Without words

Well, at least, without many of them…

I was reminded the other day of a haunting movie I saw this fall: Museum Hours. It is a small, quiet film. There’s some dialogue between the two main actors—a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna and a visiting Canadian woman—but mostly, the film is about looking. Much of it is set within the walls of the museum, the camera panning over famous paintings, pausing, giving us a chance to really see. And, in some cases, to almost enter the life of the paintings, especially the Brueghels.

Generally, I’m a word person. I read a lot, write some. Increasingly, though, I am drawn to the visual world, a world where images instead of words speak to me. Museum Hours gently pulls us into the world of images—and shows, that to have an impact, you can speak softly. Or not at all.

My thanks to British writer John Harvey whose recent blog post reminded me about this lovely little film. Perhaps best known in this country as an outstanding crime writer, Harvey is also a poet, jazz aficionado, and art lover. His blog (http://mellotone70up.wordpress.com) ranges widely and is always worth following, often combining words and images in an appealing way.

Who's your favorite author?

That’s not a theoretical question for me these days.

A maddening glitch occurred when I recently updated my iPhone and entered my password information for one of two email accounts. The email works just fine for the phone (and for my iPad—am I too Mac-happy?), but I lost connectivity (as they say) on my main computer, the iMac.

Basically, I kept getting the message that I was entering the wrong password. I wasn’t, but who’s going to argue with a computer?

The situation got more frustrating when I asked to have my password sent to me. The “security question” was—you guessed it—Who’s your favorite author?

Good grief! Who knows?

I’ve read a gazillion books over my lifetime, loved many, liked a lot more. But which, of all the possible authors, was my favorite?

I’m pretty compulsive about keeping a list of my passwords, but never bothered to jot down answers to security questions. Dumb, I know.

So, I tried. First, Trollope. No dice. (Maybe if the security question had been “Who’s your favorite 19th century author?”)

Next, I tried Harper Lee (for family reasons). Nothing.

At this point, I realized that guessing my “favorite author” was an exercise in futility. So I gave up and now am dreading the hours-long call to so-called help desk so I can be assigned a new password.

In the meantime, I’m using my alternate email address and left to ponder, who, really is my favorite author? Have I failed him/her by failing to remember? Is it even possible to name a single favorite?

Ruminations aside, I vow to write down answers to my security questions from now on. And I’m hoping I can remember where I put that piece of paper….

The mystery of reading

My daughter Rachel recently recounted this anecdote about her son Henry. He’s crazy about books, has always loved being read to, always asks for more at bedtime, enjoys going to the library and picking out new books every week.

         But, at 5 ½ years and just beginning kindergarten, Henry is not reading on his own yet.

         Or so we thought.

         Last week, he pulled out a copy of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer from their living room bookshelf. He started walking around the house with the book open, to all intents “reading” it. The first night, he took the book to bed, curled up with it, still “reading.”

         The next night, Rachel peeked in his room to make sure he was asleep—there he was, under his blanket with his flashlight "reading" The Moviegoer again.

         Who can explain this attraction? The Moviegoer is not exactly what you’d choose for a first book to read independently! Certainly, it lacks the rhyming and easy words of, say, The Cat in the Hat. If Henry is pretending to read, why this book? Was it just a random choice? The jacket cover is not especially enticing, so that’s not likely the appeal.

         Rachel and I want to ask him about his reading adventure—in a way. In another way, we like having this mysterious story unfold as it will...

         But we’ll really begin to wonder if he starts on Ulysses next!

Under the Skin

 Vicki Lane captures the atmosphere and history of remote mountain areas in her mystery series featuring amateur sleuth, Elizabeth Goodweather. The review below, first printed in Our State magazine, features her book, Under the Skin.

**

One quote that precedes Vicki Lane’s latest novel suggests the book’s subtle theme: “A Sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves — a special kind of double,” Toni Morrison says.

The two sisters who shape this story couldn’t be more different. Elizabeth Goodweather is a sensible, hard-working woman who operates an herb business from her Appalachian farm. By contrast, her sister, Gloria, is a city girl, a “ditz in high heels, a poster child for conspicuous consumption.”

Claiming that her husband (her fourth) wants to murder her, Gloria flees her Florida home and charges into Elizabeth’s life seeking sanctuary. The timing couldn’t be worse. Elizabeth is balancing the demands of her farm with those of her upcoming wedding to Phillip Hawkins. And even under the best circumstances, she and Gloria have a prickly relationship.

Gloria swans around the Appalachian farmhouse in full makeup and negligee, complaining about the “primitive” conditions (no dishwasher or cable TV). Acknowledging that Gloria brings out her “whiny inner child,” Elizabeth grits her teeth and tries to sympathize with her sister, but she wonders if the murder plot is just a way to gain attention. Meanwhile, Elizabeth wrestles with her nagging doubts about Phillip’s past and his connection to her late husband.

Overall, the question is whether people are who they seem to be. The answer unspools in surprising ways. Gloria reveals unpredictable virtues of generosity and courage, and Elizabeth discovers her own inner sybarite. A parallel story, set in the late 1880s, tells of two other sisters who produce séances to fleece innocent people in the mountain resort of Hot Springs. The two story lines intersect when the modern-day sisters attend a seminar at that same resort.

Lane’s brisk narrative draws the reader along, and she provides vivid details of mountain farm life. (Lane lives and works on her own small farm in Madison County.) Best of all, her character development gives rich layering to this tale of different sisters — who are, in the end, sisters under the skin.

-- Katie Baer

“Our State Magazine, December 2012, reprinted with permission”