Monday, June 24, 2013
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Books
As I have been unpacking books today I have been thinking of where I got each book, what I was doing at the time, why I bought it, what the book was about, and so on.
The Camera was the first book of the Life Library of Photography series, a series I started to buy and read while I was in Greenland in 1973. I had just bought my first camera, a Minolta SRT 101 single lens reflex camera, a simple workhorse camera which brought me so much enjoyment hiking and photographing the barren landscape.
The book describes a dated technology but an ageless aesthetic.
Soon after I finished my tour in Greenland and returned to the US I started buying the Hundred Greatest Books from the Franklin Library. Moby Dick was the first of the series, and each month a new leather bound book would arrive, and each month I would hold it, smell it, rub it - everything but read it. That’s not entirely true; I did read some of them, like Crime and Punishment, but others, such as Euripides Plays, I just couldn’t get into.
The fall before I went to Nigeria in 1977 I read Return to Laughter, an anthropological novel by Eleanor Smith Bowen, a fictional retelling of the author’s experiences living and working with the Tiv in Nigeria, the same tribe my wife and I would be working with a few months later. My copy of the book, a tape wrapped paperback that sold for $2.50, is well worn and earmarked, evidence of being read multiple times. More than anything else this book prepared me for the shock of moving into an entirely different culture.
Once I was living in Nigeria I started looking for books that would help me understand the people there. My copy of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is also held together by clear tape, but that old copy means a lot more to me than a brand new book would. Achebe was a great writer (he died recently) and this book started to open the door for me, to see the Nigerian culture from their side, to begin to start to comprehend the complexity of their society.
Another book that brings back memories is a cheap hard bound copy of The Life of Lenin by Maria Prilezhayeva, published in Moscow, and sold for 65 Kopeks. I obtained my copy while living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The book is all propaganda, all about Lenin’s heroic struggles and the joys of communism, and as such is an interesting example of the way things were before the Soviet Union broke up.
I read my copy of The Plague by Albert Camus shortly after caring for a young man with bubonic and pneumonic plague in Gallup, NM, and the actions and emotions that he describes so well could still be seen at the Gallup Indian Medical Center - the panic, the denials, the pragmatism.
These book, and many more, tell the story of my life; much better than I could ever tell it.
The Camera was the first book of the Life Library of Photography series, a series I started to buy and read while I was in Greenland in 1973. I had just bought my first camera, a Minolta SRT 101 single lens reflex camera, a simple workhorse camera which brought me so much enjoyment hiking and photographing the barren landscape.
The book describes a dated technology but an ageless aesthetic.
Soon after I finished my tour in Greenland and returned to the US I started buying the Hundred Greatest Books from the Franklin Library. Moby Dick was the first of the series, and each month a new leather bound book would arrive, and each month I would hold it, smell it, rub it - everything but read it. That’s not entirely true; I did read some of them, like Crime and Punishment, but others, such as Euripides Plays, I just couldn’t get into.
The fall before I went to Nigeria in 1977 I read Return to Laughter, an anthropological novel by Eleanor Smith Bowen, a fictional retelling of the author’s experiences living and working with the Tiv in Nigeria, the same tribe my wife and I would be working with a few months later. My copy of the book, a tape wrapped paperback that sold for $2.50, is well worn and earmarked, evidence of being read multiple times. More than anything else this book prepared me for the shock of moving into an entirely different culture.
Once I was living in Nigeria I started looking for books that would help me understand the people there. My copy of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is also held together by clear tape, but that old copy means a lot more to me than a brand new book would. Achebe was a great writer (he died recently) and this book started to open the door for me, to see the Nigerian culture from their side, to begin to start to comprehend the complexity of their society.
Another book that brings back memories is a cheap hard bound copy of The Life of Lenin by Maria Prilezhayeva, published in Moscow, and sold for 65 Kopeks. I obtained my copy while living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The book is all propaganda, all about Lenin’s heroic struggles and the joys of communism, and as such is an interesting example of the way things were before the Soviet Union broke up.
I read my copy of The Plague by Albert Camus shortly after caring for a young man with bubonic and pneumonic plague in Gallup, NM, and the actions and emotions that he describes so well could still be seen at the Gallup Indian Medical Center - the panic, the denials, the pragmatism.
These book, and many more, tell the story of my life; much better than I could ever tell it.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Moving In
“De ja vu all over again,” as Yogi said, that old familiar feeling of opening boxes, moving furniture, laying out rugs, placing lamps, hanging pictures, shelving books, putting dishes away, and looking for toothbrushes, extension cords, address books, and that little book with all our secret passwords - Nonnie and I have done all these things fourteen times before and I hope this is our last time. Fifteen moves since we were married, and before that I moved from Portland to New York, San Antonio, Greenland, Charleston SC, and back to Portland. With each move the amount of stuff we have seems to grow, although we did some serious downsizing a few years ago. Over the years I have lived poor and I have lived rich, and what people say is true: rich is better.
We live in a corner house in a neighborhood of small blue collar houses, although now the cars in the driveways - Lexus, Porsche, BMW - indicate that our neighbors are a bit more upscale. There is an alley behind the house and we have a large driveway off the alley, big enough for four cars, a luxury in a neighborhood of two hour street parking. The streets are narrow and crowded, while the trees are huge and beautiful. Across the street from us, lined by tall trees and a thick hedge, is a cemetery, so that when I look out our front windows I see trees, but no graves, which I hope is the also the case in the winter.
In Albuquerque we gave away eight bookcases, particle wood pieces from Walmart, so now we are looking for new bookcases. The difference between particle wood and real wood in price and quality is exponential, but we bit the bullet and bought two new unfinished seven foot high pine pieces - real wood. They delivered them today and I will finish them tomorrow, hopefully, and see how my office looks when they are in place and full of books, after which I will make plans for more shelves. The movers who loaded and unloaded our rental moving truck all complained - “so many books.”
Oran came and spent the day with us today, keeping us happy and entertained with his boundless enthusiasm and energy. We went for a nice walk in Ravenna Park, which is near to our house and has a wonderful path winding along a stream in deep woods lined with 100 foot trees. At the far end of the park we found a playground and Oran had a good time climbing and sliding. It’s a great park for daytime use, but would probably be dark and scary at night.
We met our neighbor today, a young woman with two young children. She said Oran was welcome to come over anytime, and that she and her husband love the neighborhood and never want to move away. That was nice to hear. In general people here in Seattle seem friendly - more so than in Albuquerque - but time will tell as to how deep the friendliness runs. Nonnie thinks the drivers here are impatient and honk too much but in general they seem more cooperative to me, more willing to let other cars change lanes.
It’s been an interesting week to say the least...
We live in a corner house in a neighborhood of small blue collar houses, although now the cars in the driveways - Lexus, Porsche, BMW - indicate that our neighbors are a bit more upscale. There is an alley behind the house and we have a large driveway off the alley, big enough for four cars, a luxury in a neighborhood of two hour street parking. The streets are narrow and crowded, while the trees are huge and beautiful. Across the street from us, lined by tall trees and a thick hedge, is a cemetery, so that when I look out our front windows I see trees, but no graves, which I hope is the also the case in the winter.
In Albuquerque we gave away eight bookcases, particle wood pieces from Walmart, so now we are looking for new bookcases. The difference between particle wood and real wood in price and quality is exponential, but we bit the bullet and bought two new unfinished seven foot high pine pieces - real wood. They delivered them today and I will finish them tomorrow, hopefully, and see how my office looks when they are in place and full of books, after which I will make plans for more shelves. The movers who loaded and unloaded our rental moving truck all complained - “so many books.”
Oran came and spent the day with us today, keeping us happy and entertained with his boundless enthusiasm and energy. We went for a nice walk in Ravenna Park, which is near to our house and has a wonderful path winding along a stream in deep woods lined with 100 foot trees. At the far end of the park we found a playground and Oran had a good time climbing and sliding. It’s a great park for daytime use, but would probably be dark and scary at night.
We met our neighbor today, a young woman with two young children. She said Oran was welcome to come over anytime, and that she and her husband love the neighborhood and never want to move away. That was nice to hear. In general people here in Seattle seem friendly - more so than in Albuquerque - but time will tell as to how deep the friendliness runs. Nonnie thinks the drivers here are impatient and honk too much but in general they seem more cooperative to me, more willing to let other cars change lanes.
It’s been an interesting week to say the least...
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