February 7, 2010 · 1:54 am

Conversations with My Mother: Ploop, Ploop Ploop, and Ploop Ploop Ploop

Ring Ring:

Tessa: Hi Mom, How are you?

Rosie: Good. I was just going ploop ploop.

Tessa: Nice. So it’s all working down there.

Rosie: Well. No Ploop Ploop Ploops like the old days but ploop ploop twice a day is a pretty good day.

Tessa: :You still taking those hemp seeds and do they help?

Rosie: No,  I go to the bakery at Loblaws and get this delicious new bread. It has little seeds in it. The baker tells me he gets up at 3:00 in the morning to bake it. He can’t bake enough of it. Everyone loves it. I just got a notice that I have to re-do my driving test.

Tessa: Oh. How do you feel about it?

Rosie: What am I going to do? I have to do it. I have a book I’m studying.

Tessa: That’s good. Is it helping?

Rosie: It puts me to sleep. I’ve been studying for a week and I’m still not done. Last time I saw some old lady, maybe she was 95, she was writing the test with the book in her lap. Can you believe that?

Tessa: I find that hard to believe.

Rosie: It’s true. 95 with the book in her lap. AND SHE PASSED.Aggie isn’t doing her test and she’s going to drive without it.

Tessa: I know mom, you’ve told me that ten times. That’s not something to admire.

Rosie: I know but still. At our age what the hell. My appetite is good Tessie so it can’t be all bad. Wooooooooowwweeee. You have no snow. What are you going to do for the Olympics? I feel so sad. Skiing on straw. How’s work?

Tessa: It’s been really busy. A little stressful.

Rosie: You’ve never handled stress well. Makes you all red in the face like when you run. My god. You look like a fat red balloon. Why do something that’s going to kill you?.  I have to go. I feel a ploop. I better go work at it.

Tessa: Yeah, thanks for that mom. Talk to you tomorrow.

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February 2, 2010 · 5:31 am

Mansfield Park: Jane Austen Book Review

Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is a wonderful study of human folly and caprice set amidst the studious manners and social hierarchy  of early 19th century small town English gentry.  If a novel that was written almost two hundred years ago sounds and feels like a foreign place (and believe me, it does, I mean how did they keep those castles heated for god’s sake) Austen’s keen eye for the flaws that make us human are very familiar.

Enter Fanny Price,  a young beautiful morally steadfast and virtuous girl who is taken in by her wealthy uncle  and his family so she can be afforded greater opportunity in life. Uncle Tom’s family, of course,  by virtue of possessing both wealth and  beauty, are by the measure of the time, morally and socially superior to the steadfast  Fanny Price.

The Bertram daughters are cossetted and spoiled by their Aunt Norris who obsequiously panders to their every whim and folly. When (not surprisingly)  the young ladies grow up to be of dubious moral fibre and bring shame on the Bertram name through their romantic misadventures and shenanigans, it becomes obvious to the outsider that wealth and beauty alone cannot sustain the moral order.

You could probably write a masters thesis (no doubt somebody has ) on the innumerable  transactions that take place within the cast of characters in Mansfield Park that are designed to illuminate the slippery slope of moral turpitude. The great thing about Jane Austen’s world, is that if you make the right choices, your rightful place in love and society is assured.

Fanny for example, consistently resists the offer of marriage by Henry Crawford. She witnesses first hand his careless flirtations with the Bertram sisters and sees this as irrefutable evidence of a deeply flawed character. Regardless of his money and station in life, she can never marry him, even if it means she can attain a station in life far above anything she could ever have hoped for.

Henry, on the other hand, through this single flaw, will never find the real happiness he seeks. He can love Fanny and know that she is the best he can ever have but his vanity lead him to his ultimate downfall. He may have wealth and position, but he will never have love.

Edmund, on the other hand, who is Fanny’s cousin (and son of the wealthy uncle) doesn’t seek wealth and seeks only love. Even though he is misguided in his search for love when he falls for the charming but flighty Mary Crawford (sister to the morally bankrupt Henry) he ultimately finds redemption and real love with Fanny.

This book isn’t going to be for everyone, especially not Dave or readers of his ilk, but I thought this was a fun and interesting read. It took me some time to get used to the ornate use of language but I got used to it quite quickly and found that it gave me something even more to think about which is the changing nature of language.

My next book is contemporary but then I think I’ll take a dive into Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.

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January 18, 2010 · 12:55 am

Loving Frank: Nancy Horan Book Review

I don’t usually read historic fiction but I picked this up as a recommendation from my sister. Nancy Horan is a writer and journalist who spent most of her life in Oak Park, Illinois, where Frank Lloyd Wright had lived for many years and created a notable architectural legacy. As she became interested in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life she learned of his love affair with Martha (Mamah) Borthwick Cheney, the wife of one of his clients, with whom he had  run off to Europe, leaving behind 8 children between the two families.

Although a great deal is known of Frank Lloyd Wright, very little was known of Mamah Cheney.  Horan had done quite a bit of research with secondary resources, but she  was able to more fully flesh out Mamah Borthwick’s character when several of her letters were found.

What Nancy Horan delivers is a very even- handed and beautifully compelling story of the love between two people, who defy social convention so that they may be together.

Under Horan’s expert hand  Mamah Borthwick comes to life as a very conflicted, passionate and intellectual woman who follows her heart.  A highly educated feminist  who speaks several languages, she is in every way an intellectual match for the eccentric, brilliant and egotistical Frank Lloyd Wright.

While women today have many opportunities that Mameh couldn’t possibly have imagined, the feminist dilemna that frames this story is still very relevant today. How do you balance your own intellectual and emotional needs with a happy and fulfilling family life? Can you follow your emotional and intellectual dreams and be happy in family life? Is it moral and right to stay in a loveless marriage for the ‘sake’ of the children? Can you be a good parent if you’re not personally fulfilled? Should children come first? These are all questions that Mameh faced each and every day of her life and which hounded her both publically in the  press and privately.

Yet, she remained true to herself and to a love that she felt was one of the only authentic things in life. She struggled daily with her choices and yet you don’t imagine for one moment that she could have lived her life any other way.  This is a compelling but difficult story.

The bonus in this book, is of course, that the man she has fallen in love with is Frank Lloyd Wright and the book fleshes out his character and the life and times that fuelled his vision of form. He was a difficult guy to love. Egotistical, brilliant, flamboyant, a terrible businessman who rarely paid his bills on time, he was selfish and driven. But he had a remarkable vision of beauty and form that changed the course of American architecture.  And  he also loved Mameh Borthwick with his heart and soul.

” Mamah and I have had our struggles , our differences our moments of jealous fear for our ideals of each other – they are not lacking in any close human relationship – but they served only to bind us more closely together. We were more than merely happy even when momentarily miserable…Her soul has entered mine and it shall not be lost.”

When great art and great love forms itself against convention there is a price to pay and the price is often steep.  In this kind of tale, it seems to me, there is no right and wrong although society certainly does/did its fair share of condemnation. I think Mamah Borthwick made some very tough choices for which she paid dearly. But she lived a life that was authentic to herself.  I thought this was a really interesting book that is as relevant to women’s issues  today as it was during Mamah Borthwick’s time. Nancy Horan brought to life a remarkable man and woman and their love story.

Nancy Horan has a web site that is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know more about the characters or how the book came to be written. http://www.nancyhoran.com/

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January 14, 2010 · 7:57 pm

A Fraction of the Whole: Steve Toltz Book Review

Dave’s turn: A Fraction of the Whole is narrated by Jasper Dean who tells us the story of  his overanalyzing, philosophical, paranoid father, Martin and his deceased master criminal uncle, Terry. As he tells us of the events that led to his father’s demise, he recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and unwanted adventures.

The story starts in an Australian prison cell but travels to the cafes of Paris, through Thai jungles to strip clubs, asylums, mazes and criminal lairs. The result is a non stop diatribe- for and against- politics, family, love, relationships, religion and humanity.

Throughout the story we are witness to Jasper’s constant struggle with his relationship with his father. Not knowing from one moment to the next if he loves, hates or is going to murder him. And although we get the sense that he wants to leave (after Jasper reads, in one of his fathers many journals, that he is thought of as nothing more than a premature reincarnation of his father)  to form his own identity, there is the constant inner struggle of how, or in fact if he truly wants to. I thought this was an interesting insight that explores the sometimes tumultuous relationships we sometimes can have with our own parents.

I found Steve Toltz’s writing style, philosophical ramblings and play on words more enjoyable than the story itself, which can get a little flat at times. I found myself re-reading and underlining (then suddenly realizing I had borrowed the book) certain brilliant and hilarious observations on our existence. This book has made me really think about my own life and world around it and has made me want to read more philosophy. I feel when a book has this affect it has done it’s job. I look forward to Toltz’s next writing.

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January 11, 2010 · 12:43 am

Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Book Review

I hadn’t intended to read Infidel. It was a book on a way to another book and also I am rarely  able to make my way through non-fiction. This book, however, was an exception in spite of the fact that I didn’t find the writing to be that great. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life story, on the other hand, is interesting and so foreign to any life story I know that once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is perhaps better known as the outspoken Dutch parliamentarian and women’s rights activist who collaborated on a film with Theo Van Gogh that highlighted the abuses of Islam against Muslim women. Van Gogh was murdered and found with a note pinned to his chest saying Ali would be next.

Infidel is a memoir of her life growing up in Somalia and Kenya where she was regularly beaten by her mother, abandoned by her father and eventually promised in marriage to a man she didn’t know. She escaped to Holland where she sought refugee status, worked as a translator in abortion and women’s clinics and ultimately went to university to study politics.

It is through her ‘awakening’ in Holland to western values of equality, government, marriage, self-determination and women’s rights and her work in the clinics that drives her to fight for the rights, particularly of immigrant women in Holland. She is shocked when she learns of the sexual excision of young girls and honour deaths in her newly adopted country. But her desire to open dialogue on these issues spawns a hostility that forces her to live under guard 24 hours a day under threat of death.

This is one of those books that rips you out of your western centric comfort zone and forces you to see that the world is an entirely different place for many people but particularly for many women the world over. She obviously has a very strong view on arranged marriage, the role of women within Islam and the ability for Islam to adapt to allow women an equal role and self-determination. I don’t know enough about this part of the world to exercise any kind of opinion but I can say that the dynamics in her life story are overwhelmingly paternalistic. The quality of your life depends on the good will of almost everyone around you.

That she managed to break the mold and re-invent herself as a feminist and atheist seems shocking to me given her background. She talks about the influence of reading romance novels at a young age. She would often compare her girlfriend’s experiences with marriage to these fantasies and was determined to seek a different kind of life for herself.

I think she is a brave woman. She has guts, stamina and a burning drive to make the world a better place for women.The book, for me, was a bit depressing though. If nothing else it underlined the enormous chasm between the West and Islam and given the world’s circumstances it makes me feel less hopeful that a bridge can be created between these worlds. Maybe this is a simple view but towards the end of the book when she essentially had to leave Holland because of her public outspokeness,  I felt outraged and sad (maybe sadder than usual) about the crappy world we live in.

Next book: Loving Frank

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January 8, 2010 · 5:26 pm

The Elegance of the Hedgehog: Muriel Barbery A Book Review

I thought this was an absolutely beautiful, wonderful, funny, heartbreaking book. Wow. This book made me think, feel, laugh, and cry. Muriel Barbery is a philosopher by trade and you can certainly see this in the story of the novel’s two protaganists. The story takes place in a very chic apartment building in Paris where Madame Renee Michel is a self-described thick set, bulbous, cantakerous concierge who is scornful of the building’s wealthy, snobbish tenants. What they don’t know, and what Madame Michel doesn’t allow them to see is that she has a keen intelligence, a prodigious love of philosophy, art and Japanese culture and is extremely well versed in the arts and culture.

The novel’s other protaganist is 12 year old Paloma Josse, the precocious, brilliant daughter of socialist parents. At the beginning of the novel Paloma is determined to set her parents’ apartment on fire and kill herself by her 13th birthday.  She has a keen eye for artifice, cruelty and deception and she feels trapped by her family and social status and doesn’t understand the value and meaning of life.

When an intriguing, wealthy Japanese gentleman moves into the building, who against all social convention, befriends Paloma and Madame Michel, it sets in motion a series of self-revelations that can only take place in the face of true life changing friendship.

What we see through the eyes  Madame Michel are the often cruel prejudices  exercised against people that are considered ‘below our station’ and that render them invisible. But what she brings to us are those incredible moments of arresting beauty that make us carry on in spite of everything.

With Paloma we see something different. As a member of the privileged class she has the unique intelligence to play cat and mouse with her ‘victims’ that  reveals their shallow stupidity. Her journey to try and find the meaning of life in all of this is what is so extraordinary.

While all of this sounds quite serious the book is really quite funny. Paloma and Renee are really the same people in different bodies and in different situations but they both have an extraordinary wit and a deep love for language and culture which reveals itself on every page. I will read this book again.

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January 6, 2010 · 5:14 am

Lentil, Prawn, Chevre Salad with Lemon Garlic Dressing

This is a really yummy salad that a friend gave to me which I have adapted slightly. It has been Dave proofed and is therefore delicious because I heard him say yeah this is delicious. I guessed at the qty’s when I made it but it still turned out great. Here goes: Continue reading →

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December 18, 2009 · 5:29 pm

Conversations With My Mother: Martini please

Rosie: Tessie?

Tessa: Hi mom,

Rosie: Guess what?

Tessa: What?

Rosie: I just talked to your cousin.

Tessa: Nice. Which one?

Rosie: Peter in Holland.

Tessa: How’s he doing?

Rosie: He said he couldn’t believe how great my Dutch still is.

Tessa: Well you are Dutch.

Rosie: I know but after all these years my writing is still perfect.

Tessa: That’s good.

Rosie: He wanted to know if I had any assistance,  you know hulp (help). I said no. I don’t want help. I don’t want anyone in my house. I’ve decided I’m not going to rehab.

Tessa: That’s crazy.

Rosie: I don’t care. Last time when I had my other hip done I didn’t and I was perfect. The doctor told me I was perfect.

Tessa: That was fifteen years ago. The goal is to get back on your feet as soon as possible don’t you think?

Rosie: Anyways, I almost fell out of that bed your sister bought me. So high. I could die in here. Hey, Tessie, tell me do you and Deef (Dave) still drink martinis?

Tessa: Yeah, once in a while.

Rosie: Wow. That sounds good. Maybe we can have one when you’re here. Your brother tells me you don’t eat turkey. How can we have Christmas if you don’t eat turkey? What’s wrong with turkey?

Tessa: You know I don’t eat turkey.

Rosie: Well I don’t really eat meat either. Except for turkey and lamb. I love lamb burgers. I don’t eat beef. Except sometimes Georgie makes something good on the BBQ.

Tessa: So really, you do eat meat.

Rosie: No, not really.  I can’t wait to see Deef. And you. It’s coming so soon I can’t believe it! I’ll have a martini when you come. Just one please.

Tessa: Okay mom. Love you.

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December 16, 2009 · 4:49 pm

Screw Turkey, Eat Dahl: Recipe vegan

Who says you have to eat turkey at Christmas or any other time. Try dahl and rice and throw a few more things in there and you have a beautiful meal. Add a martini or three before hand, some nice beer or wine during and have yourself a party. Continue reading →

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December 14, 2009 · 5:39 am

The Book of Negroes:Someone Knows My Name Book Review

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill is a fictional account of the life of a woman who is captured and enslaved as a young girl and sent to America  to work on a southern indigo plantation.

This is, of course, an old story that we know all too well. But in Lawrence Hill’s capable hands we traverse this dark period of history through the eyes of a woman who recounts her brutal life story from enslavement to freedom.

What is clear, from the moment Aminata Diallo  is captured and brought to the New World is that nothing in her life will ever be easy. As a black woman, whether enslaved or free, there is no place she can go that will ever truly grant her the freedom she seeks. Even when she finally escapes to New York then Nova Scotia , Freetown and finally London,  she is trapped as much by whites as she is by blacks and by freedom as much as slavery.

What I find interesting is that Lawrence  gives us a character who is taught to read and right. Aminata is fully literate and has a passion for language and stories. It’s clear that the moment she speaks that her literacy makes her  different even within her own community. She sounds like a ‘learned, educated woman’ which she is.  In the end her ability and desire to be a ‘storyteller’ to tell her own story is her humanity and her freedom.

When she is brought to London by a group of abolitionist to ‘tell the story’ of slavery, to show that blacks can be educated, they insist on writing her story so that it can be used as a weapon in their fight to abolish the slave trade. Aminata knows that the only one who can tell this story is her. As witness to her life she owns her tale and won’t allow anyone to take this from her.

This reminds me very much of Chimananda Adichie’s TEDX talk where she tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

The Book of Negroes reminds me of the importance of telling stories and the importance of listening. It’s a worthwhile read just as Chimananda’s talk is worth a good listen.

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