why go to Provence?

Royal Carriage Inn www.abvijamestown.com

Milliaire www.milliairewinery.com

Twisted Oak www.twistedoak.com

the Willows www.yelp.com/biz/willow-steakhouse-and-saloon-jamestown

the Plymouth Hotel & Restaurant

9356 Main St. ~ P.O. Box 699 ~ Plymouth, CA 95669
tel: 209.245.5131
fax: 209.245.3339

Dobra Zemlja 12505 Steiner Road, Plymouth, CA 95669
(209)245-3183
Fax: (209) 245-5022
Email info@dobraz.com

haste to the Wedding #1

RPH #10

“haste to the Wedding”

The family referred to is mine, though I am, in law, a step.

This is the loving truth for which I am eternally grateful.

“When one is getting married, one should not be clear eyed and organized. That’s what mothers and sisters are for.” This a law of the Medes and the Persians.

A year and a half ago, I met, all too briefly, Megan, the fiancée of Gregory. I found her smart, funny and well able to deal with our family’s answer to Josh Lyman. In February, Philip and I received a “save the date” card for their wedding and responded in an adult and calm manner: Oh, Yes, Please!” The actual wedding invitation was, although very pretty, pure gravy. Travel planning is one of the joys of my black heart and I went right to work. Finding flights and buying leg room kept me happy for a couple of hours but then, that’s all I had to do. I didn’t need to find a room or even rent a car, because the bride and groom had done it all! This is against the law of the Medes and the the Persians.

(We need, very briefly to talk about the difference between a Boeing and an Airbus. The rational Philip claims that it ain’t the plane but the configuration inside the plane. I, on the opposite side, don’t care. Last summer, when we went to the UK, we rode both planes and I’ll take the Airbus. On our flight to the wedding, we luxuriated in livable space, especially the 6’2” Philip.)

Our flight left at 7am so after a 3:30 wake up and the dither of packing, we got to Oakland International too early. The flight was as good (see above) and all we needed to do was figure out how to get from Dulles to Arlington. Ah, Dulles International Airport, way the hell out in Sterling VA and hard to get from or to. We asked Traveler’s Aid the way to Arlington and they, very nicely, told us about Super Shuttle but sent us in the wrong direction. All was forgiven once we were in the shuttle and on the road. I learned to drive in L. A. and I never, ever, want to drive in, or even around, the Beltway.

The nuptials were held in Arlington, VA where the smarty pants couple reserved rooms at a lovely Sheraton not a full mile from the church. They got a really good group rate and threw the reception at the same hotel. (Greg and Megan ignore the Medes and Persians whenever possible.) After checking in and dropping luggage in the room, we elevated back down to the lobby in search of dinner. As the doors opened, a wonder materialized before my eyes: Michael, the father of the groom. He was in a hurry to the bachelor party because, as the best man, he needed to be there. But, there, across the lobby was Emilia, sister in law extraordinaire and in need of supper. Having her to ourselves, for even a little time, was just wonderful. After making the first stab at catching up, we toddled, almost comatose, to bed. Our room had a spectacular view from the Air Force Memorial, across the wide Potomac, to the Capitol Dome. The Washington Monument was obscured by a lovely tree, thus I didn’t have to contemplate that overblown eyesore every time I looked out the window.

haste to the Wedding #2

As both clans collected on Friday, some of us became tourists. The siren song of the Hirshhorn & the National Gallery enticed us to the Mall and the free hotel shuttle to the Metro made it easy. We popped up on the Mall like the White Rabbit, right next to the Castle and a short walk from the front door of the Hirshhorn. Now, I can talk about paintings forever, and have to be restrained. But, trying to describe the plastic arts, especially sculpture, is beyond me. Suffice to say that the Hirshhorn Museum is the most important collection of modern and contemporary sculpture (large and small) in the whole wide world. If you don’t care about sculpture, come and see this collection. If you already love sculpture, you already know. After communing with the plastic arts of the 20th century, we meandered to the National Gallery.

The house of pictures, in fact, the family album of the United States of America, this is the National Gallery. A huge edifice, built in 1937 by the W. P. A. during the Great Depression, the one that made our grandparents so tight with money. I limited myself to the American Gallery, where I could commune with some of my favorites, Winslow Homer, John Sloan and, especially, John Singleton Copley. I love Copley, his art is great and fragile at the same time. His portraits of our founding generation are evocative and telling. There is John Adams, the old Congregationalist, who never really understood the separation of church and state. And his great friend and nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, looking all abstemious and mild. Copley was a great portraitist from the shoulders up, but, bless his noble brow, he couldn’t paint the human body. There on the wall is his whole family, with legs that are too long and arms that come out of nowhere. Stick with the close-ups John, ’cause anatomy ain’t your thing.

Part of the fun of huge collections is seeing stuff you didn’t know was there. The fine People of Boston MA have loaned to our nation the final iteration of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial by August Saint-Gaudens. It is not only the finest piece of plaster casting I’ve ever seen, it is the largest. This stunning bas relief represents Shaw and his Massachusetts 54th Regiment, marching toward certain destruction. The 54th, of honored memory, was an all black volunteer unit, led by the bluest blooded Boston Brahmin. This piece is both heroic and heartbreaking. Fighting for abolition and liberty, these men were sent on a suicide mission, and went. Freedom is a cruel master.

We had very specific instructions to be back at the hotel and ready to dine by 6:30. Since the whole wedding party and many guests were staying at the hotel, it made sense to get all of the folks invited to the rehearsal dinner together in one rented transport. It really did make sense. You may think that herding kittens or Unitarians is hard, but you don’t know. Somebody is still in their room, somebody isn’t answering their cell and one grandma is still in transit. Finally, all the Unitarian kittens were on the little bus and off we went, into the warm night, headed toward barbeque.

That which is called rehearsal dinner has long since ceased having anything to do with the wedding rehearsal. It is party thrown by the groom’s family the evening before the wedding, and ours was a hell of a party.

Cozies

Racketty Packetty House #9

cozies

I see you every day, hard working, kid loving, community caring people with not enough time for yourselves. Yesterday you all were perfectly manifested in a lovely, tired young mommy of 5 week old twins. All she wanted was something she could read in short increments, a story that would keep her company but not break her heart. There are places in our lives for powerful literature, tales of loss, betrayal and deepest sorrow, novels which examine the bitter and dark places of the human condition. But, sometimes, we need stories that will just keep us company by introducing us to small communities where common life is lived with one or two surprises. These are the books that I call cozies.

Cozy is a very valuable and under-appreciated word. Its origin is unknown, perhaps Norwegian, and its first known date is 1709 meaning: warmth. As a noun it is a covering for a teapot, of either padded or knitted fabric, intended to keep the pot and thus the tea warm. In our post-modern, cynical world, cozy is a suspect term, disingenuous at best and delusional at worst. Well, too bad, because sometimes we need a good cozy to relax us and knit up our frazzled nerves. We need stories of community and difficult relatives and the small comings and goings of basically good people.

Although most cozies are mysteries, there are prominent exceptions in regular fiction. Maeve Binchey weaves tight, clear eyed tapestries of small Irish communities dealing with the friction between traditional and modern life. Circle of Friends is her most famous but Scarlet Feather and Whitethorn Wood are every bit as good. On this side of the pond, the great Fanny Flagg, who does not write fast enough, tells small stories about home towns that call through the years to those who leave. Flagg’s work always carries a single punch that shakes up the reader and pulls the whole book together (dang she is good). Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is Fanny’s best known book but Welcome to the World Baby Girl and all of the rest of her all-too-small oeuvre are Southern treats of the highest quality.

Sometimes, in the genre of cozies, old glories can be regained. Regency Romances can be absolutely terrible, hackneyed with little dialogue and badly drawn characters. But the colossus who invented the genre has returned to remind us just how good Regency romances can be: Georgette Heyer wrote from the middle 1920’s till the early 1950’s and hers are without question the funniest and most lively, with the best drawn characters, of any romances ever written. They are true comedies of manners and Mme. Heyer is second only to Jane Austen in her language. About three months ago a customer and I were bemoaning the absence of Heyer on the open market. I went to the computer and found a miracle. Harlequin, who owns the Heyer rights for the US market, has put out a full, unified edition in trade paperback. What larks, to have the great master back.

For most readers, a true cozy is a mystery. Although Jane Marple may appear cozy to the uninitiated, with her garden and her knitting, don’t be fooled. Dame Christie has one character refer to Miss Marple as Nemesis, meting out justice without mercy. Besides, Christie isn’t happy unless at least three people are dead.

The true cozy is a small mystery, only one corpse and an amateur sleuth to unravel the tale. Cozies come in series and almost always have a female protagonist . Relationships is a hallmark, with the heroine accompanied by a group of friends and relations, willing to help, often getting in the way and continuing from one book to all others. Cozies may have important male characters and the finding of true love by our central character is often a secondary theme for the series. Unlike the gumshoe/shamus mysteries of Chandler/Hammett et al, the women of cozies have jobs and often small businesses that bring them in contact with a larger community. Most of these books take place in small towns that can support the tea shops (Laura Childs), bakeries (Joanne Fluke), quilting and knitting emporia (Mary Danheim) and book stores (Lorna Barrett) that makeup the cozy universe.

In one very fanciful series, a young mother and townie is aided in her investigations by very helpful and loving ghost (Nancy Atherton.) If the setting is a city, our intrepid amateurs stick to one neighborhood where everyone knows them and they can always find parking . Cozies are idealized us, working and living and by the way solving dreadful murders.

This is why we love cozies. The lives of the heroines are not too much different from ours. They are brave and smart and loyal and have friends who love them. They also fight the good fight for justice and often mercy. Lost treasures are found, bad marriages end and the dead find rest. These books are perfect for beaches and pools and any little space of time you might have to yourselves.

Please, enjoy.

The Troubles

RpH #8

the Troubles

The first time I remember wearing orange on St. Patrick’s day was in first grade. We were going up the stairs to the classroom and a classmate said I wasn’t wearing green. But my dress was of a small, floral pattern that had both colors in it, so no pinching occurred that day. My father, who did not go to church, taught me always to wear orange on the Irish national saint’s day. Sometimes it was as simple as orange crepe paper around my arm and for a while I wore orange with black, for sorrow. But always orange on St. Patrick’s Day, because, Daddy said, I am a Protestant.

Ireland is a mother of nations, a large island in the Atlantic ocean that has sent her sons and daughters all over the world, looking for food and work. The Irish were occupied by the English for hundreds of years, their language was outlawed, their church was suppressed and their land was given to Protestant Scottish farmers. The sorrow of Ireland is known, sung and fought, but what the hell does it have to do with me?

My paternal great grandfather was Mathias Gibson, a poor lad with bad lungs who came from Belfast. He ended up in New Hampshire, married Clara Hubble and fathered Dorothy Viola, my father’s mother. Dorothy didn’t care about the Irish connection except to refer to the Kennedy Clan as “lace curtain” Irish. She was a lifelong Republican who grew up in Boston. Family legend holds that Mathias would put an orange ribbon in his lapel and “go down to Southy on St. Patrick’s Day to discuss fine points of theology with his Catholic brethren.” So I was a Protestant before I confessed Christ, a political distinction but harmless.

Then, in 1972, the marches and riots of Bloody Sunday were spread over the news and Protestant and Catholic became very real words. Although a child of the Vietnam War, I was still in the cozy world of political black and white. As a high school drama queen, I was drawn to the poor benighted Protestants of Northern Ireland, only to be slapped in the face with a long ugly history and very complicated politics.

There was Ian Paisley, (Paisley, a town outside Glasgow in the Western Highlands of Scotland from whence his forefathers came) in clerical collar and always with pectoral cross, yelling about how the Catholics had to be controlled or they would enslave the world. And Gerry Adams, talking normal as milk, the representative of Sinn Fein, but in the beginning he was the mouthpiece for the provisional IRA, as narrow-minded and violent as the Ulster Unionist Party. He also scared the British so much that the BBC was not allowed to broadcast Adams’ voice. Both parties were blinded by their individual visions of national victimhood. In between were a disenfranchised Catholic minority and a brainwashed Protestant majority. The complaints were centuries old and, it appeared, intractable.

The most telling story for me was a little vignette that was played out across a no-go zone in Derry. Two boys were throwing rocks at each other, after their day together at school. So Michael yells over to Sean, “Sean, that’s me ma. I’ve got to go in for me tea. See ya tomorrow.” There was the soul of the Troubles , stubborn boys throwing rocks at each other because that was what they were taught to do. Those rocks were bombs and made the five counties of Northern Ireland a very dark and bloody ground. The Troubles of Northern Ireland were my political education. The victims were preyed upon by para-military thugs on both sides, no perfect good or bad. And I also learned to be ashamed of some Protestant voices. Ian Paisley prepared me for Pat Robertson.
  And I learned that even the most entrenched conflicts can be undone. In 1989 the impenetrable Wall came down in Berlin and Germany was unified. For a small time the undoable seemed doable. But that wall was only 50 years old; nothing could possibly be done about the 350 year old sorrow of Northern Ireland—unless, of course, the enabling power, Great Britain, had finally had enough. When it was no longer supportable for Britain to be in Northern Ireland, then Britain chose to leave, with its Protestant supporting army. But how? How could the earliest sins of the Empire be undone?
  Out of the Pine Tree State of Maine came George Mitchell, a retired American senator and the complete honest broker. Using the quiet and implacable negotiating techniques he honed in the Senate of the United States, Mitchell did the impossible and forged the Good Friday accords. Now, almost ten years later, the British Army is leaving Northern Ireland and there is a Target store in Belfast.
  Terrible sorrows can end, the sins of empire can be overcome and hope can prevail. All that needs done is the impossible, and that only takes the belief it can happen. The North is turning into a normal place and I can pray, with all honesty, for a untied Ireland.

 Erin Go Bragh.

that boy, those tigers

RpH #7

that boy, those tigers

What we see is what we know. First impressions are the engine of romance and mystery, and some history too. Just try to undo your first impression of an historical figure. Because of our first impressions, we recoil when we find out that Jefferson had a black bed slave and that FDR knew about the death camps and did nothing. I fell in love with Thomas More when I was 13 because he was Paul Scofield, with that perfect ruined face and endless voice. When I finally read More, I found a narrow minded pedant who didn’t want me to read the Gospels because he thought I wouldn’t understand them correctly.

In the realm of children’s picture books, image is everything and every picture tells a story. Pictures give us Madeline and Curious George and Gold Bug and everything else. In Goodnight Gorilla, Peggy Rathman tells us the entire story in pictures and the story is complete. But what happens when a great story is ruined by really bad pictures? I speak of The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, first published in 1899, the boy and the tigers.

Little Black Sambo, the very words make us cringe. The pictures from this book were used for at least 75 years to demean, denigrate and defame African Americans in particular and Africans in general. This is because the defamers didn’t spend the time to read the book. Point the first, Sambo is not from the mother continent of the human race, Africa, but from South India. The Imperial Brits, in their colonial madness, called anyone who could handle more than ten minutes in the full sun without suffering second degree burns a black. Point the second, Sambo, Mumbo and Jumbo are all smart. Mumbo runs a tight, thrifty household and she can handle the sudden appearance of a large amount of tiger ghee. Jumbo is so smart and hard working that he can afford to kit his son out in the latest style, that perfect green umbrella, those perfect red slippers and all the rest. Jumbo is also very resourceful, always traveling with great copper pots, ideal to collect anything of value that might come along, including tiger ghee. And then there is Sambo his own self.

There he is, walking down the road in the finery that his mother’s thriftiness and his father’s acumen have produced. Sambo is fearless and quick of wit. He loves the beautiful things he’s been given but he knows what matters—he has to come home alive. So he bribes the truly deadly and really stupid tigers and gets home with his skin intact. Jumbo collects the ghee, Mumbo cooks the pancakes and both are very proud of their brilliant boy. So what is not to like in this story? THE PICTURES.

The original pictures are dreadful, racist and badly drawn. How dow do we tease this good story away from really bad pictures? Simple, make new pictures. In 2007 an edition of Bannerman’s story was published with new illustrations and it made all the difference. Set in South India, Christopher Bing paints a beautiful and lush landscape to aid the rebirth of Bannerman’s words. Jumbo is tall and handsome and Mumbo is resplendent in a sari of orange and red. Sambo is a good looking boy with the sly eyes of trickster who can outwit tigers. Change the pictures and you can regain the story; all it takes is a new look through new eyes. Bing’s gorgeous illustrations of Bannerman’s story resurrects it for new readers. The first impression will change and someday, no one will remember that Sambo was a terrible insult. They will just think of a terrific story about a very smart boy and some very vain tigers.

what shall I read to my child?

RPH #3

read, read what shall I read to my child

I love selling books. It fulfills the two great desires in my black heart: to advise and to help. Although connected these are separate impulses. When my customers accept advice, it suggests that they think I might know something. When I can help them, it implies power. Guidance and power are a wonderful combination. But there is one more element that entices me to life as a bookseller: picture books.

Adult books, fiction in especial, don’t have pictures. Neither do the young adult novels, filled as they are with swooning teen vampire hunters. But when the reading life begins, illustration is the support of story. Beautifully drawn images draw the eye and through the eye, the mind. Not, mind you, the edgy monochromes that some publishers use to attract young hip parents; yes, the parents have to read the books, but they are not the audience. The person in the lap is the audience, and that person wants clear images with bright, contrasting colors, you know, like, Disney, Berenstain Bears or Dora.

Scooby Doo, Spider Man, Fancy Nancy and all the other character-driven 8”x8” tomes rule your life. You read them in the store and, when you buy them, you read them at home. You buy them because you ask your beautiful and brilliant 2–5 year olds what they want. Please forgive me if I sound shrill, but WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? You don’t ask that brilliant child if she wants to eat or if he wants a sweater or to go to the doctor. You don’t even ask your child if she wants to go to bed. No, you are the parent and, in all other ways, you take excellent care of your perfect child. It is only literature where you hand your adult wisdom over to the wild and easily influenced whims of your small, illiterate child. Dear Folks, they don’t know what they want. Why do this to yourselves?

I have not come here to berate you but to put you in your proper place. You are the mommie/daddie, you alone know what is best for your small folk. They will like what you like and, even if they don’t right now, they will soon. You are the source of all that is good and true; whatever you read to them will be what they want. So, you get to decide what is read at bedtime. It might be old stories like Blueberries for Sal or new wonders like The Library Lion and Niccolini’s Song. These and hundreds like them will make for deeply desired bedtime reading and they won’t rot your parental brain when you read them for the 100th time. But, asks the reasonable parent, how do I know what’s good and what ain’t? Well . . .

That’s me, that short, ball shaped grey haired woman, sitting on a step stool and sorting the 8”x8”s. I read the catalogues and the reviews because you don’t have time. The publishers send me galleys so I’ll flog their latest book. In other stores and other towns, I look different but, at heart, I’m a kids’ bookseller. Take advantage of my knowledge of children’s liturature and I’ll tell you the truth. Although I will sell you any book you ask for, I will never lie to you. And I am dedicated to your child wanting to read, almost as much as you are. Just ask me what you want and I’ll give you what you need.