Kaleidoscopic

Any idea what this is?



I spent some time this evening at the family farm, looking at the barn.  When the sun is setting, spikes of light come through the knotholes and spaces between the boards.  Here's an idea of what it looks like.

But when I was playing with my camera, I noticed that the light seemed to read funny on the screen.  A slight sideways movement, and the spaces seemed to widen.  That gave me the idea to move the camera just a bit, horizontally, while taking a picture.  I really like the result!

Quality time at the Brig

How many times is the weekend you picked to go camping also the weekend with the most gorgeous weather?  We really lucked out!  We were at Bass River State Forest in New Jersey.

But of course we didn't stay in camp, we also went to Edwin B. Forsythe NWR ("the Brig") for a spin around the wildlife loop.  Saturday AND Sunday :)

At the Leeds Eco Trail, which is partly a boardwalk out over the marsh, you always see barn swallows in warm weather.  They nest underneath.  The top shot isn't super sharp, but I love the action.

Another denizen of the eco trail area - a willow flycatcher.  I saw one here last fall, and now this trip.  And that is the two times in my life I've seen willow flycatchers.  They look like a lot of other flycatchers, unless you pay sharp attention to detail.  But, man, once they open their mouths, their songs give them away.

Oddly enough, there was a report of a scissor-tailed flycatcher the evening before we arrived.  That's a bird that usually comes no farther north than Texas and Oklahoma, so way out of range.  But there was no sign of it Saturday morning!

The English Patient

And the catch up continues ...

What I knew about this book before I read it:

• I saw at least some of the movie when I was younger.  I remember a lot of sand and a very dead woman.  Pretty sure Voldemort was in it.
• It's the centerpiece of a funny Seinfeld episode.  Elaine just doesn't get the appeal of the movie and hilarity ensues.

What I know about the book now that I have read it.

• It's apparently not very similar to the movie, although both have the same spirit and feel.
• Michael Ondaatje is a poet and it shows in his novels.
• It's really hard to praise it highly enough.

Seriously.  This isn't a long book, but it has layers upon layers, and the symbolism runs deep.  A lot of reviewers will tell you the book is about identity, and how people define themselves in relation to nationality, their environment, and each other.  

And I think that's correct, but that it's also about bombs.  There's a lot of detail about the mechanics of explosive devices, and I think that is a reflection of the "bombs" in the story.  Situations and combinations of personalities that are inevitably going to to blow up.

The four primary characters are in a place and time where any part of the physical world could explode at the whim of an IED.  They're near the end of WWII in a near-destroyed villa, following the German retreat from Italy, and they themselves are mentally and physically bombed out from their various and numerous wartime traumas.  Their stories crisscross with each other and explosive characters from their pasts.

At the center is of course, the English Patient, who has no physical identity any longer and who isn't really English, either.  Who connects all of the characters, past and present, and who has been responsible for more than one explosion of his own.

And then, of course, the atomic bombs that effectively end WWII also bring the book to its end.

This book, moreso than many others, reminds you that stories are art.

Final call:

Read this, please.  Not if you want a plot burner.  You are going to feel like Elaine if that's what you're after.  But if you want to be reminded of why you read ALL of the books, then read this one, now.

Never Let Me Go

I'm behind.  I actually read this book in the first half of April.  So bear with me as I play catch up.

I have read an Ishiguro book before - The Remains of Day - so I know he's good at using unreliable narrators.  Or, at least, narrators who who stick their head in the sand and hold on tight!

Never Let Me Go is accessible and approachable.  The narrator, Kathy, feels like an old friend telling you about her school buddies.  Which I am sure is part of the point, as you sympathize with her even as you come to realize that she and her friends are very different in a key way.

It's a quiet book.  Whoever designed the cover picked up on this, with the watercolor feeling.  A few moments of high drama, and the rest is subtle.

You could call this horror, although almost everything horrific is left unsaid.  Many people pick it up without knowing it is science fiction.  To be honest, I didn't know, either.  I knew there was a twist to it, and that you should just read it and go with it.

So, I did.

Final call:

  

I felt a little bit like I knew Ishiguro's tricks already.  Of the two, I feel like The Remains of the Day is a little more satisfying.  But this one is good, too.  Read it!

On Chesil Beach

A note:  I finished reading this book a month or two ago.  As you'll see, I didn't much care for it and didn't feel like writing about it and let this post sit as a draft till now.  Oh well, time to get it out!

................................................

What a squirm-inducing little book.  There's hardly anything to it, lengthwise, but there's so much uncomfortableness.  This is one of my Man Booker Challenge books.  It was short-listed in 2007 but did not win.  

I have to say, I'm not surprised.  First and foremost because the publishers took a short story and finagled it into a very small hard-bound book.  Second, because I have read Ian McEwan before - Atonement is one of my more favorite books.  This just isn't the same level or quality.

I mean, I see what he was trying to do, but it didn't totally work.  The whole arc is messed up, neither of the main characters grow.  Except for maybe a hint given by one sentence in the last few paragraphs.  Not enough.

Final call:

Eh.

    

Moonlighting

You may be wondering why I’ve been so quiet about posting lately.  The truth is, besides being both busy and sick recently, I’ve been moonlighting! 

If you want a peek at what I have been up to, take a few minutes and check out columbiahsc.blogspot.com.  This is a group that my husband and I volunteer with, but the subject matter is part of our profession, too.  We have a really great group, a really great project, and what we hope to accomplish is really exciting for our town.   

One of the things I volunteered to do was set up the blog and Facebook page for the group.  So, I've been posting, just over there!

  

Bath time in Brazos Bend

And, no, I'm not talking about me.  Anyway, we were camping.  Baths were few and far between!

The baths in question were being taken by birds, of course.  On our first day, we stopped in at Brazos Bend State Park to the southwest of Houston.  We were really just looking for a place to eat our lunch, and picked this place off the map. But the entrance fee ended up being well worth it!

We ate in a large shady picnic area that bordered on a small lake.  A little pavilion was located out over the water, and off to the left edge, in perfect lighting, white ibis and black-bellied whistling ducks were cleaning up.

But my favorite thing about watching these two birds were the faces and gyrations they would make in the process.  All calm and reposed one second, wacky and bending in crazy ways the next.

That ibis looks like me when I have too much caffeine.  Except for the standing in water part.  

And this, I don't even know how to begin to caption this one :)

It was at Brazos Bend that we realized something else could very well be in the water:

Alligators!  Yep.  It never dawned on either of us that alligators might be around in a warm swampy climate.

One of the other neat things about lunch was getting to see people walk past this sign and have their kids ask questions, and hear the parents make up stuff about the alligators to get a rise out the kids.  One parent told his kids that the alligators made these giant scrapes in the lawn.  

We thought he was just trying to scare the kids, but after getting up and looking at them, I think maybe he was telling the truth!