat around here, so I'm actually looking forward to September. I wonder why August is the hottest month, when the days are longer in July? I'll look it up online, but not right now. I've got a good book to bury myself in.

Which reminds me: I finished The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics. It's a historical story about the University of Washington rowing team that made it to the Olympics in Nazi Germany, winning against all odds. I simply couldn't put the book down once I got halfway through it. Daniel Brown, the author, is a really great writer. I'll happily read anything he writes. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

That's it for now, from my little corner of the universe during Lammas. Hope you're doing well and enjoying yourself, too!
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Books, movies and nice weather

From Wunderground.com

This kind of ten-day weather forecast for the Pacific Northwest only happens in the summer. Some people don't think our summer even begins until after the Fourth of July, and you know, this is making a good case for that view. There aren't even any clouds in the forecast! That's very unusual. Anyway, it's good for me, since it looks like this coming weekend will be good for skydiving (and I'm going), and on Monday the Trailblazers will be having our first all-day-long adventure, a new hike for all of us. It's off the Mountain Loop Highway, quite a distance, so we'll be having dinner together as well.

I also wanted to share some movies I've seen recently. First of all, I went to see Ida after reading the reviews and having seen the trailer. It's filmed in Poland, with English subtitles. Everything they say about the movie is true: it's stunning in so many ways, but it's also not exactly uplifting: a young orphan in taken in by a convent and raised to become a nun. The Mother Superior wants her to contact her only living relative before taking final vows, so she travels to meet her. The movie is about what transpires, set in 1962 Poland. The young woman's journey is very vivid in my mind. Every movie I have ever seen about the Holocaust and its aftermath have affected me very deeply, and this one is no different. That's all I'll say about it, except (1) I'm glad I saw it, and (2) I wouldn't see it again. I felt the same way about "Schindler's List."

Judy and I also saw Words and Pictures, and we almost didn't go because the reviews were so uniformly bad. Well, the movie did have a hard time getting going, but by the end I realized I had enjoyed it very much. It's a story set in a high school, with Clive Owen playing an honors English teacher who has some serious problems. A new art teacher is hired, played by Juliette Binoche, who is crippled by serious rheumatoid arthritis. The movie is about their involvement, hence the "words and pictures" of the title. I would see it again; it's billed as a romantic comedy and fills that role quite well.

Now for some books: I got quite involved with the book Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I couldn't put it down and finished it in one long day. My only problem with it is that I was really dismayed by the ending. I guess I like my books in the same way that I like my movies: lift me up at the end! I hear it's being made into a movie now, due out in October, and that the ending of the movie is different than it is in the book. Well, that alone will make me want to see it! Wonderful book, well written and memorable characters.

My sister introduced me to another writer,  JoJo Moyes. (The link takes you to her page that gives a synopsis of each book she's written.) JoJo is a British writer who grew up in London. She now lives with her husband and three children in Essex and has written eleven books. She has learned the technique of drawing very believable and unforgettable characters. She also knows how to write a page-turner of a novel. Norma Jean had just read Me Before You, a book that also captured my interest and wouldn't let me put it down. JoJo has a new book out, One Plus One, and I am on the waiting list at the library for it. One book she also wrote was in the library stacks, so I checked it out and read it: The Last Letter from your Lover. I enjoyed it, too.

Well, that's it for now. I simply must go out and do some work in my garden. All the lettuce has bolted and needs to be pulled up, and I've got to thin my beets. Plus all this warm weather coming means I've got to stay ahead of the unwanted weeds! Till next time.
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It's always something

How much will it cost me?

Boy, it seems like every time I turn around these days there is another outlay of cash required. First it was the glasses, which I needed and was sort of prepared for. Then when the annual bill from the YMCA arrived last week, I realized I had forgotten about it. Paid that yesterday.

I also received a recall notice last week from my car's manufacturer that the passenger-side airbag needed to be replaced, so I took it to the Honda dealership, and they happily did the work for me. Oh, and by the way, ma'am, your front brakes are worn out and need to be replaced.

Well, I already knew they were close because my car mechanic had told me, and it was next on my list. But I was unable to get out of the dealership without having them do the work for me. There was a special on brakes, he said, and I was still using the original Honda brakes after 100,000 miles, so don't you really want to replace them with Honda brakes?

He had me there. So I just spent another couple hundred and sighed with resignation. My renter's insurance had just popped up in my radar screen, too. Isn't it always something? I was reminded of Gilda Radner's book by the same title. Do you know it's been more than twenty-five years since she died of ovarian cancer? It seems like just yesterday to me. I loved Gilda Radner. I loved Roseanne Roseannadanna. And she was right: it's always something.

But you know, it's only money that I'm seeing flying out the window right now. As far as I know, I'm healthy and willing to continue to spend money next month when I fly off to southern California for a vacation in the sunshine. Remembering Gilda, I also realize that life is short. Mine is now almost twice as long as hers, and look how much she accomplished, how much joy she gave to the world.

Okay. My attitude has been sufficiently adjusted. I hope you have a great day; I intend to stop worrying and start smiling. I might also order that twenty-year anniversary edition of Gilda's book and read it again. I'm up for a good cry. And laugh.
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I guess it was our turn for snow

Walking to the bus stop on Sunday

Here in Bellingham we haven't had much snow in the past few years, but that all changed this weekend. All day Sunday and most of the night brought us cold air from Canada and moisture from the south, which converged right in Whatcom County. Just fifteen miles south of us, precipitation was all in the form of rain, but we got anywhere from 6 to 18 inches of heavy snow. After that picture was taken, it continued to snow all day long. I know it doesn't look like much for those of you in the Midwest and East, but it was a lot for us.

Downtown sidewalks clear, but this sign is unreadable

I enjoyed it, mostly, but it was cold and when the brisk wind blew, I wasn't exactly excited to stay outside to make a snow sculpture. I did consider the idea, but once we got home after going to the store for a few groceries, I stayed inside with a very entertaining book. I'm reading Bill Bryson's book, One Summer: America 1927. The link takes you to a very good review of the book in The Guardian, written by Sarah Churchwell. She points out that the book is a light read:

Breezily written, conversational and humorous, One Summer also includes sentences such as "Then things went eerily quiet avationwise," which is positively painful prosewise. 

I had to laugh at that, because I did enjoy Bryson's style, although sometimes it made me feel as if I were at a carnival observing a rather exciting ride. So many things happened that year that I knew about peripherally, but now I feel like that period in the history of my country is much more vividly alive in my memory.

Oh, and one more thing: I've been saving that post about how to tell which of your eyes is the dominant one. I guess I'm curious how many left-eye dominant people are out there, who are also right-handed, like me. I already knew I am a lefty, because in past years I filmed videos in freefall and needed to know where to place the ring sight, and for this you need to know your dominant eye. Just curious.
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First sunrise of the new year

Sunrise at Lake Padden on New Years Day

Yesterday I remembered that I took some pictures with my cellphone at Lake Padden on New Years Day and had forgotten about them. The pictures I took on the hike last Thursday were taken with my camera, and it wasn't until I wondered how these New Years Day pictures turned out that I was prompted to take a look. The picture above was so good I had to share it!

After the walk, ready to eat

Cindy, who is the person from the Fairhaven running store that sponsors our walks, always has a nice little gathering to ring in the new year at Lake Padden, where we take only one trip around the lake before having coffee, cocoa, and treats to share. As you can see, the fog moved in and apparently didn't let up for several hours.

Food and drink on New Years Day

The food was so delicious, and Cindy makes a spicy Mexican coffee with chocolate in it that I love. I did keep the amount I ate to a minimum, because some of us decided to take a second trip around the lake afterwards before heading home. As you can see from the way we are dressed, it wasn't exactly warm, and after stopping to eat I was pretty cold and anxious to get going. And no, I didn't stay for the Polar Bear Plunge. I briefly thought about it, but just one look at my swimsuit while dressing for the day was enough to change my mind!

One of my blogging friends mentioned a book that I received from my local library yesterday, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I had to wait for the book, since it's very much in demand, and once I started to read it I couldn't put it down. I loved it, but I hesitate to recommend it because it's a fantasy mystery that would not be everyone's cup of tea. But it sure was mine! It's one of those books that I think about long after I've finished it and will read it again. I cannot remember who suggested it; my habit is to open my handy link to the library if a book sounds interesting and put a hold on it. It was several weeks ago, so I would like to say thank you to whoever it was who suggested it. And I've discovered the Neil Gaiman is a prolific writer, so I've already put a hold of another of his books. This blogging universe enriches my life in many ways!
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Latest books and movies

Mushrooms and moss

The picture has nothing to do with this post, but I thought it was a good lead-in, and kind of pretty, too. I'm always looking for ways to use pictures I take on my hikes.

Ever since I received the first of the five books I put on hold at the library (out of 14 that Nancy Pearl recommended last Friday), I've been engrossed in reading Jincy Willett's book, Amy Falls Down. The link will take you to Willett's website to give you some information about who she is and what kind of books she writes. I laughed out loud several times at certain scenes in the book, and I just finished it tonight and returned it to the library so the next person in line might enjoy it.

Scene from Captain Phillips

On Sunday I went to see Captain Phillips, a movie starring Tom Hanks as well as an unknown young Somali immigrant, Barkhad Abdi, who had never acted before but got close to stealing the show from Hanks. Although it is based on a true story, there are some controversies that are mentioned in the Wikipedia link above. It's a gripping and well told movie. I was on the edge of my seat and immediately got on the internet when I arrived home to find out more about the story. It's based on a book written by Richard Phillips, the captain who was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2009. I remember when it was all over the news.

Scene from The Patience Stone

Last night I went to another movie that could not have been more different. An Afghanistan ex-pat, Atiq Rahimi (who also wrote the book the movie is based on) tells the story of a young Afghan woman whose older husband, probably a Taliban fighter, has a bullet wound that has rendered him comatose but alive. As she cares for him, she begins to talk to him in ways she never could before. The Patience Stone refers to a mythical stone to which individuals confide their deepest secrets. Golshifteh Farahani is almost the only person who speaks in the entire film, and she's astounding in this role. Although the language is Farsi (Persian) with English subtitles, I forgot about it as I grew more and more engrossed in the movie. The lives of women under the Taliban is horrifying to me, and what decades of war has done to these people as well.

So, as you can see, I'm still busy! One of these days my life will settle back down into some semblance of normality. Maybe. Or maybe this is the new normal.
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Time flies when you're having fun

Frosty grass and leaves

I'll be glad when my life gets back to its normal routine. October and November, so far, have been filled with unusual activities, and I keep forgetting things that are usually uppermost in my mind, such as last Tuesday's post. In mid-October I spent a week traveling to southern California and almost immediately took a trip to Vashon Island with my blogging friends. And here it is the second week in November, and I'm still trying to regain my equilibrium. I was invited to a breakfast last Friday and missed my class because of it. Just another thing to keep me off balance, but it was a really interesting experience.

Closeup of the top leaf

Oooops! See? I just published this post instead of adding this picture. Sheesh! Hopefully I was able to revert it to draft without giving everybody a sneak peek. I'll slow down and maybe I can make it through the day. I took the two pictures above with my cellphone earlier in the week, the first one with the usual cellphone camera and the second with the camera+ app. I've pretty much stopped carrying around my old camera, since this one does everything I require, including such a nice closeup as you see above. The grass was frosty, making it look almost artificial, I thought.

Shirley and Cindy

This morning I went on the Fairhaven walk with a couple of dozen women. It was pretty cold, but the only day this week that was really rainy and miserable was Thursday, when we were fighting the elements. This morning, by the time we got to this spot, we were all warm and shedding clothes. Cindy leads this group and was waiting for the others to catch up, since we had several different routes we might take from here. It was a lovely way to start the weekend.

The breakfast I mentioned was sponsored by the Whatcom Literacy Council and we had Nancy Pearl give a really interesting talk about fourteen new books she thinks we should read this year. She is familiar to me from listening to her on NPR. I immediately went to the library website afterwards and put my name in to receive four of them. Since they are all recently published, I was put on a waiting list, but I should receive at least one of them fairly soon.

I'm going to head down to my local bookstore and purchase one of her recommendations, which is so long I couldn't possibly finish it in two weeks, and you cannot renew when somebody else is waiting for the book. It sounds like a doozy: The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis. Nancy said when she finished it, she was unable to pick up another book for awhile, because this one had practically taken over her life. She said there were some uncomfortable parts, but it is incredible and well worth reading, her favorite book of 2013.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back here to post on Tuesday, unless they move the order of the days like they did last week.
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Weather or not

Threatening sky

Although it rained on and off all night, I was pleased to see that it was not raining when I got to Boulevard Park, where the Fairhaven walking group was to meet this morning. At first I thought there might be just a few of us, but before we headed out for a nice five-mile walk this morning, more than a dozen, plus a few dogs, showed up. We knew that the weather was projected to deteriorate, but we hoped that it would wait until we were warm and dry inside the coffee shop.

We did get wet, but it wasn't awful, until I left to hurry home and change my clothes before meeting my friend Judy at the Pickford to see a movie. It was raining and blowing pretty hard by then, but the bad part was not finding a place to park nearby and having to walk three blocks to the theater. By then I was every bit as wet, even more so, than I was before I changed!

We went inside to enjoy a really wonderful music documentary, Muscle Shoals, about a little town in Alabama that was the birthplace of plenty of the music I listened to in the 1960s and 1970s. I didn't know anything about the place before I saw this, but the documentary was really interesting and very well done. The beauty of the town, which has the Tennessee River running through it, was simply breathtaking at times. I learned about Rick Hall, who started it all, and the Swampers, a group of musicians who backed up many of the great hits. They were all shown as they once were, as well as interviewed as the people they are now. Highly recommended.

And books! I've just finished Gulp by Mary Roach (Adventures on the Alimentary Canal) and The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. It never fails that I'll start to read a book from the library and one (or in this case, two) other books I've had on hold come into the library at the same time. So I put Gulp down so I could read the other two. I've read everything Lahiri has written and am obviously a fan. This book stayed with me for days as I continued to ponder the characters. Everything Mary Roach writes is funny and interesting, but Lahiri's book was also deeply satisfying.

The last one, which I'm still reading, is The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. This fascinating true adventure story was written in 1961 by Blanchet, who put her five children on a 25-foot boat and explored the coastal waters of British Columbia every summer in the 1920s and 1930s. From the book jacket:

Acting single-handedly as skipper, navigator, engineer and of course mother, she saw her crew through exciting (and sometimes perilous) encounters with fog, rough seas, cougars, bears and whales, and did so with high spirits and courage.

I am enjoying her memoir and hope to find out, after I finish this book, whether any of her children grew up to write about how they experienced the same events. Oh, and one more thing: I found out about that huge pumpkin. I guessed that it weighs 315 pounds, but it turns out it is 685 pounds! I was nowhere close.
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Wettest September on record

Mt. Shuksan last Thursday - what does it look like now?

That's snow on Mt. Shuksan, which was the first of the season for our hikes. New snow, that is. Just to show you how blessed we were to have such a wonderful hike last Thursday, the road to Artist Point that we traveled to get up there is now closed for the season. They got lots and lots of precipitation, some of which is in the form of snow. We just finished September with a three-day-long storm that pushed many places here in the Pacific Northwest to record rainfalls. I took this information from a website on line:

As of 8 a.m. Monday morning (September 30th) Swift Creek, Oregon (in the Mt. St. Helen’s area) has picked up 15.30” of precipitation since Friday morning. Seattle’s storm total (for Sept. 27-30) has been 2.90” bringing the September total to 6.17”, their all-time wettest such on record besting the 5.95” set in 1978. Olympia also surpassed its monthly record with 9.36” surpassing the former figure of 7.59” also set in 1978.

I know I haven't been able to skydive for several weekends, because the weather has been terrible during Saturdays and Sundays, while we hikers have been able to find a hole in the weather during the middle of the same weeks. Last Thursday was the only really nice day for the entire week, and it's looking like the same thing will happen this Thursday. I don't know who's watching out for us, but I sure appreciate it.

On another note, I've just finished a book I enjoyed tremendously. When I wrote a week ago about a book I enjoyed, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, a couple of my commenters pointed me towards another book, which I got from the library and read in a single day. It's similar to the other one, but it was one I couldn't put down, a novel by Rachel Joyce and her first book: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. That link will take you to a New York Times book review by Janet Maslin. Here's a quote from it:

“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” is not just a book about lost love. It is about all the wonderful everyday things Harold discovers through the mere process of putting one foot in front of the other.  ... Harold finds out that there is fresh air, scenic vistas and an open sky outside the confines of his unhappy home. He finds out that the little things in life matter. 

I know that I am a different person because of my hikes in the wilderness. I related to Harold's journey in many ways, when he finds that he is stronger than he thought he was. Not to mention that Harold and his wife, along with many other people, are completely changed by this pilgrimage he undertook. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did, and I send sincere thanks for the recommendation.
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Noooo!

Al took this picture, me with my missing camera

I just returned home after attending a wonderful end-of-summer party at Jonelle's home, celebrating the end of a super hiking season. Eleven of us Trailblazers showed up at her house to show each other what we have found to be the oldest items in our closets, as directed by Jonelle. I took lots of pictures, and got home to download them, and guess what? No camera. I left it at her house, so now I'm reduced to finding a poor substitute. Al just sent me this picture, with me showing my captures to Ward, Peggy, Jonelle, Rita, and Udo. Sigh. The story of our party will have to wait for another time. What else has happened in my life lately?

Well, I saw a really good movie last week, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would: The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker as a black butler who was in the White House during several administrations. It was really well done, with cameo spots by people like Robin Williams playing Eisenhower, Oprah Winfrey playing the butler's wife, and many, many more interesting performances. It was very entertaining, and I enjoyed it immensely. I would see it again in a minute.

This week I also finished a very interesting book. I was at the bookstore when I saw it on the shelf, never having heard of it before, and I toyed with buying it. I loved the title: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. I had a sudden thought, was it available at the library? I looked on line and found that it was indeed at my local library, drove there and picked it up instead of buying it. I enjoyed it, too, although it wasn't exactly the kind of book I would read again. The protagonist lived a very interesting Forrest-Gump kind of existence in his early days, and I had quite a few good laughs thinking about his life.

The author of this book is Jonas Jonasson, who lives in Sweden and is now in the process of making the book into a movie. If it comes to this country, I will definitely see it, finding that many Swedish movies I've seen have been very interesting. I loved all the Dragon Tattoo movies, just so you'll know my taste in Swedish movies, which is not to everyone's liking.

Well, that's about all I can come up with, since those wonderful pictures of our fun party are languishing inside my camera, which is sitting on Jonelle's coffee table, she tells me. One day you will get to see us in some amazing costumes, but not today.
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Book reviews 2012

I looked back over the blog posts I've written this past year about books that moved me enough to write about them. It's a good way to look back at some of the events that made a difference in my life during the past year, and I found six books that I hope you might think about reading. There were many more that I enjoyed, but my blog posts make it easier to recall these, so here you go.

Back in June I was engrossed in reading The Invisible Bridge,  a story about a young Jewish man who is caught up in the horrors of World War II and beyond. The more than 600-page-long book took me into another place and time, and the author Julie Orringer created a world I couldn't leave behind. I highly recommend it. My sister Norma Jean also recommended that I read The Warmth of Other Suns, another tome, this one on the subject of the migration of blacks from the Deep South to other parts of the United States during the twentieth century. Isabel Wilkerson follows the lives of three people from their original homes to where they ended up. I loved this book. All three of the individuals were real people. A truly wonderful story.

I also read a book I enjoyed on introversion, which was recommended by a blogging friend: Quiet: The Power of Introverts. As a pronounced extrovert, I have always been curious about the inner lives of introverts, and this book confirmed a belief I have long held that introverts have many advantages over us extroverts. It was very educational. Then I read Jonah Lehrer's book on How We Decide, which I enjoyed very much (although the author has now become rather controversial, since he apparently seemed to plagiarize much of his work). However, the book was really engrossing and well written.

The last two books I recommend are Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, a very honest and revealing book written by Cheryl Strayed about how she decided to try to clean up her life by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail solo, when she had never backpacked a day in her life. It became an Oprah Book this year. And finally, I read The Life of Pi after seeing the movie. Since I saw the movie first, I had several aspects of the story clarified for me when I read the book. I think I actually enjoyed the book much more than the movie, although the movie was really good. I can understand how people must have wondered how the book could possibly be captured on film. But it was.

I will also do one of these reviews for my favorite movies of the year, but for now, this is already plenty long enough!
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Long ago and far away

From film directed by Liv Ullman

It's raining outside right now and has been for most of the day. Not too unusual for the Pacific Northwest, but we've got several days of this ahead. I'm busy reading a LONG series of novels which I first read when I was a young woman, long ago... and far away.

The novels are a trilogy of books written by Sigrid Undset in the 1920s, Kristin Lavransdatter.  I read an early translation (by Charles Archer and J.S. Scott) when I was in my twenties and living in Flint, Michigan with two small children. Reading was my escape, and I remember reading these books while the housework piled up around me. I couldn't put them down, so a few weeks ago I wondered if I would feel the same way about the books.

At first I figured I'd just download them onto my iPad from iBooks, since they would (I foolishly thought) be free as many other classics have been. No, they are EACH full price, so I got a copy from the library. They had two copies on the shelf and I'm now almost finished with the first book.

They are different, but then again, I am different. And it's a new translation! It's been almost fifty years since I last read these books. I found this information on Wikipedia:

A new and complete translation by Tiina Nunnally was released by Penguin Classics in 2005, and is considered by many critics to be the superior of the two, particularly for its clarity, reflective of Undset's "straightforward, almost plain style." For her translation of the third book, Korset (The Cross), Nunnally was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2001.

Hard to say how much of the story I remembered, since they feel brand new to me. There are little pieces of the story that I still recall, but most of all I loved being wrapped in a different time and place, the 14th Century in medieval Norway. Undset won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, mostly based on these stories, and Liv Ullman, an actress I have long admired, wrote and directed a Norwegian film in 1995 based on the novels. Also from that Wikipedia link:

Critics gave it a lukewarm reception at best, and many considered it to be more true to the present than to the medieval era in which it was set. However, as it was viewed by as much as two-thirds of the population, it became one of Norway's most domestically successful films: an important cultural event. The release of the film coincided with rising national interest that centered on Norwegian medieval cultural history, and cemented Kristin Lavransdatter and Sigrid Undset as a part of the Norwegian national identity.

 And now, as I re-read these novels, I am again transported into the world of Long Ago and Far Away. I'm still not sure how I feel about them, but they are a good antidote to the world outside me right now.
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The attraction of introverts

From MyNorthwest.com

I'm reading a very interesting book right now, Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. One of my blogging friends, Linda Letters, mentioned it in a comment to me, and I also mentioned it to my sister Norma Jean. She ordered it from her local library in Florida, and I got on the waiting list at my own library. I was 20 out of 18 copies and had to wait awhile. Finally, after Norma Jean had finished the book and told me what she thought about it, I was able to pick it up at my library yesterday.

I'm already almost halfway through the book, and I've found some fascinating things not only about introverts, but also about extroverts (I'm one). I have always been attracted to introverts, ever since my early childhood when my own very favorite introvert, Norma Jean, was my best friend. She still is, in many ways. I always laughed when I said that I was attracted to introverts because they were such a good audience and never tried to hog the limelight!

But it's more than that, I've discovered. I have often wondered why I sometimes suffer from stage fright, since I'm so extroverted in most situations, but it turns out that it has little to do with shyness. To quote from her book (p. 107):

My fear of public speaking might be equally complex. Do I dread it because I'm a high-reactive introvert? Maybe not. Some high-reactives love public speaking and performing, and plenty of extroverts have stage fright; public speaking is the number-one fear in America, far more common than the fear of death. Public speaking phobia has many causes, including early childhood setbacks, that have to do with our unique personal histories, not inborn temperament.

She explains what she means by having a "high-reactive temperament" in the book, which I won't go into here. Get the book and read it; I think you'll be in for a treat. I know now it's not because I have an introverted streak that I sometimes suffer from stage fright, but because of an early childhood experience where I gave a book report in grade school and was ridiculed. It set me up for a lifetime of having to be completely prepared before I could ever step in front of any audience. It is the only way I knew how to overcome it.

And this is from someone who has taught hundreds of people what they need to know in a First Jump Course over the years. It helped that they were all terrified and I was the experienced one, but just reading this book I've learned more about the vast differences we possess through inborn temperament, as well as personal history and personality. Stage fright has given me a template through which I can relate to what it must feel like to be shy and retiring.

If I could have chosen my temperament, I would have chosen introversion rather than extroversion, and this book has helped me to realize the power of introversion that I have always intuited. By the way, the link under the picture will take you to to Ron and Don, a local radio show that reviewed the book. It's very interesting.

Oh, and before I forget: I was disappointed in the movie Looper, since I was unprepared for all the gratuitous violence that was never mentioned in any of the reviews I read beforehand. It was an okay movie, but the gore turned me totally off, and it was a bit confusing as well. If you see it, let me know what you think of it, but I don't especially recommend it.
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News from my neck of the woods

From Cheryl's home page

I just finished a wonderful book. I first learned about it last week when one of my Senior Trailblazers, Peggy, told me she was reading the book and was enjoying it immensely. Although she offered me a chance to borrow it from her once she was finished, I was too impatient to wait and went online and ordered it from Amazon for my iPad. Although I first went to my local library, I learned that it already had 150 holds ahead of me! That meant it would be sometime next year before I had a chance to read it. For $13 I could have it right away. Amazon makes it awfully easy to order these things: in less than a minute it was downloaded onto my iPad.

However, it was a good move. The New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner had written a piece that made me even more impatient to read it, not to mention that I'm not exactly a patient person to begin with. Yesterday I finished it and will continue to think about it and read other things by the author.

Cheryl spent three months on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995, and the book is about her experiences. She was lost in many ways, since her beloved mother had died at the age of 45 from lung cancer a few years before and her marriage had fallen apart. She decided to hike the trail alone, although she had never even spent a night backpacking prior to this. Her writing style just kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen next. Although I'm not sure why it took her so many years to finally write this book, I'm so glad she did. If you decide to spring for it, I don't think you'll be sorry, although it's only available in hardback and it's a bit pricey, unless you go the electronic route.

Yesterday here in Bellingham we had a weather record of our own. I've been watching the awful scorching and dry weather that most of the rest of the country has been going through, and I'm grateful for the cooler weather here in the Pacific Northwest. However, yesterday in Bellingham we had the lowest high temperature for the date, by two degrees. It only made it to 61 degrees F (16 C) and was downright cold. We are already a month into the summer season and have had below-normal temperatures for most of it. That said, it's still a better summer than last year. Who knows if this is because of climate change or just normal variation? Hopefully at least some of what we are all going through is not permanent.

And finally, the other news from my neck of the woods is that my fisherman friend Gene has returned from Alaska. He goes up there for around two months every summer to fish on his boat. We not only don't see him at the coffee shop, but his lady friend Paula and his twenty-year-old parrot don't visit us either. Now everybody is back. I sure enjoyed taking this picture.

Paula with Poop-Stain

Gene says that the bird has the best summer of his life, since Gene used to take him to a bird sitter's home and he didn't get a lot of attention. Paula put a cage for him in her place, and he grew quite attached to her, as you can see. Since they don't live together (Paula and Gene), the bird now has two homes and gets plenty of tender loving care. He's also getting on in years and sleeps much more than he did even a year ago. Both of them speculate that he might have had a small stroke, since he has rather abruptly lost his squawk and is much more docile. I don't know, but I am enjoying seeing the three of them reunited at the coffee shop.

Well, as they say, that's the news from Bellingham, the City of Subdued Excitement, my neck of the woods.

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Thinking about thinking

But first, just a short aside about the rain, which returned with a vengeance after more than two dry weeks. I was actually looking forward to a bit of a sprinkle since it had been so long, but this very wet system we've been experiencing is a bit over the top. We've had more than an inch in the last three days, and it's still raining. I'm ready for a change.

However, the wet weather kept me inside all day Sunday, and I've just finished a very interesting book I checked out from the library. Last month I got interested in some books by Steven Pinker on how the mind works, and I wrote a post about his book back in April, entitled, "How the mind works." I found Pinker's book to be a bit on the dense side, but I read it all the way through and gained quite a bit of insight. My sister Norma Jean got me started down that path, and then a couple of weeks ago I visited the Village Bookstore, one of my favorite places to spend time (and money). I saw that a guy named Jonah Lehrer had a book marked #1 on the bestseller list. And it had such an interesting title: "Imagine." I perused the book with interest, but when I saw the price I put it back on the shelf, not before noticing that the author looks like a teenager! His website is very interesting and provocative, which has all kinds of links. Check it out if you're interested in this guy, who was indeed born in 1981! He IS a kid, almost. But he's also been a Rhodes Scholar and writes his own blog fittingly entitled The Frontal Cortex for Wired Magazine.

Now to the one I just finished. Lehrer wrote another book in 2009 called "How We Decide," which I checked out of the library to tide me over until his new book comes out in paperback. Lehrer is no Pinker: it was hard for me to put down. It depicts scenarios that had me reading stuff out loud to Smart Guy, and I was able to peer into the decision-making processes he illustrates so very well. One that really got me is the story of Al Haynes, the pilot of the United flight in 1989 that lost all three hydraulic lines and basically gave him no control over the DC-10. He tells the harrowing story of how Haynes had to find a way to pilot the plane. He did so, coming up with ideas that had never before been conceived, and although he had no way to slow the plane down as it came in for a landing at the Sioux City airport, most of the passengers and crew survived. The training center commissioned numerous pilots to see if they could land a plane without any hydraulics. Here's an excerpt from p. 132:

The training center used a flight simulator that was programmed with the precise conditions faced by the United crew on that July day.... The pilots training to land the DC-10 in the simulator failed to make the runway on their first fifty-seven attempts.

And they were already familiar with the accident and what the pilot did! Just realizing how Haynes made his decisions not only fascinated me, but made me realize that we can do a whole lot with our minds that we never take advantage of. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I read the book and hope that some of you will read it, too. At the end of the book, Lehrer says (p. 250),

Of course, even the most attentive and self-aware minds will still make mistakes.... But the best decision-makers don't despair. Instead, they become students of error, determined to learn from what went wrong. They think about what they could have done differently so that the next time their neurons will know what to do.This is the most astonishing thing about the human brain: it can always improve itself. Tomorrow, we can make better decisions.

I find all that to be extremely uplifting. And I did find Lehrer's new book at Costco for half price, so I bought it. Onward and upward!
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Fall food choices

Buy from Amazon here

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote on my other blog about a book that was recommended by my friend TechnoBabe, called Wheat Belly, written by a cardiologist who felt compelled to expose what he calls the reason for the massive increases in obesity and overweight in Americans over the past few decades. Nobody who pays attention to these kinds of things could fail to notice the growing numbers of really really fat people. I sure see it here in Bellingham, whereas in Boulder I rarely saw people on the street as fat as those I see around here. Of course, part of the reason for that might be linked to the winters in the Pacific Northwest: long stretches of rainy days with little to no sun.

Whatever the true reason for the increase in our waistlines, I decided to buy the book. I actually downloaded it onto my iPad2 so that I could support our local independent bookstore. (This was my first and possibly last electronic book; I really like to peruse and flip through pages that I've read without a lot of bother. Plus this book had notes in each chapter and I could not easily look them up.) I read it avidly and agreed with many things he had to say about wheat. Basically, the idea that wheat has become ubiquitous in our diets, in so many different products, is indisputable. His real premise, with which I agree, is that the wheat we ingest does not bear much resemblance to the "amber waves of grain" that we think of as wheat. It's been genetically modified in order to make it produce more at a lower cost, and all without any research on whether it is harmful to those of us who eat it. Here's a quote from p. 6, called "Wheat, the Unhealthy Whole Grain":

Of all the grains in the human diet, why only pick on wheat? Because wheat, by a considerable margin, is the dominant source of gluten protein in the human diet. Unless they're Euell Gibbons, most people don't eat much rye, barley, spelt, triticale, bulgur, kamut, or other less common gluten sources; wheat consumption overshadows consumption of other gluten-containing grains by more than a hundred to one. ... I focus on wheat because, in the vast majority of American diets, gluten exposure can be used interchangeably with wheat exposure. For that reason, I often use wheat to signify all gluten-containing grains.

Dr. Davis makes a great case for stopping the consumption of wheat. I tend to go along with what he says about it, as well as the observations he has made about all kinds of fructose sources (often hidden with esoteric sounding names) and their terrible consequences on the body when consumed in even small doses. And here I had started eating agave nectar, thinking I was doing good things for myself (not!).

Anyway, I did some research on other gluten-containing grains, such as rye, and I found out some very interesting information. For one thing, since rye has a much lower gluten content than wheat it is usually combined with wheat when used for making bread. I looked for straight rye breads and found that my local health food store does indeed carry some, but there's not much. It needs a sourdough starter if it doesn't contain any added sugars. A variety of pumpernickel is imported from Bavaria, although there is actually a 100% rye bread made locally that is hard as a rock. It's good, though, and I'm using rye as a replacement for the spelt bread I have grown so fond of at the Great Harvest Bread Company. Their spelt has lots of honey to make it rise, and I noticed that I would often crave the bread for its sweet content. One place that has lots of interesting facts about rye is Grindstone Bakery. I will continue to keep rye and brown rice in my diet, since I have no gluten issues. I asked the owner of the GHBC if they make spelt without added sugar, and he said they experimented with it, but it wasn't successful. It needs a fair amount of honey.

The reason for my endeavor into a wheat-free diet is to find out if cutting out wheat and all added sugars (other than from fresh fruit) will improve my cholesterol numbers. I was so convinced that I would be looking at great numbers after losing fifteen pounds and eating lots of healthy foods. I ate my spelt bread and sourdough wheat breads, occasional excursions into pizza when eating out with my friends, but otherwise not much wheat. I don't eat processed foods very often, but I am now thinking that I need to make an effort to keep my glycemic load to a minimum. I now check on this website (Diet and Fitness Today) to find the glycemic index and glycemic load of the various foods that I eat. In January I will again have my blood drawn to see if the numbers have improved. Oh yes, one more thing that I added: I started taking fish oil daily at my doctor's suggestion. Although I'm not going to be able to tell what might have changed my numbers, I'll know I'm on the right track if they go down. (My total cholesterol was 259, up 15 points from January of this year.)

Whew! This post got a lot longer than I wanted, but I'll stop here and release my readers to other endeavors. I do hope to hear from you about any ideas you might have about these steps I've taken.
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Wildlife and Aldo Leopold

Wolf_Kolmården.jpg: Daniel Mott from Stockholm, Sweden

How could I NOT have heard about Aldo Leopold before now? When I won the book from Far Side of Fifty last week (A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold), I entered a new and exciting part of the universe that I didn't know anything about. That first link will tell you everything about Leopold, but here's the short version. He was born in 1887 and lived to the age of 61; he died in 1948. The book for which he is famous was published posthumously by his son in 1949. Leopold died of a heart attack while helping a neighbor fight a wildfire.

In the early 1920s, he was assigned to hunt and kill bears, wolves, and mountain lions in New Mexico. He learned to respect these animals and came to realize their important place in the ecosystem. From that link:

In 1935 he helped found the Wilderness Society, dedicated to expanding and protecting the nation's wilderness areas. He regarded the society as "one of the focal points of a new attitude—an intelligent humility toward man's place in nature."

In the book, he talks about killing a wolf, and how it changed him. This is from pp. 138-139:

We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed the way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock. 

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide rocks. 

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

It took awhile, but Leopold began to realize that the integrity of the ecosystem in which we live requires wildlife.  There is now an Aldo Leopold Foundation, and his children and grandchildren have become naturalists and educators. He was truly a great man. Another quote from the Wikipedia link is from Bruce Babbitt, former Secretary of the Interior:

In January of 1995 I helped carry the first grey wolf into Yellowstone, where they had been eradicated by federal predator control policy only six decades earlier. Looking through the crate into her eyes, I reflected on how Aldo Leopold once took part in that policy, then eloquently challenged it. By illuminating for us how wolves play a critical role in the whole of creation, he expressed the ethic and the laws which would reintroduce them nearly a half-century after his death.

I have never seen a Grey Wolf but I have certainly heard them in the wild, and I'll bet you have, too. Thank you, Connie, for introducing me to Leopold's book. I am enjoying it immensely. She also sent me two lovely cards and said that she couldn't resist sending along a little bit of Minnesota too: both are pictures that she took, mounted on cards with included envelopes I can use to send to special people.

Raspberries and Yellow Lady Slipper

And then there's the book, a treasure indeed, that I will slip into and enjoy every second. The book is, as it says on the cover, "the classic statement of the joy and beauty found in a style of life that protects the environment." For someone who has seen only two bears (magnificent as they were) and mountain goats twice, I can attest to the feeling of majesty they impart to the wilderness. Here's a picture of the entire package I received:

I didn't go for a hike today because of the possibility of getting in to see the doctor about my allergies, which have been driving me crazy. Instead, I'm sitting here in the middle of the afternoon writing this post, and enjoying "A Sand County Almanac." I didn't realize how lucky I was, and I'm so happy to be able to share it with my blogging friends.
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