TWO BY J. K. ROWLING

TWO BY J. K. ROWLING

In a recent New York Times column several writers gave themselves
pseudonyms and wrote a short description of their supposed most recent book. This bagatelle was sparked by "The Cuckoo's Calling," a decidedly un-Harry Potter (thank God) novel, written by Rowling under a pen name
that someone in her agent's? publisher's? attorney's? office revealed. She had not meant that to happen but stepped up and confessed: Robert Galbraith is J. K. Rowling.

"Cuckoo's Calling" is a mystery set in London. Cuckoo, a fabulous model
falls or is thrown from a balcony at her flat on an upmarket Kensington square. Her death, while an apparently straightforward suicide, prompts her rich half-brother to hire Strike, an ex-military cop now fledgling private eye.

Strike is one of those huge men with a war injury, a former athlete
now with one leg. He fights pain and a broken heart. He is the smart bastard son of a rock star, in debt and looking to the new case to bail himself out.  Strike hires a clever temp assistant whose instincts make
her a useful sidekick. In these two -- the shambling detective and the young temp -- Rowling has created characters you must meet again.

Surely, this novel will make the screen in one form or another: film, TV
series, something. Book sales were slow: a first novel by an unknown.
After the real author became known, the publisher (Hachette) has cranked out hundreds of thousands of hardcover and Kindle copies and the book is now a number one best seller. Rowling simply can't help herself.

A previous Rowling novel, "The Casual Vacancy," (Hachette, 2012) might have used a better title. This is the first Rowling departure from Harry Potter, in a setting away from London, a suffocating small town somewhere in the West Country.

It, too, begins with a sudden death, this one of a youngish local council member, of a brain aneurism. His shocking departure has left the council with a vacancy, the casual vacancy of the title. The major characters include young and old. All of them are often repellent and out of control. Everyone has secrets and the harm they do one another fairly makes your hair curl.

The writing wants to flow along, but the stories with so many characters, not one of them very sympathetic, involve keeping a lot of plates spinning. Do we care? I kept reading because of the moments, the occasional look into other lives, among them the best description of a heroin addict and her habitat I have ever come across. Much is bleak, there is little redemption and so the reader is relieved to be done.

Rowling is one of those people who just won't be stopped from writing. Her output is staggering. We know she has finished a sequel to the Strike
novel. If this is what it takes to divorce from Harry Potter, good for her. Wonder if the third ex-Harry book will begin with an unexpected death.

COSTMARY

COSTMARY


Beside the wooden back steps at my grandmother's house in
Ellisburg, PA, was a big, leafy plant with a pleasant, minty scent.
"Rosemary," they told me and I believed that until I was a young adult.

I remembered the scent and Rosemary with its piney, oily smell was not it. Whenever I was near an herb garden, I'd look closely at anything vaguely resembling the plant of my memory. It was always one of those niggling loose ends, like trying to recall the name of the child who sat across from you in second grade.

Then, one summer afternoon, on a visit to Philipsburg Manor, a Historic Hudson Valley site at Sleepy Hollow, New York, I found it. In a quiet setting above the Hudson River and apart from a busy thoroughfare, was a mill, barns and gardens. One of the gardens was devoted to old species: herbs and flowers from colonial times. Among the thriving green beds, was a healthy-looking bush with frilled leaves. I nipped one and there it was! I was transported across time and space to my grandmother's back steps, where I saw my own child self, pinching the leaves.

"Costmary" the tag read. No wonder they called it "rosemary," close enough! I took a leaf and kept it until it finally disintegrated.
Now I knew what I'd been searching for but I was a long way from having any of my own.

Years passed. I moved from a country place with plenty of room for gardens to a city apartment with a large terrace. Here I keep a seasonal garden planted in pots of various sizes. I carry water out there daily because the sun and wind quickly dry the soil.

Like everyone else who has ordered anything online, I get catalogs, tons of them. "The Growers Exchange" of Charles City, Virginia, sent one and as I paged through it, I came across costmary, its picture and description: "Valued medicinally for its antiseptic properties - fresh leaves ease insect stings and bites. The sweet-scented leaves that are reminiscent of men's cologne are often used in tonic teas." Chrysanthemum balsamita. Tanacetum balsamita. Also known as "Bible Leaf." $5.95 a plant. I ordered three.

Then I waited. I checked often to see if the order had been sent. I waited some more then went away for a couple of weeks. While I was gone, I asked family members to watch the mail. Finally, long after I had given up, a well-padded parcel appeared in the mailbox. I carefully unwrapped three small plants looking road-weary and in need of a drink. I potted them together and left them on the kitchen counter for a few days, watering lightly and letting the sun shine on them a little. After a couple of weeks, I put the pot outside on the terrace in a shaded spot and out of the wind.

There they are, not looking anything like the picture in the catalog or in that Sleepy Hollow garden or by my grandmother's back steps. I will take them to Martha's Vineyard where I have a few herbs growing in a raised bed and tuck them in there, wishing them good luck and hoping for the best. I feel as if I finally solved a mystery and brought the solution home. 

CUTTINGS

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CUTTINGS (I just gave Sam a rhubarb plant for his
47th Birthday)

The comfrey from Martha Dana

Thrives below the back stone wall.

Bees love the modest flowers

And the lavish greenery has

Many healing abilities.

                 Cousin Tom gave me creeping violet

From his rock garden and now it is

Among the stones, above the comfrey.

Lady's mantle swapped with Charlotte

for Hosta Elegans  fights for space

With silvery artemesia

From Stella, a constant gardener,

And the mother of my husband.

Years ago, walking with Virginia,

Before she lost her mind,

I pulled up some nice ivy

From a vacant lot

And trained it to climb.

Yellow iris from Susie's place in Fly Summit

Has survived, unhappy where it is.

Bishop's Weed from Loomis Street

Has taken over by the shed.

I've carried a shovel in the trunk of my car

And dug daylilies and asters from ditches.

Betty Ann and Helen poached

My white jonquils by moonlight

From somebody's front yard.

Rhubarb from Julia French is going crazy

Out on the compost

And Julia herself, well over 90,

Is in a nursing home over near Corning.

I treasure all these cuttings.

And watch for them every Spring,

Knowing exactly where each originated

And when it was planted.

When I'm gone, there'll be no remembering.

The next people

Will never understand rhubarb

And the comfrey will be

Just another weed.

Elinore Standard

From Uptown Dogtown

(written before we moved to Vermont where
there seems to be a healthy rhubarb culture)

THE BEGUINES

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THE BEGUINES

The late 12^th Century was the time of the Crusades and the monastic movement. Greek and Roman writings – science, philosophy, literature - had been translated into Latin.  Scholarship and urban culture throughout western Europe paved a way to an early Renaissance.

For upper class women there were two choices: marriage or the cloister and even the cloister was an expensive proposition. There were few         havens for women and those that existed became more and more under the authority of the male religious hierarchy. The mendicant orders, of which the Beguines were one, came under increasing scrutiny

as their ways of vita apostolica challenged ecclesiastical authority.

The Beguines were a spontaneous women’s movement, not adjunct to any male figure or group. There was no founder, no rule, no one to supervise or regulate the Beguine houses scattered throughout northern Europe. It is hard to describe the history of the movement and nobody is sure how the name came about. They probably began in Liege, but maybe not. Around 1175,  Lambert le Begue, who was a priest of Liege, encouraged women with whom he was associated to “live religiously.” The first prominent woman to be identified as a Beguine was Mary of Oignes (d. 1213) who was a “conversa” of a male Augustinian priory near Nivelles.

The Beguine communities proliferated and some became cities-within-cities with walls and moats, houses and hospitals, churches, streets, and public squares.  A grand mistress and council presided over each group and as time went along, they turned mainly to nursing the sick. The stance of Rome was mixed toward the Beguines. Sometimes their property was confiscated and sometimes they were permitted to pursue their way of life. The Napoleonic Wars and the Reformation took their toll. By 1969, there remained about 13 Beguinages in Belgium and Holland.

The goals of the Beguines were simplicity and freedom. They valued manual labor and promoted the use of the vernacular. Although they lived simply, they did not obligate their members to poverty. They had intense devotion to the Eucharist. They stressed love as a way to divine union. Although scandalized by its greed and corruption, the Beguines did not reject the Church or its teaching.  The Spanish Inquisition had a good, close look at the Beguines who were seen as inflammatory and heretical.

1. The Beguines demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be dedicated to God without having to join a convent.  Because the Beguines didn’t have any organizational support structure, they were sitting ducks for persecution and co-optation.

Source: Elizabeth T. Knuth “The Beguines”  1992.

                                                            + + +

There is an American Beguine Community consisting of married, widowed, and single women who follow various Christian traditions. Some live together in a “beguinage” some live separately. They say in their incarnation of the original Beguines, they aren’t something you join; they’re something you do. Their work is directed mainly toward the needs of women in the workplace. Located in the Bay area, another of their activities has been to introduce individuals, groups and churches to the meditative music and liturgy of Taize.

www.beguine.org

                                   

OH, BOY!

OH, BOY!

I finally happened. Over the past couple of months, I began
reading romances. These are the paperbacks you see in the
supermarket. They are inexpensive compared to most other
books on the rack and they picture muscley men with oily-
looking chests on the cover. Sometimes they hold a buxom
woman, her long hair streaming in the breeze.

I look for romances set in Regency London. Many feature threadbare but practical and pretty (without the specs and with some new dresses) young women and rakehell second- son nobles or the cold and remote Lord Somebody.

Society is merciless and shallow. Pleasure-seeking
and idleness (gambling, drinking, gossiping) are the way of life.
"Masculine" is used often. The bad characters always loose, men, especially, grow and change and there is always a just and happy ending that usually ends with a wedding. No wonder these books are for women.

I've always thought of trying to write one. What could be so
hard? They sell like mad and, apparently, there is no editor to stand
in the way of bad writing or atrocious translation into digital.
Like all other novels, the successful romance is cleverly plotted, sometimes with a mystery to be solved. In many, there is credible atmosphere and description that makes you think the writer has actually done some research. It may not be as easy as it looks because you can't do it cynically. You must believe.

Yes, there is sex. Close to porn in some romances, titillation
in all.  The male lover is patient and expert, full of restraint
and on a mission to possess and please. The woman may be
reluctant and inexperienced, but she catches on fast and before long simply cannot get enough. Marriage and a baby, noble rank and a
stately home are in her future. No wonder these books are for women.

When she was quite old, my mother said she read a book a day and now I realize what she was reading. They go like peanuts and after one romance, you need another. I remember seeing the ancient mother of a friend, wearing a silky bedjacket and propped on the bed pillows like a small pink pig, reading a Barbara Cartland romance. Then, I'd never heard of Cartland but she was an early writer of more than 700 novels in this genre. All of her work is virginal compared with much being written today, but Cartland put the genre on the map.

Today's authors have fakey names like Amanda and Shona. The titles often include such words as "Indiscreet" and "Passion." As e-books priced slightly lower than regular digital fiction. Harlequin, long a major publisher of romance, declared sales of more than $426 million in 2012 with 27% of that in digital sales.

To be fair, some books the romance genre are actually very good. I recently read two Regency novels by Tracey Devlin: "Lady's Revenge," and "Checkmate, My Lord," that have great characters and plenty of intrigue. These two are part of a series with the main characters appearing in degrees of importance. Barbara Metzger, Joan Smith, and Carla Kelly will keep you occupied and are so much fun without gratuitous sex.  Georgette Heyer also provides an early example of good, prolific writing in this genre. Beginning in 1921 until her death in 1974, she cranked out about a novel a year in various settings, most of them with a mystery to be solved. None of Heyer's work is as steamy as most current romance novels.

Not surprising is the vast female readership this genre inspires. There are plenty of book clubs, reading groups, conventions, websites and so on. It is a whole other reading world, one I had spurned until now. It may have been longtime superiority on my part but notice what I'm reading now.  Romances are like food: you have to try them to see if you've got the palate.

BOOKS I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS

BOOKS I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS

The pile of books on my night table has grown since Christmas, my
reading future right there within reach. These perfect presents provide
added security against idle moments and it is such a nice feeling to have choices made for me: how perfect -- nothing to decide.

As you may know from previous postings and from the newspaper column I wrote for years, I like lists. I like to know what other people are reading, especially people I know. There was a time when reading tips from friends came via postcard but now they come electronically. There are lists of bestsellers and recommendations via newspapers and publishers and that squid, Amazon. Book groups (I am not in one) abound, and it seems as if everybody is reading, reading.

My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force (Little, Brown, 2012)
is like an assignment: select a small shelf and put on it a selection of books that you love, that changed your life, that inspired you, etc. etc.
The editor solicited more than 100 creative people, not just writers, and the results make such an interesting collection. Some of the people you've heard of -- some are probably good friends of the editor. I like it that
there are contributors I've never heard of. I like it that many of the shelves include books I would have put there myself.

I'll give you an example: Maira Kalman, a genius illustrator and writer, a person I admire above many! Her shelf includes two by Nabokov, two by Cecil Beaton, an Arbus, an Atget, I Married Adventure  by Osa Johnson and a book on ceremonial uniforms. Kalman says, "I won't buy any books this week, then the next thing I know, I'm running to twelve bookstores and buying books as if I'm deprived." If you want a real treat, get Kalman's own book: The Principles of Uncertainty (Penguin, 2007) and think about putting it on your own shelf.

Here is another: Mary Karr. I've always liked the way she blats it out.
The Liar's Club (Viking, 1995) was my first Karr experience and I always used it as an example of made-up dialogue in a "true" memoir. Karr's list includes a Nabokov and poems by Pound and Eliot and Larkin. She includes To Kill a Mockingbird, Salinger's Nine Stories, and The House at Pooh Corner as books about the dispossessed and estranged, about people as weird as she felt herself to be. She also shelves Blood Meridian  by Cormac McCarthy, a book I'm reading now in slow doses, a nastier and more violent story than you can possibly imagine, told via razzle-dazzle writing so gorgeous it makes you suck your teeth.

Another good thing about this collection is the illustrations by Jane Mount. As you go through, you see books repeated and think of books
you'd put on your own shelf. It is a sweet, clever offering and I am so happy somebody got it for me!

Now the rest of the pile:

Elsewhere by Richard Russo (Knopf, 2012). A memoir about life in Gloversville, NY, of the 1950s, and mostly a tribute to his single mother, Jean, and the close-knit Italian family he grew up in. I've always liked
Russo and have read most of his novels, beginning with The Risk Pool,
(Random, 1988), most of them autobiographical, so I read Elsewhere as if it were about an old friend. You have to wonder why no photos or illustrations. What is going on, Knopf? This is one of your best writers!

Beautiful Ruins (Harper, 2012) by Jess Walter, a best-selling author I never heard of.  It is a novel that jumps back and forth in time about a bunch of Hollywood people off the set of Cleopatra. You may remember the famous Burton-Taylor escapades generated by that movie and some of the cast spills over into this novel. The setting, a tiny hotel on an unknown Italian island, is home to several appealing characters who inhabit the story through the years. This bestselling novel seems to get ecstatic reviews and, though I finished, I grew impatient and skipped.

Full Body Burden: Growing Up In The Nuclear Shadow Of Rocky Flats
by Kristen Iversen (Crown, 2012). This is one of those sleeper books, a word-of-mouth success. Set in the small Colorado town that has been called one of the most contaminated plutonium sites in the U.S. where accidents were always called "incidents," Iverson tells a chilling tale of nuclear nightmare. I'll read it when I get up the power.

The Encyclopedia of Container Plants by Ray Rogers (Timber Press, 2010). First page I turn to: a big picture of a bird's nest fern, a favorite I have growing in a window here in Burlington. The snow is coming down hard outside and the fern looks at it, defying the season. Because my only garden space these days is a long, fairly wide terrace, I grow everything in pots. Each year seems to have a color theme, not exactly planned, but often coherent. Last summer, it was purple and orange: lots of marigolds and tradescantia. Now that I have this fine illustrated book, I might even
make a plan before I wander dazedly through the nursery aisles. Look! Here is a big pot of sedum, agave, kalanchoe, agave and echeveria -- all
colorful succulents that may withstand the hot, dry, windy conditions
three stories above the ground.

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Holt, 2012). I read Wolf Hall
and look forward to this one which follows on. Ah, more Tudor history

with Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer and a large cast of Boleyns, Howards, Seymours  etc. etc. Hard to keep it all straight and I keep going back and forth. Glad to have a real book here. The electronic version makes it impossible to refer to the lists, charts and family trees. I always read a book like this with maps, also. Sounds like work but is really study. Wish I could remember what I learn.

Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012). Who am I to say
Munro is depressing? I will give her another try. Surely, I've missed something.

In The Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country by Kim Barnes (Doubleday, 1996). An author I never heard of with a memoir set in the big timber country of Idaho during the 1960s. Life in a shack built by loggers on company land? Sounds a little familiar. My mother was born in such a camp in Marlinton, West Virginia, where her father ran
a saw mill.  This will be my next book. Thanks, Laura.

The Buddha in the Attic, a novel by Julie Otsuka (Anchor, 2011). Got all kinds of nominations and awards and I never heard of it. Getting deeper
down the well, is all I can say. Happy to have this little novel about a group of Japanese "picture brides" brought to San Francisco a hundred years ago.

With or Without You, a memoir by Dominica Ruta (Spiegel, 2013) was sent to me as an advanced reading copy. "My mother grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace and said, 'Get in the car.' I pulled on my sneakers
and followed her outside. She had that look on her face, distracted and mean, as though she'd just been dragged out of a deep sleep full of dreams. She was mad, I could tell right away, but not at me, not this time." So it begins -- another crazy mother and a smart kid who invents herself. I am drawn to these stories of the unprotected child and am glad to know Ruta has got herself a publisher with a national marketing campaign and big plans for promotion. Keep an eye out come March.

So many books. So little time. Thanks, everyone.





 

CHRISTMAS 2012

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CHRISTMAS 2012

Dark out and wind rattles the windows. Power out on the western slopes and snow is expected. We could use a little white to cover all the gray and brown. No color anywhere except, looking downtown, the street lights.

There is light in here, once I plug it in. Got a small tree that looked ok but has dropped needles since I brought it in and the branches are oddly limp. Put up colored lights around the dining room archway and they look ok but, like the tree, could be better. Too much haste and slap dash, not taking this holiday seriously.

This morning, I’ll bring up wrapping paper for the few presents I got – all on line, no shopping in stores. I did go to the supermarket yesterday and was surprised at how busy it was. Of course it was busy. Christmas is only a couple of days away and other people are out there, planning, going down lists.

At the supermarket, I follow my own list, churning through the narrow aisles, semi-dazed. “Jingle Bell Rock” is in my head after I picked Maya up from chorus last Thursday. Even  though the classroom door was closed, I could hear them rocking away, and now I’m stuck with the tune until Easter. Went to an organ concert downtown, on a gloomy afternoon, in a dark old church where I sat with my eyes closed, redesigning the front altar in my mind. A renovation has ruined the Victorian woodwork, placing an elongated white cross over everything. What were they thinking?

Right now, I’m wondering about the menu for Christmas dinner. I pulled out a can of cranberry sauce and a two packets of Jello (orange and lemon) to make a molded jelly thing, but that’s it. Maybe brisket from Amy’s cow. Squash. Cole slaw? Thought about making real cookies, not the ones from a packet. I remember ice box cookies my mother made, round, flat, with walnuts sliced through. Also, the ones from the press, squiggled on the baking sheet, decorated with sprinkles.

Fruit cake! I just read a poem by Marge Piercy about fruit cake, calling it some kind of poison, eaten by Rasputin. I am the only person who likes it and just threw one away after only a couple of bites. Ditch it or eat it. Help. I remember when my mother amassed the ingredients (all that citron!) and made little ones to give away to holiday callers.

Back then, people dropped in and sat around, sipping sherry and eating fruitcake (see above) while you showed them your presents. Those were opened and displayed for several days beneath the tree. This seems embarrassing now, but then it was what everyone did. From house to house people went, calling out greetings.

At Christmas breakfast, after presents were opened, we always had tomato juice my mother had canned late in the summer. My father would bring a bushel of tomatoes from somewhere in his travels and my mother was left to deal with them. The canned juice had a green pepper in it. I remember that.