Movies: Sam Elliott in "The Hero"

Sometimes you want to watch a movie because you like the star of that movie. You do not care about socially redeeming value, you do not care about  how great the director was and you definitely do not care about how many tomatoes it got on Rotten Tomatoes. You simply want to see one particular person..... in this case it was Sam Elliott.  If you need to ask "why Sam Elliott" then I can only surmise you are either a straight man or a clueless woman. Come on.... Sam Elliott?  Sexy cowboy with that gravel voice?  I long for a movie with both Sam Elliott and Jeff Bridges. Whew, just the thought of that makes me swoon.

So, here we are, "The Hero", which going into it I knew not much about but I give it two thumbs up. The character Sam Elliott plays is an oldish guy who had some success in movies. I would not call him a movie star. When the movie begins, he is doing lame-ass voice overs for some barbeque sauce product and it is clear from the first frame that he thinks of himself as a loser and so does everyone else. In the second frame (virtually) we find out he has cancer and that now defines who he is. Well, to himself it does but no one else knows.

Nothing else needs to be said here. He finds a younger woman to convince him he is not totally fucked up. He sort of reconnects with his daughter. He finally faces the cancer and tries to do the right thing with everyone in his life. All that is predictable in this movie.

What is not predictable and what is so surprising is Sam Elliott's performance, his acting, his face, his emotions. There are times when he holds his face so still and yet within that stillness, within that silence he tells us everything. There are several scenes, some that last just a few seconds, when we see the amazing quality of an actor's face, transmitting everything to us, the audience. Like Jeff Bridges, Elliott knows when to move and when to stop and wait and breathe. The last half of this movie has many of those moments. Watch and see.

Another gift is that Elliott's wife, Katherine Ross, is in this movie for a few scenes. I fell in love with her in 1969 when she was Etta Place in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."  Seeing her in this movie, "The Hero", was a bonus.

It is not a great movie but it is a good movie. Not just for Sam Elliott but for the point of facing mortality and how to do that gracefully.  It's a lesson worth exploring.

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Christmas + Champagne + Crab + Kids

Again, Christmas Eve consisted of all of the above, some to excess. Also in the mix were chocolate, cookies, cheeses, charcuterie and probably other words starting with the letter "C."  (Church was definitely not in that mix.)  It is my favorite day/evening of the year and once it begins in the mid afternoon, it roars with healthy abandon until after 2:00 the next morning. Lots of small gifts are opened throughout the evening and there is more laughter than bubbles from champagne.

The early morning found Dar and myself driving to Bodega Bay for live crab. Beautiful morning, fog drifting over the hills from Guerneville to the coast, happy people waiting in a short line for crab. Once back to Jenn and Dar's cooking began, bread was baked, bagels and cookies and dips and spreads were made and gifts were still being wrapped. By 3:00 we were all in the house while it poured rain and the power flickered on and off. A fire was lit, the first bottle of champagne was popped and off we went, snacking and talking, drinking and laughing (and crying) until, woozy with food and alcohol, we all called it a night and fell sleeping into our respective beds. 

The next morning, much too soon, coffee and the above mentioned bagels and leftover cake and cookies helped us get our feet on the ground, ibuprofen helped with the headaches and by noon we had all hugged, kissed and moved off down the road towards other Christmas dinners.

There is nothing better than sharing the love (and everything else) during this season.  I hope for all of you a happy holiday season.

The Un-Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon

OK, I admit that the first season of Mrs. Maisel was fine. I found it charming and funny, although I could never figure out how she had time to run out and do stand-up comedy in the wee hours of the night when she had two kids. But hey, it's TV, whatever.

Tonight I started to watch the second season and for the love of Lenny Bruce, what the hell happened? Is it me or is it not funny anymore? Her husband mopes around like a kicked dog, that ain't funny. She jets off to Paris with nary a thought for anyone left at home and gets friendly with some drag queens, which could be fun I suppose. But it's all so ..... fake.  Yes, it's a TV show, and fake is TV and TV is fake and all that. But can we admit it's just a little too much?

Her family is rich, we saw that in Season One. Which means there is never a worry about money or child care or hotel bills or clothes or any of that. It's amusing for a few episodes but I have ceased to be amused. I now find it manipulative and exhausting. Midge is no longer funny, she is simply a spoiled brat, living the good life, making fun of everyone, not a care in the world unless it's a care about herself. Self obsessed she is and no longer laughable, sorry to say.

Well, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

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Been home a week; was I ever gone?

It's strange to think that last Thursday I was in an airport, waiting to board a plane home. Did that really happen?

This week I worked a few days, ran errands, did laundry, walked the dog numerous times, neglected the stack of bills sitting right next to me as I write, slept, ate, baked some tasty things and ate some of them.  I watched the Bruce Springsteen special on Netflix, basically his Broadway show filmed for our enjoyment. (And enjoy I did!  If you are a fan, you will really like it, please watch it. If you are not a fan but still like good entertainment, check it out. If you hate Bruce, well, I have nothing to say about that except something rude so I will say nothing.)

It is just too easy to let vacations dissolve into a ghostly blur; real life (i.e. non-vacation life) crowds everything out with its demands and immediacy and in-your-face pushiness. Wouldn't it be so much better if all the mental snapshots of the vacation crowded out the grocery lists and the working hours and the laundry baskets of tasks we all deal with every single day?  If that vacation wasn't reduced to a couple of nice memories but instead took up as much time in our minds as worrying about paying the rent does?

But that requires work, it requires taking specific moments out of each day and concentrating on the vacation. So that's what I do. At this moment I am thinking about the village of Carcassonne, a castle fortress perched up on a hill, a perfect location if you want to watch for heathens storming your castle. Beautiful stone work, you can see where the moat would have been. Inside a chaotic scene of tourists and tourist shops, overpriced cafe's, too much noise and too many people. Obviously, heathens did storm that castle.

In three days it will be Christmas Eve, my favorite day of the year. My kids, lots of champagne, fresh crab, tons of tasty eats and more than tons of love. Christmas carols, dogs wearing funny hats, rain and pajamas. I cannot wait!

Back in the USSA

Gee it's good to be back home.
Leave it til tomorrow to unpack the case.
Honey disconnect the phone.

Packed flight out of CDG on Thursday but uneventful. Stayed at Gabe and Annie's, eye doc appointment Friday morning in San Mateo and then back to Santa Rosa yesterday afternoon. Home today, back to work tomorrow.

There is always the moment of happiness when coming home because of one's own bed, coffee, couch. But there is also that huge wave of sadness that sweeps over you (or at least over me) while driving home because that's it. The vacation is over. Life as I knew it for the past two weeks is done and life as I know it for the next 50 weeks is here. We work all the time and vacations take up such a small space of our lives when compared to the space that work eats up. 

It was very nice to be in a country that didn't understand me and sometimes the inverse was also nice: I didn't understand it. There are those random things that you never consider when planning a trip, those random things that totally make you crazy. On the Autoroute you have toll roads and you come up on them pretty quickly. There are three options, one for people with a pass, one for people who take a ticket and another for ....... I have no idea. But the signage is pictorial, there are no words explaining anything so the first time I encountered the tolls I quietly freaked out. I think I also drove through one and didn't pay because I was at a loss of what to do. This is a situation no one tells you about and therefore you are totally unprepared for. It does wake you up.

Oh well, in the end it matters little, I suppose. It was a good vacation, I learned things about France and about myself. I believe that if you don't learn something about yourself while thousands of miles away from your comfort zone you are probably either brain dead or a zombie, or both. 

But I am tired and tomorrow is a work day (bleah) so it is off to bed for me. Tune in tomorrow, more to come.



 I did not take this photo, but it sure is pretty.

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Revision

this damned device makes me crazy although I am very grateful for the loan of it, thank you Margaret. For some reasons known only to the tech/iPad/mystical world of Devices of Communication (i.e. computers, tablets, phones, satellites, tinfoil rabbit ears, mind-melding, etc) these portals into intergalactic conversation sometimes overwhelm me, which is fairly easy. I wanted to edit the last post of about an hour ago but, alas, it ain't gonna let me.  Thus a revision.

My next journey will undoubtedly involve a car. But it won't be a foreign car.It will be either my car or an American rental car. I love driving, I love the whole thing about the open road, cruising (speeding) along, music loud, Springsteen or Lucinda Williams pounding out tunes, or opera or Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" chorus blasting down the blacktop. So I revise the last blog post in that way. I said my next journey would not involve a car; it will.

That's all, just wanted to put that record straight. Maybe it will be a drive from Minnesota to Louisiana, following the Mississippi River, or a long ride through Montana. Or anything in between.  

The open road, it is always calling me.
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Marseille

Having visited France many times, I have never stopped in Marseille, a very big, busy city. Having been here for a day, I don't hate it (the setting, on the water, is gorgeous) but I don't have a lot of desire to return. The drive in, once off the Autoroute, was monstrous. I am a good driver but the streets are as narrow as a parking space, mostly one way or blocked at the end forcing me to back up or do a three point turn just to get the stupid car onto the next narrow-gauge alleyway, only to face another such turn at the next corner. At one point the street vanished altogether, appearing as a sidewalk with iron barriers that one has to maneuver through. No one pays attention, pedestrians wander everywhere, roads mysteriously are blocked over and over again by police vans, and by the time I got the car into a car park I was shaking and my head was pounding. Fucking awful. 

Parts of the old city are charming but to tell you the truth I am ready to come home, something I rarely say while on vacation. As I mentioned previously, I have learned some things about myself on this trip (and about traveling alone vs with someone else) and I am ready to come home and begin planning my next journey, which will be different in many ways. There will be no car involved, less "accidental" companionship, a better thought out route, a lot less stuff packed into my suitcase.

There is a scene at the end of the movie "The Accidental Tourist" where William Hurt is trying to deal with his heavy suitcase while in serious back pain. In a moment of desperation, his character stops on the sidewalk, unzips the suitcase and takes out his passport and a photo of his son and abandons the suitcase on the Paris sidewalk.  I have thought about doing that so many times. Why am I lugging all this crap around? Stupid clothes.

Back to Lyon to drop off the car in the morning, a train to the Paris airport where I will spend the night at an overpriced airport hotel and catch the 10:00 a.m. Flight  home. There may be one more update tomorrow evening.  Thank you all for reading along.

Learning as we go.

I guess that's life, we are always learning as we go. This vacation has clarified a few things for me:
1) I am definitely not as energetic as I once was.
2) While my mind wants to be adventurous, my body is a lot slower to catch up.
3) Traveling with someone who speaks the language is a whole lot better then winging it alone. It certainly opens up a lot more portals.
4) The concept of molecular transport would enhance travel by leaps and bounds.
5) Two words you do not want to ever say, especially while on vacation are "explosive diarrhea."

My friend Vanessa, who is traveling with me for a few days (which was not planned, but life intercedes and you just roll with it) speaks excellent French. (To me, anyone who can do more than ask to buy a croissant speaks excellent French and she can converse with anyone, about almost anything, how cool is that to have at your side?) Her linguist ability has changed my vacation immensely. She hasn't traveled much at all in Europe so she is still enthralled by small French towns and she likes to drink so walking through Cahors and stopping every hour or so for a glass of wine is her speed. Works for me as well.  In fact, this morning we headed out about 9:00, walked across a beautiful old stone bridge and we noticed folks heading towards the center of town, all carrying grocery bags. Ah, yes! It is Saturday, there must be a local market, let's follow these people and find it, which we did. What a great market! Produce, cheese, bread, meat, fish, wine, roasted chickens, pastries, the market had everything, We wandered around for about an hour, bought some bread, fresh cheese, cured duck breast, fruit. Then we sat at a cafe, outside, for another hour having wine at 10:30 in the morning!

Cahors is a very nice small town in the southern middle part of France. They make excellent wine from Malbec grapes. It's an old city, originally a Celtic city but was conquered by the Romans in 50 BC. Beautiful old stone houses, small French cottages as well. Good food and drink. It is really nice to be here. They have a big blues festival here every year in July and my brother Jeff was here a few years ago, playing in the festival and he reported that he liked Cahors.... I can see why.

Without a good navigator, it would have taken a lot more work to get here. My original plan of getting a car and meandering through part of France sounded good but I now realize that I am too scattered to do that kind of driving well. I am a good driver but not a good directionalist, if there is such a word. I am OK walking, I can always find my way back, but in a car I am much less certain and driving requires quick decision making actions, not my strong suit,  I am a leap-before-looking person, not what you need while driving 120 KPH in a foreign country. I am pretty sure that any foreign driving trips I take in the future will not be solo journeys.  Trains, yes, I can do those fine alone. Car trips in the US, fine by myself. But in a foreign land, nope, not gonna do it alone.

It was a lovely, cold clear day today. It is now 5:30 (17,30 in French hours) and we will venture out again in a few hours for more libations and consumption of tasty things.

Finally, I will leave those two words that should never be spoken while on vacation alone. That I included them above should be enough of a hint as to one of the maladies of foreign travel.  Maybe I should have avoided the water.


Another photo:

Car, Cahors and on the road.

The frustrating thing about this typeface is that it is so small I can hardly read it. But we continue on.

I woke up on Wednesday with a full blown head cold which made the day kind of a waste. So we move on. I will report more on that at a later time perhaps.  Or not.

Thursday morning I woke up feeling equally as crappy but had to leave the flat and get to the Gare de Lyon Part Dieu to rent a car and drive out of town. This sounded like a great idea when I was in California but seemed less and less so as I sat in the train station waiting for the appointed hour to fetch my car.  Finally it was noon, the hour of car rental and so I made my way to the office and said yes to an upgrade and to minimal insurance.  Yes, it doubled the cost of the rental but hey, it was a bigger car, an automatic (which would be easier on my bad knee) and what the hell, it's a vacation after all.  The tricky part came when trying to figure out to get out of the car park and through the streets of Lyon and to the Highway.  French streets and traffic signals and rules of driving are a bit different than in the US but I managed to almost hit only one pedestrian and run only one traffic light before I got to the Autostrade. My phone helped, I was on my way.

A friend of mine, Vanessa, was working at a winery not far from Lyon and our plan was for me to pick her up and we would spend a day or two together, just cruising around in my car. However, from the inception of this plan to the day of my arrival Vanessa quit her job and I was now rescuing her and spiriting her away.  Fine with me.

So here we are now in the lovely town of Cahors for the evening, and we will be here for maybe two nights and then, who knows? It's a journey of the unknown at this point.
But a good journey. I am not sure what I would have done without a navigator, it would have required a different plan, that's for sure. The last time I drove in Europe I had Tom as a navigator and we never got lost, at least not for long. By myself, it's a different story. Having Vanessa along has made it much less daunting.

Which brings me to the topic of taking this vacation by myself, but it's late and I am tired so we will cover that topic tomorrow.

Thank you for reading along. This a photo of Cahors. More to follow.

Food and film and getting fatter.

Remember yesterday when I said I didn't really go out to good restaurants by myself?  Hmmm, well that was a bit specious, I'm afraid. Sometimes I go out to an actual restaurant and today was one of those times.

Lyon has a specific cuisine of which they are quite proud and a set of restaurants called "bouchons" that specialize in this Lyonaisse cooking and when faced with such a situation one must honor the city where one is currently staying.  A person wouldn't go to New Orleans and skip crawfish or po'boys, or go to San Francisco and not try sourdough bread (unless one was gluten free, of course) so coming to Lyon and ignoring their special cuisine would be insulting. Plus, it was 1:30 (13,30 in Lyon time) and I was hungry (J'ai faim!)  One of the most well known bouchons, Daniel et Denise, is two blocks from my flat, how could I resist?

I was met with eyes askance (American woman alone!) when I walked into the restaurant and was curtly seated in a so-so area that I actually didn't mind. When I was finally given a menu, I decided to have the lunch "formula" which was a choice of starter, a main and a dessert. Having done my homework, I ordered the Pate en Croute because they had won awards for this creation of organ meats minced and baked in pastry. Served as simply as possible, with a bit of fig jam on the side and a couple of bites of the salad standby, it was delicious. I think the waiter was relieved that I not only opted for the three course option but that I ordered something typical for the area. My second course was their famous fish quenelle in a Nantua sauce which is basically bechamel flavored with the crayfish tails used in the quenelle. It was like eating a cloud of delicate fish bathed in creamy lusciousness, so delicious. All entrees come with baked potato discs and a gratin of their version of mac and cheese (penne with cheese sauce served in a little gratin pan.) I did not need either of those side dishes and did little more than taste them.  Wine was had with this, of course, a lovely and unpretentious Cote du Rhone in a small bottle.

It was so good but there was punishment to come, the third course, dessert of the day, which was possibly the best chocolate mousse I have ever had, thick and incredibly rich, served with a classic Madeline cookie. It took me about a half hour to eat the mousse, but I managed to choke it down. I swooned silently with every bite. I cannot believe I ate it all but I wouldn't have missed a single morsel.

With the wine, the lunch was about 45 US dollars and it was worth every cent. I was seated at about 1:30 and did not leave the restaurant until about 3:30. Of course part of the reason I lingered so long was because I was so full I could not budge, I just sat sipping the end of my wine, hoping I would not belch too loudly as I exited the building. I waddled back to my flat and unbuttoned my jeans as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so, i.e. in the lift to my flat.

Seriously, nothing else to eat for me today.

At 5:00 (17,00h) I was able to rouse myself from my food coma and visit the Musee Miniature et Cinema, a small, quirky, incredible museum about movie sets, costumes, models, miniatures and other trivia about movie production. It was educational and totally enjoyable. Lots of costumes and models of things actually used in films, so fascinating.

A good day in old Lyon. As I told a friend, I am sure the regular part of Lyon has its dry, boring, seedy side but here, in the tourist area of Vieux Lyon, it is charming and easy, historical and eye-catching. I am, after all, a tourist, and this is working for me.

Old Roman ruins in my backyard.

Train ride for the vacant mind and voila! Lyon!

Finding your way through a French train station is not easy if you don't speak the language but thankfully there are little icons that could guide you or confuse you even more.  For example, a little picture of a train and an arrow could indicate that your train is that way or it could mean that if you go that way there might be a train, not your train necessarily, but some train. In a large train station there might be several halls, as they are called, that might have your train, but there is no guarantee of that, you must either trust that a train could be there or shake your head in resignation that all is lost.  Then go get a coffee and a croissant and wait for enlightenment.

Being paranoid of missing my train, I was at the Gare de Lyon about an hour early, which was fine because it gave me time to get that coffee and croissant in plenty of time for the enlightenment. The other thing about the train station, unlike an airport, is that there is no announcement about trains leaving the station. The French expect you to be grownup enough to get your ass on the train without being prompted.  At about 20 minutes before my train was to depart I was tired of sitting in the Waiting for Enlightenment section (having finished my coffee and croissant) and I wandered over to where I thought my train might be and it appeared that people were casually walking down the path to the train. "Well then" I thought so I did the same and after stumbling around a bit trying to find Voiture 3 (car 3) I foolishly asked a railroad person for clarification and of course they (there were three of them in one group) all shook their heads collectively and did that French lip purse thing until one pointed at the train car nearest me that clearly was marked Voiture 2 and said "Ici." Then he said it in English in case I didn't know was "ici" meant which of course I did but really? I even showed him my ticket which stated Voiture 3 but he was undeterred. So I got on car 2 and went upstairs as he pointed and he was correct, of course, my seat number was there, although nowhere did it EVER say 3. I was grateful for his help but puzzled at the mystery.

Sigh.

Train rides are so lovely, so soothing, your mind can just go away for a while. It was only a two hour ride, I could have stayed on that train for another two hours. For me there is always something about traveling in a foreign country that makes me want to change my life and nowhere does manifest itself more clearly than on a train ride through the countryside.  Don't ask me why, it just happens. Four hours is the perfect distance, so this was short by half. But here I am, in what is definitely a person's apartment unlike the flat in Paris which was so casually sterile. I think it will be a good city for two days, at least the part I saw today was new to me, old to France, there's an old section (in which I am staying) and a newer one just across the river which is just across a bridge from my flat. I found snacks and a couple of places open tonight (it seems Lyon takes a break on Mondays) if I decide my snacks are not cutting it for dinner.

Here is a photo from my 6th floor flat and my snacks, which could be my dinner.

The idiosyncratic French and free museums!

The French have these ideas, cultural no doubt, that always crack me up. For one thing, they do not like to make any more change than necessary. For example, if the total of your purchase is something like 10,30 and you give the cashier 15 euros, the cashier will always ask "Avez vous un euro?" (Do you have a euro?)  God forbid you buy something cheap and hand over a 20! Last night as I was gathering up my purchases, the couple in back of me bought a box of cookies that were less than two euros and they handed the guy a 20 and you would have thought the couple had tried to pay with small stones! The cashier shook his head and waved his hands around and pursed his lips the way only the French can do and said something in French that was probably "This is too much, I cannot make this kind of change for such a small purchase, no, no you must give me something smaller, this cannot happen." The customer was American (but of course) and simply stood  there with the 20 in his hand until the cashier finally took it and disgustingly made change, obviously ruining his entire day.

You feel like you have insulted their entire cultural heritage when something like that happens. I have gotten that look when I order a glass of wine because I point to the price of a large glass and say "un grand verre du vin blanc, s'il vous plat." Ah, no, what? A large glass? What, how can this be?  That's the look I get. Now, mind you that a large glass is probably 10 ounces, it's not like a bucket of wine, and the regular size is tiny. Maybe 4 ounces, hardly even worth drinking, it is a mere mouthful! But they bring me my wine and I think they secretly think I won't be able to finish it! Ha! And this is a culture that drinks wine with every meal.... go figure.

The French are very serious about queueing up, waiting in line is serious business and they would never push to the front of the line. Other cultures do not have this stoicism, of course, and will not so subtly inch up to the front of the queue, displacing the French along the way but getting away with it because the French will make the insulted face but will say or do nothing to stop the intrusion. Italians and Spanish are the best at this stealthy move. It takes an American to step in the way of the pushy person and block their forward progress. ( I have done it often, quietly but firmly and it always works.) Germans just pretend they don't know where the end of the line is and they simply walk past everyone to the front. This works for them because no European wants to bully a German, too much history there. But it is amusing to watch this cultural dance, makes waiting in line so much more fun.

On another note, many museums are free the first Sunday of the month, as are many national monuments so I visited a few today. I also finally made it to the 10th arrondisment and got to see the St Martin canal at work. A small boat was coming through and the locks had to work to drain water from one level and add water to the lock so the boat could continue on. It was a treat to see it all happen and it made me so happy that I found a little cafe with outdoor seating where I had an order of foie gras and a large vin blanc for lunch!

Tomorrow I leave Paris, taking the train to Lyon for three days. It's a city I know very little about so I am looking forward to a new experience.

"Bon nuit" I say as you are all waking up.

Paris: Demonstrations, degustation, precipitation, ambulation

There were four things on my agenda today: take the Metro to Place Concorde to see Champs Elysees, visit W. H. Smith bookstore, walk to the Les Halle's area to find a couple of kitchenware stores and finally go to the Canal St. Martin area, a neighborhood I have been wanting to visit.

While on the Metro an announcement was broadcast that there would be no stopping at the Concorde station because of the out-of-control demonstrations that have been taking place for the past couple of weeks. The train stopped at the next station, Madeline, and I got off and exited the station to an eerily quiet boulevard. Blue police vans were everywhere, cars were nowhere to be seen.  There was no access to Place Concorde but smoke could be seen floating high in the air; it was either tear gas or cars that had been torched. I walked to Rue Cambon and was able to get into the bookstore, usually a very busy spot on the weekend. It was almost empty and was as quiet as a library. From there I walked up Rue Rivoli, closed to traffic, most of the businesses closed, very unusual for a weekend day. In the Tuileries was a Christmas festival, very poorly  attended. It was clear the demonstrations were taking their toll on commerce and public gatherings.

Finding the first kitchen store, Dehilleran, was easy and it's an old, dusty place with hundreds of items, from tart molds to knives, cutting boards, rolling pins and amazing copper pans, heavy as bricks. I hung around for a bit, touching things, then ventured back outside where the rain had begun falling. I decided to find a Metro station that would take me to the Canal district but realized that I was hungry and fortuitously passed a cafe that seemed to be whispering my name.

There are few things better than sitting in a French cafe, at the window, watching the wind pick up and the rain fall down, eating a perfect ham and cheese omelet on a Saturday afternoon. The French know how to take three ingredients (four if you included butter) and create something that smells, looks and tastes wonderful: the cheese is melted, the ham is warm, the top of the omelet is just a bit golden from the butter and a little of that butter glistens on the plate. Served with a simple green salad dressed in the ubiquitous French salad dressing (oil, vinegar, spicy mustard) with a little basket of fresh baquette on the side, and a glass of the house white wine and life is good.

Some people come to France to eat in upscale restaurants. If I am traveling with someone I do the same. But by myself, going to a restaurant is too daunting to face alone so I favor the smaller cafes or bistros, the kind that have similar food, where you can get a Salade Chèvre Chaud or Steak and Frites or onion soup. Or the omelet of your choice.  There is no rush for you to leave the table, sitting and staring out the window is not just tolerated but almost required.

Because the day had become much colder, wetter, darker, I headed back to my warm flat, deciding to walk instead of finding the Metro station. Turns out that I wasn't far away from my neighborhood and it would have required a circuitous train route, so it was quicker to cross the Seine, pass by Notre  Dame and meander up Boulevard St. Michel, ducking under awnings when it began to rain seriously.

It is 6:00 now and because of my lunch, there will be no dinner. I am a one-meal-a-day sort of person here in Paris, mainly because I usually pop into a local bakery late morning and get a croissant, which fills me up for hours. Bad for me yes, but I am on vacation and I have tangerines in the early morning and cheese and apples or pears at dinner time, so I figure that sinfully buttery, flaky creation is balanced by the fruit and the lack of dinner. Or so I tell myself, and really, I have no shame when it comes to real French croissants. None.

Those 20,000 French steps ...

About killed me, I am paying for it today. Not just knees but thighs, calfs and hips. Fuck this getting old crap. It beats me up.

Sorry, just had to get that out there, at 9,700 steps today which will be 10,000 after the nightly stroll, this time to the corner and back and it's more a hobble than a stroll.

Before I go farther, I know that this font is really small but I cannot change it on this device I am using so put on those reading glasses and deal with it.  Please and I thank you. Basically, I can't change how the blog looks, so we will simply adjust to what we have instead of what I want. Which is, of course, what life is all about. "You can't always get what you want but if you try, sometimes you get what you need."

It's odd, but I gave this some thought today while on the Metro (instead of on my feet) and I can't figure out why I am less sure of myself now than I was 25 years ago traveling. You would think that having been to this city about 15 times in the past 25 - 30 years I would know it well enough to be strong and confident and decisive.  Yet I find myself second guessing everything! (Well, most everything, I am still sure that any bottle of wine I get in the local Mom-and-Pop market for 8 euros will be delicious and it always is!) But I took the Metro today and I had to seriously stop and think about the process, which is basically: know the end route, put the tiny ticket in the slot and go. That's it.

It all worked out fine but it brought on a world of confusion just thinking about the process. (Not old age confusion, mind you, just the confusion you get when wondering why something is what it is.)  Is it our lot to get more confused the older we get despite our years of wisdom or is it just my rambling mind experiencing this? When younger, it seemed we plowed through things with unsubstantiated confidence and things usually worked out well. Now, at this older point in life, I am at times 100 % sure of what to do and at other times, like today, conflicted.  Where's that store of knowledge and experience when I need it?

Last evening I walked to the Jardin des Plantes to see an exhibition of luminaries. It was about a 25 minute walk. Today I took the Metro for a totally different reason and when I exited the Metro station  (after an 8 minute ride) when I turned around, there was the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes! It made me laugh out loud.

All this is to say that everything we do, all the time, everyday, is nothing but one more fucking life lesson, whether it is in France or Rome or Pasadena or in the ghetto of our minds. When we stop learning, whether about ourselves or about the world, then that's the time to kick it over the goalpost of life and call it a day. There is no growth without change and there is no change without questioning everything.

So sayeth the small print oracle.
I am going to try and insert a photo here, the view from my flat. It is of Norte Dame but let's see if it shows up.

Another random day in Paris

The random days in Paris are often the best, which is true of a lot of life. Unplanned and unmoored means (sometimes) that there will be few expectations and thus little disappointment.  The distaff side of that is also true, of course, no expectation means little excitement which can have its own problematic outcome.

The flight into Paris yesterday was rather turbulent but since statistics show that planes don't normally crash because of turbulence I am less afraid of it than I was in the past. The plane was pretty full but because of my wileyness about airplane seating, I was able to snag three seats to myself and I had no guilt about not sharing them. I read two junky books, watched one movie, slept for about an hour and voila! In Pàris I was.

My flat is fine, smaller than it looked inline (isn't that always the case?) but it has a great view, which I will try to figure out how to share with you.

It had been years since I visited Musee D'Orsay and it had a couple of special exhibits so I spent a couple of hours there and had an excellent lunch in the cafe there and how much more boring can this be? Seriously, no one wants to read about my lunch, nor does anyone want to read about Special Exhxibits at a museum in France! What was I thinking? Sorry about that.

The thing about coming back to a place you have been to more than a dozen times is that you know it is going to be boring and repetitive at some point. One doesn't want that to happen to anything one loves but it can, and then you get divorced. A person gets pissed off at whatever got boring but the bottom line is that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE gets boring at some point and  to avoid divorce you need to spice things up a bit, change costumes or venues or try a new cuisine or something.

 I am not going to wear a French maid costume or anything but since I know this town pretty well, I am going to try and see new places here. I wish I could say I will overcome my fear of being buried alive and go visit the Catacombs but that will not happen. Today, instead of taking the Metro, I walked a lot, more than 20,000 steps (7 + miles ) and my knees feel it. It was a lovely day for walking, temp around 55, partly sunny and There I Go Again, launching into boredom!

It is close to 11:00 pm, time for a cookie and and another glass of supermarket Bordeaux. Hey, at less than $10.00 US dollars, it's good stuff! Snobby Californians denigrated Merlot for so long, not realizing that it is the backbone of Bordeaux wines and the cornerstone of my drinking habit at this moment.

Please excuse any strange spelling or punctuation. I am using a friend's iPad and it is so touchy and a bit idiosyncratic, like me and many I know. (Thanks, Margaret for the iPad loan.)  I will try and get photos on here, stay tuned.

Bonne nuit!

Off to my European adventure!

Tomorrow I fly to Paris for 5 nights, then train to Lyon for 3 and then rent a car and drive around the middle and south of France.  By Myself.  Yikes!

For some reason, perhaps my advance age, I am a little nervous about this trip. I cannot put my finger on why, I have been to France many times and am comfortable there, even with no command of the language. Yes, there are street riots in Paris right now but I can avoid those. Yes, it is more dangerous to travel now than ever before but that doesn't worry me. Maybe it's just that my mind seems less focused lately and I fear I will do something stupid, like leave my luggage somewhere and walk away or lose my passport (been there, done that) or simply act like an old lady.  (Which I am quickly becoming.)

But maybe the opposite will happen: everything will go smoothly and I will have an amazing vacation!  That is certainly a possibility. Maybe it's just the getting ready to leave that is making me anxious, packing, prepaying bills, cleaning up the house, all that crap.

I am fairly certain that when I get to the airport tomorrow all the pre-vacation jitters will be gone. By then there is nothing to do but get on the plane and let the anxiety go, have a cocktail, read and fall asleep and wake up in a foreign land.  That's my plan, anyway.

I will attempt to continue this blog using a borrowed iPad, trying to connect it to foreign websites and we will see how that goes. (I have little confidence in my skills regarding using new devices, of which the iPad is to me.) If you hear from me, then great!  It worked!  If not, then boo, I am too lame to figure it out. 

Au revoir to you all for a few days but tune in on Thursday or Friday and see if I have anything to say.

SF Symphony: Beethoven's Ninth, Ode To Joy

Of all the performances I have seen over the past 20 years or so, Beethoven's Ninth, which I saw on Friday, was perhaps my favorite of all. It is a one act of 66 minutes (but who's counting, right?) of astounding orchestral music and a chorus that probably numbered at least 100 voices. We all know the melody of the Ode to Joy and that last movement is so filled with emotion that it was all I could do to keep from cheering out loud half way through the build up to final shout-out to Beethoven's Joy.

Tom and I, in the past, went to the symphony often. But then the recession of the 2008-2009 years were tough on all of us and the money for tickets was necessary for car payments and rent. But this year, being the excellent friend that he is, Tom bought tickets to see Michael Tilson Thomas direct the symphony in this masterpiece. And a masterpiece it was! 

Our seats were in the loge area, which means we had roomy seats just a step above the entire orchestra.  You can see every instrument and follow the flow of the music not just by listening but by watching the musicians and their grasp of the music. The loge seats are the best in the house (and thus their price reflects that) and the scope of the orchestra gives you a physical sense of the music as well as perfect acoustics.

There is no way to describe the journey this symphony of Beethoven has. It is, as the program described it, a journey from darkness to light. Crashing chords, sadness, pathos and then a slow, gradual climb from depths to middle ground and peace, then the ascent, higher and higher to the platform of joy and wonder and love. What a musical triumph this is!

Here is a short video of a totally different Ode to Joy experience from the SF Symphony but the joy and the emotion are so evident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU

And another more classical look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooe16ILaPo

I say do yourself a favor, find a good recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, take an hour and sit and listen to it. The first movement is familiar, the second less so. The third is so well-known for many reasons and then we get to the fourth movement, the one we wait for, the Ode to Joy with the chorus and every instrument in the orchestra jumping for joy.  It will be an hour well spent.

Thank you, Tom, for the early Christmas gift!

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My love affair with Joan Baez, tonight

It is past my bedtime but I just returned from seeing Joan Baez in Oakland this evening. Left my house early this morning to get to work, left work at 5:20 and got to Oakland just in time to miss the first two songs, but it was worth every wrong turn. What a voice and what a person!

On stage Joan Baez is as natural as a bouquet of wildflowers, there is nothing tricky about her or pretentious or famous. She sips tea, chews on lozenges (and apologies for doing so.) She applauds her guitarist and her son, Gabriel Harris who plays the drums and a young singer who shared the stage with her for a few songs. But when she starts singing and playing the guitar, she is a force. It's not just her voice, it's her entire musical and political persona that resonates on the stage. She admits her voice doesn't have the range it once had but there were times when she hit the high notes and the audience gasped at the purity of that sound.

Yes, this all sounds so fan-like, and so be it. I have been a fan of Joan Baez for more than 50 years and will be a fan forever. How I even considered not driving to Oakland this evening (where I ALWAYS get lost, always, coming and going) is beyond me. I walked in, had a very nice aisle seat and as I sat she began talking about her mother and then she sang "Honest Lullaby" and I began to cry.  (Silently, of course.) It's a story about her growing up in the 1950's (lyrics below) and then experiencing motherhood, that you don't get through either of those lifetimes without some true and honest guidance. It's a song I have always liked, hearing her sing it brought the house down for me.  But then she sang more, some Bob Dylan, some Tom Waits, so many songs she wrote, many traditional tunes and she read a poem to California about the fires and smoke and ash and our duty as people to stand up and help and fight, the world needs us and our participation.  

I could go on and on.

For some reason, for many reasons, my emotions these days are not just on my sleeve but are covering my entire body, usually manifested in tears. I can't read a headline without tearing up nor can I think about the fires and the shootings and our corrupt political world without tearing up in anger and in fear. Things just seem out of balance, I just seem out of balance, waiting for that boulder to tumble into my path or onto my car or for the tree to fall on my house or to be pushed off the brink or ...... something.
Seeing Joan Baez tonight made that unease and latent anxiety go away for two  hours. It somehow made the future seem possible for that time.

I parked about ten minutes from the Fox Theater in a loading zone with some other cars who were taking the risk of being towed. Sketchy neighborhood would be kind, but that's probably just my white woman stereotypical fear. But walking back to my car after the concert a guy was walking the same way, same age as me more or less and we talked for a few seconds about Joan Baez.  He said "I cried through about half of it" and I replied "Oh, me too! I cannot believe I considered not making the drive tonight."  He shook his head slightly and said, softly "We won't forget this, will we?"  

Nope.  We won't.

Early early in the game 
I taught myself to sing and play 
And use a little trickery 
On kids who never favored me 
Those were years of crinoline slips 
And cotton skirts and swinging hips 
And dangerously painted lips 
And stars of stage and screen 
Pedal pushers, ankle socks 
Padded bras and campus jocks 
Who hid their vernal equinox 
In pairs of faded jeans 
And slept at home resentfully 
Coveting their dreams 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby 

Yellow, brown, and black and white 
Our Father bless us all tonight 
I bowed my head at the football games 
And closed the prayer in Jesus' name 
Lusting after football heroes 
tough Pachuco, little Neroes 
Forfeiting my A's for zeroes 
Futures unforeseen 
Spending all my energy 
In keeping my virginity 
And living in a fantasy 
In love with Jimmy Dean 
If you will be my king, Jimmy, Jimmy, 
I will be your queen 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived

I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
I travelled all around the world 
And knew more than the other girls 
Of foreign languages and schools 
Paris, Rome and Istanbul 
But those things never worked for me 
The town was much too small you see 
And people have a way of being 
Even smaller yet 
But all the same though life is hard 
And no one promised me a garden 
Of roses, so I did okay 
I took what I could get 
And did the things that I might do 
For those less fortunate 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
Now look at you, you must be growing 
A quarter of an inch a day 
You've already lived near half the years 
You'll be when you go away 
With your teddy bears and alligators 
Enterprise communicators 
All the tiny aviators head into the sky 
And while the others play with you 
I hope to find a way with you 
And sometimes spend a day with you 
I'll catch you as you fly 
Or if I'm worth a mother's salt 
I'll wave as you go by 
And if you should ever wonder 
How the years and you'll survive 
Honey, you've got a mother who sings to you 
Dances on the strings for you 
Opens her heart and brings to you 
An honest lullaby

Songwriters: Joan C. Baez

And the ETA on the Zombies is when?

Seriously, I just came back from walking Cooper around the block and it is a ghost town out there, like Zombie-land. No one is on the roads, I could have prostrated myself on Mendocino Avenue and read my Bible (if I was carrying it) for five minutes before a car even came into view. The only time I have seen the road this quiet was Christmas morning, and this is Friday night!

Same thing last night, no one on the roads. The smoke was annoying last evening but today it was awful.  The smoke index (aka Air Quality Index but come on, it's all about the smoke) starts at zero for good and 500 for bad. Today in Santa Rosa it was around 320. It was around 410 in Guerneville, home of Autocamp, my place of employment. It is supposed to be the same tomorrow, Saturday.  Another reason to be joyful about going to work!

Walking Cooper around 4:30 this afternoon for a short jaunt, the sun was a hellish red-orange combo, as if someone poured blood into orange juice and stirred it up. It was as defined as a canonball in the sky, clear and hot and creepy. A young guy was standing outside my neighborhood tattoo parlor as Cooper and I walked by and I pointed to the sun and said "fucking freaky, right?" and he replied "I don't want this, we had this last year, I am done with this."  My feelings exactly.

Shootings and fires in Los Angeles. More fires 100 miles from us right now. It feels like death and destruction are leaching out from Washington, D.C., a crawling plague of evil, leaving nothing whole or safe in its path.  Yes, I am making that up but come on.... you know you can feel it too.

Be safe out there. Evil does abide. 

November, and I have been such a slacker

Where does the time go?  I actually created an account at work yesterday and labeled it "October shop account" because in my mind it was still October.  Yes, that's a very sad sign about the state of my mind, but true nonetheless. 

November: one of my favorite months, along with all the months after summer. (Well, actually, I am not usually a fan of March for some reason. Go figure.) Leaves on trees change colors as do all the vineyards I pass driving through the Russian River valley. From my front desk post at work I can see dozens of trees and sometimes a breeze comes up and thousands of leaves get blown from their branches and float down, like a snowfall of color. It's mesmerizing.  This week the days are overly warm but the nights are very cold. It's rather odd, you start the day with layers and by mid-day you are down to a t-shirt and by 4:00 the layers are back on and by 9:30, when you take the dog out to pee, there are even more layers! Crazy!

I had a mediocre lunch today but with the best company, my Stacey, but it made me not hungry for dinner. But one must eat something, right? I cubed up a chunk of butternut squash that was languishing in the fridge, salt and pepper, and a chopped piece of bacon, and baked it until the squash was tender and caramelized and the bacon was crisp. Delicious, and I am pretty sure that since it was lean bacon and the fat sort of cooked off and the squash didn't absorb ALL the fat that it was almost fat-free!  Who cares, it was really good, the soft, sweet squash against a little crunch of crisp, salty bacon.  So autumn.

Two weeks and a few days until Thanksgiving. The highlight of autumn, of course. One can walk down any street in any neighborhood and smell turkey roasting and pies baking and hear the elastic chatter of groups of people and kids gathering. It's a good day.

I will try to be back here more.  Yeah, I know, promises, promises.  But there you have it.

And here is a photo of main room of the clubhouse at Autocamp. You can see a few Airstreams and the little Redwood Suite (the ADA unit.) That's the view from the front desk where I see leaves pouring down. (The front desk would be farther to the right.) Not a bad thing to look at all day. Redwood trees on the left. 

"Jack Whitehall: Travels with my Father" on Netflix

I am not sure I would have stumbled upon this short series (11 episodes in all) had my friend Tom not recommended it to me. But it is totally worth checking out. Jack Whitehall is a 30 year old British comedian who looks like a kid who never grew up. He decides to take his 78 year old Dad on a trip around parts of Southeast Asia in order to bond and pretend to beef up their relationship. Jack's Dad, Michael, counters that Southeast Asian trip with one of his own to Romania, Moldova, Kiev and Istanbul.

To characterize their relationship as "dysfunctional" is to pretend that Kentucky Fried Chicken is wholesome food. Jack rolls his eyes at Michael while Michael simply walks away from Jack and checks them in to a 5 star hotel instead of the youth hostel Jack has chosen for them.  Jack tries to buck up and be stalwart but his father has him folding at every turn.

This series is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, sarcastic and sweet all at the same time. In the end it is simply about how family members can love each other while at the same time considering stabbing each other in the eye with a fork. (Not literally.)  Check it out, roll with it and bet you get to the end wishing Jack and Michael had a few more journeys in mind.

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"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. Book Review.

Sometimes books exceed their plot line. Sometimes the plot is conventional and predictable (boy meets girl, etc.) and sometimes we are happy with that because it meets our expectations and that's all we wanted.

But now and then there is a typical plot with atypical prose attached that makes the book so much more than its simple parts. This is one of those books.

Delia Owens has written a few non-fiction books about nature and wildlife. Her knowledge of biology and the unexplored world shows in this debut novel. (Disclaimer here: I am tired of debut novels because I find them to be trite and they writing tries too hard. This novel moved above that marker.)

The story is simple and at times very dire.  A young girl is slowly abandoned by her parents and her siblings, left to survive alone in the marshes of North Carolina. That a six year old could survive for ten years with no one and with almost nothing is a bit of a stretch but we buy into it because of the grit and determination of the young girl.  She grows into a lovely yet remote and scared young woman and attracts the attention of a couple of young men in the outskirts of her solitary world. Things get complicated, someone gets killed and thus the mystery begins. 

But Owens lets us into the world of Kya, the marsh girl and thus into the world of the marsh and the swamp and the ocean. She is at home in this world as she will never be in a civilized society, which suits her fine but also alienates her from everyone else.  "A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunger, standing alone as long as it takes to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead."

Owens' writing is sometimes lyrical and sometimes plain, as the setting of the scenes dictate. "Here, instead of the estuaries and enormous sweeps of grass as in her marsh, clear water flowed as far as she could see through a bright and open cypress forest. Brilliant white herons and storks stood among water lilies and floating plants so green they seemed to glow. Hunched up on cypress knees as large as easy chairs, they ate pimento-cheese sandwiches and potato chips, grinning as geese glided just below their toes."  Or "At the chirp of a chipmunk she whirled around, listened keenly to the caws of crows - a language before words were, when communication was simple and clear - and wherever she went, mapped an escape route in her mind."

I really enjoyed this book and I readily forgave its few overwritten paragraphs. The portrait of a solitary girl/woman trying to survive on her own and her realization that the only power she has is within herself is moving and forceful. I am looking forward to Owens next novel.

Two thumbs up. Check it out.

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Movie review: "First Man"

"First Man" is not the first depiction of astronauts and the Space Race but it might be the most honest. For me the whole of this movie was not as good as its parts. The moon landing was in 1969 and fifty years later our world is a different place. Computers now control space exploration, the communication, engineering, etc.

But in the late 1960's there was none of that. The space mission was fraught with sometimes deadly mistakes. So to see a small team of men who were ready to strap themselves into a very small capsule and take several days to land on the surface of the moon and rely on ground control to pretty much make it happen, well, that was a leap of faith in more ways than we ever knew.

Many of us remember the first landing on the moon. It was surreal because many of us grew up thinking that being on the moon would be the pinnacle of ..... everything. How could a person get there, what would that take and why even attempt it?  What would be the point?

"First Man" skirts around some of those questions but since it is based in the late 1960's and since the space race was predicated on beating the Russians into the outer atmosphere, the mindset was different than we see it today. In the setting of that era, the movie shows how it must have felt then, not how we see it now.

Ryan Gosling is a decent Neil Armstrong. The taciturn characteristics he exhibits are a little too much for this movie, in my opinion. I wanted to shake him at times and ask "Anyone in there?" It's clear he is very intelligent but he has such a disconnect from everyone including his children that it became, for me, a physical flaw, one that I couldn't ignore. Like a scar on someone's face, I was focused too much on his unmoving face and his lack of emotion.

My favorite character was Armstrong's wife, Janet, played by Claire Foy. She seems to understand Neil's sadness (especially after the death of their daughter) and for the most part she can accept it and move past it. But her patience is tested several times and she gives an excellent performance, she is a pleasure to watch.

However, what I really enjoyed in "First Man" was the science behind the moon landing and the mental and physical accuity the astronauts had to exhibit. The actual moon landing sequence was brilliant. The silence of the moon, after the noise and clatter of the space capsule, was gripping in an odd way.

It's a really good movie. Not an A but more like a B+.  Or a solid B, very good but not outstanding.

It's worth noting that the only other movie that one can compare it to is "The Right Stuff" and that movie had the amazing (in every way) Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager and the always smiling Ed Harris as John Glenn and it had that air of hope and exploration that encompassed the early days of the space program. But for me, as much as I really liked "The Right Stuff" I think "First Man" is probably more realistic.  Well, if we could get Neil Armstrong to relax his face once and give us a little, tiny smile. Or a frown. Or something other than sadness and ennui.

But check it out. It's good.

Something's coming, don't know what it is.......

I wake up with song lyrics in my head.  All the time.

Could it be, yes it could, something's coming, something good, if I can wait.....around the corner, or whistling down the river, come on, deliver......

The Mississippi's mighty, it starts in Minnesota at a place you can walk across with five steps down. And I guess that's how you started, like a pinprick to my heart, but at this point you rush right through me and I start to drown......

Screen door slams, Mary's dress waves, like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely......

Drive up the coastline, maybe Ventura, watch the waves make signs out on the water, I wanna watch the ocean bend, the edges of the sun then, I wanna get swallowed up in an ocean of love ....

I could go on and on. Every morning I get up, I walk the dog and lyrics from years and years ago swim in my head. I can't remember what's on my grocery list for that day but I can remember words from years past. It comforts me and annoys me at the same time.

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"The Overstory" by Richard Powers

To say that this is one of the most (if not the most) powerful, intense, intelligent and moving books I have ever read would not be a stretch. It would be close to the truth, maybe the whole truth. "The Overstory" is remarkable in ways that are so difficult to articulate. But here I go, trying to rope you in.....

Most books I can read in a couple of days. (I came home last night at 7:30 and finished a novel by 10:45, just to give you a clue.  It was a trashy, fun, light-hearted novel, but still.)  Some novels, those I really like and those that grab me, usually take closer to a week. "The Overstory" kept me reading for three weeks and I read two other novels in the middle of it. It was that intense and that powerful.  I hated to put it down and I hated for it to end but at times I had to walk away. It is consuming.  At least it was for me.

The first third of the book introduces us to several very different characters, times, places and concepts. All are intriguing and sometimes beguiling and often frustrating but in their introduction they all seem round and approachable, if not in real life but in this novel. Most of these intros have trees as supporting roles or, in the case of a few, major roles along with the people. Trees are paramount here.

The second third of the book brings those characters together somewhat and other, deeper themes are revealed, botany and biology and ecology come into the picture. The scope widens and we see not just the characters and their alliances with trees but we see the world and its alliance against flora. But we are also shown some of the inner workings of botany and biology and the amazing connectivity that people and trees have. (Trust me, it might sound boring but it anything but that.)

Finally, the last third of this novel is so ripe with themes that I cannot even tell you much about them. Situations and characters fly out of control, good and bad stuff happens, people act according to their beliefs and those beliefs are bludgeoned. And so much faith is tested, not just that of the characters but of the reader as well. 

It sounds esoteric, it is not. It is gorgeous.  I can open the book and pick any paragraph and it resonates with beauty and brains:  Out in the yard, all around the house, the things they've planted in years gone by are  making significance, making meaning, as easily as they make sugar and wood from nothing, from air, and sun, and rain. But the humans hear nothing. 

Or what a portrait this is:  Dennis shows at noon, reliable as rain, bearing broccoli-almond lasagne, his latest midday masterpiece. She thinks, as she does several times a week, how lucky she has been, to spend these few years married to the one man on Earth who'd let her spend most of her life alone. Game, patient, good-natured Dennis. He protects her work and needs so little. In his handyman's heart, he already knows how few things man is really the measure of. And he's as generous and eager as weeds.

Seriously, as eager as weeds.  Wow.

There are situations in this novel that are frightening and the reader fears for the characters' lives and hearts and minds. There are other times when things go right and the reader smiles and enjoys a moment of tenderness.  But underneath all of it is the heartbeat of trees, their connected roots, what they have given to the earth and the atmosphere and how we mortals are ruining them and the atmosphere and how we cannot stop it. Richard Powers has written a masterpiece, one that has deep meaning and such soul. Please find a copy and read it. It is not for everyone, it is not light, fun, airy, quick. But its meaning is deep and incredibly meaningful to all of us.  Read it and tell me what you think.

Steve, who loaned it to me, said something like "this would be a great book for book clubs."  My answer was "this would take a book club a year to discuss."  It is that massive in scope, and yet it is about small people doing small things wishing for massive results.  And then there are the trees.....

Check it out.