The Road To The County by Chigozie Obioma

I read a review of this book that quoted Viet Thanh Nguyen (who recently had a book named as one of the best books of the 21st century by the New York Times) as saying, “All wars are fought twice. The first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” The Biafran conflict ignited in 1967, which was seven years after Nigerian independence from British colonial rule. The country was not built on historic boundaries that existed before the Europeans arrived, and the three largest ethnic groups are the Hausa, who make up 25% of the population; the Yoruba, who make up 21%; and the Igbo, who make up 18%. The war was fought between the Nigerian government and the secessionist state of Biafra, triggered by a declaration of independence by the Igbo-dominated region. Britain supported the government. However, news reports of starvation in Biafra, under blockade by the government, provoked public outrage. The war ended with the defeat of Biafra. By then up to 3 million people, mostly Biafrans, had died from starvation, disease and violence. That is the historical structure upon which this novel is written. It opens with a young student, Kunle, feeling responsible for the accident that crippled his younger brother Tunde, so he buries himself in his studies. On returning home from his studies, he discovers that Tunde has disappeared into the land now known as Biafra, where an armed conflict is going on. Kunle becomes obsessed with finding his estranged brother and bringing him back home. He is not a soldier, nor is he even truly aware of what he is undertaking and he is soon captured by rebel forces. Their commander, on learning that Kunle’s mother is an Igbo, instead of ordering his execution offers him the chance to fight. And fight he does. I am not much for novels that are largely about fighting, but this is a very good story that is well told.

Barton Street, Presque Isle, Maine

When my spouse and I envisioned the trip to bury my dad, we did not have a crowd in mind, but our kids saw it differently. My parents had spent the eight years before he died living nearby and my folks had been a constant in my children's lives--they came annually if not more often, and this was the first death in our family since my FIL died over a decade earlier. So there was quite the crew and instead of staying in one of the hotels in town, I got three Airbnb's and one of them was on the street that my mother grew up on, just down the block from the church she got married in. The house here is the one that I knew, but it turns out that my grandparents built it when my mother was in high school and she only lived there a couple of years. They had the property long before that, but were unable to build during WWII--so what I thought of as the family homestead was not so much that, although my grandparents lived there until the mid-70's. The house she lived in growing up was just down the block, and one of the very fun things about the trip for all of us was my mother reminiscing on each and every drive we made between the three houses and to and from restaurants the whole trip--it is very likely her last trip here, and it was really great to see it once more through her eyes. My kids had the opportunity to fall in love with Maine as adults, and we all had a chance to see it as my parents did.

The Rebel's Clinic by Adam Shatz

I had never heard of Frantz Fanon, who died of leukemia at the young age of 36, prior to reading this book. He was born on Martinique in 1925 and while he hated that his island was being governed by white men in Paris, he bought into the French ideology of liberty and equality. Educated and speaking better French than the French themselves, he fought for France against the Nazis and stayed in Paris after the war to make a life, marrying a white French woman. But while studying medicine in Lyon, he grasped that despite France's lip service to colorblind equality, he would inescapably be seen there not as an individual but as a Black man. And he opposed the idea of identifying by race. So he to moved to Algeria to run a clinic in 1953, and found himself joining forces with its National Liberation Front, or FLN, which was fighting to win Algeria's independence from France in a brutal struggle. He wasn't Algerian and couldn't speak Arabic, so he was never a leader or fighter. A brilliant sympathizer, he became a ruthlessly passionate advocate for the cause outside Algeria. This experience would lead Fanon to write his most famous work, "The Wretched Of The Earth," a poetically messianic volume whose publication has been called a historical event. His legacy is remembered to be that of a bloody revolutionary, but he also tried to explain why that is inevitably seen as the only solution to racist oppression. Ever since it first appeared in 1961, Fanon's book has inspired everyone from Latin American guerrillas and African revolutionaries to Palestinian militants and the Black Panthers. It's best known for its opening chapter, which champions the power of violence to liberate the oppressed both politically and psychologically--it is unpalatable, to be sure, but also may be impossible. Cultures do not shift seismically, but his work related to understanding the downtrodden has also been buried with him. I did not realize that the war for independence in Algeria was revving up at the same time that it was in Vietnam, and would love to read something equally cynical to this about the unraveling of colonial France.

Ode to the New England Lobster Roll

Lobster is not quite part of me, but it is certainly in my culture. My parent's come from immigrant stock--we all do, of course, except for the vanishingly few of us who were here to begin with, and even they most likely immigrated themselves, albeit centuries earlier. My kin came with the early settlers to the Massachusetts Colony and were part of the City State of Boston before the Revolutionary War, and moved gradually northward--My mother's family English with a bit of Norman blood, and my father's more what 24 and Me calls "northern Scandanavian" origins--the Scots. They came for reasons of religious independence, but they were certainly living off the land and the lobster was easily caught prey. I learned to both cook and eat a lobster at an early age--as a child my favorite part was the legs--and as I grew older I gained an appreciation for learning to love the crustacean. So on a recent trip to New England, one where we left my dad behind, my mother, my spouse, and I all ate a lot of lobster, mostly as a lobster roll (my favorite, and one of his), and thought about how much he would have enjoyed joining us, and how I will never eat lobster without thinking of him.

Long Island by Colm Tóibín

In this book Tóibín takes us back to his real home town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, Ireland and he also takes us back to Eilis and her life 20 years after 'Brooklyn' ends. Back then, in the 1950s, Enniscorthy has little to offer the novel’s very young, soft-spoken but increasingly confident heroine whose older sister encourages her to go to America, where she meets and falls in love with Tony. Eilis is now in her 40s, the mother of two teenagers. She and Tony live on Long Island, in an enclave of private houses, all built for and inhabited by Tony’s very Italian family. Eilis has a keen emotional intelligence and independence of spirit, along with a deep love for her children. Her relationship with Tony fluctuates over the years, but she considers it solid. All that is disrupted when Tony reveals a secret that throws Eilis off her axis and she returns to Ireland to see her mother. She goes home and while she finds herself pining for the days of her youth, she is also arriving in the midst of her old flame Jim being on the verge of marrying the widow he has been seeing in secret. So much was left unsaid but the passions of youth run deep.

Never Forget

September 11th, 2001 We were like everyone else--maybe more aware because we were not at work--glued to the television, watching planes hit one then the other tower of the WTC in New York City. It was a shocking event and all Americans remember what they were doing that day--the similar day for me was Kennedy's assasination, but I remember it because cartoons were cancelled the day after he was shot and that was what my 4 year old self was struck by. In addition to what everyone was feeling, I was also watching my youngest son get his last dose of chemotherapy. He had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor 15 months before, and had undergone surgery, radiation, followed by a grueling year of chemotherapy. I was, and remain, grateful for the medical care he received as well as the research that went on before his diagnosis to give him the chance at living beyond 5 years old, but it was the hardest thing that I have ever done. The terrosit attacks on our country cut short any sort of celebration that was planned to mark the momentous day, but in some ways that turned out to be fitting. When treatment ended so too ended the prolonged periods of compromised immunity, bloow transfusions, deadly infections, and prolonged hours in the hospital, but it began what every family who has had a family member survive cancer--the waiting period. The time is fraught with anxiety, and almost nobody gets it. The general public thinks the hard part is over, and it is true that the physically grueling part is (hopefully) behind you--but the emotionally draining part continues. So today we celebrate the 23 year anniversary of a successful end of cancer treatment.

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

I read two books in a row that centered on the premise that the love one experiences in youth has an effect that lasts well into middle age. The idea is appealing, although not scientifically based as far as I can tell. The appealing part is that while some youthful relationships end because of incompatibility, others are affected by a change in geography that is unavoidable, and that it is "too soon" to commit for life. That is more or less what happens here. Sarah and Warren were in a relationship in college, and broke up, maybe based on enforced separation mixed with Sarah's uneasiness about Warren's life plans--they marry, they are not so much happy with their choices, Sarah divorces, Warren does not, and then they meet up again in their early 60's and find that they still have a passion for each other. The order with which they pursue that passion and how it eventually plays out are arguably sub-optimal, but the story is a fun one to read.

Maine Solar System Model

We were in Presque Isle this summer and discovered this wonderful model of the solar system as we drove northward from Houlton. The Maine Solar System—the largest scale model of the solar system in the western hemisphere, and the second largest such model in the world—stretches for nearly 100 miles along U.S. Route 1. The model, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, features nine planets (including Pluto, which was a planet when the model was first established), three dwarf planets (including Pluto, based on its current status and present location closer to the Sun), and seven associated large moons at Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. Other dwarf planets, to be located north of the Sun at Lille and Madawaska, are planned. You could plan to see them all, but what happened to us is that we saw Saturn (which is hard to miss), then Jupiter, and then it was a question of where are all the rest? Lucky for us, because we were there for purposes other than site seeing, five of them are in and around Presque Isle, and the hard part is spotting them because the planets are all quite small, and then the sun, which is so huge you aren't sure if it is just a huge yellow arch or actually part of the model sun. One thing I will not forget is the scale (as well as the distance between them all), which drives home the scale of our solar system, and really, it was quite fun.

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

At it should be with all novels set in WWI, this one is full death and agony. It also has a heaping tablespoon of terrible luck. Just about everything goes wrong for Lucius, the young medical student at the center of this historical novel set during World War I. The scion of a wealthy family in Vienna, Lucius has disappointed his ambitious mother and his patriotic father by pursuing such a lowly career as medicine. When the war break out, they’re relieved that their son may finally have a chance to distinguish himself in the glories of battle. Lucius thwarts their best laid plans though, finding a hospital in a god forsaken place that is more like a dungeon than a house of healing, and he also finds a nurse who haunts him for years to come. The bleakness of the war is steeped in every chapter in an unrelenting way, and it is a quiet homage to those who put people back together rather than tear them apart. I am reminded of the recent pandemic, where health care workers put themselves in harms way and even died taking care of the sick. It is an homage, as well as a story of where you can find love in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

Origin Story: A Return to Presque Isle

In June we returned to what is really the origin of my family, the state of Maine. The occasion was the burial of my father, and while my parents are both from Aroostook County, we have rarely been since I left home almost 50 years ago. The burial of my three grandparents who died in my lifetime, and the 50th wedding anniversary of one of my great aunt and uncles is the sum total of my trips to what was once my family homeland. Maine is a product of the Ice Age. The last glacier was responsible for cutting what had been a relatively straight coastline into the hundreds of bays, inlets and picturesque harbors we know today. The receding ice sheet formed the 2,000 or so islands found off the Maine coast. The region's earliest inhabitants were descendants of Ice Age hunters. Little is known of these "Red Paint" people - so named because of the red clay with which they lined the graves of their dead - except that they flourished and hunted in Maine long before the coming of the Micmac and Abnaki Indian nations. Burial grounds for these earliest Maine dwellers are thought to date back to 3000 B.C. Huge oyster shell heaps on the Damariscotta estuary testify to the capacious appetites of Maine's aborigines. Colonization came to Maine as it did to much of North America in the 17th century--A number of English settlements were established along the Maine coast in the 1620s, although the rugged climate, deprivations and Indian attacks wiped out many of them over the years. As Maine entered the 18th century, Massachusetts had bought up most of the land claims in this wilderness territory, an arrangement which lasted until 1820 when Maine separated from Massachusetts to become a separate state. At that point in time that my folks relatives were there--and maybe that is a bit of where the French in my gene pool came from, with England and France jockeying for control of the region. So while I rarely return, it feels comfortable when I do.

Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza

Liliana Rivera Garza was many things — an insatiable reader and writer, a talented swimmer, a movie lover, a devoted friend, a budding architect and an absolute feminist who loved smoking cigarettes. She dreamed of traveling and collecting experiences on her own. When she was 20, she took the first steps toward fulfilling that dream, moving to Azcapotzalco, Mexico City, where she began studying architecture at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. On July 16, 1990, Liliana was found dead in her apartment. She was killed by an ex-boyfriend, who had stalked her for many years. By the time an arrest warrant was filed months later, he was nowhere to be found. Nearly 30 years later, her older sister, the writer Cristina Rivera Garza, set out to recover a record of her sister’s life — and death. The trail, such as it was, had mostly evaporated, but Garza was determined to capture her sister’s last months and days. This is not so much a crime novel, because we know from the beginning who killed Liliana--it is more of a memoir by the author, written to her sister and to women who are killed by men who stalk them in every corner of the globe.

Morro Bay, California

I had an arduous birthday in 2023, when my friend and I bakes all the cakes for one of my sons wedding, all while my spouse was gone for the week attending a professional meeting. My friends, who truly does the lion's share of the baking and all the cake frosting and assembly, was laid up a bit with an ankle injury, so I was the legs of the operation. It was so grueling! I was walking 20,000 steps a day and I never left the property. The great news is that we finished the cakes, we didn't even want for freezer space, and the cakes at the wedding were truly fantastic!The bad news is that I was in a really bad mood about my extreme lack of a celebration.

Never fear! I spent the whole month of May this year making up for it, and one of those trips was to fabulous Morro Bay, with the same friend and her spouse so that the three of us could spend some times taking leisurely walks and bird watching. It is a spectacularly beautiful place that hosts a great bird festival in February, but is replete with shore birds year round. It was such a relaxing long weekend, and I would go back in a second.

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen

This is set in the far north in 19th-century Scandinavia and it pits the indigenous Sámi people who live there against European settlers trying to impose their religion and values. In a village near the Arctic Circle, the charismatic Lutheran minister Lars Levi Laestadius tries valiantly to turn his congregation away from alcohol and towards salvation. His flock includes Finns and Swedes, but also a few Sámi, nomadic reindeer herders who's wealth and standing within the community depends on their skills as herders. He manages to convert Biettar, a Sámi leader, into the fold where he becomes a disciple of sorts, spending his time learning this new religion, leaving the care of his ever-dwindling herd of reindeer to his son, Ivvár. But while the minister gains a new parishioner, his daughter, Willa, becomes infatuated with Ivvár. As the young Sámi struggles to maintain the herd on his own, a task never intended for one person, the two grow closer. With the spring migration approaching, a custom that has been practiced by the tribe for generations, Willa prepares to join them, defying her father’s control. So it is a classic tale set in the frozen tundra when the world was changing rapidly.

Gaya Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France

This was our last lunch of the trip (which has been a stellar food trip, no doubt about it). I like to have a lot of things from the ocean when I travel to places that abutt the sea, and this was an especially accommodating menu for that goal. The Michelin website says: Chef Pierre Gagnaire has a focus on good food in a bid to cater to modern French sensibilities with a seafaring slant (carpaccio of seabream, pink radishes and grapefruit; giant langoustine, cream of Paimpol beans, scallion onions) and a fondness for veggies.

The seafood platter for deux. There are about 40 tiny cockles sprinkled throughout that with some difficulty and a little finesse we were able to use the red topped toothpicks to get out the innards. One of my favorites—teeny tiny flavorful morsels! We really enjoyed this as the show stopping part of the meal, but there was much to love about this restaurant from start to finish.

Night Watch by Jayne Ann Phillips

The premise of this book is survival and the time period is in the aftermath of the Civil War. It is 1874, and the United States is still reeling from the horrors of the Civil War. ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, alone on their family property when ConaLee’s father didn’t return from the war, havebeen repeatedly victimized by one of the roving veterans who survives merely by taking from those he encounters. This period during and after the war was especially dangerous for women and children left alone on their homesteads where even vigilance wasn’t enough to prevent an attack. When this stranger inserts himself into their lives, Eliza withdraws into herself and becomes little more than a ghost in her own home, wordless and numb. ConaLee does her best to care for her mother. When the cruel man has finally had enough, he loads ConaLee and Eliza on a wagon and delivers them to the steps of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. There, using false identities, they make a home for themselves and Eliza slowly begins to return to her former self under the care and protection of the people they meet. Unfortunately, peace and security rarely ever last. It does not go 100% as planned and it highlights a little written about aspect of the war.

Paris 1874 Inventing impressionism, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

150 years ago, on April 15, 1874, the first impressionist exhibition opened in Paris. “Hungry for independence”, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley and Cézanne finally decided to free themselves from the rules by holding their own exhibition, outside official channels: impressionism was born. To celebrate this anniversary, Musée d’Orsay presented some 130 works and bringing a fresh eye to bear on this key date, regarded as the day that launched the avant-gardes. It was stunning, so beautiful as to be almost overwhelming, and when the museum emailed me several says after I returned home with the question "did you see everything?" (wanting me to consider museum membership as a means of rectifying that) my reply was that I saw almost none of it, I just saw this amazing feast of color and talent.

In the museum's own words: What exactly happened in Paris in that spring of 1874, and what sense should we make today of an exhibition that has become legendary? “Paris 1874. The Impressionist Moment” seeks to trace the advent of an artistic movement that emerged in a rapidly changing world. “Paris 1874” reviews the circumstances that led these 31 artists (only seven of whom are well-known across the world today) to join forces and exhibit their works together. The period in question had a post-war climate, following two conflicts: the Franco-German War of 1870, and then a violent civil war. In this context of crisis, artists began to rethink their art and explore new directions. A little “clan of rebels” painted scenes of modern life, and landscapes sketched in the open air, in pale hues and with the lightest of touches. As one observer noted, “What they seem above all to be aiming at is an impression”.