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The Most Important Book I Ever Read

August 29, 2010 - View Single Entry

Another one from To Be Rather Than to Seem.

I'm holding in my hands what may be the most important book I ever read. No, it's not by Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Coleridge, or any of the other literary giants whose work has awed me over the years. It's not by Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, or any of the feminist writers who expanded my vision. You've probably never heard of it: Lawrence of Arabia, by Alistair MacLean. It's a young adult biography of T. E. Lawrence, number 52 in the World Landmark series of history books for young people.

I had a subscription to the series, a gift from my parents, so the book probably arrived in my family's mailbox when it was hot off the press in 1962. I was in fifth grade, approaching my eleventh birthday. Thanks to a fourth-grade project on Saudi Arabia, I was already interested in the Middle East, but I don't think I'd heard of T. E. Lawrence. I didn't know that Alistair MacLean was famous for writing The Guns of Navarone, the movie of which had come out the previous year.

This was the book that introduced me to a man who has fascinated me ever since. True, the fascination was further encouraged by David Lean's film of the same name: the cinematic Lawrence of Arabia was released before the end of 1962, after my interest in its subject had been well piqued, and I saw it with Grandma on its first U.S. run, in April 1963.

By then I'd found Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the abridged version, Revolt in the Desert, on Grandma's bookshelves and read both of them. So I, the budding preteen Arabist, got to explain the events depicted and alluded to in the movie to my friends and family, many of whom had a hard time following the story and understanding the politics. I knew where liberties had been taken with the historical record, and I knew which characters were real (Prince Feisal, Shaikh Auda Abu Tayi, General Allenby) and which not (Sharif Ali ibn al-Kharish, played by Omar Sharif, upon whom I like just about everyone else had a terrible crush). I loved pointing out that Peter O'Toole, at six-foot-two, was playing Lawrence, who in real life was five-foot-four.

When I left home for college and the wider world, this book stayed behind. For decades it lived on gray metal utility shelving in the damp, unfinished basement of my parents' house, along with other books and memorabilia from my early years. When the house was sold, in the summer of 2009, the contents of the basement were junked as too moldy and mildewed to be worth sorting through. Losing all those relics was like a seismic shock in a place I used to live. The initial jolt faded in a few weeks.

Regret for the loss of this particular book didn't fade, however. Its dimly recollected cover image became ever more vivid in my mind: a drawing of Lawrence in Bedouin dress, a dagger in his belt and binoculars around his neck. I looked it up online: inexpensive copies weren't hard to find, but I put off buying one, and put it off some more.

My world has been powerfully affected by books. Books have changed or greatly expanded my understanding of the world, myself, or my work in the world -- often all three. The most important ones have become part of my foundation, part of the path I walk on and simultaneously the signposts and lodestars I need to find that path. The most crucial ones have been with me through countless moves; when they go missing, I eventually replace them. This one, though, I had left behind and not gone looking for. Perhaps it was best left back there. How could a book I'd read in fifth grade possibly live up to the place where my memory had enshrined it?

My passionate interest in the history and politics of the Arab world continued through junior high and high school. My self-directed studies introduced me to subjects that weren't covered in class and perspectives that rarely surfaced in the newspapers, which in those days I read voraciously. For a history project my senior year of high school, I rewrote the parts of the Treaty of Versailles that pertained to the Middle East. Also as a senior, I was a finalist in a school speaking competition. My subject? The secret Sykes-Picot agreement made by the British and the French in 1916. You've never heard of it? Neither had any of my classmates, or most of my teachers.

I started college as an Arabic major, and though I finished with a degree in history from a different school, what I learned from my years of study shaped my worldview. At first glance, there would seem to be few points of convergence between my life and that of a young war hero who spent the rest of his not-very-long life seeking obscurity in the Royal Air Force and speeding through the English countryside on ever-more-powerful motorcycles. But in Lawrence's dilemma, of being caught between worlds and unable to ignore the contradictions that were pulling him apart, I'm still finding echoes of my own. If we were stranded together on a desert island or in a lifeboat, I think we could have quite a talk, once each of us got over our fear that the other one couldn't possibly get it.

Finally I scored a copy of the book on eBay. The copy I read as a kid had a proper dust jacket. This one doesn't. It's a library edition, cast off by the Northside Junior High Library in Greenwood, South Carolina. For weeks I didn't dare open it. Recently I mustered my courage and started reading. Know what? It's still one helluva story, and a pretty good book.

Susanna at 59 does not read with the eyes of Susanna at not quite 11. That Susanna was known to her fifth-grade classmates as Walking Encyclopedia; without knowing it she was an editor in the making, but she wasn't an editor yet, so almost certainly she didn't notice that the word spacing is a little loose, or that "coöperate" is spelled with a diaeresis over the "o" -- a rare styling in American English these days. Now I notice that the book is almost straight narrative from one end to the other. It relies mostly on telling, not showing, though MacLean draws in some good anecdotes that weren't strictly necessary. His first chapter does an admirable job of presenting a complex backstory and essential intelligence: the nature of the land; a working definition of what constitutes "Arabia," or the heart of the Arab world, as we're more likely to call it today; the lives of the Bedouin (so styled), a sketch of the Ottoman Empire in the final phase of its long death throes (the stock phrase "the Sick Man of Europe" is not used), and enough about the British Empire and the war in Europe to make Britain's interests in the region clear. To pull this off in 17 pages -- several of which are illustrated and so don't carry anywhere close to the book's average of 250 words a page -- is downright impressive.

The next chapter goes into Lawrence's child- and young manhood. In the middle MacLean interrupts the biography with one of his rare forays into analysis and speculation: "Looking back over T. E. Lawrence's early days, one is struck by the strange fact that nearly all his interests, activities and hobbies were exactly the ones he would have chosen had he been consciously aiming toward his ultimate destiny."

As a young person I was almost certainly drawn to that idea, and to the notion that each of us -- or at least the more interesting of us -- has an ultimate destiny out there waiting for us, if only we can find the right road to it. Now I suspect that some of us are drawn on, ever onward, following portents and will-o'-the-wisps the way Merlin followed Morgan le Fay, without really knowing where we're going. Lawrence might well have been one of them, but since he was caught up in circumstances for which his preparations -- if preparations they were -- were so perfectly suited, it does look as though Fate had a hand in it, doesn't it?

Fate, it occurs to me as I read, is the ultimate deus ex machina, and a handy plot device if you've got a limited number of words with which to tell a complex story about a complicated person to a target audience of mostly 10- to 12-year-olds. With Fate to fall back on, there's no need to mention that Lawrence and his four brothers were all "illegitimate" by the standards of the day, or to delve into the class and cultural norms that he was flouting from an early age. This Lawrence of Arabia ends when the First World War ends, with a short coda about the role Lawrence played during the peace conference and its immediate aftermath. Here is the last paragraph:

"Colonel T. E. Lawrence was to live for another fourteen years before he met his death in May, 1935, in a high-speed motorcycle crash. But our story of Lawrence of Arabia ends on July 4, 1922. On that day, at the age of 33, he resigned from the Colonial Office, his task completed and his duty done."

It's those fourteen years that so intrigue me. How does a man come to terms with cataclysmic events that came about partly through his doing, even though in many ways they were beyond his control? How does he escape from a stage and a role that were partly of his own making? How do any of us deal with knowledge about ourselves and our world that we desperately wish we had never acquired? If we can't stuff the genie back into the bottle, or Pandora's troubles back into her box, how do we live with what we know?

Fortunately, Alistair MacLean's Lawrence of Arabia didn't end with its last paragraph. That last paragraph is followed by a one-page bibliography. Before long I had read most of those books, and they led me to more. In the wake of the movie, more books were written. I read them too. In my own travels through worlds that sometimes seem mutually incompatible and even incomprehensible -- as Arabic major and antiwar activist, feminist bookseller, year-round Martha's Vineyarder, features editor of a small-town newspaper, coffeehouse volunteer, onetime horsegirl who returned to horseback riding in her late forties, among other things -- Lawrence's own Seven Pillars of Wisdom has always been on my bookshelf. This passage is one reason among many:

"In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith."

At the Motel 6

August 20, 2010 - View Single Entry

Travvy and I are spending the night at the Motel 6 in Leominster, Mass. It's astonishing how much one dog and one human can schlep for an overnight stay. From where I sit I see lined up on top of the desk-bureau, from right to left, my overnight bag, Travvy's travel bag (used to be Allie's grooming kit bag), my handy-dandy burnt orange tote bag from Duluth Trading, a jar of peanut butter, a generic plastic water bottle (I bought it to do my first M.V. Land Bank Cross-Island Hike with -- in 1993), and my handy-dandy chocolate brown messenger bag from L. L. Bean. The handy-dandy chocolate brown messenger bag, which replaced my last backpack as my all-purpose everyday carry-all, transported Hekate the laptop, along with her mouse, mouse pad, and cord. This is the first time I've traveled with a computer. My room doesn't have wi-fi, but typing in a motel room "on the road" is still pretty cool.

To the left of the (empty) messenger bag is the motel-provided TV, which (of course) is off, and to the left of that is Travvy's wire crate, with a couple of chew toys, two old bones, and an empty feed dish in it.

Trav's soft crate is in Malvina Forester, whom I can see out the window of room 124, which is on the first floor. Malvina is, uncharacteristically, locked. I'm so in terror of locking myself out of my car that I do a visual key check about every five minutes: Car keys? Check. Room card key? Check. Every time I leave the room I pat myself down to make sure nothing's missing.

Travvy almost didn't get supper tonight, because he scarfed down half a bag of Charlee Bears (small, disk-shaped, reasonably healthy training treats -- less than 3 calories per treat, sez the bag) without permission when I left him alone in the car for less then 10 minutes. That's why almost everything edible is out in Malvina with the soft crate. If I were hiking in the backcountry, I'd hang my food cache from a tree limb to keep it from bears. Since I'm driving in central Massachusetts, I stow it in the car to keep it from Travvy.

The Motel 6 in Leominster is within walking distance of several fast-food restaurants. Easy walking distance. Standing at the entrance to the motel parking lot, one can see all at the same time Wendy's, Papa Gino's, Burger King, and McDonald's. Wendy's was tempting, but I went for BK, tried and true. This was worth it for several reasons, starting with the fries, the barbecue sauce, and the grilled chicken sandwich, but it was especially worth it because the soft drink dispenser has suggested pairings for each kind of soda: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, root beer, Dr. Pepper, and maybe something else, I forget. Since I am currently copyediting a book on wine tourism in the Napa Valley, in which well-heeled people fork over big bucks to learn what pricey wine to pair with their free-ranging, organically grown gourmet meal, I thought this was pretty funny. Did it start off as a parody, or is this evidence of the affluenza's enthusiasms trickling down to the fast-food-eating class?

One thing they got wrong, however. They suggest pairing Diet Coke with healthy-sounding things like grilled chicken salad and a veggie wrap. No no no. The big appeal of diet drinks is that they neutralize -- at least in the consumer's mind, and possibly the mind of the critical beholder who is looking for signs of remorse on the consumer's part -- the effects of bacon and cheese triple Whoppers, or pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni. Diet Coke pairs well with anything. It's like the universal donor blood type.

Whatever, it's intriguing. Don't be surprised if any/all of this finds its way into the Squatters' Speakeasy.

So why are Travvy and I spending the night at the Motel 6 in Leominster when we have a perfectly good place to sleep in West Tisbury? Because I signed us up to compete in a Rally trial in Fitchburg this evening. We left the island on the 12 o'clock boat, and by chance wound up sitting near Sean C., whose mother, Ann, was one of my closest friends through my early years on MV. Ann is a nurse, currently working at M.V. Hospital, but Sean said she's about to leave for Alaska, the far north of Alaska, on a reservation north of the Arctic Circle. I asked if Travvy could stow away in her luggage, and told Sean to give my best to Ann and tell her to get in touch if she felt like it.

Travvy traveled wonderfully. First he rode shotgun, as usual, but at the IHOP just before the Bourne Bridge I transferred him to his soft crate, along with a peanut-butter-slathered bone and Leo (remember Leo, the rubber toy named after Leonardo da Vinci?) with several treats stuffed into his belly. Trav slept a lot of the way, and he's more comfortable back there than curled up in the passenger seat. I don't have to worry about 80 pounds of malamute jumping into my lap at 70 miles an hour either. That's a plus.

The directions for exiting Route 2 to the Motel 6 were frustrating. I went back and forth several times and finally found it by accident. The directions for exiting Route 2 to the Courtyard at Marriott in Fitchburg, where the event was being held, were likewise incomplete, and rendered more confusing by the less-than-obvious signage for the venue: I drove by the access road three times without realizing that it was the turnoff I wanted. I lost so much time trying to find first the motel and then the Marriott that I seriously feared I was going to miss the trial, which promised that it would start "no earlier than 5 p.m." I finally drove into the parking lot of the conference center, up the hill from the hotel itself, at a few minutes to five.

There went my best-laid plan of having an hour or so to get Travvy used to the venue -- which he's needed in the past. I was, shall we say, a little frazzled. But I managed to bring Travvy, kit bag, and wire crate (even folded-up it's big and heavy) into the cavernous conference center exhibit hall and get everything set up -- with Travvy in tow. No way could I have managed this at any of our previous outings: Trav needed both my hands and nearly all my attention. This time he was excited for sure but he was "under threshold" the great majority of the time, meaning that his brain was in gear. We maneuvered with other dogs at close and very close quarters; he reacted a few times but many times he went by and kept paying attention to me.

So I was thinking that maybe we had a chance, especially after I saw that the Advanced A course didn't include the dreaded off-set figure 8, where you have to heel a figure 8 pattern around two orange cones, with two feed bowls in close proximity. The bowls usually contain food or treats, covered to be sure, but most dogs recognize a feed bowl when they see one, and covers don't conceal smell. Toys may also be used, either alone or in conjunction with food. Keep in mind that Advanced is done off-leash. Trav and I have practiced this, but we have a long, long way to go before we're anywhere close to reliable. Focus on handler is the key, I think: when Travvy focuses on me, distractions are less, well, distracting. But distractions impair focus, and at a trial, the distractions are endless: the nice judge in the ring, dogs outside the ring, dogs barking somewhere else in the hall . . . You get it.

I was, therefore, mega-relieved that there was no off-set figure 8 in the course. Trav was a little drifty at the start of our run, but not as drifty as he was at Wrentham in early June. I got his attention back, and we were doing pretty well through the first dozen stations. Station 13 was Halt, Stand, Walk Around Dog -- we did that nicely too. Then Trav jumped the ring gate into the next ring. I had no idea what brought that on -- till I realized that my playful puppy had a little stuffed toy in his mouth. Uh-oh. There was no off-set figure 8 in the Advanced A course, but there was in Advanced B. Advanced B was being held in the next ring over, and two little stuffed toys were placed just the other side of the little fence. Travvy noticed; I didn't.

Well, that meant an NQ for us. Fortunately no one was on course at that moment. And I still had to get the toy out of Travvy's mouth. Malamutes have the most infuriatingly adorable "I'm not gonna" look. Travvy was, as always, a credit to his breed. An official passed me a dog biscuit, I persuaded Travvy to relinquish the toy, and -- since there was no one to hand it off to -- I tossed the toy a few feet away. Naturally Travvy snatched it back as soon as he finished the cookie, and we had to repeat the process. I offered the toy to the Advanced B judge -- he declined, saying he didn't want slime on his hands. The Advanced A judge said her hands were already well slimed, so she took it. She also said, "If it makes you feel better, that's the first time that has ever happened when I was judging." I like that judge!

The NQ didn't prevent Trav from being the star of the class, or at least the class clown, and several people came up to meet him afterwards, including another malamute owner.

NQing was sort of disappointing, but mostly Travvy did really well today, handling the stress of being on the road and around other dogs. Since that incident after we finished the course at Wrentham, when we tripped over each other and Travvy fell into the ring gate and growled at me, I've been apprehensive that something really bad might happen: that Trav might overreact in a way that looked like, or verged on, aggression. At the end of today, I'm a lot less apprehensive than I was at the beginning.

But we've got some serious training to do with stuffed toys and other temptations.

Fair Bread

August 18, 2010 - View Single Entry

Last summer was so cool that I didn't take the flannel sheets off my bed till late June. Summer did pay a brief visit in mid-August, and the day before the fair was hot hot hot. The bread I was baking for the fair rose so fast the texture didn't feel right, and my attempts to slow it down (place pans in a bath of cold water, or even in the refrigerator) didn't help. I wound up not entering any bread at all.

This year I decided to make two different breads. That way surely one would be worth entering, right? This summer has been hot hot hot more often than not, though today has been moderate enough. Making two breads the day before the fair is no big deal. I used to do it all the time, when there were two yeast bread categories, light and dark. As of last year there's only one, and you can only enter once in each category.

So yesterday morning I took out my sourdough starter and whisked it in a bowl with a cup and a half of unbleached white flour and a cup of very warm water. Last night I poured half the bubbly batter into its Mason jar home and returned it to the fridge. To the other half I added a cup and a half of warm beer (Beck's); half a small onion, well chopped; some salt; a couple tablespoons of soupy butter; and about three cups of flour, half unbleached white and half whole wheat. I whisked them well together and put the batter to bed covered with a (used) sheet of waxed paper and a dish towel.

I also measured (rather haphazardly) into a medium-sized saucepan half a cup of stone-ground corn meal, two generous dollops of dark molasses, two cups of tap water, a couple more tablespoons of soupy butter, some salt, and the last of my juice-sweetened dried cranberries (I just ordered another five pounds from my neighbor's co-op). I covered the pot and set it on low heat. After it bubbled slowly for a while and started to thicken, I took it off the burner and put it to bed too.

This morning, after Travvy and I got back from our walk, I turned my typing table back into a bread-kneading table and went to work. The sourdough bread had already had one rising in batter form, so after 15 or 20 minutes of kneading it was ready to loaf. No loafing for me, however: I poured and scraped the corn meal and molassest  mixture into my big bread bowl (Travvy got to lick the pot), dumped over it the last of a jar of dried yeast and some warm water, then started working in flour, alternating unbleached white with whole wheat. It rose once in the bowl and again in the loaf pans -- ever so considerately, the Anadama (that's what we call corn meal and molasses bread here in New England) bread fit into the same pans I'd used for the sourdough.

The short version is that both breads came out great. Deciding which one gets to go to the fair has been tough tough tough. Here they are:

The dark ones are Anadama; the light ones are sourdough beer and onion. After much hem-and-hawing, I cut into the larger sourdough loaf (second from left), spread it with more soupy butter, and ate it. Perfect. The larger Anadama is now in my freezer. I haven't 100% decided which of the other two is going to the fair, but I think the nod will go to the smaller sourdough loaf at far right. I get to deliver it to the Ag Hall tomorrow morning. Wish us luck.

How Does My Garden Grow?

August 12, 2010 - View Single Entry

Between early summer's computer troubles (fixed!) and midsummer's deadline crunches (met! all met!), I haven't written anything about my garden.

My garden has been growing. I have made three small batches of pesto with my very own basil and parsley, and today I ate my first four cherry tomatoes. This is how the cherries looked a couple of days ago:

They're called "Black Cherry" tomatoes. They don't turn bright red. I wasn't sure what ripe looked like, but this morning one looked promising so I picked and ate it. Perfect. I ate three more with my supper. Mind you, I'm not one of those people who goes gaga for tomatoes, but these are very impressive.

A month or so ago I bought four five-foot stakes at SBS, thinking my plants would never grow that high. Wrong. I've got a tomato jungle down there. They've overtopped those stakes, and I swiped several shorter ones from my neighbor to support the subsidiary vines. I've made liberal use of twine to secure the vines to the stakes; otherwise they were blocking light from the basil and the parsley.

Sarah next door gave me three marigold plants after the bugs started feasting on my juvenile basil plants. Marigolds, my gardener friends assure me, help deter insects. This seems to be true. The bugs have continued to enjoy my basil, but they've left plenty for me. The first marigold flower bloomed in the last week. Here it is.

About 10 days ago one of the three marigolds started looking spindly, as if something had eaten all its leaves to stubble. Whatever it was hadn't eaten anything else, which is why I think the malaise was internal. When I finally pulled the plant out, its roots seemed rather shallow. This marigold seems to be doing fine. Check out the fledgling tomatoes on the left.

My first three basil plants are still yielding leaves, and the ones I started from seed -- another variety, it seems, for their leaves aren't glossy like the original ones -- are thriving, especially the ones in containers on my deck. Pesto is one of the gastronomic wonders of the world. Spied on the supermarket shelf it seems an impossible luxury -- you want me to spend that much for that little? But I've been making my own, with basil, parsley, olive oil, melted butter, garlic, chopped walnuts, and grated parmesan. This summer, when it's often been too hot and humid to even think of turning the oven on, I've enjoyed quite a few pesto-and-pasta repasts. Travvy loves licking the remnants from the pot.

Also up on the deck are my two violets, a houseplant whose name I've forgotten (dracaena?), sage, phlox, and this sturdy coleus, with chives in the background:

I love the way it catches the light.

My garden, in other words, is growing very nicely, and I'm very pleased with it.

I'm Listening!

August 07, 2010 - View Single Entry

I'm working, really and truly, I'm working! With the jobs I've got due in the next few days, I better be working. But I'm also listening to WUMB-FM, the live streaming Web version, and they said they wanted to hear from us out here in cyberspace. So I dropped everything and sent them this little e-mail:

I'm not very far away, though. WUMB is playing on the boombox in my studio apartment, but I can't hear it out here. I'm sitting on my little deck, surrounded by oak trees, editing a manuscript on my laptop. The laptop rests on a lap desk, and the lap desk rests, you guessed it, on my lap. To my left is the dictionary; to the right is a beer stein that needs refilling. Straight ahead is my sleeping malamute. Celtic music, beer, crystal-clear sunlight, and my canine buddy -- I tell you, work doesn't get much better than this!

So an hour or so later I checked my e-mail, and there was a reply from WUMB

What kind of beer?    :-)

I replied:

Tonight? Beck's. <g>

By this time the light was gone and I'd moved inside. I checked e-mail again, and sure enough:

There's a great one from New Orleans called "Blackened Voodoo" -- but it's no longer available in the Northeast since Katrina because the company's plant was lost in the storm. They've been using another local brewery down there to make batches for the locals until they can fully get back on their feet again.

Beck's okay in the meantime.

Thanks for checking in. Hope I'm not providing too much of a distraction away from your manuscript tonight!

I asked if my correspondent knew any reliable bootleggers and said I appreciated a radio station that talked back.