Friday Update

Interesting textures: a flower, a bumblebee, and the concrete of the sidewalk.

Interesting eating: four flavors of brownies from Zingerman’s Bakery.

 

Recent Reading

Quotes that characterize these two important books that I have been reading:

“We have been given only a taste of what is in store if we fail to ramp down carbon emissions in the years ahead. These crises are inextricably interwoven. Climate change—along with urbanization, poverty, human migrations, and other social determinants—is driving pandemics with increasing frequency. Whether it’s the health of our people or the health of our planet, we are on an unsustainable path. To make matters worse, the rejection of science is being used to target the physical safety and careers of scientists committed to preventing the next pandemic and halting the progression of climate change.”  (Science Under Siege, Michael Mann and Peter Hotez, p. 4)

“Most people now understand that climate change is being driven by the greenhouse effect, the buildup of certain heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, largely from the burning of fossil fuels and other activities related to energy production. Serious efforts are under way to curtail these kinds of air pollution by phasing in clean sources of energy. But in a grim irony, some of the most promising sources of otherwise green energy are disastrous for migratory birds if they’re put in the wrong places.” (A Season on the Wind, Kenn Kaufman, p. 10)

 

The details leading up to the Civil War are only vaguely familiar to me.
Clearly, I knew only the outline, and the major participants.
It’s a very tragic story, and I’m not sure I have the courage to read about Reconstruction!

On TV

We have watched episodes 1-5 of The Marlow Murder Club,
and now eagerly await the last episode of this series.

We have watched the first three episodes, and look forward to the rest.

 

“We are Green and Trembling”

“We are that which creates life between the rocks and the stars. Star and rock incarnate, we are green and trembling. The world was not made in a single week, beloved aunt, it is made and unmade at every moment.” (We are Green and Trembling, p. 189)

Magical realism again! In We are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara the central character, who narrates the story, is based on a historic figure. He is Antonio de Erauso, an adventurer in colonial South America, who was born Catalina de Erauso, a noblewoman. As a girl, Catalina escaped from a convent and utterly changed her identity to Antonio. The narrative is addressed to Catalina/Antonio’s aunt, who had attempted to force her into convent life. The true story at the heart of the book is already surreal, I think.

Antonio’s narrative alternates between a description of his current situation, isolated and threatened in the jungle with two helpless little children and a narrative of how he got there. (Very surrealistic!) He tries to make the children understand life in general and especially to visualize life in Spain, but they never seem to get it. For example, he tries to explain to the children the idea of oranges… they constantly see new jungle fruits, brought down from the trees by monkeys — but never oranges. For example:

“The monkeys return with fruits that look like artichokes. With a sweet taste somewhere between pineapple and banana. ‘Hey, che, these are your oranges?’ ‘You know they are not.’ ‘And where are your oranges?’  ‘In Spain.’ ‘Chirimoyas, these.’” (p. 36)

Of all the exotic jungle fruit, the chirimoya is the only one I’ve ever seen or tasted, so I noticed this. (Chirimoyas tasted to me like juicy fruit chewing gum.) I did wonder a bit why so many South American novels incorporate magical realism, but I guess I’ll never know. I checked for reviews of the book: there are not many of them.

I did find a summary of the novel by reviewer Brock Kingsley in the Chicago Review of Books:

“As Catalina, Antonio was confined to a convent under the supervision of her aunt, the prioress. The convent soon became a prison, both literally and symbolically. Antonio escapes and begins a process of transformation, drawing on lessons learned in religious life. His journey—from convent escapee to muleteer, cabin boy, soldier, and secretary to a grotesque conquistador—mirrors a continual act of becoming. Antonio’s shape-shifting identity challenges not only the gender norms of the seventeenth century, but also those of our own time. Through his character, the novel interrogates fixed notions of masculinity and the often rigid expectations imposed on trans identities.”

And Laura Pensa in World Literature Today writes:

“Cabezón Cámara combines the most explicit scenes of violence—including a bonfire where people burn alive; the image of a pink, waxy lagoon haunted me that night in a dream—with moments of familiarity and entirely original tenderness. Particularly in Antonio’s relationship with the girls, a bond made of mutual care but also of teasing and abandonment, it becomes clear that, although his attitude and intention might align with those of a white savior, it is the girls who take care of him. They name him, feed him, dress him as a man-bird, walk him into the forest, share with him everything he needs to know to comprehend and accept the course of events. Even his own heroic will (to save the girls from captivity) twists by the force of reality: he is the outsider who needs to be cared for, for which he must first take on the task of caring.”

Well, it was another strange reading choice, and I don’t know how I heard of it.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander. 

Time Flies

Autumn is coming

Time to hide some nuts and berries! (This is Mr.Chips who lives on our porch.)

A few leaves have gone from green to yellow, red, or even white.

Recent Reading

Martin Walker’s latest book about detective Bruno in rural France is a sad shadow of the earlier books in this series. There’s no real plot, no real crime, and no real character development! Bruno does cook a lot — to the point where it feels like one is reading a cookbook, with the detailed descriptions of prep and ingredients for one local dish after another. In earlier books, the cooking was an interesting distraction — here it’s totally over used. Sad to see this travesty on what was once a good detective series.

In Bury Your Past detective Tom Janssen in the English town of Wells-by-the-Sea solves the mystery of a body that has been hidden for six years. The body is uncovered by a violent storm that sets a grim mood for the many revelations that explain this and also other crimes. The detective is relatable, and the plot is well-thought-out. I hope to read more of the books by J.M.Dalgliesh.

Published in 1933, Death on the Oxford Road by E.C.R.Lorac is still a suspenseful and enjoyable read — though the author expresses some outdated attitudes towards people who didn’t fit into village society. A body is found on a little-traveled road, where very few cars pass by. Just this lack of traffic is a notable feature of life 90 years ago: cars were a rarity! Life was different then, but the main conventions of detective fiction were already in place.

 Samantha Schweblin’s short stories, set in argentina, are a little strange. What peculiar characters she depicts!

Good Food

Left: two different ways that we prepared salmon: patties and pan-broiled.
Right: blueberry pancakes and apple-peach cobbler with ice cream.

Classic dinner: lamb chops and corn-on-the-cob with butter.

© 2025 mae sander

Cooking. Eating. Reading.

Cauliflower, Pea, and Coconut Curry: adapted from a NYTimes recipe (link)
I prepped the food and made the recipe up until I took this photo — then Len took over the cooking.
It was the first time in a couple of months that I have cooked, as I recover from major surgery.

The curry. I added potatoes to the recipe as it was written, and omitted the rice.
Substitutions: I used green onions instead of cilantro, and peanuts instead of cashews.

Chicken thighs with potatoes and onions, which Len cooked earlier this week.

Carol’s fruit tart.

Reading about humans and other creatures

An interesting natural history book about “mutualisms,”
that is, examples of inter-species cooperation.

Rob Dunn, the author  of The Call of the Honey Guide, explores a number of interactions of humans with other beings, from micro-organisms to beavers and many others in between. The book is full of historical examples and quotations from literature and poetry that create a very interesting and unusual reading experience.

For example, the human relationship to trees: “Globally, humans have cut down, burned, or otherwise destroyed roughly half of all the forest that once was. … Nature is never just one thing or another. Trees offer extraordinary benefits to those, like us, who partner with them; they offer their fruits, their bodies, and their services. The poet Ross Gay has written that ‘our capacity and willingness to learn the language of trees, to study the language of trees, it’s so obvious to me now, might incline us to be less brutal, less extractive. It might incline us to share, to collaborate. It might incline us to give shelter and make room.’  Like the shaman in Peru, we can learn from our trees.” (p. 48-51)

The human relationship to dogs: “So far, I’ve avoided answering whether we are actually still engaged in a mutualism with our dogs. That we once were is clear, but on average, are we today? We certainly benefit our dogs. But how should we consider whether they benefit us?” The author’s conclusion is that walking one’s dog conveys many mental and physical health benefits to the dog owner, although many of the former tasks that dogs did (such as herding flocks of sheep or cattle, participating in the hunt, or watching for intruders of whatever other species) are no longer needed by most dog owners. (p 227 ff)

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Richard Halliburton and the Acropolis

Earlier this summer, I visited Athens and the Acropolis for the first time. I read about the Parthenon and all the other remarkable ancient-Greek buildings on this site when I was around 12 years old in the Book of Marvels, which had first been published in 1938. Its author, Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), became one of my heroes.

Soon after reading this compendium of Halliburton’s lifelong adventures, I read the other books by this highly romantic and highly successful author. His first book, published 100 years ago (in 1925) was The Royal Road to Romance. I loved its breathless descriptions of the exotic places the author visited. I was fascinated by the idea of travel, and hoped to see many of the “marvels” eventually. 

In The Glorious Adventure, I read about a very romantic night that the author spent on the Acropolis, after climbing the fence after hours. Here is Halliburton’s dramatized description of the Acropolis at night:

It took decades, but a few weeks ago, I finally saw the treasures of ancient Greece for myself, including a visit to the Acropolis. Of course my visit took place during normal opening hours, among the huge crowds of tourists who want to see this historic site. And unlike Halliburton, I can’t say I actually had a conversation with the Caryatids: that is, the women-shaped columns that hold up the porch of the building called the Erechtheion. Seeing this magnificent sight was the fulfillment of a long dream.

How I Met Richard Halliburton

My longing to travel began when I was around 12 years old, when a neighbor named Mrs. Rosen introduced me to the books of Halliburton, a travel writer who had been active from 1920 until his disappearance in the Pacific Ocean in 1939. She loaned me all of them, beginning with the Book of Marvels, a compendium of his favorite places in the world. I loved reading about Halliburton’s trip to the Alhambra in Granada, which I visited in the 1990s, and his swim in the Panama Canal described in the book New Worlds to Conquer, which I visited in 2014. As the years went by, I continued to wish to see the Greek temples on the Acropolis — the adventure I had missed, as he described it in The Glorious Adventure, his second book. And finally I’ve seen them.

One of the copies Mrs. Rosen let me read was even autographed -- years earlier, when she was in high school, she had gone to a book signing at a bookstore near her home (I think she was from Connecticut). She had been an avid fan, and described what a handsome man he had been, saying how she hung around the bookstore all afternoon just looking at him.Halliburton still appeals to a surprising number of readers, despite or maybe because his books describe a world that's no longer the same. He describes a sort of adventure travel that way too many people have attempted to copy. An article in the Guardian called him "the greatest adventurer in history" -- see "Seven League Boots by Richard Halliburton – review" by David Shariatmadari, published February 1, 2013. This reviewer writes, for example, that according to Halliburton, "Traditional societies, black ones in particular, are 'primitive'. His retelling of the astonishing story of Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, is polluted with racist condescension and stereotype. But curiosity and a love of the unfamiliar also leap from the pages." I didn't have that kind of sophistication when I was reading the books. I just loved the idea of those adventures.

At some point I collected most of Halliburton’s books, which were such great best-sellers that many copies are still easily available to buy.  My copies don’t have dust-jackets, but above you can see images of what they looked like when they were published. And I’ve seen quite a few of the other destinations in Halliburton’s books. What is it like to read these old volumes now? Sorry to say, the style is extreme, with much self-congratulation, and a flowery over-written prose. I don’t feel like rereading more than a few pages. But the memory of how much I loved them all those years ago hasn’t faded, and I’m happy that I finally visited one more of the romantic locations from the books.

Links to my posts about Richard Halliburton from the past: https://maetravels.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-panama-canal.html, https://maetravels.blogspot.com/2007/03/sacred-well.html

My first visit to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, July 2025.

 Blog post © 2025 mae sander