And we're back. That's a good jump shot. You have to admit.

 What's that? Not enough road pictures?

 Ain't she cute?

 Old, dilapidated. My favorite.

 

Old building stage right. I like the off center. 你呢？

 

 

 Now this was really memory lane. My ole stomping ground. Payton Place Laurel hadn't changed much at all, though they definitely had spruced the place up a bit.

 This is how we roll...

Um...Happy New Year?

Memory Lane

So back in December...ya December. I took a trip Smith County to visit a friend of mine post Christmas. We drove around aimlessly and then I let the pictures to steep on my computer for five months. They get better with age.

 Look at Mr. Personality.

 It was such a pretty day.

 Mississippi does clouds like no other.

 Mize, Mississippi's town hall. Classy.

 Small town downtown. Something classy about it.

 Quack!

 You know me. I can't resist the open road.

 My partner in crime. 

 Quick transition...we discovered the tombs of the Sullivans. Sullivan's Hollow (nearby) is notorious for its family feuds. The twilight was perfect to get that creepy effect.

The end...(more later).

Just Finished: And Then There Was White Noise

Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is the classic mystery novel, and it sat on my shelf for approximately 20 years before I read it. Rather than finish a 500 page book that was killing me with all its baseball talk, I decided to go pick up this slim and decaying volume on my shelf.

A quick read, And Then There Were None, which was previously titled Ten Little Indians, starts with a hodgepodge of characters making their way to an island off the coast of Devon. From an elderly military man who thinks he's meeting up with old colleagues to a young woman who believes she's been hired as a temporary secretary, each visitor to the island has a different and cryptic story of who invited them to the island.

Once they arrive, however, the "10 little Indians" who have been summoned realize that there is some strange about their supposed holiday. One by one they begin to die as their own dark histories come to light. The remaining guests try to figure out whodunnit while becoming increasingly suspicious of each other. Will anyone survive the l'isle mysterious?

Being such a brief read with that precise British-ness, And Then There Were None, doesn't ever get very gruesome, but it does raise some questions about right, wrong and the proper carrying out of justice. More interesting than entertaining.

White Noise...I'm not sure I'm smart enough to review this book. Don DeLillo is clearly more intelligent than I am, and he has social commentary/satire down.

The main character, Jack Gladney, is a thrice divorced college professor who gained credibility by establishing a Hitler studies program at the small private university where he works. Somewhat amusing is the fact that Jack can't even speak German well, something he's working on before his next big Hitler conference.

At home is Jack, his current wife Babbette (who he often talks to in the third person), and their son and collection of children from previous marriages are a peculiar postmodern group. One child loves burnt toast, another analyses her mother's gum chewing habits and so on.

Neurotic as they all are, Jack, his family and his colleagues all have a semi-symbiotic relationship, but trouble lies beneath the surface and an "airborne toxic event" raises fears about mortality, the meaning of life and other postmodern problems. As Babbette reveals fears about death, Jack tries to keep the family going in his own intellectual way.

As you can see, I'm butchering any attempt at explaining this book. In any case, this is probably the best of the three or four postmodern books I've ever read (and that is saying something). There were some really witty observations on American culture, but it was also thought provoking – particularly the fear of death and how one acts on that fear. Anyway, I'm sure there's a New York Times review somewhere.

Just Finished: The Glass Castle

In The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Jeannette grew up living a vagabond life as her aloof parents dragged she and her siblings from one place to the next, often with the cops on their heels.

Jeannette's father is an alcoholic dreamer who is as brilliant as he is flawed. Always with the promise of creating an invention that will propel the family into infinite wealth (and with it a castle made of glass), he one by one loses the faith of all his children, Jeannette last.

Jeannette's mother is just as much a dreamer and after living with a supposedly overbearing mother, she wants nothing to do with established order (even to the point of denying her eldest daughter glasses). Despite her teaching degree she lets the children go hungry while she spends the days painting and reading. When the children force her to get a job, she throws tantrums, gets depressed and eventually loses her job and the only income the family has. Without food much of the time, they rummage through dumpsters and sneak food out of other students' lunchboxes at school.

The Wall children eek out an existence despite their parents neglect but not without significant scars. Because their parents believe in being "open" to the world around them, they leave the doors of their house in New Mexico (left to them by Jeannette's grandmother) unlocked day and night. At one point a pervert accosts Jeanette yet her parents still refuse to lock the door with a flippant 'what doesn't kill you...' attitude.

At times there are glimpses of love from the parents, but their own selfishness wins out. As the parents try to escape the lives they had as children, they completely fail to provide any stability or care for their kids. In their escapism, they reject even the smallest social norms without realizing their children are incapable of doing the same.

Over the years their parent's care deteriorates as Jeanette's father dives headlong into his addiction and her mother the same, though hers is simply doing what she wants. The family leaves the Southwest for an impoverished area of West Virginia, where they are the poorest of the poor, living in a shack they can barely afford with no running water or electricity and leaking ceilings. What little money they have gets spirited away to alcohol as the kids go to school dirty and disheveled.

After a few years the Wall children begin to make their escape each moving to New York city where they try to make something of their lives and their history.

The Glass Castle is something of a page turner as life at the hands of the Wall parents gets worse and worse. Yet Jeannette never veers into cynicism or bitterness. Her anger is tightly contained and she shows true love for her parents, though it's hard to imagine how she mustered it...or how she even functions as a human being. I definitely recommend this read. You'll be hard pressed to come up another one similar to it.

Just Finished: Nickel & Dimed

Journalist Barbara Ehreneich's exploration into the world of America's working class is an important book but, in some ways, disappointing book. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Ehrenreich spends a month or so each in three different cities where she works as a waitress, maid, Wal-mart employee and other minimum wage jobs.

She acknowledges from the beginning that she's starting her experiment at an economic and physical advantage to those who rely completely on such jobs for survival. Ehrenreich gives herself a start up budget (also something the average joe wouldn't have) and sets out to find an apartment and jobs in each location. She discovers pretty quickly that cheap but decent housing a convenient distance from jobs is hard to find and working only one job is never enough to cover expenses (or get proper rest and nutrition).

In each job some significant law (or at least ethical code) is broken - a table outside the bathroom door instead of a break room (and no breaks to speak of), overtime with no overtime pay, exposure to toxic chemicals, etc. Ehrenreich marvels at her uncomplaining co-workers who don't try to assert their rights or look for better positions. Several jobs also keep the first month's pay of employees, which is a major deterrent for already strapped employees to switch to a better job.

Throughout Ehrenreich's three cities, she discovers how hard it is for honest, unskilled workers to get ahead. Everything is stacked against them from the lack of health care to scarce housing to poor food options. Even getting assistance turns out to be a nearly impossible task.

It's hard to read this book and look at the woman folding clothes at Wal-mart without a new respect. While some look down on the unemployed or poor, this book shows how hard it is to break even without the resources you naturally have if you come from a more affluent, educated background. Imagine trying to go to night school on minimum wage after working 10 hours with 2 15-minute breaks, gas prices on the rise, driving a jalopy, etc. It's nearly impossible and a few mistakes earlier in life can mean falling into a demeaning cycle of poverty.

My biggest issue with the book is that Ehrenreich's own experience rings a bit untrue. I wanted her to stick it out longer, but she doesn't spend very long at any location. (Who would want to if they could go back to the upper middle-class?) Her experiment would have been more valuable after a year trying to survive. I also would have liked to hear from Ehrenreich's co-workers directly, rather than her assumptions after a month or so with them.

Still, I think it's a topic we need to see from the inside and a crucial one for everyone (especially the Christian community) to be acquainted with. These are the poor and the widows and we need to figure out how to share the wealth.

Sanfranication: Land of Fresh Food & Hills

Nearly the last California post (save some film photos in the undetermined future). I'll have to go on vacation again to have any interesting pictures to show you after this. Sigh...

After touring San Fran with Dr. Bev, I thought I'd never be hungry again. She was kind of a food slave driver. We went to lots of places where there are always lines around the building because the food is so unbelievably good. Hmmm...haven't seen any lines at the restaurants here. Curious. 

In between, we saw the sites and climbed hills almost parallel to sea level.

We went to a food truck gathering. It was like an open air gourmet food court. We followed it up with some bubble tea (which we also got two nights later).

  We breakfasted at Tartine twice. Words and pictures cannot describe how good were the pastries at Tartine. I would move to San Francisco just to eat their bread and scones.

I rode on old trolleys from Italy.

Went to the Pier(s) and partook of Tcho's fair trade chocolate. Free tours, people.

Just Finished: The Remains of the Day

"Why, Mr. Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?"

This line sums up Mr. Stevens, the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Stevens is a  traditional English butler facing the changing world of postwar Britain. When his new American boss encourages him to take time off, Stevens embarks on a road trip through the countryside and through his past.

As Stevens meticulously reminisces about his life in Darlington Hall, he recounts the honor of serving the great Lord Darlington through the trials and aftermath of war. Stevens sets himself up as indispensable to the Lord who in turn played an imperative role in securing peace for the entire European continent.

But even as he prides himself on being a high caliber butler, maybe even comparable to the greatest, Stevens shoots holes through his own stories as he allows subtle doubt in about the small world he has dedicated himself to--the way he mostly ignored his own father's fatal illness as it coincided with an important meeting at Darlington or the anti-semitic turnings of his master.

Interwoven through all his memories is his relationship with Miss Kenton, the head housemaid, with whom Stevens was clearly enamored. In fact, Stevens is driving to see the now married Miss Kenton, harboring hopes he cannot admit to himself.

Like many of Ishiguro's narrators, one must question their reliability, and Stevens is no different. The above quote spoken by Miss Kenton is crucial to understanding him. Ishiguro masters this character through his  verbose recollections and obsessive details through which he hides truth within propriety, custom and the pride of his position. Nothing is exactly as it seems because Stevens pretends to everyone, especially himself. Also like Ishiguro's novels there are peculiar situations that don't ever seem to line up.

The Remains of the Day is my third Ishiguro novel and ranks somewhere in the middle with Never Let Me Go by far my favorite and When We Were Orphans one of the worst books I've ever read. Ishiguro's genius in creating his characters here resulted in exhausting paragraphs of skim-able information, but it effectively made Stevens' character and causes the reader to reflect on the veracity of the truth of their own actions and memories.

Read and judge for yourself.

Sanfranication: To Golden Gate

We made it to the last leg of the trip with this and one more post full o' pics (and then eventually one final post with film pics--there are a few you're going to swoon over.)

I loved San Francisco and after lots of alone time in Big Sur, I thankful to get to spend time with my great friend Bev who lives there. She had to work my first day so I walked along the water and ended up (at long last, took me for-ev-er) at the majestic Golden Gate Bridge. Although I wish it hadn't taken so long to get there (had to turn in the rental and then it was a long walk), I did hit the bridge at the pppperrrfffeeeccccttttt time of day as the sun was setting. The setting sun seemed to dissipate all the haze and turn that bridge into the perfect shade of saffron.

Here's a teaser of the pics to come...

Grrr. I do not remember what this was called but it was neat-o. The ruins of a luxury spa, I think?

Mysterious totem pole

Unfortunately the Camera Obscura, which was modeled after an invention of Da Vinci, was closed for repair.

I walked and walked and walked...

Just Read: Love Finds You in Liberty Indiana

Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana by Melanie Dobson: Ya, what are the odds I'd read another Christian romance? Book club! I have to say this one was a thousand times better than Shadow in Serenity so I'll stop being sarcastic now.

This one actually wasn't so much a romance. Anna Brent is a young Quaker woman with deep abolitionist convictions. Along with her father and housekeeper, she helps escaped slaves on their journey north on the Underground Railroad. Because of this, they keep quiet about their anti-slavery even as the outspoken editor of the local paper catches Anna's eye.

Danger mounts as slave hunters come to town in search of a runaway and her baby who were harbored at the Brent home and Anna gets deeper into the railroad. Meanwhile tensions in the town mount and Anna must weigh the consequences of acting on her faith that God created all people to be free.

I appreciated that as Anna faced various challenges and temptations she evaluated her feelings and seeks to bring herself inline with the truth of the Gospel, but it sometimes felt too simplistic and easily wrapped up. My main beef with this book is that, despite dealing with a heavy subject, it still ends like all rom coms with everything basically coming together like a rom com in the end.

Californivacation Big Sur, part III

Pfeiffer Beach was almost my last stop in Big Sur (I couldn't help stopping at one or two more turnouts on my way north.) It was gorgeous and digging under the first layer of sand revealed purple sand. Not almost purplish but actual purple sand. God is amazing! I would not think to make purple sand.

I could have stayed there for hours on that wide quiet beach. Actually, I could have stayed at Big Sur for a week with a bunch of good books and a friend, of course. A girl can only listen to crazy beetniks for so long.

 I'm not going to lie to you. I thought this rock was a little unsightly.

 I was here.

 See it's purple!

 Heading north again.

 Bixby Bridge, 1932.

Next stop...San Francisco!

Californivacation: Big Sur, part II

I'll only keep Big Sur to three posts. I had just about a day to spend at Big Sur, not enough but I made the most of it, starting with breakfast at the famous and historic Deetjen's Inn. I wanted to stay at the cabins here, but I didn't know when I would arrive until the day of and the cheaper cabins were taken.   Breakfast was the next best thing. 

Everything at Big Sur is expensive as it's not the easiest place to get supplies in, and once you're there, they kind of have a captive audience--something like 2 hours to the next towns on either end.

And yes, I paid $7 for that bowl of fresh, organic berries. Obscene but indescribably good. The sourdough french toast came with REAL maple syrup and their chai tea latte would make Starbucks slap its java mama.

(Again, mind the jump to see all the pics.)

Deetjen's has a one page handout with their favorite trails in the area and the mileage from the inn. Thank goodness, because I was determined to find Partington Cove. A secluded trail with no markers near a turnout marked the spot, it's nearly impossible to find it unless you know where to look. No one else seemed to find it (or be looking for it) so I hit the trail alone. Creeepppyyy.

 A look back...I'd walked maybe 10 minutes along the trail and there was no sign of PCH or any other human beings.

  

 One of the special things about Partington Cove was the kelp forests. Don't you imagine trees draped in long, wet leafy kelp? Well, that's not what it is.

I loved how this picture came out...so I edited it a half dozen or more times! A mini barrage for you...