08.31.07
08.30.07
Sexuality and justice have little if anything in common. Love and friendship and conscience and kindness and obstinacy find ways to make the unfair arrangement work, though not without anxiety, not without anguish, and not always.
Ursula K. LeGuin, “Paradises Lost”, The Birthday of the World
On one level, LeGuin is the bard of polymorphic perversity (quite literally so in the case of the periodic hermaphroditism on Gethen, first introduced in The Left Hand of Darkness). In this collection of nine stories, she explores the romantic and reproductive strategies of a wide range of human (or at least human-like) societies: complex foursomes on the planet O, equilibrium-oriented reproduction on a generation-spanning starship, gender imbalance on Seggri, radical introversion on Eleven-Soro, the multi-part God-marriage of siblings in an Inca-like society, and a kemmerhouse on Gethen. But these stories aren’t told in a prurient fashion, though there are hints of eroticism throughout; nor in a clinically anthropological way, though the stories suggest a deep back story worthy of an anthropologist’s field notes. Through her attention to character, her care with language, and her strong moral and ethical sense, LeGuin brings these strange cultures and people to life and makes our own arrangements seem just as odd.
The O stories–”Unchosen Love” and “Mountain Ways”–have the most carefully thought out customs. On O, a marriage (”sedoretu”) contains four people of two genders and two “moieties” (in this case, matrilineal descent groups), consisting of two homosexual, two heterosexual, and two chaste relationships. LeGuin plays with this complex arrangement by further complicating her characters’ lives: “Unchosen Love” places an outsider into an isolated fishing community, complete with legends and ghosts (I imagined something like the island communities of Maine and Nova Scotia); “Mountain Ways” is a comedy of manners, a sort of Jane-Austen-meets-alien-love tale in a remote mountain village.
“The Matter of Seggri” starts as a thought experiment: it posits an extreme gender imbalance, with many more women than men, and explores gender inequality in a way that turns our own patterns upside down (and yet mirrors them uncannily). “Seggri” is a formally ambitious tale: it combines anthropological reports, fiction and metafiction, and memoir to form a rounded portrait of Seggri’s culture.
Perhaps most intriguing is the culture of the spaceship “Discovery”, the subject of “Paradises Lost”. LeGuin explores the implications of a six-generation-long journey from Earth to an unknown world: the modes of thought required of the middle generations who will never know life on a planet, the ethical challenges of maintaining equilibrium inside a closed system, the things that are lost and gained on such a long voyage. The religious turn that many of the passengers take is a fascinating one, a reification of the mid-voyage experience; and just as fascinating are those who don’t make that turn.
LeGuin’s science fiction isn’t the ray gun and (at least outside “Paradises Lost”) spaceship kind; it’s speculative but grounded in things we know and the ways we know them, scientific in the truest sense. And as such it is wonderfully strange, disorienting, and enlightening all at once.
08.30.07
Portland Head
08.29.07
Portland Head
08.28.07
Portland Head Light
08.27.07
As the Spoonbridge is to Minneapolis, so Portland Head is to Maine, but more so. Horribly over-shot (and, in this case, over-processed; remember, Photoshop filters are not sufficient to make a dull picture interesting . . . ).
08.26.07
My sister-in-law asked the other day for some post-Potter recommendations; my niece plowed through the last Harry Potter tome in two days, and hasn’t found a replacement yet for the Potter books. I wasn’t able to get into the first Harry book–I just didn’t care for the writing–but I was able to rattle off a short list of my favorite fantasy series from my pre-teen reading. No doubt there are newer series out there that are just as good as these trusty-rusty books; if anyone has any suggestions, please pass them along.
Harry Potter has been a mixed blessing, it seems, for YA literature: he’s brought a lot of attention to a class of books that are often overlooked, but his shadow is a bit too long.
- A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. LeGuin: LeGuin is still on my reading list (I’m working through the amazing stories of The Birthday of the World right now); this series is a little dark at times, but absorbing and compelling; and since LeGuin has a remarkable body of work for readers young and old, this is a series that can lead to many hours of reading for years to come.
- The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper: my mother discovered this series, and read it my sister and me until she became so absorbed by it that she couldn’t wait a whole day between chapters.
- Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey; adventure and romance and dragons!
- The House With a Clock in its Walls and the rest of the Lewis Barnavelt books by John Bellairs: an orphaned boy becomes an apprentice wizard–familiar situation, perhaps?
A YA tale of magic that I haven’t read yet, but that intrigues me, is the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. And a menacing little tale I’d recommend only to children of a stern constitution is Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, which features a dark parallel world and terrible things in the cellar. While I do enjoy frightening children–I pick my candy-distribution outfit for Hallowe’en around whether it will make our neighbor Pat’s knees knock–I also believe in giving fair warning . . .
08.26.07
Jack tests his new spyglass at Portland Head Light.
The boys’ party went well yesterday, though there was a vicious water balloon attack: the 50 balloons that I spent an hour filling were thrown at me in under five minutes by a hoard of 6- and 7-year-olds. They also turned the sprinkler on me. It was somewhat reminiscent of my cautionary tale from a couple years back. The cold I was nursing got a whole lot worse after the soaking, but I think I’ll live.
08.25.07
Jack and Peter pluck a lobster from the sea at the Children’s Museum of Maine in Portland. Hard to believe they turn 6 today: first grade is just over a week away.
08.24.07
Peter at the Children’s Museum of Maine, looking out from the pirate ship out back. We hadn’t been to the museum in two years, but the boys remembered everything about it; before we left they wrote out their plan and listed pretty much all the displays: the fire truck, the grocery store, the camp site, and, of course, the pirate ship.
Sad news yesterday: Grace Paley passed away at 84. Paley was one of the great short stories writers of the last half of the 20th century; in my personal pantheon, she’s in a triumvirate with Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. Like Carver, Paley shone a bright but loving light into the dark corners of normal people; like Beattie, she wove together private and public struggles in a way that made the political truly personal, and vice versa. And like no one else, she combined humor and sadness into uplifting tales without a trace of saccharin.
What’s especially striking about Paley is her commitment to the short form: stories weren’t a stepping stone to novels, a career move to sell a bigger book. There were just the three luminous collections, plus some poetry and essay collections, but no great epic saga. And her output was spaced widely over four decades; one has the sense that her effortless prose was actually hard-won after great struggle. Few writers have said so much with so few words.
08.23.07
Jack works on a cone at Fuller’s Gourmet Chocolates and Ice Cream on the Portland waterfront. The only good thing about our delayed flight was a chance to hang out with Granddad for a couple more hours at the waterfront for hot dogs, Italian sandwiches, and ice cream . . .
08.22.07
And so we bid farewell to Moose House, at least until our next visit to Granddad. Auntie Betsy and Uncle Brian are visiting now–perhaps Granddad will enlist Uncle Brian’s help in building an addition . . .
08.21.07
A few more tree fort shots ahead . . .
It turns out the boys are actually part spider monkey: the climbing wall on Moose House fort wasn’t too much of a challenge at all…
Some sad news on one of our local tragedies: one of the people injured in the Clicquot Club Cafe accident has died. And a bittersweet ending (we hope) to the search for victims of the highway bridge collapse, as Gregory Jolstad is finally recovered. Falling bridges, flooding streets, trucks crashing into sidewalk cafes–it’s been a rough August for Minnesota. The State Fair is right around the corner, though, and Jack and Peter have big birthday plans this weekend, so maybe the month will go out on a high note.
08.20.07
A few more tree fort shots ahead . . .
One of our last minute design decisions was the climbing wall. The guys weren’t sure at first that they wanted one–it’s pretty high–but after a trip up the little climbing walls at the Children’s Museum of Maine they decided to give it a shot. Granddad built the (in)famous confidence course at a Wisconsin college as part of a leadership program, so he’s the guy to get for adding climbing walls and ropes and such to a tree fort.
08.19.07
If you’re casting about for something to do today, Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.18.07
How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!
The Garden by Andrew Marvell
We were driving home last night from the Seward neighborhood Pizza Luce when we were overtaken by a police car on 25th Street, a block from the Clicquot Club Cafe. And in quick succession, three more police cars and a paramedic van sped down the quiet streets and avenues. We decided it was best that we read about it in the newspaper tomorrow and promptly took an alternate street.
And read about it we did: a pickup truck drove into the sidewalk tables packed with diners, sending 13 to the hospital. That this is a supper spot we’ve often enjoyed (and I’ve occasionally photographed) was more than a little disturbing (like a certain bridge that we often drove on to get to Target…).
Our thoughts are with the injured, and with the folks at the Clicquot Club, and with the driver of the pickup, who apparently lost consciousness while driving to the cafe to pick up an order.
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.17.07
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Pull My Daisy by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady
After the funky “Sunflower Sutra”, I couldn’t help another Beat flower reference (there are so few; their interest in horticulture was limited largely to plants of a more . . . herbaceous? . . . quality).
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.16.07
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg
Whew . . . there’s been a lot of black and white here over the last month–46 in a row. And while I’m pleased with many of the photographs, I realize that may be a lot of monochrome for my little audience to take. So here’s a quick set of palate-cleansing color: some Dowling Community Garden pictures from earlier this summer, taken on slide film with the Minolta on aperture priority (I’m lazy with slide film; it’s less forgiving than negative film, and I don’t always trust my “sunny 16″/”f8 and be there” instincts).
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.15.07
Peter climbs the tree fort ladder.
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.14.07
Granddad discusses the plans for the tree fort, while Jack and Peter think deeply about the next steps. For all his apparent organizational skills, Granddad is an improvisational builder–plans changed midstream several times, but somehow it all came together. When working with a virtuoso, it’s best to give him space to think out loud, ask as few questions as possible, and do exactly as you’re told…
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.13.07
Some of the tools that were used in the building of Moose House, the boys’ tree fort at Granddad’s house.
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.12.07
Some of the tools that were used in the building of Moose House, the boys’ tree fort at Granddad’s house.
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.10.07
Mr. McGranahan told me last week, “You will never go far in life, Miss Franny, if you fall a prey to fancy.” I love the sound of that: a prey to fancy.
Emma Donoghue, “Night Vision”, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits
“The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits” is an historian’s story collection: in these thirteen tales, Donoghue brings to life some odd and often touching moments in British and Irish history. Some of the stories are about famous figures–John Ruskin’s passionless wedding night, Mary Wollstonecraft’s ill-fated turn as a governess–but most are little-known or anonymous, like a medieval ale-wife in an age of peasant rebellions or the dwarf child who dies far from home while on public display. This is the territory of social history, the forgotten lives documented only in census tracts and brief newspaper stories, breathed into vivid life again through skillful and imaginative reconstructions.
The stories are carefully researched, and Donoghue provides a brief discussion of her sources at the end of each. For even the briefest tales, she draws on two or more studies and primary sources, providing a solid base of fact to the fancy she spins.
And there are some fanciful and playful turns to these stories. Donoghue inhabits the minds of her characters and gives voice to the inner lives that history cannot record. Unlike many popular historians, though, who make unfounded leaps into worlds that cannot be known, Donoghue earns her fancy through both solid research and strong writing. These stories are not afraid to play with form and structure and voice, experimenting with ballads, accounting lists, and reportage. This is a collection that’s neither fact nor fiction, fish nor fowl, but a wonderful chimera that can swim and fly in either realm.
08.10.07
Peter helps Granddad mark a board for cutting during the tree fort construction project. I have to admit that I never liked working on Granddad’s building projects when he was just a Dad; I was always given onerous jobs like holding boards for cutting and lugging hardware around, when what I really wanted to do on Sunday morning was read a book. Jack and Peter, though, absolutely love that kind of thing, and I had a pretty good time with it, too. The carpentry gene seems to have skipped a generation.
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.9.07
Granddad sizes up a bolt for the tree fort while Jack sizes up Granddad.
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.8.07
Granddad pounds in one of the bolts that connects the tree fort to the tree.
If you’re casting about for something to do on Sunday, August 19th, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle (yes, this guy) has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
08.7.07
Our big project at Granddad’s house in Maine was the construction of a tree fort; not just any tree fort, though, but the kind of fort that will outlast us all (Granddad tends to over-build a bit…). Here’s the platform mounted on four trees before the flooring went in.
08.6.07
Another from one of our Moose Lake trips, while I process new black & white film from our Maine trip and wait for some color rolls of New Hampshire and environs.
Last year’s version of this picture is here.
08.5.07
Another from one of our Moose Lake trips, while I process new black & white film from our Maine trip and wait for some color rolls of New Hampshire and environs.
08.4.07
The news here continues to be dominated by the 35W bridge collapse. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office has released the names of the five people identified so far: just the bare facts to sum up those lives so abruptly snuffed out. ABC News gives a little more background on the four who were identified first.
08.3.07
We’re back from our vacation a little later than expected (thanks to our “friends” at the airline, who were at least good enough to put us up in a Chicago hotel for the night…), and none too soon it seems: we heard about the I35W bridge collapse yesterday morning in the hotel room, a bridge that we’ve driven more than a few times. I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet, but I suspect that Nick Coleman has it just about right.
08.1.07
I’m on autopilot today, while we make our summer trip to Maine. We’ll be swimming in our favorite streams, steaming up Mount Washington, and dipping our toes in the Atlantic Ocean.
And so I’ll be featuring pictures from the other coast for the week–here’s a San Francisco gull, as ubiquitous on the Pacific as on the Atlantic (and the Great Lakes, for that matter). Perhaps this will be paired with a picture of an East Coast gull in a day or two, perhaps not. All I’m sure of is that it’s back to the Midwest for me this evening.
