Food Reading, Shopping, and More

 

I’ve redone my refrigerator magnets: now it’s almost all birds. Plus the air plant that lives on the fridge.

These are just the owl magnets.

Downtown Ann Arbor

Downtown: a mural on the upper story of a building. Maybe a desert scene?

At Downtown Home and Garden

Ornaments that look like drinks.

Modeling the L.L.Bean clothes sold in the store. I wonder what his story is!

Painted on the shop window.

I always enjoy visiting Downtown Home and Garden, a store with many different sorts of merchandise and two cats. Besides household goods and L.L.Bean clothing, they have many dog and cat toys and pet supplies, garden tools and outdoor equipment, kitchen tools, and a large Christmas area.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving

Doris Lee: “Thanksgiving” (1935)

Recent Reading

I read this interesting book about the history of cookbooks and African-American
cooking in the 19th and 20th century: Recipes for Respect by Rafia Zafar.

Reading Next

Catching up on Jane Austen.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Saturday Critters, Sunday Salon, 

Monday Murals and Tea on Tuesday 

Haruki Murakami: “The City and Its Uncertain Walls”

Published this week: a new book by Haruki Murakami. I've been looking forward to this, and purchased and read it as soon as it was available to me. I was captivated by the novel, which had many of the elements expressed in earlier Murakami novels, but offered a different set of events, other-worldly settings, and characters. In retrospect, I realize how very much it was like his earlier books, but I enjoyed it anyway, in the moment.

 

As in all the Murakami novels and stories I’ve read, the juxtaposition of reality as I know it (and probably also as you know it) and a very unreal not-reality is powerful and dominates the story. But there’s much more to the story than this, and the jagged edges of reality and unreality are what makes the story so readable, at least to me. 

The features of Murakami’s magical realism are very much present in this novel, and clearly, he knows it and knows the reader is conscious of it. Here’s a key conversation between the central character, who narrates the novel, and a woman who is in his life for a brief time:

“You like García Márquez?” 

“I think so. I’ve read most of his books, but I especially like this one. This is the second time I’ve read it. What about you?” …

“In his stories the real and the unreal, the living and the dead, are all mixed together in one,” she said. “Like that’s an entirely ordinary, everyday thing.”

“People often call that magical realism,” I said. 

“True. But I think that although that way of telling stories might fit the critical criteria of magical realism, for García Márquez himself it’s just ordinary realism. In the world he inhabits the real and the unreal coexist and he just describes those scenes the way he sees them.” (Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls  p. 601-602)

 

The reader will no doubt accept this as a comment not just on García Márquez but on the author’s own way of seeing reality and not-reality in his many novels. In this novel, a parallel world exists in a mysterious town with a self-sustaining wall that keeps its inhabitants imprisoned, as well as a gatekeeper who tends a flock of golden-furred unicorns. The narrator, when he is in this surreal town, works in a library; he also works in a library in the maybe-real world (though this world also has some magical elements). The thing about the narrator is that he’s a pretty ordinary guy who just has surreal experiences. He had an ordinary education, a fixation on a lost love from adolescence, an unimaginative job in Tokyo, and then a move to a more unreal mountain town with a mysterious library. I like this. 

Every Murakami novel that I can think of has at least one long description of a man cooking dinner for a woman. I was beginning to fear that this element was missing, but finally, on page 504 out of 690, the narrator invites a woman to dinner. The cooking scene is almost a replica of such scenes from other Murakami novels right down to the spaghetti and salad, but I liked it anyway —

“In the kitchen I sipped my wine while tossing together the salad and spaghetti. She watched curiously as I buzzed around the kitchen. As I waited for the water to boil for the spaghetti, I minced a clove of garlic and sautéed calamari and mushrooms, then minced some parsley. I shelled the shrimp, sliced a grapefruit into even pieces, tossed soft lettuce and herbs together, and added a dressing of olive oil, lemon, and mustard. 

“‘You really look like you know what you’re doing. Very efficient.’  She seemed impressed.” (p 504)

 

I wondered if this novel will appeal to readers who aren’t deeply immersed already in the works of Murakami, so I looked up the New York Times review by Junot Díaz— published this week — which put it this way:

“If you’ve read any Murakami, this will seem very familiar. All the author’s standards are here, from the classic Murakami male narrator — described perfectly by Hari Kunzru as ‘a listless, socially isolated guy whose interests tend to circle around music, books, home cooking and cats, and whose lack of anchor in the everyday world often precipitates a sort of slippage into a netherworld of ghosts and spirits’ — to the apocalyptic disappearance and the reality-confusing shenanigans.” (source)

Unless you are already a hard-boiled fan of this author, if you want to read Murakami I would suggest beginning with one of his earlier novels. I’m sorry to say this.

Review © 2024 mae sander

Red

Roses blooming in Ann Arbor in November!

Michigan Autumn

From our Galapagos trip last summer.

Halloween Night Photo

Red at Breakfast and Dinner

Red wine and red pizza.

And we watched an old movie with a red poster —

Photos © 2024 mae sander

 

Orchids, Folktales, and a New-to-Me Painter

Orchid Show at Matthaei Botanical Garden

A number of orchid societies from nearby areas presented displays of orchids at this show, which we visited this weekend.
Below are photos of the orchids, as well as other plants on display in the greenhouses.

Two orchids and one cactus from the cactus room in the greenhouse.
I am very amused at finding a plaid plant!

From the Bonsai and Penjing display.

A stone plant: Lithops.

The orchid show.

All greenhouse and orchid photos © 2024 mae sander.

West African Folk Tales

An illustration from the tale “The Hunter and the Tortoise”
about a hunter who finds a miraculous singing tortoise, promises to keep it secret, but finally betrays it.

I’m reading a few folk tales from a collection titled West African Folk Tales by William Henry Barker (1882–1929) and illustrated by Cecilia Sinclair. This Project Gutenberg facsimile was made from the original text, published in 1917. I like reading these simple tales, about the tricky spider Anansi and his friends and family. Some are “just so” stories that explain the behavior of animals or birds; others are moral tales where characters are punished for not keeping secrets or the like; and some are just for fun.

It’s especially notable that so many of the tales involve hunger: the characters are constantly motivated by food shortages or the need to produce or set aside food, or their luck at finding a magical source for food. For example, 

“Anansi’s wives could not even get proper food; they had to live on unripe bananas with peppers.” (p. 26)

“Egya Anansi was a very skilful farmer. He, with his wife and son, set to work one year to prepare a farm, much larger than any they had previously worked. They planted in it yams, maize, and beans—and were rewarded by a very rich crop. Their harvest was quite ten times greater than any they had ever had before. Egya Anansi was very well pleased when he saw his wealth of corn and beans. He was, however, an exceedingly selfish and greedy man, who never liked to share anything—even with his own wife and son. When he saw that the crops were quite ripe, he thought of a plan whereby he alone would profit by them” (p. 47)   

“Once upon a time there was great scarcity of food in the land. Father Anansi and his son, Kweku Tsin, being very hungry, set out one morning to hunt in the forest.” (p. 66)

“There once lived upon the earth a poor man called Ohia … . Ohia thought of a plan which many of his neighbours had tried and found successful. He went to a wealthy farmer who lived near, and offered to hew down several of his palm-trees. He would then collect their sap to make palm wine. When this should be ready for the market, his wife would carry it there and sell it.” (p. 71)

Of course as in many folktales from many places, the magical or secret sources of food are often destroyed by the characters’ greed or selfishness. I have been curious about the Anansi tales because of the stories by Neil Gaiman that use them, and I’m finding these quite delightful.

Cutting down palm trees in order to make palm wine.

What I Hope to Read Tomorrow

Mayer Kirshenblatt: A Painter of Memories 

The Village Carp Pond

A Purim Play: children watch through the window.

Sabbath Candle-Lighting: wine, candles, challah.

Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916-2009) was born in Opatow, Poland. (The town was called Apt in Yiddish). In 1934, he emigrated to Toronto, where he worked in various jobs, married, and lived for the rest of his life. For his last 20 years, encouraged by his family, he began painting scenes from his youth in order to document his life in Apt, a shtetl whose Jewish population and culture had been destroyed by the Holocaust. Kirshenblatt's work is currently the subject of a special exhibit in the Polin Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, Poland, and has been featured at several exhibits in the US as well. For more about Mayer Kirschenblatt, see "From Memory to Canvas, Lost Way of Life in Poland" (New York Times, May 7, 2009) 

NOTE: My father was born in a shtetl in what is now Belarus, about 500 km from Opatow, The life that these paintings depict was very very similar to the life my father described, so I’m happy to be introduced to this painter. Before the Holocaust, these and many other Jewish towns were ethnically unified in culture, language, and religious practice. The national borders that exist now were different before World War I, and have changed several times since then.

For Elizabeth’s tea party — two types of wine!

At Home This Week

Weekend Google Doodle

I loved learning about the history of kayaks on a trip to Greenland, so this Google Doodle celebrating the kayak was pleasing to see. The reason for this Doodle: 

“In honor of Native American Heritage Month, today's Doodle celebrates the kayak, a narrow watercraft originally created by Arctic tribes 5,000 years ago.” 

About the artist: 

“This Doodle was illustrated by Inuit Nunangat guest artist, Natashia Allakariallak.”   

We have enjoyed our own inflatable kayak as well as opportunities to go kayaking in several places. Kayaks of the more stable and recreational variety are offered on many of the National Geographic trips we have done, so we’ve seen lots of beautiful sights from a kayak. For the last few years, we have also owned an inflatable kayak, which gets us out on the very tame local lakes and rivers — nothing to compare to the incredibly dangerous conditions in which the Inuit kayakers hunted for large marine mammals in unbelievably cold Arctic seas!

On our trip to Alaska in 2013, we watched a bear fishing while we were in a kayak.

Watching a kayak demo in Greenland in 2022. The Inuit of Greenland contributed much to the development of kayaking.

A “Psychological Thriller”

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell portrays a pathological woman who deceives everyone. Her victims may become suspicious, but she manipulates them to an uncanny extent, and the reader also doesn’t know where her fabrications begin and where the truth ends. A friend of mine recommended this book as a “psychological thriller.” The book definitely embodies a lot of tension, suspicion of coming bad things, cruelty, and growing horror at the layered revelations.

Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything like this book, and it’s not my usual type of reading. While I wouldn’t call it a supreme work of literary genius (it’s not), I think it’s unusual and very suspenseful.

Question: What is Consciousness?

Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith explores two main topics: the working of our human minds and of the minds of the octopus and closely related species (the cephalopods). The author reviews the evolution that created both humans and cephalopods. He says:

“Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” (p. 9)

In attempting to compare the minds of these divers creatures, he probes the question of consciousness, a question that’s often asked and never really answered. He describes the early steps taken by these animals:

“Later … an integrated perspective on the world arises and a more definite sense of self. We then reach something closer to consciousness. I don’t see that as a single definite step. Instead, I see “consciousness” as a mixed-up and overused but useful term for forms of subjective experience that are unified and coherent in various ways. Here, too, it is likely that experience of this kind arose several times on different evolutionary paths: from white noise, through old and simple forms of experience, to consciousness.” (p. 97)

I reviewed this book in some detail in 2018 in a post titled Invertebrate Intelligence and decided to reread it during the past week. 

Stories for Our Time

A purely evil political leader appeals to the masses through his dramatic speeches. The large crowds of his followers go wild, howling with adoration and loyalty. He convinces them that they are superior beings, and that they should show no tolerance for those who differ from them. He promises that once empowered, he will expel or even exterminate their inferiors. His overwhelming appeal almost enables him to become the supreme ruler of the Wizard World. Luckily, a few brave opponents, especially Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore, prevent the deceptive and charismatic Grindlewald from achieving his evil plan. 

As we binge-watched the three recent Fantastic Beasts films (prequel to the Harry Potter story) I was overcome with dread because of the parallel to recent real life. Unfortunately, no one stopped the onslaught of our new dictator, and as he rapidly announces his coming regime, I fear that no one will stand up to his evil plan.

Not only are we without a magical hero to save us, we don’t even have adorable magical pets to cheer us up. However, these films are a good escape if you don’t take their political situation too seriously. Here are Newt Scamander’s two adorable pets:

A Niffler

A Bowtruckle

Blog post and original photos © 2013, 2022, 2024 mae sander. 

Movie images from Warner Brothers

Credible Threat

 

To Indiana and Back Again

 We made a quick visit to my sister Elaine and brother-in-law Larry in West Lafaytte, Indiana this week.

Waiting for a pizza — interesting murals on the walls of the pizza place.

At Elaine’s, we always use this beautiful quilt.

In Our Garden

We’ve had a very extended growing season this fall, but the vivid red of the Japanese maple is a sign that it’s about to lose its leaves, and the beautiful geraniums look as if they won’t last much longer even without deep frosts.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander