THIRD ANNUAL POETRY EVENING   12/3/16

Ten of us met at my house this year, for an evening of desserts, beverages, and poems shared.

Poetry choices covered the spectrum; from thoughtful to delightful to slightly irreverent. A special treat were the poems written by Tom and Denny. Thanks you two for putting yourselves out there and sharing some of your beautiful work!

I was going to write down  one of the poems read that evening, but I am not sure how copyright laws work on a public blog? So, instead I will list the poetry that was recited, and I encourage you to look some of them up.

• Introduction to Poetry:  Billy Collins
• The Times They Are A-Changin' :  Bob Dylan
• Human Family:  Maya Angelou
• Holiday Checkout Line: Carrie Newcomer
• After Apple Picking:  Robert Frost
• First Reader:  Billy Collins
• You Can't Have it All:  Barbara Ras
• Three Poems on Retirement:  Tom Linnell
• An Offering to the Elements & Buffalo Robe:  Dennis Sovick
• Three Ski Songs:  Bob Gibson
• Introduction to Poetry II:  Billy Collins
• Braided Creek, various:  Ted Koosier/Jim Harrison
• The Peace of Wild Things:  Wendell Berry

May you all find health, happiness, and peace during this holiday season, and throughout the year!

 

Bones of the Master, a Journey to Secret Mongolia

                                          

     There was a group of 6 of us at Joan's house on another beautiful fall day, besides Joan were Margie, Marylib, Saran, Mary and Libby.  All of us who had read the book felt that the relationship between the author and the monk was one of the most interesting parts of the book.  There was a certain synergy but disconnect that made their friendship charming and juxtaposed with different cultures.  George Crane was a flawed curious likeable person, and he was certainly self-deprecating. Tsang Tsai was a loveable monk with limited English and strong determination.
     The history of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution was only touched upon but enough to feel what Tsang Tsai had gone through in his long journey to the US.  Marylib felt the relationship between Georgie and Tsang Tsai captured her the most.  Margie loved the book but felt that the last chapter was an enigma...why was it added at all.  There was a certain disingenuous quality about the subject matter. Joan and Libby also loved the relationship as it unfolded with the journey.
     Saran felt that the monk's life was a sort of contradiction in that on the one hand, there was lovely opportunity for self-realization;  on the other hand, the trip back to Inner Mongolia was seemingly selfish.  Saran also mentioned that the monk relied on other people almost exclusively, but that he also gave things away to those in need, things he had been given for the trip.  Tsang Tsai, which means "ancestor wisdom", was always a "trophy guest" in his and Georgie's travels, in every home, back to Mongolia.
     Libby, who heroically read most of the book in 3 days after not knowing the group date had been changed, felt that the photos in the book added so much to the story and she said she referred to them frequently.  She also read a passage in the book which made the most impression to her, on page 162:
     "The history of the place could be seen as a dialectic between nomadic Mongols raiding from the north, conquering vast areas of China, and the Chinese pushing them back......I was more aware of the integration of the Han Chinese with Mongol sensibility than with the Mongols themselves.  Tsang Tsai himself, village life, the frontier feel....seemed to speak to me of Chinese who had become at least partially Mongol rather than the Mongols becoming Chinese.  The Mongols, I liked to think, had retreated into the outback with their essential  nomadic wildness intact.
     "This was no doubt an illusion.  I was caught in the poetry of the place, a poetry that, like the poetry of the American west, lent an appealing grittiness to the exploitation, racial prejudice, ecological devastation, and cultural arrogance inherant in colonization--all of it subtly inculcating itself into the landscape and society until it was assumed, taken for granted, virtually invisible."
     For many of us that day, we felt that this quote was the point of the book and so well said by the author.  That journeys of this sort, 40 years later, never find the world as it was, if it ever was that way.  It can only really be an inward journey.
     Many of us enjoyed the Buddhist philosophy in the book, especially the poems, and especially the one on page 147.  There was a personal search for a sense of place.  Yet, in the end, the journey "all seemed unlikely, a fool's quest, but the best kind, the only kind worth pursuing."
   

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

With the artistry of words, Dominic Smith paints the story of 3 lives: the life of Sara deVos a woman who daringly painted a landscape during the Dutch Golden Age; the life of Marty De Groot a Manhattan attorney born into privilege who tracks down the forger of the Sara de Vos he inherited; and the life of Ellie Shipley an art historian who as a young graduate student painted the forgery. Smith stretches his canvas from the 1600s across time to the 1950s and out to the edge of 2000.

The stories of Sara, Marty and Ellie create the underlayer of Smith’s work. Sara, born in Amsterdam in the early 1600s, was the daughter of a landscape painter and trained as a still life artist. Women were only permitted to paint still life paintings at that time. She married a landscape painter, Barent, and together they made a meagre living by selling their work. Their daughter, Katrijn, who filled their lives with the beauty of youth and innocence, contracted the plague and died just before her 9^th birthday. Katrijn’s death was devastating for Sara and the grief never left her. It was that grief and her intimate brush with death that compelled Sara to paint her first landscape. The painting, At the Edge of a Wood, was a physical depiction of the moment a young woman passes from life to death and views the living world from a distance. Smith’s description of the painting is hauntingly sensual creating in the reader a deep yearning to see it with his own eyes.

He writes: “A winter scene at twilight. The girl stands in the foreground against a silver birch, a pale hand pressed to its bark, staring out at the skaters on the frozen river. There are half a dozen of them, bundled against the cold, flecks of brown and yellow cloth floating above the ice. A brindled dog trots beside a boy as he arcs into a wide turn. One mitten in the air, he’s beckoning to the girl, to us. Up along the riverbank, a village is drowsy with smoke and firelight, flush against the bell of the pewter sky. A single cataract of daylight at the horizon, a meadow dazzled beneath a rent in the clouds, then the revelation of her bare feet in the snow.”

It is this painting that hangs above the bed of Martin and Rachel de Groot. Martin de Groot was born into wealth and is heir to art work that has been in his family for 3 centuries. His life and its problems in the 1950s have the weight of a feather compared to those of Sara de Vos in 1637. He worries about his impending partnership with his law firm. He repeatedly assesses the happiness of his marriage. However, Marty is snatched out of his ruminations when he discovers At the Edge of the Wood has been stolen from his apartment and replaced with a forgery. He becomes obsessed with finding the perpetrator.

The perpetrator is Ellie Shipley, a PhD student at Columbia studying the women painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Ellie is a young woman fascinated by the techniques and chemistry of the old masters. She is “in love” with the paintings of Vermeer and Rembrandt, Halls and Van

Goyen and also with At the Edge of the Wood. Ellie made money on the side by restoring old paintings and when asked to create a copy of At the Edge of the Wood she couldn’t resist the creative opportunity.  The forgery was Ellie’s greatest artistic achievement and its image lived with her every day. But the truth of it hauntingly tiptoed behind her because if found out her career would be ruined.

Marty de Groot finds Ellie and deceitfully hires her as an art consultant. Smith artfully uses the relationship that develops between the two to illuminate each character’s desires, frailties, passions, dreams and regrets. Each character is revealed with such stark honesty that the heart of the reader cannot help but recognize them as kindred human spirits. But it is the gentle thread of suspense that leads us to continually turn the page. Will Ellie be discovered and what will be the consequences? What happened to the forgery and the original? How will Marty de Groot mete out his revenge?

The story line is woven with details true to the historical periods. Smith clearly has conducted meticulous research which educates the reader. Especially detailed are his explanations of painting materials and restoration techniques. Here he describes Ellie preparing to paint:

A woman standing in a smock at dawn, grinding pigments and boiling up animal glue on the stovetop. It’s the 1630’s as far as Ellie Shipley is concerned and canvas can only be bought at the width of a Dutch loom---a little over fifty-four inches. She reads by candle-light, like a method actor, and makes obscure errands into the supply chain that is the stock and trade for period conservators and forgers alike. Cold-pressed linseed oil that does not cloud, oil of spike and lavender, raw sienna, lead white that fumes for a month in a cloud of vinegar. She paints in her kitchenette, where the northern light washes through her grimy window and the view gives onto the streaming traffic of the Gowanus Expressway. She sees commuters on the city-bound buses, metal ribbons dotted with faces. She wonders sometimes whether those glazed passengers see her makeshift studio as an after-image. In their mind’s eye they see her bent over the stovetop and think she’s stirring porridge instead of melting animal hide.

The alluring plot and ample character development lay the foundation for this novel but the images of color, texture and scent are what bring light to the work just like the lead tin yellow brings light to the scarves of the skaters. Smith is a master at creating images that touch all the senses and bring his readers to a places beyond words. Here he takes us for a ride in Marty’s Citroen.

“At the curb, his night-blue Citroen looks almost sardonic in the morning light “___its raked hood and sleek headlights give it the dreadnought grace of a shark….” He puts her suitcase in the trunk and they climb in. When he starts the engine, the car shudders and rises a few inches with a pneumatic sigh. She looks over at him and he grins. He says, “they call that the kneel.” A moment later, he puts on a pair of driving gloves and gives the horn a light jab---it sounds French and adenoidal—and they pull down the street…From inside the car, she can’t help feeling like an aristocrat touring the proletariat. He’s wearing a pair of driving moccasins and they’re cut form the same leather as his kidskin driving gloves and his watchband---she’s always noticing his clothes. That kind of accessorizing on a different man might seem foppish, but on Jake it seems natural and masculine. Sometimes his clothes and mannerisms make her feel clumsy and flat footed, but most of the time she likes to watch him do things with his hands---the slow and precise gestures, the easy way of folding his arms across his chest when he’s listening to her go on about paintings. She looks out the window and sees a gaunt man leaning in the doorway, his breath smoking as the early light braces the length of the street.”

Below the author sets the scene as Sara and Tomas (a man she meets later in the book) go out for an evening skate on the ice:

“They come down to the frozen riverbank, the ice thick and almost translucent where the snow has blown clear. There are patches of such clarity that she can see warped reflections of the night sky. The reeds are empty husks, gone the color of driftwood: they rattle and clack in the light wind. The couple stands together, his arm around her shoulder. She looks down into a window of clarified ice and thinks of the sluggish fish moping at the bottom, drifting in the slurries that run cold along the mud, of the way she and Tomas might appear to them as a two-headed beast through the frozen lens of the river. Tomas throws a big rock out in to the center to test the hardness of the ice. It makes a satisfying thunk.”

And finally a simple introduction to Tomas:

“He leads the way across the marble floor and they pass behind the wide staircase to a narrow passageway she assumes is designated for the servants. Tomas is tall and meticulous in his movements, smells of leather and horses. His hands against the lantern are pale and thin: they seem at odds with his tending of the stable and the grounds.”

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is a novel that takes your hand and leads you down a curious path to an unknown end. The path is rich with color, texture and scent. You stop and luxuriate in the luminosity of the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. You walk beside people you know well and not so well. They pass you and you pass them as together and with the author we bathe in the light of being human.

A MAN CALLED OVE

                     

Grateful that I am to be part of a local book discussion group, I did feel a tad responsible for having to reschedule my hosting month, June. I appreciate everyone’s understanding my last minute cancellation.Three months later, four of us (3 Ms and an L) gathered to discuss this quirky read. 

All of us present apparently enjoyed A Man Called Ove for different reasons: the humorous escapades within the story, curious characters with varied development, and exasperation in having to get to know such a dye-in-the-wool curmudgeon. Yet, we agreed that deep down, Ove had a heart of gold. Somewhere. 

The author took his time in revealing Ove’s characteristics. Thus, we, as readers, were not sure about writing him off as a cranky old man approaching the end of his life. I believe the surrounding characters within the story helped us to understand - even if we did not embrace - the multiple layers of Ove: his solitary rituals, his life shaping experiences, and yes, his many peculiarities. Some, we decided had to do with aging; others, we believed had to do with culture and environment. 

I, as the discussion leader on this selection, defer to a review that made sense to me. Fredrick Backman wrote the chapters that described Ove’s life story simply and folklike. Then, in appealing contrast, Backman wrote the current day chapters (the hospital visits, the trailer issue, the cat) episodically and mercifully hilariously. 

We viewed the movie trailer for the book....in Swedish.It sure looked like the film captured the story’s essence. If it should appear at some American off-beat theater, I’m in. 

This group of four - and Happy Birthday to Maddy - felt the book was a worthwhile read. I know my being with other readers was worthwhile. 

Side Bar: pronunciation of Ove - I think his name is pronounced: ooh as in stand alone dismay; ve as in vegetarian. Say it as you think, no doubt the main character will have a look of dismay and some comment. 

THE UPSTAIRS WIFE

       The discussion of The Upstairs Wife was lively and stimulating.  All found the history of partition interesting to learn about.  All also agreed that Karachi would be a very hard place to live, especially as a woman.  It is shocking that a woman is considered impure and worth half of a man.  There was much discussion about polygamy and how women in Pakistan have little choice about the matter.  Even the law giving women the right not to agree with a husband's choosing a second wife can be ignored.  In addition in order to prove rape, a woman must bring in four male witnesses!

         Karachi quickly developed quite a tribal culture, with people from the same area in India choosing to live close together and being suspicious of others.  It was pointed out though that as immigrants came to this country, they banded together in much the same way.  Major cities had their Italian, Irish, Jewish, and Polish neighborhoods etc.

         There was discussion about when Muslims come to this country whether they should be welcome to maintain their own dress and culture or should be expected to adapt to their new home.

         It was pointed out that when the women gathered, the conversation was full of gossip and backstabbing.  This is somewhat understandable because they have very little education, many cannot read, and they are cooped up much of the time.  So they have little stimulation on which to base a conversation.

         Regarding Amina, the author's aunt, there was discussion about how tragic it seems that she became so isolated.  The men in her family deemed that she must go back to her marriage.  She cannot, however, go out on her own without a male escort.

         Such a strict Muslim culture seems like it fosters a very hard, restricted life for women.  

     IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYON

While our group was small (Mary, Paige, Joanie, Maddy, Sheri, and Margie), and despite the fact that only 2 of us had read the book in its entirety, a thoughtful discussion ensued when we met to discuss "In the Shadow of the Banyan: A Novel" by Vaddey Ratner.  This is a book not easily categorized - historical fiction? Memoir? A little of both? Most definitely, it is story telling at its best.

This is a tale that unfolds in Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge from the perspective of a 7 year old girl.  It is exquisitely written, at times poetic, in language that is beauty and it finds so much beauty in the most unlikely circumstances.  It is a book that is layered throughout with stories upon stories and these stories help a young child make sense of what is happening in the world around her.  While the meanings are not always clear at the time, the stories provide her with solace and hope over time and help her to survive the chaos, loss and tragedy she experiences.

While the topic creates angst, and those words tend towards sadness and difficulty, the consensus was that this was not a depressing book!  Libby, via an email commentary, described it as "beautiful and disturbing."  Paige commented that she read the book as a metaphor for life, stating that it "wove beauty into suffering." She felt that it wasn't the details that were so important; rather it was the fantasy and beautiful writing that riveted her.  She also stated that it was grounded in a "foundation of Buddhism."

Maddy provided sobering perspective.  She recalled her recent trip to Cambodia, describing her guide who was 6-10 years old during this period.  He remembered how hungry he was then.  She provided more commentary about traveling in Cambodia describing it as an "interesting and hard place to travel" with its beauty, poverty, sex trade, and lack of cleanliness.

Certainly we talked about this organization and the genocide it perpetrated.  Sheri questioned how human nature could be so sadistic.  Margie was surprised at the parallels and similarities to the Cultural Revolution in China.  Comments were made regarding idealism and how it can be so "off base" and how easily it becomes so ingrained.

Libby hinted at possible parallels to what is occurring in the US: "the aristocracy had given so much to the people but were accused of taking away from the masses so Khmer Rouge wanted to wipe out the intelligentsia." (Note from Libby: what is happening in our country is that people who never took notice before of politicians and feel unheard, are listening to a certain scary candidate....)  Libby also felt that book was an important book as there is so much literature related to WWII and the Holocaust but little about the Killing Fields.

This was a gripping and mesmerizing account that addressed horrors which occurred due to political ideology and extreme power.  Reading an epilogue about the author and an interview with her, is quite inspiring and causes one to marvel at what the human spirit is capable of.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Thanks you Libby for offering your house for me to host a gathering of nine of us to talk about this beautiful and poignant and relevant book. It was so good to see you all and to once more sit in a gathering of women and discuss what we loved or disliked or found painful or delightful about a recent reading of a book.  Our views of this book were varied.  Some found it too painful to finish, many found it chilling in light of Trump’s maniacal rise to power, others found it inspiring in the way that it described two sisters' quite different but equally heroic actions to thwart the Nazi’s occupation of France.

Having read “All the Light We Cannot See” over a year ago, we were able to contrast the two books.  “All the Light….” we described as poetic, exquisitely written, a gem; while “The Nightingale” was more personal, describing the lives of people of the French countryside, especially of two women, Vianne and Isabelle.  It was a visceral, heartbreaking book about the impact of WWII on the people who were not at the front, but who were fighting their own battle; the one of survival, of resistance, and of loss.

That brought us to a discussion of whether we would have had the courage to act as the two sisters did and of the differences in their motivations,  of Vianne’s betrayal of Rachael, and of course of how this war came to be.  How a mad man was able to capture the minds and bodies of a nation and if today’s mad man has the potential to capture the minds of America.  It made the book even more chilling to read it in this light.  One of my favorite quotes was “If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

This book was well researched and taught us much about France and the French resistance.  We learned that the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazi regime and became subservient to it.  We learned that about 2% of the French adult population was actively involved in the resistance and up to 10% were affiliated with it.  The children that Vianne saved were representative of the 12,000 to 15,000 jewish children who were hidden and/ or smuggled out of France.  And Isabelle was modeled after an actual woman who smuggled people across the Pyrenees.I “Isabelle's character is based on the late Andrée de Jongh (1916-2007), an amazing woman who repeatedly risked her life helping British and American servicemen escape on foot from Nazi-occupied Belgium and France.”

I will end with a couple of my favorite quotes.  “But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”  And…  “You’re not alone, and you’re not the one in charge,” Mother said gently. “Ask for help when you need it, and give help when you can. I think that is how we serve God—and each other and ourselves—in times as dark as these.”

I love books.  They offer us the chance to experience emotions and events that in our own bodies we would never know.  They teach us about the past.  I was talking to my nephew today who is on his own for the first time in years after breaking up with his girlfriend.  He was wondering how it would be to travel by himself to South America.  I wanted to tell him about Paul Theroux, who always travels alone, because it really opens you to experiences, but he is not a reader.  It is a blessing to be a reader, to see the world through so many different eyes.

Emma Gatewood's Walk

     On March 29th, nine of us gathered at Libby's home (Marylib, Sheri, Margie, Paige, Annie, Linda, Maddy, and Joan), spring trying to break through outside, sun streaming in, to discuss Grandma Gatewood's Walk.  All of us had been captured by this tough eccentric "novel attempt at greatness" by being the first woman to complete the entire Appalachian trail.  Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes, less than $200, and a pair of keds on her feet.  In September 1955, having survived snakes, two hurricanes, and a run in with Harlem gangsters, she stood atop the end of the trail, Maine's Mount Katahdin.  She proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."  And she sang "America the Beautiful."  Some say her outcry at some unmarked and difficult sections may have bee the saving of the trail.
     In modern day terms she is called an "ultra-light hiking pioneer", and an "extreme hiker".  But all of us could describe her as just plain gutsy, persistent, determined, resilient, and of course just plain tough.  She had an ambitious goal and her toughness saw her through to the end.
    Our group  had many opinions as to why she did it.  Throughout her difficult life with an abusive husband, 11 children, and back-breaking farm work, she used nature as a kind of solace from pain and hardship.  Many in the group said that she was always giving and taking care of others, and maybe this was a way to find her true independent self.  Someone said this was proof to herself she could do something for herself.
     The author Ben Montgomery had access to Emma's diaries, trail journals, and letters.  And he interviewed family members and people she met on the hike.  And yet, he was a journalist and he could only "report", which made her voice scanty.  Some in the group felt that we didn't hear her voice enough in the book, and, as women, we knew Emma Gatewood had a deep inner self that we never heard.  But, too, maybe it was the times, when people kept their inner thoughts to themselves. We could only suppose what she was thinking day after day as she walked.
     The two Eagle Scouts that helped her across a torrential stream remembered her "friendly determined nature." So with tattered sneakers, swollen ankles, a sore knee, and sleeping on the ground in leaves or branches wrapped only in a shower curtain, Emma had not an ounce of self-pity and a strong will to propel her to Maine.
     As an aside we compared the book "Wild" to "Grandma Gatewood's Walk".  We unanimously agreed that Emma Gatewood was the more admirable.  Yet, Cheryl Strayed has her own sort of toughness too.  The former came from a hard life both physically and emotionally in Applachian Ohio that none of us could fathom today.  Cheryl Strayed came from modern comforts, yet psychologically difficult times. Each had their own journeys, each self-affirming and worth it.
     My feeling was that from the start Emma Gatewood wanted to immerse herself in the movement of walking and in nature, both of which she had relied on in the past, what better way than to walk a long-distance trail she'd read about years before in National Geographic.

"The Reward of Nature"

If you go with me to the mountains
And sleep on the leaf carpeted floors
And enjoy the bigness of nature
And the beauty of all outdoors,
You'll find your troubles all fading
And feel the creator was not man
That made lovely mountains and forests
Which only a supreme power can.

When we trust in the Power above
And with the realm of nature hold fast,
We will have a jewel of great price
To brighten our lives till the last.
For the love of nature is healing,
If we will only give it a try
And our reward will be forthcoming,
If we go deeper than what meets the eye.

Emma Gatewood

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by: Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande, author of our January book, "Being Mortal", said this book "is not about a good death, but a good life--all the way to the very end."  How does one live a meaningful life even in the face of terminal illness or debilitating old age?
This provided a framework for an interesting, varied dialogue. Our own stories enriched the discussion and illustrated how complex and unpredictable end of life experiences can be. From the "sacred hour" of a mother's final moments, to debates about whether or not to 'unplug' a mothers's life support. Or, the dying wishes of a brother; and the way a good friend "gracefully threaded her way through death". Moving accounts.
This was a well written book by a humane, curious man. Dr. Gawande is a surgeon, who questions the very system he works in and the pervasive attitude that aging and dying have become a "medical experience".
The sometimes graphic case studies were difficult for all to read, as well as the description of the aging process. This created a sort of love/hate feeling for the book, for some. But, these topics are often considered "unmentionables" in a culture that does not know what to do with it's elderly and dying. Gawande had the courage to bring this up, with all its accompanying pain and discomfort. He included a moving account of his own ordeal with the death of his beloved father.
The models of independent living were a source of enlightenment and encouragement for us. Dr. Bill Thomas and his "Eden Alternative" project was particularly memorable. As Gawande said, there are people in the world who "change imaginations". Advanced aging does not have to be left in the hands of hospitals and nursing homes.
We discussed how independence versus safety become difficult to sort out in the elderly. Does granting independence to our elderly then create a burden for their caregivers, who are often their children? If everyone in the country were on some sort of medicare, would that create a more level playing field for accessing specialized care, such as palliative or geriatrics?
All of us in this group are near or over 60. Growing old is a daunting prospect, for some more than others. As humans, we are biologically driven to adapt, and this is how we begin to face aging with grace and hope. For me and for those I love, this book gave tools to approach old age in a pro-active way, by having the courage to ask doctors the hard questions they won't ask. And most importantly, to make it known what it is I care about now and 20 years from now.