The Natural Laws of Good Luck: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage

Ellen Graf was a lonely sculptor and mother of 4 mostly grown children living in rural upstate New York, when a Chinese friend suggested that she might like to meet her brother in China, who was also a lonely divorcée. Graf decides to take a chance, travels to China to meet Zhong-hua lu, and marries him. What follows is a moving and frequently hilarious account of two people from exceedingly different cultures attempting to make a life together. Graf has an advantage, as it is Zhong-hua who emigrates and must learn English and try to fit in to American culture. However, Graf too must adapt to living with someone whose most basic assumptions about human interactions -- and in fact, life in general -- are alien to her.

I like reading memoirs of all sorts and I enjoyed this book. I marveled at the leap of faith that brought Graf and Lu together and the hurdles they managed to clear. I recommend this book.

Book Review: Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

This was a reread for me. When I first read Hannah Coulter a few years ago, it instantly became one of my favorites. I was a little bit worried that if I read it a second time, I wouldn't like it as much. Having finished it, I can say that the writing is nothing short of astonishing.

In Hannah Coulter, Berry continues his ongoing story of a place -- Port William, Kentucky -- and the people who make their lives there. These are the same people who are in Berry's other novels: Jayber Crow the barber; the Coulter Brothers, Burley and Jarrat; the Catletts, the Feltners and the Wheelers. Into this "membership" of Port William (as Burley Coulter calls it) comes Hannah as the young bride of Virgil Feltner. Hannah has only been married to Virgil a short time when the U.S. enters World War 2. Like all the young men at that time, Virgil is drafted and goes to war, and like too many of them, he goes "missing in action, presumed dead."

Now a young widow with a baby daughter, Hannah continues to live with Virgil's parents. Eventually she is courted by Nathan Coulter, one of the lucky ones who returned from the war. The rest of the book tells the story of the life Hannah and Nathan made together on the farm adjacent to her former in-laws.

The story is narrated by Hannah, as an old woman who has lived to see the turn of the 21st century, looking back on her life and the lives of her Port Williams neighbors. It is a simple, quiet story, but the writing absolutely shines.

I dog-eared many passages. Here is a favorite:

I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

Another:

The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks." I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

And another:

My mind, I think, has started to become, it is close to being, the room of love where the absent are present, the dead are alive, time is eternal, and all the creatures prosperous. The room of love is the love that holds us all, and it is not ours. It goes back before we were born. It goes all the way back. It is Heaven's. Or it is Heaven, and we are in it only by willingness. By whose love … do we love this world and ourselves and one another? Do you think we invented it ourselves? I ask with confidence, for I know you know we didn't.

Wendell Berry's writing speaks to my heart and soul.

Father of "Balloon Boy"?

Wendell Berry

Enduring much snark and eye-rolling from my teen-aged daughter -- who thinks her mother has gone way over the top when it comes to food-related things -- I went to hear the farmer/poet/essayist/novelist Wendell Berry speak on Sunday afternoon. Here is something that was truly mind-blowing: After so many free tickets were distributed that his presentation had to be moved to a larger venue, he ended up speaking to a capacity crowd of 2000! Let me repeat -- Berry is a farmer/poet/essayist/novelist from rural Kentucky, not a rock star! I think he was a little blown away by the crowd as well.

I had no idea what to expect from his talk. I guess I had it in my mind that he might address the politics of agriculture, perhaps because he writes about that sometimes and he was here on the heels of Michael Pollan. That would have been great. What he did though, was to read aloud one of his short stories -- Making It Home from the collection entitled That Distant Land. It was enthralling. One of my all-time favorite novels is Berry's Hannah Coulter, and hearing him read aloud his own words reminded me of why I love that book so much. The language of his writing is luminous.

He also took questions from the audience. The thing that he said that has stayed with me is that we Americans keep thinking that the big problems should have big, global solutions, which in some ways absolves us as individuals of taking responsibility. However, in reality, big problems are solved by many, many people finding small, localized solutions, and in most cases individual contributions will go unrecognized and unrewarded by the larger world. But each of us must still work on solutions in our own way. It reminds me of this passage from Britain Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice, or of Margaret Mead's famous quote: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

I did purchase a copy of Hannah Coulter, but I didn't wait in line to have it signed, because the line was too long. (Rock star …) If you haven't read any Wendell Berry, he kind of has something for everyone. I recommend giving his writing a try.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Without a ready source of tomatoes for canning this year, I decided I would be like the grasshopper and enjoy the last lingering days of summer and buy canned tomatoes this winter. Around about last week when the weather got chilly and I wanted to make chili, I realized the folly of my ways. To top it off, a friend told me that commercially canned tomatoes -- even the organic ones -- came in cans lined with plastic. Gack! Like some poor sea creature caught in plastic 6-pack rings, I could feel myself choking on the stuff! In unseasonably cold weather -- snow, even -- I took myself down to the farmers' market on a mission to buy tomatoes. Surely someone had stripped their plants the night before in anticipation of the first frost!

Pumpkins galore, potatoes, doughnuts, ostrich meat … Roma tomatoes, $20 for 25 lbs! I paid for a 25 lb. box, finished shopping (buying apples from novelist Jane Hamilton -- one of the perks at the Dane County Farmers' Market) and drove my car around to pick up my tomatoes. Thinking, "Hmmm … are those tomatoes going to be enough to carry me over until next tomato season?" With my car in the middle of the street, emergency flashers going, I quickly made a deal to buy another 25 lbs. of tomatoes.

This is the 3rd year I have canned tomatoes and the first time I did it all by myself. I canned half yesterday and half today, all in all 6 hours of intensive labor -- blanching, peeling and coring the tomatoes, partially cooking them, sterilizing the jars, filling the jars, boiling them in a hot water bath … Rather than trying to multi-task, I broke the process down into discrete steps -- a decision that I think saved time in the end. Hallelujah, all the jars sealed nicely, and lined up on the kitchen counter they look like sparkling jewels.

Bon appetit!