Southcentral Pennsylvania versus Western Massachusetts

Scrapple. 

 

The official bug of New England.

 

I will take a break from October’s trip to France for a digression to last week’s trip to Southcentral Pennsylvania. I’ll spare you the details, but circumstances led us to consider whether we’d ever move back to Pennsylvania. I didn’t think so, as we’ve spent the past 47 years as New Englanders. We’ve also spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania because we had many (and still have a few) relatives in the Keystone State. The semi-scientific way was to consider the two (sort of) objectively. For comparison’s sake, PA means Southcentral Pennsylvania from greater Harrisburg/Lancaster to the Maryland line and MA means Massachusetts west of Worcester to the Berkshires.

 

1. Scenery

 

Both states have beautiful areas and depressing spots. Although I am enamored of the Connecticut River Valley, PA has a lot of active farms that afford sweeping vistas. As a result it feels less cramped than Western MA towns that run into each other and close-to-the-road forests.

 

Winner: PA

 

2. Susquehanna or Connecticut River

 

At 444 miles the Susquehanna is the longest river east of the Mississippi; the Connecticut is the longest in New England at 407 miles. The Susquehanna dumps into Chesapeake Bay and the Connecticut into Long Island Sound. The Susquehanna is deeper as well (>200’ at its greatest depth vs. about 130’ for the Connecticut) but because the Susquehanna also has numerous shallow sections, most of it is not navigable. The Connecticut has been a working river for boats, water power, and fishing.

 

Winner: Toss-up. What’s your watery pleasure?

 

3.  Boston or Philadelphia

 

In Benjamin Franklin’s time Philly would have won by a landslide. I regret to inform you that Ben has been moldering in the ground since 1790. Boston has been called the American Athens for its vibrant intellectual life that includes more colleges than any other U.S. city. Western MA isn’t far behind. The Five Colleges (UMass, Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire) have more than 30,000 students and adjacent Springfield 13,000 more. If you extend it to Hartford, CT (26 miles) it balloons to 170,000. Young people make the area more vibrant and (to some extent) recession-proof. Of course, all cities have urban challenges such as crime, but Boston is much safer than Philly and Springfield/Holyoke is safer than Harrisburg.

 

Winner: MA by a sizable margin.

 

 

4. Cultural Life:

 

Both Philly and Boston have cultural opportunities and, as a fan of art, their respective museums of fine arts are wonderful. However, Western MA has tons more art museums (the Clark, the Springfield Quadrangle, and the Norman Rockwell to mention just three). It is a center for independent music, folk and jazz clubs, theatre, classical music, and high-end galleries.

 

Winner: MA

 

5. Friendliness:

 

PA by a mile.  As an old joke goes, “It’s untrue that New Englanders aren’t friendly. We’d tell you if your feet were on fire. If’n you asked.” We make friends slowly and selectively. Once you are a friend, we are very loyal and go out of our way to make sure your tootsies aren’t aflame, but until then you’re on your own.

 

Winner: PA

 

6.  Tolerance and religion:

 

The corollary to #5 is that Pennsylvanians are much more likely to be judgmental. Folks in MA tend toward an MYOB (mind your own business) attitude. Gay, straight, trans, socialist, pro-choice …. Far fewer care in MA. I’ve interviewed conservatives up this way who have told me, “They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.”

 

In MA, the first comment upon meeting someone is either, “Tell me about yourself,” or “What do you do?” In PA it’s “What church do you go to?” Not all of PA is like that, but there’s an old saw about PA that says it’s Philly in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and Alabama in the middle. I grew up in the Alabama part, home of anti-choice activists. Heaven help you if try to proselytize in MA. At best you’ll get an “I’m not interested.” From there is goes downhill to “MYO F-in’ B,” or a door slammed in your face. Also, PA has tons of non-aligned churches; MA runs the gamut from Congregationalists and Quakers to Buddhists and Wiccans.

 

Winner: MA

 

7.  Politics and sports:  

 

That’s not to say MA citizens don’t get riled. In Western MA politics are as much a contact sport as ice hockey. MA is a deep blue state in which the GOP almost disappears. If we elect a GOP governor it’s because the occasional Democrat is so loathsome we hold our noses and vote against them. We also tend to follow politics as deeply as Pennsylvanians follow sports like football.

 

In Western MA we have a weird relationship to sports. UMass football is the worst program in America. The Patriots get some notice, but the Red Sox are a religion. It’s odd, though, because Western MA hates most things about Boston except the Sox, Pats, Bruins, and Celtics. I’m a Yankees fan, so I’ve learned to hold my tongue. That said, I’m a democratic socialist and the place in PA where I once lived is so Republican it went well over 80% for Trump.

 

Winner: MA.  

 

8.  Transportation:

 

MA has pretty decent public transport, whereas Southcentral PA has nearly none beyond Amtrak and you have to go to Harrisburg to get that. It’s a good thing we have public transport because there’s a reason why MA drivers are called “Massholes.” We are the worst! If you’re ever driving in MA and see a car or two or three to your left or right, don’t wonder if they are going to pull out in front of you. They will! Do not fall for the deception that stopped vehicles have yielded the right of way. They are merely doing Massmath and calculating how close you can get to them to generate the most anger before they pull out and you have to stand on the brakes to avoid a crash. If you have the temerity to blow your horn, they will flash the middle digit.

 

Winner: PA despite walls of trucks and slow traffic around Allentown, Easton, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, and rinky-dink places you’ve never heard of.

 

9.  Beaches:

 

Winner: MA because a beach in PA is called New Jersey, whereas MA has the North Shore, the South Shore, and The Cape. (We never say, “Cape Cod;” it’s always “The Cape.”

 

10. Food and Beverages:

 

Call it MA gourmet vs. PA gourmand. PA food is heavy, starchy, and supersized. Many people in MA grow herb gardens; in PA the only spices are salt, pepper, and maybe cinnamon. They also eat things like scrapple, mincemeat, and hog maw. Don’t ask; you don’t want to know! New Englanders have fresh seafood; Pennsylvanians rubbery facsimiles from Red Lobster. (They don’t even have the grace to pronounce it properly. It's “lobstah.”)

 

PA coffee is an abomination to God and humankind. It resembles coffee only in that it’s brown. MA has cafes that grind freshly roasted beans and skillful baristas who serve works of art.

 

PA “beer” means Rolling Rock, Iron City, or Budweiser. MA mainstream beer is Sam Adams, but it seems as if every town and hamlet has at least one microbrewery. I enjoy trying stuff that doesn’t have to be chilled to Arctic levels to mask their lack of taste. 

 

MA has Herrell's ice cream; PA has Turkey Hill. What does a fowl know about ice cream?  

 

PA does have much better fresh fruit. I’m amused when people up here get excited about local peaches that are about the size of what is removed to create a steer. MA cherries aren’t much better. But MA veg is superior. Butter and sugar corn is delish; PA yellow corn is starch on a stick. Hadley asparagus is the best on the planet and we know that green vegetables should be, well… green, not pressure-cooked gray. We also love arugula, which some in PA think is a type of Chevrolet.

 

Winner: MA

 

11.  Taxes

 

MA has been nicknamed “Taxachusetts,” which isn’t actually true. PA residents also hate taxes. Show of hands for anyone who just loves to pay taxes.

 

Winner: Toss-up. If you want services and schools, ya’ gotta pay for ‘em. We just make ourselves feel better if we vent about them.

 

12. World views:

 

I’ll be partly charitable on this. In PA, folks  think the key to happiness is family and owning stuff. In MA we are happiest when we are with friends and are doing stuff. 

 

However, Pennsylvanians simply don’t get irony. Faced with irony the faces are either blank because they don’t get it, or because they confuse irony with sarcasm. Not so. Sarcasm is a reflexive act; irony is premeditated, conscious, and intellectual. It is intended to be humorous commentary on the gap between what is commonly believed and reality.

 

Winner: MA because I simply don’t know how one can live without irony!  

 

If you do the tally, you’ll know why I call myself a New Englander. No irony intended. Had I added a weather category, PA might have won, though with climate change that’s less true than it used to be. You can call that tragic irony.

 

Rob Weir

 

How to Break Bad Political Habits

 

By now you’ve probably digested the news that of the eight Democratic Senators who caved in to give Republicans the votes necessary to end the government shutdown. The enduring question is why? The eight– seven Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats–can offer all of the disingenuous justifications they want, but the bottom line is that they have handed Trump a major political victory which he will use to blame the crisis on Democrats and liberals. The Disloyal Eight may have sandbagged next year’s midterm elections. The only partial victory the Democrats might have wrangled is a continuation of SNAP benefits. That is if:

 

·      The House agrees to those terms

·      Trump doesn’t throw another wobbly and refuse to sign the bill

 

What was surrendered was a guarantee that the Affordable Care Act would remain in place. Even SNAP could go away as its funding under the (ahem!) compromise bill covers only the period between November 2025 and the end of 2026.

 

I’ve watched the Democratic Party my entire life and it hasn’t inspired substantial confidence or hope since the end of Lydon Johnson’s administration. Oh sure, millions joyfully celebrated the kumbaya election of Barack Obama, the last morally upright president, a man too decent to do things he could’ve done, like make a recess appointment of a new Supreme Court justice when Anton Scalia died. He bet that Hillary Clinton would become president, but we know how that turned out. Instead of the moderate Merrick Garland we ended up with Neil Gorsuch, one of the SCOTUS “originalists” who see the Founders as infallible crystal ball gazers.

 

If you are a Democrat, it’s time to face the music; your party is as outdated as a 1967 Studebaker. As I frequently note, its singular talent is the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Where’s the pulse? Well, there’s Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, his mentee AOC, and rising star Zohran Mamdani, also a democratic socialist. None of them are mainstream Democrats and Bernie is 81. In all candor, the Democrats are in serious need of a remake represented by 30-somethings like AOC and Mamdani.

 

Let’s look at Democrats who voted with the GOP. If you know this, skip to the end to see what I propose.

 

Angus King (78). He’s an indie but don’t think Bernie Sanders; Maine has odd electoral districting and often splits its electoral votes. King is a lawyer, a two-time governor, and a classic middle of the roader. He leans liberal, but just barely. He won’t be up for reelection until 2030, by which time he’ll be in his 80s.

 

Catherine Cortes Masto (58) and Jacky Rosen (65) are both from Nevada. Let’s call their votes what they are: Senators protecting Nevada tourism. Neither is up for reelection soon. They are concerned about airports shutting down. They’d rather deal with the potential collapse of the ACA than a decline in visitors to Vegas and Reno.

 

Jeanne Shaheen (75) and Maggie Hassan (64) are from New Hampshire, and you might think they’d favor a shutdown as the unofficial state motto is “We aren’t like Massachusetts.” Hassan says her vote was to save SNAP benefits, which would sound more principled were NH not a state currently funding SNAP. Shaheen has called for an extension of ACA. Good luck getting it. What she meant to say is that she’s up for reelection next year and will face John Sununu. For some reason people in NH love the Sununu family like little kids love monsters.

 

Speaking of reelection, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (78) wants another term. You could look at the second most powerful Senate Democrat (after Chuck Schumer) and think “player.” Do Illini really want to give Durbin another term? He’d be pushing 85 at the end of it.

 

Tim Kaine (64) of Virginia is another self-interest vote. After all, Virginia has close to 400,000 federal workers once you count Department of Defense jobs, those on active military duty, and non-military support staff. He is on record of saying he “doesn’t care” if his colleagues are mad at him. This from the man who did Hillary Clinton zero good as her 2016 running mate.

 

John Fetterman (53) of Pennsylvania would normally be a strong presidential contender. Except many in his own party think he’s nuts. That not my slam on him; that’s what they really think. He has had widely reported mental health issues and a stroke. Fetterman is an enigma. At times he channels Bernie; at others he’s as inconsistent as a libertarian. At least he was upfront about his opposition to working without pay. 

 

BREAKING THE HABIT.

 

Republicanism has become the secular religion of conservatives and troglodytes. Democrats are the religion of dreamers without a clue. Party politics are dying and we would do well to pull the life support plug.

 

Here’s how to register your anger about the Great Sellout of 2025: Unenroll in the Democratic Party. Tell the courthouse clerk it’s a protest against machine politics. Most states allow you to request which primary ballot you want, so you can still vote D if you’d like, but “Independent” behind your name lets you avoid a lot of noise. I routinely unsubscribe to emails that try to pigeonhole me and never answer campaign phone calls. When I support someone financially I avoid all official party sites. Vote for younger candidates. A party relying on people my age or (gasp!) older has no future.

 

We Solve Murders: The Start of a New Series?

 

 

 

We Solve Murders (2024)

By Richard Osman

Viking, 381 pages.

★★★★

 

If you’ve been a fan of the Thursday Murder Club novels of Richard Osman, his We Solve Murders has all the earmarks of being the kickoff of a new series. If it is indeed the start—and let’s face it the Murder Club cast is aging out, as it were—you will need to adjust to the fact that thus far the new cast isn’t as adorable as the old one yet. But don’t despair, there’s still a lot of British eccentricity on the pages.

 

Steve Wheeler is a retired cop in Axley whose sole ambition is to wear his vintage rock shirts and loaf away his days. Axley is an invented English village that represents a safe retreat for Wheeler. Steve’s wife Debbie was killed in a train crash years ago, but he still “talks” to her every night. Axley also represents self-imposed isolation. Steve is still in his 50s, but his “activities” are limited to arguing with his pub mates over road routes and taking part in quiz games. His daughter-in-law Amy tries her best to persuade Steve to expand his interests, but he’s not buying it. She runs her own personal protection business to get out of the house because hubby Adam is away on business a lot. Don’t think desk job. Amy is a 5’6” dynamo and woe betide anyone who thinks she’s a pushover. They can contemplate what wrong from a hospital bed! As it happens, Amy and Steve are best buddies, even though she’s all action and he’s trying to be no-action. Amy loves her husband, but neither she nor Steve are cut out for Adam’s business world.

 

Enter Rosie D’Antonio, a famous author living off her reputation. She is classic fading diva who puts the moves on everyone she meets. She has the feeling she is being stalked and hires Amy to investigate and protect her. Amy is reluctant to take the job because she thinks Rosie is imagining things. Maybe. Maybe not. Osman brings us up to the moment with characters using ChatGPT for various reasons.

 

Francois Loubert uses ChatGPT to send impersonal emails because it is hard to trace his IP address and it leaves very few clues of his real identity. As a money smuggler, he has reasons to be incognito. ChatGPT is hard to crack, but not impossible. As Amy investigates, she gets close enough that Loubert or a mysterious “Joe Blow” hires assassins to eliminate her. That’s easier to imagine than to accomplish, but she takes enough lumps that Steve is convinced to join the investigation. After all, he’s much closer to her than he is to his son Adam.  The botched hits are amusing, even when they are gruesome failures.

 

It might be easier to crack were there but one ChatGPT trail and only one connected to Rosie. Osman constructs a convoluted plot. Jeff Nolan is the CEO of Maximum Import Solutions who’d like to know why three of his clients were killed. Is his former partner Henk involved? Is he Loubert? Who is writing emails “in the style of an English gentleman?” Who is “Joe Blow?” Amy and Steve find themselves on a round-the-world trip that begins in England and touches down in South Carolina, Dubai, St. Lucia, Ireland, Fiji, Hawaii, and back in the UK. Sometimes it’s a literal “touch” down.  Amy is as wily as she is wiry. She charms private airport passport control agent Carlos into helping her deceive one pursuer. Among the offbeat characters she and/or Steve meet include dumb-as-an-ox actor Max Highfield; Nolan’s steely secretary Susan Knox, the keeper of company contracts and history; Mickey, a loud-mouthed but laid-back Texan golfer; and Eddie, a fanboy.

 

Do Steve and Amy solve the various mysteries? Given that the two set up a new agency titled We Solve Mysteries, you can rest assured they save their own hides. That doesn’t mean they are always right; after all, Osman’s goal is to entertain, not be Sherlock Holmes. Given the number of loose threads in the plot, Osman wisely avoids any sort of all-roads-lead-to-Rome solution that ties everything together. Sigmund Freud likely never said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” but that adage holds true. Osman gives us an unlikely pairing of a failed retiree and his daughter-in-law, and if that’s not a series setup, I’ll retire my deerstalker cap.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Needle Lake: Who Are You?

 

 

Needle Lake  (2025)

By Justine Champine

Penguin Randow House, 256 pages.

★★★

 

I really liked Needle Lake, so why only three stars? Simply because I think a lot of readers will find it slow, despite its short length. You need to know that there is very little that happens in the novel and that the one tragic and terrible thing that does occur is revealed from the get-go. In my opinion, author Justine Champine would have gotten more bang for the proverbial buck had she cloaked that event in more ambiguity. It is the sort of thing that should come as a surprise, not something preordained.

 

If I might borrow from rocker Pete Townshend, Needle Lake is like the opening of one of Townshend’s songs: Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who? Much of the novel is deeply interior. Mineral, Washington, is a West Coast logging town where there’s not much going on. Fourteen-year-old Ida was born with a heart defect that led her parents to (over) protect her. She is not allowed to run, exert herself, take gym classes, or fight back if bullied. As is often the case, this makes her a target, not a figure that evokes pity. It doesn’t help that Ida’s a map nerd who wins geography contests. Most kids her age don’t think about the bigger world, let alone treat maps as sacred documents or dream about dots on a map that Ida knows all about. As a result, Ida is a recluse who insulates herself from social isolation by leaning into the safety of her routines. She’d much rather study alone in the library than try to befriend her tormenters.

 

Ida’s routines are upended when her 16-year-old cousin Elna comes to stay for several weeks. All Ida is told is that Elna needs a short break from her mother in San Francisco. At first Ida is annoyed by her cousin’s constant chatter about how much better things are in San Francisco and how her mother lets her do as she wishes. Eventually, though, Ida comes to believe that Elna is everything Ida is not: brave, free, popular, glamourous… Of course, at 14, Ida doesn’t yet see that a lot of what she finds admirable can also manifest as recklessness, unrestrained, promiscuous, and faux painted dress-up. And that’s not to mention Elna’s thievery, selfishness, and lying.

 

When the horrible thing that happens finally takes place, Elna convinces Ida to run away with her. They are bound for Los Angeles, a place where Elna is convinced is her destiny. They are on the run for several days, though why police can’t trace a stolen vehicle is the novel’s McGuffin. Don’t despair, nothing awful happens to the girls. The true tragedy of Needle Lake is ineffectual parenting. Male role models are conspicuously absent for reasons that will be revealed, but neither mother/sister is adept at raising her daughter. To add a layer of poignancy, Ida admires Elna’s adaptability and poise, yet Elna is secretly envious of Ada’s protective bubble. Each will have to come to grips with the fact that wishes don’t help in the quest for self-identity.

 

Champine tells most of her tale through Ida’s eyes. She does such an excellent job of showing the world through 14-year-old eyes that it took me back to my own search for identity at the same age. More specifically, it reminded me of just how hard it was to answer the who-are-you question. But because Ida was used to being self-contained and imagined the world and her potential place in it, we get the sense that she will be all right. Elna? The best we can say is that it’s an open question. She certainly has more to reconcile than Ida. I don’t know if Champine meant for us to conclude that morality is the key to making dreams concrete, but it’s certainly a legitimate takeaway message. I wish Champine had developed intentionality more clearly. Alas, a weak ending leaves us wondering if the key to knowing who are you is linked to another question: What is the nature of your dreams?

 

Rob Weir

 

# Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance copy of Needle Lake.

 

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil is a Lesson in Human Evolution

The fog was just lifting when we arrived

{See my Facebook page tomorrow for lots of pictures}
 

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil is often called the “Capital of Prehistory” and I wouldn’t question it. In and around the village are numerous caves with etchings and paintings from the so-called “Stone Age,” which is the longest period of human-like and early humans. It only stretches from circa (about) 3.4 million years ago to circa 4000 -2000 B.C.E. That’s a mere 99% of the time humans and their ilk have been on the planet. Most of what we think we know of the Stone Age (Paleolithic) era is inferred from visual evidence such as stone and bone tools, skeletal remains, rock carvings, examination of habitats, and painted cave walls. The Stone Age isn’t an entirely accurate term as some gold- and copper-working dates from the late Stone Age.

 

To try to get a grip on things, archaeologists subdivide the Stone Age. Insofar as we can tell at present, during the middle and later Paleolithic periods, homo sapiens evolved and became the dominant fully human inhabitants of the area, though that has been challenged. We continue to think the homo sapiens gave us the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the settled villages, domestication of animals, and farming of the Neolithic periods, but don’t be too sure. Among the many fascinating things on view at the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies is enough surviving bone to challenge the view that homo sapiens are unique. The area in and around Les Eyzies is pocked with so many once-inhabited caves that is was nicknamed “Troglodyte Village.”

 

There’s no such species as a troglodyte, but the story of humankind is often told as if there were. Ape-like australopithecines (and older) beings were assumed to inhabit the caves. They probably did, as did Neanderthals and homo sapiens. The part that stuns most folks today is the evidence that at least one line of Neanderthal needs to be reclassified as homo sapiens. (The jury is still out on the recently discovered hominids known as denisovans.) It’s pretty much a given that homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. Another mind-blowing discovery at the Prehistory Museum is that many Neanderthals differed from Cro-Magnons (long thought to be the first homo sapiens) only in that they were slightly smaller but more muscular. You can find modeled reconstructions of various humans and human ancestors in the museum, as well as now-extinct giant elk and wooly mammoths.

 

The museum alone makes Les Eyzies a busy place for a village of just 852 residents. It also makes one think, as it is housed in Château Tayac, a castle-like building that was constructed in the 12^th-16^th centuries in and around massive cliffs. Call it an advanced cave dwelling.

 

The village has a few shops but the word quaint comes to mind. It sits in a small valley near the junction of the Vézère and Beune Rivers. Local fully evolved French citizens farm and tend vines in Les Eyzies,  but tourism rules big time. Numerous archaeological sites important to human prehistory are on view and the famed Lascaux cave paintings are nearby. We visited a cave in Cougnac during the same visit.

 

By the way, troglodyte simply means cave dweller. If you visit Spain or Greece, you’ll learn that troglodytes are still among us. After all, why go to all the trouble of building a new structure if there’s a cave nearby that’s warm in the winter and cool in the hot summers. All you need to do is make sure it’s not currently occupied by bears! And, yes, there are bears in the Dordogne.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The River is Rising: Tough Book but One of 2025's Best

 

 

 

 

The River is Waiting (2025)

By Wally Lamb

Simon and Schuster, 480 pages.

★★★★★

 

Some of the reviews I’ve read of The River is Waiting, the newest novel from Wally Lamb, raised my hackles. Lamb is a wonderful writer, but some readers trashed it for being too sad and using bad language. Sheesh! Just because a book covers a tough subject, doesn’t make it a lousy book. Like Lamb’s anti-hero, sometimes people make dumb choices, especially when under great stress. Horrible things can and do happen in life. Plus, it’s pretty hard to avoid unpleasantness and swears in a novel whose major setting is prison. So here’s some advice: If you are overly sensitive, something awful happens near the beginning of the book. If you can’t handle it, stop immediately and stay off the review forums! All you’ll miss is one of best books of 2025, even if it is one of saddest.

 

Corby Ledbetter seemingly had it all: a nice home, a good-paying job, a loving wife named Emily, and two-year-old twins Maisie and Niko. Then he lost his job, stood to lose his house, and was under so much stress that he began drinking and mixing drugs with booze. Under the influence of alcohol he had an accident in which a death occurred. In Connecticut law, a DUI resulting in a death is a second-degree murder charge. Although Corby got sober, went to AA, and underwent counseling with Dr. Patel, who documented his progress at sentencing, the usual verdict is six years in prison. A semi-sympathetic judge gave him three. In most states, anything over two years means incarceration in a state penitentiary, not a county lockup. Corby was cuffed and taken to the Yates Correctional Institution along the banks of the Wequonnoc River. (Both are fictional.)

 

This is a novel about what can be forgiven, what can’t be, guilt, reconciliation, survival, small kindnesses, violence, injustice, and tragedy. Lamb is known for his attention to detail, and interior character-centered books that probe thoughts and emotions. Corby is wrecked by grief, but wishes to be a better husband and father. In the beginning of the book he is an egoistic and unreliable narrator. It is to Lamb’s credit that he makes Corby into a believable reliable narrator, yet one who retains edges and anger. He’s a liberal who is forced to put his belief in racial equality into concrete action. He learns early on that no one in the prison is impressed by his intellect or his middle-class status; survival means floating above white and black gangs without dissing either of them. He also lucks out in that a gay cellmate named Manny shows him how things work on the inside, but respects Corby’s heterosexuality.

 

Lamb does another delicate balancing act by not sugarcoating prison violence, but allowing the possibility of being a decent person. Corby is deeply depressed. How not?  Negativity and acting out are as rife in prison as the food is disgusting. When Corby gets into trouble, it’s usually because he can’t shut off his injustice sensors, though it would be in his self-interest to do so. When an obviously psychologically damaged young man named Solomon is sent to Yates instead of a psychiatric unit, Corby tries to get sadistic guards Piccardy and Anselmo to lay off the “kid.” He even reports them. Bad move! Now they hate Corby even more than they enjoy picking on Solomon. Corby learns the hard way that prisoners have no rights and that he can’t trust the Yates psychologist.

 

The Wequonnoc River is a character in its own right. Inmates can hear it from their cells and, when on outside work detail, can catch glimpses of it. Corby even manages to walk down to it when the guards aren’t looking and secures a white “lucky stone” that he occasionally shares when another inmate needs comfort. The river represents the continuous flow of history, lives, and emotions. Corby adjusts to prison, but never allows himself to give up his yearning to be free or to repair his marriage. His best moments come when he gets to work in the library with Mrs. Millman, and when his art work attracts notice and he gets to paint a mural that wins accolades from both inmates and state officials.  But don’t wait for a happy ending. Lamb settles for a tragically ironic one that stings because it seems so utterly real.

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Sarlat-la-Canéda

Duck Dinner in Sarlat. Wine not pictured!

If you visit the southern section of the Dordogne–aka/ the Périgord or southern Aquitaine–chances are good you will end up staying at Sarlat-la-Canéda, not because it’s the most beautiful village–though it is very lovely–or the largest, but simply because it is an excellent base for exploring nearby sites of interest to tourists foreign and French. As such, it has more places to stay, numerous restaurants, and shops to cater to visitors. The town of Périgueux has nearly 30,000 residents but it takes 50 minutes to get to Lascaux from there, but less than a half hour from Sarlat. As realtors would put it, it's all about location, location, location.

 

A word on French jurisdictions. France is divided into regions, départments with an administrative prefecture, and communes (municipalities). The Dordogne is located in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region whose capitol is Bordeaux, is comparable to a U.S. state.  Périgueux départment prefecture (sort of like a county seat ) is one of five in the region, and greater Sarlat is the commune town for Périgord Nord (north). You’ll find Canéda on maps, but that small village has pretty much been absorbed by Sarlat.

 

Sarlat is relatively small–around 8,800 people–but its history dates back to at least the 9^th century when a Benedictine abbey was built there. Like many places in the area its golden stone construction has its roots in the Middle Ages. For such a small place it has 77 protected monuments, the latter term with a broader meaning than a single statue or memorial. Buildings, gardens, bridges, and entire sections of a town can be designated as a protected monument, as indeed can anything else deemed of historical value or important to French heritage and culture. Sarlat’s level of preservation has made it attractive to film directors such as Luc Besson, Peter Hyams, and Ridley Scott.

 

Sarlat is also visited because of its production of foie gras, pâté, duck confit, walnut concoctions, wine, cheese, and truffles. I’m not a fan of duck liver (or any other kind), but I can recommend all things walnut, the cheese, the wine, and the atmosphere. Market days are a big deal in Sarlat with its main square ( Place la Liberté) crowded with stalls, umbrellas, and people. Other protected monuments of note include the home of poet/humanist Étienne de La Boétie, Gisson mansion, the Place du Peyru, the cathedral, the bishop’s palace, and the Lantern of the Dead. Overall, Sarlat is a great place to hang out and soak up the atmosphere: cobblestone streets, unique facades, food, and great wine.

 

Note: My Facebook page will have more pictures of Sarlat tomorrow.

 

Rob Weir