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    Our Community, Literally

    February 11th, 2010

    Since the start of the year, for some unknown reason or whim I’ve been doing a lot of reading by association. In January it was Queen of Dreams, followed by The City of Dreaming Books, followed by The Little Book. I was going to follow up with The Little Women or Little Beauties, but then I kind of lost interest; the January book thing had run its course. 

    But before January was quite over, I had already started Definite Space by Ann Iverson and The Love of Impermanent Things, by Mary Rose O’Reilley. I once saw Mary Rose O’Reilley at the Hamline Public Library. She has a commonsense approach to life that I find grounding.

    And then a few nights later, Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter practically leaped off the bookshelf and into my hands. My February theme was born: local authors. Iverson is a poet from East Bethel, and both O’Reilley and Hampl hail from St. Paul. And not only are they both from St. Paul, they are both also Irish and Catholic (or at least raised Catholic) and they both talk about their Irish Catholic St. Paul roots. I don’t usually have trouble keeping my various books-in-progress straight, but these two I kept confusing. Which one’s great grandparents came from the town home to The Burning of Bridget Cleary? (Mary Rose O’Reilley.) I wonder if they know each other. It seems rather likely that two famous Irish Catholic St. Paul writers might know each other. At least it’s not as outlandish as wondering if someone from Sweden happens to know my cousin Kersten. Anyway, after confusing them two or three times, I decided to stick with the one I was reading at the time I got seriously tired of said confusion (The Florist’s Daughter) and will return to The Love of Impermanent Things after spending some time in Hampl’s father’s greenhouse.
    Photo credit: Martin Kalfatovic

    Photo credit: Martin Kalfatovic

    When it came time to select a new novel, I decided to go local again, but I didn’t feel like a mystery (Ellen Hart, John Sandford) and felt a tug for a little gender balance. I went online for Minnesota fiction authors and found a great list through the St. Paul Public Library. (Are we sensing a St. Paul theme here?)

    On the great list from the SPPL was Charles Baxter. Really? How embarrassing that I didn’t know that he’s local. I read The Feast of Love several years ago and thought it excellent. I checked my to-read shelf and there was Baxter’s Saul and Patsy. He lives in St. Paul too. Local fiction: check. 

    So I’m planning to round out February with (mostly) Minnesota authors. I have a few in mind: Larry Millett, Diane Jarvenpa, Bill Holm. If you have additional suggestions for Minnesota authors, please send a comment or e-mail me.

    I’m thinking about stones for March. As I was looking for local books I happened upon From Stone to Living Word, by Debbie Blue. And I also have Honey from Stone by Chet Raymo. And I know I have a book somewhere about the Rolling Stones. But it’s still February and I am going back to my local books. Suggestions for additional authors (or themes) are welcome.

    Here’s to the authors of Minnesota! Thank you for helping make St. Paul and Minneapolis two of the most literary cities in the nation.
    Photo credit: Viking 79

    Photo credit: Viking 79


    Greed, Gardening and Gut Symmetries: 9 Books from 2009

    January 7th, 2010
    Photo by mitikusa

    Photo by mitikusa

    I finished my 2009 books-read list over the weekend—always a fun project. Here are 9 of my favorites from the year:

    Sabbath, by Wayne Muller. My favorite book of the year, hands down. This is a book I give reverence to, a book that I found grounding and wise with the occasional slap. Read this if you have many things going in your life and you sometimes feel like you don’t know up from down.

    Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed, by Paul Mason. Read this if you’re looking for a better understanding of how the economic meltdown happened, or feel stupid because you still don’t understand what derivatives are or how they work (a lot of bankers don’t, either). Surprisingly fun and compelling for an economics book.

    Agenda for a New Economy, by David C. Korten. Read this if you wonder what our economy might look like if it focused more on Main Street than Wall Street.

    Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson. Read this if you like period pieces and are looking for something gentle. Bonus: Frances McDormand is in the movie version which has one significant difference from the book.

    Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals, by Agha Shahid Ali. Read this if you have a fondness for ghazals in particular, poetry forms in general, or if you’re simply looking for a seriously good poetry book. 

    Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence, by Anne D. LeClaire. Read this book if the idea of an hour of silence makes your heart sing.

    Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, by Wendy Johnson. Read this if you’re interested in food, health, nature, cooking, gardening, organics, environment, zen, mythology, spirituality, sustainability, obesity, local farming, or community-supported agriculture. A multidimensional book that’s hard to categorize. Happy making.

    The Language of Baklava, by Diana Abu-Jaber. Read this memoir if you wonder about the torn life of an immigrant—missing the homeland, the sweet pull of memory, but also anticipation and excitement over the challenges and possibilities of a new country. If you prefer fiction, try Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, which I also read this year and liked very much.

    Gut Symmetries, by Jeanette Winterson. I love Winterson. Seriously, I think she could publish a book of ampersands and I would probably think it was brilliant. This novel is a blend of physics and romance (with a dash of horror)—what better combination? Read this if you enjoy books where you think you’re probably missing 30% of what the author is saying.

    A good year for books. Happy New Year (a tad late) to you and yours, and best wishes for good books in 2010!

    Books


    Is College Making Us Dumb?

    December 21st, 2009

    I’ve been reading Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford for the last couple of weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so ambivalent about a book. (Okay, I checked and it was 2005—Cool Memories by Jean Baudrillard, which alternately infuriated and impressed me.) Shop Class as Soulcraft is having a similar effect. 

    For example, passages like the following infuriate me:

    So now, if you go to a Toyota dealership to look at a Scion (their cheaper, youth-oriented brand), you get a brochure full of pictures of crazy custom Scions, and profiles of the custom fabricators who have built them, typically with a welding helmet perched just so on their heads, and the obligatory wife beater. 

    And: 

    If different human types are attracted to different kinds of work, the converse is also true: the work a man does forms him.

    I found this annoying sexist writing woven throughout the book.

    On the other hand, he challenges some assumptions that many of us hold dear, and with very good reasoning. The one that stopped me in my tracks was higher education in general and advanced degrees in particular. Crawford’s criticism isn’t based on envy; he has a Ph.D. in political philosophy. He was the executive director of a think tank for a while, and is currently a motorcycle mechanic and also a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. 

    I think what made him begin to question the value of higher education was his first job after getting his master’s degree: “My new job was to read articles in academic journals, index them under established categories, and write abstracts of about two hundred words.” For someone who loves to read and has a broad interest base, it sounds like a dream job.

    But as it turns out, not so much. The job is based on the assumption that in writing an abstract, there is a method that merely needs to be applied. There is no need to actually understand the article. Doesn’t that seem a little odd? The starting quota was 15 articles a day. Indexed and abstracted. Before he had been there a year, the quota was up to 28.

    Twenty-eight.

    That’s a lot of abstracts. I would be pleased as punch if I could index and abstract five academic articles in one day.

    Crawford found that meeting the quota “required me to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author’s argument come into focus.” Seriously, a good academic article can take hours to read and fully Graduation capunderstand. (A bad one can take even longer.)

    He questions the increasing educational credentials many employers require—often without evidence that the additional education will make them better at those jobs. He references a study of air traffic controllers—a job requiring complex decision making—which found an inverse correlation between educational achievement and job performance. Seriously. Think about that.

    And that is why I am enjoying this book. It makes me think. It causes me to question some of my assumptions. 

    And that is one of my definitions of an excellent book.


    Happy Thanksgiving!

    November 26th, 2009

    I like to recognize holidays by doing things like reading the Constitution on the 4th of July (I read the Declaration of Independence too, but the Constitution is more fun and results in more raucous discussion). On Thanksgiving, I usually generate a relatively random list of things I’m thankful for.

    So here is this year’s list of things, great and small:

    • A job
    • A job I love
    • A job I love that includes a blog
    • Good friends
    • Music
    • Books
    • Poetry
    • Family
    • Homemade gravy
    • Potato sausage
    • Good bread
    • Coffee
    • Surly Furious
    • Wool socks
    • Flannel sheets
    • Calculators
    • Radicals
    • Conservatives
    • Samosas
    • State parks
    • My snug little house
    • (On a bus line)
    • Independent bookstores
    • Good graphic designers (who make fun graphics)
    • Trees
    • The song of the wood thrush
    • Good neighbors
    • Home mail delivery
    • Minnehaha Parkway
    • Cows
    • The bog in Bemidji
    • New bookshelves

    Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with food, family, laughter, and friends!cornucopia


    The Wisdom of Rest

    October 2nd, 2009

    men at rest

    One of the things we are doing at United Way this year as a cost-saving measure is to spend down our accrued vacation time. (The company has to keep that money in abeyance just in case we all decide to use all our vacation time at once.) So I did my duty last week and spent some time in Toronto. I know—life is rough.

    While my mind is still in its Toronto-induced relaxation mode, I thought I’d share some passages from my vacation book.

    In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest.

    A “successful” life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies , pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.

    The whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation.

    The Chinese pictograph for “busy” is composed of two characters: heart and killing.

    Speed and accomplishment, consumption and productivity have become the most valued human commodities.

    Remember that everything you have received is a blessing. Remember to delight in your life, in the fruits of your labor. Remember to stop and offer thanks for the wonder of it.

    Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy.

    Those quiet Sunday afternoons are embedded in our cultural memory, even if they are no longer practiced.

    During the Sabbath, we set aside a sanctuary in time, disconnect from the frenzy of consumption and accomplishment, and consecrate our day as an offering for healing all beings.

    So that when we go forth to heal the wounds of our world, whatever we build, create, craft, or serve will have the wisdom of rest in it.

    The human spirit is naturally generous; the instant we are filled, our first impulse is to be useful, to be kind, to give something away.

    Some form of Sabbath time is practiced by Jews and Christians, by Buddhists and Muslims, Hindus and native tribes around the world.

    All the quotes are from Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, by Wayne Muller. Muller draws on traditions and practices in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and others to emphasize the importance of rest in work-life balance. It is . . . deeply satisfying.

    Autumn walk Enough rest.  Now, about Toronto—three cool things:

    1. 1.    Super public transportation (they still have streetcars and also a subway system; we are hands down better on bicycle lanes though).

      2.   No plastic bags in trees. I saw not one. And Toronto is nearly as well-treed as the Twin Cities.

      3.   They have mute swans and black ducks in Grenadier Pond in High Park (at least the day we visited). Both are new additions to my bird lifelist.


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