Book Report: A Cowrie of Hope

 30. Binwell Sinyangwe, A Cowrie of Hope (2000) (10/30/2020)

The sixth book in Pete Turchi's "Border Crossings" series of discussions, A Cowrie of Hope is set entirely in Zambia, the particular "border" in this case being between poverty and, if not prosperity exactly, perhaps fulfilling one's dreams, as well as between countryside and the city. It is set in the 1990s, a fact that becomes a refrain of the book: "These were the nineties, the late nineties," we hear repeatedly. "They were lean years. They were the years of each person for himself and hope only under the shadow of the gods."

It is a simple story, a parable or a hero's quest, about Belita Bowa, aka Nasula, "mother of Sula" (a name meaning, ironically, "let things be"), who is determined to send her fifteen-year-old daughter to a boarding school in a distant town. That, she reasons, is the only way Sula, her "cowrie of hope," will be able to escape the fate that Nasula herself is condemned to, one of abject poverty, illiteracy, utter dependence on hardscrabble land. For this, however, she needs to raise school fees of 100,000 kwacha. How will she find the money?

She begins by walking to the farm of her dead husband's family, who years earlier cheated her of her inheritance. Now, she hopes they will find a shred of kindness in their hearts to help their granddaughter and niece earn a better life. But what she encounters at the farm is a new form of destitution, caused by HIV/AIDS and the ongoing drought. They have nothing—less than nothing—left.

Next she realizes, thanks to the wisdom of a friend coincidentally visiting from Lusaka, that her meager harvest of dry beans from the spring before could, in the bustling capital city, draw precisely the money she needs plus enough for her passage back home. And so begins a tale of hopefulness punctuated by thievery, desperation, perseverance, and ultimately (spoiler) success. Throughout this weeklong ordeal Nasula becomes one of the city's destitute, sleeping on cardboard in the open-air market and at the bus station, wandering the streets seeking the man who took advantage of her country innocence. Determination and fierce love for her daughter are her only fuel. The book's authority comes from Nasula's own integrity.

A note about context: the 1990s was a politico-economic turning point for many African countries as the International Monetary Fund demanded reforms, including democratization and economic restructuring, as a condition for aid. This created prosperity for some, but for many it only increased hardship. As the above quotation continues, "No one wanted to give because no one had anything to spare. . . . [It was] the years of the rule of money. The years of havelessness, bad rains and the new disease. The harsh years of madness and evil!"

Here is a passage from when Nasula is on the bus returning home, having been swindled out of her beans and the promised payment:

The distance left behind had grown. They were over half way to the first town, Kabwe. A whirlwind was born inside her, filling her with an unearthly power—a confusion of hate, love and passion. Her being spun and floated in anguish, fear and rage. Images germinated and blossomed, clear images, precise, detailed. She began to see with a sense beyond seeing, to hear with a sense beyond hearing, and to feel with a sense beyond feeling. Her mind expanded to unrealisable limits. She acquired extra senses and abilities: determination, resoluteness and clarity.
 The world became cold. Too cold. Her world. She started shivering. She trembled like a reed in a fast-flowing river. She was alone in the middle of a plain, a vast expanse of emptiness. She dissolved out of herself and stood apart, watching herself and the cold, darkish sands of the plain. She saw herself at its centre, alone, seated on a stool of life and death, her feet partially buried in the sand.
 A hearth appeared before her from nowhere. She stretched her arms over it to warm herself. There was a heat coming from it. But when she tried to stir the fire into more life, she discovered there was no fire. Not a twig of firewood. Horror-stricken, she drew herself closer to the hearth and in a loud, silent, suffering voice she cried out: spirits of the dead, help me, I know of no other way than to bury my heart in this heat without fire. 

It is an emotional book, as befits this driven woman. The writing has a lyric quality, feeling at times as if it could have been oral history; I would have loved to have heard it narrated by a Zambian proper. There are also some lovely descriptions, such as:

The sun went down in the west and it was night. A thick darkness fell upon the world. The bus opened its eyes and bathed the road before it with sharp yellow light. In the cool empty silence of the night the bus acquired a fresh breath of life. It roared and moved onward with strength and zeal, like a lion running after a tiring gazelle.

I did especially enjoy all the various allusions to African wildlife.

This is definitely a book I never would have found on my own, so I am grateful to Pete for including it on the list. 

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Current Covid-19 stats for Monterey County: 11,705 total cases, 675 hospitalizations, and 95 deaths (up, respectively, 421, 17, and 8 since the 22nd, so a little over a week). New cases in the double digits every day. This ain't over yet. But it doesn't feel as alarming as it did a few months ago.

Stay safe. Find a good book to read!

Book Report: Why Fish Don't Exist

29. Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (2020) (10/22/2020)

This is simply a delightful book. On the surface, it is (or rather, begins as) a biography of David Starr Jordan (1851–1931), a taxonomist and discoverer of some 20 percent of the fish species known to us, as well as the first president of Stanford University. But it is also a memoir, as Lulu attempts to make sense of the meaningless-ness of . . . it all—a lesson taught to her as a young girl by her scientist father when, to her question "What is the meaning of life?" he responds, "Nothing." 

Chaos, he informed me, was our only ruler. This massive swirl of dumb forces was what made us, accidentally, and would destroy us, imminently. It cared nothing for us, not our dreams, our intentions our most virtuous of actions.

And so, when she discovers Jordan and his quest to make sense of the chaos of the natural world, she finds a potential mentor. Possibly a savior. For sure, an obsession.

She also finds a very problematic soul. Jordan was entranced with fish, yes, but he also, maybe, was involved in the death of his benefactor Leland Stanford's wife by poisoning (or at least a cover-up of said), and he certainly, until his dying day, was a proponent of eugenics. A disturbing chapter in this book, "A Veritable Chamber of Horrors," outlines the US's long involvement in that abhorrent policy, and the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of "unfit" people. (Something that still goes on.)

In her quest to understand Jordan, Miller comes to understand that dogmatism—as in her father's "Nothing matters," as in Jordan's belief that all creation can be placed somewhere on a "ladder" from lesser to better, degenerate to perfect, unworthy to worthy—is wrong, and that in fact there are so very many ways to look at and appreciate reality. What you consider unimportant, I might consider useful, or valuable, or even precious. And that does matter.  

It was the dandelion principle! 
 To some people a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others that same plant can be so much more. To an herbalist, it's a medicine—a way of detoxifying the liver, clearing the skin, and strengthening the eyes. To a painter, it's a pigment; to a hippie, a crown; a child, a wish. To a butterfly, it's sustenance; to a bee, a mating bed; to an ant, one point in a vast olfactory atlas.
 And so it must be with us. From the perspective of the stars or infinity or some eugenic dream of perfection, sure, one human life might not seem to matter. It might be a speck on a speck on a speck, soon gone. But that was just one of infinite perspec-tives. From the perspective of an apartment in Lynchburg, Virginia [home of a victim of the eugenics project whom Miller interviewed], that very same human could be so much more. A stand-in mother. A source of laughter. A way of surviving one's darkest years.
 This was what Darwin was trying so hard to get his readers to see: that there is never just one way of ranking nature's organisms. To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature, the "whole machinery of life." The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the "convenient" lines we draw over nature. To peer behind intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.
 . . . At long last, I had found it, a retort to my father. We matter, we matter. In tangible, concrete ways human beings matter to this planet, to society, to one another. It was not a lie to say so. Not a sappy cop-out or a sin. It was Darwin's creed! It was, conversely, a lie to say only that we didn't matter and keep it at that. That was too gloomy. Too rigid. Too shortsighted. Dirtiest word of all: unscientific.

The book's title is explained in the final chapter, and it concerns the "undoing," if you will, of David Starr Jordan and his obsession with naming fish. For according to the current approach to biological classification known as cladistics, there really is no such thing as "fish"; rather, there are various groups of creatures that happen to live underwater but otherwise don't necessarily share much evolutionary history. This part of the book, a single chapter, was too brief to treat the full complexity of this heady topic (me, I'll probably be accepting the notion of fish until my dying day), but it led into a beautiful meditation on the necessity of remaining open-minded, open-hearted, undogmatic, ready for any kind of delight.

I loved this book. I could see opening it tomorrow at page one and starting right in again. But, I've got too many other books to read at the moment. Well, for the rest of my life. And more arriving all the time! Yeah.

Oh, and a P.S.: each chapter was fronted by an exquisite scratchboard illustration by artist Kate Samworth. Here are a few of them (click on them to see large on black):

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Today's Covid-19 stats for Monterey County, compared with those from the last time I posted them, on the 18th: total cases, 11,284 vs. 11,022 (up 262); hospitalizations, 658 vs. 645 (up 13); deaths, 87 vs. 83 (up 4). Maybe maybe maybe we're slowing down? 

Stay well. Be open-minded and open-hearted. It's the only way to be, really. Too bad a good chunk of this country doesn't seem to know how . . .

Marie Howe, poet

I may be sharing more poetry the next couple of months. Tomorrow I'm starting an eight-week craft workshop with Mark Doty (see a few of his poems here and here and here and here)—which vaguely terrifies me (I am not a poet), but it also feels like a good challenge: sort of like when I travel abroad by myself. Call me crazy. 

Today we got our first packet of poems to read; apparently we will discuss such things as "the movement of sentences across lines, for example, or the use of questions, or the role of white space." Then Mark will ask us to write a poem of our own, based on whatever craft topic we focus on, to submit for next week's class and discussion. Given that I am not a poet, I may be reading more about poetry the next few weeks as well. I have no shortage of books on the subject. This could be fun, if I can keep the terror under control.

The poems he sent include ones by writers I've heard of and have read a bit of: Gwendolyn Brooks, Dorianne Laux, Honor Moore, and Doty's personal hero (he wrote a book about him, What Is the Grass) Walt Whitman. But there was a new one to me, Marie Howe (b. 1950), and of the five poems, hers moved me the most. So, here it is:

One Day

One day the patterned carpet, the folding chairs,
the woman in the blue suit by the door examining her split ends,

all of it will go on without me. I’ll have disappeared,
as easily as a coin under lake water, and few to notice the difference

—a coin dropping into the darkening—
and West 4th Street, the sesame noodles that taste like too much peanut butter

lowered into the small white paper carton—all of it will go on and on—
and the I that caused me so much trouble? Nowhere

or grit thrown into the garden
or into the sticky bodies of several worms,

or just gone, stopped—like the Middle Ages,
like the coin Whitman carried in his pocket all the way to that basement

bar on Broadway that isn’t there anymore.
Oh to be in Whitman’s pocket, on a cold winter day,

to feel his large warm hand slide in and out, and in again.
To be taken hold of by Walt Whitman! To be exchanged!

To be spent for something somebody wanted and drank and found delicious.

Book Report: Old Number Five

28. Castle Freeman, Old Number Five (2020) (10/18/2020)

Back in June, I read the first of Freeman's Sheriff Lucian Wing books, All That I Have.  I was positively impressed. I liked the laconic voice of Wing himself, the portrait he painted of the rural Vermont valleys he oversaw, the various permanent characters in his life—his troublesome wife, his former boss, his father-in-law. The book wasn't a mystery per se, though a crime does get solved. 

This second book in the series impressed me less. Wing is at once too passive—especially regarding that wife of his—and, let's just say, too reckless as he goes about solving a problem that would adversely affect some old-timers in his district. He maintains a hands-off approach, until he realizes that that won't work. It struck me as unrealistic, and although I'm willing to suspend disbelief if there's a reason, this novella is not a work of fantasy. Or, it shouldn't be. 

The story concerns some ne'er-do-wells who end up mysteriously, and badly, injured. Wing investigates—sort of. Mostly, he drives around, asks some questions, then leaves. And that's that. Until the "Chairman" comes along, a newly-arrived-in-the-district town council member who is, effectively, Wing's boss. And he wants answers. Which proves problematic.

Ultimately, there is a murder, which is attributed to "hunters in the area." Here, Wing and his father-in-law, Addison, talk about what happened, with some homespun philosophizing:

"You say 'they.' More than one you think?"
 "No idea."
 "No idea," Addison said. "There there's no real hope we'll ever know."
 "Sometimes that happens. More than a few times."
 "It's hard, though, isn't it? No explanation, no resolution. That's it: no resolution. No end to the story."
 "No end?"I said. "Sure there's an end. What I'm always saying: things get sorted out. They get settled. Things come to an end. Leave them alone, they always do."
 "That's been your experience, has it?" Addison asked me.
 "You bet," I said.
 "Well, but experience, don't you know, isn't the same as a resolution, is it? We were talking about a resolution. Weren't we?"
 "I ain't sure what we were talking about," I said.
 "Me either. Shall we have another boost [of whisky]?" . . .
 "You know?" I said. "Considering that I'm back home, me and the lass unparalleled, I believe I will."

There is also a rather confusing twist at the end regarding a long-ago friendship between Addison and Wing's own father—again, "new information" that I didn't buy, or at least make sense of. 

The book's title, by the way, refers to the Fifth Commandment: "Honor thy father and they mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" (Exodus 20:12). The older generation steers several of the subplots, and revelations, in the book.

Will I read the third in the series? Probably not. Too bad. Because as I said, I like Wing's voice. Also, the fact that these books are nice and short.

Puzzling

Because I have no life anymore—yes, the pandemic; also, no work lately, because I was sick of editing and told all askers no, not until January—I have basically been (a) reading, (b) walking the dog, (c) watching evening television (currently, one episode of Borgen followed by two or three of Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and (d) doing jigsaw puzzles. Since my last post on the subject, in July, I seem to have completed four puzzles. Here is photographic evidence. Of interest to no one but myself, I'm sure. But I feel like I somehow need to account for my time . . . I find it interesting that the harder the puzzle is, the more photos I take. The Hopper wins. Or maybe I just liked the Hopper best? It was aesthetically very pleasing, I must say. And challenging. Gotta love a challenge. Even if it's only a jigsaw puzzle.

Finished August 2, a puzzle featuring Maui (as always, click on the images to view them larger, if you wish):

Finished August 14, Edward Hopper's Portrait of Orleans:

These are sky pieces. I desaturated too much.
But just picture them blue, and you get the idea.

Finished September 27, a kestrel:

And finally, completed this Sunday, October 11, feathers:

I like to leave the finished puzzles on my drawing table for a few days so I can admire them. But it's been a week. I might be ready to start on a new one. 

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Today's Covid-19 figures for MoCo: total cases, 11,022 (up 79); hospitalizations, 645 (up 2); deaths, 83 (up 1). 

Stay well. Vote.

Book Report: Gehen, ging, gegangen

27. Jenny Erpenbeck, Gehen, ging, gegangen (2015) (10/16/2020)

I decided to brave this, the fourth book in the "Border Crossings" seminar that I'm participating in with Peter Turchi, in its original German--which, gratifyingly, proved to be much easier than my struggles with Norwegian, even though I haven't really spoken or read German in, oh, fifty years. But I learned it at an age—fourteen—and in an immersive experience—boarding school—that apparently allowed it to burrow deeply into my brain cells. Certainly, I didn't know all the words, so I did have the English translation, Go, Went, Gone, as well as a dictionary at the ready. But it was a pleasure to be able, for the most part, to simply sit and read, and appreciate the economy of the German language in contrast to the more inflected English.

The story concerns Richard, a widower and recently retired classics scholar who lives in what until 1989 was East Berlin. One day he sees an evening news report about a hunger strike being waged by ten African refugees who, with others, have been camped for a year and a half on a central square in the city. Just that day, he had passed through the same square, and hadn't even noticed the occupiers. Within days, the migrants have been moved to several facilities around the city, one of which is very close by Richard's home. He decides to go there and, perhaps, learn more about them. It is a project.

The book is very much about the migrants, their origin stories and the many stumbling blocks they encounter in their adoptive home, but even more, arguably, it is a story of Richard and his emotional awakening. He is an orderly man, set in his ways, and somewhat stuck since his wife died five years ago, though he still had his work. Now, he doesn't even have that. He is crossing borders of his own.

The book examines the passage of time—the title refers to the migrants' language lessons, learning how to conjugate irregular verbs, but the stories they tell also reflect their constant state of waiting, of being caught in between one real, productive life and another. As Richard learns more about these men, he reflects on everything that he takes for granted or considers "normal," which he now realizes is all superficial. And yet to go below the surface can be a recipe for pain—as well as, perhaps, joy. Or both.

As always, I flagged many passages. Here's one:

War destroys everything, Awad says: your family, your friends, the place where you lived, your work, your life. When you become foreign, Awad says, you don't have a choice. You don't know where to go. You don't know anything. I can't see myself anymore, can't see the child I used to be. I don't have a picture of myself anymore.
 My father is dead, he says.
 And me—I don't know who I am anymore.
 Becoming foreign. To yourself and others. So that's what a transition looks like.
 What's the sense of all of this? he asks, looking back at Richard again.
 Now Richard is the one who's supposed to answer, but he doesn't know how.
 Isn't it like this, Awad says: every adult human being—man or woman, rich or poor, if he has work or not, if he lives in a house or is homeless, it doesn't matter—every human being has his few years to live, and then he dies?
 Yes, that's how it is, Richard says.

If I reread this book (which I might), I will do so in English, which will, I'm sure, serve up much crisper images, since I will understand every word. But I am glad I read it in German for the first go-round. It feels somehow more "authentic."

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Today's Covid-19 numbers for Monterey County: 10,943 cases, 643 hospitalizations, 82 deaths—a change of 56, 1, and 0 since yesterday.

Cañada del Oro

Yesterday FifiBonacci, Mimring, and I set out for another geocaching adventure: to grab our third of a ten-cache/ten-hike challenge (introduced here), as well as some forty-nine other caches, on a (as it turned out) 10.4-mile loop in lovely Cañada del Oro Open Space, just west of Morgan Hill. It was a hot day, but we found plenty of shade, and there were plenty of delightful breezes to cool us off at crucial moments. We spotted a little gopher snake:

and some interesting fungi:

There was beautiful scenery:

As we started off, at about 8:15 a.m.

Views to the south and east

A glimpse of the trail we came up

David under the "crocodile tree" (or is it
a "warthog" or possibly a "badger" tree?)

And there were some clever caches:

"Sphere for Termites"

"Mossy Tree Mouth"

"Cabin in the Woods"

"No Tuffet Needed" (eek!)

And finally, here are a rather random photo of David (Fifi) and me and a couple of screenshots of our accomplishment that Alastair (Mimring) sent, to finish up this account:

Days like yesterday really recharge my batteries. And these days, my batteries are feeling pretty depleted, so yeah: I needed that.

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Today's Covid-19 numbers for Monterey County: 10,887, 642, 82--cases, hospitalizations, deaths. Up 575, 32, and 7 since October 7. Here is the picture since March:

Hard to tell if they're starting to go up again . . .

Be safe. Be well. Wear your mask.

An afternoon walk in downtown Monterey

We voted today--that is, completed our ballots: black pen, neatly filled in ovals. And because we didn't want to wait until tomorrow, when our city hall's dropbox will be available during business hours, to actually cast our votes, we decided to drive to downtown Monterey to avail ourselves of the public library's 24/7 dropbox. Done! Voted! Voilà! (Thank God we don't live in Texas.)

And then, why not just do our afternoon walk from there? Which took us to these localities, one of which—the Sloat Landing monument—we have never visited in our thirty years in this town:

The bears on the lawn in
front of Colton Hall,
where the California constitution
was signed in 1849.

Books (Leon Uris! I haven't thought about him
in 40 years), shoes, and a bag of clothes.
Left for some reason on a streetcorner.

Sloat Landing monument—30 years I've lived here,
and I'd never been up here.

Cooper-Molera Adobe,
at the top of Alvarado.

My favorite trees. I especially love them in winter
when they've lost their leaves,
but they sure looked lovely today.