Nom de Plume

Pat Montella has a going nowhere job when she is summoned to Virginia by 91-year old Magnolia Shelby, who wants to bequeath her property. What unfolds is a modern mystery surrounding the Civil War. Well-written, yet not pedantic, I found it thoroughly entertaining. It was also very affecting (I dashed away a tear or two) without waltzing off into schmaltziness.

Among other things, I imagined two of my own ancestors facing each other from opposite sides of the battleground. Papa Ed (my maternal grandfather) was from Kentucky, with a long family history of westward migration from what was the Virginia Territory. Nani (my maternal grandmother) went back to New York and Pennsylvania via the midwest. Both had ancestors who fought. My various genealogical meanderings are another story, but I thought the following picture appropriate. I am not sure who , precisely, it is–but suspect it to be a brother of David Leonard Hoover (my great great great grandfather) and taken in or near Hennepin, Illinois.

For me, India on vacation is like life in abeyance. It’s not just the surrealism of a long journey in which beginning of the trip seems lifetimes away, or the strength-sapping heat, or even of adjusting one’s clock to “Indian time.” No, it’s a dusty smell of spices and burning cow dung, the absolute foreigness of people that share your same blood.

Chaudhuri captures this sense meticulously.

Jayojit Chatterjee and his son, who live in the States, return to Calcutta for the summer vacation. They stay in his parents’ apartment. His father, the Admiral, is now retired and they live quietly, so every action, every word is magnified. It through this microsopic view that we begin to see the cross-section of lives. Jayojit is getting divorced. He wants to spend time with his son Bonny. The Admiral observes. The mother fusses. Beyond this, however, is a keen sense of a man who has lost his footing in his native country, and the book ends when he returns to America.

Hey, that’s what the jackhammer says. Isn’t he cute?

Minus trim, which either needs to be added or sanded and painted.

Furney’s had tons of stuff they were trying to get rid of, including great stands of Tuscan Black Kale for 10 cents apiece. For someone trying to barricade the neighbors off the deck, it’s a steal–in full bloom and at least four feet tall.

And it’s an Italian heirloom kale too.

It always catches me unaware, and I always feel a little ripped off–as though I’ve somehow lost an hour of my life.

A rainy Sunday, and we are listening to Whiskeytown. The dog is sitting at my feet, chew toy in mouth, as I wait for Steve to get dressed. Then off to Furney’s for yet more plants and perhaps a watery stroll in Kubota Gardens.