Grit and Shame

My fascination with the Jacksons' began when I was eleven and I visited Tennessee with my grandparents. What an idyllic trip it was. I was fascinated by the Hermitage and the story of Andrew and Rachel and the scandal of her previous marriage which haunted their lives.

Irving Stone is a craftsman. I have read at least one of his books: The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo.

I was more into by the pre-marriage friendship and courtship of the Jacksons’ and the dramatization of her difficult relationship with her first husband. Unrequited love is exceedingly romantic. Post consummated love is dull. But that’s my own hang up. There’s a reason why I love the Brontes' and can’t stand the last four minutes of the more recent movie version of Pride and Prejudice which shows the Darcys in their domestic life. Blah.

So I skimmed the last part which was full of the ups and downs of their economic endeavors and which revealed the political drive that kept Andrew involved and climbing the ladder of politics despite Rachel’s desire for a quiet life out of the limelight that was so painful to her. He seemed to be quite the dreamer and risk taker but had that homespun frontier quality that was so endearing and comforting to the people – that rugged quality that rural America is drawn to – much to the bewilderment of urbanites and Europeans. It hearkens back to my review of a Davy Crockett biography.

The book portrays the couple as having an enduring bond which united them despite the disappointment of infertility and the painful shaming that was directed at them due to them accidentally marrying before her divorce was finalized.

We can look at times past with great nostalgia, but there is no doubt that every era has its own evils. The way that Rachel Jackson was vilified and persecuted is tragic - sometimes because of social fear mongering – alternately for political gain.

They certainly lived at an epic pulse. There’s something about that burning up daylight hours to be in the arena for one's short life that’s appealing. But I also feel the call of the fireside like Rachel. I think people really felt the power to affect change in the political arena. I’m not sure how possible that is now but perhaps I’m too much the cynic. The political machines were whirling then as they are now I suppose. Money and power, power and money. Age old saga. Dominance hierarchies are permanently in motion from the playground to the Capitol.

Catch-up Books

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

This book rested on my nightstand for over a year. My daughter had recommended it to me, but I have an instinctual antipathy for books or movies about animals or dolls that are personified even though I usually enjoy them. This proved to be no exception. Kate de Camille is an exceptional storyteller. Her characters are fresh and genuine. I loved the encounters that Edward had on his journey and the idea of him finding his way back to his original owner and learning the joy and pain of real love.

TorreGreca - Ann Cornelisen

A condensed version from my stack of Reader’s Digest Condensed books. This was a delight. A true encounter of an American woman in the 1950s who settles in a southern Italian village working with a social work organization to improve the lives of impoverished and uneducated rural people. It was especially interesting to me because of my time spent in Italy. Even though I lived in the north of Italy many years after this story takes place, I recognize the peasant mentality which is closely tied to the land, survival, superstitions, local authorities and church structures, a shrewd ingenuity bred by oppression and hard times was still very much prevalent in the consciousness of the culture. But there is no condescension on the part of the author. She accepted people, admired them, and shares heartwarming stories about their hospitality and growth.

Killers of the Flower Moon and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

This is about the conspired deaths of wealthy Osage Indians who owned rights to oil in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. The book recounts the interesting investigations that ensued and finally some answers through the work of some agents who were the first of J Edgar Hoover's newly assembled FBI. The book is a bit of a downer in that the depth of conspiracy and evil that existed seems inconceivable. Yet, we know what humans are capable of... 

Giant

My mom and Grandma passed on a bunch of Reader's Digest Condensed books to me. Several of them have been real jewels and I have not made the time to record them here. One was about a convent in England and another an historical novel set in Elizabethan times. Of course I can't remember the titles and I passed them back to my mama already.  an historical novel, tee hee.

I believe I have only read one other Edna Ferber and that was set in Seattle but I really enjoyed it. I have seen the movie Cimarron and the musical Showboat, both based on her works.

EF really is a master of character development and I was pulled in right away. Plus, there was a striking familiarity in the ranch culture that she portrays of Texas to my own childhood ranch culture although mine was here in California. It was like sneaking into the lives of my ancestors (on all three sides - throw in an adopted parent) in the early 20th century and getting to spy on them.

She manages to convey some of the patriarchal nonsense, the racial tensions and superiorities, without detracting from the grit and romance of the Texan pioneer spirit. It really is all I admire and cringe at about my own heritage. Perhaps this is why I'm sitting down to write about this book at 6am on a Sunday morning. 

Perhaps I related to the female protagonist who wants to be an intellectual equal, have the freedom to come and go as she pleases, but wants to be rescued at the same time. I'm not entirely sure all of those are possible. 

She doesn't villify anyone as far as I could perceive which is really in her credit. Most people have crusty belief systems because they have never had the chance to have their ideas challenged. 

Descendents of pioneers who wrestled with the elements and eked out a meager existence grapple with the sudden onset of oil money. Ranchers who had previously sunk all their cash into their operations, build ginormous tasteless homes that the protagonist (of an old southern family who I liken to English gentry - refined, poor, intellectual, enjoying the finer things) views as massive shells of crassness. 

There is something about the pragmatism that Leslie is drawn to however. Before the story flashes back to her entry into the Texan scene through her marriage, the reader witnesses her at middle age, a member of the community - one who is accepted although she will never quite fit the breed. She likes her Texan counterpart - the neighboring ranch wife who was once in love with her own husband. He usurped the mold by marrying a "foreigner" instead of the fleshy, direct, simple, male-centric neighbor. But although the reader feels that Leslie is superior: in looks, judgment, and sensibility, there is a real-lifeness about their ability to get along. In small towns and rural areas, one cannot be choosy about your company - and you need each other. 

The dynamic between Bick and his sister Luz is also interesting. She is domineering and rides rough shod over everyone. She somehow earned the right to overcome the female limitations through her horse prowess and because she never married. He resents her but they make it work somehow. 

Uncle Bawley

Jordan and young Luz

Bob Dietz - modern ideas about land management

Jett Rink - chip on his shoulder employee who strikes it rich through oil and becomes a bully landbaron and mover and shaker - has a secret crush on Leslie over the years.

More Kindred Spirits of the Earth - O Pioneers

I had picked up O Pioneers casually. It had been collecting dust on my nightstand for quite some time. I think I picked it up at Book hounds. I had read My Antonia as a girl, and it had made a huge impression on me. I identified with how her characters were in love with the soil. I’m not a farmer and I’m not drawn to the science of growing things nor am I naturally adept at it, but I love the earth itself. I love the smell of the earth in early summer and the musky after rain dirt smell. I love the feel of the earth in my hands while planting my mom’s garden for her. I identified with how Antonia felt empowered by her outdoorsy manual labory strength that she acquired from her toil on the farms. I too liked to admire my muscles and felt scornful of people who were pasty and frail.

Last summer I read Death Comes to the Archbishop

I don’t know how she does it -but she gets into the skin of these different characters and is able to express these timeless and universal human emotions in a way that is both powerful and artful. She was a feminist before her time and I love her strong female characters although the character I most identify with in temperament is Carl Lundstrom -Alexandra’s sensitive intuitive childhood friend who goes away to the city only to return into her life years later, somewhat jaded by life but still a kindred spirit. Alexandra manages to be a kindred spirit in her solid steadfast way.

 Alexandra takes the lead at the beginning of the story, taking over the business where her pioneering father leaves off upon his deathbed. He entrusted his plans not to the dull son  or insipid son but to his enterprising and intelligent daughter, who manages to see what others cannot and over time turns their struggling farm into a prosperous industry.

The climax of the story unfolds as Alexandra hits middle age and lights on the sweet friendship turned romance of her younger brother Emil with their married neighbor Marie, who has become Alexandra’s new best friend in Carl’s absence and is one of those beloved characters that is irresistible to the book characters and the reader alike. Bohemian Marie, who is full of life, sweetness, and vitality has got herself married to a whiny lump of a man – one of those who seemed dashing and swashbuckling but who lacked the kind of substance for husband material and turns into a self serving piece of lichen who finds it impossible to love another human being – especially one who is determined to be happy where he is determined to be unhappy.

You get it. It sets the stage for blossoming forbidden love. Plus Alexandra realizes too late, she kept sending Emil over to do things for Marie that she knew her husband wasn’t doing – by that I mean fixing things around the place – not to be unclear here. Ha!

There are a lot of other interesting side dynamics that take place that really capture small town life and friendship and family dynamics in rural America – the conflux of cultures: Bohemian (which means Czech in early Nebraska), German (Carl), old Ivar (the simple animal loving man who is Alexandra’s friend and whom she cares for), Swedes and Norwegians (she is Swedish.) Sidenote: Cather grew up in Nebraska. She knows what she’s talking about here. She lingers a bit on the difficulty of family dynamics in business relationships with the land. Her brothers come back to try to threaten and one up her – this kind of ends the civility that had tenuously existed prior to that point. They pretty much tried to dismiss the integral role she’d had in saving and furthering the farms, claiming that because they had done most of the physical labor, she should basically take a back seat in the business. She calmly refuses. You go Alexandra!!!

Emil and Marie struggle to resist their connection, but the deal is sealed when the lights go out at the party and she ends up in his arms.

He resolves to leave and they meet one last time to say goodbye in the orchard, where as luck would have it enraged armed husband finds them and down they go only to die side by side.

This twist of fate offers one great opportunity to Alexandra. Her grieving has reduced her to a state where she actually needs Carl. Since he was so poor he had been too proud to ask her to marry him, but now, in her hour of need, he returns from Alaska to comfort and rescue her emotionally. He hopes his business venture will be profitable so now he feels manly enough to marry her.

Alexandra visits Frank (jealous husband) in prison and expresses her forgiveness to him. She feels that she understands his rage more than she can understand how Emil and Marie could’ve fallen in love. She’s actually more angry at Marie for being a life wrecker. In the end, Carl helps her to see that: “I’ve seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs; just by being too beautiful, too full of life and love. They can’t help it. People come to them as they go to a warm fire in winter.”

Favorite quotes:
of Marie: “The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives, always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain – until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. “

“treasure of pain,”

Of Carl: “He had not become a trim self satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-conscious than a man of thirty-five is expected to be…..he was intelligent, sensitive, unhappy.”

Tomboy, independent, bookish, sarcastic, tenderhearted, Native American - how could I not love it! Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees

This books was a delightful read. There's something about BK's Kentucky roots and eventual pilgrimage to Arizona that I resonate with. I love her conversational writing (mostly first person in this one). There is humor, humility, and heart wrenching characters. She manages to weave these social justice touchpoints into a wonderful narrative. 

The friendships that evolve between a young Kentuckian and two Guatamalan refugees is totally charming. She encounters Lou Ann - a single mom who is given a chapter of her own to set the stage - a fellow Kentuckian and single mom. Their friendship is beset by mutual counseling, laughter, and sister-parenting. The protagonist, leaves her tiny Kentuckian town in a beat up old car, and changes her name,  determined to avoid pregnancy and poverty, along the way she acquires a Cherokee baby that is handed off to her as she passes through Oklahoma. She nicknames the baby "Turtle." The baby who has undergone deep trauma is transformed from a muted numb creature into an animated child through the love and care of Taylor and her community. 

Taylor meets Mattie at "Jesus is Lord Used Tires." Mattie is a mother figure and eventual employer to her and activist for the refugee community. Taylor falls for her Guatemalan friend Estevan whose wife is just beginning to emerge from an emotional abyss. She reigns in her feelings to do what is right, as does he. The connection is subtle and developed without sappy drama. 

"Jesus is Lord Used Tires" and the "1-800-the-Lord" call number offer a gentle satire of the market driven evangelical movement of the latter half of the 20th century, particularly in the Bible Belt. She eventually calls the number out of curiosity, only to have a sarcastic exchange with the operator who is conscripted to collect financial pledges for a televangelist. 

I'm drawn to BK's protagonists who seem to share a common thread: perhaps autobiographical? tomboyish, independent, bookish, sarcastic, yet tenderhearted - no wonder I love her stuff! Kindred spirits. 

Sad Missing Books

Over the past ten months I have read many books, some of them very good. Life happened and I didn't get to write about them. I want to document my standouts briefly here:

The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls



I happened on this movie first on Amazon Prime and it blew me away so I had to read the book. I still don't know why this story moves me so much, but I love the characters and Jeannette's ability to integrate the challenges and joys of her unique upbringing.


Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop

I have been a fan of Cather since I read My Antonia as a child. I adored reading this book. Probably because New Mexico is calling to me. Again the intersection of Native American, Catholic Europe, and manifest destiny here - fascinating and something I've been pondering since my Ramona project.

Recent Nonfiction wrap up

Last Child in the Woods - Richard Louv
Free to Learn - Peter Gray

I just wrapped up Free to Learn. I had read Last Child in the Woods in the fall.  Before I crack open another nonfiction, I thought I would jot down some thoughts for the sake of my own synthesis.

The first thing that comes to mind is that it's difficult to simulate a hunter/gatherer model in modern society. At best we play pretend to replicate that kind of tribal life, play, and learning. Replicating this type of learning however, even if it misses my idealistic mark, is still preferable perhaps to the coerced factory model that the majority of our students and most of us have participated in for years. I pondered to my husband that in retrospect, adult life was a really difficult transition for me from the top down factory model school life that I had succeeded in for 16 years. It's almost as if I was always waiting for someone to pop out and tell me what to do, so I could do it and get the A. In the adult world, you may enter a company that is a top down model similar to factory school, but the rules may not be exactly the same.

If anything, a model that teaches kids to discover who they are, what they're interested in, how they lead, how they follow, and allows them to take risks and begin to live life as a real participant rather than incessantly train only to falter when they do enter the hallways of life, is a welcome concept.

Having awareness of the historical models of parenting that Peter Gray outlines was probably my favorite part of his book: trustful parenting (hunter/gatherer model), directive domineering (model instituted by the rise of agriculture and feudalism), directive/protective - current model views children as incapable and vulnerable.

As someone who has experimented with child led concepts since I read Continuum Concept when my kids were little, I think we have a lot to learn about different cultural concepts of child raising. I also realized that my small children would run out in front of cars if I did not sometimes hold their hands. I don't know if it was because I lacked "trustful parentingness" or if the dangers presented in our world are higher stakes experiments that don't allow children a proper progression of trustfulness.I also missed the presence of tribal support that I did not often find in my nuclear family oriented world. There were not a plethora of eight year olds or old grandmas around to hold my babies while I did....  I did allow them to free play without adult direction as much as possible.

The days of neighborhood roaming must have been great indeed. I didn't have a neighborhood, but I did do range roaming with siblings, friends, and cousins. Simulate away, until we figure out a better experiment, like a society where children are allowed to integrate, work, play, learn, and fully participate.