Salute to a Pioneer

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Your pioneering work with the dying paved the way for the hospice movement in the United States. When I was an ICU nurse, I heard one of my colleagues say "I come to work every day and torture old people to death." Thanks to you and the hospice movement, that is no longer true. People are allowed to die a natural death, with dignity, and as much comfort as we can give them. I had hospice services for three of my family members, so I have first-hand knowledge of the benefit of their services. Losing a family member to death is never easy, and it's always too early, but hospice can help ease the way.

I love this photo of her, which I obtained from this web site:

Finished rereading My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison, first in the series about Lady Mara, a Brehon judge in 16th-century Ireland. 

This is just as good the second time around, if not even better than the first reading. Lady Mara's good sense, her budding romance with the not-too-bright, but manly king, her dealings and insight into the character of her students make this series one of the best I've ever read. I love learning about Brehon law, too. Compared to English law of the time, it was humane and just. Unfortunately, it works best in a close-knit community of people with strong clan ties. In a large city full of individuals with no ties to a community, accountable to no one outside themselves, it breaks down. If you liked Sister Fidelma, you will love Judge Mara even more. For one thing, her hair is not rebellious.

The books are set in a part of Ireland called The Burren, which is very rocky. Most of the words I learned from this book had to do with geology:

clints and grykes are fissures in limestone. Lady Mara plants her rock garden in the fissures and grykes around her home. She likes to plant herbs and flowers with strong scents, so the sweet smell is released when people walk on the sturdy plants.

hoggets are young sheep, betw 1-2 years, too old to be lambs, but not old enough to be called sheep yet.

Another plant she likes is sweet cicely. I only know Cicely as a girl's name, never knew it was a flower. It's very closely related to anise.

Sometimes they picnic in the garden and carry the food out in willow pottles, small basket made just for this use.

Sometimes she plants avens, sturdy little flowers that do well in rocky soil. Here's a picture: 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dryas_octopetala_a4.jpg

The Real Jo Marsh

I just finished reading Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography by Susan Cheever. I knew that Little Women was a fictionalized and romanticized story of Alcott's life, and I wanted to know more about the real woman behind Jo Marsh. I knew that her life was not as happy as the books would have us think, but I had no idea just how difficult and rich it was. Her father invented himself, including a name change, to present himself to the world as an intellectual philosopher. The great literary names of the time: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Henry James, Hawthorne, Peabody, Horace Mann were close family friends, some lending housing and financial support to the idealistic, unworldly Alcott and his starving family.

LMA wrote to survive and support her family and felt the financial pressure of having people depending on her throughout her life. Her most honest writing was contained in her memoir of her time as a nurse in a Union Hospital, where she was treated with mercury. This "cure" damaged her health, and she never recovered the robust health of her youth. Her family avoided doctors, which accounts for their generally healthy and long lives. Medical treatment of the time was as likely to kill as cure.

The book is a good overall general introduction to the real woman behind Little Women without going into so much scholarly detail that the reader becomes lost in the thicket. There are references to other, more specialized studies and biographies for the curious reader.

For me, this fit the bill admirably. It told me just what I wanted to know without being overwhelming.  Cheever's personal experience and insight into the writer's mind and the writing process brings a depth of understanding to bear on a person whose entire life revolved around the creative process and the life events that supported or thwarted this impulse.

Highly recommended.

Goodbye to Maeve Binchy

I was sorry to read of Maeve Binchy's death at age 76. She was one of my favorite authors. I admired her ability to create a sense of place without heavy use of dialect. A word here and there, a particular choice of word order, now and then an eejit accusation leveled against a character was all it took to let us know that we were in Ireland. Her books have given me hours of pleasure over the years. It is some consolation to learn that she had just turned in a manuscript to her editor that is slated for publication in October. We will have one more Maeve Binchy book, this one called A Week in Winter, to warm us inside an out during the cold weather. I plan to brew a cup of my favorite tea, toast some soda bread, and snuggle up and relax one last time with one of the great ones.

Happy birthday, Maeve Binchy. I suppose it's not fashionable to admit reading your stories with their happily-ever-after endings. Not edgy enough, I suppose. But I do love your storytelling ability, and your characters seem so real. You make me believe that if I ever visit Dublin that I could have a meal at Quintons, and find my own circle of friends, or study Italian at night school. Your people are so sensible, even when they make wrong choices or hurt one another. Your readers care about them and what happens to them. We learn about life, love and happiness. And this is no small thing.

Catherine the Great v. Marie Antoinette

Catherine the Great and Marie Antoinette were nearly exact contemporaries. Both were obscure princesses moved about on the political chessboard that was 18th-century Europe. Both left their homes at a very young to live in a land where they were considered to be foreigners, auslanders, outsiders, to be married to men who weren't particularly interested in getting down to the responsibility assigned to them: produce an heir to the throne. The people, food, and language were strange. They were surrounded by intrigue and untrustworthy "friends." They both had rather overbearing mothers who couldn't seem to understand that they couldn't continue to pull the strings and make their daughters dance. Such different results, though. One becomes a great success, one of the greatest leaders Russia has ever known, and the other . . . well, not so much. Why?

I have read several bios of Marie Antoinette; my favorite is by Antonia Fraser. I just finished reading a biography of Catherine by Simon Dixon while I'm waiting for my name to float to the top of the wait list for Robert K. Massie's new bio. I realized while reading Dixon's book that Catherine and Marie Antoinette were not unusual in their circumstances. A princess is only as good as her marriage, and princesses were moved all over Europe like chess pieces. What makes the difference between Catherine and Marie Antoinette is not the circumstances but the personalities. Catherine grasps the reality of her situation immediately and settles down to spend eighteen years studying how best to please her mother-in-law, her husband, and the Russian people. Two out of three isn't a bad score, and she becomes a great leader. Marie Antoinette is the poster girl for the song "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Liberated from the strict oversight of her Austrian mother and turned loose in the French court, she didn't know where to stop while enjoying herself. Tragedy ensues.

After reading the books, I realize that pure situational intelligence, shrewdness, and survival skills were gifts that Catherine brought to the game, while all Marie Antoinette had to depend on was a pretty face a gentle nature, and trust that men meant what they said. Not enough. A princess needed a bit of ruthlessness to survive then, and now as well, I suspect.

There once was a man . . .

There once was a fellow named Lear

Who brought lots of laughter and cheer

With poems full of cheese

And bad rhymes like these

And to us he became rather dear.

The best limerick I remember was written by a friend, John Woolley. From memory, it goes something like this:

A pretentious young poet named Tennyson

Called every blessing a benison.

A lake was a mere;

When dry it is was sere;

He referred to his wife as "my venison."

What are your favorite clever limericks?