Posted in A&I
by Eleanor Lippman
Hill Topics has a complete article on page 4 in the April Edition
by Julie Mahoney
by Joni Johnson
by Lynne Bonetti
by Diane Chase
To go to the issue contents page (“What’s New”) CLICK HERE
My mother was very religious, and our home was filled with prints of religious paintings by Holbein, Raphael, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, and Fra Angelico, but I soon lost interest in them. My favorite memories go far back in time visiting art museums, when I still too young to read the labels. I knew immediately which paintings I did not like. I never cared for Rubens’ frolicking obese women, or some gruesome scenes by El Greco. The Pre-Raphaelite and other Romantic paintings left me bored. I didn’t know what to do with Picasso’s abstract paintings. The Impressionists were so much praised that I got tired of them. I know this sounds very arrogant and most ignorant! Only later was I able to relate to colors, compositions, harmonies, and moods — to really appreciate the works of art.
After I was married to Russy, we visited art museums wherever we were. I became fascinated by Russian and Greek-Orthodox icons. The rich deep-golden background enhanced the somber colors of the figures, and one could sense the deep devotion and adoration by the artist. But I couldn’t understand the bleak expressions of Mary. In my mind, Mary would not look so severe. So I tried to paint her myself. The pictures here are my versions, the ones I painted after being inspired by the masters.
During the years we lived in Mill Valley, CA, while I was teaching, I painted during weekends. Someone asked me to submit one of my paintings to the annual Mill Valley Arts Festival. To my amazement and surprise, the local newspaper selected my painting to photograph and publish along with an article about the Arts Festival.
After visiting a special exhibition for Paul Gauguin’s works of art at The Metropolitan Museum in New York, I was totally mesmerized by his brilliant colors. I went through a long phase with Gauguin’s paintings. I bought books of his life and art. Bright original-design printed sarongs against the sun-kissed bronze skins of native Haitians were intoxicating for me. I knew I had to attempt to capture something like it on my canvas. I left out whatever I didn’t like, or I rearranged some figures. The beauty of painting your own version is the freedom of doing whatever you like.
My very last painting, I did with my fingers because all my paint brushes were already packed for another move, this time from the Plaza to the Terrace. On moving day the painting was still wet, so I carried it by hand from one building to the other, where we secured it in a frame and hung it up on a wall to dry! 
There are still times I wish I could paint but my control of fingers and hands have deteriorated…
(Nit WIT Newz is an unauthorized, often unreliable, on-line news source designed to keep Manor residents abreast of the inconsequential, trifling, and superficial events that dramatically shape and inform our everyday lives here at Rogue Valley Manor.)
MANORITES NIX MILLION DOLLAR OFFER. PUSHBACK IN OFFING?
A wave of suspicious phone calls has flooded Manor phone lines in recent weeks. An unidentified caller advised residents that they were winners of a huge cash prize. Alarmed and concerned, suspecting RVM residents have spurned the offer and immediately alerted fellow residents. Unexpectedly, a call came into Nit Wit Newz’s headquarters last Monday from that “unidentified caller.” He identified himself as Demetrius Seaver.
What follows is a transcript of that phone call.
NWN: Thank you for calling in to us today, Mr. Seaver. But before we begin, may we call you, Demetrius?
DS: Yeah, that’s O.K., but it’s too long. Most of my friends just use my first initial, D.
NWN: Fine D. Now please tell us what prompted your call to Nit Wit Newz?.
DS: Look, I’m still burning over the shabby treatment I received from the residents at that senior community of yours and I wanted those people to know about it. I thought you could help me out.
NWN: Well, we are, indeed, an established Rogue Valley Manor news platform, so I think you came to the right place. But we’re sorry to learn of your displeasure with some of our residents. Now, as we understand it, you were contacting residents here at RVM and making available to them a financial offer of some consequence, but you claim your offer fell entirely on deaf ears. What can you tell us about that?
DS: Listen, I’m a certified financial opportunist. I make my living seeking out rewarding propositions in the financial world and then matching individuals that would most likely benefit from investing in those offers. Full disclosure: I should mention that a small finder’s fee is, of course, included in every transaction. Anyway, when I heard that there was such a thing as a rogue’s gallery manor, I figured this would be fertile ground for…
NWN: No, no, Mr. D, its Rogue Valley Manor. Rogue Valley Manor is a place, a senior community, not a collection of reprobates.
DS: Really? Hmm, that’s too bad. Well, no matter. This opportunity from Publishers Cleaning Your House Sweepstakes appeals to everyone…
NWN: Excuse me, sir, don’t you mean Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes?
DS: Yeah, maybe so, anyway, it was one of those publishing outfits. Look, in this particular situation, I was letting residents know that they could win $5,000 a week for the rest of their lives. All they had to do is post a modest up-front fee of $900 to become eligible for this marvelous lifetime pay-off. Pretty darned tempting, wouldn’t you say?
NWN: Well I think it…
DS: Get this, I’d planned to call and make that offer available to each one of those Manor people. It’s so good, I thought they’d be jumping at my offer, but you know what? On my first call, the lady I spoke to heard me out alright, but then said “no thanks.” I didn’t like to hear that, but that was O.K. with me; I didn’t really expect 100% participation. People don’t always recognize a fantastic deal when they hear one. So, a few minutes later, after reviewing my sales pitch to make sure I was using all of my key selling points, I dialed a second resident and before I could say that I was from Publishers Cle…, he hung up on me. Imagine! How would he know what I was going to say? It gets worse; this same abrupt cut-off happened to me call after call. They’d slam down the receiver before I got into my pitch.
NWN: It sounds as if our residents might be suspicious of your “tempting” offer. Maybe they thought it was too good to be true.
DS: No, no—how could they possibly think that when they hadn’t even heard what I had to say? But they sure kissed big opportunities good bye. Heck, after the sweepstakes, I was going to cut those rogue people into “Bunco Bingo,” “Power Ponzi for Profits”, and the roll out of my new crypto-money laundering exchange, “Two-Bitcoin Currency”—they could’ve been on the ground floor on that one. But it’s that alert system they have up there that’s ruining my business. It’s making all those people think I’m some sort of con artist or something even before they hear my pitch.
NWN: That alert system you’re talking about is an internal email network. It’s called the “RVM list.”
DS: I don’t care what they call it. You’ve got a group of people up there preventing me from practicing my profession. I call that collusion. And I want them to know I won’t stand for it.
NWN: Well, D., people don’t have to buy into your propositions. They don’t even have to accept your phone calls. Maybe if you came up with a more plausible financial opportunity they’d be more receptive. I’m afraid you mistook our community for a group of fools. We here at Nit Wit Newz aren’t in the advice-giving business, but maybe you’d have better luck if you apologized to our residents, we’d be happy to publish an apology if…
DS: Apology? You mean confess to a wrong doing? No way! Hey, I’d be giving grifting a bad name. Look, nit wit, you’re no help at all—to heck with you. There must be another newspaper up there. How ‘bout that Bits and Fleeces paper? They’ll be …
NWN: That’s Bits and Pieces.
DS: Yeah, that’s them. See ya. (Dial tone)
—A.Looney
Guillén, Mauro F. 2030. St. Martins, 2020. Available at the RVM library
The world as we know it is changing. Guillén makes a compelling case that many of the rules we learned in order to succeed in the world will no longer be appropriate by 2030. During the seven years before the book was published in 2020, Guillen gathered information and projected trends to see what our world might be like in ten short years.
No longer will babies be plentiful; there will be more grandparents than grandchildren, and retirees will outnumber workers. The middle class in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the middle class in the US and Europe combined. Non-Western consumers will drive the global economy. Women will own more of the wealth of the world than men. Cities will grow, exacerbating inequality and pollution, inching us closer to potentially catastrophic social and climate crises.
We are seeing technology disrupt the status quo by changing the concept of products (cellphones are replacing telephones); the way products are made (a robot can displace five or six workers); how it is sold (think Amazon); who uses the products (1.5 billion people in the world own or share a cellphone but must relieve themselves in the open or go to a shared outhouse); and how people interact with each other (think of FaceTime and Zoom meetings).
Artificial Intelligence, Guillén claims, will bring about epochal change. 
As an example, truck drivers constitute the largest occupational group in twenty-nine of our fifty states. They are at risk of losing their jobs as a result of autonomous vehicle technology. Another example: surgeons are beginning to use robots to assist with delicate operations.
Most intriguing to me is the potential impact of what’s called “blockchaining.” The technology began with crypto currencies. But its potential applications include government services, intellectual property, trade transactions, counterfeit regulation, gun control, poverty alleviation, and environmental protection.
In a postscript, Guillén speculates that Covid-19 will accelerate such trends as declining fertility and use of technology. In order to survive 2030, we must challenge received wisdom, rather than honoring inherited assumptions and ways of thinking. We will not survive the changes unless we challenge our traditional mindset.
Guillén, Mauro F. 2030. St. Martins, 2020. In RVM library
March Sports
This month we are featuring books about sports. All types of sports: swimming, football, basketball, skiing, the Olympics, tennis, cave diving, golf, mountaineering, fishing, and more. Even if you are not already a sports fan, you still might check out the display since it offers a variety of genres, including biographies, histories, mysteries, cozies, and thrillers.
Cathy Fitzpatrick
Everyone has experienced a good road trip. Planning for accommodations, meals and restroom breaks can be challenging but did you ever dream of how difficult the same trip would be in a covered wagon? Horsepower from actual horses! Author Linda Lochard did just that and wrote a book about it.
Applegate Trail Book Cover
Her first novel, Life Along the Applegate Trail: A Tale of Grit and Determination, may have taken her twenty five years to write, but once you meet the men, women and children looking for a better life in the Oregon territory, you’ll find you’re in a race to finish it.
Linda and I discussed the trip, the book and family over lunch recently.
Linda, who now lives in Medford, was the director of tourism at the Visitor and Convention Bureau in Grants Pass. In 1993, as part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, she rode a covered wagon into town, in a sort of parade. She fell in love instantly with the feel, the sounds and smells of being in and near the wagons and horses. When she learned of a reenactment of The Applegate Trail scheduled for 1996, she signed on to participate. Three years of training and learning everything she could about wagon trains were worth the effort. She joined the train for 31 days of the 51 day trip. The Applegate Trail was an alternate route of the Oregon Trail that some pioneers used. Much of the Applegate trail is where you find Interstate highway 5 now. She wore period clothing, walked and rode 3 miles an hour during long days, ate from the chuck wagon, and slept in a tent. Although far less uncertain than the 1847-48 emigration, the reenactment held its own concerns over the animals, meals, cleanliness and safety.
When she finished her trip, exhausted, she was determined to write a book about the experience. However, life got in the way and she kept getting distracted. In 2020, at the beginning of Covid, she was determined to finish it. Readers now get to follow Questa and Chase, who meet on the trail, fall in love and plan a life in the territory. It’s a wonderful historical fiction romance novel set in the Old West.
Life Along the Applegate Trail is available in the Rogue Valley Manor library.
Applegate Trail
Anne Newins
One of the pleasures of volunteering in the RVM library is the opportunity to discover new authors. About six months ago, I encountered Daniel Mason and quickly became entranced by his writing. The New York Times Magazine states that Mason “has quietly emerged as one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.”
Mason’s background is almost as interesting as his writing. After graduating from Harvard, he spent a year studying malaria around Thailand and Myanmar. This experience informed his first novel, The Piano Tuner, which was published by the time he was 26 years old and then turned into an opera. He attended medical school at the University of California San Francisco, eventually becoming a psychiatrist. He now is on the faculty of Stanford University, both teaching and practicing medicine.
Not an especially prolific writer, Mason’s complex fiction cannot be easily defined. Most of his writing to date has accurate historical components. His descriptions of the natural world are both precise and poetic. He incorporates vivid and occasionally appalling, descriptions of early medical practices. Asked how being a psychiatrist relates to his writing, Mason stated in an interview with ZYZZYVA, that “If there is a connection, I think it is this sense that human beings are mysteries. Since I was young, human beings have always been puzzling to me. If anything, this interest drove me to both fields.”
Below are synopses of three of his books:
The Piano Tuner (2002) is the journey of a middle-aged piano tuner summoned from England to tune an English army surgeon’s Erard grand piano in the jungles of Burma. Taking place in 1886, the British Empire is attempting to quell native insurgencies and repel French incursions in the Mekong Delta. Although not perfect, this was a powerful first novel. Fellow author Andrea Barrett praised “his ability to embrace history, politics, nature and medicine within a fully imagined 19th-century fictional world.”
The Winter Soldier tells of a Viennese medical student, Lucius. “Resentful of hierarchy, impatient for his training to come to an end,” Lucius joins the army when World War I begins. To his surprise, he is sent to a field hospital in the Carpathian Mountains, where he is the only physician, depending on a mysterious nursing sister to help when the multitudes of injured soldiers arrive. Having never held a scalpel, it is left to Sister Margarete to teach him field surgery. Lucius’s story is contained within the tides of war, as well a tale of love and atonement. As in The Piano Tuner, the historical detail will be appreciated by those unfamiliar with these particular events in history.
A Registry of My Passage on the Earth (2020) is the title of one of nine of highly varied short stories. Each of the tales has some seed of historical fact, but they go grow into wildly different creations. The characters include naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, pugilists, a women balloonist, telegraph operators, an amnesic, and more. All are chronicles of exploration, internal and external. My favorite was The Miraculous Discovery of Psammtetichus I, a darkly humorous yarn of an Egyptian pharaoh’s efforts to develop scientific methods. The collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won several other prizes.
The Winter Solder and A Registry of My Passage on the Earth now are available at the Manor library. The Piano Tuner will be added to the collection in late February. All of Mason’s books are held at the county library in various formats.
Anne Newins
Since Valentine’s Day is approaching, it only seems appropriate for the library to celebrate books about love during February. But, as one library volunteer said, “Almost all books are about love.” This certainly may be true if one assumes that the author has a passion for their subject.
The Paris Wife, by Paula McClain
Peony in Love, by Lisa See
Life Mask, by Emma Donoghue
Homegoing, by Y’a’a Gyasi
Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler
The Mountains Sing, by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
Note — Liz Argall is a feelance cartoonist (https://lizargall.com/about/); I contribute to her website as a “patron” and am thereby entitled to download and use her cartoons — Bob Buddemeier
by Eleanor Lippman
There was a time in our lives that we were cat-less. That wouldn’t do at all, so husband and I saw an ad for Siamese kittens. It was hard not to want to adopt the entire litter. They weren’t purebreds but from a litter that was a mixture of chocolate and lilac point babies, each one more adorable than the other. Although we initially agreed on adopting a single cat, the temptation was too great and we went home with a lilac point male and a chocolate point female.
What a delight to watch these little guys play and grow and adapt to their new home. But something was becoming very obvious. Our male lilac point kitty (named Toki-Cat the Second) was growing faster than his chocolate point sister, Skoshi. At first we assumed that this was normal for male cats to grow bigger and faster than females, but we soon had to acknowledge that Skoshi along with her brother was losing her kittenish looks and turning into a mature, although very, very small, adult cat but kitten size. Interesting. A mini-cat. We were the owners of one full sized male cat and one mini female cat, a cat as cute as pie.
The Real Skoshi
We agreed to have our male cat altered. We agreed that once she was able, we would try to breed Skoshi. Rag doll cats were a relatively new thing and we felt we would turn the world on fire with mini-cats. What was not to like? One evening, we found our mini-cat waiting by the sliding glass door leading to the back yard crying piteously to be let out. This was unusual because we had trained both cats to be indoor cats and neither one ever expressed an interest in leaving the house.
Once Skoshi realized we were not going to open the door, she started the strangest behavior: pulling herself forward by dragging her backside on the carpet, back and forth for hours. Obviously, she had come into heat and was anxious to mate. Lucky for us, Toki-cat was altered and had no interest in his sister’s shenanigans. So we endured her first heat, her crying, her butt dragging, her desire to go out in the world and secure a mate. When it all ended, we made an appointment with our vet to ask for advice about breeding her.
As everyone probably realizes, there is no such thing as a variety of mini-cat. There are Persians, Siamese, Manx, Ragdolls, and probably a handful of other types. But no mini-cats. We listened to the veterinarian tell us that our dear, sweet Skoshi cat was diagnosed with feline leukemia and there was no cure and no hope for her. Her future was that of declining health, dental problems, infections and so forth.
Crushed by the prediction, we took precious Skoshi home, our perfect little mini cat, still the size of a kitten, and vowed to love her and take care of her until the end. As the vet told us, her problems multiplied as time passed, and one morning as she lay quietly on the folded towel that was her bed, she looked up at me and her eyes, instead of being sapphire blue, were emerald green. I took this as the sign she was ready.
So there are no breeds of mini-cats, defined as adult cats the size of a kitten. Dreams dashed, we greeted the news years later that a vaccine against the disease had become available. We’ll never know whether Skoshi never grew in size because of her leukemia or whether, had the vaccine been available in her lifetime, and she grew up healthy mini-cats would have been a popular breed.