Most of my essay reading, in fact these days almost all of my reading, was art based.  My favorite art essay collection was in The Steins Collect catalogue for the SFMOMA.  Combined the essays gave a picture of the family and their experience with and impact on modern art.  The collection was organized by family member:  Leo Stein, Sarah and Michael Stein, and the most famous of all, Gertrude Stein.  By happenstance, I was reading the collection when Woody Allen released “Midnight in Paris.”  The essays provided a scholarship background to many of the Owen Wilson Paris scenes.  I read 10 essays in this collection.

In response to an photography exhibit at the Getty Center about trees, I read an extended essay called The Tree by John Fowles.  I wrote about it for Earth Day earlier this year.  Whew!  At least I wrote about one essay!

Although I read it and listed it for last year’s collection, once again I read “Here is New York” by E.B. White while sitting in a cafe in New York City.  It is an essay worth reading every time I go to New York City, it adds a dimension to the visit that doesn’t diminish upon re-reading.

In preparation for the de Kooning exhibit at MOMA, I read two Clement Greenberg essays that discussed this artist:  ”‘American Type’ Painting” and “The Late Thirties in New York.”  Plus, the dense and long introductory essay in the exhibit catalogue “Space to Paint” by John Elderfield.

Last, but not least, is my companion in the car, the Mark Slouka collection Essays from the Nick of Time.  Through carpools and quick lunches this book kept me company.  I have notes and comments throughout each essay, I’ve loved them.  I’ve read “Hitler’s Couch,” “Arrow and Wound,” “Listening for Silence,” and “Historical Vertigo.”  Actually, I’ve read “Arrow and Wound” twice and will probably read it again tonight now that I’m thinking about it.  This is a stellar collection.

That’s it for this year, 19 in total that I can document although I’m certain I read far more.  Next year I’m going to be do better!!  If nothing else, maybe I should buy fewer essays and read more of them.

Keith and I enjoy learning about our city, so much so that a few years ago, we spent 10 weeks of our date nights attending a History of L.A. course at UCLA.  We learned some of the reasons behind the literary and cultural views of the city.  It was born on a bed of hype.  The sales pitch has variations, but from the beginning L.A. has been sold as an image and, as we all know, images rarely live up to their promise.  It’s almost doomed from the beginning to disappoint.  Knowing our city, rather than just living on the surface of it, has added a lot to our lives.  That’s why I’ve been excited to follow Christopher Hawthorne’s Reading L.A. series on Culture Monster.

Christopher is the architecture critic for the L.A. Times and he’s spending this year reading about Los Angeles.  He’s picked 27 books, all non-fiction with a variety of history, memoir and architecture choices.  There’s even potential that some of them won’t be dismal.  Working through the books chronologically, the first two discussed in January were fairly obscure, I think reading his overview of them is sufficient.  However, my favorite and in my opinion the best history of L.A., Southern California: An Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams, was on tap for February.  If you are only going to read one book about L.A., this is the one.  Hawthorne acknowledged it as the source of future books on the city:

Southern California: An Island on the Land is, if not quite our urtext, then easily the most significant volume ever published on L.A.’s civic and urban character.  What makes the book feel so definitive begins with the way it knits skepticism with consistent, if always clear-eyed, enthusiasm — and in so doing anticipates the whole diverse spectrum of later studies of Los Angeles and its architecture, from the upbeat rhapsodies of Reyner Banham to the bleak-black critique of Mike Davis.

There are a few other books on Hawthorne’s list that I’ve read, most notably City of Quartz by Mike Davis (very dark view of L.A.) and Holy Land by D.J. Waldie (a lovely memoir that I think of every time I travel south on the 405).  I know I can’t keep up with all the books, but February’s post on Five California Architects by Esther McCoy caused me to look for a copy and there are a couple I’m going to try to read with Hawthorne.  GOOD Magazine’s Book Club is taking on Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles:  The Architecture of Four Ecologies in April, I’m going to join in.

Check out the list of books, let me know if your interested in reading any and we can pair up to read together, along with with Christopher Hawthorne.

I Love Anne Fadiman

I spent a good portion of my essay reading reveling in Ex Libris. If you love books and you haven’t read her volume of essays on reading and books, buy it right now and read it.  Anne’s parents raised her in a reading household and, as a mother who is trying to do the same with her children, it’s reassuring to see that she loved it.  One essay describes how her family loved to discover long, difficult words.  In our family, my husband collects words all year long (most from the word-a-day service from dictionary.com), writes them on 3×5 cards and then during meals on our big family vacation (because three meals a day, every day, for two weeks is too much family conversation for teenagers) he quizzes all of us.  Kyle tries to find meanings from his Latin classes, I tend to know the word or just make up a definition, and Kelsey is highly motivated by the dime the kids get for every correct definition.

For our upcoming vacation, I’m going to copy “Never Do That To A Book” and read it over a leisurely dinner.  We are a family of doing everything to a book.  We stick things in them, we prop them open, I write all over mine, we use them as door stops (two summers ago we used The World is Flat, last year War and Peace, and I’ve been trying to  use the volume of law review journals that Keith edited 20 years ago this summer, but he keeps putting that hefty book away), our books are under the car seats and stuck willy nilly through out the house.  My kids will be astonished to hear that our treatment of books, something we love, would offend some people.

Her “You Are There” essay rang true for me.  Whenever I travel, I look for books about where I’m going (Idlewild Books is a great resource).  My stack for our upcoming England trip weighs as much as I do (my suggestions for Italy and San Miguel de Allende).  But I was able to experience you-are-there reading right after this essay when I sat on a bench in Central Park reading “Here is New York.”

On the way to Central Park, I saw on my Blackberry that Daniel Schorr died.  I loved his insights and banter with Scott Simon on Saturday mornings.  It felt like a fitting way to remember him was to read E.B. White, to me they evoke the same calm wisdom and charm.  So I curled up on a bench and leisurely read “Here is New York.”  In the midst of the hordes and noise of New York City, I experienced a moment of serenity, E.B. White brought the depth and strength of New York to life.  He wrote about the history that permeates the city, what unites it, and what type of person it attracts and retains.  And then, in one of the closing paragraphs of an essay written 61 years ago, are these words:

The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in everyone’s mind.  The city, for the first time in its long historoy, is destructible.  A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions.  The intimation of mortality is part of New York now:  In the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

No doubt he was thinking of the atom bomb, but his words were too close for comfort.  No wonder a photo exhibit of post 9/11 New York City was entitled Here is New York.

It can be difficult for some to understand what was truly revolutionary about Impressionism.  Looking back from Pop Art to Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism, by the time our eyes land on Impressionism, what’s the big deal?  The Birth of Impressionism grounds the reader in the 1860s art world describing the Salon monopoly and the popular art of the time.  The first section includes four essays on the accepted art of the time: realism, soft porn nudity sold as classicism, grand history painting, and Orientalism.

The catalogue and the show set up Manet as the turning point from the conservative art to modern art.  The essay entitled “Manet:  Innovation and Innovation” nails his pivotal role as an artist who wanted to succeed in the Salon world but opened the door to displaying modern life in a manner that loosened the restrictions of formal painting.  The catalogue doesn’t limit itself to the paintings in the exhibition.  Especially with Manet, it is important to show his development with such works as “Luncheon in the Grass,” “Olympia,” and “The Dead Toreador” none of which are in the show but the book discusses in the context of his career.  The third section of the catalogue, entitled Impressionism and the New Painting shows how he was the leader of loosely knit group of artists who discussed a different way of making art, but each with his own style.  The Impressionists weren’t a disciplined group with one set manifesto and style, they were artists united in their willingness to break outside of the bounds of Salon painting.

Woven in with the revolution in art, the catalogue portrays the importance of the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the bloody week of May 1871.  The essay “The Terrible Year” puts the pictures relating to these events in context.  The works discussed, Meissonier’s ‘The Siege of Paris” or Chavannes “The Pigeon” and “The Balloon”, aren’t technically precursors of Impressionism, but they document events that turned the society the artists lived in upside down.  It’s this upheaval that helped wear down the resistance to ‘New Painting.’

My primary criticism would be how little attention was given to Degas, while not my favorite Impressionist, I would have given him more importance in the catalogue and the exhibit.  But then again, the catalogue is about the birth of an art movement and to accurately document that, the reader needs to know what the movement is coming from and who bore the birth pains, all of which the catalogue effectively accomplishes with gorgeous reproductions.

On a side note, I was pleased to see that the bulk of the catalogue was translated by Alison Anderson, a translator I interviewed last year.  This is the third book I have read and reviewed for the Art  History Challenge.

People who have read the book describe the opening scene:  Jeannette is in the back seat of a taxi in NYC going to a dinner party and she looks out the window to see her mother digging through a trash dumpster.  While the scene pulls the reader in from the beginning, after hearing about it multiple times and nothing else in the book, it all sounded too depressing and heavy to read.  It isn’t.

Jeannette had a horrible childhood, no doubt.  The book is appropriate for child abuse month because the parents are far more concerned with themselves, whether it be from drinking or narcissism or laziness, to provide the very basics for their children.   The children often go hungry (Jeannette describes hiding in the girl’s bathroom at school to steal the lunch bags thrown in the trash), do not have enough clothes, don’t bathe, and are frequently cold or living outside.  The father returns home drunk when he show up and the mother is incapable of leaving him or holding down a job.  Both parents justify their behavior as lifestyle choices, which I don’t have a problem with until they  have children and refuse to provide for their basic needs.  Once all of their children moved out of the house, the fact that Jeannette’s parents decided to live as squatters digging through dumpsters is fine, they are adults who have the right to choose their own lifestyle.

Yet, the picture isn’t black and white.  Jeannette describes a life with strong elements of adventure and love.  One of the most heartwarming scenes was the Christmas Jeannette’s father took each child outside to pick a star for their Christmas present.  It’s clear that for Jeannette every time she sees Venus (she traded up for a planet), it carries her father’s love for her.  Personally, if Jeannette’s parents couldn’t afford to give their kids presents because money was tight rather than because the father drank away their funds, the story would have meant more to me, but it isn’t my story to tell or my life to accept.  I’m impressed by Jeannette’s ability to overcome the physical and financial circumstances of her life and for finding ways to forgive and love her parents for themselves.

It is this aspect of acceptance that raises The Glass Castle beyond a hard-luck childhood memoir to a story of hope.

Politics, history and Art, This Book was Written for Me

I meant to write this the day The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver won the first round of the Tournament of Books, but it’s been a crazy week.  I liked the book better than the judge or the commentators, and, I have to say that their reading and review of the book was too superficial for me.  I have a feeling that The Lacuna may make it one more round at the very most, so here’s my opportunity to say I enjoyed it.  In part because I was a Soviet Studies major in college, so I find Trotsky an interesting character (if you agree, try In the Casa Azul by Meaghan Delahut), also because I love history and last, but not least, I enjoy art.

Politics

Kingsolver has a lot to say out the press and public acceptance of whatever appears in black and white.  Repeatedly through the discussions of the press in Mexico and later in the United States with Harrison, the main character, Kingsolver portrays the press as the howler monkeys introduced on the first page:

In the beginning were the howlers.  They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten.  It would start with just one:  his forced, rhythmic groaning, like a saw blade.  That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune.

Sadly, little has changed, where was the press during the run up to the Iraqi War?  Chasing Michael Jackson or the latest starlet sinking into a life of excess, picking up the latest howl of scandal, rather than asking the hard questions.  Personally, as much of a fan as I am of the New York Times (it’s the paper I read daily), it has a lot to be ashamed of during this first decade of the 21st century.  Kingsolver gives two options for coping with the howling press:  hide in plain sight as flamboyant Frida did, all those wonderful dresses and hairstyles covered her physical deformities and emotional pain, or hide altogether.

The Lacuna concludes with an incredible dialogue during a Committee on Un-American Activities hearing (I’ve always thought the title of those hearings really referred to the activity of the hearings more than the investigation purported to be the focus of the hearings).  A week ago, I would have said those hearings were an embarrassing part of our history, but Liz Cheney’s attacks on lawyers who respect our country and Constitution so much that they represent despicable people reminded me that political persecution is alive and well.

History

Kingsolver uses the book to present a view that history is made up of individuals.  Most obviously, she brings Tolstoy, Rivera and Kahlo to life as breathing, jealous, caring, contradictory people.  The affairs, the meetings, the food, the egos are all mixed together with creating great art and political thought.  We are left with political theory and art that influenced the course of history, but the reader sees the people who created the works.  A conversation between Kahlo and Harrison about his desire to write about the Aztecs reinforces Kingsolver’s intention:

It was a true conversation.  About whether our ancestors had more important lives than we do.  And how they’ve managed to trick us, if they did not.  Frida felt it helped them not to put anything in writing . . . “So we can’t read their diaries,” she pointed out, “or the angry letters they sent their unfaithful lovers.  They died without telling us their complaints.”

She is right about that.  No regreats or petty jealousies.  Only stone gods and magnificant buildings.  We only get to see their perfect architecture, not their imperfect lives.”

That we see the products that last from the past, rather than the reality of lives, gives a distorted view of history.  We examine what we find, which is all well and good, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a better description of history is a striving for truth rather than a documentation of it.

Art

This was a terrific book to read for the Art History Reading Challenge.  In addition to telling the story of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, there are several discussions about the importance of their art.  They painted the common people of Mexico and, especially in Rivera’s case, made them heroic.  It was revolutionary just to paint an everyday Mexican farmer.  There are several discussions about the meaning of art.  Frida says that “to be a good artist you have to know something that’s true . . . [life] has to go in the painting.  Otherwise, why look at it?”  But my favorite passage in the entire book is when Harrison describes the meaning of art:

The purpose of art is to elevate the spirit, or pay a surgeon’s bill.  Or both, really.  It can help a person remember or forget.  If your house doesn’t have many windows in it, you can hang up a painting and have a view.  Or of a whole different country, if you want.  If your spouse is homely, you can gaze at a lovely face and not get in trouble . . . It can be painted on a public wall or locked in a mansion . . . Art by itself is nothing, until it comes into that house.

Writing

Kingsolver uses a variety of devices that create an interesting mosaic of writing.  As mentioned by the judge in the Tournament of Books, the metaphor of the lacuna is used to death.

The point of view is one I dubbed “third person intimate.”  The book is largely journal entries.  I felt like I was looking at the world through Harrison’s eyes, more so than I usually do with third person narratives.  The reader also receives some perspective from Violet, the moral center of the book, and newspaper articles.

My biggest criticism of the book is that Frida’s voice was so vibrant, even through Harrison’s retelling, that once she exits from the book, it gets a bit bland.  I described it on twitter as a reverse Wizard of Oz, going from color to black and white.  Is there an underlying cultural message there because it coincides with Harrison traveling from Mexico to the US?  Maybe.

When I read Holocaust literature as a teenager, I was always the strong determined character who beat the odds and survived.  Tragedy provided a background for my heroic actions as Miep or Corrie Ten Boom.  Motherhood changed all that.  Now I’m the mother who can’t stop the Nazis from forcing her child to dig his own grave.  The mother who trods with so many others in peaceful lines to the gas chambers holding my child’s hand.  Or the very worst, I’m Sophie and I have to choose.  Claire won’t read Holocaust literature anymore, it’s too painful.  I completely support her choice.  If a book comes up that deals with the Holocaust, I quietly warn her to skip it.  But as painful as it is for me to read these stories, there is a part of me that believes if millions of people had to live and die this horror, then the least I can do is witness it in some small way.

My greatest honor as an attorney was the opportunity to work with Bet Tzedek to assist Holocaust survivors in obtaining the “Ghetto Pension” [an aside, if you know if a survivor who has not applied for the 2,000 euro Ghetto Pension/ZRBG pension, please contact Bet Tzedek to determine eligibility, today].  From my limited exposure, it appeared that the survivors who were alive today were swept into the Nazi system late in the war when they were teenagers.  Not too young or too old to fall victim to the selections, strong enough to survive until the war ended within the next 12 to 18 months.  And they barely survived.  My teenage visions of bravery were more illusory than I thought.  Elie Wiesel’s Night supports my very unscientific theory.

The Nazis arrived in Wiesel’s village in Transylvania when he was fifteen.  His experience paralleled so many of the stories I heard as an attorney.  First the community is forced into one or two designated areas, ghettos.  Then after a period of time the ghettos are cleared out and the inhabitants sent to concentration camps.  The Wiesel family is shipped via cattle car to Birkenau.  Immediately separated from his  mother and sisters, never to see his mother and youngest sister again, Wiesel took his father’s hand and entered hell.

Weisel was stripped of everything, his clothing, his hair, his dignity, all freedom of choice, his humanity, and most difficult for me to read, his faith.  In many ways his story is similar to many other Holocaust memoirs.  What sets Night apart, what actually glows amidst all of the terror, is Wiesel’s relationship with his father.  They live to keep the other alive.  Even after Wiesel loses all of his faith in God, on the verge of death himself, Wiesel prays that he will have the strength to be a good son.  Night is a Holocaust memoir, but it is also Weisel’s struggle with accepting how he acted as a son.  I read their story and wonder at what a blessing he was to his father, but it’s not my opinion or anyone else’s that Weisel needs to reconcile himself with, it is his own.

The Social Justice Challenge picked religious freedom as the topic to explore this month.  It motivated me to pick up Night which had been sitting on my bookshelf since my last visit to the Museum of Tolerance [another aside, here's my adventure taking teenagers to visit the Museum of Tolerance for Kids Off the Couch] .  What is most impressive about this Challenge is that participants agree to actually do something related to the monthly topic at least three times a year.  My activity for this topic was a lecture I gave at my daughter’s middle school Global Studies class about applying for Holocaust reparations and working with Holocaust survivors.  The students were reading the Maus books in English and had just learned about German war reparations after WWI.  I talked to them about the various Holocaust reparation programs and what the survivors I worked with had to prove to obtain the Ghetto Pension.  When I asked for questions at the end, there was just silence, which made me wonder if I bored them.  Then came an onslaught, all quizzical, not quite understanding one point or another, trying to make sense of a system that is inexplicable.  I answered their questions, and left knowing they, like the rest of us, will have to grapple with a horror  for which there isn’t any justification, no excuse, no sense  and no ability to make whole.

The English governess occupied a unique and lonely role in society.  She must be educated enough to teach others, but poor  enough to needed a job.  She wasn’t in the same social class, but she ate at with the family.  She was present, but could be treated with disdain.  She wasn’t a servant, but she wasn’t a friend.  Agnes’ experience walking home from church exemplifies this quandary:

But when I did walk, this first half of the journey was generally a great nuisance to me.  As none of the before-mentioned ladies and gentlemen ever noticed me, it was disagreeable to walk beside them, as if listening to what they said, or wishing to be thought one of them, while they talked over me or across, and if their eyes, in speaking, chanced to fall on me, it seemed as if they looked on vacancy – as if they either did not see me, or were very desirous to make it appear so.

It was disagreeable, too, to walk behind, and thus appear to acknowledge my own inferiority; for, in truth, I considered myself pretty nearly as good as the best of them, and wished them to know that I did so, and not to imagine that I looked upon myself a a mere domestic, who knew her own place too well to walk beside such fine ladies and gentlemen as they were . . . though her young ladies might choose to have her with them, and even condescend to converse with her, when no better company were at hand.

It was an isolated life, not part of the community of servants downstairs and excluded from the family life upstairs.  Agnes goes weeks without having a conversation outside her role a governess.

The governess’ presence at the dinner table served as an uncomfortable warning and threat.  The governess was a constant reminder that if a daughter didn’t marry, she would have to earn a living and her primary option was to be a governess herself.  On the other hand, an attractive, charming and single woman constantly present in the house could provide competition for the daughters in the household.  It wasn’t unheard of for a governess to marry, as Miss Taylor became Mrs. Weston in Austen’s Emma.

This in between state exists today in American society, what is the role of the full time and/or live-in nanny?  How much is she family and how much is she an employee?  What authority does she have over the children?  How much responsibility for their upbringing?  I’ve never read The Nanny Diaries, but I may pick it up to compare the viewpoints from childcare professionals across the centuries.

This is my first book for the All About Bronte Challenge.  If Anne’s sisters live up to Anne, I’m going to enjoy reading each of their books.

Last year I joined four reading challenges:  the Essay Reading Challenge, the Art History Reading Challenge, the World Citizen Challenge and 100 Shots of Short (a short story challenge).  All taught me a bit about my reading and the subject I explored.  Well, almost all, I never read a single book for the World Citizen Challenge, but I did read the New York Times all year, which should compensate a little bit.  Here are my plans for this year:

• My favorite challenge was the Essay Reading Challenge, so I’ve joined it again.  Because I don’t write reviews of each of the essays, there is a page dedicated to this challenge and I’ll write a wrap up post when I’m done.
• 100 Shots of Short is a perpetual challenge and I’m just over halfway done.  Again, because I don’t review every short story, I have a separate page for 100 Shots of Shorts.
• I love the Art History Reading Challenge and am looking forward to another year of reading about and viewing art.  Last year I committed to the six book level, this year I’m going to strive for nine books.  I’m hoping to combine what I’m reading with what I’m seeing to enrich both.  I will write separate posts about the books I read.
• I signed up for Literary Affair’s Bronte Literary Luncheon series and was excited to see the All About Bronte Challenge.  I was going to read the books anyway, so it feels like a “gimmie” but why pass up a list crossing off opportunity?  This challenge includes books by and about the Brontes plus spin offs from the novels, and the Bronte movies.  I’ll commit to reading three Bronte books, one from each sister, but am hoping to do more.  I’ll write separate posts for my book reviews.
• Even though I utterly failed at the World Citizen Challenge, I’ve decided to join the Social Justice Challenge.  For me, a book can be good on it’s own, but what makes it rise to the pantheon of great in my life is if it contributes to my non-reading life.  That could mean that it is the spring board for a great conversation, or it causes me to see a different viewpoint, or it enriches an experience related to the book.  What attracts me to the Social Justice Challenge is that for at least three months during 2010 the participants commit to doing something.  Each month of the challenge concentrates on a different issue.  This month is religious freedom and next month’s topic is water.  Each month the participants commit to a certain level of activity related to the issue, some months just reading a book, other months reading and doing an activity ,and if needed, a few months can be spent just observing what others are doing.  I’m looking forward to exploring important topics a little bit deeper.  During the months that I’m reading a book, I’ll post about it.

Those are my hopes for 2010, in addition to reading books for book groups, literary events, vacation, spiritual direction, translated books and just because it looks interesting.  Let us know of any interesting challenges you’ve found (even if you didn’t join).

But let me first start with Kim who last year made a true literary resolution to elevate her daily conversations about books and reading, thus encouraging others to read and to talk about what they’ve read.   Kim also challenged herself as a reader in a variety of awe-inspiring ways: I invite you to enter the word “challenge” into our search engine and discover the various goals she set for herself–and kept, from reading more essays to searching out books about art history.  This year, it was my turn to think about a New Year’s resolution.

But there’s a problem: I’m terrified of goals because I have a bad habit of not keeping them.  You may have noticed I didn’t join any of Kim’s challenges.  It wasn’t because she didn’t invite me.

So I didn’t wake up all hungover and bloated on New Year’s Day and start making lists of how “this year is going to be different.”  I’m too old to believe that January 1 is anything special.  I’ve seen too many come and go and can’t help noticing that the woman who wakes up on on the first day of the new year is the same one who went to sleep the night before.  She’s just a day older.

And yet there’s this: I’m going to be a vegetarian in 2010.

I realize that’s not a big deal.  A good portion of you reading this blog are probably vegetarians or are at least trying to eat less meat.  The point isn’t that I’m doing this thing: the point is how I was inspired.

Part 1: I heard a snippet of an interview on NPR back in mid-December.  I only got to hear a few seconds which is the story of my radio-listening in general since I’m always going on short pick-up drives and tend to punch the controls every few seconds until I arrive at my destination, but I managed to catch someone saying, “The best thing any single individual can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian.”

How’s that for clean and simple? It certainly spoke to me: I’m worried about the environment and I’ve known for years that the amount of energy needed to make any kind of meat, from beef to chicken, is much higher than that needed to make a comparable number of calories of grain and vegetables.  So there’s that.  And I hate reading about how cows are treated, crammed into small pens, forcefed grain and corn when they should be eating grass until their stomachs bloat and they have to be dosed with heavy amounts of antibiotics.  And then there are the growth hormones.  And the fact their gas is a huge polluter.  It’s all bad, really.  There is free-range grass-fed beef–at around twenty bucks a pound.  I try to buy it and just can’t bear to pay that much.  Chickens aren’t treated so great either.

I like animals.  I like clean air.  I’m worried about the future.  I get that if we all were suddenly to stop eating meat, the world would be a much better place (except maybe for those in the meat industry, but maybe they could try growing some crops).

I did some sleuthing (i.e. typed some words into Google) and discovered that the NPR interview was with Mark Bittman, my favorite NY Times food writer, who’s written a book called Food Matters about the environmental impact of our food choices on the planet.  I can relate to Bittman.  He’s not all laid-back and groovy and “meat will make you sick, man.”  It’s not that he finds meat unappealing and I don’t either.  In fact, I love steak.  The point is: it’s simply better for our world for us not to eat meat.  So we shouldn’t.

Part 2: I was on a vacation with my family over the holidays and we’d brought along some movie screeners to watch.  One of them was Julie and Julia (or is it vice versa?  I’d look it up but by the time I wrote it down, I’d have forgotten it again).  My movie review in a nutshell: loved Julia, hated Julie.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that in the movie–which is BASED ON A BOOK (see?  literary)–Julie decides she’ll set a year-long goal: for exactly one year, she’ll work her way through Julia Child’s iconic French cookbook.

Maybe it was the fact that 2009 was just ending that made the idea of a year-long goal so appealing to me.  I can remember only one other time that I had a goal that was meant to last for one specific year: I decided to try being gluten-free like my son who has Celiac Disease for an entire year.  It was a combination sympathy/curiosity impulse.  I mostly kept it, although the rules were far more relaxed for me than they were for him.  I could, for instance, eat soy sauce in restaurants which he can’t, since there’s a small amount of wheat in soy cause (crazy, right?)  But I didn’t eat bread or get pastries at Starbucks, and if you don’t think that was a big deal, then you don’t know me very well.

So there I am: Mark Bittman’s words are ringing in my ears and I want a year-long goal.  You already know what I decided.

But it’s not exactly a New Year’s resolution: it’s just a change in my life that happened to start on January 1 and will end on December 31.

Or maybe not.  The truth is, this isn’t like Julie Powell cooking her way through a book of recipes.  This is a decision that feels morally and emotionally right to me.  If the year goes well–and, frankly, if I don’t gain like twenty pounds doing this (which is my secret fear)–I think I’d like to do this for . . . well . . . forever.

A couple of my kids have joined me, with the agreement that they can lapse now and then which is more than fine.  It’s better to move in the right direction slowly than to jump over there and jump back because it’s too hard.

So far, it’s been a piece of cake.  Several pieces, actually.  I made this gluten-free milk chocolate cake that’s kind of amazing.

About those twenty pounds . . .