Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

 I read Jennifer Chaiverini's book, Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters. This historical fiction travels back in time to Mary Todd Lincoln's childhood, her adulthood, and the end of her life. The story is told from the perspective of four of her sisters. In total Mary was one of seven siblings from the marriage of her parents and went on to have nine more half-siblings when her father remarried. Mary's mother died shortly after giving birth when Mary was five. Elizabeth was her eldest sister who acted more like a mother than a sister after their mother died. Francis was younger than Elizabeth but older than Mary and was a peacemaker in the family. Ann was Mary's younger sister and always a bit envious. Emily was a much younger half-sister. According to this book, Mary stated her ambition to be the wife of the President of the United States when she was a teenager. As a child she was moody and stubborn, unwilling to apologize or admit error, and very used to getting her way. Historians say she might have had bipolar disorder because she swung from depression to mania rather quickly. Two of her sons died in childhood. When her third son, Tad, died at age 18 her mental health suffered. She acted erratically and tried to commit suicide. Her remaining son, Robert Lincoln, had her declared insane and committed to a hospital for treatment. Her sister Elizabeth arranged for Mary to live with her which was no easy task because Mary was a difficult person to live with. I really enjoyed reading about this controversial First Lady.

Down Along With The Devil's Bones

 Conner Towne O'Neill wrote the non-fiction book Down Along With The Devil's Bones: A Reckoning With Monuments, Memory, And The Legacy Of White Supremacy. O'Neill, a man born in a northern state who went to school at the University of Alabama, was unaware of Nathan Bedford Forrest when he first moved to Alabama. In this book he recounts the biography of Forrest along with the attempts in four southern cities to remove the statues of Forrest. Forrest was a cotton farmer in Tennessee who made his fortune by selling slaves. Later he was a general in the Confederate Army. Later still he was elected to be the first Wizard in the Klu Klux Klan. According to the author, statues of Forrest were installed at times of  racial tension.  When a black man is elected mayor of a town, the townspeople respond to their discomfort by erecting a bronze statue of Forrest. The author talks about palliatives. Palliatives are medical care or medicine that don't change the progression of a disease but do provide pain relief. He says the statues of Forrest were installed to ease the discomfort of positive racial changes in society. The book details the struggles to remove statues of Forrest in four southern cities. Not all the campaigns to remove the statue were successful. Reading the book taught me more about the history of the inaccurate notion of white supremacy.

The Age of Grief

 The Age of Grief is a collection of five short stories and one novella by Jane Smiley. I enjoyed her work before and I enjoyed this one too. My favorite was the novella which is the story of two dental students who marry and have three little girls. The dentists work in the same office with one parent working 9 to 2 and the other parent working 12 to 6. The story is narrated by the father. His love and appreciation for his wife and each of the girls is evident in the way he describes their learning styles and habits. Each character is fully developed and I enjoy that style of writing.

Thanksgiving Greetings

 

Bear Necessity

I just finished reading a heartwarming, poignant book that I really enjoyed. The title is Bear Necessity and the author is James Gould-Bourn. The story is about Danny, a recently widowed father of an eleven year old boy. The boy, Willie, was in the car accident that killed Danny's wife. Since her death Willie has not spoken. Willie is using selective mutism to cope with his grief. Danny tries to help his son but is consumed with his own troubles. He has trouble keeping up with the bills with only one income and he just lost his job. He is two months behind on his rent and his landlord is threatening him with eviction. Desperate to earn money and unable to find any jobs he buys a panda costume and becomes a performer in the park. In the process he meets a string of colorful characters. Danny and his son, Willie, form a bond over the dancing panda act. Eventually Willie was always closer to his mother than his father. Now Willie and Danny form close emotional bonds. Not only is this story heart warming but also comical. I was sorry to come to the end of the book.  

The Wild Winter Swan

 Hans Christian Anderson wrote a fairy tale about wild swans. A King with 12 children remarried. The evil stepmother put a spell on the 11 sons of the King turning them into swans during the day. She forced the brothers/swans to fly away. The evil stepmother tried to put a spell on the sister of the 11 brothers but her brothers got her away to a safe place. In the safe place the sister learned that if she knit the fibers of nettles into clothing and put the clothing on the swans the spell would be reversed and they would not be swans anymore. She also had to keep a vow of silence during the construction of the clothes or her brothers would die. The nettles stung her hands but she kept working in silence. People who saw her working asked what she was doing. She did not answer because if she did her brothers would die. A rumor started that she was a witch. She was about to be burned at the stake. She will still knitting the 11th jacket when she was taken to be burned at the stake. Just then her brothers, the swans, flew in. She threw the jackets at her brothers. One by one the swans became brothers except for the youngest brother. He became human but kept one swan wing. In the book The Wild Winter Swan, Gregory Macguire (who also wrote Wicked and other novels about fairy tales) has the boy with one swan wing fly into a house in New York City in the 1960's just before Christmas. A fifteen year old girl pulls him into her room and nurses him back to health. Her name is Laura. She lives with her paternal grandparents who immigrated from Italy. Her father and brother are dead and her mother is too ill to take care of her. Laura helps the swan boy without anyone in the house finding out. The story was told slowly and sometimes seemed to drag on. The story is told exclusively by Laura. I would have liked to know what the swan boy was thinking sometimes.

Pumpkin Head

Somebody dared to walk out on the thin ice of this pond and build a small snow person with a tiny pumpkin head.

 

The Barkskins

 Annie Proulx, the author of The Shipping News and the short story Brokeback Mountain also wrote The Barkskins. This is an epic novel covering time from the 1690's to the 1990's. Two French men, Rene' Sel and Charles Duquet travel from France to be indentured servants in Massachusetts. Charles Duquet flees from the unfair treatment he gets in Massachusetts and temporarily becomes a fur trapper. Rene' Sel stays for the three years and ends up marrying his employer's wife, Marie. Marie is a Mi'kmaw native and a healer. Her knowledge of native plants is well renowned. The descendants of both Rene' and Charles are involved in forestry. The descriptions of the mighty white pine forests are lovely. The novel is also about the ecological consequences of clear cutting the forests. I learned very much about the timber business and how it changed over the decades. The descendants of Rene' and Charles had to move on from the Massachusetts area once the one pines were gone. They went on to New Brunswick, Ohio, and Michigan. Eventually they went to New Zealand for the kauri trees and to the Amazon for mahogany. Rene's descendants have more respect for the forest due to their native heritage. Charles descendants made more money on the forest because they were white. I loved reading this very long book. The tale has been made into a television series on the National Geographic channel.

  

The Last Sailor

The Last Sailor is a short novel by Sarah Anne Johnson. I have a friend by that name which is why I chose the book even though I knew my friend was not the author. The story is set on Cape Cod in 1898. Nathaniel Boyd is a successful businessman on Cape Cod. He has three sons. The eldest, Nathaniel Junior, is in his 20's. He lives in grief on a marsh in Cap Cod in a hut he built himself. He lives hand to mouth catching fish and selling the fish. His second son, Finn, is married and runs a fish shop. His youngest, Jacob, drowned in a boating accident. Although Nathaniel Junior seems to be the one person in the family who can't get over the death of Jacob, that is not true because Finn and the elder Nathaniel are also altered by the loss of Jacob. No one in the Boyd family is the least bit happy or well adjusted. The best part of the book was the love the younger Nathaniel had for the sea, for the fish, for the beauty of nature, and living in the seasons on Cap Cod.

Buck On A Bridge

 Today on my daily walk I headed west to the Twin Pond area near the Enger tower. A six mile walk is good exercise. Quite often I have a view of Lake Superior and/or the mouth of the Saint Louis river and seeing all that blue water is calming. I am walking along, almost to my turn around point, and I get to the part where a sidewalk leaves the road and a little wooden bridge goes over the stream that empties the twin ponds. Standing on that bridge is a deer looking at me. This deer is standing out in the open on the bridge. I stop walking. This deer has an impressive set on antlers on his head with at least 3 or 4 points on both sides. I smile at the deer. This sounds crazy but I think the deer smiled back at me. A car approached me on the road, saw the situation, and stopped to watch. The deer wanted to cross the road and get into the woods on the other side. I was standing on the road in his way. I stood still as the deer slowly approached with one eye on me and the other eye on the waiting car. The deer got off the bridge, came down the sidewalk for a bit and then angled through the snow and the grass up the hill. He crossed the road maybe 8 feet ahead of me midway between the car and myself. The deer crossed the road and sedately strolled ahead with his tail hanging down. A few steps into the woods he disappeared. I proceeded to finish my walk. As I passed the car the driver rolled down his window and waved at me. We both shared a special moment today.

Pollinators

 Tonight the master naturalist chapter had a zoom meeting with Naturalist Dave. He talked about pollinators and about his new passive house on Lexington Parkway in Saint Paul. Passive homes are very energy efficient. He also has solar collectors on the roof and instead of getting an electric bill he got a check for five months of the year. Only time will tell if he is able to use less electricity than he makes. He kept a list of all the pollinators he saw at his new home and at his old home in White Bear Lake. He had terrific pictures of bees, wasps, flies, beetles and bugs. He has a very engaging speaking style and I enjoyed spending time looking at bugs made all the more fascinating by what Dave knew about them and their habits.

Sweet Sorrow

 The British author David Nichols wrote Sweet Sorrow. The story is about Charlie Lewis. At the beginning of the book Charlie is 38 years old and about to get married. Most of the book is about Charlie at age 16. Charlie's parents have just divorced. His sister and mother have moved away leaving him with his depressed, alcoholic father. Charlie worries about his father because he is taking psychiatric medications and also drinking alcohol. Charlie is not doing well in school. He meets a girl who is in a local production of Romeo and Juliet. She convinces him to join the play because they need more players. He decides to give it a try for one week if she will have coffee with him. The experiences he has in the play and with this girl change his life forever. The story was poignant, sweet, yet also incredibly sad. Some parts were downright comical. I came to like this Charlie Lewis so much I was sad when the book was finished. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

The Discomfort Of Evening

 Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is the author of The Discomfort of Evening. Marieke grew up on and still works at a Dutch dairy farm. She grew up in a strict Christian family and had a brother who died at a young age. In this novel, Jas is a ten year old Dutch girl on a dairy farm. Jas' parents are very strict Christians. Her older brother, Matthies, died during an ice skating competition when he fell into the thin ice of the canal. Jas' family does not talk about their grief. Gradually everyone in the family of five starts to fall into a state of emotional disturbance. Actually, this is a highly disturbing book. I chose it because it is up for an international Booker award and is being translated into many languages. I found myself cringing and disgusted many times as I read it. To compound the grief of the family, foot and mouth disease comes to the Dutch countryside and every cow on the dairy farm has to be slaughtered. This is not a book about happy times yet I was compelled to continue reading until the very last page.

Uncommon Type

 Uncommon Type is a collection of 17 short stories written by the actor/author Tom Hanks. Just about all the stories include mention of a manual or electric typewriter. Tom Hanks is a collector of typewriters. Each chapter has a picture of a manual typewriter on the chapter title page. The stories vary from broken hearts, the struggles of immigrants, children watching as their parents divorce to a science fiction story about time travel. The story about the time travel to the 1939 World's Fair in New York City was  my favorite. What the stories had in common is the characters are good, honest people doing good things. I enjoyed these heartwarming stories. One story takes place on Christmas Eve in 1953. The parents put the kids to bed and set the presents under the tree. Dad drinks the milk and eats the cookies set out for Santa Claus and waits for his annual midnight call from an army buddy. Both served in World War Two. The fellow who calls suffers mentally from the war and lives an unhappy life. The fellow who gets the call, the one with a wife and kids, seems adjusted and happy. After the call he goes to bed and that is when we learn he is missing a leg and most of one hand from his war wounds. These days it's nice to read some warm hearted stories for a change.

Birds of Madagascar

Tonight I attended a zoom Audubon meeting featuring Dr. Sushma Reddy who talked about the birds of Madagascar. Since Madagascar is an island many species evolved in isolation. Although closer to Africa than anywhere else, only a third of the birds came from Africa. Another third came from Asia. She showed us genetic charts showing which birds are the most closely related. The pictures she shared show very exotic and interesting birds so now I would like to take an eco-tour of Madagascar some day. Human arrived on this island only 500 years ago. Unfortunately yet predictably, the arrival of human on Madagascar spelled the end of the line for the now extinct elephant bird. With eggs a full 12 inches long and 22 pounds in weight, one egg could feed an entire family. Some beaches on Madagascar are littered to this day with the broken shells of elephant bird eggs.  Imagine seeing a bird that is 9 feet, 8 inches tall. Genetically the closest cousin to the elephant bird is the kiwi in New Zealand which makes sense because the kiwi also has very large eggs.

From the left, an elephant bird, an ostrich, a person and a chicken.

Tischer Creek

 

The sight of fresh, white snow next to running water is so pleasing to my eyes I can almost almost forget the cold temperatures and slippery walks. This is Tischer Creek as it flows down the hill from the Rice Lake area to empty into Lake Superior near the Glensheen Mansion.

A Shooting Star

 I have read several books by Wallace Stegner including  Big Rock Candy Mountain, Angle of Repose, and The Spectator Bird. All three were wonderful books. A Shooting Star just didn't measure up to his other works. The main character, Sabrina Castro, is a narcissistic drama queen who possibly has borderline personality disorder. Born into wealth, she is unfulfilled. She is jealous of people who have to work for a living. Although she, too, could work for a living, she knows she doesn't have to so she doesn't. The story is set on a peninsula south of San Francisco. Sabrina leaves her husband, a physician to the wealthy, and goes home to her mother's estate. She worries about herself and is rude to others. Sabrina is not a likeable person unlike her friend Barbara. Barbara is married to Leonard, a public high school teacher, and with their two girls they have a happy marriage and a satisfying life. Barbara and Leonard and the two girls stay up one night watching a meteor shower with Sabrina. Leonard entertains the group with his stories. Barbara and Leonard seem like a real family. The rest of the characters act like they are in a soap opera.

We Came Here To Shine

 Susie Orman Schnall wrote We Came Here To Shine, a novel set during the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. The story is about the friendship of two women. Max (Maxine) is a journalism student working at the World's Fair daily newspaper. Max is known for her assertiveness and brashness. Vivi is starring in the water show at the World's Fair swimming with Johnny Weissmuller after Esther Williams had a falling accident and was unable to continue swimming anymore. Vivi is known for her shy and unassertive manner. The two women meet at a speech about women's rights at the fair. Both women face challenges related to their gender. Max and Vivi vow to help each other. Vivi will help Max become less of a bull in a china shop and Max will help Vivi become more of a bull in a china shop. The character development was good. I found the story interesting and easy to read. The women are fictional but many of the stories in this novel are based on facts that happened at the World's Fair. After reading this story, I want to go to a World's Fair. United Arab Emirates was going to host one in 2020 but it has been postponed until 2021.

His Only Wife

 His Only Wife, a novel by Peace Adzo Medie is set in Ghana, Africa. The narrator is Afi, a young seamstress in a small town. She is convinced by her mother to marry a man she has not met to better her family's resources. Eager to please her hardworking mother, Afi agrees to the arranged marriage. At the wedding ceremony her future brother in law stands in for her husband because the groom is out of the country on business. The husband's family keep Afi and her mother in the dark about most things. Afi and her mother are taken to the large town of Accra and installed in an luxury apartment. The descriptions of the two towns in Ghana are enchanting. The story is about how Afi adjusts to life in the big city of Accra and to a life where her husband is evidently not all that interested in her. Even though Afi was brought up to be kind, obedient and subservient, she comes around to the idea that instead of trying to please others all the time, she ought to spend more time pleasing herself. Afi becomes a fashion designer. After reading this story I think it would be great to go to Accra sometime and look through some of the fashion designs and eat the food and listen to the music.

One Bold Chickadee

 Today I had a break from my usually socially distanced life. I met some friends who were taking full advantage of the warmer weather by camping at Jay Cook State Park. When I arrived at campsite #65 I met my friends and another person I hadn't met before. We started out eating our lunches at the picnic table. One bold chickadee flew down and landed on a plate next to a piece of bread spread with peanut butter and took a beakful of peanut butter before flying back. Next it came back and took a bite of banana. The picture shows the bold chickadee eyeing the banana before it takes a bite.  Seeing this I spread some peanut butter on my finger and held it out hoping the chickadee would eat the peanut butter off of my finger. For a half hour I had peanut butter on my finger before I finally licked it off myself. One of my friends had an E bike. She let me take it for a spin. I have thought about buying an E bike because I live in a hilly town now so I was excited to try it out. I biked around the loop of the campgrounds. The bike has three levels of assistance. I was on the lowest level of assistance. I was encouraged to try the middle level of assistance and suddenly I am going faster than I wanted to go on a gravel surface. I can't imagine what the highest level of assistance would feel like. After lunch we walked down to the swinging bridge and hiked to the other side. We hiked the  Superior Hiking Trail for awhile before heading back towards the campsites. We wanted to be back before it got dark. Dinner was made and we sat by the campfire enjoying the nice evening and talking. Hiking with others was a nice treat. Sitting by a campfire was also a nice treat. Today was a good day.

Artemis

 Artemis is the name of the Greek god of the moon and Artemis is also a science fiction book by Andy Weir who also wrote The Martian.  Like The Martian, Artemis has a boat load of science and chemistry involved in the story. This author has a way of making technical science understandable. This story is set on the moon in the year 2080. The name of the city is Artemis. The main character is Jazz (short for Jasmine) Bashara who has lived in Artemis since she and her father moved from Saudi Arabia when she was five years old. Now she is an adult and is estranged from her father who is a welder. She barely makes ends meet working as a delivery person with some smuggling on the side. The story is action packed full of intrigue, crime, conspiracy and murder. The story was good but sometimes I thought the dialogue was unrealistic. This novel was voted the best science fiction of 2017.

The Good Good Pig

 Sy Montgomery wrote The Good Good Pig; The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood about her pet pig. The pig was named after a music conductor who conducted the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for four years. The pig and it's owners live in rural New Hampshire. They got the pig from a pig farm because it was the runt of the litter and not expected to live. The pig did live and eventually grew to be 750 pounds. The author writes about getting food for the pig from neighbors and local restaurants. Sometimes the pig escaped the pen and wandered to town only to be brought back by the local police officer who kept apples in his car in case this happened. The author talks about how special the pig was but it seemed to me that this was an ordinary pig. Sometimes I got the feeling the author was using the pig to inform us about her other books and her extraordinary work with other animals and nature. I would have liked this book if the author wasn't so self-aggrandizing. 

Election Official

 Yesterday I served as an election official in the Morgan Park neighborhood in west Duluth. Morgan Park was named after J.P. Morgan. The town was developed U.S. Steel for the employees of the Duluth Works - a steel manufacturing plant. Morgan Park was a company town. Homeowners were expected to keep their homes looking nice and if they didn't comply, pay was deducted from their paychecks. The steel manufacturing ended in 1980. The homes are modest and well cared for. I don't think there are any restaurants in the neighborhood. My day started at six in the morning and we were able to leave at 8:45 p.m. We all had a long day. We were required to wear face masks and face shields. I could handle the face mask but the face shield was giving me a headache. I noticed all the other election officials quit wearing their face shields so I took mine off too. People were waiting outside the door beginning at 6:45 a.m. We had a rush of people at 7 but then things slowed down to some extent. In total we had almost 700 voters come in. Sixty people were registered. Some had to reregister because they had a name change or an address change but many were new voters. Most of the people who registered had a photo identification but about twenty of them didn't. They got people to vouch for them living in the area. One woman came in from a recovery treatment center. She left to get an employee at the treatment center to vouch for her and when she returned she brought 7 other people in treatment who wanted to vote with her. That woman was a leader. All but one person was able to find someone to vouch for them. One poor man who lived in assisted living was unable to return with someone to vouch for him. We felt terrible because he was obviously in a lot of pain, had difficulty walking with his cane, and breathed heavily as he struggled to get in and out of the building. Some people brought pieces of their mail to confirm they lived in the neighborhood. A utility bill was sufficient. One woman showed me her paycheck. I felt a little uncomfortable opening the envelope to look at her paycheck but she wanted to vote so I did. Every hour we changed positions. We had a greeter (offer hand sanitizer and a clean pen), registration table for registered voters, another registration table for unregistered voters, a ballot table, and a person to watch the voting machine and clean the voter desks and chairs between customers. My turn to be the greeter came at 2 p.m. and that was a perfect time to stand in the open door in the sunshine. If no one was approaching I sat on the picnic table outside the building to get some fresh air. The weather was awesome. As I stood outside I saw a large white pick up approach with 3 large flags on the back of the pick up. I wondered if any of those flags were political. I could only see the American flag. The men who came from that truck were polite and even thanked me for working here today. As they left they slowly drove by our building and I saw they indeed had a political flag between two American flags. Political flags and clothing and signs are not allowed with so many feet on the building so they should have removed that political flag before they came to the polling place but oh well, they were leaving now. The head judge has been at this precinct for more than 20 years and she said there has never been this large of a turn out ever before. We had to ask that more ballots be brought to our precinct because we would have ran out. Voter enthusiasm was very high. Some people brought in their children. Some brought in dogs. I was doing the paperwork to register a new voter when I felt a dog snout on my knee under the table. Everyone was polite and I was pleased to see the large turn out. We had a rush at lunch time and another rush between four and six in the evening. The last two hours were slower. Time was going by so very slowly. We got a call at the end of the evening saying we had to separate all ballots with write-in votes. We emptied the ballot box and proceeded to read almost 700 ballots for write in votes. I knew it was my duty to read these ballots but somehow it also felt wrong. I could not help myself from judging their decisions. I found three write in votes in my stack. Two names I didn't recognize were written in. The third one was for the soil and water conservation district (for which no one was running) and someone wrote in Donald J. Trump for that office. We carefully competed our official duties, stowed the supplies away and picked up our belongings. As we walked out into the warm dark evening, I was glad to be a part of the 2020 election. Will this year be a historical election?  Aren't all elections historical? 

Cook Before Sneaking A Taste

I made cookies today and opened a new bag of flour. On top I see this warning - COOK BEFORE SNEAKING A TASTE. FLOUR IS RAW. PLEASE COOK FULLY BEFORE ENJOYING.

I wonder who eats raw flour? I also wonder why consuming it is sneaking? I paid for it so it's not sneaking. If I was to sneak a snack, for sure it wouldn't be flour.