TBR Challenge - The Nazi Officer's Wife

The Nazi Officer's Wife - Edith Hahn Beer, with Susan Dworkin.

I read this book because a good friend said she'd been inspired by it. People will do anything to survive. Yes, and it often is astonishing to know about them. Astonishing, inspiring - and terrifying.

This book terrified me. Anything about the Holocaust terrifies me. The very word, Kristallnacht, terrifies me. I am a Jewish woman; I would be foolish if it didn't terrify me, or if I were complacent enough to think it never could happen again.

Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass. When I read about the Holocaust (which I rarely do), my brain experiences Kristallnacht. Thoughts break away and shatter. I lose my ability to speak coherently. To think coherently.

***********************

Edith Hahn's memoir is coherent and focused. I read it in one sitting because it was impossible to look away. Her story has been dramatized, and it is remarkable.

The world for Viennese Jews came apart very quickly. One day, she was finishing law school, and the next, she was enslaved and forced to work on a farm and in a carton factory. Rather than submit to being taken to Poland, she went underground in Vienna, where kind Viennese women helped her to get false identification papers and saved her life. She moved to a town outside of Dresden, met a Nazi officer, lived with him, married him, had his child, a daughter. He spent time in Siberia, captured in battle, and returned. They divorced. She and her daughter went to England. Both survived. We know this story because her Pepi, the beloved who could not escape his grotesque and hysterical mother, saved all of her letters and papers, and because her daughter read them.

What a person will do to survive -

I can not put my thoughts together for this. Instead, I offer some of my reading notes, in no particular order. Please read the book.

the Nazi officer who demanded a dust-free home
millions turned to dust. millions.
to be able to hold two beliefs
to be considered subhuman and powerful enough to threaten civilization
those who would scapegoat
1984 - do it to her
to know the lie - the citizens knew full well - THEY MAY NOT ESCAPE INTO DENIAL BECAUSE THEY KNEW-
she refused anesthesia - she endured the pain of childbirth to protect her Jewish child- to protect the daughter of a Nazi
Thomas Mann on the radio - the first time she heard the full truth, piles of children's shoes
"I had often heard Werner's views about the power of Jewish blood"
"She turned her back on me. I could feel her sense of triumph, her genuine satisfaction in destroying my life. It had a smell, I tell you - like sweat, like lust."


melanie

To be read challenge, 2007

I must be crazy. Why do I join all of these challenges? Well, because. Because they force me to focus on things I've meant to read.
This one is the "To Be Read Challenge" - 12 books that you have been meaning to read, in 12 months.



(drumroll, please......)

Jan Marsh - Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood
Lucinda Hawksley - Lizzie Siddal, face of the Pre-Raphaelites
Ann Beattie - Follies
Claire Tomalin - Katherine Mansfield: a secret life
Kara Dalkey - The nightingale
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never let me go
A.S. Byatt - Biographer's tale
Margaret Drabble - Seven Sisters
Francine Prose - Changed man
Virginia Woolf - On being ill
Maureen Corrigan - Leave me alone, I'm reading
Edith Hahn Beer - The Nazi officer's wife

melanie

From the Stacks Winter Challenge: "Marriage à la mode" by Katherine Mansfield

Technically, this is not a "rereading." It's an offshoot of the last book I read for Rereading. That's what I do, as a voracious reader: I follow pathways from one book to something else.


"Marriage à la mode" -- Katherine Mansfield

Imagine Isabel, if you will: a young, married woman who once lived in a pretty London house with her loving husband William and two little children. Picture the house, with lush petunias in a window box: a harmonic convergence of peace and bliss after the First World War.

Now think of the changes perfuming the ancient English air: women's suffrage, feminism, artistic and literary modernism. Each change drew advocates and acolytes, many of them famous (the Bloomsbury group) and colorful (Lady Ottoline's many-hued estate, harboring artists, pacifists, and pugs). These were the glitterati of the new London.

Pretty Isabel goes to Paris with her friend Moira, and returns discontented, a new Isabel who laughs "in the new way." William, baffled by her desire for a new house, new music, and new friends, nonetheless buys her a house in the country. He stays in London and visits on weekends while Isabel lives her new life with new friends. Bohemians and artists surround her, sharing a sunlit idyll with their pretty muse. She thrives, the children thrive, and William continues to work and support the merry band of early flower children that has replaced the traditional family.

Satisfactory, no? It's feminist fairy tale, if the prince and the princess don't mind a long-distance happily-ever-after.

Not so fast.

We meet William as he prepares for a weekend visit. His children expect presents, as children do. Toys, perhaps? No: Isabel has thrown out their old toys because they were "appallingly bad for the babies' sense of form." What else would please the children? William buys a pineapple and a melon, boards the train, and thinks of his lovely, "petal-soft" Isabel and the featherbed they one shared. Worries surface. Will the merry ones be there this weekend? Will they try to steal the fruits (of his labors?) from the children?

They are, and they do.

Mansfield's pen loathes artifice, and it wastes no time peeling each acolyte. (This, one senses, is personal.) Dennis, the wannabe ironist, frames every scene into a precious verbal tableau ("A lady in love with a pineapple"). Bobby, the fey freeloader, wants to don a Nijinsky dress and dance. Moira, Isabel's friend, discovers that "sleep is so wonderful. One simply shuts one's eyes, that's all. It's so delicious." (This, one senses, is very personal.)

They tolerate William because Isabel chides them (and William overhears): "Be nice to him, my children! He's only staying until tomorrow evening." Left alone, he wanders into a sitting room that is littered with the leavings of Isabel's new children -- piles of cigarette ashes, a grotesque mural on a yellow wall, strips of paint-daubed cloth strewn over the furniture ...

What makes a house a home? Mansfield offers a gesture. William, sitting in an armchair, feels the space next to the cushion. In London, in the old house, he would have retrieved his children's toys: a three-legged toy sheep, perhaps, or a little horn. Here, he finds "yet another little paper-covered book of smudged-looking poems." Not even the detritus of Isabel's new life belongs to him. Isabel's new life has both alienated and trivialized him. The reader hears a window slam shut before a clearly-relieved Isabel shoves him into a taxi.

Mansfield's pen loathes artifice. It also loathes sentimentality. Another writer may have pounced on William and reveled in the long love-letter he begins to compose on the train. William's lachrymose letter might have been lampooned with as much savagery as Dennnis' faux irony. But it isn't; she doesn't.

Instead, she follows the letter as it is delivered to Isabel the next day, a sultry Monday that finds the sulky group moping. Only Isabel receives a letter that day, "and mine's only from William." The envelope is thick, and the letter is long. It begins: "My darling, precious Isabel," and it continues, page after heartfelt page.

Isabel, astonished, feels an unexpected, unwanted emotion. A sentimentalist may have led Isabel up to the cool privacy of her bedroom, there to have an epiphany, and to resolve to reunite with her loving husband.

Instead, Mansfield leads Isabel to her bedroom, but not before she shares the letter with her new, feral children. They whoop and jeer when they read the clumsy prose. "God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness." They roll on the ground, weak with hilarity.

Something about the raucous scene catches Isabel's attention. Perhaps, Mansfield seems to suggest, the letter has touched Isabel's disregarded heart. Perhaps the letter shifts Isabel's attention. Indeed, Isabel begins to berate herself, calling herself "shallow, tinkling, vain..."

Is this a liminal moment? Mansfield certainly has given Isabel a chance, but she chooses, with minimal consciousness of error, to rejoin her friends, "laughing in the new way."

Virginia Woolf once characterized Katherine Mansfield as "hard and cheap" (although she recognized Mansfield's potential to equal her own art). Hard and cheap. How else to tell this story? Isabel squanders the opportunities of liberation, congress with serious artists, and a loving husband. She chooses cheap thrills.

This fairytale does not end with Cinderella and her prince, beautiful to the end. Sleeping Beauty does not awaken to the true value of true love. The story holds up a mirror to every frivolous, self-reverential society that is so enthralled with itself that it stagnates. As it was, Mansfield implies, so shall it be.

- - - - -
- - - - -

Mansfield died of tuberculosis, at the estate of a charismatic, esoteric teacher, Gurdjieff. The wizard could not heal her - another fairy tale gone awry. Perhaps Katherine Mansfield knew that the mage would fail, but she chose to reach for the fantasy after hard reality had failed her.


----
posted by melanie

Rereadings - "From the Stacks Winter Challenge"

Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman.

"One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish," says Fadiman in the introduction to this collection of essays. "It helps you remember what you used to be like." This may not always be pleasant: "Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarassing former self."

Patricia Hampl, in "Relics of Saint Katherine," was introduced first to Katherine Mansfield's personal writings, the journal and letters, instead of the crisp and illuminating short stories. Hampl's guide was Doris, her boyfriend's mother, who plucked these volumes from her ceiling-high bookshelves and said, "You must have these."

Doris was as unfulfilled in the dull St. Paul neighborhood as Mansfield had been in Wellington, New Zealand. Doris was rumored to have written, and had been a teenager when Mansfield died. Since then, she had maintained a personal attachment to the life and work of the dead "tantalizing bohemian big sister," a connection she passed on to the young Patricia.

She was astonished to learn that diaries and journals could be published and admired as literature. (After all, she wrote diaries as well!) These books "opened the door to memoir and the essay, forms I came to prize and practice."

Doris loved the short stories and knew the arc of Mansfield's life, including her sexual freedom, relationships with such literati as D. H. Lawrence, and her desperate, final grab at life through the mysticism of Gurdjieff. She also believed and rejoiced in the last words of Mansfield's published journal: "All was well."

"She was so happy," said Doris. "She forgot to be careful."

"It was as if she were there," writes Hampl. But Doris died before she could reread the journal after modern scholars discovered that Mansfield's odious husband had edited it to blunt the agony, loneliness, and despair with a triumphant narrative arc. (Says one of Hampl's friends: he was "boiling Katherine's bones to make soup.")

(One is grateful that Doris was able to enjoy and cherish her Katherine to the end of her life.)

When Hampl visits Bandol, where Mansfield wrote "Prelude" and "Bliss," she ascends to Mansfield's room in the "great peachy Belle Epoque" hotel, delapitated now, "left to pickle in its unhealthy browns and beiges, its sickets greens." (One thinks of Mansfield's lungs, disintegrating in the bacillus brine of tuberculosis.) Hampl looks out to the same brilliant, blue sea that Mansfield would see after three hours of "happiness in the writing" - the only happiness that remained to the doomed writer.

As Hampl compares Mansfield to Sylvia Plath - two talented women doomed to be more famous for their lives than for their art - one realizes that the same is true of Doris, whose life we see through Hampl's brief narrative, but whose writing we never will know.

"Relics of Saint Katherine," in Hampl's first infatuation, were "the moist devotion of a cultist, not the frank pleasure of a reader." The cultist tracked down Mansfield's favorite brand of soap (Cuticura), wore the soft, velvet clothing Mansfield loved, and pinned up pictures of Mansfield as a personal shrine.

Fadiman's warning that rereading may mean encountering an "embarrassing former self" may describe this early devotion, but we also see that a writer's growth can transform that shallow, self-oriented, early experience into a deep and compassionate understanding.

*********

Hampl's essay is but one of seventeen that examine works from Colette's fiction to the Sue Barton books. Consider yourself warned: come to these essays without pen and paper, else you will want to read almost everything that these writers - those who are read and those who have written - have ever published.

melanie

The perfect month for us!

Think you not of dull and drear days of winter. Instead, brew a cup of your favorite camellia sinensis and drink a toast to January, National Hot-Tea Month! It matters not whether you sip Lipton's, Earl Grey lavender, or a rare and precious cup of liquid gold so long as it leaves you with a catlike, satisfied smile of contentment.
Cheers!
(Moon Rani)

Spam poetry? Really?

I get a fair amount of spam, and some of the subject lines are funny. Sometimes I send them to amuse TeaBird. She had a brilliant suggestion: collect spam subject lines and arrange them into poetry! I decided to make them into spamkus, that is, spam haikus. Here, Dear Reader, is my first effort, a poem which is fitting for New Year's Day.

"Look at this. Throw down

your doubts and fast join us. Pray

thee, scale greater heights."

Watch this space for more spamkus.

May you be blessed with all you need and lots of what you want this New Year.

(Moon Rani)

teacuppa

Thanks to blog reader, Jenny, who told me about www.teacuppa.com. It looks like another good site for us tea-lovers. I haven't ordered anything from there, but I recommend you visit the site now while its snowflakes still flutter and while a darling gift set is still featured.

(Moon Rani)

The gifts the "Gift-Tea" gi'e us!

A friend of a friend enjoys tea. Last year my friend gave his friend a box of English Breakfast tea, brand unknown. His friend was delighted enough to hint about this year's Christmas gift. My friend asked my advice. Naturally I was flattered, and sought to deliver my best recommendation.
I learned that the recipient did not know much about tea. I took this as a good sign, as was his pleasure with last year's gift. I had a vague idea of his taste, and I could assume he was open to new ideas. Only see what I suggested because you, too, may have a lovely gift tea to try or to give.
Since the gift recipient liked English Breakfast tea, I suggested blends of black teas known to be sturdy standbys. The first is loved tea-dom, PG Tips. It is hearty, bold and unassuming, takes well to milk or cream should you desire, and also has enough heart to accept honey or sugar. The second tea is Yorkshire Gold, which was, several years ago, named the best-tasting tea in Great Britain. It has similar properties to PG Tips while standing on its own for taste. It has a pretty box, too. I know that last sounds silly, but I think eye-appeal is part of a gift.
I took the liberty of ordering the tea, and I used www.englishteastore.com. The ordering was easy, the shipping was a lightning-stroke of rapidity, and the prices were so reasonable that I won't go anywhere else from here on. Ah, and there was a bonus: my friend told me to pick something for myself in payment for my help!
Here is another recommendation, and this one is for a honey that is copacetic with tea. Here I am with a few work holidays, so of course I also have another nasty cold. Today I am drinking a cuppa PG Tips (my "payment" tea mentioned above) sweetened with blueberry blossom honey. This honey is produced by Laney Family Honey, Inc., and was at my grocer. I find it congenial in my comfort tea. It was absolutely perfect during one of my spasms of health-seeking, when I bought Celestial Seasonings' Blueberry Breeze green tea. In fact, it was just what was needed to give the tea a blueberry taste.
(Moon Rani)

Super-Size, please

This is not a book review. It's not a tea review. It's a recommendation for a font size. I am so pleased with an early Christmas gift that I wanted to let others know about it in case they are in need of the same thing.
A friend and I agreed to exchange one Christmas gift apiece. We kept it inexpensive, and each specified the gift desired. My request was for a giant-print Bible. Illness and presbyopia combined to make my ordinary Bible harder and harder to read. In fact, I avoided reading it at all, of late. I buy large-print Reader's Digests and devotional books, and it occurred to me that there must surely be a large-print Bible, too.
What I found was that the "large-print" Bibles could be printed in fonts as small as ten-point. That's not very large. But a "giant-print" had thirteen- or fourteen-point fonts. It makes all the difference in the world! My thoughtful friend decided to give my Christmas present early because he said that no one should have to wait to read a Bible, so I can offer you this modest review.
Perhaps you or someone you know has trouble with ordinary size fonts. Now you know to look for GIANT-PRINT wherever the option is available. If it is a Bible you want, be sure to look at it before you purchase; this is one time when an online purchase might not be the best idea. The thin pages do not bother me, but I can see where they would make reading hard for people who are bothered by the print's showing through from the pages' other sides.
I keep learning how to make reading more accessible to people. Learning to read was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I have tried, in small ways, to help others enjoy reading, too. I used to read aloud on radio stations to blind and visually-impaired and physically disabled people. I used to tutor small children in reading-readiness. Now I am learning about giant-print and thin pages. I offer this information to others in case they don't know such things exist. These innovations might allow others to continue to enjoy reading.
This is an appropriate day to publish this post, as I look at the date. It was my late mother's birthday. Illness and age affected her reading pleasure, too, and I remember how thrilled she was when she discovered large-print books at the library. It was like watching someone learn to read, just seeing her excitement and pleasure when books were, once again, accessible to her.
Remember: if reading is hard for you, make an effort to find a way to work around your difficulties. Don't quit reading. Never quit reading!
(Moon Rani)

Slammerkin - "From the Stacks Winter Challenge"

Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue

I never leave the house without a red ribbon.

Mary Saunders, the focus of Slammerkin, is thrown out
of her house after being raped for her desire for a red ribbon.

Does the red ribbon establish a kinship between Mary and
me? Perhaps. Lacking a common desire or situation, the
reader may have difficulty opening herself to a character
– in my case, the relationship between a middle-aged
librarian and a doomed teenaged prostitute.

Slammerkin places a very young woman in a desperately
poor household, where she is neither loved nor consulted
about how her life will unfold.

All evidence points to a miserable and colorless
continuation of her mother’s life of poverty, drudgery,
and subjugation that was sealed when her father
was killed in a misguided protest by men who believed that
they were going to lose, literally lose, eleven days of their
lives when the government changed to the Gregorian
calendar in 1752 -that they would lose time.

I was fascinated by the subjective inconstancy of Mary’s
perception of time. In her mother’s house, time is nearly a
solid mass, changing only by suffering and the family’s
heartless response to Mary’s pregnancy. This response, a
product of the times, is doled out without mercy.

How could the family understand the depth of Mary’s need
to escape the faded beige of their lives, or the magical hope
symbolized by that red ribbon? And yet, how could a mother
cast out her raped, pregnant daughter?

(As I write, I realize that Mary’s mother is the only truly
unforgivable character in the book. Perhaps my modern-time
sensibility intrudes. All of the subsequent damage and
tragedy that defined Mary’s brief time, and all of the bitter
focus on the actual material that she craved in this world,
began with this primal betrayal. If she was not loved for
what was within, she could, at least, adorn herself with the transitory beauty of clothes.)

Time, and the times, were different when Mary fled
to London. London was fast-paced, and the woman who
accepted her into the sisterhood of prostitutes were fast.
Doll’s love and practical guidance showed Mary that society
can tolerate – even require – actions and beliefs far larger
than she had ever imagined. Through prostitution, Mary
acquired financial independence and freedom to see some of
thewonders of her modern world. Likethe fireworks over
London, she and her sisters of the night were brief flashes
of beauty, dressed in their colorful slammerkins (loose
dresses) and masked behind their paint.

Mary’s sudden need to escape a street thug impelled her
to Magdalene Hospital, a residence founded to purge the
evil from the street-wise women. Time was suspended there,
with silence, blandness, and time to think without fearing
starvation or death in the freezing streets. With Doll’s death,
Mary realizes that she has to leave London, and her
retreat ends in a desperate flight from the sanctuary
to the town where her mother had grown up. Glimpses
of the possibilities there almost melt her cynicism, but
her nature has been formed, and she can not escape.

This novel is based, loosely, on the actual life of a Mary
Saunders who was executed for murder in 1764. From the
beginning of the novel, when Mary is 13, to her death by
hanging at age 16, Mary passes through more lifetimes
than many experience in ten times the years.

How many such lifetimes can a child endure? For Mary is a
child, and my working-class perception of childhood
makes me ache for this young girl, whose only
transgression was the love of a piece of red ribbon.

How does the red ribbon bind me to Mary’s life? For both the
18th -century child and the 21st century woman, the red
ribbon symbolizes hope. Mary’s hope for a better life is
destroyed, but the hopes of my Eastern European Jewish
ancestors for the children who would be born in the new
world, and would escape the Evil Eye of the old. have
been realized. After reading Slammerkin, I realize anew
that I am, indeed, blessed.

melanie

Thank you, Stephanie, for giving me this book!

Reading Women

I'm so lucky. I am a cataloger in a public library, and I get to handle every book that comes in. Children's books, reference books, fiction, poetry - everything comes through my hands. This compensates for a lot of the daily angst (oh yes, there is angst in a library!).

I just cataloged a new art book, Reading Women by Stefan Bollman. Every reading woman will see herself in paintings by Vermeer, Manet, Vuillard, or Alma-Tededma, or photographs, such as "Alice Liddell" by Julia Cameron (below).


I also found a review by the Guardian Unlimited - actually, not a review in the sense of criticism. It's a collection of short essays, each by a renowned writer who has focused on one of the images.

A. S. Byatt, for example, responds to "In the Library" by Edouard Vuillard, seeing a story in the setting of two children and a distant, perhaps disapproving young woman in the doorway of an ornate library.

Jeanette Winterson writes about a photograph of Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold, saying "She doesn't have to pose, we don't even need to see her face, what comes off the photo is absolute concentration, and nothing is sexier than absolute concentration."

Other Guardian essayists include Alison Lurie, Hilary Mantel, and P.D. James. If I owned a copy of this book, I would keep the article folded in its pages to remind myself to distill my visual pleasure into my own medium - language.

melanie

Early reading meme

I found this at Heather's site, The Library Ladder. (It was written by Kate, of Kate's Book Blog.)

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?
Family legend has it that I read at age 3, and that no one taught me. Family legend also has it that my mother read at age 2 1/2, and she could read upside down, from a newspaper. Family dynamic has it that everyone in the family is a genius, but some have more extravagant ways of proving it.

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?
I owned many books. The first one I remember was a Little Golden Book about ballet. All of the little girls in the book were tiny blonde goddesses. I studied ballet for years, but I never achieved goddesshood, or blondeness. Fortunately, I learned the difference between fiction and non-fiction very early. As for books I borrowed from the library, The Little Lame Prince, which I borrowed so many times from the school library that I still remember where it was shelved!

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?
Jane Eyre. My parents took me to the big Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue in New York because my mother wanted to buy art books. I wandered over to the fiction section and happened upon Jane Eyre. Reader, I bought it.
I should also mention another book I bought when I was very young: Franny and Zooey. I bought it in the local 5 & 10 cent store. The clerk was reluctant to sell it to me because she thought it was pornographic, and that I was too young to read it. I'm sure she hadn't read it. I've read it so many times since then that I can recite passages from it. I've never outgrown the notion that I am Franny's astral twin, nor the gratitude that my mother never tried to put me on a show like "It's a Wise Child." (How did she miss that one?)

4. Were you a re-reader as a child?
Yes. I still am a re-reader. As a child, I re-read Little Women (a gift from my paternal grandfather) and Jane Eyre (see above).

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?
Again, Jane Eyre. I identified with her loneliness and the way she had to repress her passions.

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?
Andersen's fairy tales, especially "The Emperor's Nightingale,""The Snow Queen" and "The Little Mermaid." I wasn't particularly interested in fairy tales when I was a child, but I became obsessed with them as I got older. Now, I see many things in everyday life as expressions of myth and tale and archetype, and I long to learn more.

Thanks, Heather, for passing on this meme - anyone may consider herself tagged. Please let me know if you do the meme so I can come over for a visit!

melanie

Travel to the Republic of Tea!

The United States of America is my favorite republic, and the republic of India is a close second, but there's a third republic that is dear to my heart, albeit in a different way: The Republic of Tea. The Republic of Tea is a Novato, California-based company that produces consistently tasty, quality tea. Many flavored varieties are available. They also turn out a cracking good plain British Breakfast tea - - and that's quite an endorsement from this Irish Breakfast tea lover.
A great deal of thought (and market research) went into producing these teas, from their pretty canisters to the teas to the little, round teabags that contain of the some varieties. Many of the flavors have little slogans under their tea names. For example, the British Breakfast tea has the slogan, "the perfect cuppa." It is a very good plain tea, and I recommend it for those times when you are looking for a good, heart- and body-warming cuppa. It is wonderful for making tea toddies, and it stands up nicely to cream or sugar, but it won't tax you with exotic tastes. It just takes care of you, the tea lover who needs and wants a dependable cuppa, an arm around the shoulder, a pick-me-up.
I am wild for the Wild Blueberry tea (fair trade certified). The label itself is pretty, as, indeed, are all the labels from this company. The tea is delightful! I love blueberries, and I love this marriage of fine black tea with natural blueberry flavors and blueberries. It was (till I ran out - - oops!) my preferred cuppa, my "go-to" tea. Not only did it comfort my frequent stomach distresses, but it just plain tastes delicious. All tea acts as a restorative for me, but this one does that even more so. It stands alone or with sweetening. It is my current favorite.
Another tea worth the time to brew is Blackberry Sage, the "tea for wisdom." I tried drinking it by the gallon, but I'll be darned if I feel any wiser! This is a fine black tea blended with natural blackberry flavor and sage. I like sipping this tea while I write or read. It's a rich blend of bold black tea, a little fruitiness and a touch of the Middle East with its sage notes.
The Vanilla Almond, "sweeten the mind tea," would make a wonderful after-dinner tea or dessert tea. It goes very well with plain, lightly-sweet cookies for afternoon tea. It can sweeten a dismal morning, too, such as one of those mornings when you simply must go to work to keep body and soul together even though you would far rather stay home and curl up to read one of the books you found here on TeaReads.
"Tea for the Queen of Hearts" is the last of my Republic of Tea favorites. It is Rose Petal Tea, sold only for about a month, annually, to coincide with Valentine's Day. If ever I give a Valentine tea, I will certainly serve Rose Petal Tea in a red pot. I simply love the taste of flowers, so was drawn to sample this tea like a bee is drawn to, well, flowers. It is a very pretty loose tea, with visible rose buds and petals among the fine black tea leaves. If you make it, I suggest using a large mug instead of a teacup so you can watch "the agony of the leaves" and roses as it steeps. The first time I tried this tea I was overcome with romantic warmth - - little hearts fairly danced circles round my head. It is perfect for a romantic afternoon or evening in, and it tastes just as good when you have tea solo.
To arrange your own trip to The Republic of Tea, phone 1-800-298-4TEA, or visit www.REPUBLICofTEA.com.
Bon voyage!
(Moon Rani)

Unnatural Death

Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner is my latest indulgence in true-crime reading. I picked up this book so quickly that I failed to notice its copyright is 1989. Although there is a 2005 foreword that updates some of the information in the book, the book itself is unchanged. Thus, some of the information presented herein is either outdated or now known to be in error.
The book is a compilation of case histories from Medical Examiner Michael M. Baden, M.D., with co-author, Judith Adler Hennessee. Some of the autopsies Dr. Baden conducted, consulted on or reviewed were of famous people, people as disparate as President Kennedy and John Belushi. He offers information gained through his work, then shows how it proves - - or disproves - - popular beliefs of celebrity deaths. He also writes of other deaths, those of people who were unknown beyond their immediate circles of friends and relations. Included in this book are tales of how Dr. Baden's refusal to play politics affected his career. Until I read this book, it never occurred to me that politics played any role at all in the world of medical examination.
I wish there were another edition of this book, an updated one. That's a drawback in my recommendation. However, I commend both authors for using plain and clear language that conveys information in a way that is easily understood by those of us who have no knowledge of autopsies and medical examining.
Instant gratification may be one reason I enjoyed reading this book. The deceased's physical state was described, and I paused to think about what would cause this or that condition, if it pointed to a certain type of death, what other explanations might be correct, and so on. Then - - presto! - - I had the answers right in my hand, waiting to be read. Another benefit is that the book provides the opportunity to learn and to become a little more informed. I love that.
Written by Moon Rani

Sara Teasdale

Something about the Plath poem makes me think of this, by Sara Teasdale:

There will come soft rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly.

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

A newly-discovered poem by Sylvia Plath !

What riches!

A newly-discovered poem by Sylvia Plath has been published by Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts. Written when she was an undergraduate at Smith College, it "germinated from Plath's creative response to The Great Gatsby..." -

(And yes, of course, this is Daisy:"blase princesses indict/tilts at terror as downright absurd.")

Blackbird has decided to publish it "to recognize and celebrate the disciplined hard work she put into her early writing." Click to read the whole poem, and to see two early typescripts.

Ennui -

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur...

I am so delighted that I don't even want to think yet! I just want to bask for awhile and reread "The Beast in the Jungle," which informs yet another allusive line ("The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump..."). Who can read that story and not shudder?

melanie

Arianna Huffington, On Becoming Fearless

I'm reading this book because I want to be Arianna when I grow up, and because I can not believe that she ever was fearful.

Right now, I'm reading the chapter about the body.
How many times do we read that the key to taking control over parts of our lives is to change the negative self-talk to positive? And yet, affirmations have never worked for me, so I loved reading Arianna's take. "It was only when I began observing the critical voices inside me rather than giving in to them that I could start to take control over them. Instead of being drained by the negative self-talk, I found myself amused by it the way you are by a naughty child... We may not be able to tune them out entirely, but we don't have to let them run the show."

It never occurred to me to be amused by these voices - what a concept!

Arianna intersperses her text with excellent quotes, and by short essays by other strong women, including Nora Ephron, Sherry Lansing, and Diane Keaton. My favorite quote so far is by Maureen Dowd, whom I also want to be when I grow up: "It took only a few decades to create a brazen new world where the highest ideal is to acknowledge your inner slut."

To be continued...

melanie

An old love affair renewed

My recent cold and subsequent upswing in tea consumption depleted my honey supply (see "Comfort Tea"). I stocked up on a reasonably-priced, Floridian honey available at grocery stores. I looked, without success, for Tupelo honey, my favorite Then an old love caught my eye - - orange blossom honey. What a treat it has been to stir this lovely, flavorful honey into my cuppas this week! I forgot just how tasty it is. Now I would have to say that Tupelo has a challenger for first place on my list. Next time I go honey-shopping, I'll try a new one: blueberry blossom honey. It sounds so good that it just might provoke a three-way tie.
(written by Moon Rani)

Winter Reading Challenge

Have you seen this? I've joined. My books will be:

Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue
Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong
Rereadings - Anne Fadiman
Life Studies - Susan Vreeland
On Becoming Fearless - Arianna Huffington

Check out The Incredible Growing List for inspiration -

Comfort tea

I've been down with a filthy cold for a week, now. I'll spare you the unpleasant details, but I will tell you how I find comfort when cold viruses lay me low. During the day, whether at work or home, I make piping cups of Sweet Ginger Peach tea, laced with honey [http://revolutiontea.com].
At night, I make tea toddies. Once I'm sure I'm home for the night, I boil a cup of water. While the kettle's on, I scald my mug, then add a teabag. In a pinch, I once used Lipton decaffeinated. I plunk a cinnamon stick into the mug, and, perhaps, a small grating of nutmeg or a tiny hint of clove (one whole clove or a whisper of ground). After I splash in a couple of tablespoons of rum (or whisky or whiskey) and a generous squeezing of fresh lemon juice (or lime juice, if that's all I have), the water has come to a boil, and I pour it in, too. A drizzle of honey, mixed in well, goes in last. Then I get into a comfortable chair or a warm bed, and wait four or five minutes for the toddy to blend before I drink. Although the boiling water takes the mule-kick out of the alcohol, it can still be potent, and I can be sensitive, so I make sure I'm safe before imbibing. I don't want to get lightheaded and risk falling, you see.
Tea toddies don't rid me of my cold, but they provide warm soothing comfort. When I'm sick in bed, I'll take soothing comfort in a cup any day.
(written by Moon Rani)