More on The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

I have just finished reading another of Alexander McCall Smith’s charming novels about Mma Ramotswe and her detective agency, the one and only in Gaborone, Botswana. I keep wondering why I continue to feel refreshed after reading one of them. The stories are sweet and compelling, although not riveting. The characters have grown through the course of the novels, each with his or her quirks and motivations, until I feel as though I know them fairly well. (Actually, McCall does little in the way of description – a few character tags, and you fill in the rest for yourself.)

Precious Ramotswe has some weight, a condition she refers to as “traditionally built.” In fact, the title of this recently-read book is “Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.” (I am not reading these in sequence, but as they come along.)

But I come away from one of them feeling warm, relaxed, happy, and somehow elevated in my perceptions of human behavior. More forgiving, perhaps. More capable of allowing for human differences. And just as I was trying to figure out the exact reasons for this, I came across this passage, in which Mma Ramotswe’s recently-wed husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (the is how they address each other, in fact) reflects on his feeling for his wife:

“He looked away. He was not one for displays of emotion; he never had been, but it made his heart swell to be thanked by this woman who stood for so much in his eyes; who stood for kindness and generosity and understanding; for a country of which he was so proud; who stood for Africa and all the love that Africa contained.”

And that about says it. Precious worries at the loss of old traditions of respect, kindness, generosity, etc. as the newer generation adopts more selfish and unthinking ways, even as she upholds those traditions herself. She loves Africa in a way that I can understand in my heart, as common to those of us who feel our roots in a place run deep.

It is not a love that blinds: she knows the failings and failures of her beloved country. “”We were tiny creatures, really;” she thinks, “tiny and afraid, trying to hold our place on the little platform that was our earth. So while the world about us might seem so solid, so permanent, it was not really. We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. And that applied not only to people, but to countries too. Things could go wrong and entire nations could be led into a world of living nightmare; it had happened, and was happening still. Poor Africa, which could stand for love and happiness and joy, could also be a place of suffering and shame. But that suffering was not the only story, thought Mma Ramotswe. There was a story of courage and determination and goodness that could be told as well, and she was proud that her country, her Botswana, had been part of that.”

(Smith may, incidentally, be single-handedly responsible for reviving the semi-colon in literature.)

So in those quotations lie the answer to my questions. Deeply probing philosophy gently robed in kindness.

Did I Love It? Did I Hate it? I haven’t decided….

John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure sports a subtle cover, a picture of peaches and grapes on a while tablecloth, with a very small script “A Novel” located at the base of a peach. In other words, if you don’t pay attention, you might miss the fact that it’s fiction.

While you would no doubt realize that it’s fiction before reading too far, the beginning is deceptive enough that you might feel that you are reading a food commentary akin to the writings of Brillat-Savarin, potentially because the author compares his book to that gourmand reporter. There is a lot about food and food history, and even some recipes, but all of the food related material is rather incidental and misleading except as it reveals a good deal about the narrator, and is used to introduce some of the characters.

You have to watch for clues in the text to discover what you are really reading, which is something of a murder mystery. I don’t think I have ever read a sneakier book in terms of not announcing its genre. There are some other unusual twists, which I dare not describe for fear of being a “spoiler.”

Aside from a devious plot and a lot of foodie stuff, this book contains a good deal of wit, sarcasm, hauteur, snideness and humor. Most remarkable is the author’s construction of sentences and paragraphs. The latter can run to two or more pages, the former – well, these are some of the longest and most compound-complex constructions I have seen since I was married to a man who couldn’t be bothered with punctuation. However, Lanchester produces sentences that a true masterpieces: they amble along through myriad subjects, related but often not in obvious ways, full of allusions, similes, and metaphors, with often something wrenchingly funny in their midst. Quoting one would be appropriate here, but frankly my patience and fingers are just not up to it.

I admit that I found the author exhibiting a high degree of intelligence, no small amount of gustatorial expertise, a wry and sometimes almost cruel sense of humor, and confident in his deceptiveness. As you read, you think you know what the subject is, but find that you have been tricked. You believe that you have built an accurate picture of characters and motivations, only to have that image fracture into shards. Your own expectations about the characters will lead to disappointment. Any attempt to guess at the ending is doomed to failure. Any expectation of a typical resolution or climax will be disappointed. You may feel guilty if you experience delight or pleasure in this book by the time you reach the end.

Or you may just wind up wondering if you loved it, or hated it.

Another Wonderful Book Fair

Once again, I rushed to prepare for the Rose City Book Fair in Portland (OR) May 18-19. I didn’t mean to rush – I had planned to have plenty of time. But then we had unexpected visitors, more visitors, and some more visitors. Which was lovely, since some were family and some were colleagues who bought some inventory. None-the-less, the preparation time evaporated. Fortunately, I have a lot of inventory permanently set up and ready to go – postcards, photos, maps, and ephemera. Although I had planned to sort, repackage, and index the ephemera before the show, that just didn’t get done. In time it will be.

My booth before the show opened.












In any case, the show – as usual – was well organized and very accommodating and friendly. None better. It is put on by the Portland Area Used Book Sellers Assn. and was started to give area booksellers a venue some years after the old Oregon Antiquarian Book Fair died. This year the Rose City show moved to a new venue – pleasingly, the site used for the old Antiquarian book fair. (The Doubletree Hotel, Lloyd Center, Portland Oregon.) Shades of the past, good memories of bygone days (and of some of the book dealers who have gone on to the Great Library in the sky). There is plenty of room for this show to grow, if only enough dealers remain enthusiastic about supporting it.

Portland as viewed from the hotel roof.

This year there were dealers from four states, and some very interesting material on display. Not to mention many with bargain books. Robert Gavorra was right inside the front door with a table proclaiming “no book over $10” and he meant it. Which actually reassured newcomers and walk-ins that this was not a stuffy environment where they couldn’t afford to enter. The show’s motto is “An unpretentious book fair.” The whole idea is to make the show affordable for dealers. There are tables for rent but dealers provide their own table covers, lights if they want them, and so forth. There are no curtains around the booths, which leaves the area light, uncluttered, and with good line of sight. (I much prefer this to all of those tedious little cloth caves that some shows provide.) On the other hand, for dealers the club provides bagels, donuts, and the like in the mornings, and sandwiches, chips, and beverages mid-day on Saturday, when some may not be able to get away from their booths to eat lunch.

Entry fees are also reasonable. $2, or a can of food and $1. The food, and half the gate receipts, go to the Oregon Food Bank. The club also left free passes on the hotel check-in counter and provides them to dealers ahead of time for distribution.

We threw the stuff into the van on Thursday morning –the sun shining agreeably (not a big deal for some, but this is Oregon). Unloaded and set up Thursday evening. Had a convivial “happy hour” in the hotel lounge with some colleagues. The show didn’t open to the public until 2 p.m. Friday (and ran until 8 p.m.) but the doors opened for dealers at 9 a.m., giving us a chance to scope (and scoop) each others’ goods. And the sun was shining. The 8 pm closing sent us to the lounge again, where the supper fare was just excellent. (The hotel restaurant was open only for breakfast and lunch, also excellent and our waiter “Ming” was delightful, funny, attentive, and still highly professional. Ask for him if you are ever there.)

Some hotel guests who wandered in seemed surprised to find themselves at a book fair. One gentleman stopped at my booth to admire a book. Said that he had just arrived and would look around. Unlike most “be backs” he did return to my booth to purchase the book ($85) and while there, had a phone call. I heard him explaining that he was at a book fair, obviously a bit stunned to discover himself there.

My booth during the show. That's me in the blue jacket on the aisle. The activity at the near end is at the postcard tables - I'll invent some kind of sign to go over it, since it's popular but kind of hidden there at the end.


Saturday morning we opened at 10 and ran until 5 pm, when everyone broke down quickly and hit the road. And the sun was shining. By Monday it was raining and has done so steadily since with temperatures mid-50s to mid-60s, but who cares? It was a bright and shiny show with reasonably good attendance. There was also good walk-in from hotel guests. I did about 2/3 of my normal “take” at the show, but given the current economy and the change of venue, it was not unexpected and still represented a reasonable profit, and some new customers to follow up with. Of course I spent more than I took in, but that will flip into greater profit.

There are no words to express my admiration for the volunteers who produce and run this show. The enthusiasm and thought going into it are incredible, and the results are always pleasing.

On preventing mold in Berries

This tip is circulating around the Internet. It often includes a nice photo, but since they seem to be copyright protected so I won't post them. But having had particularly bad luck with keeping berries this year so far, I wanted to pass this along (slightly modified from the original):

Berries are delicate. Raspberries in particular seem to mold before you get them home from the market. There's nothing more tragic than paying $4 for a pint of local raspberries, only to look in the fridge the next day and find fuzzy mold growing on their insides.

Wash them with vinegar.
When you get the berries home, prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider probably work best) and ten parts water. Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around. Drain, rinse if you want and pop them into the fridge. The vinegar kills mold spores and bacteria on the surface of the fruit, and voila! Raspberries will last a week or more, strawberries can last up to two weeks without mold.

I haven't tried this yet (waiting for the price of raspberries to come down in fact) but it seems very logical. Vinegar's acidity does kill or diminsh the effects of mold. Apple cider vinegar in particular has many beneficial uses, from a good spring tonic to relief of arthritis. D.C. JARVIS M.D. has written several books describing these benefits. The one on Folk Medicine I found particularly useful over the past 45 years.

A Little Bit About Altered Books

Now and then I am confronted by someone who does not understand how I can participate in activity that involves “destroying books.” But yes – I do, and without qualms.

Georgia O'Keefe homage, for "Divine Women" altered book

I explain to them that hundreds of thousands of unwanted books are shredded or sent to the landfill every year. It’s hard to swallow, if you love books, but not every printed volume is precious. Book alterers try to “repurpose” these unwanted books into works of art. Others use old books to create shelves, accessories such as handbags, even furniture.

"Henge" foldout for Spiritual Places altered book

Some of us just enjoy creating art in them. That can involve carving niches, gluing things into them, painting pages, and whatever creative approaches one can devise.

Others created by carving. I can’t imagine the patience it takes for Su Blackwell to do what she does, but the results are fantastically beautiful. Su Blackwell's fabulous book sculptures.

 Brian Dettmer is no less amazing with his “revealed” image carving.
Brian Dettmer's intriguing book carvings.

And no, I don’t even try to emulate these artists. I just have fun with a group of local friends who participate in round robins. Each member starts a book on a theme, and then the books are passed from member to member so that each can created in each book. At the end the books wind up back with the person who started them, but now stuffed with the artwork of other members.

"I Killed the Bird" for Literary Cats altered book

Well, what are they good for? people then ask. What is any artwork good for? To enjoy – to look at again and again – to share with visitors (many of whom become so intrigued that they want to participate). Each book becomes a virtual art gallery. Since the members of each round robin tend to change from one session to another (each person has three to four weeks to complete a minimum number of pages, the length of time and number of pages depending on the number of participating members) there are always new approaches and styles. There are usually 8-12 participants, so one round robin per year is about the limit for most of us. Other groups participate by mail, or they exchange pages to be inserted in the books.

In respect of the rights of my fellow artists, I won’t post examples of their work, but herein I have offered a few of my own.

Copper embossed frog for "Frog" altered book

The Rocking-Horse in Literature: a Genre of Faint Accomplishments

 

With an interest in literature and the history of the book, I recently browsed one of The Book Buyer magazines that I purchase from a colleague. This magazine offered reviews of “American and Foreign” literature, author and illustrator profiles, reviews of new books, and even articles on such subjects as book plates.

One letter to the editor speaking to the issue of limp and thoughtless writing (and in particular of a new book of poetry by Charles Swinburne) is so pointed and amusing, and so deliciously phrased, that I gave up trying to edit it down and include it here in its entirety and without further comment.

The Rocking-Horse in Literature 

John Maybury

 
To the editor of The Book Buyer (Scribner’s Sons, pub.)

Every now and then the patient reader of general literature is confronted with a specially exasperating example of what, for want of a better name, may be called the rocking-horse style. It occurs with some frequency in the short stories which furnish forth certain magazines, and it leaves the reader divided between discontent because the stories are no better, and gratitude because they are no worse.

The suggestion given by prose written in this style is of those spirited wooden steeds whose forefeet pay the air, and whose hind legs seem about to spring lightly from the rocker. But they never leave it. The horse gallops magnificently up and down, but never gets ahead; his promise is great, and his performance nothing; his form is the hunter’s, and his execution practically that of a three-legged stool. The story has interest, of a kind, and is smartly told; but nobody seems to amount to very much, or to do anything worth talking about.

In poetry, the rocking-horse manner is favored by many writers who balance line with line, cadence with cadence, and sometimes even word with word, so that their verse rocks as evenly as the staple rocking-horse of commerce. The result is often musical as a harp hung upon a bough; but it would take a wood-god to interpret the meaning. There is more excuse for this sort of material composition than for the prose, because there is a pretty well-defined impression abroad that a poet must sing in his own words, given him by the immortals, and that it is our own fault if our ears are not fine enough to hear his melody.

Still, it takes abundant charity, suffering long, to believe that all the young men and women who write this sort of verse are moved thereto by any worthier motive than the belief that it will taste sweet in the public mouth greedy for novelty, and that thus it will pay their bills. Now, it is granted that to pay one’s bill is honest, but it is not specially poetic, in itself considered.

The greatest poet in England is one of those who occasionally rock so furiously as to invite the belief that they do it to kill time while thinking up something to say. Mr. Swinburne’s new volume of poems is dedicated to William Morris in thirteen stanzas of liquid light – or something. One of the thirteen is apt among ten thousand as an illustration. Hark to the music – and then find the hidden meaning, if you can:

“Not yesterday’s light nor to-morrow’s
      Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams,
Though joys be forgotten and sorrows
      Forgotten as changes of dreams,
The dawn of the days unforgotten
      That noon could eclipse not or slay,
Whose fruits were as children begotten
      Of dawn upon day.”

This is the noblest form of rocking-horse poetry, but fine as it is, and sweet its message, one comes crying as Pip’s benefactor used to say: “Might a mere warmint ask what” message?
John Maybury New York, June 10, 1894






 

The 20,000,000 year old Mystery Skull of Oregon

The 20,000,000 year old Mystery Skull of Oregon

The old historical museum

I remember visiting the Old Oregon Historical Museum at Gold Hill when I was a child. It was part of a group of roadside attractions that included the Oregon Vortex, Trees of Mystery, the Prehistoric Gardens (life-sized replicas of prehistoric animals), and if I recall correctly there was an Indian Village  and a petting zoo, and whatever other enterprise that could thrown up near the Vortex, which was – and still is – a major attraction.

Studies suggest that there might be something weird at the site of the vortex – some magnetic influence, perhaps. (Supposedly aircraft compasses go haywire when flying over the site.) A lot of it is hyped-up though, a case of “don’t believe everything you see.”

Paul Bunyan and Babe at Trees of Mystery

I haven’t been there for many, many years and apparently the museum has been refurbished to reflect the gold-mining era of the region. But when I was there it was a hodge-podge of weird and zany artifacts: two-headed sheep, various kinds of fetuses in jars, “mysterious objects” and so forth, along with legitimate pioneer and prospector memorabilia.

I don’t recall seeing the skull in this old postcard, and when I looked at it I was puzzled for a while. Then I realized that it is set on its “nose,” with the viewer looking at the palate with its “smiley” dentition depressions and the eye sockets from below – one of them deformed by pressure or crushing.

The caption reads: The Oregon Mystery Skull.
 Estimated to be more than 20,000,000 years old.
Old Oregon Historical Museum, Gold Hill, Oregon

Having solved that dilemma, the mystery remains – I haven’t identified what it is. The Oregon coastal area was, of course, once upon a time ocean floor so marine fossils are not uncommon, but then again the card does not identify where this object was found – and Oregon is rich in fossil remains. Educated guesses are welcome. One might estimate the size by the boards behind the skull, which appear to be approximately 8 inches wide.