tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68042467371722061032024-03-13T23:01:15.835-05:00The Musing ReaderAugustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-73612969678976634372020-12-31T23:43:00.001-06:002020-12-31T23:45:25.590-06:00It's Been a Bad Year - For Reading<p> I don't know what has been wrong with me this year. You would think that with so much stay-at-home time, I would have had plenty of time to indulge myself in reading. The reality is that I read one book all the way through - ONE BOOK. And that was a children's book (<i>The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963</i> by Christopher Paul Curtis). </p><p>I had started <i>A Thousand Acres</i> by Jane Smiley at the beginning of the year, but returned it to the library when the pandemic struck, since there was no guarantee of when I would be able to get it back. And I've been picking at <i>Sister Carrie</i> by Theodore Dreiser for the past couple of months, but I recently decided I'm going to put it in "hibernation," as a Facebook acquaintance said she does. And that's it. Unfortunately, I haven't even felt like I wanted to read, which is kind of odd - you might think I would want to escape to some fictional world with problems that could be resolved at the end of the plot, unlike the real-world problems we were all facing.</p><p>That's not to say I've been an intellectual blob these months. I decided to get serious about studying Spanish. I've been doing lessons on Duolingo for 329 consecutive days. I still have trouble understanding spoken Spanish, but I'm steadily getting better at reading, and I've tried to write some.</p><p>I've also become a faithful reader of the Facebook posts by Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor who is writing what she calls "Letters from an American" that summarize the day's events in politics and place them in a historical context. Her speciality is Civil War history, and it is fascinating to see the links between what was going on just prior to the beginning of the war and today's events.</p><p>Anyway, I'm going to put <i>Sister Carrie</i> aside (who needs to read about those characters' miserable lives??) and get a fresh start tomorrow. Maybe 2021 will be better, all the way around.</p>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-38728111857414524082020-10-06T07:22:00.000-05:002020-10-06T07:22:25.405-05:00Not What I Was Expecting<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wEkgcCdaCzE/X3xZgtu1gfI/AAAAAAAAOzY/QM5k5V2-5ygydG8F5VClvg-b_JalhcO1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s274/Watsons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wEkgcCdaCzE/X3xZgtu1gfI/AAAAAAAAOzY/QM5k5V2-5ygydG8F5VClvg-b_JalhcO1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Watsons.jpg" /></a></div><br />Back a couple of months ago in the summer, I decided I wanted to read something that might help me understand better the Black Lives Matter movement. I didn't want to buy a book (bookshelf space in this household is at a premium) and I've apparently let my library card expire (I didn't know they did that). I decided to go to the books we already have, since I knew we had a copy of Christopher Paul Curtis' Newberry Honor novel <i><b>The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963</b></i>. Just the title alone promised a story - through a child's perspective - of the famous Civil Rights events in Birmingham, specifically the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.<p></p><p>I finished the book last night (yes, it took a <b><i>long</i></b> time - for some reason, I haven't done much reading during the pandemic 😞).I have to say, I feel like this book is something of a bait-and-switch because it really didn't live up to what the title led me to believe would be in the story.</p><p>The story is about the Watson family who live in Flint, Michigan, told through the eyes and voice of Kenny, a fourth-grader. Kenny has a strong family with a father, mother, an older brother and younger sister. Kenny's main problems in life are that he's often the object of bullying because he has a "lazy" eye and is really good at reading. His older brother, Byron, sometimes saves Kenny from the bullying and sometimes instigates it.</p><p>Byron is a key character in this story. He's the reason the Watsons decide to go to Birmingham in the first place. His parents are concerned that Byron is falling into the wrong crowd and bad behavior, so they decide to take him to Birmingham to live for the summer with Mrs. Watson's mother, Grandma Sands.</p><p>All of that sounds like a good set-up for a story that puts the Watsons in Birmingham as outside observers to the growing tension that culminates in the bombing. But that's not what happens in this book. (<b><i>Spoiler alerts!</i></b>) Instead, the first 3/4 of the story is about life in Flint and Kenny's problems with Byron and a friend who steals his toy dinosaurs. We're well past the halfway point in the story when the Watsons decide to go to Birmingham, and then we get a couple of chapters devoted to describing getting ready for the trip (including getting an Ultra-Glide record player for the car) and the trip itself.</p><p>Even after the Watsons finally get to Birmingham, there's only one little throwaway line about the racial tension. Kenny overhears the adults talking about white people and their hatred for blacks. Instead, the story talks about Kenny's experience of being in the South for the first time and how hot it seems to him. There's a chapter in which Kenny nearly drowns and has to be rescued by Byron, who is suddenly an entirely different person than he was in Flint (which seemed really out of character).</p><p>It isn't until the last two chapters that the ideas I expected to be at the forefront of the story come into play. Kenny is sitting in the yard on a Sunday morning when he (and everyone else in the neighborhood) hears a loud boom. They all go running to the church, and there is some good description of what Kenny saw, swirling smoke and little details like scattered hymnals. There's nothing too graphic, since this is a book for kids, after all.</p><p>That's where I think the book fails to meet its promise. There's only one small detail that hints at the effects of the violence - Kenny sees a man bringing out a little girl, and the man looks like he "had been painting with red, red paint." As an adult, I understand Curtis is describing blood, and maybe a child would pick up on that, too. I don't know. I don't want any kid to be traumatized from reading the story, but I really do think they need to understand the seriousness of what happened. We learn hard lessons by facing hard, ugly truths.</p><p>This book is NOT about the civil unrest or the black community in Birmingham in 1963. It's not really about the church bombing. The bombing is just something that enters into Kenny's life and seems no more or less traumatic to him than nearly drowning a few days before. His only connection to the bombing is that he thinks his younger sister is there (and I think it's sort of a cop-out what Curtis uses to explain why she wasn't...). The final chapter has Kenny suffering some PTSD from the events, but it feels a little forced to me. Again, Byron rescues him.</p><p>What this story IS about is that relationship between Kenny and Byron, and that's a good story. If we retitled the book to be something like "Daddy Cool and Me" ("Daddy Cool" was Byron's preferred nickname), I wouldn't be writing this post complaining. But I feel it's a little misleading to include the references to Birmingham and 1963 in the title when they are only peripheral to the overall plot.</p><p>Curtis has a really good author's note at the end that does address the civil rights issues. I just wish he had written the story to focus more on those issues. That would have been a great service to the canon of childrens' literature.</p>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-29907796496508542722020-03-21T10:46:00.001-05:002020-03-21T10:46:54.777-05:00Topsy-TurvyA week ago Thursday, I had just come into school for my afternoon office hours, planning to prep for my class at 4:00 and get started grading the exams I had given on Tuesday. I hadn't been there 10 minutes when my boss came in and dropped a bomb that turned everything topsy-turvy.<br />
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"The university is considering whether to take classes online as a response to the coronavirus," she said. "Will you be our point person in training the faculty for going online?"<br />
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At the time, I was happy to do it, because I have entertained daydreams of how nice it would be to teach online and gain those five hours per week that I spend driving from home to the office and to be able to do laundry while grading rather than sitting in an office. In the 10 days since, my mood has sobered as I consider the future.<br />
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So, after she left, I went into planning mode to cancel my class and prepare for a 3:30 meeting with her and the deans. Over the next three days, I spent several hours in meetings to scramble to plan while the upper administration was also scrambling to plan. It was frustrating to try to create a plan for training (which would need to be extensive since a couple of years ago the administration had actively rejected the idea of online teaching as not consistent with our mission) without knowing whether or not we were actually going to need to use the training. But at 9:45 Friday night, our president announced the university was going online for the rest of the semester, following a two-week spring break in which faculty could get ready for going online.<br />
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Then came two days of training that coincided with the onset of social distancing in the wider context. Our first day we had in-person training; overnight, the number of cases of the virus had grown to the point that the CDC recommended no meetings of groups larger than 10, so we had our second training day via video conferencing. We were also told that we need to get anything we think we might need for an indefinite period of time out of our offices, since we would not be allowed back on campus after Friday, March 20.<br />
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So here I sit in my sewing room that has unexpectedly become a faculty office. I'm trying to figure a legitimate way to teach public speaking online. I'm dealing with an internet connection that was already iffy that now is burdened by a whole community that's suddenly online at once (the public schools have been moved online, as well) and wondering if I'll need to get up in the middle of the night to be able to post lessons and grade stuff online.<br />
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It seems like the entire fabric of "normality" has been shaken violently (and probably isn't through shaking yet?). We had a text message yesterday that our church has canceled services until at least the end of the month. Without school and church to punctuate my week, it's kind of hard to remember what day it is. My son went last night to pick up a few groceries I thought we might need to round out our menu over the next few days - he reported there were no meats, no flour, no eggs (but at least he was able to get a bag of apples and a can of cooking spray, ha ha). How long will it be until the surge of "stocking up" is over and shopping goes back to "normal"? Will it go back to "normal"?<br />
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There's a lot of uncertainty about the future of "normal," at least in my mind. Is the virus as serious as health officials say, and how long will it take to "flatten the curve" sufficiently that health services are not overwhelmed? What impact will closing down so many businesses have on the economy? Are we getting ready to be in another Great Depression? (My dad said there are many conditions now that are similar to the conditions that led to the Depression of the 1930s.) How will people like my daughter, who was laid off from her part-time job as a lifeguard, be able to pay their bills and feed themselves? She's fortunate to have us as a backup, but will a private college survive the upheaval, or will I be "retired" a little sooner than I had anticipated?<br />
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One thing I keep thinking in the back of my mind - things like the Black Death or the Great Depression weren't just fiction. People lived in those hard, hard times, and I ask myself whether we are getting ready to be some of those people. Whether we want it or not!<br />
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I guess we don't have a lot of choice in the matter, so just like those earlier people, we have to keep plugging on. There's a hymn I really like called "Living By Faith" that starts,<br />
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"I know not today what tomorrow may bring,</div>
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If shadow or sunshine or rain;</div>
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The Lord I know ruleth o'er everything,</div>
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And all of my worry is vain." </div>
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I think I'll keep that one on a repeating loop in the coming days.Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-41293732086093775392020-02-27T08:13:00.002-06:002020-02-27T08:13:18.001-06:00An UpdateI have sprouts!<br />
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It took a long time, and I had to start twice, but I finally have some pomegranate seedlings. They are really cool-looking, such a bright green on these gray, dreary days we've had for most of February. But they are unlike any other seedling I've ever seen; ever since they've emerged from the soil, their little leaves have been coiled into a tight roll. I keep expecting to see them begin to unfurl, but there's not a hint they will, so far. So interesting....Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-12893491901319629432020-02-17T06:51:00.000-06:002020-02-17T06:51:39.618-06:00The Power of Comfort FoodI had a mandatory workshop for school Saturday, which put me in not the greatest of moods. I'll admit it - I am pretty selfish with my time. I'm especially selfish with my weekends during the school year, because those are my only "free" times to do laundry and grade stuff and maybe, just maybe, have a couple of hours for something fun.<br />
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Add to that the fact that the workshop was really just a re-hash of information and policies I already know. So there wasn't much point to spending the biggest part of my Saturday listening to lectures. As the day went on, my mood went lower and lower.<br />
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I would liked to have spent what was left of the day at home, but I had a social commitment that evening. I went, but I probably wasn't the most engaged guest. Until I saw the menu, that is.<br />
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The hostess had made Frito chili pie with fresh taco toppings (and I had promised to bring guacamole, so we had that on top, as well). Another woman in the group had made two cobblers, peach and cherry,made with big red and black sweet cherries (but I had eyes only for the cherry!).<br />
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I haven't had either of those things in a long time, and they just absolutely hit the spot Saturday night. I know this is a small thing, but the bright color of the lettuce and tomatoes and the fresh jalapeno slice atop the pile of Fritos and chili was just so pretty and cheerful that I felt my mood lifting as soon as I sat down with my plate. And the cobbler, with its flaky crust topped with a sprinkle of extra sugar, was soul-soothing.<br />
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Intellectually, I've understood the phrase "comfort food," but Saturday night, I came to an experiential understanding. And man, it was delicious!<br />
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<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-58682414432978737282020-02-08T08:44:00.003-06:002020-02-08T08:44:46.564-06:00I Used to Like HimLast year, I decided I was going to read the entire <i>Harry Potter</i> series, and it took me most of the year. I also had time to read <i>In That Time of Secrets</i>, but then I was left with a couple of weeks at the end of the year before starting a new reading challenge. I decided I would read through my own novels since it's been a while, and I was hoping it would maybe spark me into writing again (it hasn't, so far). When I finished the first one, I thought I might as well go ahead with the second one since they are a pair. While reading the second book, I made a discovery that kind of shocked me - my beloved leading man, John David McKellar, is a racist.<br />
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Just a little context - John David is a "pioneer" who has moved West looking for opportunity and a home. The place he decides can give him those things is not free for the taking, though; it is land that was ceded by treaty to the Cherokee tribe. While writing the novel back in 2010, I was brought face to face with the unethical way the United States came to be "settled" - stealing land and breaking treaty after treaty with the Native Americans, mistreating them at every turn. I set up the conflict in the novel as centered around John David and a Cherokee man ("Little" Elwin Root) who wanted the same spot of land John David wanted. A good story needs strong conflict.<br />
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What I hadn't realized in the excitement of writing the story is just how racist the things were that John David accepted in the person of another character or even the things that came out of John David's own mouth. Maybe it's an indication of how the world has changed in the 10 years since I wrote the novel and how much more "woke" (to use the young folks' slang) society is in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement and the travel ban on Muslims and the caging of immigrant children at the Mexican border. But I found myself cringing as I read things my "hero" in the story was saying and the attitudes they reflected about his place in the world and Little El's place.<br />
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I try to defend him by offering several excuses. 1) I was trying to accurately reflect the time period and its attitudes, and sadly, racism against Native Americans was reality. 2) John David's grudge against Little El is rooted in personal things rather than simple racism (but is that where racism always starts, at least on a personal level?). 3) Characters in a story can't be too perfect; they need to have believable flaws (and I always thought his flaws were part of what made John David an appealing character). 4) As a literary character, John David is on an arc of personal growth from mindless stereotyping of the Cherokee as "savages" to an understanding that the differences between him and Little El are superficial and that Little El is a human worthy of respect.<br />
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I've recently started reading the part of the story where John David's arc starts to turn away from the blatant racism toward understanding and respect. But as I remember, there are still vestiges of those racist attitudes, even after John David has "redeemed" himself. I'm afraid he's going to always be tainted for me now, a character in my mental library who's always going to be carrying an asterisk.<br />
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As I was writing this post, I remembered a song called "We Americans" off the Avett Brothers' latest album. In the song, Seth Avett ponders the legacy of a country built on "stolen land with stolen people," and how we can move forward together from that past when so much of that past still remains viable. People grumble about the occasional awkwardness of the lyrics (he's trying to fit in a lot of ideas), but I find it to be a profound and moving song. I'll attach it here and you can see what you think.<br />
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<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-44638645855405498202020-01-22T17:06:00.001-06:002020-01-22T17:06:31.689-06:00StuffIt's January, and the last thing you might expect in the heart of winter is a post about a tornado. But a couple of weeks ago, an F2 tornado whipped through a rural area south of here and destroyed the home of a couple who are members of the church my husband and I belong to. The tornado tore the roof off their house, and although all four walls were still standing, the house is a total loss. We spent some time last Saturday helping with clean-up, and I had some (half-formed) thoughts to sort out.<br />
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The first thing we did was at the church's family life center, where the couple had brought things to dry out. My job was to unpack dishes, wipe them down, and leave them on a table so the woman could re-pack them for storage. I felt a little bad because I found it sort of fun, kind of like opening Christmas presents. She has a lot of neat, unique dishes. Some of them were obviously pieces that had been given to her by older family members, like a couple of small china bowls with a really lovely pattern of violets. I have no idea what the bowls were for (maybe finger bowls?) but they were SO pretty. As I was wiping down her dishes, I started thinking what people would see if the contents of my kitchen cabinets were packed into boxes and spread out on folding tables in a church gymnasium. The answer is - not much. Most of what I have is pretty functional, and most of it is not all that pretty or valuable. I do have a partial set of stoneware that was on my wedding registry years ago, but we didn't get the whole set. I also have a little collection of creamers that I put together during a phase in which my mother and I enjoyed going "junking." Some of them are kind of neat.<br />
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But....during Christmas break (before the tornado), I was trying to make room in my cabinets for another functional piece (a grain mill, which I might talk about in a different post), and I thought, "Why am I keeping these creamers? And why did I buy this set of handmade mugs from a student at the university's art sale? I'm never going to use them. Why do I keep them?"<br />
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Later, we went over to the site of the damaged house to help with clean-up. I got the job of scooping up mushy drywall scraps and insulation from the living room/kitchen floor to be carted out to a trash heap. (I discovered something about myself - I am a compulsive "cleaner." I would have stayed all day or until all the mess was scooped out, if I hadn't had to take my husband's wishes into consideration, ha ha.) Most of what I saw while scooping was just the soggy remains of the ceiling, but I did come across a few items, like a picture of the family in a frame with a broken glass, or the remains of a potted plant. It's amazing to think how all that destruction happened in seconds. It's also sobering to think these houses that we think are so solid are basically just a collection of toothpicks and cardboard, no match for Nature when she gets serious.<br />
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I may not have pretty dishes, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be a lot of "stuff" to go through if a tornado hit this house. I look around the rooms and there is so much stuff we've accumulated over the years. Functional stuff like the canisters full of beans and rice. Outdated stuff like the collection of CDs we haven't listened to since digital music came along. Stuff that other people have given us, like the antique typewriter from my dad. I have big weaknesses for three categories of stuff:<br />
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<li>Books - I think I've kept almost every book that came into my possession; I have nearly every picture book and chapter book that belonged to my kids, even the ones I didn't like that much.</li>
<li>Fabric - I have, over the years, accumulated a lot of fabric that I intended to make into clothes but somehow never had time for. Now my kids are grown up and my husband is retired, and no one really needs me to sew for them. But the fabric remains.</li>
<li>Family pictures and memorabilia - This is another thing I didn't have time for - yet. I've kept all kinds of stuff from our family vacations, planning to make scrapbooks so we can relive the fun. But right now it's all stuffed in boxes and bags, waiting for "someday."</li>
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Again, I ask myself, "Why do I keep all these things? Would I really miss them--even the brochures I picked up on our trip to Yellowstone--if something happened and I lost them?" There's a big move toward minimalism these days, and I understand the appeal. But still, I sort of like to have more than one set of placemats to switch around once in a while. And some of the creamers are really pretty, even if they are in a box where I see them maybe once a year.<br />
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I don't know. The relationship with stuff is complicated. Maybe it takes something like a tornado to clarify that relationship. While wiping down dishes, I accidentally let a small piece that was tucked inside a larger piece fall out, and it broke. I felt terrible about it, and while I was apologizing to the woman who had already lost so much, she said something to the effect of, "Things are just things. I think the Lord has given me a view of what really matters through all this."<br />
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Amen.Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-56122988786909627772020-01-14T07:57:00.001-06:002020-01-14T07:59:26.828-06:00It's About Time!For most of my life, I've lived in the same rural community. I've had a couple of stints of living and working in a couple of different towns, and I spent about a year and a half in Kansas working on my graduate degree. But the greater part of my 57 years has been spent in a small corner of the world tucked up against the Ozark Mountains, where lies some really beautiful scenery.<br />
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Sad to say, I haven't really taken advantage of that fact the way you might expect a person to. A case in point is the Strawberry Bluff, which offers a nearly 180-degree view of the Arkansas River Valley some 30-40 miles away. I've lived within five miles of this awesome spot all my life and had never been to see it - until yesterday.<br />
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We didn't stay very long because it <i>was</i> chilly and Jeff didn't have a jacket. So there wasn't much time to sit and take it all in, which is what I felt that I wanted to do. I'm a slow thinker (ha!), and I need to be able to sit and look at something for a while to process it. But now I know where it is, and it's not going to be another 57 years before I go again! I need to remember that work shouldn't take over our lives and that I need to take small moments to treasure this beautiful place where I have the privilege to live.<br />
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<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-35193304639901866392020-01-07T08:48:00.002-06:002020-01-07T08:48:41.023-06:00Life....Abundantly<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Later today, I am going to cut up this pomegranate. Not because I want to eat it, although I'm sure I will. No, my plans for this pomegranate are to try to plant some of the seeds in hopes of being able to grow a pomegranate tree.<br />
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Will it work? I don't know. I've read online that pomegranates are relatively easy to grow from seeds, BUT that it is unlikely that the fruit produced by the seedling tree will be the same as the original fruit. Why bother, then?</div>
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That's the question I pondered this morning in the dark when I woke up at 6:00 (<i>school habits remain, even on Christmas break</i>), and I came up with an explanation that sounds a little weird but is exactly what I think is going on with me right now.</div>
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The news is so depressing these days - tensions that could lead to unnecessary war, impeachment hearings and questions about adherence to the processes outlined in the constitution, immigrant children being separated from their parents and the trauma from that stretching into the future, policies that roll back all the protections for the environment and that ignore the damage we are doing to the world. And that's just the national picture; add on the little frustrations from work and family, and it was would so easy to despair.</div>
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As all this is going on, I find myself compelled to grow things. Part of that could be explained, I suppose, by the fact that we are trying to get our farm business in the black. I think it's more than that, though, because pomegranate is not going to be a viable farm product. I don't need three fig trees. Why am I planning to pay better attention to the ginger pots in the aquaponics house? Why am I trying to come up with a rotation that will keep something growing in the herb garden all summer - and all winter? Why am I feeding that bowl of sourdough starter on the cabinet every day when I bake maybe once a week, less as school gets going? Why do I have three jars of kombucha brewing in my bedroom (the warmest part of the house)?</div>
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The answer I found this morning was that all these things are life and hope, and I crave them. Even in January, when the apple trees are dormant, they promise life; in the spring, they will put on buds that will uncurl into soft green leaves and maybe those beautiful flowers and maybe, this year, the first little green apples. The bright green lettuces in the aquaponics house and the little outdoor greenhouse have a short life span, but they look so cheery, whether they are waiting to be set out or are grown into a full-size head ready for harvest. Even my kombucha, with its creepy-looking SCOBY suspended in the jar, is teeming with innumberable bacteria and yeast, sharing with me the delicious by-product of their life.</div>
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So I will go and prune the apples in the next week or so, and I will water the lettuces and feed the sourdough starter, trying to do my part to nurture and support that life. I will clean off those pomegranate seeds and stick them in potting soil, hoping to see a pale green stem bending its back to break through the surface in a few days. Little green things - the antidote to despair. </div>
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<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-75230387224591966502019-12-31T23:26:00.000-06:002019-12-31T23:26:05.536-06:00Time for ReflectionEven though it seems I've forgotten about this blog, there's something about the end of the year that brings me back around. I don't have books to talk about this year. I had decided I was going to re-read the <i>Harry Potter</i> series this year, and I expected it to take all year (I'm just a slow reader). I finished the last book of the series in November, leaving me time for the latest novel by one of my favorite authors, <i>In That Time of Secrets</i> by Ann Turnbull. So I didn't read a lot of variety this year, but what I did read was quality.<br />
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Since I don't have reading to reflect on, I thought I'd do again what I did a couple of years ago - look back on the year of experiences using the categories I usually apply to books. So - here goes!<br />
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<b>Something I Thought Would be Amazing but was only So-So</b> – This time a year ago, I had just been asked to serve as the dean of a division at my university. I don't really have ambition to be an administrator, but I thought it would be a new path of service, so I said yes. (And I'll admit - the biggest attraction was the thought that I could collect and analyze data and make schedules. Charts and graphs!) I started right away trying to come up with plans for how to use what I've learned in nearly 30 years of teaching communication so I could be an effective leader. I went to the deans' meetings and provost council meetings in the spring semester until April, when the provost rescinded the decision, keeping me in the faculty instead. At the time, I was rather annoyed with how it all went down, but with the distance of a few weeks, I could see it really is a blessing to NOT be in that position. </div>
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<b>Best Discovery</b> – Fermentation! Also at this time a year ago, I had set out a bowl of flour and water to become a sourdough starter. I've kept the starter going all year with only one period of neglect (we went on a trip, and I asked my daughter to take care of the starter but forgot to tell her how to do it; when I came back home, the starter was covered with a dark brown layer of "hooch" because she gave it water but no flour). Sourdough was the gateway; since then I've made a batch of sauerkraut, two batches of the Latin American pineapple drink tepache, and most recently, kombucha. I've been trying to break away from drinking Diet Coke because I know it's bad, and kombucha may be what makes it possible. One of my colleagues from work shared some of her SCOBY, and I just finished brewing my first batch. The kombucha I'd bought from stores was really tart, but this is sweet and subtle and lovely, just like the friend who shared her SCOBY. </div>
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I also got it into my head this summer to make wine from some of the blueberries that were a little less than perfect and thus not able to go to market. I decided to do this despite the fact that I'm not a drinker and don't know what wine is supposed to taste like. My sister loaned me her equipment and gave me a package of yeast to get started. It was fun to watch the process, especially once it was in the gallon jugs and the tiny bubbles were rushing to the top of the liquid. Making wine is a lesson in patience; four months after I first mixed up the blueberries and sugar, we finally bottled it and gave some to people who are familiar with wine for the moment of truth - would it be any good? The verdict is yes - with an asterisk. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I topped off the jugs with sugar water after racking (I thought that's what the online recipe said to do). I thought it was odd that there were no tiny bubbles this time around. Turns out, the fermentation was basically finished before I added that batch of sugar water, and the yeast never consumed the sugar. That means we made a very sweet wine. Some friends say it is a bit TOO sweet, others say it is really good. They all agree it has a very nice, fruity flavor. Will I make more? Probably. It's better than letting those blueberries go to waste (and there's only so much jam I can make!).</div>
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<b>Biggest Accomplishment</b> – I mentioned above that I neglected my sourdough starter when we went on a trip. That trip was to Colorado to climb Estes Cone. My husband had climbed it the year he climbed the Grand Teton, and he suggested it as a quick break from the farm this summer. I've done some hiking, and that's what most of this climb was - until the last bit up to the actual summit. I had to do a lot of scrambling over rocks to get to the top. Many times in the last half-mile I told myself, "You CAN do this; you WILL do this!" When we got to the top, we had it to ourselves for a little while, long enough to sit down for a while and have a snack. It was a neat experience - my first time to climb a mountain. Jeff says he wants to go back and do Grand Teton again, but I think this mountain was enough for me!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><b>Favorite Re-Read</b> - Another thing we did this summer was bracket the season with going to concerts by the Avett Brothers. The second concert was a music festival, so we got to see other performers, as well. It was actually sort of a "bucket list" concert; we got to see Alison Kraus, Bonnie Raitt (who was AWESOME, by the way), and Willie Nelson as well as the Avett Brothers. And the concert was on the night of a full moon. It was sort of magical all around.</o:p></div>
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<b>Experience I Thought Wouldn’t be Much but was Actually Pretty Good</b> - Our son and his fiance broke up this summer (probably for the best), and he's moved back home temporarily while he goes back to school (that's another story I don't have time for). When he originally moved out, I took his bedroom and made it into a sewing room. Well, he needed it back, so I needed to move the sewing room into our daughter's bedroom (she's living away from home now). I wasn't too excited about the idea because her room was smaller, the closet is smaller, the room has only one window. But it has actually turned out to be perfect. The room may be smaller, but it has four usable walls; the other room really had only two usable walls because one was taken up by windows and one by the closet. Everything seems to fit better in here. I still need to go through and purge some things, and I really need another bookcase (ha!), but I like it better to have the room here. I haven't decided what to do about the walls; our daughter wanted them a vivid shade of turquoise. I've thought about painting over them to tone them down a little, but I get to feeling sentimental and think that when I do that, my baby girl will <i>really </i>be gone....</div>
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<b>Favorite Love Story</b> - (<i>Earlier today, I thought this was going to be so nice; something happened a little while ago that sort of soured me on this entry - more to come</i>.) We have an old cat named Prissy. I don't remember how long it's been since she showed up in my husband's shed, pregnant of course. This summer, we had a new puppy dropped on us (one of the hazards of living on a country road), and we felt sorry for Prissy having to deal with this rambunctious intruder, so we've been letting her stay in the house all the time. This cat LOVES my husband. Every time he sits down, she comes to sit on his lap within 30 seconds. She sits on him while he's watching football and yelling for the Packers; she sits on him while he's playing his computer game; she would sit on him while he ate supper if he would let her. He's always been her person, but it seems to be especially true now that she's getting old. It's kind of sweet - except old cats do gross stuff, like puke on the arm of the living room chair....</div>
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I guess those are the only categories I will right about, because nothing comes immediately to mind when I think about Saddest Disappointment or Biggest Failure. I guess that's a sign of a good year, right? My biggest hope is that next year will be the same, filled with discoveries and experiences - and good reading.</div>
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<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-51587639013829003952018-02-15T22:33:00.002-06:002018-02-15T22:33:50.094-06:00I Deserve a T-Shirt or Something<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0suZcjkVRVQ/WoZNZpWI2OI/AAAAAAAAGV0/Y-Sxq5xHf5872be4CX9MSFZXxjl2vZh0ACLcBGAs/s1600/Absalom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="181" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0suZcjkVRVQ/WoZNZpWI2OI/AAAAAAAAGV0/Y-Sxq5xHf5872be4CX9MSFZXxjl2vZh0ACLcBGAs/s1600/Absalom.jpg" /></a>One of the popular types of t-shirts people like to wear are the ones that announce, "I Survived (fill in the blank)." Well, I ought to get a t-shirt that says, "I Survived <i>Absalom, Absalom</i>."<br />
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Ok, I'm joking. I will admit, there were a lot of times when I thought I'd taken on more than I wanted to chew. Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style makes for difficult reading at the end of a long day at school. I also wished that there wasn't so much "telling"; the entire book consisted of conversations that recounted (inconsistently) the history of the Sutpen family. The story unfolds in disjunct narratives rather than in a chronological flow, and practical me got a little impatient at times with that style (and ok, I cheated on the third night and read the timeline summary at the end of the book so I would know what was going on). I get that an important aspect of the story was the perspectives of the different narrators, but sometimes I just wished for a simple, straightforward drama that put us on the scene to "live" the events instead of having someone tell us what happened.<br />
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But I also get that Faulkner wasn't just telling a simple sequence of events but instead has presented us with a multi-layered allegory exploring what it means to be a Southerner, with all the baggage that entails. I can't help but compare Henry's attitude in this novel to the attitude of some voters in the Alabama Senate race a couple of months ago - they could stomach supporting a candidate accused of being a pedophile, just as Henry could reconcile himself to letting his sister enter an incestuous relationship. But let that relationship be with someone who was part black, and Henry had to take drastic measures to end it, just as current voters grasped at whatever they could to keep a "libtard" Democrat from being elected. I'm frustrated sometimes with being a Southerner (and I guess I count as one - I'm not from the Deep South, but my state was one that seceded from the union), but like Quentin Compson, I would say, <i>"I don't hate it. I don't hate it."</i><br />
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In my research to prep for this post, I discovered that <i>Absalom, Absalom</i> holds the world record for the "longest sentence in literature," at 1,288 words. Maybe I do deserve that t-shirt.....<br />
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Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-4536513543113576392018-01-01T00:15:00.001-06:002019-05-22T17:46:48.053-05:002017 - The Year I Guess I Did Drop Out<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I'm a little ashamed of myself. If you don't count my own books, I read only three books this year. Yes - three. Two of them were novels - <i>A Lantern in Her Hand</i> by Bess Streeter Aldrich and <i>In This House of Brede</i> by Rumer Godden. At the time, I had thoughts about each one that I planned to turn into blog posts, but these thoughts came at an inconvenient time (like while I was driving to work) and nothing was ever written. The last book was a nonfiction one about the California Gold Rush, called <i>Days of Gold</i> by Malcolm Rohrbough. I'm going to blame my failure to read more on that book, because it took me FOREVER to read it. (In all fairness, the main reason it took so long was that I was taking copious notes as research for my next novel, and it had tons of good information about the miners' daily lives.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I flopped as a reader this year. However, Hemingway once said, "In order to write about life first you must live it." As I think back on this year, I've done some interesting things. I've decided to make my end-of-year review about my own experiences rather than about vicarious experiences from books.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T3NdxPOLQME/WknD2lPuEPI/AAAAAAAAF8U/37AB9ajD6hQOMUhJrVovKlLs72FeKTF7ACLcBGAs/s1600/TRNPsmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="288" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T3NdxPOLQME/WknD2lPuEPI/AAAAAAAAF8U/37AB9ajD6hQOMUhJrVovKlLs72FeKTF7ACLcBGAs/s1600/TRNPsmall.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Best
Discovery</b> - My husband, daughter, and I went on a vacation trip this summer that made a giant loop through Green Bay, Wisconsin (where my husband's family came from originally), to Banff National Park in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and back home through Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and Teton National Park. Of course all those mountain parks were awesomely beautiful, but I think one of my favorite spots on the trip was Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. We stayed at the north unit, which had much less traffic, and it was beautiful in sort of a desolate way. I felt the same way about Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. I don't think I would want to live in that kind of environment, but I do find the landscape beautiful and haunting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Accomplishment</b> - One of the things I did on the trip this summer was hike with my husband up to Garnet Canyon and the Meadow below the Lower Saddle in Grand Teton National Park. My husband wanted me to see part of the trip he made a couple of years ago when he summitted the Grand Teton. It was a challenging hike, both because of the length (about 9 miles round trip) and because of the terrain. There was a boulder field that led to the Meadows, and the weather was drizzly, meaning the rocks were a bit slippery. Being a rather clumsy person, I had to take it VERY slowly. Once we got past the boulders, there was still some snow on the trail, and I fell down a time or two - which was a little scary because it was on a slope above a steep drop-off. And when we got to the Meadows, it wasn't what I expected from a "meadow"...it was all rocks! Where were the wildflowers? By the time we got back to the cabin where we were staying, my knees were reminding me of how old I am, but it was a great experience to share with my sweetheart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Once
is Enough (Experiences I will probably never seek out again)</b> - While at Banff National Park, we hit the typical tourist destinations, including the Athabasca Glacier, and we hiked up to the "toe" and did a selfie (like the hundreds of other people who were there). What made this visit unique was that a thunderstorm had come up, and as we were hiking to the glacier, there was occasional lightning. It made me a bit uncomfortable, to say the least, to be hiking on the <b><i>top of a mountain (!)</i></b> with lightning around. Also, since this was the top of a mountain in Canada, it was COLD! There was actually sleet. I honestly can't even say if I really looked at the glacier, ha ha. It was a case of "get this picture so we can hurry and get out of here."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Something I Thought Would Be Amazing But Was Only So-So</b> - I knew the solar eclipse was not going to be a total eclipse here (only 90%), but I thought "90% is close to 100%, right?" I came home from work (we hadn't yet started classes, so I was able to do that), thinking I would watch the chickens to see if they went to the roost. Well...they didn't. It didn't really even get dark here. The light <b><i>did</i></b> change, however, in a noticeable way. My husband set up a little viewer that allowed us to see the eclipse in miniature (about a half-inch in diameter), which was kind of neat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I Thought Wouldn’t Be Much But Were Actually Good</b> - I ate crawfish for the first time this year. I wasn't too excited about the prospect because I really just don't like getting my fingers that dirty while I eat, but the meat tasted better than I had expected. I had planned to eat maybe one or two but ended up with several. It was worth the greasy fingers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Favorite
Historical Lesson</b> - The U.S. is huge. You don't really realize just how huge until you are driving across North Dakota trying to get to a spot to camp before it gets dark. That means every stop costs valuable time. However, we took time to go a little out of our way to visit the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota. We didn't really have time to go through every exhibit, but the visit to the replica of the stockade along the Missouri River was worthwhile. I always relish any experience that gives me a chance to step back in time and see what physical places and artifacts people would have used in the past. And I even laid down on a rope bed to see what it would feel like, as research for my novels - don't tell anyone! (Actually, the guide said we could sit on the beds or whatever, but I didn't want the other people in the tour group to see me lie down on the bed. They might think I was weird.....)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Biggest Failure </b>- I had a major blow-up with one of my department colleagues just before the end of the spring semester. She and I have very different philosophies on a lot of things about how to teach, but generally I try to take a "live and let live" approach. Who's to say I'm right about everything, anyway? However, this particular issue hit a little too close to home, and I'm sad to say, I don't think I handled it all that well. I apologized quickly, but the relationship has been more strained since then than it ever was before. I'm trying to not let the stains of that disagreement reach into the new school year, but it's not easy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Something Neat I Learned</b> - I took an online class this summer offered by the Adobe Education Exchange to learn to edit video using Premiere Pro, and I made a couple of little video projects. It's not as intimidating as I thought it would be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Favorite
Classic/Favorite Re-Read</b> - The trip this summer marked the third time I've been to the Grand Tetons. It's my husband's favorite destination, and I can definitely see the appeal. It's really beautiful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Favorite Love Story</b> - My son became engaged this year. He and his fiance have an interesting story. They met in a Waffle House when they were both on out-of-town trips. He said he thought she was cute so he spoke to her, they exchanged social media info, and though they lived in different states, they kept in touch for two years through social media and texting. She came to visit for spring break this year, he proposed, and she accepted. We're not sure of a wedding date (they want to be settled with better jobs first), but I am glad to be getting her for a daughter-in-law (even if that means I become a mother-in-law, ha ha!).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So those are only a few of the experiences of this year. In 2017, both of my children also graduated (the son from college, the daughter from high school) and my husband retired after nearly 30 years as a high school band director. He began the shift of career from teaching to full-time farming, and we built a large aquaponics greenhouse that took much longer than we expected. At first, we planned to have lettuce to harvest in March, then July, then September, and now here it is December and we still haven't harvested anything. But the system is up and going, and it's so relaxing to go into the greenhouse with the sound of trickling water and little green plants everywhere. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I hope to be a more frequent visitor to the blog in the coming year. I already have a plan in mind for reading - I'm going to go through some of the books on the shelves here at home. But I'm also already lining up some more of those experiences that I hope will make life interesting in 2018!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thanks for your readership!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-41674779782078405812016-12-31T23:01:00.003-06:002016-12-31T23:01:51.636-06:002016 - The Year I Nearly Dropped Out<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This year marks a real low in the number of times I've posted something to this blog. Sometimes I think I should just give it up altogether since there are such long intervals between posts. One of the key pieces of advice about blogging successfully is consistency, and I've really failed in that aspect this year. And it's not like I'm contributing a lot to the world of thought when I <i>do</i> write something. Plus, the world is in such a contentious mood, and sometimes it seems safer to just not say anything.<br />
<br />
But I feel sort of invested in what I've written--if not this year, at least the posts from the past. Even more than that, I like the idea of having a place to muse about my readings, even if that doesn't happen very often and even if I'm not "successfully building an audience." I would really miss the <i>Musing Reader</i> if it went away.<br />
<br />
At the beginning of the year, I joined the reading challenge on Goodreads, and I set the modest (or so I thought) goal for myself of reading 20 books. I didn't make that goal, either; I read 15 books, which at least is a "C" for the year (<i>teacher, ha ha</i>). I tell myself I would have done better and might have even finished the challenge if I hadn't bogged down in the late summer while I was doing the final edits for my third novel, which came out in September. I didn't count it as one of my 15 books, although I read it (with an eye peeled for inconsistencies and typos) at least twice during late August. I still haven't read it as a finished product, so I think it's going to be one of the first on my list for 2017. I also bogged down in reading a very dry historical book that is research for the next novel percolating in my mind.<br />
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In addition to the numerical challenge on Goodreads, I used the <a href="http://bookriot.com/2015/12/15/2016-book-riot-read-harder-challenge/" target="_blank">"Read Harder" challenge from Book Riot</a> and the <a href="https://daringtolivefully.com/reading-challenge" target="_blank">"Dare to Live Fully" challenge from daringtolivefully.com</a> to give some structure to my reading for the year. Because of those challenges, I read a book published last year, a book published in the 19th century, and a book published in the decade I was born; I read a dystopian book and a horror book, two genres that normally would not be on my list; I read another of Shakespeare's plays; I read a book that had strong political themes and a book that featured religious differences. I read a steampunk novel, a samurai mystery, and a couple of self-published books by local authors. It was an interesting year, although I didn't find myself really engrossed or invested in anything I read.<br />
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In keeping with my end-of-year tradition, here are my nominees for my regular categories:<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Best
Discovery</b> - The book I enjoyed most this year was <i><b>Because of Winn-Dixie</b></i> by <b>Kate DiCamillo</b>. Maybe it's because I read it shortly after the presidential election, but I was so relieved to read something in which the characters were kind to each other.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Saddest
Disappointment</b> - I was bitterly disappointed by <b><i>Johnny Osage</i></b>, both because I have really enjoyed other books by <b>Janice Holt Giles</b> and because it is set in the same time and place as my first novel. I was looking forward to it for those two reasons and actually had been putting off reading it because I didn't want to be influenced in writing my own work; unfortunately, I found it to be both boring and disturbing (if those two things can co-exist).<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Biggest
Accomplishment</b> - In 1995, I started reading <b>George Orwell's <i>1984</i></b>. It was the worst possible time for me to read that book because I was a brand-new mother undergoing the shock of that significant life change, and it was just too depressing, so I quit. This summer, my daughter was reading it as a pre-assignment for her senior English class, and I decided to try it again. It was still a depressing and miserable book (and I'm glad I finished it during the summer rather than closer to the election), but I finished it this time. Good for me.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Once
is Enough (Books I will probably never read again)</b> - This probably applies to just about everything on my list this year.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Books
I Thought Would Be Amazing But Were Only So-So</b> - I thought <b><i>Dearly Beloved</i></b> by <b>Anne Morrow Lindbergh</b> would be better than it was. This book would have been much better, in my opinion, as a short story than stretched and padded as it was to create a full novel.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Favorite
Re-Read</b> - There was only one book I read this year that I'd read before, and I'm a little sheepish about admitting it since it's a picture book. But not really - it's a very touching book with a good message, so <b><i>Sylvester and the Magic Pebble</i></b> by <b>William Steig</b> is a book I'll probably read again and again.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Favorite
Historical Fiction</b> - I read two historical novels that I enjoyed pretty well this year. The first was <b><i>The Hired Girl</i></b> by <b>Laura Amy Schlitz</b> (one of the few books I blogged about this year). The other was one of the books my son left in his bedroom when he moved away to college - <b><i>The Sword that Cut the Burning Grass</i></b> by <b>Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler</b>. I'll admit I read it just because I needed a "book set in Asia" for one of my reading challenges, but I learned quite a bit about Japanese culture, religion, and mythology - and it was a quick, fun read.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Biggest
Reading Failure</b> - I guess my biggest reading failure of the year was that I started off so well, reading three books in January. But then I hit a snag between February and June and read only three books in those four months. I don't know why.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Favorite
Classic</b> - I read three works this year that could be considered "classics": <b><i>1984</i></b> by <b>George Orwell</b>, <b><i>Frankenstein</i></b> by <b>Mary Shelley</b> (another read from my daughter's senior English class), and <i><b>The Taming of the Shrew</b></i> by <b>William Shakespeare</b>. <b><i>The Taming of the Shrew</i></b> had quite a few faults, but it wins my vote as "Favorite Classic" simply because I really, really didn't like either of the other two (I described them both as "miserable" to my family).<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Favorite
Love Story</b> - I didn't read anything that could be considered strictly a romance this year, so my favorite story about love was <b><i>Because of Winn-Dixie</i></b> by <b>Kate DiCamillo</b>. One thing I really enjoyed about the book was that the father was a loving, gentle man rather than a stereotypical harsh, distant father. Love wins in just about every situation when Opal is dealing with others, like the girl who seems snobby and the brothers who seem to be bullies. It just seemed that the characters approached the world the way a dog does - with acceptance and love. Very refreshing.<br />
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Besides the books mentioned above, I also read <b><i>Rebel Mechanics</i></b> by <b>Shanna Swendson</b>; <b><i>A Lasting Bond</i> </b>by<b> Angie Richardson;<i> Snakebite</i> </b>by<b> Beryl Wealand; <i>Arkansas in the Gold Rush</i> </b>by <b>Priscilla McArthur; <i>Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession</i> </b>by<b> Erma Bombeck; and <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> </b>by<b> Harper Lee</b>.<br />
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I'm setting my goal for 2017 at 20 books once again. Here's hoping I make it - and that I'll find time to muse.</div>
<br />Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-44264509358309094962016-06-20T17:00:00.000-05:002016-06-20T17:00:05.920-05:00In Appreciation of Good, Old-Fashioned AnticipationSometimes, I just have to laugh at myself.<br />
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My favorite band, the Avett Brothers, have a new album coming out at the end of this week, June 24. I've known this since March, when Seth Avett wrote a long, lovely letter announcing the new album and the place it marks in the brothers' lives and careers. From March to June seemed like such a long time to wait, but I know how to wait. After all, Christmas comes but once a year, right? And there is something kind of cool about waiting for the release of new material (or for a Christmas present), and that something is the thrill of anticipation. There's the wondering what it will be like, and the hoping it will be something you really like, and the looking for hints about what it's going to be like. That thrill becomes almost unbearable the closer the release day (or Christmas) comes, but the day finally arrives, and there you sit with the present or the new album in your hands, ready to tear into it and savor the fruition of all your waiting.<br />
<br />
Except....that's not how the Brothers are doing it this time. About a month after the original news about the album release, there was a Facebook post offering pre-orders of the album along with an instant download of one of the songs on the album, "Ain't No Man." Now, I know there's no need to pre-order digital music (I mean, it's not like they are going to run out of copies), but hey, I was going to buy it anyway - might as well get an early little taste of the album at the same time, right? So I hit the "pre-order" button, downloaded the single, and listened to it right away. It was sort of like getting permission to peel up a corner of the wrapping paper and take a little peek at the box holding the present. It makes the waiting a little easier, I guess.<br />
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But then two weeks later, I got an email that my order of another single from the album had been processed. And two weeks later, there was another email with yet another single. Apparently the Brothers (or someone on their management team) decided to lead up to the release date by releasing the album a little at a time. There are 12 tracks on the album, and four of them have already been officially released. Also, there have been videos on YouTube of at least two more of the songs, not including the footage from concert performances. About a week or so ago, the Brothers released a YouTube video by their official videographer of yet another song on the album, meaning more than half the songs on the album are already out there for listening.<br />
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I'm a little torn about this. On the one hand, I'm glad to have the music to listen to (and I <i>really</i> like a couple of the songs). On the other hand, I feel a little cheated out of that thrill of anticipation and the moment when I could finally sit down with the album and listen to it, start to finish, for the first time. I guess I'll still get that moment to hear the whole album together (and I do think the album as a whole is not just an assembly of singles - I believe the Brothers not only tell stories with the individual songs, but that they are mindful about how those songs come together on the album to create or enhance a larger story). But it's not going to be the same, because I am already very familiar with at least four of the songs. Through force of will, ha ha, I have resisted listening to the YouTube videos of the other songs (more than once, anyway) because I thought that was a way to reserve some of the thrill.<br />
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This morning, though, there was another post on Facebook, announcing the new album is featured on NPR's First Listen. In other words, I could hear the entire album now, instead of waiting four more days. And here's what makes me laugh at myself. For all my blathering about the "thrill of anticipation" and the purity of that first listening experience, I still went to the NPR site to "preview" each song - only to preview, mind you, not to listen to the whole thing.<br />
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But the joke is on me - our internet service is SOOOOO bad out here in the country that I could only hear a couple of seconds of the song at a time before the computer had to stop and buffer. After a couple of efforts, I gave it up. Not because of the frustration of waiting for buffering, oh, no; I've decided (once again!) to wait, so I can have that moment when I can download the remaining songs, find a quiet spot, and listen mindfully to see how all these pieces fit together into the theme or story I am certain is there on the album as a whole.<br />
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Just in case I made you curious, here's a little peek inside the wrapping paper....(I couldn't resist....)<br />
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Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-29450528696315868492016-04-15T20:57:00.000-05:002016-04-15T20:57:29.314-05:00So Long, Hag<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B5DR97q_jOc/VwcgiKnJfGI/AAAAAAAABPE/gsjQgjTlMHsOdYSxMnjEMeRw9XvBEfSKw/s1600/hag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B5DR97q_jOc/VwcgiKnJfGI/AAAAAAAABPE/gsjQgjTlMHsOdYSxMnjEMeRw9XvBEfSKw/s400/hag.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merle Haggard, 1937-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Usually I'm pretty good with being able to come up with the words I need to explain what I mean. Merle Haggard's voice, however, has always been one thing for which I can't find the words to explain why I find it so appealing. Oh, I've tried. I even tried to get my musician husband to help me. "Is it the timbre of his voice?" I asked, hoping the DH would explain to me exactly what "timbre" is in music, and that somewhere in his explanation would be the idea that would make me say, "YES! That's what it is!" (Didn't work...DH just said, "Probably," or something like that.)<br />
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After hearing yesterday (April 6, actually) that Merle Haggard had died, and having the opportunity this evening (April 7, actually) to drive somewhere by myself, I decided to do some intense listening to try once again to explain to myself what it is about this particular voice that I like so much.<br />
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What I found is that it's hard to separate the voice from the words. Actually, that may be one of the things that appeals to me - that there was such a good match between Merle Haggard's voice and the lyrics. It was not a one-dimensional match-up, either. He could be raucous and edgy on a song like <i>I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink</i>, but tender and smooth on one like <i>I'm Always on a Mountain When I Fall</i>. His voice was just so..."evocative" is the word that keeps coming to mind. I'm quite a sucker for sad songs sang well, and something like <i>Hungry Eyes</i> always moves me (at least when Merle Haggard sings it....).<br />
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Oh, man...the way he holds out "wanted" and "needed"....and the poignancy of "It wasn't 'cause my daddy didn't try."<br />
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(a week later....)<br />
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I lost my train of thought - my family got home while I was writing that post, and all the liveliness they brought with them made it even harder to think of what I was trying to say. But I do want to pay a tribute to a voice that always seemed so honest and genuine in the world of commercial music that too often is contrived and manipulated.<br />
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So long, Hag.<br />
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<i><br /></i>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-25272636438154509342016-03-29T22:01:00.003-05:002016-03-29T22:01:32.133-05:00I Shouldn't Have Worried....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This book has been on my bookshelf for a long, long time. I picked it up at some second-hand store, I think. Since I absolutely loved <i>Hannah Fowler</i> by Janice Holt Giles, I figured I would also love <i>Johnny Osage</i>. The book also had going for it that it is set in an area very close to my home and deals with history that happened just before the history in the novels I've written. That's the reason I had never read the book, though; because the time period and setting were so close to my own work, I was afraid I might subconsciously plagiarize something. Now that my books are all finished, I thought it was probably safe to finally read <i>Johnny Osage</i>.<br />
<br />
Well, I shouldn't have worried about plagiarism, because - not to be hurtful or anything - but I didn't like this book well enough to copy anything from it.<br />
<br />
I wasn't a big fan of the plot of the book, because it follows the same "revenge" plot that bothered me in <a href="http://musingreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/when-does-violence-go-too-far.html" target="_blank">this review</a> of another novel. Johnny Fowler is a trader who has a special relationship with the Osage Indians living in what is now northeast Oklahoma but at the time was the brand-new Arkansas Territory. In fact, Johnny had married into the family of one of the top chiefs, the Wolf. But the Osage have an enemy in the Cherokees who have moved into the territory, specifically a man nicknamed the Blade for his murderous ways. We eventually find out the Blade had killed and mutilated Johnny's pregnant young wife. When the Blade strikes again near the end of the novel, Johnny takes it on himself to deal out long-overdue vengeance. As with <i>A Reasonable Doubt</i>, there is no soul-searching about Johnny's decision to search out and kill the Blade; in fact, he's disgusted with himself that he had waited so long that another young girl died at the Blade's hand. Granted, the Blade is a horrible person, but I would have felt better about Johnny as a character if he had seemed to have even a single moment of remorse over what he did.<br />
<br />
But he didn't. And actually, Giles made things even worse, in my view, by how she handled the end of the book. Johnny has fallen in love with and plans to marry Judith, a missionary at the Presbyterian mission to the Osage. When Judith figures out that Johnny is going to go after the Blade, she tells him she can't marry a murderer, and their romance appears to be over, since Johnny walks out on Judith to go find the Blade for a fight to the death. However, once Johnny has dealt out his revenge and is recuperating from his wounds in the Osage village, Judith comes back to him and puts aside her own opinions so she can have Johnny.<br />
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"She would have had him innocent and molded in her own instincts, but that not being possible she would have him on his own terms...In the event, she examined her love and found it whole enough to withstand the partition of herself."</blockquote>
I don't know why that bothered me so much. I mean, I've read other stories in which a character has to give up something of him/herself for love. I understand that love usually means a person is going to have to change in some ways, perhaps important ways. I guess the issue here was that what Judith gave up was a really fundamental part of herself. And it also bothered me that the "giving up" was all one-way - coming from Judith. Not only does Judith have to compromise her ethics to accept that her future husband committed a murder of vengeance, she also had to leave the mission to go live in the relatively immoral trading village because that's where Johnny lived, and Johnny wasn't going to move. Johnny doesn't seem to have to give up anything, and that annoyed me. In fact, I can't really identify any significant way in which Johnny changed and grew as a character except that he is finally free of his angsty "guilt" once he's killed the Blade.<br />
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I might have been able to accept the plot as the author's choice (as I did with <i>A Reasonable Doubt</i>) if the writing had been better. But there were some serious info-dumps in the book, especially early on. It just wasn't much fun to read. Johnny Osage was as successful in killing my interest in this book as he was in exacting his revenge on the Blade.Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-9170131061728132012016-02-12T21:39:00.001-06:002016-02-12T21:39:37.995-06:00On Second Thought.....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I first finished reading <i>The Hired Girl </i>by Laura Amy Schlitz, my reaction was disappointment. I thought the book just didn't meet the high standard Schlitz had set in her other book I'd read a couple of years ago, <i>A Drowned Maiden's Hair</i>. My biggest disappointment was that there didn't seem to be much of a plot - the story sort of plodded along through Joan's (she's the hired girl of the title) diary entries. Every so often there would be some dramatic event for an entry, but much of the book was domestic detail that didn't seem to be going anywhere.<br />
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Well, I kept thinking about the book, and now I think I've hit on the plot I missed as I was reading - <b><i>(SPOILER ALERT!)</i></b> - This book is about Joan's search for love, particularly a father's love.<br />
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The first couple of chapters in the book were gripping to me, when Joan was trapped on the family farm and engaged in a battle of will with her father, who was harsh and unloving and who blames Joan for the death of his wife (Joan's mother). He can't understand Joan's love of learning, and he doesn't value all the work she does around the house. Piece by piece, he strips away everything that gives Joan an escape from the drudgery of her life, until finally, in retaliation for her defiance, he burns her precious books. He's a despicable character, and like Joan, we hate him. We celebrate when she carries out her clever plan to run away.<br />
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<b><i>(MORE SPOILERS!)</i></b> The story then has Joan going through a series of crushes on the men in the family that hires her on. First, there was Mr. Solomon, the family's oldest son, who finds Joan on the street when she first gets to Baltimore, takes her home, and convinces his mother to hire her. Solomon is a gentle, kind, scholarly man, and we can understand why Joan would have a crush on him. There's also the father of the family, who is kind to Joan and lets her use his library after her day's work is finished, as long as she doesn't stay up so late that she oversleeps the next morning when she's supposed to help with breakfast. Joan herself doesn't write about Mr. Rosenbach in a romantic way, but she overhears Mrs. Rosenbach telling the bridge ladies about Joan's "crush" on her husband. Finally, there is the younger son, David, who takes Joan to an opera and buys her some art supplies and kisses her one night in the dark kitchen. Joan is completely enamored with David, and builds all kinds of dream futures with him in her mind. When she finds out he's leaving for Europe to study art, she recklessly begs him to take her with him, only to find that what she interpreted as love was just David's normal flirtatious manner.<br />
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Honestly, at the time I was reading it, I thought the story was trying to make a point about social class and romance, and maybe it was. But I like this newer explanation better. Joan never had love from her father or her brothers (no one had truly loved her since her mother died), so she is desperately trying to find a substitute for that lack. One article discussing research about parental influence concluded "children who feel unloved tend to become anxious and insecure, and this can make them needy." That description would certainly fit Joan through the whole novel.<br />
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The saddest part is, she still hasn't found it at the end of the novel. This is where the social class issue intersects with the psychological need issue. The Rosenbachs are kind to Joan, even to the point of providing her a scholarship to attend the new school Mr. Rosenbach has built, but there is a clear distinction between her and them. They are kind, but they don't <b><i>love</i></b> her. Pity or charity is not the same as love.<br />
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Or maybe Joan did find love, in the form of the grumpy old housekeeper, Malka.<br />
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She got up and came around the table and locked her arms around me. "You take that education," she said against the top of my head. "When life offers you something good, you take it, you hear me? You go to a good school, learn everything you can, and grow up to be a woman. That's what you'll do," she finished, and she held me so close I felt her old heart beating.<br />
So I gave in. I even took a crumb of comfort, because she loves me. It wasn't what I would have chosen. I wanted David to love me, not Malka. But I guess I'm a beggar and can't be a chooser. Being proud belongs in novels.</blockquote>
Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-14152413748014334312016-01-22T22:10:00.002-06:002016-01-22T22:10:23.166-06:00For Money or Love?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I sit here tonight, putting off washing the dishes as I think about the book I just finished, <i>The Hired Girl</i> by Laura Amy Schlitz. In some ways, I have an awful lot in common with Joan, the protagonist of the book - I'd rather be reading or writing, but I'll get up here in a minute to clean the kitchen.<div>
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Joan is a 14-year-old girl who loves school and reading novels, but after her mother died, she's forced into the role of housekeeper for her father and three older brothers on a small farm. The work is unending, and it's hard, and Schlitz does a great job of showing us just what would have been involved for a woman keeping up a farm household in 1911. I felt overwhelming empathy for Joan when she narrowly escapes losing an eye after a cow kicked her, and yet the men of the household expect her to get supper together, even while her stitches are still fresh. At least they concede to eat a cold supper.</div>
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But it's not the work that's the worst part of her situation - what's worse is that she is struggling along in an environment in which no one ever expresses any love or concern for her or satisfaction with her work. In fact, Joan's father holds her responsible for her mother's death, and he's just completely intolerable. When he burns Joan's beloved novels to punish her for impertinence, Joan runs away from home to look for a position as a hired girl in the city (Baltimore, in this case).</div>
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Joan is lucky enough to get a position quickly with a well-to-do Jewish family, the Rosenbachs. In their household, she does the cleaning and helps the old woman who has been with the family forever with cooking. Joan thinks she's especially lucky because the Rosenbachs send out their laundry - no more washing clothes. And she's going to earn $6 per week!</div>
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It's not long before Joan realizes that, even without the laundry, there's still a huge amount of work, and a lot of it is heavy work, like rolling up the rugs and carrying them downstairs to hang over the line and beat them clean. That's the first truth I gleaned from the book; sure, the Rosenbachs had electricity and running water, but to paraphrase with a bad pun, housework, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Maybe she's no longer scrubbing the privy clean, but some other task is going to replace the one that was removed. As the <i>Shabbos</i> goy (Gentile worker who does tasks during the Sabbath), Joan seems to have as much work, if not more, with the Rosenbachs than she did at home.</div>
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One might argue that even if the workload is the same, Joan has a much better situation with the Rosenbachs than she had at home, for at least she's away from her hateful father. Throughout the story, though, there are numerous entries (the story is written as Joan's diary) that describe when Joan has been reminded of the social differences between herself and the Rosenbachs -- she is, after all, only the hired girl. Joan is not to associate with the Rosenbach's children (she does, of course). She is not to talk back or listen in on conversations or "meddle." Mrs. Rosenbach, especially, treats Joan with a certain degree of contempt; she is not unkind, unlike Joan's father, but she is <i>superior</i>, taking it as her right at one point to tell Joan she needs to work on her "deportment" so that she seems more like a hired girl.</div>
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That raises an interesting set of questions in my mind. Is it worthwhile to allow yourself to be demeaned, as long as you are getting money? I guess Joan is better off as a hired girl, because although Mrs. Rosenbach is as overbearing in some ways as Joan's father is, at least there is Mr. Rosenbach, who allows Joan free access to his library -- as long as she doesn't stay up past midnight so that she oversleeps in the mornings and is late to her work. </div>
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The work/social differences are not the only theme, or even the most important theme, in the novel, but each of us reads a story within our own context, right? I don't know -- maybe I'm in a weird mood because this was the first week back at school, and it's kind of hard to go from days when I was my own boss back into having to keep someone else's schedule. Seems like the older I get, the harder it becomes to do that.....</div>
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Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-21906861745161611202016-01-15T09:44:00.002-06:002016-01-15T09:44:53.675-06:00Am I Too Picky?<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jl8p3wJNoA/VpkLE4uBvDI/AAAAAAAABNc/BRbZmmf3Vjo/s1600/Rebel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jl8p3wJNoA/VpkLE4uBvDI/AAAAAAAABNc/BRbZmmf3Vjo/s1600/Rebel.jpg" /></a>Wednesday night, I finished my first book for this year - <i>Rebel Mechanics</i> by Shanna Swendson. This was a book my daughter recommended to me. She really liked it. Me....not so much. It was all right, and at the end, the story picked up and was satisfying, but it certainly didn't catch me up and make me live in that fictional world. As I was doing my Goodreads rating and my Amazon review, it occurred to me that I may have become too picky in my evaluation of reading materials.<br />
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A quick synopsis of the plot - this is alternative history, and the premise is that the first American revolution failed, leaving the colonies under British rule. One twist is that there is a ruling class that has magical abilities. A group of non-magical "rebel mechanics" is using their brains to invent machines that can do the things the "magisters" use magic to do. The hope is the machines will make a second, successful revolution possible. Verity Newton finds herself straddling the two worlds; she works as a governess in a magical household, but she is recruited by the rebels as a spy.<br />
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The premise for the story is pretty decent (although I could do without the "magic" bit - why does everyone these days use magic as a plot element. Just makes things SOOOOO convenient - need something to happen? Oh, they have MAGIC!). I liked the characters all right, though I wasn't really enamored of anyone in the story; Verity's boss, Lord Henry, is the closest I came to being truly interested in a character. He's living a double life, and although we could figure that out really early in the story, it's satisfying enough when the big reveal comes as to why he's doing it.<br />
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So it's not necessarily the story being poorly-conceived that bugs me about this book. The thing that bothered me most about was that it seemed to me the author was punching all the buttons to make the book "popular" with its young adult audience. Let's see...we need a girl who's sort of an outcast....how about a smart, bookish girl whose father doesn't really want her around? Gotta have some kind of paranormal element - ooooh, there's the magic! Check. Steampunk is really popular right now, and the rebels build machines, soooooooo--let's make sure everyone realizes this is a steampunk story by stopping the story momentarily to describe the rebels' clothing as eclectic (one of the key elements of steampunk culture). Let's see....we need a love triangle.....Hey, we'll make Verity be torn between the two social classes. We'll have Alec, the hot young rebel who is a brilliant mechanic and who is instantly attracted to Verity, and we'll have Lord Henry (of course), since he's this complex, mysterious character with an important secret. But of course, he's a "forbidden" love because he's her employer and her social superior.....Ooooooh, even better!! Betrayal by friends? Check. Girl needs a mysterious secret of her own that threatens her position in society....hmmmm......let's make Verity a half-breed--half magic, half non-magic. Girl saves the day? Check. Mean girl who puts down the main character every chance she gets? Check.<br />
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Even as I'm writing this, I feel that I'm being a little harsh. The book wasn't that bad, just sort of formulaic, and what's wrong with giving your audience what they want? I guess the thing that bothers me is the literary equivalent of worrying that my daughter is drinking too much sugary root beer and eating too much fast-food pizza. She's a voracious reader, but I have a hunch most of what she is reading is similar to <i>Rebel Mechanics</i> (especially since she thought this was so good she should recommend it to me). I can't at all get her to read young adult novels (like the ones by Ann Turnbull) that are substantive and involving and make you care about the characters and that don't rely on things like magic to build the plot.<br />
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Bleah! What a nagging old woman I sound like! <i>"You young people are going to rot your (brain/teeth) if you don't stop (reading/drinking) all that (formula fiction/root beer)!"</i><br />
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But then.....I pick up something like the book I'm reading now (<i>The Hired Girl</i> by Laura Amy Schlitz), and within 16 pages, I am completely invested in this character and the problems of her life. Honestly, I nearly teared up this morning (see, that says something - I HAD to read some this morning to know what happened after I left off reading last night) when I read the part about Joan picking up and cuddling the doll her mother (who is now dead) made for her. My heart just aches for this poor young girl who is working like a slave in a household full of brothers who are not cruel (I guess), but are just uncaring.<br />
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Maybe I can convince my daughter to read it....she owes me one, right?Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-66871253619136645822016-01-01T09:55:00.001-06:002016-01-01T09:55:25.113-06:00It Was an Interesting Year in Books (Reading Challenge 2105)<span style="font-family: inherit;">What was I doing at midnight, you ask? Popping a bottle of bubbly? Celebrating the end of the old year and welcoming the new with friends? Why, no...I was snuggled in bed, finishing the last few pages of <i>The Shivering Sands </i>by Victoria Holt to cap off my 2015 reading challenge!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I read a whopping 16 books this year, which I suppose I should be ashamed to admit, since it's such a low number. But it was a really interesting set of books, thanks to a couple of reading challenges I decided to take on this year. The first was a Monthly Motif challenge, which I sort of ending up dropping after a couple of months because I had become more interested in Book Riot's <a href="http://bookriot.com/2014/12/15/book-riot-2015-read-harder-challenge/" target="_blank">"Read Harder" challenge</a>. The idea of the challenge was to</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">inspire you to pick up books that represent experiences and places and cultures that might be different from your own. We encourage you to push yourself, to take advantage of this challenge as a way to explore topics or formats or genres that you otherwise wouldn’t try. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't know if I was as aggressive in pushing myself as I ought to have been, but I did read some books I definitely would not have read if not for the reading challenge. It was an experience I enjoyed, so much so that I plan to search out the 2016 "Read Harder" challenge and see about incorporating it into my reading plans for this coming year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the spirit of that challenge, I'm going to add a new category to my normal list: <b>The Book That Pushed Me</b>. For this category, the book needs to be one that is either not of a genre I normally read, one that is about a culture significantly different from my own, or one that challenges my perspective on things in a significant way. There could be several that meet this criterion for this year, including <b><i>Looking for Alaska</i></b> by John Green, which I took as a rather eye-opening look into popular teen culture (if not a realistic portrait of teen culture, at least a portrait of teen culture that is really popular with teens). <i><b>Beloved</b></i> by Toni Morrison challenged me to acknowledge the complete disruption of "normal" life that slavery forced on African-Americans, and <i><b>Anpao</b></i> by Jamake Highwater was an interesting compilation of Native American worldview myths. But the winner in this category for 2014 was <b><i>The Poisonwood Bible</i></b> by Barbara Kingsolver, not just because it was an introduction to African culture, language, and mindset, but also because it made me consider the interaction between "foreign" cultures and colonial/"missionary" cultures. (That's a blog post that never got written... :/ It wasn't a very good year for blogging.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="line-height: 115%;"><b>Best Discovery</b> - Strangely enough, the book I most enjoyed this year was <b><i>Life on the Mississippi</i></b> by Mark Twain. That may be in part because it had information about keelboats and steamboats that related directly to the time period in my own novels (another blog post that didn't get written), but I also had forgotten how funny Mark Twain can be. (He also made some racial remarks that would have been fodder for internet censure in today's environment...) I enjoyed the mix between his journalistic descriptions, his social commentary, and his personal stories. The story about the death of his brother in a steamboat explosion was understated but still packed some hefty emotional punch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><b>Saddest
Disappointment</b> - <b><i>The Poisonwood Bible</i></b> by Barbara Kingsolver. One of my friends absolutely loves this book and has read it multiple times. This is a good example of how individual taste in books is. I couldn't see the appeal. I personally didn't like any of the four sisters enough to get emotionally invested in their story, and I thought Kingsolver dragged the story on <i>way</i> past where it needed to go. (I'm sorry I didn't like your favorite, Pat!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><b>Biggest
Accomplishment </b>- Although I didn't care for it (or maybe because of that...), I thought reading <b><i>The Poisonwood Bible</i></b> was my biggest reading accomplishment for the year. It was the longest book I read all year. I did have another big accomplishment during the year--I finished the first draft of my third novel - the whole manuscript was written in one year! If you knew the crazy number of things crammed in to my life, you would understand why I consider that my biggest accomplishment for 2015, ha ha ha!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I Thought Wouldn’t Be Much But Were Actually Good</b> - Honestly,I expected <i><b>Life on the Mississippi</b></i> to be dry, nineteenth-century writing that I needed to plow through to get background information for my novels. But I was wrong, really wrong. I actually laughed out loud several times. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Favorite
Historical Fiction</b> - Because I was challenging myself to read outside my normal genre, I didn't read as much historical fiction as I normally do. This year, the only books I read that were strictly historical fiction were Nancy Dane's <b><i>A Reasonable Doubt</i></b> (about the Reconstruction period in the South) and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Poisonwood Bible</i>, which comes out on top of another category, mainly because I didn't know anything at all about the history of Congo.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><b>Biggest
Reading Failure</b> - One of the categories on the Read Harder challenge was to read a romance novel, so I thought I would make it interesting and read an Amish romance, since they are very popular and would be about another culture I'm not all that familiar with. I chose <b><i>The Covenant</i></b> by Beverly Lewis. Normally, I have a three-chapter rule; I make myself read three chapters before I decide not to read a book. Sad to say, I didn't make it that far in this book. During the prologue--the <i>prologue</i>--I decided I can't stand this book. Too much "telling," too many stereotypes. I put it away and moved on to something else, but then I decided maybe I wasn't being fair, so I tried again. This time I got through the first chapter and a half, but my reaction was the same. I can't stand this book. I may force myself to try one more time in the coming year, but ugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><b>Favorite
Classic</b> - One thing I'm kind of proud of this year is that I read several books that could be considered "classics," such as <b><i>Grimm's Fairy Tales</i></b> by the Brothers Grimm and <b><i>The Scarlet Letter</i></b> by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's hard to say, but I guess <b><i>The Hobbit</i></b> by J.R.R. Tolkein was my favorite read this year from the books that could be considered "classic." (And now my husband can be happy because I've finally read one of his favorite books!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><b>Favorite
Love Story</b> - I did go on a self-serving detour this summer in which I read both of my own novels, and of course, they were my favorite love stories, but to avoid being self-serving now, I'll say <b><i>The Shivering Sands</i></b> by Victoria Holt was my favorite. I'll admit there were plenty of flaws in the story and that the love story wasn't really the main focus of the novel, but it was one of those love stories in which the couple is faced with all sorts of obstacles that you <i>just <b>know</b></i> they will eventually overcome. I actually thought there was kind of an interesting layer to this novel that I might blog about sometime--I've seen several reviews that talk about Napier as being an "abusive" husband. I wonder, though, if the abuse is in the perspective we as the reader are given on his behavior. But those are musings for another time.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18.4px;">I'm happy to say I don't really have any nominees for the category of <b>Books I Thought Would Be Amazing But Were Only So-So</b>. Although everything on my list probably will be on the </span><span style="line-height: 18.4px;"><b>Once is Enough (Books I will probably never read again)</b> list, I was well-satisfied with everything I read this year. I do want to acknowledge the books I read that didn't fit any of the categories above, because they are all worthy of reading:</span></span><br />
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<li><b style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><i>Mama's Song</i></b><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> by Gayle Jennings</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Elements of Deception</i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"> by Mary Schaffer</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="line-height: 115%;"><i>Joyland </i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">by Stephen King (I can't believe I actually read a Stephen King book, albeit a very mild one!)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="line-height: 115%;"><i>100 Selected Poems</i></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"> by e.e. cummings</span></span></li>
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<span style="line-height: 18.4px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now I'm off to research the 2016 "Read Harder" challenge. I think I know what the first book on this year's list will be, though--I need to do my first complete read-through of that first draft of my WIP. And my daughter has suggested a book to me, so I might try to read it this weekend before she has to take it back to the school library. Oh, so many books, so little time......</span></span><br />
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Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-82388993787744936512015-06-18T16:39:00.001-05:002015-06-18T16:39:36.854-05:00The "Guilty Pleasure," Marlow-StyleThis story began when I needed to do a quick consistency check for a couple of characters who are the major players in my third novel. Both characters are introduced in my first novel, <i>His Promise True</i>, so my intention was to simply read the sections which feature those two characters, just to make sure I wasn't giving them personality transplants or anything like that.<br />
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At some point, "I'll just read those paragraphs with these characters" became "I'm reading this entire book." It's actually the first time I've read the book as a book, meaning I'm not doing any editing, which is a completely different type of reading. I also hadn't looked at the book at all since it was published in 2013, because I've been putting my scarce time for writing/reading into finishing the second novel and starting the third. So it feels like it was time to visit Maggie and John David again.<br />
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I'm pleased to report I haven't been cringing every few pages, wondering why I made the choices I did in the final edit that was published. However, it also hasn't been a completely positive experience, and that's mainly because of the guilt I feel about reading my own book (again) when there are so many good books waiting in the to-be-read list (42 on my Goodreads list alone). It's taken me more than a month to read the book, which is less than 300 pages, and that bothers me too. My only excuse on that front is the past month included finals week and the beginning of blueberry season on the farm, so I'm too tired at night to read more than a couple of pages. Every time I log in to Goodreads, I'm taunted by the fact that my "currently reading" status is blank (because it would just be too weird to publicly announce on a site like Goodreads that I'm reading <b>my own book</b>).<br />
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Really, though, I don't know that I should feel so guilty. One of the adages one hears over and over about writing is, "Write what you like to read." That's exactly what I did. What I like are historical books, especially books about pioneers, with a strong, interesting female character whose skin I can slip into for a while and a male love interest who is <i>human</i>, meaning his flaws are real-to-life and not some kind of plot device. I like for these characters to struggle and face obstacles, but to ultimately have a happy ending.<br />
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I developed this literary taste as a teen reading Janice Holt Giles, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Loula Grace Erdman, Margaret Leighton, and Elizabeth George Speare, among others. It's stayed pretty constant as I've grown to be a middle-ager. The problem is, I'm having trouble finding those kinds of books now. Historical fiction, especially pioneer stories, is just not what agents and publishers are looking for. I guess if I want to read that kind of story, I have to write it myself, ha ha.<br />
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I'm going to give myself a little bit of a break this time, and say that <i>His Promise True</i> counts as the "guilty pleasure" book on my book challenge for this year. The problem is....<i>His Promise True</i> leads right in to <i>A Permanent Home</i>...am I allowed TWO guilty pleasures???<br />
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(I'm being serious right now - if anyone has suggestions for historical novels that fit the description above, I'd love to check them out. It doesn't even have to be a pioneer story...but I do really want historical more than contemporary.)Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-11837793171481747562015-05-06T23:09:00.000-05:002015-05-06T23:12:51.274-05:00A Definite Generation GapAs promised, I'm reporting back on the Avett Brothers concert from last weekend. But the concert brought up something unexpected, so I'll switch gears in the middle of this post - hope you won't mind.
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The concert itself allayed my fears for now. It was actually a very unexpected experience, very different from the first concert I went to in September. The venue was the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, a lovely old building on the National Register of Historic Places (a plaque downstairs said it was completed in 1923). I explored a little before the concert and found a cool fez collection. <br />
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The unexpected part was that the concert was general admission seating, no assigned seats, in a big old basketball gym that seats about 4,000 people. What that meant was we were able to sit much closer than we had anticipated, and actually, we were able to walk up and stand with the crowd in front of the stage. When I've been to events with celebrities before, I always joke that the stars were about "an inch tall" (or less) because I have to sit so far back they look tiny. For this concert, I was able to get close enough (I didn't try to get to the front row, though) to see the band members as actual people. I suppose that sounds stupid, but trust me, it's one thing to see their faces on a jumbo-tron (as at the concert in September) and quite another to be able to distinguish facial expressions in person. I didn't quite have the nerve to stay with the crowd in front of the stage for the whole concert; for one thing, I felt I shouldn't just abandon the people I came with, ha ha, and they didn't want to stand up front. If I had been alone, I probably would have stayed in that crowd; it was a nice, polite crowd, united in their enjoyment of the music.<br />
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But none of that really has anything to do with what I was so worried about in my last post, that the Brothers are becoming commodified. Or maybe it does, because there were several moments when the concert seemed intimate, like the crowd and the band were sharing something. One of my favorite moments (which also happened to be while I was standing in the crowd up front) was at the end of "At the Beach." Seth ad-libbed several little riffs (the guy has impressive falsetto, btw), and the crowd repeated them back. It became almost like a game, with Seth altering the "words," the rhythm, and the melody like he was trying in a friendly way to trip us up (as I recall, it didn't work). And the final song before the encore, "I and Love and You," was really, really nice. The gestures I feared were "canned" didn't happen in this concert, and once again, the band seemed to be giving full effort into the show. So I'm going to push those worries way into the back of my mind.<br />
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The thing that most struck me as something to talk about from this concert didn't actually have anything to do with the band. We made this a family trip to the concert, taking our college-age son and our daughter, who is a high school sophomore. It was the first real rock concert for both of them. Our son disappeared into the crowd in front of the stage and we didn't see him again until the concert was over. Our daughter stayed with us in the seats. Part of that may be because she's only 5-2 and wouldn't have been able to see anything if she had been in the crowd, but she also didn't want to be so close to the other people. Now, don't get me wrong - she enjoyed the concert. When they started in on "Distraction #74," she screamed (in my ear), and she did it again when Seth came to the front with just his guitar for "The Ballad of Love and Hate" (probably her favorite of their songs). But after the concert had been going for about an hour, I came back from standing with the down-front crowd, and saw this:<br />
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WHAT??? She was TEXTING during an Avett Brothers concert???? I asked her who she was texting, and she said she was talking to a couple of her friends, one of which is an Avett Brothers fan. She said she was telling them about which songs the band was playing.<br />
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At the time, I just shook my head and turned back to the stage to enjoy the music. But later, I got to thinking about it, and I wondered if this is a sign of a huge difference in our generations. For my generation, being AT the concert and participating and singing along and standing in a crowd of like-minded fans is the reason a person pays the price of a ticket. For my daughter's generation, is the experience only <b><i>real</i></b> when it is shared on social media? I saw a lot of cellphones aimed at the stage, recording the performance for later playback - or for publishing to YouTube. Now, I'm personally glad for those videos on YouTube, but I do know from years of trying to record my kids' performances in the halftime performances for their high school band that you can't really watch and be in the moment when you are recording something at the same time. Being in the moment - that's the key thing. I've gradually come to see it's more important to be mindful and truly live the moment rather than to only halfway live the moment in a quest to preserve it so I can re-live it later. Lately, I've decided to take a quick snapshot of my kid and then put the camera down and actually <b><i>watch</i></b> the performance as it happens in front of me, live.<br />
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Maybe my daughter would have been more engaged with the concert if "her people" had been there to share it with her. Or maybe they all would have been live-Tweeting or posting selfies with the stage and the band in the background....is that a bad thing? Maybe that's just their new method of being "in the moment."Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-21730311910355305412015-04-30T22:46:00.001-05:002015-06-07T22:17:56.324-05:00For Love or Money?<i>(I actually started writing this post about a month ago, so please forgive the outdated reference to the time change.)</i><br />
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I feel a little melancholy this morning. One reason may be that it's a gray, misty morning the second day into Daylight Savings Time. But the thing that really seemed to trigger my melancholy was seeing a new email message pop up in my account, one from the Avett Brothers. I joked with myself - "Oh, they are sending me a message!"- though I knew very well it was a message alerting me to a pre-sale for tickets to concerts in my area.<br />
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It wasn't until a little later, when I was driving to work in the gray, misty morning that the melancholy really set in, when a sort of melancholy song by the Avett Brothers ("All My Mistakes") came on. And it occurred to me that the band whose music I so love has become a commodity, a brand, sending marketing emails just like Best Buy and Hancock Fabrics.<br />
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Now don't get me wrong - I totally understand why it has happened. The music is how these guys make a living and support their families, and I don't begrudge them being able to do that. I also realize that if not for commodification, I would never have discovered these guys and had all the pleasure their music has brought me. So I feel a bit like a hypocrite to even start to analyze their "brand" (but I'm going to do it, anyway, ha ha).<br />
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I show a PBS <i>Frontline</i> video called <i>The Merchants of Cool</i> in some of my classes. One of the points made in the video is that popular culture is always on the hunt for something "cool," which generally (to me) seems to come down to something authentic, something that hasn't been packaged by the big companies and sold to us as "cool." The video points out that while a lot of us are satisfied with the "cool" sold to us, sometimes we hunger for real "cool," something that hasn't yet been touched by the finger of corporate America.<br />
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The career path of the Avett Brothers could be a case study for an updated version of this video. The band started with two brothers playing acoustic music as a side project to their main gig of being in a rock band. You can't get much more authentic than that - brothers sneaking off to play the music they love, not the music that will "sell." The story gets even better - they met and auditioned their bass player in a parking lot. That was followed by years of building audiences for their music, one concert at a time. They earned a reputation for themselves as having a killer live show, and they put out five studio albums, three live albums, and two EPs on the independent record label Ramseur Records before their album <i>Emotionalism</i> caught the eye (ear?) of mega-producer Rick Rubin. To make a long story shorter, they signed with Rubin and since then have put out three major-label albums.They now play to audiences in the thousands and are one of the top draws at the big music festivals like Bonnaroo. They are going to be musical guests on one of David Letterman's final shows. Their story is the dream for anyone who aspires to be a performer.<br />
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Yet, I fear that success has come at a cost. One of the songs from an early Avett Brothers album articulated what some view as the band's mission statement:<br />
<blockquote>
They may pay us off in fame<br />
But that is not why we came<br />
And if it compromises truth, then we will go</blockquote>
As far as I can tell, the brothers have tried to stay true to their pledge to present truth as they see it; some of the songs on their last album, like "Good to You" and "Part from Me," are almost painfully honest glimpses into the cost chasing success can take on a relationship. I believe the band also tries to be true to their roots in their live shows. I went to a concert back in September of last year, and the impression that stuck with me is that those guys worked HARD for two and a half hours to entertain the crowd. They sang 27 songs, including five or six encores, and there was no "dead" time or dull "let us catch our breath" moments; they were "on" in every way for the whole show.<br />
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And yet....I sense commodification is weaving its fingers around them, insidiously, of course. For a few days after the concert, I had withdrawals (ha ha), so I tried hunting up footage on YouTube (the band has also been very smart in their generous use of online video). As I found concert footage, I began to notice some of the moments from the show I saw live were also reappearing in videos taken at other shows. Seth doing the solo at the end of "Kick Drum Heart" and throwing his arm into the air dramatically following a hard chord. Scott running/skipping around the stage during that same solo and coming up to give Seth a chop-massage on the back while Seth was shredding. A lineup of the band members doing a little waltzing sway to "Down with the Shine."<br />
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Why should that bother me? Hey, as a teacher, I have certain little gimmick phrases I use in the lecture on a particular topic semester after semester - if something works, keep it. But I couldn't help feeling a little - I don't know, taken for a ride, maybe? - to find out what I thought was the enthusiasm of the moment in the concert was more like a script. And now I'm getting marketing messages in my email.<br />
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I suppose what makes me melancholy is something else from <i>The Merchants of Cool</i>. The narrator makes the point that once marketers find something genuinely "cool," they exploit it, mass-produce it, sell it, until they kill it and it's no longer "cool." Then they move on to the next "cool" thing. One of the Avett Brothers' songs, "Famous Flower of Manhattan," has what I consider the perfect line to describe this:<br />
<blockquote>
And people don't ever let you down<br />
Forever find a way to kill whatever life they've found</blockquote>
I guess that's what I'm afraid of - that the merchants of cool will take these brothers and their sincere, honest songs and use them up until nothing real is left and they are just a brand. I've seen it happen to other artists - I used to love Brad Paisley's music, and now I can't stand to listen to his recent stuff because it just seems to be more of the same old "popular" crap that is country music these days. I can't stand it to think that might happen to my precious Brothers.<br />
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It's not inevitable, I remind myself. There are artists who have been part of the big music machine and yet stayed true to themselves, and these brothers seem to be pretty grounded. And, darn it, I don't have to be such a rhetorical critic, reading deep meanings into every little thing (ha ha). I'm going tomorrow night to do some more field research - the band is going to be within three hours of home, so I'm bookending this hard year on the job with a concert in September and one in May. I'll see what I can observe, and maybe I'll report back. In the meantime, here's the song that got me started on all this:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y21JONkLMK4?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-50896536749225087632015-04-30T00:03:00.004-05:002015-04-30T00:03:59.012-05:00When Does Violence Go "Too Far"?In 25 years of teaching speech, there have been only two speeches that I wish I hadn't heard, not because the speeches were all that bad, but because the subject matter really disturbed me. In both cases, the problem was violence. The first speech was a detailed discussion of different methods of torture throughout history, and the second was a persuasive speech against wearing fur in which the student used a video of small animals being skinned alive because it's easier to skin them when they are struggling. (Still haunts me....) I don't know if I'm hyper-sensitive to violence because I have such an empathetic mind (I think I talked about that in a recent post), but certain types of violence really, really bother me.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eFxjyYldxsI/VUGmKY8LVzI/AAAAAAAABJo/1tYXss6-kpE/s1600/doubt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eFxjyYldxsI/VUGmKY8LVzI/AAAAAAAABJo/1tYXss6-kpE/s1600/doubt.jpg" /></a>I came across a couple of passages of such violence while reading Nancy Dane's latest novel, <i>A Reasonable Doubt</i>, over the weekend. The novel is a continuation of Dane's series about the Civil War in Arkansas; this book picks up the lives of the characters several years later, during the period of Reconstruction. It's a violent period of time. Government is corrupt, especially local government, and tempers flare over injustice. Local officials are murdered in both Johnson County (the setting for the story) and Pope County (the neighboring county). Ms. Dane does meticulous research for her novels, so I'm sure these murders happened, along with the popular designation of "bloody Clarksville" for the town in the novel. The defeated former Confederate soldiers are frustrated in their efforts to have any measure of control in politics or business, and frequently, that frustration boils to the surface in violence of some kind - whether it is simply threatening someone or actually shooting and killing someone.<br />
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But there were two specific acts of violence in the story that disturbed me. <b>(SPOILER ALERT!!!)</b> The first is when two very corrupt officials come out to levy an exorbitant tax on Bill Tanner's (the hero of the story) sawmill operation. Bill is understandably upset, and he attacks one of the officials, knocking him to the ground and beating/kicking him. (I hope I have those details right; I've loaned my copy of the novel to a friend who is reading them aloud to her husband.) The other official pulls out a derringer and grazes Bill's arm. What comes next is the part that bothers me. Bill grabs the official, pulls him over to the fire, and brands him with the poker. Then, for good measure, he also brands the other official (the one he had beaten/kicked before - named Harvey, for later reference).<br />
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The second incident comes at the end of the book. Abigail (Bill's love interest) is being threatened by Harvey, who also claims to have kidnapped her son. Harvey wants Bill's stash of money from the sawmill business, and it's clear he is a pretty nasty character who will do whatever it takes to get the money. After a bit of a chase scene, Abigail and Harvey end up by the chopping block, where Abigail grabs the axe and disables Harvey with a couple of chops to his arm and leg. He's not really a threat to her at that point, but Abigail raises the axe again, and as Harvey is pleading for his life, sinks it into his skull.<br />
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OK. Both of those acts are pretty high on the "bother me" scale, I guess because the victim of the violence is suffering and pleading. But what really bothered me, more than the violence itself, was the attitude of the characters toward committing the violence. Keep in mind that the two characters who did the branding (Bill) and the skull-smashing (Abigail) are the protagonists of the story. Those acts are pretty despicable things for protagonists to have done, even to nasty antagonists. When I read the scene about the branding, I expected Bill to be somewhat remorseful after the fact, realizing that his temper and his frustration got the best of him and that he needed to listen to his better nature and keep his violent tendencies in check. But that's not what happened. Instead, Bill tells Abigail he should have killed Harvey instead of simply branding him. Bill's attitude is that the best way to deal with a problem like Harvey is the "final solution" - to eliminate the problem by ensuring Harvey can never bother him again. At no point does Bill show any remorse. Even when he's on trial for assaulting Harvey, Bill isn't sorry for what he's done, only that he may have to go to jail for what he's done. In Dane's earlier novels, I liked Bill. I don't think I like him very much anymore.<br />
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Bill's attitude rubs off on Abigail. When she witnesses the branding incident from the kitchen window, she is appalled and for some time resists her growing attraction to Bill. How can she love a man who is so readily and easily so violent? But when her own "moment of truth" comes and she's standing over a wounded man who is pleading for his life, she adopts Bill's solution to the problem - she brings the axe down so Harvey will no longer be a threat.<br />
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Sure, Harvey is a nasty character who kidnapped and threatened Abigail and her son and who was trying to steal Bill's hard-earned money. Did he deserve what he got? Maybe. Probably. But I just find it hard to relate to protagonists who choose to view and dispense violence as the best solution to their problems.Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804246737172206103.post-33830859725675009932015-04-08T22:39:00.001-05:002015-04-08T22:40:20.313-05:00A "Theme Poem" - Doesn't Everyone Have One?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5e1aOCmBY2Y/VSXtsFDov7I/AAAAAAAABI8/PB0C71nXyqc/s1600/safe_image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5e1aOCmBY2Y/VSXtsFDov7I/AAAAAAAABI8/PB0C71nXyqc/s1600/safe_image.jpg" height="219" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit: Mayfly1963<br />
Flickr.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's National Poetry Month, and one of the items on my reading challenge list is a book of poetry. So I went to the shelf of books from my good ole' days as an English major and pulled down the thinnest volume, <i>100 selected poems</i> by e.e. cummings. I've been reading four or five of them each night. At first, I was maintaining good "English major" form, trying to analyze the figurative language and appreciate the depth of allusions and analogies, and so forth. But honestly, I'm kind of tired at the end of the day, and that kind of analysis takes a lot of mental energy. So the last few nights, I've just been reading the poems and letting them say whatever they will to me, whether it is "deep" or not.<br />
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One thing I've noticed is that these poems mean things that are entirely different than they did 30 years ago, ha ha. That in itself has made the experience worthwhile, and it actually makes me motivated to go get the fat yellow <i>Norton Anthology of Poetry</i> off the shelf and revisit some of my favorite poems now that I actually have some life experience.<br />
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The other night, I decided to look at poem #53 in cummings' collection, since I'm going to be 53 years old this summer. "It will be my theme poem for the year," I told myself as I flipped to the page. And here it is:<br />
<blockquote>
may my heart always be open to little<br />
birds who are the secrets of living<br />
whatever they sing is better than to know<br />
and if men should not hear them men are old<br />
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may my mind stroll about hungry<br />
and fearless and thirsty and supple<br />
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong<br />
for whenever men are right they are not young<br />
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and may myself do nothing usefully<br />
and love yourself so more than truly<br />
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail<br />
pulling all the sky over him with one smile</blockquote>
Not bad, eh? I think I <b><i>will</i></b> make that my theme poem for the coming year.<br />
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<i><b>Note:</b> The beautiful bird picture above is from my sister's <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/55141385@N02" target="_blank">Flickr stream</a>. She has posted many, many lovely pictures of things we sometimes take for granted, like insects and wildflowers, as well as birds. You should visit it!</i>Augustina Peachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02877972911614256133noreply@blogger.com0