Book Report: The Lost Spells

48. Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, illustrator, The Lost Spells (2020) (9/29/21)

A while back I read a beautiful book called The Lost Words, by this same author and illustrator. I was enchanted. The descriptive poetry was lovely, the illustrations exquisite. 

And so I bought their newest book—which I very much liked, but it was a little less of a love affair. One reason was, that first book was such a wonderful surprise: I had no idea what I was getting into when I cracked that cover. But also, I adored the very large format of the first book, while this, as the inside jacket itself says, is "its little sister." It's small! To be held in your hand, perhaps tucked in a daypack that you take out into the world. The last many pages of this book, indeed, are a "glossary"—an identification key to all the many animals and some plants tucked into its pages, and that are out in the world to be found. 

The poetry is, again, wonderful, and often I was struck by the way the words, in their rhyme or their rhythm, captured the essence of the thing being described: Red Fox, Moth, Daisy, Jackdaw, and on and on. This book felt a little more "adult" than The Lost Words for some reason. Not a bad thing. It is a book about rewilding our lives, about noticing the magic all around us, about summoning up incantations to keep that wildness alive. These spells feel very necessary in today's world.

I would love to see an exhibition of all the beautiful, beautiful watercolors, in their original manifestation. Here are a few of them:

And here is a conversation with Macfarlane and Morris about this book:

Now I think it's about time I actually sat down and read one of Macfarlane's books for adults. Or at the very least I should make more of a point of checking him out more regular-like on Twitter.

Finally, here's a great conversation between Macfarlane and On Being's Krista Tippett. Toward the very end, at about 42:00, he talks a bit about The Lost Words and then he reads a bit from The Lost Spells. Delightful!

Book Report: The Dark Vineyard

47. Martin Walker, The Dark Vineyard (2009) (9/28/21)

I discovered the protagonist of this book (and of 14 more) back in 2019, with Bruno, Chief of Police. As I wrote then, Bruno is an amiable character, and in this second book of the series we are, again, treated to a lot of beautiful countryside, some delicious food and drink, and an array of personalities, here ranging from vintners to police officers to young rugby players to old hippies to hunting dogs and horses. The mystery, such as it is, involves an act of arson and GMO crops. A couple of deaths occur—seemingly natural, but maybe not? There is grape-stomping and dancing. Industrial espionage figures in, as an international wine company seeks to intrude on the quiet little town of St-Denis. But the townspeople come up with a counter-plan of their own, and all is saved. French inheritance laws also come into play. In the end, Bruno uncovers an old family feud, and justice is served. He is also preoccupied with thoughts about his love life, but that, too, seems to get sorted out at the end. In some ways, the mystery is the least of his worries.

Not much more to say than that. I enjoyed bumping along country roads with Bruno in his van, and hearing his conversations. At one point, Bruno hosts a dinner party, and I will take my habitual quotation from there:

Six shining plates, still warm from the [first-course] omelette, greeted Bruno as he returned with another great platter, the six grilled bécasses [woodcocks] neatly arrayed. Their heads and long beaks were still attached, but each bird had been split down the middle, and six slices of freshly grilled baguette were lined up beside them.
     "This is for Jacqueline [a young visiting Canadian] and Pamela [an Englishwoman and local resident], who have never tasted this delicacy," Bruno said, standing at the head of the table. "Hubert [a vintner], please start by pouring the Saint-Estèphe, and thanks for bringing it. You should all know that the bécasse has a peculiar characteristic. When it is startled and flies from the ground, it evacuates its bowel. This is easy since it has a very simple digestive system, just a single stomach in the shape of a fat tube, which is completely emptied when it takes flight. That tube is a delicacy. When cooked, it softens into a most delicious and creamy consistency, which we spread on the grilled bread."
     He took a long spoon and scraped from the inside of each grilled bird a white tube, perhaps half an inch wide and less than two inches long. He placed each one on a slice of bread, spread it with the back of the spoon, handed one to each of his guests and then served the bird itself.    
      [The group eats, exclaims, toasts, then discuss Hubert's plans for expanding his vineyard so as to "match the best of Bergerac."] "Anyway [says Hubert's wife, Nathalie], we're going to try. But first, I'm going to eat my favorite part of the bécasse."
     She neatly severed the charred head of the bird from the remains of its body, and then picked it up by the beak. She put the head of the bird into her mouth and cracked the thin skull, tossed the beak back into the plate and chewed with evident pleasure. The other French people at the table followed her example. Jacqueline and Pamela stared.
     "I don't believe I'm doing this," said Jacqueline, but copied the others. Very gingerly, Pamela did the same.
     "But that's delicious," said Pamela, obviously surprised. "I thought it would be all bone."
     "One of the secrets of French cooking," said the baron, "is never to let anything go to waste."

The book ends with Bruno, on horseback, seeing a bécasse flying off at the edge of a field and remarking that hunting season is just around the bend. There will be more feasting.

And now, I am one book behind in my reading challenge. I see a children's book in my very near future.

Books

I happened on this cartoon the other day, and I laughed, of course:

But seriously: that pile of unread books is so amateur! Here's mine—or rather, one of mine: I have many.

And to be fair, the stacks of books on the right
are ones I have read. I do, in fact, read...

The other day a friend wrote a blog post about how he no longer reads actual books, he does all his reading on a device. I admire the spareness, but... I just... can't. I love holding a book. I love admiring the cover art, which I get to reabsorb every time I pick the book up. I appreciate the choice of font, including size and leading, all of which influence the length of a book. (My preference: short.) I love attaching sticky-flags to passages I especially admire—or in the rare case of a book that has such passages every page or two, I love writing in books: underlining and marginaliaing. I have a habit of noting new-to-me words on the last blank page of a book (most recently: bécasse, aka woodcock, and ormolu, a sort of gilding—these in a mystery set in the Périgord region of France, review upcoming). 

But. I am now considering moving out of the country, and putting only the most necessary items (such as furniture) in storage. Are hundreds of books actually "necessary"? No. As my friend points out, you can carry thousands of books with you on your iPad. 

An entire library on a slim device. It boggles the mind.

I will most likely not reread any of the hundreds of books I've read and still possess, or even look at the many flags. But still: they feel like friends. They remind me of time well spent, of knowledge gleaned, of mysteries solved and questions asked and, very often, answered, in one way or another. 

This evening I considered purchasing a few new books that I definitely want to read: Richard Powers's Bewilderment, Michael Pollan's This Is Your Mind on Plants, Adam Grant's Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. The only title I did purchase, I purchased on Kindle: Brad Kessler's North. I would really rather read it as a physical book, but... I also want to (try to) transition. Now I just need to remember that it's there, on Kindle. I need to create a new habit, I guess you could say. Brad will be my test case. (He was an instructor in my MFA program, though I didn't work with him. He wrote the beautiful Birds in Fall and delightful Goat Song. I am very curious about this new book.)

Anyway, here are a few photos I've shot over the years of books, singly or multiply.  

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The other day I learned, in a New York Times article, that Christo—who died last year at the age of 84—had one last project to spring on the world, at Paris's Arc de Triomphe. It is up now, until early October. I immediately wrote to my niece, who lives not too very far away, to ask if she'd go see it "for me." She responded with a phone call, and a good hour-plus conversation. It was so nice to chat! But to my request, she said no. She's got a sick dog and needs to be with her. Fair enough. Plus, she's never heard of Christo. Also, fair enough. But yeah, I was a little disappointed. I rather thought this might be an interesting experience for her. Why? Christo's audacity maybe? She would be participating in the communal taking-in of the transformation of a weighty memorial—into momentary erasure and beautification at once? It's the Arc de Triomphe, for crying out loud. A monumental undertaking! But, no. Not gonna happen. And... it's fine.

I first encountered Christo and his wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude when they planted 3,100 giant umbrellas in California (southern San Joaquin Valley, north of Los Angeles) and Japan (Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo), in 1991. Unfortunately, I learned about the project after the fact—they tend to last two weeks, and then, whoosh, gone—so I couldn't witness it firsthand. Many years earlier, they'd stretched a fence of white cloth across 25 miles of Marin County. These are my spaces. I loved it that they used my known territory to make us look again, reevaluate just what these places mean.

Five years ago, Christo and Jeanne-Claude mounted The Floating Piers in northern Italy, and I similarly wrote to a friend who lives nearby and asked her to go experience it "for me." She did! With family and friends! She sent me photos! I was so happy! 

Here are some of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's projects, with links to descriptions. I'm so glad they wrought their magic on the earth—all at their own expense. (They sold their drawings to raise funds.) Theirs was a personal labor of love, creativity, and inspiration.

Running Fence, Marin County, California, 1976

The Umbrellas, California, 1991

The Umbrellas, Ibaraki, Japan, 1991

Pont Neuf, 1985

Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1995

Wrapped Walk Ways, Jacob Loose Park,
Kansas City, Missouri, 1978

The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 2005

The London Mastaba, Serpentine Lake, Hyde Park, 2018

The Floating Piers, Lago Iseo, Italy, 2016

Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Florida, 1983

 Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, 2021

Béla Fleck and his banjo

I'm just going to post a few YouTube videos here, mainly for me to enjoy later. Béla Fleck is a banjo player extraordinaire. I love him. I've seen him live a few times, which makes me love him all the more. There's nothing like live music (with, perhaps, the exception of Miles Davis, whose back we saw live at Wolf Trap, or Eric Clapton, who let his band do the heavy lifting at a concert in San Jose).

Anyway, Béla is wonderful. Check him out. This first clip also features Chick Corea; we saw the two of them at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2015.

This next one is a cut from a brand-new (released September 10) album, My Bluegrass Heart.

And here is Béla and his bluegrass banjo-playing wife, Abigail Washburn, from a 2018 NPR Tiny Desk Concert:

Here is Béla and the Flecktones—his central identity (at least, that's how I look at it)—from 2018:

And finally, Béla and the original Flecktones, from 2011, which included the amazing keyboardist and harmonica player Howard Levy—man, am I glad I got to hear him play in person:

Antietam (Sharpsburg, Maryland)

Seven years ago, David and I spent his birthday weekend of September 14 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. While there, we took an excursion to Antietam Battlefield, which I wrote about here. 

Today, Heather Cox Richardson wrote about that battle, in which, over the course of twelve hours, some 3,500 soldiers on both sides were killed, with 19,000 wounded or missing. Although it was a turning point in the Civil War, as she points out (and has written a book about), the war is still, in essence, raging. White supremacy has not died. Far from it.

She states that the

slaughter was brought home to northern families in a novel way after the battle. Photographer Alexander Gardner, working for the great photographer Matthew Brady, brought his camera to Antietam two days after the guns fell silent. Until Gardner’s field experiment, photography had been limited almost entirely to studios. People sent formal photos home and recorded family images for posterity, as if photographs were portraits.
     Taking his camera outside, Gardner recorded seventy images of Antietam for people back home. His stark images showed bridges and famous generals, but they also showed rows of bodies, twisted and bloating in the sun as they awaited burial. By any standards these war photos were horrific, but to a people who had never seen anything like it before, they were earth-shattering. . . .
     “The dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams,” one reporter mused. “We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee. There is a confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the jumble of type.” But Gardner’s photographs erased the distance between the battlefield and the home front. They brought home the fact that every name on a casualty list “represents a bleeding, mangled corpse.” “If [Gardner] has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it,” the shocked reporter commented.

Here are some of Gardner's photos. They might not seem so shocking to us nowadays—though they should. All war photos, or photos of desperate refugees, or of crowded refugee camps, or of starving children the world over, should, by God, shock us. The inhumanity that humankind is capable of—for what reason?—should shock us.

Here are a few photos taken today, of Haitians in Del Rio, Texas, "creating a humanitarian emergency and a logistical challenge U.S. agents describe as unprecedented," as the Seattle Times puts it. Photography tells a story like no words really can.