Book Corner 2019.07

Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help

by Larissa MacFarquhar

This book was put together in a creative way; it wasn’t just philosophy and it wasn’t just case studies, it was both, but interspersed chapter-by-chapter, sometimes multiple chapters of one followed by one chapter of the other, or vice versa.

MacFarquhar is fascinated by extreme altruists, or as she likes to call them, “do-gooders.” She interviews a wide variety of them and lets them tell their stories, sometimes directly with their own words, sometimes through her. In between, she ponders what we owe to others vs. ourselves, and how we each answer that question differently, and what we lose – as well as gain – when we put others’ needs above our own. “Others” in all these contexts means those who are neither ourselves NOR our family members, nor even our friends, acquaintances, or neighbors – the do-gooders chronicled here are all dedicated to helping strangers.

Personal interest: One case study involved a family that adopted 22 children, hailing from none other than my home state, in Barre, Vermont.

Enjoy her interview here with Tyler Cowen:
View at Medium.com

WW Cauliflower-Crust Pizza

It’s good, and not hard if you’ve got a food processor to rice the cauliflower.

17 Inches and 1 Degree

Mudroom Floored

The mudroom has a floor now. It’s vinyl. I don’t like a faux wood look very much; but Xopher helped pick it out. It was hard to find something not cheesy-looking, that we thought would look OK with the walls. I’m not entirely sure we succeeded… but, it’ll be covered in mud soon enough.

The vinyl goes slightly up the walls for ease of lots of wet mopping. That was one of Xopher’s few requests.

I got seriously complimented on my sweater today at the Hapless Bagel Store. That makes my day, and makes up for them being so hapless. It’s the Norwegian Fishmerman sweater. It is pretty impressive looking. It’s black and white, with just a touch of red at the edges. But the black and white makes such a great contrast, it just makes the pattern totally … impactful. Looks not handmade.

Book Corner 2019.06

Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein

I rarely read futuristic fiction, so when I do, I’m usually like, “OMG, THIS IS SO CREATIVE!” But I think this was a very impressive collection of stories; only one clunker, the one about sending unlikeable kids up in rocket ships. Every story hooked me and left me satisfied.

Noodle Rocks the Kitchen

Looks awful. Tastes great. This is an old Cooking Light recipe I’ve used for eons. Instead of pork sausage, used turkey sausage, which dramatically increased my allowed WW serving size – that, and beans now being zero points on WW. I had it over riced cauliflower (bought frozen) with a side of simple kale steamed with sea salt & a touch of olive oil. “Tastes like mama’s manicotti.” That’s an obscure movie reference.

Book Corner 2019.05

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

Too thinky. Too suggesty. When plot does happen, it lands like a ton of bricks. About half dozen too many tragedies.

Vermont 251!

I’ve joined something called the “Vermont 251 Club.” The goal is to visit each of the 251 towns in Vermont. There are no rules. If you pay dues to join, you get to use their not-very-good website. Here’s my home page. I paid extra to buy a scrapbook. It’s spiral bound and lined and lists every town with a quarter page or more for taking notes. I’m printing out actual physical copies of my pictures and pasting them in. Yeah, with glue! I don’t know, I’m down on the entire Internet these days. I didn’t want this silly little project to be just another collection of selfies floating around. I wanted an artifact. And not all the pictures are even going to be selfies. Was a time when people just took pictures of what was around them. I don’t have to prove to anyone I was in each town. I know I was there and the project is my own little game.

Book Corner 2019.04

end

The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen

The book is about 50% birds, and I’m really just not that into birds, or nature or conservation writing. So, I skimmed a couple of chapters.

He’s good when he is writing from a personal perspective. I enjoyed his chapter about living in NY in the early 80s, and particularly the bookend chapters. The first was a kind of retrospective explanation/apologia/accounting for an essay previously published, where he got pissed at the Audubon Society for trying to get people to focus on climate change instead of more immediate concrete actions that would more directly help birds; and the essay itself was reprinted. Maybe one or two sentences could have been toned down; but I really thought it was a perfectly good essay and I’m sorry people all piled on him for writing it, calling him a “birdbrain” (har, har) and even a climate change denier (please).
The last essay really made my day, even though it WAS partly about birds; it was a recounting of a pricey expedition to Antarctica, and his sighting of an Emperor Penguin. I even read the good bits to my husband. It was interspersed with reminiscences of the uncle who had left him the money that made the expedition possible, which really didn’t belong; and I’m just tired of recollections of dead old relatives and pathos in general. So this essay was an exceptional instance of wishing he’d skip the personal stuff and get back to the birds.

From the Fiber Mill

Exhibit A: Viking Socks. And do they ever look like Viking socks, i.e. something out of the 6th century. The author of this pattern needs to bone up on 17-th century heel-turning technology.

Exhibit B: More of my (should-be) patented multi-color homespun 100% mohair yarn.