“For the Record” is a new series dedicated to music and the personal experiences that surround it. Today we kick off with a small series within a series highlighting five songs by five bands or artists as part of an exploration beyond those identified as our usual favorites. In this instance, Bob Dylan is an artist my older siblings related to much more than I did, so for much of my childhood all I really knew about him was that he existed within the rank of legend.
I liked music as much as the next kid, but heard it mostly on the radio; I didn’t own any—that was my oldest brother’s territory. He sometimes let me sit in his room as he listened to music, headphones in, eyes shut, hands linked together under his head as he lay on the floor. Oblivious to the danger to his hearing, he allowed me that sneak “peak” into his magical world by way of the sounds overflowing from his corner. Being much too small—in size, age, and family hierarchy—to really have any say in much of anything, I stayed in mine.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphysical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires. Adapting a science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky created an immersive world with a wealth of material detail and a sense of organic atmosphere. A religious allegory, a reflection of contemporaneous political anxieties, a meditation on film itself—Stalker envelops the viewer by opening up a multitude of possible meanings. —from Criterion Collection website
I watched Stalker with my teenage son, a passionate and dedicated film aficionado whose examinations of them go way beyond the ordinary movie buff’s understanding of film elements. This is probably the biggest reason why I didn’t really “get” Stalker, a movie almost painful to watch—something I say only half sarcastically. The thing about Stalker is that it possesses a poetic, magnetic quality that pulls you in as much as the Room lures in the men the Stalker guides. CinemaTyler refers to movie critic Roger Ebert’s assessment of the work, that it absorbs, rather than entertains. Indeed, here is the mystery and allure of a frame-by-frame lyrical captivation; the long silences drive the heart rate up and the anticipation at times is almost unbearable. I don’t think I want to ever watch it again, yet I know I will. Part of me remains unconvinced I have what it takes to completely “get” the film.
“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.”
The Mine (Tales From a Revolution — Connecticut)
by Lars D. H. Hedbor
When I prepared myself to read the next installment in author Lars D.H. Hedbor’s Tales from a Revolution series, I knew chances were high I’d enjoy the story. Set during the American Revolution, each young adult novel in a different colony, the books capture a snapshot in time within the lives of fictional characters who very well could have actually existed. As an amateur historian, astronomer, fiddler, home brewer, linguist and baker, Hedbor is well placed to know a thing or two about this era and the ordinary details of people’s lives. It was this that attracted me to the series in the beginning because, as I’ve repeatedly stated, there is much to love and admire in the ordinary, from the versatility to variety, how people relate to one another, what they notice in their lives and what is important to them. When faced with war, some of this changes; much of it does not. They still have to keep their teeth clean, plough the fields, collect groceries and—in spite of or perhaps because of the war—they continue to do things such as dream about their futures and fall in love.
I’ve been doing book reviews since about 2013, and I love it. I came into contact with some very wonderful people, and the stories and topics I’ve interacted with have truly enriched my life. As a writer myself, it has also meant a great deal that a few authors have shared advice and information with me. And, of course, there are the wonderful tales. I’ve said more than once that I believe our very DNA is coded to us wanting to be told stories, and humans throughout history have indeed sought out and provided.
To be quite honest, I think books and the wonderful stories people tell are a big part of what makes life worth living.
Today’s entry opens up a new series for the blog, inspired by a book I received at work, a sort of welcome present, when I’d been there for six months. It’s called The Bucket List: 1,000 Adventures Big & Small and it was truly nice and a surprise. Periodically I flip through it and stop to look at many places even if I don’t have that destination as a goal, or if I know I’ll probably never make it there. Why? Because I like places, love to see them on maps and discover different things about them: traditional food, what they make or manufacture there, what that village, city or region might be known for, and so on.
So for these reasons (and probably others), this series doesn’t necessarily represent my bucket list, per se, hence the addition to its name as mapping out across the world: locales we might find worth learning even a little about, perhaps stumbling onto something, something people there do or make or care about, of value for ourselves. For instance, a very long time ago I read that before they embark on travel, Russians like to sit down for a few minutes in one spot. I no longer recall exactly the verbiage the document I’d read used to describe why they did this, or even in my own words why they maintained this tradition. For all I know it could even be an outdated one. Still, I remember liking it and adapting a bit to my own practice whereby I would contemplate life for just a few minutes and think about where I was headed: the physical place I traveled to as well as the road my choices and life were taking me down.
Before I get started, a quick note: I’m currently going through the blog’s previous entries and doing lots of re-organization. One thing I’m super pleased to announce is that at least some of the series I’d started before will resume, the content still aiming to approach its topic from more than one angle and also a bit more often.
“My Tottering TBR” is one such series, and here it will, as its name implies, focus on books I have not yet read. Sometimes a relationship or various events may have developed with or around a work, despite its status as unread; it may be a serious contender for re-read; or it might be an introductory type of posting to share something new for all of us. Life being what it is, these and other angles may mix and match—usually at the will of the books, as opposed to my own choice(!).
Whatever the case, I hope you will enjoy and, if you haven’t already, follow the blog to come back for more of this and other series or standalone entries new or resurrected as we make our way through this crazy thing called life.
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Our current item comes from a long history of knowing about Edward of Woodstock, though not precisely what his story was. Over time I gathered a few tidbits about him, including that he was a superstar warrior in his day, but predeceased his son (1376), who then succeeded to his grandfather’s throne as Richard II (1377). For a very long time Edward was quite mysterious to me, not just owing to the conflicting reports of his reputation—a “nasty piece of work” or man of valor?—but also because I had never seen any likeness of him at all. When a household ghost, whose demeanor somehow reminded me of the Black Prince*, took up residence in a corner of one room, I determined I really did need to learn more about this historical figure.
I found there isn’t really a shortage of books about Edward Plantagenet, and the one I eventually decided upon is the focus of today’s entry: The Black Prince by Michael Jones. This is in large part because a piece over at Murray and Blue (where yours truly very occasionally also writes) appeared in 2017 and shared that new evidence had been revealed by a French source and is discussed in Jones’s biography. (For more on this, click here. You can also follow and search within Murray and Blue.)
And also because, well, the cover is quite attractive. This isn’t merely the visual, but also how it relates: depicting the Prince as he rests in his tomb, it returns my thoughts to those of my ghost, always just as still while breathing an aura of contradiction into the air, quietly aware of everything going on around him yet revealing nothing. In 2019 I finally purchased the book and am, sadly, still trying to find the time to read it. Happily, it has now made it to the small pile of books on a shelf near my bedside table, silently haunting me morning and night. A December 31 deadline keeps me from picking it up just yet, but I have officially added it to my Reading 2021 Challenge, so it won’t be long now. I’m really looking forward to finally exploring the life of this enigmatic individual as well as Jones’s new information on him. The last time I chose to read about a major medieval figure—intending to read one book and move on—he became a significant research and study focus, so I’m quite intrigued to see where Edward of Woodstock will lead me.
In 1346 , at the age of sixteen, he won his spurs at Crécy; nine years later he conducted a brutal raid across Languedoc; in 1356 he captured the king of France at Poitiers; as lord of Aquitaine he ruled a vast swathe of southwestern France.
2019 edition, also available in various formats.
He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, but better known to posterity as ‘the Black Prince’. His military achievements captured the imagination of Europe: the chronicler Jean Froissart called him ‘the flower of all chivalry’; and for the man known as Chandos Herald, who fought with him, he was ‘the embodiment of all valour’.
But what was the true nature of the man behind the chivalric myth, and of the violent but pious world in which he lived? Drawing on contemporary chronicles and a wide range of documentary material, Michael Jones tells the remarkable and inspiring story of one of the great warrior-princes of the Middle Ages – and paints an unforgettable portrait of warfare and chivalry in the fourteenth century.
*This entity struck me as having some sort of martial background, and his discipline of stillness was astounding, combined with his ability to remain this way while nonetheless making his presence quite known. He never struck me as the Black Prince, but merely reminded me of him given the similar nature of the missing countenance (his face was covered) and that I could never quite determine if in life he had been a dangerous individual, protective, or perhaps a bit of both. † My copy
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Note: This post was updated to include blurb combined from the book’s online description as well as front flap of the 2017 edition.
“Our library looks like a castle,” Turtle would say when he was small. Above, the main branch as it appeared in his childhood. The impractical stairs, and the complete and open patio at the top, are now completely gone following renovation. William Seward, however, still maintains his watch over the main entry.
Like many places across the country, our public library system is functioning at limited capacity. When this whole mess got rolling, it did actually close for around two months, and I learned about it roughly 30 minutes before they locked the doors. At that time we ran to the library and went on a bit of a mad dash around, stocking up on books, music and movies we wouldn’t otherwise have gotten that day. We had entered in somewhat of a daze, but our departure was marked with adrenaline, supplied by librarians, and our own disbelief, reminding us that we wouldn’t be able to come back the next day: “Stock up!”
Some downplay various subjects, but records of them are a testament to the sense of history within past peoples; that we now know as much as we do on even those topics we take most for granted is nothing short of spectacular.
Now, eight months later, the libraries are still closed, though we can actually check materials out and return them again, thanks to the online system and computerized drop boxes. It’s not as magical as ambling lazily along the stacks, or even through them with deliberation, and for the most part you have to know what you want. Patrons can talk to librarians over the phone, but of course some human contact is lost, because chit chat isn’t really a thing with this setup. There’s no replacing the walk around a certain portion of wall to be able to swing by the desk and say, “Hey, just wanted to say thanks for helping me find that article” or, “So funny, we talked about calligraphy ink last time and look what I just found on the new arrivals shelf!”
I really miss our library.
When my son was about two, I was checking out books one day as he toddled back and forth behind me, along a wall and walkway area. The clerk casually looked over and said, “Wow, he has gotten so big!”
“Oh, you’ve, uh, seen this baby before?” I stammered.
What a great time we had with this book! Growling, rolling, counting, hiding and baking were just a few fun activities we played at under its influence.
“Well, yeah, you only bring him in every week since he was born!” I was really taken aback at that point, because I had no idea library staff might even notice such a thing. My attention, hyper focused on a really terrible time we were emerging from, noticed only the necessary. But it made me really happy to know there could be this sort of back and forth, beyond the casual greetings, authentic as they were.
Over the years, the library and its staff (at least the ones we came into contact with) became an integral part of my little son’s life; he was a reader from the get go and they treated him as if he was the most important patron there. He loved the reading contests, talked to staff about his interests, and one of the supervisors gifted him an Ernest Shackleton t-shirt she’d found in a thrift store. (We still have it.) And the twice-yearly library book sales, which my son used to replicate during his at-home play. Need I say more?
As a teen I was obsessed with Lewis Carroll and intrigued to learn so much about the family and world of the Alice who inspired his famous tale. I’ve ordered it from ILL a couple of times in a fit of nostalgia, and it still makes for fascinating reading.
I was delighted to experience an expansion in our excursions when Turtle wanted to start going to the satellite branches, two in particular. They are much smaller, but it was really fabulous to discover that their collections were just as quality as the main branch’s. Browsing through the stacks led me to such books as Butter: A Rich History or copies of Alexander McCall Smith’s latest book I hadn’t even known was published.
So, I can’t go into the library at the moment, and this may be why I seem to have so many books off my shelves recently. I have always had such stacks as my really-want-to-read-these-next pile, or the at-risk-of-forgetting-if-I-put-them-back-on-the-shelf mound. Just last night I finally sat on the sofa, my gaze moving over the multiple small heaps of books and decided they really do need to be arranged in a way less cluttered, more organized. Becoming overwhelmed would never do.
A number of themes present themselves in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and Turtle and I discussed many of them over the years. He often re-enacted scenes by himself or with friends, as children do as a means to better understand their world.
Naturally I browsed as I went along. Perhaps it’s just my grownup version of playing library, separating as I did, into various piles by subject, library or mine, read now or later, take to my room or keep here. It was not unlike the manner in which I stroll through the shelves at the library, and I stopped, memories such as the above and others flooding my mind. The Runaway Pancake, for instance, came with a CD of the author reading to an audience of children. Turtle was enamored of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and, even as a very small boy, used to recite, “Move, and I strike. Don’t move, and I strike” in a voice he made as menacing as he could, to match that of the wicked she-snake, Nagaina.
I first read A Noble Treason just a couple of years out of high school and promised myself I’d read it annually so I never forgot what the Geschwister Scholl et al. sacrificed, not just for German society, but indeed all. They died in order to preserve humanity’s right to the rich, dazzling beauty of ordinary life.
These moments with my boy, now a teenager, seem like just yesterday, but the day the library shut down—eight months have passed and it seems like so long ago. Neither timeline, really, how it should be. Children grow way too fast and libraries, once one of the pleasantries that filled themselves into many spots within those years, have simply stopped. In a way we still haven’t emerged from the library daze we were cocooned in as we walked out the door that day last March, and saying the words out loud—“We are approaching a year since we’ve been in the library”—only contributes to our continuing disbelief. Sure, administrators try to transition at least some programs into online versions of what they once were, but the truth is that libraries are living, breathing places because they are occupied by people who bring the home of stories—our stories, those of our ancestors and all the good and evil they faced, what they created and all that resulted from their massive curiosity—they bring this home of the world’s stories to further life, knowing that they already beckoned us to their circles, knowing we are programmed, in our very DNA, to want to hear the tales they long to tell us. Stories are living, breathing things, they are in our bones and we nourish each other.
Long may it be.
It’s been awhile, but you can check out the last edition our my Browsing Books series here.
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I’ve lost track of when, but somewhere along the line at one of our library book sales, I acquired an intriguing possibility of a book called Pepper: A History of the World’s Most Influential Spice (Marjorie Shaffer). I’m not a “foodie,” but I like food, and its history I find rather fascinating. Political events, geography, weather, personal fortunes—up or down—and more all played a role in the travels and temptations of various foods, including spices from tiny plants on the other side, to many, of the known world. Most of us know by now that wars were fought over spices, but I didn’t learn until yesterday some exciting and curious facts about this particular zing. It seems to be underrated because it doesn’t appear to get much press but, if you think about it, has any other spice gotten its own shaker to pair with salt? In kitchens the world over?
From the book—which I will definitely be talking about again in these pages—as well as the mighty interweb, I’ve gathered a few tidbits for you to mull over, then tell friends and family all about. If you haven’t already, give pepper a go!
Black pepper comes from the dried fruit peppercorn (piper nigrum) and grows on a perennial flowering vine.
These peppercorns aren’t actually spices, but rather fruit.
Guess which country is the biggest consumer of pepper? In 2018, Vietnam, India and the United States together made up a combined 41% of global consumption. The United States imported $671 million worth of pepper in 2009, and that number has climbed each year since.
About 50% of a typical restaurant’s spice usage is attributed to—you guessed it: pepper.
When the Visigoths sacked Rome, their ransom demands included gold and silver—and 3,000 pounds of black pepper.
Piper nigrum from an 1832 print (Detail courtesy Wikimedia; click image)
Pepper is known as the King of Spices: While some today treat pepper in a ho hum sort of manner, they don’t often realize its pedigree goes waaaaay back and is one of the most traded spices in the world. As was the case with other spices, pepper was extremely expensive to buy and ship, in this case because it came only from India. Today it remains a widely traded spice and may be found in the most ordinary of groceries for just a few dollars.
“The extinction of the dodo is related to the pepper trade[.]” Marjorie Shaffer writes that pepper traders on their way to Asia stopped on Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, in search of food. Whether with intent or not, these traders introduced a variety of animals to the island and the flightless birds seemed to have succumbed under the invasive species’ presence, for by 1690 they were seen no more.
A few thousand years ago, pepper was used as an aid in curing disease and various maladies; it was later that it became popular as a condiment.
The branching vines of the pepper plant take several years to mature, and can reach up to thirty feet.
Harvesting begins when one or two of the peppercorn fruits begin to turn red. If they are allowed to reach full maturity, they lose their pungent odor and drop off. Likewise, people tend to prefer grinding their peppercorns as they use the spice, rather than keeping a large stock of powder, because the shells retain freshness. Once exposed to air, pepper’s flavor begins to fade.
Roman era trade route: from India across to and around the Arabian Peninsula, then overland until reaching the Mediterranean and across to Rome. (Map courtesy Wikimedia; click image)
Knight Assassin is the Second Book of Talon by James Boschert, whose experiences and education in places such as Iran cause me to muse about how much of his own stories make their way into these adventures, whether poetic passages or information about secretive, dangerous groups. On this cover we are given closer look at a knight, presumably Talon, and an idea of how these men might have looked circa twelfth century. Beneath the mail and gauntlets I sense a brooding type of personality, perhaps a dangerous one, though not a reckless or casual threat. This is not a person who kills easily, but cross him at your peril.
I was also extremely attracted to the color combination, a swirl of blue and green, my favorite though not, in my experience, often seen in covers for novels set in this era. The thick layers of the knight’s clothing reveal nothing of his physical sense in much the same way his helmet conceals anything at all that he might be thinking, strategies, doubts or possibilities he may be experiencing. The image speaks of yet conceals much, captivates and whets the appetite as we seek more understanding of who this man is, where he comes from and what he is about. The title’s Persian font; a castle, set high on a hill behind him; and moon in the background introduce more intrigue and, paired with Talon’s one indication of to whom he is loyal—the Templar cross—our fascination is sealed.
Published: March 14, 2015 by Penmore Press | ISBN 9781942756149
Format: Paperback/eBook | Pages: 520
A joyous homecoming turns into a nightmare, as a trained assassin must do the one thing he didn’t want to do–become an assassin again. Talon, a young Frank, returns to France with his uncle Phillip, a Templar knight, to be reunited with his family who lost him to the Assassins of Alamut when he was just a boy. When he arrives, he finds a sinister threat hanging like a pall over the joyous reunion. Ruthless enemies, who will stop at nothing to destroy his entire family to achieve their ends, are challenging the inheritance of his father.
Talon will have to depend upon a handful of Welsh Archers, whom he met at sea, and his uncle’s trusty sergeant Max to help him defend his family from this plot. To accomplish that, however, he must also use the skills he learned as a Persian Hashshashin to tip the balance in his family’s favor.