Join Me for a Swim in the Gene Pool

I know that what ails me is more than cabin fever, even though my temp was 99.9 briefly. Now it's normal even though I'm not. I am warm though, and my mind keeps drifting to the past, wherever that is.

Last week I drove to NYC for my birthday weekend. I'm notorious for week-long celebrations. Ask my friends. I had a martini at the 21 Club and another at the restaurant. It was a small gathering, people I'ved shared my birthday with many times.

The next day, I had a birthday lunch with my good pal Jeffrey, aka Luvy. For some reason, I usually get a burger when I lunch with him. It's comfort food and Jeff's always a comfort to me. Living in the boondocks though is evident when I try to act like a city girl, walking for miles, climbing subway stairs. New Yorkers don't have to diet as long as they stay away from taxis.

Back at my friends' house (4 flights up), I decided to take a  nap. As I was drifting off to sleep there was a knock at the door. Ma? It was my son Mark surprising me for my birthday. I thought I was dreaming, turned over and went back to sleep.

He'd flown in from Texas for the weekend. His brother Harry also surprised me. These young men are gems. I attribute that mostly to their father, and that we lived in Costa Rica for six years. My daughter is working in Costa Rica at the moment and couldn't be part of the surprise. She's trying to save the world one child at a time. Admirable.

Dinner at a restaurant in our old neighborhood was nonpareil. Breakfast at Juniors the next morning was a classic exercise in consuming vasts quantities of delicious greasy foods. I love that place.

Mark returned with us to the woods and cooked dinner. He ran and consumed enough food to feed me for a week. He does crosswords in ink, just as my grandfather did.

Two New Novels That Disappointed

I'm a big Dave Eggers fan. I've read most of his oeuvre, as has my family. It was with a certain amount of excitement and expectation that I started reading The Circle. It's basically a tale of right-around-the-corner  technological totalitarianism. The company seems a thinly-disguised Google. Think about all the ways this company affects your on-line life. Think about how it could control even your off-line life. That's the premise of the book. The main character, Mae, is an enthusiastic new hire at the Circle, a massive California Company that hires the best and the brightest to do its work, not just to make money but to take control of everyone's life, from healthcare to banking to shopping to everything conceivable, all done in the "noble" belief that humans would be happier. Mae becomes a vehicle of this nightmarish scenario.

I found that Mae was a bit of a dolt, which is why she's chosen to implement the plan to close the Circle. The book is so obvious in its plot that instead of being a chilling warning a la Orwell's 1984 minus the the worldwide war, it merely focuses on what we already know: that technology can rule our lives, if we let it.  The Circle was nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction, but didn't win it.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride won the prize. McBride is the author of The Color of Water, a memoir about growing up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. His father, who lived around the corner from me for a while, was an African-American and his mother was a white Orthodox Jew. This cultural combination seems to produce great writers. I think of Walter Mosely.

Lets get back to The Good Lord Bird. The story is told by a black boy who masquerades as a girl named Onion by the mythic abolitionist John Brown. Onion, who is a 10-year old slave, depicts Brown from a very complicated man. He's the onion, not young slave he frees and takes along on his many forays through pro-slave territory. The major problem I had with the book is that aside from the fact Onion is literate, she uses words and phrases I find hard to believe she knew. She writes in Black/Southern dialect, but using the word "pixi-lated for drunk (It actually is a slang expression, but its first known usage in1848, is only ten or so years prior), and incog-Negro (which is a contemporary phrase) which didn't't ring true, and served to snap me out of the narrative. I recommend you read this book, along with Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. In my opinion, Bank's is the better historical novel about an incredible man

I love comparative literature. What do you expect of an English major?

The Long, Winding, Icy and Hilly Road to My Door

When I left my house Thursday, it had only snowed an inch or so and had stopped. I was driving my trusty old minivan, Vanna, which doesn't have 4-wheel drive. Three hours later, snow was falling and the roads were icy and untreated. My first challenge was to turn left out of the parking lot and go up a steep hill. There was minor slip sliding away, but I made it. It was a white-knuckle ride, snow whirling, darkness falling. I could barely see. Breathe, I told myself. Relax those shoulders. Unclench your fists.

I was brave enough to pull into the local supermarket parking lot. The store was closing early--in 10 minutes--but I only needed a few things.

Arriving at my house unscathed was a relief. My daughter arrived 40 minutes later. She'd driven from Providence, RI, encountering snow in the last hour of her trip. She had the 4WD vehicle for safety. I look forward to not driving for a couple more days.