Film Fest Two

The low-key Japanese film Love Life begins in medias res, with Taiko and Jiri, a young middle-class couple, preparing for a surprise birthday party. In one early scene  Taiko shouts across the courtyard to an older woman; it turns out her in-laws live in the same apartment complex. Out in the street she consults with a group of people from the office where Jiri works about the festivities. One of them she's never met before, and she asks Jiri why he never mentions her in conversation. He brushes off the question with a shrug. 

Their young son, Kieta, has just won another Othello tournament, and they're using that as a cover for the birthday event, for which Jiri's father will be the focus of attention. Unfortunately, the old man arrives in a huff. There are hints and illusions as to the source of the tension underlying this ostensibly light-hearted gathering, but it takes us a while to put the pieces together. Kieta is Taiko's son from a previous marriage. Jiri was engaged to the woman in the street until he met Taiko; a newcomer to the office invited her to the party by mistake. And Jiri's parents are growing impatient to have a second grandchild--one of their own lineage.

I wouldn't be giving away so many pieces of the plot, except these are only a few of the complications Taiko and Juri face before the film gets rolling. It's riddled with politeness, disappointment, humor, and tragedy, unexpected turns and astute reflections about the past. It's a rich and satisfying  melange, which also includes some balloons, a stray cat, and two nuns singing karaoke.

The Eight Mountains takes us to the Alps north of Turin, Italy, where an urban couple and their son Pietro spend summers in a largely deserted village—the population has dropped to fourteen. Pietro forms a friendship with Bruno, the only child who lives there, though the two could hardly be more different. Bruno is robust; Pietro tends to get altitude sickness. Bruno has the matter-of-fact confidence of someone who knows his realm—the mountains—and has little interest in anything else. Pietro has no idea who he wants to become, though he comes to detest his father's driven way of life, exemplified by a tireless mountain-climbing enthusiasm. With the passage of time, while Bruno is laying bricks with his dad, Pietro cuts ties with his parents and carves out a bohemian path that seems to be going nowhere, though it leads him eventually to Nepal.

The film follows the lives of the two men, both heavily bearded now, as they revive their friendship in adulthood. Pietro struggles to come to grips with the fact that Bruno had spent a lot of time with his father during the years he was away. He helps Bruno restore a mountain chalet, brings his friends up from the city, and Bruno eventually marries one of them.

The mountain scenery is good, though the film was shot in a squarish format that restricts the views. But it's an odd and incomprehensible vibe at times, and the English-language folk songs on the soundtrack add to the disquieting effect. Which is another way of say that 8 Mountains doesn't fit a conventional story-telling mold. And I guess that's good. 

Max Roach: the Drum Also Waltzes follows the pattern of many jazz biopics, with black-and-white stills of Manhattan after dark (horns honking in the background or ice clinking in a glass), great music from the bebop era, detours into the world of heroin and other drugs, and interviews with the artist himself, the musicians he played with, and his wives and kids. It's always fun. Perhaps a film about an eminent drummer might not be quite as much fun, because drumming isn't all that interesting to most of us, in and of itself. On the other hand, Roach's story is enlivened by his efforts during the civil rights era to elevate that pressing issue in the public consciousness. The taped interview with the director that followed the film also added to the event.

 

One might suspect from the title that Greener Pastures is a film about agriculture. Not so. Although the focus here is on four Midwestern family farms in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota that are failing for one reason or another, during the course of the ninety-minute film we learn absolutely nothing about what the reasons are. The farmers themselves make a few offhand references to NAFTA, "factory farms," and tariffs making it difficult to sell powdered milk to China, but the filmmakers offer us no specific information about such things. The entire film is devoted to lackluster scenes in which the farmers stroll through the milking barn, drive their corn-harvesting machinery, or play military video-games in the basement to relax while complaining about tough market conditions and how much they love their cows. Bernie Sanders makes a brief appearance, of course.

Of the four farmers involved, one is leaving the farm to set up a business to counsel other farmers who, like him, have attempted or contemplated suicide. That's a worthy endeavor. Another is a practicing alcoholic who often finishes off a six-pack of beer before lunch. A third farmer seems to be hanging on largely due to his wife's cake-decorating business until he gives in and sells the mineral rights to his acreage, which will net him $150,000 per month. "I can tell, people in town sort of resent me now. They think I'm rich," he says. "But that don't bother me."

I like farm films, but we're far removed here from the world of Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, or the well-financed, thoughtfully managed California organic farm we see in The Biggest Little Farm. Farming can be a tough business, I know, and the little guy without a competitive edge is likely to lose out. But it's the same in every business. I read in the Star-Tribune a few weeks ago that the average net profit of a Minnesota farm last year was $179,000. That doesn't seem too bad to me. The income of dairy farmers dropped by 25 percent, however. 

Someone ought to make a movie helping us to understand why. 

Korean director Hong Sangsoo's filmography must number more than thirty works by now. His films tend to be fresh, rambling, and seemingly uncalculated, as if movie-making were a relaxed poetic endeavor rather than a leviathan corporate undertaking.

 His latest, Walk Up, is a black-and-white bagatelle involving a famous film director, Byung-soo,  who escorts his daughter Jeongsu to meet Byung's former friend Ms. Kim, a sometime interior designer, at the small apartment building she owns. Jeongsu is interested in interior design, and Byong thinks she might learn sometime and overcome her shyness by chatting with Ms. Kim. Ms. Kim gives her guests a tour of the building: a woman runs a restaurant on the second floor and a reclusive painter lives on the third.

A series of casual conversations ensue with plenty of drinking and an ever-changing cast of participants.  At one point Byung is called away to meet with a film producer and Jeongsu and Ms. Kim carry on a halting conversation not only about interior design, but at greater length about what it's like to be the daughter of a famous film director. Jeongsu goes outside to smoke a cigarette and strikes up a conversation with the boy who works in the building, and he fills her in on Ms. Kim's quirks of character. Hours pass, Byung hasn't returned, and Ms. Kim sends Jeongsu off to the corner store to buy another bottle of wine.

Things begin to get strange when we witness a repeat of the building tour, and Ms. Kim and Byung join Sunhee, the woman running the second-floor restaurant, for an afternoon of giggly wine-soaked conversation. Ms. Kim eventually heads down to her basement apartment to get some whisky and never returns, while Byung and Sunhee carry on a rambling conversation about his films, which she tells him she especially enjoys while drinking.

Time passes. The situation has changed, perhaps more than once; it's hard to tell. Another extended scene takes place on the terrace of the top-floor apartment. It seems Byung has moved into the artist's apartment with Sunhee. He's ill. She's going out to visit a friend who's getting married. He falls asleep on the bed. And so on.

The pieces of Walk Up don't really add up, though the ending is tidy. It were as if Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut had collaborated on an Asian remake of Run, Lola, Run. Some viewers will find the result self-indulgent. Others will be intrigued enough to see it again. An L.A. Times critic remarked, “Walk Up flows as absorbingly as a dream and is no less pleasurable to puzzle over afterward."

    

Norton's Birthday

The other night publisher Norton Stillman was feted at the St. Paul University Club. Poetry readings take place there once a month, but the turnout for this one far exceeded the norm. It was Norton's ninetieth birthday, and fifteen of the poets he's published over the years were slated to read one poem apiece from a Nodin Press collection. 

The event was featured in both the Star-Tribune and the Pioneer Press, and the room was packed, not only with poets and poetry-lovers but also with printers, publishers reps, bookstore owners, former employees of Bookmen (Norton's book warehouse, now long defunct), Nodin Press essayists and biographers, and many of Norton's relatives and long-time friends. Not to mention poets and poetry-lovers who attend the readings regularly. Amiable poet and raconteur Tim Nolan kept the event moving, and there was plenty of time afterwards for people to mingle and chat.

The poets, one after another, expressed their gratitude toward Norton and also their appreciation of his kindness and warm personality. My favorite story—though I don't recall who told it—involved Norton calling a young poet to tell her he wouldn't be able to attend her upcoming reading, due to a veterinary emergency. Then he added, almost as an afterthought, "Oh, and I'd be happy to publish your book."

Phil Bryant

I don't remember much about the particulars of the poems themselves, but I was struck repeatedly by how pleasant it can be, in a landscape often overburdened with politics and moral harangue, to listen to a few vivid personal impressions tinged with silent emotion. Janna Knittel read a poem "about" a kingfisher; Laurie Allmann read one "about" a meadowlark. Emilio DeGrazia and Norita Dittburner-Jax read poems in which trees figure prominently. Jim Lenfestey read a boisterous poem about spring. Sharon Chmielarz read an enigmatic one, full of Biblical overtones, about scorpions turning into cabbages. (Or was it the other way around?)

Freya Manfred read a poem about one of her favorite subjects—swimming—and prefaced it with a touching story about Norton's mother, Millie, who also loved to swim. Cary Waterman reminded us, before reading her poem, of the important role played by the anthology 25 Minnesota Poets, which Norton published fifty years ago, in nurturing the state's rich poetic environment.

Poet Margaret Hasse had arranged for a sheet cake with Norton's portrait on the frosting. It's one of Norton's long-standing event traditions. (He even had one made for Rosalynn Carter when she came to the Bookmen to promote her book!)

I never got near the cake. I've been working on books with Norton for more than twenty years, and there were lots of people in the audience I hadn't seen in a long time, or had worked with but never actually met! In addition to the poets mentioned above and others, I ran into friends (and former Bookmen employees) Annie Klessig and Bill Mockler, Norton's nephew Brett  and his wife Sheila (also publishers), biographers Dale Schwie and Joy Riggs, historian Etta Fay Orkin, essayist and garden expert Steve Kelley and his wife Arla, author John Coy. The list goes on and on.

Norton with Norita

I spoke with Norton on the phone the next morning, and it was like: "Oh, was she there? I never saw her." "Gee, I wish I'd gotten a chance to talk to ...," "His wife died, but he seems to be holding up well." Mike Hazard, Don Leeper, Chuck Erickson, David Unowsky. It was old home week for the local book scene.

During her appearance at the podium poet Morgan Grace Willow mentioned that her book Between originally carried a different and more latinate title. Norton returned to that concept during his brief remarks, mentioning that his mother, returning home from shopping, perhaps, would say, "I had a good "between" with so-and-so this morning."

Good betweens: that's what Norton's career, his books, his friends, his life, has all been about.

Five Worthy Films at the MSPIFF

The Mpls. St. Paul. Intl. Film. Fest (MSPiFF) is in full swing, and it's great to see the halls and theaters full of people again. The scene can be chaotic, with rush lines and ticketed lines forming a hundred yards from the theater entrance, but that's part of the fun, I guess.  Hilary and I made it down to see five films over the weekend, and there was nary a stinker in the bunch. We've been to Mexico, Egypt, France, Sweden, and South Korea.

Cairo Conspiracy exemplifies the virtues of the event. If you haven't seen it, then it's unlikely you'll ever get a peek inside Al-Azhar University, the world's foremost center of Sunni Muslim clerical education. That in itself is worth the price of admission. But director Tarik Saleh uses the setting to spin an intricate tale of political and religious intrigue unlike any plot I've seen before.

As the film opens, a village fisherman's son named Adam—young, devout, and naive—wins a scholarship to study at Al-Azhar. Not long after he arrives, the reigning Grand Imam dies, and a power struggle ensues between followers of the various Sunni leaders who are vying to succeed him. The Egyptian government has a favorite choice, of course, and it also has a well-developed security network to make sure it gets what it wants. Trouble is, the clerical establishment considers itself to be above secular law, and the government has no way to know what's going on inside the walls of Al-Azhar. Through a series of events too obscure to relate here, a renegade colonel recruits Adam and orders him to bring news regularly from inside Al-Azhar to a coffee-shop assignation. Adam accepts the unorthodox assignment reluctantly, and he grows more uneasy still (as do we) after witnessing a violent event in the university courtyard.  It's hard to tell who is on who's side, not only inside but also outside the walls of Al-Azhar.

Night of the 12th, a "taut and piercing" police procedural, opens with a raucous retirement party at police headquarters, follows with a gruesome late-night murder, and proceeds through ninety minutes of detective work heavily interspersed with conversations and asides that expose the prevailing mentality of the force and various details of the officers' private lives. The youngest member of the team is excited about his upcoming wedding; one of the older officers is getting divorced. 

The murder victim, a young woman returning home on foot from a "girl's-night-out" at a friend's house, is portrayed as a good-natured young woman who entered easily into relationships with a variety of men, none of whom were deeply interested in her. Hence, suspects abound, though the perpetrator left little evidence behind and everyone seems to have an alibi. Thoughtful and generally low-key, the film has a day-to-day feel. The detectives become frustrated as the case grows cold, and gender issues take on new dimensions with the arrival of a female detective and prosecuting judge. Director Moll avoids polemical browbeating, giving us instead a complex and deftly nuanced rendering of modern life in small-town France.      

Ajoomma is a Mandarin word for "middle-aged woman," often translated as "auntie." In He Shuming's feature film debut, we follow the misadventures of Auntie Bee Hua as she departs alone on a package tour of South Korean tourist sites, after her son has dropped out due to an important job interview in California. Auntie, a recently widowed Singapore woman, has devoted her life to caring for her husband, raising her son, and watching Korean soap operas; she hasn't gotten out much. But her solo vacation would have gone much better were it not for the suave and irresponsible youngster leading the tour, who has plenty of problems of his own. The opening half-hour is tame, but it sets the scene for a riotous and touching sequence of events set in motion when Aunt Bee is left behind the tour at a remote apartment complex and comes to rely on the kindness of the elderly night security guard, Jung Su, to find her way back to the group. They don't speak the same language, but they manage to communicate. The episodes that follow combine elements of slapstick, desperation, schmaltz, and farce, with touches of inter-generational wisdom thrown in.

Hilma af Klint is a stagy but generally informative biopic focused on the life of the Swedish painter of "spiritual" abstractions, largely unknown during her lifetime but recently enjoying a surge in serious interest. The early death of a younger sister drew Hilma to currents of theosophy and the occult that were popular at the turn of the twentieth century, and in the film the young artist stresses again and again that her work is the creation of an unseen spirit that uses her merely as a vehicle. She is painting the unseen connections between all living things.

Himla developed her unusual style in the company of four or five other women who were also artists. They helped her with her work, though they generally lacked her visionary spirit and contented themselves with painting  conventional landscapes. Hilma sold  few if any works in her lifetime, and rarely exhibited them. Lacking a job or family income, she relied heavily on the financial generosity of one of the group, with whom she was also romantically involved for many years.

Swedish director Lasse Hallström fleshes out this scenario in a long series of episodes. He shows the women having tea together, giggling a lot, participating in séances, and invariably acquiescing to the suggestions and demands of their visionary leader. On the other hand, he makes little attempt to examine the underlying issues and contradictions involved, most importantly, how does the "spiritual" content of Hilma's art differ aesthetically from that of contemporary artists who were also driven or "inspired" to paint in non-representational ways? Does her work actually merit comparison to that of Kandinsky, Miro, Odilon Redon, Klee, and other self-professed spiritual painters? It may strike some viewers that it has more in common with decorative Art Nouveau swirls and Marimekko fabrics.

In any case, the film offers viewers like me, who had never heard of Hilma before, an avenue of ingress into the work of a Nordic artist who chose her own path and dedicated her life to it. 

Gods of Mexico is the strangest of the films we saw. It consists of a collection of powerful black-and-white images of indigenous Mexican women and men standing in frozen, tableau-like settings, and two lengthy color sequences, one depicting the activities at a salt farm, the other focusing on mining operations with hand tools deep within a maze of underground tunnels. In their static dignity, the tableau reminded me of the surreal photographs of Graciela Iturbide, while the long episodes with movement underscored the ardor and beauty of repetitive but inescapable work. These sequences also include episodes of shooting craps, cock-fighting, fireworks, dancing, and expert whistling. 

Call it the aestheticisation of the mundane, if you will. Or the romanticization of the "other." The Mexican consul who attended the screening doesn't seem to think so. He recited the Aztec names of the gods being represented, and tried to explain why people are corn, and why corn is people.

In any case, the absence of dialogue for ninety minutes helps us focus our attention on the solidity of people and their connections with other living things.  

In one scene that I will never forget, we see the cavernous interior of a mine, with water dripping down into two misshapen tin cans. In the tiny aperture of tunnel light, we see the silhouette of a man approaching. It might take him a minute, or five minutes, to reach the wider cavern. (No one is in a hurry here. Everything takes time.) He picks up one of the cans, drinks the water, and hurls the can off into the shadows. He picks up the second can, drinks the water, and sets it back down where it was before. 

Why?  

Why a Duck?

It's the time of a birder's year when the ducks are moving through.  They're easy to spot, just floating out on the water, and most of them are both beautiful and easy to identify.

You'll see more of them if you head down to the river. Hilary and I took a few days off and rented a little cottage on the shores of the Mississippi just south of La Crosse, Wisconsin. We had no way of knowing what the precise view would be, but it turned out to be superb, and the fact that the cottage was tucked into the base of a cliff, separated from the Mississippi backwaters by a noisy highway and two sets of railroad tracks, hardly mattered.  

We spent our first evening watching the sun go down. A few minutes later steams of pelicans began to arrive from the south in the twilight and settle into the backwaters of the river for the night. I would guess there were 400 of them all told.

The next morning we drove out through Goose Island County Park, where we got excellent views of canvasbacks, redheads, blue-winged teal, shovelers, and lots of scaup and ring-necked ducks. We spotted a few widgeons in the mix, too.

And let's not forget the humble gadwall. A very fine duck, its markings are so subtle that it often goes unnoticed in the crowd.

It was a fine getaway, further enlivened by brief hikes at Wildcat Mountain, Perrot, and Merritt state parks. A few wildflowers were blooming in the hemlock woods above the Kickapoo River. But all the park offices were closed, and we never got a chance to purchase a park sticker.

I should go online and order one right now...

Meanwhile, if the phrase "Why a Duck?" rings a bell, maybe this Marx Brothers routine has resurfaced from your stock of childhood memories.

The April Fools Day Blizzard

Though it won't rank with the Halloween Blizzard of 1999, our most recent blow has a lot to commend it.

1) It took place mostly at night when few people were out on the highway.

2) It arrived early on a Saturday, a day when few people have anywhere important to get to.

3) It freshened up the landscape, which had been littered with grotesque mounds of dirty snow.

4) It was followed by a brilliantly bright day, with full sun and a deep blue sky.

On the other hand, the snow was wet and heavy; limbs came down, and many people lost power, including us.

The previous morning I'd been out in the backyard, getting a closer look at an unpleasant sight previously glimpsed from the bedroom window: some creature had gnawed the bark off several of our nannyberry bushes, which play an important part in our woodsy summertime privacy screen. We planted then eight or ten years ago, and no one had messed with them until now. I was heartbroken.

Not sure which critter might be responsible, I sent a note to Steve Kelley and his wife Arla, of Kelly and Kelly Nursery, clients and friends with whom I worked last year on a gardening book. Perhaps I didn't phrase the note very well, because I got this reply.

We're sad to think that it took a winter's worth of rabbit damage to your shrubbery to bring Arla & Steve to mind. If you cut the damaged shrubs down to the ground, they might send up new shoots. Otherwise, hope everything is well with you.

 Happy Spring,

Steve & Arla

 In my defense, I might observe that it wasn't the first time I'd thought of them, and it was their remarkable knowledge of plants, rather than the destructive habits of pesky rabbits, that brought them to mind. But I'll get over it. As Spinoza says somewhere, "To feel remorse is to be unhappy twice."

 After examining the sorry plants at close range, I wandered over to the fence to watch some technicians install solar panels on our neighbor Rocky's house. The foreman, who was also watching them work, wandered over for a chat. He was curious to know, naturally enough, if I might be interested in a few panels myself.

 "Our yard is a lot shadier than Rocky's," I said. "And much of our roof is actually an antique rubber sheet. I wouldn't want to tamper with it too much." 

 That afternoon I drove over to the library to pick up a few books that had been put on hold for me. And on the way out I purchased a slim paperback called Quarry by a French novelist named Celia Houdar from the friends-of-the-library bargain cart in the lobby. Ignoring the books I'd requested, I spent much of the afternoon reading it.

 The story, such as it is, concerns itself with a man who's been behind bars for three years awaiting trial in Pisa, the judicial magistrate who's going to handle the case, her husband--an unemployed expert in ancient Hindi textiles--and their daughter, who takes sculpting classes two days a week at the quarry in nearby Cararra.

 The novel consists of numerous chapters, never more than three pages long, that shift from one character to another at random. The details are precise, but links between passages are non-existent, and readers who take them as "pieces of the puzzle" and try to fit them together into some sort of narrative will struggle. Of course we want to figure out who took a potshot at the victim. Yet Houdart refrains from interpolating, foreshadowing, or removing herself in any way from the event at hand.

For example:  

On a Saturday afternoon near the end of November, Marian was driving a charcoal-gray Fiat Croma slowly down the narrow road from Pontedera to Vicopisano. As she rounded a curve, she saw a man in a tracksuit walking on the shoulder, followed by two women who looked like sisters. All three were carrying canteens. From the way they watched her pass, and the way she saw them squinting to make out the province code on her license plate when she glanced back in the rearview mirror, Marian got the impression that they were very anxious to know who she might be."

We never learn who these people are. In fact, they never appear again. They're simply people on the road, behaving the way people often do.

For that matter, we don't really need to know that Marian was driving a charcoal-gray Fiat. Wouldn't "a gray Fiat" do? Every detail adds a little to the picture, but the level of seemingly random detail tends to detract from the momentum of the plot.

Or course, some passages certainly weigh more heavily than others. For example

At around six that evening, Marian received a visit from the court clerk. He asked her if they could talk. His voice was unsteady. He said he was ashamed of himself for not having had the courage to speak up sooner. He wanted her to know that, from the first day of the hearings, he had been pressured. Marian asked him to be more specific. His face changed and went pale. He seemed unwilling to continue. Marian insisted. They were alone, she said. He could speak freely. He was still hesitant. He said that, if he told her, it might mean trouble for both of them.

This sinister episode lingers in memory, but in the end, it figures no more prominently in the story than the pedestrians on the road.

I finished the book that afternoon, puzzled and refreshed. I have no intention of giving away the ending. I'm not sure there was an ending.

While I chopped the onions and celery for an ad hoc spaghetti sauce, I pulled two CDs that we rarely listen to from the rack. The first was The Essential Ben Webster. I'm not a big Webster fan, but listening to this album I began to understand that his appeal lies less in any dazzling virtuosity as a tenor saxophone soloist than in a boogie-woogie spark that drives his work.

The second CD offered a similar lesson: the flamenco guitarist Moraito has never been viewed in the same light as Vicente Amigo, Chicuelo, or Paco de Lucia as a solo guitarist, but Moraito comes from a large family of musicians, and here, in Mora Morao (2004) he maintains a robust village energy, bolstered by a chorus of clappers and shouters with names like Rafa, Bo, and Chicharo.

There was a time when I could distinguish a alegrías from a sevillana or a soleá por bulería from a bulería por soleá with ease. Not any more. But little matter. It's time to relax and enjoy the music.

We woke the next morning to the foot of snow that I mentioned earlier. The power was off, though we could see porch-lights glowing across the street. By the time I got into the kitchen Hilary had already fetched our small green camping suitcase from the basement. She'd set up a flashlight lantern on the counter and was heating water on the stove for coffee. 

We went out for a walk around the block at sunrise. A narrow plow had made its way through the neighborhood, but otherwise the streets were dead. At the end of the block one large branch had snapped from the weight of snow and fallen across the street.

During our first stab at the driveway our neighbor Sean, who was also out shoveling, came over to chat. He'd been awakened by a "pop" a 3 a.m., noticed the power was out, and called Xcel. Hilary asked him how the winter had been treating him. "Too long. Scott and I are headed for Nashville in a week," he said with a laugh. "His parents live there."

Hilary also carried on a conversation with our neighbor Rocky when she came out to shovelg. She was bummed because her new solar panels were now covered with a foot of snow.

After our first phase of shoveling we took another walk around the block. I spotted our neighbor Elfrida, three houses down, waving at us from the window. That was odd. On our return trip ten minutes later she came out on the stoop and called to us.

"My electricity is gone," she said, in her thick German accent. "I don't have a little phone. Would you call the police? I don't have any power." Elfie is one of the neighborhood's few remaining original residents. She and her husband must have moved here in 1947 or thereabouts. After the war.

"Yes, don't worry," Hilary said. "No one has power. We'll call."

I was about to head out for phase two of the shoveling—the really heavy stuff out by the street—when I heard our neighbor Brendan's snow blower roaring. I waited. Fifteen minutes later he was finished with his driveway, and ours, and neighbor Sam's next door. (I own him a six-pack of Surly.)

Our final neighborhood interaction took place that afternoon, when Lee and Joe, a young couple who moved in a few houses down the street two or three years ago, stopped by. "We hear your power's out," Lee said, "so we brought you these." She handed me a zip-lock bag of chocolate-chip cookies. Sweet.

"If you need anything, just let us know," she said.

"Oh, we'll be fine," I said. "We've got the Jøtul going, and we've got a lot of flashlights."

She looked a bit confused, so I added, "It's a Swedish stove." Perhaps that didn't help.

We spent much of the day sitting in the den, judiciously feeding the Jøtul (made in Norway, as it turns out) as we read. Hilary, who was reading An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, would say, "Did you know that when a bat emits a sound, it's so loud that its ears momentarily shield themselves from the noise?"

A few minutes later, looking up from the book I had started on, The Serpent Coiled in Naples, I read her a passage like this:

"Melody was born in Naples. So they claim, and who am I to dispute what people say of themselves? They may overdo the sauce a little, but I’d much rather it be them for a change and not me. Some people flee an unsupported assertion as if suddenly sprayed with insecticide. Others reach for their intellectual weapons of choice. We are, on the whole, expected to be reasonable. The poet Giacomo Leop­ardi, whose ghost I will later pursue, says we place too much value on reason for it is the enemy of nature and he was no subscriber to the Whole Earth Catalogue. Melody was born in Naples. The claim, wild though it is, is not wholly without substance."

As darkness descended we threw another log on the fire and donned our headlamps. It was still cozy by the stove but the back of the house was cooling off. We'd grab a down comforter from the closet before going to bed.