Nom de Plume

From Masha Hamilton via The Elegant Variation:

The Camel Bookmobile made its first run almost a decade ago. Three dromedaries trudged through dusty, arid northeastern Kenya near the border with Somalia to bring a library to settlements so tiny and far-flung they’d become nearly invisible; places lacking roads and schools, where most people had never held a book between their hands and where they lived daily with drought, hunger and disease…

The Camel Bookmobile books are primarily in English. The children are taught the language in outdoor “classroomsâ€? under acacia trees for the younger students, indoor classrooms for the older students. They particularly like children’s storybooks, though all fiction is also sought-after, as well as books about math and astronomy, biology and other sciences. …

… The Camel Bookmobile librarians told me their patrons also really appreciate the sense of connection they get when a book is signed from a particular place and person. It widens their understanding of the world. So send a favorite book or two, sign your donations with your name and city, and add a note if you wish.

So come on all you bleeding heart liberals, send a book:

Garissa Provincial Library
For Camel Library
Librarian in Charge, Rashid M. Farah
P.O. Box 245
Garissa, Kenya

And know that you’re in good company.

There is a house across the street in the throes of repossession. Again.

The background is worthy of a soap opera, and has been dribbled in by various neighborhoodly sources. Laurie and her first husband lived there. They had a kid. Then they got divorced. Laurie kept the house,married Kevin, transferring the property into his name (probably because she doesn’t work), and had another kid.

Kevin then got another woman pregnant so Laurie kicked him out. About this time, he tried to sell the house for an inordinate sum of money–unsuccessfully, I might add, though this may have been because: a) Laurie didn’t want to move and is so strident and shrill that she puts a fishwife to shame; and b) he insisted on doing a “for sale by owner,” which consisted of a few cheesy signs.

Our friendly sources–including Kevin himself–claim that Kevin then told Laurie he would pay the mortgage for a year, at which point she would have to move out. He and the girlfriend planned on moving in. (Call me crazy, but the last place I would want to live with a current paramour is where I lived with the previous one. But that’s just me.)

She didn’t move.

He threatened her with eviction notices.

She didn’t move.

Finally, he stopped paying the mortgage altogether. He had a buddy repossess the house.

And then he had his new girlfriend buy it.

Should I mention that at some point in this saga he also filed bankruptcy? Does that explain why the notice on their front door states that Kevin and the gf are now 6 months behind on the mortgage payment? I don’t know–but what I do know is that their house has a sweeping vista of Lake Washington and despite various remodels and additions, still has good Craftsman bungalow bones.

And I’m thinking about buying it.

So there I am, on the phone with my bank, walking through the credit application. It takes me awhile to dig out my 2005 tax return, freaking out the whole time. Then I start looking for my 2006 tax return. Where is it? AHHHHH!!!!! The guy tells me I can call back. We hang up.

At which point I realize that my 2006 tax return is NOT missing. It doesn’t exist yet.

I rarely read short stories; they seem to require a curious mindset, in which one feels intelligent but mildly ADD. Generally, I feel one or the other. That start and stop, start and stop puts me off, before I even begin. And it’s a shame, because my bookshelves are teeming with shorts. Like Mark Winegarder’s That’s True of Everybody. It was one of my Edward R. Hamilton purchases at least a year ago. I had read Winegardner’s novel Crooked River Burning, and liked it. So what the heck, I thought. The book has been moldering away since.

Well, I’m down with the flu–recovering nicely now, thank you–and spent all of Sunday lying in bed reading. One of my informal resolutions for the year is to catch up on the many titles I’ve bought but haven’t read. This was one. And it was a strange one.

Oh, not in a bad way. It’s just that I recently finished this book, and I can barely remember any of the individual shorts–but am still left with a general impression of everything being off somehow, that the strangeness of all the characters is somehow illuminated but universal. It was good.