Butterflies Get Sick and Die: A Hangover in Belize and Kingsolver's New Book

It's Katherine today.

I finished Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Flight Behavior, about an hour ago.  It's about butterflies.  I want to write about it, but I'm not sure if I want to recommend the book.  That's odd because I love Kingsolver stuff.  It's hard for me to know if my problem with this book is actually the book or if it's my personal baggage getting in the way.

Given my ambivalence, I think I'll begin by describing an unlikely night of drinking tamarind juice and copious amounts of vodka in a jungle preserve in Belize about five years ago.  I have butterfly baggage and it starts there.

We were with Bud and Janet Simmons at a place called Five Sisters near the Mayan ruins that straddle the border of Belize and Guatemala.  The day before we'd done two flights and a bus ride from Belize City to the National Preserve and the resort there with our lodging.   The final leg of the journey included a stint on a nightmarish dirt road in a van with suspension issues where we covered 17 miles in two hours.  When we arrived and had our mediocre dinner, I'd been really put off by my cocktail before dinner because the tonic mixer was pink and a pink gin and tonic just seemed wrong.  Exhausted after the day, we'd gone to our cool thatched huts and slept.

The next morning we headed out to the ruins.  It was my first such experience and I was transformed by the magic of the past.  The only memory that interrupts the joy of this day is my mental photo of the army folks who guarded us up the final part of the road to the ruins and the  multiple guards with assault weapons strapped on and roaming the ruins with the tourists.  Our guide told us nasty Guatemalan bandits liked to rob tourists and to steal a plant used to tint American money it's special green color.  Mostly the ruins were wonderful and I learned you can change the colors of begonia petals if you hold a flame to them.  Who knew?

On the way back to the resort, we stopped and played in a river with a waterfall and had a small picnic. There was a big cave we stopped and looked at as well.  There are lots of ruins and caves and playful water spots to investigate in Belize.  It was a good day.  The guides loved our foursome and at the end of the day, one handed me a jug of the tamarind juice we'd had with lunch.  With a wink, he told me it was good with vodka.

For me, it was a day to celebrate.  My world had expanded and I knew I'd be checking out Mayan ruins in future trips.  It's hard to explain when something happens to you and the world is a different place afterwards.  It was that kind of day for me.

The four of us gathered in one of our thatched huts and had one of those wonderful evenings that good friends have when they've shared something new with each other.  We sat and relived our day and ate canned peanuts and drank.  The boys drank beer--Belikans--awful stuff, but all that was available.  Janet drank something, but with restraint.  I drank lots and lots of vodka and tamarind juice.  It went down so easily and it had been such a good day.  I no longer eat or drink anything with tamarind juice.

The next morning was horrible beyond belief.  We had tours set up and we were going no matter what. The details of my morning can be imagined.  With a head I thought would never stop hurting and a stomach that I hoped could take the long dirt road trip involved, we headed off for a canoe trip through burial caves conveniently located on the river's path.  The caves creeped me out because I felt awful, my headlamp stopped working shortly after we entered the several mile-long first cave, and I'd been reading this really scary book about caves called The Descent.  I was a shaky horrible mess at the end.

We got back in our van and headed for the next event with a picnic planned close by.  We bumped to the butterfly farm and a spread of fried chicken and Cokes was waiting.  Heaven.  I don't know why, but fried foods or Mexican food is what heals sometimes.  An hour in the jungle shade with greasy food and sugar and no movement and I was myself again.

And now I finally get to why I'm telling this story.  The butterfly farm.  I think the word "farm" was hyperbolic.  There was a small enclosure of chicken wire filled with very colorful butterflies.  That was it.

We entered the constantly moving enclosure with a guide who spoke minimal English; Janet was our best hope at Spanish and her shopping vocabulary wasn't getting us far.  We are teachers though and we ask questions and we want to learn.  There is no point of being trapped in a butterfly "farm" with butterflies crawling all over you unless you learn from the experience.

We asked many questions, but our language-limited guide had only one answer to ALL questions:  "The butterflies will get sick and die."

What happens if a butterfly escapes the enclosure?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
What happens if I touch a butterfly?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
How often does a butterfly mate?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."
Do these butterflies migrate in the wild?  "The butterfly will get sick and die."

You get the idea.  To this day the four of us cannot respond to any butterfly spotting of any description without a verbal or mental reaction:  The butterfly will get sick and die.

So here I am and I've just finished Flight Behavior--a book that is ultimately about butterflies.  It even has a butterfly guide as a minor character.  I'm not sure I would have finished the book if I wasn't such a Puritan about reading books--I mean, a girl is supposed to finish what she starts.  I knew from the moment I realized the book was about butterflies, and not birds or bats for instance, that butterflies would get sick and die.  And sure enough, they do.  Lots of them.  In fact, that's the point of the book.  The climate is killing the monarch butterflies.  The species is getting sick and it could die.

The tragedies of climate change in the biological world are many and Kingsolver turns a real Mexican butterfly catastrophe into a fictional possibility where she can set up a battle between Appalachian religious folks and a wonderful butterfly scientist trying to figure out why the monarchs stopped to hibernate in West Virginia one winter when the Mexican possibility no longer existed.

Dellarobia is the primary character who is a central metaphor for butterflies as well.  Dellarobia married the wrong man (too young and pregnant) and is trapped in a future that she doesn't see as hers.  The book begins with her flight from it.  All the characters are fleeing and only Byron Ovid (our intrepid, but very cool, butterfly scientist) and the bland local preacher, Bobby Ogle, seem to stand up to save the butterfly-laden trees that Dellarobia's relatives want to log so they can pay their bills.  Dellarobia needs to migrate herself.  She has two kids, a lug of a husband, and she's discovered she's good at science and wants to learn.  Will she fly, which is really her only way to fight?  And that is the point of the book.  Sometimes that animal instinct to fight or flee in a dangerous situation is a lot more confusing than we think.  Flight can be the fight.  Ok.  Got it and I think I would have figured it out without the message (almost in capital letters) n the last pages of the book.

Though Kingsolver books are big on character and short on action in general, this one is more so.  I learned a lot about tracking butterflies and what butterflies look like and behave like when they are hibernating--they hang on clumps on trees.  I learned that religious folk in the Appalachians don't think the climate is changing--oh really?  I watched the characters flee in numerous directions and fight the wrong things and I watched Dellarobia learn not to run by running away.  It's one of the few books that the end of marriage and family and floodwaters destroying things seemed the best possibility.  I suspect the ending might be worth the effort for someone slogging through a really tough divorce and trying to find a new and better migration for the future.

In a while I will know if this book sticks.  It might.  I'm doubting it though.  Kingsolver's last book, The Lacuna, is among my favorites and it just won't go away from my head or heart.  I'm pretty sure, however, that Flight Behavior, like butterflies, will just get sick and die and I won't remember much of anything in a year.

A Novel List

During a recent interview, Caroline Kennedy was asked to name her favorite novel.  It was impossible for her to name just one, but she did list a couple that made her laugh (LUCKY JIM and A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES) and some that made her cry (JUDE THE OBSCURE for one).  You have to admit those are some pretty impressive choices.  I loved Kingsley Amis' LUCKY JIM so much that, like the idiot teacher I all too frequently was, I convinced the department to get a few hundred copies for my Humor in Lit class.  LUCKY JIM, without going into particulars, is a British comedy of manners, every page filled with wit dry enough to make your lips pucker.  I loved it as a senior in college.  Imagine my surprise when my students didn't share my enthusiasm.  LUCKY JIM became a symbol in my career of the hubris that sometimes got in the way of effective lesson planning.  The point is that choosing LUCKY JIM says a lot about Caroline Kennedy, at least to me and other Amis fans.  And then her choice of JUDE THE OBSCURE!  Most people would have settled for TESS.  It is right up there with Woody Allen including SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION in his list of "Things That Make Life Worth Living."

Of course, now my own answer to the favorite novel question is going through my head like an old and increasingly irritating melody.  What follows is a purging of sorts.

I'm like Caroline Kennedy in that I couldn't possibly name one favorite novel.  If the question instead was to name a favorite work of literature, I have an immediate answer.  KING LEAR.  I get emotional just typing it.  I saw a production when I was in high school and even though I didn't understand any of it, I knew that something significant was happening.  Father Boyle taught it when I was in his Intro to Shakespeare class my sophomore year.  Father Steele did it with me when I was a senior in his Tragedies class that met at Ernie's Bar at 44th and Lowell at least once a week.  I figured out a way to work it in no matter what class I was teaching.  I even taught it to bewildered sophomores at Marycrest when I was only in my second year of teaching.  Poor kids.  I've seen James Earl Jones, Lawrence Olivier, Paul Scofield, and many more local performers like Ed Baierline (sp) down at The Germinal Stage, all do Lear and all move me from outrage, to pity, to vengeance, to vindication, to joy.  I've almost got it committed to memory.

On the other hand, novels are a different story.  There are the obvious choices:  CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE GREAT GATSBY, HUCKLEBERRY FINN.  Those are the first three that always jump into my mind because I was still in junior high when I read them.  CATCH-22 comes next because every time I reread it (once a year from my sophomore year in high school until I got married and had a life) I came away with a different idea.  But the number one idea to this day is that it is the funniest book I know.  Not as antic but maybe more powerfully satiric, BRAVE NEW WORLD is the only novel that I missed teaching when I retired.

Then there are those choices I make after the first wave.  These are almost like those novels you would, as an English teacher, be remiss in omitting.  MADAME BOVARY is the most fulfilling novel I've read.  I can't think of anything about it that is not simply perfect.  ANNA KARENINA is perhaps a greater book only because it is about such enormous things, but when it comes to style and matching sound to sense, I'll take Flaubert.

And finally, UNDERWORLD by Don DeLillo stuns me with its structure and technique.  It contains the best description of a moment in a baseball game in all of literature, or at least in all of the literature that I'm aware of.

I was going to add LUCKY JIM, but that class long ago, the one where the wrong kids showed up, ruined it for me.

Look! I'm a Low Information Voter

Remember back to the last senate campaign in Colorado when Mark Udall was running for reelection.  During that campaign no conservative was ever heard to refer to him by any other term than "Boulder-liberal, Mark Udall."  It was an obvious speaking point established either formally or informally on a national level.  Even the blond Stepford Wives female furniture on Fox referred to him as that "Boulder-liberal."  There has been a steady stream of similar catch phrase speaking points lately.  First of all, no conservative ever referred to the Affordable Care Act as anything other than Obamacare, being careful to use the term derisively, as if the syllables and the assonance left a nasty taste.  When Obama adopted the term as his own and proclaimed that he liked it during the first debate--the only bright spot he had that night in Denver--conservative pundits, phrase makers, and politicos immediately substituted "Government Take Over of Health Care".  While not as catchy as Obamacare, it's many syllables and loaded word choices provide plenty of opportunity for derision.

There is a new catch phrase speaking point going around and this one I take personally.  I first heard Bill O'Reilly use it during an end of show rant.  Today I saw it in print in Mike Rosen's column ("The Obama Gambit", 3-14-13).  Here, let Mike say it:  "President Obama apparently believes that the younger generation and his low-information voter base. . ."  It was the term "low-information voter base" that got my attention.  Am I the only one who finds irony in a writer who deals almost exclusively in ad hominem diatribes rife with Fox News speaking points drawing attention to folks with "low-information"?  This idea of "low-information voters", mind you, is coming from pundits who align themselves with the same political party that has brought you such high-info ideas as the notion that a woman's body shuts down when raped, assuming of course the rape was a legitimate one.

In today's assault Mike is outraged that Obama would cancel White House tours in response to the sequester.  It is just a political stunt that proves Obama is insincere in his warm and fuzzy reach out to Republicans.  And then he proves this by labeling Obama's offer as so extreme that it was just another cynical public relations ploy.  Apparently Mike wishes Obama's offer, an offer that most conservatives were arguing didn't exist until Obama had to take them to a fucking lunch to convince them that it did, were more reasonable like, say, Paul Ryan's.

Then he goes on to list all the untrue things Obama has claimed about the poor preyed upon Republicans.  For instance, the spurious accusation that Republicans don't want to raise revenue.  Of course they do, Rosen insists, and to suggest otherwise is just another example of Obama's demogoguery.  He adds further "evidence" by telling his loyal readers that the Republicans want more revenue, but they don't want "ever-higher tax rates on capital and successful America capitalists. . ."  Well how is that going to happen?

Let me give you my best take on the Republican position on revenue as told by Paul Ryan.    First of all Mike, you could not be more wrong, or more cynical in your attempt to spin the truth.  Republicans are not interested in increasing revenue.  Rosen looks at Obama's plan with such contempt because it faces reality and does raise revenue by eliminating loopholes.  What it doesn't do is lower the tax rates to 25% to offset the eliminated loopholes.  Their proposal is "revenue neutral", to quote Mr. Ryan.  That means that loopholes (some) will be gone, but that will not raise taxes.  Let me go back and capitalize that.  THAT WILL NOT RAISE TAXES.  All those loopholes will be offset by a lower rate and in fact, unless you are stupid enough to be stuck in the middle class, your taxes will go down.

Rosen's last three sentences:  "He needs to roll up his sleeves and make a deal with the elected loyal (sic) opposition.  And that means settling for some things he doesn't like.  Simpson-Bowles would be a good place to start."

Hey, Mike.  Guess which proposals out there stray furthest from Simpson-Bowles?  Ask Paul Ryan and the rest of the "loyal" opposition.  You could look it up.

Losing Weight: 5 Tips

Katherine here.  I'm postponing work emails (I grade papers this year--enthralling documents created by CDE--eek!) and the next step in doing our taxes.

Since I've just lost about 7-8 pounds, I thought I'd share my current five best weight loss tips.  It's important to note that I haven't been a "big" girl since I was in tenth grade so weight loss is pretty much constant maintenance for me.  I gain and lose the same 5 pounds over and over again.  It's not impressive to the outside world, but from my end, it's a bitch.

I gained more than my usual five pounds the last round--foot injuries ended step classes and running and all I can say is never, ever trust the advice of a clerk at Boulder Running Company.  I run in Newton's from Boulder now and I'll tell that story another day.  My feet and I are doing much better.  The turquoise shoes are pretty cool too.

I've lost the 7-8 pounds and just in time.  The one and only pair of jeans I could wear has basically disintegrated.  I lost the weight just in time.  My jeans are arranged by my weight.  It looks like I have a lot of jeans, but no more than 2-3 pair per poundage-range.  Two pounds can make a difference in which jeans I can choose to wear.  Sad, but true. I realize there is little sympathy for my situation.  I haven't been losing this same five pounds for the last 50 years without realizing that.  I'm just saying it's hard to do.  That, and I no longer have any jeans left in the top poundage range.  I'm not yet sure if that is good or bad news.

Enough.  Here are my current five best tips for weight loss.  I do well if I adhere.

1.  I stop eating sugar (we don't do sugar replacements either) and beef for the most part.

When it comes to the sugar side, fruit is fine.  Nothing with refined sugar.  I love ice cream.  I stop having ice cream.  I have desserts when my mom comes to dinner and sometimes at restaurants, but that's it.  Mom assures me sugar is an important "food group" and it never pays to try and outwit an 86 year old when it comes to food groups.

I stop eating beef for the most part.  Unfortunately, I was raised on beef and I love it.  I love other proteins too though and losing weight shifts my focus to what we're really eating when it comes to meat.  I end up doing a much better job with veggies and fish (a challenge for me) when I pay attention.  I never have too much beef consciously, but when I look at what we're cooking,  I discover we have more beef  than we want to or should have in any one week.

2.  I look at a pound of hamburger.  It's best when they clump it on some white butcher paper at some upscale place.  A pound of hamburger is large.  There is no one place on my body you could take a full pound out--I would be disfigured, not thinner.  The visual image of the hamburger sitting on the butcher paper is good for me to keep in mind.  A pound is a lot to lose and I never underestimate how tough it is to lose just one pound. Losing five pounds (five mounds of hamburger) is huge.

3.  I get on the scales once a week and wait a month before I get on at all.  I tend to gain muscle because I also increase activity and that adds weight at first.  I've had the same belt for years.  It lets me know where I stand.  If I move the buckle stop a notch, time to try the scales.  If the scales are good, it helps me. Best to wait.

4.  I increase my activity.  I go to the gym more and try something different.  This time it's just been going more often.  I've also been running better although I still have a long way to go.  I'm actually working at it again though.  I like the lifting and the walking.  It's the hardcore aerobics that challenge my mind and aging body these days.  Running is circles on the track is only minimally better than running on a treadmill and it seems the weather and my timing for outdoor running just are not in synch.   I think I have to realize that activity has to be artificial (gyms) more than the natural approach I would prefer (hiking in the Tetons) when I try to lose weight.  I'm pretty tired of regimen, but it really helps if losing weight is more than talk.  Adhering to a regimen is the first way I can tell if I'm just wishing to lose weight or if I'm ready to do something.  Basically, I start going to the gym more regularly.

5.  I understand that ANY change takes twelve weeks.  I don't care if you are trying to stop smoking, get over a lover, change a habit, or shift your life from Miracle Whip to Best Foods Mayonnaise--it will take 12 weeks to dent the process if it can be done.  I've been trying to learn to hang up my coat for years and I'm beginning to think I'm genetically indisposed to that change in habit, but I'm not sure I've ever really gone after it in a true twelve week period the way I have weight loss.  If I am going to lose 5 REAL pounds, I start by looking at the calendar and seeing where I will be in twelve weeks.

Sisyphus rolled a rock up a hill eternally.  It's basically the same thing.  Sisyphus beat Zeus by embracing his punishment and smiling in the face of the gods.  I win if I can do four things for twelve weeks.  I'm just glad my "fat" jeans survived until then.

Seafood, Swine, and Wine at Old Major

One of the ways I can tell a restaurant is great is by looking at waiters' reactions when they deliver food to the table.  At places like Mizuna, Frasca, Babbo in NYC, The French Laundry in Yountville you can spot waiters looking over their shoulders as they leave the table because they can't wait to see your reaction to the incredible concoction they just placed in front of you.  I love it when that happens.  I mean wait staff at The Olive Garden don't hand you a bottomless salad bowl with the same conviction.

That's the way it was at Old Major (3316 Tejon) last night.  The place is the latest creation of the same team that brought us Masterpiece Deli.  Is there any sandwich in town better than the Cuban at Masterpiece?  No, unless it's the brisket sandwich at Masterpiece.  Old Major specializes in Seafood, Swine, and Wine as their slogan states.  That slogan is what made me want to try the place out.  The guys who have created Old Major started out their Denver career with Frank Bonanno at Luca d'Italia, so their credentials with swine have an impressive pedigree.  And a couple of years ago they tried to open an upscale seafood place on 17th Avenue someplace, but ran into partner and rent troubles.

The place occupies a pretty large space with a black facade, the name barely visible.  But you can tell you've arrived at the right place by the line of cars in front of the parking valet.  (Thank god for that.  Without the valet parking, parking,  just like on any evening in Highlands, would be close to impossible.)  The mob of people seen milling around the bar area through the huge sheets of glass looking out on Tejon is also a sign that something is happening here.

I'm assuming the inside is supposed to be evocative of a combination of industrial--exposed air ducts, pipes on the wall, exposed hardware on industrial strength tables--and farmhouse--huge banks of bench seating lining the walls and filling up some of the middle areas made from distressed barn wood (or faux barn wood), rough hewn floors, some foods delivered on weathered looking cutting boards, and all the rest--motifs.  In other words, it is kind of a Kitchen-liberal-locally-sourced-uses-old-cooking-oil-to-fuel-car kind of place.

Another reason I felt compelled to go is that as an old literature teacher, I felt it incumbent upon me to patronize a restaurant specializing in pork clever enough to call itself Old Major.  I was a little worried before I got there and saw the menu that they might try to continue the Animal Farm theme by having menu items named after Orwellian characters.  Like a pork confit dish cleverly named Napolean, or how about a plate of trotters and fries helpfully named Snowball.  Just be careful of any meat dish called Boxer!

But that wasn't the case.  It was a simple menu with small plates, a vegetarian three course tasting menu, pork dishes, one beef steak, and seafood.  All of this was being churned out by a huge showcase kitchen with busy chefs butchering hogs in one corner, others whipping out sausages in another, everyone else working on the line.  It reminded me a little of the kitchen vibe at Alice Water's place, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, only this one must be twice the size.

Our waiter gave us an iPad on which we scrolled through wine, beer, and cocktail choices, reasonably priced and not overwhelming in sheer numbers.  It was an interesting change, but I'd rather have a physical wine and drink list.  That's at least human for Christ's sake.

But even with all that atmosphere oozing out of every corner, the food remains the star here.  House made pretzels accompanied with a mustardy butter start the meal.  I began by ordering 5 oysters from the Atlantic coast of Virginia.  They rivaled the oysters I've gotten on restaurants on either coast for freshness.  They tasted just like the sea and they were big and juicy.  Kathie had an endive salad that was as delicious as it was beautiful.  Kathie chose the lobster pot pie appetizer as her main.  I'm always a little skeptical of things like lobster pot pie.  First, because I'm not that wild about lobster, but second because usually such creations have about three decent chunks of lobster accompanied by lots of random vegetables.  Old Major's version was luxuriously filled with lobster in every bite.  Great choice.  I had the trout.  I always order trout if it is on the menu.  This one was perfectly cooked, crispy with Wondra on one side, and translucent and flaky every where else.  For dessert we shared a terrific beignet dish.

The final bill was something like $114.  For a place like that I think that's cheap.  Postpone all further activites and go to Old Major.