Book Report: The Typing Lady

16. Ruth Ozeki, The Typing Lady—and Other Fictions (2026) (9/22/26)

Continuing on in the alphabet, I picked up another hardback book that mysteriously arrived on my doorstep not too long ago. (Okay, not so mysterious. I can't help myself.) I've read two other Ruth Ozeki books (review of her last one here and an extended quote from an earlier one here, and by the way, I can't believe it's been eleven years since I first discovered her—where does the time go?) and very much enjoy her sensibility, a sort of grounded whimsy. 

This book comprises eleven short stories, many of them featuring, at least in passing, typewriters, many of them also featuring, I'm fairly certain, a thinly veiled version of Ozeki herself. The characters range from children figuring out friendship and connection, to a young woman falling in love, to adults searching for ambition or grappling with an elder's dementia, to a widowed grandmother considering the inevitable future. There's nothing fancy about Ozeki's style; it's straightforward and comforting. 

"The Typing Lady," which opens the book, is subtitled "An Author's Note" and it ends like this:

This author's note is not really about [the typing lady's stories]. It's about yours and mine, about how, when we read a story, we bring our own lives to bear on it and make it ours, no matter what the writer might have intended. Stories are like that. They are collaborations between people who read and people who type. They are how we co-create each other and dream ourselves into being.

And this book held a couple of ancillary surprises as well, tied to the bigger world. The first relates to a FB post by a friend of mine, who was considering cause and effect, and concluded: 

It is turtles all the way down.  That’s the answer but I can’t remember the question. A giant turtle carries the earth on it’s back and it is endless turtles all the way down. We will never know the causes of life.

Bladder cancer is supposedly caused by smoking at home, or maybe second hand smoke in the office, or maybe past radiation treatments, or something eaten, or nuclear bombs tests near my mother’s Arizona home. The correct answer is, bladder cancer is really caused by turtles and there are turtles all the way down. 

So imagine my surprise when, in the final story of this collection, "The Problem of the Body," I arrived at this line: It's turtles all the way down. Ha! The context here is not cancer, but a couple of actual box turtles, Ebeneezer and Evelyn. But given that Ozeki is an ordained Buddhist priest, I'm sure she was winking at the old Hindu (etc.) concept of the Cosmic Turtle.  

Then as I was settling into bed, having finished the book, I opened my email and found one of my daily poetry messages. And this one contained the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins "Spring and Fall, to a young child." Which was referenced in the story "One Art," about an unrequited love. "I found a poem," the protagonist writes. 

"It's very sad, I've been thinking about it all day. I can't work for thinking about it. I dreamed about it. It won't go away."
     "Don't be sad. What's the poem. Tell it to me."
     "It's by Hopkins. It's about Margaret. Do you know . . ."
     "Margaret. I know that. Of course. I found that poem a long time ago. Someone showed it to me. I can't remember . . ."
     "'Margaret,' it goes, 'Margaret, are you grieving, Over Goldengrove unleaving . . .' It has all the accents so I can't say it right. It's so sad. I don't know what it means, but the sounds are so sad."

The remark about the accents is what caught my attention, because the emailed poem had—all these accents!

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older . . .

Anyway. These little coincidences made me like the book all the more. Not only could I identify with some of the characters in the stories, and appreciate the connection between myself and Ozeki the author, but then elements of her imagination showed up in my very own lived life. Which is exactly what's she's getting at.

P.S. One last synchronicity, from later in the same day that I posted this: a post by a poet (whom I don't actually know, but I enjoy his irascibility) on FB:

Just finished Absalom, Absalom, and have seen Faulkner once again as a great innovator. He was doing things that no one else was doing except maybe Ralph Ellison and Flannery O'Connor. I think of the Battle Royale sequence in Invisible Man as being profoundly innovative and thematically as complicated as Faulkner. I think of Flannery O'Connor and the way she could tilt the magnifying glass of her vision just so and set the very paper on fire. Now I think of how someone like Faulkner would be laughed out of most agents' offices, and how no contemporary publisher would touch him, so unconfident are they about most Americans ability to read and sustain concentration. Who are the present innovators; I mean, formal innovators? I think of Ruth Ozeki as getting away with things nobody else could get away with, but no one else. Of course I haven't read everybody.

There she is! I am already looking forward to whatever she offers us next. Or . . . I could go seek out Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, or (this one terrifies me a little) Faulkner. I could do that.

Book Report: Switzy

15. Emma Cline, Switzy (2025) (9/19/26)

I'm not sure where I read about this novel—some review somewhere—but it sounded intriguing. And if I was going to get back to my alphabetical-order reading project, I needed an S. Switzy certainly works. And yes, I enjoyed this book very much. 

Though it's a sad book. Not simply because it's about a man, David Hastings, heading to Switzerland to end his life through assisted suicide. And not only because this man, who is 70-something (and I write this at age 71), has growing dementia. But because even as he confronts the end, it feels as if he's barely lived.

Sure, sure, he was a businessman, a CFO of a presumably large American company—until he started making 8-figure errors. He had had a wife (now ex), and together they have a daughter, who now lives in London. On his way to Zurich, he will visit said daughter and his grandson, and they will have a stilted, final visit (though he doesn't reveal to her his future plans). He also intends to visit his boarding school roommate, though they are estranged. He wants to say he's sorry for an incident now long in the past. 

David is traveling with a 30-something man, Cody, his hired companion, who remains attentive and (mostly) unfrustrated as he shepherds his employer in and out of hotels and to his various assignations. Cody will have a life past this job, after all; now, it's his task to be organized—and kind. David, meanwhile, alternates between lucidity and mental ramblings, often into a fragmented past, and sometimes just into the confusing detail of a room or a face in the present. 

Here's one (lucid, and sad) paragraph I flagged:

The first time he had gone to the Philharmonic, David had mistaken the racket of the players tuning their instruments for a strange, avant-garde song. He had listened attentively, tried to detect some kind of shape in the sonic junk. David, the dutiful student. He had never shaken the sense of checking a box. Straining to be moved in some way. And even as the music had started, the actual music, he wanted to be elsewhere. Perhaps his entire life had been a form of that wish. To be somewhere else. To hurry this along.
     There was some back way, wasn't there? Some workaround?

The more confused parts are conveyed through staccato sentences and short paragraphs that bounce from one thought to another, with white space in between. And Cline does an admirable job of inhabiting this character. Of course, it's impossible for us to know how people with dementia actually experience their dimming, or shattering, faculties, so it makes for a brave act of imagination on Cline's part (plus, of course, taking on an older male character). And it is the gist of the book. The visits with his daughter, with the old roommate, with the doctor at the Swiss facility, feel jerky, uncomfortable, because we're seeing them through David's eyes, and he's unable to process them himself. Cline does hint, through words or facial and bodily expression, at what the other characters might be thinking, feeling, but the POV remains consistent. Making the end somewhat of a relief. Now all those other characters can get on with their lives. Which, of course, they were doing anyway. It was just David who was skidding to a halt. And was ready to. Now he can find peace.

More than just a story, it's a reckoning, of course. What is a life well lived? And it's a nudge: to focus on living better ourselves, to be more present. Because we'll all run out of time eventually. 

My last several weeks

...in one collage of photos:

One reason I enjoy doing photo-a-day projects is that when I look at a composite like this, I recognize how rich my life is.

Though curiously, there are only two human beings in all these shots. And they're both in the one. 

Maybe I'm happy keeping my own company? Well, yes, I am. And I enjoy people too. I just don't like taking pictures of people.

A day in the life

It's 12:20 a.m., and I'm hearing the neighbors across the street, sitting on their porch or deck, talking animatedly. The last two days were hot, but today was merely warm (70s), and the night air is refreshing. I kind of like the somewhat distant sound of friends spending time together.

This evening David and I chatted about this and that—perfectionism, bad writing, politics (unavoidable), ship figureheads, maggots crawling on deer tongues (sorry, but real life)—after our usual round of TV: Veronica Mars, partway through season one (for the second time); and we started in on The Lincoln Lawyer, which neither of us remembers having seen. TV followed a heaping plate of leftover cauliflower pasta and sautéed spinach, yum.

It's funny recounting a day backwards. "Then" doesn't work. There is no real counterpart. "Before that"? Clunky. But I'm happy that we've started this new habit of "just chatting" after our evening TV dose. There's so much to talk about.

Before dinner, I worked on the bad writing—which in fact is a proofreading job for the Getty Museum, about a Gabinete de Porcelana, a porcelain room in a Spanish palace from the 1700s. I keep thinking I might stop working, but then I keep getting offered jobs that sound interesting. Did I ever even imagine that there were dozens of rooms made of porcelain in castles all over Europe? It sort of puts our present-day billionaires in perspective. People with too much power, money, or what have you. They've always been with us. And they have to prove their worldliness, or do I mean worth. Materially. At least in the past it was materially. I don't know how those trillionaires "prove" their "worth" nowadays...

David and I also contracted for our burial. Or rather, "soil transformation." I kept thinking of my mother, who sometime in her later years contracted with the Neptune Society to be cremated and have her ashes tossed into the Pacific. I bless her for that—though I also feel sad that she left this world somewhat as she entered it, all alone. In any case, now we've done similarly, only rather than being burnt, our bodies will be composted into dirt (it takes 30 to 45 days), and that dirt—soil—will be spread on some conservancy land or other. Ashes to ashes, flesh to soil. I'm glad that, whoever of us goes first, the other simply needs to pick up a phone and it will all be taken care of. 

This afternoon I spent a few hours with my good friend Barb walking at Elkhorn Slough and having lunch in Moss Landing. A fat little ground squirrel wandered the restaurant deck begging for scraps. And mighty Cosmo, a brown-and-white doodle, chased the little ground squirrel. So much action! The special listed on the board at the restaurant's entrance was "crab roll and potato chips," but when I asked the price I was dissuaded: $36! So I went for a $16 bowl of artichoke soup instead. Barb got the crab, and then treated me to lunch. I think we both ended up happy? (I was certainly happy to nibble on her chips.)

The slough was beautiful, and the tide was high, so when we got to the path spanning the open water and the inner lagoon, it was flooded! Which meant we had to turn around and retrace our steps. Still, when you go the opposite direction, you always notice something new. It was a beautiful day in that watery place.

At 10 I met my English learner, Marina, at the library as usual of a Friday morning. We read a children's book she'd picked up somewhere ("Free!"), about a couple of beavers, Pudgy and Polly. I don't feel like she's making any progress—in fact, it feels like she's regressing. I don't know how to improve her odds. Languages are pretty easy for me. I like them. They're like puzzles I want to figure out. She lives in a place where people speak English everywhere, and yet she doesn't seek out the opportunity to just go listen. But . . . she seems to enjoy our friendship, and our chats about life. I guess that's something.

And that was my day. Though I should note that it started with a deuce in Wordle! Promising great things to come!

Book Report: At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

14*. Tara Ison, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (2023) (9/8/26)

Tara Ison was a mentor in my MFA program at Antioch University. We didn't work together, but I attended her workshop, her reading, and I loved her look: her smile, her berets. So when this book was published, I bought it. And finally I've read it.

I found it interesting, especially for the unusual perspective it gives, on unoccupied France during WWII. A France that was being fed stories from Vichy—collaborators, if you will, with the Germans.

The story is of 12-year-old Danielle, a Jewish girl in Paris, whose father is killed after the Germans roll in. Her mother decides the safest haven for her is in a village near Limoges, with a Catholic couple who once worked for Danielle's grandparents. There, she becomes Marie-Jeanne—Jeanne d'Arc becoming her own namesake savior. The book's title refers to twilight, and serves as a metaphor for that terrible time.

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, something about this book irritated me, and I ended up skimming quite a bit of it. 

There's too much Catholic liturgy, for one thing, and too much of Marie-Jeanne's often frantic thoughts, expressed in run-on sentences. I'm not sure I believed her naiveté, or her ready abandonment of who she'd been before. Was she really just adopting camouflage for safety, or was she especially gullible?

I do appreciate the book for one scene at the very end. Marie-Jeanne is on a streetcar heading to visit a good older friend and her little girl when a German soldier boards and tells everyone who actually lives at the destination to get out and walk the rest of the way, while everyone else should return to Limoges. She soon learns that all of the village residents, 642 men, women, and children, have been killed. This was a real event, occurring on June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, and the village, Oradour-sur-Glane, has remained untouched ever since, a monument to the Nazi horrors. 

Ison has, indeed, done a marvelous job with historical research, and mining all the contradictions of Vichy France. I kind of love this book, even if it rankles me. I won't forget it. That's a testament of sorts. 

——————

*And as an addendum, I will note that several weeks ago I finished the sixth Slow Horses installment, Joe Country by Mick Herron—which explains why At the Hour counts as book #14, not 13. I'm not going to write a report. It was a good thriller, set in the snow, and I'm sorry to have lost a couple of the characters. Spying is a dangerous business.

Dirty Dancing

I like to take daily long walks—five miles or more—and one thing that keeps me going is podcasts. I've got a few favorites: Ezra Klein, Strangers on a Bench, Poetry Unbound, Melody or Witchcraft, Desert Island Discs, the Poetry Space, On Being. And lately, I've really been enjoying What Went Wrong: conversations about some of our most iconic, or most popular, or most unlikely movies, and the back stories about how they almost didn't get made, or might have been made very differently.

The other day I scrolled to a movie that I dearly love, Dirty Dancing. I don't remember when I first saw Dirty Dancing, but I do know that when Netflix went out of business and they let people just keep the last two discs they'd ordered, I put a lot of thought into what those two discs should be. 

Well, okay, "a lot of thought": I thought, well, I love Wings of Desire, so there's one. And . . . hmmm . . . I also love Dirty Dancing. Done.

And no regrets. I do enjoy watching both those movies every so often, different though they are. But also not so different: they're both about passion and meaning, what it is to be human. And sure, there are certainly other movies I'd also enjoy watching again and again. But I only got to keep two. Those others, whatever they are, are probably streaming somewhere, right?

Anyway. I very much enjoyed hearing the down-and-dirty on Dirty Dancing in What Went Wrong—the casting issues, the scant $5 million budget, the scramble for music rights (within that budget!), the search for a director, the search for a production studio, and it went on. They also mentioned a series of Netflix documentaries, The Movies That Made Us, the first installment of which is . . . yes, Dirty Dancing! So I watched that this evening. Each treatment gave me a different perspective, both on the movie itself and on the moviemaking industry. I'm beginning to think every movie I see is worth all that money. It's not an easy business.

I'll end with the movie's finale. 

Patrick Swayze especially was a joy to watch. He died too young. But I'm glad he lives on in Dirty Dancing.

Two poems, by two Jims: Harrison and Moore

I ran across these two poems today, both speaking of time and what matters, and I love them and want to keep them around. The first one in particular. My new goal in life is to keep wagging my feet above the abyss.

Bridge

by Jim Harrison (1937–2016)

Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
though the sea was too wide.
I’m proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge, which was his idea. 

Now that I’m old the work goes slowly.
Ever nearer death, I like it out here
high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred-foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies. 

So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap.
This is my job, to study the universe
from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea, the faint
green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore. 

This is the photo of a young Jim Harrison that accompanied the FB post. It's kind of perfect.

I had not heard of the next poet before today, but I've looked into him a bit and like what I see. In 1975, he was at La Guardia airport when a bomb exploded, killing twelve. He later wrote, "I realized, in the aftermath of the bomb, how arbitrary fate can be. Spending the night in La Guardia in the midst of that chaos, destruction, grief, and hysteria changed the nature of my work. Since then, I have felt that life is much more about the interruption of plot than about plot. What choice did my poetry have, but to reshape itself around these interruptions? I try to see as clearly—even calmly—as I can how things are. Sadness is at the heart of this clarity, but, strangely, consolation as well . . . we are all in it together." The following poem may well inspire me to seek out more of Jim Moore and his work.

The Need Is So Great

by Jim Moore (b. 1943)

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green

behind the broken chain link fence on the corner.
But the need is so great for the way light looks

as it takes its leave of us. We say
what we can to each other of these things,

we who are such thieves, stealing first
one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going

just this slowly, show me the way to believe
that what matters in this world has already happened

and will go on happening forever.
The way light falls on the last

of the stricken leaves of the copper beech
at the end of the block is something to behold.

And, okay, a third, final poem, named by David when I asked what his favorite is—because it fits the overall theme here: of having a mind and a heart and beholding the wonder of it all:

Messenger

by Mary Oliver (1935–2019)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

The Weight of Time

Not long ago, Pádraig Ó Tuama posted in an email (Poetry Unbound?) a musing about time, and in it he included a poem he'd written, "The Weight of Time." One of the stanzas irked me, and continues to irk me:

1993 was a terrible year for me, an old guy said.
I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t born, came a reply.
The speaker got annoyed,
but the young guy said,
you’ve had your time —
my generation’s being destroyed.

First, the line "you've had your time." Um, no. Anyone who is alive has whatever time there is. We all only get this one span of time. Of precious life. You've had your time? What will that young guy feel when he gets to be seventy, eighty?

Certainly, too, you could look back to a similar "young guy" in the 1960s—who could easily have been the older speaker—and he also might well have said, "My generation's being destroyed." In this country, it has been true for many, throughout our history. The current generations might consider themselves lucky that they don't have a Civil War, a World War, a Vietnam, to get conscripted into, if they had perspective. There are many ways of surviving the odds.

Then there are the young people who complain about older folks who are remaining in their houses, now paid off, rather than moving somewhere smaller and letting young families take them over. But when I look at options around here, we'd have to pay more than we could get for our house, and for something smaller. Why should we do that? Haven't we paid our dues, earned some peace? Shouldn't we all get to be where want to be—assuming we've made it there—until it's no longer viable? Is it us "boomers'" fault that humans keep procreating, keep filling the planet? (And I say that as someone who did not.)

Of course of course, we're all egocentric, invested in our own stories, our own pains and joys, and we think we are the most important. And maybe that's also what I'm objecting to: that selfishness. Aren't we all in this together? Apparently not.

Though part of me thinks it's the media that are creating all the bellyache. That people aren't really as generationally divided, as dyspeptic, as selfish, as the "pundits" make up stories about. Because they've got to sell their papers. Which doesn't mean people don't believe the stories they're told. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sad. I wish critical thinking was actually taught in the schools.

Anyway, I'm keeping my house. I will do my best to stay healthy as long as I can, another ten, maybe twenty, but most likely not thirty years. Soon enough, the newest generation of young adults, whatever it calls itself, will have a crack at all I own. Most of it, they'll toss out. The house, though. I do hope some young family, someday, falls in love with it and makes it their own. Just not yet.

I know I'm being a crank here, but honestly. "You've had your time"? That's such bullshit.

Alebrijes y Nahuales

We spent the afternoon poking around the nearby city of Salinas, seeking out 20-foot-tall wooden sculptures of magical creatures. It was a traveling exhibition by Mexican artists, which is leaving at the end of the week, so we figured it was today or never. 

Here are the seven we spent some time with (the eighth, an "alien," was in a very crowded soccer venue, it being Sunday, so we just waved at it as we drove out of the full parking lot). I wrote captions on my Facebook post, so visit there if you'd like more information, and more photos, as well as artist bios. 

Armadillo

Rabbit

Lionbull

Catbird

Coyote

Dog (and guide to the underworld)

Cat Nahual

A Trip to Brazil

In 2001, David and I went to southern Africa—a trip of a lifetime: Zimbabwe, for a total solar eclipse; Botswana, for a couple of safaris, including the magical Okavango Delta; and finally some rock-climbing fun in Namibia. In Botswana, we met a couple of Brazilians, Dora and Ricardo, and they said, if you like this, you will love Brazil's Pantanal. After we arrived home, an envelope appeared in our mailbox with a handmade brochure featuring the Pantanal. Dream food.

And so all these years, I've kept that name tucked away in a fold of my brain. Until just this month, when we finally made our way to the world's largest tropical wetland. We flew into Cuiabá, shown on the map, then drove, via Pousada Araras, to Porto Jofre. From there we flew south to a lodge not shown on the map, then drove to another, and finally ended up at Caiman. 

A few facts: the Pantanal comprises some 81,000 square miles, stretching across southwestern Brazil and into Paraguay and Bolivia; up to 80 percent of the land is submerged during the wet season, November–March. It has exceptional wildlife diversity: plant species, ~3,500; birds, 656; fish, 325; mammals, 159; reptiles 98; amphibians, 53. And it has some 10 million Yacaré caimans, the highest concentration of reptilians globally. (I especially loved seeing the caimans hauled out on land sporting fresh bonnets of water hyacinth.)

As I try to do, I posted daily on Facebook with some photos and descriptions of what we were seeing. It accounts for maybe a quarter of what we were actually experiencing, but it's something. 

So here we go—another day-by-day summary that helps me, at least, remember an astonishing trip.

Leaving home, and a couple of days in São Paulo
Heading out
A walk through Guarulhos
A day in the Parque Ecológico do Tietê

The first half of the tour was in Mato Grosso do Norte: Araras Lodge and Porto Jofre, on the Cuiabá River
Arrival in the Pantanal
A boardwalk walk, day 2
First safari drive (of many), still day 2
Another boardwalk walk, then a drive to Porto Jofre, day 3
River trip, part 1, day 4
Day 5: I took the morning off from wildlife spotting, and nosed around the hotel property, saw plenty
And then I rejoined the group
Day 6: on the river
a couple of videos of a swimming jaguar
Day 7: another morning off, and then another boat ride
Day 8: a final boat ride, then off to Mato Grosso do Sul

In the south we stayed in three lodges: Aguapé, São Francisco, and Caiman
Day 9: The giant anteater was the real prize today
Day 10: And we move on to our next destination, São Francisco
Day 11: Driving around Fazenda São Francisco
Day 12: Last day in these beautiful flatlands, then a drive to our final stay: Caiman Lodge
Day 13
Day 14: Our last full-day safari drive
Day 15: Transitioning from the Pantanal to reality
Day 16: A morning in the Parque dos das Nacões Indíginas, in Campo Grande

Robert Hass, poet

Today is my husband's and my 45th anniversary. (Yikes! How did that happen?) And for a Wordle-related reason, I needed to find a snatch of a poem. I thought I might base it on the traditional gift for 45, which turns out to be sapphire. And I found this lovely poem, with the "sapphire of the raccoon's eyes." I do love Robert Hass.

Iowa City: Early April

This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves.

And last night the sapphire of the raccoon's eyes in the beam of the flashlight.
He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal
Simmered in cider from the bottom of the pan we'd left out for the birds.

And earlier a burnished, somewhat dazed woodchuck, his coat gleaming with spring
Loping toward his burrow in the roots of a tree among the drying winter's litter
Of old leaves on the floor of the woods, when I went out to get the New York Times.

And male cardinals whistling back and forth—sireeep, sreeep, sreeep—
Sets of three sweet full notes, weaving into and out of each other like the triplet rhymes in medieval poetry,
And the higher, purer notes of the tufted titmice among them,
High in the trees where they were catching what they could of the early sun.

And a doe and two yearlings, picking their way along the worrying path they'd made through the gully, their coats the color of the forest floor,
Stopped just at the roots of the great chestnut where the woodchuck's burrow was,
Froze, and the doe looked back over her shoulder at me for a long moment, and leapt forward,
Her young following, and bounded with that almost mincing precision in the landing of each hoof
Up the gully, over it, and out of sight. So that I remembered
Dreaming last night that a deer walked into the house while I was writing at the kitchen table,
Came in the glass door from the garden, looked at me with a stilled defiant terror, like a thing with no choices,
And, neck bobbing in that fragile-seeming, almost mechanical mix of arrest and liquid motion, came to the table
And snatched a slice of apple, and stood, and then quietened, and to my surprise did not leave again.

And those little captains, the chickadees, swift to the feeder and swift away.

And the squirrels with their smoke-plume tails trailing digging in the leaves to bury or find buried—
I'm told they don't remember where they put things, that it's an activity of incessant discovery—
Nuts, tree-fall proteins, whatever they forage from around the house of our leavings,

And the flameheaded woodpecker at the suet with his black-and-white ladderback elegant fierceness—
They take sunflower seeds and stash them in the rough ridges of the tree's bark

Where the beaks of the smoke-and-steel blue nuthatches can't quite get at them—
Though the nuthatches sometimes seem to get them as they con the trees methodically for spiders' eggs or some other overwintering insect's intricately packaged lump of futurity
Got from its body before the cold came on.

And the little bat in the kitchen lightwell—
When I climbed on a chair to remove the sheet of wimpled plastic and let it loose,
It flew straight into my face and I toppled to the floor, chair under me,

And it flared down the hall and did what seemed a frantic reconnoiter of the windowed, high-walled living room.
And lit on a brass firelog where it looked like a brown and ash grey teenaged suede glove with Mephistophelean dreams,
And then, spurt of black sperm, up, out the window, and into the twilight woods.

All this life going on about my life, or living a life about all this life going on,
Being a creature, whatever my drama of the moment, at the edge of the raccoon's world—
He froze in my flashlight beam and looked down, no affect, just looked,
The ringtail curled and flared to make him look bigger and not to be messed with—
I was thinking he couldn't know how charming his comic-book robber's mask was to me,
That his experience of his being and mine of his and his of mine were things entirely apart,
Though there were between us, probably, energies of shrewd and respectful tact, based on curiosity and fear—
I knew about his talons whatever he knew about me—
And as for my experience of myself, it comes and goes, I'm not sure it's any one thing, as my experience of these creatures is not,
And I know I am often too far from it or too near, glad to be rid of it which is why it was such a happiness,
The bright orange of the cat, and the first pool of green grass-leaves in early April, and the birdsong—that orange and that green not colors you'd set next to one another in the human scheme.

And the crows' calls, even before you open your eyes, at sunup.

Two and a third books: Theodore Roosevelt, Louise Penny, and Stephen King

13 & 14. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) (7/14/26) and Louise Penny, A Great Reckoning (2016) (7/19/26) — and a brief comment about Stephen King, Fairy Tale (2022)

I spent a good three months tackling the 780-page first volume of Morris's ambitious trilogy about Theodore Roosevelt (920 pages with notes, bibliography, and index). It took a while for several reasons, chief among them being that I have no attention span anymore. Plus, I took a couple of trips during those three months, during which I read pretty much not at all. And I picked up one decadent little thriller halfway through, just to charge my reading batteries. But I persisted, because The Rise of TR is a fascinating book about a fascinating man—and I didn't even make it to the part where he's president! (That comes in volume two.) 

No, that's not entirely true: the prologue covers New Year's Day 1907, six years into his presidency, and the epilogue covers the moment in September 1901 when, as vice president, he learns that President McKinley has died from an assassin's bullet. The rest, all 28 chapters, takes us from his birth in October 1858 through, variously, his childhood (as a somewhat sickly boy); his undergraduate years at Harvard; his romance and marriage to Alice Lee Hathaway, birth of his daughter, and several chapters on, Alice Lee's death; his election as a New York assemblyman; his repeat visits to North Dakota, where he had a herd of cattle and became an accomplished hunter; his embrace of the Republican Party, and the various alliances he forged, and rivalries as well; his candidacy for mayor of New York City when he was 28; his prolific career as a writer of history and biography; his several-year stint as U.S. Civil Service commissioner; oh, and in there he married Edith Carow, who had child after child after child; his service as president of the New York City Police Board. By now he's made quite a name for himself, and old enmities and scuffles with the political machinery in New York start getting more and more troublesome. He soon returns to federal service as assistant secretary of the navy, where he is far from an isolationist. When war breaks out with Spain over Cuba, he resigns and dons a uniform—and assembles both cowboys and Ivy Leaguers to form the Rough Riders, one regiment of which he eventually leads up San Juan Hill. Back home, he wins the governorship of New York, and things go fine for a year, but soon that old machine starts gumming up the works of his reformist plans. The best option is to run on President McKinley's second-term ticket—though he loathes the idea of serving in a do-nothing, ceremonial job. Still, he realizes that regular party politics will stymie him at the local or state level. And so he follows that path. 

The book is beautifully researched and full of wonderful anecdotes, quotes, characters, and events. I sometimes got a little lost in the politics (due in part to my slow reading pace, no doubt), but then some more earthy escapade would rescue me. I am looking forward to the second volume, Theodore Rex—though at the moment I feel like I need to get my old reading chops back. And what better sort of project than light fluffy fiction?

Like Louise Penny's twelfth Inspector Gamache mystery set in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines. It had been a couple of years since I'd read Penny, and this one to a degree picks up where an earlier volume left off—with Gamache tackling corruption at the highest levels of the Sûreté, Québec's provincial police force. This time, it's at the Súreté's training academy, which Gamache has been recruited to head and which he hopes to reform. We meet several professors, a couple of whom Gamache hires despite checkered pasts, and several "cadets," both brand-new and third-years, who may have been tainted by the academy's previous director. Then, that director is murdered. Throughout the investigation, which involves an old map (yay, map!), an outside observer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, an anachronistic revolver, and a stained glass window, we are treated to the delightful interactions of Gamache's friends in Three Pines and the sleuthing of his variously professional colleagues. It ended up with a couple of satisfying twists. 

The best part was, I sat down and just read. Over a few days, but at least it didn't take months. And I got engrossed, which is really all I ask for in a book. It was a relief to take a good break from my phone and laptop. 

And then there's Stephen King's Fairy Tale, which I listened to, on the recommendation of my sister-in-law. And I was enjoying it—the narrator is very good, and the story—a teenager saves an old man who's fallen down the stairs and broken his leg, and they become friends, and there's a trusty old dog as well—grabbed my attention. But then the old man dies, and a magical—fairy-tale—world is revealed that the teenager decides he must visit, and . . . I lost interest. I guess I prefer reality, or at least not flat-out make-believe. So I found the plot summary in Wikipedia, which saved me a good fifteen hours of listening, and learned that all's well that ends well, which is good enough for me. 

Now, back to the alphabet, and a short collection of essays whose title starts with, yes, S. Report coming soon!

Berlin & Oslo—a photo/travelogue

As I do, here's my summary of the travelogue photos I posted on Facebook recently, as we toured Berlin and Oslo.

On this trip, the days flowed together, so I present you with two groupings:

Berlin:
day 1
day 2
day 3
day 4, with a tour of the East Side Gallery (an art installation on a portion of the Wall)
day 5

Transit day: Berlin to Oslo

Oslo:
day 1
day 2, which ended up in three parts because of internet issues: 1, 2, and 3 (dinner)
day 3 
day 4
day 5
day 6

It was a wonderful trip. I've always wanted to visit Berlin, and it was so interesting and satisfying. Oslo was about family time, and revisiting familiar places. 

Madison Grant, All-American white supremacist

Yesterday on FB I posted a quote from the biography of Theodore Roosevelt that I'm reading, to wit:

A NYC newspaper editor had this to say about a certain politician: "Stop [him] talking! Why, you would kill him. He has to talk. The peculiarity about him is that he has what is essentially a boy's mind. What he thinks he says at once, says aloud. It is his distinguishing characteristic, and I don't know as he will ever outgrow it." 

The editor then went on to say, "But with it he has great qualities which make him an invaluable public servant—inflexible honesty, absolute fearlessness, and devotion to good government which amounts to religion. We must let him work his way, for nobody can induce him to change it."

And I asked—the initial observation of course bringing to mind Trump, but the subsequent characterization reminding us of anyone but—whether any of my readers had a guess as to who was being described?

My friend the writer BK Loren got it right off, with the added comment that Roosevelt "also leaned heavily white supremacist." She wrote, "I wonder if most people know that about him? He and Madison Grant ☞ saved the redwoods at least partially because they thought they represented the superior white race. The book Madison wrote was used by Hitler and Anders Breivik to justify their heinous acts." And she referred me to an essay (from 2015) by Duke University law professor Jedidiah Purdy, "Environmentalism's Racist History," discussing Grant.

This particular Grant is not mentioned in either volume one or two of the book I'm reading; maybe he's in volume three, but maybe too he slipped under the biographer, Edmund Morris's radar. That series was published between 1979 and 2010, and Morris no doubt had to jettison just as much juicy material as he kept, TR being rather larger than life. But perhaps Morris didn't run into Grant, or didn't consider him worthy of mention? 

As Purdy puts it, Grant (1865–1937), "like many young men of his vintage, felt duty-bound to do more than enjoy his privilege. He made himself a credible wildlife zoologist, was instrumental in creating the Bronx Zoo, and founded the first organizations dedicated to preserving American bison and the California redwoods." But what he's better known for today is his 1915 book The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, in which he warns of the decline of the "Nordic" peoples, whom he considered "a natural aristocracy, marked by noble, generous instincts and a gift for political self-governance" (as Purdy paraphrases). This book was admired by Hitler, who called it his "Bible" (which, Purdy observes, "has given it permanent status on the ultra-right"), and it influenced the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, restricting immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe and Africa and outright banning migrants from the Middle East and Asia. 

In the FB discussion, herpetologist Harry Greene also cited a more recent (June 26 repost) profile of Grant, by Richard Conniff, "The All-American White Supremacist Role Model." 

I am posting all this because I want to read both those commentaries, and what better place to store the links—and potentially find them again!—than here.

I will also say that TR, at the very least (I have no opinion of Grant yet), was a man of his time and class. Which is not to excuse him for having entitled, no doubt racist beliefs. He was certainly a (white) American exceptionalist, yet his biography also shows ways in which his thoughts evolved and changed. And we do have to thank him for championing our environment, even if one reason for his doing so is anathema today. From what I've learned of him so far, I would not call him a white supremacist. As Morris puts it more accurately, he was an aristocratic paternalist, though even that shifted in 1898–99 with his "military catharsis" on San Juan Hill, when he lived closer to his men than to his superior officers.  

As for Trump,  Conniff comments, "The difference between Madison Grant & Donald Trump? Grant at least accomplished some good in his life, as a wildlife conservationist, before turning utterly bad."

And . . . I'm glad now to have discovered Conniff's Substack. It looks like it has all sorts of interesting reads.

Not really a book report: Solar

12. Ian McEwan, Solar (2010) (6/28/26)

As I've mentioned before, I don't listen to books. But I have an Audible account (don't ask me why), and back in May a writer friend said she had enjoyed listening to Solar by Ian McEwan. I'd read Atonement by McEwan, and was impressed by it. So I loaded Solar into my queue, and one day when I couldn't find an appealing podcast to listen to on my more or less daily walk, I decided to give it a go.

I was not hooked, exactly—but once I'm walking, if I don't have to stop and fiddle with my phone (and as I said, I didn't have any immediate alternatives), I just keep listening. 

This occurred a few times, at intervals. So given the combination of me being a distracted listener—when I'm walking, I'm always visually engaged, looking for a photo of the day—and of having no real sense of the structure of the book—"chapters" were enumerated on my screen, but my ear couldn't really discern starting and stopping points for such, it all just seemed to flow like a braided stream—and of listening to it in maybe a half dozen sessions over the course of weeks . . . I'm afraid I have a very diaphanous impression of this book. 

But it all starts and ends with an overall antipathy toward the main character, physicist Michael Beard, Nobel Laureate—but also narcissist, stealer of ideas, framer-for-murder, womanizer, and generally unpleasant specimen of manhood. And he doesn't improve.

The story is also sort of about climate change, and trying to tackle the problem—but Beard doesn't really believe in climate change, he's just stumbled on someone else's attempt at a solution. And he decides to implement it. Why not? 

In the end, everything falls to bits. The final paragraph caught me by surprise (at least with a print book you can anticipate that you're coming to the end, but here: it just ended, what?). And I cared not a whit. The overall mood of the book is one of cynicism. And I don't need more cynicism in my life.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book was the epilogue, the address at the Swedish Academy outlining Michael Beard's accomplishments in physics (with a dash of Richard Feynman) as he's awarded his Nobel Prize. And then there was an interview with McEwan, talking about the book—hearing about the writerly process was interesting. For example, that a somewhat random chapter about a visit to the far north of Norway to view climate change in action was based on a trip McEwan himself took, which in turn became the initial inspiration/instigation for the book—that was worth learning about. (Or at least, it verified my suspicions: too often, a writer's inspiration is actually a write-off.) And it turned out the Swedish Academy address wasn't even written by McEwan, but by a physicist friend of his. Maybe that's why I liked it so much.

So far, listening to audiobooks, I've been really glad I took on Percival Everett's James—that book was, I think, enhanced by the reading voice. The Testament of Mary was wonderful as read by Meryl Streep, but I wonder if it might not have been a teeny bit better if I'd simply imagined my own voice of Mary as I read the words on the page. With Solar, I suspect I would have quit reading, turned off by the protagonist. So it's only the narrator who kept me going. Something to do while walking. But maybe simple silence, being with my own thoughts, would have been a better alternative. But no, I'm glad I listened to Solar. It at least made me consider how one might pull off an unsympathetic character, and make you care. It's possible, I know.

Travel again, 25 years on

In 2001 we traveled to southern Africa, the lure being a total eclipse (on June 21) in Zimbabwe. But while we were in the area, we figured we'd stick around. After two weeks on the eclipse tour, we spent another two weeks in Botswana on another tour that I booked through a South African company (in those days, the internet was still a place where you might be interacting with a dog, who knew? but in this case the random selection worked out just fine and we had a marvelous excursion through various national parks, including the exquisite Okavango Delta), and finally two weeks in Namibia with a South African climber I also rustled up on the internet, Richard Behne—in order to do some climbing. It was a trip of a lifetime. Here we are in Zimbabwe (note the elephants), then in Namibia atop Spitzkoppe, the highest mountain in the country, and on the Wattenberg plateau.

Back then, I was still using a film camera, so the photos I took were slides, some of which I digitized—but apparently didn't save at full resolution. They're blurry and grainy, but they give some idea of some of what captivated us. For the following photos, you can go here to see the images individually and for some description.

I would love to return to that part of the world—and next time, I'd like to go to the Garden Coast of South Africa, in springtime. Maybe it'll happen. Who knows?

Book Report: London Rules

11. Mick Herron, London Rules (2018)

Ha, I see that with the last Slow Horses report, I was also slogging my way through a long nonfiction book (which I also realize I never finished, uh oh). This time, it's a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Which I am feeling quite happy to get back to now, after this retreat into fantastical fiction. I'm ready again for the real world—though not necessarily the real world I happen to live in. Then again, no, that's not true: the real world I live in is just fine. It's the real world of the headlines that I'd just as soon keep avoiding. (Though today does bring some reasonably good news as the Republicans begin to show a bit of spine. Let's see what happens tomorrow—or just later today . . .)

In any case, back to London Rules, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Mick Herron is a helluva writer, and storyteller. And once again, the TV series with Gary Oldman kept flashing through my head as I read, and once again, I enjoyed the difference between the story on the page and the dramatized screenplay. Also, it helps to be able to "see" the characters so well. 

The story here begins with a terrorist attack in a village in England, and then moves on to other seemingly random acts of violence (including the murder of 18 penguins and an accidental death by falling paint can), which the Slow Horses manage to make sense of—and which point to a leak within the Secret Service itself. Of course, it's not so simple as sabotage, nor is everything under any kind of control. Though things do work out in the end and Jackson Lamb keeps the upper hand. 

And now, back to Teddy, who is about to take a long break in the wilds of "Dakota."

My Colbert Questionnaire

Sure, I'll bite—because it's fun. And even though I didn't watch The Late Show (except randomly on FB shares), I will miss Stephen Colbert. I also fully anticipate that he has something up his sleeve that will delight us . . .  I would say all, but we know that a good 30 percent of this country does not begin to understand or even want to care about Colbert or his humor or those to whom his humor appeals. So anyway, here we go:

1. What is the best sandwich?

"Best" is difficult to define, but I do know that if I go to a restaurant and it's lunchtime and tuna melt is on the menu, that's what I order. Or BLT. Maybe with avocado. Yeah, there's no "best." It depends on the moment

2. What was the first concert you attended?

Jethro Tull, with Steeleye Span as opener, 1973. SS's Gaudete knocked me for a loop. It was Tull's "Passion Play" tour. (And as a caveat, I should say that I attended plenty of classical music concerts, as well as musical theater, growing up, with my mom. Here I'm singling out my first popular music concert with friends.)

3. What is the scariest animal?

I was not exactly attacked by a mama javelina (aka white-lipped peccary) in Arizona once, but man, yeah, she was scary.

4. Apples or oranges?

Apples. Crunch.

5. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Jean-Claude Killy, the skier, at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. It would've been about 1969. I have seen a few other famous people (Ronald Reagan, Laurence Fishburne, Sean Penn, the Dalai Lama) at various venues, but I was no longer an autograph seeker. Not that I ever really was. I think my father was more interested in that Killy autograph than I was . . .

6. What do you think happens when we die?

What Keanu Reaves said.

7. Favorite action movie?

Die Hard. (Me and George Clooney and Ethan Hawke, just sayin'.)

8. Window or aisle seat?

Window.

9. Favorite smell?

Petrichor.

10. Least favorite smell?

Oh please.

11. What is your earliest memory?

I'm afraid it was when in nursery school I peed my pants and had to be sent home. Though you know I'm sitting here searching for something better. Like, I really wish I remembered being terrorized by the emu at the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary in Victoria, Australia, on my third birthday, when it did its best to pluck the red ribbon out of my hair. But all I have is stories to that effect. . . . (And I'm making up the red detail there, because the photographs-as-proof are all in b&w.)

12. Cats or dogs?

Both. We have (had: our beloved Milo, 15, died in January) both, and they both bring different joys. I'm not going to choose. Currently, the cats are trying to be dogs. Well, one of them is. Really hard.

13. If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what is it?

Mozart's 21st piano concerto. 

14. What number am I thinking of? (Often Colbert's number is 3)

18 (that's my number. I don't care what Colbert's is)

15. Describe the rest of your life in five words.

Curious, relaxed, exploring, appreciating, connecting. (At least, that's what I'd like to aspire to. To quote at rather more length from a blog post of March 2016,  I hope to "keep expanding, exploring, leaping, trusting, risking, trying, while always seeking my center." Yeah. All that.)

Still thinking about travel

We have some old friends visiting, from Denmark: Jan, a Dutch naval architect who works at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, and Catharina, who is communications officer for vaccine-preventable diseases at WHO (though both are about to retire, at the end of June). We met them at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, and Catharina grew up in California, so this place is well known to them, though they don't visit very often anymore. 

We've spent the past couple of days wandering our local habitat, yesterday through Monterey, along Cannery Row, and into Pacific Grove along the shore; today Elkhorn Slough, a tidal estuary just north of us, and neighboring Moss Landing, a little fishing harbor. To me these places are, well, just local places—not not special, but . . . well, they're not like wandering the Langelinie in Copenhagen and bumping into the Little Mermaid, which Jan and Catharina can do any day they feel like it (and I'm betting they very rarely do). 

And so it's been very heartening to me to experience their unbridled delight in the spots we've been encountering—it's like seeing my world through fresh eyes. Which is something I rather need, given how depressing my world has become. (Yes, that's a political comment.) They are so happy just with the weather! And yes, really, it's been perfect weather—not too hot, not too cold, some sun, not too much.

Today, at the slough, we lingered on a bench, and then on a pier, just watching the bird life—a greater yellow-legs, a long-legged shorebird, something I hadn't seen in a while; a whole herd of (Brandt's?) cormorants and brown pelicans and great egrets dashing back and forth in a watery inlet, probably after baitfish; acorn woodpeckers flitting in and out of a nesting hole in an acorn-studded dead pine. These birds are unusual for J&C, but even for us, having the chance—or rather, taking the time—to simply observe them in a leisurely fashion, what a treat. Then at Moss Landing, we stood for a good twenty, thirty minutes watching, mesmerized, as maybe seventy sea lions lounged and battled and bawled and shlumped right over one another in a sandy cove, all punctuated by the insistent cry of a seagull settled into the top of a piling, and by a circling ballet of more sea lions, fins and tails raised in a thermoregulating salute, in the water. It was quite the sight, and quite the cacophony. 

Yesterday, we ducked into a shop selling alebrijes, fanciful carved wooden animals intricately painted in bright colors, and later encountered a seventeen-year-old Sulcata, or African spurred, tortoise out for a stroll near the Pacific Grove bike path (her name is Sunny; her owner is Gary). 

Here are some pictures I've taken.

A porcupine alebrije

Gary and Sunny

A yucca flower with buzzing bees

Ed Ricketts on the rec trail

The slough—so peaceful

The mob of hunting waterfowl

A few of the sea lions (and that noisy seagull)

It's been a little bit like being on vacation—and is making me feel slightly less curmudgeonly about travel (see my last couple of posts). Because although I like being a "tourist" in my own neighborhood, I really love exploring new places, and feeling that fresh delight of strangeness and discovery—which I've also been getting a glimpse of from Jan and Catharina. Gotta find your teachers where they are.