David Copperfield --- A Book Review

The Kindle Cover

After reading Barbara Kingsolver's 2022 novel Demon Copperhead, a retelling of Dickens' David Copperfield, my addiction to reading Dickens took over.

I say "addiction" because that's the best way I can describe my love/hate relationship with that venerable author. Periodically I get this uncontrollable urge to read him. Then about three-quarters of the way through I vow NEVER to read him again.

I did better this time. According to my eReader, I got to 83 percent complete before I hit the red line. 

I think Dickens himself understood my situation.
     “Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books,
     what work it was to write them.” Copperfield's aunt said.

     “It’s work enough to read them, sometimes." he responded. 

These quotes from David and his aunt come in Chapter 62 (Yes, I said 62, How many books these days even have a Chapter 62?! According to Google, most modern novels have 10 to 12 Chapters.)

This is the original illustration
from the publication of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield in serialized form

beginning in May of 1849 and running through November 1850. 

It was published as a 624 page book in 1850.

Of course this was then, its publication date, five years before the Flying Cloud, a clipper ship, set the world's sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco, 89 days 8 hours. That was by sailing around the Horn, Cape Horn, the southern most tip of South America. Because that was more than a half-century before the completion of the Panama Canal.

It was also well before radio, television, the internet, and streaming sight-and-sound entertainment into our homes. Most of Dickens' novels, including David Copperfield, were originally published in weekly or monthly installments in journals, which Dickens himself edited. Each month, subscribers would get a few chapters wrapped up in printed wrappers with illustrations, by the same illustrator who did the book. Someone in the household, would read to the rest while they listened and did what they did -- darning socks, tatting, shelling peas, mending harness, or perhaps sitting comfortably in their favorite chair enjoying a manly cigarette and sipping sherry or dipping a lady-like strip of toast in their tea. 

For the price of a half-penny, those who did not have subscriptions and probably could not read, could have the latest installment read to them.

Hence, the wonderfully descriptive Dickens passages like these describing Copperfield's childhood home before his widowed mother remarried. When you read these sentences, listen to what you are reading as the people back then would have done. Maybe even read them aloud.

     "On the ground floor is Peggoty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house
     on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without
     any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing
     and ferocious manner." 

And then several more sentences, equally long, and equally descriptive about the geese kept at the house Copperfield was born into. Keeping in mind that they lived in town not on a farm. In Victorian times, those well-enough-off to own their home, commonly kept food animals and had servants. David's mother had one, Peggoty.

Dickens describes the interior of the home quite completely including the store room one had to pass to get from the kitchen to the front door:

     "...a place to be run past at night; for I don't know what may be among those tubs and jars 
     and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a

     mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper,
     candles, and coffee, all at one whiff."

And from the bedroom window the young Copperfield could see "the quiet churchyard with the dead [including the father he never knew] all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon."

     
     "There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard;

     nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early
     in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother's room to look out at it; and
     I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, 'Is the sun-dial glad,
     I wonder, that it can tell the time again?'"

Those readers and listeners, back then, knew this world. For them, these complete descriptions put them into the story just like we would be brought into the story today, if we were watching it on a screen.

Today's readers read much more quickly and do not want so much description. Plus the repetition in Dickens books necessary to recap what was previously read in last week's or last month's edition make reading Dickens today a slog as we read on and on in the equivalent of binge-watching. So our patience is tested, and, in my case, too often found wanting. And I complain. Out loud to my husband.

But his stories! Oh, my his stories! They are wonderful. Because the world! He lived in the world he wrote about. He paid attention to the people around him and he wrote their characters realistically.

I also, probably too often, read the gorgeously descriptive passages to my husband. I suppose it's no wonder my husband is always relieved when I finish a Dickens book.

For example: Dickens understood about the character Mr. Micawber, the kind and eternally optimistic would-be gentleman who continually lived beyond his means and ended up in debtor's prison. Along with his wife and ever increasing family. Dickens' own father spent time in debtor's prison, along with his wife and the younger Dickens children. 

It was at that point that twelve-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to board with various family friends and work long hours in a blacking factory at very low wages, which had to be used to help pay for his care and the needs of his family in prison. He and his older sister spent their Sundays with their family in prison.

And the Dickens villains -- In David Copperfield we have the very attractive Steerforth. Of course we would have fallen under his spell, too. And the disgusting Uriah Heep! It was to the point where if he showed up again I wanted to rip that page out and hurl it across the world! And his mother with him.

But, of course, I was reading on my eReader....

Can I recommend you read David Copperfield? Of course I can. But I think listening to an audio version would be a good choice.

And I understand that the audio version of Demon Copperhead is well-done and would also be a good choice.

   

 

Something I Learned from Dickens

This is a photo of Charles Dickens from The Guardian, a British daily newspaper. To me, he looks like a kindly man looking at me, with sincere concern. 

I couldn't find an image of him smiling. I looked. Although he was an international literary celebrity, famous for his humor, satire, and cutting observations of people and society, he did live and work during the Victorian Era and smiling for photos was "simply not done."

Those of you who know me, know I am addicted to many things, one of which is Charles Dickens' novels. And as such, I periodically MUST read Dickens. Then about three-quarters of the way through, I swear I will NEVER read Dickens again.

Well, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (See my review here) and could not resist revisiting Dickens' David Copperfield.

Now I am of a region of the country and of a generation that falls easily and thoughtlessly into "old sayings." I say "thoughtlessly" lightly, but it is absolutely the correct adverb to use. 

About a quarter of the way through David Copperfield, I came to a statement by an as yet unimportant character named Malden. He said "I don't want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do...." 

I do know what that means, or thought I did. Don't question good fortune, like it's bad luck or something. Not being of pre-automobile times, I never thought about what it literally means.

I have known for a very long time that horse traders are infamous for their sharp dealings when selling a horse, especially to an unwary buyer. The buyer should watch the horse move to be assured that it is sound on its legs.

 And the buyer should also check the horse's teeth, because you can tell its age and its general history of care from their condition.

So...when someone does you a favor or hands you a gift, of course it would be rude to look for a nefarious motivation or an otherwise flawed gift.

Who knew?!

And now that I look at that Dickens photo, I'm reminded of Fidel Castro. Oh, well.

I Voted Today

 

I'm up later than usual this morning. The traditional polling places open at seven in the morning, the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. So if  I were going to the polls, I would not be first in line. 

                            This is my polling place!                                But first breakfast.

Since we live in Colorado, we can vote anytime after we receive our ballots in the mail. We got ours a couple of weeks ago. And about a week before that we received our Ballot Information Booklets -- One from the State for elective offices and statewide questions and issues and one from our county for questions and issues pertaining just to our county.

  

 

These booklets give the titles and text of the questions we are voting on plus a summary and analysis of those questions including arguments for and against and the fiscal impact of the question. 

For example: Amendment E to the state constitution, Extend Homestead Exemption to Gold Star Spouses "reduce property taxes for the surviving spouses of both United States Armed Forces service members who died in the line of duty and veterans who died as a result of a service-related injury or disease." Plus arguments for and against this amendment and the Fiscal Impact "Amendment E will increase state spending by $288,000 in state budget year 2023-24 to cover the reimbursements [to the counties who normally benefit from property taxes] authorized in the measure."

The State booklet also gives information about the judges being considered for retention. In Colorado, judges for the State Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals and the District Courts are selected through assisted appointment -- the governor selects a nominee from a list provided by a nominating commission. Those judges then come up for Retention votes two years after their initial appointment, then after 10-year-terms for the Supreme Court Justices, 8-year-terms for Appellate Court judges, and 6-year-terms for District Court judges. We vote yes or no on each judge up for retention.

An independent research firm conducts judicial performance surveys on judges. Commissions made up of attorney and non-attorney volunteers evaluate the information collected and makes recommendations of "meets performance standards" or "does not meet performance standards" which we voters can use to decide our vote. Good information for those of us who do not have courtroom experience with our judges, thank goodness.

When it comes to candidates running for the various and sundry offices, we voters are on our own.

 

                          Time to mark my ballot.                          Sign it and seal it in its special envelop.

Then pop it in a drop box. In this case outside the rec center where I have exercise class.

Civic duty done.

Demon Copperhead -- a book review

 

Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver. 

See all those sticky notes? Those are passages worthy of noting. But then, my blog post would be almost as long as the book.

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel. She is, in my opinion, the best writer working in the United States today. This novel is serious about serious subjects -- poverty, the oxycontin epidemic, the region-wide loss of livelihoods, and the generational loss of hope. 

I was a caseworker for the Oklahoma welfare department back in the late 1970s and early 80s. Logan County where I lived and worked was not the poorest county and our town Guthrie was not the poorest town in our State, but economic opportunities were very limited. What were the possibilities? Guthrie's population at that time was 10,300 plus or minus. It is 30 plus or minus miles from Oklahoma City and there was (and is, as far as I know) no public transportation available for those who would work in The City. There were jobs for people without a high school education, but not many and not well-paying. The two largest manufacturing businesses in our town were the furniture factory and the casket factory. The major grocery stores and Walmart at least offered medical insurance for full-time employees. Small business owners did as well as they could, but even their medical insurances came with high deductibles and copays and, for the most part, pay for their employees was low and medical insurance was the employees' own look-out. The people I worked with were people who had fallen on hard times and had basically no place to go and no way to get there if they did. But, for the most part they were not bad people.

The most important thing that I learned working in that job was that it is NOT true that people are whatever degree down-and-out they are because they're lazy or they make "poor choices." Or they're just "worthless and so was their whole family." I repeat, this is not true.

Kingsolver "gets it." She paints an unflinchingly stark and, at the same time, beautiful portrait of the countryside and poor people in Lee County, Virginia.

Kingsolver tells this story in first person from the title character Demon's point of view.

The world Demon was born into was definitely not any kind of  his "choice." His single, teenage mother was raised in Virginia's foster system. She had no "people." Demon explains his parentage and name "One of Mom's bad choices, which she learned to call them in rehab, and trust me there were many, was a guy called Copperhead. Supposedly he had the dark skin and light green eyes of a Melungeon, and red hair that made you look twice."

Whoa, rehab? So we've learned Demon's mom was a druggie. And Melungeon? A new word for me -- Wikipedia: "an ethnicity from the Southeastern United States who descend from Europeans, Native American, and sub-Saharan Africans brought to America as indentured servants and later as slaves. Historically, the Melungeons were associated with settlements in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and eastern Kentucky." 

So didn't Demon have enough trouble without being considered "non-White?" in this county of about 20,000 people, 94% of whom are white.

Even the sunshine was limited in his world.

     “Living in a holler, the sun gets around to you late in the day, and leaves you early. In my
     years since, I’ve been amazed to see how much more daylight gets flung around in the
     flatter places. This and more still yet to be learned by an excited kid watching his
     pretty mom chain-smoke and listen to the birds sing.” 

Demon was unceremoniously born to that "pretty mom" alone in a rented trailer house. He loved her and took care of her the best that a child could for as long as he could. 

Their home was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Peggot. Mrs. Peg found the newborn Demon still inside his amniotic sac and attached to his unconscious mother. Mrs. Peg called the ambulance. The Peggots were the closest thing to responsible, caring adults in Demon's childhood. They owned the trailer house and lived next door with their grandson, Demon's best friend, "Maggot" (an unfortunate, but easily remembered corruption of his name Matthew Peggot.) Maggot's mother, one of the Peggot's daughters, was in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend (manslaughter.)

Again, which of these were "choices" of any kind for these children? Or the grown-ups either?

The Peggots were good people. They treated Demon and his Mom like family. But what about their "choices?" 

     "Mr. Peg knew about [when "Once upon a time, a nice piece of land and good prospects
     and a boy that loved his farming] back whenever he was a boy, his family did well with the
     corn and tobacco before they had to sell off their land a piece at a time for people to build
     houses on. Same with Mrs. Peggot, she started out as a little girl on a farm before their daddy
     sold his land for a certain number of hogs, one for each child. After that, their farm was a
     coal mine where her brothers worked and Mr. Peg also. Mining is how he got his crushed foot.”

Demon explains why these hard-working, God-fearing, family-loving people stayed. Even as tobacco and coal were on their way out? Their livelihoods were being discontinued.

     "Why does a man keep trying? A farmer has his land and nothing else. He's more than
     married to it, he's on life support. If he puts his acreage in corn or soy, he might net
     seven hundred dollars an acre. Which is fine and good for the hundred-acre guys.
     Star Wars farmers.

     "But what if he's us, with only three that can be plowed? In the little piece of hell that
     God made special for growing burley tobacco, farmers always got seven thousand
     an acre. A three acre field is no fortune, but it kept him alive. No other crop known to man
     that's legal will give him that kind of return....The rules are made by soil and rain and slope.
     Leaving your family's land would be like moving out of your own body."

Farming and mining were exiting stage-left leaving a very big niche to be filled by
     "a shiny new thing. Oxy Contin, God’s gift for the laid off deep-hole man with his back
     and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts
     at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every
     football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting
     back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes we did eat of the
     apple.” -- Demon Copperhead

You know, it just seems like some people are doomed from their beginning. They survive one awful situation just to be thrown into the next awful situation. And Demon Copperhead is one among many of those people, but just like "some people," he persists and, like so many around him he tries. He loves. He's loyal to the people close to him.

With a really good story that is really well-written there will come a time that I can't ignore the sorrow and I weep. If it were a movie or a TV show, the story would get past the tears, but a book comes to a halt right there because you can't see to continue. I won't tell you the situation or the character who authors these words to Demon. This is where the book reaches that point. "Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel. I can always be hopeful of you."  Words to live up to and to fall back on.

There are times Demon wants to give up, but he doesn't. He endures.

Me? I almost did give up and skip to the end to see how Demon Copperhead and his story come out. An unthinkable act on my part. My firm rule to finish any book I start, was left by the side of the aging- road some time ago, but I have yet to give up on a good book and jump to the end. 

Me and Demon Copperhead. I'm glad I didn't give up either.

From the blurb inside the front flap of the book cover: "...Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society."

          So now I guess I'm gonna have to read Dickens' David Copperfield. 

I Wear a Mask

 

I just had an odd experience -- perhaps not "odd" for people elsewhere, but I'd not experienced it before. I was coming out of the grocery store and was walking across the parking lot when a man driving a nice, big, red pickup slowed down and called to me "You know you look ridiculous...) I thought he was referring to the bright pink color in my hair and I was in the midst of waving to him when he finished his statement) "wearing a mask." And suddenly it went from a friendly situation to an unfriendly one. I even felt threatened. With that he drove out of the parking lot.

When I got home, I told my husband about it and he asked if I had shouted back that he was a rude, asshole. I said, "No, but I did look to see if he had balls hanging from the back of his pickup. He didn't."

I just got my third Covid booster and my annual flu shot. I no longer wear my mask during yoga class, but I do wear it at the grocery store, doctor's office (required) and any public indoor venue where there may be a crowd or little children.

I have not, so far, gotten Covid. I do not want to get Covid, or, for that matter, the flu. I do not want to contribute to the spread of either of those viruses and by so doing, increasing the opportunity for viral mutation.

I do not wear a mask to rebuke any who do not wear a mask. It is no more a public statement than the fact that I wear my seatbelt in the car or take my morning meds. 

Our county is rated "Low" in its rate of transmission, which is good, but the data shows 74 people in our county were diagnosed with an active Covid case yesterday. And one person died from Covid yesterday in our county. Yesterday!

I do not want to have any part in data like these, so I will take what precautions I feel necessary for me, including wearing a mask. And I will not feel "ridiculous."

Books or eReaders

 

"Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators"

                                                                            -- Stephen Fry

With this quote, I have a new favorite philosopher. Stephen Fry! You know, Jeeves to Hugh Laurie's Wooster. 

 

          That's him on the right as Jeeves.                             He'll be 65, August 24. 

                                                                                       Look at all the books behind him!                 

I don't remember when I first saw the very funny British comedy Jeeves and Wooster, I was certainly
an adult, probably over 50 when it aired in the U.S., probably on PBS, which has little to do with the topic of this blog post -- the contentious question Books or eReaders?

I do remember learning to read, though not exactly when. According to my mother, I was three. I  do very clearly remember actually learning. I would sit under the ironing board while my mother ironed and read to her. When I came to a word I didn't know, I'd spell it and she'd tell me what it was. By the time I was in the second grade, we were reading as a family. My mother, younger brother, and I would take turns reading aloud. Daddy enjoyed listening. There was no Amazon then and our town didn't have a public library so we read Momma's books from when she was a child.

My favorites were Johanna Spyri's Heidi and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. By the by, did you know that that book's proper title is Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse and it's one of the best selling novels of all time?! I didn't, either. Ain't Wikipedia grand!

             

I also don't remember when I got my first eReader, but I'm on my third one so however long it takes to wear out two of them, it's been that long ago.

Books or eBooks is a question that seems almost limited to my generation these days. To be honest, I really don't understand the fanatic loyalty to hard copy books that some of my peers seem to cherish.

At our age, vision is very often not as good as it used to be. You can adjust the light available on your eReader. You can adjust the font size. You can even have your eReader read to you. And eReader attributes that I appreciate are not needing to keep up with a bookmark or page number if you lose your bookmark. Not to mention, that if the book you're reading is lengthy and you like to read in bed, you don't have to worry about breaking your face if you fall asleep and drop the book.

Another thing about eReaders that I especially like is the ease with which you can acquire another book. I don't know about you, but I experience low-level panic if I finish a book and haven't another at hand to start. This can quickly lead to financial ruin if you automatically turn to an online book vender  in the middle of the night. A definite eReader negative.

But, spend a few pleasant moments with a librarian at your local public library and you'll learn how to download a digital book from the library for free. You don't even have to worry about late fees, because the digital book automatically reverts to the library on exactly the right date. Or, as icing on the cake, you can go online and renew the loan if you need more time to finish the book. You have the same 24/7 access to books as with an online vender, but the money you need to pay your electric bill is safe. 

When I first went digital, I said I'd never buy another hard copy book. Well, let me just say, I still can't take my credit card into an area where books are being sold or I'll get into financial trouble. I still bring hardcopy books home from the library. I cherish books people give me as gifts. I love the "Little Free Libraries" scattered around my town. And I even rescue and mend books I find lying on park benches.

So my answer to the question "Books or eReaders" is a resounding YES!!!

P.S. I like stairs and elevators, too,

especially if they're ornate and take me where I want to go.

Freedom of Choice

 

The statue on top of this building is called "Freedom." 

Buckle up. You're in for a history lesson!

In 1854, Sculptor Thomas Crawford, originally from New York, was commissioned to design and complete a full-size plaster model of the statue "Freedom" in his studio in Rome, Italy. All nineteen and one-half feet of her. 

Jefferson Davis (yes, indeed, that Jefferson Davis) was in charge of the then ongoing construction of the Capitol building and all it decorations. There was a kerfuffle between the New Yorker and slave-holding Mississippian. Crawford had originally crowned Freedom with the liberty cap, a symbol of an emancipated slave. Needless to say, Davis being the boss, won the tussle. 

Crawford died in 1857 before the full-size plaster model could be shipped to the United States. In the spring of 1858, divided into six crates, she set sail for New York. During her voyage the ship began taking on water and put in at Gibraltar for repairs. The ship left Gibraltar only to begin leaking again and ending up in Bermuda. After stopping there in storage for a while, Freedom, or at least half of her, arrived in New York City in December, 1858. Finally all parts of the plaster model arrived in Washington, D.C. in late March 1859.

Casting of Freedom in bronze at the Mills Foundry outside Washington, D.C., began in 1860. The work was interrupted in 1861 by the Civil War and again when the foreman in charge of the casting went on strike. Instead of paying him higher wages, Mills turned the project over to Philip Reid, one of his slaves working at the foundry. Reid presided over the rest of the casting and assembly of the figure. Freedom was finished by the end of 1862. On December 2, 1863, a year and a half before the end of the Civil War and eleven months after the Emancipation Proclamation, former slaves completed the installation of this bronze woman called Freedom to her pedestal atop the Capitol of the United States. 

I find it ironic that "Freedom" a.) is personified as a woman; b.) that her design had to be approved by a slave-holding man; and c.) that she was finished and raised to her pedestal by slaves and newly-freed slaves.

Just like that beautiful statue standing high above Washington, D. C., women's rights, indeed almost everyone's rights, have followed a long and torturous path from that grand Declaration of Independence and the nascent days of The Constitution. And it looks like we've still got a ways to go.

With apologies to Arlo Guthrie and his Alice's Restaurant, "Freedom" is what I come here to talk about. Not a statue, or a symbol, but the real freedom for American citizens to make life-changing (even life-or-death) decisions about their own medical care -- specifically women citizens and anyone with a uterus. The Freedom of Choice. And that is exactly what I mean Freedom of Choice. NOT pro-abortion. And having only one choice, is no choice at all.

There are as many experiences of pregnancy as there are people who have been or are pregnant. 

I have a friend whose mother was advised by her doctor to terminate her pregnancy, but she exercised her freedom of choice and carried my friend to term. And I'm glad she did. That instance, however, did not in any way involve a "law" or a court's decision.

What about governmental regulations? 

In 1970 when Air Force Capt. Susan Struck, a career officer serving as a nurse in Vietnam got pregnant, she was transferred to a base in Washington, one of the few states where abortion was then legal. Not only was pregnancy a reason to discharge her, albeit honorably, but the regulation extended beyond that "The commission of any woman officer will be terminated with the least practicable delay when it is established that she...has given birth to a living child while in commissioned officer status."

Despite Struck's plan to give the child up for adoption (which she did) and the fact that she had 60 days of accrued leave for recovery time, a disposition board gave her a choice: Have an abortion on base or leave the military. An abortion or the end of her career? There is no choice here.

Struck's case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. Her attorney in the case was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear Struck v. Secretary of Defense, Ginsburg's legal wrangling led to the Air Force's decision to reverse its policy.

                             

Where was Liberty for women among these symbols? And it wasn't just the Air Force. It was the Department of Defense.

And it wasn't just the Federal Government who treated pregnant women differently from men although their pregnancy would not affect their ability to do their job. Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, women teachers could be required to take enforced, unpaid leave. Private companies could use pregnancy as a reason to deny disability benefits otherwise available to all employees. (I know, I know. pregnancy is not in and of itself a disability. But sometimes pregnancies do not follow a normal course, and mothers-to-be are put on bedrest or have other restrictions to avoid premature birth or miscarriage.) Businesses could refuse to hire someone because they might become pregnant. (I suppose they still can, but they can't say out loud that is the reason.)

Probably the most important thing about the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is that it was passed after the Supreme Court, in 1976, upheld the General Electric Company's right to treat pregnancy-based disability differently than any other nonwork related disability for insurance purposes on the basis that pregnancy-discrimination is not sex discrimination. That 1978 amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress.

"Passed by Congress" to correct what many thought was a wrong decision by the Supreme Court.

The current Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. They said they were returning decisions relating to abortion to the States. Many of us think the current Supreme Court's decision to turn our decisions regarding our own reproductive health over to the various and sundry States was a wrong decision. It's already limiting our Freedom of Choice and endangering not just our reproductive lives but our actual living-and-breathing-free lives. 

Pro Choice is NOT Pro Abortion. It is just what it says. Pro Choice. The Constitution does not give us Freedom. It prohibits government from taking our Freedom away from us.

You and I cannot decide who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States. And we cannot change the fact that it has now given our Freedom of Choice to the State governments to do with as they will.

But we can, together, decide who sits in our State Houses and in our Congress with our votes. It's up to us to protect our Freedom. Our choices this fall will have real life effects on our mothers and sisters, our daughters and granddaughters, on all the men in their lives, and anyone whose lives are directly affected.

It's time to stand up for Freedom.

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Where the Crawdads Sing

 

A book. A movie

Where the Crawdads Sing, the 2018 book by Delia Owens was her first novel. It topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list for 2019 AND for 2020. Okay, so Where the Crawdads Sing is not on this week's New York Times Best Sellers List, but it was on that list for more than 168 weeks.

Owens has a BS in zoology from the University of Georgia and a PhD in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis. Her studies of African wildlife behavioral ecology have been published in such scientific, peer-reviewed journals as Nature, the Journal of Mammalogy, and Animal Behaviour.

Although most of her field work was done in Africa, it's safe to say that she knows where from she speaks in describing the world of Where the Crawdads Sing. And she describes the saltwater marshes of the North Carolina coast beautifully.

In the Prologue she sets the scene, and the scene is as great a part of the story as the human characters.

     "Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows

     into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, 

     and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace--as though not built to fly...."

     "Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in 

     clammy forests. [....] There are sounds of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is 

     quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the 

     rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life."

 As in all good murder mysteries, Owens gives us a body. 

     "On the morning of October 30, 1969, the body of Chase Andrews lay in the swamp.... 

     A swamp knows all about death, and doesn't necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly 

     not a sin. But this morning two boys from the village rode their bikes out to the old 

     fire tower and ... spotted his denim jacket."

But is it murder or is it suicide? If it is murder, who dunit?

Kya's story begins the first of two timelines in 1952. She is six years old, the youngest of five children.

    

     "The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines 

     with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of 

     the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon. Kya [...] heard the screen door slap. Standing 

     on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of 

     worn-out suds."

The sound of that screen door shutting was her mother leaving. In the following weeks, Kya's oldest brother and two sisters left, too. Her brother Jodie, seven years older than she, was the last to leave her alone with their father.

 

     "She knew by the way [Jodie] spoke that Pa had slugged him in the face."

     "'Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don't go in the house, they can get ya there. 

     Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo' tracks; I learned ya how. And 

     ya can hide from Pa, too.'"

When I first heard about this book, I was skeptical about so much of the story. A six-year-old left in the care of a physically abusive, alcoholic? The local authorities were aware of the situation and they did nothing?

My initial skepticism of that part of the story evaporated pretty quickly when compared with my own experiences. 

I worked for Oklahoma's welfare department in the 70s, some twenty-five years after this story starts. I'm sorry to say, things were not much different. We had a sexually abusive family. The abuse was documented by older children who had gotten themselves out of the home. They provided us with photos. We took the photos to the local assistant district attorney and were told he didn't want to look at them. Nothing was done. And that was not the only time families were treated differently by the law. Not because they were "swamp rats," like in North Carolina, but because they were "white trash."

Then there was the question of how a six-year-old could survive without parental care and guidance. 

For a period of time after everybody else left, her father stopped drinking so heavily. He taught her about fishing and operating his boat. He had been injured in World War II and received a weekly disability check from which he gave her small amounts of money to buy food and fuel for the boat. But he took to drink again, coming home less and less often until he just never came home again.

The people in the village, for the most part, ignored her or ridiculed her. Over the years, when the authorities took note of Kya, they attempted to literally catch her and put her into "normal" situations like school or a group home. Attempts, she saw as trying to trap her like an animal.

There were a few people in the Barkley Cove community who did befriend her, albeit mostly from a distance -- Jumpin' and Mabel, the African American couple ran the town's equivalent of a convenience store. They treated Kya with kindness and respect and provided what parental guidance she received. Tate, the son of a fisherman, taught her to read and provided her with books from the library. And Chase Andrews, whose daddy owned the local Western Auto store, fed Kya's dream of being accepted in   Barkley Cove.

The salt marshes of North Carolina were Kya's natural habitat. Kya was smart. She learned about life, about survival, from those saltwater marshes. Kya mostly did what she could figure out on her own to do. And, like her mother, she was a talented artist, drawing and painting and describing her world. 

The second timeline weaves in, around, and through Kya's life. It starts in 1969 and covers the investigation of Chase Andrews' death, Kya's murder trial, and the rest of her life. 

The local authorities decided that the manner of death of Chase, a football star and the only child of the closest thing to society in Barkley Cove, must be murder. His status in the community must surely make him immune to suicide, and he was too athletic to just fall from the old fire watch tower. Someone must have lured him up there and pushed him to his death. Chase's clandestine relationship with Kya, the swamp girl, while planning to marry a more acceptable Barkley Cove girl, made Kya the most obvious perpetrator. Her low status, also made her the least able to defend herself -- a slam dunk conviction for the prosecutor and a satisfying solution to the mystery for the townsfolk. 

And now it's a movie!

Where the Crawdads Sing, the film is visually stunning. It was filmed in the saltwater marshes of Louisiana, and they are beautiful. Filled with the natural world, neither the book nor the movie mentions dangers from animals native to saltwater marshes -- I'm thinking, mosquitos and ticks and alligators, all of which can cause death either by disease or predation. Both the book and the movie focus on the most dangerous animal in nature. Man.

Where the Crawdads Sing, the movie, deserves very high marks. 

Kudos to the Producers led by Reese Witherspoon. They knew what they had and produced a movie faithful to the original story. 

To Polly Morgan, Director of Cinematography, for the lush photography.

To Screen Writer Lucy Alibar for fitting the story into the movie's two hour and twenty-five minute time frame.

To Casting Director David Rubin for putting together this wonderful cast.

To the actors including, but not limited to 

           

             Jojo Regina as Little Kya                            Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya

  
                 Sterling Macer Jr.  and  Michael Hyatt                                Harris Dickinson

                           as Jumpin' and Mabel                                                as bad boy Chase

and David Strathairn as Tom Milton

Kya's defense attorney

And certainly, high marks to Director Olivia Newman who knew what she had when the actors gave her good performances.

Both the book and the movie are excellent. Truth be told, you can only read the book. Or you can only see the movie. Each is worth your time on its own. Me? I'm glad I did both.

Negroland, a memoir -- a book review

 

The book cover

Margo Jefferson, do you know who she is? 

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995 for her book reviews and cultural analyses in The New York Times. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography) in 2016 for Negroland a memoir which was also short-listed that year for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, an annual British prize for the best non-fiction in the English language. And  this year, 2022, She was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction. (After reading the book, I googled her, a little research before writing the review. And all I've got to say about these honors is that I am impressed with the organizations. They had the great good sense to recognize and reward her work.)

How did I find out about this book? Since I seldom read reviews before I read the book or watch the movie or listen to the music. My daughter recommended it. While attending a writing program at Skidmore several years ago, my daughter heard Ms. Jefferson read a passage and thought I'd enjoy it. It didn't hurt a bit that one of the blurbs on the dust jacket is from Isabel Wilkerson, an historian whose work I very much admire. My daughter was right.

Okay, so you've read Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming -- if you haven't, do yourself a favor and read it. You can get it free from your local public library. And read my January 14, 2019 blog post reviewing it. (It's available in my blog's archives. Also free.) 

They grew up in the same city, Chicago -- our Michelle and Margo -- but a generation apart. Both are African American. Both are intelligent, well-educated women. And both have achieved great success. Dispite this common ground, I think you'll find Margo Jefferson and Michelle Obama to be as different as a Live Oak and a Coastal Redwood, both beautiful and hardy enough to not only survive but thrive in this hostile world.      . 

Michelle Obama grew up in a working class neighborhood amid a close, extended family. She attended neighborhood schools and was encouraged to get the best education possible. 

Margo Jefferson grew up in a wealthy, highly educated family, her father a doctor and her mother a social worker. They lived in an upper class, becoming integrated, neighborhood. They had famous people from the sciences to the arts as guests in their home. Her parents had a cabin cruiser docked on Lake Michigan. She describes themselves as "The Third Race ... poised between the masses of Negros and all classes of Caucasians. Its members had education, ambition, sophistication, and standardized verbal dexterity." They were the Negro Elite.

Growing up white in Oklahoma at the same time Ms. Jefferson was growing up in Chicago, I knew nothing of The Negro Elite. 

Obama's growing-up world was very like my own and that of my family and friends. I was the daughter of an electrician. My friends included the daughter of Cuban refugees (they had been wealthy and influential before Castro took over), the daughter of an art teacher at the local college (he may have been a professor, that was before I was familiar with academic ranks), the daughter of a highway construction crew boss, and the daughter of the local veterinarian (actually, he got his DVM at the University of Pennsylvania. Who knew that was, and is, an Ivy League school?) The son of a former Governor/US Senator was in my typing class, but I doubt he knew my name. To be honest, I knew nothing of The White Elite.

The one thing Margo Jefferson and I had in common was learning about the world through literature. All kinds of literature -- fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism and all their various permutations. During her sophomore year in highschool, she was introduced to the essay, "challenging essays -- by E. M. Forster, George Orwell, and James Baldwin."

Jefferson describes the first time she read Baldwin. She quotes from Notes of a Native Son, "Many Thousands Gone."

    The story of the Negro in America is the story of America--or, more precisely it is the story
    of  Americans. It is not a very pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty. [The
    Negro in America] is a series of shadows, self-created, intertwining, which now we 
    helplessly battle."

At that young age, she began her life of critical analyses of the Word. "Who is this 'We'?" she asks. And answers, "It's you, white readers. But what of We, his smaller band of Negro readers? ...the Negro that so many Negroes like me dread having plural relations with."

Back to Baldwin, she quotes him "One may say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in the darkness of our minds."

Then she says "'One': a pronoun even more adroitly insidious than 'we.' An 'I' made ubiquitous. Baldwin has coupled and merged us in syntactical miscegenation."

She, that highschool sophomore, continues,
    "Close the book. (Breathe deeply.) James Baldwin is proclaiming right of entry with
    every possessive pronoun, integrating America by means of grammar and syntax. No
    demonstrators hosed into the air and crashing onto pavements, no tear-gassed bodies
    coughing and twisting, no children our age dressed in exhaustively clean, pressed clothes
    to walk shielded by armed guards into schools built to deny them."

You know how some times you are moved by the perfect, most beautifully honest music or painting or movie or a play that gets life so right you see the world differently. I think that's what the best art forms done well do. The artform that has the strongest effect on me is the written word in my language, English. As I read, the words are experienced inside of me, not on a stage or screen across the room. Strong words, direct words put together in ways I'd never thought about, explode in my head, sunbursts glinting off shards of old understandings scattering into the darkness of the past.

In Negroland a memoir, Margo Jefferson did that for me. Over and over in its pages. It is the best  memoir I've ever read.

Margo Jefferson

Truth to tell, I just like the looks of her. She could be in our walking group. And I bet she'd be a great addition at coffee as my friends and I conspire to save the world.