A Clergyman's Daughter

I was in the mood to reread 1984 by George Orwell. So I looked at my library and didn't find that but I did find The Clergyman's Daughter. This book is old, discolored and tattered. This book is so old it still has that envelope with dates indicating when the book was borrowed. October 2, 1982 was the oldest date but it was published in 1935. The story is about a young woman working relentlessly to help her father with his church and his meals. He doesn't appreciate a single thing he does. He is stingy with money. At one time he had a bit of money but gradually lost it by making poor investments. He is grouchy and rude to his parishioners. His daughter, Dorothy, is forever trying to smooth his rough edges.  She is up past midnight working to make costumes for a church play when suddenly she goes missing. A vile woman in the neighborhood who is always telling evil stories about people in the village makes up a story that Dorothy was seen leaving town with a local bachelor who had three bastard children. This isn't true but it created a huge scandal. The clergyman angrily refused to talk to the press so only the false story was in the newspapers. Actually she lost her memory. She was out on the road far from town when she met 3 other people. Together they applied for jobs picking hops. When the hop picking season ended her memory returned. With her wages she wrote letters to her father begging for money to return home. He refused to respond. Eventually she ended up homeless and begging in Trafalgar Square. Eventually she was found my her father's cousin and taken in to work at a school where she was treated unfairly. Eventually a man from  her village arrived. The evil woman who told lies was sued for libel by a banker in town. The evil woman left town. Dorothy returned home to resume her duties with her father. Life for women in the 1800's was tough.

 

 

The Restless Wave

John McCain and Mark Salter are the authors of The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations. The book is about the last ten years of his life when he was working in the Senate and running for President against Barack Obama. I don't agree with everything he says politically. I really admired him for standing up to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld against the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Enhanced interrogation techniques is a euphemism for torture. Keeping people awake until they hallucinate, keeping them cold or naked, water boarding, and making them keep their bodies in painful positions is torture. He got a lot of push back for his opinion. He was told he would have blood on his hands. Another thing I  liked about him is that he fought for democracy and for human rights. Also, he is willing to admit when he has made a mistake.

 

  

Mighty Red

I found another book written by one of my favorite authors, Louise Erdrich. This one is called The Mighty Red. The story takes place in a North Dakota town along the Red River. This is sugar beet country. One of the main characters is Crystal. During sugar beet season in the fall, the drives semi-trucks of sugar beets to the plant. She has a daughter just graduating from high school named Kismet. The story is about a love triangle with Kismet, Gary (a beet farmer's son), and Hugh (a nerdy home schooled dreamer). The story is also about the soil degradation due to the chemicals used on beet fields. Besides degrading the rich North Dakota soil the chemicals are harmful to bugs, birds, and humans. I totally loved this book.

 

 

 

  

Love Forms

Love Forms is a novel written by Claire Adams. Most of the novel takes place on the island of Trinidad. Later we go on to Venezuela and the United Kingdom.  I enjoyed reading the descriptions of Trinidad and Venezuela. The author wrote lovingly about the towns, big and small, and the beaches and the hills and the roads. The story was sad. Dawn, a sixteen year old girl in Trinidad is the best swimmer among her friends. Her family is wealthier than others and because of that she has few friends. Then comes the daughter of a traveling businessman and suddenly she has a friend. They attend the Mardi Gras parade together. Dawn takes a tourist to the beach to impress her friend. Later, finding out she is pregnant, she is shamed by her parents and her two elder brothers. Her father arranges an illegal trip to Venezuela to live with the nuns until the baby is born. He doesn't share how the journey will go so she is scared as she gets into various cars with strange men. She has to wear a black pillow case over her head in the boat on the way to Venezuela so that officials won't see her teeth or the shine of her eyeballs in the dark. Later, as an adult, she works as a physician in London while caring for her two sons. Once her marriage fails she decides to try and find her daughter. The author does a better job with descriptions of the land than the descriptions of the relationships between people. 

 

 

Bats

 Tonight the Winona bird club had a meeting. Our speaker is a member of the Wisconsin Bat Ambassadors program. She gave an interesting and enthusiastic talk about the bats in Wisconsin which are the same eight species that we have in Minnesota. Four of our bats dwell in caves in the winter and they migrate. Living communally like that makes them more susceptible to disease. The other four species dwell in trees or rock walls. They like to get under the bark or between the stones. She showed us videos of bats using echolocation to find moths at night. The closer they get to the moth the faster they make the echolocation noise. This noise is undetectable to the human ear but it can be heard with an echolocation detection device. Also, the bats don't put the food directly into their mouths. They have a flap of skin between their feet called a uropatagian. Bats use this skin to catch moths or mosquitoes and put them into their mouth. The uropatagian is also used to hold baby bats while they nurse. Bats are very important to our ecosystems.

 

 

Buzz Sting Bite

 I read Buzz Sting Bite which was written by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson. She is an entomologist living in Norway. She references Norway many times but she also references the United States. To me it felt like she aimed this book at readers from the United States. Her daughter did the chapter illustrations. The book gives an enormous amount of facts but they are written in an entertaining manner. She writes about insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. I probably won't remember most of what I read but I enjoyed reading it.

 

 

Nosireebob

The snow in Winona is nearly gone except for on the north side of buildings or walls. The sun is warm enough to melt the ice from the concrete. Yet it's still cold enough to keep a shelf of ice above the concrete. One of my all time favorite things to do is to step on that ice shelf and listen to it crack. The sound is SO SATISFYING!

But now I am elderly. I can't afford to fall on concrete. I try to avoid ice. Does that stop me from cracking the ice on the sidewalk? Nosireebob!