POETRY GATHERING, DECEMBER 17, 2020

On this darkening, pre-winter afternoon, Libby, Joanie, Mary Lib, Paige, Saran, Sheri, Zanna, Margie and Annie gathered (via our friend Zoom) to recite selected poems. We missed you Maddy.
Each of us chose two poems to read. The poetry covered the spectrum from somewhat dark to whimsical, with a leaning toward nature poetry. No surprise from this group of outdoorsy women.
Here are a few lines from some of the poetry read; a taste of what was on our hearts and mind this day.


Joanie:  She chose some of her original poetry
   All you need to remember
   All there ever is
   Revealed by a flower opening.

Mary Lib: Original poem by Rick and Lucie, written for their curious grandson (inspired by Shel Siverstein)
   Are you kind because you care about people?
   Or do you care about people because you are kind?
   Do you love your puppy because she is sweet?
   Or is she sweet because you love her?

Margie: “Morning Poem” Mary Oliver
   It is your nature to be happy
   You will swim away along the soft trails
   for hours,
   With your imagination lighting everywhere.
 

Saran:  “Barter”  Sara Teasdale
   Spend all you have for loveliness,
   Buy it and never count the cost;
   For one white singing hour of peace
   Count many a year of strife well lost.


Libby:  “Light Rain”  Annie Lighthart
   I take a spider outside in a glass
   And kneel in almost invisible rain until
   it climbs into the grass and is gone.

Sheri:  “November”  Mary Oliver
   Through the window
   we could see
   how far it was to the gates of April.

Annie:  “Woolworths”  Mark Irwin
   Maybe you’re retired, on Social Security,
   And came here for the Turkey Dinner or
   the Liver and Onions.
   Or just to stare into a black circle
   of coffee to get warm.

Thank you for your contributions, friends. We will meet again in 2021, hopefully with renewed optimism for good health and peace across the world.

  

 The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

With the intended purpose of escape from the political and social turmoil surrounding us and wanting a work that would entertain/ distract from reality, the November book pick was Ann Patchett’s latest work, The Dutch House.  And so it was that on December 1, 2020 – deep into the pandemic with cases surging at an alarming rate – Saran, Sheri, Joanie, Annie, Libby, Mary Lib and Margie discussed this novel via Zoom. To this end, most of the group felt the objective was met.

The Dutch House is the anchor point pulling together the life story of brother and sister, Danny and Maeve. Told from Danny’s perspective, it begins with them as children, abandoned by their mother, living with their mostly detached father and on the brink of becoming Andrea’s step-children The vivid and detailed descriptions of the house’s interior as well as the effects of the house on its inhabitants are what lead the reader into the relationships and circumstances that become this book’s storyline.

Margie felt she was caught up by the story and character development from the very first chapter and relished the descriptive quality contained within it .Maddy enjoyed the book; Annie appreciated the storytelling; Mary Lib commented that it was a lovely change of pace from everything going on. While Paige praised the storytelling, she felt the characters were implausible. Sheri and Saran were in agreement on this point. Whereas Sheri found the story fun and entertaining, she was disappointed in the character development. Saran thought some characters were not well developed (especially the mother) and had difficulty understanding them. Joanie was intrigued by how the book was put together while others saw it as a drawback particularly the time gaps between the sections and with too much happening at the very end.

Such opposing reactions led to good discussion of the characters, and of themes contained within. Libby talked about a home providing a sense of place for what happens there and many of us talked about memories of experiences with various homes and how those memories are still so alive. Another theme was that of memory and how we look upon the past.

Interestingly, Margie chose an Ann Patchett book in 2017. In that summary it was stated that a common thread among her books is that Ann Patchett throws two different groups of people together to create a community. It seems that she does this once again in The Dutch House.  And once again, she has created a work that was met with such diverse reactions and opinions from us. Annie relayed a quote to me that she remembered (to the best of her ability). It went something like this: “…good fiction doesn’t always fill in the spaces and provide all the answers. That is up to the reader’s imagination…” Based on our discussion I think we can safely say that Ann Patchett did not fill in all the spaces in this book – and because of that you either liked the book – or you didn’t!

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Paige, Mary Lib, Libby, Joan, Sheri, and Saran met via Zoom to discuss Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward’s books share themes of poor, Black families who struggle against catastrophes and injustices and of voices of the dead that sing to them across ‘the sea of time.’ These themes reflect Ward’s own childhood; individuals who are silenced, misunderstood, underestimated, and scarred simply by being Black. The only certainties in life are danger, death, and decay. In contrast to this bleakness, we all found Ward’s prose lyrical and lush, gorgeous and evocative. 

Our discussion of Sing, Unburied, Sing focused on the complexities of its characters, the circumstances of their lives and their histories, and the deeper issues of slavery and racism. 

Ward is unflinchingly honest about her characters. Thirteen-year-old Jojo cares for his little sister Kayla; both are of mixed race. Jojo’s father is in the notorious Parchman prison: his mother Leonie is a drug addict. JoJo and Kayla live with their grandparents: Pop, who is upright and dignified although consumed by his past, and Mam who is dried up and hollowed out by cancer. 

Jojo is, in many ways, the center of this novel. We watch him throughout the book as he changes or adjusts, coming of age prematurely. He shows deep responsibilities to Pop – to be tough and capable – and to Kayla – to be her parent and guardian. The kindness between JoJo and Kayla is nearly heartbreaking. 

We asked, though, about the consequences of being knocked down as repeatedly as JoJo was? Would he turn in to Leonie in a few years? A consistent theme throughout the book is that Jojo and Kayla are starving, deprived of food and drink while Leonie feeds herself.  Toward the end of the book, Mam tells JoJo that “she ain’t never going to feed you.” Does Leonie’s behavior reflect her own past? What do JoJo’s circumstances bode for his future? 

In Leonie, we all found a character difficult to understand or appreciate. She unfailingly makes the wrong choices. Libby felt that Leonie yearned for a family, but withheld tenderness from both of her children. Is she paralyzed by her own past? Or a victim of her current circumstances? Or, likely, both? Sheri found both Leonie and Michael to be complex characters – capable of love, yet brutal to their children and outright abusive in many ways. Like his offspring, Pop emerged from a difficult past, haunted by racial prejudice and injustice. He carries with him the ghost of Richie. As an adult, Pop is nourishing, strong, and steady, a reminder that family members subjected to same trials respond differently. We also meet Given, as a ghost from a terrible death, Michael’s racist family, and Kayla, who is too young to see ghosts yet successfully banishes them in the end.

Collecting Michael from prison, this makeshift family returns home with an unburied spirit and the narrative takes a more supernatural turn. We meet Richie, learn about his association with Pop. We learn the beginnings of their story in Parchman; but not until Richie ‘returns’ with Leonie from Parchman do we learn the end.  Richie claims he can’t leave until his story is resolved. Given is another ghost, ever in Leonie’s company.  By Mam’s death, several ghosts sit in the trees. With revelations (Richie) and acceptance (? Given), they are finally shooed away by Kayla – someone yet to ‘see’ the spirits, but they are obviously with her.

The circumstances of this story are common to Ward’s writing.  Modern Mississippi “means addiction, ground-in generational poverty, living very closely with the legacy of slavery, of Jim Crow, of lynching and of intractable racism.” What are the consequences? Leonie chose Michael, knowing that his cousin killed her brother.  In Post-Obama America, Paige suggested, Blacks lost all hope, reverting to and succumbing to their pasts.  In regions of our country, individuals lack the tools or the endurance to achieve and so revert to decay and decline, previous fears, despair, and the spiritualism or mysticism evidenced by the ghosts in this book. There may be no other way to cope in Mississippi. No matter what you achieve, you are still Black and deprived.

Joan encouraged discussion of deeper issues, some mentioned above. What is the effect of constant hunger, generation after generation? Or of constant neglect? Or of constant despair? How can individuals with few options overcome these challenges? Jojo stole food in order to survive . Will he carry this behavior in to his future? Will he learn skills from Pop, or from Leonie? Does he have any options?  Ward addresses the question of hope for these individuals, asking whether it is an intelligent hope or a necessary hope? It is the latter that she attributes to her ancestors and her characters - it wasn’t an intelligent hope that they had for freedom or that their children might live different lives than they did, they had to hope to keep going.

Another deeper issue is whether Black Americans would be treated so poorly today had we not enslaved them? After considering racism in other societies, we ended with the worrisome thought that engrained prejudice against ‘the other’ is a fundamental (an evolutionary?) character that all humans share. It is perhaps an inevitable derivative of tribalism - the need to protect our ‘own,’ and to see others as threats. 

THE YELLOW HOUSE BY Sarah Broom

 September's book group gathered again via Zoom to discuss The Yellow House, Sarah Broom's inaugural book released in August 2019.  Linda chose the book and hosted the Zoom and attendees included: Annie, Joan, Libby, Maddy, Marylib, Paige, and Sheri.  Zanna Cochrane, one of the original B and B book group organizers, joined from her home in Ketchum, Idaho, a welcome addition.

Several readers agreed that the story is multi-layered: personal memoir, extensive family history, and a narrative of decades of remembrances shaped by the vulnerable land where the author's beloved home sat - 4121 Wilson Street, in East New Orleans.  Early in Broom's story she reminisces that the house was "on ground that is always soft".  (East New Orleans was a no man's land just south of a major thoroughfare and Lake Pontchartrain.  The kids had to dangerously cross this highway to go to school.)

In 1961, 19 year old Ivory Mae, a new widow destined to become Sarah's mother, was able to purchase a rapidly constructed shotgun house in a huge urban development intended to provide houses for workers employed in other neighborhoods, businesses, government buildings, and tourist venues - all on higher ground.  

Ivory Mae remarried and went on to raise 12 children in this house.  The entire time she made every effort to keep the interior as lovely as she could.  Ivory May exemplified for her children a strong sense of self-pride and a desire to learn.  They would carry these traits through many twists and turns in their lives.

The reader learns about Sarah in her early life within the family and in her hometown.  The reader is then treated to Sarah's extensive personal accomplishments and demanding travels to other parts of the world.  meanwhile, throughout, she would return to revisit her roots and to check on family members, those near and those far-flung, having had to leave New Orleans after Katrina.

In an interview, Sarah Broom stated that she did not intend to write a book about Katrina, the category 5 hurricane that severely hit New Orleans in 2005 and absolutely destroyed her home area in East New Orleans.  The aftermath of this horrific event event led to the complete destruction of what remained of the Broom family's yellow house.  However, it may have brought Sarah back to New Orleans to stay as part of her community and to thrive.

This book received a 2019 National Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Non Fiction.  It provided our book group opportunity for interesting conversation, as well as several recommendations for improvement of a new author's writing style.

For me, the Zoom gathering represented the value of group book discussions.

THE ABOVE WAS BY Linda Hamilton

FURTHER COMMENTS BY other book group members:

Some people thought it was remarkable how Broom recreated her family history through photographs and that she included them in the book.  While she never said they were poor, you knew it by some of her fascinating descriptions of the house and what went on in it.  There was some feeling with readers that her portrayal did leave out a certain amount of warmth, that it was more just day to day, year to year description.

There was some confusion by readers of who all the characters were, and even though Broom had a big family, it was hard to keep them separated and who was who.  Some readers felt that the book also needed editing especially the last part after Katrina hit.  Broom changed styles with italics for the statements of other family members especially her mother, and during the "water" had whole paragraphs about what happened to certain people during the water rise.  Some felt this was clever, some confusing.

One reader who could not attend wrote in to say:  I found the first part very engaging; Sarah's childhood was a poor one marked by great dignity.  Her parents were remarkable, and the message each child could be clean and polite and neat despite poverty was very affecting.  The middle part was just confusing - we skipped all of her education and rise in visibility and status and ended up in Burundi for no obvious reason.  I couldn't understand what the last third was about - Sarah's various positions in government, her family, the yellow house, or East New Orleans.

Another reader disagreed with this assessment that the trip to Burundi had no purpose.  This was a country on the edge, of collapse, of trying to recover from a horrible war and ethnic violence, and it needed help.  Broom no longer felt like she had a home, and her sense of place and loss was extreme.  The Yellow House had burst open and with it she "had burst open". She had moved to Harlem, worked at Oprah and was dissatisfied, and was swayed by a talk and a book and the urge to travel and explore other people and their problems with dislocation, displacement, and disconnection.  This travel was vital to her finding herself, exemplified in her long letters home with desire for family, for home, for direction.  Through her intense loneliness in a country that was not hers, she found that she had to leave to travel to then come home again.  She had to sever herself from the past, to leave her former self and find another.  This was the crucial part of the book where I felt it as a launching pad to confidence and thoughtfulness about who she actually was.  She also stated that she was "genuinely interested in placing what happened in New Orleans in a more global context to understand how loss, danger, and forced migration play out in other parts of the world."

Another reader said it well: We didn't love the book, but were glad to have read it. I found her writing to be prose-like in places; she could put a thought or feeling into a string of beautiful words that could give me pause.  This was (thankfully) not a diatribe on the injustices and inequalities that blacks have endured.  But, she was able to point this out within the context of her life story, which gave it more impact and made it more readable for me.  The book felt a little over long; further editing was needed.  Her choice to go to Burundi was impulsive, perhaps the kind of thing i would have done when i was her age.  And she needed to be grounded in something away from New Orleans, family, and the "water". Burundi was by no means fulfilling or grounding, but i think she grew up a bit, and was more prepared to face all the challenges at home.

Several readers agreed that the last third of the book with all the government jobs and moving around that Broom did, was confusing.  But the book ended sweetly with Broom and her brother Carl meeting back at the plot of land where the Yellow House had been to mow and clean up the yard.  The pride that her mother, Ivory Mae, had imparted was certainly carried on.

LEAVING MOTHER LAKE by Yang Namu and Christine Mathieu

There were five people at the Zoom discussion of Leaving Mother Lake on May 26th; Maddy, Margie, Marylib, Paige, and Saran.  Perhaps the poor attendance reflected lack of interest in the book, but some later said that a Zoom discussion was much better with fewer people.  Margie and Maddy liked the book, of course because Maddy chose the book.  Her family has ties with China and moving to the US.  Maddy made the point that the language was simple because Namu was not a native English speaker.  Maddy's mother went to college in the US from China and was not able to speak English well at all.

Some wondered what about the anthropologist who helped tell the story, wouldn't her part in the book help the language be more readable?  The anthropologist Christine Mathieu did write an Afterword which some felt was the most interesting part of the book, since it cleared up where the Mosuo people fit into the peoples of the region, which in parts was fascinating.  Namu actually wrote a short afterward of sorts called The Last Word, which was good writing and poignant, much different than the rest of the book she wrote.

Some felt the story of the Mosuo women was culturally interesting but the simple way it was told got in the way of some enjoying the book.

In these times, the Zoom way is all we have safely right now.  There were many complaints about Zoom, but it was a way to connect.  Some felt that Zoom is tiring and weird.  We are wondering how long we have to put up with it.

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Libby Edwards, Mary Lib Sovick, Mary Sanz, Paige Noon, Margie Karuzas, Annie Sjoberg, Sheri Linnell, Maddy Weisz, Joan Ritchie, Saran Twombly

Ten of us gathered virtually, via Zoom, to discuss Michael Ondaatje’s most recent book, Warlight. Here is a distillation of our thoughts and impressions.

Warlight tells the haunting and mysterious efforts of a young man to understand his past – and therefore his present – life.  Ondaatje weaves together a complex web of time, memory, and fact. A few themes hold these together:  people are not who or where we think they are; we order our lives with barely held stories; no one knows who the truth bearer is; and we never know more than the surface of any relationship. Nothing lasts. The book may be spare in emotion, but it is replete with events, relationships, and fabulous characters.  It is intensely atmospheric.

The atmosphere that Ondaatje creates is amplified by the story’s setting in post-war London, an atmosphere of darkness, of uncertainty, and of danger. The fog of war, strange characters and antics, mysterious roles, responsibilities, and relationships, the need to survive. The war is over, but it is not really over. No one was who he or she appeared to be. The characters we meet are consumed by making do. Secrecy persists as does revenge. Mahler’s use of schwer to indicate difficult or heavy passages is co-opted as a warning that nothing was safe.  The story that emerges links the vicissitudes of war with a young man’s coming of age. It is a story of relationships and memories, acknowledging that memories don’t last and that we never know more that the surface of relationships. It is a mystery that is not fully resolved.

Ondaatje is a consummate storyteller – a brilliant writer who prompts his readers with hints, people, events, and connections to build a story from diverse fragments. He takes us through a looking glass of sorts, from a mad-cap beginning to a series of incidents and people that shift and evolve, intricately connected, to provide Nathaniel the pieces of his story. We agreed that the book deserves multiple readings, each of which may change our interpretations. A few of the group – Libby, Joan, and Saran – read the book at least twice and found it richer with each reading. Does Nathaniel complete the story of his past, or will fragments continue to merge and memories continue to change?

Maps reappear as stable points throughout the book, for military intelligence as well as for those searching for where they are and where they have been. This figurative and literal reference to maps is effective; it provides another link among disconnected events and people.

How reliable is memory? Is it formed more by feelings than by details or facts?   Many of us experienced childhood events that made no sense at all at the outset, gaining meaning only with time. Is it possible to piece together a life from memories, questionable facts, and unconnected fragments? In these questions, Ondaatje’s rendering is deeply imaginative and, for me, deeply emotional.

Some of us did not find much in Warlight that addressed emotions and the mental states of each player. Nathaniel is a compelling protagonist, but a few found him detached from his own feelings as well as from those of others (Agnes, for example).  This perceived absence of character development made it hard for some to engage with the story or to care about the characters. Rose provided a prime example of our differing interpretations. Maddy found her awful while she was Annie’s favorite character. I found the book deeply emotional; others didn’t. Several of us left with a feeling of great sadness for Nathaniel.

What about the true damage of war? Can we find amidst this damage emotion that is not necessarily explicit? We meet two young kids who are profoundly deceived by their parents. Their mother, Rose, risks her life for her county but must leave her children in care of an eclectic group of individuals with similarly divided allegiances. Did Rose have a choice, sitting in her rural home listening to bombs drop on the English countryside? Nathaniel and Agnes escape surrounding madness to unoccupied houses where they are lovers, yet Agnes must then make do when she finds she is pregnant. We meet a talented gatherer who recruits the best agents but never suffers the consequences. Most importantly, how painful must it be to search for reasons behind betrayal, forced to piece together parts of a puzzle that don’t easily fit?

I found deep emotion everywhere – sometimes just a word, sometimes an unexpected connection, sometimes a startling awareness.  Each step of his search reminded Nathaniel that memories of the past were not what really happened.  How much disillusion and pain result from constant efforts to separate fact (or apparent fact) from memory, events from deception, people from nicknames  and hidden identities? By the end of the book I felt profound sadness for Nathaniel because, in fact, nothing lasts.

THE SPECTATOR BIRD by Wallace Stegner

The month of March came in like a LION, and it went out like a LION!  Our lives have been changed and some people think that we all might be changed for the better.  (That is if we don't have to battle the virus).  That this time of solitude and reflection and desire for more simple things will be with us forever now.

I had fun studying the book and writing the following email to all.  I am thinking that most had assumed that book group would not be held (true), and did not read the book.  Some of the questions I put forth were universal, thinking that if anyone had read part of the book or none at all, they could answer the universal questions. I will be eternally grateful to the one person who did answer some of the questions even though she only read part of the book. Her answers to these questions made me think deeper and even ask some of my family the same questions. 

On the question of "safe place", I was thinking that the character Joe had a safe place all along and did not realize it until the end, the long time love of Ruth, his wife. My children grew up in different countries and traveled all over Asia and Europe when they were very little though high school, and later we traveled together in South America and Africa.  I asked them what their safe place had been throughout that time and now.  They both said that their safe place was mommy and daddy no matter whether we were in a village on the Laotian border or camped high in the alps or driving through South Africa.  As long as we were together and we were there with them, that was their safe place.  (Even when an elephant charged the car!) Now of course it has shifted more to their spouses but they both still say that as long as we are alive, we two are a kind of safe place for them.  And this safe place is of course love.

I thought more about the differences between men and women, and the fact that this book was written in the 70s.  And I thought more about our choices in life and how much control we have over them.  And I thought a lot about how we overlook what is right in front of our face and reach for something out there somewhere, like excitement, an affair, a voyage.

Reach out whole heartedly for what is right in front of you, enjoy your quarantine buddies, and savor being alive!

Take care be well!

Libby

If any of you have some comments or answers to any questions, please insert them at the bottom under "comments".  Thank you for listening.

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL EMAIL:

At the end of the book Stegner says, (we are) "Two young people with quite a lot the matter with us, we stood for a moment breathing it in."  Breathing in the beautiful night air and nature, the past and present, the long relationship, the life they are having moment to moment now as they age.  And he praises both the long marriage and Ruth.  And they breath in how lucky they are.

So for those of you who got so tired of Joe grumbling and complaining, this last chapter should have been a catharsis of sorts.

The book won the National Book award in 1977.  I began to enjoy the fact that Stegner moved back and forth between the present day, as Joe struggles with aging, and Denmark, where Joe and Ruth get caught up in the strange almost Gothic world of Astrid and her shunned aristocratic family.  This was a voyage for Joe especially to grapple with the death of their only child, with whom he never saw eye to eye, that could never be resolved, as if it was a struggle between the past and present, the old world (Europe) and the new world (America). 

A post card comes by mail in the present day from the Danish countess Astrid, and that leads to Ruth wanting the journal she did not know existed from that era to be read out loud.  This was after Joe tried to hide all from Ruth.  This was such a great tool of Stegner to show and portray a whole lifetime.

And so over the time I spent reading this book, a little every day in my sunroom with my flowers and the outside in, I began to think of questions I could ask all of you.  If any of them sound incoherent, please disregard, of course.  Answer all or none, one or two, or whatever hits you.  And I will post the responses I get.  Also, send a summary of your thoughts on the book along with answers to none or more of the questions.  These questions are all made up by me....it was a fun challenge.

Here goes:

1) On the very first page of the book, Joe muses about two types of birds, the wren and the bushtit.  How does this musing about their different behaviors portend about his life and himself as the story progresses, about how the Denmark part ends and how the story of Joe and Ruth comes out?  About what is truly important for him in life?

2) How would Joe's chosen profession of that of an agent of books rather than an author himself feed his discontentment?

3) Do women in general have less of a problem with a loss of identity in retirement?  Why does Ruth, who speaks relatively little and is shown less than anyone else in the book, remain vividly in one's mind after the book is finished?  Is her bravery the only way Joe could have come to terms with his life?  How much is this a book really about Ruth?  And about a long marriage?

4) Towards the end, after the scenes with Astrid in Denmark, Joe mentions Marcus Aurelius, which I had to research...STOIC philosophy, in other words, accepting what is happening, another expression of the spectator bird.  How much is Joe seen as a spectator in his own life?  He believed he was essentially drawn into the current of life, not participating in the twists and the turns of the flow of life, "gone down steam like a stick, getting hung up in eddies and getting flushed out again, only half understanding what he floated past, and understanding less with every year."  How many of you have felt this same thing at times?  And what's more Joe is now an isolated observer made worse by his angry, sardonic personality.  What do you think is meant by "the spectator bird"?

5) Throughout the story there is a theme of "a safe place" and safety.  What is your safe place?  What do you think Stegner meant by "a safe place"?  What does this mean in light of the events in the world today?

6) Joe goes to Europe half heartedly to search for his roots.  How much is this the AMERICAN search for roots and identity?  Compare what he finds to the freedom and nature of American and the stifling control of nature in Denmark, needing a heritage and creating an evil heritage, and Joe's mother fleeing to America.

7)  Stegner puts in a curious tennis match between Joe and the count in Denmark.  What does this say about Stegner's value of sports in getting people together, and as the great equalizer? 

8) The time the book is set in is tumultuous but really not much different in reality than the issues of today.  Comment on this.  I found it fascinating that Stegner mentions us as friends of the Kurds against the Iraquis!!! 

9) How comfortable are you in talking about your own aging, because we are all aging....?   Would you approach it like Joe and grumble, like Ben Alexander who drives around in a convertible with a young woman and a positive attitude (and he is older than Joe), or like Ruth who makes herself useful every day?  Ha ha or anything in between???

10) THE LAST QUESTION:  in the introduction to my book, Jane Smiley says "Joe Allston's novel revealed itself as a rhetorical structure that articulates in both theme and form some of the defining concerns of Stegner's art - the wild versus the cultivated, the prospective versus the retrospective, youth versus age, anticipation versus nostalgia, the fringe versus the establishment, the romantic versus the practical, the experimental versus the traditional, the headlong versus the measured - and in doing so it puts up a barrier between some readers and complete suspension of disbelief.  Please comment.  Have these arguments been resolved today?

I do hope you enjoyed this book. A friend sent me a funny saying that said something like:  "I always wanted for years to deep clean my house but lacking the time, these last weeks I discovered that wasn't the reason."  I hope you found the desire to read this great book.  Thanks for listening and enjoy your safe place.

The Long Haul by Finn Murphy

In addition to inaugurating Mary Lib’s new house with its first official hosted event, our February meeting was also Beth’s inaugural event. Welcome, Beth!

Joan, Annie, Linda, Saran, Beth, and I shared the first event at my new house three days before actually moving in and before furniture was moved, but we did have a kitchen table with six chairs, which is all we needed. Well, that and the yummy fruit and cookies that Linda generously provided. 

The Long Haul, by Finn Murphy, provided an insight into the work of movers and their observations into the lives of the people who they help move. Additionally, the book shares perspectives on the stuff that people acquire, pack, move, and then perhaps never unpack but move again. 

Our group explored the topic of our “stuff,” especially since so many of us had moved in the fairly recent past and had been faced with our own decisions about our stuff. What do we move? Why do we move it? Do we have our own unopened boxes sitting in garages after previous moves? Why do we keep them?

We talked about what would draw someone like Murphy to do this type of work. We considered the allure of the independence it offers, the ability to see the country and the cultures within it, and the rewards of seeing a job to completion. Murphy is a problem solver and seems to draw great satisfaction from (and was very good at) solving complex problems. This topic led to a discussion about the problem solvers in our own lives.

Murphy was a good storyteller. Some of his highlights were the story of the baby grand move and of Mr. Big’s Chinese gravestones!

Libby and Margie were on a hut trip but sent comments before we met. I’ll share a few of those: Libby – “The first part of the book to me felt like the story of a guy who wanted to run away, the times were ripe for alienation from regular society.  He did see an America that few people ever see.  He has some interesting amusing stories but I spent a lot of the book wondering what was really “driving” him since I imagined his background different from the average trucker...It was almost as if working at a hard back breaking job, he was escaping from himself. And ironically he ended up working for people (high end mover) from a class he originated from.”… I did enjoy the story about the “running convoy” being like a zen experience, the way truckers can communicate and stick together.  Stories about what he sees in America about decline vs thriving towns we somewhat interesting.  But the book left me hanging at the end, until I listened to the Terry Gross interview.  After that I liked Finn, but the book itself lacked heart, I felt.

Margie – “…I was headed to UT for a week of skiing with the guys and thought I’d bring the book with me as a back up – in case I finish My Antonia. Driving w on I-80 through WY we got caught up in very slow traffic amidst many semi’s. On the opposite side, east bound there was a caravan of semi’s that was 5 miles long, bumper to bumper, and not moving. Every now and then there was a car interspersed.  There were more than a handful of semi’s off the highway on their sides! That totally re-ignited my interest in these drivers – who they were, what their lives as truck drivers were like. Once in UT for the week, I did finish My Antonia and picked up The Long Haul again. I finished the book. And I was a bit stymied. I really didn’t like the person of Finn Murphy. And I felt sad for him. So I re-read your email about the book pick. and decided to listen to the interview with Terry Gross. That was quite interesting. As Annie said, it filled in that 10 year gap – and that made me even more sad for him. I will say that listening to him gave me a different perspective of who he was and I liked him a lot more after the interview. 

We talked about the 10-year gap in Murphy’s personal story, but after listening to Terry Gross’s interview with Murphy and hearing him summarize how a bad decision turned his life upside down during that period, we concluded that those details would have been a distraction, disrupting the flow of the book. It made sense to us that he omitted it, but because we felt connected to him while reading his story, we couldn’t help but be very curious about that period of time.

Overall, most of us enjoyed the book, primarily because it gave us a glimpse into the lives of some very interesting people.