End of November reading update

Well, there are about 45 minutes left of November, so I'll post my reading update. What a sad showing -- I was too busy participating in National Novel Writing Month to read much. And yes, I did make it to 50,000 words -- today -- so I'm a NaNoWriMo "winner" once again --

but the novel itself is not quite finished, so I still need to write some more. I'm partway through Chapter 29 and I had intended to write 30 chapters. So almost there, but not quite. In any case, I have until next November to revise this one, so no worries. Of course, I am still revising the novel I wrote last November, so maybe I should worry.

Here is the pathetically short reading list:

86. Hug Your Kids Today: 5 Key Lessons for Every Working Parent by Michelle Nichols. Michelle was my freshman-year college roommate, so of course I had to read her book. It was heartbreaking but at the same time very funny and insightful. Also very well edited! No typos!
87. China Lake by Anthony Hyde. Of course I had to read a mystery set in and around Ridgecrest. Sadly, it was not the best book ever written, but it was still fun to read, especially since I was at the same time trying to write a mystery set in and around Ridgecrest.
88. Blessings by Anna Quindlen. I said I wasn't going to read any more Anna Quindlen books, but I found this at a rummage sale and decided to read it. I actually did like it very much, so even though I'm not going to read any more books by Anna Quindlen, I'll keep this one around.
89. The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell. The seventh book in the 12-book series, this one finds our hero (anti-hero?) in the army, at the beginning of World War II. Things are a little less humorous and people are starting to die. I'm a little nervous about the next book, which is winging its way to me from the big library in Bakersfield.
90. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. This was one of my birthday books. I wasn't sure I'd like it, but it was actually very compulsive reading. Overall, kind of moody and sad, thought-provoking. Maybe in 10 or 20 years Lahiri will revisit these characters. I'd like to know what Gogol does next.

So, now it's December, or will be in half an hour, and I need to read 10 more books by December 31 to reach 100 for the year. Can she do it and also survive Christmas? Stay tuned...

Winnie-go-house

The title of this blog post may be confusing -- you may be thinking, didn't she mean Winnie the Pooh? Or... something else? Actually, what I should have called it was "Wizard of Oz House" but Winnie-go-house is what the twins call it, so I'll call it that too.

Winnie-go-house is a large interesting house at the corner of Downs and Church Streets in Ridgecrest. It's red, shaped like a caboose -- I've heard it called the Caboose House, so maybe it even really is a caboose? Or it's a caboose attached to a regular house? Anyway, it's interesting all by itself, but around Halloween each year, or at least last year and this year, which is all we know about, the owners transform it into a Wizard of Oz fantasy. And it stays up past New Year's! They put up lights, and lighted signs that say "OZ" and set up life-size figures of the characters from the book/movie. Last year the figures were all on the roof of the house, but this year only Glinda, the good witch, and the Wicked Witch of the West (who I can't help calling Elphaba, from Wicked) are on the roof. Dorothy (with Toto in basket) and the Scarecrow are on one side of the yard, and on the other side you've got the Lion in a tree and the Tin Woodman beneath him, with a Flying Monkey in another tree, and yet another version of the Wicked Witch/Elphaba inside a house.

I worried about the figures last year, sure that our terrible winds were going to blow them off the roof. They never did blow down, but I wonder whether the homeowners thought they'd be safer down below and that's why they moved them. Or maybe they just wanted to expand the decorations in their yard.



I have to apologize for the quality of these photos -- my camera doesn't take very good night photos. I should take some daytime shots and add them to the post later. I'll have no trouble finding the time to do this, because the twins and I drive by Winnie-go-house EVERY FRIGGING DAY, usually two or three times. Every time we get in the car they start yelling "Winnie-go-house! Winnie-go-house!" The homeowners must think we're planning something nefarious, the way we're around all the time.

I shouldn't complain. I love the house too. I never get enough of it (though I think that this year, by New Year's, I will have had enough of it). I play the CD of Wicked as we drive by.

I can't help wondering why the local newspapers don't do a big story on the house. Even if they've done them in past years (and I do remember a very short, uninformative article last year), the display is different this year, so why not do an update? And fill us in, we newcomers, on what the heck is going on with the house. Why do the homeowners do it? Do they just love L. Frank Baum's work?

Sadly, though, the local papers (especially the daily paper) never seem to cover what's interesting, and they NEVER NEVER NEVER fill in the blanks for those of us who just got here. I remember soon after we moved to Ridgecrest the local paper started writing stories about the closure of a local housing development? apartment building? some kind of place where people live -- called La Mirage. Never did they say where this group of dwellings was. It was at least a year after the whole mess was resolved that I finally stumbled across La Mirage -- former base housing converted to low-rent housing. Of course everyone who's lived here for years and years knew that already, but I didn't.

But I'm not the Daily Independent's intended reader. I read the paper obsessively, but it is not written for me. Nor is the News Review intended for me. Still, I wish one or both of them would write about Winnie-go-house. I'd love to know more about how this enchantingly goofy house came to be.

The Getty Center -- with toddlers

This weekend we went to Los Angeles for a visit with friends and family and I was reminded once again -- as if I needed reminding -- of how much my life has changed since having children.

The main purpose of the trip was to attend a "gaming party" at the home of our friends who live in Canoga Park (in the San Fernando Valley). They have a party every month to which they always invite us and we always politely decline, because (a) they live 145 miles away from us, and (b) we have two-year-old twins. These gaming parties go from 6 pm until sometimes 2 or 3 am, or possibly later, and the twins go to bed at 7:30. Even if we got a babysitter for the evening, the twins would still get up at 6:30 am, and then the next day we'd be zombies.

But this month we decided to give it a try. We planned to attend the party from 6 to 7:30, take the twins back to the hotel and put them to bed, and then trade off going back to the gaming party -- first Rocket Boy could go and play a game, and then he'd come back and I'd go and play a game, etc. It didn't work out very well and we were zombies the next day, but at least we tried.

But we needed something to do in Los Angeles before the gaming party started. Yes, we could have stayed in Ridgecrest until 3 pm and then driven down, but we had a better idea -- why not go to the Getty? The glorious Getty Center museum complex is an easy 20-minute drive from our friends' house. We had gone there together several years ago (i.e., before twins), and we knew it wouldn't be the same WITH twins, but we were still interested. If nothing else, we could sit by a fountain and eat snacks.



And that's about how it turned out. The Getty Center has a very attractive garden to explore, plus numerous plazas and fountains. The museum is free, but they're clearly making some money on parking ($15/car) and food -- many people seem to go there just to sit around and eat snacks. Our kind of place.

But the art, you say, what about the art? The Getty Center has an enormous collection and is constantly buying more. What did we see?

We saw one room of a photography exhibit before the twins started yelling. Later, after a snack, Rocket Boy urged me to go back and look some more while he babysat. So I went back and looked at that room again and then at one other room. And then it was time to buzz through the gift shop and run for the train back to the parking garage.

The Getty Center experience with toddlers does not have much to do with art. Architecture, yes, and gardens, but not pictures hanging on walls.



But for me the really striking part of the whole experience was not the fact that I didn't get to see any art. It was the other people at the Getty, and how different they looked from me. I first noticed this when we were standing in line for the train from the parking garage to the museum. It was a long line that snaked back and forth, so you got a good look at all the other people. And I started looking at their clothes. No one dresses up to go to the Getty, I thought, when choosing my clothes that morning. But I was wrong.

Almost everyone in line had dressed up to go to the Getty. I saw the most marvelous outfits and hairstyles and hair colors. I wished I had a camera in my phone so that I could take pictures of the line without being really obvious about it.

What were we wearing, you may ask? Baby B wore a Thomas the Tank Engine shirt while Baby A wore a Cars shirt. (When I was pregnant I vowed that my children would never wear shirts with licensed characters on them, and there were several families at the Getty who appeared to have made -- and unlike me, kept -- similar vows.) Rocket Boy wore his usual slacks and shirt. I wore an old cotton t-shirt and black cropped exercise pants, which is one of my uniforms, with my desperately-needing-a-haircut hair hanging limply down my back. We were no oil painting, as they say. In particular, I was disappointed with my own look, or lack thereof.

When did this happen? When did I lose all connection with any sort of personal style? Was it due to having twins, to gaining weight, to turning 50, to living in Ridgecrest? It is true that when you have children you tend to want to spend money on them, not on yourself. And when you live in a place like Ridgecrest and you're not working outside the home, it's hard to justify any expenditure of time or money on your own appearance. But geez, there's such a thing as taking a thing too far.

The next morning, after downing 4 cups of coffee at our hotel's continental breakfast (in order to deal with the zombie factor), we went to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought me a full-length mirror. It's hard to improve your appearance when you can't see yourself. And today I put away all my summer clothes and got out my winter clothes (and tossed out a bunch of stuff I don't like anymore). It's a start.

Manzanar

Yesterday we decided it was finally time to visit Manzanar, the WWII "relocation center" for people of Japanese descent that has been made into a National Historic Site. It's less than 2 hours north of us, just past Lone Pine. We've been talking about going for ages.

Why hadn't we gone before? I suppose because it sounded a bit depressing, like the kind of thing you'd have to be in the right mood for. Or if not depressing, at least very serious, not a place to have fun. Not a place the twins would enjoy. Most of these worries turned out to be unfounded. It is a serious place and you do kind of have to be in the right mood. But it's also very interesting and the twins loved it.

On my first trip to Germany, back in 1985, my great-aunt (with whom I was staying) asked me if I would like to visit Dachau, the former Nazi concentration camp, which was nearby. I had not even heard of Dachau, nor had I thought of visiting it, but I said yes, of course, and we went. Now Dachau was depressing.

But Manzanar is more puzzling and thought-provoking than depressing. Pretty much nobody was killed at Manzanar, except in one riot that occurred there. The "internees" just had their lives destroyed, that's all, and much of that happened before they ever arrived, when they were forced to abandon their homes and businesses. Once they got to Manzanar, they just lived what was left of their lives, albeit in very difficult, uncomfortable circumstances, behind barbed wire fences, guarded by sentries with submachine guns. The overall impression that I took away from Manzanar was: what absolute nonsense. How completely unnecessary. What was my country thinking.

And of course it's impossible not to compare it with the current hysteria against Muslims. But I digress.

One caveat: I didn't get to see many of the displays (too busy babysitting), and maybe if I had, my impressions would have been different.

The only buildings on the site that have survived since the 1940s are a couple of stone sentry posts at the entrance, and the former auditorium, which was several different things through the years and now houses an excellent interpretive center with a great gift shop. Here we are walking, or in the case of the twins, running pell-mell toward it.



The other people in the picture were two older couples who appeared to be "of Japanese descent." When I saw them I thought, oh maybe someone they knew was here. Later, talking to a ranger, I asked "Do you get many Japanese-Americans here?" I knew it was an idiotic question before I finished asking it, but he was polite. He said, "We get many former internees here. Almost every day."

That brought tears to my eyes. This all happened so recently.

The best thing in the interpretive center, as far as the twins were concerned, is a toy room, with examples of toys similar to those the Manzanar children would have played with. And the best thing about the toy room? You can play with all the toys! The twins and I spent most of our time in that room. When we left, Baby A attempted to pull a toy wagon full of the toys out of the toy room and off to the car, but we prevented that. In the gift shop they sell those same toys. I bought a set of alphabet blocks.



In addition to the interpretive center there is a driving tour you can take of the site. They have reconstructed some of the barracks, so you can see how the people lived. Other than that, most of what you see on the driving tour are building foundations and bare land, with signs indicating what used to be there. There were two interesting exceptions: the cemetery, which includes the monument in my photo at the top, and the gardens.



When Rocket Boy read aloud from the brochure that here was the "mess hall garden," I assumed that meant a vegetable garden. But then we got out of the car and read a display near the garden. This was not a vegetable garden, this was a traditional Japanese garden, with rocks and water. It was not for growing food, it was for solace and contemplation.

Yesterday was a fabulous day to be out and about in the Owens Valley. It was cool but not cold, breezy but not windy, and the sky was a fabulous blue. But to the west, over the Eastern Sierra, a winter storm was clearly taking place (as you can kind of see in some of the photos). So weird. Some of the literature I read said that what the people interned there liked best about Manzanar was the beauty of the mountains.