Welcome to my site! I'm going to be taking a little time each week to write out something about the Pendleton Public Library. As a run-of-the-mill employee, I will only write about what is on my mind at the moment--very little of my content is going to be political in any way. I'm going to talk about good books, new releases, interesting programs, and funny little anecdotes. I encourage everyone who visits to stop by the guest book, and write about what they're reading and why. We hope to hear from you soon! Enjoy!
I re-read Jeff Smith's great graphic novel series Bone recently. Three little white cartoon characters bumble their way into a valley of medieval humans. One is our hero, Fone Bone, one is his grasping cousin Phonecible "Phoney" P. Bone, and the last is another cousin, Smiley Bone. He is a fool.
Smiley isn't just any fool, though, and a deeper examination of his position in the story makes me think about the fool. In critiques of this story, Smiley is usually dismissed out of hand as an unimportant comic relief. He's stupid, he's shallow, he's easily led. I don't think he's any of those things--he's something most people just find indescribable. For example, many people say that they laugh at The Simpsons because it's "so stupid," but in fact The Simpsons is a very intelligently written tv show, that sometimes requires people to be well-read to get the jokes (I admit, I laugh harder than anyone when Homer causes himself a slapstick injury, but that's not even what most of the jokes are).
Smiley doesn't do anything stupid, but he does do things that are unconventional. He knows that his cousin Phoney's paper money is no good in the valley, but he has him buy drinks anyway. Tricking Phoney into working his bar tab off, Smiley has put him into the same position as himself. Not stupid. Later, though he knows Phoney isn't dividing up prospective prophets evenly with him, he agrees to join him in perpetrating racing fraud. He's happy to do it, and declares that he likes the cut of Phoney's gib. He just doesn't care what the outcome will be, since he can be pretty certain that it won't go in Phoney's favor. Again, not stupid.
Smiley proves throughout most of the story that he isn't shallow. He and Fone Bone save a baby monster (a rat creature, in the story, and soooo cute, with big baggy feet and huge red eyes like a Japanese cartoon character), and he spends the rest of the story worrying about it's welfare. I find the most poignant scene in the entire story to be the one in which Fone and Smiley have seen the baby back to a pack of rat creatures. A rather shakey Smiley asks Fone Bone, "will he be ok?" and turns back to watch him running up the mountain with others of his kind. The love of Smiley and the baby rat creature proves he is not shallow in the least.
Although Smiley joins Phoney in his dubious endeavors, he isn't led into it. Phoney doesn't even really ask him to come in, he just assumes he will. He does, of course, but only to have the fun of making mischief. He doesn't think of consequences, because consequences just don't matter to him. He likes to see people get upset. This is an irritating personality trait, but it is one based in a highly individual nature. Such a nature is not easily led, it is in fact manipulative on its own account. He looks like Albert Alligator in the Pogo comics (not an accident, by any means), but he acts like Harpo Marx. Harpo is supposed to be easily led also, by the machinations of Chico. I always think that really he just used Chico's fraud as a jumping off point for indulging his own Puckish nature. Chico might want him to break out of jail, but he decides on his own to cut the beards off 3 sleeping aviators for disguises. Smiley is like that, too.
Smiley doesn't act right. I admit it. If he were a person I really knew, I would not be able to see him in such a kindly light. He's capricious, unpredictable, perhaps amoral. I think he's such a moving and interesting story character, though.
Tonight, we are hosting a talk by the official historian of Crater Lake National Park. We are having it in honor of our new National Parks of the West section, and the turnout seems pretty good. We had a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and the lady who donated the funds for the project ran the giant scissors. She only wants the section to be there for ten years, she doesn't want her name associated with any of it, she just thinks people have to know more about our wonderful national parks, and I agree. We should all know more about our particular national park, especially.
I stayed at the lodge at Crater Lake when I was young. It was hot and dry all the way there, and then there was that huge expanse of cold, deep, mountain water. It seems so impossible. It's in the middle of the dry pine woods and sage prairies, and it holds a big clump of the world's fresh water. It's in a volcano crater. There's a hot spring on the bottom, maybe more than one. There's a cinder cone making an island in it, barely supporting conifer life. There's a log wandering around in its currents that has been wandering for at least 100 years. There are strange effects of light and sound. There can be snow deeper than the roofs of the lodge. There are birds and little skittering mammals in the woods. There are people everywhere with expressions of astonishment.
I have a panoramic photograph in black and white of the rim of the crater, with snow patches still visible. I don't know if it's very old, but I would like to take one of the same view in the present day and hang them together. I like that feeling of continuation. I want everyone to have it. I want everyone within the sound of my typing to get up off their chairs and make plans to visit their national park this very summer! We owe it to ourselves.
I don't care for thrillers. I don't like to feel anxious and nervous and worried, especially about fictitious characters. Lots of people disagree, I know, and enjoy the feeling of excitement (yes, even a "thrill"!). I'm naturally anxious, nervous, and worried, so I don't get much of a kick out of it. I can't even watch I Love Lucy, since she gets into so many scrapes. I do, however, enjoy the works of the English author Mary Stewart.
She wrote from the '50s up into the '90s, with many a zinger to her name. Her books about King Arthur & Co. (The Hollow Hills, The Crystal Cave, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day, The Prince and the Pilgrim) are much admired. Her book The Moon-Spinners was made into a Disney movie, featureing Hayley Mills. She writes an exciting story with great characters. I haven't yet found one I didn't like. I've read almost all of them, but find I have missed The Wind Off the Small Isles. I hope I find it someday. The others have never let me down.
Even her children's works are good. I got A Walk in the Wolf Woods for a present one summer, and read it up under the elderberry tree in the side yard in one afternoon. It features magic, which turns up sometimes in her works, but not often. It's in Germany, which is not unusual. Most of her books are not set in England. One of her other children's books, The Little Broomstick, is about the insidious lure of witchcraft (in an amusing way--the little broomstick takes a little girl to a witchcraft school, which is not a nice place).
Another of her witch books, and my favorite, is Thornyhold, which follows a romance for shy people. I have always loved it. The witchcraft theme there is one of natural talent versus malignant meddling in the English countryside after the second World War. The adventure is mild, but the suspense is strong. Try it out.
I must mention that I like these books on audio. I have read them in book form, but the readers they get for the audios are so good. They have calming, pleasant voices, and a good grasp of drama. I believe that they are actresses, not professional readers. Actors make the best readers, I think, because they have trained their voices to give their effects and not annoy the listener. Professional readers almost always ignore the timbre of their voices. I think training would correct this flaw.
At any rate, I must urge you to take up Mary Stewart. In some ways she is like the author Rosamund Pilcher, and in some ways like M. M. Kaye. She is also like D. E. Stevenson, who I have mentioned in previous blogs. Try one book of each author this summer, and see if I'm not right.
The library is getting a new section, just for National Parks. I'm actually spilling the beans a little bit, since the grand opening won't be until June 4, but I think I can give a few hints about what's in store. It won't be a patch on the real thing!
We will have it in the new hard-floored seating area by the front door. We already have cafe tables and chairs set up there, and expect a coffee wagon. We already have 3 wing chairs upholstered in a rustic print featuring animals (moose and bear, of course), and a large, round, leather-topped ottoman. People like to sit there already. We have a computer table and chair under the window, and will soon have a very nice computer in it. That machine will be only for looking up current information on the websites of the national parks. There's a file cabinet for the pamphlets, booklets, and info sheets the parks send us. I have a 20 lb. paper box full of them to get catalogued still, they're too interesting to just shuffle through! We're hanging up three donated Pendleton blankets (little fellas, since we don't really have wall space in the library), with designs used in the lodges at three national parks. One is the blanket they use at Crater Lake Lodge, one is used at Glacier, and one is used at Mt. Rainier. That rustic lodge look is getting more visible, isn't it? We're also getting a display cabinet, which we'll fill with different artifacts from the parks. Sometimes things about animals, sometimes about rocks and plants, sometimes about native peoples.
Right now, I'm involved in the booklets from Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado (all this time I thought it was in Arizona, or New Mexico). Already I have learned that we can't call the people who used to live there "Anasazi" anymore, as this is someone else's non-descriptive word for them (the Navajo, who I guess have just as much right to misname somebody as anybody else). I'm going to keep saying Anasazi because I like the word, and I do find it descriptive. The Navajo were describing some people who left the area, the "ancient ones" or the "enemy ancestors". I think that's probably pretty accurate. The National Park Service now want them to be called the Ancestral Puebloans, using European words ("ancient villagers" or "village ancestors" seems kind of just like "Anasazi", only dumbed down a bit). I want to go suss it out for myself in person, don't you? Let's plan on going down there in the next couple of years.
We're going to have a revolving collection of books and dvds about the parks, too. We've ordered some beauties, especially the ones about Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, and Arches. They are beautiful places, with fascinating geology, and plenty of places to hike, camp, fish, and stare. I was extolling the virtues of one of our Arches books, and Mary (our reference librarian, you know) pointed out that we'd all better get out and see those desert parks soon. It's getting too wet there, she says. The arches and stacks are eroding rapidly. I think maybe this informative collection is coming just in time. When people get interested in visiting these places, when they see them with their own eyes, the places become part of the people. It's more likely people will keep those places. They're here for all of us.
I love horse races. I love to watch those big crazy powerhouses thunder by, throwing dirt and jockeys, running flat out as fast as they can for money. My favorite track is the one at the Walla Walla Fairgrounds, with the Blue Mountains in the background. In between races, it's pleasant to have the high green hills to watch. I like to watch the Triple Crown, but have only seen the whole thing won once, by Seattle Slew (I was 5, and only remember the man painting the weathervane in the colors of winning horse and silks). I find horse races thrilling, even without a betting system, which I have.
Yes, it's true, a betting system. It's simple, dull, and pays off occasionally. It was suggested to me by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, when I received their pamphlet on recreational wagers. It seems that the horse expected to win the race (the "favorite", in racetrack parlance) will come in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd 70% of the time. The only bet anywhere near a sure thing is to take the winner win, place or show (1st, 2nd, or 3rd). The odds are poor, because he's expected to win, but if you bet $5 on him, and he comes in anywhere in the first 3, you win $10 or more. That may be a modest profit, but it's getting your money back and a little more for free, which you don't get everywhere, everyday.
I don't go to the track often. I don't like to go by myself (someone might notice my success at winning in $5 increments and roll me for my cash), and most of my nearest and dearest fail to see the charm of sitting on a hard bench for several hours to watch horses that all look the same gallop past. I find that I must look to books for my racetrack entertainment. The following list contains authors who write about horses, racing, horse racing, and gambling. Try one or two. I think you'll be amused.
Dick Francis. He was a jockey in his youth, as well as an RAF pilot. He even rode horses for Queen Elizabeth II's mother. He was good, he was raised in the stables, he finally had to retire in 1957 when he had a bad horse wreck. After he wrote his racing autobiography, Sport of Queens, he got a job as a racing correspondant for the London Sunday Express. After that, he started on novels. I have liked every one I ever read. The characters are not only subjected to the problems of the racetrack (getting the horses trained, keeping the horses healthy, paying the horses' bills), they are also brought up against organized crime, spies, murderers, and on one memorable occasion, a drunken brother. The Sage Library system lists 275 titles by Dick Francis (most assuredly, there are duplicate titles, but still), and Pendleton lists 68. Some of the novels were made into movies, with Ian McShane as the detective (he always seems to fed up to me, even when he's being Lovejoy, who also has books about him, but steal art and antiques, not horses). I would like to watch these movies.
Marguerite Henry. She wrote the book King of the Wind, which is about the Godolphin Arabian, one of the foundation stallions of the modern Thoroughbred race horse. For some reason, his sons didn't produce as well as his daughters, so most Thoroughbreds who list him in their ancestry do so on their mother's side. This book, for pre-teen readers, follows the Arabian from North Africa to France, and on into England. It's a Black Beauty-style look at antique horse abuse. It's my favorite horse book.
Damon Runyon. He wrote about gamblers, touts, and showgirls. You might remember his snappy little New York characters from "Guys and Dolls". All of his language is very funny, and seems to be something he made up for the benefit of his readers, rather than something he actually overheard people speaking (just like an author). He wrote short stories, and you can't go wrong with any of his collections.
I was on the phone with my friend Malinda a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about great kids' movies we still enjoy. One of our favorites is Babe, the movie of Dick King-Smith's novel Babe : the Gallant Pig (The Sheep-Pig, in Britain), which is so funny and clever, especially when the farmer does a dance for the ailing piglet. We love that movie. It should surprise no-one that the movie is only partly as good as the book. In fact, it's only partly as funny as any of Dick King-Smith's books.
He writes mostly about animals, often animals that interact with people. People are usually secondary figures, however. Frequently, he writes about little children finding magical friends. There is at least one about an old lady escaping a retirement home (my favorite). He's another author who directs his characters to overcome difficult situations through boldness and ingenuity, and doesn't neglect the good use of language so many recent children's authors have abandoned. I think it's important for children to enjoy what they read (otherwise they won't practice), but I don't think you have to write down to their level. I find that while their grammar is technically acceptable, the phrases they choose are usually borrowed from the most screaming of reality tv shows. Dick King-Smith writes funny and gripping stories in good English. What more could you want?
Everyone is familiar with Babe, but few realize that Babe has pig descendants. One of them is Ace : the Very Important Pig. He watches tv with Queenie, the corgi. She's bossy, as you might suppose, and Ace has to assert himself. They have other adventures, but that's my favorite part. He makes himself clear, reasonably, and without violence. I like that. A different approach is taken in Three Terrible Trins, about mouse triplets born to take revenge on the cats living in the farmhouse they occupy. It's all about violence and social hierarchy. It's also about a small force overcoming a large force through guerrilla tactics. Also, soccer.
The magic of the toys of the past is explored in Lady Daisy, when a modern boy is much taken with an antique doll, who talks. I find talking dolls scary, like masks and ventriloquists' dummies (and clowns, of course), and there was also the added worry of what would become of the doll in the hands of the boy's bully. I felt a great deal of stress often while reading this book, but it always dissipated. The story was just too well-told. The Merman worried me some, too. A little girl learns to swim with the help of the title character, in the seas around Scotland. The warming of the Earth's oceans make this possible. The recent movie The Water Horse is one of his stories, too. Magic creatures and funny stories are good for children.
And now for my favorite, The Stray. The little old title character is bored at the retirement home. She never really had much of a life (boyfriend died in World War II, parents invalids that she had to care for), so with all the money she has, she sets out on the train for the seaside. She is hired as a "home-help" by a dentist's family, and starts to really live. The characters are very real to me. I love the balding, flabbergasted dentist (upon meeting Henny, the stray old woman, he declares, "I think I'll have a drink."). I also enjoy Henny. She isn't put down by any set-back, even the absence of money when the dentist's children want ice cream on the beach (she gives the ice cream man her watch until she can get £3. I must admit, though, that it is one of the few books a prefer to listen to instead of actually reading it. The copy on tape that we have in the library is read by June Whitfield, who you might remember from such tv shows as Absolutely Fabulous (she was the mom), and Mirrorball (she was the mom). She also read the audio of Three Terrible Trins, but our copy got old and had to be deleted. She is very good.
Well, I saw the first two episodes of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It was just as delightful as I had hoped! I like the actors chosen, especially Lucian Msamati, who plays Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. He isn't what I pictured, but he is just exactly right. After the 2-hour premier, I read a critical review. It mentioned criticism of the story's treatment of the AIDS epidemic in Botswana. It called the author's mention of it "coy", and implied that it was squeamishness that kept it from being pursued as an important topic. Well, I believe it is squeamishness, but I doubt the author is avoiding it. Every book talks about the disease, and many characters are suffering with it, or love someone suffering with it. The secretary of the agency, Mma Makutsi's own brother is one. Everyone the detective meets knows what she means when she talks of "that disease", which argues that it is much on everyone's mind. It seems to me that it is the way of the people of Botswana to be careful of mentioning the disease, not the author.
I have always liked P. G. Wodehouse's work. I like the funny situations, I like the funny language, I like that he wrote whole novels and little short stories from the early part of the 20th century right up to the late part. I have even done things because of what I read in his stories (not something an intelligent person should admit, as it encourages unscrupulous persons to take advantage of suggestibility). Actually, I had already been thinking of taking up golf for exercise, but his golf short stories make it seem even more attractive. I'm not much on short stories, as I have often mentioned, but these are humorous and non-threatening. I even like his book about living in America, America, I like you. It amuses and edifies. He has been an author whose works attract may people, so I often find I have him in common with unexpected people.
First of all, my Aunt Kim has almost all of his books. I can't say all, because I don't know if she has the schoolboy stories, but I do know she has many that are hard to come by in the bookstores. She's worked hard to avoid missing one. We have him in common, but we have many things in common. I have often borrowed and read her books. Secondly, my friend Hilary and I have long read anything of his we could get our hands on, including a book about his works in the theater, whose title I cannot recall. We met in the era of Jeeves and Wooster's introduction to Masterpiece Theater, and watched plenty of that show together. I find now that my Knit Club friend and volunteer Maura also enjoyed that series, and those books. An unexpected windfall of a friend (plus, she has an autographed copy of The Grey King by Susan Cooper, with strange photographs as illustrations, which I am eager to see, but Susan Cooper is another blog entry). An elderly couple who frequent the library surprised me by suggesting two Wodehouse audio books for purchase by the library. I didn't think they liked anything but contemporary spy thrillers. I praised them roundly in the hopes that they would continue their superb suggestions (they also wanted us to get an audio edition of Some Buried Ceasar by Rex Stout, wherein Archie's longtime girlfriend Lily is introduced, and which I had never read or listened to, but Rex Stout is also another blog entry).
So I have P. G. Wodehouse in common with a lot of people, mostly women. His books help me talk to new people, which is easy for me professionally and very difficult personally. I find now that he was a recluse too! What a relief. I've been listening to a book about him called P. G. Wodehouse : The Authorised Biography by Francis Donaldson. She really knew him, and except for claiming that only men really enjoy that kind of humor (where bad things happen to people and it's supposed to be funny instead of making you feel bad for the sufferer and which I absolutely love because to me, nothing is funnier than real-life slapstick where someone falls so spectacularly that their feet fly up in th air over their heads, especially if it's me, and I must admit that I even find the Three Stooges funny, so there you go), I find her analysis of his work and life extremely edifying. I think you will too.
Here's what we have of his in our library today.
Bachelors Anonymous
The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood
Carry On, Jeeves
The Code of the Woosters : Jeeves to the Rescue (on CD)
The Eighteen-Carat Kid, and Other Stories
Love Among the Chickens (also on CD)
The Purloined Paperweight
Sunset at Blandings
Thank You, Jeeves
Please do not limit yourself to these titles only. Please seek him out in all his forms. There is an anecdote in the biography I'm hearing that relates how one Oxford (I think, it might have been Cambridge, though, so don't get upset however it turns out) don made reference to a P. G. Wodehouse book that all the dons understood, except one, who had never read him. He wrote a note to the first one asking to borrow a Wodehouse book, then passed a note for another one the next day, and so on through the first don's whole collection. It was an anecdote that illustrates how even the educated like these funny little stories and books. I think even the educated can be human, so let's all be human together.
Every Oregonian can be proud of the movies made in, on, and about their state. From the title of this entry, you can guess that one of these movies is Paint Your Wagon, with the unlikely singing talents of the aforementioned Lee Marvin, and the just as unlikely Clint Eastwood. I've tried to watch that movie many times, but I've only seen it beginning to end once (last Saturday, as a matter of fact). The area filmed around Baker figures prominently as a character itself. It's supposed to be California, but it sure looks like Baker. They hated filming that movie, but I enjoy seeing that rugged territory on film. Another movie in which Oregon had an important supporting role is The General, a Buster Keaton movie about a Civil War era train engineer. It had to be filmed in Cottage Grove, because they had a historically accurate rail line. Also, the Oregon National Guard was available, and could take on a little extra drill as first Union soldiers (filmed passing from left of the screen to the right), then as Confederate soldiers (they changed uniforms and marche back). A railroad bridge had to be blown up under the engine (The General, from the title), and the Oregon Guard's commanding officer was not warned ahead of time. He does look shocked. They only cleared the wrecked engine out of the ravine for scrap metal during World War II. If you visit Cottage Grove today (and, really, you should), you will find the film commemerated by a municipal mural. While on the subject of humorous films of Oregon, let us not neglect Kindergarten Cop, whose plot I can't really remember, except that it was about Arnold Schwarzenegger pretending to teach Kindergarten in Astoria while really being an undercover policeman for some reason. But Astoria is prominently featured in the movie, and the filming resulted in new fences, lawns and murals fro the John Jacob Astor Elementary School. Also, Universal studios filmed real Astorians as extras. Good for Universal. Speaking of Astoria, every reader my age will recall that The Goonies lived in Astoria, and searched for their lost pirate treasure under its cliffs. Grown-ups at the time were a little uncertain about the swearing children, but I actually was aware that children swore at that time. It just seemed like realism. Quarterback Princess, with Helen Hunt, was filmed in McMinnville, but I always think of that town as the home of Howard Hughes's Flying Boat (which you might remember as The Spruce Goose--I have a computer game that shows the mile-long flight of the Goose as a reward). And how about Animal House, filmed in Eugene? That's one that's less about the place it's filmed in, but I think a certain Eugene atmosphere leaks through.
I don't know if it's cheap to film in Oregon, or just beautiful. It certainly does have a lot of different looks to choose from. High chaparral, lush coastal forests, rolling fields and orchards, quirky cities of many kinds ( actually, I guess most of the city filming for tv is done in Vancouver, WA, not Portland, but still, the cities are worth filming).
From the 7th grade on, I drew lots of elves. Big ears, exuberant hairstyles, crazy hats--the works. I knew I'd been influenced by some professional's work, but I had only seen the books once, and couldn't exactly remember what the pictures had looked like. I was a freshman in college before I saw them again, and they were just as inspiring then! I started to hunt the graphic novels out in second hand book stores, and peered around the comic store next to campus for anything new. They were the ElfQuest comics of Wendy and Richard Pini.
Wendy draws the comics, and Richard writes the stories. They are colorful in both appearance and subject-matter. To distill the extremely long story to it's very essence, aliens crash on a stone-age human world, and spend centuries trying not to be killed. There's a lot of violence and tragedy. There's a lot of sinister beauty and brotherly love. They're not for children, but they are for young adults. They're mostly about diversity. I hope to soon have the series here in this library.
Now that I think about it, I find that I did read some of the stories much earlier than college, and in a different form. The book The Blood of Ten Chiefs is an anthology of ElfQuest stories written by favorite fantasy authors of the day, like Piers Anthony. Each story follows an ancestor of the comic book's main character, Cutter. It was the second grown-up book I ever read, after the Anne McCaffrey Pern novels. There were a couple of follow-up books to the first one, too, but I don't remember any of the stories. Still, it shows how intriguing the premise is!
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