Sunday Scribblings #113: Curves

This week's Sunday Scribblings asks:
Has life thrown you a curve ball? Do you love hugging the curves while you are driving? Do you love or hate your physical curves? Winkipedia defines "Curve" as: "In mathematics, the concept of a curve tries to capture the intuitive idea of a geometrical one-dimensional and continuous object." But we use the word in a lot of different ways. What do you have to say about curve/ curves?

I had only one image come to mind with this prompt: mountain roads. That brought me to thinking about the differences between Iowa, where we lived for 5 years during graduate school, and Tennessee, where we lived before and since Iowa. The poem following the blurb I wrote during graduate school in Iowa, back when we would make the trip from Iowa to Tennessee once a year, and we only dreamed that we might return to Tennessee someday for good. The picture is of my youngest son, who was born here in Tennessee, and his friend looking out at the great expanse of Great Smoky Mountains, one autumn evening.

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There are things you miss about the South but mostly you miss the mountains. You never learn to love the prairie. You never love the big empty Iowa sky and the straight roads, cutting even squares and rectangles through the farms. You never love the tall corn and straight rows of soybeans. It is all too orderly. You miss the sharp curves of the mountain roads, the thrill of fear, the proximity of the edge. You miss the tangle of laurel thickets and confusion of kudzu. You miss the way the mountains stretch and curl back into themselves, gently curving like the stillest sea.

And when you are home again, finally, you will never miss that midwestern wind, endless in its straightforward, relentless pursuit.

Seventeen Hours, Give or Take (Driving South)

We count on someday,
coffee on the front porch,
Buffalo Mountain still

in its own black shadow.
We live now
for the next vacation
and the next, driving southeast
and then south and east,
shedding
these strange selves

as the farms turn to forests,
corn to tobacco.
Two hours to go
and we are easy again
as if some lethal spell
has been lifted. We unzip

our stiff suits
at the state line
and toss them out the window.
Our skin beneath is warm

and smells greenly of wood.
We can't stop breathing.

(By Sarah Small. Published in Breathing the Same Air, copyright 2001)

Booking Through Thursday: What Is Reading, Fundamentally?

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks:

What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

Do you have something to say about this? You can post on your own blog and leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments at Booking Through Thursday—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Cereal boxes, classified ads, the bathroom walls, War and Peace: yes, it's all reading. Whatever the format, yes, it's reading. But I do have my preferences. First of all, there must be something to read. If I must sit in one place for more than a couple of minutes and there is no one next to me with whom to converse, I must have reading material. I prefer to have something of substance, but I'll read newspaper ads if that's all that is available. I'll even pick up a scrap of paper on the floor of the van to read if I don't have a magazine stashed away.

The format is important. I prefer traditional print text, hard copy. I haven't yet been able to read entire books online, and I print out short-stories and often e-books. The whole kindle thing excites me not in the least. I think this might be a relationship thing for me: I like the relationship between book-in-hand and eyes. Could be related to my terrible vision. Along the same lines, I appreciate audiobooks and do consider this as "reading," but all has to be right in order for me to fully appreciate one. For example, a couple of years ago, I drove the 14-hour trip to New York with my 3 kids. The younger two sat in the back and watched DVDs much of the time, but my teenager and I listened to The Jungle the whole way there and nearly the whole way home. There were no distractions, no extraneous noises. But I couldn't just listen to an audiobook on our daily drives about town; I need that long stretch of highway.

I'm not into comics, manga, etc. Never have been. I'm way too much of a word lover, big blocks-of-text lover. But I certainly consider in reading. Just not for me.

Weekly Geeks: Other Forms of Storytelling

The theme of this week's Weekly Geeks centers on other forms of storytelling besides books. The possibilities are all intriguing: TV shows, movies, music, theater. How do we tell stories? Where do we find stories? I love the stories told on TV and movies, in music and music videos, and at the theater. But when I think of storytelling, I think of my father.

My father is a poet, although he has spent his life as a scientist. To do what he does (apple breeding, fruit-growing) takes the gentle soul of a poet; I believe botany--or botany-in-nature as opposed to taxonomy, for example-- and poetry are intertwined beyond the sacred worlds of science and literature. A wild rose tangled in a rusty barbed-wire fence appeals to both the poet and the botanist, as does an orchard heavy with apple blossoms.

My father is a natural storyteller. These days one can get a master's degree in storytelling; East Tennessee State University offers one. If you live in East Tennessee, you are likely aware of the National Storytelling Festival held annually in Jonesborough. Closer to home, Pigeon Forge has been hosting a Storytelling Festival the past few years that is growing each year.

But it is my father's storytelling that I like best. My earliest memories include my father telling stories on long car trips. Rarely did we hear the same story twice. He might tell orchard stories, Grandma Riley stories, army stories, or war stories. He might tell childhood stories of growing up amidst a swarm of wild Irish cousins in tiny Dix, Illinois. One-room schoolhouse stories, fire on the farm stories. War stories never included battle, but rather the slices of life that spoke of survival: chocolate ration bars scraped into mugs of sweetened-condensed milk and warmed over a fire along the Rhine to make the best hot chocolate ever. The private from Long Island who always wanted "an-coy-veys." Too much salt in the beans.

When my father tells stories, his voice slips back into a gentle southern dialect. Although he has lived in New York State for 40 years--nearly half his life--the distinguishable sounds of Southern Illinois are just beneath his tongue. A smallish drawl, a lingering of vowels.

Around the dinner table at night, we soak in his stories still. In the past two decades he has recorded many of these stories in writing, and when I read them, I hear his voice clear as the scent of apple blossoms in April. The greatest storyteller at the National Festival could not, for me, compare to my father and his collection of slices of life.

Book Review: Winter Wheat

I can't imagine why, in all my years of high school, college, and graduate school as an English major, I had never heard of Mildred Walker. Her writing is entirely along the lines and quality of Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner--OK, maybe not quite as spectacular--but pretty darn close. So why isn't she included in American Lit anthologies/reading lists? Why aren't we teaching her when we study the American West or the impact of WWI and II? I have no idea. All I can say is that if I were teaching American Lit again, I would seriously consider including Winter Wheat on our reading list.

But back to the book. Winter Wheat tells the story of Ellen Webb, a young woman born and raised on a wheat farm in Montana, during a 2-year span of her life. Ellen has spent an idyllic childhood on the farm, loved by her parents and completely satisfied with ranch life. She is a hard worker on the farm but desires a college education. With a good crop, her parents are able to send her to college in Minnesota, where she quickly falls in love. As Ellen says, "I hadn't meant to fall in love so soon, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's like planning to seed in April and then having it come off so warm in March that the earth is ready."

Ellen's troubles begin when Gil comes to Montana for a visit, and Ellen begins to see her parents and herself in a whole new way. She is painfully aware of her mother's foreignness (she's from Russia) and her father's sickness, and she convinces herself that they are trapped in a loveless marriage.

The story is beautifully written. Ellen is a tremendously likable character. I loved her romanticism mixed with a healthy dose of sensibility. Mr. and Mrs. Webb are also extremely well-drawn, memorable characters., and Walker's descriptions of Montana are wonderful, as well. This is one of my favorite books so far in 2008.

The Sunday Salon: Perfect Sunday

This is one of those really, absolutely perfect Sundays. The day itself is gorgeous. I had a particularly enjoyable day at church, as it was my turn to lead Junior Church (2nd-5th graders), and the kids were just really delightful. "Delightful" isn't a word I use much, but it so appropriately fits the kids today. After church, the tomato soup at Panera was perfect and no child complained about his or her meal. And when we came home, I read until I fell asleep, and then took a blissful, undisturbed nap. While I napped, Dr. H. did the grocery shopping.

I am still reading Mildred Walker's Winter Wheat. I can't imagine why I've never come across Mildred Walker before in all my years of studying literature. Winter Wheat is an absolute treasure, very similar in style and subject to Willa Cather's My Antonia. I'll be sad to finish this one, but I do have Ami McKay's The Birth House to look forward to next. Summer reading is so delicious.

Since last week I posted a review of Astrid and Veronika, and I have a stack of books that I've read to the kids to review. I'm lazy about kids' books. I have at last managed to post my entire TBR List. As of yet I haven't added to it from last week, but I still have more Sunday Salons and Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books to peruse.

I am thinking about hosting a house-warming party here on SmallWorld Reads. I've got the topic in mind; I just have to work out the details. Stay tuned and have a great week of reading.

Sunday Scribblings #112: Quitting

Here is a tragic flaw: I quit people. Jobs, books, hobbies--what do these things matter? I am the real villain. I am soaking in a bucket of undiluted guilt. I am a people-quitter.

Oh, the collection of cast-offs isn't a massive one. I could name each one, but they would all fit the same description. I quit people who threaten me in their instability. Who frighten me with their grasping need. Who clutch at me on their way down. Who avert their eyes because they haven't told the whole truth: from fragments to chunks, from pebbles to boulders, something big is missing.

And, I argue, I am not the one who can find the missing pieces. I am not a solver of riddles. I balk at reading between the lines. I put together the borders, but someone else must fill in the middle.

Because I quit.

Book Review: Astrid and Veronika

This book by Linda Olsson has been on my reading list for so long that I had no memory of what it might be about when I at last got to it. I am so glad I finally read this gem. Olsson (her website is here) is a lyrical writer; she takes time about this craft of writing, creating phrases that fit together like poetry. Neighbors Astrid and Veronika are both lonely, heartbroken women. Astrid, nearing 80, has lived a solitary, sad life; Veronika, in her early 30s, has come to this tiny town to recover from a terrible loss. Their stories run a parallel course: both women are without mothers and without daughters, but ultimately find this relationship in each other.

This is a quiet, reflective novel. Olsson has wonderful insights into the concepts of time, memory and perception, and I found myself mulling over many of her statements. Like this:

"Children have to build their world from such incomplete information. Other people make decisions for them, and only fragments of the rationale are ever conveyed. As children we inhabit a world built of incoherent snippets. The process of embellishing and filling the holes is an unconscious one, I think. And perhaps it continues all our lives."

And this:

"'Time. I don't understand it,' Veronika said. 'I think I have never grasped the essence of time. Memories seem to surface in no particular order, with no time attached. Yesterday can seem as distant as last year. … Some of my clearest memories are of the briefest moments,' Veronika continued. 'I have years of life that have left no traces, and minutes that are so ingrained in my mind that I relive them every day.'"

I love to come across an insight into something I've often pondered: the fragments of childhood memories, what we choose to remember and how much we've lost in the journey. Olsson does this well.

I loved this novel. Astrid and Veronika are women of much depth, and their stories are heartwrenching but mostly satisfying. Mostly because a few of the key points of the stories were incomplete, or perhaps I was too dense to grasp what exactly happened--or why--in a couple of instances. But the writing is lovely and the characters wonderful.