Posting 2 days in a row? Impossible. See what happens when I have some time off school?
Christmas came and went in the usual whirlwind, but I feel like we enjoyed it more this year than ever before because Scott and I simplified a lot of the usual holiday craziness.
As gifts for each other, we decided to go in together and buy one great camera. It came in about a month ago, and we've already got some great stuff. I am excited to see what it gives us this year as I learn more about how to use it. So far Scott is way better at it than I am, but I'm learning!
As gifts for my mom and my grandparents, my sister and I decided to do a family photo session with photographer Kyle Hale. I discovered him through a college friend of mine when she posted some gorgeous family photos a few months ago. Kyle was reasonably priced, easy to work with, and he came up to our home to do the pictures which I loved. The final results really feel like home - which is probably because it is my home - but you know what I mean. I think our comfort really conveys itself in the photos because we are in familiar surroundings, and he came up with so many cool ideas and angles in and around our house. (If you are in Atlanta and need someone for a wedding or general family photography, check him out at http://www.kylehale.net/.) When we got the pictures back, Melissa and I decided that they were incredible enough to be our gifts to one another as well. I know it's partly because it's my own family and I love them, but these photos took my breath away the first time I saw them. This is just a sampling, and we received 114 photos that are ALL frame worthy.
All of us on the porch - Mom loved this one!
We somehow persuaded my camera-shy grandparents to stop by for a while.
my favorite one of Scott and me
with the kids
my sister and her beautiful family
I think this one is my favorite!
And lastly, Melissa with little Emmie
At first, we just wanted a unique Christmas gift idea, but now I am so happy we decided to do this, and I will definitely cherish them for quite some time. In addition to these fabulous pictures, I received some much needed photo albums for all our Europe pics, a camera bag for the new Nikon, a couple of new books, and ..... a Wii! My arms are sore as we speak because I couldn't stop playing for the past two days.
My sweet yearbook students all pitched in together to give me an American Express card that purchased two lovely Target bookshelves, and believe it or not, the majority of my books have now found their way out of the basement and in to a (somewhat) organized place on the shelves that now grace our dining room.
So all in all, a fabulous Christmas vacation thus far, and I am happy to say I have 6 days left. I have an interesting idea brewing for a New Year's resolution that pertains to this blog, but I'll be thinking on that before I unveil it. I hope everyone's holiday is going beautifully and we are all ready to be out with the old and in with the new. Happy holidays!
Back in August, I was fortunate enough to sit in on a panel at the Decatur Books Festival. The discussion, entitled “Down from the Mountain,” featured two authors from the Appalachian region. I was certainly already familiar with Lee Smith as an author I adore, but Ron Rash was new to me. During the panel, he read from his newest work Serena, which had not been published at that time, and I was anxious to read it after his reading and explanation. The novel did not disappoint.
In short, it’s an Appalachian retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It does not follow the story precisely; Rash is far more creative than that. It does, however, hinge on the theme of blind ambition, and the story centers around a female character you love and hate at the same time, one who steers the ship for her husband as they encounter obstacles on the way to their success. It is this character, Serena Pemberton, who keeps you turning the pages and makes the novel worthy of its hype.
Originally from the mountains of Colorado, Serena meets her husband in Boston before the two of them establish a lumber empire in the North Carolina mountains. Life in the lumber business is hard, and the workers in the lumber camp often lose limbs and lives in their day-to-day work. It’s clearly no place for a woman, but Serena has no difficulty holding her own here, and furthermore, she manages to present herself as a superior when the workers quickly understand that she, even more so than her husband, is the one to answer to and the one to fear.
With a white horse and a trained eagle on her side, Serena’s character is unmistakably mythic in her capabilities and in Ron Rash’s description of her. Rash describes her training the eagle; “Each dawn the following weeks, Serena walked into the stable’s back stall and freed the eagle from the block perch. She and the bird spent the morning alone in tree-shorn plain below Half Acre Ridge…..By the fifth day the bird perched in Serena’s right forearm, its head black-hooded like an executioner, the five-foot leash tied to Serena’s right elbow and the leather bracelets around the raptor’s feet” (102). The image of Serena dashing across the mountain on her white horse with the eagle perched alongside her is one that makes quite an impression on the lumber workers and on the reader.
A story of a vast lumber empire is not what drives the plot of the novel, however. Soon after setting foot off the train from Boston, Serena learns firsthand that her husband’s previous relationship has produced a son in these mountains, and like Lady Macbeth, that seems to be the one thing she cannot give her groom. Many twists and turns ensue from there, and the ending of this novel is one of the most memorable conclusions I have ever read.
All in all, Ron Rash reveals a story of violence and misery but also one of love and devotion, and Serena Pemberton is a character who will stay with you long after the novel is finished. It's certainly one of my best reads of the year.
Current Read? It's a sloooooow go. Not that long ago, I heard of a little book that was getting a lot of attention, and I decided to pick it up and try it for myself.
So I am reading - or attempting to read - Verlyn Klinkenborg's Notes of an Abject Reptile, and I am simply not that into it. This surprises me since it sounded like it would be just my style. As a quick summation, it is musings on English countryside told through the eyes of a tortoise who resides on the garden of an accomplished naturalist. Usually beautiful style and philisophical meanderings can keep my attention, but as my students say, "I'm just not feelin' it" with this one. I'm no quitter, so I am determined to plow right through. Hopefully I can report back with a change of heart and "feel it" soon. We shall see.
Anyone read this one before and can offer an ounce of insight?
I clearly haven’t blogged in ages, and I’m sad to say that I don’t even really have a book post to finally write. I have been so restless lately, in every possible way. Jumping from book to book without really finishing anything is not very effective, nor is it really characteristic of my usual habits, but that’s what I have been doing lately. When I actually finish something, I’ll be astounded. What a terrible approach and an unfamiliar habit. Who am I?
There’s one thing I know I am and that’s addicted to politics this season. I’ll be the first to say that watching debates, listening to pundits, discussing / arguing about relevant issues has definitely cut in to my reading time (not to mention my sanity) these days. I don’t want to watch anymore, but I can’t stop listening and watching.
The truth is I am scared. I am astounded at how divided this nation has become, and I sincerely hope that whomever is elected can heal this divide. Months ago, my first thought was “Wow. How great! Everyone is really interested in politics this year, and apathy is out of style. How refreshing.” Now, however, I’m seeing that the intense fervor with which the nation is discussing politics is indicative of a much greater issue here. Each side thinks the other is so wrong that this country will go down an unfixable path if that opponent is elected. I cannot remember an election in my lifetime where each side is so earnestly scared of the other party gaining power. And that, my friends, is the scary part.
Take, for instance, this video. It’s only a couple of minutes long, but worth watching.
Now let me say that obviously a Democrat produced this video, and someone could most likely find some anti-McCain supporters at a rally somewhere who look just as crazy. But look at those people. They have lost every sense of sanity, of dignity. They have no regard for the facts or what is right and wrong. They simply want their side to win, and they are honestly frightened of the other alternative.
I had a 45 minute political conversation with my mother this week. Never a good idea. I think my ears were bleeding afterwards. But what I realize after speaking with her is that she is just as honestly passionate about her views as I am mine. I don’t think poor people choose to be poor. I don’t think public schools are a waste of tax payer money, and I don’t think vouchers are a way to fix its problems. I don’t think progressive taxes are unfair; to whom much is given, much is required. (I believe Jesus said that, by the way.) I don’t think it’s ridiculous to say that every child in America must have adequate healthcare.
By the same token, however, my mother (and many others like her) passionately believes that most poor people choose to waste government money, vouchers are the solution to America’s public schools, there should be a straight percentage across the board for everyone’s taxes, and mandatory healthcare for children is one enormous step to a socialized nation. She is just as frightened of Barack Obama as I am of John McCain. Both of us genuinely see America descending on a permanent path to doom if the opposite party is elected.
My students are in the same boat. Everyday, specifically after debates, I have to tell students to stop yelling at each other about politics. I’ve never seen anything like this. I know most of them are regurgitating what their parents say, but it’s still reflective of this alarming trend.
So where does this lead us? I honestly don’t know. I am ready for the election to be here and to have a new, hopefully capable, leader for a change. But I am also nervous about the reaction of everyday Americans after this is all over. The truth is, when you look at popular vote, it is split reasonably evenly. This means that almost half of America will be appalled either way. There is no doubt that America is more polarized now than it was 8 years ago. It was Abraham Lincoln himself who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” How did we get this way, and how do we fix it?
We have been back from Europe for 5 days but it feels like years. So much going on and too long to explain. Let's just say I wanted to feel peaceful and cozy when I returned home but it has been anything but that. Why does everything seem to happen at once?
I start back to school in 10 days, and I can't believe I am saying this but I almost want to start back just to get my mind off the super-stressful business that has been occupying my time and energy these days. I am trying various approaches to bring peace of mind to myself, and so far early morning grocery shopping is the only thing that works. I can't even read these days.
Oh well. Let's not dwell on unhappy things. I will instead focus on that 16-day-long oasis from craziness. From now on, I will try to imagine myself back to .......
T.S. Eliot's footsteps in the reading room in the British Museum.....
the beautiful stained glass in King's College Chapel....
Cambridge, England - my favorite place on Earth.....
The Trinity College courtyard on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.....
a punt along the River Cam.....
the beautiful Roman Baths....
Where else can you be this happy in the pouring rain?
or maybe the quays of the River Seine....
or the lending library of Shakespeare & Company Books....
a stomach full of French food and an evening stroll in front of the Eiffel Tower....
the quaint canalside lanes of Bruges, Belgium....
Belgian countryside.....
the busy energy of Dam Square ...
the canals of Amsterdam....
Our trip was lovely, and I have so much to reflect on. Reflection will come, but for now, I don't have the energy or the time. I begin school in 10 days and I have a 700-page summer reading book to complete and a sudden lack of concentration ability - such a bad combination. As I've mentioned already, my mental and physical energy is being pulled a million directions at the moment. ....A death in my family, small issues that are unnecessarily being made bigger... and I am saddened by the news that a college friend of mine has been widowed far too early. Her pain is beyond my comprehension.
I'm thinking of her and everything else that is going wrong at that moment, but I am trying to focus on the positive. 10 more precious days of summer.
I wanted to update more often, but I have been doing all of my "computering" with the occasional free wifi on my iPhone.
We are in Belgium now. This picture was taken with my phone last night after a fabulous French meal. Paris was great! Five more nights in Europe - 2 in Bruges and then on to Amsterdam for the final leg of the trip.
As promised a few days ago, I am taking some time to post on Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies - prompted by a little book discussion a few weeks ago.
I first read this book my sophomore year in college as I began to get in the full swing of English major craziness - reading who knows how many books at once. While I love to read as much as anyone I know, it can take the enjoyment out of the experience when you are hurried and simply trying to finish the book just in time to move on to the next one and find an angle for your next essay. It's the eternal ironic dilemma of the English major and the English teacher...when your joy becomes your job.
This book was the exception.
I can remember reading the title, rolling my eyes, and thinking, "Fair and Tender Ladies? Lovely. It sounds like a romance novel or something." I expected hoop skirts, moonlight, magnolias, and all of the other southern cliches many southern lit books deliver. Lee Smith, however, gives us so much more in this novel. Even in the frenzy of mid-semester, I specifically remember relishing the book and lying on my bed a few afternoons in a row as soon as class let out. Once you get to know Ivy Rowe, you can't put this one down, and you are riveted until the tearful last page. As I have come back to it now for the third re-read, I feel a stronger connection to the text every time I read it.
The epistolary novel begins with a young Ivy as she tries to write herself out of her misery in isolated Appalachia where her impoverished family lives. While Ivy suffers a great deal, - hunger, deaths of family members, being denied many things we take for granted - Smith ingeniously allows the reader to sift through all of the expected pity and into the soul of Ivy Rowe. She finds enjoyment in what she does have as her father walks through their fields and tells her, "Slow down, Ivy. Slow down. This is the taste of spring." Young Ivy manages to find joy and even ownership in places that we would not expect in order to accommodate for her seemingly lackluster life atop Sugar Fork. She explains her experience looking down off the mountain to the world around her:
"The whole world was new, and it was like I was the onliest person that had ever looked upon it, and it was mine. It belonged to me. Now it is new for me to feel this as I have not had hardly ever a thing of my own, it is handmedowns and pitching in and sharing everything up here on Sugar Fork, they is so many of us up here as you know. But I looked out over all them hills, and the land was sloped so different from the snow. And every tree was glittering and Sugar Fork black and singing along mostly under the ice. The snow come plum up to my knees. Nobody else had got up yet and I reckon I was the onliest one in the world."
Young Ivy's naivety does not last long as she makes the move down to Majestic and then to the mining town of Diamond where she creates a life of her own and of course a reputation that isn't always favorable. Ivy is not a perfect character as she makes many mistakes that most of us usually find unforgivable. With her, however, the readers find themselves seeing past her discrepancies and straight to the endearing honesty, feistiness, and wit that endears her to us in the first place.
What I find especially interesting is that each time I re-read this novel, I find myself focusing a bit more on a certain phase of Ivy that I perhaps overlooked before. When reading this in college, I adored the devil-may-care sauciness and self-assured attitude that I saw in the younger Ivy as she made a name for herself and fumbled her way through life and early independence. Now as I re-read, I focus on the slightly-older Ivy as she gives a moving description of the birth of her first daughter or settles in to life with her husband Oakley. I know this is a book that I will come back to many other times in life, and my copy is so battered, marked, folded, and bruised that I can find the perfect passage just when I need to read it again and again.
While I am 27 years old and Ivy ends her epistolary story at a much much older age than that, I am already hoping that I too can end my long years with the same sense of satisfaction Ivy does. In her last letter, she describes how life takes you places that you definitely don't expect:
"...how little we know. We spend our lives like a tale that is told I have spent my years so....I have loved and loved and loved. I am fair worn out with it."
What more could any individual ask for as you cross that last bend? Love in its many forms is what makes this novel and this character so enthralling. Lee Smith creates an unforgettable presence that will stay with you long after you turn that last page.
Wow. This blog is seriously suffering. I certainly have not placed this as a priority in quite some time - as evidenced with these massive gaps in posting. One of the reasons I love keeping a blog is to look back at it and see what I was doing, thinking, feeling at that moment, but when I post every 6+ weeks, it's not really reflective of that so I need to shape it up around here.
Let's see? A recap of summer thus far? Well, it began beautifully with a fabulous book discussion on one of my favorite books of all time. I met a college preofessor and a few English major nerds for brunch to discuss this book for my professor's special study on southern women reading southern lit. She recorded our conversation, and it was a good one. Visiting Ivy Rowe through the pages of Fair and Tender Ladiesis like seeing an old friend. I have much more to say, but I am going to devote all of that to its own post later this week. I SWEAR.
After that, I went to yearbook camp - woo hoo. And then I had a nice long weekend with some college gals whom I don't see nearly enough of.
Here we are about 8 years ago:
And here we are last weekend in Seaside, Florida:
Funny how some things have changed and others......not so much. It was great ladies, and we better not wait so long next time. [The story behind that picture is actually funny. We were trying to get a picture with the camera timer, and some guy walked by and said he'd take it for us. We said "sure" but then I forgot to turn off the timer feature so he was just holding it awkwardly for ten long seconds - which is why we are laughing. It was weird...not to mention that he was walking on a dark beach all alone with a cigar. Odd.]
Aside from all of this, I managed to finish Belong to Me which was a great summer read - not too heavy but not entirely fluffy either. I came to really like the characters by the end of it. Now I am diving into Norwegian Wood which has begun fabulously and I am fighting the urge to sit here and read it when I finish this post instead of go to the gym like I need to.
In addition to all of these lovely novels, what have I been reading? Oh, just a few guidebooks for a little trip we are taking. Only one short week from now, I'll be gazing at these sights to name a few......
or maybe this......
then this ....
and finally this.....
London, Paris, Bruges, and Amsterdam!
Yipee. I am so excited and I'd love to know suggestions on food, cafes, sights, whatever.
Life is crazy, and the pace at school is INSANE as it always is at this time of year. I'm trying to make some time for myself occasionally so that I don't end up at the end of my rope. Oh wait, too late for that. There are 9 weeks left in the semester, and my students are getting just as restless as I am. I'm pretty tired of them, and it's safe to say the feeling is mutual.....they are tired of me as well. I won't even tell you how many research papers I have to grade. Saying the number aloud makes me cry.
Anyhow, I wanted to post a review of Heroines from a while back. It's a fun little read, and I don't want to pass the chance to comment on it. The general idea is that 13-year-old Penny lives in rural Illinois in a B&B with her mother, Anne-Marie, literary heroines step out of their tragic lives to recuperate under Anne-Marie's care.
It gets interesting when a specific heroine's leading man comes looking for her, and long story short, young Penny ends up in a mental institution of sorts and ends up learning much much more about her mother and her mysteriously-absent father. The conclusion is such a fun surprise that I won't really say much else. I will say, however, that Eileen Favorite manages to craft a story that is both ridiculously unrealistic and completely believable for those of us who are book lovers. So many times, I have felt so close to a character that she might as well have been staying at my family home. Favorite just takes this connection to the next logical level as characters relate to real people, and we are reminded of why we read in the first place.
So what am I reading now? Well, I have a general policy that I don't re-read. (I have too many waiting in line.) But I'm re-reading a fabulous book I read about 3 summers ago. I just got an itchin' to read it again, and I am enjoying it almost as much as the first time. If you've read it, you know why it's worthy of a revisit; if you haven't read it, GO READ IT.
It's been a crazy week or two around here. I've developed the same plague all of my students had - headache, cough, aches and pains, general ickiness. My sister almost went into premature labor. (She's at the hospital right not and they've stopped the contractions, but I am here with my niece until they release my sister.) Earlier this week, I also received some really sad news about a close college friend of mine and the much-too-early loss of her mother. On top of all of this, I have a scary stack of essays waiting to get graded and no time or concentration available to do so.
When it rains, it pours.
I'll be back to blogging at some point soon, I promise.
So I really want to go do some Target and Trader Joe's shopping, but instead I'm waiting on the carpet cleaner people to finish up with my house, so I'm stuck here for a while. I figure what better way to pass the time than to update my often neglected blog?
I hope everyone had a shiny holiday season and a fun new year. You'd think that a whole 2 weeks off would mean I could blog every now and then, but the husband and I were busy busy busy around here. Christmas Eve was my family, Christmas Day was his, and then there was a fast trip to Chattanooga and a fast trip to Birmingham so by the time New Year's Eve was here, I was needing a holiday from my holiday! ....Not to mention those essays I brought home. Ahem, procrastination anyone?
On another note, I have a good feeling about 2008, lots of good things happening. I will have a niece number two this spring - YAY; we are traveling to Europe this summer for a long-awaited trip; there is talk of a much-needed beach reunion among some old college friends this summer, and I am finally feeling comfortable and settled after our move last year.
Life is good and I have an iPhone. I can't complain.
New Year's Eve turned out to be loads of fun as we spent it with some of our old friends....not that any of us are old but we've known these folks for quite some time.
Why do camera flashes love my fair skin?
I've now spent 9 New Year's Eves with this person. Scary, I know.
So all in all, I had a fabulous holiday and am looking forward to an even better year. I feel much more rejuvinated now that I have had a break from school, and I am excited that British Lit is a semester course so I can repeat what worked and change what didn't.
All of us on the porch - Mom loved this one!
my favorite one of Scott and me
my sister and her beautiful family
Cambridge, England - my favorite place on Earth.....
a punt along the River Cam.....
My sister with Peyton and Emmie - a few hours old!
I've now spent 9 New Year's Eves with this person. Scary, I know.
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