I had the the great fortune tonight, through the kindness of some wonderful fellow Chicagoans, to be able to attend a fundraising reception at which Joe Biden was the guest of honour. As my loyal readers will remember, I didn’t know much about him before he was chosen as the VP candidate, but I was so impressed with what I saw in Springfield and everything since then, that I jumped at the chance.
The reception was at a private house, and we stood around chatting for a bit over wine and nibblies before we were ushered out to the garden which had cement steps in the back. almost as if it had been designed for open-air theatre — or itinerant speech-making vice presidential candidates.
Finally, the guest of honour arrived, and we hung on his every word. He had some notes written up, but he put them in his pocket and spoke off the cuff for a few moments. This was a speech that was given far from the press to an enthusiastic and intimate audience of supporters and friends. What impressed me the most was his awareness of the critical nature of this moment he has become part of, the opportunity for real change we have now and maybe only now. After he spoke, he answered a few questions, one not surprisingly about how he is going to handle Gov. Palin in the debates. His answer was revealing. He said that this was a question that might have made sense thirty five years ago, when he was first 
in the Senate and there were very few women in politics. But he has been debating all kinds of strong and powerful women for years. This is going to be nothing new for him. You may be afraid, but he is totally unfazed.
There was a brief chance to talk more informally after the questions were over. I was enormously impressed by every moment of this evening. Joe Biden is a man who knows what he’s doing, why he’s doing it (and who he’s in this for), and how to do it best. We should all have such a strong sense of purpose.
John Kerry
Well, erm, I guess I’ve outed myself politically already so I might as well keep on going. I wanted to post this speech because I thought it was the standout of the night, and I know the networks cut it off. I thought more people should have a chance to see it.
I found it poignant that Kerry was able to unleash the full force of his passion and brilliance on behalf of Barack Obama in a way that he was never able to do for his own presidential candidacy. But maybe that’s what we should have expected from a man who won a silver and a bronze star for helping others, not thinking of himself. And isn’t thinking of and working for others before onesself the real mark of a hero?
Springfield
Yup, I was there. I’d never been to a big campaign rally before and I decided that, as an Illinois resident, yesterday might be my last chance. I’m glad I went. It was exciting, but even more than that, I’m glad I saw how the whole thing works. I’ll have a better idea now of just what goes into an event like that. First of all, the security. My heart sank when I saw the line to get in circling around and around many city blocks. But it moved very quickly, and the guards were both extremely efficient and extremely thorough getting us through the metal detectors and bag check. I finally understood just how hard it would be for someone with ill intent to get up to something at one of these rallies. And the snipers in the photo? Yeah. There was one guy on the roof right abut us though whose sole job was to spot people in the crowd who had collapsed and direct people to go help. With a crowd standing three hours and more in the hot sun with little water, that happened often.
Obama was low key and Biden was wonderful — impassioned, articulate (not to say clean), and a great wingman. But you can read about that elsewhere. Being in the crowd is such a different experience from seeing it on TV. First of all, you have no sense of how big the whole crowd really is. All you can see is your own tiny part of it. And there was a lot of booing when they talked abut Bush and McCain. Did that come through on TV? I never heard it before. You see how chants begin and spread through the crowd. But the most striking thing of all that I learned was that when you attend a rally like that, you’re not there to hear a speech and learn about a candidate (we could hear perfectly, though we couldn’t see much). The audience at a rally isn’t an audience at all. It is part of the spectacle, part of the performance for the real viewers, who are sitting at home. And we performed our hearts out.
Thank goodness for my little zoom lens or my photos would be even more pointless than they are now. But I had to post this one because you can see Michelle, and I <3 Michelle. We were hoping they’d walk down to our end of the stage, but they didn’t. The event started right on time and went very quickly. I think they knew they couldn’t leave all of out there in that heat for much longer.
Perhaps the coolest thing about being there was I got to be one of the first in the country to get an Obama/Biden sign. They were still warm and the ink scent was strong when they pulled them out of boxes to pass them to us, literally hot off the press. We had dinner in Champaign, and you could tell which waiters had made the trip to Springfield by their sunburns. We had sunburns too, but those will fade. The sign is in my window.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
It’s a light, empty, fun movie, worth it if you are looking for mindless summer fun. I also found it hilarious in ways I don’t believe the director planned. I think poor Mr. Allen learned everything he knows about Spain from the foyer of a luxury hotel and the back seat of a taxicab. And what Woody seems to have learned is that Barcelona is a lot like Los Angeles! People own handguns and drive around in massive silver SUVs and live in mansions, with pools, and invite people over to their fabulous modern kitchens with stainless steel appliances. Like, L.A., there are a lot of Spanish speakers around but it’s okay because they all speak English too. God forbid that in Catalunya they should speak, you know, Catalan. So it’s not surprising that when our heroines finally leave Barcelona (mild spoiler alert), they have experienced none of the personal epiphanies that are usually associated with the broadening effects of foreign travel. They never really left home.
Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
I finished this last night. I tried not to, I really did, because I knew that once I had turned the last page, I’d never experience the joy of reading this wonderful story for the first time ever again. But I couldn’t help myself, I had to keep reading, faster and faster…I had to know… And what a satisfying ending.
It’s a Gothic novel about twins, and it also shares many of the same attributes as Zafon’s wonderful Shadow of the Wind: books, fire, and hidden identities. If you liked that, you’ll love this one, but it is also very much more of a “women’s novel,” written for anyone who ever loved Wuthering Heights, or The Lady in White, or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, or Middlemarch, or Jane Eyre. Above all Jane Eyre, especially if, like me, you lost interest in that book the first time you read it after the part when Jane’s first friend dies, and she returns from school.
So what are you waiting for? Go! Go! Times a-wasting. Start reading!
That means you especially, Mum.
I’m back
Just got back last night after ten days at the cottage in the Eastern Townships with a side trip involving a night in Montreal and a weekend in Quebec City. Much good food was eaten and conviviality shared, but what struck me was the potential for good historical fiction about this whole area.
There is an old and noble tradition of historical writing about French Canada during the ancien regime and the British colonies to the south, including the war of Independence — I’m thinking of authors like Thomas Costain, Thomas Raddall, and Kenneth Roberts. But when I say old, I mean old. Surely we are due for some reinterpretations. I thought of my friend with Renaissance and Early modern interests as I strolled the streets of old Quebec, still intact within its original walls, and couldn’t help feeling that this town in its restored beauty might provide as strong a sense of how the French lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as any in France.
The photo at left is from Old Montreal, and it shows the “sailor’s church,” Notre Dame de Bon Secours (immortalized by Leonard Cohen as “Our Lady of the Harbour”) with the silvered dome of the Marche de Bonsecours in the background.
Yaz
We all have bands that were the soundtrack for our lives at different points. Yaz, or Yazoo as they were known in the UK (being Canadian I heard both and so am still thoroughly mixed up, as in so many things), was mine for those crucial end-of-high-school-beginning-of-college years. Their career as a band was so short lived — two or three years? only two albums — that their original fans, those, who like me, listened to their songs over and over in dorm rooms and scruffy apartments, represent not a whole generation but a sliver of a demographic.
Yet passionate we are, and the whole Chicago branch of that demographic was present at the Chicago Theatre last night for a wonderful reunion concert of their distinctive bluesy electro-pop. I’d like to say “long-awaited” reunion concert but really, who knew? It was the best sort of surprise, one that you don’t even know you want until it happens.
I’d say more, but I’m tempted to revert to sullen teenager mode and just say either you get it about Yaz or you don’t. I was asked last night when I first learned about them and the answer is that I heard about them the way all new music gets transmitted, from the older sister of a friend. She loaned me a mixed tape, which I dubbed and still have. It was my first introduction to music beyond Top 40 and AOR (bonus points if you remember what AOR stood for). For the record, below the fold, the contents of “Lucy’s Tape,” named after her, not me: Continue reading “Yaz”
Reading meme
Aw shucks, it’s my first internet meme. It seems reading habit discussions are going around the internet these days. I got this from Teresa and there was a great post this morning on BookEnds on childhood reading. I’d love to hear your answers, either in the comments, or on your own blog.
Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?
I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, but I do remember that the first chapter book I read was Enid Blyton’s Five go to Kirrin island. I also remember being in grade one and trying to go to the section in the library where I could find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the librarian gently but firmly steering me back to the picture book section. Being read to as a child was crucially important.
What are some of the books you read as a child?
Do you have a few hours? I would typically bring ten to twelve books home a week from the library. Favourites, at different ages, were Enid Blyton, L.M. Montgomery, Arthur Ransome, Laura Inglis Wilder, Edward Eager, E.M. Nesbit, Elizabeth Enright, Eloise Jarvis McGraw (Greensleeves – I still reread this one), Grace Richardson (Apples Every Day – this one too), Noel Streatfield, Mara Kay, Maud Hart Lovelace, Joan Aiken, Alison Uttley, Rosemary Sutcliff, etc. etc. I also started exploring the adult section at a fairly young age, and discovered Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt (who were, of course, the same person).
What is your favourite genre?
I’m eclectic — I’ll read the best books in any genre. Literary fiction and historical fiction, especially about times and places I don’t know much about, are old favourites. Mysteries/thrillers and fantasy are more recent loves. I haven’t read much SF (does William Gibson count?) but I expect I’ll get to it some day.
Do you have a favourite novel?
Every time I reread Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, Carol Shields’ Republic of Love, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings I get something completely different out of them. So they would be god desert island candidates.
Where do you usually read?
On my bed.
When do you usually read?
In the evening,
Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
Not happily. If I do, it means that I wasn’t enjoying my first book and I’ll probably never go back to it. So I suppose technically, I have one book that I’m reading and another I think I should be reading.
Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
I read cookbooks like I read novels. I read other non fiction for research purposes, so I am usually taking notes.
Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
I buy them, used and new.
Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
I try to cull them periodically and I usually end up donating a bag or two to a book sale. But since much more than a bag or two of books enters my house every year, there is a problem here.
If you have children, what are some of the favourite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
It has been fascinating rereading old books to my son and seeing which hold up and which don’t. Madeleine L’Engle, Susan Cooper, Arthur Ransome, and The Phantom Tollbooth were as good as they ever were. All my Narnia book preferences had changed. Some old friends were not as good on rereading.
What are you reading now?
I’m in the middle of an old Elizabeth Peters, The Camelot Caper. Good fun.
Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?
A TBR stack on the top of one bookshelf.
What’s next?
Not sure, but I just bought my very first book by Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls, so that may be it.
What books would you like to reread?
I reread books often, which is why I keep most of the books I buy. I suspect the book I have read the most often is L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingeside. If it’s not that one, it is definitely one of hers.
Who are your favourite authors?
In no particular order, Laurie Colwin, Margaret Elphinstone, Dorothy Dunnett, Carol Shields, Mary Wesley, Margaret Drabble, A.S. Byatt, Doris Lessing, Charles de Lint, Elizabeth George, Dorothy Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, Angela Thirkell, P.D. James, Sarah Caudwell, Cecelia Holland, Pamela Dean, Vera Brittain, Garth Nix, Gail Godwin, Connie Willis, Susan Howatch, Susan Isaacs, Melissa Banks and I should probably shut up now because I could go on forever but there was probably something else you planned to do today.
Eeeeexcellent!
Cool, I won an award for blogging from my pal Julianne over at Writing the Renaissance. Now I get to nominate some of my favourite blogs in a wonderful blogging-pyramid scheme that will bring us all lots of lovely links, hoorah!
I have a vague idea that these are supposed to be historical fiction blogs, but since a lot of my favourites have already been named, I am going to pretend I do not know this and just nominate as my whimsy takes me (and by the way, there are at least five blogs called, “As my whimsy takes me.” I’m surprised it’s not more.)
LadyTess — Historical romance, Canadiana, and we went to college together. How can you lose? And if you hurry over there right now, yes right now, she has a photo of a deer in her very top post.
Plotters & Manipulators United — Sherry Thomas doesn’t post very often, but when she does it is always interesting, especially when she writes about the craft of writing. Actually, the reason I am giving her this is to nudge her into posting more. Nudge, nudge.
Whatever — John Scalzi writes SF not HF, but world-building is world-building and I visit every day. Mostly, I confess, for the cat photos and the political rants. No, with his billions and billions of hits, he does not need my blog award, but he’s up for a fan writer Hugo this year (oh, and: best novel), and I thought maybe if he didn’t win that, the Blogger Excellence Award might be some small consolation.
Into that world inverted… — I think I have been reading too many “how to write” books because what I want to say is that I love Sarah Rees Brennan’s blogging voice. And it seems strange to talk about voice on a blog, but I suppose it shouldn’t be. Read her blog for a while, and then I defy you not yo buy her book when it comes out.
Smart Bitches <3 Trashy Books — Another blog that doesn’t need my link to get hits, but these smart, feminist romance novel fans are my guilty pleasure and I might as well come clean about it. It’s been a long time since I read a romance, but it doesn’t matter. As they say, “Come for the Dominican bitches — stay for the man titty!” Oh lord, what kind of search strings am I going to end up with now?
And one food blog, for good luck:
Gastronomy Domine — Just don’t click the link if you’re feeling hungry. You’ve been warned.
Oh Canada
Yeah, I know everyone’s seen it already. And it’s a beer commercial. But have a happy Canada day anyway, eh?