Birmingham Botanical Gardens

This is a must see when visiting Birmingham--after visiting the civil rights sights, to take in a bit of peacefulness as an annecdote to all the racial hatred that is embedded in the city's past. In 1961, after years of trying and failing to make his dream a reality, Birmingham Mayor James W. Morgan finally came to an agreement with the Park and Recreation Board establishing the Botanical Gardens. The city constructed the gardens on 69 acres of Lane Park, just east of the Birmingham City Zoo, on the south side of Red Mountain. The mayor wanted Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens to be the largest of its kind in the Southeast.

The gardens are open year round and they are free of charge. There is a beautiful conservatory that is adjacent to the rose garden--the roses are aromatic, and one of the volunteers noted that while roses are being wiped out by pests across the southeast, they are remarkably healthy here. There are numerous paths, and lots of benches and gazebos to sit and take in the beautiful surroundings. Highly recommended.

Our Migrant Souls by Hector Tobar

This is a complicated story of Latin immigration to the United States--mostly to places that less than 200 years ago were part of Mexico--and being shunned and denigrated in places that historically speaking, the shunners are historically immigrants and those that are shunned are more native to the land. That is the crux of the matter, something that American Indians have understood and experienced for 500 years. Adding in to the conversation, the author uses his own family and their immigrant experience to bring some of his theses alive. Many of the conversations about Hispanics in America, especially those told in the media, suffer from a combination of myopia and monotony. They focus on predictable topics—perilous immigration experiences, cartels, poverty—and fail to grapple with the variety of Latino experience. This is not that book. Instead the author attempts in a way to remedy this. Part memoir and part polemic, the book tries to answer a rather panoramic question: What is the Latino experience in America like? At his best, Tobar offers a lyrical portrayal that captures the lives of many Hispanics. This is concise, approachable, and well worth reading.

Friendsgiving

Back in our younger days, when our kids were small, we went to a friend Thanksgiving, usually the weekend beofre the actual holiday, that was kind of a blowout affair. The meal was a pot luck, the host had an impressive wine cellar, and it was the sort of debauchery that you wouldn't want your kids to witness. As we got a bit older, the chenanigans ebbed, the wine got even better (the host had a bottle from each of our birth years, for example), and it was a welcome time to catch up with each other and to enjoy the traditional meal with the family that you choose. As out kids got older, they wanted a friends Thanksgiving, so we would have family of Thursday and that Sunday, when everyone who had gone out of town to celebrate, we had a massive do-over meal with our local friends and their families, often spread all over out first floor with furniture moved aside and lots of tables snaking through the rooms. Then the kids left home, and their friends as well as some of ours, moved on, and we were down to one traditional meal--but this year, the original host of our original friends Thanksgiving threw another one, for old time's sake, and it made we wonder why we ever gave it up! Happy holidays to all.

Cocoon by Zhang Yueran

This is a slow moving moody book that I am not sure I got everything about it. I saw on my nephew's reading list and decided to read it. The book is written by a young Chinese author and it reflects on the history of China in the second half of the 20th century, and so in that way is maybe a window into how that might be viewed or thought of by those who did not live through it, but whose parents and grandparents would have. Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong grew up in very dysfunctional families and this is a main theme of the book. The book opens with the two childhood friends reuniting in their 20s, and is told from their alternate perspectives, chapters seesawing between the accounts told by each, as they tell the story of growing up from their perspectives, filling in gaps in each other’s knowledge to the point where it was hard to keep the two stories straight, they were so similar and overlapping. At the center of the story is how does the lack of a respectable father, a respected mother, loving grandparents and aunts and uncles, affect a child and how does that shape their lives as young adults. Their two stories lead each other and the reader towards the truth of a crime that occurred in their family before their time. It shows how targeting one man at that time triggered the cycle of dysfunction and destruction that shaped families for generations. The author does this not only through the actions of the various characters and the inability of any family member to escape this cycle, but also through the gloomy, pessimistic atmosphere that pervades the book. It is a hard read, but maybe one that can shed some inside light upon what is happening for people in modern China.

Hayward Oubre

I saw this exhibit this fall at the Birmingham Art Museum--which is free to the public--and really loved it. Oubre is best known for his work with an everyday material—wire coat hangers—which he used to create modernist masterworks. While living in Alabama and North Carolina, he made art in his vanguard style. These artworks fuse his lived experience, wide-ranging interests, and art historical influences in compositions that range from realism to pure abstraction.

Oubre shaped art in the United States not only as an innovative artist, but also as a distinguished educator at two prominent Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He served as the first chair of the art department at Alabama State University (ASU) in Montgomery, from 1949 to 1965. After leaving ASU, Oubre established the art department at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) in North Carolina, building on the legacy he established at ASU. When he retired in 1981, he had taught and created art for more than forty years, educating generations of Black artists.

Shanghailanders by Juli Min

This is a series of linked stories about Leo Yang and his family that in the end sum up to a novel. The time is 2040 and neither China nor America come off looking like they have advanced in the near future. The opening story has Leo has just dropped his wife, Eko, and two older daughters, Yumi and Yoko, at the airport and is returning home on a high-speed train to teenage Kiko, the baby of the family. The older girls are returning to boarding school and college in Boston--but all is not as it seems. The girls have each gotten into their own hot water that has consequences that are more a product of where they happened than that they are deeply troubling. The stories hint at things that are revealed in later stories, including additional characters, and there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that pervades the book, but also a feeling of not wanting it to be over, that there must be more to know about this time and these people. Delayed answers to questions create a sense of unfolding and revealing that balances the disappointment one might feel about leaving the latest versions of the Yang's, and their interesting problems, behind. It is an oddly atmospheric book, but then Shanghai has that complexity as well.

Love, Guaranteed (2020)

This is part of my solo travel movie binging that was almost 100% light hearted romantic comedies. I read a review that characterized it as sufficiently bland and calmy cozy, and I would agree with that characterization. Susan is a plucky and uptight attorney with a strong sense of justice who works tirelessly for the little guy--she makes almost no money and often works pro bono. She loves her work but she is barely making it, as her underpaid office staff frequently point out. Strapped for cash, she agrees to take a case with the handsome and charming Nick, whom she initially clashes with, naturally. Nick has come to their office because he wants to file a lawsuit against an online dating company called – you guessed it – Love, Guaranteed. He says he's gone on 986 dates without having found love and wants to sue for fraud. This is the part that should have scared her--he has copious documentation related to each of these failed dates, but no, that is that part that makes her feel like they might actually have a case. The target of the lawsuit is the website's wealthy owner, a woman who feigns enlightenment and says "namaste" a lot but misquotes Buddha--very unlikable, in other words. The movie wends its way to its predictable end in a very inoffensive way, and I would recommend it for the sort of night where you con't want to think too much, which is me post-election.

The Summer Before The War by Helen Simonson

Yes, this is yet another book set in the lead up to WWI set in England. While WWII was devastating to almost all of Europe, England included, it was WWI that shook the British class system to it's core, and which led to the ultimate toppling of the British Empire world wide. While this was inevitable, they did not see it that way, and so books about England on the brink of that war abound. The book got off to a slow start for me, but I did enjoy it and reflecting back on it, I see that some of what I found uncharming about it was in fact the point. The heroine of the story is a charming young woman named Beatrice Nash, who arrives in the seaside town of Rye to serve as Latin teacher to the village's children. She enjoyed what she saw as an idyllic life being all things to her scholarly father--she was his secretary, his travel agent, his companion, and his intellectual equal--all of which ill prepared her to deal with her circumstances after his death. He father, who trusted her with everything in life, chose to tie her hands with a restrictive trust in death, and she is forced to earn her keep and finds herself constrained as all women were in the early 20th century. Beatrice soon falls in with a well-connected local family, the Kents. At the helm is Agatha Kent, who is subtly working to improve women's lot in life, her husband John, who is involved in national security, and her two nephews, one a poet and the other a doctor. The story invites us to look at all the ways that money and title tilted the table at the time, and how it was all going to change both in the short run and the long.

Domestique Coffee, Birmingham, Alabama

We went to a wedding in Birmingham and had a great time in the neighborhood that the hotel was in. This was the third wedding the family had hosted in their home town, and they had learned from their previous adventures. The hotel was very comfortable, but the neighborhood was hip and fun, with a lot of shops within a few blocks and a safe place to walk around. There were several coffee shops to choose from, but this was our favorite. The coffee is excellent, they have very good croissants that they heat up for you if you so desire (which is my favorite--the butter comes to life with a little heat, and that is after all the reason to eat croissants, you might as well get full enjoyment), and best of all, it is a shared space. The coffee shop is in the front and in the back is a bike shop--this is a large space with high ceilings--plenty of room for both, but the coffee shop space--which includes indoor and outdoor seating--is very nice and welcoming.

Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez

I do not read much in the romantic genre, but I put this on my library hold list when it appeared as a recommendation in The Week as a good beach read--of course all of those four books took so long for me to wait for them that it was no longer beach season by the time I was able to check any of them out, but there are many opportunities for light reading to hit the spot. I found this entirely predictable, which is consistent with the genre, and none-the-less enjoyable. The premise is that Justin is the lucky rabbit foot for women who date him--after they break up with him, which happens pretty rapidly, the next person they date is their soul mate. Occasionally it is a friend of his, so his ex's are still around even, grateful and happy while he is vowing not to date again. Matters are complicated by his otherwise seemingly normal mother being on the brink of a long jail term after being convicted of embezzling a seemingly small amount of money she repaid, and he is going to be the guardian for his three younger siblings. Not exactly the stuff of romance. In comes Emily, who says that she too has the same curse as he, and they agree to date each other so that the next person they each date will be their dream come true. Emily has a lot of her own baggage, and it all conspires to break them up--or does it?