Letting the inner child out for a while

Today was one of those I-Actually-Did-Something days. One of those days that come all too infrequently, these days. What I did was go to a Model Train and Doll House show at the armory in Augusta. I love both model trains and doll houses, so when I saw the sign yesterday, on my way to Burger King to get a Whopper without onions and a chocolate milk shake, and saw that the entry fee was only $4, I determined to go.

Not only that, I actually asked someone to go with me. As I've mentioned here before, too often I don't do things because I have no one to do them with. In this case, I didn't really mind going alone, but thought it would be a pleasant activity to share with someone, and also thought that the staff member with whom I am most sympatico might actually be interested in going, too. And she was but, alas, the show was only running today, and she was already committed to going shopping with her mother.

So I went alone. Out into the freezing cold day -- after two days when it got up into the 40s, to everyone's aston-ishment and delight, it is now back to being Winter in Maine -- and making the what is beginning to seem like such a long drive, from my house to the street in Augusta where most things happen (Western Avenue, which sports two shopping centers, numerous fast-food places as well as a lot of small businesses, the Post Office, the best hotel in town, the office of the local newspaper and yes, the armory) -- and joining the queue behind all the people with little kids in tow, so I could fork up my $4.

The show was not what I expected. I thought there would be lots of neat doll houses and running trains to ogle at. There were some of each, but not that many. There was an absolutely marvelous doll house in the form of a light house, with a beautifully done room on each of the three levels. The only thing I wondered about was why the woman who made it had put the bedroom on the second floor, and the living room on the top. "People" -- and there were figures in the kitchen on the ground floor -- would have to go through the bedroom to get to the living room. But the woman's work was meticulous. And feeling the way I do about lighthouses, well, you just know I would have loved to be able to add that one to my non-existent collection.

There was also a doll house that cost $600. It looked like a McMansion. Also beautifully done, but $600?

Several model train clubs -- Maine 3 Railers, Great Falls Railroad Club -- had displays of running trains. My favorite train was the Bangor-Aroostook, a train line that actually served that massive county in the north of Maine from the 1890s through the 1960s. What really charmed me were the all the Maine-specific cars that made up the train: an Oakhurst milk car (Oakhurst being a major Maine dairy), a presumably refrigerated Maine Lobster car, heating oil being transported in a Downeast Energy car, etc., etc.

Perhaps the best display was produced by Model Rail Scenes, apparently a branch or project of the Central Maine Railroad Club. Wonderful buildings for the train that was running to glide past -- a milk stop, with tiny old-fashioned metal milk containers waiting on the platform, farm buildings, a general store with outhouse. I came away with their card, which directed me to their web site (www. modelrailscenes.com), which showed me that all these items can be purchased as kits, with prices ranging from $60 for the milk stop, to $200 for a switch tower, to $325 for the barn/silo/shed. Just imagine what it must cost to outfit a complete countryside for your train to roll through!

However, despite these few displays, what the show mainly consisted of was people selling train cars -- never saw so many little train cars in one place, most lying on their sides in little boxes -- and the tiny, adorable, in some cases exquisite furnishings, and dolls, that go in doll houses. I don't have a doll house, or a child with a doll house, so obviously I wasn't going to be buying any of the doll furniture -- especially with prices like $59 for a miniature table-with-two-chairs, or $54 for a tiny rocking chair (think how much it would cost to fully furnish a doll house at those prices! These are not inexpensive hobbies.) -- and while I would love to be able to buy a whole train, with a track for it to run on, and cunning little buildings to go with it, such a purchase would not only fall into the luxury category, in which I may not, as a rule, indulge; but also, where on earth would I put the thing? Not an inch of available space in my house (which is so small it could almost qualify as a Doll House).

Actually, what I really wished was that I had not only the permission of my Friends organization to make such a purchase, but also some cold hard cash from them, so that I could get a small train with tracks for the library. This is obviously something for which I have no money in my regular budget, but is the sort of thing the Friends have paid for in the past. Two Christmases in a row we had the loan of a cute little train that ran 'round and 'round our Christmas tree, to the enchantment of many a child, and many a non-child. But then the fellow who had lent us the train died, and that was the end of that. In December of 2009 I was thinking of trying to find such a set to buy and donate to the library, as I was a little more flush then than I am most Christmases. However, to my real surprise, I couldn't find a place in the area that sold electric trains! None of the local stores like Target or Wal-Mart carried them, nor did the little independent toy store to be found in one of those shopping centers on Western Ave., not even the much publicized Red Dragon Toys, south of here in the town of Brunswick. Goodness, don't little boys get train sets anymore? So anyway, I gave up that notion for the time being.

But before I left the show today I spent a dollar on a raffle ticket for a complete train layout. Won't know who won until next December, but that would be just in time for Christmas...

Everyone's doing it

I have joined Facebook. Why have I joined Facebook? Mainly -- perhaps even solely -- in order to get a better sense of what's happening with a number of friends/ family members whom I rarely hear from. It seems most of them are on Facebook!

This is not really my kind of thing. Even writing this blog is often difficult for me, trying to walk the thin line between revealing enough about myself and my life to keep it from being boringly impersonal, and revealing an embarrassing too much; between my well-developed sense of privacy, and my desire to communicate my thoughts and feelings about "things."

Besides which Facebook is so much a matter of word bites -- "the family and i just got home from chunky-cheese, the line was out the door the whole time we were there," or (among the teenagers), "Mall tonight?" "What time?" -- whereas I am hard-pressed to limit what I say in these blog postings to just over a page. I have to work at being succinct.

Then there's the fact that, besides the minutiae of people's lives, I am constantly bombarded with political links from my most politically active "Friend" (my much-admired sister-in-law, Karen, whom I discussed at some length in the Oct. 27, 2010 Note )-- which leave me feeling overwhelmed, because many of them concern issues I do feel strongly about, but I simply cannot sign that many petitions (I don't much believe in petitions anyway, but rather in letters from individuals -- and I can't write that many letters to my President and my congressional reps!); with pleas to buy purses or have a purse-buying party, from the daughter of one of my Friends (whom I felt duty-bound to accept as a Friend as well) who sells the things; and with the announcements that so-and-so is now friends with so-and-so.

And I don't understand all the intricacies of the thing. What does the "Like" feature mean? So often people seem to "like" something that doesn't really call for a do-you-like-this-or-not opinion. And since I am getting all these exchanges between my Friends, and their Friends -- whom I don't generally ask to be friends with, since for heaven's sake I don't even know these people -- does that mean all of my exchanges are appearing on not only my Friends' pages (where I don't find them!), but on the pages of my Friends' Friends? It's all quite mad.

And my god, was ever an expression more overused than 'lol'?

Nonetheless, this very public "bulletin board" is doing exactly what I hoped it would do: letting me see what are the day-to-day concerns and activities of those I care about, but have a hard time keeping in touch with. I've already learned much more about my nephew in these few weeks of reading his and his friends endless one-line communiques, than I have ever known before. Didn't know he played the guitar ("I sing, too," he told me), didn't know he "tutted" (tutting being a dance form -- as I learned when I looked it up on the Internet -- in which the emphasis is on sliding the arms and hands in and out of geometric designs, a la King Tut [or to be more precise, like the figures in wall paintings in Egyptian tombs]), didn't know he liked the Beatles (one of the few things we have in common).

Well, so there I am, though I may very well be the weakest link in the chain.

Dirty cars, and love

Greetings from the land of filthy cars. I've been wanting to say that ever since I started this blog, and finally remembered to do so when it was appropriate, i.e., in the middle of winter, when everyone's car is, indeed, filthy. Even if it has just snowed, which has served to give your vehicle a little bath, two minutes on the road will take care of that, as the sand put down by the public works people, and the slush produced by traffic rumbling over still-snowy roads, gets thrown up by all that passing traffic. Most people don't bother to wash their cars all winter; there doesn't seem to be a point. So here we are, the land of filthy cars.

And here's a question for you. Why, in sit-coms and romantic comedy films, does the guy always say, when asked by a third party if he loves the girl, something to the effect of "What's not to love? (or maybe "Of course I love her.") She smart, funny, beautiful..." And that's it. Those always seem to be the reasons men trot out for loving the woman in question, even though as a matter of fact real-life men rarely love a woman because she's smart or funny (beautiful, yes). They may admire her brains, and enjoy her humor, but that's not why they love her.

Nobody ever says, "Of course I love her -- or, What's not to love? -- she's sweet, kind, loving, she hasn't got a mean bone in her body, she puts up with me, I can be myself when I'm with her, she's great in bed..." In other words, nobody ever gives any of the real reasons men love women.

This shows an appalling lack of imagination or insight, or else just plain laziness, on the part of a heckuva lot of writers. Even if you want to be succinct, because the whole show has to be squeezed into 24 minutes, even if you don't want to come on too heavy, because the show is a comedy, you should be able to come up with something besides "She's smart, she's funny, she's beautiful." Even "I don't know why I love her; why does anybody love anybody?" is better.

Murder in Grub Street

I am so not au courante. I started writing this posting about a series of mysteries I really like, only to discover, when checking a fact online, that the latest book in the series was published in 2005, with the titles I have read and was going to write about having come out much earlier. Ah, well. Maybe there's someone out there who's even more behind the times than I.

The books are in the Sir John Fielding Mystery series, by Bruce Alexander, and the one I just finished reading, Blind Justice, was actually the first novel in the series, though I'm reading it after having read two later ones. Like most people, I hate it when that happens; but I stumbled on the later books in my library -- Murder in Grub Street and Jack, Knave and Fool -- long before Blind Justice appeared among a bunch of donated books this past week.

Sir John Fielding is a blind magistrate in the London of the mid-1700s. There really was such a person, and he really was the half-brother of the more famous Henry Fielding (author of Tom Jones). The books are written from the viewpoint of a young orphan boy who becomes Sir John's assistant, after being falsely accused of thievery, and being brought before Sir John's court. Evidently that was quite a little racket in the bad old days: some innocent being set up by a gang of crooks to appear to have stolen something from one of them, and being dragged off to court, where the accusers may receive a "bounty" for bringing in a criminal. Fortunately for young Jeremy, the blind Sir John sees right through the bad guys' game, and takes a liking to Jeremy.

This is one of the things I like about these books: one learns, in an entertaining way, interesting tidbits about the everyday life of that place and time. Given my interest in history, and in other cultures, past or present, it's easy to see why I would enjoy such books. Indeed, I've written about other mystery series with historical settings that I've liked (see Note of May 1, 2009). In the Sir John books, I've also learned a bit more about the Bow Street Runners. I had a dim recollection of having heard of the BSR, without really knowing what or who they were. In effect, they were London's first profes-sional police department, organized by the Fielding brothers (Henry Fielding was also a magistrate, besides being a successful writer). The court was in Bow Street, and the "runners" were the constables who worked for the magistrate, going out to bring in people the court wanted to see, taking them off to jail when that was necessary. They carried clubs for banging obstinate heads, which became eventually the policeman's night stick.

But for all the fascinating historical detail, what most holds these books together, and gives them their greatest appeal, is the upright Fielding, with an earthy enjoyment of his food and his beer, a proud deter-mination to make his way around without assistance, to the extent possible, and his all too human vanity about his ability to distinguish among voices. He is a man of both compassion and integrity, besides being very smart. He is someone you can admire -- one always want to be able to do that with the hero of a mystery series -- and the fact that the fictional character is taken very much from the real-life character (as I learned when I consulted Wikipedia about him) makes him even more attractive.

I have discovered that there are many more Sir John novels that I have yet to read, which gives me great satisfaction. It's always a pleasure to discover new authors that you like, and to know you will be able to read more of their work.

I'll close this mini-review with the blurb from Newsday that appears on the back of Jack, Knave and Fool: "Historical fiction done this entertainingly is as close to time travel as we're likely to get."

Ah, but what comes next?

My, we do live in interesting times, don't we? I watched the protests in Tunisia with amazement, was especially amazed that the marching and shouting and street violence actually resulted in the much-despised president "stepping down," as they say, and leaving the country. A popular uprising, in that part of the world, actually toppling an unpopular government.

And now we have Egypt, which is even more aston-ishing. The country as a whole has enjoyed greater prosperity than Tunisia, but there are still many people unemployed, many of them young and educated, chaffing at having that education, and not being able to find a job (the same problem that exists in Tunisia). And so very many people living in gross poverty, on the equivalent of $2 a day, I heard on a news analysis program. And a government that has been a tiny bit more tolerant of self-expression, but not if it includes criticism of the government.

Then, thanks to mass communication, the Egyptians are able to watch the successful uprising in Tunisia -- hey, if they can do it, why can't we -- and a few hot-headed young men, who always seem to be the ones to lead insurrections, take to the streets, and the powder keg is lit.

I think how the French Revolution must have started in just this way, with the common people finally having had enough of their dire circumstances in juxtaposition with the wealth and luxury of the aristocracy, and the indifference of the government. In fact, that seems to be the recipe for "revolution": the bulk of the people living wretched lives, with no sense that the government gives a damn about them. A few brave souls start shout-ing, marching, and all the lemmings join in. Then the mob mentality sets in -- there's violence, destruction, and the powers that be get scared. Inevitably they bring in the police/army -- the guys with the guns. But if the guys with the guns have any sympathy at all with the protesters -- as seems to be the case in Egypt -- or if the protesters are in sufficient numbers, and of sufficient desperation -- the government may be out of luck.

Of course we all learn about this stuff in school -- for some of us, a hundred years ago -- but now we're able to watch it being played out on our television screens. We are able to watch history being made, as we did with the moon walk, the assasination of Lee Harvey Oswald (I remember passing through the living room, glancing at the television, which had been left on all-but-constantly since Kennedy's assasination, and actually seeing Oswald gunned down), the Vietnam war, or for that matter the Iraqi war, during which we were given practically a blow-by-blow. Television really is a remarkable thing.

The current history-in-the-making is fascinating, but also unsettling, because most of the people involved in the yelling, marching and stone-throwing are not in any way pro-American. Even though they are vehemently against their current governments, they are just as vehemently anti-American. It is going to be very interesting, seeing how the world proceeds to change.

The not-so-good earth

I have been reading a very interesting book, Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth, by Hilary Spurling. This is a book I ordered for the library, because it got such good reviews, but I am the only person to have checked it out in six months, to my considerable disappointment. I'm always disappointed when one of my book selections falls flat with my patrons. I consider a circulation of five for a nonfiction book good, 2-3 is o.k., none at all is, well, flummoxing. How could I so misread my patrons' reading interests?

I know it's not that no one knows who Pearl S. Buck was -- which is apparently the case in the wider population these days -- because a lot of our patrons are older. They would have heard of The Good Earth, quite possibly read it -- maybe even seen the travesty of a Hollywood film that was made of it -- even if they had never read any other of Buck's books. But apparently no one is interested in the back-ground and experiences that made it possible...one might even say necessary...for Buck to write that at-one-time blockbuster novel, which all but singlehandedly saved the small, struggling publishing house, John Day Company, that published it in 1931, which won the author a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, and was a large part of her winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938 (the first woman to do so).

Well, too bad, my patrons have just missed out on a good book, from which I've learned a great deal, both about this complex, fascinating woman, and about a period of Chinese history most of us are essentially ignorant of (late 1800s, early 1900s). I vaguely knew that Pearl Buck was the daughter of missionaries to China, and spent her childhood there, but I really didn't understand to what extent China formed her. She spent the first half of her life trying to be someone she was not suited to be -- first the docile daughter of a Bible-thumping missionary (who estimated that in ten years he had managed ten converts, which just left millions still to be converted) -- then the equally-docile wife of an equally fanatically-dedicated agricultural specialist, still in China. Although she was born in the United States (in her mother's native West Virginia, which came as a surprise to me), during a holiday home for her missionary parents, she spent all but four years, from toddler-hood to her mid-thirties, living in China. The years 1910-1914 she was attending Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, being miserable and feeling out of place (though, as she put it, "externally I became an American"), dismayed that no one was the least interested in the place she thought of as home.

I don't remember much of The Good Earth, which I read many years ago. Mainly I remember being appalled by the life of the main character's wife (who, for me, was actually the main character). She was not loved by her husband, who only picked her because he thought she would be a hard worker, which she was. O-lan's life was an unrelenting hard, from her days as a slave in a rich man's house, to her days married to Wang Lung, during which she was forever getting pregnant, bearing the children all by herself (the scene of her first solitary childbirth is indelibly imprinted on my brain), and work-work-working. I found it heartbreaking that even when she died, her loss was not much felt by her family.

Having read Spurling's book, I now know that the unfortunate O-lan was based to a large extent on an equally unattractive, but stalwartly loyal servant of Buck's. And that, indeed, much of what happened, virtually all of the conditions of which she wrote, Buck had witnessed, over the years. When the book was published the Chinese literati objected to it vehemently, because it was about rough, lowly peasants. Why would one write about such people? The government also objected to it, because it suggested rampant lawlessness in the countryside, and did not paint a pretty picture of life in China. But what came of Buck's close exposure to "rough, lowly peasants" was a respect and compassion for these people, along with a clear-eyed view of what life was like for them, how it dictated their behavior.

She also, apparently, wrote tellingly of her mother -- trapped in an inappropriate and unsatisfying marriage her entire life (at the time of her death she literally despised her husband, whom she felt, quite rightly, had sacrificed both her and their children to his fanatical missionary work) in a book called The Exile, and about her difficult father, whom she finally came to understand, respect and love, for all his flaws, in Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul. I'd be interested in reading both books, though I fear the former would depress me -- I hate being reminded that, in the good ol' days, so many women were trapped in miserable marriages that deprived them of the opportunity to be truly themselves -- and the latter would make me mad.

I can only say I'm glad Buck finally had her day in the sun, that after over 24 rejections the book that made her was accepted for publication, and that once she moved permanently to the United States, and unburdened herself of a marriage that had been as unsatisfying as her mother's, she was able to find constant, loving support from her publisher, whom she married, and with whom she adopted six children. Apparently much of what she wrote in later years was not, in a literary sense, very good, but she never stopped trying to convey to the rest of the world the "real" China. That was her mission.

To close or not to close

Well, here we are in the midst of another blizzard. It's beginning to look like this is going to be a serious winter.

I closed the library, after doing my usual dithering. At eight o'clock when my alarm went off (Wednesday is the only day I have to get up to an alarm clock, as it is the only day I must be to work before 11. Late starting times are definitely one of the benefits of my current job -- starting the work day at 8 or 8:30 was always an agony for me.) I saw that it wasn't snowing all that hard. Maybe we should go ahead and open, and then close early (the storm was supposed to get worse as the day wore on). There were several reasons I considered this possibility. 1) I was out sick yesterday, and really didn't need to be losing another day of work. 2) Like me, my staff is paid only for hours worked, so the two women who normally work on Wednesdays would be losing pay. For one of them this is no big deal, for the other it is. 3) I know that a number of hardy souls who live in the immediate vicinity of the library would be glad to have it open. We have several patrons like this: retired, not much to do, very dependent on the reading matter they obtain from the library to give them something to do. 4) What if the storm turned out to be not all that bad -- we would have "wasted" one of our "snow days." Not that we have a set number, but when you close too often, your public begins to lose faith in you ("what, they're closed again?!") And this is Maine, where it is generally expected that one will carry on, despite the weather.

Finally, at nine, I called my staff member who normally opens on Wednesday, and who lives just three blocks from the library. She is also the one who dislikes losing hours. I figured if she was up for going in for a while she could do so, but I had decided I was not going in. It was rapidly looking worse out there, and it just seemed unnecessarily foolish (sometimes it is necessary to be a little foolish) to be making that 15-minute drive from Gardiner to Hallowell on what would certainly be treacherous streets -- after spending an exhausting half hour digging my car out -- and then having to come back again in two or three hours. As usual I got Sue's answering machines -- Sue and her husband are in that elite group of people who not only screen all their calls, but never pick up, so you always have to wait for them to call you back (I admit I do not understand this at all). However, Sue did not call me back, which confused me; surely she wouldn't have left for work already. She was scheduled to arrive at 9:30, to prepare for the 10 o'clock opening, and it would take her two minutes to get there if she drove, maybe 10 if she walked.

By 9:30 I knew we should not be opening. I had contacted the delivery service that brings and picks up our Interlibrary Loan books on Wed., to tell them we would be closed, had contacted the chairman of our Board of Trustees, (by phone, as for some reason Yahoo Mail picked this particular time not to give me access to my email account), to tell him we were closed, and to ask him to convey that info. to the rest of the Board. I did this because he had sent out an email last night, about the Board meeting scheduled for this evening, telling us to "watch the weather; we may have to cancel. If the library is closed we will definitely cancel." I think he was relieved to get my message, and promised to pass along the info., and said he would be cancelling tonight's meeting, as well.

However, I still hadn't talked to Sue. I tried to reach her several times between 9:30 and 10 at the library. I have told my staff not to answer the phone when we are not open, as I think it's important for people to understand that, just like any other business, we have hours when we are open, and hours when we are closed; but I knew that when I was not there Sue frequently disregarded this stricture. I hasten to add that this is not because of a basically rebellious nature, but because for Sue helping patrons is a sacred duty, and whether they call at 7 a.m. or 10 p.m. -- if she's there, she feels duty-bound to answer, and help them if she can. However, I got no answer, even after 10 a.m. -- except for the message I had had my staff put on the answering machine last night, saying if you're hearing this message during our regular hours on Wednesday it means we are closed due to the storm -- so I had to infer that a combination of my rather cryptic message to her home phone ("we need to talk about our opening"), combined with the state of the weather, had convinced her that we were not opening today. And when she finally called me, 11-ish, that turned out to be the case.

Well, I've gone on and on, when here is the real crux of the matter: it drives me crazy that I have such a hard time making this kind of decision. Perhaps it's a lack of faith in my own judgment, combined with a fear of not meeting the expectations of others. Perhaps I am just cursed by being so aware of all possibilities and ramifications...or perhaps the curse is being paralyzed by that awareness. Whatever is the cause, I must say it's a drag...