Homer And Langley

 E. L. Doctorow is the author of Homer and Langley, a fiction novel set on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park in New York City. His novel is based on two brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer. The author changed the birth order, which brother played the piano, and had them live thirty years longer than they actually lived. The Collyer brothers were famous for being reclusive hoarders. In the story Homer is a intuitive piano player. He went blind at an early age but managed to navigate the streets using his good hearing. He taught piano. He even played piano at the movie theater before movies could talk. One of his students sat by his side on the piano bench and would whisper information to him such as "a man rides a horse down a city street" or "the lovers embrace and kiss" or "three policemen chase the robbers across a park." Langley went to World War One and came back with poor lungs due to exposure to mustard gas. Langley came back changed. He started hoarding newspapers because he planned to write a newspaper that would cover all situations. He brought a Model T car into the dining room in order to create electricity. One by one the house keepers, butler, and cook, servants they had from their parents, left their employ. Although they had money in the bank, they refused to pay their electric bill, phone bill, water bill and mortgage. The author imagined what life was like for these two eccentric brothers who lived. All of it is speculation. I loved the story. I loved that he gave Homer and Langley some good times, moments of excitement, and great memories.

Limnology Office

 

I have always been curious about the Limnology building in east Duluth on London Road next to the Lester River. Limnology, in case you don't know, is the study of lakes. Today I got to go in the building for a volunteer orientation for Hawk Ridge. Several people at Hawk Ridge have their offices upstairs at this building. The bottom is an open conference room with a couple bathrooms. The building has lots of windows but most don't open. We got fresh air by leaving all the doors open. Hawk Ridge started in 1972 which is 50 years ago and also the year I graduated from high school.

Almond

I enjoy reading books from other countries. I really enjoyed reading Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung. This novel is about a young boy named Yunjae who grows up with his mother and grandmother. He needs careful parenting because he was born with a condition called alexithymia. He does not feel emotions such as fear or anger. His mother and grandmother are not fazed by his condition and they help him navigate the world. His mother has a used book shop and she teaches him when to smile, when to say "thank you", and when to back away. On his 16th birthday a random act of violence leaves him alone in the world. As he copes with his loss, a boy named Gon arrives at his school and starts to bully him. Gon is mystified by Yunjae's apparent lack of fear. They have something in common. Gon feels too much emotion. Yunjae feels too little emotion. They strike up an odd friendship. I thought this is a delightful story and I really liked reading about life in Korea.

Overdue

I have mixed feelings about Amanda Oliver's non-fiction book titled Overdue: Reckoning With The Public Library. I liked the insight I got from her nine months of experience working at a public library in a run down section of Washington, D.C. Working there could be scary and she claims she got PTSD from her job. I enjoyed the facts about public libraries in our country. I enjoyed reading about the services libraries provide to people like who who come and check out books and to people who are houseless and need a warm space with free Wi-Fi and public bathrooms. What I didn't like is the pages spent on personal rants against cancel culture and the dangers of social media. I didn't see how those things related to public libraries. Several chapters were off the topic of public libraries.

 

Blue Darner Bog And Fen

Today I met a group of natural plant enthusiasts at Stone Lake boat landing. We were going to the Blue Darner Bog to gather plants for the U of M/Duluth herbarium. The Blue Darner Bog is part of the Sax-Zim bog.

 

The bog is a quarter of a mile from the boat landing. We were walking on the bog. As I was walking my mud boots sunk six inches into the bog with my left foot and four inches deep on my right foot. My boot was suctioned down hard. I tried to lift my foot and felt my foot leave my boot. I put my foot back in and tried the other foot. A man behind me saw my troubles. He moved around me, hung onto a black spruce, and offered me a hand. With his help I was able to free myself and put my boots back on. I walked more carefully after that. 

Here we are out on the fen on the edge of East Stone Lake.

One of the 40 specimens we took was cotton grass.

I found a cranberry but it wasn't ripe. One side was red and the other side was white.

Here is a tiny little sundew, a carnivorous plant.

We walked back to the boat landing and prepared our specimens too be dried. Each sample was tucked under two layers of newspapers, blotting paper, and stiff cardboard. The newspapers were labelled with the name  of the plant, the date, the name of the person who collected it and the number. Our first number was 2022-01.

We filled three of these plant presses. After a month or so of drying we can mount the specimens on paper, add a label, and put them in the herbarium collection at the University. I had four hours of fun in the bog but it is nice to wear tennis shoes and to walk on solid ground again.

 

The Colours

 Juliet Bates is the author of The Colours, a novel set in Ireland. The story is told from two perspectives. One is from Ellen who is 12 when her father dies and she is shipped off to a Catholic orphanage for girls. She had hoped to stay with her older brother, Henry, but the local priest insists she go to the orphanage to learn how to behave. The other perspective is from a boy named Jack. Ellen is Jack's single mother. In Ireland, at this time, being different, being a single mother  is frowned on. Ellen is a person who is not typical. She doesn't go to church. She sees colors in a different way. Each person in her life is represented by a color. Jack, for instance, is blue. Her coworker at the house where she cares for Mrs. Tibbs is the color of stewed prunes. Color is important to Jack as he starts out painting landscapes during the war, moves on to architectural drawings, then water colors and eventually ends up teaching drawing at the University. The story of Jack and Ellen is told slowly and carefully in this very enjoyable novel.

Piping Plover Project

This afternoon the master naturalists met at the end of Wisconsin point to learn about the piping plover project. This is a joint project with the Wisconsin DNR and the US Fish and Wildlife department. These agencies hired the St. Louis River Alliance to monitor the site. Every day between May 1st and June 15th, staff monitor the area with binoculars and scopes to survey birds. Piping plovers have not nested here (nor on Minnesota point) since 1983. This year they saw one piping plover but it didn't stay. The St. Louis River Alliance also does stewardship work so that the area looks more like one of the Apostle Islands where piping plovers do nest. They planted dune grasses. They burn big piles of driftwood. They cut down trees so that a merlin doesn't sit there because a merlin would attack a piping plover. The area is surrounded by a tall fence like you would see around a prison. You can see some of the fence on the left side of the photo. I enjoy going in places where normally I would not be allowed in.

They also hauled in some small rocks. Plovers build their nests out of white or whitish colored inch long stones. To court a female, a male piping plover will kick a stone and start building a nest. He might build two nests. If the female is willing she will choose one of his nests. If a nest is observed to have two eggs the staff will cover it with a five square feet fence with fencing over the top to keep out birds of prey. The plovers are small enough to walk right through the fence when they need to. After learning all this we helped weed the dune grass and the rock beds. I picked a large trash bag full of weeds. With seven of us working we made a big difference in a short amount of time.

 

One Step Too Far

 One Step Too Far is a crime novel written by Lisa Gardner. If I had known it was a crime  novel I wouldn't have borrowed it from the library. The story is about a woman named Frankie. Frankie has issues. Frankie works at low paying jobs. When she has a little saved up she helps find people who are missing. She is good at finding missing people. So far she has found 16. Why Frankie feels obliged to spend her time and resources finding people remains unclear to me. She hears about a guy named Timothy who went missing 5 years ago. His family is still searching in the forests of Wyoming. Timothy was with his four groomsmen at a bachelor party/backpack camping weekend when he went missing. Frankie takes a bus to Wyoming and hitchhikes to the town. She meets the search party at a restaurant and talks her way into being allowed to come. Timothy's father is in the group as well as a local woodsman. Timothy's four groomsmen, a woman with her cadaver finding dog, and another woodman are coming. The search party leaves early the next morning and hike 8 miles to the spot where Timothy was last seen. From the beginning things go wrong. Someone steals nearly all their food that was hanging in the trees to be safe from bears. One of the groomsmen is struck in the back of the head with a rock causing a concussion and a large gash. Obviously someone doesn't want this search party out here. I don't really like crime novels. I thought the ending where Frankie has a long monologue telling how it all went down was not good. I did enjoy reading about the cadaver dog, Daisy, and I also enjoyed reading about hiking and camping and survival skills. 

Secrets Of Our House

Rea Frey is the author of Secrets Of Our House. Desi designed the perfect house nestled in the woods of North Carolina. Her mountain getaway is magazine ready. She and her husband, Peter, have decided to spend the summer here to work on  their marriage. Their daughter, Jules, is enjoying her last summer before starting college at Columbia. Compared  to their regular house in Chicago, they are enjoying the wild beauty of nature. Jules has made friends here and even has her first boyfriend. As the summer progresses it becomes obvious Peter doesn't want to work on his marriage and Jules doesn't want to go to Columbia. Desi doesn't know what to do with all the changes. Things are not going according to her plan. I enjoyed reading this family drama even though I didn't particularly like any of the characters.

  

The Maid

I really enjoyed reading The Maid by Nita Prose. I read that this story will be turned into a movie starring Florence Pugh in the starring role of Molly who is the maid. Molly works at a five star hotel. She is 25 and has always lived with her Grandma. Grandma helped Molly interpret others. In my opinion Molly is neurodivergent because she has quite a few autistic behaviors. Now that Molly's Grandma has died, Molly is on her own. Molly loves to clean and tries to do a great job. She feels proud wearing her black and white uniform. She takes pride in returning each hotel room to "a state of perfection." One day she goes to clean a room and finds a hotel guest dead in his bed. Because her reactions to the police investigator are so odd, she becomes a prime suspect in the case. I really enjoyed reading about Molly and I think this story will do well on screen too.

 

Every Summer After

 Carley Fortune wrote Every Summer After, a coming of age story set in Toronto and at a lake cabin four hours out of Toronto. Percy (short for Persephone) meets Sam at age 13 at the cabin her parents just bought. Sam wants to be a cardiologist someday and he spends his free time reading textbooks. Percy wants to be a writer and she spends her free time writing horror stories. Their story is told by Percy jumping back and forth from her teenage years to the present time when she is thirty. This was a silly chick lit, romance story which I should have guessed if I had taken a closer look at the cover.

We Were Never Here

 Andrea Bartz is the author of We Were Never Here which I listened to via audiobook. The story is about two 39 year old friends. Kristin and Emily met ten years prior in college. They travel the world together seeking experiences in Vietnam, Cambodia and Chile. Emily is quiet and unassertive. She tends to fall for mean men. Kristin is bold and adventurous and assertive. By the end we learn which one of these women is a gaslighter with a toxic personality but the road to get there was much, much longer than it needed to be. Emily says the same things over and over again. One bad memory from Cambodia has her remembering, "Stop, stop, STOP." I heard those three words so often I wanted to quit listening to the story. I kept listening because I was past the halfway mark. I think the plot was good but 75 pages could have been edited out.

Patience Is A Subtle Thief

Patience Is A Subtle Thief is a historical fiction novel written by Abi Isola-Ayodeji. The story is set in two towns in Nigeria. Patience is a young girl who doesn't know where she belongs. She lives with her tyrannical father, her step mother, and her step sister. Her father is wealthy government official. He acts coldly to Patience. He tells Patience her mother was crazy and didn't want to live with them anymore. He won't tell her if he knows where her mother is. He sends Patience to college to be an accountant without asking her what she would like to study. At a party held before she goes off to study accounting, she meets a friend of her mother's. Patience asks her mother's friend if she knows where her mother is. She learns that the last time this friend heard from her mother, her mother was living in New York City. Patience vows to go to New York City. Patience drops out of accounting school and focuses her time on saving money for a trip to meet her mother.  It is at this point in the story that I learn a lot about crime and politics in Nigeria. I enjoyed reading this story about the culture and society in Nigeria during the 1990's. 

Read Dangerously

 Azar Nafisi is the author of Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power Of Literature In Troubled Times. She structured her book by writing letters to her dear father who had passed away. She explores the role of literature at a time when the president dismisses writers and the media. She grew up in Iran where her father was the mayor. She recommends various authors to read including Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and James Baldwin. The author is a professor of literature in the United States. I was very interested in what she thought of during the pandemic, the insurrection at the capitol, and the George Floyd murder.

Tansy Lane

 Common tansy lines both sides of a snowmobile trail I walked today in Grant Lake Township. This is a noxious weed that grows thick and impedes other species. The yellow button like flowers form in July and August. Common tansy was imported from Europe for medicinal purposes. Tansy has been used to treat worms, cure seizures, reduce the pain of rheumatism, and cure digestive problems. In the Middle Ages, high doses of common tansy were consumed to cause abortions. Common Tansy can make cows and horses sick if they eat it. The smell is similar to camphor. Tansy was used to line caskets to mask the smell of death. I think the only way to get rid of this much tansy would be to mow the sides of the road so often the flowers can't form or spray the road sides with a herbicide.

The Hush

 Sara Foster wrote a book set in the near future named The Hush. Although it isn't clear exactly when these events take place the Covid 19 pandemic is mentioned so I am guessing this is 2030 or so. The book is set in London. The British government is requiring all citizens to wear a watch. The watch is supposed to track your health but the watch also tracks your location and listens to what you say. A new medical problem has arisen. Gradually a higher percentage of births end up with the infant dying as soon as it is born. Ellis, one of the three main characters, is a midwife so she sees the problems first hand. Journalists are forced not to delve into the topic upon threat of loosing their jobs by their editors. Ellis' daughter, Lainey, is a 17 year old high school student. One of her friends goes missing along with her friend's parents. Turns out lots of teenage pregnant girls are going missing. If a girl buys a pregnancy test at a pharmacy, the pharmacist insists she use the test at the store and if the girl is pregnant, the police are called. I really enjoyed this dystopian thriller. I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

The Butcher's Daughter

Victoria Glendinning is the author of the historical fiction novel named The Butcher's Daughter. Set in England in the year 1535, Agnes Peppin, the butcher's daughter, has few options. She knows about butchering from her father. She knows about preparing the dead for burial from her mother. This is a grim and oppressive time for women, even though who know how to read and write. Agnes joined the cloistered life at Shaftesbury Abbey. With her quick intellect she becomes the assistant to the Abbess. Henry VIII is the king and self declared leader of the church. He decides to dismantle all the monasteries including the Shaftesbury Abbey. Agnes is now free to pursue her own life and to live by her wits. This was an interesting book because Agnes is a very wise woman. I also enjoyed reading about a woman who lived so very long ago.

 

The Paper Palace

 Miranda Cowley Heller is the author of The Paper Palace, a novel set mostly on Cape Cod. The cabin Eleanor's family stays at is not a palace and is not made of paper. The place is over run with spiders and mice when they arriver every spring. There is a freshwater pond behind the house and the ocean in front of the house. Eleanor and her sister grew up with divorced parents and multiple step-parents. One July morning Eleanor (now aged 50) wakes up with a decision to make.  Although in love with her husband and happy with her three children, she left the cabin last night and made love to her childhood sweetheart for the first time while their spouses chatted inside. Now what will she do? Stay with her husband or go to her childhood sweetheart? The story goes back and forth in time explaining why Eleanor made the decisions that she did. I enjoyed reading about childhood sweethearts. 

The Friends We Keep

 Evvie, Maggie, and Topher are the three friends in The Friends We Keep by Jane Green. The friends met at university. Evvie went on to become a super model. Maggie married Ben. Topher became a famous actor. Their lives drifted apart. Now, thirty years later, they reunite. This was a nice story about friendships with flawed people.

Cheeky Doe

 This cheeky doe doesn't care if I am walking by on the Lakewalk today. She is an urban doe and is used to pedestrians, bikers, roller bladers, skate boarders and electric scooter boards whizzing by.

Reputation

 Sarah Vaugan wrote The Reputation, a psychological thriller and crime drama. The story revolves around a member of Parliament living in London with two other female members of Parliament. Emma is divorced. Her daughter, Flora, lives with her father and step-mother during the week and comes to Emma's place on weekends. Emma takes up social causes. When a young girl commits suicide because her boyfriend threatened to release a video of the two of them having sex, the boyfriend is sentenced to 5 months of probation. Emma writes a law saying that on-line abuse should be  punished with 7 years of incarceration. Emma puts up with a stunning amount of on-line abuse herself. She gets letters threatening her life and her health. She is stalked by one voter. A newspaper reporter stalks her too and has a photographer outside of her house every night. Reputations are important. I liked the book but sometimes I thought it went too slow.

 

Primary

 Today is primary day here in Duluth and I worked as an election judge at First Lutheran Church on Superior Street. We registered 35 new voters and had a total of 251 ballots cast. Traffic was slow but steady all day. Everyone was friendly. One of our judges was friendly and also not so friendly at times. If people tried to cast their ballot at the machine for blind people instead of the voting machine, she was say, "Uh uh uh uh uh."  She sounded like a parent scolding a toddler. I would say, "Excuse me, the machine you want is over here." She got irritated off and on throughout the day. One of the other election judges (not me) must have rubbed her the wrong way because it was obvious she didn't like her. We all saw it. Anyway it all worked out in the end and we posed for a photo when the night was over. My civic duty is now complete and I am exhausted.

The Myth of Hiawatha, And Other Oral Legends

 As long as I was staying at Schoolcraft State Park I thought it would be a good idea to read one of Henry Schoolcraft's books. I read The Myth Of Hiawatha And Other Oral Legends. Schoolcraft married a native woman. I suppose many books written in the 1800's wouldn't be as interesting now as they were then. I found this one to be dry, repetitive, and boring. After his first wife died he married another woman whose family owned slaves. Schoolcraft later wrote a pro-slavery book which caused a rift between him and the children of his first wife.

Beautiful World, Where Are You?

 Sally Rooney wrote Beautiful World, Where Are You? The fiction novel is set in Dublin and involves two couples, Eileen and Simon, Alice and Felix. Eileen and Simon, as a couple, makes sense to me. Why Alice puts up with Felix is beyond me. Eileen and Alice have been friends since childhood. In between visits they write each other long emails about their activities and also about their thoughts on beauty, life, and consumerism. What I didn't like about the book is the incredible amount of detail into mundane things such as opening a front door. Should opening a front door take six sentences? If the details were important to the plot, I could understand but they weren't important, they were boring. 

St. Croix Paddle

 Today was the annual canoe trip. This time we started at Interstate State Park and got out in Osceola and rode the school bus back to our cars. The weather was unusual. The temperature was in the low 70's with no wind and cloudy skies. It was nice not to have the sun beating down on us. For a Sunday there weren't that many people out in the water. The water level was very low and we ended up hitting a few rocks. I steered for the first part of the trip but after lunch I rode duff and sat in the middle soaking my hands in the river water. We saw a few eagles, a turkey vulture, a belted kingfisher and about 5 turtles. We saw several stands of cardinal flowers from our canoe. When we got to the dalles part of the river where cliffs are on both sides we sometimes see a sand bar. This year there were two sand bars. We could tell my the water lines on the rocks that the river was four feet below normal. I had a really nice time on the water today.

A Sunlit Weapon

 When I borrowed A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear I didn't know I was reading the 17th in a series of books about the psychologist/private investigator Maisie Dobbs. I probably wouldn't have chosen this book if I knew that but it all worked out in the end. The story is set near London during World War II. A young aviator named Jo Hardy is piloting a spitfire plane from one airport to another. Along the way Jo decided to fly the plane under a railroad bridge. As she passes a farm she sees a man firing a gun at her plane. Jo asks Maisie to investigate. Two days later a different female pilot crashes at the very same location. I enjoyed learning about the female pilots used during the war. This was an interesting historical fiction.

Beautiful Country

Qian Julie Wang wrote a memoir about her childhood called Beautiful Country. Qian was born in China. Both of her parents were professors at a university. They lived a comfortable life surrounded by a loving extended family. Her father did not like how the Chinese government restricted free speech so in 1992 he left China for New York City. In 1994 Qian and her mother joined him. Her father had a job in a laundromat. Her mother found work sewing clothes. Qian's mother would bring Qian to work and the seven year old had a job cutting the loose threads out of the inside of shirts earning a penny for each shirt she completed. They had lodgings but had to share a kitchen and a bathroom with other families. They had food but not enough. When Qian went to school, she did not speak English. Later, in 5th grade, she has mastered English. She turns in a paper to her teacher and he accuses her of plagiarism because the paper was too well written for a girl like her to write. After that she includes mistakes in grammar or spelling on purpose for this teacher. On top of all the deprivation the Wang family worried about being deported because they were undocumented. Qian's parents handled all this stress by turning on each other and having loud arguments. I enjoyed reading her memoir because she is a strong person, a great writer, and a success story.

 

Growing Bacteria

 

My newest citizen science project is for the National Resources Research Institute which is an offshoot of the University of Minnesota in Duluth. The project is studying the relationship between bacteria and algae in the hopes to prevent algae blooms on the north shore of Lake Superior. On Tuesday afternoon I took a sterile bag and collected water from the flowing part of Chester Creek which is a five minute walk from my place. I placed it in a insulated pouch with a frozen ice pack and took it home. I mixed 3 ml of the creek water with a growing medium and put it in this petri dish. When I saw algae starting to form 24 hours later, I waited another 24 hours to count. I counted 14 spots of E-Coli. E-Coli are the black or dark purple spots. The pink spots are a different kind of Coli. The white spots are not Coli. When I was finished I entered the data onto a computer form. I poured a thin layer of bleach over the petri dish and disposed of it in the garbage. How odd to be purposefully growing bacteria in my house. This will be a weekly talk until the creek freezes over.

The Tumbling Turner Sisters

The Tumbling Turner Sisters is a historical fiction novel by Juliette Fay. The author has family members who were in the vaudeville circuit and some of the characters are based on her family members but the Turner sisters are fictional. Set in 1919, the mother of sisters Kit, Gert, Winnie and Nell decide to try vaudeville after their father's hand is crushed and he can no  longer work as a boot stitcher. The decide on acrobatics, find an agent, and off they go. They tour small towns in upstate New York. Along the way the meet fascinating people and gets tips to improve their act. The story is told by Gert and Winnie. I thought it was interesting to read Winnie's "glass half full" side of the story followed by Gert's cynical view of the same events. Earning a living on the vaudeville circuit was grueling, interesting, rewarding and sometimes dangerous work.

 

Just Like Mother

I don't like dolls. I think many dolls are creepy. I also don't like horror stories. So I have no idea why I borrowed and then read Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel. This book was full of horror and creepiness but I was compelled to read it to the end. When Maeve was 8 she fled the cult she lived in. She was close to her cousin Andrea. When the cult was investigated and shut down, Maeve was adopted by a nice family and she never heard from Andrea again. She tried to make a normal life for herself working in the publishing world in New York City. She was curious about Andrea so she did a DNA test with 23&Me and eventually they got in touch. And that is when the horror started. If you like horror and creepy dolls, this is the book for you.

Recipe For Persuasion

Sonali Dev wrote Recipe For Persuasion which is a novel and a loose retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion. In this story Ashna is a 30 year old restaurant owner in San Francisco. Her father owned the restaurant that served Indian food. He died when she was 18 and she is trying to honor his legacy even though he was one of the worst parents I have ever read about. The restaurant is not doing well so that is why she signs up for a reality show Cooking With Celebrities. She hopes to win the biggest prize and have the money to fix the restaurant. The celebrity she is paired with is a famous soccer player and also the guy she dated in high school. Their chemistry is noted by fans of the show. This was a silly romantic book that wasn't terrible but also wasn't great.

 

The Hidden Child

 Louise Fein wrote the historical fiction novel, The Hidden Child, which is set in London just before the second world war. Eleanor and Edward are married. They have a four year old daughter named Mabel. Edward served in World War One as an officer. Now he is a scientist and although he calls himself professor, he doesn't have a degree to back that up. Edward is involved in psychological research regarding intelligence and crime. Edward is interested in eugenics. He thinks that criminals, prostitutes, people with developmental disabilities, foreigners, homosexuals and epileptics should be sterilized for the sake of modern society. Before they were married Eleanor was Edward's research assistant. When Mabel starts having seizures Edward wants to hide her because of his professional reputation. Eleanor wants to help Mabel. Edward and Eleanor struggle over Mabel. As I read the book I grew to love and respect Eleanor while reading this poignant book.