Hello Friends,
I hope you’ve had a long weekend full of gratitude and blessings. My husband and I did a lot of cooking and housecleaning. Holidays make me feel my age. For years, I would never leave dirty dishes from holiday cooking on the counters/in the sink overnight. I couldn’t stand the idea of waking up and having to deal with the mess. Now I can’t stand dealing with the mess on the day of the cooking and company. It has to wait for the following morning.
To deal with holiday stress, I think it’s fun to read advice columns in the newspaper. People have wacky issues, and that provides a little laugh and helps put things in perspective. My favorite this year was a man whose adult child has a father-in-law who refuses to trim his nose hairs even though the hairy-nose-man’s wife and child asked him to. The writer finds this so gross that it’s hard to be at the holiday table with the hairy-nose-man and wants to check out for that reason. You know, you read things like that and think ‘Really? That’s your holiday issue?’ But also, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want to deal with that.’ It could make your own family feel pretty normal.
My Personal Curriculum
I just learned that ‘personal curriculums’ are a thing. I happen to be working through one myself right now. I’m learning about California during the Great Depression and particularly about migrant farmworkers in the state. I want to know more for a novel I’d like to write. I thought I’d get through the books faster—I thought I’d be done by Dec. 1. But I have been caught up in other things and reading very slowly.
Here are some library books I have on loan.
Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California by Kevin Starr
Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture, edited by Gabriel Thompson (interviews are more contemporary rather than from the Great Depression)
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California by Carey McWilliams
Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century by Michael Hiltzik
Picturing a Nation: The Great Depression’s Finest Photographers Introduce America to Itself by Martin W. Sandler
I’m also taking a look at California and public projects at the time. Once I get through these books, I want to read about the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Factories in the Field was published in 1939 and is a great book for those seeking information on migrant farm work and agribusiness in California from 1900-1939. “This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture.”
Here’s a poem that serves as the book’s epigraph.
“The Nomad Harvesters” by Marie De L. Welch
The nomads had been the followers of the flocks and herds,
Or the wilder men, the hunters, the raiders.
The harvesters had been the men of homes.
But ours is a land of nomad harvesters.
They till no ground, take no rest, are hooked nowhere.
Travel with the warmth, rest in the warmth never;
Pick lettuce in the green season in the flats by the sea.
Lean, follow the ripening, homeless, send the harvest home;
Pick cherries in the amber valleys in the tenderest summer.
Rest nowhere, share in no harvest;
Pick grapes in the red vineyards in the low blue hills.
Camp in the ditches at the edge of beauty.
They are a great band, they move in thousands;
Move and pause and move on.
They turn to the ripening, follow the peaks of seasons,
Gather the fruit and leave it and move on.
Ours is a land of nomad harvesters,
Men of no root, no ground, no house, no rest;
They follow the ripening, gather the ripeness,
Rest never, ripen never,
Move and pause and move on.
Are you working on a personal curriculum? What is it? Why are you interested in the subject?
Sacrament by Susan Straight
Recently I mentioned four books I’d bought at Warwick’s Bookstore in San Diego. Since I’m working on reading the California books, those others mostly have to wait. However, I did begin Susan Straight’s Sacrament with high hopes of being well into it by November 19. I intended to go out to Riverside that day, have dinner with a friend, and then we were going to attend an Inlandia sponsored event featuring Straight discussing the novel. I’d actually bought the audiobook and began to listen to it. And then I’d bought the hardback at Warwick’s because the event was at a cultural center, and I didn’t know if the book was being sold there.
The best laid plans and all that. My sister had an emergency that day. She happened to be in Palm Springs, so my other sister and I drove out there and stayed for a few days to visit her in the hospital.
Straight is the star writer of the Inland Empire, narrating the diverse lives and landscapes of inland Southern California. Perhaps I can see her somewhere else soon. Meanwhile, I am enjoying Sacrament. There are some characters whom I met in Straight’s last novel, Mecca. I really like the character Johnny Frias, a motorcycle CHP member who grew up as a cowboy/rancher. However, the novel is centered on new characters, four nurses in San Bernardino, California during the Covid pandemic. They are in the thick of it—removed from their families and living in trailers so that they don’t risk infecting their loved ones. Dealing with dying patients and work that never ends as well as the loneliness of missing their families. So far, very good stuff.
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Best Books of the Year—the Lists are Coming Out!
One of the reasons I like checking end-of-the-year book lists is to see how many favorites I happen to have read. Have you read some of these ‘bests’? Did you love them as much as the critics did?
* The New York Public Library has 50 best adult books, 50 best teen books, and 125 best children’s book at this link.
* Here’s a gift link to the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025.
* Here’s NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2025 (384!). Click on the individual book covers for more information.
* Publishers Weekly lists and briefly comments on the National Book Award winners here.
For writers, Brecht De Poortere now has his 2025 list of top ranked literary magazines here. You can start your submission wish list. His process: “I use major awards and anthologies to rank more than 750 magazines publishing literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I also include information on: reading periods, cost of submission, restrictions, word counts, pay, location and journal website.”
If you are writing and also submitting, then you will be receiving rejections. More and more, literary journals seem to be trying to soften the blow. Which is an admirable effort. And while saying things like, “This isn’t a reflection of the story’s worth” is okay—the story might not be worthy, but the reason for rejection is often that it doesn’t match the editors’ tastes—here’s A Thing Lit Mag Rejections Shouldn’t Say:
“We encourage you to keep writing and creating. The world needs it, and you.”
I got this message this week. Please. Just. Stop.
As to keeping the arts alive in the U.S., I thought Ron Charles’ comments in his Book Club newsletter were spot on. It’s a mistake to depend on wealthy patrons, who will (and do, and always have) expect[ed] praise of themselves, and a pass on accountability for their behavior.
“But now President Trump is dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As a consequence, America will slip further back into that clammy system of pleading and patronage.
I know…. These reflections sound so naive I should be writing them with a stubby crayon. But it’s possible to imagine a country in which writers, artists, librarians and museum directors don’t have to wheedle for money from wealthy pedophiles, tobacco executives, OxyContin pushers or reality TV stars moonlighting as tyrants.
It’s possible, really. As someone might have told Jeffrey Epstein, ‘The Brain — is wider than the Sky.’”
You may recognize that as Emily Dickinson—and you’re right!
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
Thanks for reading! Next week I hope to share titles of books I’ve been reading lately.
I want to end by saying that I know we are entering a difficult time of the year for many people. Grief pops over the holidays when loved ones are missing. While my family and I have lost many loved ones over the last five years, some of the losses are directly connected to the holiday season. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my brother’s death. I dream about him sometimes, in the most ordinary way. Just chit chat. My mom died on Dec. 8 five years ago. The whole Covid nightmare makes it seem more recent. The anniversary of my sister-in-law’s birthday is Dec. 7. She died of leukemia. My mother-in-law died on January 6, the Epiphany.
The holiday season is so much different for me than it was for most of my life. It’s now emotionally complicated. and I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom this is true.
Take care.
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