1. Since we put a barrier up dividing the small area in our house where the two bedrooms sit from the living room, Copper no longer has to be behind closed doors to keep Gibbs from scream barking at him. We've had this arrangement for several weeks now. Copper loves it, loves moving freely from room to room, loves having the the two rooms' doors open. He's been content, and, as you can see from this picture, relaxed. I hope you can tell that Copper is near peak comfort when he stretches out on his back on my bed.
2. I had taken a little time away from the very serious, often dark, list of books on the Leah Sottile list I've mentioned several times since July. Today I returned to Red Clocks by Portland, Oregon's Leni (rhymes with RAINY) Zuma, a novel set in the not too distant future in a small fictional Oregon fishing town on the coast. In this future, the U.S. Constitution has been amended to outlaw all abortions and legislation has passed that allows only married heterosexual couples to adopt children.
Zuma tells the interlocking stories of four women who live in or near this small town: a high school student, a high school teacher and biographer, a stay at home mother, and a mender who lives in the woods and treats people who come to her with concoctions she makes from herbs, barks, and other natural sources. The novel also includes the story the biographer is writing of a 19th century woman who was an Arctic explorer.
Through these characters and their stories, Zuma explores different dimensions of womanhood -- marriage, being single, having an accidental pregnancy, professional ambition, professional sacrifice, motherhood, being an outsider, living as a battered wife, and more.
I found the stressful and often dark storylines in Zuma's book to be offset by the lyrical beauty of her writing. I particularly enjoyed how she took her readers into the details of the natural beauty of the Oregon coast and the forest lands just east of the ocean.
Over the last month or so, I've had strong yearnings to visit the Oregon coast and so I relished doing about the next best thing, enjoying the beauty of coastal Oregon through Puma's descriptions and poetic attention to detail.
3. Debbie paid the Inland Lounge a visit this afternoon and returned home with a bag of Ginger Beef and rice from Wah Hing. I always enjoy cooking dinner for Debbie and me, but tonight I was so absorbed in Red Clocks that I welcomed how I only had to put the book down for the short amount of time it took me to enjoy this delicious dinner and then I returned to the suspense of what was going to happen to these characters in court, in pursuit of an illegal abortion, in marriage, in the Arctic, and in the midst of professional and moral decisions as a teacher -- and more.
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