The other day Evelyn found a book called “Love Me, Puerto Rico” at a local book store. It’s by an American woman named Mary Louise Edwards who moved to PR in the early 1960s. After cracking open the book and reading “there’s no phone service here”, I knew it was one I wanted to read.

I find it interesting to read what other Americans have to say about there experiences in PR. Not because they describe PR better than a native, but because I like to compare their experiences with my own. I enjoy reading about other perspectives, especially those written by people who have had to live on the island (i.e. not tourists).

Another thing that interested me about this particular book was the timeframe–the early 1960s. You see, there are a lot of books out there that cover the 1950s, because of all the commonwealth activity, but I’ve yet to find much (English) writing on the 1960s and 70s. I find these time periods even more interesting than the 50s. Why? Because it’s during the 60s that you really begin to see the island shift from agriculture (sugar cane) to manufacturing. A very tough period for a country to go through, as we see now throughout the world.

The funny thing is that “Love Me, Puerto Rico”, if written today, would be a blog! It’s a series of short (1-2 page) sections that cover different aspects and experiences of her time in Puerto Rico. It follows a timeframe between arrival, purchasing a house in the city, and then moving out to the campo. Each short section is a snippit of life: City Noises, Street Vendors, Things We Do Without, Manana Mood, and so on. There are also sections that cover people and families that she met. A comprehensive narrative, it’s not. But it really does have some very interesting entries.

Roast pig is such a popular food on the island that there are many lechoneras–restaurants specializing in pork. We watched one lechonera being built by a poor, almost ragged man. At first it was just four poles supporting a roof that kept the rain off the roasting spit. A few weeks later the man was wearing a large white apron and a starched cook’s cap. Next came a roof addition, and another addition, then cement block walls, and finally tables, chairs and a juke box.

I really have to give the author credit, she is pretty fair with her subjects, discussing the good and the bad. While she doesn’t hold back in telling us what she feels, she is constructive and thoughtful about her criticisms (more than I am, for sure).

If you’d like to read the book, just do a couple of searches on-line. Used copies are pretty available, running in the $10 range. (Don’t bother paying more for a signed copy; it looks like she signed most of the copies out there.) There’s 1962 and 1966 editions (I own the 1962, and would be interested to see if anything changed in the 1966 edition).

One last thing: If you are in the Austin area and are looking for Childrens Books or Cook Books, I’d recommend taking a look at Curio Corner Books. (They also have an on-line store.) It has to be one of the best organized used book stores I’ve been in, better organized than most new book stores!

I don’t think I’m going to be traveling to Brazil any time soon. Not that I was planning on it, though checking out the Amazon sounds cool. Their air travel has really been a mess. First we had that crash between the private jet and commerical airliner, and now we have the one of several days ago. Quite horrible.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, their air traffic control radar went out the other night for nearly three hours, requiring turn-arounds and unscheduled landings. To top it off, the authorities don’t seem to know what a “black box” looks like and ending up sending a piece of fuselage to the labs instead of the recorder. Note to authorities: Even though it’s called a “black box” it’s not actually black. It’s either bright red or green/yellow in color. As an airport authority, that might be a good thing to remember in the future.

The timing of all this Brazil news is kind of spooky, because I’m reading not one, but two, books about Brazil. While browsing the local bookstore’s travel section I found one called “A Death In Brazil“. While the author rambles and jumps around quite a bit, it still is a facinating look at modern expat life (he lived there, off and on, from the mid 80′s to 90′s). He weaves in a lot of history in his storytelling; I’ve learning a lot about the country.

A couple of days ago Evelyn picked up some books about Darwin’s travels, including one called “In Darwin’s Wake“. It covers a modern day cruise following Darwin’s first voyage around South America. While I really wouldn’t call this a faithful recreation of the voyage, it is an interesting travel book that covers experiences in 1990′s Brazil.

What I find most interesting is the different experiences both authors had. Actually, it shouldn’t call it different experiences, but different perspectives. Both authors had horror stories about Brazil; the “Death” author seemed to take it in stride, the “Wake” author was keen to get out of there.

Both authors clearly agree that the politics and living conditions down there are pretty darn horrible, at least for most of the people. Places like Sao Paulo are gigantic dens of extreme poverty, with the rich tucked away in their gated communities (taking private helicopters between work and home).

I won’t even get into the plight of the street children, many of whom “huff” glue to make things more tolerable. The movie “City of God” illustrates their story well.  (Though, as an added downer, I learned that the actors — nearly all of of which were street kids — have not been able to escape the life of the favela.)

After watching City of God, check out “Bus 174“. If you aren’t sadded after a double-feature of those two movies, then you might want to cut back on the antidepressents.

I guess that if you want to see what slavery, colonialism, poverty, and miliary rule will do to a country, look no further than Brazil. It’s a clear illustration of how difficult it is for a country and a people to change. 

Just when the hype about Ms. Hilton was dying down, now all I hear about is that damn Potter book and how “fans are crying” because the ending was leaked.

Lighten up, Francis! It’s a book, it’s not your life. If you are worred about learning about the ending, maybe you shouldn’t be doing Google searches for “does harry die?”.

For those who were wondering, the last chapter involves Harry and Ron having their first romantic encounter–with each other! A crazy Hagrid beats Dumbledore to death (he’s alive!–but, now, dead!) Finally, Snape and Hermione get married and give birth to Voldemort The Second.

While visiting our friend in Fort Smith AR we stopped at a used bookstore. Small-town bookstores can be pretty small and/or disappointing. However, the great thing about them is that they often have treasures hidden on their shelves. This is especially true of things like cookbooks. You see, in the Big City all those old and unique cookbooks get snatched up pretty quickly. I have yet to find anything interesting in Chicago, Austin, etc. However, you walk into these small stores and find a treasure trove.

I found a couple of interesting books, including “A Cook’s tour of San Francisco” (not overly old, 1963, but in good shape), and “Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners”. The Sunday Dinners is interesting because it is older (1915) and was owned my Mrs. McLaurine (sp?) of Muskogee, Oklahoma. I love it when people personalize their books. She even had her home address listed. Though, sadly, the house no longer appears to be standing (at least according to Google Earth). The good Mrs. appears to have disliked alcohol, since she lined-through any references to booze! It seemed like a pretty boring Christmas Dinner at her house.

The third book I got was a classic James Beard titled “Beard on Food”. It’s from 1974 and is a collection of his magazine articles. (This ended up being a hidden treasure, as it is also a first edition.) For those non-foodies out there, Beard is one of the people who opened American’s eyes to things other than steak-and-potatoes. He, along with his friend Julia Child, opened us up to eating “strange and exotic” stuff.

Keep in mind, not so long ago, Americans thought things like the avocado were strange. Let’s not even get into traditional dishes of other cultures (Indian, real Mexican, French, Middle-Eastern, the list goes on and on). A lot of what city-folk take for granted, like a good Indian joint, were non-existant in the States not very long ago. It’s people like Child and Beard that opened us up to stuff like Coc au Vin.

This is not to say that American food is boring. After all, the Americas brought us the tomato, the potato, chocolate, the chili pepper, and on and on. We think of Italian food being tomato based, but that only occurred a couple hundred years ago, thanks to imports from North America.

The Beard book is endlessly interesting. Each section is a page or two long, but what Beard can fit into those pages is amazing. He is a wonderful food writer, and makes you want to try everything he mentions. (I’m tempted to purchase a device to cook and serve snails.) If you are interested in food, I highly recommend you pick up a copy. (The nice thing is that it’s still in print, so you should be able to find a recent reprint in a used bookstore.)

An Aside: How Ron Learned About James Beard

I have to thank my parents for my introduction to Beard. To be more specific, my grandmother. You see, she hunted down Beard and got an autographed copy of one of his cookbooks (I believe, his paperback on American cooking). I “borrowed” that book for quite a while, though my Mom asked for it enough and got it back, right before our move to PR. I think she was afraid she wouldn’t see it again. Anyhow, it was the Beard book and Sunday afternoons watching Julia Child on Channel 11 (later, Jeff Smith) that got me really interested in cooking.

Project Gutenberg has posted a “new” short story. Originally published in 1962, I don’t think it’s been re-printed since. It’s worth a look for those interested in Vonnegut. Check it out here: 2 B R 0 2 B

We were watching Fahrenheit 451 the other day. I’m amazed at how a movie filmed in 1966 can still look so fresh and vibrant. For those who have not watched it, this movie is based on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel “Fahrenheit 451.” Roughly it’s about a society that has banned all written form of books, essays, papers, and such. A society depended on audio and pictures as a form of communicating and learning.

There is a scene in this movie that all of a sudden I got chills and for a moment I had flashbacks. This really frightened me. The scene takes place at the home of the main character Montag and his wife Linda. Linda is very excited when Montag arrives home from work. She quickly get dinner served and tells Montag of her great opportunity to be an actress. she is thrilled that ” Cousin ” has selected her for tonight’s play. ” Cousin ” is a regular T.V. personality that these people in this environment watch with regularity. Kinda like are today’s prime time shows such as American Idol and what not. Well as Linda and Montag watches the play unfold and at one point the actors in the program looks dead on to the television viewers and ask Linda, what should we do {blah blah blah }? Linda sitting on the living room floor is so excited and looks over to Montag as if “help me, I don’t know what to say.” Montag signals her to reply but by the time she turns to the screen the actors have taken her reply. Amazing techology!?! So, the story goes on… you’ll need to see this for yourself.

This ” Cousin ” reminded me of a show when we lived temporarily in Puerto Rico called “SUPER XCLUSIVO” with it’s main personality being a hybrid lifesize female puppet named ” La Comay” and her co-male personality Hector (not a puppet). The similarity of ” Cousin ” and ” La Comay ” is that everyone tunes in religiously. La Comay even has her own fan website. I’ve seen very little of La Comay show and from what I observed I noticed that it slightly different from ” Cousin ” La Comay uses combined format of tabloid, journalism and humor. Puertorican loves this combined format. It’s pretty entertaining and at times it brings to surface the ills of our society. In an Island were people are oppressed regularly their venue of expression has made this show a success.

Sadly to say, there are those who would like to keep people ignorant and oppressed even in this modern day.
The thought of one day our society moving in such a direction is concerning and yet there has been and will be idividuals who do whatever it takes to keep such a thing from happening.

By the way, apparently Frank Darabont who directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mille has planned to remake Fahrenheit 451 for release sometime either 2008 or 2009. It will be interesting to see his perceptive although I think the 1966 version is quite good.

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at age 84. So it goes.

If you haven’t read much of his stuff, take a look at some of these novels: The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Jailbird, and Cat’s Cradle. The ‘required reading’ novel would be Slaughterhouse-Five.

I just finished a book called “One Man’s Wilderness” by Sam Keith. It’s the book form of Richard (Dick) Proenneke’s diary. Proenneke moved to Alaska in the late 1960′s and kept detailed diaries of his adventures.

It’s a great book for those interesting in reading more about someone who moved away from “civilization” (like An Island To Oneself). Proenneke, like Neale, wasn’t really a hermit like person. He liked other people. Both of them looked to prove to themselves that they could survive with their own hands. One man did it on a deserted island, the other in the Alaskan wilderness.

One of the really cool things that Proenneke did was take a 16MM movie camera with him. He used this not only to film the wildlife, but he also documented the construction of his cabin. Proenneke was obviously a master carpenter and all around handy-man. The construction of his cabin is nothing short of amazing. Luckily, much of the film has been transferred to DVD. A set of two DVDs and the Book are available from Bob Swerer Productions for $58.90. If you are interested in the wilderness and want to be in awe of what a man can build with his own hands, I recommend them. The book is really descriptive, but the DVD does better justice to the workmanship involved.

When watching the DVD take a look at how fit the guy is — he was in his early 50′s when we went out to the wilderness! This guy can haul logs around like they were toothpicks. In fact, he stayed in the wilderness for the next 30 years, finally leaving when he was in his late 80′s (and couldn’t handle the winters anymore).

If you’d like to learn more about Proenneke, there’s a decent (though incomplete) bio at wikipedia. The National Park Service also published a second set of his diary entries, but it’s hard to find. Luckily they have scanned the original and it can be download from here (it’s a very big PDF file). I’ve just started reading it (hard to read on the computer screen)–but it seems to have much more detail about his life than the limited wiki article.

RAW, writer and philosopher, died today. His most famous works focused on conspiracies and how we got so easily wrapped up in them. A nutty guy who was dying in poverty until his plight was broadcast of the Internet and a bunch of people donated money. (He was dying, and was about to be evicted. Luckily this was avoided.)

I liked his last blog posting:

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

Those interested in Sherlock Holmes may want to check out a couple of books I recently picked up.

The first is called The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E.J. Wagner. It’s a short (200 page) book that covers the forensic science behind the stories. It illustrates how many of the stories used (what was) cutting edge science. For those interested in forensics and/or Holmes, it’s worth checking out (though a bit pricey–see if you can find it used or at the library).

The second has actually been out for a year or two now, but I just picked it up. It’s called The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by Leslie Klinger. There are three volumes in the set. The first covers the Adventures and Memoirs collections. The second covers Return, Last Bow, and Case-Book. The third (which I don’t have) covers the novels.

Good annotations can be wonderful editions to read, especially for older books. For those unfamiliar, an annotated version is basically the original text with a ton of side-notes. This helps a modern reader to understand older phrases or concepts that are no longer in widespread use. Very helpful if you want to learn more about the history surrounding a writing.

Now these books are gigantic. Volume One is over 750 pages and Volume Two is over 1800 pages! And the paperbacks are trade, meaning that they are the same size as the hardcover editions. Not pocket books, that’s for sure! You can find the hardcover editions for about $60 on Amazon, and they are well worth the price. However, I was able to pick the set up from the Quality Paperback Book Club for only $20 (with free shipping)! It’s an absolute steal at that price. Not only do you get all of the short stories, but you get annotations and many illustrations, too.

If you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I highly recommended picking up these books–especially the New Annotated set.