Trixie and all the supporting characters

It's summertime in Sleepyside, and the Trixie Belden series really gets underway with book number three.

Summer's a good time for Trixie.

The girls were wearing shorts and tops so that they could take a dip in the lake whenever they wanted to, without bothering to change into swimsuits.

There's swimming! And horses! Oh, and diamonds.

One diamond, actually, found by Trixie and Honey (of course) in the floor of the cottage at the edge of the Manor House grounds.

Honey, having learned how to tell real gems from paste (what else would a millionaire's daughter do?), is ready to hand the diamond over to the police immediately. But the ever-persuasive Trixie has other plans.

"Oh, no, please," Trixie begged. "Let's not tell anybody about it for a little while. Let's try to solve the mystery of how it got in the cottage ourselves."

And why doesn't Trixie want the police involved?

"The cottage would be positively crawling with detectives who'd find all the clues before we had a chance."

Because this is when Trixie discovers her true calling: she's going to be a detective. And Honey too, just as soon as they get through with pesky things like chores and school and older brothers who like to make fun of them.

Yes, brothers. Aside from the detective thing, Brian and Mart Belden's first appearance is what makes The Gatehouse Mystery the first real book in the series. (There's also the fact that I had this one long before I acquired the first two, but I'm sticking with my thesis.)

"The one on the left with the funny-looking crew cut is Mart. The other odd-looking creature is Brian. I hate them both at the moment."

Trixie hates her brothers (at the moment) for the same reason I love them: they provide some much-needed perspective and tranquility, and aren't given to making assumptions like "The reason why the crooks didn't come back for it when they found out it wasn't with all the rest of the loot is that they got killed off in a gang war or something."

You love them too, don't you?

By the way, the Wheelers are rich. Just in case you'd forgotten.

In book #3, that means Honey gets stuck with lines like this:

"Regan's been complaining that, what with having to drive servants back and forth and having such trouble with car repairs, we need a chauffeur. I really think I'm going to have to speak to Daddy about it."

And this one:

"Don't feel so bad. Daddy has plenty of money. He can keep us out of jail... If the police come around asking for diamonds, Mother will give them one of hers."

Oh, and we're treated to a description of casual dining a la Wheeler:

But on Thursdays, the cook's night off, the meal was a much more simple affair. Celia served the first course, and then she and Miss Trask brought in platters of cold cuts and big bowls of salad. Everyone helped himself, and the dessert was usually fruit and crackers with several kinds of cheese. Grown-ups were served coffee in fragile little cups.

(Is it just me, or does anyone else think Maureen O'Hara would be just right as Mrs. Wheeler?)

A few other miscellaneous bits of interest:

• The Gatehouse Mystery was my introduction to Diamond Jim Brady (the Belden siblings are familiar enough with the name that they can use it as a subtle reference to the gem in question) and the art of forging signatures. The actual forgery instructions weren't so useful, because carbon paper was no longer a household staple by the time I met the book (and it was no longer the case that "anyone can rent a typewriter"), but I still liked knowing how to do it.

• For everyone keeping count, this is now the second time we've seen "bracelets" for handcuffs, this time courtesy of Jim.

Trixie continued: happy families are all alike

It's been a long time since my last Trixie post - nearly a year.

Conveniently, our intrepid sleuth pretty much covers everything you need to know on the first page of the second book in the series, The Red Trailer Mystery.

"We're going on a trailer trip, Honey Wheeler and I, with her governess, Miss Trask, to try and find Jim Frayne, who has run away again."

What? You want more?

"Oh, Dad, Jim is really the most wonderful boy I ever knew. His ambition in life is to own and run a camp for orphan boys so they can learn how to be good at sports and how to get along in the woods at the same time that they have school lessons. So that's why we feel sure he's trying now to get a job at one of those three big camps upstate. He could be a junior counselor, like Brian and Mart, or junior athletic instructor, because he's very good at everything and he knows all about the woods and did two years of high school in one and one a scholarship to college --"

That's right, Trix. Time for a breath. (Come on, aren't you a little in love with him too by now?)

So Honey, Trixie, and Miss Trask are headed for the nebulous region known as "upstate" to those of us who live near the coast.

And how are they getting there? In a trailer, featuring a "combination living room and bedroom with a cozy little dining alcove... tiled kitchenette... glistening modern bathroom [e]quipped with a glassed-in shower, fluorescent lighting, and a compact mirrored cabinet over the washbasin."

You think that sounds like fun? Try it for a few days. Rainy ones. When one of the members of your party is a toddler suffering from severe poison ivy. And the thing leaks.

Sorry, forgot whose story we were focusing on here. Back to Trixie, who runs into another mystery, in the form of the trailer they park next to on their first night:

"That's funny," Trixie wondered aloud. "What's a man who looks so poverty-stricken doing in such a lavish trailer?"

Naturally, we find out by the end of the book. And all his problems get solved too.

In the meantime, we get to see familiar themes resurface:

• Honey is rich.

"It must be an awful nuisance being rich... Your parents are always worrying for fear you'll be kidnapped and held for ransom, aren't they?"

• Honey fails to display the intelligence she has in the later books.

"Why, he could go to a hotel, couldn't he?" Honey demanded.

Trixie shook her head. "Not without arousing suspicion. Boys his age don't go around stopping at hotels."

"I never thought about that," Honey said slowly.

• Bad guys are bad from their first lines.

"It was all your fault. You weren't watching where you were going. You'll have to pay for the damage, you stupid little fool!"

• Bad guys use a lot of slang.

"'You'd better watch who you call a numbskull around here,' Jeff said evenly. 'And in case you're interested, I'm getting fed up with you giving all the orders. This is a fifty-fifty racket, see?'"

• So do police - state troopers, in this case.

"'Reach for the ceiling, brother... Put your dainty wrists in these bracelets, bud. Pretty, aren't they?... Since we caught these two birds red-handed, we won't need to call you as witnesses."

(This, by the way, marks the first appearance of "dainty wrists" and "bracelets" as a synonym for handcuffs. It will not be the last.)

And of course the book is full of delightful signs of 1950 - airmail letters and telegrams, camps full of husky, energetic boys, a camp called Autoville...

It's not really spoiling anything to say that the book has a happy ending.

Forget spoilers. The book is almost sixty years old, and if you haven't gotten to it yet, it's not my fault.

And anyway, the last page provides us with one more swoon-worthy Jim moment, so naturally I'll close with it here.

"'They're waiting for you at a table inside.' Jim gave her a little push. 'In you go, kid. I'm top man around here now.'"

What? I'm the only one who finds that adorable? Hmph. Just wait for book #3, where Jim gets to confront his first hardened criminal.

Chicken Saga, Part the Last

The chickens went home today. After two months of moving from one box to another...
... they've gone back to the farm.
No more converted warehouse loft for them.
Now they're in a full-scale commune.
They - well, I guess "enjoyed" is the right word - a ride along some back roads...
... and settled in among their sisters who were fostered elsewhere.

There's already some jockeying for queen of the chicken yard...
... but mostly they're excited about being outside. (Grass! Bugs! What fun!)

Sometime soon they'll move to the chicken tractor, whose resemblance to a gypsy caravan is not an accident.

In this case, they'll move a few feet every day, so they can eat bugs and fertilize the fields.
And, of course, they'll start laying in October or so. No doubt we'll pick up their output at the farm stand from time to time.
Goodbye to Peck, Pack, and Stripe!

Poetry Friday: ¿Y tu aguela, aonde ejtá?

This week's poem is a big thank you to all the people who think about race in writing, put themselves out there, and push me to challenge my privilege. Y'all are awesome, and don't get nearly enough credit.

¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?
by Fernando Fortunato Vizcarondo

Ayé me dijite negro
Y hoy te boy a contejtá:
Mi mai se sienta en la sala.
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

Yo tengo el pelo'e caíyo:
El tuyo ej seda namá;
Tu pai lo tiene bien lasio,
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

Tu coló te salió blanco
Y la mejiya rosá;
Loj lábioj loj tiénej finoj . . .
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

¿Disej que mi bemba ej grande
Y mi pasa colorá?
Pero dijme, por la binge,
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

Como tu nena ej blanquita
La sacaj mucho a pasiá . . .
Y yo con ganae gritate
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

A ti te gujta el fojtrote,
Y a mi brujca maniguá.
Tú te laj tiraj de blanco
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

Erej blanquito enchapao
Que dentraj en sosiedá,
Temiendo que se conojca
La mamá de tu mamá.

Aquí el que no tiene dinga
Tiene mandinga . . ¡ja, ja!
Por eso yo te pregunto
¿Y tu agüela, aonde ejtá?

Ayé me dijite negro
Queriéndome abochoná.
Mi agüela sale a la sala,
Y la tuya oculta ajtá.

La pobre se ejtá muriendo
Al belse tan maltratá.
Que hajta tu perro le ladra
Si acaso a la sala bá.

¡Y bien que yo la conojco!
Se ñama siña Tatá . . .
Tu la ejconde en la cosina,
Po'que ej prieta de a beldá.

Text taken from here.

Rather than subject you to my totally non-poetic attempt at translation, I'll let YouTube come to the rescue: here's the poem read in English (albeit ninety degrees from vertical).

In which I rant a bit

"One British scholar who studied the Venuses in his youth never noticed any clothing because, he recalled, he 'never got past the breasts.'"

You know how women sometimes complain about men speaking to their breasts rather than their faces? That's nothing compared to what the prehistoric European figurines (most of them called Venus of Something) have put up with.

It's something I've been especially cognizant of since reading The Invisible Sex by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page. And it's why this Reuters article, filed under "Oddly Enough," set me off, starting with the title.

"Sexy Venus"? This is not a prehistoric pinup girl. (Which, I found out only after typing that, is exactly the term Nature uses, at least on its website, to describe the figure. I thought Reuters might have been dumbing down, but it seems the blame lies elsewhere.)

The Nature letter and accompanying commentary discuss a recently discovered figurine that bears some resemblance to the known ones, like the Venus of Willendorf, Venus of Brassempouy, and Venus of Lespugue, but is 5,000 years older than any known figurine of this type.

So it's huge - these figurines are thought to represent, among other things, the concept of gender as distinct from sex, which was a big step in the development of human consciousness.

As in, it happened earlier than we thought.

Those of us who bother with thought, at least, and don't get stuck on the idea of what The Invisible Sex calls "paleoporn."

Adovasio and Soffer took their eyes off the breasts for a while and focused on what appear to be braids. And they found that "a close inspection of the braids of the Venus of Willendorf showed that her 'hair' was, on the contrary, a woven hat, a radially hand-woven item of apparel that was probably begun from a knotted center in the manner of certain coiled baskets made today by Hopi, Apache, and other American Indian tribes."

Which is significant, because based on the amount of detail in the hat, "the carver had to have spent more time on just the hat than on the rest of the entire figurine." Seems like the important part, no?

That's not to say there's no sexual aspect: "There is simply no denying that the sculptors of these figurines went to a great deal of trouble to show off the sexual and secondary sexual features of the female human, even to the point of leaving the rest of the figure - face, feet, arms, and so forth - either abstract or absent altogether."

But they - and there's plenty of speculation about the identities of the carvers - don't seem to have put the figures in the plain brown wrapper that Reuters, Nature, and the latest researchers are reaching for.

(All quotes from the ARC version of The Invisible Sex, which is a plausible takedown of standard man-the-mighty-hunter versions of prehistory and other ways to interpret archaeological evidence. There's a reason the ARC still has a home on my shelves.)

Poetry Friday: Letter to Alex Comfort

For today's installment of Poetry Friday (look at me, talking about it like it's something I do every week!), the poem I took this blog's title from: "Letter to Alex Comfort," by Welsh poet Dannie Abse.

That Greek one, then, is my hero who watched the bath water
Rise above his navel, and rushed out naked, 'I found it,
I found it' into the street in all his shining and forgot
That others would only stare at his genitals.
What laughter!

The full text of the poem, alas, doesn't seem to be online, although Human Genome includes another section on one of its pages:

But nothing rises. Neither spectres, nor oil, nor love.
And the old professor must think you mad, Alex, as you rehearse
poems in the laboratory like vows, and curse those clever scientists
who dissect away the wings and haggard heart from the dove.

In fact, I've never read the full poem. I discovered it on the first page of my copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ages ago.

The Alex Comfort of the title is, in fact, the one who wrote The Joy of Sex. It's either slightly inappropriate or rather apt as a source for the title of a YA-lit-focused blog.

Comfort was a doctor-poet like Abse, and one of his mentors - that courtesy of a really well-written profile the Guardian ran in 2003.

Visit Kelly Polark for the rest of Poetry Friday.

Anthropology and The Chosen One

The Chosen One, Carol Lynch Williams. 2009.

Because I try to avoid "after hoc therefore something else hoc" fallacies, I'm not going to tell you that The Chosen One is responsible for the bad dreams I had after I read it.

But still.

I'm just sayin'.

If this book were a Feministe post, it would come with "trigger warning" at the top. This is a disturbing story, but it's also one that grabs hold of you.

Kyra is thirteen, and she's about to be married off to her uncle, who already has far more wives than is good for him. But this is an isolated polygamist community, and Kyra's uncle is one of the more powerful men, so she doesn't get much say.

She tries to resist. And she gets some support at home, especially from her father. He's the one who stands to lose the most by Kyra's resistance, and Carol Lynch Williams does a great job showing his internal dilemma - how long can his daughter's interests come ahead of his own?

An Edible History of Humanity isn't the first book you'd link this to, not like The Rapture of Canaan or Lucy Peale, but give me a chance: One of the ideas Tom Standage touches on is the relationship between agriculture and hierarchical societies. The theory is that as people switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture, they became sedentary and acquired possessions that they wanted to hold onto, so they weren't as likely to get up and relocate when a new leader claimed power or new privileges - and eventually we got monarchies and dictatorships.

Think about that as you read Kyra's descriptions of how the community has changed, and think about why even her father can't do much to help.

Other reviews and discussion:
Becky's Book Reviews (plus an author interview)
The Brain Lair
A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy
The Stories of a Girl
YA Authors Cafe (author interview)
Cynsations (author interview)