“March” by Geraldine Brooks

This book was really sweetly recommended to me by a student in one of my classes, I had to take him up on it and read it after that! The idea is that it tells the story of what the father is experiencing throughout Little Women while he is off at the Civil War. There are also parts with the narration from Marmee’s point of view as well. I thought it was an amazing read!

The book opens with Pa March in the middle of a battle, trying to save other soldiers but being forced to flee. He in particular tries to save a boy who cannot swim, but he thrashes away. From there, it flashes back to him as a traveling salesman and staying on a cotton plantation for some time. He doesn’t like slavery, but he is enamored with all of the leisure time, and so stays a while. He ends up teaching one of the kids to read and is caught, then expelled from the place. Fast forward and he is back at the plantation as an army chaplain and meets one of the women there again. Eventually he is told to get off of the unit as his abolitionist talk is making the men uncomfortable so he transfers to a contraband farm to teach the former slaves.

He enjoys his position there for a while, he eventually gets along fine with the owner and they establish a nice farm for themselves. The army outpost though moves on and they are set upon by irregulars from the Confederate army who capture the slaves. Pa has a narrow escape but is determined to save the owner and as many as he can. This triggers fighting and shooting, everyone is either killed or captured save one former slave that drags Pa off to a hospital before disappearing. This is when Marmee comes to get him. She finds him being tended to by the nurse, who is the woman from the original plantation. When he comes to he is beset by grief and regret, he wants to go back out there and try to make things right, but then Beth gets sick. He heads home, seeing the ghosts of the people he couldn’t save in his daughters.

One of the strengths of this is that the book can be much more political with Pa’s narrative. He talks directly about the war and slavery to just about anyone. Marmee is also active politically, she helps with the Underground Railroad and gets them involved with financing Brown’s venture as well. Little Women is about life on the outskirts of war, Pa is in the middle of it.

I also really appreciated having Marmee’s point of view at times. She can seem too angelic and perfect in the original text. Here she is annoyed with her husband for going to war and being a dreamer instead of living with his family. It makes for a refreshing and realistic change.

The book ends with a note about the sources for all of this. Pa is heavily based on Louisa May Alcott’s father, turns out that he was quite the radical in his day. He wasn’t a preacher but a teacher, hence the teaching on a contraband farm. The timing of the war and that farm even was messed with a little, but it is based on real experiences during the war. Additionally the hospital Pa finds himself in is based on Alcott’s experiences as a Civil War nurse which I thought was a nice touch as well. Some passages are from the novel itself, such as some of the letters Pa writes home. It makes for a very compelling read as it feels like it fits with the original novel like a puzzle piece.

I thought this was an excellent read and a great suggestion from my student. I’ll have to tell him how much I enjoyed it.

This Is Beautiful: "Travesties" by Tom Stoppard

 Last weekend I saw a Tom Stoppard play that I'm not super familiar with, "Travesties." I really liked it, it made me want to check out a copy of the script or something to get in deeper. It was written in the 70s as a response to the Vietnam War, but it's about folks in Switzerland during WW1 and the Russian Revolution. It borrows from "The Importance of Being Earnest" heavily, and how people who were really there end up swapping and making up identities to flirt with women. 

The wordplay was classic Stoppard fast and furious, which is partially why I would want to see a script. I felt like I wasn't getting half of what was happening. There was a part lifted from "As You Like It" by Shakespeare and I was tickled by that, but I'm sure there's more to uncover. And I just enjoyed the combination of theater and writing and Dada art that gets highlighted on stage. Plus there was a whole segment where one of the characters is spinning in a lyra and yelling about the proletariat revolution in Russia which was so fun. 

Anyways, would highly recommend. I feel like there isn't a ton of Stoppard that gets highlighted beyond "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and maybe "Arcadia" but I'll have to add this one to the list.

Durham, North Carolina

Over Labor Day weekend I took a day trip to Durham! I wasn’t sure if there’d be enough to see since it was on a Sunday, but I was really pleased with the trip.

I started over at the science museum since that’s out of the way of the town for the most part. The inside portion is primarily for kids although there is a neat local wildlife exhibit. Outside is more interesting, there’s a butterfly room and farm animals that I liked a lot. Apparently past that are the dinosaurs but I couldn’t take much more of the kids so we moved on.

From there I went downtown, I really wanted to check out the food scene and the Museum of Durham History. I did get an excellent pizza, and the museum was small but a lot of fun. They have an exhibit up on Durham Pride marches which I always enjoy learning about.

After that I ended my day over at the Duke campus. The gardens were delightful to walk through, and I thought the chapel was so pretty. And finally the art museum on campus, also on the small side but with a fun collection.

So it was a quick visit, but I got to see a lot of the town by heading to 3 different stops. Parking was free except for on campus lots but those were $2 an hour so not that bad. I’d still love to head back sometime and see more of the place!

This Is Beautiful: Ten Thousand Hours

 Last weekend I got to see the Australian circus company's production of "Ten Thousand Hours" and it was really incredible. The acrobatics were amazing and they had a live drummer! Plus there was a fun screen behind them that would share numbers like a countdown or a clock. I thought it was such an interesting look at how to put a performance together since the theme was that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master or something. 

Anyways this gets a shoutout partially because this is an idea that I've thought about so much in my own performance as well, but they pulled it off much better than I did. There was a segment where one of the performers did her warm-up routine multiple times but with different feedback ("I want to feel it this time", "like a breakdancer", etc) and another segment where 2 acrobats tried a trick 10 times to see how often they'd get it. I also really liked a whole act that incorporated how you'd learn this, so they'd walk through movement and hit poses and then finally do the full movement. It was really cool to see something that I've also thought about executed so well and in such an entertaining way!

Raleigh, North Carolina

I almost forgot to write this, but I have been living in Raleigh for over a month now! No doubt part of this is that I really had to leave my old place, but I really like living here so far. There is public transportation, plenty of things to do, museums, and a lot of nature.

Now for practical reasons you really do need a car in Raleigh. There are buses but they don’t go everywhere, can take forever, and can be unreliable. I have learned to almost distrust the GoRaleigh buses, the GoTriangle ones seem to be much more dependable. Having said that I do have a bus option for getting to work and I take that practically everyday since I just don’t want to deal with parking and whatever. So having the option is a plus!

Just about every weekend has a free festival of some kind. The downtown area during the summer gets a lot of cultural festivals with vendors and food trucks and performances. I have yet to have a weekend in which there is nothing going on, which helps me immensely as I am living on my own. And not only that but there’s so much stuff within a short drive of here! There are multiple dance studios to pick from, which is a luxury I haven’t had in a while, and a circus facility, and a community band. Really just spoiled for choice here!

The museums deserve a special shoutout, there’s an art museum and a science museum and a few others as well. The art museum has a very fun collection plus a sculpture garden if you want to picnic. Beyond that even there are so many historical sites from taking a tour of the capitol building to seeing the founder of Raleigh’s house. There’s also the birthplace of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s vice president and the first president to be impeached! Very cool things to see if you are into local history.

And final there are so many parks and beautiful trees nearby. Even smaller places have their own gardens as well! You are certainly in a city, but green escapes are nearby and hiking is around. There are also good places for kayaking and paddling but I haven’t done those yet.

So I’m really happy living in Raleigh so far, it’s been lovely to be in a city and have access to more things. I don’t know if I’ll stay here past my job appointment, but this is not a bad place to be for a few years.

This Is Beautiful: Free Weekend

 It's been a busy few weeks, I'm actually looking forward to not having much this weekend and getting a little lazy. Or bored even! That might be nice.

“Pythagoras's Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender War” by Margaret Wertheim

This book has been on my to read list for sooooo long, I almost forgot it was there. I was lucky and managed to get a copy at my new library. It’s such a fascinating book, it primarily gives a very accessible overview of the history of physics. Wertheim takes a very close look though at the relationship between physics and religion, and how that impacts the way female physicists work and are treated. As a result this spans everything from history and philosophy of science to feminism to religion.

Now the book itself was published in the 90s so it is a bit dated, I am willing to bet though that the argument Wertheim is making still holds water. Essentially, physics throughout history has been entwined with religion. This could be religious universities in the Middle Ages, or even more present day with talk of the God particle and whatnot. And that has inevitably led to scientists believing that only men can carry it out, like some sort of scientific priesthood. But the field could benefit greatly from more equitable inclusion of women, right now physicists are focused on this theory of everything that will not measurably change anyone’s day to day life (as admitted by the scientists themselves). One way the field would change with the inclusion of women is that it may shift its focus to topics more focused on benefitting society. But Wertheim is also careful to say that it isn’t a female physicists job to do this, it’s just that there will inevitably be changes and that is what she predicts would happen.

I really enjoyed reading this work, I thought the inclusion of all of these different topics and fields made for a really compelling read and argument. I am a biologist, not a physicist, so there was a lot of new scientific information in this work, in addition to everything else. I do see Wertheim’s project though as parallel to my interests in biology and adding to it, I really want to make science more equitable and inclusive as a teacher. And I want to teach myself more about the philosophy and history of science to fully understand it. These topics aren’t taught to you as a scientist, you have to go out of your way to get exposure to them.

I am so glad I was eventually able to find this book, it was a great read. The information is presented in a very friendly way, and it gives insightful commentary on the field itself. This book does it all!

This Is Beautiful: Pride Finally!

 This past weekend was Pride in Durham (past two weekends really) and it was great to finally make a Pride celebration! For a series of reasons I wasn't able to make it to the Prides in Michigan (weather and scheduling and health, etc) and I figured that I would have just missed it all this year. Not so! Durham celebrates their Pride in October since it's warm until then and that's when they first marched for equal rights. So we get a later Pride! And it coincided so nicely with my partner coming to visit me for the first time in my new place. It was so nice to go together and finally get a Pride!

“I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy

I remember being aware that this book was coming out, I had loved iCarly when I was young and I was glad to see a child actor growing up. I picked it up finally because I was between books from the library and it was available as an ebook. I ended up absolutely loving it, McCurdy’s voice comes through so strongly and is so funny, plus it’s fascinating to see what was going on behind the scenes in her life the entire time I was seeing her on screen.

McCurdy starts with a segment of her mom is the hospital in a coma, and her trying to wake her up by saying she finally hit 89 pounds (essentially through anorexia). Flashback to her as a kid, growing up in a hoarder household where she lived to please her mother and make her happy. When her mother suggests that she act, she can’t say no. As she grows up, her mother encourages her to stop eating in order to make her small. She grows to hate acting and after iCarly, hates fame. Her friendship with Miranda Cosgrove, her co-star, is very real though. Her mom does have a cancer relapse and eventually died. And eventually, McCurdy gets help and starts to take a closer look at her relationship and mythology around her mom.

What I really love about this book is that it has all of the messy stuff about recovery. I haven’t read a ton of recovery memoirs to be fair, but there are plenty of anecdotes where I can remember how it looked on the outside, but she supplies the harsh reality of what she felt on the inside. So it may specifically resonate with folks that saw her on tv as a kid. It doesn’t gloss over the details and I so appreciate McCurdy for that.

Additionally, it is really harrowing to hear about what child actors go through. I mean I’ve heard all of the stories and whatever, but reading about it happening to her is something else. I am always so amazed by what they were able to get away with over at Nickelodeon (and Disney as well I assume). In the book she is offered 300 thousand dollars to never talk about her experiences, and she turns it down. She also turns down the reboot of the show. And good for her, or we might not have had this book.

This was such an entertaining, enjoyable read. I was rooting for McCurdy the whole time and really enjoying hearing her voice. And I’m just glad she’s in a better place now.

This Is Beautiful: Coding for Teaching

 This week I've been working on a course that I'm designing and I'm making sure that I can do all of the analysis myself before incorporating it into a class. It's honestly so much easier when the mindset is "what do students need" rather than "what is possible?" I like it so much more, it limits things and the idea is just hey, can we do this? Just another confirmation that I am where I am happy, which is teaching!

“Haroun and the Sea of Stories” by Salman Rushdie

This was a really quick read! The book is fun for both kids and adults, so the story is full of quirky characters and the plot really clips along. It makes for a fun time; I finished this in a weekend.

Haroun lives with his mother and father, his father Rashid is known for his storytelling. His mother gets unhappy though and Rashid doesn’t notice, and one day she runs off with a horrible boring guy who hates stories. Rashid is depressed, Haroun feels that he is to blame since he asked his dad “what good are made up stories?” in the aftermath. Eventually Rashid gets on stage and can only say “ack” meaning that their livelihood is in danger. Haroun goes with Rashid to tell stories to support some politician, and the night before his performance in a fit of anger Rashid says that he is done with stories. Haroun then surprises a Water Genie who is there to turn his storytelling magic off, and Haroun steals his tool and persuades him to take him to the great Walrus at the head of Processes Too Complicated Too Explain and reverse this for this father.

They fly to the City of Gab (which is on another moon) on a bird and learn that the waters of the Sea of Stories are being poisoned and the princess has been captured. From there it is war with the inhabitants of the city that is always in darkness for the ocean and the princess. They are not in agreement for what the priority is though, the inhabitants want the ocean clean and the prince wants the princess back. So they split up, Haroun and some new friends head off to spy on what is being done to the ocean. They are immediately captured, but they figure out the plan is to plug the spring of stories and manage to dismantle that. The key is that these inhabitants have managed to detach their shadows, Haroun uses a wish and Wishwater to turn the moon so that they are in the sun and the shadows all melt. Meanwhile the others fought for the princess and won since the inhabitants of the dark city hate their leader. Haroun decides as thanks for his efforts he wants a happy ending, and when they get back Rashid tells the story of “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” and they find his mother has returned.

The summary really doesn’t do this book justice, there are so many quirky things and silly wordplay that would just take too long to explain here but make for good reading. It also feels a little like Alice in Wonderland, there are multiple characters from Haroun’s life that reappear in Gab. Additionally, there are clear influences from India here, Rushdie provides some explanation to the character names at the end that highlight this the most clearly.

All in all, a good fun read that makes you think a little, not too much, about stories and how useful they are. They aren’t real, but why should that make them unimportant?

This Is Beautiful: The World Ends With You

 Ugh I have beat this topic to death but I recently restarted "The World Ends With You: The Animation." And I'm in the middle of getting through NEO: The World Ends With You on the Switch again. And it just makes it so clear to me that the original game was miles above the sequel. I still like the sequel, but compared to the original? No question. (Specifically the original on the DS, I never got used to the Switch port.) 

It just used the DS technology in so many ways and incorporated really fun side characters and really milked every aspect of the story. I love it so much. Revisiting the anime was just a catalyst for remembering that.

“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Ed Tarkington

Funnily enough I meant to read a different book called Only Love Can Break Your Heart, but I ended up with this one and I read through it anyways. It wasn’t a bad read, but it didn’t really stick out to me either. A solid, middle-of-the-road work, which we always need some of those.

Our narrator is Richard, or Rocky for short. It starts with him as a child with his mother, father that he only calls “the Old Man”, and a troublemaker brother Paul. In particular there is one instance where Paul and Rocky go to investigate an abandoned house across the street and Rocky sees someone creep in and shoot Paul. That turns out to be the wealthy new owner of the place. Paul recovers, and Rocky tells how he starts dating Leigh in high school and they all hang out and listen to records together. Eventually, Paul’s mom (from Old Man’s first marriage) dies and he goes to the funeral alone. After that Paul disappears, taking Leigh with him. Leigh eventually reappears, but no sign of Paul. Leigh gets engaged to the son of the family across the street, and meanwhile Rocky starts a friendship with Patricia, the daughter of the new owners across the street. Their relationship turns sexual. It comes crashing down then when Leigh confides to Rocky that she had a hippie wedding to Paul in a cult commune in New Mexico where the leader was also sleeping with everyone, including molesting kids. Leigh came back and had an abortion immediately. Rocky tells Patricia, word gets out, and the wedding ends in disaster with Leigh having a mental crisis in the middle of it. To top it off, Old Man has a stroke at the reception.

Leigh returns and starts reading to the elderly in town, including Old Man. Her ex-fiancee leaves town for a while, along with Patricia. Paul amazingly returns out of nowhere, and starts to help around the house now that money is tight. Rocky manages to get kicked out of his rich school in an attempt to help as well. Suddenly there’s a double murder across the street of the couple in there. Everyone suspects Paul and Leigh. Meanwhile Rocky gets back into acting and is cast as the lead in “Equus”, a play about a lovesick stable boy and his horse god. Patricia accidentally incriminates herself to Leigh and skips town to avoid being arrested, but those two are off the hook. Patricia writes Rocky a letter saying her father was taking advantage of her, and that’s why that happened. Rocky grows up, Old Man eventually dies, and the book ends with Paul marrying Leigh and dying as well.

The genre of this is hard to pin down, some sort of Southern gothic for sure, but there’s a small murder mystery as well. Definitely coming-of-age too. It is a cool mix that really keeps you reading for sure. Patricia frustrated me to no end, but having Paul and Leigh as constants really helps. And gives you something to root for. I found it to be an easy read overall.

The best part of the book is the play. When Rocky describes opening night, the actors all get swept up in the energy of it and Rocky really becomes this character. But even in the embodiment, he acknowledges that this is really Paul he is playing. The outcast, maligned son fits him even better. I loved the use of the play and the overlap of it with the characters and how the play falls right at the climax where Paul is actually in jail and Patricia is just being suspected. It is a great use of the story.

Overall, fun and easy read. I didn’t mean to pick it up but I sure don’t regret it.

This Is Beautiful: Growing Mushrooms

 I finally FINALLY have had more success with growing my own mushrooms! I bought a kit from The Mushroom Conservatory a while ago and my first attempt was a dud. The first step is to get your mycelium to colonize a bag of rice, then you cut it open to start fruiting and getting lil mushroom guys. The mycelium I grew just didn't go much of anywhere, so when I cut it open I ended up growing mold. Cute. Anyways I read through the instructions again and turns out that you have to let the rice cool before adding the mushroom soup, and now I have some gorgeous mycelium growing! It is fluffy, white, and beautiful! I'm so excited to finally have some success here!

“The Bone Cave” by Dougie Strang

This book I bought in Dunkeld at a combination coffee shop and bookstore. It only felt appropriate to buy a book about wandering around the Highlands while we did the same thing. I talked more about our experiences in Dunkeld in this post.

The book narrates Strang’s experiences with a huge hiking trip through the Highlands, making stops at places with myths about them. He ends up making a kind of figure 8 through the area, there is a map at the beginning and he refers to things like towns and highways as he goes. I only recognized Inverness and Loch Lochy/Loch Ness.

The narration is equal parts describing the hike, talking about the folk tales, and telling the tale of Strang’s life. I thought the last bit was the most interesting, for a few reasons, among them being that I’m not as familiar with the scenery or stories. But my main apprehension with the book was that I knew it’d be different if a woman was doing this in terms of approaching the stories and how travel risks are thought about. But Strang is more aware than I thought, he talks about having daughters and how they likely would assess things like hitchhiking very differently. Strang also discusses how he grew up and was in an apprenticeship but felt it to be soul sucking. He applied to a job on a whim and ended up heading out to the woods to live there. Through that, he decides to get a degree in Scottish tales, leading directly to this journey through several myths.

The book certainly isn’t a thorough discussion of Scottish history or folklore, but it gives a very interesting intersection of them. The whole thing is driven by place and as he travels Strang can recount both the history of the location and how it has stuck around as well as myths mentioning it. It is interesting how history can stick around in the imagination of contemporary individuals, to this day folks have feelings about the massacre at Glencoe and discriminating against those descended from the general leading that effort. It’s honestly kind of amusing.

So I really liked reading this book as it paralleled my travels. I certainly didn’t go on any trips as noteworthy, but I like to learn about where I’m traveling. And this was a great way to get a little knowledge of Scotland and it’s culture as I’m no expert.

This Is Beautiful: Exercise

 My schedule is finally evening out and it is honestly so nice having access to more things. I'm able to take 3 different dance classes at 3 different places plus aerial circus and it feels amazing to have exercise that I want to do. Near me! It's wonderful. I hope that over time it'll just be a lot like healthier for me to be doing all of this, and it's not so time consuming I can't also do non-exercise things as well. Anyways, I feel great, I love what I'm doing, and it's shaping up quite nicely.

“Ayiti” by Roxanne Gay

This is a collection of short stories by Roxanne Gay, whose other works I have also read previously if you want to find those posts. This is the only fiction that I have read from her, and she mentioned when she visited campus for a talk that she does consider herself a fiction writer.

Ayiti itself is the indigenous name for Haiti, which is where Gay is from. Hence, all of the stories have to do with being Haitian, and most of them are about Haiti’s relationship to the US. People wanting to immigrate, those that have immigrated, those with other family members that immigrated, all of those stories are in here.

Reading this immediately after Hunger, which Italked about in this post, was really striking. There’s a longer story about a woman from Haiti who marries a rich man from the US. They have their honeymoon on Haiti where the woman is kidnapped by a group of men who rape her repeatedly. She returns and is traumatized by this, and eventually gives birth to a baby boy. The story is difficult, but also really beautiful. The way Gay talks about this protagonist and her own assault in Hunger is really strikingly similar, I have to wonder if that was her way of processing it. Or if it was her way of representing her own experiences.

I really liked this book, it is a quick read but there’s a huge variety of stories here that give a depth to the Haitian experience. I would recommend, especially if you are like me and hadn’t read Gay’s fiction before.

This Is Beautiful: Local Comedy Show

 Last weekend I got tickets to a local comedy troupe at a nearby venue. I wasn't sure what to expect, comedy can be kinda hit or miss. I was hoping this would be better since it's a local group that performs pretty regularly, from what I can tell. And it was so fun! I had a really great time, I'm checking out when that group is performing next. Sometimes it can be so rewarding to just go to a random show!

Edinburgh Fringe

The follow up to my previous post about Scotland is that we spent the second half of vacation in Edinburgh at the Fringe festival. I had never been and I loved it! It felt very much like just trying to absorb as much art as I can in a few days.

We stayed in student housing, which wasn’t great, honestly. It did the job but the bed was uncomfortable, plus there were two of us in there. But we got our own (tiny) bathroom and a shared kitchen. It definitely worked for our purposes, but maybe a hotel if we ever make more money.

The shows themselves were really the highlight. There was such a cool mix of different genres, we saw multiple circus shows and audience participation shows for sure. Most of them were comedies also, and based on other IP. So for example, one of my favorite shows was “Fly you Fools!” which was a group of four actors reenacting “The Fellowship of the Ring” that was equally faithful to the movie and funny. Unfortunately a lot of the Fringe fest is very DIY, actors flyer for themselves and run a lot of the tech themselves, there is some venue staff as well who also work very hard. But it seems logical that independent shows not based on something the public has familiarity with would have a harder time.

I loved this experience so much, I could have been there all month and not gotten tired of it. And spent too much money. But it was really delightful to just take it all in and focus on art for a week. I hope I can go back sometime!

This Is Beautiful: Advanced Dance Class

 For so long I have been looking for like a ballet company where I can take open adult classes in the evenings. It probably sounds snobby, but going to somewhere that specializes in ballet gets the classes up to a higher level and pushes me more, and I need that. Anyways this past week I managed to get to class at Carolina Ballet and I was a little intimidated going in because it seemed like everyone was incredible. But it was great, I sweated like I haven't in years. It's so nice being back at it!