October Book Report: The Four Swans by Winston Graham

I prefer stories with happy or hopeful endings and I’m always on the lookout for good books in that category.   Last year, I came across a list of books with happy-ending stories.  Many of my favorite books were there and so I knew this large list was good news for my bookish self.  The list recommended the books of Winston Graham, just as Masterpiece Theatre announced that they would be producing a series based on Graham’s most well-known work: Ross Poldark.  I picked up the first books in Graham’s Poldark series in advance of the PBS airing.  I loved them at once.

Set in Cornwall in the late 1700s, the series opens as Captain Ross is returning from service in His Majesty’s army in the American colonies.  Ross is a gentlemen, but more aware then most men about the dangers of class division.  He returns from the war a thoughtful man,  hoping to marry the woman he left behind and take his place in Cornish society.  Instead, he discovers that his love is set to marry his cousin, his father has died, and his estate is in ruins.

Things can only improve.  

They do, amidst beautiful descriptions of the Cornish landscape and keen observations about class and obligation in late 1700s England.  The series has a total of twelve novels written over a span of fifty years, starting in 1945.  They are beautifully written, with well-developed characters and thoughtfully explored plot lines.  Graham understands human nature and all its complications; he has an appreciation for the natural world.  His heroic characters are distinctly human.  The less admirable figures are presented as fully developed so that the reader understands their motivations even as they remain unsympathetic.  There is drama amongst the Cornish landscape but also humor, happiness, and an arc toward hope.  

The Four Swans, which I read this month, is the sixth novel in the series and is about four women whose lives intersect with Ross Poldark.  Graham understands the limitations placed on women in the world of the 1790s and though these women are not empowered in the traditional sense, they are influential in their worlds.  

I started October reading this novel.  Reading it amidst the candidacy of Hillary Clinton on the cusp of being elected our first female president, while the latest revelations about Donald Trump’s behavior toward women swirled around us, found me especially thoughtful about the narrow path women still must walk in this world.  Our lives aren’t constrained like the women in 1700s Cornwall, but its clear that we are not yet accorded the privilege of wealthy and empowered men.

The Four Swans didn’t leave me thinking only about 2016 politics.  It was all that I have come to expect from Graham’s novels: an engaging diversion from my world, a story that is diverting and thoughtful. 

That’s happy.

12 months of Miss Read: October

The backstory: At the start of 2016, I pulled out my very favorite Miss Read book, Village Centenary.  The novel is structured in months and each chapter explores a month in the year of a village school that is celebrating its 100^th anniversary.  This year, my own school is celebrating its 250^th anniversary and as we think of our past and look to our future, I thought that Miss Read would make a lovely companion for me.  For each month of 2016, I plan to read Miss Read’s reflection on the month.

Miss Read is a pseudonym for Dora Jessie Saint, an English author who wrote between 1955 and 1996.  Her novels were tales of every day life in small English towns.  Village Centenary is set in Fair Acre, an imaginary Cotswold community.  As is the case in nearly all of the Fair Acre novels, the novel is written in the first person and it is through our narrator, school teacher Miss Read, that the story unfolds.

Miss Read in October 

Miss Read’s October is filled with planning for her school’s centennial celebration.  She’s also relishing that last days of summer warmth.  I feel the same way, enjoying the cooler nights and warmth of a fall quilt, but turning my face toward the sun when the afternoons are warm.  I’ve still got my flip flops at the ready but increasingly I come home and look for slippers or socks.  The leaves are blowing about and fall is in the air.  

After a week of cool weather, today is sunny and warm.  Throughout my house, the windows are open so that we can enjoy the air.  As October prepares to close out, I'm aware that warm days like this are increasingly rare.  So they should be embraced and enjoyed. Miss Read agrees.

Dogwood Thursday: October 27

Posting has been light this week, thanks to the fact that the flu is kicking my backside. But I was home today, napping and otherwise letting the flu have its way with me and I did remember to make a picture of my dogwood.

This week has been unseasonably cold and rain fell all day today.  Between the rain and some earlier wind, fall colors seem to have accelerated.  Leaves are everywhere.  The dogwood is closing in on losing the last of its leaves.

Fall is pretty around here and it’s especially lovely in my backyard, which was a blessing to admire as I napped and rested today.  

Down for the Count

On Friday evening, a wave of physical exhaustion swept over me.  I assumed I was just extra tired and so I tucked into bed early.  Saturday night, after spending much of the day at school for an Open House, I felt the same kind of exhaustion.  Plus, I was really cold.  Again, I thought nothing of it and went to bed.  Sunday dawned and I felt a little tired.  But T and I went grocery shopping anyway.  By mid-day, I was once again exhausted.  By 4, I’d put on my pajamas and taken to the sofa under a heap of blankets watching endless episodes of American Pickers.  I went to bed at 7:30; JT came home and gave me a kiss on the cheek he was so worried.

Monday, I took my feverish self to school to help out with a day of community service.  I felt like death on a cracker and nearly everyone who saw me asked, “are you okay?”  I came home at midday and had a nap and finally admitted the truth: I have the flu.

Today I am home while Old Man Tree gets a complicated trimming from a veritable army of tree trimmers.  I’m drinking endless cups of tea and contemplating the fact that moving from the sofa to the teapot feels like a Herculean task.  It’s been years since I had the flu but let me assure you that it still sucks.  I don’t get sick very often and I am the world’s worst patient, resentful of the fact that I am sick and generally convinced that I’m doomed.  Dr. Google is especially helpful in this regard.  

I highly recommend a flu shot, if you haven’t yet gotten around to it.  Because the flu is not fun.

Food Friday: Cinnamon Apples

In New Jersey, diners are located on nearly every corner.  They have huge menus and serve breakfast all day.  In this state, they are an institution.  In the South, that same role is filled by restaurants collectively known as “ a meat and three.”  That means places where you choose what’s on your plate one item at a time.  Your start with a "meat".  The meat choices are usually a long list of options: fried chicken, pork chop, country ham, sugar-cured ham, chicken fried steak, meatloaf, chicken and dumplings, pot roast……..you get the idea.

The “vegetables” on the "three" list are usually an enormous collection, only some of which are actually vegetables: corn, grits casserole, cole slaw, turnip greens, green beans, squash, black-eyed peas, pinto beans, carrots, crowder peas, cottage cheese, mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes……..and there are always sweet cinnamon apples (also called fried apples).  

Cinnamon apples taste like the inside of an apple pie.  It’s a simple dish of sliced apples, cooked in a smudge of melted butter with brown sugar and cinnamon.  The apples cook down and release their pectin, so the sauce is thick with flecks of cinnamon.  Served warm, they are always delicious.  Leftovers, if you have any, can be served for breakfast with a corn muffin or biscuit, on pancakes, or in oatmeal.

But for supper, they taste like home and fall.  And in our house they taste like your mama loves you.  That’s happy!

Dogwood Thursday: October 20

Last week we had cool weather.  None of the days had temperatures over 70 and the evenings dropped into the 40s.  My plants came in off the front porch, blankets were added to the beds, windows were shut against the chilly night air.  For its part, the dogwood went to full-on fall foliage.  Nearly all the leaves were showing red by the end of the weekend.

Naturally, warm weather returned this week.  The dogwood seems over-dressed for days in the 80s, but having committed to seasonal change the dogwood is not going back.

Counting the Days

The other night, I set out to replenish the cotton squares in my medicine cabinet.  I use one each night to remove my makeup.  Typically, I buy a large bag and then take a dozen or so from the bag and place them in the cabinet for my daily use.  In this way, I keep track of how many I’ve used and, as the supply wanes, make a note to add replacements to my Target shopping list.

On Monday, when I grabbed a new stack of squares I had the idle thought that when these squares were gone, the election would be over, and Donald Trump would no longer be in my daily mental landscape.  

The realization was both thrilling and telling.  Thrilling,, because I long ago grew weary of this man and his hateful, ignorant, and incendiary rhetoric.  To think that he will soon be gone from my daily world is exciting.  And telling, because I had not realized how much his presence in my personal newsfeed had taken its toll on my heart and soul.

Eleven years ago, I began to take note of the passage of time by marking the shrinking piles of things I used in my daily life: cotton squares, dryer sheets, coffee filters…..all were small markers as I looked for time to pass and ease the pain of my broken heart.   It started in a peculiar fashion, in July of 2066, just a few weeks after JT’s other mother had left our family, when I was struggling mightily with an engulfing sadness.  One evening, I used the last coffee filter to set up the coffee pot for my morning coffee and I realized we’d bought those filters together.  Now I would buy filters on my own.  That summer found me marking all the things I would now take care of on my own.  I looked to these mundane items for the healing that the passage of time would provide.  When I’ve run through these 160 dryer sheets, I’d think, it will hurt less.  When these 250 coffee filters have gone, I’d hope, this break up won’t be my first thought each morning when I come awake.

The odd little remedy was a comfort.  Within a year, I was better.  As time marched on, the heartache was less acute.  Eventually, the wound healed.  

Counting out 3 dozen cotton squares and then realizing that when they were gone, the pain that is Donald Trump will have been defeated was surprising.  I hadn’t realized the toll that this election had taken on my subconscious.  But it has taken a toll.  The spite, the ignorance about our democracy, the dismissive attitude toward women, the vindictive rhetoric, the demonizing of decent people, and the hateful language: I am done with it all.  

I want hope.  I want the promise of a nation that works together and moves forward in unity.  I want an appeal to our better angels.  I want to go through my day and neither hear nor read of Donald Trump.

On Monday, when I counted out the cotton squares, it was 22 days until November 8.  As of today, it is 20 days.  We can do this, America.  We can hold on.

The Soup Season

The arrival of fall finds us enjoying soup for supper.  To celebrate the season, I will post pictures of the soups we have enjoyed in the past week.  We had black bean soup for supper early last week.  It’s a recipe I’ve been making for years.  It comes together easily and it’s always delicious.

Lucy

Cats are not supposed to be on the table.  Neither of them cares for my silly rules.

Lucy pleads guilty as charged.

Real Life Conversations with JT: Heads Up edition

The backstory: Commuting in New Jersey is an adventure in crowd control.  The classic New Jersey commute is to drive one set of roads to work and a whole other set of roads to get home.  A t various points in the time I have lived here, I’ve done that.  I’ve been driving the same way home for several years, via local roads instead of the interstate.  Recently, there have been long (and inexplicable) jam ups on a road that used to move quickly.  T has noticed the same thing and recommended that I try the interstate, which I had long ago given up as too jammed with traffic.  We’re tried that route for the last three days and have been rewarded for our effort.  The 10 mile drive home on the local roads had been taking us more than 40 minutes.  The revised route has shaved 20 minutes off the drive.  As JT and I flew down the  highway, we were pleased.  And then JT paid me the ultimate complement in his world.

JT:  In baseball, there is heads up base-running.  But this has been some head’s up driving.  Nice work, Mama.

I’ll take it.