Note of the Living Deb

Gregory J. Wallace's book Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia was recommended to me by a friend who knows I'm reading books about and set in other countries.

It's actually about two of his journeys through Siberia, the first being to help lay cable. He wanted to prove to himself that he was courageous. He succeeded.

The second time he wanted to observe Russia's exile system to better explain to his fellow Americans how much more humane it was than our penal system. For example, they let family members accompany them. And the Russians did let him inspect sites across Russia and interview not only the people in charge but also the exiles. In the end he decided he was horribly wrong and almost single-handedly changed US-Russian relations from friendly to not-so-friendly with his writings and speeches.

The Siberian exile system was not planned to be loathsome and vile... [It] was the product of imperial ambitions [for free workers], bureaucratic incompetence, corruption [sending off people you don't like without a trial], and inadequate funding [overcrowding and unsanitary conditions]. Centuries of grotesque penal evolution had spawned disease-ridden prisons, exile parties driven like cattle [except also wearing chains], virtual enslavement, and lunacies like the punishment of the Bell of Uglich [literally a church bell].

I won't go into any more details--I think you get the picture. Oh, except that it continued evolving into a worse and worse system.

One fascinating thing was just how difficult travel was for Kennan and the illustrator he brought with him: bouncing around in vehicles so much that they were bruised head-to-toe, having difficulty finding proper beds and avoiding bedbugs and other vermin, and being unable to sleep for long periods. How did the drivers they hired do this all the time? And yet it was much worse for the prisoners. And also for the people who accompanied them.

Another fascinating thing was that he met a female exile whose history and attitudes made him decide that she was even more courageous than he. He then gave up his beliefs that women were weak.

Another fascinating thing was that Kennan feared Americans wouldn't care about the terrible treatment of people in a land across the sea when they couldn't be encouraged to fight the injustices against Native Americans and recently freed slaves at home. But they did. Apparently the lack of guilt made it easier for them to be horrified and somehow they also managed to avoid feeling hypocritical. There should be a lesson here somehow in a country where some oppose teaching the bad parts of American history because they think it just makes white kids feel bad about themselves.

Without my usual sources, I still read more things about and set in other countries than I would have without this goal. Below are the books I read and movies I watched (the ones I plan to own are asterisked) plus my favorite articles and videos.


Africa

Nigeria
* fiction - Children of Blood and Bone - Three teenagers in an epic fight between those who want to bring back magic and those who want to kill it forever. The magic is fun, but there's too much torture, fantasy, and stupidity for my taste.

Tanzania
* fiction - Hard Rain - Guy who doesn't believe in love falls for a totally hot woman with a mysterious past. Has she killed a bunch of exes? Is he in danger? Can he trust her yet? And somehow she falls for him, magically "knowing" he is decent when he is always angry with her for being late, lying, and refusing to tell him things that she feels are none of his business. The mystery sucked me in; the ending made me angry--basically one character disappears so that this can be the first story in a series.


Americas

Bolivia
* nonfiction - Bolivia in Pictures - A landlocked country twice as big as Texas, Bolivia borders Lake Titicaca and its ancient ruins, and has llamas and all kinds of minerals, but government is by coup.
* article - "In World's Highest Capital, Breathing is Main Challenge" (1992)

Canada
* movie - "Disappearance at Clifton Hill" - Seven year old witnesses a kidnapping near the Canadian side of Niagara Falls where she lived. As an adult, she returns in order to deal with the sale of the hotel of her recently deceased mother, but she also investigates the disappearance. It's hard to keep track of what's happening and what's real. "The haunted houses aren't really haunted. The fun houses aren't really fun."

Mexico
* fiction - Murmur of Bees - Man describes life in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution and Spanish flu epidemic, which they survived partly because of his brother who could talk to bees and see some of the future. I kind of love it until the terrible thing happens and it's nothing but mourning, grudge holding, and not telling me what happened for eighty years.


Asia

Bhutan
* article - "Bhutan PM Asks All Citizens to Adopt a Stray Dog or Plant a Tree for King’s Birthday"

China
* fiction - The Last Chinese Chef* - A widow is recovering from her grief by moving to ever tinier homes. A Chinese American opens a traditional Chinese restaurant in China. Fascinating look at Chinese food, and many of the characters are likeable, but I don't quite love the ending.
* video - "Can China go net-zero? Two charts show just how ambitious Xi Jinping’s goal is"
* article - "Tibetan altitude gene came from extinct human species"

Israel
* movie - "The Band's Visit" - An Egyptian band arrives in Israel for a performance at the new Arabic cultural center, but they end up in Beit Hatikva instead of Petah Tiqva (Arabic has no "p" sound), where, according to one character, there is no Arabic culture, no Israeli culture, no culture. Some humor, but also very slow paced and lonely, and all the marriages have gone bad. It's trying to be arty--it looks like people are set up for art photos.

Japan
* fiction - Go* - A Japanese boy with North Korean citizenship finds love and prejudice. Shocking but fascinating.
* fiction - Convenience Store Woman - A woman with a mental disorder tries to find a place in society and learns to love the convenience store where she works. Being set in Japan is not what feels alien about this setting. It's the part about how people have all these expectations and demands and expect you to fit into various molds; the same molds that humans have had since caveman times.

Russia
* fiction - A Gentleman in Moscow* - Set during the Russian Revolution, there's a lot of depressing stuff, but the protagonist is super charming, and even when there's no one there to talk to, he talks anyway, to the cat, to the bird, to himself, and he's okay. This book also made me cry about wine (which I don't care about at all in real life).


Europe

Belarus
* article - "Belarus poll workers describe fraud in Aug. 9 election"

Denmark
* movie - "Checkered Ninja" - Doll made in sweatshop comes to life and with his owner seeks revenge on the guy who killed his maker. Disturbing lessons, but great contraption built in preparation for a fight.
* article - "Denmark apologizes to children taken from Greenland in a 1950s social experiment"

Germany
* movie - "Jojo Rabbit" - Ten-year-old in Nazi Germany has Hitler as an imaginary friend to help him get through life. He also has a real life best friend. And, it turns out, a Jew in the attic. There were many creative, fun, and touching scenes, but of course many horrors. It still feels too soon.

Greece
* fiction - This Rough Magic (also partly set in Albania) - Actress visits her sister on a Greek island (Corfu, off the coast at the Greek/Albanian border, theorized to be the setting of "The Tempest") to recover from the failure of her first play. Mystery, adventure, dolphin stories, and too much happening all at once in the last few pages.
* fiction - The Moon-Spinners - Gal arrives in vacation spot in Crete one day early. So before checking into the hotel, where she's not expected, she goes for a little walk and ends up embroiled in a plot to kill murder witnesses. Too much trickery on who's dead and who isn't, and there is a very heroic character that our protagonist abuses, endangers, and doesn't even apologize to or anything.

Norway
* fiction - Bear Island - A doctor takes a converted trawler toward Bear Island in the Arctic with filmmakers, and then characters are dying left and right. Some of the writing is insightful and some is fun, but mostly we have a lot of characters and no clue what's going on.

Sweden
* nonfiction - No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference - A collection of Greta Thunburg's speeches against the climate crisis. Too repetitive for fun reading unless you read only one speech a day, but a beautiful, well-made, if poorly named book. (It should be called House on Fire! or something.)
* fiction - Samurai Summer - A boy in a terrible summer camp for poor people tries to become a samurai and build a castle. It's sad and slow for a while, but then gets exciting.

United Kingdom, England
* nonfiction - Outposts: Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire - The author looked up how much of the British Empire remained and decided to visit all these outposts. He sort of got it that colonialism is sucky but sort of also liked the idea of the sun never setting on the British Empire. I forgot that I don't generally like travelogues.


Oceana

Australia
* nonfiction - Uluru: Australia's Aboriginal Heart - Find out about the biggest rock in the world. It's red sandstone, it's in the middle of the desert in Australia, and it's part of a National Park managed by the local Aborigines who find it sacred and won't quite let you do everything you want or quite tell you all their stories.

Tonga
* article - "The Real Lord of the Flies: What Happened When Six Boys Were Shipwrecked for 15 Months"

I also read a couple of books set in multiple countries:
* nonfiction - Rascals in Paradise (Easter Island, Chile; Taiwan, China; Tahiti, France; Papua New Guinea; Philippines; Tonga) - a collection of true-life stories of people who looked for paradise in the South Seas. A lot of them are scumbags, wanting to unite many of the islands so they can rule them all.
* fiction - QB VII (Czech Republic; Malaysia; Poland; England, UK) - Guy escapes false accusations of criminal Nazi behavior in Malaysia, but then goes back anyway, and the narrator lied or cheated and then we have to read about a whole bunch of Nazi horrors.

Quote of the Day - "I am full up on sordid truths right now." - me

I've decided to share more of what I'm learning from my quest for books and movies about other countries. And rather than share all the notes I'm taking for myself, I'll share just the most interesting information.

The book: Sheehan, Sean; Brethany Bryan; Jiu Lin Yong. Angola (Cultures of the World) (2019)

The country: Angola is on the southwestern coast of Africa, between the Congos and South Africa (except for the Cabinda province, to the north, on the coast between the two Congos) and is twice the size of Texas.

Most interesting things I learned:

1) Angola gained independence in 1974 after 400 years of rule by Portugal, then suffered civil war for the next 27 years. Can you imagine? And that's partly because different sides were egged on by the superpowers. Sadly, the communist-leaning side was much less corrupt than the side that my country supplied. And China is still the country providing the most help today. Unlike in many countries, the ethnic infighting seems to be over, so the improvements are not being undone all the time.

2) As the eighth largest producer of oil, Angola is part of OPEC. But oil production is only increasing the wealth of some people. Luanda, the capital, is one of the most expensive cities in the world and aspires to be a new Dubai, but the poor are extremely poor. (I prefer the way Ghana and Norway handle their oil--the government gets a bunch of the money and uses it to improve the lives of a large percentage of their citizens). Also, don't look here for human diamond mining.

3) The government wants food to be sold in retail stores to protect the people from food-borne illness, but the people are still most comfortable buying from street vendors and at open-air markets. New stores are trying to feel more comfortable by moving next to the old markets and playing Angolan music. Civil war, drought, and fluctuating oil prices have really messed up agriculture, so they actually import most of their food these days.

4) The health situation is horrifying except: the rate of AIDS is pretty low, possibly due to the high rate of male circumcision, and they've eradicated polio.

5) I mentioned this book to friends at a party while I was still reading it and they said they had learned an Angolan dance style, kizomba. They said that during the civil war, it wasn't safe to go out at night. So people would go to parties at friends' and relatives' houses and then stay all night, dancing. Because they were dancing all night, they preferred a low-energy style. And because they were only with close friends and relatives, it was very intimate. The book has a whole page on this kind of dancing, which says it's "known for the sensual nature of the dance and the focus on the intense connection between dance partners. Learning the steps is fairly easy. There are only four to five moves that a dancer needs to practice to learn kizomba. The tricky part is learning to master those moves with a partner and conveying emotion through those dance steps." Online research shows me it looks a lot like Argentine tango with Cuban (hip) motion.

Review of Angola - I always like these childrens' books about specific countries. The Cultures of the World series may have the thickest books, though there is a bit of repetition in this one as if they don't expect you to actually read all of the chapters. This series also has links to other websites including recommended videos.

My city is proposing a new zoning code that is supposed to change the way our city works so that it becomes more bikeable and walkable and more affordable. Oh, and also to update and simplify the code. We're currently on the second draft, which is over 1300 pages, so it sounds like they're failing on the simplification goal.

My previous post is a shorter summary of some of the issues and my conclusions. This post addresses everything I heard at a panel discussion on CodeNext that I went to in order to find out more. The organizers of this discussion were against it, so this was not a well-rounded panel. However, they did have experts from many fields which they felt the city should have consulted. Here's what I got from what they said.

Ed Wendler, real estate developer

Wendler was introduced as the "good" kind of developer. He said developers negotiate, and they hire lobbyists and lawyers to help them negotiate, for the right to build what the people want built, where they want it built. He may claim to do that himself, but in general I think we can count on developers to build where the developers want to build. Also, they are looking only at potential buyers, not at current residents.

He felt that the city was using what he called "Popeil Pocket Fisherman" tactics such as presenting an artificial deadline and building unrealistic expectations.

He said that we are losing residents with household incomes of less than $35K and gaining them for higher incomes, so that's why it makes sense for developers to build more expensive things. But again, I think it's not just new residents we need to look at. As current residents are priced out of their houses, they are going to be looking for lower-cost places to live and leaving available the higher-cost places for newcomers. Also, he assumes that everyone should or will live in the most expensive place they can afford and I think people should be able to live in the least expensive place that makes them happy if possible. I sure do not want to spend the most I can afford on housing if I have that option.

He said that the phrase "missing middle" is a PR term that implies it's for the middle class, but it's at best for the upper middle class. The missing middle refers to residences that are between apartment complexes and single-family homes: duplexes, fourplexes, garage apartments, row houses, etc. He said the current median family income is in the $50K-$75K bracket and they can afford houses that cost $253K or afford rent of $1,562. And then he showed some sample comparison prices of houses versus their associated garage apartment: $569K vs 424K, $474K vs 374K. He found cottages (very small houses) for $429K to $579K, and the new row houses at Mueller are going for $449. So, they may be more affordable than single-family homes, but they are still above the maximum budget for the median Austin family.

Finally he gave a bunch of correlations with housing prices:
* population size: +0.46
* population density: +0.64
* share of creative class workers: +0.46
* share of college graduates: +0.58
* share of high tech workers: +0.54
* share of blu-collar workers: -0.5
I'm not exactly sure what his point was. But if he's trying to say that Austin's plan of attracting better-paying employers and of increasing housing density won't work, I would have to counter that correlation is not causality. In fact, I can't imagine that increasing density of houses increases housing costs--more supply should lower the cost. But it does make sense that when things are expensive, then you start increasing density.

Fred McGhee, urban anthropologist

McGhee talked about Imagine Austin, the plan for Austin on which CodeNext is supposed to be based. He discussed two basic problems. First is that there is no discussion of gentrification or the actual history of our city which includes racism and classism--it's just PR. He insists "Gentrification is a fundamental violation of human rights." This did not make sense to me at first. He says it puts profits over housing. It pits organized money over organized people. It sounds like that the problem is that when you change the code to allow outsiders to build more things, this helps the developers and the new people, but it hurts the current residents often driving them out of their homes. And to the extent that this is done only in lower-cost and/or minority neighborhoods, that leads to results that feel classist and racist. In the question/answer period, someone said, "You don't have to ask which parts of Austin are not changed in CodeNext." But some people did ask. And some people shouted "Hyde Park" and "Tarrytown", two fairly central, very rich neighborhoods. And it's not like they already have way more density and mixed-use areas than other typical neighborhoods.

He also said we have the oldest public housing in America (that seems unlikely!), implying that we also have good history. (Internet searching makes it appear that Austin started public housing soon after new regulations encouraged it in the 1930s, but so did a lot of other places.)

Carmen Llanes Pulido, public health advocate

Pulido said that "Texas diversity" is considered to be 30-30-30. My best guess is that's Anglo-Hispanic-Other. She says my neighborhood used to be the only integrated part of East Austin. (This implies there were some integrated parts of West Austin; I can't imagine what those would be.) She also mentioned a fun map called Judgemental Austin where her neighborhood is labled "house flippers." [Mine is labelled Target Lovers; interestingly that Target location was a two-story Montgomery Wards when I moved here. I find myself curious about the retired state employee section--I think my sister used to live there. Most of my friends live outside the boundaries of this map.]

Pulido dislikes CodeNext because it incentivizes demolition, and this leads to larger, more expensive houses and increased flooding. It's clear to me that CodeNext incentivizes smaller, less expensive housing. It does let us build bigger buildings, but also lets them be divided into more units.

She does have a good point on the flooding though. She says most of our water runs from west to east, so most of our flooding is on the east side. However, you don't just have to be careful with losing ground cover in the east; losing ground cover in the west also increases flooding in the east.

Pulido says community planning via zoning is a terrible idea. "What Austin desperately needs is community planning." First work with stakeholders in the community, and then build the zoning from that.

Supposedly they are building the zoning from "Imagine Austin," but she thinks of that plan as "Imagine Austin Poor." She says we have a long history of institutionalized racism and we have plenty of housing where people can't afford it.

Bobby Levinski, attorney and policy advisor

Levinski said that many neighborhoods have already developed their own neighborhood plans. (And that mine is one of them--Windsor Park and University Hills have a joint neighborhood plan. Interesting.) He doesn't see our current zoning code as ancient code from the '80s patched and re-patched to keep up with the times and now needing overhauling, but as a collection of carefully negotiated agreements that are just being thrown out. He says that relying on market principles too much doesn't take into account existing residents. He says a lot of affordable housing is multi-family units. And he says that both AISD demographers and city demographsers ahve warned the city about the uninetneded consequences of planning for too much growth. (I think he's talking about gentrification again.)

Laura Morrison, former City Council member

Morrison says that making Austin "compact and connected" was supposed to be magical. I say we haven't done it, so of course we haven't seen the magic.

She says CodeNext ignores the Imagine Austin p. 207 directives. Neighborhood plans include "stability areas" with single-family housing (and some deed restrictions disallow duplexes, which I'm guessing would supersede any code changes). She also says that allowing density leads to demolition and rising costs. This code adds residential to business districts, even in communities that have already said no to this. She also talked about a change in "compatibility standards." Before you could only add an extra story or two beyond what was allowed in the areas next door, but the new code allows for abrupt changes: 8-story buildings across the street (e.g., Cameron Road) from single-story dwellings. CodeNext also allows bars and nightclubs in most commercial zones and personal services (such as hourly rental hot tubs) are also allowed pervasively. Not to mention drive-throughs, which actually discourage walking. This code could lead to a complete replacement of who lives here and who the city serves.

She said the new code increases entitlements (allowances for more height, more square footage, more units, vertical mixed-use) without enough affordability (the current requrirement for 10% affordable units is being reduced or removed from many areas). (I think the 10% has to be affordable for households with less than a certain percentage of the mean household income. Obviously, all houses are going to be affordable to somebody.)

Also, the new code is not simplified or streamlined.

Ana Aguirre, flood mitigation task force

Aguirre reminds us that flooding is not just an inconvenience, it leads to deaths and homelessness. Austin is known as Flash Flood Alley, so we don't have the kind of slow flooding that Houston has where there is time to escape.

She also said that Austin has 68 watersheds. (I would think so many watersheds would prevent overbuilding in one area from increasing flooding in another area.) But the fact is, floods have become more frequent and flood plains have expanded. Our city's current solution is buy-outs. Many of the people who were bought out ended up moving out of Austin because they couldn't afford to stay. Yet buy-outs are expensive anyway. We have too many creek variances (variance is exceptions to the rules). Expanding drainage pipes is also expensive.

Robin Rather, sustainability strategist

Rather said that many Austinites have been displaced. We don't even know what has happened to them. Austin needs to focus on people not money (we should not be treated like a big ATM). "CodeNext is the worst thing that' ever happened to Austin." Nicknames include CodeWho'sNext and CodeYou'reNext.

In any deal, it's good look at who gives and who gets. She says with CodeNext, developers win. There's a huge up-zoning of eveyr district in our city. The city also wins with more property taxes. Current residents are the losers.

I'm not sure I'm a loser. I would really love to have more mixed use areas and thus more walkability and eventually better mass transit. More density should mean lots more things are close to us. Like in Europe.

Her next question is: what problem is this solving? Our biggest problem is affordability. Median house prices have gone up:
* [I happen to know: 1996 - 100K]
* 2001 - $149K
* 2007 - $183K
* 2016 - $280K
* 2018 expected - $320K
Currently, 70% of us make less than 100K and thus can't afford a median priced house.

She also says CodeNext is divisive, upzoning the whole city for money. So-called "smart growth" leads to displaceent. She thought we would build in empty areas but instead we have gone for gentrification.

She thinks there should be property tax caps for people over the age of 55 or making less than $100K. I disagree on this, especially on the latter, which would do wacky things like make some raises lead to less income. Also, all of these people need roads and an educated public, etc.

She says our new code should be getting rid of systematic racism and economic segregation and fighting our fossil fuel addiction.

Question-and-Answer

I learned that most new appartments are 80% 1-1's and efficiencies. But that's who's moving here. (But aren't many of the people moving here going to later want to be in bigger families? And are the people who are already here changing more toward wanting smaller or larger units?)

Zoning in Germany is done at the federal level. They just pass laws about civil rights and environmental protection that all areas have to follow.

The League of Women voters has concerns. I looked that up and wow! For elections, they never pick a side, they only dole out three pro and three con arguments on each issue (unless they can't find three). They have a document much like this post only about a forum with different speakers. And a lot shorter, too! But with links to the presentation PDFs. Their recommendations, however, are only about process, not content.

Subsidized public housing leads to affordability.

The average annual household income in Austin is $57K.

Property taxes have grown higher than the mortgage for some people. (I can see this. My P&I was $505, my taxes are $400/month, and I bought my house in 1996. If I had kept my 30-year fixed mortgage (which had a slightly lower P&I) and made the minimum payments, I would still have 9 more years, and that would be happening to me soon.)

The new code is switching from talking about "use" (such as retail) to talking about "structure" (such as number of stories). I think both codes talk about both; maybe the emphasis is changing.

Most people do agree that we need more retail, but not crap retail.

Gentrification can lead to overuse of code enforcement to push people out.

The code is changing for almost the entire city without enough negotiations, with consultants who are too incompetent, and with too many developers on the committee.

One of my Facebook friends linked to America - The Grim Truth, which says that Americans have the worst quality of life in the developed world by far. I'm not sure I believe that, but some of the points were interesting:

* Health care - The US is only country in the developed world without a single-payer health-care system; which means super sick people generally have financial worries as well as health worries.

* Health - Industry works hard to prevent effective food regulation and inspection; high corn syrup consumption makes type 2 diabetes common, we're drug happy, and we don't get many vacation days compared to other developed countries.

* Career - Your employer will "play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you." And we tend to be deep in debt.

* Freedom - "America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass. ... Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders."

* Hope for change - the people are propagandized, mass media spouts corporate propaganda, politicians have actually legalized some forms of corruption.

The author recommends leaving. Out of curiosity I googled some top-ten sites to get ideas. I'd like a place that's got less corruption and more equality. I love college towns best, so I looked up education. And I really don't want to deal with a strongly religious culture. Here are the results (numbers show ranking on the indicated list).

C = ten least corrupt (per https://themysteriousworld.com/10-least-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/)
E = top eleven most educated (per http://nordic.businessinsider.com/wef-global-competitiveness-report-most-educated-countries-in-the-world-2016-10/)
R = Least religious (per https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-03-25/the-10-least-religious-countries-ranked-by-perception)
= = top eleven most equal (per http://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-most-equal-countries-in-the-world-2011-10?op=1/#-germany-gini-270-1)

Australia - E9, R1
Austria - R10, =8
Belgium - E5
Canada - C10, R8
Czech Republic - =4
Denmark - C1, E6, R7
Finland - C3, E2, =10
France - R9
Germany - R3, =11
Hungary - =2
Iceland - E11
Kazakhstan - =9
Luxemburg - C9, R6, =6
Malta - =5
Netherlands - C8, E3, R4
New Zealand - C2, E10, R5
Norway - C5, E7, =3
Singapore - C7, E1
Slovakia - =7
Sweden - C4, R2, =1
Switzerland - C6, E4
United States - E8

No country appeared on all four lists. Six are on three lists:
Denmark, Finland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway

The equality list is probably the least important to me, these were on all three other lists:
Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand

I am not surprised to see the Netherlands and Norway appearing on multiple lists; I am surprised to see Luxemburg. I'm surprised to see the US on only one of these lists and Japan on zero of them.

Other things that are important to me are warm weather, good friends, and affordability.

What are your priorities?

I found a mystery book set in Ghana at my library and I enjoyed it and have since started looking for other books in the series. The book is Kwei Quartey's Children of the Street (An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery, #2) (2011) and it is set in Accra, Ghana's capital city.

Summary

Detective investigates murder of a street child with the help of a reporter, a serial killer specialist, some children's shelter workers, and more. Working against him are his rage against rapists, his marijuana addiction, and the lethal illness of his only child. We also meet several street children, making money how they can, forming groups to protect themselves, etc. There was no way to guess the murderer, and there were so many bad guys, but I still enjoyed the book. And the last paragraphs made me laugh. His wife shrieks, they hug. In the back seat, their son explains to his friend, "They're like that sometimes. You just have to be patient and wait for them to stop." "Oh, okay," Sly said.

One character invents "wisdom cookies," like fortune cookies, but inside is a proverb. Apparently there is a huge book full of Ghanaian proverbs.

On Ghana

Accra, has very polluted slums where the rivers flow like sludge. One is called Agbogbloshie (fun to guess how to say). Even in the richer parts, the electricity goes out when it storms.

"Dawson and Christine had decided to have kenkey with fish .... They went traditional, using their fingers to eat from one large common bowl. It was a social and intimate way to take a meal, even more fitting by lantern light." Google tells me that kenkey is fermented/sourdough corn dumplings. "The Ga, Accra's original people, had a legendary love of kenkey, but Dawson was half Ewe and half Fante. Nevertheless, he was fluent in Ga, as well as Ewe, Fante, and Twi [not to mention English], which took care of most of the lower half of Ghana. He had only a rudimentary knowledge of Hausa, one of the major languages spoken in the north."

Another interesting quote: "Then, nine months ago, wonderful news had arrived. The GPS [Ghana Police Service] announced an official policy that it would pay all medical and surgical fees for its employees and their dependents. ... But then reality struck like a sledgehammer. It turned out that the GPS would not prepay employees' medical or surgical expenses under any circumstances of illness, major or minor. All payments would be strictly on a reimbursement basis." The opposite of insurance--you only get help when you don't need it.

I didn't notice the glossary in the back until I was done. By the time I had finished the book, familiar words included:
* Ashawo - sex worker
* ewurade - an exclamation, "My god!"
* kayaye - woman from northern Ghana who makes a living transporting things on her head, head porter
* cedi - monetary unit of Ghana, worth about a dollar
* pesewa - 1/100 cedi (coin)
* tro-tro - minibus.

They also use "massa" as a word for sir when talking to higher ups, but it doesn't have the bad connotations you'd expect. And they seem to use the word "please" sort of like "sir," and not just when they're requesting something.

Related web pages

I decided to learn more about tro-tro's.

* Susan Blausten's Report from the Field: The Tro-Tro--An Essential Mode of Transport in Accra, Ghana (9/29/2010) - This is a fun blog post with some pictures. Tro-tros are the mostly widely used form of transportation in Accra. They have both a driver and a mate--the mate collects the fare and communicates the destination, usually in one of the local languages, but also using signs, such as a circle for the Circle route.

"If I’m lucky, I won’t wait too long before a bus heading toward my destination arrives. Now the challenge lies in competing with other would-be passengers for a spot in the minibus. Boarding can require physically competing with others to land a seat (usually just a healthy amount of nudging, but during peak travel times, competition can be more fierce). ... On some occasions, young, able-bodied people will even enter the vehicle through one of its windows to circumvent the queue at the door."

Tro-tros are privately run--the mate tries to fill it before leaving a stop, so there are no schedules. The vans are old and rickety.

* GhanaWeb's TroTro: Transport for the People by the People has 17 pictures, most accompanied by interesting facts about tro-tros. For example: "The origins of the name Tro-Tro is that Ga language word "tro," which means three pence (pence being the penny coins used during Ghana's colonial days). In the colonial days, the mass transit vehicle charged passengers three pence per trip, and thus were referred to as "tro-tros," and the name have struck ever since."

In the quest for books on Spain, I ran across George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, written in 1937. I love his writing style, so I picked it up. Here is his short summary of the plot of this nonfiction book: "I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do."

His visit to Barcelona "was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle." Public buildings were seized by the workers and draped with red flags, churches had been gutted, "Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized. ... Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech [such as señor, don, and even usted] had temporarily disappeared." Tipping had been forbidden. There were no private motor cars; all had been commandeered. "In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform. All of this was queer and moving. ... Also I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers' state and the the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being." Even the military was egalitarian--people of all ranks had the same pay, and you complied out of respect for the cause (after asking about the reasons), not because of fear. Compliance took longer at first, but then was stronger.

His descriptions of this equality have really grabbed me, as the atmosphere of equality grabbed him.

Interesting note: "In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy," in that order where he was. Personally, I'd put water over tobacco (and yes, even my vice of sugar). Candles were used for lighting.

Interestingly, there were a lot of deserters coming over from Franco's side. This is partly because they had been conscripted and partly because megaphones were used as weapons. "Generally they shouted a set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come over to our side. ... I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him! I now think that from any point of view it was a legitimate manoeuvre. ...[D]eserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can give information." One of these megaphone users "simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!'"

Then there was the chapter on politics, which he told us we could skip. But I didn't feel the need. When he'd first come, he'd thought the war was between fascism and democracy. But really Franco's was a military mutiny backed by the aristocracy and the church, more to re-establish feudalism than to establish fascism. And at first his real opponent was not so much the government as the trade unions, and they were not resisting in the name of democracy (and status quo) but for revolution. And news of the revolution was downplayed or ignored throughout Europe. Even the Russians were against it.

Interestingly, "In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers' control, but bourgeois democracy." Foreign investors would also be hurt by revolution (as their assets were seized). So the Anarchists, Socialists and Communists united against Franco, but Russia, who provided the bulk of the weaponry, called the shots. And it was more important to beat Franco than to have revolution. "As usual, the breaking-up of the [workers'] militias was done in the name of military efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was needed. It would, however, have been quite possible to reorganize the militias and make them more efficient while keeping them under direct control of the trade unions; the main purpose of the change was to make sure that the Anarchists did not possess any army of their own." Just sickening.

Orwell was convinced that "One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from ... people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight."

Interestingly, "All this time I was at the front [January until late April] ...in the strip of Aragon controlled by Anarchist and P.O.U.M. troops, the same conditions persisted, at least outwardly. The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class."

Another interesting fact: "At the front everyone stole, it was the inevitable effect of shortage, but the hospital people were always the worst."

After four months at the front, he had a two-week leave in Barcelona. "Everyone who has made two visits, at intervals of months, to Barcelona during the war has remarked upon the extraordinary changes that took place in it. And curiously enough, whether they went there first in August and again in January, or, like myself, first in December and again in April, the thing they said was always the same: that the revolutionary atmosphere had vanished." By "revolutionary," he meant egalitarian: "the normal division of society into rich and poor, upper class and lower class, was reasserting itself." The "waiters, flower-women and bootblacks" no longer looked you in the eye and called you comrade. "The restaurants and hotels [patronized by the rich] seemed to have little difficulty in getting whatever they wanted, but in the working-class quarters the queues for bread, olive oil, and other necessaries were hundreds of yards long." Beggars were back, "the cabaret show and high-class brothels" had re-opened, and only rich people could get proper cigarettes (smuggled in).

During his first week of leave, he overate! So he stayed a second week to recover from that and that's when the battle at Barcelona happened. All the papers said that the P.O.U.M. started the fight, in the pay of the Fascists, but Orwell was in a position to see that this was not true. That story was fabricated to hide the revolutionary factor.

After this scuffle, he returned to the front until he was shot in the throat. When he returned, they were rounding up P.O.U.M. members as traitors, throwing them into prison, and, at best, throwing away the key. He had had no clue, but found out in time. He hid at night (because police would be called if he checked into a hotel), but could hang out anonymously in places where he was unknown during the day (at least once things opened at 9 am). Finally he (and his wife!) escaped.

He concluded that even if Franco lost, the government would still be fascist, though not as bad.

There was an introduction (I read this last so as not to have spoilers), but all it said was that Orwell was a virtuous man without being a genius, which the intro writer found refreshing. Whatever.

I encountered some new Spanish vocabulary:

* centuria - group of about 100 soldiers

* porrón - "a sort of glass bottle with a pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up; you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it can be passed from hand to hand. I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as soon as I saw a porrón in use. To my eyes the things were altogether too like bed-bottles, especially when they were filled with white wine."

* fusil - rifle

* ametralladora - machine gun. "Yo sé manejar fusil. No sé manejar ametralladora. Quiero aprender ametralladora. Cuándo vamos apprender ametralladora?" [I know how to use a rifle. I don't know how to use a machine gun. I want to learn the machine gun. When are we going to learn the machine gun?] The answer was always a harassed smile and a promise that there should be machine-gun instruction mañana. Needless to say, mañana never came."

* cabo - corporal. "I had been made a corporal, or cabo, as it was called, as soon as we reached the front, and was in command of a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure, especially at first." Partly because the "men" were mostly teenaged boys.

* several more: "The difficult passwords which the army was using at this time were a minor source of danger. They were those tiresome double passwords in which one word has to be answered by another. Usually they were of an elevating and revolutionary nature, such as Cultura--progreso [Culture--progress], or Seremos--invencibles [We are--invincible], and it was often impossible to get illiterate sentries to remember these highfalutin words. One night, I remember, the password was Cataluña--heroica [Catalonian--heroic]." When a guy asked, he explained that heroica meant the same as valiente [brave]. Later, he replied "valiente" so the sentry shot him (but missed, as usual in this war).

* maricón - "nancy boy" (according to SpanishDict, an extremely offensive word for homosexual)

* practicante - "The practicantes (hospital assistants) stole practically every valuable object I possessed including my camera and all my photographs."

I also learned a new English word.

* harrow - an implement consisting of a heavy frame set with teeth or tines that is dragged over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds, and cover seed. "There was a kind of harrow that took one straight back to the later Stone Age. ... made of boards joined together, to about the size of a kitchen table; in the boards hundreds of holes were morticed, and into each hole was jammed a piece of flint. ... I had to puzzle over it for a long while before grasping that it was a harrow. It made me sick to think of the work that must go into the making of such a thing, and the poverty that was obliged to use flint in place of steel. I have felt more kindly towards industrialism ever since."

What I already knew about Costa Rica: It's a Central American country with a lot of US expatriates. (Therefore I am wondering if it would be a good alternative to where I live now if things go badly around here.) One of the Zoology professors I used to type for took students there every summer to do biology research. And ACC's Spanish III study-abroad class is held there. They have preserved a lot of their land and have a surprising amount of biodiversity.

I actually read two books with the same title.

1) Raum, Elizabeth. Costa Rica (Countries Around the World) (2012) - This is a children's book from that series that's not my favorite.

Ancient people created perfectly spherical stone balls, some as small as golf balls and some over 16 tons, probably between 600 and 1500 C.E.

Columbus arrived in 1502, saw natives wearing gold jewelry and assumed he had found a source of gold but was wrong. They had traded colorful feathers for it from Mexicans. Of course European disease killed many. And Native Americans now make up only 1% of the population, though there are also mestizos.

Brief historical outline:

1821 - Spain granted independence; it was run by dictators

1840s - Coffee becomes cash crop

1889 - Became a democracy

1948 - Ex-president who lost starts civil war and loses. New Constitution created and army abolished.

1980s - Nicaragua civil war spills over into Costa Rica; Costa Rican develops a peace plan and was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

2007 - President pledged that by 2021, Costa Rica would be carbon neutral, using only renewable energy like water, wind, solar, and geothermal energy. By 2010, 99.2% is renewable.

Costa Rica is located between Nicaragua in the north and Panama in the south with borders on both east and west coasts. It is thought that this area started as volcanic islands that eventually formed a land bridge between the Americas. There are two mountain ranges approximately parallel to the coasts and most Ticos (Costa Ricans) live in the valley between them, which has great weather. Some volcanoes are still active and there are earthquakes.

It's a bird-watcher's paradise. And has 18% of all butterfly species. There's a protected jaguar corridor. "Farmers have learned to make room for the big cats. ... Although jaguars sometimes eat livestock, they leave people alone." There are anteaters, iguanas, monkeys, peccaries (wild boar), and sloths. In the ocean are manatees, humpback whales, turtles. There are also poison dart frogs, crocodiles, boa constrictors and poisonous snakes.

Tourism is Costa Rica's largest industry. Ecotourists visit rain forests, cloud forests, volcanoes, and beaches.

"Costa Rican's are very polite. They greet one another with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek."

Electric power, telephone service, clean drinking water and health care are available "almost everywhere despite the difficulties in remote, mountainous areas." "The World Health Organization ranks Costa Rica's health care system 36 out of 190 nations." And the literacy rate is 96%; English and computer literacy has been required in public schools since 1994.

Ox-carts, first used to transport coffee beans, are a national symbol. There is an Ox-cart Museum, and brightly painted ones are often seen in holiday parades.

Of course they are into soccer, even in the smallest villages. And they watch as much TV as in the US.

They eat a lot of beans and rice, either plain or with fish, meat (especially roast pork), or eggs. They rarely eat dairy but eat lots of tropical fruits (like papaya, mango, pineapple, watermelon, and cantaloupe). The national dish is gallo pinto (lit. spotted rooster). (Fry up some onion and bell pepper, add beans, then cooked rice, then add Worcester sauce, Tabasco sauce (optional), and chopped cilantro; serve with salsa). In the picture, it's served molded into a pretty shape next to tortillas.

2) Miranda, Carolina A. and Paige R. Penland. Costa Rica (Lonely Planet) (2004) - This is a tour guide. I read only the first and last sections and a bit of the San Jose section. There is so much more detail on the history, geography, and, of course, tourism than the other book.

Tourism is mainly eco-tourism and adventure tourism (hiking, mountain biking, diving, rafting and kayaking, and waterfall rappeling). Even driving: "It is a badge of honor for travelers to boast about the disastrous roads they've survived in Costa Rica." And so they have a section labeled "worst roads."

Costa Rica was a backwater colony for Spain; in 1821, Guatemala declared independence for all of Central America. In 1823, it joined the Central American Federation; in 1824, "Guanacaste-Nicoya was voluntarily annexed from Nicaragua." Interestingly, in 1855, "an American renegade military adventurer [named Walker] ...arrived in Nicaragua ... to conquer Central America and convert the area into slaving territory and then use the slaves to build a canal through Nicaragua to join the Atlantic and Pacific. He defeated the Nicaraguans and marched south, entering Costa Rica more or less unopposed. ... Then, as now, Costa Rica had no army, so Mora [the president] organized 9000 civilians to gather their arms and head off Walker in February of 1856." They won, chased Walker back to Nicaragua, and set fire to a wooden fort where he had taken refuge. He survived to make "several other unsuccessful invasion attempts before facing a Honduran firing squad in 1860. In the meantime, President Mora's cronyism and a burgeoning cholera epidemic (that he and his men reportedly brought back with them) would become his undoing. He was deposed in 1859, led a failed coup in 1860 and was executed in the same year as Walker."

And, about that democracy. "Democracy has been a steady (if sometimes tenuous) hallmark of Costa Rican politics ever since [1889]. One lapse occurred in 1917 when Minister of War Federico Tinoco overthrew the democratically elected president and formed a dictatorship. Resistance from his own people and the US government soon put an end to his regime. ...

"In 1948, Calderón again ran for the presidency, but was beaten by Otilio Ulate. However, unwilling to concede defeat, Calderón fraudulently claimed victory, claiming that some of the ballots had been destroyed. The tense situation escalated into civil war, with opposing forces led by ... Ferrer [who] led an interim government for 18 months, and in 1949 handed the presidency over to Ulate."

About that Peace Prize: One president let the Contras and CIA use the country as a military base, but the next "overturned this decision on the grounds that it violated Costa Rican neutrality and his subsequent work on framing the accords that ended the war in Nicaragua and instability in other parts of the region would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize."

When I first read about Costa Rica not having a military, I thought that was strange since they border Nicaragua. Then I finally realized that their military was more likely to overthrow their democratically elected government than to protect them from foreign invaders, so they feel safer without it.

In the section on culture, it says Ticos are proud that they are not illiterate, not poor, take care of their land, and are peaceful. "Ticos will avoid conflict at all costs, no matter how trifling the topic. People will say 'yes' even if they mean 'no,' and 'maybe' often replaces 'I don't know.' ... Tough negotiating is not a strong suit." Conversations start with small talk, and "Bullying and yelling will get you nowhere." "Disputes tend to be settled amicably through careful negotiation and compromise, rather than a winner-takes-all mentality. Ticos do not respond well to boastfulness or arrogance."

There is poverty (23%), but "By the early 1990s more than 93% of all dwellings had running water and a little under one-third were connected to a sewer system." Yet life expectancy exceeds that in the US. Federal law makes spouses "legally responsible for supporting each other, their children and immediate family members requiring assistance (e.g. a disabled sibling)."

On wildlife: "Nowhere else in the world are so many types of habitats squeezed into such a tiny area."

On food: There really is a lot of beans and rice. For breakfast it is served with eggs, cheese, or sour cream. For lunch and dinner it is usually served with meat, cabbage salad, and some more carbs such as potatoes, pasta, or plantains.

And I'll end with (most of) my favorite paragraph in the book about something that's not good for people like Robin and me who are supremely talented at getting lost. "Though some larger cities have streets that have been dutifully named, signage is rare and finding a Tico who knows what street they are standing on is even rarer. Everybody uses landmarks when providing directions; an address may be given as 200m south and 150m east of a church. (A city block is cien metros--literally 100m--so '250 metros al sur' means 2 1/2 blocks south, regardless of the distance.) Churches, parks, office buildings, fast-food joints and car dealerships are the most common landmarks used--but these are often meaningless to the foreign traveler who will have no idea where the Subaru dealership is to begin with. Better yet, Ticos frequently refer to landmarks that no longer exist [such as the site of an old fig tree]."

I once decided I'd rather read something other than travelogues for my media-from-other-countries project, but this title caught my eye, so I read Eric Dregni's In Cod We Trust: Living the Norwegian Dream (2008). An American with Norwegian roots moves to Norway with his wife for a year to see what it's like (and write a book). The wife ended up getting pregnant before they left, and they had their baby there. The baby seemed to love the cold, the darkness, and getting bounced around a lot--it just goes to show how everyone's different! I learned loads of stuff about Norwegians, too. Note that the following are gross generalizations, of course.

It turns out that Norwegians do not open up to strangers right away; you say hi to your neighbor and they look at you like you're strange before they look away. The author says it's part of their Janteloven philosophy - don't show off, even to yourself. (That philosophy matches the main character's insistence in Broken that he was humble--so maybe it wasn't just about his own personality but also about what is expected in Norway.)

There's a Norwegian saying I like: "Don't go tramping in the salad." It means means don't show how dumb you are by opening your mouth. Another interesting one: "There's no bad weather, only bad clothes." They don't put heaters in the bedrooms because no one likes to sleep where it's hot. In Norway. Hot. At night. In the winter. Yeah.

They work 35 hours a week (or less) and are not into efficiency. They are into the welfare state, even the people paying a lot of taxes. One reason they haven't joined the European Union is because they want to keep up this tradition of taking care of their own. Similarly, they don't want to open up their waters to international fishing; they have rules to prevent overfishing.

They refer to Minnesota as "our colony in America."

I already knew they ate a lot of fish. They also love butter. In one cookbook the author found, half the recipes were for butter-laden pastries. There's a whole chapter for different kinds of porridge--which is not for breakfast, but for dinner. And they eat meat, but not many vegetables. There's a Saturday night tradition that kids eat as much candy as they want, there's porridge for dinner, and you hang out in front of the TV.

This made me wonder: how many kinds of porridge do I know about? Several actually. There's oatmeal of course. But also cream of wheat. And grits probably count. And I got a recipe from chikuru called Yulgrit which is rice pudding, so that probably counts. Norwegians also make something involving sour cream that you can't make here because our sour cream doesn't have a high enough fat content (35%) for it to work.

Their licorice is salty. And someone told the author "You know that the beef you find in Norway are old dairy cows that don't produce milk any more, not cattle raised just for food like in the U.S. That's why Norwegian hamburgers taste funny. You should really eat moose." Which apparently is delicious.

Boys are not circumcised except for religious reasons. Medical care seems amazing. For example:

After the birth, we were given a large room for the three of us with three meals a day (plus a snack and late-evening soup) delivered right outside the room. Many of the mothers, though, preferred that their husbands stay at home, so they could form a sort of girls' club while pushing their babies around the hospital in their little beds on wheels.

The midwives told us that we should stay at least three or four days in our family room to make sure that the breast-feeding was going well. In this large room with a view of the snow-capped mountains and meals delivered, why would we leave? We asked the head midwife, Sigrid, if they ever have trouble with mothers who won't leave the hospital. She told us, "Sometimes if we have too many people having babies, we have to ask mothers who have been here for a long time, 'so, how are things going? Do you have any plans?'"

Norway went from being one of the poorest countries in the 1880s to being one of the richest today, partly due to the discovery of oil offshore.

The author knew that his grandfather had emigrated from Norway when the country was poor. When he went to visit the place where his grandfather used to live, he met a shopkeeper who had the same last name. He jumped to the conclusion that they were related. Then he found out that back when his grandfather lived there, the laborers would take the same last name as the land owners. The store owner was a descendent of the land owner and the author was a descendent of a laborer, so they were not related. Oops!

Overall, it was an interesting read with bits of humor. Maybe I prefer travelogues where people are learning about someone else (in this case, the author's grandfather and other Norwegians) over ones where people are trying to find themselves.

And here is my last post in this series this year.

France

Fiction

* Champion, Alexander. The Grave Gourmet (2010) - The author is not afraid of big words (First sentence: "With the consummate petulance endemic to opera divas and French chefs..."). And I hadn't even heard of the word "piaffing" (executing a cadenced trot on one spot, with a well-elevated leg action)--a woman's poodle was nerviously doing this on the banquette (booth seat) next to her. But he does often has a way with words that is super fun. "...a head that would have been handsome had the mousy brown hair not been roughly hacked off, apparently by the owner without benefit of a mirror." The police are meaner than I like, the bad guys magically talk a lot, and some of the characters are icko, but it's fun that the first and last chapter talk about one guy affected by the murder. Lots of talk about food and wine, some about cars.

* Champion, Alexander. Death of a Chef (2012) (sequel to the previous book (recommended by Robin after he happened to pick it up at the library) - This one is about food and some kind of pottery. Good writing, but with some icky people. I enjoyed a cop who ran off to pretend to be a writer and really got into it.

TV

* "Death in Paradise" (filmed in Guadaloupe, France, in the Caribbean; set in the fictional St. Marie) (recommended by Sally's mom) - fun. Season 1 is great--you can actually try to guess who the killer is. You can't do that in Season 2, but they still do tie up all the loose ends. Season 3 brings it all home; finally you feel the horror of murder. More cast changes in season 4. Shows life on a small Caribbean island with people with British, French, and Caribbean accents.

Norway

Fiction

* Nesbo, Jo. The Snowman: A Novel (2007) (translated by Don Bartlett) - Not a read-aloud book, but it sure gets exciting by the end. Pretty sick. Don't love the alcoholic detective. In this one, they figure out who did it--multiple times (they were wrong the first times). Moral: don't get the police to look into the case that interests you by pretending to be the criminal--the evidence they find will look incriminating.

(I accidentally picked up this book because it was next to the Nesser books (see Sweden, below). I enjoyed it more than many of the books I found recommended by strangers on internet book sites.)

United Kingdom, Scotland

Technically, Scotland is not a country but part of the United Kingdom. However, it's on my list of "countries" because I want to learn more about parts of the United Kingdom other than England.

Fiction

* Smith, Alexander McCall. 44 Scotland Street (2005) - Written as a newspaper series, it chronicles the lives of some people who live in a small suburb in Scotland. Not too exciting, some interesting bits, love some of the characters, but not the main ones. The second biggest character reminds me of the bad guy in "Saved!" where he thinks he's doing everything right but is actually kind of horrible.


Spain

Nonfiction

I've read bits and pieces of a lot of travel guides. Finally I found this children's book, which turned out to be really good. I'm going to check out all the other books I can find in this series at our local library.

* Somervill, Barbara A. Spain (Enchantment of the World Second Series from Scholastic Press) (2012) - There are fifty words for ham (might be exaggerating). Not a democracy until 1975, no constitution until 1978. They elect parties, not people, and the head of the majority party becomes the prime minister. There was a picture of a Visigoth church (San Pedro de la Nave) that's pretty--made with big blocks of stone on the bottom, smaller as you go up. And there's a picture of a Roman Aqueduct in Segovia, with "no mortar or any other material holding the stones in place"--yes, lots of arches. There are different "autonomous communities" sort of corresponding to earlier kingdoms. Basque Country is one of them, but they still want to separate. These autonomous communities seem to have more power than US states. For example, they have their own official regional language. "Euskara, the language of the Basques, is not related to other modern European languages." Most Spaniards speak two or more languages (besides Spanish and the local language, English and French are often studied.) Like "-son" and "-dottir," The Irish "Mc-" and the Spanish "-ez" mean "son of." Sanchez = son of Sancho, Rodriguez, son of Rodrigo. Jews were kicked out in 1492, but refugees were accepted during WWII.

Movies

* "Atame" aka "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" (1989) (recommended by Robin) - guy kidnaps gal to convince her to love him; this actually works somehow. I love her sister who makes everything work.

* "Pan's Labyrinth" - gal follows fairy into labyrinth and must pass three challenges to re-take her rightful place as princess. On the one hand, her mother really does get better when she puts the weird plant under her bed. On the other hand, it's probably just all in her head to help her get through her days in that horrible place in 1940s Spain. The bad guy is so terrible that I never want to watch this again.

Other

* Vistas, Panorama, “El Festival de San Fermín” - In Pamplona is the running of the bulls. There are 17 bulls and hundreds of crazy people running through the narrow streets with only a rolled-up newspaper to defend themselves. The film shows them just moving to the side when the (faster) bulls come up from behind. There are also parades with gigantic figures.

Sweden

Fiction

* Nesser, Haken. Mind’s Eye, An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (as are all of the following) (1993) (translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson, as are all of the following) - read-aloud quality writing, many very nice scenes, but probably not enough information to figure out the murderer since the inspector can just feel things. Don't love it, but will try to read more from this author.

* Nesser, Haken. Borkmann's Point (1994) (won the 1994 Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Best Novel Award) - more read-aloud writing; serial killer victims seem to have nothing in common, which messes with some of the usual assumptions. Van Veeteren isn't as good as in the first book, but other characters are and I'm glad one resisted cheating on his wife.

Here is the point in my reading where I wrote this review.

* Nesser, Haken. The Return (1995) - my favorite so far because Van Veeteren goes for surgery; don't quite understand how something could bother someone for “all the remaining nights of his life” when he has only seconds to live.

* Nasser, Haken. The Inspector and Silence (1997) - the one with the religious camp; I totally fell for two red herrings.

* Nasser, Haken. Woman with Birthmark (1996) - "Whatever you do, don't stand there bawling at my funeral. ... No, do something, my girl! Take action! Do something magnificent that I can applaud up there in heaven!" That leads to a mystery that the police never figure out until it's all over.