Big Mystery by Dana and Susan Robinson

One of the joys of my job at Thomas Ford is hiring musical acts for our Friday at the Ford concert series featuring folk, jazz, classical, or whatever music will appeal to our community. Thanks to the support that we get from the Western Springs Library Friends, I get to select five acts for each season, usually scheduling concerts in September, November, January, March, and May. I always have plenty of talent from which to choose. Frequently I receive compact discs to demo in the mail, as well as phone calls and emails directing me to websites with streaming music and performer information. If I did not have reference desk duty, books to buy, and websites to maintain, I could spend a lot of time listening to music.

So I was happy to receive Big Mystery, a new CD by North Carolina's Dana and Susan Robinson. We featured Dana and Susan at Friday at the Ford back in the fall of 2008, at which time they already two CDs as a duo and more from Dana's solo days. Native Soil featured mostly traditional Appalachian songs, while Dana wrote most of the songs on 'Round My Door. For Big Mystery, Dana wrote seven songs, including the lively title track, which he describes as a "love song to Vermont during the month of May," and a haunting instrumental "Waiting for Gordon." The traditional songs are an instrumental featuring Dana's fiddle called "Sycamore Tea" and "Poor Howard," an upbeat Ledbelly tune sung by Susan. Susan also sings "Griselda's Waltz," a song that sweetly retells the story of Cinderella through the eyes a sympathetic sister. There are eleven songs, some telling old time stories, and all worth putting on your iPod.

We are hoping to schedule Dana and Susan again in eithe 2011 or 2012. You can get a sample of their music at their website www.robinsongs.com.

Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea by Linda Greenlaw

Many readers met Linda Greenlaw first in Sebastian Junger's 1998 bestseller The Perfect Storm. Since then, she has published a half dozen books of her own, chronicling her career and describing Atlantic fishing life. During the past decade, while she was writing, she stayed close to land, hauling in lobsters. In the latest, Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea, she tells about her difficult 2008 attempt to revive her deep sea career.

Taking a boat out to the Grand Banks for six to eight weeks is always risky. With international shipments of low cost fish flooding markets, profits in fishing are difficult to achieve, and when storms come, there is no shelter for fishing boats. Greenlaw had given the up-at-all-hours life up until she got a call offering her command on a boat that lost its previous captain tragically. With the lobsters not paying well and little time to think the offer over, she jumped at the chance. She hoped to prove she still had the courage and knack to do the job. She put together an older and unseasoned crew to take the old ill-fitted boat to sea. A comedy of errors with some tense moments resulted. Greenlaw even unwittingly violated Canadian fishing laws.

Greenlaw tells her story well, working in enough details to let readers know how work-intensive running swordfish lines is. In doing so, she shares the spotlight with the four extra-large men who make up her remarkably compassionate and dedicated crew. How they all get along on such a little boat is a constant concern that keeps readers reading. I found myself following their trials and rooting for them to catch some fish. You'll have to read the book to see how well or poorly they did. Find it at your public library.

Greenlaw, Linda. Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea. Viking, 2010. ISBN 97806700211925.

Multiple Resources Needed for Bird Identification

I do most of my bird spotting at zoos. It's easy because the birds are in full view and there are signs telling you who they are. We also have gone on some wonderful tours where guides directed our attention to wildlife, including birds. Despite these great experiences, I can still be pretty inept at deciding what's in our own backyard.

All this summer, a tiny little grayish bird has been singing away every morning when I go out to water, harvest, or weed in the backyard. He flits around, landing in various places where I get relatively good looks at him. He's been so close that I did not bothered bring out the binoculars. Identifying him should have been easy, but I was having a hard time. I kept looking in Birds of Illinois by Sheryl DeVore, Steven D. Bailey, and Gregory Kennedy. I thought he looked a bit like a Tennessee warbler, but this was not the warbler's breeding range and the song description was all wrong. I thought the veery had the right beak and general look, but it was too brown and way too big. I kept scanning the pages of the guide without luck.

Bonnie suggested I retry some of the possibles by using the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, which has audios of bird calls. The result was I became certain that none of the species I tried were correct.

We have an iPad at the library that we are testing as an ebook reader and to see if it has other good library applications. I loaded iBird Yard from the iTunes store onto the device for a small fee. This app with a search function focuses just on birds that one might commonly find in an American yard. I chose "very small" in the size box and "Illinois" in the common location box, and iBird Yard showed me nine possible species. Of those nine, only the house wren looked possible. It seemed browner and had stripes on the wings and tails that I did not remember, but it seemed closer than the other birds.

I returned to the Cornell website and searched for the house wren. There I saw pictures of the house wren that were inconclusive in my case. Then I played the bird call. The song was right on.

I took my binoculars out back and looked at the bird very closely. Through these field glasses I could see striping on the wings and tail that I did not see otherwise. These marks were not as pronounced as in any of the guides.

I went back to Birds of Illinois by DeVore, Bailey, and Kennedy to see how it described the house wren. The habitat and behavior sounded perfect, but the picture made the bird look so brown and textured. I would never link the image with our backyard friend.

I then checked The Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley. He shows six variations on the house wren, some grayer and some browner, a couple looking pretty close to our backyard bird. His comments about the song descending matches.

Having used books, the Internet, and an app on an iPad, I am going out on a limb and say with 95 percent certainty that we have a bird that is as common as dirt - a house wren.

Biggest Problem with the Kindle: How to Turn It Off

We have had Kindles at my library for a bit over one year now. They were donated by the Western Springs Library Friends so our clients can experience using a Kindle before making a choice to buy. Many have enjoyed the device and purchased, while a few have thanked us for helping them see that the Kindle is not the device for them. The waiting lists have now dwindled, so we are letting them go out for longer periods. Our three Kindles are often out, but readers sometimes find one available.

One thing we notice as they come back is that they are not turned off. Instead they are just asleep. We demonstrate how to use the Kindle to each new user, and in the process, we highlight turning it off, but if the returns are an indication, many people don't get it. This has been verified to me by some Kindle owners who have come to me for troubleshooting. Their Kindles are losing their charges too soon. I show them how to turn it off properly and their problems usually end.

To turn off a Kindle, slide the on/off button that is located on the top edge of the Kindle to the right and hold it there until the screen goes gray. That sounds easy, but many people just slide and let go. The Kindle then shows a picture of famous author and may go blank after that. The Kindle is in this case only sleeping and slowing draining its battery. Also, if you slide the button to the right and hold a second too long, it comes back on again.

If you practice, you learn to turn off Kindles flawlessly. But it should not a trick to turn off a Kindle. I urge Amazon to redesign.

Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness by Reinhard Kleist

Johnny Cash's story has been told before in books, movies, and documentaries. Now it is the subject of a gritty graphic novel, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness by Reinhard Kleist, which focuses on the singer's life up to his direction changing 1968 concert in Folsom Prison. Through black and white panels, the author/illustrator recounts the death of Cash's brother Roy, his military service, unhappy marriage, and early time at Sun Records, leading up to his addiction to drugs and arrest for smuggling. He also inserts panels on the life of Glen Sherley, an Folsom inmate who wrote a song that Cash sang at the daring concert. Kleist makes no apologies for Cash, who abandoned his family, broke the law, and disappointed many concert goers with bad performances. Feeling that his songs spoke to and for them, however, many of his fans stuck with him. This frank but sympathetic graphic novel is 223 pages and may take several hours to read.

For a deeper look at Cash's life as a whole, try Johnny Cash: The Biography by Michael Streissguth, who has also written Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece.

Kleist, Reinhard. Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness. Abrams ComicArts, c2009. ISBN 9780810984639.

Claiming Ground by Laura Bell

The rural West has always been a refuge for people out of step with the American mainstream of family, work, and religion. Laura Bell saw this in the sheepherders and cowhands that she met as a young woman on an archaeological dig in Wyoming in the 1970s. They, of course, worked very hard, formed their own kinds of families, and were spiritual when sober, but their ways were unrecognizable to city dwellers, suburbanites, and anyone from east of Kansas. Bell also discovered that she wanted to live among them under the big sky of ranch country instead of returning to Kentucky. She tells her story in her memoir, Claiming Ground.

Bell was not, however, really able to hide away from all society and her former life. The local librarian discovered her and began sending her books (which were deeply appreciated by the book-loving Bell) via grocery and agricultural supply deliveries. Ranch women kept checking on her welfare and seeking her company. Most significantly, her family from Kentucky began making long trips to just visit - never criticizing her choice of poverty and wandering. Reading this book, I kept hoping that I could be just as tolerant and supportive a parent as Bell's mother and father. I also hope that my daughter never experiences as much heartache as Bell.

Of course, we can never really protect the ones we love. Bell learns this in one of the hardest ways - through the death of a stepchild. How she carries on is her subject through the latter part of the book.

I suggest Claiming Ground to readers who enjoy nature writing and personal revelations, for in describing her experiences as shepherd, ranch hand, forest ranger, massage therapist, and conservationist, Bell always notes the look of the clouds, the feel of the wind, the scent of the grass, and the rough beauty of Wyoming, a place she deeply loves. She may make you long to visit Wyoming, too.

Bell, Laura. Claiming Ground. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 9780307272881

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Last year in The Help, Kathryn Stockett told a fictional story of a young white woman interviewing black maids who had stories to tell about their white employers in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. This year in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot tells her own true story of interviewing the family of a black woman who died of cancer in 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland, whose cells have been used ever since in medical research. While the stories may not sound similar on the surface, there are many common elements and as much to discuss. While Skloot's investigative report will probably not approach the market success of Stockett's novel, it is in my estimate as significant a book. Racial discrimination is only one of the concerns in this new book that should make every reader who has ever had medical treatment wonder about his or her own genetic destiny and privacy.

When Henrietta Lacks was treated for cancer in 1950 and 1951, the physicians at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which was originally established to treat Baltimore's poor of any race, took samples of her cancer cells. One of the physician was trying to cultivate cells that could live in petri dishes and be used in medical testing. Lacks' cancer cell proved to thrive in the lab, and he gave samples to colleagues all over the world. These cells labeled "HeLa" are still multiplying and are now sold commercially. Ironically, Lacks was never asked whether the cells could be used and no one in her family knew for twenty years of their fame. They have never gotten any financial benefits from what might be argued to be their cells. They have often avoided medical treatment that they could not afford.

Skloot does not just report the science and business of medical research. By recounting the life of the nearly forgotten Lacks and visiting her family, the author has made the story very accessible to anyone not inclined to technical reading. Skloot reconstructs many conversations, using many quotations. The anger, confusion, suffering, and relief of sons and daughters and grandchildren of Henrietta Lacks are as much a part of the story as what diseases have been cured.

Don't skip reading the afterward. According to what Skloot has found, almost all of our cells are now being stored somewhere. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks isn't just a story about someone else and the issues it raises are not going away. It is an obvious choice for book clubs who tackle current events issues.

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown Publishers, 2010. ISBN 9781400052172.

How to Mellify a Corpse and Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition by Vicki Leon

Anyone thinking that history of the ancient Greeks and Romans is dull should try How to Mellify a Corpse and Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition by Vicki Leon. In this illustrated collection of short essays, Leon intimately examines ancient Greek and Roman thinkers and their thoughts without either glorifying or belittling them. While she seems to get a kick out of telling when they totally misunderstood natural processes, she also likes pointing out when they were two thousand years ahead of everyone else in discovery and understanding.

"Mellify" is not in the American Heritage Dictionary, but "mellifluous" is. The latter means "flowing with sweetness or honey." Honey was the only sweetener that the Greeks and Romans regularly used. They also used it to treat burns and wounds and to embalm bodies, including that of Alexander the Great. In an essay near the end of the book, Leon tells how the ancients were able to make good use of the honey without ever really understanding it or the bees that made it.

Many centuries of Greeks and Romans, who were spread around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, had no word "science," and most of their observations were made by philosophers not employing scientific method, so they were bound to make mistakes. They did not, however, seem to be too bothered by mystery. Looking back, it is rather remarkable how advanced they were in math, astronomy, and physics. There seem to have been quite a few philosophers who figured out that the earth circled the sun. Democritis and Leucippus even proposed that all matter is made of atoms, but they had no equipment with which to prove their theory. They probably did not even feel the need to prove it.

Leon makes learning about the ancients fun. In her accounts, she often throws in humorous asides. When describing how a slave given an education reacted, she writes, "The young slave took to it like feta to Greek salad." She also relates ancient science and culture to the modern times: lead was the plastic of its day, temples were tourist attractions, and Romans had their own battle re-enactors. With much fascinating information within, How to Mellify a Course is a book to enjoy a little at a time.

Leon, Vicki. How to Mellify a Corpse and Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition. Walker & Company, 2010. ISBN 9780802717023

An Evening at the Ravinia Music Festival

It is not convenient getting from Downers Grove to the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. When we go, we want to make the best of it. Friday we went and discovered two-for-one tickets in the Pavilion for the all Mozart program directed by Pinchas Zuckerman, at which he played three violin solos. His daughter Arianna also sang from two Mozart vocal works. It was her Ravinia debut, but he has been there many times. Ironically, he was the conductor the only other time I sat in the Pavilion twenty or so years ago. We usually buy less expensive lawn tickets and spread out with our picnic. But yesterday was different, and we sat on the right side five rows from the cellos and bass players. I could see the scratches on the basses and how the cellos seemed to come in different shades of brown.

A second factor in our buying the Pavilion tickets was that it allowed us to also attend the Steans Institute Young Artists' Concert at 5:45 p.m. in the Bennett-Gordon Hall in the John D. Harza Building on the Ravinia campus. The young musicians come from around the world for classes with distinguished faculty, including Miriam Fried and Leon Fleisher. In the biographies in the recital program, there were many references in student and faculty profiles to the New England Conservatory of Music. On the program was a Beethoven piano sonata, a Debussy string quartet, and a Dvořák viola quintet, each approaching half an hour. We got more music than we expected. I particularly liked the Debussy while Bonnie favored the Dvořák.

We hardly had time to eat our salads and desserts before we took our seats in the Pavilion, where, as I said before we sat very close. I found it easy to watch Zuckerman conducting. Unlike my band directors in high school, "Pinkie" (as the frequent Ravinia concertgoer next to us called him) did not seem to be keeping the beat. He was swinging around and pointing and looking around. Strangely, it did not appear to me that many of the orchestra members were actually watching him. Instead, they were intently reading their music. Professionals that they are, they stuck together anyway. I enjoyed hearing the lively and familiar pieces.

The final half of the concert was Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G minor, a very recognizable piece. I call still hear it a day later. Ta TA TA ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. It was a fitting end to a great evening of music. We have been tending toward attending Grant Park concerts more lately, but Ravinia can still deliver.

Cedar Rapids Baseball

In my dreams, I'd like to spend a summer with Bonnie attending minor league baseball games across the country. Maybe we'd write a book. Minor league games are much more fun than major league games these days. The players are more humble and better behaved, the stands are filled with families, and the between-inning entertainment often makes me laugh. Such was our experience attending the July 3 game between the Clinton LumberKings and the Cedar Rapids Kernels. Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids is relatively compact, and we were so close to the action that we saw all the plays well. And the game was a big 13-3 win for the home team.

Bonnie and I do go to games to watch every play. I even keep score. In the LumberKings-Kernels game, almost everything that could happen did. We saw a every kind of hit and almost every kind of out. We saw great catches, snappy double plays, and almost unbelievable errors. Two runners were thrown out trying to steal second. One runner was out because he was hit by the batted ball - something we rarely see. The final line score was very strange. The LumberKings scored three runs on nine hits. The Kernels scored thirteen runs on eight hits. That's more hits for the losing team. Many walks and errors made the unusual outcome possible.

Watching the game alertly is really important sitting just behind the third base dugout at just about any stadium. Bonnie and I were ready to duck the ever-dangerous screaming foul ball. We were so close. That also gave us a good view of the between inning entertainment. I had never seen a tooth fairy clean the bases nor a bloodshot-eyeball race.

Before the game, Bonnie found the Cedar Rapids Baseball Hall of Fame within the stadium shop and recommended it to me. Inside were a couple of cases with relics and old newspaper articles. On one wall were team pictures dating back to 1939 when the team was called the Raiders. The city's minor league history actually dates back to the 1891 Cedar Rapids Canaries. In 1897 they were called the Bunnies, and then a few years later the Rabbits. On the opposite wall were pictures of the hall of fame inductees. I liked how many of the honored were only famous in Cedar Rapids, not just players who went on to great major league careers. I noticed among them infielder Denis Menke, one of my favorite players as a boy. I saw him playing shortstop for Houston in 1969.

My brat and my bowl of mint chip ice cream were both good. The parking was free and convenient. The weather was almost perfect. The game was filled with action. I'd gladly go again.

The Neddiad: How Neddied Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization by Daniel Pinkwater

Imagine that your name is Neddie and that you are just a regular kid with regular parents growing up in Chicago just after World War II. You enjoy going to the movies every Saturday morning and looking at magazines on your sofa while you wait for dinner. You see a picture in a magazine of the Brown Derby Restaurant in Los Angeles and mention to your dad that you'd like to eat there among the movie stars some day. He says that he would also like that and that he'll move the whole family out to California right away. Suddenly you pack up, catch a train, and things do not seem so regular anymore. This is how The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater begins.

Anyone who has read Pinkwater or heard his commentaries on National Public Radio knows that he has a world-class top-notch imagination. In The Neddiad, he draws from his deep well of experiences (having grown up in Chicago) and transforms a story about kids in the forties into a epic tale filled with mythological characters. Neddie and his friends Seamus and Yggdrasel talk just like kids and hang out at doughnut shops and go to school and make friends and deal with bullies. They also meet Indian shamans, befriend a ghost, visit a circus with a real mammoth, and strive to save the world from a evil spirit. A kid's got a do what a kid's got to do.

The Neddiad is aimed at young readers but don't let that keep you from checking it out. Older readers who recall early television, movie serials, radio dramas, comic books, train travel, diners, old telephones, and such may remember being somewhat like Neddie themselves. And if you like the book, Pinkwater has written two sequels, Yggyssey and Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl. Most public libraries will own them.

Pinkwater, Daniel. The Neddiad: How Neddied Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 9780618594443

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

Patagonia is a place of extremes which harbors descendants of many wandering tribes of humanity. Mixed in its valleys, deserts, and mountains are people of astonishing origins. Welsh, Germans, Italians, Brits, Scots, Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, Russians, Hindus, Africans, Japanese, New Zealanders, and North Americans have all sought wealth or refuge in South America's southernmost region. The late Bruce Chatwin reported on meeting many of them in his now classic travel account In Patagonia.

Despite being only 199 pages and made up of 97 short episodes, In Patagonia is not a book to read in a day. Chatwin wrote minimal, economic prose to report his wandering through the region. The sharp-image quality may make little sense to someone plowing through the book quickly. To them it may seem to be just one thing after another. Readers need to pause and contemplate what Chatwin has shown them to draw their own conclusions about the place and its people.

There is much in the text to disturb the reader. I particularly noticed how the Native Americans who work on the ranches and in factories are referred to by everyone as "peons." Even in the 1970s, they often did hard labor for little pay. In the historical accounts that Chatwin includes, they were often killed for sport or just to lay claim to land. Even the missionaries, who seem to have had some good intentions, often betrayed them.

Chatwin says very little about himself other than how he travels, which might be hiking across a desert or hitchhiking with truck drivers or riding with the engineer in a train. In conversations, he mostly asks question or otherwise spurs conversation. Almost everyone other than an old priest who wanted to be left alone spoke to Chatwin readily and many gave him a meal and a place to stay. More than most travel writers, he made the journey not about himself.

In Patagonia is a book that might be quite different if written today, when people are leery of travel writers, who often go with film crews into even the remotest regions. We should be thankful for this broadcast pre-media account, which may still be found in many libraries.

Chatwin, Bruce. In Patagonia. Summit Books, 1977. ISBN 0671400452

ricklibrarian Guide to Picking Raspberries

This is high raspberry season in Downers Grove. I am out picking away every day. I probably picked four pints yesterday. I've gotten at least two pints every day for the last week. We've been eating them with many meals and Bonnie has been baking wonderful desserts. Neighbors are getting raspberries. We've taken berries to work. It's a wonderful time.

If you have never picked raspberries, here is some advice:

• Raspberries are easy to grow if you have a sunny, well-drained spot that you don't mind letting go a little wild. I planted five little sticks about eight years ago and now have a thriving patch.
• When picking, look at the bushes from every angle that you can. You'll find that after picking the top and outside of the bushes, there are many more inside the thicket.
• If a raspberry does not come off easily, it is not yet ripe. The berries that are ready just slide off in your fingers.
• Really shiny berries are not ready. The peak flavor in my berries seems to be in those that are just losing their shine. If they dull and dark, you are too late. It is better to be a little early picking than late.
• Little berries that did not fill out taste woody. I drop those to get them off the bushes.
• Some berries are so ripe you have to eat them right of the bush. Right after dinner is a good time to pick. Consider it dessert time.

While you do have to clean the patch up in the fall and spring, the work is easy. Here outside Chicago, I hardly have to water the established patch except in drought. The benefits of having a raspberry patch are many. Many pints.

Tulpan, a Film by Sergey Dvortsevoy

Bonnie and I enjoy watching obscure foreign films that feature life in exotic locations. Tulpan, a film from Kazakhstan, directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy fit the bill. Set on the dry brushy steppes of Kazakhstan, it shows how hard living can be even in these modern times for nomadic sheep herders and their families.

In Tulpan, former sailor Asa has returned from the Russian Navy to the Hunger Steppe (well named place) with the dream of becoming a herdsman with his own yurt and a family, but his general immaturity and lack of agricultural skills work against him. His brother-in-law tells him he will never have his own herd until he marries because a wife who will do much backbreaking work is essential to survival in the vast semi-arid region. But there is only one eligible woman in the area, Tulpan, whose dream is to go off to college. She has a mother who protects her from shiftless suitors.

Tulpan is fiction, unlike Dvortsevoy's other work, but it still has a very real feel. The weather and antics of livestock must have been just what happened out on the steppes during filming. There are several slow one-camera-shot scenes, where the action and dialogue start off camera. Viewers are challenged to figure out what is going on. Who keeps singing? Why is one child interested in world news radio? Sound is as important as image in this story in which everything is slowly revealed.

Though Tulpan won many prizes at film festivals, you will probably never see it at a regular theater. Check your library.

Tulpan. Zeitgeist Films, 2009. ISBN 0795975111935