Book Club August 2011

Book Club meeting was at the Fallbrook library this month in the outdoor patio, Poet's corner. The weather was warm and we were quite comfortable out there until about 8 p.m. which is closing time (on Thursday) and when it was just starting to get chilly. We are so grateful to be living in California where we experience these wonderful cool summer nights in contrast to our friends in the rest of the country who are sweating night and day.

This month we read "State of Wonder" by Anne Patchett. The group has enjoyed most of her books (Bel Canto, Run) and so we were all eagerly anticipating this publication. For a change, we polled to see who liked or disliked the book. Three people loved it and would recommend it, two people thought it was so-so - they liked some parts of it and disliked others, one person (me) disliked it. 

Our discussion of the book was lively. We talked about the Amazon jungle setting and whether any of us could survive there...a couple said they definitely could, most felt they couldn't. The two principal characters, both female doctors were fodder for plenty of discussion and debate. We spent some time discussing medical ethics in particular caesarian section, as one of the characters gets pregnant at 73. Those who liked the book were able to enjoy the fantasy and wonder of the premise and the setting; for others, it was too much of a stretch. 

Food was excellent as usual. Laurie brought a delicious baked zucchini dish and marinated zucchini with basil and olive oil. Beth brought a dip of  black eyed peas, beans, avocado and onions and she brought fried plantains (in honor of the Brazilian setting). We also had gazpacho, fried chicken and another wonderful dip made of mangoes, avocados, cilantro, green onions and lime juice. Sobriety reigned as we were, after all, at the library and instead of the usual array of wine bottles, we drank soft drinks, water or lemonade. 

Next month we read White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. A 2008 Man Booker Prize winner - here's the Amazon summary:

The novel provides a darkly comical view of modern day life in India through the narration of its protagonist Balram Halwai. The main theme of the novel is the contrast between India's rise as a modern global economy and its working class people who live in crushing poverty. Other themes touched on include the corruption endemic to Indian society and politics, familial loyalty versus independence, religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims, the experience of returning to India after living in America, globalization, and the rivalry between India and China as superpower countries in Asia.

Silver at Breakfast

Breakfast table this morning...far from our usual thing. Our brother-in-law gave us some silver at the weekend and it reminded us to USE THIS STUFF while we still can; before we're sucking up our nutrition through a plastic straw or a senior sippy cup. There's something satisfying about eating from plates and using forks that are older than we are.  The big catch is the clean up - twenty minutes to hand wash everything and put it away....maybe we could manage to do this once a month? 

Brainy Planter

Family Reunion 2011

There was a bloodless coup at the family reunion this year. We were shocked to walk into our cousin's kitchen in Nipomo to find the "next" generation hard at work, seasoning meat and making side dishes. This was the year for the baton pass...the younger ones are taking over the big BBQ and they did a fine job with just a little assistance from the cheap seats.

Prepping for the Q

Catching up, discussing the issues

Tri Tip and Chicken in progress

Father and daughter - passing of the tongs

It's always a wonderful event. Two new tiny people joined the tribe recently; one is too small to travel, the other only a couple of months.

Youngest family member, Rowan - too young to travel so he didn't make it this year.

Second youngest family member, Travis - a happy little guy

There are plenty of youngsters on hand  to keep the energy level high,  ranging in age from toddlers to teens. Dogs weave their way in and out of the crowd, watching the BBQ with great concentration.

Goldie - dog extraordinaire

Echinacea

Decorative oregano in Marianne's garden

Marianne, Master Gardener

After the big evening feed, everyone overnights in various places and re-congregates at cousin's Bob and Mariannes Pretty Penny vineyard in Paso for pizza and more talk. Marianne, master gardener, is constantly at work on her garden canvas, adding plants, changing pots with fantastic results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our way home we usually stop at Ranch 99 off the 60 Freeway and buy egg custards from the Chinese bakery. They bake them off all day and no matter what time we arrive, the tarts are always just out of the oven. I glanced over to the cake case and saw this magnificent mango thing...not that the whole cake would be very appealing - too much icing and glaze and goo, but the sliced mangoes are amazing. They're perfect and as anyone who's ever sliced a mango knows, not easy to accomplish. The mangoes have got to be the same size, the same perfect state of ripeness and the slicer has to have an eye to keep the consistent size and work around the pesky pit to keep slices intact.

Egg Tarts

Mango Cake

The Darling Tarsier

Jason's photo

My friend's son is traveling in the Philippines and on the island of Bohol he encountered the tiny (5 oz. average) totally captivating tarsier, one of the smallest mammals on the planet. It also has the highest eye to weight proportion of all mammals - oh, those googly eyes!!

Nicely adapted for life in a dog-eat-dog world, it's carniverous and consumes insects, birds, crabs and bats. In turn, it can be on the lunch menu of lizards, snakes and owls. Here's the part I liked...if a tarsier is being attacked and there are other tarsiers in the area, they all band together and attack the predator. Imagine being swarmed by hundreds of these little creatures? You'd die of cute!!!

But the tarsier has many resources and evasive mechanisms to protect against capture. In case a quick escape is necessary it's long, long legs - twice the length of head and body together - enable jumps up to  40 times it's own length -  the equivalent of a six foot man jumping 240 feet. A vertical clinger, the tarsier spends much of the time on tree branches, hunting at night, moving kind of like frogs, leaping on insects. The darling head conveniently swivels 180 degrees, a necessity because the eyes, while large, are fixed.  The large ears can move around in all directions but can also be folded back flat against the head when sounds are too loud. Great sensory system for early warning.

When it jumps and lands on a branch or tree the little grasping hands have long padded fingers covered with a sort of non-skid skin which makes clinging easy. 

They bear young one at a time with a gestation period of six months. The young are born fully furred and start moving on their own in a couple of days. They can live 12 - 20 years in their natural habitat and don't do well in captivity. In a short video, filmed in a Bohol sanctuary, the director said that the tarsier will stop breathing when held in human hands. I read elsewhere that they have been know to commit suicide in captivity by smashing their heads on bar cages. People tried to keep them as pets and they were once very popular in Japan. Now they are endangered and mostly protected.

As if the little thing isn't sweet enough, I read that they have high pitched voices and do many kinds of vocalizations.  The males and females sing duets together at the beginning and end of their foraging day.

More information about this fascinating little creature can be found here: 

Tarsier http://www.bohol.ph/article.php?id=15

and here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsier

A Lunch Mystery

What I made for lunch the other day:

What is it? Look here for the answer: Nancy's blog

Book Club June

 Our book selection for this month was "Lake of Dreams" by Kim Edwards. Most thought the story was okay - it had a few moments but overall the themes were trite and the writing tedious. The story took place in the beautiful Finger Lakes district in Northern New York state. Here's some photos of what it might look like: 

Canandagua Lake from "I love the FingerLakes"

Seneca Sunset by ArtMakers.com

The heroine has a love interest who is a glass blower who makes objets, perhaps something like this?

From Glassart5

and the mystery of the story involves a stained glass window......a woman is the central figure in one of them:

Woman at the Beach, sketch for stained glass, Lessing photo.com

I hosted the meeting and didn't get many photos unfortunately but there are a few of the group eating. We had a Honey Baked ham, a couple of salads, a lovely vegetable dish, pickled asparagus, sliced watermelon, TJ cookies and chocolate for dessert. Plenty of wine.

Next month's book is "State of Wonder" by Ann Patchett and we are meeting at the library for a change of pace.

Hypergraphia and Illustrated Manuscripts

Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscripts are believed to be written between 1404 and 1438. I was searching for information on graphology and hypergraphia when I came across them and I was amazed at how contemporary they look. 

By comparison, here is a page by Jane LaFazio, a celebrated local artist and teacher:

Sample journal page, Jane LaFazio from her web page

And another by Vivian Swift, author:

Vivian Swift, from "When Wanderers Cease to Roam" page

 

The Voynich book has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript". Illustrated journals fascinate me. It's all I can do to get words on paper - how some extremely talented people have the ability to not only write but to decorate each page as they go is beyond me.

One of the many interesting things about this journal is that nobody has been able to translate it. The language is not known and no one can break the code if it was written in code. One can infer from the illustrations what various sections are about.  From Wikipedia: The book is named after the Polish-Lithuanian-American book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912. The Voynich manuscript is owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, and is formally referred to as "Beinecke MS 408". The first facsimile edition was published in 2005.^[5]  It's now owned by Yale University. 

Voynich Manuscript

Voynich Manuscript

Voynich Manuscript

Voynich Manuscript

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Finally, I found my way to information on Hypergraphia. What is it? From Wikipedia: Hypergraphia is an overwhelming urge to write. It is not itself a disorder, but can be associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and mania in the context of bipolar disorder.

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, is said to have had hypergraphia.^[4] In his lifetime he wrote over 98,000 letters varying in format. The letters were written backwards, in rebus, and in different patterns, such as the "Mouse Tail" in the former book. Some examples of his letters can be found here.

The Reverend Robert Shields maintained a diary chronicling every 5 minutes of his life from 1972 until a stroke disabled him in 1997. The hypergraphic work filled 81 boxes and contained approximately 38 million words.^[5]

Outsider artist and writer Henry Darger would appear to have been a case of hypergraphia, having produced what has been described as the longest novel in existence, The Story of the Vivian Girls.

American composer Alan Hovhaness is acknowledged as one of the most prolific of the 20th century and may have been affected by hypergraphia. He carried paper and pen wherever he went and is known to have composed almost everyday, in shopping malls, restaurants, and even on buses. He claimed to have thrown over 1,000 of his early compositions into the fireplace in the 1940s whilst still a young man, and even at the time of his death, in 2000, had penned around 500 more, most of which are published.

Former United States Senator Bob Graham has maintained a meticulous account of the daily events of his life. Between 1977 and 2003, Graham filled almost 4,000 notebooks,^[6] recording such varied items as the movie he and his daughter rented on the eve of his grandchild's birth (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which, he noted, he rewound and returned), as well as details of strangers he'd met at airports so that he could follow up with a friendly letter. Each notebook, color-coded by season, covered two to three days. His daily entries included minutiae like his weight, clothes into which he changed, what he ate and where, as well as serious matters of state. When the company that manufactured Graham's notebooks ceased production, Graham bought up hundreds of the remaining stock. During the 2000 Presidential race, Vice President Al Gore considered Graham as a potential running mate, but campaign insiders worried Graham's habit of filling notebooks with daily minutia would be perceived by the public as eccentric.^[7] Finally, late in the selection process, Gore decided against Graham.^[8] Nevertheless, Graham maintained his notebooks were not diaries—as they contained no introspective commentary—but rather an efficient system for life management.^[6] "I would rather have more detail than less," Graham told Time magazine in 2000. "I use [the notebooks] as a working tool. I review them for calls to be made, memos to be dictated, meetings I want to follow up on and things people promise to do. I would be reticent to be too open in describing personal feelings and emotions."^[9] In the same article, an anonymous source close to Graham suspected the suicide of Graham's half-brother spurred Graham to seek control and discipline, one form of which was Graham's notebooks.^[9]

Arthur Crew Inman (1895 - 1963) was a reclusive and unsuccessful American poet whose 17-million word diary, extending from 1919 to 1963, is one of the longest English language diaries on record. The diary was edited by Daniel Aaron and published in 1985 by Harvard University Press.

Ipad hatred

I hate typing on my Ipad. After working with it for a couple of months I still find the keyboard awkward and the absence of a delete button confounding. Highlighting with the touch pad and "cutting" takes so much more time and it's so difficult with the small letters. Perhaps I delete more than most writers? Inputting much more than a search on Google is more trouble than it's worth. My plan was to use it for email while traveling. Well, maybe to read email, but my correspondents won't be getting more than a one sentence reply. Yes, I know I can buy an external keypad - Sharper Image has four or five styles, most built into a case, but then I might as well have a laptop. Before I give up on it entirely, I'm going to attend the Apple store Ipad tutoring session to see if there are some tricks or shortcuts that might help.

Streaming radio on the thing is a problem with many stations. I get them working and they suddenly stop and then won't work again. I'm sure there are solutions to these glitches but do I want to search for them and figure it out? My husband bought a lunchbox radio recently for the grove. It has two knobs, one for dialing in the station and one for volume. Brilliant.  

The reader is great. I enjoy the back lit text and the ability to make it larger and smaller. I love being able to write notes on marked pages and to refer directly to the dictionary or to Google. And who doesn't like paying less for books and getting them instantly! But you can get most of these features with with any ereader.

For the money, I'm not sure I wouldn't have been better off with a slim, light laptop.

De Luz Picnic

The picnic invitation stated that eating would begin at 3:15. We arrived at about 3:00 and were shocked to see how few people were there. Our fabulous volunteer fire department had settled in but only a handful of people were gathered around a single table. I added my teriyaki chicken wings to the long, long master food table next to the other 3 dishes. Hmmmm.

3:00

 

3:14

3:15

By 3:12, 150 people descended on the place. The long table was completely covered with dishes and at 3:15 precisely, tops were off the food and the eating began. I love this event and the great home cooked dishes people bring. Wonderful enchiladas and tamales, cous cous, Thai salads, elaborately carved fruit, fried chicken, spare ribs, casseroles of all manners and descriptions. There's a nominal dessert section, but few people have the strength or eating stamina to cram down a dessert after the main event. By 4:30, everything's cleaned up and the last cars pull out for home. 

3:15

3:25

3:30

Introducing new neighbors