While doing walking around one of Providence's large old cemetery's yesterday (the North Burial Ground off of Main St, near Branch Ave), Lauren and I saw some very interesting tombstones. One of the first that caught our attention was one of a young man who'd died in his mid-20s. On one side, with his name and dates, was a picture embedded in the stone and coated in some sort of hard transparent shell. On the back was a poem or song or... whatever, written by the deceased. On the picture, I'm torn between thinking it's a bit creepy and thinking it's a very nice touch. It's it is creepy in some way, isn't that just because there's a part of us that finds it easier to look at an impersonal field of stone rather than confronting all the lives that were and now are not? Isn't there something to be said for the humanizing power of a picture to give the dead some life? And isn't there something to be said for letting the dead speak and say something in their own words? Leaving aside any questions of literary merit, the fact is that they are his words. Kind of cool.

Another tombstone, for a couple, had an older black-and-white photo of the couple in a sort of locket-like setting, which allowed it to be closed. You could see the people, but you weren't forced to. It seemed pretty sturdy too, as well as rather beautiful.

I haven't included any of the photos I took because, although it's unlikely that they would either see them or be offended by them, I wouldn't want to add any measure of pain to those whose loved ones are depicted. Here, though, is a rather more historical marker, the stone for the first mayor of Providence:

I have additional pictures of each side, but rather than making you load even more photos, I'll just summarize to say that one gives the basic facts that he was the first mayor and born in Seekonk, MA and his dates and all, another side talks about what a good person he was and how everybody liked him, another talks about what a great man he was to his family and his community, and then finally one talks about his professional career. It is, of course, dehumanizing in the way that most eulogies are: he's made over into a sort of lower-order saint, and while I'm sure he probably did have lots of great qualities, he was almost certainly human. 

Even before I read Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, I think I agreed with its basic idea: the idea of trying to neither praise nor blame the dead, but to understand who the person really was, in fullness of humanity. Maybe that's too much to hope for in most cases, but it's a noble goal, isn't it?

Anyway, like the first stone I mentioned, this one had the virtue of at least giving some indication of who the deceased was in life instead of just giving a name and a date. I rather appreciated it in both cases.

What are your thoughts on tombstones? As always, your thoughts are most appreciated. 

The history of Mother's Day goes back to the late 1800s and in some ways bears little resemblance to our modern celebration (but then, isn't that usually the case?).

A look at its history takes us back to a woman named Julia Ward Howe, who is perhaps best known as the author of the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" during the American Civil War. However, between that war and the Franco-Prussian War, she became horrified by the carnage of war and by 1872 was trying to unite mothers with her call for a "Mother's Day for Peace." In 1873, such a day was celebrated in 18 U.S. cities, and continued to be celebrated in Boston, at least, for the next decade. The celebrations evidently petered out when Howe was no longer personally paying for their continuance, though some celebrations continued for 30 years. However, she was never able to secure formal recognition for Mother's Day for Peace.

Mother's Day as we celebrate it (well, sort of) derives from the work of Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Jarvis, a contemporary of Julia Ward Howe who also worked to organize mothers, though her aim was to improve sanitation and, later, to reconcile North and South after the Civil War. Anna Jarvis's Mother's Day was first celebrated in Grafton, WV on May 10, 1908 to honor her mother's work and that of other mothers. The holiday spread to 45 states before becoming an official national holiday in 1914. At that time, it was a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of mothers whose sons had died in war. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the holiday had become so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become.

 

---

The above historical information comes largely from an e-mail I received from a colleague, which he credited to Martha Yeager, the Program Director for the American Friends Service Committee in Southeastern New England. Portions of the wikipedia entry for Mother's Day bear a striking resemblance to the e-mail I received. Additionally, I consulted the webpage for the International Mother's Day Shrine.

---

It's probably no surprise that Julia Ward Howe's version of Mother's Day didn't gain official recognition. While governments may talk a good talk about desiring peace, you can be sure that they don't actually want to encourage it in their own citizens--people agitating for peace in a democracy might make it harder to go to war, and no government wants to rule out that possibility.

 

It's probably also not surprising that Jarvis's holiday changed from her original conception of it. Celebrating the work of social activist mothers leaves a lot of mothers out; so, too, does honoring mothers who have lost children in war. A Mother's Day holiday was probably bound to become something more universal, especially with American capitalism just waiting to sell the holiday. It is, evidently, one of the most commercially successful holidays in the country, and the word from Wall Street is that not even an economic slowdown can stop us from spending money on our mothers, with something like $18 billion flowing through the economy on its way to those who gave birth to us.

My Mother's Day wishes, beyond the gourmet cookies I sent my own mother, will be rather less than that, as I simply wish all mother's who may read this, a happy Mother's Day, and especially to those mothers who work to make this world a better place, whether through social activism and their own good works or through raising fine, responsible children whose presence in it makes the world a better place. 

Small Favor, the newest (and 10th) book in The Dresden Files, has all the characteristics I've come to love in the series: it's funny, it's a page-turner with action and some good plot twists, and it continues to develop--albeit somewhat slowly--the larger plotlines that run through the series.

I'll not recap the plot here, because it's unlikely to make much sense if you aren't familiar with the other books in the series and you'll want to read it for yourself anyway if you are. The series as a whole follows Harry Dresden, the only guy listed under "Wizard" in the Chicago phone book. Harry functions basically as a private investigator with a few more tricks up his sleeve than the average private dick. Over the course of the series, however, his role has gradually evolved as he has become more involved with the politics of the White Council, wizarding's main governing body. 

In this novel, a host of familiar characters return, friends, enemies, and frienemies. Some will say, in fact, that the cast is too large and the novel loses focus as a result or that the characters become two-dimensional, but I didn't find this to be the case. Another good novel in an excellent urban fantasy series.

Tourism is one of the fastest growing "industries" in the world, with special niche markets such as eco-tourism, "creative tourism," and adventure tourism springing up and growing like weeds--really interesting weeds that you want to go see.

Listening to NPR today, the woman talking said "tourism" with a strange accent that made it sound like "terrism."

Well, in a world now facing terrorism as one of its biggest threats, it seems that a new sort of tourism is almost inevitable: call it "terrism" or, as I prefer, "tourerism." I can already picture the brochures being handed out to would-be suicide bombers:

See historic sites--blow them up!

Meet interesting people--inflict fear and suffering on them!

See the world--before leaving it behind forever!

Although I started reading in the children's section of the library, what really drew me into reading was fantasy, and I've loved it ever since. In college, I more or less gave up fantasy; I was an English major and fantasy was obviously garbage. Fortunately, in grad school for music, I picked up some fantasy when I was in the mood for some light reading, and thank goodness! I picked up some fantasy and realized that there's some really wonderful, brilliant stuff being written in the genre. It is, of course, a rather different kind of brilliance than what's being done in "literary" fiction, and each has its merits. 

Fantasy, of course, typically comes packaged in a series (the most common serving size, of course, is the trilogy), so today's Thursday Thirteen will be my thirteen favorite fantasy series.

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien -- The original trilogy, not just for me but for so many people. I first read these novels, preceded by The Hobbit, in 5th grade and have read it many times since, though not for a few years now (I re-read them when the films came out).

2. The First and Second Amber Chronicles (The Great Book of Amber) by Roger Zelazny -- When I first read these novels, they were in the form of the two-volume The Chronicles of Amber (five books in two) and a second series of five novels that follow the son of the first series' protagonist. For some reason, I read the second series first, but I've re-read them both several times.

3. The Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust -- I read these when I was in high school, but it wasn't until later that I really appreciated how good they are. These stories of an assassin's capers have something of a Zelazny-esque feel to them.

4.  The Kaavren Romances by Steven Brust -- These have a very different feeling, modeled as they are on Alexandre Dumas' work. These stories happen in the past of the same world as the Taltos series. Likewise, I read the ones of the series that had been written then when I was in high school, but definitely didn't fully appreciate them.

5. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan -- I started these in high school, re-read most of them a couple times, and they still weren't finished last year when Jordan died. The series didn't stay quite as compelling as it began, but they still have a certain charm. Apparently, he left extensive notes so that the series can be finished.

6. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb -- She not only knows how to write fantasy well, she knows how to finish a series she starts. It's an under-appreciated virtue, to finish what you start and not let the tale grow in the telling. This story centers around the illegitimate son of a prince, who is trained as an assassin and in whose hands the kingdom's future lies.

7. The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb -- This is a follow-up trilogy with the same protagonist as the above trilogy, rather later in his life.

8. The Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb -- Set in the same world as the previous two series, this series only has one overlapping character with the other two, and fall chronologically between them. The story centers around magical living ships, pirates, and the re-awakening of dragons.

9. Inda by Sherwood Smith -- Speaking of ships, much of this excellent (so far) series takes place at sea.

10. The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker -- This trilogy features a dark, brutal fantasy milieu. Written by a philosophy PhD student, there's some deep stuff here.

11. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson -- I discovered this as an author that Bakker recommended, and it is excellent, excellent epic fantasy. It's a long, unfinished series though. I've reviewed most of the novels somewhere on this blog, so I'm not going to spend too much time re-reviewing the books here. Of course, that's also true of most of the series above.

12.  A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin -- This is the most recent epic fantasy series I discovered, and it's excellent stuff. It has a very medieval feel to it, with knights and kings and castles and such, but nothing is romanticized about it.

13. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher -- I'm currently reading the latest entry in the adventures of Chicago's hard-boiled wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden.

Do you have any favorite fantasy series to recommend to me? I'm always looking for more good stuff. Incidentally, a couple of Sean Russell's series almost made the cut, and Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series probably would have made the cut if I'd read more than just the first book of the series--it was quite good, but I never got past the first volume, for some reason. 

For one reason or another, this didn't post yesterday. Thursday Thirteen will post later today... just as soon as I figure out what I'm writing about.

---

Through Good Reads I've gotten involved in a Sci Fi / Fantasy book club, and tangential to another conversation, the subject of how we treat books came up. One poster wrote:

I'm a hardback fanatic. I wrap my books in mylar dust jacket protectors and scan them into my database. Asking to borrow a book means a lecture on proper book maintenance. Read a book without removing it from it's dust jacket and putting into a protective book cover? Are you a barbarian? Don't even start on writing in books, dog-earring pages, or putting books face down.

I was reminded of myself in my much younger days (pretty much late elementary school through high school). I couldn't actually afford hardbacks, but I was fanatical about keeping books in good working order: no writing in books, no dog-eared pages, no broken or damaged spines. 

These tendencies, in fact, got me into my one and only fight in my childhood. It was the summer after 6th or 7th grade, at camp, and some older kid was playing keep-away with my copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. In the process, the cover got ripped nearly off and I went absolutely nuts. Being the bookishly ineffectual kid that I was, he was more bemused than threatened and had the good grace to refrain from kicking my butt, which he certainly could have done. 

In college, I finally started writing in and marking up books, out of necessity, but I even resisted that through most of my freshman year--instead of underlining passages and writing notes in the margins of my books, I would re-copy entire passages into a notebook, make note of the page number, and there write any notes I needed. 

With books I'm reading for pleasure, I'm still pretty careful about how I treat them, though I haven't gone so far as to insist on hardcover books or wrap them in mylar, nor--when we build our own house--am I likely to spring for a temperature- and humidity- controlled room and bookshelves with glass doors on them. My obsessive care for books has definite limits.

What about you--what sort of reader and care-taker of books are you?