Book Review - The River Why

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

David James Duncan ©1983

The story that was a river.

This story begins in the pool of stagnant water of Gus’s life as a boy growing up in Portland, Oregon. He is a prodigal fisher-kid, born to a pair as compatible as Lord Byron and Calamity Jane. The only points on which the three of them converge is the water and the fish that sway within, and their affection for Gus's little brother, Bill Bob.  Bill Bob wants nothing to do with water, but swims in metaphysical waters like one born with gills.

Gus's family is in a state of perpetual conflict, particularly with regards to the method by which fish should be taken from the water. The battle of worms vs. flies rages on a daily basis, revealing a deep disconnect between his parents.

After graduation without honors, Gus's river leaps the log jam, and glides post-haste to a cabin on Oregon's fictitious Tamawanis river. Isolated, he spends all his time following his Ideal Schedule: Sleeping, fishing, eating, drinking and sleeping again. Instead finding utter happiness, one such as myself would expect, he sinks and spins as though he's caught in the eddy of a waterfall. His philosophical minded friend, Titus, offers him hand and pulls him free.

Free flowing again the story meanders through remembrances of his childhood, through ancient forests that fell victim to refir madness, through Sherar’s falls fished by the Native American, Tomas Bigeater, who remembers his spirit, and by other Native Americans who cannot. A branch of the river flows through the city of Portland and dies, while the main story flows on. The river is rife with riffles of laughter, between pools of deep clarity, and eddies of beauty, and murky stretches of disorientation.

Sometimes the river passes through the physical into the metaphysical, to return luminous. It is alive with spirited trout, minnows of greatness and longing, ugly yet delectable nymphs, and worms wrapped in mud like Twinkies. This story-river makes fun of itself, gives and gets, despairs and hopes. It bubbles from it's spring wondering at its purpose, finds its spirit, all the while asking, “Why?”

David James Duncan has written a beautiful river that I will float, fish, skinny dip, and refresh my spirit in again, and again, and again.

Book Review - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Douglas Adams ©1979

I read this book because it's one of those novels that is woven into our culture, and it bothers me when I catch myself nodding along with references, parallels, or jokes that I don't get. Or worse, when I have to ask for clarification and the words “Oh, you've never read it?” float over, complete with sympathetic head tilt.

Grrr, gimme that thing.

With my usual dubious feeling towards all things revered I cracked the cover. After reading the opening page, all my doubts vaporized, and soon afterwards so did our planet—in the story...

Arthur Dent is a normal English Joe, who fancies a cup of tea in the morning and a pint in the afternoon. He is dragged away from his house, which is about to be bulldozed to make room for a highway interchange, by his friend, Ford Prefect.

Ford is a galactic hitchhiking alien who's been stranded on Earth for the last fifteen years, while doing research for the title book, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Ford could care less about Arthur's house, as he's just intercepted a signal from a Vogon Constructor Ship, which he knows are tasked with destroying planets to clear a routes for new hyper-spatial expressways. Progress, you know. He's brought Arthur to the pub in attempt to tank him up to ease the inherent discomfort of riding in a matter transference beam.

Ford and Arthur stowaway on the Vogon ship, and therein begins the adventure in which they learn the origins of our planet, for whom it was created, and why. Along the way we meet the two headed, AWOL, galactic president/hippie, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillium, who is the other remaining earthling, and a manically depressed robot named Marvin.

And then there's The Guide, with a cover stating, "DON'T PANIC", and subjects illuminating readers on nearly infinite topics, including the necessity for hitchhikers to possess a clean towel at all times.


The author, Douglas Adams, takes gorgeous colors from physics, math, social parallels, humor, and pure originality, and swirls them in a bucket of flippant genius; then he crunches up a spaceship and dips it in. Shaking it out, and hung on the line to dry is this book.

The product is slightly psychedelic, loaded with wildly imaginative ideas that swirled before my mind's eyes before shifting into something else fascinating and original.  For example, the guide informs us that the “..beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt.” Or there's the improbable inventor of the golden Infinite Improbability generator, “which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars” without all that “tedious mucking about in hyperspace”, who was a student rather than a self-exalted physicist.  He ended up being lynched by an angry mob of physicists who just can't stand a smart ass.

With all these potential story threads flying around, there's me wondering what to make of it, and hoping he'll go in deep with one or two of my favorites. Then the book ends when the characters decide it's time for lunch.

Just like that.

Huh? Wha? You mean this isn't going to go on until every original idea is put in a mortar and ground into dust by a pestle wielding author? You want me to think about these things, and make what I will of them? How weird. How lovely. How trippy. Wheee!

I’m in! Just let me go pack my towel.

A Virus Descends

(Originally written, September 25, 2013)

Like the turn of the seasons to an aged farmer, I can feel it in my bones when a sickness is about to descend upon our household. Generally the weather is still nice, but a mom sense tingle tells me something is coming. Then perhaps there’s a friend over who comments, “My throat feels a little scratchy,” or there’s that kid in the park with a runny nose. (I'm not judging, my kids have been that kid before.)  Unbidden, visions of sleepless nights, endless coughing, my house littered with wet tissues, confinement to our home, and money pouring through my fingers, flit through my mind, raising the hair on the back of my neck as my flight reflex urges me to scoop up my kids and head for the hold and batten down the hatch, while the waves of viruses wash over the deck of our family ship.

I hold onto something and breathe to deliver oxygen to the logic centers in my brain. The serenity prayer flows through my mind reminding me to accept the things I cannot change.  If there are children around with outward signs of infection, the virus is most likely already at work inside my little ones, insidiously hiding in their bodies, replicating themselves again and again, waiting for their numbers to grow substantial enough to launch an attack on my child's cells. Then their immune system responds in kind, and their eyes take on that lackluster look, the mucous appears, and the deep harrrooof, harrrooof sound comes from their tiny throats as they try in vain to expel the invader from their body.

Mama, I don't feel good.

I remind myself to take each day as it comes. We have survived these viruses countless times before, and we will persevere once again. I wonder how long this one will last. Maybe it will just be a three day cold. That has happened before—once. More likely it will start in her head, then settle in her chest for a one to two month stay. Coughing fits keeping her up late, and waking her—and everyone else—for hours. Then morning arrives and I rise to send my little red-nosed, dark eyed, zombie off to school. The littlest one tethers me to our house, and my eyes lose focus as I start pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

And so it has been for the last six weeks in our home.

Two trips to the doctor later we find that Danielle's cold has become bronchitis. Not only does she have fluid in her lungs, but both ears are so stopped up that the doctor thinks she has a hearing loss of forty decibels. This is not news to us as “huh?” has been her response to anything we have said for weeks now. Including doctor visits, tissues, remedies and prescriptions, we easily have three hundred dollars invested in this cold. We have lost countless hours of sleep; one child wakes up to have a coughing fit, which wakes up the other child before falling back to sleep, who has a coughing fit and wakes up the other before falling back to sleep, who has a coughing fit who wakes up the other… And so we go bouncing from child to child, torn by our bodies’ need for sleep and our children's need for comfort.

For. Six. Weeks. And counting…

Before having children, I blissfully unaware of the toll it takes on you as a person—beyond seasonal illnesses—everything. But I'm always grateful this hardship is mine, and Charley's too, of course. I know the trials we endure parenting our girls are forging us into better people. Being in a forge is not particularly fun, it's pretty hot, and you get smacked around with big hammers a lot, but I think we'll come out as something new, still composed of the same basic elements, but perhaps wiser, stronger, and more useful. Besides, being quenched in buckets of “Mama, I love you”, hugs that dry tears, and saturated with the magic of childhood innocence feels pretty damn great. 

I wouldn't trade my spot in the forge for anything.

Gotta go, I need to run to the store for more orange juice and Kleenex.