Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand made it on the recommended book list I had requested from Breetel last winter, and when I made an off-hand comment to Davi about being surprised to see the infamous capitalist on her list, Davi defended her little sister by saying that everyone in her family has read Ayn Rand and that I would actually probably get a lot out of reading her. Then she disappeared into her bedroom and came back with the tattered paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged that she had pulled off of her mom's shelf and devoured while in high school.

I started reading it in May, on the porch of the little one-bedroom Chicago apartment that I shared with Davi for two years. In June, I moved home to Wisconsin to be near my family and Davi moved to NYC to be closer to hers. At home I would read a chapter or so with my coffee in the morning and then mull it over as I pruned and weeded in the blueberry rows of my family's farm. I took it with me on a trip out west and read it on the train from Eugene to Seattle, marking my place with my ticket stub. I don't get cell phone service on the farm, so where I once shared daily conversation with Davi, I now was lucky to catch up with her a couple times a month. But reading Atlas, contemplating the themes of the novel, taking notice of the purple pen underlinings and hand-written notes in the margins, and imagining the conversations that will surface when we share space again, has helped me get used to not having my best friend within shouting distance anymore.

It was especially intersting to be absorbed in the final chapters of the book as the stock market fell and our country prepared to vote in a new leader. I often found myself asking, "Who would Ayn Rand vote for?" Although I can't imagine she would be in favor of his plans to tax the rich, I have to believe that Obama's message and the way he has run his campaign would strike a chord with her. I have to believe that while their politics may differ, she would be persuaded to vote for him based on the values they share.

From Obama's election night speech: "Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.'"

On Monday I caned raspberries. Dad joined me in the field for the last couple hours of daylight. We caught up on the events of our weeks. I told him I had finally finished reading Atlas and he said he noticed that Hannah Coulter had been sitting out and asked if that would be my next read (which it will be). He was excited for me to read it. He said he enjoys Wendell Berry's work, not because he shares the experience of the characters (farming blueberries in Wisconsin is a lot different than farming tobacco in Kentucky) but because he shares their values.

"Like me and Davi." I replied.

Skim

words: Mariko Tamaki
drawings: Jillian Tamaki

I found this book at W&CF doing that thing I mentioned a couple posts ago where I wander around the store and leave with whatever book has found it's way into my hands and stayed there. I like especially that the book portrays a very real friendship with ups and downs and closeness and distance. I have found that my truest friends are not the people that are constantly in life, but the people that I always come back to. I also like that the book was created collaboratively with Mariko doing the writing and Jillian doing the drawing. I see myself and my friends in the characters, as well as in the authors way of intertwining their art.

Now Is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection

I think good found snapshots (like those collected in this book) are a lot like crushes--singled out of the plethora of others because of pleasing aesthetics and intriguing subject matters, but attractive also because of what you don't know, because you are able to take the pretty pieces contained in the small square frame and then just make up the rest.

The Florist's Daughter

Author: Patricia Hampl

I started reading another of Patricia's memoirs (A Romantic Education) a couple years ago and I liked it but didn't have the time or patience then to be sucked in and therefore I never finished it. I've been wanting to return to her work for sometime now, especially as I am visiting the cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, the setting of almost all her work) more often and am contemplating possibly living there myself or at least having it as my closest city when I move back to the farm. When I saw this memoir, her lastest, still in hardcover and costing more than I really should spend, displayed at W&CF, I couldn't help but pick it up and carry it around the store with me. My friend says she likes to grocery shop by walking into the produce section and seeing what vegetables she picks up. She believes her body will tell her what food she needs if she just surrounds herself with the options. I almost didn't buy it. I can wait until it comes out in paperback, I thought, or maybe get it from the library. I should read the one I started first and then come back to this one, I thought. But I wanted this one. The connection to her father's work in the title, but a summary that made it sound like it was actually more about her mother, and the Pat Conroy praise on the cover: "Patricia Hampl writes the best memoirs of any writer in the English language." I needed it.

For the next couple weeks, I would read a chapter or part of a chapter before bed, and like A Romantic Education I liked it, but whether it was me being busy and tired or her meandering, I didn't get sucked in. I brought it with me to Memphis last weekend but didn't open it up to read until Monday morning when I was waiting at the airport for my flight. I continued to read after I boarded the plane, as we waited longer than usual to take off, in the air, back on the ground in Chicago and waiting again for O'Hare to lend us a gate, on the blue line (I took a quick break to call work and tell them I would be late), and then on the red line. I laughed at the Belmont stop. I cried at the Lawrence stop. I finished the book at Berwyn, with just enough time to reread the last page before I got off at Thorndale. So good. I didn't mind paying for hardcover, and I definitely didn't mind showing up to work late because of a delayed flight.

Genre: Memoir

The Church of the River

I went to Memphis last weekend to meet up with Leslie, my roommate from college who was there on a grad school interview, and stay with my friends Sara and Lauren who I've been promising to visit since they moved there. Before coming, Sara and Lauren asked what I wanted to do when I came. "Graceland? Beale Street?" they offered almost fearfully, but I told them I was coming to see them and that I wanted to see their Memphis, not the the tourist packaged Memphis.

It was great. We drank Budlights at a (the) trashy dyke bar, BBQ'd salmon and chicken on their backporch, drank coffee and ate whole wheat bagels at the "hippie" hangout, chilled in the park by the art school where all the "different" people of Memphis hang out, watched tevo'd reality MTV, played guitar hero and a little bit of real guitar. On Saturday Sara and Lauren mentioned that they had been attending services at a Unitarian church. I had learned about the Unitarian Church from living with Leslie in college, but I had never been to a service, so on Sunday morning the four of us went and I have to say it was one of the nicest church experiences I've had. The music was pretty and the sermon was thought-provoking (although I think it could have gone deeper), but what really got me was the windows. The pews are tiered and face a front wall of all window that overlooks the river. (This is the best picture I could find of the church, but it doesn't really do it justice. And we also didn't stand up at the front like that.) It was so nice to sit there and watch the trees and the river and feel the music and contemplate the sermon. And to be with a whole room of people that are sitting with you watching the same river and feeling the same music and contemplating the same sermon. Afterwards the four of us got brunch together and talked about what we had been thinking about and that was pretty damn great too.

The Translation of Dr. Apelles

Author: David Treuer

This is the novel Krystle gave me for Christmas this year. I started reading it a couple weeks ago when it was below zero temperatures in Chicago. The book begins with two villages of Indians dying off in northern Minnesota because of a cold spell. Only two children survive the "bloodless massacre" as Treuer vividly describes it. So as the rest of Chicago complained of the cold, I couldn't help but feel lucky to have a house and a furnace and lots of blankets. It was an appropriate book for me to read right now. I could be feeling cold, but the setting of this novel is colder. I could be feeling lonely, but the characters of the novel, the only who remain of the community they were born in to, are lonelier. I'm beginning to think I'll always be able to count on Krystle to pick my winter reading. This was last year's pick.

Dreams from My Father

Author: Barack Obama

Part of why I love Obama is because his activism so obviously grows out of his life experiences. He does what he does (like run for president) not just because he feels like that is a good thing to do, but because he couldn't NOT do it. This book reminded me in a way of Michael's The After-Death Room: Journeys into Spiritual Activism. In both books the authors' journeys are simultaneously inward and outward. Ultimately they are able to make peace with their pasts and use it as fuel for their future work, yet the complexities of this journey, this peace, and this future are all present as well and I feel that is what makes the book, and the person, so affecting.

So yeah. Go Obama.
https://donate.barackobama.com/momentum

Six Feet Under

Where do I even begin? I have never been so affected by TV. Davi and I have been watching this show via DVD over the last few months and last night we watched the final episode. Not only was the last episode wonderfully crafted, bringing together beautiful writing, cinematography, acting, and music, it also had four seasons of rich material and characters to draw from. As we had been warned we would, Davi and I wiped tears and blew our noses constantly through the last twenty minutes. And then rewound and did it a second time. Even today, I will recall an image from this final scene and it will make me teary--partly because I have become attached to the characters, feeling as if they are my own family and friends, but mostly because I see myself in them. It has been interesting to note which scenes over the past couple months of viewing have really a struck a chord for one of us as the relationships between family members, friends, and significant others in the show echo our own current or past relationships.

The timing for watching this final episode couldn't have been better. It has been so good to watch and learn, to see myself reflected in the show, and to think to myself, "I want to be able to do this in my own work." And as Claire drives across the blank slate of desert, cheesy as it sounds, I feel as if I am in the car with her, as if I am her--affected by the lives of everyone around me and finally ready to create my own life.