1. I finished Debra Magpie Earling's book Perma Red and as I let the story and its conclusion sink in, an odd connection rose up in my mind, a connection between Flannery O'Connor and this book. O'Connor's short stories often featured moments of redemption shaped by violence. O'Connor referred to it a the violent intrusion of grace. If Earling's characters, Louise White Elk and Baptiste Yellow Knife, experience grace and redemption in the book's conclusion, their moment of grace grows out of violence -- violence that Baptiste Yellow Knife perpetrates and is victimized by and that Louise White Elk experiences as she is regarded as exotic and target of male desire, desire for sex and power.
2. I listen to a podcast interview with Debra Magpie Earling, mostly about Perma Red, on the podcast Breakfast in Montana, and learned about her family connections in Rose Lake, Idaho and bit about growing up in the Spokane area and walking out, never to return, of West Valley High School. I also learned more about Earling's real life Aunt Louise, the person in Earling's family who inspired her creation of Louise White Elk. I also learned that Earling original manuscript ended much more darkly, and that no publisher would print the book until she changed its conclusion. I've thought a lot about the contrast between Earling's original conclusion the conclusion she wrote in order to get it published.
In their own ways, both conclusions work, each with their own emotional power.
3. Debbie combined cabbage, bacon, wide noodles, butter, and leeks with a side of optional sour cream into a most delicious dinner.
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