Another traveler on the locavore path is Barbara Kingsolver, probably best known for her novels – particularly The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible which won the National Book Prize of South Africa and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club selection.
I recently read her newest novel, Demon Copperhead, which won the Pulitzer Prize. But the book I’m thinking of today is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I was looking at her booklist and saw this non-fiction book about her family’s experiment to eat only locally grown food for a year. Along with her husband and daughters, she moves to a farm in Virginia. They grow and can tomatoes, learn about roosters, make cheese, and learn to do what it takes to eat what is in season.
Kingsolver’s background is interesting. Born in Maryland with some of her childhood spent in Africa where her father was a medical doctor and some in Kentucky. She attended DePauw University on a music scholarship for classical piano but ended up switching to biology. In the late 1970s, she lived in Greece, France, and Tucson, Arizona, working variously as an archaeological digger, copy editor, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator. She earned a Master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
That doesn’t sound like the typical resume for a novelist or someone writing about being a locavore. “If we can’t, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread,” says Barbara Kingsolver.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was published in 2007 and is described as a blend of memoir and journalistic investigation. The revised edition is updated with stories of how the family’s original project has been carried forward through the years. The family was concerned about the environmental, social, and physical costs of American food culture. Barbara wants you to consider our nation’s lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production.
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” – John Donne.
Art and Nan Kellam bought an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine in 1949 and lived there for more than 35 years. They were quite content with little more than the company of each other, and they thought of themselves as an island.
I enjoy reading about people who had their own Walden kind of solitary experience. It is easy to Romanticize those experiences into some kind of idyllic fantasy. Though the story of the Kellams is appealing, you have to keep in mind that they had no electricity or running water and heated the house they built with firewood from their forest. They rowed a dory several miles to the mainland and back to fetch supplies.
Their goal was self-sufficiency, so they were building things rather than buying them, and growing whatever foods they could. That was more to stretch their limited money than it was to serve as models of good living or inspire a book.
Their island was Placentia Island, a forested 550-acre island a few miles from Acadia National Park. They moved to the island in 1949 to lead, like Thoreau, a simple life, free of technology and modern contrivances. These are not Caribbean desert islands, but a series of islands along the coast of Maine that are more rocks in a cold ocean than palms tress and warm breezes. The optimistic name Placentia is from the Latin and means “pleasant place to live.”
They lived there year-round for nearly forty years. The couple had decided to donate the island to the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) after their deaths, and Peter Blanchard III met Nan in his role as a volunteer for the Maine Chapter of TNC. His book is illustrated with historic photographs and recent photographs by David Graham.
It is a story of a relationship that grew in isolation, and also one of those tales of “living off the grid” that I find appealing. But the couple should not be grouped in with those people who have some idealistic, environmental, survivalist, sustainability movement behind their actions.
“They made a conscious decision to inhabit a world that they had total control over,” says Blanchard. “And though they were not naturalists or conservationists when they took to the island, it would be hard not to say that their mindfulness and appreciation for not only nature’s beauty, but its power grew each year.”
They didn’t want to see their land destroyed or built on, so they turned to conservation and donated the island to the Maine chapter of TNC after retaining a “life estate” that allowed them exclusive use of Placentia during their lifetimes.
The couple kept a journal and did daily writing sessions, but there was no plan for it being edited, published or retained. It is so personal that it has terms of their own invention and shorthand. They called themselves the “Bears” (Blanchard calls them the “Islanders.” The book has a glossary for the journal’s personal words.
Based on the number of pieces I have written about islands and living on one (in that Romanticized way that a reader of literature might), you would think I would act upon these ideas more than write about them. But what I have read has kept me just visiting islands and writing about them.
Blanchard learned of the Kellams when he volunteered for The Nature Conservancy, and he himself “owns” two islands near Placentia – Black Island and Sheep Island – that have been permanently preserved, and is part-owner of a third preserved island, Pond Island.
If you visit Placentia Island now (it is a public nature preserve), all you will find of the Kellams are some stone foundations and a square of cement with their footprints.
I was an English major as an undergrad and with all those literature courses, I can’t help but see symbols all over the place.
Semiotics is the study of signs and how meaning is communicated. It examines how meaning is created using words, images, symbols, gestures, sounds, and design. This isn’t just about literary symbols. It applies to traffic signs, emojis and emoticons, logos and brands.
People can become deeply interested in symbolism, as evidenced by the popularity of Dan Brown‘s novels The Lost Symbol and his best-selling The Da Vinci Code and Angelsand Demons. All three books are filled with symbols, and the characters in the stories often become fixated on them. I don’t intend to delve into a literary analysis of Dan Brown’s works, as they are classified as “fiction” and Brown himself seems content with that categorization.
The Internet is a great place for conspiracies, symbols and all that goes with them. The Lost Symbol website is full of mysteries for potential readers. When I was reading The Da Vinci Code, I had a moment of synchronicity because a booklet was handed to me by a Bible-holding man outside a bookstore when that book was released. The booklet pointed me to thetruthaboutdavinci.com which presents opposing views. Of course, we should keep in mind that Brown’s books are novels, not non-fiction or academic treatises.
A view of D.C. from the top of the George Washington Masonic Temple.
On a trip to D.C., I visited the George Washington Masonic Memorial and learned that George Washington was a member of the Freemasons (along with a good number of the other founding father types). Lots of secret society stuff going on there. It’s not bricks and mortar, though Freemasonry traces its origins to the Stonemasons’ guild. Freemasonry employs the tools and instruments of stonemasonry to “teach a system of morality, friendship and brotherly love.” The standard emblem of Freemasonry is the square and compasses.
Dan Brown says his novel is based on five years of research and is set “deep within the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons and will explore the hidden history of our nation’s capital.”
Washington was initiated into the Masons in 1752, into the Masonic Lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia. General Lafayette and General Washington shared not only a close friendship but membership in the Craft, a commonly used name for Freemasonry.
You read about this and it starts to sound like a religion. Washington’s correspondence with the Masonic Lodges is full of Masonic references to the Great Architect of the Universe, but his response to a Christian clergyman avoids any mention of Jesus Christ or acknowledgment of personal Christian faith. Washington also defended American Freemasonry and denied that American Masonic societies were connected to English Freemasonry or contaminated with the subversive principles of the Illuminati.
I came upon semiotics when I was reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco back in 1983 and went digging for some information about the author. Semiotic studies (semiology) is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.
Umberto Eco’s own website actually has an article “About God and Dan Brown.” I guess Eco is paying attention to the clues too (though he doesn’t give the book a good review). Semiotics is serious stuff, but on the purely entertaining side, you have things like the National Treasure movies which are more like the “semi-otics” of this post’s title rather than full-blown semiotics.
Classics Illustrated is a comic book series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad. The series began publication in 1941 and finished its first run in 1971, producing 169 issues. (Other companies reprinted the titles after that.)
I am probably not the only kid who was first exposed to classic literature through the series. For me, that happened in the early 1960s. Each issue of 64 pages was an abridged but accurate literary adaptation, and they featured author profiles and various educational little fillers. There were no ads. No ads!
I always read the back cover catalog of titles to decide what was my next purchase. Luckily, my mom thought they were good for me to read. I have very vivid memories of spinning the comic book stand at Sam’s Deli at Lenox & Madison Avenues in Irvington, NJ trying to pick my next purchase. I can hear stand squeak.
Most comics cost 12 cents – Classics cost 15 cents – which made it clear that they were “special.” Oh, I also bought Superman and Archie comics. Sometimes, there were “giant” issues for a quarter.
I loved having a quarter to spend. Two comics and still a penny candy. Maybe a sour apple gumball. No sales tax. Or one comic, a 10-cent fountain soda or Fudgsicle ice cream, and 3 penny candies. What a deal.
In 1942, the publisher became the Gilberton Company, Inc. with reprints of previous titles. With WWII, paper rationing forced a cut to 56 pages and costs later cut it to 48 pages.
These comics led me to begin reading the actual books. I tore through the Jules Verne comics and I read the books. I doubt I could get through some of these the novels anymore. Though I have read Moby Dick and some H.G. Well and studied Shakespeare and other classics as an English major in college, some classics are a tough climb for me these days.
The series actually became Classics Illustrated in 1947 with issue #35, The Last Days of Pompeii. (That is one I won’t reread.) In 1951, they added painted covers. By the time I was born, they had added Classics Illustrated Junior, some special issues, and The World Around Us series. They sold 200 million copies between 1941 and 1962 and then new titles ceased.
The comic book series was created by Albert Lewis Kanter who wanted to introduce some great literature to kids who were not reading the original books. It was also a time when the comic book industry was coming under attack for its “negative influence” on youth.
Sterling North, a columnist for the Chicago Daily News led the attack. He wrote that comic books were “badly written and badly printed. A strain on young eyes and young nervous systems the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant [and] unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the comic magazine.” Kanter’s plan eventually worked for a time.
What happened? Television, Cliff’s Notes (for those who had used the comics as such; many a book report was faked using the comics), increased mailing, paper and printing costs.
I actually had a teacher who had issues in the classroom for us to read. He also gave me a box of old issues at the end of the school year which I still have. The series ranked as the largest juvenile publication in the world for a time. Even kids who were avoiding reading the novels (or Shakespeare plays) were still exposed to some literary tales that would have otherwise never known.
Classic Illustrated Comics was probably one of the things that led me to be an English major and teach some of these classics.
I remember reading The War Of The Worlds (#124) and I remember reading the book which I had ordered in school through the Scholastic Book Club. (Thanks again, Mom, for always letting me order a book.) Number 124 was a classic Classic. I’ve seen the old and new movie versions of that H.G. Wells classic, but my vision of what a Tripod looks like is still in that comic book. The comic of The Invisible Man had better special effects than any film of the time.
I don’t know if there is an equivalent for today’s kids. Graphic novels, perhaps, and, of course, comic books still exist – but classics? Movie versions of classics? Not many of those are made anymore, but you can stream films of To Kill A Mockingbird, Great Expectations, Romeo & Juliet et al. I’d rather see a kid read the comics.
In the Middle Ages, it was common for people (predominantly men) of the educated upper class to wear a case on the belt to hold a book.
You can call them a book case (not a bookcase as the spell-checker wants me to type). Books that might be carried for easy access included the Bible, a Book of Days, or a Breviary. These cases were for books that you might want to consult every day.
Do you have any book that you consult daily or very regularly? Is there a book you could imagine carrying with you every day?
I think about that impossible question of “If you could only have one book to read for the rest of your life, what would it be?” I don’t have an answer. In fact, the idea of one book for the rest of my life sounds like a horrible future. If pressed for an answer, I guess I would go with some big anthology of poetry or short stories. The complete works of Shakespeare? That sounds like a good answer, but though I love some and never read others, it would bore me quickly.
I stumbled on a reference to Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), a work of art created by science fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh, and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. It is not a book you can buy. You might say it is not even a book. The title made me think immediately of two other books.
My first thought was Agrippa, the man. I found his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia libri III) when I was seduced in college by the occult and a woman who was deeply into it. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s books are a study of occult philosophy. It was a significant contribution to the Renaissance philosophical discussion concerning the powers of ritual magic and its relationship with religion.
I used some things from his books for a paper I wrote in a religion course. The three books deal with Elemental, Celestial and Intellectual magic. The books discuss things such as the four elements, astrology, kabbalah, numbers, angels, God’s names, the virtues and relationships with each other as well as methods of utilizing these relationships and laws in medicine, scrying (foretelling the future using a crystal ball), alchemy, and ceremonies. The occult didn’t stay with me )either did the woman) but I learned a lot of things through those studies.
The other book I thought of comes from the fact that this newer book is a clear allusion to The Egyptian Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from around 1550 BC to around 50 BC. It is a book I tried to read many years ago and finally did read much more recently. The book appears in several posts on this site.
The original Egyptian name for the text is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day, or Emerging Forth into the Light. It is translated as “book” which is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts. That really connects with the Agrippa I recently discovered. This Egyptian book is comprised of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife. It was written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years.
The modern Agrippa (Book of the Dead) consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by William Gibson, embedded in an artist’s wrapping. It was designed to decay from its very first use. It was an unusual idea that might have played into our fears about malfunctioning technology ahead of the dawning Y2K millennium madness.
Gibson’s text focused on the ethereal nature of memories retained over time. The title refers to a family Kodak photo album from which the text’s memories are taken. The book took on some notoriety from the fact that the poem Gibson wrote is stored on a 3.5″ floppy disk and it was programmed to encrypt itself after a single use. The writing is a 302-line poem that Gibson wrote after looking at an old family photo album filled with images of people who were dead. The poem disk would lock after play, meaning the user could experience the work only once. Dennis Ashbaugh’s artwork was on pages treated with photosensitive chemicals so that the pages would gradually fade from their first exposure to light. His images would distort if touched and naturally disintegrate as any paper book but at a much more rapid rate.
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)is recognized as an early example of electronic literature. It is also a commentary on our desire for some degree of permanence for our memories and the recognition of their impermanence. It was “printed” or made on demand for $500-$1500.
Gibson said of his poem “It starts around 1919 and moves up to today, or possibly beyond. If it works, it makes the reader uncomfortably aware of how much we tend to accept the contemporary media version of the past. You can see it in Westerns, the way the ‘mise-en-scene’ and the collars on cowboys change through time. It’s never really the past; it’s always a version of your own time.” — Gibson, as quoted in Details, June 1992
Publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in “End Notes,” The New York Times wrote “Some people have said that they think this is a scam or pure hype … [m]aybe fun, maybe interesting, but still a scam. But Gibson thinks of it as becoming a memory, which he believes is more real than anything you can actually see.”
We don’t like things that disintegrate. We like to preserve things.
The dominant theme in Gibson’s poem is the loss of his father. The name Agrippa referred to the photo album in his family home. The album was produced by Kodak, and the particular volume was called Agrippa. Inside the album, there were photo reminders of all those who had gone before him. So, it is a book of the dead.
The poem begins:
I hesitated before untying the bow that bound this book together.
A black book: ALBUMS CA. AGRIPPA Order Extra Leaves By Letter and Name
A Kodak album of time-burned black construction paper
The string he tied Has been unravelled by years and the dry weather of trunks Like a lady’s shoestring from the First World War Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Of course, memories fade, erode, crumble, and disintegrate almost immediately after the event. How often do you forget a dream – even a vivid one – minutes after you wake up?
some pages from the book
The image at the top of this post of the book (Is it a book?) is from the copy at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London which was shown in an exhibition entitled “The Book and Beyond” in 1995. (Fair use, according to Wikimedia)
In the years since Agrippa was produced, people have used various technologies and techniques to reproduce the poem and the art in other forms. You can find some of that using the links below. But that is not the experience of the original project.
, told by New Jersey native and conservationist Peter Blanchard III based largely on journals kept by the Kellams.
and 
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back in 1983 and went digging for some information about the author. Semiotic studies (semiology) is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.
movies which are more like the “semi-otics” of this post’s title rather than full-blown semiotics.
Weekends in Paradelle 