"...I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."
 – Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona








July 30


We did not then that our scouting out of Salamanca would be such a small part of the journey of en pot, there could be no way to know – but that there are certain portions of one's life, I am still convinced to the day, move in different paces, different rhythms. Far too often it is only the content of our years that seem to stack up to make any difference, as though we live for what might be enscrolled onto the gravestone: he was raised in the Midwest, he went to college, he trained at Company Y, and then he hunkered down into that trade like a mole in the dirt tunnels. This was a certain pace, a certain rhythm, and it should work fine, thank you, for so many; yet as we had arrived in Salamanca, what was it that I was feeling at the moment? As we looked across the street from Hotel Rector, each building and each rampart was far more new than I believe some people experience in life times. It is a cafe and restaurant town you begin to see so very quickly as you rise up the cobblestone walkways into the city center, that very labyrinth that must be understood, to very quickly, by all Americans that cannot be fully understood. American cities are blocks and they are square; the Salamanca streets are curved delights, small trails through golden blocks, like cakes, standing in the sunshine, bold, robust, and unmistakably creative. "I think it would be very possible to sit here at the cathedra and look at its red doors for hours," my daughter said. A guitarist was sitting quite causally at a step. He was dark haired, wise, and strong with his guitar, a virtual weapon of serenity. We walked through the street leading to the city center. It opens gradually, like a stage, and opens, for us, Americans, again, used to a sort of set-stage, into something that is tragic-comic, old and new, but very unpredictable, full of seats and waiters moving in and out of clean tables. Of the smells that rise from each small cut out, it is very difficult to describe, to comprehend, Salamanca, a cafe town, restaurants, at ever edge of every block.

My French Kitchen Daily

“The carnival is gone. Once a year the village flares into transient brightness, but even now the warmth has faded, the crowd dispersed." – Harris, from Chocolat










July 28


Some mornings he woke not far from the sliding glass door just inside of the balcony overlooking Lake Monona. On these mornings he knew it would have been much better to have headed home after the clean-up in the restaurant, after the last of the dishwashers had headed home themselves, but that he might drift up into his office without thinking much about it at that late hour, as the city near the capitol, where the buildings met the lake, there was such luminous sort of haze over it all that it seemed quite unlike any city that one might find in the midwest. Last night he had looked over the lake, a steel bluish gray, and there was nothing there save the party barge barely bobbing at the dock. A few street dwellers sat like tree limbs on benches, and he felt for a minute that this might his coast at Brittany and he held out this feeling and he thought for a moment that en pot, his mark on the city, was a transportation of the real thing and it gave him a very sound feeling and he did not want to sleep. "Head home," Andreah, the hostess, had told him; he had already been in the kitchen since that morning, placing cold product into all of the proper places in the cold room and closer yet into the refrigerators. "This is our first night of bouillabaisse," he said and of course knew that everybody else knew this also, for it had been of great discussion for several days ahead of time. Andreah had been a cook herself and knew the trade well. She had grown up inside a restaurant, her grandfathers, in a small town not far out side of Madison, had skipped around several restaurants around town until she had children, and then decided to take her skills to hostessing. She was an easy pick for him the day that he hired her; in fact, she was the first and only person that he interviewed; some people understand the restaurant business, others are the business. He had tied his waist band and had already begun to pull out the sole, when she walked up to him.

My French Kitchen Daily

"This very old recipe was originally cooked in a pot balanced on three stones, and was dish of the poor, designed to make the most of cheap, common ingredients." – Harris, 'Rich Bouillabaisse' from My French Kitchen











July 27


He had looked back at those very early days along the docksides, learning that the food we ate was not something that came in a box, but real and live, and from the sea in this case, so that when the cooking began it was understood that we were all – he thought then that to learn from the ground up, the sea up – was something of a brotherhood, was to touch something quite real, to care for, even love; if the cook could take into consideration where this sole came from and where it lived and perhaps even loved, he came to see that that love was then transferred over onto the menu, and from there to the plate, and from there the experience that the diners would enjoy. Casulet, the greatest of chefs in Brittany, and told him many times that the most important of the chef's day was the bright early morning at the docks or at the markets. "It is not just price, you see, although price makes a difference over the long haul, of course. It is that you have suffered just a bit yourself awaking early and getting dressed and walking down to the dock men. See how it is that they live. When they see you, they will fish a little harder, they will use proper techniques because that is what you, the caregiver of the of recently passed, demand. The great chef is a part of the chain you see." At Casulet's he learned, above all else, humility of the origins of things. Casulet's was 4-stars by design. It could have been 5 with only a slight bit more time by Casulet himself, but he did not want that. He wanted to remain in a small hamlet and humble and connected to the water itself not the routine of colorful images that would splash across the magazines, although there was that too. When he had moved back to the states, he already knew what would be the name someday of his own place here in five lakes city of Madison on lake Monona, en pots, for it came from Casulet's desire to use the ground morsels of leftovers from various butchering. Here he had docks but not fishing necessarily; that was what he missed most, the sole for the cotriade, for the bouillabaisse, but he had access to the pigs, and so en pot was what it would be. He sat on a second level balcony off of Machinery Row and looked out over the lake considering his first menu.

My French Kitchen Daily

"We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter." – Joanne Harris, from Chocolat









July 26


He had not been here long, along the coast at Perros-Gueric, such a small and stone-filled village overlooking the sharp and snapping foil of the coast of Brittany, but he found his fishmongers down at the docks as quickly as he could. "I have been told to make Cotriade," he had then told the larger of the two men who were clearly unloading something other than fish, likely Langoustine, and the man did nothing more than look up quickly enough to assess the seriousness of the eyes, and shrugged his shoulders down the dock to an old man who working the nets of his trawler through his hands. "Good enough," he said, and brought his basket along with him, as he did then in the beginning. Here at this part of the coast there was a sort of painting quality to it all; who could make such scenes up? He had been land locked back in the states for many years; here the world was not about land, but its more dominant counterpart, the sea, it was as dominant as any chain of farm fields from the midwest might have ever been. The men who working these docks weren't really men of this age, he thought, but maybe with a little different style of hair or more advanced sea coats and rubber boots, were really of the past weren't they? He had been trained to consider food as story and take the time to get to know

each character, each player, the scene, the context, of course, but here it all was in an instant, the novel itself, and he was merely walking through it a minor player himself. There were moments, he thought then, when history takes its proper place and overwhelms you; it presents you with a scene that assures you of your insignificance. He felt mildly sheepish approaching the old man at his boat. "The two men there," he pointed, "said you might have sole for my cotriade?" He could not expect himself to speak the language at this point and hoped for English in return. "English, ah?" His eyes were of the sea, oysters themselves, a nose of tan leather. He did nothing more than reach down below decks and picked out two fish, one per hand. "These two are for you" he said in chipped English, "if you promise to do well by them. These two I catch by single line. Good little fighters." He had taken them back that day to his small kitchen where every essential imaginable was available to him but much was hidden and loaded in drawers that he would not have guessed. His partner, Dash as they called him for his sometimes frantic pace in cooking, had guaranteed him all of the necessary tools if he came here; he was correct, all could be found, but only after some searching. He spun around to his first enter, Grilled Sole with Hollandaise. The first step, he knew, was complete. He had retrieved his fresh fish. All else would come much more easily. He would save parts for the cotriade later.

Odes to Monona

"I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize..."
   – Neruda, from "Ode to Bicycles"





A long string
of beautiful bright days
I see like beads
on a necklace as they continue on
one after another
and how we can wear
this with love
and solitude as we plan
our hours by hands
on our pastel flowers by the garden,
our hands as watering cans –
what joy
to bring a fresh sparkle
to the rounded heads
of the purple coneflower,
reflections
of the very pristine beads,
drought resistant...
thick as thumb, tough as honeycomb,
ever growing.

The river passes
by as a chest of velvet
does it not?
Is it not a fabric of motion,
green by cover
of the spread oaks
overhead,
the couple who walk across
riverside drive
with a red kayak
over their shoulder
their eyes on the cool waves ahead
and I wonder if love
is green –
is it red –
is it the blue of bicycle
of that I riding down the street?

Others pass by
holding loosely their happy dogs,
retrievers by the same sunlight
blond, glistening
walking through the jewels
through the thin fabrics
and necklaces of the streets,
on my way
to a draft brewery
I sing
and cannot continue peddling,
as I see the sky
is the cloth of a blue dome,
soft, savoring, lovely
and caring
for you and me.

My French Kitchen Daily

"Margrets de Canard a l'Orange is a variation on the classic dish of duck with organ. Duck works well with sweet tastes, and this is a quick and stress-free version to prepare." – Harris, My French Kitchen












July 22

Duck may be a little like Lamb: once you have sampled the perfectly executed lamb chop, it is difficult to figure out why you would desire beef; if duck breast is done well, and if the selection is a fresh nice cut, then you wonder why chicken or turkey. In Harris's introduction, she makes it abundantly clear the mission of her book and the style that comes along with it – keep the selections simple, and remember that for the average great French foodie, it is all about the fresh selection of product that you choose. By the case of the duck then we can only sense that anything store bought is clearly not going to exhibit the raw flight of the recently harvested bird. Like so many other food forms, many of us will never truly understand the difference. For Harris, she always points us in the direction of the seller of the fresh; for those of us over here, we would have to rely on the marsh hunters, which many of us did as kids but don't have that access any longer. Once the fresh selection is found, she asks that we cross hatch the skin of each duck breast before cooking. This will allow for a more even rising of heat through the dense meat. Much fat is rendered in duck breast cooking; keep that after cooking for ten minutes. An orange gets segmented and laid over the duck breast, adding orange juice to the skillet with rendered fat juices, then add a corn starch paste, a pinch of grand mariner, and this will be the drizzle over the birds, plus salt and pepper. The photograph to the side of the recipe of a wonderful little French concrete back stoop with Ivy climbing from the ground up along the upper shudders of a narrow glass door. We can smell de Canard, a slight orange accent, wafting alongside those ivy limbs and tantalizing the bedroom inhabitant above.

My French Kitchen Daily

"If I were to plan my last meal, Fruits de Mer would be the main course. To me it evokes everything that is good about food: the joy of excellent ingredients, simply presented; the time it takes to eat; and the pleasure of eating in an informal environment, surrounded by friends and family."
    – Harris, My French Kitchen










July 21

When we take a longing look at the picture of the seafood platter, as it sits an enormous deep white plate brimming over with the excitingly archaic structures of clam and crab shells, we can't help but wish that this pride of the ocean, this favorite meal of the ocean goers, was an abundance that did not carry an concern for sustainable numbers of each of these species. In a modern context of post-abundance, however, no matter how utterly beautiful the notion of the seafood platter – periwinkles, for goodness sakes!...seaweed! – it feels a little more a plate that represents a once in a lifetime, like something to savor like a grand splurge, to order such a thing. It's beauty, as Harris says, is that "it requires time and leisure. It encourages conversation, cooperation, intimacy, and friendship. It is the ideal thing for a large and cheery get together." Agreed. I, along with every other long time cooker of seafood, have come to the conclusion that there are virtually no other food sources that convey a place, an element of our earth, mores than fresh seafood. Cattle for beef, plants as our vegetables, fruits off of our trees; yes, of course all of these remind of us air, water, and earth, but how to

compare to the raw briny swishing nature of how sea creatures carry their surroundings; and so this preciousness is a wonderful cook's learning moment by which we at once respect and adore these creatures and our abilities, for so many generations, to pluck them from the sea, and can see how they have transformed our sociability; and by the same token, a perfect reminder of how to preserve the oysters, the mussels, the Dungenes with a strong and calculating will of resistance to over harvesting and over eating. It is at this moment that we might sense that all the fun is being taken out of the Seafood Platter – why must we limit? – but I'm to sure the logic holds if what we are doing is savoring this same miracle of a platter for future generations. It is true that we might not be able to eat the same bounty as often, but far better than eliminating the option for all later down the road. As we might look over the beautiful ceramic style art of the shells as we finish this meal, we might even say a prayer of the sea, and acknowledge, without any false sentiment, how lucky we have been. Down the channel of this imagination we see our ancestors eating the very same meal; we see two generations forward with the same gift of a treat.

My French Kitchen Daily

"In southern France, slices of pissaladiere wrapped in paper can be bought from a boulangerie and taken to the beach as a lunchtime snack. At home, serve thick slices of warm pissaladiere with a green salad, or serve small squares of it with drinks." – Harris, My French Kitchen










July 19

There is a small farm tucked back in the green valleys of Onalaska, WI, located across the street from a small old white milk house once attached to the very farmstead of Hamlin Garland, a pulitzer prize winning author from the turn of the twentieth century, who had immortalized the rolling pastures, the drift less sandstone cliffs, and the difficult days filled with the domestic tasks of mothers and daughters, that would make a perfect little French restaurant. From my kitchen there, hopefully looking out over the same small pastures that now house a handful of goats, chickens, and even a burrough, I would send out first what Harris calls Pissaladiere, what looks, at first glance, like an American style flat crust pizza, stacked by 3 lbs of yellow onions, 12 salt-packed anchovies and "About 1 cup black Mediterranean olives, pitted." The dough is a standard mix of flour, yeast and flour, but maybe I would try to slip one farm fresh egg along the edges. The topping consists of onions primarily, finely sliced, which cook for an entire hour, stirring occasionally, with a touch of thyme to flavor, and salt and pepper to season. The eventual cooked dough is covered with the cooked onions and the anchovies are cut to ribbons and arranged on top in a lattice pattern. "Place the olives between the crisscrossed anchovies and sprinkle with the remaining thyme. Leave somewhere warm to rise again, uncovered, for 30 minutes." Bake the entire pissaladiere for 20-25 more minutes, serve warm. It seems to me that the final half hour would be the time sequence that would allure the residents of the back bluff neighborhoods as they biked, walked, and even drove by the farm. Ah, what I visage! The small red barn set in the center of this little scene; a few animals clopping about in the back; a most unusual smell wafting up out of the doorway of the kitchen. Children out at the merry go round, part of the green day, part of the sunshine.

My French Kitchen Daily

"Tarte Paysanne has a rich, sunny flavor. Make it with the best tomatoes you can find." – Harris, from My French Kitchen












July 18

As you look out onto your back courtyard at the three pots full of a variety of tomatoes – as they are just beginning to fill and turn red – the question of how to use them will always come up. I am completely jealous of those folks who do nothing more than pluck one, shine it on a pant leg, then bite in, but that has never quite worked for my own palette. Lately I have been bonding with cherry tomatoes, cut and quartered, and then sautéed along with virtually any greenery, especially brocollini, as I did last night. It adds a burst of 'sunshine,' as Harris puts it above, to anything. When I saw the visual for the Roasted Tomato Tart in My French Kitchen, I knew that I was properly ready...trained...if you will, to create a fully tomato based dish, something that looks akin, at least on surface, to a ratatouille, another bright, lively, garden dish. Attracted first off by the request to peel the tomatoes, then by the need to create a pastry, this is a wonderful two step in the kitchen that we we can see immediately is fun to make and to look at.

The recipe calls for 10-12 tomatoes total, peeled and sliced. Cream fraiche will be part of the topping as will some thyme and dijon mustard. The pastry all of the usual suspects of flour, butter, shortening, eggs. Arranging the tomatoes in a long shuffled line has to be a fun part, soon to find out. We can imagine that after 40 minutes baking that we will have the somewhat unusual aromas of the depth of the pastry and the tangy acid of the tomato lingering together, let cool, cut, still warm, enjoy, and all the while keeping a substantial portion of the mind's eye on the beautifully cottagy little summer hamlet in France where the pictures across the page lead us to. It is here, bathed in sunshine, a cool breeze at the window sill, that we might just, for the first time in a long time, enjoy ourselves behind the kitchen counter with nothing better to do than smell, cut, eat, pick some more tomatoes.

Bean Soup with Pistou

"To me this bean soup smells of my grandmother's garden in spring. It is a wonderful way to make the most of young, homegrown vegetables if you are luck enough to have them." – Joanne Harris, My French Kitchen











July 17

It is just the point, when Harris says in her short caption above the recipe that it is "extremely therapeutic to make, especially if you make the pistou by hand." What better way to spend several hours? I could see a small place just down the road here in Madison, WI, called Bean Soup, and it would be a drop-in arrangement, with kitchen in the back, and various people filling in to cook this very soup together. We have made a similar recipe many times, from an oversized Williams Sonoma book, in which we had swapped out the pistou for a bouquet garni, such a wonderful little roll of plucked herbs to settle across the top of the soup and disperse a a flavor hard to contend with other standard techniques. It is complicated, with a lot of ingredients, from kidney beans to onion, carrots, stock zucchini and, brilliantly, artichoke hearts and vermicelli! We should never mistake variety of ingredients with a complication that is not worthwhile. It is all about time for gathering these items, preparing them, and watching the clock as each go through their very transformation. The beans for example are asked to soak overnight. Sautee the vegetables. Maybe most fun of all is the peeling of the tomatoes, a technique that kids enjoy because of the scoring and then the eventual easy skin peeling, leaving a vegetable that is considerably different in its raw state.

By the end of the process, pistou dashed across the top, it is an important part of the process to have been a part of the cooking because now the cook is able to pick out and detect each of the ingredients. We can taste the leek from the potato, the zucchini an amazing addition really and the real tomatoes add a certain earthy texture and taste that can't be duplicated by the canned variety. So, really, to go through these French recipes is a sort of plea to self and others to truly reconsider the elongated family process of cooking; consider the bean soup an alternative to any number of other activities that families might try to get involved in on a sunday afternoon. We have all come to realize that quality time tends to mean more than just being in the same house or same room even, often TV in the background. The bean soup, once made successfully, will be asked for again and again.

French Kitchen Daily

"There were forbidden areas (my great-aunt Marinettes pancake pan, for instance, was formally out of bounds", but for the most part the kitchen was a learning zone for children, a place where philosophies were expounded, histories examined, and scandals unearthed." Joanne Harris, from My French Kitchen










July 16


Well now what Joanne talks about from her introduction to the very captivating (beautifully photographed) book, begins assemble the idea of the kitchen as the playground for all of the senses, for a comfortable place for all to be and, most importantly, an environment for children to walk in and out of to learn, listen and hopefully enjoy. I'd certainly like to explore this some more. The kitchen as the playground for the senses. Only a few nights ago I was able to take a pasta making cooking class at the local Sur la Table and was reminded of this notion of kitchen as kinetic and made for brief conversation. What else is there that is similar, I ask; and what are those things that we try to recreate to replace the conviviality of the kitchen. For the likes of me, as I myself lose out on kitchen time, as it were, in a coming empty nest period of life, I ask a simple question: what of a community kitchen? What of a place to go to cook? Guided informal French cooking, built not necessarily for sheer sake of perfecting cooking (although that is always an option), nor for selling products, nor even necessarily for the sake of serving a restaurant full of people, but instead for the sheer sake of getting together to create something, to learn about the wonders of French food, to participate in our very own French kitchen...?

The recipe for Onion Soup looks to be a wonderfully appropriate starter for this French kitchen re-creation. Harris calls for 1 1/4 pounds of onions, finely sliced, to begin; these will sit on low heat and butter for 50 minutes! That detail alone finds me thinking of the aroma of those onions as they caramelize slowly, which "gives this soup its rich golden color and deep flavor." From there we will add three garlic cloves, chopped, a toss of flour so make a roux, then comes a full 1 1/2 quart of vegetable stock and I cup of wine. At this point, as we stir, I am sure, we have a certain combination that begins to remind – or maybe the word transport us is more appropriate – of that essential childhood memory of this symbolically associated French soup. Flip in a bay leaf, some thyme, salt and pepper. Here is where philosophies are about to get expounded: let simmer gently for another 40 minutes! My goodness. Suffice it to say that, if indeed we had our children along with us during this creative moment, what they would learn and what they would, thankfully, be missing out on, which no doubt would be nothing more than two more hours of phone time. When done simmering, broil your toast until gruyere cheese is melted on the top and serve over bowl of your French soup! Enjoy.

"Each morning by daylight she crossed the same distance from her kitchen door to Ovid's camper, pausing there on her way to the lab to record the previous day's high and low temperatures." – Kingsolver, Flight Behavior






There are times when reading FB that we have to wonder if the same criticism that once applied to the Scarlet Letter – that the characters symbolic and thereby naturally flat and cut out – might also apply to the players of Feather town. This question becomes more intriguing as the book goes along because in fact the scenes that generally depict the day to day life of leading family is quite mundane, to say the least; a Christmas shopping scene, for example, seems to meander along such a pre-set pattern that to call it pre-cut seems oddly prescient, considering the date of Scarlet Letter. And yet, there are several redeeming formal qualities of the structure and girth of the text rise over time. One is that, from the narrator function of the limited third person, we begin to see a long line of reactions from Dellarobia, little asides and insights which, taken each on the surface don't amount to much more sometimes than interior barbs. Taken, however, against the backdrop of all other characters, what is established is a thinking person in among a group of others that aren't necessarily as curious or concerned. The point here is that Dellarobia is depicted to be both imprisoned by her surrounding flatline culture, but who is the one near to break out, to recognize, to consider and to change. This leads then to the second main point that comes from what I would call the stretched narrative of FB (the book could have been condensed to another Scarlet Letter with relative ease, but would then have missed many teachable moments). Dellarobia, over time, as she breaks out of a hundred molds, is shown to be an inherent learner. Who else among the townspeople are working alongside the primary butterfly experts. She is monitoring for a variety of reasons; one might have been titillation in the beginning, or even a false sense of pride, but it becomes, over time, something more akin to a vital connection to the natural world which is, after all, the human world as well. It is this very connection that is the difficult one for others to adhere to as they are more wrapped up in material concerns and what is also shown as a surface religion; that is, it is followed mechanically, but it is not enhancing the inner lives of those who attend. This is an extension of the old knock of traditional religions as claimants of humans' dominion over the natural world, and our hyper materialism is just another manifestation of this. To see through this part of archaic religions takes curiosity, and a willingness, in all truth, of carrying on an inner conversation with oneself as it stacks up against the reality the is mounting around us. Dellarobia, then, is a thinker, a learner, and a participant, all values that we tend to cherish at least in the abstract. When surrounded by those whom may not live by these forward-paced values, a lacking willingness can settle in, which it has in Feathertown. In Scarlet Letter, much of this was told us in typical 19th century fashion; todays content has to drag us through the material of life to get us to the point.

Solo de Lune

"The moon is rising, O read in a dream! O road without end, here's the post house, where they light lanterns, where drink a glass of milk, and gee-up we're away, in the song of crickets, under the July stars." – Laforgue, from "Solo de Lune"









I see that I am merely navigating
my way through the Renoir of Indian grass and trees.
There is no need for moon for here,
here where the crossing angels of pelicans
slowly dip across the burning prairie
toward the Lake at Onalaska,
where the dragonfly's catch fire at the end
of the blazing star stalk – you can see through
their mottled wings as if lit glass.
Do not let the moon ever come.
Darkness merely hushes songs.
The prairie dropseed, the chorus of the yellow coneflower,
the high-pitched falsetto of the twinkling aster
I go alone along the prairie
path and it leads through the buzzing of bees.
How they nettle at the wild bergamot.
I crouch over to examine the rags of purple petals.

A Few Strokes of Ink

"A few strokes of ink and there it is.
Great stillness of white fog,
waking up in the mountains,
geese calling,
a well hoist cracking,
and the droplets forming on the eaves."
– Milosz, "Reading the Japanese Poet Issa"





Not everybody's days pass by the wishes of spectrum.
What the hemlock across the street
might look like ablaze by a noon sun,
as it joints hands with the riverside foliage,
puffs blazing green of the crystals that shine
off the backs of passing red wings.
Renoir, Monet, Manet, all the rest, may have gone mad for such hours.
We plant our gardens for both the fruit and its canvas.
Back here there is a terra cotta sun pattern
chiseled into the garage wall and by late afternoon
it is the sun that radiates the sun.
King Tut plant stalks bob back and forth
like long hands introducing the scene.
There is a small crack between houses to the south
that reveals a wedge of blue lake.
Is it water? Is it the pulse of color that is reflected
onto a mass we have come to call liquid?
When I walked along the lake just yesterday
I followed a narrow trail
that has been cut by years of foot traffic.
Over the bank lay thick trunks
that had overturned many years ago,
black on this side in shadow.
Underneath, the still dapples of duckweed,
blazing green, sunlit, like apple skin,
sagging among the pools of watercolors.

"You only need to breathe lightly
for the miracles to be displayed.
Suddenly you hear the birds singing,
the pines chanting;
you see the flowers blooming,
the blue sky,
the white clouds,
the smile and the marvelous look
of your beloved."  – Hanh, Touching the Earth





The simple watering of plants
is the care of something other than the attending of your thoughts.
How many tasks and configurations each day
create blindness to what is passing before our very eyes.
Breathing while watering you become both.
All the while the hundred things mount and create unhappiness:
where am I to be next? How can I complete those thoughts
that continue to rise to the surface
like small fish who blindly peck at floating insects.
We notice there is no nourishment in distraction.
The water from the hose is steady.
The soil thickens and darkens as distractions rolls off.
What did it take Buddha, but a few focused breaths?

Before the Butterfly

"Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thais?"
–Milosz, from "Natura"







At the height of the hip I hold my hands
as I walk through the warm June stalks of prairie.
This is the level of the butterfly, of the dragon with wings,
never too close to the ground,
a certain hell is sure there where the heat flumes
upward and releases to blue.
Not too high, where even for the comfort of wings
structure is lost, the camouflage
of dark crosses across the hind wings lay revealed
but a tender body,
a nub pulsing with entrails.
I could raise my own arms higher in this world.
Our eyes forever off in the ether,
far off horizons notable dreams.
Yet our feet do dare to roam where the butterfly won't,
and trudge across the crisp
stems of blazing star,
a burnt out scepter held as ash against the coming hours.
I do not know where I belong.
To chase by eyes like wings?
To heel to deep soil with my own shovel before buried?

A Voyager Arrives

"A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory..."  – Czeslaw Milosz, from "This Only"









I had wondered how to write a poem of the prairie.
My goodness, all that has been done.
Reading Laforgue, old French Master, I see the strands to Whitman
and know how he would have excited.
I admire the catalogues.
I am completely jealous, to the tell the truth, of the robotic scientist,
who I presume shreds away the delusion of romance
down to the very fiber of the tracking roots.
You see there are so many problems with imitation.
It is a theme that very few come to understand.
In my own mind, it had become glass.
The prairie is viewed. Because it is beautiful
beyond what we normally see we find ways to witness.
I so desperately want to be it.
In underneath the big bluestem is sense the field mouse
scurry along the rigid stems of twenty species.
What is like under there? That, the scientist must contend.
I must say though it is not enough.
Emerson understood; Whitman threw it upon the wind.
I shouldn't be bothered with the love of the Transcendental,
as I, just another, walk along the hot paths
of this simple trail that meanders through a staged prairie
who considers already his lesson plan
for such and such a landscape.
I won't be bothered!
There are some things that I know, things I love,
and yet rarely tell others.
I love the radiant sense of pure sunheat on my body.
You want love to be a sly kiss or a tingle near the belly button.
I get my love from a fire bomb in the sky.
The dragonfly is a sphinx to me.
The dragonfly is the prism for the light of the sun.
The dragonfly is not thinking about me.
The dragonfly is scepter upon the phalanx of the ruins,
eyes of your god, not wings but tied
to the soft draping molecules of heat that love nothing.

sea o nights!

"The flesh is sad, alas! and I've read all the books. To escape! escape out there! I sense that birds are drunk to be amidst the unknown foam of the skies! – Mallarme, "Sea Wind"











Windswept old prairie today on fire by cloudless heat! So few feel it, hidden as they become underneath desks, behind wheels, lazily on porches chairs stirring cold air as the world works its way across  hours slow like pelicans' wings. Here it is a certain kind of Hades, not punishment of the flesh, but a wave of love that covers this earth, this little blanket of big bluestem and the twitching of the cordial aster. Complaint is so grim a love but so common. I want to jump out of the doors of every building and swim in among the swinging coneflowers and blink eye to eye with the dragonflies and never let the moon hang again its contrived romance, like that woman you once knew, like a theater hand, face bent over the backstage lamplight, a false yellow drop dripping from her rouge nostril.

Madrid A-Z

C. Cibeles Fountain


In this new groundbreaking genre of speculative travel, the idea is to imagine yourself standing within the very city you are about to visit in a week, a month, a year. I will never forget putting this idea to the true test before we visited New York City five years ago for the first time. I studied the history of the city and then make sure that I had a fairly good handle on the layout of the city, street by street, not so much in a way to memorize but to simply plant the seeds of potential recognition as we traveled via taxi or by following a guide. One particular morning my speculative travel came in very handy, as we were on a walking tour of revolutionary New York, down deep into southern Manhattan. As we passed Beaver Street -- not far from Wall Street District -- I knew that I recognized that my favorite speculative restaurant, Delmonico's, often claimed as the first true restaurant in the city, was not far away. I asked politely if we might take a very brief detour and walk past the restaurant -- I wanted to simply see the entrance, maybe look in, tell a story if need be. We walked a few blocks down and found the restaurant although it was unfortunately closed for construction. As we stood gawking into the front doorway a man had come up to us from across the street and asked if we might be interested in seeing the restaurant. Well, we played along; it looked innocent enough. The man proceeded to tell us in a potent Eastern European accent that he was the brother in law of the new owner and that he was in charge renovation. He opened the door with a simple key and let us walk around this fabulously old dining room for half an hour. We promised that we would make reservations before we left the city and we did, enjoying one of the finer steaks in the land two nights later. New travelers don't have the luxury of experience. To see oneself inside the city before travel even happens is a sort of pre-experience.

I for one would like to take the very short walk from our hotel Hospes along the Calle de Alcala, two blocks down a stroll around what has been identified as one of the truest symbols of all of Madrid, the Plaza de Cibeles, where the Fuente de Cibeles flows and it is said that the national soccer fans gather to celebrate their team upon victory. Cibeles is named after Cybele, goddess of nature and agriculture, who is depicted sitting on her chariot, drawn by a pair of lions, obviously a very fertive symbol of abundance and hope, designed in the late 18th century two Spanish architects. This is an epicenter of administrative headquarters with the Palacio de Communications and Banco de Espana all within eyeshot, and leading down to the famous Paseo del Prado, now a city seat for museums and galleries. As with the tentative travel to New York, it is the sheer scope of such cities that inches your toward beginning to streamline your plans. It's very easy to think that we could likely spend three days alone in Bourbon Madrid, saving the three other primary districts for another trip to come.

Madrid A-Z

"To the east of Old Madrid, there once lay an idyllic district of market gardens known as the Prado – the 'Meadow.' In the 16th century a monastery was built there...the palace gardens are now the popular Parque del Retiro."











B. Bourbon Madrid: Puerta de Alcala

Located across the Calle de Alcala in Bourbon Madrid is the Plaza de la Indepencia which, at it center, rises the Puerta de Alcala, built by the great Italian architect Sabatani. Most newcomers to Spain no doubt eventually find themselves wandering to the east, as it is called, and stroll the Paseo del Prado, lined by museums and galleries, botanical gardens and gems of Renaissance architecture. The Puerta is said to be the oldest among the great European arches dedicated to the triumphs of their city, including the Arc de Triumph in Paris. It is a ceremonial gateway, erected by Carlos III, (1759-88) in his efforts to improve eastern Madrid. Construction of the Puerta was begun in 1769 and lasted a total of nine years. It has five arches, built from granite in Neo Classical style, with a lofty pediment and sculpted angels.  The description mentions that it is best seen when floodlit at night, a very nice detail to consider as we are stationed to stay directly across the street in the Hotel Hospes Puerta Alcala, residing inside a royal house from the 19th century. A very brief sprint across the Calle de Alcala and the Plaza will no doubt very quickly become our visual headquarters, as it is the origin of another series of streets and plazas that surround the great Parque del Retiro, once the setting for Felipe IV's palace, the Real Sitio del Been Retiro, originally a private playground of the royal family, only becoming open to the public in 1869. Here is where a fine mid morning jaunt sounds like as fine a way to begin a day as there is in Madrid, looking out over the lake, where rowing boats can be hired and, no doubt, as one gathers in this view, looking back over the right shoulder at the hotel, the Puerta at its front most entry, it could be seen that the centuries are gradually moving backwards in time all the while traffic marches forward into their own daily history.

Reading Behavior

"He took a bit of his sandwich, which appeared to be cream cheese on wheat bread, while she chewed on 'thousands of years.' In her experience, conversations of this nature always ended with the same line: The Lord moves in mysterious ways." – Kingsolver, Flight Behavior





6.

This is a point in the book where Kingsolver is depicting Dellarobia becoming aware of the magnitude and the cause of why the butterflies are perched along the side of the mountain in Tennessee. Without education or background, the presence of the seeming beauty of the butterflies had initially taken on the superficial suggestion that this was a sort of miracle on earth or a kind of accidental gift of fate that was steered in Dellarobia's direction. She hints at being a bit upset that all things that come her way cannot be as simple as beauty but instead have be 'terrible beauty.' In the case of the butterflies, of course, there are virtually no positive reasons given by scientists as to why they would suddenly, after thousands of years, jump north from Mexico and land here other than circumstances that are negative. The scene that shows Dellarobia assisting with the monitoring of the fallen butterflies is what we might call a projected parallel scene, where we are shown the same events presently that likely occurred on the Mexican mountain: that is to say encroachment, heavy weather, a look of suitable temperatures for survival, flooding and rain; if these were the same events that took place on those remaining habitats in Mexico than it is obvious to us as readers what is happening to the species in general. Dellarobia is shown ultimately to be a kind of symbolic character that is made up of many surfaces, much like the popular casts of clay and ceramics made by the Dela Robias of Renaissance fame. That family for three generations had created a sort of mass production process for figures and art that had in the beginning been criticized for its popularization of a mass produced item, but later complimented by Ruskin himself, as artful and brilliant. The surfaces change; materialism and luxury is subtly insinuated but that also the pointing to another direction of austerity and one could say sustainability today. We notice that to some degree – whether fully intended or not – that virtually all of the people in Flight Behavior are, frankly, a bit shallow and occupied with their cultural existence. Dellarobia is in a way presented as potentially exhibiting depth of character and desires and we are presented much inner testimony of her voice through a kind of stream of consciousness third person limited point of view, but she is not a fully vivacious character who is yet capable of taking on her own action and becoming a fulfilling protagonist. She is limited my place, culture, family, lack of education, and, sadly, a perpetual need for a smoke. These are all hindrances. Many of us have made the point in the past, that in order to truly concern ourselves over the welfare of the earth – that is to say to place it above as a priority – we almost need to rid ourselves of culture to the degree that we care. It makes sense that materialism is of course a hindrance in these matters because as we enter into the sequence of gaining we exit the sequence of preserving. It is a difficult bit of obvious math to consider that for every piece of plastic, for example, that is consumed, that matter has to come from the earth somewhere done the line and it will return in a form that is non degradable, for the most part (yes, some waxworks and some bacteria have been found to consume plastics.) Yet it must be understood (Kingsolver is showing us this as well), that until materialism is adjusted there is no such thing as reversal of climate change. As long as materialism and all of its surface prescriptions are followed, care for the earth, at the level necessary, is actually impossible, nearly by definition. Unfortunately, might it take a species apocalypse to turn the cultural mind back onto regenerative prospects? The Renaissance was a movement from the dark to the light in many ways; seemingly only destruction and a sinking of the moral conscious eventually was achieved to such a degree that only choices of light remained. Our chief problem with following these same prospects of renewal though is that the earth, this time, is in balance. The Renaissance was about saving the human soul. Today, we still have the soul to save, no doubt, for materialism is not only a bane to the prospects of the earth itself, but so much easier to follow than ever before that it might very well be becoming a part of our very brain texture, nearly incapable of jostling out. The arguments being set out at this point in the novel are heavy in intention, and a touch low in execution, however. Kingsolver, by admirably creating nature as a coming protagonist, has indeed left the humans in her book as nothing particularly interesting at all. This is not a personal criticism – I happen to believe in this motion of priority – but it will be exceedingly difficult for the modern attention span to put these pieces together. A cli-fi book? A book that is a calling to ideals of the Renaissance? The utter importance of the indicator species of the butterfly? For the mind wrapped in materialist tendencies, it must be understood, these are some of the very last points that would be interpreted.

Chan Hui, or Beginning Anew

"The Beginning Anew practice described in this book is based on the compassion of the earth. When we touch the earth, we take refuge in it. We receive its solid and inclusive energy. The earth embraces us and helps us transform our ignorance, suffering, and despair. Wherever we are, we can be in touch with the earth." – Thich Nhat Hanh, from Touching the Earth








1. Growth of earth, growth of mind


The planting boxes upon the walls of the courtyard had been neglected for some days.
The sun has been heavy and baked the potting soil hard.
I look out into the courtyard and see that the King Tut grass and the geraniums
have stayed so strong and vital despite this neglect.
Hanh says in the beginning of Touching the Earth that if we know we can act
differently in the future than we need feel no guilt.
I water the dill and thyme and three lettuces twice yesterday
and today I will go out with my hand trowel and aerate the hard soil to aerate.
When I water the newly tilled soil it can absorb it and spark its nutrients.
The water will no longer run directly down and onto the courtyard floor.
Despite both neglect and full compassion I see that the plants are resilient
not complaining, but merely browning at spots on the tips.
I see that nature continues to be exactly what it is.
It is growth but not desire
It is beauty but not vanity.
It is resilience but not domination.
These are small rules interpreted by a small garden
but they are ones that are perceived by a compassionate mind.
We notice then that compassion is the growing substance of the human mind.
Like the soil needed water to spark the nutrients
so too does the mind need to grow alongside the other mind, the other life.
To begin anew is possible every hour of every day
because there is nothing that we encounter that does not need care, compassion, consideration.

Madrid A-Z

"If words were edible, Provencal speech would be a rich, thick, pungent verbal stew, simmered in an accent filled with twanging consonants; a civet, perhaps, or maybe a daub." – Peter Mayle, from Provence A-Z










A. Alcadesas di Zamarramala

The travel writer who has yet to visit the location that he is about to write about has to pull a few tricks out of his sleeve, so to speak. In his own wonderful dedication to the place he lived for much of the second half of his life, Provence A-Z by Peter Mayle (of Year in Provence recognition), wrote about his adopted and beloved new geography with plenty of experience. Oh, well, maybe some day that could be my own case; but more likely, as with any traveler who sees travel in near jackpot circumstances (visit Spain once!), we are left to learn about the country through guidebooks, histories, and Wikipedia. I feel that is a better start than not trying at all.

For my letter 'A,' I was first attracted to the wonderful phrase Alcadesas di Zamarramala, associated with Segovia, a day trip that we already have planned for our own trip, located only a couple of hours north of Madrid. This particular festival takes place in February – its official name is 'around first sun,' and the description says that "For a day village women boss their men around.' Quite an abrupt description really, but one that I am sure all men would love dearly to visit and participate if they

happened to be traveling the middle of Spain in deep winter. The city of Segovia however, is certainly not seemingly quite so simple to pin down, as it reads that it is a truly major architectural wonder, offering the Alcazar castle, described as fairy-tale castle rising above the cliff at Segovia, and one that has inspired the very castle we have all seen in Cindarella. It is proposed that the original castle had been constructed in the middle ages and rebuilt in 1862 after fire. From its top one can see "the breathtaking views of Segovia and the Guadarrama mountains."

With so many 'A' options built right into this small medieval town, it is not hard to know which to pick next, one of the grandest of all architecture in all of Spain, the great Aqueduct, one of two of the greatest preserved aqueducts in Europe, a testament to Vitruvius's well preserved treatise on the principles of architecture from the very end of BC. It is really quite a sit to see such a construction that has survived at that height from 100 AD and to consider the kind of thought and work that would have been put into the ancient dilemma of water transportation, this set filled by the River Frio into the city. With the fortress walls around the perimeter, the castles firmly ensconced onto cliffside, and a large structure used for the convenience of water, I suspect that Segovia has been thought of since the beginning of recorded history as sort of hidden gem of location and beauty, residing, as it does well above the pulsing metropolis of Madrid.

This Year on Water

"Spring, it seems, is undeniably in residence. Even though the vernal equinox has not yet taken place. Even though I've not I've not yet planted my peas, the ritual with which I traditionally mark the beginning of my spring gardening." – Karl Klaus, My Vegetable Love





July 4

It's been said before on snappy taglines for local commercials that when you live along the Upper Mississippi River Valley, well, summer on the river, summer not. Growing up in the La Crosse, WI, area, driving past blue or brown patches of water all the time, you know there's some truth to that saying, as boat upon boat always seem to be bobbing along the usually choppy section of river along Riverside. This is the area where three rivers meet – the Black River, the La Crosse, and where Old Man River makes a sharp curve south. There is much turbulence here. This is the very spot where the city was essentially born, here at this patch, where it was once a prairie utilized by the Winnebago for trade, camp and their game of choice, La Crosse. All of these things of water influence you as a boy, a girl, and a student. Grandparents who lived up a ways along the river near Trempeaulea. Wonderful drives even further up in that direction over the years to Pepin in order to drop your daughter off a summer camp and, as you drive back down the contours of the main channel, you see you live along one more river town that is strung from Minneapolis down to Winona and finally La Crosse. Further south, good friends who have lived in Stoddard forever; nearby one of the holiest of river sites at Goose Island where you can easily remember twenty trips for fishing, camping, kayaking. To say you come to take it all for granted is an understatement. Sometimes it takes the most wonderful of hikes straight up the side of the Coulee bluffs near Hixon Forest, dead center in the city, to find the top on those sandstone cut outs, to see the two lines of bluff that seem to guide the Big River as far west and then south as you can see, to truly appreciate this place.

Now we live on a contributing channel of Mississippi, the Black, which is backed up just a mile down at Lake Onalaska by a spillway always flowing. We made there in fact just yesterday on a wave runner ride pulling my daughter and friend on an inner tube. The back bays and sloughs are marvelous pieces of unpredictable shorelines. High water leaves them looking something like you've seen out of the Everglades swamps in movies, big thick willows and hemlocks rising right up out of the water, normally on dry ground, so that kayakers can now pass through territory normally only seen from a passing fishing boat. The water is choppy by a moderate breeze; at least 85 degrees; but enough passing pontoon boats to stir up all the water through this stretch near French Island. Back at the condo, we've got two gorgeous marinated pork loins smoking on a Trager grill. I had butterflied them earlier, cutting them lengthwise right down to a membrane connecting them, then I filled up the center with shaved smoked gouda cheese, closing them back up and oiling them well. They sit on that smoker for only an hour in this case; some other meats and treatments asking for considerably more; but the key to pork is always keeping it as moist as possible. When we ride back through the calm bay near our own inlet, it is a jigsaw of parked boats ready to float it out for the day, large floating mats laid out for the kids, parents standing with beverages in hand enjoying a sun that is supposed to turn to heavy storm for a few hours later in the day. By the time I get up to the smoker my wife has turned the Trager down to shut off but left the pork on and it no doubt absorbs a bit more smoke and keeps nice and warm at the center where the cheese is squeezing. The surface is glistening moist not the standard char or dry you can get far too easily when grilling. When I cut it into their little one slices, I have to say to myself this is some of the most tender and slightly pink pork loin I've ever seen. It looks like food meant for a day on the water.

Black River Bottoms

"I hid the canoe in a small stream near the river, and covered it with tree branches. I knew that Pap would not be able to find it. When I returned to the cabin, Pap noticed my wet clothes. I told him that I had fallen into the river. Then I cooked the fish for our breakfast."  – Twain, Huck Finn

There's plenty of trouble to get into down on the river. You can watch it for hours from right above any bank and it is pretty to look at, that is for sure. The bay back here doesn't have any current – it's sealed off from the main channel of the Black River, and so unless there is wind, it looks like brown glass really. The pontoon boats have to approach the dock slow and easy because there is no wake signs all over the place. I remember watching out there one morning and a fisherman in a sleek boat didn't take the no wake very seriously and busted out of the back of the bay at about fifteen miles an hour and by the time he got to the other end of the bay three different men from across the bay had jumped right out of their back decks and raced to the shore sending out hand gestures to that fishermen and he quickly slowed down. During spring at least six eagles perch along the edges of the shores up in big limbs to watch the free fish wash up to shore or take the little ones off the shore. Pelicans swim in small groups back and forth scooping up the same fish. It's a nice peaceful looking place, something right out of a painting I guess you could say.  But once you get out onto the open river, either the Black River or fifteen minutes down to the main channel of the Mississippi, there are all kinds of things that are likely to get you in trouble. We hear all the time from the older folks around here that living around the river in the old days was a big part of many lives. They used to push logs all through here and you can even see some old stations of places like mills along the black river. When I get out there on the kayak and paddle around some of those back sloughs, I'll be the first to admit that I like to think about those older days when there would have been folks fishing or trapping, pushing logs, or even encounters with the Winnebago before all that. Think of it for a minute. Canoeing down there along the Petibone Island, all that wild life flying around, minks, otters, beaver, fish jumping all over the place, and then to slowly float past a group of Winnebagos who had probably lived in this area for thousands of years. In my mind, I always hope I would run across them at the right time and not make anybody mad. I see them standing around a fire maybe skinning a deer or working on hides and doing nothing more than nod at me as I skim past and that is that. I'm glad to move on. The mysteries back here in these waters started with all of that -- me thinking about life way back in the old days, when there was no loud highway noise like there is now. It's all quiet back here and you are kind of on your own. My dad didn't want me this far, past the bridge, and back up into these sloughs because it was sort of out of reach for anybody to stay in contact. Sure, you could bring a phone back in here, but after I lost my first one in two inches of water, dad said that is that. Dad is police chief over here on French Island. It's not a very big island, only two other officers, and I tend to even run into dad here in there on boats or on my kayaks. I've made a small business back in through here by doing some netting and clamming. Dad thinks it's pretty odd but he says he has also seen much worse that kids do all day so he allows it as long as safety is maintained. The day I found that dugout was as accidental as it was ever going to get, I will say that. I couldn't get Mack to come with me that day. Mack is Corey's last name, but Mack is the one he prefers. He won't even look at you if you say Corey, that kind of thing. I was on my own. I don't like going deep into the slough bush at any time really – poison ivy and mosquitos makes everything miserable but I had been following an inlet under trees that I had never seen before. The high water opened up all kinds of places back here. I stayed on kayak all the way up to a big patch of timber that had uprooted. 

Reading Behavior

"Of these I can claim in adequate measure only the last; I'm drawn like a kid to mud into the sticky terrain of cultural difference. How wondrous, it seems to me, that someone else can live on the same round egg of a world that I do but explain it differently..." Kingsolver, from "The Space Between"






5


First and foremost the job of a good literary critic is to be sure to provide honest feedback to the literature; always lay down praise exactly where it is deserved and always make sure to point out perceived deficiencies. With Kingsolver, the critic can very easily fall pray to only praising because, as mentioned in a previous write-up, we are extraordinarily lucky that we not only still have a great and tenacious novelist about in our modern culture, but more specifically – and this is where my own bias will come in – a novelist who more than a little bit interested in nature as subject, more specifically climate change, or deep green concepts. Honestly, in our age, why more great or true novelists don't take on this topic is actually beyond me; most less sturdy novelists or young writers tend to plug into the apocolypse and sort of let the drama that is automatically intertwined with this do all the work. That is to say, set up a netherworld, watch it collapse, and watch all of the atrocious behavior that ensues. This heavy handed sort of dramatic reaction is far easier than building up an entire society, picking each bit apart, or elevating portions where they are due. In other words, the work of the real social novelist is long, hard work and that is why the great ones will be considered literature and why the subgenres will, hopefully, be a passing fad: certainly read by a mass audience today, but without the offering up of cultural solutions, not very useful really. What Kingsolver says above is quite important in this regard, in terms of both praise and critique. Let's be fairly clear about Flight Behavior in the early going: it is considerably slow and considerably dull, especially as we realize that up there in that mountain is a living breathing miracle, but we are beset with the trivialities of many characters that we come to perceive are not the narrator's favorite type. Cub and crew is not receiving raving reviews; they are, of course, the cultural backdrop that needs to be juxtaposed up against the pulsing habitat of the Monarchs. The blindness that the natives carry any longer for what is true, beautiful, and that 'indicate' something is so well established that we are left to wonder if maybe a bit of the Scarlet Letter's extreme symbolic efficiency could be used here. Say it this way: Kingsolver is asking a lot of us readers, especially in these more attention deficit times, to stick the minutia of a day of congregation, or a day of Dellarobia doing laundry in the house. We are now beginning to see the more human version of the flight behaviors that are alluded to in the title and the concept as both the family and the stranger are making their way to Dellarobia's doorstep. This is quite fascinating, there is no doubt, and the imagination begins to work out the reality of what might happen if one of the greatest ecological treasures of Mexico did bizarrely swap spots abruptly; it's safe to say that the butterflies would not be the only creatures to head south. The human quotient would be exceedingly curious, there would be followers, there would be scientists, and there would be appropriately believers. But my question here is this: what happens if these scenes of the newcomers began the book? Granted, the plot trick might come off more as a mystery book tendency, but it might provide for some very interesting and immediate tension to depict, fairly quickly, the culture of Cub and family and then show these other cultures represented and arriving. This is not so much a questioning of the choices of a master but more of suggestion mindful of audience – I would like to see even MORE people, of all ages, read this kind of book. Kingsolver is truly a master of all genres. The language plucked above comes out of exceedingly succinct passages from High Tide in Tucson, where the sentences are purposefully tensile and nearly directive. Behavior is not long winded per se – the narrative style is gestural more than it is elaborate; it provides us with many offhanded sort of remarks that offer some humor and some inside thinking as it were. And yet the social covering of the details, I sense, are more than necessary; in a way trying a little too hard to set the trap for these folks who inhabit this particular scene. It doesn't take a whole bunch more description to catch on that Cub is a bumbler, for example, and without the prospect of his leaping out of the confines of flat character into round, it becomes too much, which to me actually indicates an inability for Kingsolver to understand this person for real. She mentions in the same essay from above that she always realized there is no real way to enter into the actual minds of others that tend to be different from one's one psychology, but that she learned from Steinbeck and merely describing these people from the outside is all that can be asked. Of course this seems to be totally true: description is all the writer can do, but the cardboard characters of the Tennesseans seems a bit of a shallow haul as of right now. To deny Hester, for example, even a single positive feature seems a little bit out of touch with reality to me. Maybe Hester is everything conceivably loathsome to Dellarobia except for the fact that she is .... the hardest working woman ever know on that farm. If this were the case, Hester becomes a bit more human very quickly; for her to be locked inside the trap of false religiosity, domineering, dim, and built to control, among many others, unfortunately falls into caricature, which could work in a shorter symbolic novel, but one that is purposefully socially inclined, this isn't quite enough to keep the readers in tune.