I've recently finished two great books of very different kinds. The quality of the books is not just my opinion--I ordered them because they received good reviews.
_The Rabbi's Cat_ by Joann Sfar is a lively graphic novel with a sort of sophisticated-scribbly yet wonderfully detailed art style. The story takes place in 1930s Algeria, where a very opinionated cat lives with a widowed rabbi and his curvaceous young daughter. The cat acquires the power of speech by eating the other family pet, a noisy, annoying parrot. He promptly uses this power of speech to deny he ate the parrot. The cat insists on a bar mitzvah, opening the way for extensive Jewish theological discussion between the cat, the rabbi, and the rabbi's rabbi. The cat's external and internal dialogue reveal him to be intelligent, smart-mouthed, and extremely devoted to his mistress, the rabbi's daughter. There's plenty of humor, food for thought, adventure, and romances of various kinds (the cat himself is strictly is the love 'em and leave 'em type). A side note: Ken, who loves this story, identified the cat as a Russian Blue even before he saw the author photo with "the model for the rabbi's cat." Ken wants a Russian Blue cat the way I want a baby. Except, as he points out, cats are cheaper, even a purebred Russian Blue.
For more information, and sample pages:
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/rabbiscat.html
Ah, yes, the second book: _Two Lives,_ by Vikram Seth. This is the story of Mr. Seth's uncle, Shanti, who emigrated from India to Germany in the 1930s for dental school, roomed with a German Jewish widow and her daughters, fell in love with one of the daughters, Henny (the second 'life' of the title). They both moved separately to England and eventually married. Vikram Seth clearly adores his uncle and aunt, with whom he stayed as a young student, and built up this story of their separate and intertwined lives. The story covers major world events, personal tragedy, friendships, family relationships, all in a varied but smooth and engrossing narrative. Vikram Seth, I think, includes himself in the story just the right amount. This memoir beautifully illuminates major events of our century, and life in three disparate countries, through the lives of these extraordinary "ordinary" people.
to hear about the book from the author via video:
http://www.meettheauthor.com/bookbites/798.html
for more about Vikram Seth's other books:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth89
Enjoy either or both if you will...
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Beth and the animal kingdom
Ken and I both worked Saturday. I got home first; he arrived, pounded on the door, and called "I need you." "What the heck has he got that I need to help him bring in?" I wondered. I got onto the stoop and Ken, in full National Park Service dress regalia, pointed behind me. There, in the nearby stand of trees, was one of our landlords/neighbors' miniature donkeys! Of course, Scott and Joyce were away for the weekend.
"Let me go upstairs and get an apple" I called to Ken, running up to cut up an apple to use as a bribe to get the donkey back in the corral where he belonged. (We later deduced he was the male donkey, Sweet William--he's only a couple of inches shorter than Pansy, his mother).
I tried cajoling Sweet William with words and by holding out the apple slices, which seemed to work at first but I must have been to far away because he shied back and galloped a short distance away. Ken gradually succeeded in herding Sweet William near the barn, where I stood, holding the apple out, and slowly backing him away to get inside. Ken stayed behind him to keep him in the barn, while I tried unsuccessfully to figure out how to open the gate to the corral, where Pansy and Awesome (the pony) were whinnying and galloping around, very agitated. Don't know whether it was a "what's he doing out there? we're worried" reaction or a "we want to get out too!" reaction. Or they may have smelled the apple pieces and wanted some too!
We decided to get Sweet William into the most secure stall in the barn. I almost got him in with apple bribes, but not quite. Finally I left Ken to watch him while I slid the barn doors nearly shut. I gave Sweet William a slice of apple to keep him occupied while Ken and I slipped out and called another neighbor, Mac.
We waited by the barn for Mac, who arrived soon enough, slipped in, and sent Sweet William into his stall with some soft words and a gentle slap on his rump. Then I fed the other two the remaining apple slices (Sweet William shouldn't get a special reward for being "bad"!) and Mac brought the other two in and gave them all dinner. Sweet William got out again the next day, but Scott figured out how he did it and fixed the problem.
Incidentally, I was wearing the same slippers I wore when I found the live squirrel in my toilet (a story for another time) and Mac was the neighbor who helped out by rescuing the squirrel (not to mention me), too!
I'll post photos of Sweet William once I get Ken to help.
"Let me go upstairs and get an apple" I called to Ken, running up to cut up an apple to use as a bribe to get the donkey back in the corral where he belonged. (We later deduced he was the male donkey, Sweet William--he's only a couple of inches shorter than Pansy, his mother).
I tried cajoling Sweet William with words and by holding out the apple slices, which seemed to work at first but I must have been to far away because he shied back and galloped a short distance away. Ken gradually succeeded in herding Sweet William near the barn, where I stood, holding the apple out, and slowly backing him away to get inside. Ken stayed behind him to keep him in the barn, while I tried unsuccessfully to figure out how to open the gate to the corral, where Pansy and Awesome (the pony) were whinnying and galloping around, very agitated. Don't know whether it was a "what's he doing out there? we're worried" reaction or a "we want to get out too!" reaction. Or they may have smelled the apple pieces and wanted some too!
We decided to get Sweet William into the most secure stall in the barn. I almost got him in with apple bribes, but not quite. Finally I left Ken to watch him while I slid the barn doors nearly shut. I gave Sweet William a slice of apple to keep him occupied while Ken and I slipped out and called another neighbor, Mac.
We waited by the barn for Mac, who arrived soon enough, slipped in, and sent Sweet William into his stall with some soft words and a gentle slap on his rump. Then I fed the other two the remaining apple slices (Sweet William shouldn't get a special reward for being "bad"!) and Mac brought the other two in and gave them all dinner. Sweet William got out again the next day, but Scott figured out how he did it and fixed the problem.
Incidentally, I was wearing the same slippers I wore when I found the live squirrel in my toilet (a story for another time) and Mac was the neighbor who helped out by rescuing the squirrel (not to mention me), too!
I'll post photos of Sweet William once I get Ken to help.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Noisy Quaker Women on Retreat
This past weekend I went on the BYM Quaker Women's Retreat. This is an annual women's retreat sponsored by Baltimore Yearly Meeting (Catholics: this is the equivalent of my local archdiocese) and run by one or more of the Quaker meetings in that meeting group. This year the two Baltimore City groups, Homewood and Stony Run (cool names for meetings, arent they?), organized and ran the retreat.
Quakers, at least Quaker women who go on retreat, love to sing! (Maybe because music isn't a set part of Quaker worship but is one of the most spiritual acts there is) We had three scheduled singing sessions, plus I chose to go to the Sacred Chant workshop, so I was very happy! One of our "hymnals" was Rise Up Singing (a title my folkie friends will recognize instantly as the incomplete but ubiquitous "folk hymnal") so I was especially happy and at home. Oh, how I have missed singing sacred music of various kinds! We sang spirituals, Taize chants, folk hymns, rounds, a chant in Hebrew and several in church Latin, usually with harmonies thrown in.
I forgot to mention we also had a coffeehouse, which included some songs as well as excellent storytelling and poetry reading (we're talking seriously expressive, evocative reading of others' and one's own poetry!) I couldn't resist the opportunity to sing. Well, actually I needed a little encouragement. I stood by the sign-in sheets and said to the two other women gathered there that I wasn't sure I had the courage. One of them handed me a sheet and that was all the encouragement I needed. I sang "I Am for You," a contemporary hymn by Rory Cooney.
(If you'd like to hear a bit of the tune, you can go to
http://www.hymnprint.net
and search on the title)
That was just two ways I've been learning I can live out my music ministry as a Quaker. Two other Quakers mentioned they sing in churches of other denominations (I overheard one woman say she was cantor in a Catholic parish, as I was for four years!). Then there's the prospect of starting an evening of music at my meeting (more on that in a later blog, depending on what develops...)
Ys, there was much more than music! Our theme was "Living from the Center" and we had three worship sharing meetings with a smaller group (ours numbered a lucky 13 women) to talk about various aspects of the theme such as "what is living from the center"--of course, there's at least as many answers as there are people!--and "what keeps you from living from the center?" I had a one-word answer: "clutter." Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, I could spend my *life* working just on the inner chatter in my head!
We had a lively, warmly human speaker, Linda Garrettson, the director of one of the Quaker camps in the BYM area, and a music teacher during the school year. She hosted a delightful "Centering Fun" icebreaker/community-building session Friday night, and gave a wonderful keynote talk on Saturday on our theme. She asked for help on "what is Living from the Center?" Her preschool class, of course, all raised their hands immediately "Preschoolers know" she informed us. What did they say? "Living from your heart" Where can you go on from there? Well, Linda and her various friends, coworkers, and students could.
What else did we do? Well, there were a *lot* of knitters, including my co-carpooler and clerk of our Marriage Committee, Lynada, who makes lovely knit caps for women undergoing chemotherapy (I think some might prefer the cozy, soft caps to a wig!) as well as other projects. She's also a perfect driver (not too cautious like me, or too fast like, umm, well, I won't say) and drove the Prius, which used about 2 gallons on the 4-hour round trip. And we made a couple of detours to walk on a handsome college campus (where a friendly maintenance guy let us into the chapel to use the restrooms--I felt so at home in a chapel that reminded me so much of Voorhees Chapel at Rutgers and the Reformed Church at home in New Paltz) and on the way home to get fresh apples and cider and jam at a local farm store. What was I talking about? Oh, knitting. I learned from Rebecca that you can create a felted item by knitting with 50% or better wool yarn and then soaking the item, when it's done, in hot water. You just have to make whatever-it-is four times as big as you want it. I also learned from Rebecca that if you're meant to have a baby (by whatever means) the money will come from somewhere. One has to trust. Oh, yeah, trust. The thing I keep forgetting to do (and that God keeps sending me people to remind me to do it).
There's so much more! I love just being able to be with other women, talk, and share our life stories. Andrea married an Iranian man and went to visit his family in Iran back, oh, I think in the 70s. Her mother-in-law greeted her in Tehran with a hug and the words, in Farsi: "I love you. You are my daughter" She sat next to her on the car ride from the airport and didn't even greet her son till they got home. She told her son to love and respect Andrea or he would hear from her (he does hear from her--and his sisters--if they think he's not being good enough to her. Andrea and her husband flew back for a visit on Sept. 9 2001. She promptly got sick and was awakened on 9/11 to the news of the terrorist attacks. That night people all over Tehran got up on their roof and lit candles in sympathy with the bereaved Americans. She said it stopped only when the police forcefully put an end to the vigil. When she and her sister-in-law said goodbye at the airport, they couldn't stop hugging and started crying. The women guards in the room (Andrea had to be searched before she left), stern women in black, started crying also.
Oh, the women! All ages, from a high school girl and her mom, Julie, who sang "I'll Cover You" from Rent at the coffeehouse to eighty-seven-year-old woman Deborah James, who taught a workshop on writing vignettes of one's own life and told one of her own at the coffeehouse, "Yin and Yang" on her need for relationships with men. Peggy, who came up with dance movements to go with two of the chants Betsy taught us in the Sacred Chant workshop, tried them out with some of us from the workshop, and taught them that night at the Circle Dance. And the drum circle (yes, music again) where for the first time I experienced the sense of oneness one can get from drumming as a group--and how good a group of amateurs can sound!
And more: the young woman who was involved with Young Friends with Tom Fox, the Quaker Christian Peacemakers Team member who was taken hostage http://www.afsc.org/iraq/news/2005/11/christian-peacemaker-team-abducted-in.htm
and, while eating gingersnaps at the Snack Shack, meeting Debbie, who grew up in New Paltz and once dated my cousin Mike!
This is an awfully long post, so I can't get into the place itself
http://www.summitlake.org
crafting the Art Room, conversations with Lynada in the car or a zillion other things!
Next year: another retreat with the Richmond Friends women, and maybe (if we can) Friends General Meeting Conference so Ken and I can go together for nearly a week of Quaker gathering!
Yours enthusiastically,
Beth
Quakers, at least Quaker women who go on retreat, love to sing! (Maybe because music isn't a set part of Quaker worship but is one of the most spiritual acts there is) We had three scheduled singing sessions, plus I chose to go to the Sacred Chant workshop, so I was very happy! One of our "hymnals" was Rise Up Singing (a title my folkie friends will recognize instantly as the incomplete but ubiquitous "folk hymnal") so I was especially happy and at home. Oh, how I have missed singing sacred music of various kinds! We sang spirituals, Taize chants, folk hymns, rounds, a chant in Hebrew and several in church Latin, usually with harmonies thrown in.
I forgot to mention we also had a coffeehouse, which included some songs as well as excellent storytelling and poetry reading (we're talking seriously expressive, evocative reading of others' and one's own poetry!) I couldn't resist the opportunity to sing. Well, actually I needed a little encouragement. I stood by the sign-in sheets and said to the two other women gathered there that I wasn't sure I had the courage. One of them handed me a sheet and that was all the encouragement I needed. I sang "I Am for You," a contemporary hymn by Rory Cooney.
(If you'd like to hear a bit of the tune, you can go to
http://www.hymnprint.net
and search on the title)
That was just two ways I've been learning I can live out my music ministry as a Quaker. Two other Quakers mentioned they sing in churches of other denominations (I overheard one woman say she was cantor in a Catholic parish, as I was for four years!). Then there's the prospect of starting an evening of music at my meeting (more on that in a later blog, depending on what develops...)
Ys, there was much more than music! Our theme was "Living from the Center" and we had three worship sharing meetings with a smaller group (ours numbered a lucky 13 women) to talk about various aspects of the theme such as "what is living from the center"--of course, there's at least as many answers as there are people!--and "what keeps you from living from the center?" I had a one-word answer: "clutter." Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, I could spend my *life* working just on the inner chatter in my head!
We had a lively, warmly human speaker, Linda Garrettson, the director of one of the Quaker camps in the BYM area, and a music teacher during the school year. She hosted a delightful "Centering Fun" icebreaker/community-building session Friday night, and gave a wonderful keynote talk on Saturday on our theme. She asked for help on "what is Living from the Center?" Her preschool class, of course, all raised their hands immediately "Preschoolers know" she informed us. What did they say? "Living from your heart" Where can you go on from there? Well, Linda and her various friends, coworkers, and students could.
What else did we do? Well, there were a *lot* of knitters, including my co-carpooler and clerk of our Marriage Committee, Lynada, who makes lovely knit caps for women undergoing chemotherapy (I think some might prefer the cozy, soft caps to a wig!) as well as other projects. She's also a perfect driver (not too cautious like me, or too fast like, umm, well, I won't say) and drove the Prius, which used about 2 gallons on the 4-hour round trip. And we made a couple of detours to walk on a handsome college campus (where a friendly maintenance guy let us into the chapel to use the restrooms--I felt so at home in a chapel that reminded me so much of Voorhees Chapel at Rutgers and the Reformed Church at home in New Paltz) and on the way home to get fresh apples and cider and jam at a local farm store. What was I talking about? Oh, knitting. I learned from Rebecca that you can create a felted item by knitting with 50% or better wool yarn and then soaking the item, when it's done, in hot water. You just have to make whatever-it-is four times as big as you want it. I also learned from Rebecca that if you're meant to have a baby (by whatever means) the money will come from somewhere. One has to trust. Oh, yeah, trust. The thing I keep forgetting to do (and that God keeps sending me people to remind me to do it).
There's so much more! I love just being able to be with other women, talk, and share our life stories. Andrea married an Iranian man and went to visit his family in Iran back, oh, I think in the 70s. Her mother-in-law greeted her in Tehran with a hug and the words, in Farsi: "I love you. You are my daughter" She sat next to her on the car ride from the airport and didn't even greet her son till they got home. She told her son to love and respect Andrea or he would hear from her (he does hear from her--and his sisters--if they think he's not being good enough to her. Andrea and her husband flew back for a visit on Sept. 9 2001. She promptly got sick and was awakened on 9/11 to the news of the terrorist attacks. That night people all over Tehran got up on their roof and lit candles in sympathy with the bereaved Americans. She said it stopped only when the police forcefully put an end to the vigil. When she and her sister-in-law said goodbye at the airport, they couldn't stop hugging and started crying. The women guards in the room (Andrea had to be searched before she left), stern women in black, started crying also.
Oh, the women! All ages, from a high school girl and her mom, Julie, who sang "I'll Cover You" from Rent at the coffeehouse to eighty-seven-year-old woman Deborah James, who taught a workshop on writing vignettes of one's own life and told one of her own at the coffeehouse, "Yin and Yang" on her need for relationships with men. Peggy, who came up with dance movements to go with two of the chants Betsy taught us in the Sacred Chant workshop, tried them out with some of us from the workshop, and taught them that night at the Circle Dance. And the drum circle (yes, music again) where for the first time I experienced the sense of oneness one can get from drumming as a group--and how good a group of amateurs can sound!
And more: the young woman who was involved with Young Friends with Tom Fox, the Quaker Christian Peacemakers Team member who was taken hostage http://www.afsc.org/iraq/news/2005/11/christian-peacemaker-team-abducted-in.htm
and, while eating gingersnaps at the Snack Shack, meeting Debbie, who grew up in New Paltz and once dated my cousin Mike!
This is an awfully long post, so I can't get into the place itself
http://www.summitlake.org
crafting the Art Room, conversations with Lynada in the car or a zillion other things!
Next year: another retreat with the Richmond Friends women, and maybe (if we can) Friends General Meeting Conference so Ken and I can go together for nearly a week of Quaker gathering!
Yours enthusiastically,
Beth
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