See you in a week!

By Charles D’Ambrosio
Back Bay Books
1995 (paperback edition)
Condition: Excellent; annotated text; signed by author; additional inscription reads: “Madison, WI Nov. 3, 2004.”

Why I keep it: intellectual, personal ^[*]

In 2004, during my first semester as a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, writer Charles D’Ambrosio served as the fiction writer-in-residence. This consisted of a four-day campus visit in which he spent some time with us, the eager young fiction darlings of the department and in which he came into our fiction workshop, taught by his friend and our professor, Lorrie Moore, and expounded on writing short stories.

Some of my classmates were familiar with D’Ambrosio’s work, but somehow I had managed to make it to age 34 without reading a single one of his stories. I’m certain had I read one of them in The New Yorker or Story Magazine, I would have remembered because D’Ambrosio’s stories are nothing if not memorable.

Moore assigned “The Point and Other Stories.” We were to read the collection and come to class with questions for the author. Around mid-September, I bustled over to the University Bookstore and purchased my copy, and then I let it sit. And sit. And sit some more on my messy desk in the graduate student office. I let that sucker sit until the week before D’Ambrosio was to arrive, and then I cracked it open and read it in one long afternoon.

I won’t say this about very many short story collections, but it’s entirely possible to overindulge in D’Ambrosio’s particular brand of wicked poison. He possesses a biting wit and a dark vision, one populated by young men floundering and failing, trying desperately to achieve the trappings of adulthood but falling far short of the goal. In fact, D’Ambrosio seems to question whether those goals are worth pursuing at all.

The author writes in an updated version of the dirty realism that Richard Ford and his peers made so popular. As Meghan O’Rourke writes in The New York Times:

Indeed, in the last few years, writers in this book review have lamented the decline of slice-of-life realism, pronouncing it dead at least once. But pronouncing things dead is the job of critics, and the truth is that understated realism remains a robust tradition, as evidenced by the work of, among others, Charles D’Ambrosio, whose stories frequently appear in The New Yorker. Eleven years after the publication of his first book, “The Point,” and one year after his book of essays, “Orphans,” along comes “The Dead Fish Museum,” which largely traverses the same Carveresque territory staked out in his debut: the charged relationships between fathers and sons, drifters and workers, in the outskirts of the American Northwest.^[1]

The two stories that made the strongest impression on me were the title story, “The Point,” and “American Bullfrog.”

“The Point” has appeared in Best American Short Stories and other anthologies. In it, the narrator recalls a moment from his teenage years when his mother asks him to escort a drunk woman home from a party at his house. As the woman becomes increasingly irrational and hysterical, the boy is forced to draw closer and closer to the tragedy that has shaped his life, his father’s suicide. D’Ambrosio’s handles his characters with care. In a particularly moving passage, when Mrs. Gurney strips down on the beach and asks the narrator if she’s beautiful, the narrator says:

“This really isn’t a question of beauty or not beauty, Mrs. Gurney.”

“No?”

“No,” I said. “I know your husband doesn’t love you, Mrs. Gurney. That’s the problem here.”

“Beauty,” she sang.

“No. Like they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You don’t have a beholder anymore, Mrs. Gurney.”

A charged sexual moment that follows between these two damaged people leads to the ending, which, though violent, has a tender edge of redemption to it.

In “American Bullfrog,” on the other hand, D’Ambrosio showcases some of his rawest writing. The narrator in this story, another teenaged boy of the same age, believes his parents have been “cooking up a little fantasy of their own, namely, that I was not their son,” a problem made worse by the narrator’s decision “that the only life for me was the life of an outlaw.”

D’Ambrosio takes the classic “who is my teenager” trope and turns it upside down. In “American Bullfrog,” the teenager wonders who his parents have become, particularly since he has “lived in the same house with them for thirteen years–more than ample time to get to know a person.”

In a particularly hilarious passage, the narrator describes how he stops using the front door, preferring instead to climb out the window and climb down a tree to exit or enter the house which leads his parents to begin discussing him in the third person and him to begin monitoring their intake of alcohol.

The story maintains this wry edge throughout, but what makes it unforgettable is the sex scene between the narrator and a girl named Diane at a party in an abandoned house. Almost immediately, the narrator determines:

“we weren’t made for each other. The way she rocked and squirmed around, I was afraid I’d fall off, and decided that it was necessary to grab onto her head. I held onto her head with both hands, just above the ears, as if to the handle of a pogo stick.”

And on it goes. Whole books have been devoted to the topic of writing sex scenes, but I’m pretty sure the sex scene D’Ambrosio writes–that raw, fumbling, uncomfortable teenage experimentation–wasn’t what the authors of these writing guides had in mind when they sat down to impart their guidelines.

I rarely have the occasion to use the words “horrifying” and “sex scene” together, unless I’m referring to a scene that’s nonconsensual, but the first time I read this story, I was utterly horrified. It was hard to see around that one scene to the story beneath it, and had I started reading the book sooner, I would have had time to digest the story, to come back to it (as one might a bad car wreck), to look at it from a different angle.

I’ve since re-read “American Bullfrog,” and it’s a brilliant short story, one that holds up under multiple readings. In fact, the entire collection should be required reading for parents with teenage boys. D’Ambrosio understands the beast within each of his characters, and he illuminates it tenderly and carefully. These boys may be ghastly right now, but the author cautions us, they will become the men with whom we live and work.

By the time I came to class to discuss this book, my brain felt bloated and over-full. I wanted to let out my belt a notch or two, but I couldn’t. Had I begun reading the collection back in September, I could have read the stories in snippets, imbibing in them only until I felt Je n’ai plus faim (”I have no more hunger”), not until I was overstuffed.

Thus, I keep this book because it’s good, but also because it serves as a reminder that the digestion of excellent fiction cannot be rushed. Epicurus wrote that we must “be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance,” and so it goes with fiction.

Tomorrow’s delivery: “Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother” by Beth Ann Fennelly

Further reading:

Stray Questions for: Charles D’Ambrosio (PaperCuts, NY Times, Sept. 19, 2008)

The Quarterly Conversation: The Charles D’Ambrosio Interview

Powell’s Books interview

Fourfold: Charles D’Ambrosio Q & A

Story in Literary Fiction: Charles D’Ambrosio Interview

Willow Spring interview

By Richard Ford
Vintage Books
1988 (paperback edition)
Condition: Used; wear on front cover; pages dog-eared.

Why I keep it: intellectual, emotional ^[*]

I’m not sure if I own a short story collection that surpasses the importance or the teachability of Richard Ford’s “Rock Springs.” Some would argue my point, but I’ll stand by Ford’s collection as it has stood by me.

A reader who calls himself Grouch writes in an online review:

And when I first read “Rock Springs,” a collection of 10 short stories by Richard Ford nearly 15 years ago, I was standing in the Public Library of Livingston, Montana. I’d come to the library that night not knowing what I’d walk out with, but I knew I wanted to read a great piece of literature–one that would make my heart pound, my palms sweat and the little hairs on the backs of my hands stand up. At the time, I was married, the father of two, a reporter for the town newspaper and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Our budget was so lean, Jack Sprat looked like a glutton. To conserve gas, I walked to work, head down and collar up as the harsh winds of south-central Montana scoured the streets. We were so broke, my wife and I thought of co-authoring a cookbook: “101 Things To Do With Macaroni-and-Cheese.” Of course, buying books was out of the question. That’s why I was at the public library that night, looking for a piece of writing that would take me out of my struggling, lower-middle-class life.

Little did I know I was a character straight out of Ford’s stories.^[1]

I had a similar moment, the first time I read the collection in its entirety. I thought, Ford knows my people. Somehow, he knows the men and women I grew up with in my working class family–the dreamers, the down-on-their-luck schemers, the work-hardened people who said they’d given up on hope for good (but who kept a little wellspring of it on tap for emergencies), the smoke-roughened women, the leathery-palmed men. I may not have grown up in Montana or Wyoming, but it doesn’t matter because Ford understands the archetypal working class, even as he extends his characters and his stories beyond the stereotypes and one-dimensionality of the archetype.

Ford’s style is sometimes called “dirty realism^[2],” a term that better describes the state of the characters in his stories than the writing style itself. His concern, in this collection, does not revolve around the wealthy or the privileged. His vision sharpens around inequities and slights. He understands how desperation can lead to the worst choices. He does for the American short story what Woody Guthrie did for folk songs.

Thus, when I assign a Ford story to a classroom of students, I know the working class students will fall in love, as I did, and the wealthier students will be forced to face their own preconceptions. Most importantly, Ford’s work allows me to start a conversation about the necessity of fiction in our day-to-day lives.

I say, “How many of you know people like these people?”

Usually one or two kids raise their hands. They are still ashamed of their people. (I want to tell them this impulse will pass, but they won’t believe me. Not now. It’s too soon.) For now, Ford has broken down their barriers, put them at ease.

Then I say, “For those of you who don’t know people like this, what do you think of these characters?”

Usually a pretty female student will raise her hand, wrinkle her nose and say, “They are losers (or some variation thereof).”

Or the kid, who cornered me on the first day of class and informed me with some aggression that he’s a Republican and that he hopes my class won’t be one of those where I try to shove my liberal ideas down his throat, says he thinks these people had better pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get some work and become productive members of society, dammit, because that’s what’s wrong with America.

Someone else will speak up and defend these imaginary people, say that it’s kind of hard not to be a loser when there’s no work and no future and no way out. And our conversation, in which we discuss how important fiction is in a democracy, in our daily lives, in the press and fold of a nation’s progress, will unfold.

I tell my students they are not required to love these stories or even to like them, but they are required to read them deeply and with an honest heart. I tell them that’s the least they can do since that was how these stories were written. But I secretly hope, every time, that they will love these stories as much as I do, that they will treasure Ford’s rhythms and his eccentricities. I hope they will recognize the thread that binds all of these pieces together, the thread of our common humanity.

I like to end that class by reading aloud portions of my favorite story, “Communist.” It has been anthologized often but not as often as the title story “Rock Springs” or “Great Falls.” The title, “Communist,” a term they’ve been taught to hate, throws them off, of course, but the opening which is rather mundane quiets them: “My mother once had a boyfriend named Glen Baxter. This was in 1961.”

I read key lines aloud to them, and we discuss point of view and point of telling. We talk about how narrators can look back or forward in time and what those choices mean. When they are fully contemplative, I read aloud the entire last movement of the story which begins with the lines:

A light can go out in the heart. All of this happened years ago, but I still can feel now how sad and remote the world was to me.

Perhaps its because a little of the light in my heart has gone out as life’s many disappointments have piled up or perhaps its because I know what time will do to the hearts of my students…I don’t know.

What I do know is that I find it increasingly difficult, as the seasons pass, to read those lines aloud to my students without my voice cracking under the weight of their enormity.

Tomorrow: “The Point and Other Stories” by Charles D’Ambrosio

Further reading:

The Stubborn Truth: If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we should never elect a rich guy who says he hates government but can’t wait to ‘fix’ it. (The Guardian, Jan. 17, 2009)

Richard Ford On The Work Of Writing. (CBS News, July 6, 2008)

California Literary Review interview

Salon.com interview (September 2008)

Powell’s Books interview

¹ A Short Story Masterpiece. http://www.epinions.com/review/Rock_Springs_by_Richard_Ford/book-review-1FEE-107CB128-383510D8-bd1 Accessed Feb. 28, 2010.

² Dirty realism has been described as “the fiction of a new generation of American authors. They write about the belly-side of contemporary life – a deserted husband, an unwed mother, a car thief, a pickpocket, a drug addict – but they write about it with a disturbing detachment, at times verging on comedy. Understated, ironic, sometimes savage, but insistently compassionate, these stories constitute a new voice in fiction…‘These writers,’ Tobias Wolff has observed, ‘while not necessarily a school, nevertheless form a new voice. They are able to speak to us about the things that matter.” Granta 8: Dirty Realism. (Summer 1983) http://www.granta.com/Magazine/8 Accessed Feb. 28, 2010.

By Margot Livesey
Henry Holt and Company
2001 (advanced reader’s edition)
Condition: Good; some scratches on front cover.

Why I keep it: intellectual ^[*]

Margot Livesey, a Scottish-born author, who has enjoyed a good career as a writer of literary fiction wrote one of my all-time favorite ghost stories. “Eva Moves the Furniture” explores grief and longing, particularly as it’s experienced by children.

Eva McEwan’s mother delivers her daughter in 1920 under the inauspicious omen of six magpies in the tree outside the birthing room window, and she stays “only long enough to bring me into the world.” As Eva grows up, under the care of her father and her aunt, two other mysterious strangers, a woman and a girl, begin visiting the household.

The catch is, only Eva can see them. At first, their presence seems benign. They teach her to gather eggs and encourage her to explore her world, but as Eva’s desire for freedom expands, the companions’ visitations takes on a slightly more ominous feel.

Eva grows up and becomes a nurse in WWII Glasgow, but she never outgrows her ghostly companions. Livesey builds a sense of dread throughout the novel, and she delivers an ending that shocked and surprised me.

Livesey’s prose stands as a fine example of crisp, clean writing that is at once lyrical and straightforward in its delivery. (I know, I know, how is that possible? But I swear there’s no other way to describe it.) Livesey has said that her goal is to write readable novels:

I think that I’ve always believed that literature could achieve its higher aims while still being entertaining and enjoyable, that it’s possible to write really good literary novels that are still a pleasure to read, and entertaining.^[1]

The plot of “Eva Moves the Furniture” will seem deceptively simple, but by the time the reader reaches the final few words, the full meaning of the novel’s many events will begin to make sense. In fact, this novel is one of those rare books that made me want to flip it over and re-read it, if only to catch some of the subtle hints and clues the author leaves for her readers.

I met Livesey a few years ago when she came to Madison, Wis. to read at the Wisconsin Book Festival. During that meeting, I proceeded to open my mouth and shove my foot so far down my own throat that it’s a wonder I ever recovered.

Mind you, I had developed a serious love affair with “Eva Moves the Furniture.” I also felt the novel had been under-recognized by reviewers and readers. I was telling everyone I knew about it, and most people hadn’t heard anything about it which bummed me out. I felt it was an original and marvelous little gem, and I had even given a couple copies away as gifts. So my conversation with Livesey went something like this:

Me: I enjoyed the novel immensely. It was one of my picks of the year.

Livesey, somewhat warmly: Thank you.

Me: I do wish it had gotten more attention from readers and reviewers because it’s really inventive and wonderful. (Or something a little gushing, which was absolutely not my style, and something a little inadvertently insulting like that, which was absolutely not my intent, but I loved this novel just that much and I’m just that much of a dolt.)

Livesey, coldly: Well, I think it’s done quite nicely, thank you.

Me, turning red: Well…right…but…you know…it’s just that… (I mutter an expletive or two under my breath as Livesey sails away like a frigate in Queen Elizabeth’s fleet.)

Whenever I saw Livesey the rest of the weekend, I would try to either slink away or blend into the wallpaper because there really isn’t any way to recover from that faux pas.

Sadly, if you haven’t already read this novel or if you don’t know and follow Livesey, you may not have heard of the book when it was first released. Now you have, though, and I’m charging you with reading it.

Tomorrow’s featured special is: “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford

Further reading:

Official Harper Collins Web page

Off the Page: Margot Livesey

Meet the Writers: Margot Livesey (Barnes & Noble)

January Magazine author interview

By Ruth Reichl
Broadway Books
1999 (paperback edition)
Condition: Very good; owner’s name inscribed; additional inscription reads: “10/99 Seattle.”

Why I keep it: intellectual, emotional ^[*]

I can’t remember why I purchased Ruth Reichl’s memoir “Tender at the Bone” (Did someone recommend it? Had I read a review?), but what I do remember is reading it on the plane and in the hotel and during every available moment (because it was so incredibly good and full of wit and wisdom that felt so incredibly important at that moment) during a long weekend trip to Seattle in October 1999. I was attending the wedding of my former coworker and good friend Tracy Cutchlow, and “Tender at the Bone” kept me good company during the down time between wedding-related activities.

To me, this memoir sets the bar by which all modern food memoirs ought be compared. It’s funny. It’s heartbreaking. It’s insightful. It includes really great recipes. Plus in this era of you-just-can’t-believe-it’s-true memoirs, Reichl opens with the observation that:

everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual…I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story.

And a good story she provides, opening with my favorite chapter “The Queen of Mold.” Reichl describes how her mother fed her father “the worst thing he had ever had in his mouth…so terrible that he leaned over and spit it into the sink and then grabbed the coffeepot, put the spout into his mouth, and tried to eradicate the flavor.” In explanation, Reichl writes that her mother was “taste-blind and unafraid of rot.”

I have long secretly believed that Reichl and I share a common ancestor. Perhaps our mothers were first cousins or maybe even sisters? Because Reichl’s description of her mother’s worst kitchen nightmares sound a lot like my own experience with my mother’s. Even as I write this, I am still genuinely convulsed by laughter when I read this passage:

“I can make a meal out of anything,” Mom told her friends proudly. She liked to brag about “Everything Stew,” a dish invented while she was concocting a casserole out of a two-week-old turkey carcass. (The very fact that my mother confessed to cooking with two-week-old turkey says a lot about her.) She put the turkey and a half can of mushroom soup into the pot. Then she began rummaging around in the refrigerator. She found some leftover broccoli and added that. A few carrots went in, and then a half carton of sour cream. In a hurry, as usual, she added green beans and cranberry sauce. And then, somehow, half an apple pie slipped into the dish. Mom looked momentarily horrified. Then she shrugged and said, “Who knows? Maybe it will be good.” And she began throwing everything in the refrigerator in along with it—leftover pâté, some cheese ends, a few squishy tomatoes.^[1]

Reichl, who was in the news this past fall because of Gourmet Magazine’s surprise closure (where she was editor from 1999), has written other equally wonderful books, but for some reason, “Tender at the Bone” remains my favorite. Perhaps it’s because I associate it with Tracy’s wedding or because it was the first time I really laughed out loud while reading a memoir. I don’t know. All I know is that it occupies a treasured space on my shelves.

“Tender at the Bone” has been around long enough and has been lauded often enough that it seems like almost everyone has read it; but if you happen to fall into that small percentage of people who hasn’t had the pleasure, go. Go today and buy your copy, and sit down and read it as greedily and unrepentantly as possible. You won’t regret doing so.

What you can look forward to: “Eva Moves the Furniture” by Margot Livesey

Further reading:

NY Times interview by Deborah Solomon (Oct. 10, 2009)

Ruth Reichl: A New Book And The End Of ‘Gourmet,’ Fresh Air WHYY (Oct. 14, 2009)

Powells.com interview

Salon.com interview about Reichl’s work as a food critic (November 1996)

¹Tender at the Bone: The Queen of Mold. http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/04/tender-at-the-bone-excerpt-ruth-reichls-mother Accessed February 28, 2010.

By Jill Paton Walsh
St. Martin’s Press
2000 (first edition)
Condition: Very good; owner’s name inscribed; additional inscription reads: “Door County, Feb. 2001.”

Why I keep it: intellectual, emotional ^[*]

British author Jill Paton Walsh may be best known for her work as a children’s author and for her mysteries featuring sleuth Imogen Quy. She also completed Dorothy L. Sayers’ final unfinished novel “Thrones, Dominations.” Less well known in the United States are her adult novels, including “Knowledge of Angels” (shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize) and “A Desert in Bohemia.”

I picked up “A Desert in Bohemia” while on vacation in Door County, Wis. in February 2001 when Jesse and I were shopping at the lovely independent Passtimes Books in Sister Bay. I’ll admit that I was first drawn to the novel because of its evocative cover (a scratched sepia-toned photo of an angel statue with the title in cursive script), but a cover alone isn’t enough to make me buy a book.

The opening paragraph electrified me:

The forest edge was thick with the mist of early morning when the woman staggered out of the last line of trees, and stood there, staring. A very young woman; one might say a girl. She was blood-boltered from head to foot, her hair thickly matted in a helmet of coagulated blood, her clothes sodden and clinging with it. A bird flew up from above her with clattering wing beats, and she shrank back between the trees, with her teeth chattering in her head. But when the silence had re-formed she stepped forward again. Into an overgrown, half-vanished garden white with frost, with the mist swirling over it, the house in the garden only faintly visible to her.

Who was this girl? Why was she “blood-boltered from head to foot”? Where was she now? Was someone following her?

I remember sitting on the floor in the bookstore and reading the next page. Gunshots sound in the distance. The girl tries to enter the house attached to the “half-vanished garden.” I looked around, feeling guilty. Maybe I should just buy the damn novel, I thought. And then: But, first, another page. The girl manages to get inside the house and to safety where she finds an infant by the fire. Despite narrowly escaping death herself, her instincts kick in, and she begins to care for the child.

I imagine what I must have looked like at that moment: novel clutched in two hands, legs straight out in front of me, eyes large and skimming as fast as possible, all of my focus on the story in front of me. Jesse stepped up to me then and said: “I’ll just buy it if you like it that much.” And so he did.

We spent a long, romantic weekend in Door County, skiing and relaxing. We were a relatively new couple, and I think I fell in love a little bit harder and faster when he bought me the book. Here was a man who cared deeply about my intellectual life. During every available moment, I read “A Desert in Bohemia,” and sometimes I read good bits aloud, during which Jesse listened patiently and commented lucidly on the story.

The story follows nine people from 1945 to 1990 in an attempt to make sense of totalitarianism’s far-reaching effects. Reviewer Lily Thayer summed up the story’s narrative arc best when she wrote:

…her ambitious new novel “A Desert in Bohemia” elegantly and effectively explores the experiences of three generations of Czechs under two successive authoritarian regimes. It also fits neatly into a literary tradition that documents totalitarianism’s effect on the human soul.

What I loved best about the novel was that as a reader I learned so much about the world in which these characters live: the smells, the sounds, the sights. Yet, what I learned about their emotional lives, I had to glean from their actions.

The novel felt familiar to me, not in the sense that I had read a similar story (I hadn’t), but rather in the sense that it plugged into a larger literary tradition. In some ways, Paton Walsh’s exquisite novel pays homage to the best of Sartre and Kafka’s work. The reader is as bewildered as the novel’s characters, and that bewilderment serves to highlight important philosophical considerations.

Lest I make this book sound bone-dry, go back and re-read that opening paragraph. Paton Walsh keeps up that pace throughout the story, all while writing beautiful sentences. I treasure this book both for its intellectual scope and for its connection to a perfect moment in my personal life.

Next: “Tender at the Bone” by Ruth Reichl

Further reading:

Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L. Sayers

“Wimsey, Sayers and Me” from Shots: The Crime & Mystery Magazine

By Jeffrey Eugenides
Farrar, Strauss, Giroux
2002 (first edition)
Condition: Pristine; signed by author with a personalized inscription that reads “To Heather L. S. all best and thanks for reading slowly.”

Why I keep it: intellectual, personal ^[*]

Somewhere on my overstuffed books shelves, I have a copy of “The Virgin Suicides,” Jeffrey Eugenides‘ first novel; and while I think his debut is worth reading, I treasure his expansive, generational novel “Middlesex.” (I had no trouble putting my hands on it when I decided to write this post.)

From the title, which plays with one of the novel’s main themes (intersexuality) to the twisting, delicious narrative, I had a feeling from the first moment it arrived on my desk that this book would be an important American novel.

In the opening lines of my Oct. 25, 2002 review, I wrote “In many ways, author Jeffrey Eugenides’ new novel “Middlesex” can be described as the ultimate American story. While ostensibly telling the painful coming-of-age tale of a young hermaphrodite, Eugenides takes time to explore the promise of the American dream — that heady mix of life, liberty, the chance to make buckets of money and ultimately, the ability to reinvent oneself.”

I was high on this book, but I also felt that Farrar, Strauss, Giroux was having some trouble marketing the novel to a more general readership. Whereas “The Virgin Suicides” was an easy sell (boys meet girls, girls kill selves, boys obsess about meaning of these suicides), “Middlesex,” like the fictional lives it contained, was messy, intricate and confounding. Was it a novel about intersexuality? Or a family history? Was it a story about being the other, in all of that word’s meaning? Or about the ultimate redemption of family? (Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.)

No matter, though, because every marketing issue the publisher faced disappeared in 2003 when the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. During my years as a books editor for The Capital Times, I kept up on the Pulitzer Prize fiction nominees list. Sometimes I was surprised by who won and sometimes I was disappointed; but I felt a deep sense of pleasure when I learned that Eugenides had won for this brilliant novel.

Eugenides wrote “Middlesex” as the fictional memoir of Calliope (Cal) Stephanides. Cal was born (in Detroit) with a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency and was labeled a girl at birth despite being intersexed (sometimes referred to as a hermaphrodite). The novel explores Cal’s coming of age, in which he rejects the label of woman and embraces his masculinity, but the reach of that story line was too small for Eugenides, who wove in the story of Cal’s parents and grandparents. The opportunity for reinvention that immigration offers plays an important role in Cal’s future, as does the family’s Greek heritage.

In October 2004, I had the opportunity to interview Eugenides. He was charming and funny, and he spoke about the changes his life had undergone after winning the Pulitzer. Whereas before I had only respected Eugenides for his skill as a writer, after spending some time talking to him, I found myself genuinely appreciating the guy as a person. This was my favorite exchange between us:

I suppose the Pulitzer Prize changed your life. When I met you a few years ago, you were probably one of the more unassuming authors I’d ever met. You were pretty shy.

Not now, though, in my large limousine that I go around in. I’m a totally different guy.

So, you’re taking the town by storm. Are you coming into stores and saying, “Do you know who I am?”

I don’t even have to do that. Wait, what was the question?

Has your life changed a bunch?

It has changed to a certain degree. It’s hard to separate the publication of “Middlesex” and the Pulitzer Prize, though I think what the prize tends to do is give you a kind of easy label for people.

People mention it a lot. I went to my first Wrigley’s game the other day and was sitting in the bleachers. I guess I was overdressed for a Wrigley’s game in the estimation of the audience because they started saying, “Are you sure you’re not too warm?” They were basically all half-naked with no shirts on. I had a shirt on and a very light linen coat, and they started heckling me for how much I was wearing. I was just so surprised. The people I was with whom I had never met before, they looked at me and they said, “Tell them to go to hell, tell them you won the Pulitzer Prize,” or something like that.

So, people will constantly mention it, but I think they don’t know about it. It does alter how you’re perceived in the world. That’s probably the biggest difference. Suddenly you have a kind of almost brand label for people who haven’t read your book. The best benefit is it brings readers to your book. That’s what I’m happiest about, because I wrote “Middlesex” with the reader in mind. Some people were unsure about the subject matter and not really understanding what it was about, and that kind of book was aided by getting a prize like that.

Eugenides is working on a third novel, but don’t expect it any time soon. He has earned his reputation as a slow, meticulous writer. “Middlesex” took him nine years to complete, so we should be on track to see something from the author in another year or so.

And in 24 hours: “A Desert in Bohemia” by Jill Paton Walsh

Further reading:

NY Times video interview of Eugenides (May 15, 2009)

Reading guide for “Middlesex”

Powell’s Books’ author interview

3 a.m. Interview

Jonathan Safran Foer’s interview of Eugenides at BOMB Magazine

By Amy Timberlake, Pictures by Adam Rex
Farrar Straus Giroux
2003 (first edition)
Condition: Excellent.

Why I keep it: intellectual ^[*]

Rarely have I been more delighted by a children’s picture book than when I read (and re-read and re-read yet again) Timberlake’s debut book, “The Dirty Cowboy.” The best picture books provide a perfect marriage between story and illustrator, and the publisher Farrar Straus Giroux made a wonderful decision when it paired Timberlake’s dryly humorous text with illlustrator Adam Rex’s outstandingly funny and richly detailed pictures.

There’s a wonderful history to this book as well. Apparently this story was one Timberlake’s grandfather told her when she was a kid, and when she decided to write her first book, this was the story that most wanted to be told.

The Cowboy of the title is one filthy hombre. Timberlake lists his crimes against hygiene as follows: “(his) hair housed thirty-two fleas and a small grey spider”; “he’d discovered a tumbleweed in his chaps”; “a flurry of flies flocked round his body buzzing so persistently that he experienced a distinct loss of hearing in his left ear”; and “(his) stench stuck to passersby like mud splashed up from a wagon wheel.”

The Cowboy lives with his dog and his horse in a tin shack. They don’t seem to mind his slovenly appearance, but one day for no reason whatsoever the Cowboy announces “This ol’ boy needs a bath.” (A line that never fails to crack me up and that can be read with a faux Western accent that delights young listeners.) The trio travel to the local watering hole (literally a little mud hole in which one can wash), and the cowboy gets “nekkid” and tells his dog, “Dawg! No one touches these clothes but me. Hear?”

The illustrations of Cowboy’s bath with carefully placed bubbles, frogs, birds, dust, and other assorted animal parts add to the hilarity, although Timberlake provides a funny description of the Cowboy’s bath too. The washing goes well, but things start to go awry when the Cowboy tries to retrieve his clothes. The dog sniffs the Cowboy and wonders:

“Where was that sweaty, wild boar-like smell that clung to the cowboy like a second pair of clothes? Where was the smell of black pepper and mesa mud? And where, oh where, was the smell of cow?”

The dog decides this man who looks and sounds like his owner can’t possible be his owner because the smell is all wrong. What ensues is a hilarious dust-up between cowboy and canine. Particularly hilarious are Rex’s wrestling scenes that, again, employ various pieces of clothing and animals to cover up the Cowboy’s naughty bits. I won’t give away the ending, but it definitely satisfied me.

What I love best about this book is that it’s funny enough to stand up to multiple readings for the discerning, and often bored, adult reader, but it also appeals to kids who will continue to find lots of details to point out in the pictures and who will quote the dialogue endless.

And if that’s not enough, the book has won a bazillion prizes and other honors. (OK, maybe not that many, but a lot of honors which, as it turns out, matters a lot to some parents who want to know that their kids aren’t just reading an entertaining story but that they’re also reading something that has received a seal of approval for both its entertainment value and its general literary worth.) Should you care about that kind of thing, the honors are as follows:

• SCBWI’s Golden Kite Award
• Parents Choice Gold Medal
• International Reading Association 2004 Notable Book Citation
• Bulletin Blue Ribbon
• First Prize in the 2004 Marion Vannett Ridgway Awards
• Finalist for the Spur Award (Western Writers of America)
• Finalist for Southeast Booksellers Association 2004 Book Award
• Adapted into a musical for children by Lifeline Theatre in Chicago, Ill.

Coming tomorrow: “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides

Further reading:

Amy Timberlake’s official site

Help! The Writing Process of The Dirty Cowboy: From Family Story to Published Book

Adam Rex’s official site

Adam Rex’s blog

By Lorrie Moore
Alfred A. Knopf
1998 (first edition)
Condition: Some wear on book jacket including evidence of water damage; annotated text; owner’s name inscribed.

Why I keep it: intellectual, emotional, personal ^[*]

I reviewed Moore’s collection “Birds of America” in October 1998. The piece ran in The Capital Times, and it was my first review for the paper. I had previously written a profile about poet (and fiction writer) Tenaya Darlington (who later became a very good friend), but the Moore review was my first run as a real reviewer.

I’ve always suspected that my editor, John Nichols, chose me because I was utterly unknown in local literary circles, and when he asked me to do the review, I didn’t immediately start giggling like a small child over the honor of writing about one of America’s most revered short story writers (”Self Help”). I was excited to write the review, yes, but I wasn’t star-struck. I believe that suited Nichol’s purposes perfectly.

He reminded me with an appropriate amount of gravity that Moore, who serves as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-present), had a strong local following, a move that injected just the right amount of tension into my consideration of the book. I was stepping into some big shoes with the review, and I knew Nichols wouldn’t accept any opinions that didn’t have the hallmarks of careful, incisive thought. I wanted to please Nichols, and I wanted to be true to the collection’s literary worth.

Looking back at my in-text notes, it seems the very thing that makes most people swoon over Moore—her wordplay, her odd expressions, her breathless use of exclamation points, her scorn for the ordinariness of Midwestern life—were all things that irked me. My annotations read: “Gag.” “Too cutesy.” “Is this what she really thinks of the Midwest?” Of course, just as often I would star a passage that struck me as particularly true or beautifully written; but if you were to crack open this copy of “Birds of America,” you might get the sense that I hated the book.

That’s not true though. I found much to love in this collection. I wrote that Moore had “taken the discussion outward, beyond the fragile boundaries of the interior, and discovered that a whole other world exists—one full of family, sick children and uncertain futures.” My review was not, however, uniformly positive—an opinion I’ve never lived down when in Moore’s presence—but on the whole, I gave the book a thumbs up and opined that “Moore’s command of language and keen sense of observation cannot fail her.”

My favorite story and the one that has stayed with me all these years was “Terrific Mother.” In the first paragraph Moore observes “She had entered a puritanical decade, a demographic moment—whatever it was—when the best compliment you could get was, ‘You would make a terrific mother.’ The wolf whistle of the nineties.” (I wrote “yes” next to these lines.)

We learn in the first two pages that the heroine Adrienne has killed the Spearson baby “when the picnic bench, the dowels rotting in the joints, wobbled and began to topple her—the bench, the wobbly picnic bench, was toppling her!” (If you don’t think I’m careful when I sit on picnic benches holding someone else’s baby, then you haven’t read the story. I treat other people’s infants like bone china. I was scarred by reading this story.)

No one blames Adrienne, but in her slow, sly way Moore shows the reader that no one can dish out blame better than the accidental perpetrator of a random, horrifying accident. The rage, confusion and sorrow that shape Adrienne’s life following the death of the baby are at the heart of “Terrific Mother,” and the “terrific” of the title speaks directly to the writing and the fine emotional tenor of this story. For that story alone, “Birds of America” is a keeper; but of course, I enjoyed other stories as well.

I also loved “Charades,” noting in my annotations that “this, this is a good story,” and I shared the Mother’s sorrow as Baby spends his days in the pediatrics ward of the local hospital in “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk.”

Later, when I had the opportunity to take a graduate-level fiction class with Moore as a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at UW-Madison, I felt like I had come full circle. I remember taking out “Birds of America” and paging through it before my first class with her. I’ll admit I was nervous at that moment in a way that I hadn’t been when I was asked to review the collection.

But I had been so young when I reviewed it. I didn’t understand the gravity of the request or the importance of the undertaking. Because here’s what I have come to understand: that review literally was the start to what pulled me through to my inevitable and life-altering application to the MFA program. After spending years reading other people’s fiction and poetry and getting frustrated or excited about it (or both), all I wanted to do was write my own work. Had I not written a review of “Birds of America” that pleased my editor (and was turned in with great nervous trepidation two entire weeks early much to his amusement), I might not have had the opportunity to write about excellent and awful writing over the years, and I certainly would not have found the courage to develop my own writing.

Next up: “The Dirty Cowboy” by Amy Timberlake

Further reading:

Barbara Kingsolver and Lorrie Moore Among PEN/Faulkner Prize Finalists (NY Times: 2/23/2010)

Litagogo’s recap of a podcast featuring Moore

Lorrie Moore information page (with link to Salon.com interview)

Believer interview from 2005

Yeah, so that was an empty promise. In other words, I’m baaaaack. Oh, and the novel isn’t finished. Yet. (I’m getting closer and closer, though, and 2010 will be the year of finishing it.)

I’m sure I’ll be recounting a few stories of animal high jinx, and certainly the growing season is nearly upon so there will be gardening information to relate. Yet, today my thoughts turn to the past, specifically reading I’ve done over the years.

On this fine snow day, Jesse and I finally got around to moving the six-foot wobbling book shelf that houses my all-time favorite books to a safer, less wobbly location. (The shelf threatened to kill me and a poodle recently, so relocating it was very important.) Moving these books has made me realize that every reader must have, as I do, four or five shelves of “wow, I really need to read/finish/crack open” books and perhaps one or two shelves of beloved, adored can’t-live-without volumes.

Or as avid reader Jennifer H. wrote, as we debated the pros and cons of e-book readers:

I do still buy hard copies of the “keepers”. For example, for “Three Cups of Tea” I own it in hardback, paperback (for sharing), the Kindle version, and I just got the younger readers paperback version to read with Conner for school.

As I pondered the books that have earned a permanent home on my book shelves, I came up with three criteria that set these apart from their discarded/sold/given away brethren. Some books have only one point of connection, but others have multiple points of connection. The “keepers” have the following in common:

1. I have an intellectual connection to the book. The ideas contained between the covers are important. Maybe the book speaks to larger issues. Maybe it was groundbreaking scholarship in its day. Maybe it’s still groundbreaking on some level. Maybe it opened my mind to new ideas in some important way. Or, most likely, it has some combination of these qualities.
2. I have an emotional connection to the book. Maybe I read it at an important time in my life. Maybe I had an emotional epiphany when I read it. Maybe someone I adore(d) gave it to me. In any case, when I pick up the book I have instant feelings about its worth. Even if you told me the book wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, I would hang onto it.
3. I have a personal connection to the book. In most cases, it was written by someone I admire or personally know. I probably got the book for that reason, but once I read it, the book’s innate qualities earned it the right to stay in my home. Or to put it another way: books in this category may be written by friends and heroes, but they also offer an excellent reading experience.

I thought it might be useful to share the books that have earned their place on my favorite shelf. As I embark on this journey, I invite you to share the books that have shaped your life and that have earned the right to stay in your home.

Why are they important to you? When did you read them? What lesson(s) did you take away from them? Why do you hang on to them? And, of course, if you’ve read a book I’m featuring, please let me know if the book was as important to you or if you hated it.

Coming next: “Birds of America” by Lorrie Moore

Of course, when I say “laundry,” I’m not talking about that neat little basket of unmentionables that can be tossed in the washer with a dab of soap and a happy smile. When I say “laundry,” I’m talking about the stinking heap of barn clothes and dog towels and horseback riding clothes that requires a moment of silent prayer.

I’m thinking of blue jeans that are so crusted with dirt and grass stains that they could be leaned up against the wall as a post-modern sculpture. I’m talking about the white t-shirts with pit stains that go halfway down the sides and circle up to the shoulder seam. I’m pondering muddy, hay-infested dog towels, sweat-stained underwear, sweatshirts with pockets full of screws and hay chaff, socks that were once white and that are now a muddy gray.

In short, I’m talking about day-to-day farm laundry. (I won’t even tackle the big guns of farm laundry: shit-encrusted horse blankets, cat-stained blankets, and horse leg wraps. I don’t know anyone who actually washes that stuff in their washer. They either send it out to a service, wash it by hand in the yard, or sneak it to the laundry mat and clean out the poop-balls from the washers and dryers with a large portion of guilt.)

I thought it might be helpful to discuss how to handle day-to-day farm laundry. Although most of my readers don’t actually live on a farm, some of you must certainly encounter scrungy laundry. Here are a few of my thoughts on how to tackle really dirty laundry:

Day-to-day farm laundry has a way of piling up, despite my best efforts to combat it. One key tool in the War Against Farm Laundry is the special hamper for extra-dirty farm laundry. Regular clothes should never be placed in this hamper, and farm laundry should never go into a regular laundry hamper.

Rules apply, too, to the use of the special hamper. Just throwing filthy, scary laundry into the special hamper and hoping the laundry fairies will tackle it in the night is not fair to the resident laundry slave or to your clothes.

At my house, the general guidelines for the use of the special hamper include:

• All jeans, pants or jodpurs must be worn at least twice before I’ll wash them, particularly if they are only used for a quick 30-60 minute trip out to the barn. If the article is worn for an entire day or in rain or for a particularly messy job, I relax the rule. If you can get more than two wears out of it, I give you special kudos.
• Sweatshirts and jackets should be worn at least three to four times (or, preferably, until you start to smell something funny every time you get near said article of clothing and the outdoor animals, who never notice this kind of thing, start to reel back in alarm when you approach…just kidding…just kidding). When you put the damn things in the wash, try to clean out the pockets. I really hate having to reach in and empty out the hay chaff, screws, washers and other assorted ephemera that accumulates.
• Some t-shirts, if worn for 30-45 minutes, can be re-worn if they are not too sweat-soaked. Be honest in your appraisal of their re-wear-worthiness. Don’t clog up the system with nearly clean t-shirts that could be re-used. On the other hand, don’t be a martyr and wait to put a shirt in the laundry if it deserves to be there. Remember, I still have to pick up that shirt and stuff it into the washer. If it knocks me dead, who will do your scrungiest laundry?
• Socks and underwear are a one-time deal. I don’t quibble on this point, but please turn your socks right-side out and straighten your underwear out of that little sweat-soaked ball it turned into when you peeled it off your body. I’m not so excited about having to chip your sweat-stiffened skivvies into a more appropriate shape. (In other words, have a care for your slave.)
• Do not put sweat-soaked or other wet articles of clothing in the laundry basket. Put them on the back porch and let them dry, for god’s sakes, and then put them in the hamper. Do you really want a reprise of the Summer 2008 Mildew Incident? Those shirts have never looked the same since.
• If the dog pissed on it, please spray it with Nature’s Miracle and let it dry. If you put it in the hamper wet, it will make everything else smell like, yep, you got it, dog piss.
• Try to chip off large pieces of poop before you put the clothing in the hamper. It will fall off, and then I’ll have to empty the hamper of clothes and poop chips.

Once the troops are following your guidelines reliably, you will find emergencies occur less frequently. Believe me when I say the Summer 2008 Mildew Incident was not fun to deal with, and its repercussions are still being felt to this day. You can avoid things like that if you enforce the rules reliably and regularly.

Of course, no matter how good your hamper system is and no matter how docile your laundry creators might be, you still have to pull the stuff out of the hamper and throw it in the washer at some point. (Sooner always being a better option than later.) First, a point of confession: I do sometimes wear rubber gloves when doing barn laundry. Second, a step-by-step guide to tackling a steaming heap of barn laundry:

1. Remove lacy panties from small white poodle’s jaws.
2. Shoo large black poodle off the pile of nice, everyday towels you plan to wash later.
3. Yell at medium black poodle for playing tug with your favorite pair of jods.
4. Banish poodles from the laundry room.
5. Refocus on task at hand by removing any regular laundry from the laundry room floor and into a safe location.
6. Dump all barn laundry onto the laundry room floor.
7. Sort barn laundry into following washing categories: dark hot water; light hot water; dark cold water; light cold water.
8. Within each category, do a further division: dirty; really, really dirty; holy fuck dirty.
9. Shake each piece of clothing to remove debris such as poop, hay chaff, grass clippings, cat hair, geese or chicken feathers, horse hair, wood chips and the like.
10. Start with light/cold/holy fuck dirty. Place clothes in washer, shaking each piece before putting it in the washer. Be sure to check all pockets for debris. Hay chaff can really do a number on your washer if you aren’t careful.
11. Use the following mix of washing products: 1 capful (per directions) of regular laundry soap; 1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax Powder (more on this in a moment); 1/2-1 cup white vinegar (depending on the stink-factor of the clothes in question); 1 capful (per directions) of color-safe bleach, preferably Clorax.
    • Laundry soap: I’m a big fan of “free” laundry soaps, i.e., the ones without perfumes or dyes. I think they do a better job of cleaning the clothes, and you won’t have the problem of bad smells being masked by sickening perfumes. Tide is preferred by some, but I use a grocery-store brand with good results. I do not use the same detergent for our nice clothes, however, as I know I need a little more cleaning power on the barn clothes.

    • 20 Mule Team Borax: Many people have no idea just how amazing Borax can be. Not only does it deodorize and brighten your wash, it also softens your clothing far more reliably than those little laundry fluffs do. It’s definitely my secret laundry weapon, and if you regularly wash dirty diapers, it’s awesome for them as well!
    • White vinegar: “What on Earth?” you might be thinking. Why white vinegar? Doesn’t that belong in the kitchen? Indeed, white vinegar has a lot of applications in the kitchen, but it’s also an amazing household cleaning fluid. You can use it to wash windows, floors, brighten countertops, and deodorize anything that’s stinky, like laundry, for example. I swear by it, and nothing, not even Borax, can remove that horsey fug that clings like grease to barn clothes like white vinegar.
    • Color-safe bleach: I like to brighten all of my clothes a little, and while the Borax does some of that, the bleach adds a final oomph to my wash cycle that can’t be beat. And believe me, some of Jesse’s white t-shirts need oomph after they’ve gone through a hard day’s work.
12. Always choose the “extra rinse” option if your washer offers it. Despite your best shaking efforts, these barn clothes will be littered with debris, and the extra rinse will help get rid of some of it.
13. Remove washed clothing from the washer and if you can, dry it on full heat. If you need to hang it to dry, try to fluff it on no-heat to remove any other debris.
14. Proceed with other loads of laundry in the following order of preference: light/cold/dirtiest to least dirty; light/warm/dirtiest to least dirty; dark/cold/dirtiest to least dirty; dark/warm/dirtiest to least dirty. In this way, you will eliminate any cross-contaminationn of dyes that might run and of the dirtiest laundry with the least dirty laundry.
15. When all the barn laundry is finished, sweep the floor. (You’ll be amazed at the amount of debris that accumulates.)

I still hate doing laundry, but I’ve found that with a sensible system in place to deal with the truly awful wash that develops from twice-daily chores and marathon outdoor work sessions, I can cope. The key is to have a system and some rules. My grandmother eventually let her farm laundry overwhelm her, and the results were not pretty.

I sometimes washed a load or two of my grandfather’s laundry when I was a teenager. He liked to get the maximum wear out of his chore clothes, and there were no rules in place to suggest otherwise. The water ran black when that wash rinsed. You do not want to be the person staring in horror at the muddy sludge that churns out of the washing machine or the person who has to tackle the next load of long overdue, truly filthy barn clothes. There are better options, I promise you.

Besides being lyrically written (truly one of the most moving essays I’ve read in the last year or even last few years), the piece also had special meaning for me because my memoir-in-progress is organized around a series of chapters detailing the animals in my life.

***

Far from being dumb beasts who live to serve me, I have come to know the animals who share my life as independent creatures with their own social hierarchies and concerns. In addition, they seek, as Seibert notes in his essay, to interact and to communicate with humans.

I’ll give you a good example: When I watch my horse impatiently nudge the gate open with her nose as I put on her halter, I am struck by both her extreme patience (After all, she is 900 pounds, and if she wants to push past me and rush through the gate, she can.) and her intelligence (She understands that the gate must be opened in order for her to be led out, and she also knows that it opens in just one direction. She uses her nose to nudge it in the correct direction again and again, but she never steps through until I have finished haltering her and indicate that we’re going to walk together.)

What, then, is she doing if she’s not trying to strong-arm her way past me—something she could so easily do? I have concluded after weeks of watching her that she’s communicating with me. It’s rudimentary, yes. We’re not talking a Ph.D. thesis here, but I believe she is telling me that she wants me to hurry up, that in my slow, fumbling primate way, I’m taking too damn long.

I could be anthropomorphizing, although Siebert addresses this possibility in this brilliant passage in which he talks about a paradigm shift in scientific thinking:

A distinctive aspect of the new cognitive revolution that Toni Frohoff spoke to me about is that scientific facts, of all things, are now freeing scientists like herself to be more expansive storytellers. The accusation of anthropomorphism — of projecting our thoughts and feelings on other animals; of trying to guess at what a whale’s day might be like, or a chimp’s or an elephant’s — has been obviated by the increasing evidence that such creatures have parallel days of their own, ones as distinctly intricate and woundable and, ultimately, unknowable as ours. “I don’t anthropomorphize,” Frohoff told me. “I leave it to other people to do that. What I do is study gray whales using the same rigorous methodologies that have long been used to study the behaviors of other species and interspecies interaction. Those who would reject out of hand the idea that whales are intelligent enough to consciously interact with us haven’t spent enough time around whales.”

Another example: I talk to my horse all the time. I order her life through my verbal commands. I tell her “whoa” and “back” and “good girl.” I expect that she understands these commands, and not just in one context. If I tell her “whoa” while she’s on the lead rope and I back it up by tightening the rope, that’s one conditioned response. But what about last night when she was loose in our driveway and barreling toward the open barn door where a half dozen chickens were loitering and where two kittens were wrestling and where a poodle was sniffing a good smell? My mare could not see me because of the angle of where I was standing, but I could see her galloping toward the open door—no lead rope, no halter, no control whatsoever. I yelled, “Whoa. Whoa mare.”

I had nothing to back up that command, and if she did not understand it or choose to heed it, she could have hurt several other animals or herself or me. I saw her ears swivel forward when I yelled it, and then she slowed and stopped. She pranced in place. She snorted. She flicked her tail. The other animals scattered in fear. I said, “Whoa. Wait.” She pawed. I opened her stall door, and I whistled. She trotted around the corner, and I put out a hand and said, “Whoa.” She stopped, and then I stepped back, and she entered her stall.

Honestly, she didn’t have to stop either time. There was nothing I could have done to actually make her stop. She chose to stop because she heard a verbal command that meant something to her, and not just something in a particular context. The word “whoa” meant something independent of any other experience. “Whoa” meant stop, no matter the circumstances. She heard it, and she acted on the command.

I keep coming back to the idea that it would be a monumental conceit for me to imagine that my horse is not trying to reciprocate my volumes of communication. She doesn’t have spoken or written language, but if I’m listening, we sometimes manage a crude form of exchange. I usually don’t agree with her idea of what should happen next, but I do try to hear her concerns. It’s the least I can do.

***

Recently, a writing colleague said she could understand how I might decide to use animals in the memoir as they seem to be such an important part of my life. To her credit, she has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and she is enthusiastic about my project.

Yet, I sensed that she was being generally dismissive of animal-driven narratives. I do understand. There’s a feeling, I know, among writers that animal narrative or animals in narratives just isn’t serious. The serious writer does not include animals as a central driving force in a narrative, unless they want to be marginalized and shelved near such books as Marley and Me. And yes, before you go on about how popular that book was and how much you loved it, let’s establish right up front that it’s not considered a serious piece of literature.

God knows, trite animal-focused books litter the book shelves of many book stores and libraries, as well as the personal libraries of readers. I would know. I have my own fair share of them. But truly gorgeous, mind-altering writing about animals (something I aspire to, as you might have guessed) isn’t easy to find.

I think the true goal of wonderful animal-related writing should be to illuminate an underlying principle of our lonely human existence: That we are not as alone in this world as we might imagine, that we share—through a web of DNA and mammalian traits—a kindred emotional existence with these alien creatures that live not in the black sky beyond our imagination but in the closest proximity to our everyday lives.

He works in the flooring department at Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse in Vestal, N.Y. A six-foot tall, thin man with a friendly smile and an efficient way of getting things done, he and his manager, Fran, have improved sales in their department by nearly double. In fact, in the last six months, they have managed to win awards from the regional office and garner customer praise by the bucketfuls.

It’s not surprising, really, since both Fran and Paul are older—both in their early to mid-40s and both have had long-time careers in flooring installation and sales. They know their products, and they like to talk about them.

Fran is a straight-shooter, the one clearly in charge. Paul defers to him gracefully, and this easy-going quality, this ability to roll with the power differential becomes more surprising when Paul’s story emerges in little snippets between sales pitch and friendly banter.

Paul used to own his own business. Until about a year ago, he installed carpet and other flooring. His phone banged off the hook, he said. He was well-known for his quality work, and he loved the freedom of scheduling his own days. When fishing season started, he made sure to leave days open so he could hit the pole. If his wife needed some errand or favor, he could easily rearrange his day to accommodate her. He made a good living.

He explains this while he unrolls and cuts a length of carpet. As he moves around the cutting machine, the right leg of his shorts pulls back, and his knee is exposed. A map of incision lines and bumps traced in white on his sunburned skin stands out. When he kneels down to adjust the carpet, his descent hitches for just a second. He twists, gracefully, to find a comfortable position.

“Blew my knee out,” he says, nodding down at the right knee. “For my fortieth birthday, I got a new knee and all the morphine I could take.”

He laughs as he says this, and Fran, who is helping Paul with the unwieldy carpet, adds, “His knees are shot. That’s why he left the business.”

By business, Fran means the carpet installation business. Fran adds that Paul truly was one of the best in the area. Paul ducks his head a little, as if he can’t stand to hear the compliment. He keeps his hands busy, pulling plastic wrap onto the piece of carpet.

“I can’t kneel all day,” Paul says. “My knee can’t take it. Installers, we…they kneel all day. That’s what they do.”

Paul, an avid outdoorsy type, was riding his three-wheeler when he lost control and crashed. The machine was totaled and so was his knee. A surgeon reconstructed his knee, but Paul was warned that he might never regain full use of it. In fact, he has a good range of motion, he says, but he’s not taking any chances.

Later, as he explains how to use the adhesive tape to patch two pieces of carpet together, he talks a little about changing careers in midlife.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I had a career, and then poof, it was gone. I didn’t expect things to end up like this. I didn’t think I would work here.” He swings his arm out to encompass all of Lowe’s cavernous interior, the warehouse-style shelving, the flickering overhead light, the piped-in music.

“I miss making my own schedule,” he says. “I miss making things with my hands. You know, at the end of the day how I could look around and see what I had accomplished. I miss that.”

He pulls the tape out of the box and demonstrates how the backing pulls off and how easy it is to use. His knuckles have the beat-up look of a lifetime’s use. His fingertips are blunted by work.

“I like it here, though,” he suddenly adds, as if he’s afraid he’s given the wrong impression about his job. “Good benefits. Good retirement. I hate the hours. Wish I could be at my son’s baseball game today, but I like Fran, and we’ve turned this department around.”

He jokes again about the new knee and morphine for his birthday. It’s his line, his way of summing up the enormity of his loss. The words join together to mean something and nothing at all.

He looks surprised for an instant after he says it, as if he’s taking in the sudden realization of his life. As if he had forgotten for just a moment where he was. He puts the carpet tape in our basket, and he says he thinks we can do the project, no problem.

I’m not complaining either way.

After nearly a full month of rain every single day, the return of the sun signals a welcome shift in weather. People keep telling us that northern Pennsylvania weather never behaves so oddly, that this truly represents an anomaly, that in years past there have been droughts and long inexplicable dry spells. It’s hard to believe, as all we’ve seen are the stainless steel undersides of storm clouds for weeks and weeks.

The weather has been so uncooperative, in fact, that to my deepest sorrow, we were unable to plant our garden. Underground springs form a tracery beneath this soil, so the ground remains sodden and uncooperative in many places. (In Wisconsin, we would designate this land wetland. Here, people turn their horses out on it.) Thus, our tomatoes remain in pots on our porch, and our seedling potatoes go unplanted.

Our hay supplier, Slugger (”Mr. Slugger?” I asked. “Just Slugger,” he said.), has been at work in his fields, trying to pull off as many bales as possible. When we call the feed store where he works, they tell us “he’s at home making hay while the weather holds.”

When we break open a bale of Slugger’s hay, a mix of timothy and other grasses, it smells divine—of sunshine and chlorophyl and the soil from which it grew. Next week we will begin bringing home 200 bales of it, and then, even in deepest winter when tears freeze on our eyelashes and our fingers go numb, we will be reminded of these drowsy, sunlit days of mid-summer in the whoosh of captured air that bursts from the middle of the bales.

With this news coming so soon after the Fourth of July holiday when we celebrate our nation’s embrace of democracy, it’s hard for me to concentrate on a single other thing besides the struggles of people who are risking their lives to oppose a government they believe has become “destructive of these ends.”¹

Many news outlets have reported numerous acts of violence against the protesters, as well as arrests of those involved and of bystanders. Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic Monthly has remained one of the few bloggers who has continually posted updates. I won’t replicate his work. Visit his blog and learn more about the Iranian struggle.

Our founding fathers risked everything—life, liberty, family, the pursuit of happiness—just as the Iranian people are doing today. If you haven’t lately, re-read the Declaration of Independence, and you’ll get a sense of just what citizens risk when they uprise against the government in power.

Whatever you do—be it pray, meditate or some other way to commune with your spiritual beliefs—please send your best thoughts to the Iranian people who are locked in a struggle that truly represents a grassroots democracy effort.

It’s not hyperbolic to suggest that these demonstrations mean life or death for thousands and thousands of Iranian people.

I was standing behind 15 books and two DVDs. The clerk had to duck her head around the pile to make eye contact.

“I am,” I said. “I’m taking year off to write.”

Saying this made me feel shivery and fraudulent, since I have done exactly no writing since landing in Pennsylvania/upstate New York. Then I thought: Does a half-truth like that constitute grounds for universal dismissal? Will I come down with the swine flu for straining credulity? Then I remembered this blog. Aha, I thought, I have been writing.

The clerk scanned and stamped my books, working slowly but carefully through my pile. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Being a writer…it must be…hard. What do you do when you can’t think of anything creative?”

Ha, I thought, what do you do indeed? Then my practiced writerly answer, which was, again, a kind of half-truth, flew out of my mouth.

“I read,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. To get new books to read. Sometimes they inspire me because they are so good and sometimes because they are just so bad.”

The clerk seemed a little mystified by my answer, and I sensed she didn’t quite believe me. Good on her for seeing through my bullshit, I thought. I hardly believed myself as I said it.

“I cook,” I blurted out into the silence that was stretching between us. “When I can’t write, I like to cook.”

She looked up and smiled. “That’s why all these cookbooks?” She gestured toward the pile in front of us.

I nodded. “I love to bake. And to cook meat. There’s an art to cooking meat.”

***

Indeed, lately my main form of writerly contemplation seems to center around the kitchen. Dreaming up new meals to tempt Jesse or to challenge my ability to mix recipes and to follow directions has become an obsession of late.

I know other writers who love to cook too. Stephanie over at Cooking With Two Dudes inspires me with her handmade everything (Need fresh cheese for that? Steph will make it instead of buy it.) and her commitment to getting her two sons into the kitchen to learn how to cook and appreciate fresh food.

Michelle Wildgen, an accomplished author in her own right and an editor at Tin House, embodies the foodie extraordinaire. She has written about food, sampled food, enjoyed food, and otherwise embraced it as a vocation and an avocation.

Tenaya D., another gifted author and blogger, offers up titillating cheese-related ruminations on her hilarious homage to all things queso at Madame Fromage.

I think the connection between cooking and writing cannot be denied. Whereas writing a novel encompasses months and often years, whipping up a luscious, mouth-watering peach pie or a pan of decadent brownies takes a mere few hours.

Whereas working on writing alone and often unheard resembles nothing more than spitting into Lake Michigan, serving up a pot of fresh Catalan-inspired pork stew to an enthusiastic audience offers that immediate oomph of recognition. This is not to say, of course, that writers write only for fame and fortune, but we do write because we have something on our minds, something to say, goddammit, and at some point, it would be nice to have someone hear us.

Cooking offers oodles of immediate gratification and recognition. When I have to rap Jesse on the knuckles and say “no, fingers out of the fresh-baked oatmeal spice cookies…those are for guests,” I won’t deny it. I feel good about the work I’ve done.

***

Last night’s dinner came from Stylish One-Dish Dinners by Linda West Eckhardt & Katherine West DeFoyd. An upgraded book of stove-top and oven-based one-dishers, this book has a full range of fancy-schmancy choices.

If one-pot meals bring to mind your mother’s Shit on a Shingle, an unappetizing melange of tinned soup, frozen veggies and browned meat (although I’ve always been a sucker for that kind of comfort food, just ask Madame Fromage about my love for her daringly declasse Tater Tot Casserole), Eckhardt and DeFoyd have upscaled one-dishers to a whole new level.

You won’t find Chicken Dumplings here. Instead, you can try Berkeley Panned Chicken with Polenta, Peppers and Corn (pg. 24-5) or an upgraded version of pot roast in Braised Herbes de Provence Beef in Burgundy Wine. Most of the recipes take a mere 20-30 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to a few hours to cook. Many of the author’s notes encourage the cook to make the dishes ahead and reheat, a nice feature in my opinion.

We tried Roasted Lemon Chicken with Fingerling Potatoes, Tomatoes and Olives (pg. 188-89). A roasted dish, this combines fresh lemon slices with cayenne pepper, garlic, chicken, potatoes, tomatoes and olives with a dash of rosemary. We didn’t quite have all of the exact ingredients the recipe called for, which might be why the finished dish turned out all wrong. It was interesting enough to try again and fiddle with it, but as it turned out last night, the verdict was D-.

Interestingly, the cayenne and lemon, while a strange-sounding combination at first, really complement one another. The cayenne takes the edge off the lemon perfectly. I think I used too much lemon, so the dish turned out a little puckery/bitter for my taste. Also, the recipe calls for bone-in/skin-on chicken, and I would second that requirement. I used boneless/skinless breasts, and there simply wasn’t enough fat in the dish to help brown the potatoes and other veggies. As far as the kalamata olives go, stick with what the recipe calls for. I used what I had on hand with somewhat disastrous results, and I’m a die-hard olive lover. (In my defense, I was inspired to experiment with what I had by Pete Wells’ excellent essay titled “The Pantry Forager” about cooking one weekend with just what was in his cupboard at that time.¹)

Despite the overarching failure of this meal and others like it, I keep cooking. Unlike throwing away an entire page of writing that I thought might work (or heaven forbid, a portion of a novel, as I have done before), I know Jesse will slog through and eat the leftovers. Or I know of three poodles who will do their part for the greater good of the family.

¹Originally published in Food & Wine, I read the essay in Best Food Writing 2005, edited by Holly Hughes. I highly recommend “The Count and I” by Emily Kaiser in the same volume.

“I noticed the Katz-N-Flocken had a slight aftertaste,” Mom said.

I paused, thought hard about how to respond, then asked the only logical question: “Well, like what?”

“I don’t know. Tallowy.”

“Like grease?”

“Yeah, like grease,” she said, then added, “But the Royal Canin [HLS: the new food] tastes good. It has a slight chicken flavor.”

“Hmmm…that’s surprising,” I said, although I was thinking the food should taste like chicken since that’s presumably one of its main ingredients.

“The Katz-N-Flocken leaves a slight salt taste on your lips,” Mom added. I started to wonder just how much cat food she had ingested.

“So are they eating it [the Royal Canin] now?” I asked.

“They are,” she said. She has this way of saying things in a way that makes her sound surprised and certain all at once. That’s the tone she used when she said this. The more surprised she sounds, the happier she is with whatever transpired. She was very happy.

“Good. I know you were worried.”

“I was,” she said. “You know, they didn’t really start eating it until I ate it in front of them. I think they knew it was OK after I ate it.”

Spoon River Anthology was “unconventional in both style and content,” and “shattered the myths of small town American life.”¹ Written as a collection of epitaphs on gravestones, the underlying narrative of a small American town emerges in fragmentary pieces. The dark undercurrents of lies, sorrow and anger shocked readers of the day.

Of course, the frisson that Masters’ readers first felt cannot be replicated for modern readers who have spent a century weaned on the idea that small rural towns are hotbeds of vice brushed over with a patina of godliness. There’s much to admire in Masters’ collection, and Buckner perfectly captures both the tone and the narrative arc in his selections for his album.

In an interview with Jennifer Nine at Comes With A Smile, Buckner talks about why he chose Masters’ collection as a basis for The Hill:

“You know what? I didn’t actually get him in school either. I found him after college,” laughs Buckner, who graduated from Chico State in California with a B.A. in English, “just like everybody I liked reading. Four years reading the fucking Wasteland,” he adds, “and everybody I liked, I found afterwards. It was quite coincidental; I was working in a bookstore and stumbled on this anthology and kept it.”

“Masters was a Walt Whitman disciple, definitely. A lot of people think of him as a minor poet, and out of his whole literary career, this [anthology] was his one shining moment. It was the one piece that was about his life, entirely. Before I began recording this album, I’d already been doing songs from the new record on tour. I’ve had a couple of people walk up and say, ‘well, I’m not a real Masters fan, but I like the songs.’ But I don’t like everything by anybody. You have to take it for what it’s worth. I think that book’s really great.”

My favorite track from Buckner’s album is “Elizabeth Childers.” The darkness of the words is heightened by the almost tender guitar and cello work. At once dreamy and hard-driving, this song and the poem that comprises its words can break my heart 50 times in a row:

Elizabeth Childers²

Dust of my dust,

And dust with my dust,

O, child who died as you entered the world,

Dead with my death!

Not knowing Breath, though you tried so hard,

With a heart that beat when you lived with me,

And stopped when you left me for Life.

It is well, my child. For you never traveled

The long, long way that begins with school days,

When little fingers blur under the tears

That fall on the crooked letters.

And the earliest wound, when a little mate

Leaves you alone for another;

And sickness, and the face of Fear by the bed;

The death of a father or mother;

Or shame for them, or poverty;

The maiden sorrow of school days ended;

And eyeless Nature that makes you drink

From the cup of Love, though you know it’s poisoned;

To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?

Botanist, weakling? Cry of what blood to yours?—

Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,

It’s blood that calls to our blood.

And then your children—oh, what might they be?

And what your sorrow? Child! Child!

Death is better than Life!

¹Spoon River Anthology: The Definitive Online Edition. http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/ Accessed July 2, 2009.

²184. Elizabeth Childers. Masters, Edgar Lee. 1916. Spoon River Anthology. Bartleby.com http://www.bartleby.com/84/184.html Accessed July 2, 2009.

The kittens had obviously tortured it to death. Its upper and lower jaws didn’t quite match up, and its body hung limp and askew from Jesse’s leather gloves. A kitten leapt up and tried to catch the dangling tail in his claw. We put the body in a safe spot so we could look at it again when identifying if it was harmless or venomous.

The snake marked our nineteenth confirmed snake sighting at Bullfinch East. I used to think Bullfinch West was rife with snakes, but now I see how misinformed I was.

We consulted our new farm primer, the Pennsylvania Herp Identification: Online Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians of PA, to determine what we were dealing with here. Without hesitation, Jesse ruled that it was a juvenile milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum).

We know this snake only too well, having had to remove one from the space beneath our living room floor during the Bullfinch renovation. A common Pennsylvania (and Wisconsin) reptile, the milk snake can be found in most rural areas. It prefers hiding under building debris and other fallen matter. At first glance, the milk snake resembles a copperhead, but its diffident and distinctly non-aggressive nature sets it apart immediately. In fact, milk snakes are considered a docile snake that makes an excellent pet with some taming.

Having just dealt with the capture and removal of a copperhead, I know it’s easy to see the difference between the two. Copperheads will turn and strike. A milk snake will flee. It wants nothing more than to find something to hide beneath.

Our landlord recently jokingly said, “Snakes are a theme in your life, aren’t they?” I answered, “I guess they’re just our thing.” Later I pondered that until he met me, Jesse hadn’t seen a snake in years. Me? I have been plagued by them since I was a baby. So, perhaps it would have been better for me to say “snakes are just my very personal theme.”

At some point today, the body went missing from where Jesse had stowed it. We suspect the chickens or the cats dragged it off and ate it, but knowing my luck, I suppose it will turn up underfoot and rotting when I least expect it.

Yes, I visit several Craigslist cities every day. Or, maybe it’s just easier to say: “Hi, my name is Heather, and I’m a Craiglist addict.” There, I said it. That wasn’t so hard.

Truth is, I love to look at all the treasures people are selling. I like to ogle the tractors. I dream of picking up a couple roosters to butcher and eat. I marvel at the crap people dump in the free section. I enjoy reading the train wrecks that are wedding dress ads under the clothes section. But, God help me, I love the crazy ads best of all.

One day about a year ago, I was perusing Madison’s general category when I ran across an ad trying to hawk one “slightly used” set of Liberator cushions. If you haven’t yet heard about the Liberator cushions, they are marital “aid” cushions that… You know? Maybe you should just go to the Liberator Web site if you really want to know what these cushions, but don’t complain to me when your eyes start bleeding, OK? And once you have a good grasp on what a Liberator cushion is exactly, the “slightly used” part will have a whoooooole new meaning.

Jesse and I still laugh about that one. Anyway, people unload some seriously whacked out stuff on good old Craigslist. I found my recent favorite on the Madison thread. (Yes, yes, I still check the Madison Craigslist. I’m an addict, OK?)

It read:

Gorgeous Percheron Gelding Free To Wonderful Home

XX is a gorgeous percheron gelding who I saved back in October. His prior owner was going to shoot him as he is completely blind in one eye and the other eye he can only see a slight haze and/or shadows out of. I was told he is around 11 years old.

He is the sweetest horse, but needs work on his ground manners. He is broke to ride and I was told that he is broke to drive. I’ve ridden him in my arena and he does wonderful. Very responsive to the bit.

He is a very large horse and I need to find someone who is able to handle him better than I can and that is able to work with him and take care of him, I want to find him a wonderful forever home with someone who has the knowledge for working with blind horses. He is to big and strong for me to do anything with as far as trying to fix his ground manners.

I would love to find him a job somewhere, or find him the perfect home to be a pasture pet for somebody to love. XX needs to be kept in a VERY strong fence…..not electric fencing. Round pen panels, would fencing, etc…. He is very rough on fences being that he is so big and he pushes on the fences when scratching, etc…. He is a very, very sweet horse.

He is up to date with worming. He badly needs his feet done as my farrier does not do draft horses. I haven’t been able to find anyone that can trim them for me. He will need his spring shots and a current 2009 coggins also. I will be very particular as to where his new home will be.

OK, It’s nice that this person took the time to give a blind horse a second chance. Many blind horses are able to go on to have wonderful, useful lives. My horse is partially blind in one eye, and she’s still a hard worker and a good horse. I have heard of (but never seen) totally blind horses competing and working well into their late 20s. It happens.

And it’s good that she realizes she’s in over her head. A lot of people hang on and get hurt because of dumb pride and the inability to say “I just can’t.” I’ll give her credit for her honesty about her ability and her honesty about the horse’s issues.

What bothers me about this ad, though, is that the horse sounds like an ungovernable, pushy jerk. And my guess is that he was an ungovernable, pushy jerk before he went blind, which means that his blindness has probably only made his bad behavior worse. All conjecture on my part, of course, as I’ve only read the ad and know nothing of this particular horse. Yet, I know horses generally, and horses don’t just become ungovernable, pushy jerks overnight. It’s a process. It’s a personality.

I question why this person decided to save a big ungovernable, pushy jerk of a horse that is blind when there are so many other kind, easygoing, fully sound sweet horses out there that are coming to bad ends. I’m a big believer in saving animals that can go on to have productive lives, and I’m not convinced that this gelding will ever be productive.

In other words, I don’t believe horses should be saved just because they are horses. Thousands of worthy equines who could be retrained or just ridden immediately are being shipped to Canada and Mexico each month to be processed into horse meat for consumption in the European market. I’m sorry to say that I just don’t believe that every horse deserves a second chance, and I have adored horses all of my life. It seems likely to me that this horse should have been put down as his original owner planned to do.

Then there’s the whole “I’m going to be picky about where this big, mean, blind horse goes, but I haven’t done a lick of preventative care on his behalf, so you’ll be shouldering about $200 in shots and Coggins and another $50-80 in hoof care…just to get started.” I’m always amazed by people who say they will be picky about where their horse goes, but they don’t even bother to take care of its most basic medical needs.

As one of my former instructors once told me, “It’s easy to find a free horse. It’s what comes after that costs you money.” Or as Jesse recently said, “Don’t ‘rescue’ an animal if you can’t afford to do it properly.” In other words, if you don’t have access to adequate farrier care or the ability to pay for those expensive spring shots and a good teeth floating (i.e., dental work for horses), then don’t bother “saving” the horse in question. Vaccinations are an imperative, as is good farrier work. If you can’t provide them on a regular basis, you probably should rethink your horsey plans.

So, maybe the ad really should have said:

Please take this animal off my hands

XX is a big, mean but kind of pretty percheron gelding who I mistakenly saved back in October. His prior owner was going to shoot him as he is completely blind in one eye and the other eye he can only see a slight haze and/or shadows out of. I was told he is around 11 years old, but who really knows as many horse people lie about the simplest things.

I wish he was a sweet horse, but he’s an ungovernable jerk on the ground. He’s large and in charge, and he’d sooner step on you or push past you than listen to what you have to say. He is broke to ride and I was told that he is broke to drive. I’ve ridden him in my arena and he does wonderful. Very responsive to the bit.

I’m in over my head. He’s a big monster who costs a ton to feed and house, and he’s mean too. Who wants to keep that? I know he’d fetch a pretty price at auction and would be shipped for slaughter, but that would make me feel bad, so I’m really, really hoping that someone is either dumb enough to take him on or actually has the horse smarts to improve him. Of course, if you have the horse smarts to improve him, you probably don’t want him because you can get something younger, sounder and kinder practically for free in this crappy horse market, so I’ll settle for someone with a big dumb heart…someone kind of like I was last October before I learned my lesson.

Oh, by the way, he’ll run down your fence. And forget electric fence. He doesn’t give a crap about that. You’ll be replacing your fence regularly if he has anything to say about it. Oh, and another thing. I rescued this horse, but I haven’t really been maintaining him. So, you’ll, um, have to, you know, have all of his spring shots and Coggins done. And his feet. I wormed him though! I spent the nine bucks on wormer!

I actually feel bad for folks who find themselves stuck with an unsuitable horse in this economy. You can’t give horses away right now, and the really good ones…the ones that are worth their weight are being held onto until the market improves.

Even in the best of markets, caveat emptor should be the buyer’s watchwords; but especially now, if you are in the market for a horse, be careful! Find a good trainer to help you make your decision. Choose wisely. Be cautious. Or you may just find yourself putting up an ad on Craiglist with the subject line “Free to good home.”