My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
I wish I had more self-discipline, and read more heavy weight books, but what I find is that when I read heavy non-fiction these days, it falls over when I fall asleep. Mostly, I read the New Yorker, or catch up with my news online, while listening to NPR.
I don’t know how I got My Life in France, if I ordered it or if I bought it in B&N. I’ve had it for a while. We’ve always loved Julia Child; her programs were a hoot, and she was an accomplished woman who never took herself too seriously. I will never forget one time I saw her on a Martha Stewart Christmas Special; they were doing a tall Croquembouche, and at one point, Julia was not throwing on the caramelized sugar strings the way Martha wanted her to and she grabbed the little thrower-thing out of Julia’s hand to show her how. I gasped! That is like grabbing a spoon from the Queen of England, no! No! You can’t grab a spoon from Julia Childs! You can’t show Julia Childs how to do it, Martha, you BOW to Julia Childs!
Julia Childs, classy woman that she was, just watched Martha with fascination and never showed an ounce of annoyance.
The book is hilarious. While alive, she worked with her grandson, Alex Prud-homme, gathering correspondence – she was a copious letter writer, and people in those days kept their snail mail to refer back to, the way we keep e-mails. They sat in her sunny garden, and he would ask her a few questions, and off she would go, regaling him with stories of people, places, occasions, parties, and especially FOODS.
Julia Childs worked for the OSS in World War II, the forerunner to the CIA. Stationed in India, she met her husband, and after the war ended, they married. Stifled in her California life, and and Paul jumped at a chance to live overseas. Imagine – Paris! She had to adapt to a totally different way of life, totally different living space, a totally different way of shopping for food, and she had to learn to cook. Since she was in Paris, and because she is the woman she is, she signed up for cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu, where she worked hard to master the techniques to successfully produce the sauces and delicate flavors which makes French cuisine so delicious.
She also moves to Marseilles, to post-war Germany, and to Norway, and manages to produce two books, each of which took, literally, years to finalize, because of her attention to detail, and wanting to make sure that women using her books could understand exactly what to do, and when to do it.
This is a really fun book. I would have loved to know this adventurous, courageous woman, who meticulously tested every recipe for Mastering the Art of French Cooking and changed the lives of serious cooks in America. No, I have never cooked from her book. No, I don’t have her book. I have a Larousse Gastronomique, from which she worked to get the ‘true’ Frenchness of French cooking, but I don’t have any cook books by Julia. I have put out a hint, though, and I am hoping to get one for Christmas. 🙂 Not just for me – AdventureMan is making serious inroads into adventurous cooking. He has mastered blackened fish tacos, and seared tuna, woo hoooo! He is working on the ultimate cornbread. Just wait until I get him started on the quintessential French Onion Soup, or even – maybe – French bread!
We Need to Talk About Kevin: The Movie
“So what is your group reading?” I asked my friend as we talked my last evening in town, after a visit from Qatar, several years ago.
“I’m about to start something called ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ for Book Club,” she responded, “it’s like an Orange Award Winner.”
“What’s an Orange Award?” I asked
“I dunno,” she laughed, “but it’s on the list.” I was able to pick it up on my way to the airport.
A week later, I called her. “Are you reading ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin?'” I asked, and there must have been a note in my voice she recognized. “Why did you recommend this AWFUL book to me? It’s awful!”
“Can you put it down?” my friend asked.
“No! No, I can’t! But I can tell this isn’t going to end well.”
“Where are you?” she asked, and I told her.
“I’m right at the same place,” she said. “I hate it.”
We continued talking regularly as we read the book, a book which is truly, truly one of the scariest, most awful books I have ever read. Sometimes an author can make it so real, it’s almost too real, like the nightmare you can’t wake up from.
I passed the book along to some reading friends, and each one had the same reaction.
“WHY am I reading this? It’s awful!”
It IS awful, and, I suspect, so awful because if you have a child you think might have psychopathic tendencies, your life might be a nightmare. And you live with a sense that this isn’t going to end well, and it must be like waiting for the guillotine to fall and chop off your head.
What I didn’t know was that they’ve made it a movie. I haven’t seen any mention of it in the United States, but I’m told it’s opened in England.
The trailer captures some of the terror of the book. I’d suggest you read – or listen to – the book, by Lionel Shriver, before you see the movie. I honestly don’t know if I can go see it, it’s that scary for me. I reviewed We Need to Talk About Kevin, the book, here.
The Rule of the Harvest
I was talking about this with a Mormon friend, who told me they call this ‘The Rule of the Harvest,’ that it is one of life’s great – and most obvious – secrets, that what you give comes back to you ten-fold and more.
Pastor Rick Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church, and sends out these thoughts on a daily basis. The current theme is generosity in giving, as this is stewardship season.
Financial Fitness: Generosity Reaps Generosity
by Rick Warren
The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. Proverbs 11:24 (Msg)
If I sow generosity, it’s going to come back to me, and I’m going to reap generosity.
Every farmer knows this. A farmer has sacks of seed in his barn and he looks at his empty field. He doesn’t complain, “There’s no crop! I wish there was a crop!” He just goes out and starts planting seed. When you have a need, plant a seed.
It seems illogical that when I have a need, I should give.
Why did God set it up this way? Because God is a giver. He is the most generous giver in the universe, and God wants you to learn to be like him. He wants to build character in you.
The Bible says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce” (Proverbs 3:9 NLT). This is the principle of tithing. It’s the principle that says every time I make $100 — the first $10 goes back to God.
Tithing is an act of worship. We’re giving to God. We’re saying, “All of it came from you anyway.” God says, “Put me first in your life and watch what I do.” You may think you can’t afford to tithe, but the reality is, you can’t afford not to tithe.
If you have an interest in receiving his daily message, you can subscribe here.
Non-Profits: Something From Nothing
Here is what I love – people who get an idea, and make the world a better place because they have a vision and make a plan so that the vision can become a reality.
The Gulf Coast Citizens Diplomacy Council
I volunteer for the Gulf Coast Citizens Diplomacy Council. The one in Pensacola was started from nothing by a young woman with a vision, Gina Melancon Gissendanner. Her organization, her Board of Directors, her members and her resources deep within the Pensacola community have welcomed several hundred of the US Department of States International Visitor’s Leadership program delegates, bringing awareness – and dollars – to Pensacola.
When the visitors come into town, they have activities, tours and visits with professional counterparts that give them new strategies and resources to take back with them to their home countries. While here, they meet local people, shop in local stores and dine in local homes.
I love this program. From nothing, this young woman has created an organization with a far-reaching legacy. Thanks to her innovative and relevant programs, the international delegates leave here with happy memories of their time in Pensacola, and they go home and tell their friends and neighbors about their time here.
This weekend, we crossed paths with three more organizations, creating a better world, each in their own way.
The Master Gardeners
“You have to come to the sale at the County Extension Office!” our aqua aerobics friends told us. “It is so much fun, and they have Florida-hardy plants available at really good prices.”
OK! Finding ourselves awake and ready to hit the road early on a Saturday morning, we headed for the County Extension office, and the Master Gardener’s Sale. Now, I may get some of the details in this story wrong, but this is what I think I have been told. . . Several years ago, county extension offices (who answer questions about soil and growing things) found themselves deluged with questions, with too few people to answer them. They started a program – and I believe it is nation wide – training people in all aspects of growing things in the local area.
People who signed up for the training also signed up for a commitment to volunteer, and pass their knowledge along. Slowly, slowly, we have begun to know these people.
The sale was a lot of fun. While gardeners love a challenge, like growing flowers in Florida that aren’t supposed to grow here (like me, I am trying to grow bougainvillea, which isn’t really good at getting through cold winters, but maybe if I find the right protected spot, I can get it going and keep it going until it develops a deep root system and an ability to withstand the minimally cold winters we have in Pensacola) and they also love to share their knowledge.
There was an experienced, knowledgeable and enthusiastic Master gardener about every ten steps at the sale, and we could ask all the questions we ever wanted, and they just loved talking with us and giving all the answers. Free! There was no admission charged, the plants were reasonably prices (and many were very cool plants) and it was just a great place to pass a Saturday morning.
We’ve been told the Spring Sale is THE best sale – we can hardly wait.
When we left, AdventureMan said “Every one of them seemed so comfortable in their own skin.” I think he is right. I think working in the earth with your hands helps ground you. 🙂
The Master Gardeners are those people you find in Home Depot and Lowes, giving information on gardening in Florida, and at special booths at Arts Fests, in the schools, and working the beds at the County Extension office. They are volunteers. They do this work for the love of making the world a more beautiful place.
The Butterfly House
Our next stop was the Monarch Madness festival at the Panhandle Butterfly House in Navarre, where there was also an Arts Fest in progress. The volunteers at the Butterfly House all wore these terrific T-shirts with a caterpiller on the front and Monarch butterfly on the back. They had a great system, too, for getting a lot of people through the butterfly house in an organized and civil way, still giving people a lot of time to ask questions, and with lots of really cool activities for children to do, to help them understand the life cycle of these beautiful and short-lived creatures.
The Manna Food Pantries, Pensacola
I’m lucky. I work on a church committee where the chair brings in representatives from all the major charities in Pensacola to talk with us about what they do. The Manna Food Pantries is, in my humble opinion, a poster-child for how a non-profit should operate. Providing food for those who are hungry, for those going through tough times – and there are more than you might think – is truly part of God’s work for us here on earth. Manna Food Pantries collect and distribute food to the hungry. This morning, we had two Manna vans at the church and people were bringing in their full bags to donate.
It’s been a very tough year in Pensacola. The tough times just go on and on. You can prepare for tough times, save your money, gather your resources, but when tough times linger, sometimes those resources run dry. Manna has been faced with just such a time; resources are drying up, donations were down and the need is greater than ever. Manna hit the front page this week two days in a row, and is getting great coverage on radio, in the churches, in social groups – they are very very good at getting the message out, and the message is clear: We need your continued support, food, money, now more than ever.
They are brilliant at managing their volunteers, and many have been with them for years and years.
All these organizations are only able to exist because people believe in giving of their time and efforts in the hopes of making the world a little better, a little more beautiful, a little more peaceful, a little more hopeful – one person at a time.
Where are you going to put your efforts? What organizations do you support – and why?
Not-So-Real Housewives
Over Thai food, I confessed my guilty secret – I can’t help it, I watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the Real Housewives of New York. I expected a horrified response from my sweet smart niece, Professor Little Diamond, but she just laughed.
“Oh we all watch them,” she reassured me, “It’s like watching a train wreck, you are appalled, but you can’t look away.”
What makes me really, really nervous about these ‘real’ housewives is that I think that the Bravo station is carried in Qatar and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. While the more educated have travelled, and know that these ‘real’ housewives are not the norm, there may be many who think that this is the life of the American female.
I remember when I shocked my Qatari friends as I told them I was going home to take care of my Dad while my Mom had a knee replacement and spent a few weeks in rehab. They didn’t know we take care of our parents; they thought we just put them in grim warehouse like nursing homes. How did they know? From television, of course.
So you can understand I have a major concern that these women are representing us normal people in the homes of our friends in the Middle East. These women spend a lot of money on scanty clothing, these women have people who come in and do their make-up before a dinner party, these people have nannies taking care of their children (many of whom are really bratty) and they all seem to be designing handbags or creating make-up lines or (oh-no!) cutting records to try to get a singing career started.
Ask yourself this – who do you know in your own circles who would agree to have camera crews follow them around in their lives, filming their most intimate conversations? Who do you know in your circle who creates drama and conflict? Who do you know who needs the affirmation of an audience to believe her life is worth living? Who in your circle is addicted to plastic surgery or throws charity events to get attention? Those are the women they are filming.
You never see these women go to church. You rarely see them cooking up a normal dinner for their family. You don’t see any of them heading off to an 8 – 5 job. You don’t see them doing all the normal things we normal American housewives do (a lot like our sisters do in every country of the world) like laundry, running the kids to school, doctors appointments, soccer matches, paying the bills, scrubbing the floor, making appointments at the veterinarian, getting the car serviced, buying groceries, going to PTA, or doing their volunteer work. You don’t see them running over to their children’s house to babysit, or going to their exercise classes.
But then again, if they were doing all these things that us REAL housewives do, who would watch, LLLLOOOOOLLLLLLL! I understand there may be some sister Real wives series coming up from foreign countries. It will be interesting to see how their lives look.
Uyen Nichole Duong: Mimi and Her Mirror
I must be on a streak. I really wanted to like this main character, Mi Chou (Mimi) but I found her obsessive, impulsive, overly emotional, self-absorbed and boastful. Her strongest relationship in the book is with her three way mirror. She specifically claims not to be narcissistic, and I think the story tells us otherwise.
The book is supposed to be fictional, and I truly hope some parts are fictional, but the strengths of the book lie in the ‘coming to America’ experience, which she captures well. She has a strong eye for ironies, hypocrisies and cultural differences. Her beginnings are vague, as is often the case when an immigrant goes through the shell-shock of being cut off from their own culture and grafted into another. I believe the author drew strongly on her own experiences to write this part of the book, and to me, it is the strongest part.
Mi Chau and her family leave Viet Nam during the great evacuation, and are given a spot on the planes that should have gone to someone else. Her entire family, mother, father, sister and brother all escape together, leaving behind a beloved grandmother who refuses to leave. Their entry into the US goes smoothly. They are the first wave of Vietnamese, the lucky ones. They have support, they have jobs. They have lost their own world, and they struggle. All this is part of the normal immigrant experience.
Neither is it abnormal that the children thrive through their struggles, and achieve excellent eduations. What is distracting to me in the book is how Mimi bases her self worth first on her academic excellence, and later in life on what she owns, and on her status. She has accomplished so much, she owns high-status symbols, but she is miserable and her life is empty.
Is it because of her experience as she evacuates out of Vietnam? Is it a character defect? There are no meaningful relationships in her life, she lives an empty and soulless existence, focusing on work and accomplishment and status symbols. Her major problem, as I see it, is an unwillingness to connect, to step out of herself and see through other’s eyes.
It’s an interesting book. There are, in my opinion, better books about the Vietnamese coming-to-America experience, and one is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about immigrant Hmong, which is rich in cultural teachings, rich in relationships, and I still remember details more than ten years after I first read it. It is only available in Kindle format now, through Amazon, although they may have a used copy from time to time. Way better book than Mimi.
Anne Enright: The Gathering
What is it with my problem with Man Booker Award winners? The last one I remember is White Tiger, which we read in our Kuwait book group, and I hated. Actually, it was the main character I hated . . . and possibly that is what is happening with me and The Gathering, now that I think about it.
We meet Veronica, Irish, from a large Irish family, as she learns of the death of her brother Liam. Through claiming the body, preparing for the funeral, the funeral and the aftermath, we are there with Veronica as she whines and complains, as she disparages her family members while ignoring her own husband and family, and she drinks too much. She gets up at noon, and stays up all night, avoiding her husband. Her language is frightful, and her sexual episodes are crude and explicit . . . offensive, but maybe it is the utter distraught nature of a woman in the throes of the deepest grief?
Slowly, slowly, the story unfolds. For me, I was never sure what was truth and what was imagination, in terms of the story. Were the children abused, molested, neglected? Or are these the creative imaginings of a troubled woman? There seems to be a thread of insanity in the family – can we trust that she is a reliable narrator?
As little as I liked the main character – hmmmm, that seems to be a problem I am having a lot right now, or at least I’ve had a run of main characters I don’t like very well – I finished this book. I’m glad I read it so that I can talk about it if it comes up in a discussion, but it did not inspire or elevate me in any way, and I didn’t even feel a lot of compassion for the narrator.
Contagion
As we rushed into the house, we both headed immediately to our bathrooms to wash our hands. Twice. And I also washed my face.
Contagion is a very intelligent movie. It is scary, but not in the Friday the 13th kind of scary, or in the Night of the Living Dead kind of scary, although come to think of it, there were some elements in common with the original Night of the Living Dead. No, what makes Contagion scary is that it could happen so easily.
I had no idea that we touch our faces, on the average, of three to five times a minute, more than 3,000 times a day, and that with every surface we touch, we transfer (germs) (bacteria) (things that could make you sick) close to an entry to your body, like your nostrils and your mouth. Once you start thinking about NOT touching your face, you become aware of how often you touch your own face, unaware. Like flipping hair out of your eyes, or covering your mouth when you laugh, or a million other things like that. You become aware of all the things you touch between the time you wash your hands and touch your food. You think about who may have touched your fork, and how well it was washed.
For me, the scariest part of the movie, beyond how quickly the virus mutated and spread, was how quickly civil society broke down when cities were quarantined, when people were concerned food was growing scarce, when people thought they had to fight for survival. The rules for avoiding spreading the virus were not to meet, not to touch, to stay apart. It’s hard to help one another when those rules are in play, but those rules make it easier for those without rules to attack and take what they can.
I liked the music in the movie, too, very edgy.
Before I ever saw this movie, I heard an interview with the author on NPR. She was saying that when they came to her wanting to make this movie, she said “it cannot start in Africa. . . (there were a whole bunch of rules, which were hilarious because they were like every plot for a movie like this ever made) I knew I needed to see this movie, to see how it could be done and still be dramatic, and follow her rules.
There is one hilarious quote. A blogger in this movie gains enormous following. As he is tracking down one of the scientists for information, the scientist says to him:
Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation.
Excuse me, gotta go wash my hands again.
Jennifer Egan: A Visit From the Goon Squad
Amazon.com kept telling me I needed to read this book, so finally, I ordered it and waited a couple months before I was ready. I just finished a major project AND I caught a miserable cold, so what better time?
I loved this book. It had a lot going against it; you know irrational factors like how you feel when you have a cold and your sinuses are all stuffed up and your chest is tight? A Visit From the Goon Squad took me out of my misery. While it appears random, it is tightly plotted, and I loved seeing how different strands intertwined. I also loved the effects of the goon squad (no, I am not going to tell you anything specific) and I loved how technology drove differences in how different generations thought and acted.
The last act takes place in a future where (this makes total sense) there is a high value placed on “pure”, no tattoos, no swearing – it is truly hilarious, the lengths to which we will go to NOT be our parents. Babies have their own hand-helds, which is already happening. My eyes have been opened, watching our own 18 month old grandson working an iPad and iPhone. It’s amazing to me the aps that are created to entertain, divert and teach our little ones.
This is not a straight line book, so there are times I had to go back and read a section again to remind myself where I met this character before, and how he tied into the plot earlier. It is a fascinating creation, this book, and I would love to sit down for coffee with this author, and her outside-the-box kind of thinking.
Bad Grandparents: Disaster Averted
“No! No!” he shouted, and pushed away the spoon full of rice and beans which he normally loves. No. He wanted BaBa to walk him around the restaurant some more, showing him serapes and sombreros and gaudily crowing roosters.
‘More. More,’ he signed.
“It’s dinner time, time to eat,” GaGa said calmly, signing for ‘eat.’
“No! No! Done!” He may not have a large vocabulary, but Happy Baby knows how to communicate pretty clearly. BaBa goes to pick him up, but I say no, it’s dinner time. Very calmly. The shrieks begin, the arched back, the tears. Baba looks at me accusingly; what to do? I know we need to hold our ground, but it is so hard when the piercing shrieks start.
And then, a miracle. The waiter shows up with a small plate of whipped cream with chocolate sauce over it.
What self-respecting grandparent would allow a child to feast on whipped cream??
Desperate grandparents. Grandparents who can’t bear to hear him shriek. We let him eat the whipped cream, but he had to eat it on his own, with the spoon. He’s not very efficient with the spoon yet, so he couldn’t really get much. And, between tiny spoon tastes of whipped cream, BaBa and I have discovered he will eat beans and rice after all. He ate all the beans and rice, and only got a little of the whipped cream, but he was happy. And so were we.
On some deep level I feel like we have shirked our responsibilities, but oh, those shrieks . . .
When we are at home, we can ignore the shrieks. One time he was shrieking, and when we ignored him, he stopped, came closer and then flopped down and started shrieking again. We couldn’t help it, we just laughed. It was so hilarious. When he saw us laughing, he gave up and got involved with something else. He is so much fun. 🙂
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