Monthly Archives: November 2012

A surprising source for things you never thought to ask about

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Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac for the year of our Lord 2013 (Harris Publications, Inc., 2013)

When I was a pre-schooler, I got farmed out (literally) to my aunt and uncle’s farm in Alexander, Illinois quite a bit since mom–a single mother in an age when they were looked down upon–frequently had to find other work to support us. There are so many good memories about that place I wouldn’t know where to start, but one of them was seeing The Farmer’s Almanac on the table next to Uncle Mike’s chair. He would sit of an evening after supper reading through it while the rest of us watched television. I didn’t read that copy, but older copies were always available in the restroom.

The “restroom” at my uncle Mike’s was a small, wooden structure that you got to by walking through the chicken yard. The old Almanacs were there for your reading pleasure. There were other publications there as well, mostly old catalogues, but they were there for … well, I am sure I needn’t go into that here.

Once, I helped my uncle and a neighbor man “move” the restroom (I “helped” by staying out of their way). It was done by simply digging another hole nearby, picking up the outhouse, setting it over the new hole, then filling up the old hole with the dirt from the new one. The old plot became an extension of my aunt’s garden. I don’t mean to brag, but Aunt Theresa was known to have the biggest tomatoes in Morgan County!

But, I digress. The point is, I became familiar with The Farmer’s Almanac at a very early age, and enjoyed flipping through it and looking at the pictures and reading whatever parts of it I was able to make out at my tender age.

Well, The Farmer’s Almanac has not only survived, but continues to sell some four milliion copies a year. I picked up a copy of the 2013 Almanac the other day at a Walgreen’s, and have found myself flipping through it whenever I have a few extra minutes.

What’s neat about The Farmer’s Alamanac is that it allows you to think about and learn about things you would not otherwise think to go looking for.

For example, in the new edition of the Harris Farmer’s Almanac, there is a brief article about Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which taught me things I had never known about the writing of that ten-sentence masterpiece. Did you know that Lincoln kept it short because he wasn’t feeling well? Or that  borrowed an expression from a sermon by an abolitionist preacher named Theodore Parker, which read, in part,

“Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.”

I sure didn’t. But it was right there in the 2013 Farmer’s Almanac, in an article titled “Ten Sentences that Made History,” by Gregory McNamee.

Here’s something else I’ll bet you didn’t know. The first ever crossword puzzle appeared in the New York World in the Sunday Fun section December 21, 2013, composed by journalist Arthur Wynne.

But the real claim to fame, and the thing that farmers always want to know, is what the Almanac says about the weather.

Weather information for the entire year is presented by regions of the country, and even though naysayers claim that you can’t predict the weather much beyond a few days or weeks, the Almanac bravely does just that, as it has for hundreds of years.

Just for fun, I took the Almanac’s outlook for November 2012 for Region 9, in the northeast united states, and compared it with actual results. (You can do this yourself, if you ever find yourself in the restroom with an Almanac and an iPad (how times have changed!) by going to Current Events dot Com / Weather.

The Almanac predicted “slightly above normal temperatures” from 44 in the west to 52 along the coast” for the month. Vague, you say. Perhaps, but when I compared it with actual temperatures for Pennsylvania, sure enough, average temperatures in Eastern Pennsylvania was 50 degrees. Western Pennsylvania went off the charts at 62 degrees average … but that is definitely “above normal”– even if more than slightly!

I don’t think I would bet money on the Almanac’s weather predictions, since many claim that the predictions are little more than “guesses,” and its methods not only unscientific but “unpublished.” Check out a website called Research Penn State, which carries an interesting article about the “unscientific” system used by the Farmer’s Almanac.

So, if you ever find yourself longing for simpler times, and want to be surprised by things you didn’t know and wouldn’t even have thought to ask about, pick up a copy of The Farmer’s Almanac and keep it … on your nightstand. You might just learn a few things.

But, if you are planning an outside event, check the Almanac — but check the forecast on Accuweather a few days in advance just to make sure!

Note: This article is based on a reading of Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac. Other Farmer’s Almanacs might also be of interest, such as The Old Farmer’s Almanac (OFA, 2013), or Farmer’s Almanac 2013, ed. Peter Geiger and Sondra Duncan (Famer’s Almanac, 2013)

Copyright 2013 Isaac Morris

The labyrinthine heart

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“RURAL ENGLAND, a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, a summer’s day at the start of the nineteen sixties.”

THUS BEGINS The Secret Keeper, a new novel by Kate Morton (Atria Books, 2012, 496 pages), a book whose Edenesque beginning finds fourteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson in her hideawy tree house, while her sisters romp playfully beneath her. The spell cast by the English countryside is soon rent, however, when Laurel witnesses the shocking death of a stranger — at her mother’s hand.

The nature of the threat posed by the stranger is unclear, but the threat was real enough to allow the death to be ruled justifiable; Laurel witnessed it, and spoke to the police about it. Everything settled down after that, but for Laurel the questions never went away.

Why? It was something that was said before the blow was struck. Something that led her to believe that the man who lay dead in their yard was not a stranger.

Author Morton, bringing back the blitz. Source: Kate Morton Author on Facebook

This is a novel with many threads that are woven expertly by Morton, an Aussie who has graced the New York Times bestsellers lists with books like The Forgotten Garden and The Distant Hours.  The reader is led down labyrinthine ways, from the present to the past, as the nagging sense of a horrible wrong leads Laurel to seek out the secret that her mother has held since before she was born. At her mother’s deathbed, Laurel, now a successful actress, is determined to find answers to the mystery that has clouded her existence since the day her mother took a life

The story takes us back to the Blitz, that hideous scar in a nation’s memory that has never completely healed over. In the early 70s, I spent a January near London. I can still remember walking to the West Kensington tube stop, passing rows of Victorian houses–and after every so many of them, a small park. I later learned that the “parks” were on lots that once held houses, houses that had been hit by bombs thirty years before. The bomb blasts and the craters left in their wake have haunted literature ever since, from Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (1951) to Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001). Greene’s novel is, in my estimation, brilliant; McEwan’s, compelling. Morton’s Secret Keeper I would place nearer to Greene on this ad hoc spectrum of great books.

London, 1941, is the war-torn city where Laurel finds the first traces of her mother, Dorothy. She also learns of another woman, Vivien, whose dark secrets are slowly uncovered; and a young photographer named Jimmy, who is the beloved of Dorothy. Through interviews, journals, news clippings, and conversations Laurel slowly, painfully, and artfully pieces together the story of her mother, her father, and the reason for the stranger’s death on her farm which changed her life forever. There is suspense at every turn–we frequently know enough to feel concern, but we don’t always know what we think we do.

This is one of the most beautifully plotted and engaging novels I have read in years. Morton is a terribly erudite and gifted writer, one with insights into the cavernous hearts of human beings whose obsessions are not always rational and whose responses to slights real or imagined can have unanticipated and cruel consequences.

Brilliant. That’s the only word I can think of for The Secret Keeper.

It’s Turkey Time!

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Source: Wikipedia Commons

TO THOSE OF YOU who have been following me now for almost a year, thank you so much! I appreciate it. I hope my American friends have a terrific Thanksgiving; but for all of you–regardless of your country–I leave you with a gift: a list of the turkeys I have either reviewed or passed on this year.

Biggest Gobbler of the Year

The Family Corleone: A Prequel to the Godfather, by Ed Falco (Grand Central Publishing, 2012)

Gobble, gobble, gobble. See my review.

Two different blondes, two different endings

I DON’T REVIEW BOOKS  that don’t interest me; but sometimes I get galleys for books that I am intrigued by but which lose me along the way (usually up front or after about fifty pages). This doesn’t really make them turkeys, because some of you might find them fascinating. So I leave it to you whether you might want to give these books a try.

Twitch Upon a Star: The Bewitched Life of Elizabeth Montgomery, by Herbie J. Pilato (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, November 5, 2012).

The subject was an amazing woman, but Pilato’s style (which seems more academic than journalistic) and his penchant for details that I found uninteresting lost me after about 75 pages (I normally just stop at 50 — so there’s that!). But, for those who don’t find his style off-putting, the story of this daughter of Hollywood royalty who bewitched us all as Samantha might be well worth the effort.

The Empty Glass, by J. I. Baker (Penguin Group USA Incorporated, 2012)

No doubt a clever approach to the much ballyhooed story of the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe, The Empty Glass tells it from the point of view of a young coroner for whom something just doesn’t seem … right. I stopped after a while. Probably because I am tired of all things Marilyn, and the conspiracies that supposedly surrounded the entire era of all-things-Kennedy. I am fairly well certain that Oswald killed Kennedy, and Marilyn took too many pills.The simplest explanation is often the most likely. But that’s just my take. You might really enjoy this book!

Have a great weekend! And thank you again for stopping by to read my postings!

 

Quick Looks at Books

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Here are a few quick descriptions of books I have read recently. Some of these were read before I began the Morris Chair, but they are books which I have revisited and books worth a look!

TIme Out of Mind, by Jane Lapotaire Original Sin - A Cultural History
Abraham's Curse The Brontes

Time Out of Mind

by Jane Lapotaire

I first became acquainted with Jane Lapotaire when I watched the 1983 BBC production of “Macbeth,” wherein she starred as Lady Macbeth alongside Nicol Williamson. Her performance was sensual, visceral, and seductive; her madness and final decompensation as believable as any descent into hell I have witnessed on stage or on film.

I actually picked up and read this book some time ago, but the brain hemorrhage Ms. Lapotaire endured–and survived–is probably her greatest achievement to date. She writes about the awful feelings of incomprehension, the new awareness of her mind’s terrible trauma, and her reawakening to life in a way that makes any paltry issues I am dealing with pale by comparison. Think you have problems? Read Ms. Lapotaire’s story and you will look at life with a whole new appreciation.

Original Sin: A Cultural History

by Alan Jacobs

I purchased this after checking it out of the library because it is truly a book that needs to be reviewed and reread. Having grown up with the notion of original sin–a mainstay of Catholicism–I have frequently harbored concerns about the view of humanity that this presents. Are we all, in fact, tainted by a primal weakness inherited from our first parents and thus in need of redemption? This book is a work of scholarship that addresses the evil that men do and examines the possible explanations: are we, in fact, inclined to sin because of the sin of our parents? Or are we, as some teach, basically good and made evil by circumstances? Does the fault lie in the stars, or in ourselves? This book examines the responses that derive from the various answers to these questions, and makes a convincing case for our essential inclination to evil–whether it’s due to some parental flaw that passes on like a case of pre-natal HIV, or whether it’s “in our genes.” Thought provoking and well worth discussing.

Abraham’s Curse: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

by Bruce Chilton

The story of how Abraham could, without question, pack up his son, firewood and a knife and march out to sacrifice Isaac has always bothered me. A test? This book examines the story from Genesis, and an analogous story from the Koran; and the fact that it prefigures the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (who, like Isaac, carried the wood himself). The impact of this story in our history, in which we continue to sacrifice our young on the altar of Democracy, is a work of scholarship that is well-written and easily understood even by non-scholars. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the primal urge to sacrifice, and how much of what we have taken from the story may have been a mis-interpretation: one that has cost millions their lives. Highly recommended.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters, by Juliet Barker (Pegasus, 2012, 1184 pages).

If you loved Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, you may have sought information about the young women who wrote them. Search no more. Juliet Barker, an Oxford Ph.D. and former curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England has written what is probably a definitive, 1100 page book about the dysfunctional Bronte family. The parson, the alcoholic brother Branwell, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne lived out their lives in a setting almost as bleak as the heath that Cathy and Heathcliff wandered. Most biographical writings have heretofore focused on one of the sisters; this book examines the whole tragic family dynamic, from which would spring two very gifted and avant garde writers. This scholarly book is only for the ardent, however. Also, it is not new. It is a rehash of Barker’s The Brontes, a 1000 plus page book that first appeared in 1994. A reviewer on Amazon referred to the earlier book as “Long, somewhat ponderous, but informative.” Pretty well sums it up. But if you want one book in your collection that will suffice for just about anything you or anyone would want to know about the reclusive Bronte sisters, this is the one.

Note: Another movie version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has just come out. See my posting of July 26 concerning this latest adaptation.

Copyright 2012 Isaac Morris