Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Sometimes I finish a book, and I loved it, but I feel too puny a mind to say anything to do it justice. I just am not learned enough, wise enough, deep enough. I am at a loss for words.

Moonglow by Michael Chabon sat on my Edelweiss shelf for 45 days until I could finally make a space to read it, read 'out of order', as I read based on a book's publication date.

I have enjoyed all the novels I've read by Chabon: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I have The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Telegraph Avenue on my TBR shelf. (The real books bookshelf, not ebooks!) And I'd been hearing a buzz that Moonglow is Chabon's best book yet.

Chabon makes me laugh. That's golden. Especially in a novel about the effect of war on the lives of the narrator's grandparents, where happiness is found 'in the cracks' between failure and mental health breakdowns, and heroes are found to be villains, and fiction is better than knowing the truth.

Stories told to Chabon by his terminally ill grandfather inspired Moonglow. In the novel, a grandfather reveals what had remained unspoken, a gift for his grandson (Chabon) to turn into an orderly account, with the admonition to 'make it mean something.'

His fictionalized grandfather, a Drexel Tech graduate, joined the Army Corps of Engineers before WWII; his wartime experiences leaves him with a 'form of spiritual aphasia' and searching for purpose. He meets a beautiful girl, another victim of the war, who has a daughter, and struggles for mental stability. Together they hope to 'fly to the moon', but the journey is fraught with crash landings and heartbreak.

The back story is told in bits and pieces, interwoven with stories from other time frames, slowly revealing the grandfather's history.

"You think this explains everything?" the grandfather queries, "Me and your grandmother. Your mother. My time in prison. The war." The grandson replies, "It explains a lot." "It explains nothing,,,It's just names and dates and places," the grandfather retorts, "It doesn't mean anything." And then he adds, "I'm disappointed in myself. My life....you look back and you see all you did with all that time is waste it." And the grandson sums it up, "Anyways it's a pretty good story."

Which is all we can ask from life. A pretty good story in spite of the failures, dreams deferred, the heartbreak, and the craziness.

See photos that inspired Chabon while writing Moonglow at:
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/22/michael-chabon-photos-inspired-moonglow

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Moonglow
by Michael Chabon
Harper/Collins
Publication Nov. 2, 2016
$28.99 hard cover
ISBN: 978006222559

What I'm Working On

My 1857 Album blocks for October need corner pieces. Its been great fun!Thanks to Gay Bomers of Sentimental Stitches for providing the free patterns!

 My next poet quilt is TS Eliot, featuring The Naming of Cats!

 I am hand quilting it.

 St Martin's Press sent me this Domestic Noir thriller...

 And then a letter...

Look for a $2.99 sale on Behind Closed Doors.

I won The Mortifications which I am enjoying.

Next week my weekly quilt group is going to the White Horse Inn in Metamora, MI and visiting a quilt shop in Hadley, MI, home of this covered bridge:

Photo by Tom Gochenoujr

I just had to end with this bit of home decor. The bucket was painted by a dear lady who said her mother always displayed Indian Corn.

The roses are still blooming, the grass is bright green, my parsley is thriving; we haven't had a killing frost yet; today its in the 70s again. The leaves are just beginning to fall--although the city has been scheduled to pick them up for several weeks! I can't believe it's November! At least I can be thankful that the election will soon be over...although I know the political battles won't end with a new president...

Truevine: Two Brothers, A Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South

Truevine is the remarkable story of George and Willie Muse, born to a sharecropper in a part of the country that had hardly changed since slave days. And they were born albino African Americans, with white skin, pale hair in dreadlocks, and blue eyes unable to focus or stand light. The boys faced a brutal life in the tobacco fields of Virginia.

The brothers were six and nine when they were stolen from their home in Truvine to be exhibited in circuses, told their mother was dead. Called Eko and Iko, Ambassadors from Mars, or the Sheep-headed freaks, or touted as cannibals, they performed across America and in Europe. Uneducated, told to talk in mumbo jumbo and to act wild, they also learned any instrument by ear and loved to sing It's a Long Way to Tipperary.

Their heartbroken mother spent twenty-eight years trying to reunite with her sons.

When the circus arrived in the brother's home town their mother was in the audience and was recognized by her sons She went to court to seek justice for her sons: remuneration, better living conditions, correspondence with their family, a retirement savings account. Her sons, after all, were one of the biggest draws in the sideshow.

In Roanoke, VA, African Americans lynch mobs dealt out 'justice' and the descendants of slaves were considered genetically inferior. The Muse brother's mother took on one of the biggest entertainment businesses in a courageous act that could have brought fatal repercussions.

Not that the battle was fought once and for all. The boys contracted to return to the circus, this time with a salary. But they were handed off to a new manager who took off for another venue and kept all the proceeds for himself. The brothers spent 28 years exploited, in virtual slavery.

I was reluctant to read a book about 'freaks' until I saw the reviews. Macy considers the Muse brothers' story in context of African American history from slavery through Jim Crow laws, the eugenics movement the early 20th c., and cultural and political changes including urban renewal.

The author spent 25 years building a relationship with the woman who cared for the last Muse brother in old age. Truevine is impressive in it's scope, exploring human trafficking, the heyday of the circus, the racial history of Roanoke, VA, and offers sympathetic, human portraits of the Muse family.

There is question about how the brothers came to be discovered by the circus and if the circus life was better than the lives they would have had, especially as they developed blindness. What is not under question is the love and respect given the aging Willie who lived to be 108; his tombstone reads, "God is good to me."

As I read this book I remembered the elementary school boy with a hook for a hand. And I realized the white haired, white skinned boy with dark glasses in my high school had albinism. Differences were something I took in stride growing up, for as my mother used to say, in another day and economic status, she would have been a circus freak.

Mom suffered from psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. At times 90% of her body was covered by psoriasis. Her nails were thick, yellow, and bumpy. She took long soaking baths and applied creams to loosen the dead skin, leaving her with red patches of new skin. Arthritis too mobility in her neck, hands, and major joints. Her treatments included mercury salves, cortisone that caused weight gain and thin skin that easy tore open, application of smelly tar ointments followed by body wrapping in saran wrap, applications of olive oil on her scalp (which I helped apply with cotton balls), Ultra Violet light treatment that caused pre-cancerous growths, and finally Methotrexate which allowed her a quality of life she had not experienced in decades.

Mom figured she would have been touted as a scaly Fish Lady.

To me, Mom was pretty, smart, and generous, a loyal friend, an incessant reader. Yes, she needed help with her personal care, and had trouble opening jars or lifting heavy things. But I was not ashamed of her, as she feared, nor did I feel the need to explain or hide Mom's autoimmune disease.

The Muse brothers didn't have what Mom enjoyed: a loving mother and father who provided for their children, a loving husband, a community that supported her, affordable medical care. The Muse brothers did have a mother who never gave up wanting the best for her sons.

"One of my advisers, a sociology professor, says that black people really want people to know that they have survived something – emotionally, physically, spiritually – that would have killed most people," Macy says. "That's the heart of this book." http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2016/1027/Truevine-untangles-a-tale-of-exploitation-and-grace

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



Truevine: Two Brothers, A Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
Beth Macy
Little, Brown & Company
$28 hard cover
ISBN 9780316337540

A Lyrical, Pastoral Novel: On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin

"--they would stand over her patchwork quilt and peer at the black velvet stars and the hexagons of printed calico that had once been her dresses."

Identical twin brothers Lewis and Benjamin sleep in their parent's 1899 oak four-poster bed, hung with the cretonne hangings of larkspur and roses their mother made as a newlywed, with linen sheets worn to holes, the mattresses sunk into two troughs. On the bed was the patchwork quilt their mother had made, "to remember me by," cut from the calico dresses of her youth in India and her best black funeral skirt. From their bedroom window they could see the Black Hill.

The house remained unchanged for the twins were unwilling to dismantle the memories of their mother embedded in the wallpaper, the Georgian pianoforte, the Coronation and Jubilee mugs. Hereford had been their home; though Lewis loved maps and far off places, he never left. Benjamin's love for his twin was like a binding vine holding Lewis back from pursuing a greater life. People come into their world bringing love and tradegy, hope and disappointment, and a few answered prayers.

On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin is a quiet story spanning the 20th c, full of eccentric and memorable Welsh villagers whose lives remain rooted in a past rapidly crumbling around them. A world outsiders consider quaint, antediluvian, or collectible, or a haven from the modern world.

I love this kind of novel that elicits a nostalgia for a world I have never known, bringing forward the forgotten people whose lives merit our compassion and admiration.

Toward the end of the novel a 1960s drop-out comes to Black Hill and becomes friends with the brothers. Theo invites the twins to his yurt, and taking a lotus position recits poetry, sharing his favorite poem by Li Po:

What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.
I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here,
To seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking. 

The poem, Exile's Letter, translated by Ezra Pound is one of my favorites as well, the story of parted friends and the nostalgia and longing for their shared days together.

On the Black Hill is lyrical nostalgia, though few of us would be willing to return to the rugged and harsh rural life depicted, we envy the characters' connection to the past, their community, and rootedness to the earth.

This new ebook version of On the Black Hill includes an illustrated biography of Bruce Chatwin.

Bruce Chatwin is the author of In Patagonia and The Songlines (also available from Open Road Media), books I enjoyed reading when they were first published in the 1970s. On the Black Hill won the Whitbread Literary Award for First Novel.

I recieved a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/bruce-chatwins-wales-one-of-the-finest-one-day-walks-in-britain-9765731.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/02/books/a-novel-of-pastoral-vision.html?pagewanted=all

On the Black Hill
Bruce Chatwin
Open Road Media
Publication Oct 18, 2016
ebook
ISBN: 9781504038348

Halloween Costumes of the 1950s

My Halloween costume in 1955 

I remember trick or treating on Rosemont Ave as a girl, walking down the streetlight lit sidewalks in the early dark, getting goodies from all the neighbors, most of whom I knew. I recall being a 'gypsy' several years, wearing Mom's full gathered skirts, loads of beads, and a scarf. I believed myself quite lovely and exotic.

My relatives loved a party and I found these great photographs of a costume parties held in 1958 and 1959.

My Grandmother Gochenour was the only clown I was not afraid of!

My Grandmother Emma Becker Gochenour in a clown costume.
Taken in the kitchen on Military Rd, Tonawanda.
I remember that red wall paper.

Dad's big nose and mustache and glasses looked funny in 1958, but later in life he did have a mustache and glasses!

My father Gene Gochenour

 Mom as an old fashioned, white haired lady...not like the Jitterbug Queen she really was!

My mother Joyce Ramer Gochenour

Chubb and Adaline (nee' Becker) Killian and
Rube and Dot Becker.
Chubb and Rube were my grandmother's siblings.

My Aunt Alice Gochenour Ennis with her mother Emma.
I believe the lady sitting in the background is
Mary Becker, wife of Levant (Lee).

Alice Gochenour Ennis and Rube Becker

Alice Gochenour Ennis

 My aunt and uncle were characters from Lil' Abner. Note the saddle shoes on my aunt!

Ken Ennis

Friend of the family Helen Ensminger and friend

Dorothy and Rube Becker

Us kids mostly wore store bought costumes.

From 1957, my cousins Steve and Linda Guenther
children of  Dad's sister Mary

And myself in 1957 as Mickey Mouse! I still have that clock shelf seen on the wall.

I wonder what was in the bag?

And later in life I was still wearing a costume for special parties. This is my costume for the senior costume day in 1969. Yes, that is an Avocado green piano! Mom and Dad made thewall  clock circa 1960 and I still have it.

A neighbor made me this pilgrim costume for Halloween 1969.
Seniors were able to wear costumes to school.

 My husband and I were invited to a costume party in the early1990s.

In the early 1990s my husband and I wore these costumes to a party.
I was wearing a pillow as if I were pregnant. My hubby had taken
Mime classes and this was his costume. That's the Phillies Phanatic in his arms.

 Then our son came along, and Halloween was fun all over again.

Our son's earliest costume was Peter Pan which I made.
He is posed with our first Shiba Inu, Kili.

 My friend Jan made this costume inspired by my Poe quilt!

My quilt group friend Jan was inspired by my Edgar Allan Poe quilt
to make a costume with a purple curtain and a raven!

Edgar Allan Poe by Nancy A Bekofske

Have a safe and fun Halloween!

Restoring a Sense of Order to the World: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I was eager to read Amor Towles novel A Gentleman in Moscow after reading rave reviews from my Goodread friends and enjoying the opening pages through the First Look Bookclub. I loved the writing and tone of those first pages. When I got my hands on a copy I read it in three days and was in happy tears at the end.

Count Alexander Rostov, recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, Member of the Jockey club, and Master of the Hunt is a Former Person, a member of the aristocracy slated for execution but for having his name linked to a 1915 revolutionary poem. Count Rostov is instead placed under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in the heart of Moscow. It is June 21, 1922. The Count is 33 years old. It is his luckiest day.

He will not return to his luxury suite stocked with priceless heirlooms and beloved books; he is moved into an empty 100 square foot room, former servant quarters in the attic. The Count chooses a few items to take with him. And when I read these following lines, I knew their truth from having moved many times and carried 'things' that brought a sense of home with them:

"...we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience...allowing memories to invest the with greater and greater importance...Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion. 

But of course, a thing is just a thing."

I found myself marking passage after lovely and insightful passage that elucidate the characters and our common experience.

The Count adapts to his new reality, mastering his circumstances. He takes a job as the head waiter in the hotel restaurant. He is befriended by Nina, a whimsical nine-year-old girl whose parting gift is a universal pass key to all the hotel rooms. Nina grows up, then leaves her daughter Sophia with the Count to follow her husband sent to the Gulag. The child is ignored by the police only because there was doubt about her patrimony. A Soviet official hires the Count to educate him in the culture of the West, and over fifteen years they develop a mutual respect. And Sophia grows to become an accomplished pianist. (Hear the music of the novel here.)

As the world the Count knew and loved is dismantled under the Bolsheviks, "who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased." The Count's university days friend Mishka has been struggling, asking, "What is it about a nation that would foster a willingness in its people to destroy their own artworks, ravage their own cities, and kill their own progeny without compunction? " Mishka answers his question with his realization that self-destruction was not an abomination, but Russia's greatest strength, "We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them [The British, French or Italians] in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person."

Sophia asks the Count why he returned to Russia from Paris. His only answer is that, "Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol." And the last pages of the novel become comedy, a happy ending, a righting of things knocked over in the skirmish, "an essential faith that by the smallest of one's actions one can restore some sense of order to the world."

You may think a novel about thirty-two years living in the Metropol Hotel would be dull and without interest. The novel is episodic, skipping from one important time to another, but new people enter the hotel and affect the Count's life. Read the author's comment on the structure of the novel at http://www.amortowles.com/gentleman-moscow-amor-towles/gentleman-moscow-qa-amor-towles/

But I was mesmerized, charmed by the Count, drawn in by the slow revelation of his past and enticed by his plans for his future.

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: Running a Coffee Truck

In this installment from my dad's memoirs he talks about running a side business, a coffee truck in Lockport, NY.

Gene Gochenour

"A few years after we opened the station a friend talked me into going into the coffee catering business with him. His name was Sam Letcher and he had worked for a coffee catering service so he had some knowledge about the business. Since neither of us had established credit we asked my father to cosign for a loan at the bank for us, which he did. The loan was for two hundred and fifty dollars. 

"We bought an old truck and I painted it green, built shelves for the coffee and donuts, and had our name painted on it. We called our business “S & J Coffee Service” When Sam applied for our business license, he put down Jean, instead of Gene, on the form. I was not about to go to the trouble to change it. We decided to run the business at Lockport, a town about twenty-two miles away. There were several coffee catering businesses in our area, but none there. We rented the second floor of an existing business on Market Street in Lockport. The second floor had not been used years so we had to clean it up, then install our coffee urns and supplies.

"Every morning, Monday through Saturday, I got up early, and went to Gallager’s Bakery at the city of Kenmore where I picked up about twenty dozen donuts, then drove to Lockport. I drove a 1950 Dodge sedan then, and I filled all the seats with trays of donuts and on the way I would eat one. But after a week or so, I did not eat any, and I would open the car windows, because I didn’t even like the smell of them! 

"When I arrived at our building in the morning I made about sixteen gallons if coffee, and then loaded the coffee urns and donuts on the truck. After I had loaded the truck Sam would come in and drive to various businesses to sell the coffee and donuts, Then I would go back and work the rest of the day at the station. On Sundays I drove to Lockport to get the truck and bring it back to the station to wash and service it. Then I drove it back to Lockport so it was ready for the next week. Each day the unsold donuts were dropped off at the station, so our customers always had free donuts. Of course we had a coffee machine at the station also. 

"The vehicle we used for our coffee business was a step van that we had paid one hundred and twenty five dollars for. We decided we needed another vehicle so we bought an old Ford panel truck. It had been used by a paint contractor so it needed a good cleanup. I painted it, put in shelves, and had it lettered with our business name. On the first trip to Lockport, Sam flipped it over on a curve, and totaled it. Luckily he did not get hurt in the accident.

"I stopped going to Lockport when we hired a lady to work for us a few months after we started. I never made any money from that business, and after a few years I sold my part of the business back to Sam for the original amount I had invested. I never should have been talked into getting involved in another enterprise, because I had all I could handle at the station!"