AfricanKelli

I bought this copy of Love Medicine on a whim while picking up groceries recently. I remembered loving Louise Erdrich from a Native American lit class I took in undergrad, but didn’t remember that I’d already read this novel. Come to find out, I hadn’t read this exact story. This is the 25th anniversary edition of the book. (It doesn’t say that on the cover. Well done, crafty book publishers.) Erdrich explains in the afterword that she removed one chapter from the original, and moved another to the very end. There is also a hilariously dry Q+A section with the author at the end of this edition.

Of course, it’s been more than a decade since I read this book the first time. I didn’t notice the changes. What I did notice was the lyrical writing and how beyond belief, I fell in love with a crazy mish mash of Native Americans living somewhere near the Canadian border. My geography in this book isn’t great — and it isn’t important to the story.

What is important is the family tree kindly provided by the author at the beginning of the book. Like Garcia Marquez’ 100 Years of Solitude, you’ll need it to understand the story until just about the last page unless you have a photographic memory.

Although these Native Americans are not Arizonan, the story brought me home. To the large reservation I passed each day driving to work in north Scottsdale. To the mesas east of Flagstaff. To the crimson earth of northern New Mexico, where you can drive for hours and see only rusting trailers, a colorful line of wash flapping in the wind the only sign of life, other than the occasional herd of wild paints and pintos running in the distance.

Erdrich writes in a way that makes the reader feel like you are there — in a drunken fight. Watching your son cut open a Lysol container in hunt of a quick high. In a canoe, headed toward an island full of feral cats and a lone, Indian in much need of a human visitor. Sitting with aging nuns in a convent where you were tortured just for being a child — especially an Indian one.

Page 248:

“Grandma got back into the room and I saw her stumble. And then she went down too. It was like a house you can’t hardly believe has stood so long, through the years of record weather, suddenly goes down in the worst yet. It makes sense, is what I’m saying, but you still can’t hardly believe it. You think a person you know has got through death and illness and being broke and living on commodity rice and will get through anything. Then they fold and you see how fragile were the stones that underpinned them. You see how instantly the ground can shift what you thought was solid. You see the stop signs and the yellow dividing markers of roads you traveled and all the instructions you had played according to vanish. You see how all the everyday things you counted on was just a dream you had been having by which you run your whole life. She had been over me, like a sheer overhang of rock dividing Lipsha Morrissey from outer space. And now she went underneath. It was as though the banks gave way on the shores of Matchimanito, and where Grandpa’s passing was just the bobber swallowed under by his biggest thought, her fall was the house and the rock under it sliding after, sending half the lake splashing up into the clouds.” 

Like half the lake splashing up into the clouds. Yes. This is what I wish I could have said at my grandmother’s funeral. My life couldn’t be more different from the characters of this book, but Erdrich has the magic touch any novelist works for: the ability to make the reader connect, against all odds.

My review is simple and unnecessary — this book is fantastic and has been lauded for ages. I enjoyed it as much today as I did a decade ago.

I haven’t fallen in love with an author quite like this since reading Kingsolver, of whom Erdrich’s writing often reminds me. If you haven’t read her stuff, I give it my highest recommendation: five out of five bananas.

-K

{I’ve just ordered four more of her books. Have I mentioned how much I miss school? The tests. The cramming. All the books? It has also been nearly a decade since I graduated and oh, I still love learning. So I am financing — just barely — my own made up graduate level course in Louise Erdrich’s writing. Let me know if you’d like a copy of the syllabus. I grade on a curve.}

Prosecco, melon + prosciutto, turkey + artichoke stuffed shells, summer berry cobbler — a summer dinner shared with friends:

~K

The second bed is in, and the first bed is going wild:

Grow, little tomatoes — grow!

The second bed is fairly uneven. I’m hoping the newspapers and other old carbons I put under the cardboard will help. Otherwise, I’ll watch the watering in the lower area.

Gardeners — any creative ideas in lieu of using a cage? I need to get something in place in the next week in bed #1. I have done teepees in the past for tomatoes, but it becomes a mess and can make reaching the tomatoes difficult. Other ideas? I may just buy more of that trellising, although each one is $7. The upside: I can fold them flat and move them with us, rather than throwing away money on round wire tomato cages, which are nearly impossible to move.

I’d love to hear your ideas.

~K

Easy peasy recipe if you have house guests and need a quick no-frosting cake:

Take one chocolate cake mix (I like Betty Crocker triple fudge)

Add 3 eggs, 1 cup of sour cream, 1 teaspoon of cayenne, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1 teaspoon of cardamom, 1/2 cup of oil and 1/4 cup of water. Mix thoroughly. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes in a well greased bundt pan. Serve with ice cream, or alone. Watch guests inhale.

This cake is slightly spicy, earthy and incredibly moist. It is absolutely delicious and a super simple answer when entertaining.

-K

A friend on Facebook made the point that New Jersey has issues with heavy metal. No, not Bon Jovi, but harmful waste in the soil. When I planted a vegetable garden several couple weeks ago — I went the lasagna route. Cardboard, newspapers and other carbons, added with compost and organic top soil. I’m watering top down and these plants are going nuts. It helps that it rains here all the time.

I might have repurposed a few building materials as seen above from other areas of the property. As you can tell, most were buried under heaps of pine needles and I highly doubt if they will be missed by anyone other than the roly poly bugs who called them home.

Additionally, I wanted to start some seedlings to transplant. I’ve never had any luck with transplants, so who knows how this is going to go.

I very well may be too late in the season to be putting them in, but I am going to try.

It has been a lot of fun to have these little babies going on the kitchen windowsill. I will plant herbs this way in the future. Today, these will be transplanted into an garden extension, including a trellis for those green beans from Finny.  More importantly, I am now studying seed saving and will hopefully have seeds to share and save for next year’s garden too.

I may just pick up some basil seed to start this project again.

~K

Yesterday, I stood on Pier 66 in Manhattan in shorts and bare feet.

And it. was. awesome.

Some friends from Arizona are in town this week and they found a Groupon* for kayaking the Hudson. Along the edges of the pier, trash bobs in the waves. A corporate helipad sits just a few hundred feet north of the pier, making constant ripples and loud whipping noises as profiteers come and go. Folks enjoying a warm, gorgeous Sunday funday afternoon hooted and hollered from the Frying Pan — a bar on the next pier over.

D looked at the trash and then at me and swallowed hard. “Are we up to date with our vaccines?” He smiled. I laughed, throwing on my huge sun hat and smacked his paddle with mine.

“Come on! This is going to be a blast.” It had been years since I’d kayaked last, but I remember it being a killer workout and a great way to see the landscape.

After a brief introductory to the equipment, we slid into our single kayaks and headed out into the brown water.

Some 45 minutes of paddling later, I could barely pull myself back up on the pier. We caught the tide heading south toward the State of Liberty, which meant we fought our way home. The water was cooling as it dribbled down from our paddles on to our warm legs. It was also a beautiful dark blue once you got past the murkiness on the shore. We were all screaming and having the a great time until we realized we’d outlasted our welcome. I couldn’t physically paddle any more, but I didn’t want it to be done.

A kayak just may be the way to see the island that never sleeps. I’d love to see if I could maneuver around the entire thing. We plan to ride our bikes around the entire island at some point this summer with another friend. There is something so much more enjoyable about discovering a new place when it is done outside of the confines of public transport, or a cramped Civic. When the four of us got back to my little car, we were all exhausted. It was 7 pm on Sunday and we’d all traveled, worked and reached the end of our weekend to-do list. We climbed in and prepared to make the typical 45 minute drive home, where dinner was bubbling away in the Crockpot.

A little more than an hour later, our car had barely budged. We had unknowingly driven into the middle of this 100,000-plus person demonstration. When we finally did get around the countless school busses full of Hasidic Jews and their male children, we could barely think. It took more than two hours to get home. God bless Mr. Crockpot for his technology; dinner was still ready regardless of our late arrival.

Regardless of the crazy traffic, I cannot wait to go again. Manhattan Kayak actually rents space by the month. I may just buy one of these babies. There are several spots nearby on rivers near our home that offer hourly rates for canoes and kayaks. I may just sign us up again this weekend. I’m wondering if I can get Nelson interested in going along too. He would look pretty cute at the front of a boat.

-K

*Groupon might be the best way to get to know a new place. Signing up for the “adventure” section gets you out of the house doing crazy fun things for just a few dollars, while the food category can quickly help you find the best mom and pop spots in town.

I recently finished Rachel Held Evan’s “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” I was unfamiliar with Evans, or her popular blog on Christianity, until my friend Sarah and her husband Matt visited Colorado last summer. They mentioned Evans as a voice for contemporary Christian thought — not shy of her evangelical roots, but also seeking understanding in a loving way. And as a woman, catching heaps of flack for her voice.

This book is not tongue in cheek. She chronicles a year of living up to being a “Biblical woman.” Prior to reading this, I didn’t know such terminology existed. Sure, I’d read Proverbs 31. I’d heard the few stories of the strong women in the Bible repeated over again and again. But I did not know there was a Bible-based conservative movement defining the role of women. Namely, that women should be submissive, quiet, in the home, and working to keep their husbands happy. If these women were unable to bear children, it is a great failure and sin.

My faith does not fit this mold. Granted, my grandmother and my mother were both stay at home moms. They did work to keep their husbands happy. They were responsible for the bulk of the household duties. But they were never submissive, quiet, or without their 50% share of any family vote. My grandmother and mother fit the notion of a Proverbs 31 woman: they often rose before dawn, worked in gardens, helped to feed the needy and work with the poor, etc. And they did this with a smile because happiness and joy came from their families and from their relationships with God. However, I never heard once in my life that this would be my expected role in life. My brother and I were fairly given our share of chores. He knows how to wash a dish as well as I know how to mow a lawn; gender was never taken into consideration when it came to getting the work done.

Evan’s is not shy about having grown up as an evangelical, or of being scared to have children. She is happily in love with her husband — who is not into submission. In fact, the month she has to call him “master” completely (and I would say rightly) freaks him out.

There are times of life when a book keeps crossing your path. I’d heard of Evan’s latest for a while, but it wasn’t until I was playing house girlfriend in New Jersey that I read page 1. As we figure out house hold responsibilities, talk about careers and priorities and try to sketch out a plan for the future — I was reading about varied stories of women in the Bible who did all this too — some with happier outcomes than others.

I so appreciate Evan’s bravery; there is a strong wave of hatred for her work online that I cannot understand, other than it is threatening to those who have their wives under some sort of trance to behave or else be damned. She writes each chapter with a great balance of humor and Biblical understanding, and I dogeared too many pages to share. (I think the chapter where she learns to sew and knit are my favorite. Or maybe when she bakes pies that bleed butter. The woman is a solid writer and a mediocre crafter, which provides lots of comedic fodder.)

As a woman and a Christian trying to figure out my place in this world spiritually — this book was the perfect read. And a great reminder Jesus surrounded himself with strong-willed, bold women who loved God and never gave up on Him. In fact, they were the ones to discover He’d risen.

Review: five out of five bananas

-K

A walk through our neighborhood this week:

~K

One Community is a monthly photo project in which participants photograph their homes and community with a theme in mind. The theme varies by month. The goal is to both showcase similarities and differences in our communities worldwide – and bring us all closer together in understanding through art.

This month’s four words are: door, yellow, breakfast and sweetness.

Door:

A few of the interesting “doors” in our new neighborhood:

Yellow:

Fields of flowers in bloom on the Appalachian Trail.

Breakfast:

I love being able to start the day with French press coffee. With a lot of milk, that’s all I need until midday. While waiting for the coffee, I scramble a couple eggs and whatever protein is left over from dinner for a burrito. I wrap this in tin foil and have it ready for D to grab on his way to work. (Cherries not included.)

Sweetness:

Baking for friends. I love the house to smell of cinnamon and all spice. I love the way brown sugar melts into a puddle of deliciousness with butter when whipping up banana bread. This week I baked a few small thank you loaves and made cupcakes for house guests staying with us while working in the area. No time for breakfast in the morning? Fine. Grab a couple of these and a cup of coffee to go and you won’t be cranky at 10 am, tapping your toe waiting for a lunch break.

Other One Community participants:

Sarah is a life-long Missourian who shares her home with her husband, one (soon to be 2) son(s), and an old grumpy dachshund. Like every good Midwesterner, she can (and will) talk to you at length about the weather.  Sarah blogs at www.beautyschooldropout.net.

Colleen lives with her handsome hubster and two feisty felines in Portland, Oregon. She loves rain and sun (in that order), words and pictures, and chatting up the neighbors. She blogs at:www.underaredroof.com

Rebekah lives in Kilkenny, Ireland with her husband. An American by birth, she’s discovering what it means to be an expat on the Emerald Isle. She blogs at Honeysuckle Life.

Kara is a cheerful nerd living in downtown Phoenix, AZ with her law-studying husband and an anxious pound puppy. She works full time in the mental health field but in her off time enjoys sunshine, great food and the occasional craft beer.  www.sunshine-cupcakes.com

Stephanie from Wyoming.  Her blog is www.nowicanseethemoon.com

(If you are interested in participating, shoot me an email: africankelli@gmail.com)

It is lovely to be able to go into the garden to trim a bouquet for flowers around the house. Also, it gives me a smug sense of satisfaction to be able to use something I already had in a different way, and add color to our home for no expense. With any luck, I’ll get some lavender and bulbs planted so we have lots of flowers next spring too.

-K