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Going Off the Beaten Track in France

July 23, 2016 •

cahors_pont_valentreIf your heart is set on a pil­grim­age or walk­ing tour in France, and you don’t want to pay a com­mer­cial tour­ing com­pany, where can you look for help with travel plan­ning? It’s not always as easy as you might think.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple will hike the month-long trail across Spain’s Camino de San­ti­ago this year. Mean­while, only one-tenth as many pil­grims will tra­verse the French trails that lead to the SJPDP trail­head for the Camino Francés (from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port at the base of Pyre­nees and then across north­ern Spain.)

FB group for le Chemin du Puy

FB group for le Chemin du Puy

Because the audi­ence for French pil­grim­ages is 90% smaller, it takes skills and com­mit­ment to find rel­e­vant and timely resources to pre­pare for those walk­ing tours. The best guides have been writ­ten en français, and require at least inter­me­di­ate read­ing and com­pre­hen­sion skills in French, sup­ple­mented by Google Trans­late and other inter­ac­tive trans­la­tion dic­tio­nar­ies.

Scarce resources for niche travelers

The French trail sys­tem for camino pil­grims is off the beaten track, far from the larger or well-known cities.

In these out-of-the-way loca­tions, ser­vices are pro­vided by fam­ily-scale or very small busi­ness enter­prises, located in ham­lets with few other options. The travel sea­son is short, May to Sep­tem­ber. Change is a con­stant, given how hard it is to earn a liv­ing at such a highly sea­sonal busi­ness, with fund­ing com­ing from such a small pop­u­la­tion of tourists and vis­i­tors (many of whom are on very tight bud­gets.) As a result inns, cham­bres d’hôtes, gîtes and bistros that appeared to be thriv­ing last year may no longer be in busi­ness this year…

For peo­ple who want the com­fort of room reser­va­tions before arriv­ing in France, advance plan­ning is essen­tial. Luck­ily, my hik­ing buddy has done this before, knows the con­straints of the Chemin du Puy, and thus made sure to book room reser­va­tions months in advance. She also knew where to look for help.

Spe­cial­ized Face­book groups offer help­ful, some­times per­son­al­ized and up-to-the-minute resources for aspir­ing pèlerins — a god­send for Eng­lish speak­ers. For exam­ple, I’ve joined the FB group devoted to the Via Podi­en­sis (the Way of St. James that begins in Le Puy). Group mem­bers (past, present and future pil­grims) share pho­tos, pack­ing lists, rec­om­men­da­tions (or places to avoid), prayers and so on. On any given day there’s a lively Q‑and‑A con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place.

Some mem­bers pub­lish links to their blogs and travel mem­oirs. A few ded­i­cated vol­un­teers share detailed work­sheets with tips and links to lodg­ings, cafes, bistros, phar­ma­cies and other essen­tial resources for pil­grims.

These online travel resources are invalu­able for French pil­grim­ages, due to the fast-chang­ing nature of les héberge­ments.

When Facebook is not enough

I spend almost an hour most days keep­ing up with my FB groups’ lat­est updates, but now I want less “ran­dom” point­ers…  With just six weeks before fly­ing to France, I make time to work through a hand­ful of books/guides, and prac­tice my rusty French.

Here’s what’s on my active book­shelf right now:

  • From Here, You Can’t See Paris: Sea­sons of a French Vil­lage and Its Restau­rant, by Michael S. Sanders, © 2002
  • Miam Miam Dodo: Saint Jacques de Com­postelle, Le Puy-en-Velay / Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (GR 65), 2016 edi­tion
  • TopoGu­ides: Sen­tier vers Saint-Jacques-de-Com­postelle via Le Puy (GR 65, 651, 652)
  • Chemins de Com­postelle: Le Puy-en-Velay —> Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Miche­lin Guide), largely focused on maps
  • Advanced French, Hugo edi­tion, DK pub­lish­ing, © 2009
  • South­west France: Dor­dogne, Lot, Bor­deaux (Cado­gan Guide), © 1998

These are not books you’re likely to find on the shelf of the typ­i­cal book­seller. Even Ama​zon​.com may take a few weeks to deliver some of the French guides. Half the books on my list were sourced from over­seas book­sellers so I had to wait 2–4 weeks for their deliv­ery. If you want sim­i­lar books on your shelf, it pays to plan ahead…

Life in a tiny French vil­lage
Spe­cial­ized resource lists

Great topo maps
Good for ele­va­tion plan­ning

French lan­guage prac­tice
Big pic­ture overviews

Bon chemin à vous!

Spice Up Your Life with Slow Cooking

November 3, 2015 •

slow-cooking-cookbooksWhen the rains return and clouds build up, North­west­ern­ers talk about feel­ing cozy. The locals smile about the lumi­nous skies. It’s time to plunge into juicy nov­els, go on a Net­flix binge, or get back to last win­ter’s knit­ting project. Haul out the fleece and the down sweaters. Go for long walks in the rain.

For me the fall weather also sig­nals the sea­son for slow cook­ing.

On rainy week­ends like the one we’ve just had, I take the time for slow-paced foodie projects that will reward us with mouth-water­ing fla­vors:

  • Slow-cooked lentil stews brim­ming with root veg­eta­bles
  • Savory lentil soups à la Française
  • Roasted veg­eta­bles: car­rots, pota­toes, sugar pump­kin, sweet pota­toes, onions and leeks
  • Lamb cur­ries, North African style
  • Pot roasts and boeuf bour­guignon

When you embrace slow cook­ing, you learn to accept delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion, wel­com­ing the tan­ta­liz­ing aro­mas that per­me­ate your home as things sim­mer. From a yoga per­spec­tive it’s a prac­tice of “mind­ful­ness for the nose.”

Not Just for Vegetarians

Ours is not a veg­e­tar­ian house­hold. We love poul­try and tasty cuts of meat.

That said, we’ve begun a delib­er­ate quest to cut back on meat con­sump­tion, espe­cially red meats. Despite the self-pro­mo­tional denials by the meat pack­ing indus­try, we’re con­cerned by the lat­est sci­en­tific reports that link increased risk of can­cer to the con­sump­tion of red meats and processed meats.

As a health­ier alter­na­tive to red meats, we’ve begun exper­i­ment­ing with savory veg­e­tar­ian-inspired dishes. This in turn has dri­ven us to go look­ing for exotic spices, nutri­tious grains and fresher ingre­di­ents that will punch up the fla­vors and aro­mas.

Slow cook­ing is a great way to get the tasti­est results from dishes that rely on grains or dried beans. It’s also a very effec­tive way to be sat­is­fied with poorer cuts of meat, or smaller pro­por­tions of meat, rel­a­tive to the veg­etable com­po­nent.

New Discoveries

Star anise

Star anise

My inspi­ra­tion for this sea­son’s slow cook­ing comes from some cook­books that go well beyond the sim­ple plea­sures of Joy of Cook­ing (listed below.)

Another cat­a­lyst was last year’s quirky Christ­mas gift for my hus­band, a spice dis­cov­ery kit that has brought us year­long joy. (He loves cook­ing too.)

I’ve also been moti­vated by the ease of sourc­ing ultra fresh spices and herbs thanks to local and online mer­chants, includ­ing Ama­zon for hard-to-find ingre­di­ents from other coun­tries.

I’ve exper­i­mented with Le Puy lentils and red rice from Camar­gue, and have quickly used up my trial orders of these tra­di­tional French grains. So much bet­ter than dried out and bor­ing lentils or boxed rice from the gro­cery store chains! Now it’s time to find local stores with bulk sup­plies of these upscale ingre­di­ents.

My new fave source for dried herbs and freshly ground spice blends: Seat­tle’s World Spice Mer­chants (avail­able at Pike Place Mar­ket or online.) Thanks to Pen­zeys and World Spice Mer­chants I’ve been refresh­ing our spice stocks, throw­ing away jars with dubi­ous ingre­di­ents that are too old or faded. I’ve finally learned to ignore my moth­er’s voice whis­per­ing in my ear, “Hold on to your spices until the jars are empty…”

As a result our kitchen is redo­lent with pun­gent aro­mas from star anise, bay leaves, kaf­fir lime leaves, car­damom pods, freshly ground cur­ries, Ras el Hanout and other exotic ingre­di­ents.

These spices and ingre­di­ents lend them­selves to North and East African stews, North Indian style cur­ries, world fusion soups, and France-meets-Morocco dishes.

Some have even spiced up my bak­ing projects. Yes­ter­day’s dessert fea­tured Comice pears poached in a spicy honey syrup with star anise, vanilla beans, car­damom pods and cin­na­mon sticks. The syrup included freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice, along with a gen­er­ous quan­tity of cit­rus zests.

Next on my list of cook­ing exper­i­ments: Curry Bread Pud­ding with Car­damom Cream.

My adven­tur­ous hus­band is delighted to join me for the fun of explor­ing new spices and slow-cooked foods from dis­tant coun­tries.

Food for Thought

To learn how to com­bine these new-to-us ingre­di­ents in pleas­ing ways, I’ve relied on cook­books, sup­ple­mented by online research:

  • Splen­did Soups by James Peter­son (fea­tures recipes from around the world)
  • Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan
  • Patri­cia Wells at Home in Provence by Patri­cia Wells and Robert Fré­son
  • Euro­pean Peas­ant Cook­ery by Elis­a­beth Luard
  • Love Soup by Anna Thomas
  • Mourad New Moroc­can by Mourad Lahlou

The Inter­net has been a great source of authen­tic recipes from coastal African coun­tries, Afghani and Mid­dle East­ern-inspired dishes. We’re still enjoy­ing Thai cui­sine, thanks to my hus­band’s child­hood there, but we’re rel­ish­ing this oppor­tu­nity to broaden our reper­toire.

We wish you the savory joys of new dis­cov­er­ies. Happy cook­ing!

Learning Spanish Then versus Now

March 10, 2015 •

Last month I began one of my big projects for 2015, relearn­ing Span­ish. It’s a les­son in humil­ity, but I’m encour­aged by how many options there are for moti­vated learn­ers will­ing to prac­tice at home.

Pre-digital Lessons

Mount Holyoke College gates

Mount Holyoke Col­lege gates

When I attended col­lege, per­sonal com­put­ers had not yet been invented. There were no Macs, no iPods or iPads, no YouTube or online com­mu­ni­ties — no dig­i­tal devices to serve as end­lessly patient lan­guage tutors.

In those days the empha­sis of Span­ish instruc­tion tended to be read­ing pro­fi­ciency. You went to Spain for the sum­mer or did “junior year abroad” as a more prac­ti­cal way to learn to speak like a native.

Col­lege classes were con­ducted in Span­ish, once past the intro­duc­tory level, but time con­straints pre­vented teach­ers from coach­ing stu­dents on how to improve pro­nun­ci­a­tion or con­ver­sa­tional skills.

We got coach­ing or cor­rec­tions as a class, rather than as indi­vid­u­als. No one taught me where to place my tongue to roll my R’s or RR’s in the Span­ish man­ner. Any native His­panic speaker knew instantly that French was my pri­mary sec­ond lan­guage.

Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, there was no at-home tech­nol­ogy to rein­force lis­ten­ing, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, or sen­tence con­struc­tion in a for­eign lan­guage. We were lim­ited to hand­writ­ten exer­cises, lan­guage labs and audio-tapes (ana­log, not dig­i­tal).

Pre-digital language labs

Pre-dig­i­tal lan­guage labs

Lan­guage labs were spe­cial class­rooms with ana­log A‑V equip­ment, avail­able only at presched­uled times.

Instruc­tional focus was on the basics: vocab­u­lary drills, gram­mar lessons and writ­ten Span­ish. We learned to read and write in Span­ish, to under­stand its logic and gram­mar; how­ever, we strug­gled to use our Span­ish in real-world set­tings. Our con­ver­sa­tional skills lagged far behind…

I could read Don Quixote or Cien Años de Soledad, but I could not dis­cuss music or cur­rent events with native speak­ers, at their nor­mal pace.

My Span­ish-speak­ing hey­day was a self-guided tour of Spain with my hus­band. We rented a car, nav­i­gated across the coun­try, chose where to stay with the help of a Span­ish-only guide­book, booked hotel rooms by phone, ordered meals off Span­ish-only menus, shopped, and thor­oughly enjoyed the expe­ri­ence. Estábamos muy con­tentos.

21st Century Language Lessons

Multimedia Spanish lessons

Mul­ti­me­dia Span­ish lessons

Fast for­ward to 2015, and my Span­ish vocab­u­lary has evap­o­rated, for lack of use. My lan­guage recall is pathetic.

Until last month, I could not remem­ber how to con­ju­gate the most basic verbs — but I still under­stand the rules for gen­der match­ing, the ratio­nale behind the tenses, or when to use the verbs ser, estar or tener. The logic of the lan­guage, but not its con­tent.

As I work through my mul­ti­me­dia Span­ish lessons, I’ve noticed that my lis­ten­ing skills are bet­ter, more nuanced than before. I hear and under­stand more clearly. As a result, I’m get­ting a lot of ben­e­fit from the expen­sive Liv­ing Lan­guage course I pur­chased from Ama​zon​.com last month.

Who knows why? Have I got­ten bet­ter at lis­ten­ing as I’ve matured?

Per­haps there’s less pres­sure from my pri­vate dig­i­tal tutor, ever patient with my mis­takes. I can repeat a sen­tence or a phrase as often as I want — some­thing that was not prac­ti­cal with ana­log-only audio-tapes.

What I notice most is how clumsy my tongue has become, for lack of prac­tice. There’s a big gap between the sounds I “hear” in my brain and what comes out of my mouth.

Dur­ing drills my tongue feels slow and clumsy, eas­ily tripped up by the chal­lenge of rolling my R’s like the native speak­ers, or try­ing to remem­ber to pro­nounce the V like a soft B. My tongue gets stuck, I floun­der, and the dig­i­tal instruc­tor is already onto the next drill activ­ity. It’s hum­bling, but only my cats are lis­ten­ing…

My brain can “see” the words as they would be writ­ten, but my tongue rarely dances from one word to the next at the pace required by the prac­tice drills.

I’m find­ing some very help­ful YouTube videos that explain how to posi­tion the tongue to trill that R. I’ve tried a cou­ple, and already it’s get­ting bet­ter.

As I prac­tice and re-learn this begin­ner-level Span­ish, I find myself observ­ing the many dif­fer­ences between then and now: how I learned Span­ish at col­lege, and the options avail­able to me today, thanks to YouTube, my Mac, iPhone and iPad, a CD player in my car, and the Inter­net for addi­tional drills and prac­tice.

I’m learn­ing how to use the iPad key­board dif­fer­ently, in order to access the accented let­ters such as ñ.

As for con­tin­u­ing ed classes, I’ll wait until ready for a con­ver­sa­tional class.

In the mean­time, by the time I get to Mex­ico next month, I will know how to count to cien and con­ju­gate the com­mon verbs, in the present tense. I’ll have a 100-word vocab­u­lary, the most basic words. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

¡Estu­pendo!

Now if I could only say perro…

Fairy Tales for Grownups

August 13, 2013 •

Sum­mer vaca­tion is a great time to indulge in some won­der­ful books. This sum­mer I’ve been immersed in two new fairy tales for peo­ple who rel­ish worlds where mag­i­cal things hap­pen: Cin­na­mon and Gun­pow­der, by Eli Brown, and The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker.

cinnamon-and-gunpowder

golem-and-jinni

Both sto­ries are highly orig­i­nal, witty and immer­sive. The writ­ing style is lyri­cal in both nov­els, but the authors are writ­ing for edu­cated read­ers. Con­sider this pas­sage:

It is no great secret that cook­ing is, in essence, seduc­tion. As with amour, plea­sure does not bloom in the body so much as in the mind.… The most rar­efied tastes on the unpre­pared tongue may be ignored, or worse, mis­un­der­stood. How then is the mind pre­pared for del­i­cacy?

—Cin­na­mon and Gun­pow­der, by Eli Brown © 2013.

I found The Golem and the Jinni to be espe­cially atmos­pheric — much like Night Cir­cus — in its re-cre­ation of turn-of-the-cen­tury New York. You can almost feel the win­try cold or sod­den, oppres­sive  humid­ity of sum­mer in the Lower East Side. Or hear the cacoph­ony of recent immi­grants strug­gling to find work and make a place for them­selves in this new world.

That said, as a foodie, I found myself savor­ing the meals pre­pared by the mas­ter chef who was kid­napped by a pirate in Cin­na­mon and Gun­pow­der. He was strug­gling with a lim­ited set of fresh ingre­di­ents, no decent stove and few cook­ing tools (given the lim­ited gal­ley resources of a pirate ship under sail). It’s an unusual take on the pirate-cap­tures-inno­cent-vic­tim story, with a roman­tic twist at the end.

These are delight­ful sto­ries, and I highly rec­om­mend both books to peo­ple who rel­ish adven­ture sto­ries chock full of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. For sum­mer read­ing, or any time of the year.

The Pain of Afghan Women

January 6, 2013 •

Do you recall this photo, a young refugee whose pierc­ing gaze con­fronted read­ers of National Geo­graphic dur­ing the Soviet Union’s inva­sion of Afghanistan? Her image became an endur­ing icon of that war’s hor­rific impact on Afghan fam­i­lies and orphans.

Photo of young Afghan refugee from cover of National Geographic

© 1984 National Geo­graphic

For many peo­ple this photo sym­bol­izes the suf­fer­ing of peo­ple pow­er­less to pro­tect them­selves or loved ones from the hor­rors of war­fare, cor­rupt gov­ern­ments or greedy war­lords.

Afghan Women

Then as now few peo­ple are as pow­er­less as Afghan women and girls. For cen­turies their tra­di­tional cul­ture has oppressed women. All aspects of their lives are utterly con­trolled by the men in their fam­ily, bound by the con­straints of a cru­elly nar­row-minded honor code.

Girls and women live in fear of say­ing or doing any­thing, even unwit­tingly, that might bring dis­honor to the fam­ily or tribe. The small­est infrac­tion could trig­ger an honor killing if the fam­ily or tribe decides it’s war­ranted. Hus­bands, fathers, broth­ers, uncles — all have the power to kill an Afghan woman whose behav­ior is seen as dis­hon­or­ing the fam­ily.

The offenses that might merit ston­ing are unimag­in­able to some­one who has grown up in a per­mis­sive West­ern cul­ture. Dis­play­ing one’s face, arms or ankles to a stranger; mak­ing eye con­tact, talk­ing while unsu­per­vised to a male who is not a fam­ily mem­ber — the list goes on and on.

Photo of women in burqa

Women in burqa

For most Afghan tribes the best way to avoid the risk of dis­honor is to pre­vent women and girls above a cer­tain age from being seen by any man out­side their fam­ily. Hence the burqa, a shroud-like gar­ment which cov­ers the form from head to toe, con­sid­ered manda­tory for hon­or­able women when doing errands away from home.

Most Afghan women are trapped inside the home, chained to the kitchen and an unend­ing cycle of chores. Once a girl is deemed old enough to marry (as young as 9 in some fam­i­lies), she can no longer leave her home unless escorted by a male fam­ily mem­ber. If need be, sons escort their moth­ers to the bazaar for shop­ping.

Is Education the Solution?

This seques­tra­tion of women makes it very dif­fi­cult to intro­duce West­ern-style reforms such as edu­ca­tion, let alone the right to vote or hold office. West­ern­ers have tended to believe the solu­tion lies in build­ing schools and libraries, fund­ing teach­ers, and cre­at­ing edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for girls.

The say­ing among phil­an­thropists goes, “Edu­cate the girls and the whole fam­ily ben­e­fits. Edu­cate the boys, and they’ll leave home to emi­grate to places with bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties.” This is cer­tainly what my friends and I have believed. We were enthralled with the hope­ful pos­si­bil­i­ties raised by books like Three Cups of Tea, the mis­sion to edu­cate girls in order to improve the soci­ety in which they live.

Just build­ing schools and libraries — “build it and they will come” — may be doomed to fail­ure, because it ignores the cul­tural real­i­ties that keep Afghan women trapped in poverty and illit­er­acy. In My Father’s Coun­try, a thought-pro­vok­ing book by an Afghan woman who moved to the US at age 15, raises chal­leng­ing ques­tions:

So much atten­tion is paid to build­ing schools for girls, but their men refuse to allow them to go. In a cul­ture where women are so depen­dent on the good­will of men, how can we expect to move wom­en’s rights for­ward with­out get­ting the men to bring them to the new age of lib­erty and democ­racy?

— Saima Wahab, In My Father’s Coun­try, © 2012

Saima’s book tells her jour­ney from Kabul to Port­land (and back to Afghanistan), with an empha­sis on the impact of Pash­tun cul­ture on every­day fam­ily life.

One Woman’s Perspective

Like Shar­bat Gula, the young Afghan girl in the iconic photo, Saima Wahab lost her father to the Sovi­ets. Like her she was forced to flee with her fam­ily to Pak­istan when their vil­lage came under con­stant attack from Russ­ian bomb­ing.

Unlike the orphaned Shar­bat Gula, Saima was lucky enough to have rel­a­tives who could spon­sor her emi­gra­tion to Amer­ica, along with two sib­lings, in the late 1980s. Join­ing her uncles’ house­hold in Port­land, Saima learned Eng­lish, attended school and landed a full-time job.

Despite liv­ing in Amer­ica, her uncles con­tin­ued to enforce the Pash­tun way of life and its restric­tions on women. Their rules were so con­fin­ing that Saima even­tu­ally rebelled and moved out of their house, once she earned enough money to pay rent.

As one exam­ple, phone calls from male class­mates could send Saima’s uncles into a frenzy, falsely accus­ing her of provoca­tive or licen­tious behav­ior despite her efforts to avoid any­one’s notice. The fact that these male callers were gen­er­ally seek­ing home­work help did not excuse her behav­ior in her uncles’ eyes, one of whom was a col­lege pro­fes­sor.

In 2004 Saima was recruited as a trans­la­tor by a mil­i­tary con­trac­tor (there were very few flu­ent Pashtu-Eng­lish speak­ers at that time). This enabled her to return to Afghanistan, where Saima served as an inter­preter for US mil­i­tary com­man­ders in charge of recon­struc­tion mis­sions and liai­son to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. While work­ing in Afghanistan, Saima took advan­tage of every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­nity to meet and talk with Afghan women in their homes and vil­lages.

Saima’s life story and her inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with Afghan men and women make her book, In My Father’s Coun­try, a com­pelling insid­er’s look at the cul­tural real­i­ties and con­flicts of con­tem­po­rary Afghanistan. It’s well worth read­ing by any­one who wants to under­stand what life is like in today’s Afghanistan.

Sadly, the book does not offer any pat answers to the ques­tion of how best to help Afghan women. It raises trou­bling ques­tions about the effi­cacy of today’s well-inten­tioned NGO and phil­an­thropic approaches. (It also reveals the per­va­sive cor­rup­tion within the Afghan gov­ern­ing struc­ture.)

What it does make clear, how­ever, is that any last­ing solu­tion must be forged by peo­ple who truly under­stand the cul­ture and its mores, who oper­ate from within the sys­tem to pro­mote changes through solu­tions that will pro­voke less resis­tance from the peo­ple with power over wom­en’s lives.

If only all we had to do was build libraries and schools to make a dif­fer­ence to these pow­er­less women…

Feasting on a Good Book

November 25, 2012 •

Over the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day I’ve been read­ing a gor­geous new book, John Sat­ur­nal­l’s Feast, by Lawrence Nor­folk. The hard­bound ver­sion is a feast for the eyes, lav­ishly designed and illus­trated, unlike most nov­els these days (open­ing pages of chap­ter 1 shown here).

john-saturnall-feast-opening-pages

Each chap­ter opens with an old-style wood­cut illus­tra­tion, fol­lowed by a dropped cap­i­tal on the fac­ing page. The dropped cap­i­tals are styled in a way that’s rem­i­nis­cent of illu­mi­nated man­u­scripts — a bit of a design con­ceit, given that the story is set in the first half of the 17th cen­tury, rather than the medieval period. (The story opens 5 years after the Pil­grims landed at Ply­mouth Rock.)

Sur­pris­ingly, this book is printed in 2 col­ors on every page — a fea­ture you don’t see in very many eBooks… Head­ers, foot­ers (page num­bers) and ding­bats appear in red, along with a dropped cap­i­tal at the begin­ning of each chap­ter.

saturnall-feast-on-kindleEven the Kin­dle ver­sion has a bit more visual panache than usual, as shown in this photo of page 1.

A Story to Savor

John Sat­ur­nal­l’s Feast is any­thing but action-packed pulp fic­tion, intended to kill time on long plane rides. The story is set at a time when life moved at a slower pace, when jour­neys took place on foot or on horse­back. When meals took hours and many peo­ple to pre­pare.

This is a book to savor. The words and imagery are dense, com­plex and juicy. They reward slow, atten­tive read­ing.

And that’s appro­pri­ate because the story touches on sen­sory themes — sights, smells, tastes — such as gar­den­ing, cook­ing (slow cook­ing over wood fires), herbal lore, rural vis­tas, the sounds and smells of wood­lands — or the stink of 17th cen­tury san­i­ta­tion.

The author’s lan­guage is lush, emu­lat­ing older styles of sto­ry­telling from cen­turies ago. The story takes you back in time, back to the days when the Eng­lish coun­try­side was cov­ered with thatch-roofed cot­tages and dense wood­lands.

John scram­bled up and down the ter­races and banks, hunt­ing out the secret breaks in the thick­ets or crawl­ing through hol­lows woven from sharp-spined stems. Black­ber­ries lured him into sun-pricked cham­bers. Old byways closed and new ones opened, drifts of net­tles surg­ing for­ward then dying back.

If you can find time dur­ing the busy hol­i­day sea­son to relax, sit by the fire, maybe with your favorite glass of wine — this is a book to keep close at hand.

Slow cook­ing, slow read­ing — for a life well-savored.

Books and Places of the Heart

September 9, 2012 •

We’ve been vaca­tion­ing by the Cape Cod seashore, at a fam­ily home over­look­ing a tidal marsh and a bay watered by the Nan­tucket Sound.

Poponessett Bay in early September

On sum­mer days this bay is alive with kayaks, sail­boats, power­boats and jet skis, echo­ing with the sounds of fam­i­lies at play. After Labor Day plea­sure boats drowse at docks and moor­ings, except for after­noons and week­ends when the locals reclaim their bay. By now the calls of osprey, gulls and great blue herons have replaced man-made sounds from boat­ing and water sports.

We rel­ish sail­ing and kayak­ing these waters in the golden light of Sep­tem­ber. But when fog or rain rolls in, we turn to books and mag­a­zines. Quiet moments shel­ter­ing from the rain, lux­u­ri­at­ing in “slow read” books, tales that unfold slowly. We find our­selves set­ting aside pulp fic­tion bet­ter suited for cross-coun­try flights. Instead we savor mem­oirs and sto­ries with imagery and prose that delight the mind’s eye and charm the tongue like a multi-lay­ered fine wine. Well-crafted writ­ing that takes time and atten­tion to be appre­ci­ated.

Two such books have enchanted me this vaca­tion:

  • Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Paja­mas and Found Hap­pi­ness by Dominique Brown­ing
  • Sloop: Restor­ing My Fam­i­ly’s Wooden Sail­boat by Daniel Robb

Both are writ­ten by New Eng­land authors fac­ing per­sonal rein­ven­tion and dis­cov­ery in midlife, what Slow Love’s author calls “the inter­tidal years.”

Slow Love, A Life Story to Savor

Dominique Brown­ing is the for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of the now defunct House & Gar­den mag­a­zine. In 2007 she was laid off from her job when Condé Nast decided to fold the mag­a­zine. Slow Love describes her strug­gles with self-esteem, iden­tity and loss of pur­pose after being thrust abruptly into unem­ploy­ment. Her pain is com­pounded by more uni­ver­sal midlife griefs:

At the start of this jour­ney, all I could think about was loss: lost work; my chil­dren who had left home; my par­ents slip­ping into their last years. Lost love, on top of it all, because I was finally forced to con­front the fail­ure of a rela­tion­ship that had pre­oc­cu­pied me for seven years.

— From Slow Love by Dominique Brown­ing

After los­ing her NYC salary, Dominique reluc­tantly sells her “For­ever House” just out­side Man­hat­tan. She moves to a mod­est cot­tage on the Rhode Island shore where she learns how to cre­ate a slower, sim­pler but richer life. Liv­ing sim­ply and in a less expen­sive place enables her to live on what she earns as a writer, blog­ger and con­sul­tant while focus­ing atten­tion on the things, peo­ple and places that she loves. She quips: “Slow love is about know­ing what you’ve got before it’s gone.”

Dominique has crafted a life filled with sim­pler joys: gar­den­ing, cook­ing, read­ing, swim­ming, kayak­ing, and cher­ish­ing moments spent with friends and fam­ily. Today she shares the joys of “her inter­tidal years” via her blog, Slow Love Life.

This is one of many pas­sages in Slow Love that spoke to me:

The edge of the sea has many voices, … some boom­ing, some fran­tic, some crash­ing. But the voice I respond most deeply to, lis­ten most closely to, is one that whis­pers: a susurra­tion of water rif­fling across clack­ing stone, min­gled with breezes catch­ing in the high grass of the dunes. After years of first find­ing and then finally hear­ing and under­stand­ing what that voice can teach me, I have just begun to accept the relent­less flux that is the con­di­tion of my life, of all our lives. Not young, not old; not betrothed, not alone; think­ing back, look­ing for­ward; not bro­ken, not quite whole any­more, either. But present. These are my inter­tidal years.

— From Slow Love by Dominique Brown­ing

Sloop

Although Sloop is also a mem­oir, it tells a dif­fer­ent story: what it’s like to live and work on Cape Cod while learn­ing how to restore a clas­sic wooden sail­boat that has been in the author’s fam­ily since 1939. The boat at the heart of this story is a “twelve-and-a-half” sloop designed by Her­reshoff — a clas­sic Amer­i­can trea­sure in the eyes of wooden boat lovers.

Herreshoff 12 and 1/2 sloopLike many peo­ple who live year round on Cape Cod, author Daniel Robb cob­bles together a liv­ing from mul­ti­ple sources; in his case, from car­pen­try, roof­ing, writ­ing, teach­ing and act­ing stints in nearby sum­mer reper­tory the­aters.

At first he under­takes the sail­boat restora­tion project as an oppor­tu­nity to earn some money. Daniel Robb pitches the idea of restor­ing his fam­i­ly’s vin­tage sail­boat and writ­ing about the expe­ri­ence to his pub­lisher, who approves the project con­cept.

But the quest to restore the derelict boat quickly becomes much more than a way to spend time and earn some much-needed income. Even when he’s “off Cape” earn­ing money, the author is pre­oc­cu­pied with the chal­lenges pre­sented by the sail­boat restora­tion project.

We learn that “it takes a vil­lage” to restore a 1939 wooden sail­boat. It demands resource­ful solu­tions and access to raw mate­ri­als that are hard to come by. Trips to marine spe­cialty sup­pli­ers in New Bed­ford, places that were thriv­ing 150 years ago before steam dis­placed ships pow­ered by wind.

The author spends hours over tea and cof­fee, seek­ing advice from local boat­builders and arti­sans who under­stand the art and sci­ence of build­ing ocean-wor­thy craft from wooden com­po­nents and met­als that resist cor­ro­sion. Peo­ple who know mod­ern work-arounds when orig­i­nal equip­ment or mate­ri­als can no longer be found. Robb learns through trial and error, some­times the hard way — for exam­ple, what it takes to bend wood into curv­ing frames and ribs.

I loved the story because it takes place not far from our Cape Cod home, in set­tings that we’ve vis­ited with our broth­ers and sis­ters. My hus­band loved it in part because he owns a mod­ern repro­duc­tion of a 12 1/2 sloop; his 10-year-old Bul­l’s Eye fea­tures a hull based on tem­plates designed by Her­reshoff.

We both loved Sloop for its insights into rela­tion­ships, crafts­man­ship, exper­tise shar­ing, and the wry ways in which New Eng­lan­ders offer advice and crit­i­cism. It’s a “down home” kind of story. Per­fect for a rainy day.

Do Animals Have Language Skills?

August 17, 2012 •

I read a fas­ci­nat­ing newslet­ter this morn­ing, writ­ten by a sci­en­tist who has con­ducted research to prove that ani­mals have well-devel­oped lan­guage skills. As the owner of two cats with obvi­ous social and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, I know that pets try very hard to com­mu­ni­cate with their human fam­ily mem­bers. Ani­mals can “speak,” if only we have the hearts and minds to “hear” them.

Pro­fes­sor Con Slo­bod­chikoff has con­ducted exten­sive research into the vocal­iza­tions of prairie dogs. His find­ings indi­cate that prairie dogs use a vari­ety of sounds to alert each other about poten­tial dan­gers from preda­tors approach­ing their bur­rows.

These ani­mals use dif­fer­ent and dis­tinc­tive sounds to warn about dogs, coy­otes, hawks, humans or other poten­tial preda­tors. They use spe­cial sounds to cat­e­go­rize their alerts based on whether the preda­tor is approach­ing on foot or from the air. His research also sug­gests that their alarm calls include sig­nals about prox­im­ity or the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of indi­vid­ual preda­tors, such as dif­fer­ent col­ors. His book on what he has learned about ani­mal lan­guage will appear later this fall: Chas­ing Doc­tor Doolit­tle, Novem­ber 2012.

While my cats have a rel­a­tively lim­ited vocab­u­lary, Pro­fes­sor Slo­bod­chikoff writes that some herd­ing dogs have learned sev­eral thou­sand words, and can dis­tin­guish between words they know and unknown words based on their actions in research tri­als.

Pro­fes­sor Slo­bod­chikoff also spec­u­lates on the pos­si­bil­ity of future pet-owner trans­la­tion devices, so we can more clearly under­stand each other. There are many poten­tial appli­ca­tions, from the mun­dane to the impor­tant: from “Clean up my lit­ter­box, or I’ll leave some­thing nasty on your floor” to alerts about spe­cific intrud­ers or warn­ing a fam­ily mem­ber that the dog can smell can­cer cells (which research has proven is pos­si­ble).

I look for­ward to the day when pets and own­ers can under­stand each other, so pets will feel less inclined to act out and mis­be­have when their own­ers per­sist in ignor­ing what the pet wants to con­vey.

For Women Who Want to Reinvent Themselves

June 14, 2012 •

Not every­one is blessed with a tech-savvy father, as I am. In the past half hour he’s talked about his Face­book time­line, shar­ing pho­tos via Drop­box, and using social net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies as a means of help­ing oth­ers. The fact that my dad is over 85 makes his famil­iar­ity with these options even more impres­sive.

But what really struck me is his lov­ing con­cern for my sis­ter and her friends, and how they might go about rein­vent­ing them­selves pro­fes­sion­ally. He is con­cerned not just for my sister’s cir­cle of friends, but because he rec­og­nizes that their chal­lenges are shared by hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of other Amer­i­can women.

These are women in the prime of their lives: expe­ri­enced, vibrant, ener­getic, full of ideas, with a pas­sion­ate desire to con­tribute to their fam­ily and com­mu­ni­ties — and woe­fully under- or unem­ployed. Where’s the JOBS Act for them?

They exited the work­force in order to spend the past 10 or 15 years rais­ing their fam­i­lies. Nowa­days their kids are increas­ingly inde­pen­dent (except for trans­port and access to cash or credit cards!) This cre­ates the pos­si­bil­ity for these stay-at-home moms to re-enter the work­force, to con­tribute their wis­dom and capa­bil­i­ties in exchange for some form of com­pen­sa­tion.

But there’s a big catch…

These women have time and energy to invest in the next chap­ter of their career, but they fail to con­nect with today’s employ­ers, so they can’t land jobs that stick. Sadly, their tech­ni­cal skills are years out of date… If they’re lucky enough to get a job inter­view, they may find them­selves 10–15 years older than the hir­ing man­agers, who prob­a­bly lack the will­ing­ness or time to invest in retrain­ing Boomer women for today’s require­ments.

Temp­ing is an option, albeit less than ideal, but they’re at a gen­er­a­tional dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to recent col­lege grad­u­ates and the “dig­i­tal natives” who pre­dom­i­nate in many temp agen­cies. They may not under­stand the rules of engage­ment when it comes to temp agen­cies and the con­tracts between agen­cies and their clients.

Seek­ing mean­ing and self-esteem (not to men­tion com­pan­ion­ship, a trim­mer fig­ure, or a daily dose of endor­phins), they flock to yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes…

My sis­ter tells sto­ries of how her friends try to help or advise each other, after class or in cof­fee shops. Dad won­ders if there’s an online com­mu­nity that would enable them to help each other more effec­tively. His take is that there’s lots of talk, but no fol­low-through (for lack of a pro­duc­tive struc­ture to their con­ver­sa­tions?)

When asked, I was­n’t able to name spe­cific online com­mu­ni­ties where women pro­vide con­struc­tive advice and men­tor­ing to those who want to re-enter the work­force after a multi-year absence… I also sus­pect, at least for this gen­er­a­tion of Boomer women, that social bonds and trust are crit­i­cal; few are likely to reach out to strangers for help when it comes to things that touch on self-esteem. For chal­lenges like this their rela­tion­ships would need to have a real-world ground­ing before being extended into a vir­tual com­mu­nity.

Women Helping Women, Like a Book Club

business-model-you-book

But I did have a prac­ti­cal idea that my sis­ter and her friends could do at very lit­tle cost. They could meet together once or twice a month, like a book club, and com­mit to work together on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with the aid of a book called Busi­ness Model You.

At each meet­ing they would work together or sep­a­rately through a set of career “rein­ven­tion exer­cises,” help­ing each other as sound­ing boards and cheer­lead­ers. Each ses­sion would focus on one aspect of their per­sonal value can­vas, as shown below (thanks to www​.Busi​ness​Mod​e​lYou​.com). Ide­ally, some­one would facil­i­tate each ses­sion.

Business-Model-You-canvas-concept

They could use the rec­om­mended activ­i­ties and check­lists in the best-sell­ing book, Busi­ness Model You, as a per­sonal roadmap.

At the end of the process, they are likely to end up with at least one career con­cepts that they could val­i­date.

Peo­ple who are seri­ous about explor­ing new career vis­tas and are will­ing to be intro­spec­tive should def­i­nitely buy the book.

Ddis­clo­sure: I was a con­tribut­ing co-author, along with hun­dreds of other insight­ful and tal­ented peo­ple around the world.

Do you know any­one who has worked with women in this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not talk­ing about pro­fes­sional life coaches, but women help­ing women to rein­vent them­selves…

Kindle: Now at the Public Library

October 3, 2011 •

Despite being an avid reader, I’ve been a late­comer to the Kin­dle. A year ago I tried a Kin­dle DX but gave it up for var­i­ous rea­sons.

Amazon’s recent announce­ment of a Kin­dle beta test with pub­lic libraries rekin­dled my inter­est (so to speak), so I decided to try again — with the Kin­dle app for iPad.

Here’s my ini­tial take on bor­row­ing an ebook from the King County Library. It’s con­ve­nient, but not with­out issues for peo­ple who love the way books are designed…

A Match Made in Heaven?

My first attempt to bor­row a Kin­dle for­mat book from the pub­lic library went nowhere: it was too early — the local library had not yet updated its sys­tems for Kin­dle. On a sec­ond attempt a few days ago, I found the “entry point” in KCLS’ online cat­a­log, and iden­ti­fied a hand­ful of books to bor­row for use on the iPad/Kindle. But I’d have to wait; none were avail­able that day.

Today I received an email announc­ing that my first ebook was avail­able for down­load, but I’d have to act fast: it would expire within 4 days.

KCLS-Alerts-re-Kindle-Book

I clicked on the link, dis­cov­ered that the web page had kept my library card and pass­word cre­den­tials from the prior ses­sion, and I autho­rized the “dig­i­tal book loan” (a process that took sev­eral steps).

The lend­ing process takes you to Amazon’s web­site, where Ama­zon links the library’s ebook to the autho­rized Kin­dle reader (or your “cloud reader”). I imag­ine that this is part of the behind-the-scenes infra­struc­ture that enforces the DRM pol­icy pur­chased by KCLS — the lim­its on how many copies of this ebook may be in cir­cu­la­tion at the same time.

Kindle-Books-from-KCLS

So far the process worked smoothly (with a fast broad­band con­nec­tion).

The only glitch occurred with the Kin­dle app on the iPad — and it was prob­a­bly just a tim­ing issue with syn­chro­niza­tion. That said, the first cou­ple of attempts to down­load the library’s ebook to the iPad yielded no result.

So I went back to Ama­zon to ensure the ebook showed up in my autho­rized Kin­dle repos­i­tory, and that this book was prop­erly linked to my iPad. I was pleased to see a clear indi­ca­tion that this was a library copy, ver­sus one that I have pur­chased…

Kindle-Manage-Library-on-Amazon

On my next attempt to down­load the library’s ebook to the iPad/Kindle, the process was quick and easy.

When the library’s online sys­tem is work­ing quickly (which is not always the case), I’d say this whole process would take 5 min­utes or less.

Much faster than get­ting in the car, and dri­ving to and from the near­est library branch.

Which leaves me with my remain­ing reser­va­tion about the cur­rent state-of-the-art for books on Kin­dle (or ePub for­mats): the lack of typo­graphic sophis­ti­ca­tion. The cur­rent stan­dards may be fine for pulp fic­tion, but they are a real dis­ap­point­ment for bib­lio­philes who pre­fer higher qual­ity “trade fic­tion” and books with an intrin­sic design sen­si­bil­ity.

For the book I bor­rowed, The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dun­nett, the loss of typo­graphic styling makes it dif­fi­cult in places to com­pre­hend the author’s intent — or even to dif­fer­en­ti­ate lit­er­ary embell­ish­ments from the flow of the nar­ra­tive.

The Loss of Fidelity Detracts from the Story

To illus­trate what I mean, here is a cropped photo of the first page of The Game of Kings, as ren­dered by the Kin­dle app on my iPad 2. Except for the chap­ter head, all the text is styled the same. There’s no addi­tional white space as you would see in the print ver­sion.

The Kin­dle Ver­sion (via iPad)

Scan-Opening-Page

Although it’s not obvi­ous in the photo above, The Game of Kings begins with a poetry excerpt that pre­cedes the first line of nar­ra­tive. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s noth­ing in the typo­graphic treat­ment or page lay­out to sig­nal that this block of text func­tions dif­fer­ently from the main body of the story.

To make mat­ters worse the poem uses archaic lan­guage — and the com­bi­na­tion could be off-putting as a first impres­sion.

The Print Ver­sion

By way of com­par­i­son here is what this page looks like in the print ver­sion that’s cur­rently in cir­cu­la­tion:

Book-opening-page

With this lay­out it’s easy for the reader to under­stand that the poem sets the theme for the chap­ter as a whole. It’s clearly set apart from the first line of the nar­ra­tive.

The loss of typo­graphic and page lay­out fidelity in the Kin­dle ver­sion is a huge issue for books writ­ten by Dorothy Dun­nett, an author who lib­er­ally embell­ishes her sto­ries with poems and lit­er­ary allu­sions in mul­ti­ple lan­guages.

Early Days — Or a Battle for Control?

I under­stand that the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing work­flow is still in embry­onic state, that it’s dif­fi­cult for pub­lish­ers to adapt the print ver­sions to Kin­dle and ePub for­mat with­out loss of fidelity.

Among other con­straints Apple and Ama­zon seri­ously limit the num­ber of type­faces avail­able, a huge obsta­cle to any designer who wants to pre­serve artis­tic intent across all ver­sions and ren­di­tions of the book. For the tech­ni­cally adept, there are workarounds with embed­ded fonts for authors and pub­lish­ers aim­ing at Apple’s iBook for­mat, but not for pub­lish­ers going to Kin­dle. (At present I sus­pect we’ll see embed­ded fonts pri­mar­ily from the self-pub­lish­ing com­mu­nity…)

I look for­ward to the day when ebooks are full-fledged alter­na­tives, with addi­tional con­ve­nience ben­e­fits, rather than artis­tic com­pro­mises that trade off design intent for ease of adap­ta­tion. Leav­ing you with so much less of the orig­i­nal expres­sion of the author’s intent. And a dis­ap­point­ing read­ing expe­ri­ence.

I hope we won’t have to wait another 10 years before ebooks achieve typo­graphic and design lay­out fidelity.

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About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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