January 4, moving eve

Word came down and we're set to start packing and moving our collection tomorrow.
Having lunch in the Extension, facing a field and a band of trees. Originally, when I started lunching in my car here, after a long while lunching at noisy, dirty, chaotic Moe's, Extension seemed away, natural. A place of repose. And, these are quieter lunches. But, lately, I notice much more the traffic noise from Clemson. You learn real quiet when you hike in back country areas.

Continued to read Turner House at lunch. It's a family novel, with thirteen siblings and their children and Grands. But, the novel resolves down to the story of two of the siblings, eldest Cha Cha and youngest Lelah, who are struggling in their lives and in need of some kind of salvation. I'm sixty pages or so from finish and both Cha  Cha and Lelah are only going into a deeper bottom.

There is a back story. The story of Francis', the Turner patriarch's first months in Detroit are woven through the story of the Turner children in the present day. Francis Turner leaves Arkansas and his new wife Viola for what he imagines will be a preaching opportunity.

Everything falls through and his early days in Detroit are rough, rife with loneliness and setbacks. He drinks too much. He takes up with the woman who runs the boarding house he stays. He fails to send word back to Viola about his well being and doings. He confesses, " It took courage to let a woman in on one's disappointment, one's fear"(278). He labels the time distant from Viola, his wife, as his "heathen period"(278).

January 3: Turner House, delayed move

From the Turner House by Angela Flournoy: "other siblings feared Marlene...she was too quick to get angry and too long to forgive, but Leah knew that Marlene simply loved hard"(212, pb). I am hoping this will be defined.

Sometimes, Flournoy spells it out when she need not and other times she assumes an understanding. Such as when younger son Troy visits his aging mom and complains, "Viola could complain about Cha Cha all day if you allowed her, just as she could Francis Turner, never mind that he was dead"(177). And, we know from this that Troy is feeling a bit unloved by his mum. But, just in case you're obtuse, or reading this while watching the ball game, Flournoy adds (in Troy's thoughts or via the narrators voice?), "The constant complaining suggested she cared for them most"(177).

Then, there's nice: "Cha Cha thought, if only she was as understanding as she was nurturimg"(218).

Moving delayed. Spent the afternoon reassigning staff.

Identity from Swing Time by Zadie Smith

If Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat, said Gene Kelly, and by this logic Bill "Bojangles" Robinson should have really been my dancer, because Bojangles danced for the Harlem dandy, for the ghetto kid, for the sharecropper-for all the descendants of slaves"(24).