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We have had lovely spring weather in Niagara so far and I’ve been out in the yard as much as possible. This weekend Colleen helped me build some tripod trellises for the runner beans and we got those planted. The garden is slowly starting to take shape, however I’m learning just how much there is to do to keep up a yard and a garden of this size. Don’t get me wrong — I love it but have had to recognize that it is always a work in progress. Perhaps that is half the fun?
My spring allergies have come back with a vengeance. I’ve been sneezing and sniffling my way through the past week or so. I’ve not yet been able to pinpoint exactly what it is I’m allergic to — probably a combination of plant materials. Very frustrating! (By the way, anyone have any recommendations for products or homeopathic remedies for this type of allergy? I’m always on the lookout for new ways to try and combat this.)
The impulse to read up on a topic is not limited to my academic work, and since I want to know more about allergies I recently picked up Gregg Mitman’s book, Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes. On Saturday, during a break from gardening, I sat out on the back porch and began reading it. This struck me as a highly appropriate choice of reading material given that I’d just recovered from an allergy-induced sneezing fit. Mitman opens his book with an interesting analysis of the story of Mr. T. cutting down all the trees on his Chicago-area property. Mr. T and environmental/medical history? I’m hooked!
When I fly I often play a little game. I don’t pack a book in my carry-on bag but, instead, wait to see what I can find for reading material at the airport shops. I know, I know — for a book-a-holic this sounds like a risky approach to travel. The fun part, however, is that by doing this I’ve often come across books I wouldn’t think to look for in larger, more diverse bookstores. And for all the flying I’ve done in the past few years there was only one time where I just couldn’t bring myself to buy any of the books for sale in the airport.
On my recent trip to Boston I played this game and bought a book at the Buffalo airport. I bought Lisa Genova’s debut novel, Still Alice. I’m not sure if it was the striking cover design or the fact that the book was set in the location I was about to visit, but something made this book jump out at me from all of the others that day. I hadn’t heard of this book before and, like all books bought while playing the airport book game, I had no idea if it would be a waste of money and time or not. As it turned out, I really liked this book. I finished it a few days ago and am still thinking about it (always a sign of a good book!). I don’t want to give away too much, but the novel is about a Harvard professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. While, of course, this subject matter means that the book does have some heart-breaking scenes, the story is not as bleak or depressing as it might first sound. In fact, I found myself looking forward to getting back to the book each evening as I wanted to know more about the characters and how they were learning to live with this major change in their lives. Quite a compelling read!
The other night we went to hear Roch Carrier speak. I have been a fan of “The Hockey Sweater” since I was a kid, but this was the first time I had heard him give a presentation. It was a great evening — Mr. Carrier is such an interesting and engaging person, and I really enjoyed listening to him talk about his career as a writer. He also read some of his short stories to us, including one about how he learned to read. I was particularly touched by this story, given how the words he has written have undoubtedly inspired many other young Canadians to fall in love with reading. I know I certainly remember how I enjoyed reading excerpts of his stories in our grade school readers.
I have some recollection of when I first learned to read. My mom tells me that I taught myself, but I’m sure that isn’t entirely true given how frequently we were read to. I do remember wanting so desperately to be able to read like the grown-ups around me, and I’d often sit with a book open in my lap, staring at the pages in the hopes that something magical would happen and I’d start to comprehend what I was seeing in front of me. My aunt Irene bought me a book at a garage sale to practice with. I don’t recall what book it was, but I do remember it was a green hard-backed book and I remember sitting with her, circling in pencil the words I knew how to sound out. After that the details get a bit blurry, but I know that once I figured it out I wanted to read any books I could get my hands on. Ramona Quimby, Laura Ingalls and Nancy Drew soon became close, personal friends. Trips to the public library were much anticipated, and to this day the crinkly sound of a laminated library book cover makes me smile.
Of course I continue to read a lot now, but the majority of the reading I do for work is non-fiction. I love the subjects I teach and research, so I do very much enjoy reading books on the history of art, visual culture, botanical illustration, etc., however Mr. Carrier’s talk made me realize how much I miss the pleasure of being carried away by a good story. This summer I’m going to be sure to add some fiction to my reading list!
William Brymner, The Picture Book [1898]
Image Source: National Gallery of Canada/CyberMuse
Apparently, the author of some old fashioned bodice-ripping romance novels recently decided to plagiarize a piece on black-footed ferrets. I suppose she figured she’d never be found out. All I can say is why? I mean, seriously, this is the most absurd thing I’ve heard in ages! I haven’t read the novel in question, but I can’t see how Tolme’s writing on the little critters would seem at all suited to a steamy romance novel. I’m sure Tolme’s writing and research is very good, but it is just, well, a different kind of writing altogether, isn’t it? What’s the thought process here? And then there is the question of the editor of the novel — even if he or she didn’t know Tolme’s piece existed, the abrupt shift in writing style should have triggered some sort of warning signal. Seems that this story is continuing to develop — more over at Smart Bitches.
Once again I must credit bioephemera for alerting me to something fantastic! Over at Curious Expeditions you will find the most amazing post (including a series of stunningly beautiful photos) in honour of libraries. A good library is a wonderful, wonderful place!
(Image Credits: Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, England and Old British Reading Room, British Museum, London, England. Taken from Curious Expeditions)
As I continue to organize my office to get ready for the 2007/08 academic year, I have been unpacking the various bags and boxes of books I purchased this summer. The majority of them were purchased in the UK, where I got a little carried away in museum and garden bookshops! We had our suitcases stuffed to the brim with all of my heavy books on the way home. This would have been fine except we had to take the tube to Victoria station in order to transfer to the Gatwick Express. We discovered a little too late that there are no lifts in Victoria station, so we had to drag our heavy luggage up the stairs — I’m sure we looked quite comical! Thankfully some nice folks stopped to help us out.
Below is a list of the books I bought over the past couple of months. I can’t wait until I have a chance to read them all!
A Vision of Eden: The Life and Work of Mariane North (London: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1993)
Carol Armstrong, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843-1875 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press)
David Attenborough, Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos, Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (London: Royal Collection Publications, 2007)
Holley Bishop, Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey, The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World (New York: Free Press, 2005)
R. Howard Bloch, A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry (New York: Random House, 2006)
John Buchanan-Brown, Early Victorian Illustrated Books: Britain, France and Germany, 1820-1860 (London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2005)
Stefan Buczacki, Garden Natural History (London: Collins, 2007)
Susan Cambpell, A History of Kitchen Gardening (London: Frances Lincoln, 2005)
Ray Desmond, Great Natural History Books and Their Creators (London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2003)
Carolyn Fry, The World of Kew (London: BBC Books, 2006)
Lisa Graziose Corrin, Miwon Kwon, Norman Bryson and Mark Dion, Mark Dion (London: Phaidon Press, 1997)
Victoria Finlay, Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box (McArthur & Co, 2006)
David Gessner, Sick of Nature (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2004)
Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire (HarperCollins, 2006)
Ruth Hayden, Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers (London: The British Museum Press, 1980)
Kenneth I. Helphand, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2006)
Images from Nature (London: The Natural History Museum, 1998)
Anne Jennings, Victorian Gardens (London: English Heritage and The Museum of Garden History, 2005)
Anne Jennings, Edwardian Gardens (London: English Heritage and The Museum of Garden History, 2005)
Sylvia Landsberg, The Medieval Garden (London: The British Museum Press, 1995)
Leslie Laking, Love, Sweat and Soil: A History of the Royal Botanical Gardens from 1930 to 1981 (Hamilton: Royal Botanical Gardens’ Auxiliary, 2005)
Linda Lear, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007)
Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989)
Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2007)
Elizabeth K. Menon, Evil By Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)
Sue Minter, The Apothecaries’ Garden: A History of the Chelsea Physic Garden (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2000)
Peter Pesic, Sky in a Bottle (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005)
Laura Ponsonby, Marianne North at Kew Gardens (London: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1996)
Leonard Shlain, Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991)
Ann Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England, 1760-1860 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
Kim Sloan, A New World: England’s First View of America (London: The British Museum Press, 2007)
Rupert Smith, A Year at Kew (London: BBC Books, 2004)
Mary Soderstrom, Recreating Eden: A Natural History of Botanical Gardens (Montréal: Véhicule Press, 2001)
Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007)
Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis (Orlando: Harcourt, 2007)
Jenny Uglow, A Little History of British Gardening (London: Pimlico, 2005)
Lucia van der Post, William Morris and Morris & Co. (London: V&A Publications, 2003)
Roy Vickery, Wildlife Garden at the Natural History Museum (London: The Natural History Museum, 2004)
Twigs Way, Virgins, Weeders and Queens: A History of Women in the Garden (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 2006)
Anne Wilkinson, The Victorian Gardener: The Growth of Gardening and the Floral World (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 2006)
Val Williams and Susan Bright, How We Are: Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present (London: Tate Publishing, 2007)
Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed the World (New York: Perennial, 2002)
When I pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon I was given a coupon for a discount off my next online order. I just used it towards the purchase of Linda Lear’s new book, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Seems appropriate, non?
I just finished reading Dava Sobel’s book, The Planets and I absolutely loved it! I remember being fascinated by things astronomical in elementary school science class, but haven’t spent that much time thinking about things like planets and stars and orbits in recent years. Perhaps it was Sobel’s own discussion of her childhood fascination with the heavens that quickly drew me into this book. She opens by discussing the model solar system she made as a child (a project that has been a fixture at every science fair I have ever attended!), and the sense of wide-eyed wonder that drove that project lingers throughout the rest of the book. The book is certainly grounded in meticulous scholarly research, however it is the mixture of personal anecdotes, mythology, art, history and science that makes this such a fascinating read. The facts, figures, stories and histories in The Planets are wonderfully woven together in a narrative style rarely found in non-fiction writing.
The Planets is a cultural history that focuses on shifting knowledge and belief systems about the solar system at various points in time and, as such, ancient mythology sits comfortably next to discussions about the chemical make-up of specific planetary atmospheres. Whenever I read about the history of science I am always fascinated by the changing process of creating knowledge and, indeed, what types of knowledge are privileged and promoted in different historical contexts. In this vein, I was intrigued by Sobel’s comments on how astronomy has become much more of a collaborative effort in recent years (she uses the large team involved with the Cassini spacecraft as a particularly illustrative example here).
I’m home from my travels! I enjoyed both the ASLE conference in Spartanburg and the whirlwind research trip in the UK but I’m plum worn out now and am really in need of a little home time. We just moved into our new house 2 weeks before I left for ASLE, and I am really looking forward to spending some time at home so that I can finish unpacking and getting settled. One of the things I like best about moving to a new place is that sense of “nesting,” the process of making a space comfortable and personal beyond the pure functionality getting the furniture set up.
We are very excited to have a yard and a garden to call our own and, as transplanted Albertans living in Southern Ontario, we are having fun trying to identify all the plants that grow in this zone. (We are also marvelling at both the range of things that can grow here and the longer growing season. We love Niagara!) Scott was tending the garden while I was away, and I was delighted to return home and and see what had been blooming and growing. The tomato and zucchini plants are growing like mad, the raspberries are delicious, the rabbits didn’t eat all of the corn, and both the blueberry and grape plants we put in seem to be thriving. We have big plans to get rid of all the lawn and replace it with more interesting plants (lawn is a particular pet peeve of mine!), but since both time and money are scarce these days it will have to be a gradual process.
And speaking of lawns, a book on my annual summer reading list is Lawn by Virginia Scott Jenkins. I distinctly remember how I first found out about this book. We were living in Kingston at the time, and I was finishing up my doctoral dissertation. One day as I was doing some finicky editing I was finding myself getting increasingly annoyed by the din of the lawnmowers in our neighbourhood (on that particular day the neighbours on both sides of us were mowing at the exact same time), and in a fit of frustration I googled something like “why are people so obsessed with lawns?” This search took me to a page for the (at that time) new book by Jenkins and I promptly dug out my credit card and placed an order with Amazon.ca That day I was irritated beyond belief, but I now see the humour in this spontaneous book purchase as it really speaks volumes about academic life: “when in doubt, see if someone wrote a book about it!!”
As a Canadian I have to admit that I have not spent a whole lot of time thinking about the landscape of South Carolina. However, prior to this trip If I had been pressed on the issue I would have likely guessed that the landscape would be characterized by big mossy tree trunks. There are trees with mossy trunks in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but this was certainly not the predominant view of the area around Wofford College. I wish I’d had time to take a side trip out from Spartanburg, to see more of the vegetation in this region.
My preconceived notions as to what I would encounter in terms of landscape and vegetation in the American South are informed, at least in part, by the mystery novels of Nevada Barr. Barr’s heroine, a park ranger named Anna Pigeon, fights crime in a number of different US National Parks, the specific setting changing with each novel. I’ve been reading Barr’s detective fiction for years now. I’ve found these books to be a fun way to relax and unwind after a long day. I was, therefore, delighted to be able to attend a panel at ASLE called “Nevada Barr and Other Eco-Sleuths.” One of the most interesting themes that came out of the presentations and the discussion that followed afterwards had to do with regulatory boundaries and expectations in certain spaces. For instance, many of the crimes that Anna Pigeon fights are activities that would not automatically be illegal outside of park borders (i.e.: hunting), and so there is this interesting relationship between how certain landscapes dictate certain patterns of behaviour. This, of course, is not a new observation and there has been much writing on the subject over the years, but what was neat about this discussion was that we were given the opportunity to think about the ways in which objects of popular culture reinforce and sometimes challenge these patterns of human behaviour as dictated by landscape.
