Book Review: Going Postal

Going Postal opens on the very last day of the unfortunate Moist Von Lipwig's (a.k.a. Albert Spangler and any number of other aliases) life. He's made a good run of it as a swindler and a con man, but he's been apprehended and sentenced to hang that morning.  Sometimes, however, you get an angel, this time in the guise of Ankh Morpork's tyrannical ruler Lord Vetinari. Moist has a choice to make -- execution or … become Postmaster of the Ankh Morpork Post Office, which has fallen on hard times in recent years.

Being Postmaster isn't all golden suits and wingéd hats. First, Von Lipwig must prove himself to the Post Office Workers, then he finds himself in direct competition with the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, a telecommunications conglomerate that's "too big to fail." (Which begs the question, does Pratchett possess some weird sixth sense or does Tim Geithner read Terry Pratchett?)

Terry Pratchett is simply a genius. He has a knack for hitting every nail squarely on the head. His writing is often classified as "fantasy" because it takes place on Discworld, but make no mistake about it: Pratchett's feet are planted firmly on Earth and he is satirizing everything about it he can get his hands on.

As far as I am concerned, Terry Pratchett is among the best living writers in the English-speaking world. He incorporates science, sociology, and fantasy with a wicked sense of humor. He leaves nothing unskewered, but he does it all with an absolutely generous heart. 

Highly, highly recommended.

Jerry, the Mail Carrier

Last Tuesday, my stepfather Bob was taking his daily walk to Einstein Bagels for coffee. He had been commenting recently how tired he gets (which doesn't seem surprising because he is in his late eighties.) On Tuesday he barely made it to the strip mall where Einstein's is located, when he started having severe chest pains, causing him to almost fall over. Jerry was delivering mail at the time, saw him, and rushed to him. He got Bob to an outdoor seating area of a Chinese restaurant, got Bob's pills from his pocket and gave him one,  called 911, and stayed with him until he was on the ambulance.

I intend to go find Jerry this week, so that I can personally thank him. And after I ascertain that he won't get in trouble (you never know with the Post Office) I will let his superiors know what he did.

Meanwhile, Bob arrived at the hospital where it was determined that he had a blocked artery, and as he was being taken to the cardiac cath lab, he had a second heart attack because another artery was blocked as well. So he received two stents at the same time.

All is well that ends well. Bob is doing okay and going home today. Had Jerry not been there or not been paying attention, I'm afraid that the outcome would have been very different. Jerry is a hero in my mind.

What about a simple kiss?

The dramatic play can become quite dramatic in my kindergarten classroom. Take today, for instance. There was a group of five or six children in the housekeeping area. One child -- obviously a princess -- took a bite of a poisoned apple, and fell down dead. The other children laid her out on a bier, covered her with a blanket and surrounded her with plastic fruit. My teaching partner intervened momentarily when they commenced with the CPR compressions (apparently the fruit wasn't working its magic) because she was afraid they would hurt the victim patient. Then they all kneeled around her in a circle and put their hands together and prayed. And a miracle occurred! The expired princess leapt to her feet, alive again, and then the whole group refused to clean up their mess. Hallelujah!

Ah yes, never a boring moment in my profession.

Book Review: Boys and Girls Forever: Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter

This is a book of essays on children's literature by Alison Lurie, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a professor of children's literature at Cornell University. Most of these essays appeared at an earlier time in the New York Times Book Review. I picked this up on a whim from a display at my branch library, being a sucker for reading about children's literature.


To tell you the truth, these essays really annoyed me. I really didn't see a point to this book, except maybe to gather her essays in one place -- if gathered they needed to be. Each one read like a long-winded lecture from someone steeped in the self-importance of academia: Hans Christian Anderson (about whose writing I took an entire semester-long class in college), Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, John Masefield, Walter de la Mare, Dr. Seuss, Tove Jansson, J.K. Rowling, and then some more general essays on fairytales, nursery rhymes and games, illustrations, and the role of nature in children's literature. Each essay was a pronouncement: "This means that" and "This wrought these changes." They also read like the countless essays I had to write, demanding that I "compare and contrast A with B." (Dr. Lurie, please compare and contrast Tove Jansson's Moomintroll books with A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.)


For me, as a person who spends every day in the living, breathing company of young children and books, so many of her pronouncements seemed wooden, and well, academic. I admit, that may well have been her intent, but it didn't sit well with me. I kept having flashbacks to the children's literature class I took as an undergrad at Keene State College, taught by a salty new England woman with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife who intoned on and on about May Hill Arbuthnot (a noted children's literature scholar and the author of our textbook.)


I don't know how old Lurie is -- old enough to have 3 grandchildren to whom she dedicates the book -- or if she is still teaching, has even stepped into a book store any time recently, or when these essays were first written because her knowledge of illustrators seemed to stop with Maurice Sendak (she likes his later work -- which I find kids don't particularly care for) and Arnold Lobel (who died 23 years ago.) In other words, the essays were very narrow in their scope.


Now I am going to expose my deep-seated prejudice with a question: Why is Harry Potter considered a classic piece of children's literature, while other modern fantasies that have been around much longer (Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and The Hobbit for heaven's sake) get barely a nod in their direction?

I guess I have to say that children's literature is anything but academic to me. It is alive, and I am far moire interested in how to apply it (i.e. do the kids enjoy it when I read to them?) than what meanings might be hiding in the subtexts. Unless you want to re-live your undergraduate college literature courses, I would advise steering clear of this book. I wish I had.

Book Review: Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife

Subtitled Pride and Prejudice Continues, this book conjectures the life that the lovely and spunky Elizabeth Bennett shared with the taciturn Mr. Darcy after their marriage. First, let me begin by saying that the amount of sex was absolutely ludicrous and I really didn't need to be constantly reminded that Mr. Darcy was, um, well-endowed. Once I got beyond that (to the point where I just rolled my eyes when "it" was mentioned) I really enjoyed this book immensely (no pun intended, really!)

If you know anything of my reading habits, you know that good writing is paramount. If a book is badly written -- no matter how interesting the topic -- I usually can't finish it. This book was well written. The author, Linda Berdoll, apparently is a huge (there's that image again) fan of Jane Austen and actually did some research for this book both into the language and the historical times. I thought it was interesting to have the familiar characters placed in a historical context -- the end of the reign of mad King George, the Napoleonic Wars -- for surely intelligent characters like Darcy and Elizabeth would have had some interest in the world around them (once they got out of bed, off of the floor, back from the lovely sun-dappled copse on the Pemberly grounds …)

What else besides sex? Intrigue, bastard children, murder, swashbuckling rescues, plus a return of the many other characters that Austen conjured up in the original Pride and Prejudice: the good and lovely Jane and her precious Bingley, the ne'er-do-well Wickham and his silly wife Lydia, Elizabeth's good friend Charlotte, the vicar Mr. Collins and his patroness the Lady Catherine de Burgh, Darcy's sister Georgiana, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett …

You want serious literature? This isn't it. Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife is pure candy, and I have to say I haven't had as much plain fun reading a book in quite a while. Heaving bosoms and all.

Book Review: The Geography of Bliss

My newly formed book group chose Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss for our maiden selection. Weiner is a foreign correspondent for NPR and a self-proclaimed grump. He decides to take up a study of happiness, and starting out in Holland where Professor Ruut Veenhoven maintains the World Database of Happiness, he embarks on a 'round-the-world tour to find the secrets of true happiness. Weiner's travels take him to such disparate places as Switzerland (mmm, chocolate), Bhutan (whose king abandoned the index of Gross National Product in favor of Gross National Happiness,) Qatar, Iceland (in winter,) Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and the U.S.

Weiner writes in the style of Bill Bryson or Tony Horwitz, which makes for a mostly light-hearted and enjoyable read. I was reluctant to give myself over to it at first -- just another smug NPR commentator cashing in with a quirky travelogue. (Maybe I was experiencing some envy, which research has shown to be a happiness-killer.) However, halfway through Switzerland I was happy to be along for the ride.

I was a little put off by the chapter on Moldova, which I thought Weiner (and everyone else) treated a little unfairly. Moldova, you see, ranks fairly low in Veenhoven's happiness database and there seemed to be a fair amount of kicking a place that is already down. A country's fortunes can change fairly quickly. In fact, I would be interested in seeing how a country like Iceland is faring now after their economic collapse (although research shows that happiness is not necessarily related to money, not in ways that one might think, anyway.)

The Geography of Bliss was sometimes thought-provoking. I too, often feel like I am a grump, and it is not something of which I am exceedingly proud. It is the manner in which my particular brand of depression manifests itself, and as the child of a grumpy mother myself, it's not something I want to impart to my own children. So I have done a lot over the years to help myself be happy (something that happiness researchers say is almost uniquely American.) I was pleased to see that I have unscientifically incorporated many of the qualities that seem to mark happy people, and indeed I think I can say that my happiness index is quite high these days.

I enjoyed this book. It was not earth-shattering, it was a tad too much like an extended NPR piece, but it gave me some ideas to ponder, some pithy quotes, and was altogether quite relevant. If you enjoy travelogues and non-fiction, I recommend it.

40 Years

One of my happy pastimes is going to events that mark passages in the lives of old family friends, people who I am connected to through my parents mostly. I generally go with my oldest brother Dave, though sometimes by myself. I love it -- even the funerals, sad though they may be. They connect me with my parents, who have both been gone for some time now, and with my past which, seen through the lens of 50 years is actually looking and feeling pretty happy for the most part. Attending these events, being the steward of these connections is a role I have taken on, and one that I love.

Today was no funeral, however.

This afternoon I had the honor and pleasure of going to a party to honor 40 years of marriage for old friends of my family, Charlie and Louise Uphoff. The Uphoffs and the Grindrods go way back, back to my parents' youth and their days as young Socialists. My parents frequented a place called Fellowship Farm, that was overseen by Walter and Mary Jo Uphoff, the ad hoc "parents" I guess, being a few years older. In fact, my parents were married at Fellowship Farm, under the auspices of Walt and Mary Jo (and a radical minister named Shorty Collins.) Many years later, their son Charlie brought his wife Louise to live at Fellowship Farm. It was the late sixties/early seventies. I was on the cusp of adolescence and I thought they were one of the coolest, hippest couples I had ever met. They lived in a ramshackle farmhouse with tattered peace posters on the wall. They had a chair in their living room made out of the hood of a VW Bug -- how cool is that? I'll answer for you -- REALLY cool! And then they did something even cooler -- they had a baby, and I got to babysit for her!

So now 40 years have passed and I was reflecting on all of that. We're coming up on our 23rd anniversary. I hope that we can celebrate our 40th in such style, surrounded by loving family and friends, children and grandchildren. And I hope we inspire some other young person, show them a model of a happy marriage.

And I will keep maintaining these connections as long as I can.

Anxious to see this movie

I don't think it has been released in the U.S. Too esoteric? I'll bet there are as many Morris dancers here as in Britain, doggone it.

I finally read "Pride and Prejudice!"

I don't think much needs to be said about the plot of Pride and Prejudice. It has been copied endlessly in almost every romantic comedy coming out of Hollywood. They meet, they hate each other, they part, they discover they really love each other and defy the odds to get back together again, and tra-la, they marry and (presumably) live happily ever after. Ah, but was it ever again done so well as this?


I first listened to Pride and Prejudice as an audio book a few years ago. It was snatched from the shelf of the public library in a moment of panic when we were leaving on a 12 hour road trip and had forgotten to get any episodes of Hank the Cowdog, our preferred travel listening. Mr. Feeny (I'm just getting in the P&P mood here) looked dubious when I brought it home. Maybe he was remembering the last time this had happened and I brought Prodigal Summer along, and everyone hated it but me. However, this time it was different. We all loved Pride & Prejudice, laughing heartily all the way to West Virginia and back.


Still, I hadn't read it until last week when I was looking for a book to read while I waited for my book club reads to come into the library. (Yes, I'm in a newly-minted book club.) Jane Austen's writing and humor is so fresh and modern. It is a joy, and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend doing so. 


Today my friend recommended Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife which she says is Pride and Prejudice with the addition of spicy sex scenes. Ooh la la.

Sweet Sixteen

It is hard to believe that my daughter Sophie would be 16 today. I know it's a fruitless exercise, but I spend a lot of time wondering what she would look like and who she would be. I wholeheartedly embrace her life and death as one of my life's enormous mysteries, but there are times when I just feel bereft, and I know I will feel that way until the end of my days. I often feel as if I am holding my breath for these ten days that she was alive. Mostly it is okay; the sad moments remind me that she is very much present in my life and nothing can change that.

Sophie Olivia Grindrod-Feeny, ¡Presenté!

21 Years Ago …

21 years ago was the beginning of an incredible adventure: the birth of my first child, Anna Fiona. Being a mother has brought me unimaginable joy, and I wish this child of mine the happiest of birthdays today.

I have refrained from posting any of the naked ones. No need to thank me, Anna. Just one of the many little kindnesses I have performed over the last 21 years.

It's Wick!

Well, we have gone from winter to spring in a few short days. Piles of snow as high as my head have melted away so quickly, that it's a little disorienting to walk Molly around the neighborhood. I'm simply not used to seeing grass and lawns that are level with the sidewalk! 


I have begun a daily circumnavigation of my house checking for "things coming up", i.e. signs of new growth: the bulbs I planted last fall, perennials coming back, buds on trees. (I am holding my breath that my redbud tree is okay; it was looking sick last year.) When I do this, I am always reminded of one of my favorite books from childhood, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mary, a sickly, surly little girl who has up until the time of her parents' death lived in India, moves to her uncle's estate on the English moors. Her uncle is a bitter and broken widower, and his mansion holds secrets: Mary's invalid cousin Colin and a walled garden that was locked up when the mistress of the house died.


Mary is drawn to the garden, and with the help of Dickon -- a local boy -- the children find their way in to it in the very early spring. I love the part where Dickon roams the garden looking for signs of life and pronounces it "wick" -- local dialect for alive. Of course as the garden comes to life, so do Mary, Colin, and Colin's broken-hearted father. It is a lovely and satisfying book.


I have crocuses blooming, tulips, irises and daffodils peeking out of the ground, forsythia buds swelling. It's wick!

Why am I such a misfit?

My program for Friends General Conference Annual Gathering arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. For the uninitiated, that is the annual gathering of one of the branches of Quakers. It is held every July at a different college campus, almost always in the continental United States. A few years ago it was held in Wisconsin, and with the benefit of a very generous scholarship from FGC and my home Meeting, my daughters and I attended.

There is something very appealing about the idea of it: an entire week of hanging out with Quakers can be a heady thing. Week-long workshops are offered; there are many opportunities to explore one's spirituality or to connect with others like-minded …

… And I didn't like it! I  was reminded of that once again as I perused this year's invitation. I start to wonder, is there something wrong with me? It should be fun. It's like summer camp! Do I have a serious character flaw?

What I remember was that it was a lonely experience. The only thing worse than being lonely by yourself is being lonely in the midst of a thousand people. I would feel somewhat connected in my workshop (it was about right relationship with money and I discovered that it is an easier topic to explore when you have a little extra money to begin with … and you certainly need to commit a chunk of money to attend Gathering, so maybe that was part of the problem) but then the workshop time would end and I felt at loose ends. Not connected enough with anyone to seek them out -- except my friend Poodle Doc, and I didn't want to be a nuisance to him -- I would walk into the enormous cafeteria at mealtimes and it was full of tables of people, longtime friends and new acquaintances eating and chatting, and it didn't seem as if there was any room for me anywhere.

That was compounded by the fact that my younger daughter was having a hard time in her workshop -- a theatrical production of an African folk tale using giant puppets that the kids constructed. She wasn't really connecting either. (Oh no, is my social malady something I've passed down to my children?) And I still have some deep concerns about how the adults in charge of her workshop ran the week, but that's water under the bridge.

All around me everybody else seemed to be having a great time. I have friends who plan their summers around Gathering, they go back year after year. I guess I'm just not that person. What I find myself yearning for is some kind of a hermitage -- maybe a hermitage with regular conjugal visits -- but no demands. No workshops, no graduate school projects due, no work come Monday, no expectations. A gathering of one -- me. Now that idea speaks to me. I could knit, read, play my guitar, walk my dog. See my family some (because I would miss them pretty quickly.)

I'm waiting for that brochure to arrive in the mail.

Two Movies

I used to love going to movies. I'd go to movies every night of the week, sometimes even double features! Lately, I don't know. I'm tired of going and being disappointed. Watching them at home, there are so few that inspire me. Even when I enjoy them at the time, I hate myself in the morning. But I can't always be the wet blanket, so this weekend I agreed to rent a movie with my younger daughter on Friday night, and go out to see a movie with my eldest tonight. Here's the rundown:

Taking Woodstock -- "Based on a true story", a tale about the small town that hosted the Woodstock festival in 1969. This had gotten so-so reviews, and having lived through the sixties, I was prepared to hate it. Surprisingly, it was altogether enjoyable. Accurate? I doubt it. But fun and poignant at the same time. I think what saved it was the fact that, where the film maker could have been extremely heavy-handed with the visual imagery and the hippy stereotypes, instead it was handled with a very light touch. So you could laugh about the theater troupe doing Chekov in the nude, instead of sink into your chair and squirm with embarrassment. And the best part? When the protagonist's father, a Russian Jewish immigrant, called someone a schnook. I haven't heard that word -- haven't even thought of it -- since my parents died.

An Education -- A screenplay by Nick Hornby is reason enough to see this one. Takes place in 1961, the story of a 16 year old English schoolgirl who takes up with an older, more worldly man. I don't want to say too much for fear of spoiling it for you, but it is definitely well worth seeing. Well acted, entertaining, thought-provoking …

Both movies are recommended.

Happy Birthday to one of the Lights of my life!

She was almost a groundhog. It was February 3, 1996 around 10 a.m. when our third daughter, Grace Marguerite, entered the world. Outside was bitterly cold --  -27˚F. While in labor I made my husband and my friend Fay walk me around the block in the wee hours of morning. Twice.

I haven't looked at the photos from her birth-day in a long time. I am a little unprepared for the emotions that are welling up. Grace's birth was such an enormous joy, but -- perhaps unfairly for her -- it was imbued with an incredible mix of emotions: grief, anxiety, and hope. She was born exactly a month after my dad's sudden passing, and we were still reeling from that. Also, as many of my faithful readers know, Grace was born subsequently to her older sister Sophie's death. (It pleases me to notice that in the upper left corner of the photo of Ed holding Grace, is another photograph of Anna holding her newborn baby sister Sophie.)

Grace came and helped us heal. I smile like the sun when I think about that day. Happy Birthday, dear Grace!

Photographs taken by Fay McClurg

Sad Day

R.I.P. Howard Zinn -- one of my heroes. His death is an enormous loss to the world.

Ah, Kindergartners

I've been back in school for 3 days, and the cuteness is pretty darned cute. A quote from yesterday: "Ms. Grindrod, I'm going to the bathroom. I have to go poop, so I might be gone for a while, just in case you're wondering." I guess she was afraid I'd suspect her of playing in the bathroom, which is one of my pet peeves.

Same child returned from lunch today with a speck-sized hangnail and quickly escalated to a wail of "It's bleeeeeding! I need a baaaaaand-aid!" "Yes, I can see that it's gushing blood," I replied. "We may have to call the custodian to mop up." My sarcasm was lost on her, as she agreed with me. I was to drop everything and get a band-aid -- which I did.

On the way to the cafeteria for lunch, another child earnestly suggested that everyone should have to genuflect before eating their lunch. (She didn't actually say "genuflect"; she just gave a demonstration.) I tactfully told her that I didn't think a requirement like that would go over to well in [public] school.

Later on she couldn't find her library book and was becoming quite upset. When we finally found it, she told me "I think the Lord helped us find it!" (Kind of reminds me of my mom. She'd say, "Which of you spilled cocoa on the counter and didn't wipe it up?" We'd all brush her off: "I don't know. It wasn't me …" and exasperated, she'd snap "I suppose the dear Lord did it!")

Ah, it's good to be back!

Hot Tub! or, Reenacting "The Titanic"

It being Christmas and all, Mr. Ether's siblings are all gathered in town. It being Sunday and all, the Green Bay Packers ("the only Socialist team in the league," as Mr. Ether is fond of saying) played today. Me being me and all, I avoided the game like the plague. Everyone else gathered at my brother-in-law's house to watch the game. I was lured over by the promise of a dip in my brother-in-law's hot tub, and I carefully timed my visit to coincide with the end of the game.

As it turned out, the rest of the sibs being prodded by restless teens, they all left to go back to Grandma's. No prob, all the more room in the hot tub, eh? I waited until Mr. Ether had removed the lid of the tub, and clad only in my swimsuit and mukluks, made a dash across the frigid deck (temperature around 20˚F today) for the steaming hot tub. Not forgetting to remove my mukluks, I jumped in and -- "Oh. It's not very warm is it?" Mr. Ether checks the thermometer. "98˚. Body temperature." Five minutes later, "97˚." Crap. "Bill, your hot tub isn't very warm!"

My brother-in-law Bill, wonderful guy that he is -- fantastic artist, talented musician, best uncle in the world according to my children -- is not particularly handy. He comes out, mumbling about it working yesterday and knowing there was a "reset heater" button somewhere, but he couldn't remember where. Back he goes into the house to search for the owner's manual.

"96˚," says Mr. Ether. We're not quite ready to believe that we aren't going to have our wonderful hot tub experience. I wonder if it's possible for my nose to get frostbite while the rest of my body is submerged in warm water. "Hey," I say to Mr. Ether. "Let's reenact that scene from the end of The Titanic (which I've never seen, but never mind that) where everyone is floating, dead in the frigid sea." We barely have time to assume our poses before Bill is back again. He's put on some slippers and a sweater. He doesn't notice us as he's poking around. Darn.

We finally give up the hot tub ghost and head into the house to get into dry clothes and warm up. Then Mr. Ether -- who on top of everything else that is wonderful about him is also handy -- goes back out to the tub and finds the proper combination of buttons to push and contacts to connect, comes back in and says, "It's working!"

By this time there is a dog to walk and feed waiting at home, so we cheerfully head out into the night. Maybe we'll get to hot tub another time.

Gives a whole new meaning to "toiletries".

I first noticed this last week as we drove back to town from cutting a Christmas tree ("Hey, I think we just passed a Christmas tree made out of toilets!"), but alas, didn't have my camera. Yesterday we drove out again to photograph it. Residents of Dane County (Wisconsin) -- you can find it on highway 14 between Middleton and Cross Plains.

Secret Santa?

I woke up this morning to find the tiny corpse of a mouse lying in our upstairs hallway, right outside the bedrooms. A few feet away was one of the cats, wearing a "Who, me?" look. The other cat appeared shortly after I had picked up the deceased in a body baggie to carry outside. She went right to the bag and sniffed it, then went to the place where the victim was first found and gave that a sniff as well. With a shrug of her kitty shoulders (or so I imagined), she too gave me a look of innocence. I see how it is; neither one will admit to being the murderer.

The thing is, I cannot imagine either of these pampered, clutzy, indoor cats having the wherewithal to catch, much less kill a mouse. Perhaps all of those hours sitting on the back of the couch watching "birdie TV" out the window are paying off. They have honed their skills, like an armchair big game hunter watching Marlon Perkins every Sunday evening.

I hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come, because I walk around barefoot in the dark most mornings. I might be in for some nasty surprises.