Book Report: Tomato Red

12. Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red (1998) (2/27/21)

Not long ago on FB, a writer friend of mine (of gangster stories) declared . . . I don't remember the exact words, but something to the effect that Daniel Woodrell was a god and could do no wrong. So of course I had to seek him out.

I had read Winter's Bone and greatly admired it. When I read my review of that book now, it seems that book wasn't so very different in its components from this one: a holler in the Ozarks; young people with unrealizable dreams of getting out. And yet while that one moved me, I didn't much care for this one. I don't know quite why, and I keep trying to puzzle it out.

The language, again, was virtuosic—maybe to a fault: there were moments when I wanted someone to just say a plain sentence.

The basic plot concerns a young man, Sammy, who has drifted into Venus Holler, Missouri, "the most low-life part of town," and into the lives of nineteen-year-old Jamalee (Tomato Red, so called for her red-dyed short hair), her younger and drop-dead gorgeous brother Jason (he is also, probably, gay—not necessarily a good thing in podunk Missouri), and their hooker mother Bev. Breaking and entering into the homes of wealthy neighbors introduces them all. 

Jason ends up dead—no one knows how, and the law seems not to care; Jamalee ends up absconding with some money and a gun—hopefully to find a better life, but prospects seem slim; and Sammy, at the very end, whacks someone with a crowbar, so it's pretty clear where he's headed. 

I wanted to like these people, and couldn't. But I suppose I did develop some empathy (or do I mean sympathy?) for them. Or not specifically for them, but for actual red-blooded Americans who live in the poorest pockets of this country and want something better in life—but have no ability to achieve it. 

Sammy's whack of the crowbar at the end is driven by desperate frustration, and I believe (bleeding heart that I am) that that same frustration is what drives so many in this country into sorry fates: of prison, or addiction, or murder, or early death. We, as a society (and I definitely include the uberwealthy here), could do so much more to educate and arm young people and give them the wherewithal to escape circumstances beyond their choosing."Pull yourself up by the bootstraps" be damned.

For a sample of the writing, randomly chosen, here's this:

When you look as if you are a person who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect, you get put through the drill plenty. Big boss man comes sidling up on the driver's side, hand on his pistol butt, stayin' just over my shoulder for a clear shot in case I might snap and want to blast my way free of a parking ticket. John Law has standard demands: license, registration, name of passenger. He runs the paperwork through the behemoth computer they've got that keeps track of us un-mainstreamed residents till the day the rules decide to stack us all in a pile and squash us like little irritants. The computer keeps us easy to find. On me the computer prints out that I'm temporarily clean, with no outstanding warrants and no more tail on my parole, either. Yet damned if I don't smell guilty.
     He hands my papers back and says, "There you go, Mr. Barlach." He says my name wrong, then leans to my window. He smells of baby powder and Old Spice and has a mint clicking behind his teeth so he's got sweet breath and is prepared to start kissin' at any second. He says, "You and your vehicle match a description."
     "What's that, cool cat in car? Is that the description?"

This book gave me a lot to think about, in an uncomfortable way. Again, I can't say as I liked this book. But I'm glad I read it. (And seriously, the use of metaphor, simile, and the like? Not to mention dialogue? Masterful.)

Book Report: Surfacing

11. Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing (2019) (2/25/21)

This book of twelve essays explores, with depth of spirit and an observant eye, memory, meaning, and the reach of time, as well as landscape as place and home, not just of humans but of all life. Jamie (who is Scottish) is also a poet, and it shows in the exquisite details and descriptions she renders. 

The collection includes two longer essays, both dealing with archeological sites—one, about 500 years old, in Arctic Alaska (which I wrote a bit about here), the other 5,000 years old, on an island in Orkney. I found the first, "In Quinhagak," especially beautiful, for her musings and her noticings—there was something about the huge tundra landscape on the edge of the Bering Sea that seemed to blow her heart wide open—but the second, "Links of Noltland," was also lovely for tapping into our common humanity with people thousands of years gone. 

Being on site often left me freighted with thoughts about time, how it seems to expand and contract. I kept having to remind myself of the ages that passed during what we call the Neolithic or the Bronze Age. How those people's days were as long and vital as ours.
     I tried to picture that pioneer generation, landing on a lonely shore with provisions stowed and live animals tethered in the bottom of their boats. Sheep under a net, seed corn and tools, the transforming "Neolithic package" that had been pushing across Europe for a couple of thousand years before it reached here. It was a way of life that bound you inescapably.
     But does it matter, how it began? What Link reveals is the long and various "middles," the daily getting on with it that most of us inhabit, if we're fortunate enough to live in times of peace.

In the third-longest piece, "The Wind Horse," she recounts a journey she took as a young woman to a city on the China-Tibet border, which happened to coincide with the student protests and martial law of June 1989. Although the details here are as beautifully related as in the longer pieces, this essay was more "travelogue," in that she was observing, but she was not so much a participant in the "actual" life of the place. There was less at stake—until the very end, perhaps, when, back in the present, she reflects on the meaning to her of those events and of the various people (all fellow travelers) she met.

All the other pieces are very short, sometimes just two or three pages. Often an experience in the present sends her imagining back into the past—to nineteenth-century whaling voyages, to the days of Paleolithic hunters. She also reflects on her grown daughter heading into her own life, and on her father's quiet death sitting at home in his easy chair. In "A Tibetan Dog," a dream conjures an event in China—a dog bite—that returns many years later when she is met with a cancer diagnosis. As she falls fitfully to sleep in the hospital after a biopsy, full of worry, the dog comes to her, and reassures her that all will be okay:

It was the same Tibetan mutt, utterly forgotten until now, twenty-five years later. The dream-nip was the very sensation I felt then, in the same place. How funny, to think my subconscious must have waited till I'd fallen asleep, then gone rummaging through a million long-lost memories to find an image it could craft into a message I would wake from and understand. And what had it come up with, so triumphantly? That little dog, and its teeth.
     Now that it's all over, it pleases me to imagine that the lama-dog knew what it was doing back in 1989, that it was laying down an act of kindness, and that I'd regret the stone-throwing and cast a blessing after its memory instead. I'd thank it for becoming that dream-metaphor trawled up to reassure me in my hour of need.

I enjoyed this beautiful book, and am glad to know there are two more books by Jamie waiting for me: Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012).

Nunalleq Archeological Site

I am reading a book (that I will report on later) of beautiful essays, one of which concerns an archeological dig near the "city" (pop. 669) of Quinhagak, in the far west of Alaska at 60°N on the Bering Sea. The dig site is called Nunalleq ("old village" in Yup'ik) and dates back to about 1540 (if not earlier). Because the site is being steadily eroded as the permafrost melts and the sea encroaches, work has been nonstop—at least for two months at a time: July and August—and fruitful. More than 50,000 artifacts have been unearthed over the ten-plus years of the project. In 2018, a museum opened to showcase the finds of this remarkable site, following processing at the University of Aberdeen under the supervision of dig manager Rick Knecht.

Here's an excerpt from the essay in question, "In Quinhagak," by Kathleen Jamie from the book Surfacing:

[The Quinhagak Village Corporation president Warren Jones] spoke about the dig. "We pleaded with those elders [to allow the dig to happen]. We said it was for the youngsters. How are they to know their own culture? We had nothing. When I was growing up, all we got was the church! We knew nothing about our own culture."
     "And is it working?"
     Warren relaxed as he spoke.
     "It's pivotal. Last year we held a dance. The dig inspired it. Did you know that? On that site, they are discovering dance-masks that our ancestors wore. The missionaries told us our ceremonies were devil worship! They brainwashed us! There hadn't been a ceremonial dance in this village for a hundred years. Well, one of the teachers put this dance together from elders' memories and fragments from other villages. They made that dance and the youngsters performed it."
     He looked defiant. "Well, the first time that drum hit, the hair on my neck stood up. I thought, It's back! Now, I'm telling the hunters to keep the wattles of the caribou. It's what the women's dance-fans are made of. Now they are required again, for the first time in a hundred years.
     ". . . You know how we do 'show and tell,' at the end of the season? First time, forty people came. Last year, it was eighty. This time we've got TV reporters coming, National Geographic are sending people... Since this dig began, kids from this village are hunting, carving again. They're working the dig, learning archaeology, learning their own traditions. We're sending more kids to college. Is that a coincidence? I don't think so."

A Wordpress site was launched in 2012, chronicling the work at Nunalleq in all its nitty and gritty. The site continues to this day, celebrating new PhDs and awards, and presenting some of the unique finds of the dig. It's a remarkable resource. Occasionally, Warren himself wanders through one of the entries.

One area of the Wordpress site that I find especially interesting is #ArtefactoftheDay. Here are a few of the items featured:

Labrets (lip plugs)

Dance masks

Amber beads

A legendary palraiyuk (a gator-like creature)

Red ochre-painted bentwood bowl

Wooden spoon

An early show-and-tell:
more heritage coming to light

And although these are not from the dig, these are Yup'ik dance fans, or tegumiak (the men's are made with snowy owl feathers; these appear to be the women's):

Reading this essay and learning about these hardy people and the otherworldly land they inhabit has been eye-opening for me. This world with all its denizens, even including us humans, is simply remarkable. 

Book Report: American Zion

10. Betsy Gaines Quammen, American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West (2019) (2/21/21)

This book, which grew out of a PhD dissertation on the relationship between Mormonism and public-land feuds, is jam-packed with history, current events, policy, personal anecdotes, myths, and facts. In that regard, it's a bit of a mess, veering from one subject to another. But that said, it's all fascinating, if also at times frustrating. 

The first of three parts, "The Cowboy and the Prophet," recounts the founding of the Church of Latter-day Saints by Joseph Smith and his journey, taken up by Brigham Young after Smith's murder, from New York State to Ohio, then Missouri and Illinois, and ultimately to Utah: Deseret, or Zion. The self-contained, can-do culture of these resourceful, devout, discriminated-against people is one key component of the public-land saga.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Joseph Smith were contemporaries, born two years apart. . . . Both were driven to understand the divine, and they instilled their ideas within two distinct cultures that continue, even today, to clash over public lands. To Smith, land became sacred through human industry. When the Mormons reached the Great Basin, sacralizing a landscape was achieved by planting, irrigating, running cows. . . . God's blessings were manifest in the fruit-laden branches of trees growing in a carefully tended Mormon orchard, or in a trail blasted into rocks. To Emerson, by contrast, lands without the imprint of humans were divine. Holy places could be found in the jut of a mountain, the chop of a river, and the polished face of a sun-dappled stone.

Add to that the Mormon belief that the U.S. Constitution was, in fact, divinely conveyed and that they are its rightful protectors.

Part two, "American Zion," goes into the history of ranching and federal land management in southern Utah and neighboring Nevada, the area that Cliven Bundy and his clan come from. Bundy, famously, stopped paying the pittance of a fee for using public lands to graze his cattle stock in 1993, after the federal government demanded that he cease grazing (an effort to protect the endangered desert tortoise) and ultimately, in 1998, canceled his lease agreement—which made his cattle operations on nearby public lands a breach of law. Things came to a head in 2014 when federal officials attempted to round up Bundy's animals—and militiamen from all over the country showed up in protest. Two years later, Bundy et al. took over the Malheur National Wildlife Sanctuary in southeastern Oregon, ostensibly in support of local ranchers. Their claim: the federal government "cannot" own land; all so-called public land should be "returned" to the people who use it—the ranchers, the miners, the loggers.

Threaded through all this are accounts of the Paiute Indians, an array of tribes and bands who peacefully occupied the region before the Mormons arrived and claimed it as their own. When Bundy invokes "tradition" and the way "things have always been done," he conveniently overlooks these natives of the land.

Part three, "We the People," brings together Bundy ("We the people" is one of his key phrases) and the right-wing libertarians—not just militias, but also elected representatives, legislators and sheriffs, who believe strongly in states' rights and "posse comitatus," or local power—and pits them against environmentalists and those who advocate a greater social good. Even BLM managers prove ineffective, either cowed by the force of arms they are met with or feeling a certain sympathy for these scrappy fighters. 

It's complicated, and what I've summarized here only scratches the surface. Quammen goes deep, letting the actors themselves tell much of the story. "The West can be explained through a series of myths," she writes, and these myths inform the on-the-ground stories she relates, 

from the myth of the cowboy to the myth of Zion. The Bundys embrace both of these as well as constitutional, prophetic, and conspiracy myths. Edward Abbey perpetuated the myth of wilderness as solitary—a land without humans. But lands are in fact filled with people and have been long before European colonization. There is also a myth that longstanding convention is better than change. This idea is embodied in such slogans as "make American great again," demanding that the practices of yesteryear continue unabated no matter the political, ecological, cultural, or economic consequences. . . . [Rural westerners believe] that government overreach and extreme environmentalism, not shifting economics, tapped-out resources, and habitat destruction, are diminishing opportunities in the West. In truth, those factors are changing opportunities, yes. But not diminishing them.

She ends by invoking Aldo Leopold, who, in his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, wrote that

an ecological ethic, in the sense of one human individual's behavior among other creatures, means limiting "freedom of action in the struggle for existence." A philosophical ethic, he continued, derives from the "differentiation of social from anti-social conduct." He saw these as two definitions of one thing. "The Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society; democracy to integrate social organization to the individual." We need to live in ways that allow others to live securely. But, he added, "There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it.". . . Thanks to him and others, nowadays we do recognize—some of us recognize—that lands and their inhabitants, apart from their utility to humanity, must be appreciated and safeguarded. Because even in this, we are sustained.
     The Bundys disagree. They have defied and rejected these principles—Golden Rule, land ethic, stewardship, or conservation—in their fight to possess and use American public land. They have insisted upon being anarchic atop fragile landscapes harboring vulnerable species, and they have done it in a most anti-social way. They have bullied the public and federal agents, broken laws, and brought guns to their fight. And they have browbeat those who haven't fully embraced their level of lawlessness. . . . The Bundys want no regulation on lands they believe, in spite of everything, that they reign over.

And so far, they are winning. But fortunately, they are also in the minority among western ranchers, many of whom see the writing on the wall and are shifting their efforts to more sustainable enterprises, or to collaboration with neighboring organizations. The frontier is dead, and has been for a long time. Life must always continue to adjust.

Geocaching

If you've been following me at all, you will know that I really enjoy geocaching. I find it a most satisfying hobby, pastime, obsession—a delightful (and sometimes challenging) way to spend time. You get out exploring, hiking; maybe learn some history. There may be puzzle-solving. We've encountered some awfully sweet spots on the planet thanks to geocaching. I am not ashamed of the pleasure I get from it.

I just thought I'd compile a list of the many posts I've devoted to this sport. I will try to remember to keep this updated.

Frivolity—as I like to title my posts about this frivolous hobby—4/6/15 (the cacher I mentioned back then, who had found 112,440 caches, is now up to 209,209; I do not even know how that is possible—me, I've found 3,766 caches, over 14 years)
travelbugs, 4/28/15
diabolical Beatrix Potter puzzles, 6/8/15
pizza, 7/11/15
perseverance, 7/27/15
Steinbeck's Salinas, 9/7/15
Nisene March quasi-death march with Mimring, 9/25/15
Halloween night cache, 10/25/15
a math-based puzzle cache, 2/20/16
filling in my calendar, 2/29/16
Castrovile, 11/25/16
Henry Coe State Park, 12/28/16
Tattletales, 2/10/17
Venice, Italy, 4/4/17
more Henry Coe SP, 4/15/17
Moss Landing, 6/25/17
WWII puzzle cache, 7/22/17
a twins-themed cache in L.A., 9/16/17
geocaches I have known (random photos), 9/19/17
a trip down Highway 1, 9/22/18
Salinas public art, 9/17/18
Toro Hall of Fame, 10/29/18
Hollister, 11/16/19
Fremont Peak State Park, 1/1/20
Elkhorn Slough, 1/10/20
The Mystery of the Missing Geocacher, 1/23/20
Fremont Peak, 1/1/20
Garrapata State Park, 7/2/20
Santa Cruz Mountains with Mimring, 7/25/20
Cañada del Oro, 10/16/20
Almaden Quicksilver, 11/21/20
Coyote Creek, 2/19/21
Coyote Lake–Harvey Bear Ranch County Park, 3/27/21
Henry Coe, 4/17/21
Urban (Santa Cruz), 8/2/21
Gilroy and the Reach the Peak challenge, 10/28/21
Quicksilver Almaden, 12/28/21
Mt. Madonna and souvenirs, 2/19/22
Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve, 9/4/22
Fort Ord, 12/13/22 (Adventure Lab)

Covid-19

Today we got the first of our two Covid-19 vaccines. It was Moderna. In another month, on March 19, we will get the second shot, and . . . the world will be a safer place. At least for us.

We did have to drive an hour to San Jose. Then sit in a veeeerrrrry slow-moving line of cars in a shopping center parking lot for two hours. It wasn't exactly easy-peasy. But it felt important. And we had our phones (and each other, not to mention the dog) to amuse us, so long as every so often I looked up to see if it was time to move yet. Usually it wasn't. 

Afterward, we did some geocaching. One walk took us along Coyote Creek, which would have been really lovely if it wasn't for the fact that it borders on Highway 101—so, traffic noise. But still: there were lots of beautiful oaks, lots of green clover, some meadows and ponds, and of course the creek itself. Also a few glorious trees, like these:

The one on the left: pink-flowered (plum?). The one on the right is . . . maybe a willow? They were both being heavily sun-kissed in gorgeous light. And yes, I messed with the photo, so who knows what it really looked like. But you can see the fellow there, taking photos of the blossoms; and his dog, seriously wanting to engage our Milo in play. There were cyclists on the paved path, and lots of walkers. And we found all the caches we were looking for.

Even with the two hours in the parking lot, it was a very nice day. And I haven't even mentioned the yummy gyros sandwiches.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But while I'm at it, I'll provide an update on our county's Covid-19 stats. As of today, there are 41,787 confirmed cases, 66 current hospitalizations, and 315 deaths. The last time I posted any numbers was December 25: 24,538, 155, and 185, respectively. I don't know what cases and hospitalizations really mean—they fluctuate. But deaths: they don't; they simply increase. And the fact that there have been 130 deaths in the past less than two months, compared to 185 over the ten months previous? Well, it's something to think about. 

Stay safe. Get vaccinated when you can!

Waxwings

Many years ago, before the fence went up between our house and the house up the hill, when our neighbor Paul still lived there and a beautiful cotoneaster bush that we all admired graced the grassy slope, there was always a memorable day sometime in winter, late December or early January, when the bush was full of berries and the cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) came to feast and get drunk on the fermenting fruit.

Today a FB friend posted a photo of a Japanese waxwing (B. japonica):

It seemed more colorful than our cedar waxwings. And then, of course, I started wondering: just how many waxwings are there?

Three, it turns out. The third is the Bohemian waxwing (B. garrulus; no relation, I'm pretty sure, to Bohemian Rhapsody—and not restricted to Bohemia, since it's one of the two North American waxwings). 

Here are the cedar and Bohemian:

When I thought "more colorful" with the Japanese version, I apparently meant more red. They're all beautifully colorful.

The genus name, Bombycilla, translates to "silktail," a nod to their soft, silky plumage. Those red dots on their wings look like sealing wax, hence their common name. They are fruitivores, feeding on strawberries and cherries, mulberries and raspberries, mistletoe and dogwood berries, and of course cotoneaster fruits. They do not migrate far, unless it's a poor fruit year where they happen to be—and then they go in search. If food supplies are good, they may nest in great numbers, without any territoriality, which may explain why they have no true song. Pairing includes a ritual in which mates pass a fruit back and forth several times until one eats it. The female is the main nest builder, though both gather construction materials.

I wish we still had that cotoneaster up the hill. Though I have gotten used to the fence, which was down for a while the last few months, until it got rebuilt in a more lasting fashion. And given the state of the new neighbors' yard, and their free-range, barking dog? I guess I'd rather have the fence . . . 

But I do miss the waxwings.

Book Report: So Long, See You Tomorrow

9. William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) (2/15/21)

I learned about this book in a New Yorker article, "The Best Books We Read in 2020." The recommendation was by Rebecca Mead, who writes brilliant profiles for that magazine. In her post she says, "I’ve been thinking about how to make literary use of memory. How might one capture the way that images or encounters lodge in the imagination and become, over time, layered with meaning?"

That is precisely what this short (135 pages), exquisite book does. It is part memoir, with Maxwell, in his late 60s, thinking back to an incident—a murder/suicide, involving once close friends and infidelity—from his youth. But that sparks all sorts of other associations: his own mother's death from influenza; his difficult relationship with his father; a fleeting friendship with—as it turned out—the son of the murderer; Maxwell's own long-held feelings of guilt for not reaching out to the friend, Cletus. 

But halfway through, Maxwell (who, by the way, worked for 40 years as an editor at the New Yorker, consorting with the best) turns to, not fiction exactly (though it is), but richly contextualized imagining. As he puts it in introducing this section, "If any part of the following mixture of truth and fiction strikes the reader as unconvincing, he has my permission to disregard it. I would be content to stick to the facts if there were any." 

The bulk of the story takes place in about 1922, in small-town/rural Illinois. The details that Maxwell summons up, not just the sensual ones but also the emotional, are, as I said, exquisite. Every bit of his account is convincing, and deeply moving. In it, he tries to make sense of—or perhaps better, provide coherence to—lives falling apart.

He continues from the above quote:

The reader will also have to do a certain amount of imagining. He must imagine a deck of cards spread out face down on a table, and then he must turn one over, only it is not the eight of hearts or the jack of diamonds but a perfectly ordinary quarter of an hour out of Cletus's past life. But first I need to invent a dog, which doesn't take very much in the way of prestidigitation; if there were cattle there had to be a dog to help round them up. In that period—I don't know how it is now—farm dogs were usually a mixture of collie and English shepherd. The attraction between dogs and adolescent boys can, I think, be taken for granted. There is no outward sign of trouble in the family. The two farms are both on the right-hand side of the new hard road and have a common boundary line. The Wilson house [where the murder took place], with its barns and sheds, is next to the road and an eight of a mile closer to town. To get to where Cletus lives you have to drive up a narrow lane that has a gate at either end of it. When it is almost time for Cletus to come home from school the dog squeezes herself under the gates and trots off up the road to the mailboxes, where she settles down in a place that she has made for herself in the high grass with her chin resting on her four paws. These mailboxes . . . are on posts and look like wading birds.
     In the very few years since my father disposed of the horse and carriage, there has been a change in the landscape. It is now like a tabletop, the trees mostly gone, the hedges uprooted in favor of barbed wire—resulting in more land under cultivation, more money in the bank, but also in a total exposure. Anyone can see what used to be reserved for the eye of the hawk as it wheeled in slow circles.
     If a farm wagon or a Model T Ford goes by, the dog follows it with her eyes but she does not raise her head. She is expecting a boy on a bicycle.

The dog, as it happens, makes an excellent observer.

I flagged so many beautiful passages. Here's one from near the end, speaking of loss and neglect:

Whether they are part of home or home is part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen—the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washday, of wool drying on the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops.
     His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-backed copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it.
     Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too—the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the open door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.

I know end-of-year best-of lists irk some people. But I am very glad I checked this one out, and stumbled on this gem.

(Here is an excellent essay about Maxwell by A. O. Scott.)

February 14

Every so often I search Flickr for a day in my life, to see photos I've posted on a particular day of the year. February 14 turns me up four photos, from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. I feel a little chagrined that my participation in Flickr has fallen to almost zero. It's a great space for sharing, and archiving, photographs. Maybe I should make a point of showing up there more often?

Paris Bakery, downtown Monterey

An edit of a book on French wines

One of a mob of cedar waxwings that showed up
on our pyrocanthus to feast away!

A lone sparrow on our soon-to-be-no-more
ash tree

But seeing as how February 14 is St. Valentine's Day, here are a few pictures of my Valentine of going on 42 years. My co-adventurer. My partner in life. My rock. My love. David Ralph Canright.

Having just finished a mud run

Pondering life on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Testing some sort of scientific phenomenon
at the Maryland Science Center, Bal'more

A sushi restaurant with interesting lighting

Best buds forever!

We like mushrooms

Making friends with trolls

In the high Sierra

Best buds FOREVER!

1983-ish? In El Cerrito, our first home.
(Or should I say, Who is that dreamboat?)

Out geocaching

!

In Xinjiang Province, getting ready for a total eclipse

A 3D movie seems to be in our future

Ah, air travel

In North Carolina at a family reunion

Chillaxin'

Who IS that guy?

On Teewinot. Climbing through life together.
❤️

Cutting a Tree

Yesterday I went out with three other wilderness rangers, Lynn, Steve, and Beth, to clear some trees from the first two miles of the Pine Ridge Trail, which heads east out of Pfeiffer–Big Sur State Park into the heart of the Ventana Wilderness. I knew we dealt with three trees, because we had to get out our big guns—or rather, saws: 6-foot Al and 5-foot Boss—and stop and strategize. But apparently we cleared the trail of seven trees in all while I wasn't paying attention. I'm glad somebody (Lynn) was. 

Here are some pictures I took of the largest tree we wrestled out of the trail, a redwood burnt in the 2016 Soberanes Fire. I wasn't documenting our work per se, but the photos give an idea of what we do. It's fun!

The obstacle: 3 feet in diameter

First task: get rid of extraneous branches

Steve carving away bark on the lower
(second) cut: bark is hard on the saw

Lynn and Steve and Al tackling the first cut, up the hill

The second cut was a bear: difficult to get comfortably
positioned, especially on the near side. But finally,
we were through, the cut piece dropped—and the saw
got pinned. But no worries: hammering on a wedge
in the cut should free it—and boy, did it!
The log started rolling, down the hill, onto the trail,
and right on over the edge. Lynn, who was
standing down the trail, had to run out of its way
(she was a ways down, so there was no danger—
but none of us were expecting the log to move as
quickly and decisively as it did). It was something to see—
and hear. Job well done!

And now just time for cleanup.
What a satisfying log clearing operation!

Book Report: Over Tumbled Graves

8. Jess Walter, Over Tumbled Graves (2001) (2/9/21)

I don't even know what made me think of Jess Walter when I was searching for a new, preferably page-turner book the other day. I remember really enjoying his The Financial Lives of Poets (2009) and Beautiful Ruins (2012). I couldn't begin, now, to tell you what the first was about, but I remember the basic plot and mood (ebullient?) of the second. His range is broad and eclectic. And for some reason (maybe the fact that he has a brand-new book out?), Over Tumbled Graves wiggled into my mind the other day, and I happened to know on just which shelf it resided.

This, Walter's first novel (of seven), is a mystery-thriller, but it's also very much about the place it's set in—Spokane, Washington, Walter's hometown—and the relationships of people depicted in it. So it's not just about (a) murder, (b) police investigation, (c) murder solved. It's more than that. With a twist at the end that I expected but was not at all disappointed to see. It wasn't one of those out-of-left-field twists; it felt organic to the whole.

The basic plot involves the search for a killer, which quickly overlaps with the discovery of one, then two, and ultimately five murdered prostitutes, several of them laid out along a riverbank as if to gather attention—of the FBI variety. There are a couple of detectives, good at what they do, who have an unrequited thing for each other. There are a couple of FBI profilers who despise each other. The killer at the start is observed and followed, but although he remains elusive to the cops, we readers get to know him a little, and to sympathize with him. And through all of this, the neighborhoods and shady areas and river of Spokane draw us along.

I did not flag any passages, but I did make a mental note of page 303, and this is what's there. It's from the POV of Detective Alan Dupree, a worn-out homicide detective who's pushing 50 and being superseded by a young, unimaginative guy with up-to-date, high-tech training.

The tired houses and dead lawns at the base of the South Hill reminded him of an old theory. The theory of yard relativity. He believed you could tell a criminal by the amount of yardwork he did. He'd first come up with the theory in neighborhoods like this one, responding to a thousand fights and drug deals and domestics, and after a time it dawned on him that he was almost never called to houses with well-kept yards. This wasn't an economic or racial thing. It was a pure yardwork thing, the basic theory being that criminals don't have the patience for yardwork. That's what crime is, he believed—a lack of patience. Want to get rich quick? Get laid without all the work? Want to get rid of your business partner without the trouble of suing him or paying him off? That's the difference between criminals and real people. Patience.

Walter is a great observer—of detail, but also of character and desire and where a person stands on the sliding spectrum from earnestness to wiseassery, energy to exhaustion, engagement to desperation. The people in his books always seem very real to me. I admire that in any writer, and I admire Walter for pushing the envelope and trying out new situations, characters, and motivations.

Around the World through Food - Netherlands Antilles

The other evening I cooked a rather bizarre dish involving shredded chicken, green peppers, dill pickles, capers, green olives, tomatoes, golden raisins, a Scotch bonnet, ketchup, and tomato paste (some recipes include eggs and/or cashews)—which combination is interesting enough on its own, but what was really different was the fact that the entire mélange is baked within a shell of thinly sliced Edam cheese. It's called Keshi Yena, and it is known as the national dish of Aruba (formerly part of Netherlands Antilles). Traditionally, the meat mixture (which might be ground beef instead of or in addition to chicken) would be baked or steamed within the rind of an empty 2-kilo wheel of Edam cheese, topped with more grated or sliced cheese, but since wheels of used-up Edam are hard to come by, layered slices do the trick.

It may have been bizarre, but it sure was tasty.

Me, I like cooking from recipes, and the more involved or exotic, the better. So Keshi Yena was just the ticket. Nothing like anything I would ever just throw together. Despite the fact that it is, essentially, a little bit of everything, thrown together. I also like researching international recipes, dishes that use interesting spices or combinations of ingredients. I have had it in mind, for example, to do a "project" of savory pastries from around the world: empanadas, pirogi and piirakka, Cornish pasties and scones, hortopita and bučnica, huzzah!

So I'm thinking of adding a thread to this blog, of dishes from around the world that I grapple with myself. And if I end up going nowhere with this idea, at least I have now saluted Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Sint Willem for their endemic and delicious cheesy chicken dish.