Reading post: The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta

This has been quite a week, but as things have quieted down a bit at last, I'm going to do a reading post. I have finished my second book for the 2021 Classics Challenge: The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge (aka Yellow Bird, or Chee-squa-ta-law-ny in Cherokee), which was published in California in 1854. I chose to read this for category #11: Travel or Adventure Classic. Kind of a goofy choice for that category, but hey. The main character travels up and down California, dipping into northern Mexico now and then, and he has many exciting adventures.

John Rollin Ridge, the author, was Cherokee on his father's side, and was born into a wealthy, powerful family in Cherokee Nation, in Georgia, in 1827. After an overly exciting youth which included the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation to what is now Oklahoma, the murders of his father and grandfather and uncle, and at least one murder committed by himself in a related conflict, in 1850 he decided to try his luck in the California Gold Rush. He was unsuccessful as a miner, and instead earned his living over the next 20 years through writing and clerical work (he had studied law before he came to California). He died in 1867 -- just after the Civil War -- of a brain ailment.

One interesting thing I learned from reading about Ridge was that he was a cousin of Stand Watie, the Cherokee Confederate sympathizer described in the children's book Rifles for Watie that I am thinking of reading later on this year. Some of what is known about Ridge comes from letters he wrote to Watie. Small world. Ridge himself was pro-slavery (his grandfather, his father, and he himself were all slave owners) and wrote newspaper articles criticizing President Lincoln during the Civil War. There exists a biography of him, and another book about his family, but of course our library doesn't own either volume and of course I can't get them through Prospector.

Joaquin Murieta is famous for being the first novel written by a Native American, but it isn't about Indians, at least not much. Ridge, who was also a poet, wrote Joaquin Murieta to make some money off the muddled history of several Mexican bandits in California, all named Joaquin, one of whom may have been killed in 1853. Although Ridge begins his novel by claiming it is a true story, there is almost no truth in it -- and anyone who read it in 1854 would have known that. Five years later, someone rewrote the story slightly and published it again, and that version was rewritten and republished over and over again, around the world, for the next 70 years or so. Occasionally Ridge's original version was also tinkered with and republished. Gradually, as the true story faded in memory, people began to believe the fiction. The 50-page introduction to the edition I read includes a fascinating description of how the novel mutated into "truth."

It's not a very good book. (Supposedly the 1859 rewrite is a little better.) There are no chapters, no divisions of any kind. The Wikipedia article about the book describes 11 separate chapters, but that must have been a different version (the paperback I read is a reprint of the very first edition, which can be viewed online here). Instead, the book I read just rolls along for 150 pages, one incident after another after another after another after another. Joaquin and his gang attack a miner and steal his money and gold, they attack another miner and steal his money and kill him, they attack a group of miners and steal their money and horses and kill them all. Sometimes someone decides to kill Joaquin, but is always foiled in the attempt (until the last few pages). One of Joaquin's compatriots, a man called Three-Fingered Jack, wants to kill everyone he meets, but since Joaquin is a gentleman, he prevents Jack from committing murders he considers unnecessary.

Although the book is badly organized, the writing is OK. It starts oddly, with a first sentence that made me doubtful about what was coming next:

I sit down to write somewhat concerning the life and character of Joaquin Murieta, a man as remarkable in the annals of crime as any of the renowned robbers of the Old or New World, who have preceded him...

Hmm, I thought. That "somewhat" is not very encouraging. But there are dramatic passages too. How about this, where one of Joaquin's compatriots witnesses a love scene through a window:

Upon a settee on the further side of the room, half-reclining, sat a blushing girl of seventeen years, her golden ringlets showered down upon her neck and shoulders, and her bosom heaving as if it would burst its gauzy covering and strike the gazer blind with its unspeakable loveliness.

The image of that "bosom" bursting out and striking someone is really hard to forget.

Although the real Joaquins were mainly cattle thieves, in the novel, members of Joaquin's gang are constantly stealing hundreds of horses and driving them down to "a fine tract of rich pasturage" called Arroyo Cantoova for safekeeping. With the help of an interesting paper called "Mapping Joaquin," I learned that Arroyo Cantoova was in what is now Fresno County. It's less remote now since I-5 goes right past it, but back then I guess it was a good place to hide thousands of horses.

It's not a book about Indians, but there are Indians in it, and I was interested in how Ridge would portray them, especially since he published the book under his Cherokee name and he was already known in California as an Indian writer. For the most part his descriptions are unflattering. He refers to one group of local Indians as "these simple people," and a few pages later notes that the "ignorant Indians" were often blamed for the misdeeds of "civilized hands." A few pages later he describes members of the Tejon Nation thusly:

They soon reached the capital, which consisted of twenty or thirty very picturesque-looking bark huts scattered along the side of a hill, in front of the largest of which they found old Sapatarra [the chief], seated upon his haunches in all the grandeur of "naked majesty," enjoying a very luxurious repast of roasted acorns and dried angle-worms. His swarthy subjects were scattered in various directions around him, engaged for the most part in the very arduous task of doing nothing.

A page later he refers to them as the "poor, miserable, cowardly Tejons," who nevertheless manage to get the better of Joaquin and his gang. Later in the book, however, mention is made of "Cherokee Camp." The "half-breed" Cherokees who live there appear to be more capable than the Tejons.

The book is interesting about race/ethnicity: Joaquin and his followers, though referred to as bad guys, are absolutely the heroes of the book, and Joaquin is described on the first page as a "truly wonderful man." Joaquin turns to banditry because he and his mistress are abused by "Americans." The Americans also pass laws that are unfair to all Mexicans in California. Joaquin is brave, honorable, and very good at being a bandit. All the Mexicans in the book are impressive, whereas the Americans are basically incompetent. (I'm not sure what "Mexican" meant to Ridge, other than a nationality: Joaquin has "long, glossy, black hair" and "large dark eyes," and his complexion is "neither very dark or very light.") Some readers feel that Ridge sympathized with Mexicans because of what other "Americans" did to his people. On the other hand, Ridge is thoroughly racist regarding the "Chinamen" who Joaquin steals from, and of course he was a slave owner (but I don't remember any slaves in the book).

Finally, much to the relief of this reader, Joaquin and Three-Fingered Jack and other members of the group of bandits are captured and killed by Captain Harry Love and his men, and the book ends. The head of the man who was actually killed (whether or not it was Joaquin Murieta who died, or even one of the other Joaquins) was put in a jar and displayed at fairs and such for some time after the killing, as was a three-fingered hand purported to have belonged to Three-Fingered Jack.

Joaquin's story has been filmed numerous times, but of course the Boulder public library system doesn't have any of the versions and of course doesn't belong to Prospector anymore so I can't get a hold of any of them that way. I did request the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, which apparently has a distant connection to the Murieta legend, and it is now waiting for me at the library, so I may add a note about that when I watch it.... Okay, I watched it! It's not a bad movie, very cheerful, good acting. Swashbuckling. And the Murrieta connection is interesting -- in the film, there are two Murrieta brothers, and Captain Harry Love kills Joaquin, but Alejandro escapes to become the new Zorro. I liked it. *I haven't read The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, the 1919 novel that launched Zorro (and of course the Boulder Public Library doesn't own it -- but Longmont does, so I requested it from there), but I don't think it has anything to do with Murrieta. Still, I think it was a good idea inserting him into the movie. Might as well keep his name alive.

*Postscript: I have now read The Curse of Capistrano (retitled The Mark of Zorro after the success of the silent film) and it's a lot of fun. It's set in Spanish California, probably some time before the Gold Rush and the events that caused Joaquin Murieta to become a famous bandit (at least in John Rollin Ridge's imagination). But it's the story of a Robin Hood-like character who goes after bad guys who have injured the poor and helpless. It's quite funny, and there is a little suspense here and there, when Zorro gets himself into difficult situations and you're not sure how he's going to get out. I enjoyed it.

April gets better

I probably should have posted right after last week's sad story, to let people know that our plumbing problem was solved quickly. But I'm trying to stick to this Sunday schedule, except for occasional reading posts, so here we are a week later and I've almost forgotten what misery we were in a week ago.

That's the thing I've noticed about a lot of horrible stuff: fixing it just removes the misery, it resets you to normal; it doesn't really make you happy, except briefly. But removing misery is still a good thing, and I'm NOT complaining.

So what happened was this: last Monday the plumbers called Rocket Boy and told him they had a cancellation and would he like them to put the sewer tap in that day instead of Tuesday. RB said yes! do it! and so around 10 am or so a plumbing truck was parked in our driveway. After a fair bit of backing and forthing, they settled down to dig a hole in our front yard, but close to the house, behind the pfitzers, so it didn't show very much. The hole was right beneath my bedroom window, so I couldn't sit on my bed and read while they worked -- I mean, I guess I could have, but it would have been weird. So I sat in the office with the kids (who had the day off from school) and played computer solitaire. The weather was nasty: first it rained, and then gradually it turned to snow. (By the next morning, Boulder had received 9 or 10 inches.) Oh, and we skipped the museum trip we'd planned, obviously. The money I spent on IMAX tickets ended up being a donation. It's fine.

Mid-afternoon the plumbers came to the door and told me they were ready to start working on the clog, so would I please flush the toilet a few times and turn on some faucets so they'd have a steady stream of water flowing. Figuring that we had used very little water the previous five days, I turned on the faucets for the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and proceeded to wash the pile of recycling (by hand, but dumping the water down the drain when it got dirty). Maybe half an hour later they knocked on the door again: "We're done! That was a pretty nasty clog, but you should be good now." I wrote them a check for $2750 and they left, with these two white plugs the only evidence of their work. 

And we went back to normal life. I put the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher and ran it, everybody used the toilet repeatedly, and Kid A took a shower. The next day I took a shower, and Wednesday I finally decided it was safe to put the dirty towels in the washing machine. I have to admit that every time I turn on the water I still flinch slightly, afraid it won't go down the drain. But it's been almost a week with no problems -- I think we're good.

Otherwise it was a quiet week. My book group met Tuesday (still via Zoom) and I told them about our plumbing woes, but by then it had already become an amusing anecdote. We spent more time talking about the book, Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, which no one liked. It's about what it's like to grow up and live ethnically Asian, specifically Chinese, in the USA, and none of us warmed up to the author's experimental style. Still, it did make an impression on me. I remembered an Asian guy I dated in grad school and how conscious he was of being Asian in a white world. Being from California, I tend to think of the US as not really a white world, because California is only 36.8% non-Hispanic white, and 15.3% of the population is Asian -- the highest percentage of any state except Hawaii. But most states are not like that. Michigan, where I went to school, is only 2.4% Asian, and Colorado, where of course I live now, is only 2.8% Asian.

The more we talked, the more truth came out. One member recalled that where she grew up, in San Diego (but a long time ago), the only ethnically Asian person in her life was a man who worked at Burger King. She and her siblings called him "Mr. Ah-so." They thought it was funny. I remembered that there were two Asian kids in my class in elementary school, one ethnically Chinese and one ethnically Japanese. Constantly, white kids would come up to them and ask, "Are you Chinese or Japanese?" Once I learned which was which, I would get cross at people who asked the question, because one last name (Wong) was so obviously Chinese, and the other (Maruhashi) was so obviously Japanese. In truth, the girls weren't Chinese or Japanese, they were American, probably for multiple generations, but having Asian features brands you forever as Asian, foreign. I have been asked whether I'm Swedish (that blond hair, you know), and I've been told I look German. But it's different. 

I'm not Swedish, as far as I know. I'm German, Scottish, Welsh, English, Dutch, and.... My father's father's family came from Schleswig-Holstein, close to the Danish border, so it's possible that some of my ancestors are from farther north.

Next month we're going to read The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal, which is about three sisters going back to India to scatter their mother's ashes. It's supposed to be light-hearted and cosy, which we all wanted, but if it is, it will probably end up annoying me. I need to go buy the book, need to put that on some list.

What else happened last week? On Wednesday I was interviewed by a professor at CU who's doing a study on how undergraduates are rude and aggressive toward untenured faculty members. I had agreed to participate a week before, just as our plumbing problems were taking hold, and remembering some of my badly behaved students had made me feel worse. The interview was interesting, though. I'll have to look for papers she writes about the results.

Finally, on Friday morning, I got my second dose of the Covid vaccine (Pfizer), and I have spent the weekend recovering from it. I didn't have a bad reaction -- I've just felt tired. Friday night I was exhausted, couldn't get to bed fast enough, and I slept maybe 10 hours. I lazed around all day Saturday (at one point the cats and I had a good nap on my bed) and slept another 10 hours last night. But I think I'm feeling better today. My arm is no longer sore and I never had a fever or other body aches, like Rocket Boy did. It's a very good feeling to know that in 12 days I will be considered as "safe" as it's possible to be right now.

Our 9-10 inches of snow has all melted, and everything looks wet and green outside. Nothing is blooming yet except a few dandelions, but the early bees will appreciate those. Oh, I guess there were a couple of grape hyacinth near the clothesline. The allium leaves look rather battered, but I hope the plants will still bloom. I feel like going out and buying a bunch of annuals to plant, but I'll hold off for now. All we have in the forecast for the next week is rain -- and sun, of course -- no snow. But this is Colorado, so the snow could come again in May. At least for April, though, I think we're done.

I guess I could do a to-do list for the week ahead, but I don't really want to. So far I have nothing scheduled except a Zoom call next Saturday, so there's lots of time available. Maybe I should review what I had planned to get done during the month of April.

Monthly goals (April):

• Make contact with a friend and/or family member. I wrote to my old friend in Los Angeles. Could think about this one this week.
  
• Book group. Did everything I needed to do for this month. I could buy the book for May.
  
• Classics Challenge 2021. I read the first book on my list, posted about it, and am almost done with the second. I'll try to post about that one this coming week.
  
• Take the twins somewhere fun. No, and it won't happen this week either. Aim for May.
  
• Donate $$ to some organization. Ah, yes, need to choose. I had thought about doing something related to the environment. I'll do that this week.
  
• Do one of the smaller goals on my master list. April, as I assumed, was another health month, as well as a plumbing month. I'll think of something else for May.

Actually, one thing I definitely want to do this week is get back into exercising. That really needs my attention. If I take a walk every day in this nice weather I'll be doing well. So I'll focus on that. Starting today.

April can be awful

April, that cruellest month, is really doing a number on us this year. I'm so tired today that I'm not sure I'll be able to write a blog post, but I'll try. It's already 10:30 pm, so it'll be a short one.

So, the story begins last Tuesday night, when I was taking a shower before bed. I noticed that the water was pooling in the shower and the toilet was making ominous glug-glug sounds. When I finished my shower and got out of the tub, I noticed that the pooled water wasn't draining, not at all. And when I flushed the toilet, yeah, that didn't work either. 

When there's something wrong with our plumbing, it's always the same thing: tree roots. Rocket Boy's parents, new homeowners back in 1955, with no experience in the art of tree placement, decided to plant a lovely honey locust tree right on top of the sewer line (and the water line, because in those days, it was legal to put the two pipes in the same trench). It's a beautiful tree, probably the healthiest one we have. Wonder why? It spends the year feasting on our sewage.

I sent Rocket Boy a text before I went to bed: "Oh joy, bathtub won't drain. Will call plumber tomorrow."

But somehow I didn't call right away on Wednesday. I waited to see what would happen. The toilet flushed normally in the morning, so I thought I'd better do another test. I could have run the dishwasher, that would have been nice. But instead I decided to do the ultimate test: a load of laundry. And toward the end of the cycle, the water went everywhere. The toilet overflowed, the sewer line backed up into the bathtub (including a lot of poop), the laundry tub filled with dirty water, and water from somewhere went all over the concrete floor of the garage (where the washer lives).

So I called a plumber, the same one that came out last year, in January 2020. "You need to send the truck with the really long hose," I told the girl. She pencilled me in for the next day, between 12 and 2.

Wednesday night was interesting. No one could take a shower and we couldn't flush the toilet. We peed in it and I poured water from a bucket over the pee, just to dilute it (it wouldn't go down). I didn't make dinner -- I didn't want to eat anything, because then I'd have to "go." The twins followed my lead.

Thursday morning I had an appointment with a dermatologist for a skin check, due to my little squamous cell cancer three years ago. I apologized to her for being dirty -- of all the times to lose the ability to shower, right before a doctor looks at every inch of your body. She cut off a mole and a giant skin tag, and froze three actinic keratoses on my face. I thought that's what those spots were. I have to go back in a year. Guess it's necessary.

I went home to wait for the plumber. He arrived at 1 pm and I showed him the access to the sewer pipe in our basement. Then he started to work. Five and a half hours later, he asked for and received $725 from me and went home. During those five hours he removed large clumps of roots, got his coil stuck on something, called two other plumbers to help, finally got it unstuck, got more roots out, got it stuck again, got it unstuck, and gave up. "You need to get a camera down there, see what's going on," he told me. "It's possible a portion of the pipe has collapsed. We can do it, or you can get some other plumber to do it. But my supervisor told me not to go any further." I thanked him and he left.

After he left, I thought we probably had gained some time. There was still a clog, but it was further on down the line. Surely we could flush the toilet, take a shower, maybe even run the dishwasher. That night I took a quick shower. Immediately the toilet filled up again. Guess I was wrong.

While the plumber was working, it started to snow, and overnight we got about 6 inches. Pretty typical for April, heavy wet snow. At least the trees don't have leaves yet. And the twins had the day off from school on Friday, so I didn't have to run around getting them ready and scraping off my car.

I had an appointment to get my hair cut at 11:30 am, so I went ahead and did that (much of the snow had melted off the car by that point). I figured it would be easier to wash shorter hair quickly. I had asked Rocket Boy what to do, the night before, and he decided we would call a different plumber and have them put in a sewer tap (i.e., dig down to the pipe in the front lawn, as close to the clog as we can get). They did a sewer tap in the rental house last summer -- at the time I wondered, why the rental house and not our house? Now I really wondered. Two guys from the other plumber came to take a look at the situation, gave me a quote of $2700-2800, and said they could do it on Tuesday -- assuming it didn't snow again.

One small bright spot: I spent a lot of time this week helping Rocket Boy fill out his Financial Disclosure statement for work. This involved calling several organizations who don't send us statements anymore (because everyone's gone green, so it's all online, but we don't know our passwords or usernames, or how to get into the various sites, so it has effectively made our finances a mystery to us) to ask them how much money was in this or that account on 12/31/20. It turned out we have more money than we thought we did, especially since the stock market is so out of control. So if we end up having to fork out $20,000 instead of $2700 (and this is possible, if the pipe has collapsed), we'll be able to do that. Might even be a good idea to do that before the stock market falls again. Isn't that wonderful.

Also on Friday I started doing dishes, realizing that it would be a long time before I could run the dishwasher again. I set up two tubs in our double kitchen sink: one for warm soapy water and the other for rinse water. I couldn't put any of the water down the drain, so whenever one got full or dirty, I dumped it outside on the snow. It was slow work. Bit by bit I emptied the full dishwasher and also tackled the pile on the counter. But it's gotten bad again. Saturday night we had takeout from Chili's and now we have a million plastic takeout containers piled up. It's much harder to wash takeout containers (and milk bottles, juice bottles, etc.) because you can't rinse them out and pour the water down the sink. For each one I think I'll have to take it outside to dump the water, and every time I do that, little kitty Merlin tries to get out. Sigh.

Our next-door neighbor had seen the plumbers' trucks there all afternoon Thursday, and she texted me to ask if we needed to use her bathroom. So we started going over there. She gave me a key and let us go over when she wasn't there, for a little more privacy. I took a shower there on Friday, which was wonderful. I managed to get Teen B to take a shower there this morning, and I took another one tonight.

Today (Sunday) I decided it was time to find a laundromat. I was almost out of underwear and the kids would run out of everything in a couple of days. I went to the Table Mesa laundromat and found it to be very clean and spacious. I brought a book and sat in my car and read during the wash cycle. I didn't leave the clothes in the dryer long enough to get them completely dry, but after I got them home I realized that our DRYER is fine, it's just the washer I can't use. So next time, if I want to, I could just take the wet load home. 

I wonder if there will be a next time, or how many times there will be. The kids have enough clothes now to last through Friday. Will we have a cleared sewer line by then?

The toilet situation has been the most stressful. Twice, when poop wouldn't go down, I reached into the toilet with my hands and removed the soft wet turds, putting them into a plastic bag and then that bag into another bag, tying them up, and putting them in the garbage can, like dog poop in newspaper bags. The first time I did it with my bare hands, and then I bought a box of gloves at the pharmacy and used one of those (but it wasn't long enough and my arm got wet/dirty). Those two times might have been the worst experiences of this episode so far -- but a close competitor would be last night, when one of the twins had diarrhea and I couldn't scoop it out. I poured water on the mess, waited for it to slowly go down, poured more water, repeat, repeat. It just looked worse and worse.

This morning I woke up with one thought in my brain: plunger! Maybe I could plunge away the poop. Sure enough, it worked. I don't know what is going on in our sewer pipe, but plunging is helping keep the toilet clear enough to use a few times a day (only for poop; we leave pee to "mellow"). Can't do anything else with water, but that's the most important.

Oh, I'm forgetting another bad moment: Friday night, when I woke up nauseated and had to vomit into a toilet that wouldn't flush. Not getting a covid test this time. It's clearly stress related. I'm trying not to eat much in the evening, and nothing too fatty or weird. Of course, I only want to eat comfort food. Cookies, ice cream. What a great time to be a diabetic.

I'm noticing that I have to act like a mom more than usual during this hard time. Despite the fact that I am falling apart, I am the only resident of the house who knows what to do. I know how to wash dishes by hand, find and use laundromats, even remove poop from toilets. Today, when I took the boys over to the neighbor's to use the bathroom, our interactions reminded me of when they were much younger. I coaxed Teen B into the shower, washed his hair for him (normally he doesn't want me to see him naked). I convinced Teen A that it was really OK to use the toilet. I spoke in a soothing "Mom" voice. I have used that "Mom" voice more in the past few days than I have for the last couple of years. 

It is actually somewhat soothing to ME to use that "Mom" voice. It reminds me of when they were little boos, like two or three, and I was the all-knowing, all-doing mom. 

The cats are also helping, being very sweet to each other, even attempting to wash each other occasionally. They're not affected by this at all, since they use a litter box.

And Rocket Boy is on the other end of the phone line, offering advice and encouragement and sympathy. I wish he were here, but since he's not, I'm coping as best I can.

So now it's Sunday night. I have various things scheduled for this week, but I don't think I'll do my usual to-do list. Some stuff will get done, some won't. My book group meets Tuesday night, via Zoom, and on Wednesday I have a Zoom interview with someone at CU to discuss my experiences with undergraduate incivility and aggression. That'll be fun. Oh, and Friday is my second Covid shot. I sure hope I don't have a bad reaction, with all this going on.

Tomorrow, Monday, the kids are off school again, so we have reservations at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, including tickets to an IMAX film. I arranged this primarily because there are BATHROOMS with FUNCTIONING TOILETS at the museum. But now the weather is looking bad. It's going to rain and then snow. (I do not like to drive on highways in the snow.) And get this: the snow total for the day is predicted to be 1-2 inches, but overnight it's predicted to be 4-8 inches. So we could wake up Tuesday morning to 10 inches of snow on the ground. Regardless of whether the plumbers come, I will have to get the kids to school in that mess.

The plumbers are not going to come and put in a sewer tap if we have 10 inches of snow on the ground. And then we'll have to wait for it to melt, and for a few days the lawn will be a muddy wet mess. And once they can get in there, what if the pipe has collapsed? I don't know when we're going to have a clear sewer line again. I truly don't.

On that note, I will head for bed. We will survive, but it is not fun.

April can be nice

I think this will just be a short post, not much to share this time. I knew it would be a quiet week and it was. Highlights were Teen B's orthodontia appointment on Monday and his haircut on Saturday. Thrilling, I know. The haircut looks good.

Actually, the effects of the orthodontia appointment lasted all week and are still lasting, because we have a difficult decision to make. Do we pull two teeth and then put on braces for two years? or do we do headgear for 14 hours a day and a retainer for the other 10 hours a day for six months, followed by 18 months of braces? I am voting for headgear; Teen B is voting for teeth pulling -- except that he doesn't actually want his teeth pulled, because that will hurt. But he doesn't want headgear, for the weird reason that he doesn't want to wear a retainer the rest of the time. It seems to me that the retainer is the absolute least of our problems. But I'm not Teen B.

I'm thinking -- do we really need to do braces at all? The dentist and the orthodontist think it's obvious that we do. But Teen B will not let me look at his teeth, so I can't form my own opinion.

We've had some nice weather this week, though it's supposed to cool down and precipitate this coming week, a little every day. That's fine -- moisture is good, and a wet April seems appropriate. Some of that moisture will be snow, but not much, half an inch here and there, nothing more. I will try to enjoy it, not get depressed.

I'm struggling with depression again, or maybe it never stopped. This was a hard week. For some reason I stopped walking, after doing really well with that for 12 days. In the past five days I have taken exactly one walk, which is terrible. I need to do better. In fact, before I finish this post I will try to go out and take a walk. It doesn't have to be a long walk.

Why am I depressed? What triggered it this time? I can think of a few things.

First, the red-breasted nuthatches are gone, both of them. One day this past week I looked out and there was a CHICKADEE pecking at the nuthatch's hole. A chickadee! I was horrified! Did the chickadee chase the nuthatch away? Did the nuthatch get eaten by a cat or a hawk? 

I actually really like the chickadees that hang around our yard, but they're such everyday birds. I was looking forward to nuthatch babies, maybe even two sets. I went out and yelled at the chickadee, which is not like me.

The thing is, a few days later I saw the nuthatch again, working on the hole. So it was still alive, or at least one of them was. And then I haven't seen it since, nor have I seen the chickadee. So I don't know what's going on, but I haven't seen any bird near that hole in a few days now, and that makes me sad. The nuthatch worked on it for so long. Incidentally, the chickadee seemed to be making much faster progress on the hole than the nuthatch.

Second, I was offered the chance at a job. This is a really weird one: a recruiter contacted me through LinkedIn and asked if I'd be interested in working for the government agency where I worked for 10 years. That's right across the street from us, basically. This would have been a contract position -- I wouldn't get my benefits back or anything. But that's OK. I don't really need them at this point, as long as Rocket Boy has insurance. 

The problem is, I don't think I'm physically capable of working full-time right now. I don't know if it's my age or my weight or the depression or the diabetes or the high calcium, but it's hard for me even to keep the house running and the twins cared for. Imagine trying to keep the house running and the twins cared for while also working a full-time job! I can't imagine it, and this job would be mentally taxing. So I told the recruiter I was interested, but I could only work part-time. And she said nope, the client insists on full-time. So I had to say no. Rocket Boy was NOT happy with me about this.

I suppose I could have said maybe, and at least gone in and talked to them (ok, realistically it would have been a Zoom interview) about what they wanted me to do. And maybe part-time would have been possible after all. But I didn't do that. And that made me feel bad in so many different ways. It brought up a lot of stuff: feeling inadequate, feeling like no one will ever hire me again, wishing I'd never quit my job all those years ago.

Third, I know there's ongoing sadness related to the shooting. It's hard to quantify, but it seems to be affecting me like a low-grade fever. I just can't function normally.

Well, another week is starting and there's always the opportunity to do -- and feel -- better. One thing I focused on this week was getting little stuff done (because that was all I felt up to): laundry, dishes, trash & recycling & compost, all that. I also managed to pack away Easter, which was good. I took books back to the library and got more; I patronized the Bookworm; I read a lot. I went to multiple grocery stores; I got my metformin prescription refilled; I made an appointment with an endocrinologist. I coped.

So this coming week I will focus again on coping, and try to include daily walks in that plan.

Week of April 12-18:

• Monday: Do school with the kids. Tell the orthodontist what our decision is (if we've made it). Call the electrician again or look for a different one. Spend some time weeding before the rain starts. Take a walk, make something easy for dinner. Get Teen A to plan his meal for this week.
  
• Tuesday: Get the kids to school. Spend some time writing. Finish my letter to my friend in LA, take it to FedEx Office to print out, mail it with her birthday card. Lift weights, take a walk. Conference with Teen B's music teacher at 4:30; Zoom-meet with my parent group at 5:30. Make an easy dinner after that.
  
• Wednesday: Get the kids to school. Grocery shop. Do some cleaning, or take the sewing machine out of its box. Take a walk. Cook dinner with Teen A.
  
• Thursday: Get the kids to school. Dermatologist appointment at 9:30. Spend some time writing, do the kids' laundry. Lift weights, go for a walk. Fix dinner, put out the trash and compost.
  
• Friday: Kids have the day off. Pay bills, do my laundry. Haircut at 11:30 am. Maybe some cleaning or sewing. Take a walk. Fix dinner.
  
• Saturday & Sunday: Go for walks (get the kids outside at least one day). Blog, maybe go to a movie. Get takeout on Saturday, make something easy on Sunday.

There are a few more things on the schedule for this week than last, so I'm hoping that will perk me up, not stress me out. On the other hand, it will be cloudy almost every day, which tends to bring me down. The thing about depression is that you've just got to wait it out, while doing what little things you can to help it lift. It's important not to think about it too much, not wallow in it. Wallow when you're feeling better, if you want, not when you're low.

This afternoon I took the kids to Target, and I was thinking to myself on the way there that I needed to be nicer to other people, help make the world a better place and all that. Then, in the parking lot, a guy in black leather and helmet, riding a motor scooter, almost ran me over as I walked in a crosswalk. "Whoo!" I said, resisting the urge to give him the finger. My "whoo!" made me think of the video for the Phoebe Bridgers song, "Kyoto," which I like. So I'll leave you with that. Such a goofy song and video -- it always cheers me up.

P.S. I did just now go for a walk, only 15 minutes but that's fine. I was just going to walk to the creek and back, but I saw a couple looking at something in the park, so I followed them and got to see the flowers around this bench, which made me happy. They're mostly just getting started, as is everything in Colorado, but they're pretty. 

The bench was put here in memory of the victims of a tsunami, I think the one in Japan in 2011.

Soon the hummingbirds will be back, by May, anyway.

Easter Sunday

Our second Easter without Rocket Boy (though he did call the boys on Skype just now, annoying them both, bad teenagers). I just can't tell you how much I didn't want to do this one, but the thought of NOT doing it -- of having no eggs to hunt, no stuffed rabbits on the coffee table, no lemon meringue pie -- was worse, so I did it. 

I bought the candy at Target. I had a few bags stashed away, but when I went back to buy more, a week ago or whatever, I couldn't seem to estimate correctly. (I've been very spacey in stores since the shooting.) I kept putting bags and boxes in my cart, and as a result we have enough jelly beans and chocolate eggs to last us until summer. Filling the baskets (which we have been re-using for about 10 years) last night, I was mildly horrified at the amount. I could barely stuff it all in. I still have one bag of jelly beans left, for refilling later in the week.

And the boys surprised me this morning. They made a low-key attempt at finding everything -- interestingly, Teen A was more into it than Teen B, who usually finds most of the eggs -- and then they sat down at the kitchen counter and requested breakfast. Gone are the days of candy breakfasts: they wanted ramen. We settled on scrambled eggs, which they gobbled down. A few hours later, Teen A heated up his leftover mac & cheese (from Panera, our Saturday night takeout treat).

The member of the family who was most interested in Easter this year was Mr. Merlino, appropriately the youngest. He and Sillers were in the bedroom with me last night, watching me fill the baskets and the plastic eggs. I say I never buy any new supplies except the candy, but a few years ago I picked up a couple of finger puppets at Grandrabbits -- and then lost them. Last year I found them -- after Easter, of course -- so this year was to be their debut. I placed them in one blue and one green metal basket, and then continued my work. Mr. Merlino was winding his way through the piles of junk on the bed, and he spotted the yellow duck finger puppet. Ah ha! He plucked it out of the basket, jumped off the bed, and began to play with it. Eventually I retrieved it, but I realized he was interested in the fluff sticking out of the head, which reminded him of a bird. (He also attacked every Christmas ornament that had fluff.) 

Another thing that appealed to him from the baskets were Rollos, those little roundish chocolate candies with caramel, because, hey, they roll. And this morning, as the kids quickly tired of the hunt, Mr. Merlino was busy batting jelly beans around the living room floor. Rocket Boy, when I told him about this, expressed sorrow that we no longer have a mouse -- who could have feasted on the beans that end up under the furniture. Hmm.

I was reading last year's blog post about Easter and was amused by how much snow we got that day: 17 inches, followed by another 17-inch snowfall a few days later. The schools were already on lockdown, so we just had school at home, but good grief, 34 inches of snow in less than a week (though apparently it all melted between the snowfalls). This year is completely different -- it's been in the 70s the last few days, close to 80, and will be again today and tomorrow. A slight chance of a few snowflakes Tuesday night, and then there's a little bit of a cooldown, but for the most part it looks like the snow is over.

Of course, this is Colorado, so there could be more snow later in the month, and for that matter in May. Or June. But it feels like the snow is over for the year. We'll see.

What else happened this past week? In last week's post I wrote about hoping that nothing else bad would happen, which I knew was tempting fate -- and sure enough, the next morning I discovered that Teen A's bike had been stolen. The thieves neatly cut the cable and the bike was gone. But oddly, they left it in some bushes about six blocks away, where we were able to retrieve it after I posted about the loss on our neighborhood listserv and two different neighbors reported having seen it.

So in some ways that was a positive occurrence, since it demonstrated how great my neighbors are. I still have to buy Teen A a new lock, but for now his bike is locked to mine (with a much stronger lock), and both bikes are on the back patio where they're less visible. Rocket Boy's bike is still on the front porch, locked with a cable about as thick as Teen A's was, but I've packed the bike in with a lot of noisy, clingy objects such as folding chairs and a scooter. If someone tries to steal it, they'll make a lot of noise getting it out, which I think would discourage most thieves. We'll see. (Obviously this wouldn't work if the bike was being used regularly, but since Rocket Boy is in St. Louis...)

On Monday we also got our new stove, which I am still getting used to. One thing I don't like about it is that the burner dials aren't marked "High," "Medium High," etc. Instead, it's 1 to 6 (1 is marked "Low" and 6 is marked "High" but that's all). So is 5 "Medium High," 4 "Medium," 3 "Medium Low," and 2 -- what? "High Low"? I feel that there are too many numbers, and "Medium" is more like 3.5, but I'm not sure yet. Maybe 2 is "Low" and 1 is "Warm." Also, everything cooks a little differently on those burners, not just because I can't figure out what temperature I'm using. The oven seems to work well.

My covid test results showed up Monday night and were negative, thankfully, so I went in for my mammogram on Tuesday. The nice technician told me that it could be three weeks until I get my results, because they hadn't gotten my old films from Kaiser yet -- but no, they were in the system by the next day. All clear and good. On Wednesday I went in to pick up my new glasses, Thursday I finally had that bloodwork done, and Friday I got my first dose of the vaccine. A nice old lady, presumably a volunteer, took my picture afterwards.

My second dose is scheduled for April 23rd, and by May 7th I will be considered fully protected. Just before Mother's Day. We're thinking seriously about a trip to Missouri after school gets out. Of course, the kids won't be protected, but I think that's OK. They've started testing kids (using spit) at their middle school once a week. Teen B got tested this week (he was negative) and Teen A will be tested next week. Very reassuring.

This coming week looks a lot less busy, which is great. Teen B sees the orthodontist tomorrow, for his first big appointment where they make molds and take x-rays. Other than that, my blood test results will probably come in, and that will mean more discussions with my doctor, but I don't know exactly when. Unless I'm forgetting something (like last week I forgot Easter), that's my week. So, here are some plans:

Week of April 5-11:

• Monday: Take Teen A to the orthodontist at 9 am; otherwise, do school with the kids. Take a walk, make something easy for dinner. Get Teen A to plan his meal for this week. Call my niece and wish her a happy birthday.
  
• Tuesday: Get the kids to school. Spend some time writing. Do their laundry. Call the electrician again or look for a different one. Write a letter to my friend in Los Angeles. Lift weights, take a walk, fix dinner.
  
• Wednesday: Get the kids to school. Do some cleaning, or take the sewing machine out of its box. Go to the/a grocery store. Cook dinner with Teen A.
  
• Thursday: Get the kids to school. Spend some time writing. Lift weights, go for a walk, fix dinner, put out the trash and recycling in the evening.
  
• Friday: Get the kids to school. Pay bills, do my laundry, do some cleaning or sewing, take a walk. Fix dinner.
  
• Saturday & Sunday: Go for walks (get the kids outside both days, maybe even someplace special), blog, get takeout on Saturday, make something easy on Sunday.

It all looks good. I know this isn't how things will really go -- probably something medical will interfere, or some other part of the house will break. Or who knows what will happen. But at least in my plans it looks like an easy week.

Even in Colorado, with its frequent late snows, early April shows signs of spring. Some of the green things in this photo are grass, but several are onions, those purple alliums that I love. They spread like crazy, so Rocket Boy digs them out of the lawn and plants them over here in this sort of dead place between the east driveway and the house.

The most fun spring thing we have going on this year is a red-breasted nuthatch digging a nest cavity in the dead-ish aspen on the side of the house. I say dead-ish because neither Rocket Boy nor I can remember whether it's totally dead or not. It might still have a few leaves, not sure. Anyway, the first time I saw the nuthatch, over a month ago, I thought it was looking for insects. But it kept on digging away, and eventually I looked it up online and learned that nuthatches like to dig themselves new nesting holes -- they don't like to borrow other birds' old holes. It takes a long time for a tiny little nuthatch to dig a nesting hole in an old dead-ish aspen, but they are certainly persistent.

Here's the thing, though. Today, when I went out to try to take a better picture of the bird (I have many blurry shots where it moves just at the moment the camera clicks), I stood back to get a shot from farther away. And that's when I realized that there wasn't just the one nuthatch digging a hole. There were two nuthatches, both digging holes. The other one was way at the top of the tree, and it hadn't gotten very far with its hole yet. I think they were both females.

They're both in this picture. I know you can't see it, but one is at the top of the main trunk (you can see just a little thing sticking out to the left) and the other is about two-thirds of the way up.

And now I'm puzzled. Are we going to have two red-breasted nuthatch families in the same little tree? Aren't they territorial at all? Or do they like to be close to others of their kind?

I'm still hoping we'll have another hummingbird nest, too. I think it's too early, but I might as well fill up my feeder, just in case. Sugar water is cheap, and whenever the hummingbirds do arrive, it'll be nice to have a meal waiting for them.

I haven't been back to the memorial fence around King Soopers, even though I want to go. I'm glad I went twice, but now I feel nervous about going back. Back and forth, back and forth -- do I want to think about this, or do I want to set it aside for now? On Friday, after my vaccine, I went to the King Soopers on 30th Street, even though I don't like that store, because we were out of a lot of things and I figured I'd be more likely to find them there. The store is organized differently from my store, so I did a fair amount of backing and forthing, but I eventually found everything except raspberries, which they were out of (serves me right, trying to buy raspberries in early April). There was an armed guard in front of the store, and all the clerks seemed subdued. 

I had purposely left my cloth bags in the car, because I knew I didn't have the strength to bag my own groceries, and when I started filling an evil plastic bag, a little old man (realistically, he was probably about my age) came over and asked me if I'd like help. "Yes, thank you so much," I told him, and we chatted a little as he worked. He was apparently visiting from another store. "Where did you find applesauce?" he asked me. "That's the one thing I can never find. I know where it is in my regular store, but they hide it here." "I don't know where I got it," I had to admit, even though it made me sound like I had Alzheimer's. I had come upon the applesauce unexpectedly. "Maybe in the cereal aisle?" I knew what he meant, though. I don't even know where applesauce is in my regular store. I just trust that if I walk down every aisle, I'll eventually spot it. I do sound like I have Alzheimer's, don't I? Whatever I have, it has been exacerbated by the shooting. Especially in stores, but not only in stores, I feel like I am losing my mind.

Well, I just have to hold onto enough of it to get through the days. No pressure, not much that needs to get done this week. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

In my support group meeting yesterday, we were talking about the shootings, and I mentioned Teri the bagger. The leader of the meeting, who leads many other such meetings, said he'd been hearing about Teri the bagger all week. "I think half of Boulder must have known her," he said. What would Teri the bagger have thought of that? Life is so sad, and so strange.

Reading post: The Last of the Mohicans

I've finished my first book for the 2021 Classics Challenge: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was published in 1826 (but set in 1757, almost 70 years earlier). This fits into category #7: New Classic by a Favorite Author. In truth, James Fenimore Cooper is hardly a favorite, but I have read something else by him (The Pathfinder, last year) and it may be that I will read more in the future.

Last year, reading The Pathfinder, I was quite conscious of not having read The Last of the Mohicans, the most famous of Cooper's five-book Leatherstocking series. So now I've rectified that. Mohicans is the second in the series, so maybe I should go back and read the first in the series, The Pioneeers, but since that is set at a later time (1793), maybe I'd want to read The Deerslayer, which was published later but set earlier, in 1740. I suspect I may eventually find an excuse to read them all.

Mohicans is very different from Pathfinder, despite the presence of Natty Bumppo (aka Hawk-eye, la Longue Carabine, and other names) and Chingachgook, his Mohican brother. There is less humor, and in its place we have extensive violence. In addition, two main characters die, which I wasn't expecting -- though maybe the title should have been a clue.

The novel is set during the French & Indian War, and is loosely based on a true series of events, specifically the Siege of Fort William Henry. The British, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro, commanded this fort near Lake George in New York state, and were attacked by the French, led by General Montcalm, and the Native Americans allied with them. General Webb, who commanded nearby Fort Edward, sent troops to help but eventually would send no more, and Fort William Henry conceded defeat to the French. While they were leaving the fort, some of the Indians allied with the French attacked the British, killing (according to Wikipedia) between 70 and 184 of them. They also took 500 as prisoners.

In The Last of the Mohicans, the two beautiful (fictional) daughters of Munro (as he is called in the book) are at Fort Edward and proceed to Fort William Henry to be with their father. Cora and Alice are accompanied by an American soldier called Duncan Heyward, who is in love with Alice, a teacher and practitioner of religious music called David Gamut, and an Indian guide, called Magua. Magua turns out to be evil and abandons them in the forest, but luckily they are found by Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and the latter's son, Uncas, who rescue them and defend them from Magua and other Indians. Cora, Alice, Heyward, and David eventually make it to the fort, but when Colonel Munro accepts defeat and they have to leave the fort, Magua captures Cora (who he desires for a wife), Alice, and David, and runs away with them. This is for the best, since most all of the other whites in the fort are killed by the Indians in a terrible massacre (much worse than what really happened).

In the second part of the book, Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, Uncas, Heyward, and Colonel Munro head north to find Munro's daughters, helped by Uncas's almost magical tracking skills. In the end, SPOILER ALERT, Magua kills Uncas and one of his associates kills Cora, but Hawk-eye shoots Magua, and the local Delaware Indians (who are related to the Mohicans) massacre the local Huron Indians (Magua's tribe), and there is a big joint funeral for Cora and Uncas, who the Delawares seem to think will have some sort of a marriage in heaven, though Hawk-eye strongly disapproves of this idea. We are told that Colonel Munro dies soon after, Heyward and Alice marry, and Hawk-eye and Chingachgook continue to lead their wild lives together.

This was an interesting book to start this year's Challenge with, for several reasons. First, it was a very popular book when first published and has remained popular ever since. Its portrayal of Native Americans was likely very influential. It has been filmed several times, and I just picked up the 1992 Daniel Day-Lewis version from the library. The title is familiar even to those who have never read the book, and, according to Wikipedia, it has come to mean "the sole survivor of a noble race or type." 

But James Fenimore Cooper's attitude toward the Indians he writes about is worth looking at closely. While the book is full of praise for the talents of Uncas and Chingachgook, it also clearly portrays them (and the other Native Americans in the book) as members of a dying race. As Tamenund (ancient leader of the Delawares, based on a real person) says at the end: "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again." Basically, Cooper wrote romantically about the END of Indians, not their continuing existence in the world. His books helped spread this view, the idea that soon there wouldn't be any more Indigenous people, not that they would continue to live and be part of America.

When I read The Pathfinder last year, I thought the racial sentiments expressed in the book were almost progressive. I'd have to go back and check that book again, but based on the racial sentiments expressed in The Last of the Mohicans, I think I was probably wrong. The difference between the two books is that in Pathfinder, there are few concerns about intermarriage. In Mohicans, it's an issue. First of all, Colonel Munro's daughter Cora is mixed-race -- a distant ancestor on her mother's side was Black. Although Cora is beautiful and spirited, the American soldier Heyward has no interest in her, only in Alice, who is described as "alabaster." Instead, Magua the Huron is attracted to her, and later, apparently, so is Uncas (I didn't actually notice Uncas' interest, but Richard Slotkin, who wrote the introduction to the edition I read, assures me it's there). Cora finds Magua's attentions disgusting, but I'm not sure how she feels about Uncas. Hawk-eye, whose opinions are generally supposed to be the wisest, believes the races should not mix. He describes himself as "a man without a cross," which I thought meant he wasn't religious, but which Richard Slotkin tells me means that Hawk-eye is pure white, no crossbreeding in him.

So, The Last of the Mohicans presents us with a number of Cooper's opinions: Indians are a dying race, they have "gifts" as Hawk-eye puts it, and should be admired for what they are, but basically they are inferior to white people, who were in the process of inheriting the earth at the time the book was set (1757) and written (1826), and should not intermarry with them. And this was, for the time, a liberal view -- other authors were much worse.

I should add that I didn't enjoy the book very much. It's more exciting than Pathfinder was last year, fewer long boring discursive passages, but I also kept getting confused about what was happening. In the next-to-last chapter, when Hawk-eye shoots someone, I completely missed it. Later I read a review that mentioned Hawk-eye had shot this person, so I went back to the book. I had to read the passage over and over before I saw it.

...It was now, when the body of his enemy was most collected together, that the agitated weapon of the scout was drawn to his shoulder. The surrounding rocks, themselves, were not steadier than the piece became for the single instant that it poured out its contents. The arms of [    ] relaxed, and his body fell back a little, while his knees still kept their position. Turning a relentless look on his enemy, he shook his hand in grim defiance. But his hold loosened, and his dark person was seen cutting the air with its head downwards, for a fleeting instant, until it glided past the fringe of shrubbery which clung to the mountain, in its rapid flight to destruction.

I thought he just fell off the mountain. Missed the shooting entirely. It's possible that I was sleepy, for I mainly read the book right before bed.

Well, I'll be interested to watch the movie, because I gather from reading about it that it attempts to eliminate some of the racism, especially regarding the two beautiful sisters. Also, I love Daniel Day-Lewis, but he's not at all who I would have imagined as Hawk-eye. So we'll see, probably tonight. 

Postscript: I did watch the movie and wanted to add a few comments. It's a great, fun movie, very exciting and well-acted. There are big changes from the book, but they all seemed to make emotional sense. Each time there was a diversion from the book -- oh, they killed off this character, not that one -- I would think, OK, that works, I'm OK with that. I think that says something about the book, that its story is deeper than the complicated surface plot.

Much of the racial ick from the book is gone. Magua doesn't want to marry Cora, he wants to kill her, so we don't have to worry about interracial marriage issues (Uncas and Alice are interested in each other, but it's not gone into much). The biggest change from the book is that Hawk-eye is a young man, around the age of Uncas, and Chingachgook is his adopted father who refers to Hawk-eye as "my white son." That gives Daniel Day-Lewis the opportunity to be the romantic lead and fall for Cora, who in this story is not part Black, but still beautiful and spirited. The Hawk-eye from the book could not be imagined in this role. Making Hawk-eye the leading man requires that the book's focus on Uncas be changed -- the whole second half of the book is reduced to a couple of big scenes. But a two-hour movie can't include everything from a 350-page novel, so...

The biggest surprise in the movie, for me, was Magua, played by the wonderful Wes Studi. I'm sorry, but Studi steals the show. Every time Magua is in a scene, you can't take your eyes off him. In the book, Magua is pathetic and horrible, very unsympathetic. In the movie, Magua isn't exactly sympathetic, but he's the most well-rounded character of them all. You feel like you understand him -- or want to. So I would recommend the movie just for that. Wes Studi is Cherokee, and he was playing a Huron, but the languages of the Cherokee and the Huron are both Iroquoian. So when, in the movie, they had trouble finding a Huron language expert for some parts, Studi simply spoke Cherokee instead of Huron. I thought that was very cool.

It just occurred to me how surprised James Fenimore Cooper would have been if he could have seen Wes Studi play Magua.