What I'm Reading Now

Nancy McCabe, From Little House to Little Women

McCabe writes about her childhood and young adult reading, as well as a trips she and her daughter take to visit literary sites across the US and Canada, including the Little House museums.  I've never been to any of these museums except the one outside of Independence, with the reconstructed Little House on the Prairie; but I was reading most of the same books McCabe read in the same years she was reading them, so I enjoyed this memoir a great deal.

McCabe, her daughter, and various friends visit not only the Little House museums, but other museums, such as the Betsy-Tacy houses; the Anne of Green Gables museums on Prince Edwards Island; and the Alcott museum in Concord. Interspersed with the travel memoirs are reflections on McCabe's own life growing up in a religious conservative family in Kansas, focusing on her relationship with her mother, aunts, and female cousins; and how she evolves, both as a reader and person, as she comes of age and adopts her own daughter. Her memories of her family intertwine interestingly with her memories of the books she reads.

There's also some political musing about the various books -- feminism in Anne of Green Gables, as well as the conservative strictures that helped to create the Little House books (and even more so in the horrible television show). Both Wilder and her daughter were opposed to the New Deal created by FDR's administration, and these books (among other things) worked to create a narrative that explained why the New Deal, or any government aid, was a bad thing. (Never mind all the government aid Pa got, which among other things gave them their land in the Dakotas and sent Mary to college.) 

McCabe is the author of Vaulting Through Time, which I reviewed for Asimov's. It's also about mothers and daughters, aunts and cousins. Plus time travel! Both that novel and this memoir are wonderful reads.

Ron Charnow, Mark Twain

This is a biography of Mark Twain, and about a zillion pages long. Twain has never been one of my favorite writers, being very uneven, though of course I read Tom Sawyer about a million times as a kid. I've read Huck Finn a couple of times, and enjoyed the first half every time. I don't think I have ever made it through any of his other books, though bits of his diaries of Adam and Eve are funny. Anyway, I picked this one up off the new books shelf at the library and mostly enjoyed it. 

The second half of the book, when Twain's life is falling apart and his kids and wife are dying, is a bit depressing. Also he (and they) were constantly ill with things that antibiotics would cure, or which could have been prevented with vaccines. The baby son died from diphtheria, for instance. And they were always getting boils or dysentery; the youngest daughter had her life ruined by epilepsy. Life before modern medicine was awful. (On that topic!)

If you want to know what it was like to be a writer born before the Civil War who lived through a number of historical events and social changes, this book will tell it to you. Warning: Charnow doesn't try to gloss over the racism and misogyny of Twain's younger days. To his credit, Twain learned better and did better in his adulthood. 

Reading the biography made me want to give Twain's works another chance, and I might even do that.

Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

This one was recommended to me by my kid, who likes horror novels. I do not like horror novels, but he said I would like this one. I did! 

It's about a Pikuni -- a Blackfoot -- Indian, Good Stabs, who becomes a vampire after attempting to kill a 500 year old vampire who immigrated to the US from Europe in the early 19th century. Good Stabs lives, as a vampire, through the destruction of his people and his culture by Europeans, attempting to fight back by killing Europeans, especially the Buffalo hunters who are wiping out the great herds that his people lived on.

Jones does interesting things with vampire lore, and he's a good writer. Trigger warning: lots of genocidal murder in the backstory. If you can handle that (I skimmed some parts), this is an engaging read. The ending left me a little underwhelmed, I'll admit.

Dealing with Home Ownership

We've been in the house about fourteen months now. I always said I didn't want to own a house because then we'd have to repair things, and neither of us is very much of a DIY person.

Here are things I've had to repair (or pay to have repaired) over the past 14 months:

(1) Installed a walk-in shower for Dr Skull, who no longer has the mobility to use a tub shower. My SIL recommended a contractor for this, and he did an excellent job.

(2) Rebuilt the back deck and screened in the porch. The same contractor did this as well. Also an excellent job.

(3) Put in a gas stove when the electric stove quit working. Hired plumbers to do this one.

(4) Swapped out various electrical outlets -- this was paid for by the previous owner, really, who took over the closing costs. 

(5) Put in a "cricket" on the chimney, also paid for by the previous owner.

(6) Replaced the circuit breakers so the house didn't burn down. Also the water heater vent, same reason. 

(7) New washer and dryer, ugh -- the house came with a washer/dryer, but they were very old and when the washer quit working I just went ahead and replaced both.

(8) Fixed the plumbing leading into the laundry room, which entailed fixing the plumbing that lead into the house -- the pressure had been set too high, which was why the feed in the laundry room started leaking.

(9) Smoke alarm battery needed replacing. I did this one myself!

(10) Repaired the automatic garage door opener. Surprisingly cheap!

So yeah, owning a house = lots of repair work. I guess some of that comes under "remodeling," by which I mean the porch and the shower. Both very much worth it, though!

Links

PZ Myers fell on the ice and concussed himself. I worry more about falling these days, though so far I feel pretty stable. During the snow, I stepped in a hole and hurt my Achilles' tendon, which I do not recommend. It is very slow to heel. (Pun not intended, but it's hilarious, so I'm leaving it.)

Fraser Sherman blogs about the situation in MN. Like Fraser, I have been given hope by the people of Minneapolis especially. From the post:

Adam Serwer: “Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

I too have notice how unChristian many American Christians are. If this were 2026 years ago, they would be standing with the Romans, celebrating the Crucifixion of that trouble-making Jew.

This was bizarre: the FAA closed the airspace around El Paso for ten days and then a few hours later reversed the decision. No one seems to really know what happened, though I have seen claims that a "party balloon" alarmed someone. Also claims that DoD and Hegesth are having a spat. Who knows, with this regime.

Same, Charles. Same.

Palate cleanser: N&M talk cats. My little cat seems to be doing better, which is good news.

Donate to MN. They run a daily Go-Fund-Me for people in the city, plus links to food banks and immigrant aid. 

The science of the protests:

UPDATE: Looks like the protests worked. We should all take note. This is how we win.

We Need Unity

I still remember the student who told me she was voting for Trump because the country was too divided, and we needed to "heal" those divisions.

At the time, I was knocked speechless. Why would she think Trump, of all people --

But clearly I just wasn't understanding what she meant. Trump wasn't Obama, that's what she meant. What she meant was, we need to return to a time when white nationalism was the norm, and we could murder any brown person who stepped out of line.

Terrible Dreams

I had an awful dream last night where we were moving again. I was packing, or trying to pack, except the moving boxes kept falling apart. Also, it was our house in Idaho. Also, every time I thought I'd gotten all the books off the shelves, more books would show up.

If we believe Freud that in dreams the house is the body, then this dreams means....

Honestly, no idea.

My Poor Little Cat

My little cat (her fighting weight is five pounds) had been losing weight. I took her to the vet, to find she weighed just a few ounces over four pounds, and that she has kidney disease.

They kept her for three days, giving her IV fluids and appetite stimulating meds, and she's home now. She's eating, but she's still awfully skinny. I have to continue the appetite stimulation meds and also give her subcutaneous fluids. The vet says she could live another year or another month, it's hard to say at this point.

Junti, the Tiniest Cat

What I'm Listening To Now

I listen to audio books when I'm doing kitchen work or laundry, and when I'm trying to fall asleep (my insomnia is really bad at the moment). These are the ones I've been listening to lately.

Angela Thirkell, High Rising

Read by Jilly Bond. Written in 1933, this is what my kid calls a "family book," by which they mean books about families doing nothing much except having tea, raising kids, and falling in love. This is Thirkell's first book that focuses on Tony Moreland, I think, and his mother; but George Knox and Lord Stokes and others show up as well. There are some anti-Semitic moments and casual classism, as is usual with Thirkell's early books. Since nothing much happens, this was a good book to listen to when I was trying to fall asleep.

Josephine Tey, Miss Pym Disposes

Karen Cass reads it. One of my favorite books, which I have read so often I know it almost by heart. This is also a good category of book to listen to while I'm trying to sleep. Miss Pym gives a lecture at a physical training college and then stays on for a few weeks, dealing with a murder toward the end and middle of the book. The mystery isn't the point, though it features heavily in the plot. Rather, this is a study of the students and faculty at the college, and of a particular kind of English life. Published in 1946, there is some classism and eugenics commentary, but this is nevertheless a charming novel.

Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool

Read by Ron McLarty. I have listened to this one before, but it's such a good book, and McLarty does an excellent job reading it. It's really long, over 24 hours to listen to, but well worth it. If you haven't read Russo yet, this is his best book. We follow working class Donald Sullivan -- Sully -- and the other inhabitants of the dying town of Bath, NY, through a few months in the winter of 1983 or so. Just a great book.

This Isn't at All Alarming

From Paul Krugman's column, which I encourage everyone to read all of:

Trump is now calling for “nationalizing” the midterms, meaning to put voting and the counting of votes under his administration’s control. He can’t do that, but his demand is a clear sign that he will not accept the public’ s verdict in November.

So it’s just being realistic to say that MAGA will try, somehow, to prevent voters from having their say. Will ICE try to prevent blue districts from voting? If that fails, will they reject the results, in a midterm version of Jan. 6? Call me alarmist, but remember: The alarmists have been right, and the people telling us to calm down have been wrong, every step of the way.

Still Cold, MN Still Occupied

It was 16 degrees when I took the dog to the dog park this morning -- the first time we've gone in a week, due to all the snow and ice. It was still snowy there plus lots of ice. The pond and stream were frozen over. The dog still had a good time, though. He loves to run.

I'm limping a bit because I slipped on the ice a few days ago and bruised my Achilles tendon. It's not serious, just annoying.

Minnesota is still occupied. Donate if you can: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

AI Being Very Helpful

So on my Gmail account, which I use to communicate to editors I write book reviews for, AI has started helpfully attaching summaries to the threads, explaining what the emails have covered.

For all kinds of reasons I do not like this.

Still Snowy, MN Still Occupied

No sign of snow melt yet. About seven or eight inches on the ground, I think. The high today is supposed to reach 33, but not for long enough to melt much. Tomorrow we're reaching the 40s, but for today at least we are still snowed in.

I take the dog out for his walk twice a day (in multiple sweaters, a ushanka, wool gloves and snow boots) so I'm doing okay, but Dr Skull is getting stir-crazy.

I've made donation to food pantries in Minneapolis and to the ALCU of Minnesota, and I encourage you to do likewise if you can. One of my students lives there now, as do many of my favorite SF writers. Naomi Kritzer has a page about how to help.

Kritzer also includes links to local news services, if you want to read about what's happening but don't want to be fed MAGA propaganda.

I've seen lots of MAGAts on FB and elsewhere saying Pretti shouldn't have been armed -- these are the same people that love to preach about the 2nd Amendment, so I don't know how to square that circle -- and others saying that he should have "informed" the agents that he was armed. You know, like Philando Castile did.

Most of the other boot-licking MAGAts are saying he should have just stayed home. Because that's the way to deal with injustice and tyranny and people murdering your neighbors -- stay home and watch TV.

These people sicken me.

Another Murder by ICE

Yet another US citizen has been murdered by ICE. This one was shot in the back by an agent -- it's all on tape. At least ten shots were fired, some while the man, Alex, was already unconscious and on the ground.

The Trump regime is saying it was justified because the man had a gun. (He also had a valid permit to carry the gun, and never drew his weapon. In fact, another ICE agent took the gun and backed away well before the murderer shot the man.) That it was justified because the man was a "terrorist" who "attacked" ICE agents. (None of that is true.) That he went to the protest planning to kill ICE agents. 

On FB, MAGAts are saying he deserved to die because he was blocking traffic (He was not) or interfering with ICE agents (he was filming ICE and he tried to help a woman they pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground).

Or he deserved to die because he was at the protest. 

Or he deserved to die because he had a gun.

Second Amendment? What's that?

Never mind the First Amendment.

If you ever thought MAGA had any principles or honor or human decency, they stand revealed now.

Another Shorter Video

Snow Dog

 Shamus loves the snow:

Ooof

It's cold here. 

Really, only 27 degrees, but with the wind and 40% humidity it feels so much colder.

How cold is it? It's so cold I'm not taking the dog for his evening walk. This means he will be restless and annoying, but it is just too cold.

Snow is predicted to start at 10:00 p.m.

Winter Emergency

The weather guys are saying we're getting from eight to eighteen inches of snow this weekend, starting Friday night. Also "brutally cold" temperatures.

Arkansas is dutifully panicking -- the kid and I got groceries yesterday (including milk, but not bread, because we bake our own bread) and the store was filled with frenzied shoppers. The hummus we like was sold out, as was the cream.

Home Health (Dr Skull's home nurses) called to make sure Dr Skull had enough food, medicine, and water, also a plan for where we will go if we have to evacuate. (We have no plan for what to do if we have to evacuate.) It's interesting to have access to functional health care. You just have to wait until you're 65 and then pay $650 a month in premiums.