Quotes of the (Most Fabulous, So Far in 2011) Wednesday

Self had Rick’s Cookie Dough Ice Cream!  At The Café in the Arrillaga Alumni Center, after the Feminist Studies Honors Presentation at Stanford!  (She still doesn’t think it’s as fabulous as Gelato Classico’s Lychee, however it is at least $2 cheaper for a small scoop)

Anyhoo, it was a most intelligent afternoon.  Self was in time to catch the last half of the Honors Presentations, and quite a diverse group it was:  There was a young woman who presented on feminist writing from Saudi Arabia, and another who talked about three generations of women ranchers in Wyoming.  There was a young woman who spoke about finding inspiration in Edward Hopper paintings while on Study Abroad in Italy, and another who spoke about being inspired by her two months working at an Iraqi refugee camp in Jordan.  There was yet another young woman who spoke about being inspired by Alice Munro’s The View From Castle Rock, and who had written a novella called, amusingly, The Budget.  All of the young women, it turned out, were from a class self had visited several years ago, at the invitation of Professor Valerie Miner.

Self doesn’t recall which of the young women said this, but it struck her as being so true:

Narrative creates us, as it is being created.

The last young woman to read, the one who was writing a novella, was a very humorous writer.  Here’s a quote from her novella:

Aunt Rita meant well and only came across as heartless because she had no tact.

BWAH.  HA.  HA.  HA!

And self thought the above only applied to Filipinos.

The young woman named her novella The Budget : the plot revolved around a cycle of letters between friends which eventually grows into a huge archive of personal memory.  When any of the women’s husbands asked what the women were so busy with, they replied:  “The budget.”

That young woman has tremendous perspicacity, self thinks.

The young woman who was writing short stories about the Iraqi refugee camp was blonde.  She talked of showing her stories to a friend who was from Jordan (or was it Saudi Arabia?).  The young man was from a rich family.  He asked her what gave her the right, what made her think she could appropriate these stories, these personal narratives that didn’t even belong to her.  Self thought it was very brave of that student to tell about this conversation, which must have been hurtful.  The young woman explained that she had “grown up in an America steeped with the consciousness of our relationship with the Middle East.” (Self put the young woman at about 22 years of age.  So, yes, she would still have been in primary school when 9/11 occurred)   The young woman said she learned, from the refugees, that “waiting is not a paralysis:  it is a reckoning.”

So, after that fabulous afternoon, self swung by the Menlo Park Library and checked out a copy of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.  The back cover has several blurbs which all refer to it as a “tragedy.”  Oh.  Self is such a Philistine —  she can’t remember how long it’s been since she’s read Edith Wharton.

Then she went home and waited for hubby.  Since he was working later than usual (Self simply surmised this because it was getting dark), she poured herself a glass of Merlot and went skipping about the web, looking for more reviews of “Midnight in Paris,” which is her # 1 most relaxing current activity, ever since she and hubby saw the movie last Sunday.  She hates that all the reviews spend so much ink detailing the plot when —  hello!  —  wouldn’t it be so much better if the viewer was surprised, as self was when she saw it?  She honestly hadn’t heard a thing, not a thing about it, which was good because then all the movie’s gags (and it really is a gag movie, just one that happens to be written by Woody Allen) were fresh.

Here’s a quote from Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian, who actually didn’t like the film all that much (He called it “a shallow examination of nostalgia”):

The view of Owen Wilson strolling, incidentally, shows a distinctive loping gait:  Like Robert Mitchum or John Wayne, he might have one of the most notable walks in Hollywood.

HA HA HA!  Only a British reviewer could mention Owen Wilson in the same breath as Robert Mitchum or John Wayne!

Stay tuned.

The bin Laden Raid: Best Written Backstory (So Far), Courtesy of AP

Ever since the news broke last night, self has been wondering what the crucial tip-off was, that led to the Seals finding bin Laden’s residence.  The answer comes in this article by Associated Press, posted several hours ago on the Yahoo!  News site.

It seems that, years ago (shortly after 9/11, in fact), U.S. intelligence had already concluded that “bin Laden’s vulnerability was his couriers.”  According to the article:

He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout.  But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.

Detainees in the CIA’s “secret prison network” told interrogators about an important courier who went by the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (What?  America has a “secret prison network”?  You mean, aside from Gitmo?  Oh, right,

Rating Obama’s Speech Tonight

“We will be relentless in defense of our citizens . . .  Justice has been done.”

—  Obama informing the world that Osama Bin Laden had been killed (Days ago?  It took a while before the U.S. government could absolutely confirm his identity, via DNA testing)

10 out of 10.  10 out of 10.  10 out of 10.

Stay tuned.

Latest Book Deals (From PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, 17 January 2011)

Latest deal announcements from Publishers Weekly :

Mystery/ Crime

• Law & Order:  SVU Executive Producer Neal Baer’s Kill Switch, “a series featuring a female forensic psychiatrist who joins with a former police officer to look for a former patient turned serial killer, written with co-executive producer Jonathan Greene,” to Kensington, in a three-book deal

General/Other

• The follow-up to the debut novel How To Be an American Housewife, Margaret Dilloway’s The Rose of Galilee, “about a solitary amateur botanist who’s on the path to perfecting a new breed of rose” who has “her world turned upside down by . . .  her wayward niece,” to Putnam, for publication in 2012
• Author of The Writing On My Forehead and finalist for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, Nafisa Haji’s The Sweetness of Tears, “in which a young Christian woman uncovers the secret her mother has been keeping from her:  that her biological father is Muslim,” to William Morrow

Memoir

• Academy Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek’s Barefoot Stories, “a memoir told in stories, spanning her childhood in Texas, her arrival in New York City with only a small suitcase and a guitar, and her adult life and distinguished acting career,” to Hyperion for publication in 2012

There were other fascinating deal announcements, such as former Cantor Fitzgerald partner Lauren Manning’s Every Day, A Choice, a “memoir of survival and self-renewal” about how she “survived terrible burns on 9/11, as documented in husband Greg Manning’s 2002 book Love, Greg & Lauren,” but, alas, self has many many things to do today, many relatives to visit and many jeepney rides to take and more adventures to embark on.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Thursday, the 13th of September 2001: What Is a “Normal” Life?

9/11 happened on a Tuesday.

(It just so happened this was Ying’s birthday.  Also the day that she passed away, two years ago, in Tel Aviv.  She was 37.  Now 9/11 evokes a complicated layer of feeling that pretty much guarantees self is a basket case for a few days before and a few days after)

On the Thursday after 9/11, self hunted down a copy of The New York Times.  Copies had been scarce, the day before.  But on Thursday, she actually found a copy, she doesn’t remember now whether she got it from Borders or from Kepler’s.  Self found the 2001 newspaper in the garage this morning, when she was cleaning out some shelves.

These were the front-page headlines.  The names in parentheses are those of the reporters:

• A Grim Forecast:  Barest Count, by Three of Hundreds of Firms, Has 1,500 Missing (by Robert D. McFadden)
• A City of Quiet:  Nothing Is Same One Day After (by N. R. Kleinfield)
• On a Doomed Jet, Passengers Vowed to Perish Fighting (by Jodi Wilgoren and Edward Wong)
• A Few Moments of Hope in a Mountain of Rubble (by Dan Barry)

Self finds it incredible that coherent stories could be constructed, barely two days after the calamity.  Likely, no one at the Times slept:  not the editors, not the reporters, not even the drivers of the vans that dropped off copies of the newspaper to various distribution points.

A quote from the first article listed above states:

A nation that had been aghast and mostly shut down on Tuesday tried to move back toward a semblance of normal life.  Across the country, businesses, shopping malls, government offices and skyscrapers reopened.

Also from the same article:

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that 82 bodies had been recovered from the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center, a fraction of the thousands he said were presumed dead.

Incidentally, in about 10 days self will be in New York.  As it happens, with Dearest Mum.  She hasn’t been in New York with Dearest Mum since 1995.  That is the city where Dearest Mum grew up.  Self is going to try and mine her memories for all she’s worth.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Today, Last Tuesday of September 2009

It was so incredibly cold and blustery (and it’s not even Winter yet:  in fact, it’s barely Fall) that the two li’l crits stayed indoors all day, pressed against each other on a cushion next to the dining room where self sat, writing.

She was going to see “The September Issue” (a documentary about Vogue Magazine editor Anna Wintour).  That, at least, was what she kept telling herself all day, to make herself continue writing —  doggedly and with purpose.

But the matinee showtime came and went, and self was still at home.

Instead, she read James Risen’s State of War and learned that the plans for the

Tomorrow, Sept. 11

While everyone else is commemmorating the World Trade Center (or should be), self is remembering the fact that tomorrow is Ying’s birthday.

It’s also the day she passed away, a year ago, in Tel Aviv.

My mother had stepped out of the room for a moment, my brother was

Reading Ian McEwan’s SATURDAY on a (Labor Day) Monday

Self just realized: This is her first Ian McEwan novel.

Where was she all these years? She was falling in love with Deborah Digges who, as far as self knows, had only one or two books (of prose, that is), and who taught at Tufts and who passed away earlier this year, much too soon, and Rosario Castellanos and Nina Berberova.

But, better late than never. She has arrived at Ian McEwan. And the first novel of his that she happens to read is Saturday. And it’s tangentially about 9/11. And it begins so well, with that gripping scene of the doctor standing at his window and seeing a plane on fire.

But then it begins to meander, and in a novel this short there really shouldn’t be any meandering, and the doctor goes on and on and on about how much he loves his wife (Okay, self gets it, the man is blessed. Which can only mean one thing: the novel will end with the doctor in a singular state of un-blessedness. Which self thinks is a rather

A Weekend with Brother-in-Law

Hubby’s younger brother is visiting from New Jersey. He arrived Friday night, and yesterday we took him around Redwood City, treating him to lunch at Pho Dong and, a few hours later, to early dinner at City Pub. Today we went to a dimsum place in Belmont, then to the Mountain View Farmers Market, then to Goldilocks on Rengstorff (where self bumped into Elizabeth N, a student she taught last spring, at xxxx community college), then to downtown Palo Alto (for gelato), then home. The rest of the afternoon, brother-in-law kept hubby company while he watched one football game after another. Self cooked chicken apritada; brother-in-law helped her peel and chop potatoes and washed up in the sink. After dinner, self graded papers. After a couple of hours, self took a break and joined the men in front of the TV, and brother-in-law asked self if she watched “Prime Suspect.” No, self said, but she knows what it is: a police drama starring a flawed heroine, played by the magnificent Helen Mirren.

“The American version is The Closer,” brother-in-law said, which came as a big surprise to self. Self then found herself doing a mental comparison of Helen Mirren and Kyra Sedgwick. Aside from the fact that they are both super actresses, and are both in the “mature” category, she can’t think of a lot these two women have in common. In any case, it turns out that brother-in-law is such a fan of “Prime Suspect” that he has all seven seasons on disk.

Self asks brother-in-law if he likes “Heroes,” which hubby’s suddenly developed a fondness for. Brother-in-law replies that he doesn’t watch regular channels any longer, only cable. It all started with 9/11, he continues. Before 9/11, his home in Newark, NJ got good reception from a signal beamed from the top of the World Trade Center. After the buildings were knocked down, he and everyone else in his neighborhood had such bad TV reception that they were forced to get cable, and now he watches nothing else.

The other thing brother-in-law tells self is that he has been to games in Boston’s Fenway Park three times. “What about Yankee Stadium?” self asks. Brother-in-law’s only been there once. He says, “The bathrooms stank.”

From brother-in-law, self also learns that there are no Goldilocks branches on the east coast, only Red Ribbons. So, now that brother-in-law is here, almost the first thing he wants to do is go to Goldilocks. And when we get there, he buys so much polvoron and brazo de mercedes and cassava cake that he spends nearly $100. Self figures he is going to hand-carry the brazo and the cassava and perhaps even the polvoron. She assumes he must be planning to feed a houseful of people (brother-in-law rents a room from a Filipino family).

He also has a GPS navigation system. Last night, he lent it to self so that she could find her way to Edwin L’s house in Diamond Heights. Amazing: self blithely followed all the instructions and she made it from Redwood City to Edwin’s house in just a little over half an hour. Sold!

Tomorrow, brother-in-law says he’ll take a train to the City and visit a couple of museums. Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

“102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Flight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers”: P. 195

Self has slowed down her reading of this book considerably.  Just before going to bed last night, she read a little more, and stopped at p. 195. Then she had her first uninterrupted six hours of sleep in a long time. When she awoke, she called Dearest Mum who, considering that she’d just flown to Tel Aviv, spent a few days there, and flown straight back, was surprisingly calm.  Dearest Mum told self that she was still looking for a container in which to put part of Ying’s ashes:  Ying had requested that some of her ashes be brought to the Buddhist temple in Bangkok where her parents are buried.  Self is so relieved that Dearest Mum delivers this information without comment; her aunts here were so adamant about Ying being baptized before she died, self imagines they would have something to say about the Buddhist temple bit.  But perhaps, self thinks, it is because Ying was a Buddhist that she and self got along so well.  Truly, self has never known anyone, Christian or not, who was as kind and humble as her sister-in-law.

Self has many lessons to prepare for the coming week, so it’s well past the lunch hour by the time she resumes reading 102 Minutes:  The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers.  In the book, it’s 9:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001, and the layout of the south towers is inclining inexorably towards tragedy.

Self learns of four companies that had employees in the uppermost floors of the south tower: Keefe, Bruyette & Woods; Sandler O’Neill, a trading firm; Aon; and Fiduciary Trust.

At 9:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001, sixty-seven employees of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods were still alive on the 88th and 89th floors. There were eighty-seven employees of Sandler O’Neill who had reported to work that day, and of these only 20 had managed to leave the building. Aon had 176 still inside. The daughter of the man who had helped build the trade center’s Otis elevators was trapped on the 97th floor. The woman called her husband, who worked at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The husband called the school’s security and engineering staff for advice on what his wife should do. Hit the sprinklers, they said. Use a shoe, anything.

A man named Shimmy Biegeleisen, trapped on the 97th floor, was sharing a phone with others in his office. They had managed to plug the phone into the back of a computer, “bypassing the central phone systems that relied on the building’s electrical power.” At this point, dear blog readers, the narrative becomes acute: