Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet

Ballet was a huge part of my life up until high school. I learned grace, discipline and French. I made friends I still have. After reading a review of Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans I knew I had to read the book, even though it is 600+ pages.
Ms. Homans traces ballet and dance from the 18th century through contemporary times as a party of larger world history. Ballet was important pre and post French Revolution and some of the greatest celebrities were defectors from the USSR (remember Baryshnikov in Sex and the City?). She reminds us that ballet stars influenced culture and although we might think it elite and esoteric today, there have been times when dancers and choreographers risked their lives for it. This volume is well edited, with facts and pictures. Dance is also ephemeral: of the hundreds of ballets Balanchine choreographed, for example, only a handful are remembered.
Ms. Homans ends the tome believing that ballet is dying. She argues there are no true stars and it doesn't have the same influence as in the past. But I disagree. Last night I sat on the Esplanade and listened to the Landmarks Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky, with members of the Boston Ballet dancing parts of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. And there was a crowd of people with me. And what about shows like, Dancing with the Stars? And the Zumba craze? Maybe not ballet, but people love dance and I'm not ready to give up on it.
This book took me months to read, but it was worth it. 5/5 netflix stars.

Zeitoun and The Lacuna

If Dave Eggers wrote the original Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he's followed it up as an adult with even more heartbreaking works: What is the What a few years ago and Zeitoun in the past year or so.  It might be too soon for some to read a non-fiction account of a family's post-Katrina life in New Orleans.  If that family is Muslim, it might put anyone over the edge.  After sitting on my shelf for a year, I picked it up only because it's the current book club pick. I didn't know if I was ready to cry through the entire story.
The cover is an illustration, but could be any number of photographs that came out the days following the hurricane and levee breaks...a man in a canoe, gliding through the streets.  The man is Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant who owns a contracting business along with his wife, Kathy.  Eggers writes about their lives in a journalistic fashion.  He fills in the day-to-day life of a hard working father of five with brief backgrounds of Zeitoun's life in Syria and Kathy's life as a younger woman in New Orleans (including her decision to convert to Islam).  Kathy and Zeitoun watched the weather reports leading up to Katrina's attack on the gulf coast much as we all did, but most of us didn't have to decide weather or not to evacuate and most of us didn't have to come home to houses completely inundated.  Even fewer of us chose to stay in New Orleans, as Zeitoun did, witnessing trapped neighbors, looting, interrogations by the law and the lawless.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is a different account of so called law in the guise of public safety but 50 years earlier.  It's a fictional account of William Harrison, an American who grew up in Mexico and ended up working for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as a kind of jack of all trades-- sometimes plaster mixer, sometimes cook, sometimes confidante to Mrs. Kahlo.  Frida has become such an iconoclast that it was hard to believe her conversations with Harrison.  I had trouble seeing where Kingsolver was going at times-- why so much background on Harrison's mother? It was a 600+ page book and at times I felt like I wouldn't make it through.  But then there was a turning point.  When Kingsolver devoted the second half of the book to Harrison as popular author and quiet bachelor in a small Southern town, the story became compelling.  Kahlo and and Rivera are too big to compete with and Harrison deserves to stand on his own, and he does.  In a short time we learn that he is targeted as a Communist, quotes from his fiction are attributed to him, out of context, and no matter what, the US government will bring him down.  Kingsolver is a bit heavy handed in her allusions to current government control and persecution (read Zeitoun) but Harrison is a complete and sympathetic character. I felt the same helplessness with Harrison as I did with Zeitoun.
These may not be the best reads for conspiracy theorists...or maybe they're the best reads for all of us. 5 and 4 stars respectively.

A Walk In The Woods

My mom liked to say that from Kansas, you could get to somewhere fun in a mere 12 hour drive.  The beaches on the Gulf were 12 hours to the south, the mountains 12 hours to the west, and deserts and cacti 12 hours to the southwest.  We spent many summers in Colorado or Santa Fe, and most vacations involved some rustic cabin living and lots of hiking.  We had our favorite trails-- the Alpine Trail near where we stayed in Buena Vista, CO and the ski basin in Santa Fe.  But these trails would represent just a centimeter of the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia up to Maine.  In the mid-90s Bill Bryson and his friend Steven Katz decided to hike the AT over the course of several months, and A Walk In The Woods is Bryson's record of that adventure.
I started this book as part of the Emergency Holiday Challenge and remembered Steph loving it and was even told by someone in my yoga class how funny it was.  And while it was funny, it was also wistful and kind of sad.  Bryson would intersperse details of the hike (lots of walking, lots of trees) with facts about the AT and the environmental changes.  We've all heard about the demise of the passenger pigeon, and the relatively quick fell of the American Chestnut trees...Bryson lectures us just to the point of depression and then says, "back to the trail!"
Even though this book is just about 10 years old, at times it felt dated.  Bryson writes with disdain about people to bring modems hiking so they can share stories from the trail (um, that would be blogging) and writes with amazement that some people have brought satellite tracking devices (what we now know as GPS!).  Every few days they arrive at a small town where they check in with their families from payphones.  Cell phones were not rampant yet.
2,200 miles is a lot of hiking and without giving anything away, a six-mile day hike on a trail of woods, streams and mountains maybe gives you the same idea as 6 months of the same.  Day hikes let you get back to the relative warmth of a cabin (and maybe access to some soothing hot springs) by 6 pm.  Nevertheless, I feel lucky that we have the luxury of wilderness to hike in, that despite the extinction of species, we generally value unspoiled nature.
4/5 netflix stars

The Help and Strength in What Remains

The Revolutions of 1989 were by and large bloodless; the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of other Eastern Bloc countries resulted in the end of Communism and peaceful transfer of power. Twenty years before that Dr. Martin Luther King epitomized the non-violent struggle for civil rights.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett describes the stories of three women: one privileged white woman who along with two African American maids work together to tell the stories of behind the scenes lives, and in the process create a non-violent revolution in Jackson, Mississippi.  Each woman makes personal sacrifices for the greater good-- even though at the time they have no idea what that good will be.  Ms. Stockett tells the story of The Help in three viewpoints-- Skeeter's, Aibileen's and Minny's.  Each woman has a personal impetus to enact change, but what's amazing is how the three of them come to work together.
The revolutions of 1989 were not all peaceful. Tianamen Square took place that summer.  Likewise, 1994 brought about revolutions too. The very violent kind.  Extreme poverty for the majority and extreme wealth for the minority set the catalyst for the ethic genocides in Burundi and Rwanda.  Tracy Kidder relays Deo's story in Strength in What Remains.  Similar to What is the What, Deo miraculously flees Burundi and lands in New York with $200, no place to live and barely understanding a word of English.  Within five years he's enrolled at Columbia and soon after that, Dartmouth Medical School.  Mr. Kidder relays Deo's story in a series of viewpoints also.  He writes as a journalist, telling Deo's history as Deo remembers it.  Then he tells the history of the country, so the reader can better understand how events took a turn from the worse, and finally, he tells his story: how he met Deo and his impressions of him and his relationship to him and their return together to Burundi.  Mr. Kidder's document seemed a more complete story than What is the What.
In The Help, Skeeter is amazed that Aibileen is such a voracious reader, and that other maids who work for her friends have gone to college and aspire to send their children to college.  Many of white women Skeeter is friends with cannot see past the color and occupation of their maids.  But what surprised me was that Deo's story in New York was similar.  He'd come from being an intern at a hospital in Burundi to being a grocery delivery boy who made $15 a week in New York.  Just as the family Aibileen works for dehumanizes her by not even allowing her to use a bathroom in the house, Deo's employer literally pokes him with a stick to make him work.
Both books are good reminders that revolutions are, and should be, dynamic and constant.  I give both 5/5 netflix stars.

Spice: The History of a Temptation

The new school year is here! I can almost smell the fresh pencils and pink erasers and can hear the crackle of a brand new text book being opened for the first time. It's a time of optimism and new goals and fresh starts. Which is why it's so hard for me to say this...I gave up on a book.

I'm a good student-- I've only missed one book club in the past 7 years and have read all the books (with the exception of one that I couldn't finish: Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder, because I thought she came off as a know-it-all, condescending smarty-pants). I like to give everyone's book a chance, even though we had one member (with a PhD-- you know who you are!) who consistently chose tedious and difficult subject books. In general, if I read a book I wouldn't normally choose, at least I feel I've gained something I wouldn't have otherwise.

Spice: The History of Temptation by Jack Turner sounded promising. It's a historical book-- not something I'd normally pick-- but drew rave reviews on the back cover as well as on Amazon. As soon as I started reading, I was reminded of school...remember how every year in elementary school you'd learn about Columbus and De Soto, etc, etc? Surely, I thought, this would be an introduction and the fascinating parts would be forthcoming. And to an extent, it did get better. I learned that spices were used to preserve food and bodies and were used as displays of wealth and aristocracy. Turner used no shortage of examples and I would find myself skimming through yet another medicinal example of peppercorns and their various uses.

I tried to give this book my all. I took it on an airplane and I even re-checked it out from the library. But it made me sleepy. This book is clearly a labor of love for Turner, and perhaps readers who have a greater interest in history would enjoy this. In fact, I'm willing to take the blame for this. Perhaps I've been dumbed down by reading Twilight and Harry Potter and watching marathons of Project Runway. But I have to be honest and give this book 1 out of 5 netflix stars.

Rag and Bone: A Journey Among The World's Holy Dead

A little over a year ago, my sister Liz took me to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It's off the beaten track of the other monuments in DC and there's nothing much else out there. But we were curious and we like churches. The Basilica was immense and sparkling and to two non-Catholics, daunting. We opted for the tour. Our guide explained statues and histories of saints and took us into special alcoves and soon we all lined up to view the relic. Maybe it was a bone fragment; I can't recall. But we all moved in a circle to get a glimpse.

Peter Manseau tells similar stories of viewing relics the world over in Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead. His interest is that of a layperson, like myself. He's not someone who has a strong religious attachment to the relics he visits themselves, but is curious about how the affect so many people, and on some level, are common to all the world's religions. He visits India, Israel, Pakistan, Syria and interacts with Jews, Catholics and Muslims. He describes a brief history of each of the relics he visits-- most are dubiously authentic but have at any rate suffered indignities and brutalities post mortem that sometimes exceed the violence experienced by the living person. And he usually speaks with the caretakers of the relics and/or shrines. He meets a nun whose personal life was marked by so many violent accidents that she felt compelled to turn to religion and the saint whose remains her convent now hosts. He met a family who for generations had been guarding a holy tooth in Kashmir, but who had lost their legacy through politics; Inidian guards now hold the keys. He met a scientist whose life work it has been to verify (or not) the remains of Saint Joan of Arc. He claims he is not spiritual, yet he reveres her bones with a fervor usually reserved for the most pious.

Mr. Manseau comes to realize that the relics are more than just a spritual connection-- in Sri Lanka they provide jobs-- helping the economy informally (tours) and formally (the requisite gift shop), in France, local pride unites a community and in Syria, children get to practice their English with tourists.

Mr. Manseau journeys the world with curiousity and respect. For him, it's a strictly personal exploration as much as an means to discovering the history of relics. His message is subtle-- living people and living history is more important than the dead.

For myself, the Basillica was beautiful, but maybe too beautiful. It was hard to for me to reconcile the ostentatious gilt with the suffering experienced by the saints featured. I appreciated Mr. Manseau's journey.

Netflix rating: 4/5 stars

American Wife and The Wordy Shipmates

Periodically I'll put in requests for books at the public library and if the books are "best sellers" I might be number 80 on the list. I don't mind waiting, but invariably what happens is that all the books will arrive at the same time. So a couple weeks ago I got notification that American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld had arrived along with a fellow blogger's recommendation for The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. With limited time to read both, I shoved my New Yorkers to the side and plowed in. Fortunately I was sick for a few days so could only read and watch KU basketball on the couch. More importantly, I realized these books are nice complements to each other.

The Wordy Shipmates is Sarah Vowell's research on the origins of American settlers in New England and American Wife is a fictionalized life story of Laura Bush (Alice Blackwell in the book)-- in short, these two books are bookends on American History.

Ms. Sittenfeld creates a thoughtful and sympathetic portrait of an average American woman. Alice grows up in a small town in Wisconsin and leads what anyone would consider a fairly ordinary life from the outside. She attends public school, goes to church, interacts with her neighbors, and has a best friend. Her dad works at a bank and her mom stays at home. Her grandma is the spunky antithesis of "normalcy"-- she provides the inspiration for Alice's lifelong liberal leanings. When Alice falls for Charlie Blackwell, a son from a strong and old Republican family, they are still years away from Charlie becoming president (based on W.). Alice is confident she and Charlie can keep their politics separate and to an extent they do, but she does find that her mores and ethics are often at odds with Charlie's public persona. She maintains a fine line between her personal feelings and public face.

Alice's conflict can directly be traced back to the 1630s. In school we learned that the Pilgrims came from England for religious freedom. That's part of the story. Ms. Vowell explains that they were all for religious freedom as long as they all adhered to an agreed upon set of rules. Sound familiar? She gives us the backstory on the founding of different colonies and the seemingly petty disagreements that led to vicious attacks on American Indians, multiple banishments of colonists and beheadings of those who disagreed with the King(s) of England. I liked Ms. Vowell's account of this history because she writes with humor and personal insight and honestly loves our founding fathers (and mothers) despite, and because of, their shortcomings. She cringes when Anne Hutchinson shoots herself in the foot and rolls her eyes at Winthrop's and Williams' disagreements. But she never apologizes for being American-- she loves America.

Both of these books were so well written and edited. They were both worth the wait, and even the $0.60 fine I'll pay for finishing The Wordy Shipmates after its due date.

5/5 netflix stars to each.

Three Cups of Tea

I just finished Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin and alternately admired it and despised it. Right now I have an angel on my right shoulder and a devil on my left. I'll ask them to go through the pros and cons of this book.

Angel: What's not to love? Greg Motensen has really lived an amazing life-- not only for himself but humbly giving what he can to those less fortunate. He was able to identify a need-- schools for those who didn't have them-- and a means to provide them.

Devil: Sure, sure...but he was always running away, couldn't commit to a life and career in one place.

Angel: His missionary parents raised him and his siblings in Africa! He has a family history of selflessness.

Devil: Selflessness? What about the idea that this whole book is self promotion? And how many times so his Pakistani friends and good deed recipients say, "Praise be to Allah! And also Greg Mortensen!" Andrea, you know you hate that.

Me: That self aggrandizement does bug me...

Angel: He was just stepping in and helped get things going- the Pakistani people built and ran the schools, plus he provided jobs and pay to several upstanding Pakistani and Afghani citizens. Plus he really focuses on providing education for girls and providing community centers for village women as a means of empowerment.

Me: Ah, I really do love female empowement.

Devil: But would you really love being his wife and being 9 months pregnant while he's unreachable in Afghanistan? He's away from his own family for months out of the year!

Angel: She knew that going into the relationship.

Devil: And how about how they named their kids after places in Pakistan? So corny!

Angel: Attacking kids' names?? Classy, Devil, Classy.

Devil: Seriously, why do we always hear stories about white people going in and making life better for brown people? What, there's no brown people helping themselves?

Angel: Why make such a big deal out of it? Just look at it as one man doing his best to make a positive difference-- don't read so much into it! So, Andrea, what do you think?

Me: I think I still don't know...I'm just going to give this book exactly 2.5 out of 5 stars.

How To Be Alone

An Open Letter To Jonathan Franzen:

I'd like to start by thanking you. Your book The Corrections entertained me for a good couple days at my first post-college job. But perhaps the joy that was The Corrections bears re-reading, because I found your book of essays, How To Be Alone, in a word, annoying. In two words, annoying and obnoxious. The book consists of essays written from the early to mid-90s and finishes with one written on Inauguration Day, 2001. Many of the earlier essays are stuck in their time-- ruminations on the deterioration of society due to cordless phones and answering machines. I guess it's noble to write one's novel on an old typewriter...if you're 78. But Mr. Franzen, at the writing, you were in your early thirties! Isn't that a bit young to become a curmudgeon? Personally, if I had written an essay predicting that the Internet would fall the way of beta max and AOL email, I'd want to make sure it stayed hidden, presumably under lock and key in old gray file cabinets, and not compiled in a "Best Of" album. I felt embarrassed for you.

You lament that people don't read anymore and inform us that you gave away your old tv so that there would be no distractions from reading. While you might like to think you are a martyr for doing this, the reality is, Mr. Franzen, that many, many people read. And many, many people can just turn off the tv for a couple hours. I daresay that even Mr. Frey would be able to abstain from tv for an evening to read a forlorn and dusty book in the prison library.

But Mr. Franzen, it's not all gloom and doom. I sincerely enjoyed your expose on the deficiencies of the Chicago Postal Service (because who doesn't enjoy bitching about the mail?) and your last essay on Inauguration Day 2001 showed growth and insight. The essay about your father's brain was poignant and your interviews with prison inmates were thoughtful. But when you just offer your opinion on a given issue, you often straddle both sides, leaving me wondering which side you are really on.

I'm sure you'd be happy knowing the Marie Claire Book Club probably would not wade through your verbiage of "big" words (two words missing from your essays are "hubris" and "humility"). In fact, I couldn't finish the book. I decided to take the challenge you proposed and read...but life's too short to read condescending opinions set forth by spoiled artists.

Mr. Franzen, your book may be so lucky to fall into the same company as your beloved typewriter and even the answering machine-- at a garage sale in a box of $.10 books.

Sincerely,

Andrea

Netflix stars-- 2/5

Russian Journal

I put greater trust in people with whom I share a name, Andrea. I picked a primary care doctor only because her name was Andrea and she was fantastic. All the Andreas I've ever met have been amazing. So when I discovered the writer Andrea Lee several years ago, I automatically assumed she would be a great writer. Not only do we share the same first name, but my middle name is Lee, so the sisterhood was sealed. And, true to form, she is a great writer.
Russian Journal is her first book-- it's a non fiction description of her time in the Soviet Union in the late 70s. Growing up in the 80s, the Soviet Union was a place completely off limits-- images of dark, dismal landscapes, people waiting in endless lines for scratchy toilet paper and root vegetables, plus, of course the constant threat of Communism to our freedom loving souls. Ms. Lee carefully paints a picture not unlike that described above, but with even more depth. She does not hide her distaste for the shortfalls of the huge Communist country-- the poverty, miseducation of its citizens and destruction of an imperial history in favor of boxy low rent conformity. But she draws a careful line between the institution that created this and the people who are a part of it. She makes friends who readily criticize the Party as well as friends whose patriotism is unmatched. She uses a journalist's eye to evoke character descriptions of her friends and the total landscape they inhabit. She finds herself missing "luxuries" such as freely speaking and going wherever she would like. She misses the glitzy advertising in the U.S. that is missing from the U.S.S.R. She misses the "whole" movie (sex scenes are edited out of imported movies). But when she arrives back in Boston, she finds she has a much greater appreciation for the lives and struggles of her Russian friends and finds herself appreciating them all the more.
Ms. Lee's descriptions confirmed many of my notions about Soviet Russia-- the coveting of American blue jeans and music, the cold and cramped housing. But now I'll also think of Grigorii, the student assigned to spy on Ms. Lee and her husband, but who they grew close to nonetheless, and his quiet appreciation of the nightingale's song. Or of Ms. Lee's descriptions of the ice breaking up in the spring, and the crisp cool air with eventual lilacs.
This was a beautifully written book so I'm giving if 5/5 netflix stars.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

In high school we had a foreign exchange student from Italy, Laura, attend Wichita Public High School for a year. You are welcome to think that living in Wichita for a year would be a more of a punishment rather than an "equal exchange", but I like to think that probably more than any of us who currently live in major metropolitan U.S. cities, she got a feel for how the majority of Americans live. I remember her telling me that she missed mozzarella-- at home it was fresh and came packed in liquid. I had no idea what she was talking about-- mozzarella, like all cheese, came shrink wrapped in a uniform block and resided in the refrigerated section at Dillons.

When I moved to Boston after graduation, I was suddenly exposed to many more fresh foods: the fresh mozzarella, fresh pasta and sauce, fresh, brown eggs and...the Farmer's Market! (I also missed foods of my own, like pimento cheese spread.)

It's now been more than 10 years and I eat and cook much different than I did growing up. Part of this is expense-- the prepackaged food are more expensive than making a huge pot of red beans and rice. But part of it is also thanks to Michael Pollan. The Omnivore's Dilemma exposed how much high fructose corn syrup is in everything and how Big Farming has environmental as well as health costs. If we're able to be responsible consumers, why shouldn't we?

His new book, In Defense of Food, tells us how to identify the real food (fresh mozz in water) from the fake food (block of white cheese "product" encapsulated in plastic with a list of ingredients longer than this post). Pollan tells us that we've been duped by scientists and nutritionists with every passing food fad (currently Omega-3s) and that sometimes the sum is greater than the parts (supplements just don't provide the same total nutrition that whole grains and plants do). His advice is threefold: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Sounds easy and logical, but he breaks down how the Western Diet has made it difficult; we eat mostly processed and refined foods, with additives, we eat portion sizes much bigger than most cultures, and take our cues on satiation not on feeling, but on visual clues and finally we are a culture which eats many pounds more of meat per person per year than other cultures.

Mr. Pollan's premise in this book is radical because it is so different than how we eat, and how we grew up eating. It presents a doable challenge and ultimately reminds us that is what is good for the environment is also good for our health, and vice versa. This book gets 5/5 netflix stars.

Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

Readers of my other blog, Zandrea, might recall my anecdote on taking our girlscout troop "camping" last summer and my amazment, along with my other troop leaders, that the girls did not run off into the camp wilderness during freetime. They all stayed close to the lodge and for the most part did crafts that could just as easily been done inside (which, due to rain, at times they were). We attributed it to their being "city kids".

About a month ago, I was watching one of those Sunday morning shows* and a statistic along the lines of our grandparents knew and traveled 5 miles around their house, while our parents knew about a 2 mile radius and today's children are many times limited to their very house, if not their front and back yards. The book this came from is called Last Child In the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. I immediately added it to my library queue. I had wondered if I was just having a "kids today!" moment so thought this book might validate some of my observations.

Mr. Louv discusses various repercussions of "nature-deficit" among this generation of children: higher incidences of ADHD, not being able to identify local species of birds, insects, trees (thereby decreasing the liklihood of preserving them), childhood to adulthood obesity. Mr. Louv sites many reasons for this, and kids watching tv and playing video games is just one small reason. Liability/litigation have made exploring neighborhoods off limits, fear of "stranger-danger" has lead parents to keep kids within eye and earshot, organized sports and school have lead to less free time and schools have cut out recess and physical education if favor of more academic time to pass required tests. But Mr. Louv presents adults and kids working to buck the trend-- progressive school programs which feature nature learning, trips to the Alaskan wilderness for inner city kids. I thought about my experience in nature as a kid-- not a lot in Kansas, but summer vacations were often in Colorado or New Mexico and when we did visit New England, hours were spent at the beach, creating makeshift aquariums. Freshman year of high school I had an assignment to make an insect collection. I balked because what 14 year old girl wants to collect bugs? But I did it and was amazed enough to still recall it 16 years later.
Mr. Louv sometimes comes across as the dorky dad-- he makes us all feel good but also like maybe we shouldn't swear so much and drink more milk and less alcohol. But at the end of it all, he presents a compelling argument to set an example for kids and get back out in nature**. This reads like a college sociology book (although I liked my college sociology class), so it's getting only 4/5 netflix stars.

*note to self: get off your duff and get outside!
**inspired, I'm going to go outside and watch the total lunar eclipse. Or at least watch from the window with a movie on in the background.