The Punishment That She Deserves by Elizabeth George

I do not usually write about murder mysteries, even though I read them at a pace of about nine for every one book that I blog about.  I make an exception for Elizabeth George's Lynley series because they are so character rich and well written that I think they deserve some attention.  That, and the fact that it is 700 pages built around a small British village with all sorts of intrigue going on make it well worth a gander.
For those not familiar with the backbone of the story, Thomas Lynley comes from the landed gentry and is a flat out rebel for joining the police.  there are a number of crime fiction series that use this formula, but this one, in my opinion, is by far the best.  His preferred partner in solving crime is Barbara Havers, who doggedly pursues every inch of a case, infuriating all those who work with her, with a few exceptions, Lynley included.  Havers is on a last chance agreement, her superior is looking to boot her to the boonies, and she is assigned a case where he is sure that she will fail.  She sort of does and sort of doesn't at first and Lynley joins her for the second half of the book where they unravel what really happened when a well liked church deacon was taken into custody and was then found hanged in his cell.  Well done all around.

RBG (2018)

We went to see this movie to escape the oppressive (and early) heat.  This documentary about both the life and career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is well worth seeing.  The backbone of the movie is related to her own personal experience of discrimination as a woman, and then, as a young lawyer (as well as wife and mother), how she systematically and thoughtfully went about making the argument to the US Supreme Court on six occasions that to treat men and women differently was inherently discriminatory.  I was less aware of that aspect of her life than any other portrayed, and yet in many ways, it changed the course of options for women after these 1970's decisions were made.  Lots to still do, of course, but she pointed out the glaring inconsistencies and the lack of equal protection under the law.  I loved the scenes with her husband, with her grandchildren, and her family's views of her.  She is shier than I would have thought.  Her husband was the perfect choice for her, he obviously put her career in the place that it belongs, but I did not know that he had cancer as a law student, and almost died.  It all could have been very different, so thankfully he made it. 
The bottom line is that she is an icon and everyone should watch this.

Wilted Greens and Rice Gratin

• 1 bunch greens
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• Freshly ground pepper to taste
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• ¼ cup chopped fresh herbs
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup low-fat milk (2 percent)
• 1 cup cooked rice, preferably short-grain
• 3 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (3/4 cup)
• ¼ cup breadcrumbs, or a mixture of breadcrumbs and freshly grated Parmesan (optional)

1. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, add a generous amount of salt and add kale. Blanch for 2 to 3 minutes, remove from the water with a deep fry skimmer or a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl of cold water. Drain and, taking the greens up by the handful, squeeze hard to expel excess water. Chop medium-fine or cut in thin ribbons.  Can be stir fried if you prefer
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add onion. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes, and add fennel. Cook, stirring often, until the fennel begins to soften. Add salt to taste and continue to cook, stirring often, until the fennel is very tender and fragrant, about 8 minutes. Add garlic and kale, stir together for another minute, then stir in dill. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and remove from the heat.
3. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 2-quart gratin or baking dish. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Whisk in milk and salt to taste (I use about 1/2 teaspoon). Stir in fennel and kale mixture, rice and Gruyère, and combine well. Taste and adjust seasonings. Scrape into baking dish. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top if using, and drizzle on the remaining tablespoon of oil. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until set and the top and sides are beginning to color. Remove from oven and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes before serving. This is good hot, warm, or room temperature.

Five Carat Soul by James McBride

I am not a huge fan of the short story as a genre and so the reason that I read this collection of short stories is because it was on the list of recommended reading from Obama.  He is a great reader, and I have almost uniformly enjoyed the books on his reading list.  This one did not change my idea about short stories but it is well worth reading.  I like what one reviewer said of this collection, that it is strategically doleful.
A sort of jazzy, generous spirit animates this story collection. The best stories here feature a teenage band called Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band. Set in a poor Pennsylvania neighbourhood called The Bottom, they are narrated by a kid named Butter with a kind of bemused innocence that gives the stories much of their “aw, shucks” humour. The stories also feature telepathic zoo animals, a zealous toy collector and an eavesdropping Abraham Lincoln. All these disparate voices could lend the collection a circus-like feel, but McBride succeeds in tempering absurdity with insight, and camp with poignancy.

San Diego Public Art Surprises

On a recent trip I realized that I had sold San Diego short.  I am not a beach person.  I like a bucolic water view almost as much as the next person, but it doesn't send me.  So I had somewhat low expectations of my time in the self proclaimed America's Finest City.
The airport in San Diego is so close to the downtown area that you can easily walk there.  Landing is a bit disconcerting, because I swore I could wave at people in their offices in skyscrapers we passed.  Stepping off the plane after a surprisingly pleasant flight, I was greeted by this sculpture entitled Figure of Speech, a whole series of rolled tongues that was both beautiful and it made me laugh.

Next stop was a walk around the Gaslamp district, which is near the waterfront.  I love the late nineteenth century architecture, which is both surprising in a California town and reminiscent of my own house.  There was a lot of street art in this neighborhood and I would definitely recommend spending an afternoon walking along the waterfront then venturing inland to see what is on offer.

Juniper and Ivy, San Diego

 We ate at this great restaurant in San Diego on a recent trip.  This is my birthday dinner for this year, and it was all kinds of wonderful.  The first thing, which is less important to me, is that it is a beautifully designed and laid out restaurant. We had a cozy corner table that was just perfect, and there were all sorts of other options for special seating.  The wait staff was also very pleasant.  Also not high on my priorities, but a nice addition to a memorable evening.

 Then there is the food.  Which was just flat out wow.  They had a couple dozen dishes on the menu and the majority of them were tiny or small plates, ranging in price from a few dollars up to fifteen and twenty dollars.  That may sound like a lot, but think of it this way--the quality of the preparation and the inspiration of the dishes is like a high end fixed price meal, but you get to choose each of the courses, and in the end we spent about $100 for two.  Not an everyday meal by any means, but we felt like we got a deal.  We cook, and we would never accomplished this at home.

The best dish was a huge portion of a beef crudo on toast cut into four portions, each topped with a perfectly poached quail egg.  I am not a beef eater, and I do not care for it raw, but I have to admit, this was delicious.  The pictured dishes are cod and shrimp poached in a richly flavored broth, with cherry tomatoes.  It was perfectly cooked and had such balanced flavors.  Next down is abalone with an avocado gazpacho and an olive, pine nut, and herb side salad.  Abalone is always kind of a crap shoot and this was delicious.  The surprise dish was a sous vide chicken with a mole made with carrots and topped with Mexican pickled carrots and fresh thinly mandalined carrot, so basically carrots three ways and super moist chicken.  Really delicious, and the one dish that we might actually be able to replicate at home.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

This is not my favorite book by this author (who I am very fond of), but if you are a fan, it is a solid follow up to her book, Case Histories.
One Good Turn returns to the now ex-private eye Jackson Brodie two years after the events of Case Histories. Wealthy, retired and bored, he is mooching around the Edinburgh festival while his girlfriend Julia, another of Case Histories' damaged souls, has a part in a dreadful fringe production and ducks his emotional demands. Julia is as absent to us as she is to Jackson, who finds his purpose in the shape of a dead body washed up on Cramond Island and then snatched back by the tide - another lost girl, doubly lost this time. Her death is somehow connected to the road rage incident that begins the book and links the disparate cast of characters while a crowd spectates.
The book is a reasonable murder mystery, would that it fit squarely in that genre, but as literary fiction it is just not her best work.  

Navajo Rugs, Mingei International Museum, San Diego

 I have always been very partial to Navajo rugs.  My parents had a Two Grey Hills and a Ganado rug that they acquired in the early 1970's that I have always loved.  Then as a young adult, I would wander through Navajo country every couple years, and even bought two for myself at the Hubbell Trading Post in the early 1980's, once I had some cash of my own. 
The recent exhibit of Navajo weavings that I saw in San Diego was spectacular.  The rug above is a Crystal District rug from 1940 and the Ganado Eye Dazzler below is an 1890 rug.  Wowza.

The Mingei has an incredible collection of turn of the century Navajo rugs of a quality that is rarely seen in rugs this age.
What do they symbolize? 
Two of the earliest known design elements to be utilized by Navajo weavers are the diamond and the triangle. These elements were incorporated into old wearing blankets and continue in the modern day Navajo rugs.  Navajo grandmothers say that the diamond is a symbol of the Dinétah or Navajo homeland with its four sacred corners that are marked by the four sacred mountains.
Triangles are basic building blocks of Navajo design. Placed on top of each other, triangles can become a series of prayer feathers or songs or become the backbone of a mountain Yei figure.

Tamarind Salmon

This is the best salmon recipe we have had in a long while.  Just delicious, and also pretty straight forward.

1 side of salmon
olive oil

Sauce:
1 tomato chopped (or tomato puree)
1/2 c. tamarind paste
1/3 c. brown sugar
3 chipotles in adobo
1 Tbs. sherry vinegar
1-2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Directions

1. puree all sauce ingredients in a blender.
2. preheat broiler.
3. line a broiler pan with aluminum foil.
4. brush fillets with olive oil, them brush with tamarind sauce.
5. season with salt& pepper.
6. broil salmon for 6-8 minutes, adding more sauce halfway through.
7. serve!  We had a nice tossed salad for a low carb and delicious meal

Still Me by Jojo Moyes

This is the third book in this series which began with Me Before You.  It is not a tear jerker, which is refreshing, but it is pretty much entirely modern romance.  Even though my spouse reads much of what I do, I returned this one to the library without putting it on his side of the bed. 
Louisa is back, and she is following in the foot steps of her hero and going to New York.  She is a paid companion for the much younger wife of a wealthy man.  She is trying to maintain a long distance love, which doesn't work out all that well.  She loves New York, but she runs into trouble both on the job and in her relationships.  However, as the feel good conclusion to this trilogy would have it, she finds a job where she is appreciated and also gives her a path to the next phase in her life.   I enjoyed this, and read it all in one day while traveling.  It is light and frothy but well written in an Emily Griffin kind of way, and not quite Curtis Sittenfeld material, but good.

The Last Year of the Sixth Decade

It is hard not to feel that 59 is cliche, but that is indeed where I am.  I would probably spend more time worrying about how old I am getting if I wasn't so grateful to be alive and aging.  A couple of years ago it was an uncertainly if I would even get a chance to be 60, and while it is still not a slam dunk, it is looking more hopeful now than it did then.
I have found it challenging to live from one oncology appointment to the next, although reassuring in the short run.  I hesitate to make plans that extend further than three months out from my last appointment, which is a strange way to live.  My plans go in spurts, where I have tremendous anxiety leading up to an appointment, and then a flurry of activity immediately afterwards, wanting to take full advantage of my new lease on life, only to go through it once again, and so on.
So today what I want to do is to focus on the good things that have happened in the last year.  I have been actively quilting and making things again--I have struggled some with cooking as much as I would like to, but my crafty side has been fully satisfied.  I have traveled extensively, knocking off a couple of life goals and hoping to get to a few more in the year to come.  I have had great medical care and without that I truly would not be here, so that is a huge plus.  I have been able to spend time with my family, both near and far, and may all of these things be true of the year to come.

Monroe's Restaurant, Albuquerque, New Mexico

We ate here our very first night on a recent trip to New Mexico, and it was a great way to start.  After a week, we all thought that we had had better components of the meal at other restaurants, but everything here was solid, and for sure if you are looking for chile rellenos with read and green chile sauce, this is an excellent choice.
We had just driven 12 hours from Kansas City that day and were all ready to get out of the car.  Our Airbnb hosts were over the top nice, and when we asked for a New Mexican restaurant that we could walk to they said, "Monroe's" in unison.  It was perfect, a half mile walk on a pleasant evening and had a delicious (and very affordable ) meal.  The one thing that many of us had not had was sopapillas, which are a bit like fry bread but smaller and puffier.  You drizzle them with honey and break off small bites at a time, and they are both ubiquitous in New Mexico and a real treat.  So if you are in the neighborhood, this is an excellent dining choice.

The Great Beauty (2013)

This is a definitely Fellini-esque film, which means that I am pretty sure that i did not totally get it.  I was both confused and amused by it.
"The Great Beauty" is a character study that presents contemporary Rome through the eyes of Jep Gambardella (played by Toni Servillo).  He is a simultaneously overstimulated and underwhelmed taste-making intellectual who moves from small intimate roof top parties to clubs that throb with music and pulsating dancers. He was a writer who wrote one great work that is now floundering in obscurity and he doesn't really write. Or be gainfully employed.  He spends his time performing as a public figure, a fixture of the city. He wants to remain young and important for as long as he can (he's 65 and ironically looks older), so he uses botox. But he also mocks anyone who makes vague, pseudo-intellectual claims about ethics, art, and staying young. It is a movie of contradictions, and I think the message is that Rome is also full of contradictions.  At once old and flirting with modernity, it is a city that has great beauty, but also some grittiness.

Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico

I love National Parks and I love New Mexico. 
I am still reflecting on my spring trip to New Mexico, and if you are ever in Albuquerque, this park is not far from downtown.  It has a visitor's center, which also has a couple of short trails with petroglyphs, and then a couple of other locations that are an easy drive from there.  There are literally hundreds of pictures drawn on rocks that are easy to find and fascinating to look at and think about.  We chose the site with several hundred because I thought that in that case for sure we would see a couple dozen, but in reality it was pretty easy to find a hundred or so.  The trail for this is paved part of the way, very flat, and while you can definitely scramble on rocks to see more drawings, it is not necessary to do so, and a wheelchair or a stroller would be a reasonable mode of transportation.  

Mourning the Dead

Edvard Munch had a thing about death, and when I saw an exhibit of his work last summer, there was a whole room full of paintings that were about death and dying.  This one in particular really captures how I feel, almost 50 years later, about the death of my brother.
He was born over half a century ago and came home on my second birthday.  I don't remember that part, or when he got polio five months later.  I always remember him in a wheelchair, and as such he was more often home than not.  We were unusually close for siblings, mostly as a result of his physical limitations, and when he dies when I was ten, I was a bereft child living in a house with parents who had lost their child and a remaining sibling who could barely walk and talk.  The loneliness and sadness that this painting captures is so much about how hard, almost impossible it was to move beyond that grief.  It wasn't until I was in college that I could even face that it was a problem and even today, I will sob through anything that I write that skirts on his death.  However, that is not the memory that he would have wanted to leave behind.  So I find joy in my sons, who carry a bit of him inside them, and on this one day each year, I cry.  It is a compromise.

Hello Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

This book, which is very easy to read, won the Newberry Medal this past year.  I have been reading young adult reading and two things about that. One is that they are faster to read, and they really resonate with issues that continue to be relevant well into adulthood.  Another silver lining for me is that it got me back on the horse of reading more fiction written for adults.  Not that I was doing a terrible job there, but not as good as I wanted, and a few YA novels and a couple of trips where I could read a whole book on a travel day really helped.
The focus of this book is bullies and how to manage when you become a target (and some thoughts that we can all relate to but aren't all that helpful as well).  Virgil has a pet Guinea pig that he carries around in his backpack.  So when a bully throws the pack down a dried up well shaft, Virgil goes in after to reclaim his pet.  It can't really be called a rescue because then he himself is trapped, and it isn't until a band of similarly situated socially kids come to help out.  It is uplifting without being too unrealistic.

Asian Pork and Cabbage Dumplings

 I contend that these are a dish that you should avoid getting out, as they are so easy to make at home.  Buy them from an Asian market, fry them up, and viola, they are really as good as any that you would get at a standard Asian restaurant.
So when my youngest wanted to make these I was not what you would call enthusiastic.  I was worng about that, as it turned out.  These are super easy to make and they taste delicious.

• For the Dumplings:
• 1 pound finely minced Napa cabbage (about 1/2 a medium head)
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt, divided
• 1 pound ground pork shoulder
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic (about 3 medium cloves)
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• 2 ounces minced scallions (about 3 whole scallions)
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 package dumpling wrappers (40 to 50 wrappers)
• Vegetable or canola oil for cooking
• For the Sauce:
• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons chili oil (optional)

1. For the Dumplings: Combine cabbage and 2 teaspoons salt in a large bowl and toss to combine. Transfer to a fine mesh strainer and set it over the bowl. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.
2. Transfer cabbage to the center of a clean dish towel and gather up the edges. Twist the towel to squeeze the cabbage, wringing out as much excess moisture as possible. Discard the liquid.
3. Combine pork, drained cabbage, remaining teaspoon salt, white pepper, garlic, ginger, scallions, and sugar in a large bowl and knead and turn with clean hands until the mixture is homogenous and starting to feel tacky/sticky. Transfer a teaspoon-sized amount to a microwave-safe plate and microwave on high power until cooked through, about 10 seconds. Taste and adjust seasoning with more salt, white pepper, and/or sugar if desired.
4. Set up a work station with a small bowl of water, a clean dish towel for wiping your fingers, a bowl with the dumpling filling, a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet for the finished dumplings, and a stack of dumpling wrappers covered in plastic wrap.
5. To form dumplings, hold one wrapper on top of a flat hand. Using a spoon, place a 2 teaspoon- to 1 tablespoon-sized amount of filling in the center of the wrapper. Use the tip of the finger on your other hand to very gently moisten the edge of the wrapper with water (do not use too much water). Wipe fingertip dry on kitchen towel.
6. Working from one side, carefully seal the filling inside the wrapper by folding it into a crescent shape, pleating in edge as it meets the other . Transfer finished dumplings to the parchment lined baking sheet.
7. At this point the dumplings may be frozen by placing the baking sheet in the freezer. Freeze dumplings for at least 30 minutes then transfer to a zipper-lock freezer bag for long-term storage. Dumplings can be frozen for up to 2 months and cooked directly from the freezer.
8. To Cook: Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a medium non-stick skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add as many dumplings as will fit in a single layer and cook, swirling pan, until evenly golden brown on the bottom surface, about 1 1/2 minutes.
9. Increase heat to medium-high, add 1/2 cup of water and cover tightly with a lid. Let dumplings steam for 3 minutes (5 minutes if frozen), then remove lid. Continue cooking, swirling pan frequently and using a thin spatula to gently dislodge the dumplings if they've stuck to the bottom of the pan, until the water has fully evaporated and the dumplings have crisped again, about 2 minutes longer. Slide dumplings onto a plate, turning them crisped-side-up before serving with the sauce.
10. For the Sauce: Combine vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I loved this book, which is a brief summation of Russian history from the revolution through the 1950's.
I picked it up because it was on Obama's reading list, and while I have lost any respect that the presidency might confer on a person, I still respect him.
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is living in the Hotel Metropol in 1922 when he is sentenced to house arrest for writing a poem that offended the ruling parties.  He remains there, largely within it's confines for a goodly portion of the novel.  He has to move form his luxury suite to a much smaller room, but he is a breath of fresh air throughout the novel.  We learn about the goings on in Russia through the voices of his visitors, and it is a turbulent era, what with people being shot and exiled to Siberia, the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's regime.  It is beautifully told, and eye opening in a way that enchants.  It is, as one reviewer put it, a reminder of what it is to be classy.  The Count has no attitude about his fall from grace.  He occasionally outwits his captors, but he largely lives a full and rich life within the confines of an exquisitely appointed hotel.  I hear that this is being made into a movie or mini-series, which I do hope does it credit.

Motherhood

I do truly think of things like Mother's Day as  manufactured holidays that are designed to force all of us to get cards and flowers and chocolates together to show our appreciation for a parent.  It is brilliant in some ways, because we all had a mother, but on some level it is very painful for those who have lost a mother or in a lot of ways never really had one.
So for me it is a chance to be thankful that both as a child and as a mother I have been fortunate.  I did not have any desire to be a mother, and in a lot of respects that while I am basically a good mother, I do not have the additional features that takes a mother from good to great.  That being said, the Winnicott concept of the good enough mother appears to be sufficient.  My last child graduated from college this year, and my first grand child was born.  I have given fully of my self when it has been needed, and there have been some very rocky points along the way, and it ended up being all right. And today, I celebrate that.

The Geranium Dress

I have been really enjoying making clothes for my new (and only) grandchild.  I bought this pattern ages ago with the hope of making one for her, but as a non-sewer, the whole thing seemed a little overwhelming to me.  Not so for my intrepid sister-in-law, who while also not a sewer, has way more confidence in her abilities than I myself had for either of us.  But no one says no to her, and with only an afternoon to complete the task, off we went.
I had to google which foot for my sewing machine was the buttonhole foot, tried to find a YouTube video to learn how to make the button hole itself, all while my SIL was tracing, cutting and sewing this adorable dress.  We were so proud of ourselves (I made some matching bloomers to go underneath to complete the outfit), and even put buttons from her great great grandmother's button box onto the back, giving it a foot into the past.  Very satisfying.

The pattern is absolutely fantastic in its construction.  The bodice is entirely lined and mush of the dress has no raw edges whatsoever.  So wash it once a week until it no longer fits, the edges will not fray.  The basic dress, which is on the left, is supremely easy, and then once you master that, there are literally dozens of variations that can be made (you need to buy what is called an expansion pack in order to get all the way to dozens, but this one pattern could be all you need until you get up to the 5T size).  Pockets, long sleeves, short sleeves, frills if you want frills, simple if you want simple, no sleeves, capped sleeves, zippers or buttons, it goes on and on, and requires only that you master this one pattern.  I love it!

White Houses by Amy Bloom

I like Amy Bloom's work, and I liked it even more after I heard her speak at a Wesleyan Parent weekend event many moons ago. This book, which chronicles a long time affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.   It joins the ranks of fictional accounts of First Ladies, the best of which (for me) is Curtis Sittenfield's American Wife, and is no less scandalous in it's own way.

Much of it is factually based.  Eleanor Roosevelt was dismayed at the loss of privacy being a first lady would entail, and she worried that her position would keep her from the activism that gave meaning to her life.  Lorena Hickok, an AP journalist,  helped her find her equilibrium. Hickok was a tough-minded beat reporter with a nose for a story, and Eleanor — a Good Wife who had looked the other way at her husband’s multiple infidelities — could have been the scoop of a lifetime. But Hick, as she was called, fell in love with her subject, and at least for a time Eleanor reciprocated. Realizing she couldn’t cover someone she had feelings for, Hick resigned from the A.P. and all but moved into the White House. Formally she worked for Harry Hopkins, the head of the New Deal relief programs — a job Eleanor arranged — and reported, brilliantly, from the field about the lives of those affected by the ravages of the Depression. But she also functioned as Eleanor’s increasingly necessary confidante, cheerleader and intimate partner.  Until she was kicked to the curb, either because Eleanor tired of her, or because she couldn't stand the scrutiny.  In any case, this is a fictional account of their long term friendship and affair.

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2018)

This PG-rated literary biopic “Goodbye Christopher Robin” might sound like a perfectly fine choice for family night at the movies, given that it is in large part an origin tale about that beloved ursine superstar Winnie-the-Pooh. For anyone who has read aloud A.A. Milne’s sing-song wordplay to sleepy tykes at bedtime, the film’s title likely summons visions of a honey-craving bear, a sweet-natured piglet, a sullen donkey and an energetic tiger bouncing alongside their pint-size human pal—inspired by the author’s own son—as they share adventures in the 100 Acre Wood.  Wrong.  This is a tale repleat with sadness, trauma, war, and the consequences of both PTSD and the seeking of fame.
The good thing about it is that it is a story that resonates.  It has the strength of being true behind it and life is messy, so the movie that tells a true story is bound to be messy.  The bad part is that you will never quite look at the bear and his friends quite the same again, so do not let a child who is still enthralled with them watch this just yet.

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

This book, long listed for the Booker Prize, takes place in the course of an hour on All Souls’ Day, when the dead return to walk the Earth, and set in the stark, lovely landscape of County Mayo on Ireland’s west coast, it is a story told by a ghost of a man in one single running sentence. It is broken by commas and paragraph indentation, but never comes to a full stop. It could be a story being told on the stage.
Its narrator is the recently dead Marcus Conway, a civil engineer who is still concerned with scale and accuracy, mapping and surveying, but also with love for his wife Mairead and their children. Even illness and suffering can be rendered beautiful by close observation, by the tenderness of affection. Marcus’s life is an ordinary one in much the way that the life of Leopold Bloom, his literary predecessor, is ordinary. It is the vivid attention to detail is Joycean, which makes this novel resonate like an evening bell.

Spanish Grilled Asparagus

I was recently in Portland, and when I got home, I took some cookbooks by Portland chefs out of the library in order to keep the food experience alive.  This is from the Toro Bravo cookbook, which is wonderful and exceeds our actual experience in the restaurant, but we would give it another try after cooking out of this.

2 pounds asparagus
2 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
4 slices jamon (Spanish ham), finely julienned
Kosher salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1 preserved lemon, skin julienned

3 whole oil-cured Calabrian chilies (or ½ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes)
½ cup green and black Mediterranean olives, pitted and quartered (try a mix of Castelvetrano and Kalamata)
1. Start your grill. Prepare an ice water bath. Snap the woody bottoms from the asparagus spears, then peel about 1½ inches from the stem end.
2. Bring 1 gallon of water to a roiling boil with 1/3 cup kosher salt. Boil asparagus for 30 seconds to 1 minute, depending on the size, then cool in the ice bath.
3. In a medium saute pan over medium-high heat, add the 2 tablespoons olive oil and the ham; cook, stirring constantly, until nicely crisped. Strain, discard the oil and set the ham aside.
4. Drain and dry the asparagus, season with remaining olive oil, salt and pepper and toss to coat. Grill the asparagus until charred, remove to a plate and set aside.

5. Put butter in a medium saute pan. When it begins to brown, add the preserved lemon skin and shake the pan a couple times. Once the lemon turns a little white, and begins to crisp, add the chilies and olives, and give the pan another shake. Stir and allow the mix to bloom for about 20 seconds. Add the ham, shake and top the asparagus with the mix. Serve immediately.

Blood Ties (2016)

This is one of those Cain and Abel stories.  French director Guillaume Canet amassed an all star cast for this first English-language directing project, a gravelly, 1974-set crime thriller.  It features Clive Owen as a pimp-cum-ex-convict, and Billy Crudup as his cop brother (no, really), orbited by James Caan as their dying dad, Lili Taylor as their sister,  Marion Cotillard, Zoe Saldana and Mila Kunis as assorted ex- and current girlfriends, and Matthias Schoenaerts as a thug.  Unfortunately the film does not quite add up to the sum of it's parts as an action thriller, but it is very good as a movie about choices and moral compasses.  Clive Owens is really a bad to the bone kind of guy who kills without batting an eye and pimps his girlfriend.  His brother Billy Crudup is a good cop but not a great one, and he quits when he realizes that he cannot bring his brother in.   He also makes an enemy of the above mentioned thug, which he does with his eyes wide open, but he doesn't really figure out how to do it safely.  All of which leads to exactly where you think it will, so sad, predictable , but ultimately well done, if not exactly thrilling action.

The Idiot by Edith Bauman

This is a really good coming of age novel, written from a slightly different perspective. 
At the start of the book Selin has  arrived as an undergraduate at Harvard and is worrying about how to live. How does she make friends? How does she fall in love? How does she come to understand the relationship between art and life, words and world? Taking a linguistics class, Selin is sure that she’s formed by her languages – English and Turkish.  She is told by a new friend that she’s unusual in having an aesthetic view of the world rather than a moral one, and has a pronounced tendency to live her life as a narrative.
The novel takes place in the early 1990's so email is new and no one has a cell phone. When Selin is presented with a university email address she doesn’t know what to use it for. She quickly discovers that she can create an email relationship more real than those she’s experiencing in the flesh. She writes to fellow student Ivan, an older boy in her Russian language class, putting them both in the personae of inhabitants of their Russian textbook. The characters in question are engaged in a doomed love affair, rendered peculiar by the limited beginner’s Russian available to them. In taking on these roles, Selin and Ivan are able to expose themselves to each other while hiding behind the barrier of fiction. Cool way to look at coming of age through an odd lens.

Kids Get Through College, Check

First and foremost, it is a great feeling to have you last and youngest child through college. Largely, with the exception of financing it, we deserve little or no credit for this, but is feels like a milestone as a parent.  The fact that all the boys are home to celebrate is another serious plus in the whole equation of life.
Our youngest is childhood cancer survivor who has a number of learning differences, so his graduation is particularly sweet.  We have all, as a family, contributed to his accomplishments to date, but he is to be celebrated.  The fact of the matter is that we all need the support of our village. None of us does anything alone.  We owe those who went before us for our successes, but it is easy to forget that.  Not so in his case. He knows exactly how much he relies on us for his opportunities and his successes, and his openness to acknowledging this is, for me, inspirational.  The future is yet another unknown, but we are asking in this current glory.

Game Over, Man! (2018)

I may have seen worse movies in my life, but nothing comes to mind, and it is certainly the worst movie that I have seen in the last decade.  And I watch a lot of action adventure movies that have thin plots, lots of gratuitous violence and blood, and juvenile humor.  I wrote a review of Kong:Skull Island saying that it was surprisingly good.  So it is not like my bar is so high that anything would fail to hurdle over it.  No way.  This is a movie to avoid at all costs (why I watched it to the end is the real mystery).
So I blog about this in an effort to save others from my fate.  My spouse picked it out, which is what we asked him to do, and gave him free reign.  I checked it on IMDB and it got a 5.4, which is not great, but usually I find the movies in the 5-6 range to be acceptably entertaining.  So I was shocked by how bad this movie was , right from the start and continued all the way through.  The things that were truly objectionable (blowing up a small dog, cutting off a man's penis, impaling people, and so on) were done not once, but several times over.  It was so painfully sophomoric and at no point did it get all the way to the absurd so that it would be funny.  No, just bad all the way through.

Far From the Tree by Robin Benway

This book won the National Book Award for Young Adult fiction, and I thought it was spot on.  Much like when I read The Fault in Our Stars, I was crying through the last bit of it. That may not be much of a recommendation to some, but what it means is that the book is beautiful and compelling, on top of evoking emotions.
The central theme is what is family?  Is is blood, is it a choice, or is it something combining or containing those elements.  Grace grows up as an only child who has been adopted into a wonderful family.  But she is also the middle child of a threesome who were given up for adoption by their mother.  She doesn't know her siblings, but after she gets pregnant herself at sixteen and gives up her baby for adoption she is drawn to finding them.  Joaquin, the eldest, has been in foster care since they parted ways, and has only just been in a family who love him and want to adopt him, even though he is about to be eighteen.  Maya, the youngest, is in a family with another child, conceived soon after Maya was adopted.  They all have challenges and good things, and the book is about how they find family and support.  Really good, even if you have aged out of the Young Adult target audience age range.

Leap! (2018)

In an effort to not lose track of my youth, I watch many animated movies and really enjoy the genre.  So while my youngest child is well into his twenties, I do have a granddaughter, so in addition to many other things, she provides an excuse to continue.
If you are looking for top notch animated stories that will be an award winner, this is not for you.  One review I read said that they should take the exclamation mark off the end, and while they may have had a point, I was able to enjoy it, punctuation and all.  This was very fun, if entirely predictable.  s an animated movie set in 1879 Paris, where tween best friends/orphans Felicie (voiced by Elle Fanning) and Victor each work to make their dreams come true (dancing and inventing, respectively). They escape to Paris from a strict orphanage in Brittany and face some challenging situations, which is one, almost always the case in stories of this sort, and two, entirely predictable.  Nothing terrible happens to them, but it is touch and go.
This is a very good family movie, with a nice message (a bit on the optimistic side, but not terrible), and people following their passion.  It won't be nominated for anything, but it is diversionary.

May Day by Fionn Mac Cumhal

May Day

May Day, delightful day
brilliant time of year
birds sing a full lay
before the sun has cast its rays

Loud the cuckoo calls
and nods to the feast of summer
the sickle of the storm ceases
which tore at the branches of the wood

Summer cuts the little stream
swift steeds seek the pools
long spreads the heather
fine fair ferns flourish

Flowers shine  from the hawthorn hedge
water flows in smooth currents
bringing sleep to the salt sea

Little strong bees bear
bundles brought from blossoms
The generous mountain carries
lean calves in plenty

Music plays in the woods
harmony bringing healing peace
dust and fog are blown from homes
and from the full lake pool

The cake of well-guarded grain speaks
the high waterfall sings anew
welcome to the warm pool
rustling comes to the reeds

Swallows flit on high
loudness of music pours  from the hills
good fodder for beasts in the meadow
wounds inflicted are healed

Leaves spread on  beech twigs
the cuckoo calls loud and high
the speckled trout leaps
strong is the swift skirmisher’s limb

The strength of men returns
the mighty slopes are young again
Fair are the clear woodlands
fair every great wide meadow

Sweet time of year
gone are the gusts of wicked winter
the forest shines, the waves are wide
all is peaceful, summer is joyous

A flock  of birds comes together
in the place where the woman is
chirping in the green meadow
where the green river flows

Fiercely racing,  horses run
the thronging crowd stands round
brilliant is the shining marsh
the golden iris is there

Weak is the man who fears noise
the strong man sings out loud
he sings in delight
"May day, delightful day!"