The Anthropologists

 The Anthropologists is on the list of favorite books of 2024. Written by Ayesegal Savas, this book is on Barack Obama's favorite books of 2024. I read it and I just don't see the appeal. The book is a series of discussions or outings by an immigrant couple living in New York City. The couple tries to see their neighborhood and local park as if they were anthropologists. They have one friend in city but few others. They keep in close contact with their parents, siblings, and grandparents back home. They spend years looking for a larger apartment. What frustrated me is that nothing really happened in the story. The married couple spend more time making fun of their friends and acquaintances than anything else. This book was more like a short story instead of a novel in my opinion.

 

Every Day Is A Gift

 Yesterday I walked by one of those free little libraries in Mechanicsburg and opened the door. Inside I found an autobiography of Tammy Duckworth called Every Day Is A Gift. Born in Thailand, she grew up with her American father and her Chinese/Thailand mother plus a younger brother. For a long time her father supported the family well. After the Vietnam war ended, jobs for her father were few and hard to get. Tammy, her father, and her younger brother moved to Hawaii where they were almost homeless. Her father was a veteran and sought help from the American Legion. They applied for food stamps, reduced lunches at school, and got housing. To make ends meet Tammy and her brother would bring food home from school. Her father wouldn't settle for a menial job. One day, in tenth grade, Tammy got frustrated. She told her father off and the next day she got a job hawking cruise flyers in Honolulu. She also sold roses to people in cars on the street. She graduated from the top of her class in Honolulu. Her family moved to Virginia to be near her father's family while she went to school in Washington, D.C. Eventually she joined the ROTC. She wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Not unusually smart, she had to work hard for her grades. While in Iraq flying Black Hawk helicopters through combat zones, her helicopter was struck by an RPG. She nearly died and became a double amputee. While recovering at Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, she became an advocate for other veterans. To this day she is a dedicated public servant. I enjoyed reading her story and I finished the entire book in one afternoon.

 

 

Colored Television

 I quickly read Colored Television written by Danzy Senna. Set in Los Angeles, this is a current novel about a family trying to get by. Jane is an author who had great success with her first book and little success since. She is married to Lenny who makes no money as an artist of abstract paintings. They are the parents of an 8 year old daughter and a 6 year old son who is on his way to being diagnosed as on the spectrum. Lacking money for rent, they house sit for richer couples that they know. The kids are used to moving. Jane has been working on her second novel for 10 years and getting no where. She decides television is where it's at and pitches a television series about mulattoes making life work in the city. This is a dark comedy. I enjoyed reading about this pair of inept parents.

The Winter People

 I am not sure why I read a horror/mystery book set in Vermont. Desperate for literature I guess. I didn't really enjoy The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon. She probably wrote a perfectly good horror/mystery book but this is not my genre.

Living On The Creek

 I am staying in Pennsylvania with Offspring #1 and his family. They live in a brick house bordering a creek. Every morning I look out at the creek through the kitchen window. The creek flows from left to right. Lately there have been pentagrams of ice flowing to the right. Some of the ice shapes are a yard across. Others are smaller. By noon the ice has melted. Yesterday a group of a dozen buffle head ducks were splashing and throwing up water in the back yard. As they gradually moved to the right they were followed by a crowd of thirty Canadian geese. This morning an angler was out there fishing. Sometimes the angler was in the blue boat and sometimes the angler was wearing waders next to the blue boat. All evidence points to fish being in the creek in the back yard. Sometimes the flock of geese will leave the creek and park themselves in the large sloping lawn to rest and eat grass. Living on a creek is a real treat to those who like nature.

Susquehamma Art Museum

 

Last week I visited the Susquehanna Art Museum in downtown Harrisburg. I was the only customer that morning. The museum has free parking in the back (a rarity in Harrisburg). The first floor has an admission desk, a small museum store, and a few exhibits several of which are displayed in the vault. The museum used to be a bank and they still use the vault. Upstairs was a display to textile art. Jordan Nassar is one of the exhibitors. He does textile art which looks to me like complicated tiny cross stitching. Most of the works are by him along but one giant piece is a combination of his art with textile art that he designed and commissioned from other women artists in Palestine. Beside that is a collection of quilts from the American Folk Art Museum. Some of the quilts are from Pennsylvania. Some name the artist. Some are from the early 1800's and the artist is unknown. Here is a picture of one of my favorite quilts labeled "The Rose."

Book Of The Little Axe

 Lauren Frances-Sharma is the author of Book Of The Little Axe: A Novel. I just finished reading it today. The story starts out in the late 1700's in Trinidad as the English are taking over for the Spanish in colonizing the island of Trinidad. A father of a boy and two girls is trying to make a living as a farmer and a blacksmith. He makes quality axes. He makes things for the Spanish such as handcuffs but he doesn't realize, or he doesn't want to realize, that the people wearing those handcuffs he made are from Africa. The father is from Africa too. His younger daughter, Rosa, is rebellious. She is not satisfied working in the kitchen or making healing salves. She prefers to work with the horses and run the farm. At first her father encourages her to be a rebel. Later, as it becomes unclear if black farm owners can keep their property, he changes his mind about Rosa. Later, in the 1830's, Rosa is living in the Crow Nation in Montana. Rosa is still tall, still a rebel, and still trying to survive in a changing landscape. The book was long with lots of tragic consequences.