The Bauer Confidential

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July’s book club selection was The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani.  Set in early 1600s Iran, this novel tells the tale of a young girl and her mother, who after the unfortunate death of the girl’s father, are forced to seek out their sole relatives in a far away city, and begin a life completely different than the existence they knew in their tiny village.

The girl (about 15) and her mother are more or less slaves to the whims of their hosts, the step-brother of the girl’s father and his tempestuous and conniving wife.  Though essentially reduced to servitude, there are some bright spots in the lives of the main character and her mother.  The girl has a thirst for knowledge, particularly the art of Persian rug making, at which her uncle is an expert and employed by the Shah.  He teaches her a great deal about the aesthetics of this much beloved art form and she is a good student.  She also makes friends with a wealthy girl who teaches her to read and write, but her new friend also uses the girl causing her grief.  The mother works brewing herbal medicine for the wealthy neighbors and between her daughters rug making and her cures they hope to save money for a dowry for the girl.  Unfortunately, the girl makes some bad choices that anger the relatives, and the aunt then uses her power over the two women to pressure them to accept an unfair and damaging proposition for a sigheh, a three month marriage contract that essentially turns the young girl into a prostitute and eventually puts her at odds with everyone she holds dear.  Among all the serious things that happen, the descriptions of her time with her “husband” and all her hard work, it is easy to forget that the main character is still very young.  Her age and inexperience eventually cause her to act in ways that she believes are for the better, but whose consequences she has not contemplated fully.  These decisions lead the mother and daughter down a dark path into destitution, and difficult choices must be made to ensure their survival.

This is a well crafted novel, with vivid descriptions that allow you to almost smell and taste the world the characters inhabit.  The author uses folk tales told by the characters to make important connections and add a sense of history.  The main character is never named, an homage to all the unnamed artisans from that time (only great masters were allowed to sign their work).

In general, I enjoyed this book.  I was a bit rushed to finish it because of a mix-up at the library, which perhaps made me a bit impatient.  The beautiful descriptions that are such an intricate part of this book sometimes feel repetitive and overly flowery.  It takes a great deal of exposition before the characters get into the heart of the story, which makes getting into the book more difficult.  My least favorite thing about the book was the opening chapter, it starts off describing the girl and her mother and how far they have fallen, though it doesn’t say why.  This plot device is neither original nor compelling, I feel it seriously diminishes the tension that the author works so astutely to build.  I enjoyed the ending, but it left me feeling as if the novel itself was a long version of the folk tales peppered through its pages.  It seems cynical to say this, but given the setting and mores of the time, the finale of the book is a bit too optimistic.  All of those criticisms aside, if you have the time and patience for an author who is sometimes a tad too pleased with her own use of metaphor and simile, this is an enjoyable read.  I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger girls because it does contains some very detailed descriptions which are sexual in nature.  I think it would be a good beach or travel read; it definitely has dark themes and is very sad at times, but it is uplifting in the end, and less depressing than more modern day accounts of the women of Iran.

What we’re reading this month:  Aninmal, Mineral, Vegetable: a year of food life by Barbara Kingslover et al.

A couple of weeks ago, we went in for a long, detailed ultrasound to check all the anatomy of our baby.  We decided to find out if it was a boy or a girl.  For some reason I had it in my mind that it was a boy, but then two nights before we were to go in for the ultrasound I had a dream we were at the Dr.’s office and they told me it was a girl.  I guess I always had a 50/50 shot.

A tear rolled down my cheek when she told us it was a girl, not of saddness that it’s not a boy, or even of relief that it is a girl, but just general happiness.  Apparently I mostly blocked Matthew getting a good view of the screen because I was so eager to see everything.  The heart, the ribs, the legs, the hands, the face, all skeletal looking but still so cool to see.  She wasn’t particularly cooperative, constantly putting her thumb in her mouth when the poor technician was trying to get a good shot of the face.  If you’d like to see the newest ultrasound pics, they’re in the baby slide show in the photo-section.  Out of respect for the baby’s privacy, we didn’t put up what Matthew likes to refer to as the “R rated” photos where they point out certain parts of the anatomy.

The baby has been kicking me like crazy.  As of right now, I like it because it’s reassuring.  Nice to be aware of her there and to know she’s active and doing well.  I’m sure I’ll tire of it when it starts to become painful.  We’re starting to figure out what we need to get before the baby comes, a pretty daunting task (not to mention expensive).  We had another Dr.’s appointment yesterday where we again heard the heartbeat, and the Dr. told us how pleased she is with the way everything is going and how everything looks normal.  It’s reassuring to hear.

Beach on PCH1 before Half Moon Bay, California.  June 2008

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory Hairnet Policy, Berkeley, CA.  June 2008

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It’s been a while since we’ve expanded our cultural horizons.  Sure we see movies and read books, but we haven’t been to a play or a museum in a stretch.  We decided it was time to remedy this situation.  There are so many opportunities in our area to see great art and we really haven’t made enough of an effort to seek out such things since we moved to the bay area.  We remedied that a bit last weekend with a trip in to SF.

The bay area seems to sleep later than we’re accustomed to, but this is good for us; it means fewer crowds in the mornings.  We got up at a reasonable hour last Sunday and caught BART into the city and then a bus to Golden Gate Park (and the bus was quite crowded for 10:00 on a Sunday morning, I thought).  We came particularly to see a limited engagement exhibit at the De Young Museum of the artist Dale Chihuly.  I’d heard of people waiting hours to see this installment, but because we got there so early we went in immediately.

A master of color and light, Chihuly’s exhibitions are different than most artwork featured at museums.  The works are often large in scope and scale, comprised of many individual pieces of glass-work.  He came to fame for his innovative work with blown glass, but having lost the sight of one eye due to an accident, he can no longer “make” the individual pieces, but is the director of a group of artists who follow his vision.  Some of the works are visually stunning, sometimes even jarring, while one piece (glass bowls made to look like ancient indian woven baskets) was surprisingly subtle.  I can’t help but like Chihuly, I love vibrant colors, I love the radiance in some of the pieces.  His “Persian” pieces, comprised of many individual off center bowls created with a mille-fiore technique are meant to capture every color in the rainbow.  Individual bowls may have a palette very similar to a Monet “Water-lilies” type of piece, while others use more primary colors.  I prefer the bowls individually to the way they are presented in a large grouping, as they are individually graceful with hues that mix well, but taken as a whole, the piece can feel a bit disjointed, though the forms are constant. Photo courtesy KellyGrimm.com.

I’ve been told that Chihuly isn’t much liked by the artists in his native Seattle.  His work has been met with great commercial success, which often breeds dislike, and a lot of his works are annoyingly similar.  He’s obviously found something that works and is profiting from it.  I’ve seen Chihuly before, in 2002 at the Botanical Garden of Chicago.  I have to admit I preferred it to the De Young exhibit.  Set among plants and other natural elements, the organic and earthy aspects of many of Chihuly’s pieces are brought out, and anything beautiful is made even more so by gorgeous surroundings.  I also ran into a piece at Cold Spring Harbour Labs that was supposedly inspired by green fluorescent and yellow fluorescent proteins in neurons, but it looks a lot like all of his chandelier type pieces, just in pale yellow and green.

I really enjoyed the rest of the De Young museum.  The collection is eclectic to say the least, with modern art, contemporary art, revolutionary war American pieces, art from ancient cultures of south and central America, as well as New Guinea.  I particularly enjoyed the small collection of contemporary art which featured a handful of remarkable pieces.

Once we’d exhausted our eyes and minds at the De Young, we went for a more zen experience at the Japanese Tea Garden.  There we had the most overpriced pot of tea in history ($9 for rather nondescript Jasmine tea with almond cookies and rice snacks, I don’t care if they are served by Japanese girls in Kimonos, it’s still a rip-off after the $4 admission fee).  The garden is enjoyable, a short stroll through a rather non-traditional seeming environment with a few Japanese pieces (some of which are in bad need of repair).  After an even more crowded bus ride to downtown SF, we vainly searched for a decent place to eat, eventually dining in the admittedly upscale food court of the Westfield shopping mall.  By then we were pretty exhausted from all the walking and culture and we called it a day.

Today we tried to continue our cultural education by attending the Berkeley Art Museum.  I admit I’m grateful that admission was free since we work for the university.  Mostly I found this museum disappointing.  It features a lot of modern art, which I really want to like, but just can’t seem to wrap my head around.  I find it mostly pretentious and rarely enlightening or beautiful.  There was a video/performance art piece that I felt represented all that is wrong with modern art, though I’m sure a great deal of people would disagree, and that’s their prerogative.  Art is a highly individualistic by its nature.

There are still a lot of sights to see in the area, and I hope, as we find the time, we will continue to explore them.  Next time we’ll take the camera.

Here are a few pictures from the Orsborn Summer Vacation. I’ve been meaning to post these for sometime, but better late than never I guess.

Oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips and M&Ms.  July 2008.

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Subtitle:  The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

Listening to NPR one day in the lab, I happened to catch an interview of Mary Roach regarding a her new book Bonk.  The interchange was quite witty and clever, with a good dose of humor thrown in, which made me think I might like to read a book by Mary Roach.  So I put my name on the request list at the Berkeley Public Library for all three of the books by the author in question.  The first book to become available was not the one I will review here, but Stiff: The curious lives of cadavers.  Now don’t get me wrong, this is also a good book, as much as I could stomach of it.  Amusing and interesting, the first few chapters that I got through were fun to read, though a little difficult if you’re prone to queasiness.  I eventually had to give up reading it after an unfortunate attempt to read on BART (the hour trip to the airport to pick up my family when they came to visit caused a pretty bad bout of motion sickness, no doubt aided by the detailed descriptions of the treatment of corpses).

When I got the e-mail telling me Bonk was available for pick-up I was ready to give Mary Roach another shot.  One of the problems of getting reserved books is that you can’t renew them, so you have a limited time to get them read.  Luckily for me, I was able to read this particular book in good time, partially because the text is so engaging, and also because it’s just funny.  Because this is a family site, I won’t go too much into the details of this particular volume.  Being a scientist, I am always intrigued by the history behind science, and the often unexpected ways things converge.  Mary Roach has a talent not only for quick witted comments and double entendres, but also for making the science interesting and giving proper perspective.  This is definitely a book that will have you reading passages out loud to your significant other.  Mary Roach does an excellent job of describing the atmosphere regarding scientific endeavors exploring areas of sexual research during different periods of history.  And how can you not respect an author who is willing to participate in the subject; not only does she participate as a research participant in one study, she convinces her husband to fly to London and the two of them become subjects in a study that involves the couple in an MRI tube, cramped quarters.  That’s one giving husband!

What is not surprising is that attitudes toward this sort of research haven’t really changed so much as we all might think.  The problems facing reserachers who are interested in understanding the physiology and psychology of the sexual response are fundamental to scientists in general.  They must be able to justify the research as a way to profit from people’s problems.

The main point I would like to convey is that this book is a very enjoyable read if you are not sqeamish about hearing the intimate details of the human reproductive system.  It also shows how much is yet to be understood, in part because of the tricky nature of such research and the difficulty convicing people that the research is worthwhile and on the up and up.  If you are not made uncomfortable by such subjects, you will laugh heartily at this book, you will chuckle under your breath at the jokes (especially those in the footnotes) and you will gasp at the sort of things people allow themselves to be subjected to in the name of science.

It was the 4th of July, and all of our family and friends are, well, not here in California.  April and I decided to go see WALL-E, and so did about everyone else in town.  I must have forgotten that Independence Day was such a big movie day.  Here is my take on the movie:

Pixar has generated another gem of a movie with WALL-E, arguably one of the best movies Pixar has produced since “The Incredibles,” if not ever.  This movie works as both 1) a sci-fi movie, with a thoughtful story about the effects of complacency, and 2) a cute and adorable romantic movie.  If you can believe that robots have personalities and can fall in love, than you might really love this movie.  The story is strong and somewhat deep, but it works only because the animation is really good.  I mean really, really fantastic.  For example, the movies main robot characters don’t talk, so to convey emotion, the animators have to do a terrific job anthropomorphizing these robots, and they succeed tremendously.

For those who want to know what the movie is about, well here it goes.  We have WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a robot whose directive is to clean up earth.  Humans have consumed and polluted the planet to the point that the place has became unlivable so they decided to pack it up and live in an enormous spaceship.  While they’re gone, they leave behind an army of robots to clean up the place, and when they’re done, the humans will return.  Now, 700 years removed, most of the robots have broken down, leaving only one lonely robot to do the work, and work he does.  He compiles trash, compacts it into cubes and piles them higher than most skyscrapers.  During his workday, he collects objects that he finds intriguing, including an old VHS tape of “Hello Dolly,” and watching the people dance and fall in love makes WALL-E long for some sort of contact.  His only companion, and only living creature on the planet it appears, is a cockroach because I assume they can survive any disaster.

The movie eventually moves to the enormous spaceship, because having two non-speaking robots on a lonely planet will only entertain for so long.  We eventually need some sort of conflict.  Here, the romance story is pushed to the back and we enter into a more of A Brave New World type of universe in which robots tend to humans’ every need, and feed their happiness.  Humans have become so self-absorbed in their own happiness, that they become unaware of everything else.  The story shifts a bit to the ships captain, who is awakened to his surroundings and becomes excited when he learns about the history and potential earth could offer him (and the rest of humanity), and WALL-E, along with his “love” interest EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), gives him a reason to return.   It is an interesting story line with a strong message.  Eventually, both stories cross, and WALL-E becomes the most lovable character Pixar has ever dreamed up.

As you can see by our nifty little baby widget in the sidebar, today marks the 120th day of our pregnancy.  This is the halfway point (assuming the baby comes exactly on time, which is highly unlikely).  I have mixed feelings about this.  Part of me is thinking “Woohoo, we’re halfway there, yippee, so exciting, woohoo!”  But the other part of me says “Only halfway done.  Argh!  I’ve been prenant forever already.  I have to do this for another five freaking months.  This is a bunch of crap!”  And the logical part of me knows that the half that lies ahead is going to be much harder than the half that has past.

I know I shouldn’t complain, I’ve been really lucky so far.  My baby bump is just starting to become evident if I’m wearing the right clothes.  I was getting a bit anxious about this, as it seems everyone else was bigger than me by this point.  I went to prenatal yoga last week and the two women who weren’t as far along as me had much more pronounced bellies.  They were also much thinner than me to start with, which probably explains a lot.  I prefer to think it’s just that I’ve got really strong ab muscles, not that my belly fat is hiding the baby ;)  My weight gain (or lack there of) has been good so far, I’ve gained less than five pounds which, considering I was already carrying a little extra insurance in that department, is good.  I started feeling the baby move last weekend; Matthew was even able to feel it with his hand on my tummy.  Now it seems like the baby is moving a lot, especially after I eat.  It doesn’t hurt, just feels a little strange.

Next week we will go for another high detail ultrasound.  If the baby cooperates, we should be able to find out if it’s a boy or a girl.  After some consideration I decided I want know, whether it’s suprise now, or a surprise at the time of the birth doesn’t make a difference to us.  And this will allow us to start getting all our ducks in a row by finding baby stuff and picking out names.

In case you’re curious, here’s how my belly looks at this point.  Didn’t take any before pictures, but you get the idea.