Debi Cates
Just read this for the third time. I first read it back in the late 70s. Then again around 2010. And I read it again today. Oddly, it seemed even more cruel this time around.
It's a powerful story. Moves me every time. Makes me cringe every time, too. In some ways I see myself and my mother and maybe my grandmother, although not specifically or nearly as dramatically. But I can recognize the adult folly, how a mother often carries her own life's disappointments and some of her own mother's disappointments long into adulthood, affecting the next generation. Seeing ourselves is the power of the play. We can relate to the best and worst of our own selves both as mothers and as daughters.
That might be why I've read and re-read it: it's the sometimes tragic Mother-Daughter metaphor that could be made based on the effects of radiation on bright yellow marigolds.
WaitI read this semi-autobiographical novel a few years after it was published in 1984 and was stunned by its breath-taking prose and sensitive fatality of the story. It was Doerr's first published work and received a National Book Award. She was 74 when it was published. Since then, after only reading it the once, I've said countless times it was my all-time favorite book.In the novel, two North Americans move to a small village in Mexico to re-open an abandoned copper mine. Six years later, Sara Everton's husband, Richard, dies of leukemia. The book is about those six years of living, of knowing, of waiting, and of Sara never reconciling that it would happen.Now I finally read it again. I'm no longer in my early 30s. I'm in my mid 60s now. In those intervening decades, I've lost the people who were my roots, knew me best, and are my faithful shadows now. I never really believed they would die. Even today I still wish each would have waited longer, until I was ready. There are things I want to ask them. Things I want to tell them.This time reading, the novel was just as lyrical, just as sensitive, just as breath-taking. This time, it was also newly crushing.Doerr, herself, is dead now. She wrote only 3 books. I have one left to read, another novel, [b:Consider This, Señora 137851 Consider This, Señora Harriet Doerr https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347224505l/137851.SY75.jpg 132871]. What am I saving it for? No, what am I waiting for?“What if he dies before I get back, before I can tell him? Tell him what? she asked herself. Tell him about the dog, the moon, the flowers, the lost streets of Viudas. Tell him that Dr. de le Luna is a specialist in his disease. Tell him to wait.”
It may seem morbid but that's truly the American Way of Death–to think discussing death is morbid.
When I read this long time ago, I wanted to know what was involved with standard burials. I had just returned to the States and felt slightly like a fish out of water. For some reason this was something I felt that, as a new adult, I should know more about. Not coincidentally that's also when I decided I'd rather be cremated.
Published in 1963 this book prompted Federal legislation to prevent funeral homes from gouging grieving families. Yay you, Ms. Mitford!
P.S. Funny how I've been on GR over 10 years and just remembered having read this book. I was playing a book bingo, came to the prompt “borrowed,” and oddly up popped this book to my mind. I think it might be because it was the first adult non-fiction book I ever borrowed from our library and thought it was mighty progressive of them to carry a book on this “taboo” subject. Oh, how quaint we were back then.
A Favorite with Much Gratitude
Suddenly, out of the blue, I remembered this book today!
I couldn't remember the title, but I easily rattled off the name Hugh Prather, just as easily as I would John Denver or Robert Redford or Flip Wilson. (How's that for a grab bag from the old brain cells?) After being completely absent from my mind for so long, instantly it was back. The memories were still there: tidbits of text, the calm floating leaves on the cover, the perfect size and the way it opened readily, the furniture in the rooms around me while I read it.
Written in the early 70s, I haven't laid eyes on it in forty years. But it was a regular companion in my mid and late teens. It inspired me and guided me to be aware of all the moments that make up a day, an hour, a minute—to be open to those moments, to contemplate them and to, most importantly, to feel them. By example he taught me to be honest with myself and when I respected my thoughts, I respected myself, an aspect that was especially important at a risky Ophelia age.
Wow, that's A LOT to gain from that little, possibly sappy 70s book. But it was a perfect fit for me at the perfect time. (And 5 million others, too.)
What prompted me to so suddenly remember it after such a long absence from my thoughts? I was working on some haiku slash journaling and the instant I wrote “airport” a little Prather ditty came to me: Prather's note about traveling one hot summer, being in a busy international airport. And among all the hundreds of stressed-out travelers there was one little girl who was the single person experiencing what it felt like to sit on a cool marble floor.
Now I will identify Prather's book as my earliest introduction to Eastern mindfulness, whether or not that is actually what it is. It gave me a longing and foundation for Eastern philosophical readings that continue to this day.
The older I get, the more my view is through a Zen lens. This book was my first teacher.
Lately, I am randomly remembering books, odds and ends that I've read. Books that were important to me in my youth.
I just texted my friend, Mrs. S., now living in Tennessee, who gave this book to me as a going away gift, back in 1974 when I was 14 and she was 39. I was leaving Kansas for Beirut, Lebanon. This book was my first book of poetry. Since then poetry has been an ongoing, regular pleasure in my reading life. The love of poetry is such a remarkable gift to give someone. I had to thank her for that. She had forgotten giving me the book but she told me she is a life-long lover of poetry too, making it an even more special gift.
Sadly I lost my book, among the many large and small things that can be and have been lost in the many intervening years. I just ordered a like new 1972 copy to read again, one loss that can be remedied.
But even more remarkably and thankfully, I still have my friend who's 90 now!
I re-read Antigone (translated by Richard Emil Braun) today June 17, 2020, before giving my copy to my 16 year old granddaughter to read. Must be the third or fourth time I've read it. It'll be her first.
How remarkable that a 2,500 year old play should still speak to us. Words from Ancient Greece, from a time when that funny old god Zeus was supreme and war was waged as an unthinkable face-to-face brutality of swords, down to our time, our high-tech-global-speed-of-light world with things like DNA and drones. Will there be meaning for my granddaughter's first reading? I think so.
When I first read it at age 14, in another long ago time of the 1970s, I related to it from a budding feminist perspective. Today I see its parallel lessons in the massive Black Lives Matter protests. Protesters of thousands and thousands of Antigones (and Antigonuses) buck against a stubborn power that has lost its moral code, refuses to budge, and fights against the divinely inherent rights of humanity. Makes me wonder what parallels my granddaughter might find with the world when she's my age. I can't imagine. But, they will be there.
What I didn't understand in my youth but see clearly now, is that this is a cycle that will – and must be – played out by all the generations, all over the world.
At the end, Kreon is personally demolished. Of the pain of his folly and result of his stubbornness, he cries out, “It leaps on me, it crushes.” In all these intervening years since the play was written, there have been thousands of Kreons, some also crushed. But even more Antigones, locked in the clash with the powerful by the empowered still willing to fight face-to-face brutality.
The play ends with advice for leaders, “To be sensible and to be pious are the first and last of happiness.” The message is from the chorus, the story is of Kreon, but the title is Antigone.
I have no idea how, but in 1972 at the awkward age of 12 going on 30, I got a hold of this book, with its campy 70s titillating cover and proceeded to take it with me on my first commercial airplane trip (which also happened to be a solo one). I don't remember the contents of the book, in spite of what had to have been such a personal coup into the secret adult world, but I do distinctly remember the alarmed expressions of a couple of grownups on the plane.
Recalling this made me laugh today. I was a rascal.
This is the book, and the series, that taught me to read, way back in 1965. It taught me to want to read because I wanted to understand all the fun being had by Dick and Jane (along with Sally, and Spot, and Puff). Thank you to this book for starting my fantastic adventure that has lasted me a lifetime. How can I rate this book anything less than ALL THE STARS?!
I wonder what is the traditional First Book for kids now in school? I'll have to ask the Littles. I was reading to my own daughters long before they started school and can easily remember many of those books, but now wonder what were the First Books my girls read officially to learn to read in school. I'll ask them too.
A postscript:
Yes. I know. There is legitimate criticism about Dick and Jane, most especially about the lack of diversity. And I wholeheartedly agree that diversity is lacking. But when I learned to read, we had not progressed in that direction yet. Hopefully many kids had the same experience I did with this series – they learned to read. That's step 1 for any education and functionality in modern times.
Also, while reading Dick and Jane I remember at my school we also learned phonics along side so I don't recall just memorizing words by sight, which is another criticism of the series that I don't recall being an issue.
All five of my grands have gone to the same elementary school. There they teach something called the Carden Method and all of them learned to read and amazed me with their reading above grade level abilities from the start. I started to do a Carden Method search. Google thinks I might want to know about “Carden Method criticism.” Sounds like it might not be perfect either.
We learn –> We change –> We advance.
First, though, we must learn to read.
This is one of those books I read as a kid and have since thought about on and off for more than fifty years. Today I am wondering which school library carried it and of the unknown librarian who selected it for the shelves of the elementary school I attended.
I'm in ever-growing awe of librarians who seem to know what the minds of children crave long before anyone else. This book's original title, the one I read, was George Washington Carver: Negro Scientist.
Carver was born enslaved, just before slavery was abolished. As a baby, his family was kidnapped from their white slave owner, Moses Carver, in Missouri and the family was sold in Kentucky. He alone was found and was returned to Carver. After slavery was abolished, Carver and his wife raised George as one of their own children and encouraged his intellectual pursuits. One can't help but wonder what America would be like today had there been tens of thousands of stories like that, of whites who embraced the 13th Amendment, instead of resenting it and passing down cruelty and resentment for generations.
This autobiography for children was published before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Very likely school segregation was still going on where I lived at the time. If not by law, then by de facto segregation when whites and people of color lived in distinct areas of town and thus attended different schools. As a child I was aware of it–where did I live at the time I read this book? New Mexico? Oklahoma? I can't quite recall nor do I recall questioning exactly why that was; why there were few to no non-whites in the schools I attended. Had I asked, I wonder what answer I would have gotten. Certainly the appropriate, educating word “systemic” would not have been used.
However, even at just 8 or 9 years old, we were taught about the shameful history of slavery in the United States. That was before these current inane laws prohibiting the factual teaching of it were enacted, lest someone white feels “bad.”
(I'm confused. Who are the “snowflakes” again?)
We should all feel bad about it, about that time in our country's history. Sickened, heart-broken, ashamed, and outraged, too. Those are healthy responses. It's called empathy and you should be glad if your child feels it. It's a painful capacity that distinguishes good people from cruel or psychopathic ones.
Oh, but seeing this cover uplifts me. It brings me back to the early fuzzy questions of my younger self. This book is an early testament to a host of adults–artists, writers, agents, publishers, librarians–who answered questions of children like myself. They were part of the hard work of “making a more perfect union.”
Recipe sections (# of recipes)
Breakfast & Brunch (14)
Muffins & Breads (13)
Soups, Dals, & Chilis (17)
Burgers, Wraps, Tacos, & More (18)
Quick One Pot Dinners (12)
Tofu & Vegan Meats (14)
Pasta & Casseroles (9)
Mix & Match: Vegetables, Grains, & Beans (19)
Desserts (21)
Dips, Snacks, & Finger Foods (13)
Spreads, Gravies, & Sauces (14)
Condiments, Spices, & More (12)
===Recipes I want to try next:
Sour cream p. 27 (cashews and tofu combo)
Adobo Mushroom Tacos p.64 (Guajillo chiles & adobo sauce)
Waldorf Salad p.111
Southern Seitan Sandwich p.120
Fluffy Quinoa Pancakes p.124
Pine nut-crusted eggplant p.163
Seitan Picatta p.169 (seitan and mashed potatoes)
Raw Key Lime Pie p.185 (avocado and coconut milk)
German Chocolate Cake p.191
===Recipes I've made and would make again:
Caesar Dressing p.21
Caesar Salad p.107
Butternut Squash Gnocchi p.145
I made with sweet potato. Made too much cream sauce and next time I would like it a tad thinner.
===Recipes I've made:
Curried Stuffed Sweet Potato p.153
I simplified. Sauce overpowering. Or maybe I simply didn't like as much as I thought I would.
In progress...
Let's Play Two 08/18/2025
I think they call this micro fiction. It reminded me of poetry. It captures a thousand things about Dads, kids, and baseball in a mere paragraph.
Bikes 08/15/2025
Nostalgia, being a kid in the 1970s, was front and center in this story. As I read, I recalled how many dangers we escaped, often kept as secrets without remark, and how often we felt alienated by the world of adults. When the protagonist Anne faithfully but furtively reads “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” column in her mother's The Ladies Home Journal magazine, it hit me in the solar plexus once again, those half-secrets of the adult lives around us of which our own questions were barred. And we were fascinated.
Helter-skelter 08/09/2025
Like Mardi Gras and jambalaya, Louisiana is equally associated with off shore drilling. This story, a flashback to the rough and tumble oil industry of the 1970s gets it so right. Like thousands of others at that time, a Northerner leaves home to work on a rig in Gulf of Mexico, assigned the lowliest, dirtiest work for an enticingly fat paycheck even as a “worm” (newbies on rigs are still called that today). A “Yankee,” he faces unfounded prejudice by a couple of ne'er-do-wells who pose as much real danger to a body as explosions or hurricanes. Brader's got some authentic masculine flex here.
The Fig Tree 08/02/2025
Brader deftly sprinkles both the soaring and soured sensations of a young woman being hopeless under a certain masculine spell, the kind made with the simple flash of a smile and no promises. First story read and I'm already smitten!
The idea of Vegan Fusion seemed fun! And Kudos to Newman for writing recipes that stand out from the plethora of Pinterest and Tik Tok vegan recipes, all “The Best Ever” don't you know.
She had me at “Sauces.”
But by “Main Dishes” my enthusiasm waned. Maybe I don't entertain enough? Not trendy enough? Maybe I am, after 4 years plant-based, still trying to get a set of regular tasty rotation recipes down pat before I venture far out in fusionland. I can't imagine what some of those fused foods would actually taste like (she does mention “spicy” a lot – I live in Texas so that doesn't help much) so I just couldn't work up an appetite to make one of them.
It's probably me.
But wait, I think I do have a legitimate gripe, about pictures. Not every recipe touts a picture. Okayyyy. But in a book of this nature, you'd think it would be full of amazing pictures, convincing you of its mind-blowing deliciousness, especially since these recipes are supposed to be things never thunked up before. The pictures included were often meh, like the one of cute bowls of cucumbers with red chiles. Meh. Flip page.
On the other hand, she describes her recipe for WONTON WRAPPERS LASAGNA NAPOLEONS as “Oooh, so pretty! If you ever really want to impress your friends with your plating skills and creative culinary talents, pull this one out...” But is there a picture of this so pretty thing, whatever it is? No.
And what the heck is YA KA MEIN a.k.a. OLD SOBER? Sounds intriguing! Recipe sends you to page 74 to “see photo.” I jump right over there and on page 74 is a photo of a mere meatball-looking sandwich titled BEAN BALL BAHN MI. And no, this wasn't a double duty picture. There is nothing along side the sandwich in the pic except a napkin and an out of focus, half out of frame glass of iced tea or something. Maybe completely out of frame, sitting in front of the meal was old sober? Yeah, har har.
It felt like bait and switch.
Again, it's probably me. The selections and omissions of pictures did irritate me enough that I'm putting this aside for now, until I am back in a more kindly mood. Some of those sauces at least need to be tried.
Recipe Sections (# of recipes)
Fusion sauces and condiments (15)
Small bites and starters (15)
Soups and salads (20)
Main dishes (22)
Sides and snacks (23)
Elixirs and libations (15)
Desserts (15)
(in progress)
Quite by chance I discovered this poet. It was because I googled “Australian poetry” and by dipping in here and there in the results, I discovered there's an impressive body of literature, a continent full. One poem, though, made me want to cry or cry out or shout it to the rooftops, one by Les Murray. Quickly I found an anthology of his work and will be reading slowly over time as I like to do with poetry.
Read Jul 21, 2025
“The Burning Truck”
A seaside town is attacked by fighter planes, a truck is hit and becomes a fireball of free roaming disaster, attracting the street children in chase after it.
over the tramline, past the church, on past
the last lit windows, and then out of the world
with its disciples.
“Driving Through Sawmill Towns”
all day in calendared kitchens, women listen
for cars on the road
children lost in the bush,
a cry from the mill, a footstep—
nothing happens.
“An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow”
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.
“Vindaloo in Merthyr Tydfil”
DNF'd 2024
I got big issues with this.
Capote's innovation to overlay fiction techniques onto nonfiction sounds good on paper but in reality lacks integrity, beginning here: “As Mr. Clutter contemplated this superior specimen of the season, he was joined by a part-collie mongrel.”
Who told Capote that Mr. Clutter was contemplating the Indian summer? The dog? And just like that, I was snapped out of the narrative into distrust. I can't suspend my disbelief because it's a true story. And I can't believe what I'm reading when it's the inconsequential thoughts of a real, now dead man. Apparently Capote thought this was a clever innovation; he gave it the name of “non-fiction novel.”
I see that as intrinsically problematic. It's like AI. Like gaslighting. Like Trump—just look at the huge effect that's had. Deceptive mixing of the truth and lies can do harm, even if it isn't your intention to harm.
Fiction inserted into non-fiction is a lie. Adding literary style is one thing (aka James Elroy), but fudging the truth, well that's not the same thing.
Capote's deluded mix in the service of an artistic “break-through” was dangerous: psychologically to Smith and Perry who believed they had a friend who also didn't want to see them to hang, to the Swans who told him their deepest secrets in confidence then outed to all of NYC, and to Harper Lee who gave him the cover of normalcy for Holcomb but got bupkis from her friend who lied about her contributions and couldn't be bothered about her own successes. His Art was his only moral compass.
The ultimate danger was to Capote himself, the result of his betrayals for Art are he died shut out of the high society he so craved and lived the last years high as a kite.
So why am I still reading this hot mess “classic” that I'm finding repugnant?
I'm not any more. DNF 2024
November 2024 DNF'd....for now.
I just started partaking of audiobook options through my public library. And like I was afraid could happen, happened.
What happened is that I did not like the audio narrator's rendition. For me, Robert Ramirez was missing nuance. After 4 chapters, I knew this was ruining the text for me. I went to YT and listened to Anaya read some from his novel. Yes. Yes, that's the rich, nuanced treatment it should be given.
So, I'm going to give it a break, clear the narration from my head. Then, later, come back to it and read the book's text myself, letting the words speak for themselves.
A long time resident of my Lebanese Cookbook Shelf
Published in 1988, “adapted to Western kitchens”
Vegetarian, so there is cheese and yogurt, as is traditional in Lebanon
Scatterings of photos but not images for all recipes
Includes phonic Arabic name of recipe
No nutritional information
WALDORF SALAD, not a hard recipe to begin with but I've never made it before. Good basic recipe.
SAVORY SEITAN CUTLETS, I'm happy! Worth the price of the whole book. I made seitan before and the flavor was unpleasant, wheat-y, and I was afraid to try again. But this had a really good flavor and not hard to make at all. I'd even go so far as to say it was beef-y. Since going vegan, I've had a recurring craving for cutlets. This hit the spot. And just 83 calories!
BLACK BEAN SAUSAGE, a keeper recipe. I made a batch and enjoyed a “breakfast sausage” every morning until they were sadly all gone. (They freeze beautifully.) I did add more spices after the first sausage taste test – it just didn't have enough kick for my taste. So in went more sage and a healthy amount of red pepper flakes that was not in the original recipe. Next time I'll grind my fennel seeds and possibly less of it. I sure didn't like getting a bite with a whole fennel seed.
[Will add more to review as I try other recipes]
Paused, maybe DNF. May 14,2025
I think this may be too brief (and dry) for my tastes, although I love all the images and the family trees, too. Probably would make a good comprehensive book if you already knew all the interesting bits.
I'll hang on to it for a while, as a Reference, pull it out next time I am reading or watching some other Kings and Queens of England book or program.
The last royal image included is a painting of Princess Diana (1961-1997). A sad reminder of a sad time.
I know it's trendy, but enough already with the faint hard to read print!
What looks good to me?
OUT FOR THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
...I'm so over the cutesy recipe names. Sadly, the index lists nothing under Monte Cristo so I'll have to stick with the full, foolish sounding names here. Okay, on to this recipe. I am intrigued by this recipe's embedded “French Toast Bagels” but with a crazy flavor profile. It's a clever dip mixture for the bagels that uses a blender to blend cashews, ND milk, Dijon, sauerkraut juice, white wine vinegar, scallions, and so on, and then fried like French toast. Yes, please, I'd be very willing to try a bagel like that.
SHH-OCOLATE SPREAD PANINI
...Oh brother, these names are tiresome. When I was a teen and lived in the mountains of Lebanon, we liked to hang out at a sandwich place run by “Yaaaa Skandar!” There was only one Skandar but lots of teens, so he let us behind the counter to make our own sandwiches. Among my favorites was a chocolate sandwich which was made with some sort of pre-packaged spread of chocolate and possibly cream cheese, slathered on a small French bread loaf, and made all melty and toasty on the big panini machine. He once chastised me for having them so frequently, “Ya Debi, you are going to ruin your figure!” Sigh. This recipe could be a somewhat figure-saving chocolate panini sandwich! Made with cannellini beans and vegan chocolate chips.
PISTACHIO SPREAD & STRAWBERRY CANAPES
...pistachios! Anything with pistachios sounds good to me.
https://mthoyibi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/literary-theory_an-introduction_terry-eagleton.pdf