A Day at the Huntington

 The Huntington Library and Gardens recently traded their famous Gainsborough's Blue Boy for a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby called An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump and I had been meaning to go and see it. Time was running out for the bird (and me) as the painting was returning to UK end of May so I decided to get out there for the Memorial Day weekend. The painting didn't disappoint. 

 

I first heard about Wright when my daughter studied Art History in high school. His pictures combined Baroque techniques with enlightenment ideas and depicted science in action. In this one we see an eager audience around a lecturer demonstrating the importance of air to life as he slowly sucks out air from a glass jar housing a cockatoo. I would like to think he will not kill the bird and will actually revive it. It is a riveting scene and you can see the anguish on the little girl to the right although I don't know what the two lovers on the left are doing at a science demo gazing at each other!

I loved this painting much more than the Blue Boy and felt this was more fitting for the Huntington which also houses a number of rare manuscripts and books. When I see the Ellesmere Chaucer, the Gutenberg Bible, the Tyndale Bible, Newton's Principia a Shakespeare's First Folio, Thoreau's Walden drafts, Whitman's hospital notes, Audubon's unbelievable bird sketches all under one roof, I get goosebumps. In an era where we are seeing ridiculous book bans some of these books remind us of the revolutionary power of the printed (or handwritten) word.

Ellesmere Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Newton's Principia

Gutenberg Bible -only 48 survive of which 12 were made from vellum including this one

Tyndale's Bible - god's words in your own language!

First Folio opened to Midsummer Night's Dream

 

Thoreau's Walden draft

Audubon's larger than life book of bird drawings

The great thing about the Huntington is that it houses samples of extraordinary writing by women too. All my heroes are here - Mary Shelley, Revolution printed by Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, works of Octavia Butler and Hilary Mantel. I don't know if it is simply a matter of coincidence or whether my interests drive me towards certain things, but each manuscript here held a special place in my heart.

Mary Shelley's cross-written letter to her friend Marianne Hunt

One of my favorite biographies was "Romantic Outlaws" which was about the mom/daughter pair of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley told in alternate chapters. So I am a bit familiar with what Mary Shelley is writing about in this letter - an account of her personal tragedies.

Butler's notes for Parable of Sower

Here is a writer I came to late - maybe about a decade ago when I first read Kindred. Following that I read both Parable of the Sower and Talent followed by Lilth's Brood. It is only fitting that all her papers are in the Huntington as she was a Pasadena native.

Mantel's research for her Wolf Hall trilogy

The books that marked the last decade for me are absolutely Mantel's trilogy about the rise and fall of Cromwell. I loved the books so much that I am now reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography of Cromwell. This was a nice surprise as I didn't recall seeing Mantel's manuscript at the Huntington before. This wasn't the only surprise for me. 

From a distance I saw this bird on the grounds and for a second thought it was a Phainopepla but as I took a closer look it was unlike anything I had seen before. Merlin to the rescue and with both photo and sound id the bird was identified as a Red-Whiskered Bulbul, a native of India that had first found it way to Florida. Along the way some birds escaped the aviary and seem to have established themselves in places with exotic fruit plants. Made my life-list! 

That wrapped up an amazing day for me! On the ride back home we overheard a Proust quote on the radio "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." These past few years travel has been impossible but books remain the cheapest way to transcend time and space. It breaks my heart that we are living in times when books are banned but guns are not.

Guns in America

 It has been a horrific couple of days - one more mass shooting in America and this time in an elementary school. This is an all time low even for the US and as a mother this was just heart breaking. When I picked up my daughter from school I couldn't even imagine what the moms of the 19 kids in Uvalde would be going through at that moment. After Parkland I was hoping something would change. Then we heard about the scandals associated with the NRA and their bankruptcy and I thought, if not now then when? And now Uvalde is here and will anything change at least now? 

How can we have a party that claims to be Pro-life also be Pro-guns? For them, life seems to begin at conception and ends the moment the head emerges and the umblical cord is cut. After that a child can be brought into a world without healthcare, with little to no food security, and be exposed to horrific violence in schools  - those don't seem to matter to those beholden to the NRA. 

How many times have we heard the phrase "guns don't kill people; people kill people." What kind of crazy argument is that? Yes at the end of the day a person wields the weapon, but the kind of weapon matters. Just look at history and how warfare has evolved - from the crossbow, to poison gas, to nuclear bombs, the number of fatalities has correlated strongly with the type of weapon. The solution is not arming schools! When has more weapons been a solution to anything? Is there any justification for any civilian to own a semi-automatic? Countries like Australia and NZ have shown the positive effects of banning such weapons. How many more kids should die before we start learning from these countries. But those countries don't have a right to bear arms enshrined in their constitution - another common retort. How about the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that 19 kids in Uvalde are never going to be able to enjoy? Does the right to bear arms trump the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness? I am sure the founding fathers would agree that semi-automatic assault-style weapons in the hands of any citizen with no background checks was not what they had in mind when they drafted the second amendment.

I have to concede i am not hopeful. I hear statistics like 90% of Americans want to have some kind of gun control, some form of universal background check - not this patchwork of state laws. I also know the NRA is hurting, but it looks like there are other lobbies that are powerful. It is also true that conspiracy theories are at a peak right now and that has driven more people to gun ownership. In the nearly 25 years i've lived here I've seen Columbine, Parkland and now Uvalde. At each point I thought a major change was coming and I have been disappointed. I know emotions are running high right now and I am sure the other side is going to say we cannot legislate anything right now. Can we at least repeal the Dickey Amendment and get some funding for research into gun control policies?

No parent should have to deal with a tragedy like what happened in Uvalde. If we cannot unite around this I don't know how we can deal with all the other challenges that we are up against.

Books (and/to) TV

 I've been catching up on books and TV shows these past few weeks. Normally I am nervous about TV adaptations of books that I've enjoyed but maybe it is the GoT effect, these days TV adaptations of books are turning out to be very good. So here are some of my reviews on things I've been watching and reading.

 The one that has topped my list is AMC+'s The North Water. I had picked up Ian McGuire's book back in 2016 when it came out on the basis of a blurb from Hilary Mantel and loved it! Slow burn, dark and moody, arctic atmosphere and great prose. It is a great story about the ending days of whaling, the misdeeds of the Raj in colonial India, fraud and murder, adventure and survival and a meditation on (toxic) masculinity.  So I was thrilled to find out that it was made into a TV series starring Collin Ferrel and Jack O'Connell (who was terrific in Godless which incidentally is one of my all time favorite series on Netflix). The show didn't disappoint. The acting was impeccable and the visuals were spectacular. The show is not a popular one as it is not available on the Big 3 streaming platforms and you need a subscription to AMC+ but it was totally worth it. If you don't believe me, here is a link to the BBC's review of the show.

This Christmas being stuck inside with Covid I spent it with Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy. I am normally not a fan of vampire stories, but I came to her books through an interview she did for the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. I loved the premise about a lost manuscript and different creatures hunting for a book that held the key to their origins. I had also recently finished Janet Brown's two part biography of Darwin and this series, about the origin of species albeit of a different kind, came to me at the right time and I finished the first one during the two week Christmas quarantine and decided to complete the trilogy. I had no intention of watching the TV show but since i had gotten a month of AMC+ for the sake of North Water, and this one was also available I decided to give it a try and this too was a very successful adaptation. The books are definitely more satisfying but the show is still terrific for someone who doesn't have the patience to go through three door-stoppers.

Next one on my list is The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. It was first published in 2016 and I remember buying the book in an international airport (not sure if it was Changi or Chennai or Heathrow) because at that time the book wasn't available in the US yet. Perry specializes in gothic fiction and Victorian literature and that genre appeals to me. This is a very slow read and at times it feels like nothing really happens, so I was not sure how the TV show would be. So far three episodes have come out on Apple TV and with a stellar cast and outstanding production values I am going to finish this one. Of all the Book-to-TV recos I have, this one was my least favorite book and by extension could become my least favorite show, but will reserve judgement until the series wraps up.

Pachinko is my last of the Book-to-TV recommendations. Loved the book when it came out a few years back and the TV adaptation on Apple TV is wonderful too. Korean cinema and TV is garnering worldwide audience these days thanks to Parasite and Squid Game. Pachinko is very different as it tells the fate of a family matriarch tracing her background from the colonial times when Korea was under Japanese rule through modern times. The book was a big hit when it came out and the tv show is amazing too with some terrific acting. However, only season 1 has been completed so the story leaves you hanging in the TV adaptation. Not sure when season 2 will arrive. But the book is already here and can satiate your curiosity.

That ends my Book-to-TV reviews. I will now switch gears to books I've been reading this month and here is a brief summary of those that have left an impression.

Klara and the Sun is by Kazugo Ishiguro who needs no introduction. Winner of the Nobel prize for literature Ishiguro is someone not bound by genre and his books bridge genre and literary fiction. This book is getting rave reviews for its portrayal of a dystopian world where AI has advanced to the level where a child can have an AF (artificial friend) and gene editing (with some risks) is available to elites who want to assure a great future for their kids. He raises a number of questions on the ethics not just of technologies like gene editing, surveillance, AI but also the disparity in the access to these tech and how humans treat their AF companions. The book was a quick read but at times it seemed too simplistic to me. Maybe that was intentional as he wants us to think about what is real and what is a simulacra and does it matter. However, I was waiting for something to happen and it was a bit disappointing. I've concluded that it is a matter of personal taste -  I just prefer his books like Remains of the Day, Artist of the Floating World to his dystopian fiction.

In Search of a Kingdom by Laurence Bergreen was a book that has been on my radar for a long time and i finally read it this past week. It tells the history of how Francis Drake transformed from a lowly pirate to a Knight  and helped transform the lowly island to an Empire and secured Elizabeth's position on the English throne. An ex-slaver who turned away from slavery seeing the cruelty of the Spanish, Drake was driven by just one thing - exacting revenge on the Spanish - which coincidentally suited his monarch who didn't want to wage an all out war on the Spanish. Instead Drake's targeted piracy weakened the Spanish so significantly that its effects were seen during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Incidentally Drake also circumnavigated the globe and didn't meet with the same fate as Magellan. Drake's piracy was also relatively more humane than that of other conquistadors and explorers. He treated the indigenous people he encountered (like the Cimmarons of Panama or the Miwoks of the Pacific Northwest in America) with respect and reserved all his disdain and cruelty for the Spanish. Keynes (yes the famous economist) estimates that Drake's piracy helped Elizabeth pay off all of England's foreign debt and left her with 40,000 pounds in hand which she invested in the Levant company whose profits led to the East India company which in turn led to the looting of India's wealth and the establishment of the British empire. The book is fast-paced, easy read, full of interesting facts like how 007 came to be a thing based on a cryptic cipher by John Dee, Elizabeth's historian. 

Speaking of fast-reads, action adventures The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston was another nonfiction that reads like a fictional tale. The book follows a group of US & Honduran archaeologists and documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins' attempt to discover the archaeological site referred to with numerous names - the White city, the City of the Jaguar, the City of the Monkey God- from the time of the early conquistadors in the Mosquitia region of Honduras. While numerous explorers from the 1930s at various times have claimed to have discovered the city, Preston debunks many myths and this team with the help of Lidar technology did the first proper aerial survey of the site. While there was a fair share of criticism about the effort from other experts who were not part of the exploration, the discovery of the site has been hailed as a source of national pride by the Honduran government and to the team's credit they did not stop with the Lidar survey but risked their lives in ground truthing the data with actual field work in the jungles with many of them contracting leishmaniasis due to their exposure to parasites in the jungle (Dr.Fauci plays a minor role in this regard). I haven't watched the documentary but I hope to at some point as both the story of the civilization and the story of the discovery are equally intriguing. It was also good to hear about something positive coming out of a US-Honduran relationship.

I am glad I read all these books and am double glad that I finally took the time to write about them. Sometimes when I read one book after an other they all get muddled in my brain and taking the time to even write a few sentences helps fixing some of these books in my memory for longer term. As summer is around the corner i am building up my reading pile in anticipation. I was reading a review of Emma Smith's upcoming book Portable Magic and the guardian review states "Her title, borrowed from an essay by Stephen King, emphasises the mobility of these apparently inert items and their occult powers. Like motorcars or metaphors, books transport us to destinations unknown, and that propulsion has something uncanny about it." Needless to say that book is on my reading pile as it echoes my sentiments completely.

Taking a Break

 After 25+ years in the corporate world, I decided to hit the brakes on my career this week. I am not part of the pandemic induced she-cession or the great retirement. This was something that I had always planned to do even before the pandemic hit us. I had tried to quit once before, early in my career, when my then infant daughter first went to day care and came home with multiple ear infections. Thanks to my mother and spouse who supported me through those tough days and a very understanding manager I was able to manage both home and career without quitting. This time around there is no such compelling need, other than the fact that my daughter will be a high school senior this fall and before I know it she will be out of the home and I will sitting on an empty nest. I decided if there was ever a time to take a break this was it. Some people called my decision "courageous," others lauded me for choosing family over career. I honestly don't think I deserve any of these comments. I recognize that I am lucky enough to be able to afford a break like this.

This is an experiment - my Walden - but unlike my hero, I am not isolating myself. I am just trying to be more available for my family and practice being present in the moment as opposed to running schedules in the back of my mind and flitting from one thing to another constantly. Reading, volunteering, and birding have always been part of my life. But I am hoping to do these more mindfully.  In the past when I wanted to learn something new I always did it alongside managing my home and career. I am hoping that with a bit more leisure i will have the opportunity to follow up on areas of interest in depth. Maybe I will finally finish Ulysses and I am hoping to call my mom more frequently. Beyond these I don't have specific goals. I am not calling this phase my retirement because I don't know what's in store for me and no one can predict the future. And I am not doing this to help my daughter's college application process. Sure, I hope to travel with her this summer to colleges that are on her list that I had never heard of until now. There is not much I can do other than listen to what she is / is not saying and follow her lead.

It's been a week and I am happy to report that I haven't experienced any withdrawal symptoms or regrets, yet. Sure, I miss the people I used to work with but I don't miss the daily grind. This Mother's Day didn't feel any different from the last one either. On our way to the local pond for some birding time (which has become our traditional Mother's Day thing to do) we didn't see any chicks which was quite different from our experience last year. Disappointing? Well, yes at first. But then I told myself maybe the chicks have all successfully fledged and we were just a bit late this year - which reminded me of my own fledgling standing next to me and the ephemerality (if that's a word) of life. If I had any second thoughts about taking a break, the pond with no chicks/fledglings removed the last vestiges of doubt. Now as Gandalf reminds me "all I have to decide is what to do with the time that is given me."