Stuff - Running Away from Home

I had planned to post several book reviews and attend several events to celebrate New Orleans, but all of that is on hold right now.

It looks like Tropical Storm Gustav will become a hurricane and head for the Gulf Coast states. Right now, the landfall is just west of New Orleans, but the models are still unclear. Anyway, it's not safe for me to stick around.

I am planning to head up to Arkansas, but if the tornadoes head that way, I might go somewhere else. Luckily, this country is big enough to let me wander around.

For my evacuation reads, I decided to take books that I haven't read. Even though my library is small, I can't take books that I have read already.

I will post things when I can.

Keep the Gulf States in your prayers. Poor Haiti and Jamaica are suffering right now, and they don't need anymore bad things happening to them.

Books - Busy Week

For being the end of August, I will be very busy book-wise and for Katrina-versary.

Yes, it will be 3 years on Friday, since the levees drowned 80% of the homes in New Orleans and almost 100% of the homes in both St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes (we don't have counties in Louisiana). I am lucky that I still live in the 20% that didn't flood but I drive through the flooded areas (due to the miscalculations of the Corpses of Engineers and their contractors) on my way to work everyday.

I will pray (at home) for a family friend who drowned in her Gentilly home. I wish I could go to church, but I am angry at the Archdiocese of New Orleans right now. They have decided to close some churches that didn't get damaged. The old people are very sad and mad. My goodness, the oldsters have been through enough already; why close their houses of worship?

On Saturday, I will have a table at the New Orleans' Institute : New Orleans Speaks: We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For conference. It should be a positive conference.

I will represent both my website: NOLA Bookshops and One Book, One New Orleans (OBONO) and its selection, The City of Refuge by Tom Piazza.

I need to come up with some sort of little poster for my table. I am not strong in the design portion of things, but I am happy to learn something new.

In September and October, I will be participating in creating a discussion guide for OBONO and leading some discussion groups. I will be going to flooded neighborhoods that I haven't visited yet in New Orleans East and maybe the Lower 9th Ward. I am also co-organizing a conference tentatively called "Why St. Bernard Matters," to showcase the survival and revival of this area.

I am going to finish both the Russian Reading Challenge and the It's the End of the World as We Know it Challenge this week. Look for my reviews. I am still missing one book for What's in a Name and two books for Chunkster Challenge.

This fall promises to be very literary; two important festivals and two BIG READS events!(See word-ly events.)

And my book group will have Book Nomination Night in November. I have about 4 books to recommend. I can't wait to see what the other members, especially the new ones bring to the table.

I won a book from Reading Matters and received a new free book from Random House. I am currently reading a book that Random House sent me in 2006 that I just couldn't get in the mood to start until now. I love reading free books.

Well, there is a depression near the Gulf of Mexico right now. I haven't packed my books for evacuation reads and I hope that I don't have to.

Books - Book Review - An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 by Etty Hillesum

I bought this book last year during my vacation at Persephone Books - Lamb's Conduit in London.
I was finally in the right mood to read Etty's diary and letters and once I started, I couldn't stop.

Etty was from Holland, living in the time when the Nazis were starting to deport the Dutch Jews east to Poland. She lived at the same time that Ann Frank was hiding and writing, but she was older and more aware of what was going on, because she was in her late 20s.

I think that if Etty had lived, she and I could have been friends. I like her style of writing and her thoughts. She had many academic degrees, was very smart and positive. Because she knew that death was a real possibility, she matured quickly and was making observations about life that an older person should be making.

There was no ghetto in Holland, like in Poland, but the Jews were sent to a transit camp called Westebork, which was still a nasty place, where lots of people got ill. She was employed by a Jewish organization to register the newcomers, a harrowing job, because everyone knew that the next stop was a concentration camp in Poland. As an employee, she had the opportunity to go back to Amsterdam and deliver farewell letters that her friends had entrusted to her at Westebork to give to friends or relatives in Amsterdam. And despite the lack of privacy, she managed to write something in her diary or a letter every day while at Westebork.

When the Jews were experiencing restrictions in where they could go and what type of work they could do, many hated all Germans. But Etty wrote in March 1941, "Hatred does not lie in my nature. If things were come to a such a pass, then I would know that my sould was sick and I should have to look for a cure.."

In late March, she reflects about her past, about anticipating the future, she "lives in the here and now, this minute, this day, to the full, and life is worth living. And if I knew that I was going to die tomorrow, then I would say, it's a great shame, but it's been good while it lasted."

To survive the uncertainty of her situation, he started musing more about God and different religions. It's evident that she has read a lot about different religions, and she created her own "God" to help her get through the times. In a letter dated October 12, 1942, she writes, "..At your birth, the soul already has an age that never changes. One can be born with a twelve-year- old soul. One can be also born with a thousand-year-old soul...I think that Orientals 'live' their souls more fully. We Westerners do not really know what to do with them; indeed we are ashamed of our souls as if they were something immoral."

In one of her last letters before her deportation, she tells a friends in Amsterdam (June 8, 1943), about the train going to Poland, "The freight cars had been completely sealed, but a plank had been left out here and there and people put their hands through the gaps and waved as if they were drowning." Chilling!

You have to be strong to read this work. At some points, she mentions that many orphans, who need a little affection, are in Westebork. She gives what she can, but she is not well herself and her parents also need medical attention, and she just can't do anymore. And other women there either ignore the orphans and are so concerned about their own children, that they can't give anymore either.

The work has two introductions, which you should read beforehand. It gives a biography of Etty and her family and explains the times in which she lived and recounts all her friends. The only problem is that I had to keep going back and forth to keep track of all the Joops in the letters and dairy. It's a common Dutch nickname, applied to both women and men, and I kept getting confused about which Joop she was writing about.

If you want to learn more about her, click this site: Etty Hillesum Centrum

I need to reread this work. I don't think that I have understood everything.

This book also counts for the Chunkster Challenge.

Books - Book Review - The Keeper of Antiquities - IUril Dombrovskii; M. Glenny (translator)

I don't have a cover picture for this book, because I can't find one! My copy is a library one with no jacket. If you find an image, let me know! This novel counts toward the Russian Reading Challenge.

I was picking up another Russian novel when The Keeper of the Antiquities was calling to me.
And unlike most Russian novels, I didn't get confused with all the characters, because there were not many of them.

It's a quirky novel. The protagonist, an archaeologist from Moscow arrives by train to a hinterland city, Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan in 1933. He goes to work in a former cathedral, cataloging all sorts of broken pottery, animal remains, and other items and sleeps in another part of the cathedral. He occasionally writes articles for the local newspapers and is impatient when people from the nearby farming collective bring him items for the museum and expect a lot of recognition for detritus.

For the most part, nothing much happens in this novel, but there is an undercurrent of unease. The NVD (precursor of the KGB) is very active here. One needs to be careful of one's action.

The Keeper writes an article about some very valuable medieval books in the local library that are not shelved properly or appreciated. The librarian, Ayopova, throws a hissy fit, because the article makes her look like a bad administrator (which she really is) and wants the Director of the museum to sack the Keeper. She finds out who tipped off the Keeper about the books and has him sacked. However, the young man, another Moscow native, manages to get a work transfer permit and starts working at the museum, helping with archaeological digs.

The Keeper does keep a lot to himself, but when he allows himself to think, he is very lyrical. His first impressions of Alma-Ata are interesting. In one part, he saw, "a Russian peasant cottage, as brown and tough as a walnut..Clay adobe, weather-boarding, thatch. No dressed stone, no brick, hardly any new two story buildings and no old ones at all. Just a sleepy Cossack village at the turn of the century. Then suddenly a miracle happened. I crossed a street and found myself in a completely different town. Here the streets were wide, paved, the houses, multi-storied, colour-washed from top to bottom." He finds out a few minutes later that the city was designed by Pavolich Zenkov, who built the newer sections all earthquakes in the area, without any of the buildings falling down nor a window breaking.

The Keeper's boss, a former military man, worries a lot about the new leader of Germany, Hitler. He feels that a war will be coming soon. He imagines that the cellars of the museum will become "air-raid shelters and he was no longer a museum director but an officer in charge of a thousand men? Yet his wife, Valentina Seregeyevna was sound asleep in the next room, worrying about nothing...Our womenfolk slept soundly, trusting in us, in our male strength, our virture, our intelligence, our courage, and our ability to stop anything bad from happening in this world."

The Keeper keeps irritating more people and is trying to deciding what to do to stay out of more trouble. He walks through a wooded area, noticing nature: "The air had a special quality. The march exuded a thousand delicate aromatic smells that never merged with one another...here and there, like floating candles, shone rare water lilies."

I am not even sure when this book was published (the translation was done in 1969), but this article states that Dombrovskii was exiled to Alma-Ata in the 1930s. He might have based some of the Moscow characters in the novel on his fellow prisoners.

Look for this book in the library. It's hard to find on-line and in bookstores, since it's out of print. But, it's a treasure waiting to be discovered again. And, compared to most Russian novels, it's a short work for you to enjoy.

Books - Book Review - Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women's Lives - Rosemary Daniell

I heard Daniell speak at the Tennessee Williams Literary Fair about her writing experience and her writing group, the Zona Rosa and I got her book as soon as I could.

This book is not necessarily a "how-to" book but one to get your started and to encourage you when you feel like quitting or if you have writer's blocks.

She relates stories of her personal life struggles and how she overcame them to continue writing and relates the stories of other writers.

Many of the stories are funny and all are thoughtful.

There are some "exorcises" that she recommends that you do to kick start your writing. I didn't do them on my first reading, but I plan to do them later.

If you are interested in her techniques and writing groups, check out Daniell's website!

Stuff - Two Knitting Projects

I am 3 months late for submitting my scarves for the Knit Your Bit Campaign for current veterans but "better late than never." (I just couldn't finish it for the May knit-a-thon.)

It's a simple pattern that stays flat. Bette Bornside suggested it: knit two, purl two and on the reverse row, knit the purl stitches and purl the knit stitches.

I've never knitted with wool in the middle of the summer and the last few inches were pure torture! But, for my veterans, I will do anything.

I also submitted two panels for the International Fiber Collective, which was completed in May 2008. The purpose was to make a comment on to express their concern about the worlds extreme dependency on oil.

And wouldn't you know it; at the time of the installation is when the gasoline prices started shooting up.

I read somewhere that artists can perceive the world around them differently from other, and Jennifer Marsh saw it way before any of us did.

She has finished her degree and is moving to the South. She might have another project like this! I hope to participate again, because I loved working with strange materials.

Books - Book Review - Sunstroke and Other Stories - Tessa Hadley

This is the second to last Advanced Reading Copythat I picked up from the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library. The ARCs fly from the shelf, but with the heat, I haven't had the nerve to walk four measly blocks to get new ones.

Well, this one is a complete treasure. It's several short stories, mostly about women, but some men are involved, at a fork in the road of their lives. The stories talk about that decision that they must make and sometimes it's not easy, but it's interesting to read what happens after the decision is made.

The protagonists live in various parts of the UK and it's set in present time. But, the protagonists are of different ages and stages in their lives.

In the story, Sunstroke, we meet Rachel and Jane, two college buddies that have children and a man in their lives. They are at a beach in the Bristol Channel in Sommerset. "They are both in their early thirties, at that piquant moment of change when the outward accidents of flesh are beginning to be sharpened from inside by character and experience... Neither is unhappy, but what has build up in them instead is a sense of surplus, of life unlived.."

A friend comes to join the families at the beach. He picks up on this unease and drops enoungh hints to both that he should become a lover, but neither Jane nor Rachel realize that he has flirted with both of them.

In Bucket of Blood, Hilary (in her last year of high school) is taking her first trip by herself on a bus from Cambridge to visit Sheila, who is in her first year at the University of Bristol. They are the oldest children of a vicar and his post-partum depressed wife. Both vow neither to let having children wear them down so much, as their mother has been.

Hilary is surprised when a scruffy young man picks her up, instead of Sheila. "The Bristol bus station was a roaring cavern: everything was greasy and filthy with oil, including the maimed pidgeons."

Hilary spends all of her time taking care of Sheila in a squatter's building. (Sheila has had either an abortion or a miscarriage.) Hilary grows up quickly and is a bit disgusted by the environment and disappointed that her sister is repeating their mother's reproducing life.
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When it's time to leave for home, she starts to think that "it seemed extraordinary to Hilary that her life must at some point soon change as completely and abruptly as Sheila's had, so that everything familiar would be left behind."

We also meet Christine, a lecturer in English at a university, Carla, who falls in love with her professor, Louie and Phil, two friends who met years ago and learn about each other in a writing class, and Graham, who looks up a woman who flirted with him when he was a teen.

Hadly captures feeling of all people at various ages of their lives. And tells interesting stories at the same time.

Stuff - Behind on Reviews and Booker Longlist Reviews

It's just been so hot lately. I have enough energy to go to work, walk to and from my parking lot, pick up some items at the grocery store, and go back home to rest from the 4 or 2 block walks.

I can read, but I am behind on my blogging again (4 books). I hope to catch up soon.

I went to my university library to borrow three books, as recommended by other bloggers. If I like them, I will buy a new copy. The papers on these books have changed colors!

In the meantime, 3 bloggers, whom I regulary check, are racing to read all the Man Booker Longlist books. Have a look-see:

• The Mookse and the Gripes
• Asylum
• Booklit

Sadly, I've never heard of any of these writers and right now, I am in my own little reading world and don't want to pick up any of the Bookers.

Stuff - Illustration Friday - Poof

Poof - Miss Jimmy is wearing his best poofy dress. He's afraid of going outside being called a Poof by the other boys. When Miss Jimmy steps out to the heat, he says "Poof!".

Yes, instead of cursing, I say "Poof" when I leave my air-conditioned place. Sometimes, I can even see waves of heat in the air.

I put temperatures in degrees F and C on the walls and the trees.

The top half of Miss Jimmy's is from a Victorian costume booklet; I wove the bottom half from two different strips of paper.

I still need to practice my calligraphy; the P splattered everywhere!

Books - Book Review - Peony in Love

I bought this novel months ago when Lisa See came to give a reading; I was saving it for the right time, which happened last weekend.

Lisa See mentioned that her previous work of fiction, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, she wrote about one part of China. Peony in Love takes place in Yangzi Delta. And there so many different regions in China, that she has countless sources for her next novels.

The Cataclysm (The Manchu invasion of the Ming Empire) happened a few years earlier. Women in some upper class families write, meet outside their homes to read each other's poems and writing, and even talk to men who are not in their immediate family circle!

However, Peony is still very protected, although she can write and read and spends time talking to her father.

Peony is about take part in her arranged marriage. But before this big event, her father, a former Ming subject, invites the local Manchu administrator and his entourage for a staging of the opera, Peony Pavilion. The production lasts three days (with breaks for eating and sleeping), and the women watch/hear behind a screen. (See explains the significance and influence of this opera in the body of the novel and in this version of the novel, in the Q&A section.)

Peony meets and talks (gasps) to a poet, who is also attending the opera. She sounds like a love-struck 17 year old teen when she lets the readers know "He was in my fingers, my heart..Each time petal-scented air came through my window, my emotions were thrown into turmoil."

But, the writer in her, a mature portion of herself, says, "A thousand years ago, the poet Han Yun wrote "All things not at peace will cry out." He compared the human need to express to the natural force that impelled plants to rustle in the wind or metal to ring when struck. With that I realized what I would do. It was something I had already worked on for years...My poet wanted my thoughts about the Seven Emotions; now I would find all these places in the Peony Pavilion that illustrated them...My project would be my salvation in the coming dark years. I may be locked in my husband's home, but my mind would travel to the Moon Viewing Pavilion, where I could meet my poet again and again without interruption."

Peony does finish her work and collaborates with two other writers, but not in the way I thought she would. The way she accomplished the critique is uniquely Chinese.

Peony has the feet. In this novel, See doesn't write too much about the actual binding process (read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan for the details), but she does mention why the husbands find the feet alluring and what they do with the feet. Peony does mention that sometimes the bones need to be filed down to maintain the shape.

I also learned that a home's occupants in counted by fingers, not persons. Peony's natal home has 940 or 94 people in the compound.

See also mentions the works of the Banana Garden Five, a women's writing group. I need to find out where I can get a copy of their works. Also, we learn why Peony's mother won't let her have as much freedom as these writers, even though she participated in writing groups a long time ago.

I really enjoyed reading this novel and if you pick it up, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

P.S. I like to write down my favorite quotations from any novel that I read in my journals. I was so inspired by Peony's calligraphy that I decided to do my writing with a calligraphy pen. But, not only did it take longer for me to write it all down, some of the words were splotchy, because I didn't control the ink too well. Peony's mom would have been on my case for my handwriting!