Saturday Morning Walkers - February 20, 2008

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the delayed and abbreviated edition - I've been sick for the last several days but finally feeling better. I did get to our Saturday morning walk and coffee but that was the last time I ventured out of the house until this morning. We walked around North Boulder and ended up at Breadworks for coffee.

Book Report:

Barb and her book group read The Tender Bar, a memoir by J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times
Amazon.com
"Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me," asserts J.R. Moehringer, and his compelling memoir The Tender Bar is the story of how and why. A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, Moehringer grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather. Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns first to his father, a DJ whom he can only access via the radio (Moehringer calls him The Voice and pictures him as "talking smoke"). When The Voice suddenly disappears from the airwaves, Moehringer turns to his hairless Uncle Charlie, and subsequently, Uncle Charlie's place of employment--a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage. While Moehringer may occasionally resort to an overwrought metaphor (the footsteps of his family sound like "storm troopers on stilts"), his writing moves at a quick clip and his tale of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community is warmly told. "While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us," Moehringer says, and his story makes us believe it. --

Laila continues exploring Indian writers with The Twentieth Wife by Indu SundaresanAmazon.com
In The Twentieth Wife, first-time novelist Indu Sundaresan introduces readers to life inside a bejeweled, dazzling birdcage--the world of the Mughal Court's zenana, or imperial harem. Her heroine exercises power in the only way available to a woman in 17th-century India: from behind the veil. At the age of 8, Mehrunissa (the name means "Sun of Women") has already settled on her life's goal. After just one glimpse of his face, she wants to marry the Crown Prince Salim. And marry him she does, albeit some 26 years later, after overcoming the opposition of her family, an ill-starred early marriage, numerous miscarriages, and the scheming of other wives. The story's gothic trappings have a basis in fact. As Sundaresan writes in her afterword, the historical Mehrunissa exercised far more power than was usually allotted to an empress, issuing coins in her own name, giving orders, trading, owning property, and patronizing the arts. (Curiously, the book ends just as Mehrunissa is ascending to the throne as empress, dwelling on her years of powerlessness and struggle rather than those of her enormous political influence.) Although the empress was fabled in her time, we know next to nothing about the woman herself. Unfortunately, Sundaresan does little to flesh out this intriguing figure. Despite the vivid historical detail, the reader remains more aware of the author's presence--and her own contemporary take on women's issues--than of her characters' inner lives

Jan recommends a DVD called Yesterday.
Product Description
Yesterday- A spirited and happy young mother living in a remote village in South Africa's Zululand - doesn't have an easy life. A heart-breaking film

Website and Podcast of the Week - www.nextbook.org - Nextbook is a Jewish cultural organization that produces an online magazine, a book series and cultural events. I don't think you have to be Jewish to appreciate some of their offerings. Check it out.

Vocabulary Word of the Week - catachresis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις), which literally means the incorrect or improper use of a word -- such as using the word decimate (e.g., "they were severely decimated") mistakenly for devastated -- is a term used to denote the (usually intentional) use of any figure of speech that flagrantly violates the norms of a language community. Compare malapropism.

Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation, and is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in the avant-garde.


Cooking and Dining Report - nothing from our house this week but Jexy made a very successful dinner on their weekend away in the mountains of California.

From Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa, she made Linguine with Shrimp Scampi - http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32175,00.html

She served it with Arugula with Parmesan - http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32175,00.html - both of these recipes are from the Barefoot Contessa Family Style Cookbook.

An upcoming event to mark on your calendar:

The 60th Annual Conference on World Affairs is scheduled for April 7 through April 11. This is a world-renowned event hosted each year by the University of Colorado. "The Conference on World Affairs was founded in 1948, originally as a forum on international affairs. CWA expanded rapidly to encompass the arts, media, science, diplomacy, technology, environment, spirituality, politics, business, medicine, human rights, and so on. Roger Ebert, who holds a record of thirty-seven consecutive years of participation in the CWA, refers to the event as “the Conference on Everything Conceivable.” Every seminar and event is absolutely free - check out the schedule and list of participants! http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/information.html

I hope that all of you stay well - enjoy the rest of the week!

Love,

Susan