Light and Momentary

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As of 12:20 this morning, I'm finished with the Crazy Shakespeare Project! More anon.

The Crazy Shakespeare Project: Close, No Cigar

There is a reason you've probably never seen a performance of Troilus and Cressida.

After my enthusiastic start last January, I never quite managed to read one play each month. Once my new job started in August, in fact, I hardly read any Shakespeare at all. Reading Shakespeare is much easier than it used to be, but it still requires concentration. It turns out that teaching graduate classes in an area outside my specialty also requires concentration, and so Shakespeare took a back seat to lecture prep for the whole of the fall semester.

I had hoped I could catch up in December since I wasn't prepping lectures, but the demands of finals plus the dreariness of the remaining plays meant that I couldn't pull it off. Bummer.

Still, I read 14.5 plays in 2011, and all but one of the poems.

Titus Andronicus 1/5/11	Coriolanus 12/4/11
Henry VI Part I 1/10/11	Two Gentlemen of Verona 7/4/11
Henry VI Part II 1/15/11	King John 5/30/11
Henry VI Part III 1/20/11	Twelfth Night 1/7/12
The Winter's Tale 4/3/11	Measure for Measure 7/18/11
Troilus & Cressida 1/1/12	Venus & Adonis 12/11/11
All's Well That Ends Well 1/4/12	The Rape of Lucrece 1/6/12
Richard III 1/25/11	The Passionate Pilgrim 12/2/11
Timon of Athens 12/21/11	The Phoenix and the Turtle 1/30/11
Pericles 1/29/11	A Lover's Complaint 4/17/11
Cymbeline 4/11/11	Sonnets 5/29/2011
Henry VIII 12/28/11

I've been saving Twelfth Night, which I've seen a couple of times but never read, for last. Perhaps I can finish Twelfth Night on Twelfth Night? After I'm finished I'd like to reread Hamlet and Othello, both of which I sped through too inattentively as a sophomore in college. I asked for and was given a copy of The Two Noble Kinsmen for Christmas -- it's not in my Complete Works -- and I think I'll tackle it this year too (she said a little wearily, hoping it's more like Macbeth (did you know Macbeth is thought to have been co-authored? Wikipedia says so and that means it must be true) than Pericles or Timon of Athens).

Boy, this is kind of a gloomy post. (This is kind of a gloomy blog lately. December/January at Light & Momentary: brought to you by Seasonal Affective Disorder.) I'll try to do a cheerier wrap-up post when I've actually wrapped up the project.

Read this book: Raising Elijah

Back in (oh dear) March I requested and received an electronic review copy of Sandra Steingraber's Raising Elijah. I galloped through the book, taking notes for my review all along the way, but I never wrote it up. Why? Because it's about a divisive political issue, and I don't talk about divisive political issues very often.

Steingraber's previous book, Having Faith, looked at the effects of environmental toxins during pregnancy and lactation. I read it when I was six months pregnant with Joe and spent the ensuing weeks flipping out about toxin exposure. Her new book looks at risks faced by children beyond toddlerhood, and it is equally flip-out-inducing. Maybe that's the most important thing I have to say here: you should read it and see what you think. Read it and see if there's anything you want to change, because if enough of us want to make changes that will protect our kids, maybe we can do something about it together.

I'm finally writing this post today because it is [was] the feast of Christ the King and I am thinking about our obligations to "the least of these," and because there is [was] a horrifying story in today's NYT Magazine about the after-effects of fracking -- which, incidentally, is discussed in the final chapter of Raising Elijah. (And also because it's NaBloPoMo.)

Steingraber's book winds through an alarming array of topics of particular interest to parents. There is a chapter on the carcinogenic properties of pressure-treated wood (which is probably an integral part of at least one playground structure near your home), one on the relationship between toxins and asthma, one on the neurotoxic properties of environmental contaminants -- their possible role in ADD/ADHD and autism spectrum disorders.

She writes about the discovery that the kitchen floor in her home was actually a triple-decker terrine of toxicity: when she and her husband decide to replace the vinyl flooring (after you read about the explosion at the vinyl plant you'll never think about vinyl, or freight trains, in quite the same way again), they uncover asphalt tile (necessitating emergency asbestos abatement) atop lead-painted hardwood. It's a story that makes a person say, "When are we going to figure this out? When will we stop building our homes with substances that harm our children?"

In frequently lapidary prose, Steingraber urges us to protect our children. Here is the thing that deterred me from writing this post: many of the women who read here are Catholics who tend to vote Republican. On that end of the political spectrum, there's a tendency to argue about the existence of climate change and downplay the importance of environmental issues -- the issues that Steingraber labels "the great moral crisis of our day." Many of you who read here will have a very different idea about the great moral crisis of our day, and will be saddened to learn that Steingraber is open about the abortion she scheduled when she learned that her first baby had multiple anomalies. But I think there is an important truth submerged in those colliding narratives of crisis.

In this country at this time, there is a strange alliance between pro-lifers and pro-industry forces: the politicians more likely to support legislation that restricts abortion are generally less likely to support legislation that requires external regulation of industry, including the chemical industry. Does that really make sense? Environmental contaminants play an important role in fetal anomalies. Fetal anomalies play an important role in late-term abortions. What if we could protect the least of these and steward the earth more wisely at the same time? We say that we believe God knits us together in our mothers' wombs. Why, then, are we silent about the substances slashing savage steeks through his handiwork?

When I was pregnant with my oldest son, I worked with a woman from a small farming town. She was also pregnant, as were two of her neighbors. She was broken-hearted when both of their babies were diagnosed with multiple anomalies incompatible with life. "Why?" she asked her OB. "Is it something in the water?" "Oh, no," the doctor assured her. "It's just one of those random things." Given the stats I later encountered on reproductive toxicant release in that region, I am disinclined to believe it was "just one of those random things." We mothers clutch our vigilance like a totem; during pregnancy we take our folic acid and we steer clear of unpasteurized cheese. But the reality is that we need systemic changes if we are to shield our children, born and unborn, from harm.

Steingraber proposes three changes in Raising Elijah: she encourages each reader to plant a garden, to use a reel mower in lieu of a gas-powered mower, and to line-dry clothing. (I tell myself, in the immortal words of Meatloaf, that two out of three ain't bad.) She acknowledges that to some readers these suggestions will seem ludicrously difficult while to others they will seem ludicrously inadequate. Wherever you fall on that continuum, I suspect you will find her book intriguing and provocative. Read it, and tell me what you think.

Disclosure: I received a free .pdf of Steingraber's book. I was not compensated in any other way for this review.

A Bard & Hack Production

Pericles was the last play I read in January, and I was not enthusiastic. It starts out with our hero sussing out the truth about a father-daughter incestuous couple, which made me sigh heavily because Room is still thrusting itself into my brain at inopportune moments. I didn't want to read about any more sex slavery, thanks.

Their relationship turns out to be a very small part of the play, which is good, but my anticipation of better things to come was dampened (dampened is an understatement here -- dampened like a tsunami might dampen something) by the writing in the first two acts. Pericles is one of Shakespeare's collaborative projects. His co-author is unknown but I think his name might have been Poetaster The Hack, or PT for short. The first act prompted this exasperated tweet, and the second wasn't any better.

Two good things came out of the Hack-Bard collaboration for me, though. The first was a keener appreciation for what Shakespeare does: he makes blank verse look easy. Sure, Shakespeare wrote plenty of lines that don't scan and lines that are hard to parse, but our friend PT produced a limping affront to scansion and syntax. It's like Yoda meets Bill Peet. (Bill Peet in his rhyming stage -- goodness, I dislike those books.)

The second thing was a fun surprise for me: I think my ear for Shakespeare's voice is developing. I skimmed the introduction and took away the idea that Shakespeare didn't jump in until Act IV. Imagine my astonishment, then, to find myself actually...enjoying Act III. There were bits I wanted to underline. There were turns of phrase I admired. It sounded more like the Bard than the hack, but it was still too early for that, wasn't it?

I flipped back to the introduction and discovered that I'd misremembered: Act III is exactly where Shakespeare comes in. Kind of nifty, huh?

Even though he was light-years ahead of PT, Shakespeare was pretty much phoning it in for Pericles. Hidden identities, last-minute reunions, big happy ending, blah blah blah. He'd done the same thing at least a half-dozen times by then. There are also scenes in which I imagine PT grabbing the quill and saying, "No, it's my turn now" -- the writing is uneven. I will remember it happily, though, as the play in which I saw Shakespeare's craft more clearly, and in which I hit a target I wasn't sure I'd make: 1 month, 6 plays.

My updated intro post for the Crazy Shakespeare Project is here, if you're curious about how it's going. For February I am going to post about Richard III, and read The Winter's Tale, The Lover's Complaint, and about half of the sonnets. Getting there!

Henry and Margaret

Henry VI is an infant in the opening scene of the trilogy named for him; in its closing scene he dies. From his first appearance on the stage he is bookish and pious. "Marriage, Uncle! Alas, my years are young! / And fitter is my study and my books / Than wanton dalliance with a paramour." His nobles choke and splutter at the news of England's shrinking authority in France; Henry shrugs and says they must accept God's will.

These are not, as you might imagine, traits they find very kingly. "Be patient," Henry counsels Lord Clifford. "Patience is for poltroons," Clifford retorts. When the sparks of discontent ignite a civil war, Henry is even more ill-suited to lead.

Fit to Rule

The middle play of the Henry VI trilogy is all about the jostling for power that takes place in the run-up to civil war and in its early days. Some bits of the first half were the kind of Shakespeare I like least, in which the Earl of Whatsit and the Duke of Wherever go on and on in I'm-especially-good-at-expostulating fashion.

Act IV, though, was something completely different. John Cade first appears on the stage in Act IV, ushering in a sequence that reminded me of nothing so much as, again, the Coen Brothers. It's not unusual for Shakespeare to sprinkle funny scenes into a tragedy, like this bit in Macbeth where the porter complains about the way that drinking boosts desire and impairs performance. In my experience, though, those episodes are usually extraneous and are often excised. (I have that example at the ready because I still remember my astonishment on discovering it. As a high school senior I read Act III at home in my dad's Complete Works, and then learned the next day that the porter's scene had been edited right out of my English text. Bowdlerization! I couldn't believe it!)

John Cade is like nothing I remember seeing in Shakespeare: every bit as bumbling as Dogberry and his ilk, but loaded for bear with an army of commoners at his back. His scenes are hilarious, but it's black, black humor. Although these events date from more than 500 years ago, they spark timely questions given our current political climate -- in particular, what equips a person to govern? Shakespeare derides the idea that an unlettered man could lead. (2 Henry VI is the source of the quote "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"; it's a proposal from one of Cade's followers, all of whom view education with suspicion.) On the other hand, in scenes reminiscent of modern-day debates about the "liberal elite," Henry is described as overly fond of books and is clearly ineffectual. He is too passive, the grasping Richard too vulpine.

Shakespeare doesn't offer an easy answer to the questions he raises. Henry's uncle, the good Lord Protector who has served in that office since Henry was a baby, yields up his staff of authority. His wife is worried; he dismisses her fears. He tells her "And had I twenty times so many foes, / And each of them had twenty times their power, / All these could not procure me any scathe / So long as I am loyal, true, and crimeless." His reward for decades of faithful service? He is murdered in his bed. It's a troubled place, 15th-century England.

Joan of Arc: The Unauthorized Biography

I mentioned that I'd been dreading Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth trilogy. I expected it to be a slogfest, full of interchangeable nobles and soporific speechifying. My apologies to Mr. Shakespeare: I'm two plays in and finding it engaging, moving, laugh-out-loud funny in spots, and reasonably easy to follow despite the York-Lancaster machinations.

Tonight, some quick thoughts on Part One. I loved Shakespeare's treatment of Joan of Arc in Act I. Particularly memorable: a nobleman named Talbot swaggers in, full of bombast and braggadocio. You almost expect him to burst into song -- "I'm especially good at expectorating!" -- and then he meets Joan. She leaves him quaking in his boots, saying, "They called us for our fierceness English dogs; / Now, like to whelps, we crying run away."

It was a bit of a shock, then, to see her in Act V. She summons demons (!) and offers them her blood, her body (!!), her soul (!!!). They reject her offers (!!!!); the tide turns against the French. I didn't realize until I read this play that Joan of Arc wasn't canonized until 1920. I thought at first that Shakespeare was giving precedence to jingoism over accurate biography, but I suppose I don't know how long it takes to have one's reputation rehabilitated after being executed for heresy.

Talbot reappears in Act IV with his son. The two of them are fighting a doomed battle -- doomed by infighting among two other nobles whom the naive king has instructed to stop fighting and get along already. The whole segment is well done, with the well-meaning king and the squabbling dukes, but I especially enjoyed the father-son dialogue in which each encourages the other to flee and live. In the end, though, they both die in the battle. Talbot says, "If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father's side, / And commendable proved, let's die in pride."

I launched into the trilogy thinking, "Three plays? Was that really necessary? Who would ever watch THREE PLAYS about HENRY THE SIXTH?" I was pleasantly surprised, again, by the end of Part One. The Earl of Suffolk (cue booing and hissing) persuades Henry that he should marry Margaret, breaking his more politically advantageous engagement. The pliant Henry acquiesces over the objections of his uncle, the Lord Protector. We can already smell the trouble brewing in Part Two -- about which more soon.

The Bard and the Coen Brothers

Can we still be friends if I tell you that I refuse to see another Coen Brothers movie? I know that all the cool people love the Coen Brothers, but I don't care: not gonna do it. Their images get under my skin and stay there, and really I like the underside of my skin just fine without any mangled dead bodies lurking there. I don't mind the quirky (I'd be in a world of trouble if I hated quirky, since quirky is practically my middle name). I mind the blood, I mind the improbably motivated killings, I mind the characters whose inner workings I just cannot fathom -- all of which brings me to Titus Andronicus.

Titus Andronicus is awash in blood. It reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon that came out when The Passion of Christ was in theaters, with Mel Gibson shouting into a director's megaphone "More blood!" Titus Andronicus is widely held to be Shakespeare's worst play, and I am here to tell you the reputation is not undeserved.

It is so alarming that it kept me pretty much rapt, waiting to see what awful thing would happen next. In the final act Titus kills his daughter, his beloved broken daughter, a deed that made me say out loud, "Oh, no, you didn't!" That's the moment I keep puzzling over in my head, telling myself things like "paterfamilias" and "death before dishonor." But mostly I just keep telling myself, "That is deeply wrong."

It's not just that it's excessively bloody and set in a time when fathers ruled absolutely over their families. The characters don't even make sense. Tamora, the captured queen of the Goths, appears first in Act I pleading for the life of her son. "And if thy sons were ever dear to me, / O think my son to be as dear to me," she implores. "Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?" she asks. "Draw near them then in being merciful. / Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge." And yet when she gives birth to her lover's child she sends the baby to him with instructions to kill it, to "christen it with thy dagger's point." Really, Tamora? Really? And oh, her lover Aaron is a piece of work -- a Moor (cue the blackness cliches) with not an iota of goodness in him. In his last appearance on stage he asserts: "Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things / As willingly as one would kill a fly, / And nothing grieves me heartily indeed, / But that I cannot do ten thousand more."

I don't buy it. Shakespeare's later villains are much more persuasive.

Still, in the years I have spent reading Shakespeare, the moments I have disliked most are the sloggy moments, spent counting down the lines until an act is over. Titus Andronicus has many flaws, but it is certainly not boring. And it also means that this year of Shakespeare can only get better.

My Crazy Shakespeare Project

So I am resolved to finish the works of Shakespeare this year, which means reading 17 plays and most of the poetry. That, my friends, is a lot of Shakespeare. You will probably not be surprised to hear that I have a Plan.

This month I am aiming to read six plays, one act per day. An act a day is a great pace for me -- it feels like headway without actually taking too much time. I started with Titus Andronicus, to get it out of the way, and I have moved on to the Henry VI trilogy. I expected to be counting down the lines until the end, but I was surprised to find I really enjoyed the first act -- so much so that I made my husband stop reading his own stuff so I could read my favorite bits aloud to him.

After the Henry VI trilogy I will probably read Pericles and Timon of Athens, in order to get the most dreaded plays out of the way. That will leave me with 11 plays, or one for each remaining month. That should leave me plenty of time to cover the poetry, right?

Here's my list:

Titus Andronicus 1/5/11	Coriolanus 12/4/11
Henry VI Part I 1/10/11	Two Gentlemen of Verona 7/4/11
Henry VI Part II 1/15/11	King John 5/30/11
Henry VI Part III 1/20/11	Twelfth Night 1/7/12
The Winter's Tale 4/3/11	Measure for Measure 7/18/11
Troilus & Cressida 1/1/12	Venus & Adonis 12/11/11
All's Well That Ends Well 1/4/12	The Rape of Lucrece 1/6/12
Richard III 1/25/11	The Passionate Pilgrim 12/2/11
Timon of Athens 12/21/11	The Phoenix and the Turtle 1/30/11
Pericles 1/29/11	A Lover's Complaint 4/17/11
Cymbeline 4/11/11	Sonnets 5/29/2011
Henry VIII 12/28/11

I'm feeling optimistic -- even if I bail in July, I'll read more Shakespeare than I would have otherwise. If I were a Shakespeare scholar, or even a less distracted googler, I would end with a suitable Shakespeare quote. Maybe by this time next year I'll have found one that's exactly right. Watch this space!

As tedious as a twice-told tale

Remember my happy Dickens project? It was conceived in a bleak Edinburgh winter as a way to keep the literature-loving corner of my brain humming in a season filled with soggy diapers and sibling squabbles. If you keep nibbling at something big, sooner or later you find you've chewed a sizable hole in it. I decided to read a Dickens novel and a Shakespeare play every year.

So in January of 2000 I started out.

Confessions of an Impure Mom

A friend of mine mentioned that she'd been reading The NDD Book by Dr. Sears, and so I put it on hold at the library. It had been a few years since I picked up one of his newer books, and I was curious.

Oh my goodness, I am not a fan.

He says NDD stands for "Nutrition Deficit Disorder." I think it's actually "No Detente! Destruction!" This book is undiluted biblio-napalm in the Mama Wars, because in it Dr. Sears separates the "pure moms" from the rest of us. He tells us we can know we're on the road to pure mom-hood if we hurt inside when we see a child -- not our own child, any child -- wolfing down a Twinkie (p. 68).

And do you know what? If that's what it takes to be a "pure mom" in his view, then I am going to wallow in my impurity. Because really? I should get bent out of shape if someone else's kid enjoys a Twinkie? I'm supposed to be opinionated about other families' food choices?

It will not cause me inner pain if your child enjoys a Twinkie.

I will not strike you from the guest list if you don't feed your family wild-caught salmon twice a week. (Page 14 tells us that pure moms associate with pure families, so they can all eat 12 servings of produce a day (really! 12! who does that? 9 is hard enough!) -- with a side of smugness.)

If you are kind enough to care for my child while I am away, I will not excoriate you for offering mainstream snacks -- like, say, Ritz crackers. Relationships with extended family/friends/babysitters are complicated enough without adding in demands that they stop sabotaging my child's health with those evil sleeves of crackers.

I am so glad that this book was not in print when my oldest child was little, because I would have used it to hold myself and the mothers around me to an unreasonable standard. I went through a pretty hardcore stage in which my pantry contained no white sugar, no white flour, and no white rice. Instead I had a case of tempeh and ten pounds of blueberries in the freezer, and CSA vegetables overflowing the crisper drawers. Strangely, I cannot say that my children's health and well-being have deteriorated since then, despite the -- gasp! -- chocolate chips in the pantry and the ice cream in the freezer.

One of my longstanding hesitations about Dr. Sears is his tendency to overstate the implications of correlational research. You've all seen this cartoon, right? It's natural to look for causal relationships. It's also terribly easy to get it wrong when you look for causal relationships, sometimes with painful consequences. If your child has autism, it's unlikely that a little more wild-caught salmon would have rendered him neurotypical. If your neighbor's kids are annoying, it's probably not just because they need more vegetables. If you wrap up your kid's identity in a circumscribed set of food choices (we're instructed to say things like "In our family, we don't eat candy because it can make us sick"), what happens when he discovers that he really REALLY loves candy?

I am 100% convinced of the need for more n-3 LCPUFA in American kids' diets, and 100% convinced about giving kids opportunities to enjoy whole foods frequently. But OH the hortatory tone of this book just doesn't work for me, because I'm also 100% convinced that sanctimommies do more harm than good. Does the world need more Judgmenta McSmuggersons expressing their concern that you put M&Ms in the oatmeal cookies? I think not.

If you are looking for a book on feeding your family, try Ellyn Satter instead. If you've been reading Dr. Sears, you might need to brace yourself for the part where she tells you that Tuna Helper is okay.

Have you read The NDD Book? What did you think?

One more post about Dickens

Sarah and Lissa and Lilian asked for a little more information about my Dickens project, so here's an outline of how I did it with some notes on the books. As I mentioned in my first post, I had already read Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist before I decided to read them all. If you've never read any Dickens, start with those.

2000: I started with David Copperfield, and it remains one of my very favorites. It's a great way to start on the longer novels, because the characters are so engaging.

2001: I picked Martin Chuzzlewit because it was the only Dickens novel on the shelf at the branch library, and I spent nine long weeks battling through it. It was fun to see Dickens' perceptions of America and Americans since we had just returned from two years in the UK. I also remember being struck by Dickens' emphasis on illness as transformative (for both patient and nurse), and by the glimpses of 19th-century midwifery. It was mostly a slog, though.

2002: Little Dorrit had been on my shelf for years, and I decided to finish it before the arrival of our third son. (Lesson learned from 2001: don't drag it out.) This one taught me to pay close attention, because I was still puzzled about Mrs. Clennam's prevarications when I finished the book.

2003: OH! Bleak House! Love love love puffy heart love. Might be my favorite. This year I also read Great Expectations to my oldest son, which took some determination. Well worth it -- I'll always remember sharing that beautiful ending with him. "Mom," he said quietly, "that gives me a funny feeling inside." Me too, sweetheart.

2004: The Old Curiosity Shop was hugely popular in its day. I am not a fan. I wished Little Nell would hurry up and die already.

2005: Pickwick Papers is most likely my favorite, but it arrived at the top spot by a circuitous route. I tried to read it in college and gave up after 20 pages. I tried to read it in the winter of '05 and gave up after 60 pages. I set my teeth and dove back in at the beginning that summer. About 150 pages in I was completely hooked. Of all his books, this one is the most fun: whimsical and deliciously preposterous in places, with the bathos confined to stories told by the characters. I knew it had to get better, because why else would the March sisters have loved it so? It did -- oh, did it ever. Persevere, Lissa! I promise you'll be glad you did. (Note to any Dickens newbies: I do think it's helpful to have read some of his other stuff first.)

2006: Our Mutual Friend is in the Little Dorrit class -- not one of his very finest but a good read anyway.

2007: Same for Barnaby Rudge. Remembering the eerie feel of this one still gives me a pleasant shiver.

2008: Dombey and Son is obscure for a reason. Evanescence of riches, fragility of life, importance of family, all presented in a way that made me say "blah blah blah" instead of nodding in recognition.

2009: Hard Times must be his shortest novel. It's a quick read that hits on a lot of familiar themes.

and 2010: Nicholas Nickleby, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'd love to hear about your Dickens adventures!

In which Jamie completes a task begun ten years before

I finished my Dickens project Friday night. It was SO satisfying.

For a long time I didn't talk about the project because it's kind of pretentious-sounding. The thing is, once you get into his groove, Dickens is really fun and not drudgery at all. Some of my favorite things about this project:

1. The earnest young men, like Pip, David Copperfield, and Nicholas Nickleby. They mean well, they try hard, they make a hash of things, they rue the hash-making, they learn some things, they make more hash, they [insert plot meanderings here], and then they find true love as wiser and more prudent men. I love watching them grow out of callow youth and into honorable manhood.


2. The crazy plot twists. Sometimes they are wildly implausible, but I eat them up anyway. When Dickens takes those dangling threads and wraps them up neatly, it speaks to the part of me that hopes this messy life is a tapestry and not just a tangle. Dashed hopes, lost loved ones, unrighted wrongs -- when you read Dickens you remember that injustices can be made right in unexpected ways. It's not over until the fat lady sings, or perhaps until she finds a suppressed will that allows the heroine to live in comfort the rest of her days.


3. The antidote to internet-induced-rabid-gerbil-brain syndrome. You know how Google is making us stupid and all that? Dickens is a great remedy. I have turned into an inveterate skimmer and it frustrates me. This project compelled me to read every word on every page for 800 pages at a time, a welcome and rewarding discipline. If you skim a Dickens novel you'll wind up badly confused, and I hate being confused.

I am delighted that I finished up with Nicholas Nickleby, because I am especially fond of the whimsy that surfaces more in early Dickens novels. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. I saw the big revelation coming, which also delighted me because I can't usually predict his plot twists. It made me think to myself, "I get it! I can anticipate where he's going with an idea now!"

My supervisor in my first job out of college talked about being really sad when she finished all of George Eliot. I wondered if I might feel that way when I closed Nicholas Nickleby, but I didn't. I have spent hours and hours wandering the streets of London and the English countryside with Mr. Dickens as my guide. We have passed through woods and fields and slums and palatial estates, with stops abroad as well. I am not sorry to have visited all the places he has to show me. I am looking forward to passing through again someday, and saying to the people there, "It's good to see you again!"

The Deathly Hallows (Spoilers Galore)

So I loved HP7 -- loved it.  And I am going to write all about what I loved in this post, so don't click if you haven't read it and want to be surprised.

Spring Tide and Charlotte's Web

There's an ebb and flow to mothering -- sometimes it's not so hard and sometimes it kicks my butt.  Right now it's high tide, as Pete moves into toddlerhood.  He is so busy:  there are carpets to write on and magnets to eat and giant dump trucks to propel down the stairs.  There are also three erupting molars to kvetch about, and much clinging to Mom that needs to happen in between adventures.

When my oldest was this age I remember being so discouraged.  Didn't he know he was supposed to get easier after he turned one?  When was I going to be able to get something done?  I know, this time, that the tide goes out again.  Eventually.

I am working on another birth post, but I am only able to write in five-minute snatches.  (So far in this post, Pete has nursed, dumped all the diapers out of their bag, and wandered into the bathroom.  Must make sure the toilet brush is not being used for oral hygiene.  Back in a minute.)  Today here's a quickie instead.

Marty and I just read Charlotte's Web, a book I like better as an adult than I did as a kid.  This time through I was musing about its title -- the book's not as much about the web, I thought, as it is about the friendship between Charlotte and Wilbur. 

But then White describes the way Wilbur tries to be "some pig," and "terrific," and "radiant," even though he doesn't think he's really any of those things, because Charlotte says that's how she sees him.  That's one of the beauties of a good friendship:  your friend sees things in you that you can't see yourself.  You stretch yourself to be the person your friend sees, and you grow in the process.  The web that was woven to trick the humans became something more.

Something else I'd never noticed until this reading is the contrast between Charlotte and Templeton at the fair.  She empties herself for her babies and for Wilbur; Templeton stuffs himself.  It made me think of Christ's kenosis, and of the generosity that's a hallmark of genuine love.

In the end Charlotte says, "By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle.  Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

Indeed.

Books '06: 4, 5, and 6

The Great Divorce. I am planning to read a bunch of C.S. Lewis this year; I started with this one because it was on our shelf. Short, intriguing, and timely in view of book #7 of '06 (which will get its own post one of these days). The narrator describes a bus trip from hell to the outskirts of heaven, in which any interested residents of hell are invited to stay.  They decline -- an artist because he cannot see that "if you are interested in the country [heaven] only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country," a mother because she will not subjugate love of her son to love of her Father. Good stuff.  I liked the quote Lewis put in George Macdonald's mouth: "There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery.  There is always something they prefer to joy -- that is, to reality."

Henry IV, Part 2.  Every year I read a Shakespeare play, in hopes of getting the complete works read by menopause.  In the beginning I loved this plan, but for the past few years I had been enjoying the plays less.  I do a lot of reading, but it's mostly in fits and starts -- five minutes while the water is boiling for the mac and cheese (oh, wait, I mean for the organic brown rice with tahini-miso sauce), ten interrupted minutes while I am supervising the Lego pickup, a few pages at the park.  And it doesn't work very well for me to read Shakespeare like that.

I took the first part of Henry IV with me in December when I went to visit my brother and his wife and baby.  Because of a travel snag I ended up spending a whole day in the city, arriving at my brother's house in the small hours of the next morning.  That day I read Shakespeare whenever Pete slept and loved it.  I couldn't wait for part two, and I resolved to carve out some time for uninterrupted reading since it made such a difference.  But uninterrupted time is in short supply (isn't it ironic that I stopped in the middle of this very sentence to save in draft form and deal with a sibling blow-up?) around here.

Now I wonder:  did I like Part One more because I read it away from the usual clamor for band-aids, snacks, and justice, or is it a better play?  I enjoyed the Hal/Hotspur contrast in Part One, with its reminder that parents need to love their own children and not pine for somebody else's.  (In my head I was calling their opposite trajectories "chiasmus," but apparently chiasmus is only a smaller-scale kind of crisscrossing. Is there a word for it when one character triumphs and another character tanks?)  I'm not a fan of Falstaff on the page (too many obsolete puns about booze and unfaithful wives) -- does he play a bigger role in Part Two or did it just seem that way?

Anyway, resolved:  Shakespeare is best read in larger chunks with fewer distractions.  Maybe that means I'll be past menopause before I finish the complete works after all.

gods in Alabama.  Joshilyn Jackson's blog makes me laugh out loud consistently, and her book is even funnier.  It is also a well-plotted mystery and I stayed up late galloping through it.  Interesting stuff about love, family, and race, and the battleaxe aunt brought to mind my own tough-as-nails Aunt Mary Bob.  I'll be reading her next one when it comes out.

Books 1, 2, and 3 of 2006

I am going to borrow an idea from MamaT and do quick reviews of the books I read this year, instead of planning longer posts in my head and then never writing them.  One of my resolutions for this year was to be more purposeful in my book selections.  Not so many random grabs from the shelves by the library checkout desk -- instead I would have a Plan!  Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time! Galsworthy! Proust! In French!

Yeah, well.

Random selection #1:  I grabbed Patrick Madrid's Surprised by Truth 2 while we were visiting friends over New Year's and brought it home to finish.  It's another volume of conversion stories, and it shares the strengths and weaknesses of the first Surprised by Truth.  There's a lot of good apologetics information but there's also a lot of repetition, since the same questions come up again and again.  My favorite story came from a woman who went to Latin America as a missionary and found herself with big questions.  Chief among them: how to foster discipleship among people who can't read if your emphasis is on personal scripture study.  I'd never thought of the importance of the liturgy's proclamation of the word in that light before.

Random selection #2:  SAHM I Am, a pleasant piece of fluff from the library's new books display.  It's a 21st-century epistolary novel, composed entirely of emails from a fictional loop for Christian mothers.  I suppose it's obligatory for a novel featuring email to have an episode in which the wrong name is typed in the TO: field and disaster ensues, but Allison Pearson did it better.  Still, the ending made me laugh and it was a quick read, so I won't complain.

And random selection #3:  Loud and Clear.  My husband snagged this one for me from the sale rack at the used bookstore.  Anna Quindlen writes so gracefully that-- that-- that I am all hung up trying to find a graceful ending to my own sentence.  This is a collection of essays and speeches from roughly 1993-2004, a mix of thoughts on motherhood and calls to political action.  I disagree with Anna Quindlen in predictable ways but I always enjoy her writing.

The three books I am reading now are all Purposeful Selections.  We'll have to see if the purposeful wins out over the random for the year or not.

Quickly

While I was away I finished Holly Pierlot's book, A Mother's Rule of Life. It's the best book for Christian women I've read in a while  -- each chapter had at least one insight that made me say, "Wow, I never looked at it that way."  I have been trying to implement some of her ideas, with some success, but the hours of free time she describes are proving elusive.

There are all these things I want to blog about but I have been too busy folding laundry and going to bed early to get them written down.  And I was just going to take a minute to tell you that our priest friend is coming tonight for dinner and to hear Alex's first confession, and why I'm so excited about it, but the baby is fussing and the 3yo is calling for help and the 5yo crumpled his older brother's picture again.  Argh.  Oh, wait, I'm supposed to be cultivating serenity.  Picture me smiling beatifically, with a hint (or several) of frazzledness around the edges.  I'll try again later.

The Vegetable Project

Item:  I just finished Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book, which is full of stories about his "Super Size Me" adventure and the latest antics of Big Food. 

Item:  I have twenty pounds (eek) of pregnancy weight to lose.

Ergo: the Vegetable Project.  For the month of June, I'm going to eat five servings of vegetables a day and cut out refined sugar.  And, of course, I'm going to blog about it.

Don't Eat This Book is flawed.  It reads like a blog in hardcover; a little more editing would have made it a much better book.  There is a "let them eat cake" tone in some places -- too many encomia to organic veggies and not enough focus on the problems of cost and availability, especially in poor neighborhoods.  It's not in the same league as Fast Food Nation, which caused me to call all my friends and family saying "Read this book!" and tell my children I would only take them for fast food once a year.  I read DETB compulsively, though, sloppy editing notwithstanding.

So this is my super-size-me-in-reverse project.  ("Minimize me" doesn't sound quite right.)  I had visions of a nifty calendar in the sidebar with links to recipes, but I'm going to have to keep working on that one.  Here's a recipe to start:

Garlicky Pasta Sauce with Kid-Friendly Greens

Peel a head of garlic (do you know the trick where you smash each clove hard with the flat of your knife and the peel slides off easily? also useful when pitting olives) and chop it roughly.  Saute in oil, along with red pepper flakes to taste, until tender.  Add a 28-oz. can of chopped tomatoes and two 15-oz. cans of garbanzos.  Simmer 20 minutes or so.  Stir in a thawed 10-oz. package of frozen spinach.  (You can substitute other greens here if you like -- I used beet greens.  Chop them finely and add them at the beginning along with the garlic.)  Serve over pasta with grated Parmesan cheese. 

I used whole-wheat pasta for that extra-virtuous feeling, but ended up with a virtue deficit when I waited too long to start cooking and snapped at my children as my blood sugar plummeted.  Here's to better planning by month's end.

In Which I Am Eminently Reasonable and Mature in the Face of Anxiety

I am back, pie in hand (also mouth), to tell you about my reasonable and mature approach to the stress induced by Christmas preparations, miscarriage muck, my husband's job search, and the winter Gloom (so murky it demands a capital G).

Ready?  Breath bated?  Here it is:

Avoidance!  You can sing it to the tune of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" if you're looking for a little Christmas cheer:  "Avoidance! Avoidance! Avoidance, O Avoidance!"  (&c.  Catchy lyrics, I know.)

Did you notice this is my fifth post this week, after my earnest resolve in late October to back off on posting during the holiday season?  That's part one of the Definitively Reasonable And Mature Approach in motion, my friends.  And just in case you'd like a little DRAMA of your own, I am sharing part two with you.  I have an enormous pile of fun books beside my brown chair, right there ready to help me out when I have a wayward thought like, "You know, you could knock out the last of the Christmas cards right now if you just buckled down and did it." 

At the top of the pile is Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner.  My high school best friend (who needs a name -- I think I'll call her Fairy May because we became best friends when she was Fairy May and I was Ethel P. Savage in our high school's production of "The Curious Savage") recommended it and I'm so glad she did.  I love Winner's voice -- fresh and articulate, candid and thoughtful.  I am forcing myself to read it slowly because I will be sad when it ends.  I can't remember the last time I felt this drawn to an author. 

Eric Brende wrote a book called Better Off about living with a community he calls (pseudonymously, to protect their privacy) the Minimites -- they're an offshoot of the Amish with stronger convictions about avoiding technology.  Brende was in graduate school studying the social impact of technology when he took 18 months to learn hands-on about low-tech life.  His "research" involved farming (sans machinery) to pay the bills and the birth of his first child at home with a lay midwife.  I sympathize with Brende's ideals and his experience is intriguing.  The writing is uneven, though, and I've been stalled at two-thirds of the way through the book for a couple of weeks now.

I'm reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.  Spiritual Midwifery makes me laugh -- the "get tantric with your lady" approach to labor is a little too 1974 for me.  I'm really enjoying this newer book, though.  I love Gaskin's confidence in women's bodies, the way she expects most women to be able to birth their babies without techno-operatics.

I'm less enthusiastic about Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions.  Sometime last year I heard Naomi Wolf and Ina May Gaskin interviewed together for a radio show on childbirth in America.  Gaskin was so calm and reasonable; Wolf was more strident.  I'm hearing that in her book as well.  I don't know that I'll read it cover to cover (unless I discover additional stresses to flee from), but I'll keep dipping into it.

I'm also hearing voices in Michel Odent's book The Farmer and the Obstetrician.  I saw Odent speak at a European breastfeeding conference in 2000, right after his book The Scientification of Love came out and right before we moved back to the States.  He was speaking in English, but with a serious French accent.  He was talking about the pulsatility of oxytocin release and I spent the entire talk going, "Huh?  Pool-sa-teal-ee-t[non-English vowel sound here]?  What word could that possibly be?"  I have no idea what else the talk was about, but I had quite an aha! moment when I figured out the mystery word.  This book has some provocative ideas -- Odent is opposed to cameras at birth and ambivalent about fathers being present -- but there are just enough quirks in the English that I hear his accent as I read.  Talk about distracting.  (Since distraction is the goal here, perhaps I shouldn't complain.)

Barchester Towers has been on my reading pile for a while now, along with Adam Bede.  I took them both down to my parents' house, forgetting that an abalone can't turn pages very well.  Adam Bede is the one book in my stack I want to finish by year's end.  (New Year's resolution.)  Given my current completion stats for things that need to be done by December 25, I don't know if I'm going to make my self-imposed deadline:  I always find George Eliot hard slogging.  I keep thinking it ought to get easier as I read more of her work, but it hasn't happened yet.

Friday night I pulled St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life off the shelf for Advent reading.  I decided to do so because of a memory lapse -- I thought it was St. Francis Xavier's book -- but it's been so highly recommended that I think I'll stick with the plan anyway.

Fairy May also recommended Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, which I have just barely begun because a person can only procrastinate in so many directions at one time.  And at the bottom of my pile is Having Faith, by Sandra Steingraber, a favorite of mine which I am re-reading in hopes of providing a more informed response to Brooke's question about breastmilk contamination.

Dishes are calling, and I have stockings to stuff for the feast of St. Nicholas.  FlyLady (yes, I am so pathetic that I resubbed) has a "Please Go to Bed" email sitting reproachfully in my inbox, so I should wrap things up here.  Further ideas for avoidance strategies -- I mean Definitively Reasonable And Mature Approaches -- are most welcome.