The Last Town on Earth

I went for a walk about a month ago and stopped by The Fountain Bookstore to browse.  I did not intend to buy a book but I always feel like I need to support our locally-owned businesses by making a purchase (and it is really not difficult to convince myself to buy a book (which you would know if you saw our house, teeming with books)).  I’m glad I decided to buy something, because I wound up with the exquisite novel The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen.

The novel takes place in Commonwealth, a small northwestern hamlet founded by Charles Worthy and his wife, Rebecca, as a sort of utopian village.  The Worthys decide to build this logging/mill town and invite like-minded laborers to take part in the timber industry with them.  Every worker has a voice in the town’s government and has his own home.  The workers can discuss any issues and make decisions collectively; in essence, forming a cooperative town and business.  Commonwealth becomes a haven for many due to the intense fighting between workers and businesses as workers begin to demand rights when they form labor unions.  The action occurs in the early 20th century, in Commonwealth’s infancy, as American citizens are fighting in World War I and as a deadly influenza outbreak is ravaging the country. 

The labor strikes and union violence, the war, and the flu outbreak create much of the tension in the novel.  Because the flu is killing many people across the nation, Charles suggests (and the town members agree) to abide by a self-imposed quarantine.  No one in Commonwealth is ill and they hope to remain disease-free by not allowing anyone to enter or leave the town.  The town decides to post guards at the one road entrance to the town to warn possible trespassers away.

The main conflict arises when Graham, a worker whose love died in a violent labor riot, and Philip, Charles’ and Rebecca’s adopted son, are on guard duty.  Someone approaches them and asks for shelter and food for the evening.  He is a soldier.  Graham explains from some distance that the town is under quarantine and that the soldier cannot enter.  The soldier explains that he is not sick and that he needs shelter or he could die from exposure.  Graham warns the soldier to stay away or he will shoot him.  The soldier does not heed this warning, approaches Graham and Philip, and Graham kills him.

Did Graham make the correct choice?  Should he have shot the soldier?  Was he protecting his wife and children, his friends, his town?  Was the sacrifice of one person’s life, a stranger’s, worth potentially saving the town from disease?  Philip is unsure.  He idolizes Graham, so agrees with him that the killing was justified, but still feels uneasy about it.

Philip is alone on guard duty several nights later when another soldier approaches the town, seeking refuge.  Philip tries to warn him away and threatens to shoot the soldier, but is unable to make himself do so.  He eventually decides to let the soldier hide in the basement of an abandoned house on the outskirts of town, and promises to bring him food later.  However, the soldier is discovered, and both Philip and the soldier, Frank, are forced into quarantine.  Philip and Frank develop a tentative friendship and Philip discovers that Frank and the first, now dead, soldier were deserters.   

Of course, the self-imposed quarantine is unsuccessful, and the flu hits Commonwealth hard.  Many people become sick and many die.  Some people blame Philip for allowing Frank to enter the town, believing that Frank brought the flu with him (even though Frank remains quarantined and shows no signs of sickness).  (It is later revealed that several of Commonwealth’s citizens had broken the quarantine themselves, venturing to other towns and bringing the illness back with them.)  There is further action, reaching a peak when Philip has to come to terms with both Graham’s and his decisions regarding the soldiers:

It had occurred to Philip that every decision made by the town since the quarantine began had been somewhat selfish.  They’d placed themselves on a  pedestal above all outsiders, holding their value to be superior on pain of death.  It seemed wrong, even when placed against the vision of Philip’s own family failing ill . . . the quarantine designed to block out the flu had only succeeded in cutting off the town from its previous ideals of right and wrong.  It was a town in full eclipse, and Philip would have to navigate through the dark by himself.

The novel is very well-written, with Mullen using a simple writing style.  I learned a lot about America during World War I, including interesting facts about the American labor movement and the influenza outbreak.  The description of these outside historical events was neither overdone nor preachy.  The conflict of the self-imposed quarantine and the opposing decisions that Graham and Philip took in reaction to the intruders and how they both felt they were protecting the ones they loved and the town that housed their dreams was very well done.  That characters were understandable and likable.  I truly enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.

Rating:

Gulag

Gulag is Anne Applebaum’s comprehensive tome on the origin, culture, evolution, destruction, and repercussions of the Soviet labor camp system begun under Stalin and continued through the end of the Cold War.  The book is long and covers a lot of ground, often using first-hand accounts from camp survivors to capture the essence of camp life.  I thought I would touch on several points that resonated with me:

• One of the biggest differences between the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag was that the Nazis only imprisoned particular groups of people whom they wanted eliminated.  The Soviets were not discriminating: they would imprison anyone and everyone.  The main purposes of the initial labor camps in the Soviet Union were to settle the uninhabited and inhospitable areas of the country and to work (building canals and cities, laying train tracks, etc.), not to punish people.
• Many prisoners believed in the Soviet socialist system and felt that they were mistakenly imprisoned, even after they had been in the labor camps for numerous years.  Many prisoners also took pride in their work and their country even when they were essentially working in miserable conditions against their wills.  As one prisoner said, “How strange is the heart of man!  My whole soul cursed those who had thought up the idea of building a town in this permafrost, thawing out the ground with the blood and tears of innocent people.  Yet at the same time I was aware of a sort of ridiculous pride.”
• Applebaum describes the absurdity of the Soviet system, how the government continuously produced propaganda exclaiming how wonderfully successful the Soviet system was when all around, people were being forced into labor camps for no reason or unable to procure enough food to eat.  Prisoners were required to still respect the system: “In our camps, you were expected not only to be a slave laborer, but to sing and smile as you worked as well.  They didn’t want to just oppress us: they wanted us to thank them for it.”
• There was a social structure within the Gulag, with divisions between the criminal prisoners (those who seemed to be rightfully imprisoned for actual crimes such as thievery or murder), political prisoners (those in prison for expressing traitorous views of the government), and others (imprisoned for no reason).  There was also a question of morality.  When everyone is suffering or dying from starvation or coldness, how much should you share?  Should you give someone worse off than you a bite of your meager rations, if you barely have enough to subsist on? 
• The system evolved over time.  As prisoners became more organized and as more and more people were processed through the system, there arose voices against the system.  No longer was the government able to arbitrarily arrest anyone; in later years, they began providing reasons such as declaring people mentally imbalanced and placing them in “mental facilities” that were little more than prisons.
• As stories about life in the camps began to emerge, Soviet citizens had to face a dilemma: was what they believed, was their government all based on lies?  “If the camps had been stupid and wasteful and tragic, that meant that the Soviet Union was stupid and wasteful and tragic, too.  It was difficult, and it would remain difficult, for any Soviet citizen, whether the member of the elite or a simple peasant, to accept that their lives have been governed by a set of lies.”
• Applebaum also describes how Russians are uninterested in investigating and learning about their tragic past, the history of the Gulag, and how this lack of interest has manifestations today:

the failure to remember has more mundane and practical consequences . . . It can be argued, for example, that Russia’s failure to delve properly into the past also explains its insensitivity to certain kinds of censorship, and to the continued, heavy presence of secret police . . . or FSB.  Most Russians are not especially bothered by the FSB’s ability to open mail, tap telephones, and enter private residences without a court order.  Nor are they much interested, for example, in the FSB’s long prosecution of Alexander Nikitin, an ecologist who wrote about the damage Russia’s Northern Fleet is doing to the Baltic Sea.

Gulag is extremely well-written and researched, and very easy to read.  Applebaum includes many pertinent details but doesn’t get bogged down in minutia.  I learned a lot about the Soviet Union and the Gulag, although nothing that was shocking or particularly surprising to me.  That said, as Applebaum mentioned in the quote above (within the last bullet), knowing this information is important for Russians and Americans especially.  Why did we fight the Cold War?  The Soviet system was fragile and unsuccessful.  Why was the United States so frightened by it?  Why did America practice a policy of containment all over the globe (especially in Vietnam) in order to stop the spread of Communism?  Was Soviet Communism truly a threat?  I don’t know enough to answer all these questions, but they need to be asked.  I recommend this book.

Rating:

Sun Storm

Sun Storm is a simple mystery novel from Swedish author Asa Larsson.  The protagonist, Rebecka, is an attorney in Stockholm.  She is summoned back to her hometown of Kiruna, a small hamlet in the Swedish countryside, when her friend Viktor is murdered in the church he helped found.  Rebecka is reluctant to travel back to Kiruna and unravel her past.

Viktor’s sister, Sanna, requests Rebecka’s help in solving the mystery of Viktor’s death.  The mystery surrounding Viktor’s death is not as interesting or thrilling as the relationships among the many people from Rebecka’s past, who are all involved in the church.  Three ministers oversee the evangelical church and all worked to indoctrinate Viktor, Sanna, and Rebecka when they were younger.  Viktor became a profitable spokesperson and prophet for the church, Sanna became mentally unbalanced, and Rebecka had an affair with one of the ministers that resulted in an abortion, an expulsion from the religious community, and her fleeing to start a new life.  

Sun Storm has the typical mystery novel conventions, including a heroine who has to confront her past in order to live successfully in the present, a building of potential suspects based on faulty assumptions, and a climax where the heroine is trapped and must defend herself in order to live and catch the killer.  There is also a secondary and underdeveloped love interest between Rebecka and her boss at her Stockholm law firm (he rushes to her hospital bed at the end of the novel).

Larsson is effective when describing the harsh yet beautiful setting of Kiruna.  Ice, snow, the Aurora Borealis, stars in the chill, clear, night sky, and how the climate affects the characters personalities and their actions, are all well-described.  However, overall, the book was mundane.  If you are looking for a typical mystery novel, you won’t be disappointed.  If you are looking for a great mystery novel, you will.

Rating:

Thirteen Moons

 Thirteen Moons is the second novel by author Charles Frazier.  Most people have heard of his first novel, Cold Mountain, which was made into a much-heralded film.  I loved the book Cold Mountain, and was eager to read Frazier’s second offering.  Unfortunately, Thirteen Moons was disappointing and does not compare favorably to Cold Mountain.

Will Cooper is an orphan who is sold to a trader in order to work the trader’s outpost in Indian Territory (as you can surmise, the action of the novel takes place during the mid-to-late 1800s).   Will successfully runs the outpost and befriends many Native Americans, especially one named Bear, who becomes a father figure and friend to Will.  When the trader dies, Will is given the opportunity to purchase his trading outpost plus several others, which he does.  He successfully oversees these businesses and becomes wealthy.

We follow Will throughout the novel and hear him tell his life story: how he becomes a member of Bear’s tribe; how he journeys to Washington, DC to lobby the federal government to protect Bear’s tribal lands (the government is forcing all Native Americans to leave the eastern region of the country and travel West to reservations); how he befriends the unstable and sometimes cruel Featherstone, another very wealthy Native American with many landholdings; how he and (as it later is revealed) Featherstone’s wife, Claire, have a lifelong, passionate love affair; how Will and Bear become the largest landowners in the region in order to try and keep Bear’s tribe together (which they are able to do because Will is Caucasian and able to own land); how Will leads soldiers in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; and how Will becomes a politician.  We also vividly see how Native Americans are hunted down by a government determined to exterminate them and expel them from their homes.  We see the destruction of this society from a first-hand basis.

Is Will a hero or someone to be despised?  It is hard to tell.  He empathises with his Native American friends and seems to be helping them by purchasing land for them to stay on, but, simultaneously, he also works with the U.S. Army to force some Native Americans to leave and he becomes individually wealthy from his transactions on behalf of them.  He justifies his actions by acknowledging the greater good, but often chooses an immoral path that harms individuals in order to preserve this greater good.  Can it be good if others are harmed?  I’m not certain.

Will is also the narrator, so we are uncertain whether to trust his version of events.  As he writes in the beginning of the novel:

Everything that happens is fluid, changeable.  After they’ve passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time.  Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin stripped from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall.  Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing.  Flat and still and harmless.  Bear recognized that all writing memorializes a momentary line of thought as if it were final.

Will’s life adventures, as listed above, sound as if the novel should be exciting.  It really isn’t.  I did not feel as if any of the action came alive except for the descriptions of Will and Claire’s love.  Frazier, the author, has a knack for evenly and effectively writing about passion and emotional bonds.  I do not think he is as effective a writer when it comes to other themes and basic action.  The book was an easy read and enjoyable, but not one that will stick with me over time.

Rating:

Sleeping in Seattle

If you read Tim’s blog, you know that we took our vacation this year earlier in December and visited Seattle.  Jessica asked me a long, long time ago to write a blog entry about it, but I have been so busy that I haven’t until today.  So, Jess, here are my impressions:

1. Seattle is far, far, far away from Richmond.  The flight seemed excruciatingly long, especially on the way out when we flew from Richmond to New Jersey (further east) and then from New Jersey directly to Seattle.  The long flight and the time change made us sleep – a lot – while we were there. On the way back, we had a layover in Cincinnati which broke up the trip better.

2. Seattle is much smaller than I thought.  Even though our beautiful hotel (the Pan Pacific – nicest hotel I have ever stayed in) was not in the main downtown district but to the backside of it, Tim and I were able to navigate the city very easily by foot the entire time.  I admit, we did use taxis occasionally when it precipitated, but only because we did not want to get soaked.

3. Seattle has lots of interesting museums.  I guess you could say this about every city, big or small, but when you visit a new city as a tourist you tend to look for all the museums.  We visited the Seattle Art Museum which had, among other things, an interesting collection of Northwestern Native American art, a lot of glass pieces (Seattle is known for its glass-work and has one of the preeminent glass schools in the world), and a small exhibit of Jacob Lawrence work (whose work I truly admire).  We visited the Experience Music Project/Sci-Fi Museum (they are housed together).  The EMP had some great exhibits on the foundations of grunge and the Seattle music scene, as well as rap.  There was a neat special exhibit on Latino influences in American music (which is more pervasive than I imagined).  The Sci-Fi museum had lots of kitsch from old TV shows and movies, which was neat.  

4. It is no joke the Seattle residents drink a lot of coffee.  You know how in most cities there is a Starbucks on every other corner?  Well, Seattle has at least 2 Starbucks on every block (and between the 2 Starbucks will be another coffee shop).  I honestly have no idea how they all stay in business even though everyone we saw was drinking coffee.  I like coffee but am not passionate about it; everything we tried seemed fine to me.  We did have a nice afternoon tea in this great tea and crumpets shop.  I even sampled a delicious homemade crumpet served with ricotta cheese and honey.  Actually, my favorite parts of the trip were our daily afternoon snacks: around 3:00 every day, we would stop and have tea or coffee and a sweet snack, probably because we would eat breakfast later and skip lunch all together.  We were truly in leisure mode.

5. Seattle had septic problems when it was first founded.  The original settlers built the city with a big pipe running down the middle that dumped the city’s sewage into the Sound.  During high tide, the Sound’s water would rise and back-up the pipe, causing some displeasure for residents.  Fortunately, the city burned down in the late 1800s.  As they were planning on rebuilding, they decided to raise the city up a storey in order to avoid the problem of the sewage pipe backing up.  Of course, there weren’t enough funds to raise the city all at once, so people rebuilt on the existing level and later had the first storeys of their buildings be underground.  You can still travel to some of the underground parts and see the store windows (which we did when we took the hilarious Underground Tour).

6. Seattle is a very environmentally-conscious city.  There were recycling bins everywhere (and not just one big bin, but one bin each for cardboard, glass, and aluminum).  Our hotel had a “smart toilet,” where you push one button to flush when you pee, and push another button to flush when you poop.  The pee flush is only a half-flush and saves a lot of water.

7. Pike Place Market is as cool as it looks on TV.  Pike’s is the place where they have the famous fish stand where the guys toss the fish from one side of their stand to the other, but there is so much more there.  Tons of vendors selling fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, seafood, books, magazines, clothes, pastries, breads, knickknacks, and basically everything.  It is a sprawling market; Tim and I spent most of a day there and went back a few times to buy some additional things.

Overall, I enjoyed Seattle.  Of course, it rained a lot, but that is to be expected.  It even snowed one day, although it was so wet, it didn’t stick.  We also found one of the best bookstores I have ever visited, Elliott Bay Bookstore.  Somehow though, I did not love Seattle as a tourist.  I could see myself living in Seattle and liking it, but it was a little disappointing as a visitor (mostly because it was so small, and not particularly pretty – the whole place seemed under construction, with hundreds of cranes dotting the skyline).  So, opposite of the old adage, Seattle is a great place to live, but not to visit.

                                                                  

A Merry Little Christmas

Tim and I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina last Saturday to visit his family and celebrate the holidays.  After our 7-hour drive on Saturday, we proceeded to spend the next 4 days sitting, eating, watching TV, eating some more, talking with relatives about other relatives, and eating.  Seriously, it truly wasn’t a “little Christmas” in terms of food.

I feel that I am finally becoming part of Tim’s family because his mother and sister actually let me enter the kitchen and assist them several times (although there were still many more times when I was told to go and relax).  Once Tim’s mother even found me to request my help.  Yay!

The funniest moment came when we were at lunch at the Moose Cafe and Tim’s hellion niece Lauren (who had previously been ignoring all of my attempts to engage her in conversation) asked, “When are you going to get pregnant and have a baby?”  I really didn’t have an answer ready for her.

We did visit the Asheville Farmer’s Market, which was more organized than the impressive Des Moines Market I saw in September because it had actual buildings where people sold their wares (the Des Moines market just took over the city streets).  Even on Christmas Eve there were many vendors selling their goods.

Tim and I also took a brief excursion to downtown Asheville, a wonderful area full of independent shops.  At the Woolworth Walk (an old Woolworth’s store that has been divvied up into multiple small galleries featuring local artists’ works), we bought two prints by Edward Rowles featuring sci-fi subjects.  Here is the one that Tim bought:

                                                    

You can see more at the artist’s web-site.  I bought one that has a rocket ship with a vivid purple sky in the background.  I also bought a second print by an artist named Sarah Faulkner which I think I will hang in my office.

Our trip home was uneventful, but we were thankful that the rental car company upgraded us to a small SUV: we had XM radio and just enough room to fit all the gifts Tim’s family generously gave us.  So far, I have had the most fun with the remote-controlled helicopter Tim bought for me.  I have only successfully gotten it off the ground twice (whereby I became so excited that I forgot to switch to the other control that moves it left to right, causing the helicopter to just crash into the wall).  The rest of the time the thing just twirls around and crashes on the floor.  Oodles of fun!

I hope everyone else had as much fun as we did and enjoyed time with family and friends.

Lemon Movie Network

I’ve been fighting a cold since last Friday, so I decided to take a sick day from work today.  Of course, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling guilty about contemplating taking a sick day when I was not completely incapacitated (I feel bad – scratchy throat, post nasal drip, general head congestion that makes it difficult to focus – but not awful).  But when push came to shove this morning, I decided to take the day off. 

My sick days usually consist of lots of reading and watching really cheesy movies.  My friend Jenn and I always joke about our liking of Lifetime movies – the ones that are made for TV using has-been actors and which have a targeted audience of middle-aged women.  The protagonist is usually a female dealing with hardship (such as being wrongly accused of murder),  who hasn’t known love in a long time (since her true love died when she was 18 in a tragic surfing accident) or has never known love (as she has devoted herself to raising her cancer-stricken daughter).

I’ve passed a particular channel on the TV guide a few times with the call letters LMN.  I thought this was a network devoted to bad movies, as in the Lemon Movie Network.  I was wrong (well, sort of).  LMN stands for Lifetime Movie Network and features constant cheesy hardship/romance movies.  Today I watched The Road to Christmas starring Jennifer “Nobody Messes with Baby” Grey.  Plot summary: Claire, a snobbish fashion photographer, is trying to travel to Aspen to marry her handsome, wealthy, well-dressed, Italian fiancee on Christmas Eve.  But are they really meant for each other?  [The answer is "no" as it turns out the fiancee is gay.]  As Claire tries to get to Aspen in time for her wedding, her plane is rerouted, there are no rental cars available, and the bus won’t arrive in time.   Fortunately, Claire crosses path with widowed father Wes (who was a famous artist before losing his inspiration when his wife dies (by the end of the film, because of Claire, Wes rediscovers his artistic muse and begins creating sculptures again)) and his daughter who are headed to Aspen and offer to give her a ride.  Sparks fly as snooty Claire and outdoorsy Wes argue and fuss at one another.  Will they wind up together? [Answer is yes.]  

I have to go read now.  My brain is rotting.