The Nature of Things

Time for another visit from that devious feline, Simon's cat.

One of the pleasures of the Armand Gamache series - and there are many - is the description of the food. Wherever his job as head of the homicide division of the Surete du Quebec takes him, Gamache always seems to eat exceedingly well, and Louise Penny describes it all in intricate detail - the herbs used, the consistency of the sauce, and especially the aroma of the baking bread and of the coffee, always the coffee. That is never more true than in this fourth entry in the series. Armand and his beloved Reine-Marie have gone to the Manoir Bellechasse for a short vacation and to fulfill their tradition of celebrating their anniversary at this inn which holds so much nostalgia for them. It's their thirty-fifth anniversary and they are enjoying their time away from it all, being cosseted and pampered by the staff of the Manoir. The Gamaches are not the only guests. The Morrow/Finney family has arrived for their family reunion and a more obnoxious and unattractive family is hard to ima...

Since the massacre of tiny children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, the country has sustained its sense of outrage and grief over those senseless killings. There is a lot of talk about and impetus toward new action on trying to restrict the availability of military-style weapons to a public which has no business owning them. Their only purpose is to kill people. Their only valid use is in the military where killing the enemy is, in fact, the point. Vice President Biden is working with his group to try to get legislation written and passed through the Congress. God knows it won't be easy with the legislative clowns he has to deal with, but he's done it before, with the assault weapon ban back in the '90s. Perhaps he can do it again. Meanwhile, as Biden and his group work and the pundits pontificate and the gun nuts expostulate about how hammers are more dangerous than guns , (Yes, they really do say that!) the death count con...

I know Dellarobbia Turnbow. She is someone I grew up with and went to school with, someone whose life arc was changed forever by an unwanted teenage pregnancy. She is someone who grew up in an ultra-conservative society that is founded upon a rock-ribbed traditional understanding of the Bible. She is also whip-smart and has begun, at age twenty-seven, to question the understanding that underlies the closed society in which she finds herself. Dellarobbia lives in the Appalachians, in the small town of Feathertown, Tennessee. She is a small woman with an outsized personality, flaming red hair, and a deep desire for something more meaningful in her life than her unchallenging duties as a wife and mother. We meet her as she is hiking up a mountain behind her home, heading for an assignation with a telephone lineman, someone she is hoping will bring a passion that is missing from her life. She is not wearing her glasses, because "men don't make passes at women who wear glasses....

"The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer.  Minute by minute they lengthen out.  It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change.  It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a  twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour." -  Vita Sackville-West

I'm not a fan of David Brooks. I stopped regularly reading his column in The New York Times several years ago. I found his writing tendentious in the extreme as he praised politicians who I found to be outrageous in their views and downright unpatriotic in their actions. I suppose if I had agreed with him, I wouldn't have found him quite so tendentious! Anyway, I don't usually read his column but the one from yesterday caught my eye and I did settle down to read it. I'm glad I did. The title of the column is "Suffering fools gladly" and the topic is politeness, a value that is too often missing in our lives today. Indeed, the modern view seems to be that politeness is a weakness. It's a philosophy of life that is much more interested in the snappy comeback, in showing up the ignorance or stupidity of one's adversary than in being kind to people. And, in this world view, everyone is an adversary. Brooks points out that many of the people that we admi...