The Now, The Past: Good Things

The Now: Good Things

A book that I pre-ordered back in August 2014 arrived on Monday! (It was due out last October but I read in the New York Times that the publisher--a small academic press--underestimated the demand and only printed 15,000 copies. Those sold out on the day it was published and before Amazon put in its request for the 30,000 pre-ordered copies.)

Anyway, it's here!


Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer Girl

I am a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books for children, have been since I was six or seven years old. I still read the whole set of them from cover to cover every year or two. This book goes back to the beginning, to the penciled journals that Laura wrote that eventually became those children's books. She originally intended it for adults, but failed to find a publisher until it had been reworked to appeal to children. The original is definitely more straightforward than the children's books and, with the annotations, there is a lot of historical background that would be of little interest to children.

Anyway it's a big, heavy book, almost like a textbook, which does not make for good bedtime reading, so I've been reading it at mealtimes. It's marvelous, a new way to know Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And it has been welcome company: My meals have been rather solitary since Dave has been on a business trip this week. (He comes back tomorrow.) Since he's been gone, I've simplified my diet quite a bit, eating yogurt and fruit for breakfast, eggs on toast for lunch, and a variety of dinners including a couple of nights of cheese and green chile Lotaburgers and onion rings. Tonight I had bean nachos with lots of cheese and sour cream and a kind of impromptu calabacitas made with the zucchini from our last CSA box. (We get another one this Saturday.)

Dave calls every night when he gets back to his hotel. Last night when he called Saba and I had just settled into bed, so I took this picture of us to text to Dave while we chatted:

(That is my new red bathrobe, which Saba loves. I sometimes wear it to bed when I'm cold and when I do, she thinks it's Christmas. She runs over and kneads and kneads and kneads at it, tugging and pulling it into a little bed to settle down onto as she has here, pulling it up off my shoulder.)

When Dave calls, I usually put him on speakerphone and Saba is very curious about this. I don't know if she recognizes his voice or if she just wonders why I'm talking to this little box that answers me back. She is a smart cat though, she actually understands a lot of commands and questions and such, so I think she knows who is on the other end. Anyway, she likes to listen in on our conversations for whatever reason.

The Past: Good Things

I was craving a diet soda this afternoon, so I went out to the local non-co-op grocery store to pick up some soda and things for nachos. I walked into the store, saw this headline on the newspaper, and had to buy a copy (something I haven't done in a decade or more).

Why this?

When I was in high school, this man and three accomplices abducted Linda Daniels, a local college student, as she was unloading groceries from her car. They kept her for several days, raping and torturing her, and finally murdering her and dumping her body. The youngest (17 at the time) eventually turned himself into the police and received immunity for his testimony against the others. (Four years later that young man hung himself. When I heard, I thought: Good.)

At the time all this happened, I was fourteen years old. I remember hearing about the crime (she was missing for several days and there were several articles in the paper about it) and being terrified. It has stayed with me all these years, too; I probably don't go a week without thinking of Linda Daniels. I think about her whenever I am unloading groceries from my car by myself. I think hearing about her murder made me hyper vigilant about personal safety in many ways, even when--especially when--I am close to home, as this happened on this woman's doorstep.

After I unloaded my groceries today, but before I even put them away, I read the article in the paper and then suddenly started crying. It was not out of grief but instead a kind of overwhelming relief that some evil had passed from this world.

Tonight, as I was thinking whether or not to write about this, I suddenly remembered when I was nineteen and reading Dante's Inferno for the first time. I wondered what level of hell this rapist and murderer would be in now, so I went and looked it up.

In the Inferno murderers are sent to the seventh level of hell. There they spend eternity submerged to various depths in a river of blood. When they try to move out of their level, the centaurs that patrol the banks of the river shoot them back into place with bows and arrows. There is no escape.

But fix thine eyes beneath: the river of blood
Approaches, in the which all those are steep’d,
Who have by violence injured.” O blind lust!
O foolish wrath! who so dost goad us on
In the brief like, and in the eternal then
Thus miserably o’erwhelm us. I beheld
An ample foss, that in a bow was bent,
As circling all the plain; for so my guide
Had told. Between it and the rampart’s base,
On trail ran Centaurs, with keen arrows arm’d,
As to the chase they on the earth were wont. [...]Around The foss these go by thousands, aiming shafts        At whatsoever spirit dares emerge From out the blood, more than his guilt allows

When I read this, I thought: Good.