Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Bookish: The Lazarus Project
Before I went on holidays I finished this Aleksander Hemon novel and was charged to discover that this novel (released last year) lives up to the promise of Hemon’s short fiction. Unlike Nowhere Man, his first “novel”, The Lazarus Project holds throughout with a double narrative, strong characters and an intact storyline that carry the reader through the travels and struggles of two immigrants to America one hundred years apart.
The Lazarus Project is both the story of Lazarus Averbuch, a Jewish Immigrant shot dead Chicago’s police chief in 1908 and of Vladamir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer who becomes interested in Lazarus, following his path in reverse through the novel from Chicago to the Ukraine, Molodova, Romania and Bosnia with the aid of his fantastical friend and photographer Ahmed Rora. The two stories, though taking separate chapters in the beginning of the book, begin to bleed through into each other by the end, provoking comparisons between the two main figures despite their divergent lives. Averbuch, a man chased by pogroms to America works on his English, goes to political meetings and sketches out ideas for a novel. Brik, having left his home country on a writing gig and been blocked from re-entry due to war, works as an immigrant columnist while living principally on his surgeon wife’s income. Two men no longer able to live in their country of birth, searching for something to dignify them in the great land of freedom. And of course, that’s not so easy (many would say impossible) to discover.
The story of Averbuch is very much true, the mystery of what happened to him on police chief Shippy’s doorstep that March morning has never been solved, though the racial tensions caused by the shooting were well documented in newspapers of the time. Hemon does a thorough job of imagining the conversations, smells, thoughts, and conditions that Averbuch lives in, as much as he is able to bring life to the journey of Brik and Rora through Eastern Europe to their devastating conclusion. Each story informing the other, layering on much thought and beauty in the process. A pleasure to read, The Lazarus Project gets a place on my shelf and a definite recommendation.
Just saying….
I am really having a difficult time understanding why some Americans are so rabidly, hysterically opposed to health care reform in the US. I mean, have you seen those people at the town hall meetings? And it’s not because of the weak suggestion of a public option (that’s what I’d be up in arms about – there *has* to be a public option!)…. it’s because of…. well you know, Obama wants to kill children and old people. Or something to that effect.
In response the US government vehemently denies that they would consider bringing in a system like Canada or Britain have – socialized medicine being the bugaboo that it is south of the border. Heaven forbid! A seamless system under which a single insurer manages payments to any number of services that might be required by a patient without any fuss to said patient? I’m not saying the system here is perfect by a long shot, but I do appreciate that I can go to the Doctor, the lab, an ultrasound clinic and a specialist never once having to figure out if that company or individual is covered by my insurance plan. They all are! And there isn’t another plan to get it confused with! (Not only that but I pay less than half of what the average HMO charges for medical insurance for what is considered some of the best medical care in the world).
Yeah, that’s totally something to scream about, or to backpedal away from. I can see why people are bringing handguns to townhall meetings to confront their local representatives…. Because public health care is too scary, all those good God-fearing Americans need to defend themselves from it and Obama. Damn.
Canning madness.
Last week we had planned on a 3-4 day kayaking trip with friends in Victoria which didn’t happen (for us) because I wasn’t up to kayaking in the steady rain that greeted us Monday morning. Instead, Brian and I got back on the ferry and headed inland to Manning Park which we used as a base for a road trip/fruit-buying expedition to Keremeos as well as some hiking and canoeing. Arriving home on Thursday, we’ve spent a part of each of the last few days canning our haul which has (finally) come to its end and is ready for storing against the winter ahead. We’ve processed 40 pounds of tomatoes, 30 pounds of peaches and ten pounds of cherries – not to mention a pound of strawberries, 3 pounds of self-picked blackberries and a bunch of rhubarb from the backyard into the following:
- 6 jars of blackberry-rhubarb pie filling
- 4 jars of strawberry-rhubarb pie filling
- 22 500 ml jars of stewed tomatoes
- 4 large jars of tomato broth
- 2 jars of tomato sauce (frozen)
- 19 500 ml jars of sliced peaches (canned with sage, thyme or cinnamon)
- 3 250 ml jars of peach-rum sauce
- 7 250 ml jars of peach salsa
- 6 500 ml jars of cherries
- 6 250 ml jars of “spirited cherries” (with rum and vanilla vodka)
Which is somewhat insane given that I’ve still got fall apples to do (applesauce, apple chutney, apricot chutney)… we’re going to end up with a lot of food in the cupboards when its all done. I’m quite pleased about it really, Brian’s enthusiasm for learning to can (not to mention his willingness to do half the work) spurred me on to greater quantities and more diverse recipes than ever this year.
I’ll post a couple of recipes in the next few days, including my favourite apple chutney, for those of you so inclined to try. Canning really is very simple, and once you get the gear it’s a super cheap way to create yummy food for the whole year.
A poem for sharing.
I was looking for a wedding song for a friend, tossing around the idea of putting a poem to music rather than doing a conventional/ridiculous love song. Found this, and although it’s not what I needed it moved me to share it. Mary Oliver is on the top of my favourite poets list these days.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Bad feelings.
Last night I reached a breaking point. You know, the kind that leaves you paralyzed, teary and raging angry all at the same time? Yeah, one of those. Problem being, I let things build up and build up, pretending everything is fine…. and when it stops being fine all of a sudden, all that pent-up energy just comes roaring out and I’m an inarticulate, sobbing mess by the end. I don’t particularly want to go into details here, but I’ve got a situation with someone who I thought I was doing a favour for and rather than just saying cool, and getting on with things, he has spent the last year complaining to me about my actions every time I talk to him. I can not, in fact, recall a single conversation in the last year that had to do with much else than what I should be doing more in the situation (ie: what I am *not* doing right now).
And so, even though I’ve just done another favour by forgiving something, I had the same complaint last night about something I haven’t done that I’ve heard about 25 times already (a simple task that I can not complete until a much more complex task is completed and he knows that) – and I snapped. I’m sick of being treated like a bad person in a situation where I am doing all that I can, and that’s essentially what I said – though not so eloquently as I would have liked.
Which leads me to wondering about what to do next. It seems that to ever be in a situation of being able to help someone else (ie: a place of privilege) just leads to resentment and ultimately bad treatment, and this isn’t the first time I’ve been confronted by this seeming contradiction. It’s not that I want to be recognized for being decent, but I certainly don’t want to be pilloried for it. Which makes me think the only way out is to clearly set boundaries on thes type of help I can give friends. As in, I can not provide financial help, but I’m a good listener. While I may want to give financial help when I can, it will go to strangers who I will never meet and therefore can not resent me as an individual or treat me badly because of it.
But this is all very antithetical to my belief system which is from each according to their means, to each according to their needs – which shouldn’t be impersonal at its core but practiced in daily life, in communities of mutual aid. Right? Perhaps. Unfortunately this particular situation has destroyed a friendship, and I am forced to formalize every transaction from hereon out in order to distance my emotional self from a situation that is quite frankly dragging me down with every iteration. Any thoughts about this cycle? I’d really like to find a way to both provide support to friends who need it but set limits on what can be expected of me without sounding rude or inconsiderate. I’m not sure how to strike this balance.
Red Cedar 