CAROLE E. BARROWMAN

I'm writing this with a view of the beautiful Welsh coastline and the sea in front of me. Sun is shining and it's not too windy. A few windsurfers dot the horizon, a couple of fishing boats, and every now and then a ship passes on its way out through the channel. 

First, thanks to all of you who sent me emails and good wishes after the Torchsong convention. They were all very sweet and much appreciated. There were just so many that I couldn't get to them before I left for the UK to work with John on a few projects. But I read them all. I also appreciated the pics that a few of you sent too. Thank you.

So second, an ankle update. John's ankle is healing well. He's been going to regular therapy and by the end of the week his leg was released from its full 'David Beckham' boot. He's now wearing one that looks a bit like small shin guards–a mini Beck. He has to limit his side-ways movements with his ankle so dancing the slosh with my mum and dad is out for awhile. He should, however, be able to get back to full shopping speed today. I think we're heading to Costco to make up for lost time.

Cheers,

Carole

In my U.S. Environmental History course this term, I was assigned to read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman (which I highly recommend). It exposed a scary truth about human invention; human beings have actually created something that will remain intact in the environment for an indefinite amount of time. The book explains that every single piece of plastic that has been created in the last fifty years, since its invention, still remains in the environment. Furthermore, there is no sign that any plastic will actually biodegrade, even after it has been reduced to small fragments. We use plastics everyday: in bags, bottles, containers, wrappers, and numerous other things. Plastics have become a fundamental material for modern life. However, I'd like to suggest is an easy and simple way to do a little to reduce your impact on the environment. Think about soap! Alan Weisman has forever changed the way I will shop for soap, and I hope I can convince you to change too. Next time you go to the store to buy body soap, read the bottle. If it doesn't say "100% natural exfolients", stop! Read the ingredients. If you see the word 'polyethylene' anywhere, do NOT buy it. This means that the exfoliating granuals in the soap are made of plastic. Yes, plastic. A scientist interviewed by Alan Weisman explains this best: "They're selling plastic meant to go right down the drain, into the sewers, into the rivers, right into the ocean. Bite-size pieces of plastic to be swallowed by little sea creatures" (147). There is no need to use soap that hurts our environment when there are alternatives that do not. It may seem small and insubstantial, but remember, those tiny bits of plastic will not ever wash away. So next time, think before you scrub!

Clare

4/09

My choices for my favorite literary love stories are romantic novels that are alternatives to what I call the heaving bosoms and bulging biceps books. Romantic fiction can be good literature, but romance novels ot that variety rarely are. Romance novels (Barbara Cartland etc.) are like French fries or– in the spirit of Valentine’s Day– a generic chocolate heart that can fill the spot but doesn't last; whereas, romantic novels explore the complexities of relationships and the challenges and consequences of following your heart– so my literary love stories would be Godiva chocs or Lindts truffles…mmm!

1.“Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War” by Sebastian Faulks

Many classic love stories in literature are about infidelity and the consequences of falling in love with the ‘forbidden.’ For example, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. This is a contemporary novel in that category. It’s about a soldier in WWI in France who falls in love with the wife of a wealthy industrialist. She’s in a passionless marriage and he’s, well, he’s twenty…. her husband and the war are big obstacles to their relationship. Faulks is a really eloquent writer and a terrific storyteller . . . and let's face it if I want to have a fanatsy love affair it might as well be with a twenty year old.

2.“I Capture The Castle” by Dodie Smith (a great pick for mother/daughter book clubs)

If you love the kind of romantic stories that Jane Austen wrote (Pride and Prejudice and Emma are my favorites), you’ll adore this book. The novel was first published in 1948 and it was like Twilight to my generation. I read it when I was a teenager, re-read it with my daughter when she was about 14 (it’s one of her favorite books too), and I ended up re-reading it last week when I picked it up planning just to skim it for this blog. JK Rowling has even said that the main character, Cassandra, “is one of the most charismatic narrators” ever in literature.

Cassandra, a budding writer and full-blown romantic, lives in a decaying castle in England with her father (a famous writer suffering from severe writer’s block), her sister, Rose (cynical and an anti-romantic), her younger brother, and her father’s lover who was once a famous model in London. When a family with eligible males moves into the neighboring estate, love blooms. The novel ends with “I love you! I love you! I love you!” What’s not to like?

3. “Of Love and Shadows” by Isabel Allende

Incredibly romantic love story set in mid-twentieth century in a Latin American dictatorship (it’s really Chile) against a backdrop of political repression. Allende writes sagas that are deeply passionate and sweeping and complex. This is a love story about the daughter of a wealthy family who falls in love with a photographer and journalist. They uncover a mass grave and as they try to discover who’s responsible, their love grows in the “shadows” of political repression. My students love this novel when I assign it. It has a heart and a strong social conscience.

4. “Affinity” by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters has won a number of prestigious literary awards in the UK. Her main characters generally play on the ‘girls team’ when it comes to romance and matters of the heart. This novel is one of a trilogy set in Victorian England and it’s engaging and thoroughly researched about what it was like for women in the 19th century who have been “put away” because they think or act differently. It’s the story of the developing relationship between two women, one an upper class woman who volunteers at a women’s prison, and the other woman is one of the prisoners who is a spiritualist. Waters is an engaging writer.

5. “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby

Rob Fleming takes his girlfriend for granted. She walks off with another man, leaving Rob to struggle with happened. He’s a list addict (top five best songs for a first date etc.) so he makes a list of the women who’ve dumped him and decides to learn from his past mistakes and try to win the love of his life back. The book was made into a movie with John Cusack and Jack Black, but the novel is deeper and richer in its understanding of the nature of modern love. It's also set in the UK not Chicago as the film is. This novel is witty and romantic without being mushy.

Hope you enjoy these literary love stories. Have a wonderful Valentine's Day.

Cheers,

Carole

I’m in trouble. I believe I’ve lost time. I went to bed on Halloween and when I woke up November 1st, it was already Christmas. Everywhere I turned witches, bats, ghosts and goblins had morphed into Santas, snowmen, twinkling lights and tinsel.

What happened to Thanksgiving?

Did I pull a Robert Louis Stevenson and miss the entire month of November? I’ve always thought that traveling in a time machine would be pretty cool, but I’d hoped that when I did I’d wake up with fewer wrinkles, lots more money, and a pair of perkier – well, you get my point. What I didn’t want to happen was to skip directly from scavenging the good candy from the bottom of the Halloween bowl to facing cranky shoppers and more credit card debt.

It’s a mystery to me where Thanksgiving has gone. I know it used to be the holiday directly before Christmas and I know that to many Thanksgiving was simply a full day of rest before the mad rush to Toys R Us or Mayfair Mall, but to me Thanksgiving was the holiday that defined what it meant to be an American. I loved everything about Thanksgiving, with the exception of pumpkin pie. In my opinion, the pumpkin as a dessert has got to be the most overrated culinary con since Rachel Ray. A pumpkin can be a ride to the ball or a scary lantern, but it is not a sweet treat at the end of one of the best meals of the year.

Growing up in Scotland, Thanksgiving didn’t exist as a national holiday. Why would it? When the Pilgrims packed their stuffing recipes with their Puritan ideals and set sail, we British said “cheerio and behave yourselves.”  
In Scotland, we do have all the other biggies, though. We have Valentine’s Day, Easter, Bank holidays, our own versions of Memorial and Labor Days, and, of course, Christmas, which begins in December and encompasses a few of weeks of frenzied family gatherings, parties and pantomimes, all culminating in the biggest celebration of the season, New Year’s Eve, or Hogmanay as it’s called.  In some parts of Scotland, Hogmanay celebrations can make Mardi Gras blush.

Consequently, when my family immigrated to America in 1976, we embraced all things American. Our first Thanksgiving was our chance to celebrate a holiday that only Americans celebrated.  To us Thanksgiving was a quintessentially American tradition, borne out of the nation’s peculiar past, albeit a messy and not nearly as romantic as we’d like to remember past, but unique nonetheless.  My family wanted to embrace all of it, families and friends gathering to celebrate nothing more than each other, rejoicing that all have survived another year, no matter how battered or brilliant, no matter how tremendous or trying. At Thanksgiving none of that mattered.

In those first few years when we seemed so far from home, Thanksgiving gave us a chance to think about all the reasons we’d come to America in the first place. It seemed to me then as an outsider and it still does now after thirty years that Thanksgiving is the one holiday that we all truly share. No matter where we live, what we look like, or what we believe, on Thanksgiving we all share a meal together. Thanksgiving gives us all permission to pause and nourish ourselves.

So I’m troubled about what has happened to Thanksgiving, and I really hope we can find it again. Until then I have to tell you I will not be dragged into the department store holiday sales, I refuse to recognize the presence of decorations, and I certainly will not listen to radio stations prematurely pandering the season.

During December, I’ll give and receive with the best of them, but not right now. It’s not that time yet.

Cheers,

Carole

This November I'll be able to vote in my first Presidential election, and I'm thrilled to see that the election is drawing more people my age into the political process because this means that politicians will have to pay attention to the needs and concerns of the under 25 crowd.

Through such resources as MTV and MySpace, young people have easier opportunities to get informed.  Almost all the candidates have ideas for specific programs that will help the young people of America.  A recent poll on MTV asked who young people thought worked hardest to get the support of young voters.  The poll showed Barack Obama on top.  This is not too surprising considering he has programs in mind to help young people (affordable health care, increasing the funding for college) and stances on major issues that young people can understand and support. 

Yet, despite this, not even half of my peers caucused in Minnesota last winter plan to vote in the Presidential Election.  Why do so many young people still choose not to vote?  For me, it was never a question of if I wanted to vote.  In my mind voting is an obligation as an intelligent and functioning member of a democratic society. 

I decided to find out from my peers why they were not voting.  Overwhelmingly, there were only two answers:  “I don’t do politics!” or “It’s not like one vote makes that big of a difference anyways…”

These responses can be easily refuted.  A person living in a democracy does politics every single day when you write a copay at the doctor's office or return your library book and no one cares what you were reading.  And if the 2000 election taught us anything, it taught us that every single vote makes a big difference.  

Despite every celebrity who “rocks the vote” and every politician who works to convince young people that their “vote really does count!” it’s not convincing everyone.  Something needs to be done to convince my peers that voting is important, worthwhile, and, yes, I'll say it, exhilarating.  

I think politicians like Barack Obama are a step in the right direction.  Young people can relate to an Oprah-adored, 40 something, racially diverse man much easier than they can relate to a 70 something, white man who is just more of the same nonsense that has been plaguing our country for the past eight years.  It also helps when candidates, like Barack Obama, have specific plans that will directly affect the young.  

I don’t have a better answer as to what can be done to convince every young voter to go out and vote.  However, I do know that the future is going to be scary if large groups of us who are that future refuse to "do politics", don’t think their vote counts, and don’t even bother to get informed on issues.  Ignorance is not okay and being apathetic does not make the problems go away.

All I know, is that for my part, I'll keep harassing my peers and try to persuade them to vote because this is our chance to let our voices be heard and to create change for the better.

Clare Barrowman Casey
September 2008