I'm a Helicopter

According to the description in the above article, I am definitely a "helicopter parent" - that is, I hover over my kids. Heaven knows, I've been trying not to, but it's just the way I am. And as a result, this past week has really been tough for me, as C has been preparing to leave for Savannah.

Oh, sure, it helped a lot that he spent all of July in New York City. That was a dry run for all of us, C included. But one of the things that those of us at home learned was that he doesn't often feel much of a need to communicate with us often, so we know what to expect once he's down south. Sigh.

So - not much time this week for mandalas, what with gathering things for C's dorm room, helping Z get her school year started, and N still on her last week of summer vacation. I did find the time for one the other day, gel pen on vellum, which I titled "Morning Energy" because that's what it gave me as I worked it:
I don't expect to have much time until next weekend to make more, but after that things should settle down to a dull roar, I hope.

I have, however, finished three books recently. The first and most notable is Erik Larson's Thunderstruck.
What did Marconi's invention of the radio and Crippen's brutal crime have to do with each other? Actually there is a significant historical link. With remarkable, painstaking research, Larson weaves the many strands of these two stories, until, slowly but surely, they form one whole picture of a period about which I had previously known very little.

This is an amazing work. In places it is a bit heavy-going, but I found my time well spent, as Larson has a reason for every minute detail he includes. The race to perfect wireless communication makes for a fascinating read; and after the few hints about him, I am anxious to read a biography of Tesla.

I think you need to have some interest in the history of science & technology to fully appreciate the book, but if you do, you will find it great entertainment indeed.
This is the second in the Mobile Library series, and it's every bit as wonderful as The Case of the Missing Books, the first of Ian Sansom's marvelous books about Israel Armstrong. Poor Israel - he arrives in Tumdrum, Ireland, and first he discovers that all of the books in his library have gone AWOL and that his first job is to find them all. Now in this second book, he is accused of robbing and kidnapping the head of the local department store, and in order to clear his name, he sets out to find Mr. Dixon himself.

All I can say is that these books are brilliantly funny, and that anyone who doesn't fall a little bit in love with Israel Armstrong must be an old grouch.
I had mixed feelings about Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy. I expected to love it, and instead I found the style choppy and annoying after a while. I understand the reason he wrote it that way - it is divided according to days and periods of convent time, as it is set in a convent in 1906. But after about 40 pages, the style grated on my nerves.

The book does, however, contain one of the most beautiful descriptions of a mystical experience that I have ever come across. It is almost impossible to describe something like that in words - the mystical is, by nature, ineffable. And Hansen's ability to write as a 17-year-old postulant is quite admirable. But.

I've just started Paolo Coelho's The Devil and Miss Prym. I teach at 8 tomorrow morning, after getting N ready for her first day of first grade. I think I will retire with the Coelho now.

~Namaste

Book Ketchup

Stanislaw Lem's autobiography - well, it's not so much an autobiography as a ramble through the chambers of his childhood. Oddly enough, there are more objects than people in these chambers; when Lem reminisces about his father, it is his father's books and medical instruments over which he waxes sentimental, rather than shared moments of intimacy. The opening of the last chapter is telling:

What is it about the objects and cobblestones surrounding us in childhood that is so magical, so irreplaceable? Whence comes their demand that after the destruction of war and with them piled in rubbish heaps, I testify to their existence? Not many years after the idyllic time presented here, inanimate things were envied their permanence, for day by day people were taken from their midst, and suddenly the things were orphaned, the chairs, canes and knickknacks abandoned and monstrously useless. As if objects were superior to the living, hardier than they, less vulnerable to the catastrophes of time. As if liberated from their owners, they had gained force and expression - consider the baby carriages and wash basins on the barricades, the eyeglasses there was no one to look through, the piles of letters stepped on. Although in the landscape of war they gained the power of eerie signs, I never held that against them. I believed in their innocence.

This passage resonated with me, particularly because I read it during the time that my class was discussing the Buddhist concept of nonattachment.

I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this all-too-brief book, with the exception of chunks of the penultimate chapter, in which Lem descends into a morass of tedious deconstructionism from which he emerges at the last moment, just before the reader - at least, this reader - is about to call it quits. The rest of the book is disarmingly charming and frank.

Ian Sansom's The Case of the Missing Books: A Mobile Library Mystery was a complete surprise from beginning to end. The beginning was unwrapping it - it was a "spring break" gift from my friend S, blessings upon her. I'd never heard of it, so that made it an extra-special surprise: new author, hurray! It begins,

No. No, no, no, no, no.

Interesting way to begin, no? ;-) The protagonist is a nebbishy librarian from London named Israel Armstrong. He comes to Tumdrum, Ireland to take a new position, only to discover that 1) the library has been permanently closed; 2) they want him instead to drive a bookmobile; and 3) someone has stolen all 15,000 of the books. He's Jewish (every time he mentions Hanukkah, someone says "Bless you") and he's a vegetarian (which means, in Tumdrum, that pretty much all there is for him to eat is scones). He's from London, which means he can't drive worth anything.

It's a very funny, very Irish book, quite cleverly and entertainingly written. And now I need to read everything else Sansom has written, thank you very much!


Julie Kenner's Demon-hunting soccer mom series is a hoot. Sort of like Buffy the Vampire slayer, only I enjoy them, while I find Buffy tedious (has a lot to do with the poor acting, bad scripts and awful special effects). I've now read two of them and can't wait for the next in the series. They're light fluff, so I'm not going to go into more detail than to mention them here - Carpe Demon and California Demon.

Frank Miller has written and illustrated some marvelous graphic novels. I've been wanting to read 300 for a long time, so when I picked it up the other night I was very excited. I read it more quickly than I usually read GNs; I like to savour the art, but there wasn't much here to savour. It felt more like storyboards than graphic art. The layouts were good, but the art itself just didn't "sing" somehow. So unlike the "Sin City" books! I was very disappointed. I hope that the film coming out this Friday will be more interesting.

Cheers.