Dobleve

Instead support up and coming author Jacob Paul and an indie publisher (Ig Publishing) out of Brooklyn by buying Sarah/Sara.

I am an avid reader of contemporary literature as well as historical fiction and non-fiction, poetry, pulp fiction, the odd twinkie thriller page turner, and of course, cook books. There is one book however that I can’t WAIT to read: Sarah/Sara by Jacob Paul.

Sarah/Sara is the diary of a young Orthodox Jewish woman solo-kayaking across the Arctic Ocean from Prudhoe Bay to the mouth of the McKenzie River. She’s undertaken the journey, originally her father’s retirement dream, after her parents die….

The author, (yes! he’s a friend of mine) is wickedly intelligent and subtly, dryly hilarious and I can’t wait to read this novel.

Of his own work Jake writes:

” My characters exist in a world terrorized by violent acts, a world they can only make sense of if they believe in God. Yet they are haunted by the notion that their God has created a world not worth living in. To resolve this paradox they grapple with physical texts and the natural world. They kayak the Arctic, climb the Tetons and wander the canyon lands, the conflicted Hebrew of the Psalms or Job or Genesis as vivid as their inhospitable surroundings. My books play out the danger of wedding oneself too strongly to a single reading of a foundational text: textual readings that make personal and political change impossible to achieve without either reinventing the text or reinventing one’s identity.”

Consider supporting this up and coming author by buying a pre-order copy of Sarah/Sara. Do it because he’s my friend and I would be sooo grateful! Do it because it is such an amazing thing to have written a novel! Do it because it’s going to be a fantastic read! Do it because a small grass roots (international!!) showing tells the publishers, distributors and anyone else who’s paying attention that there is a market for these novels and their writers!

And, if you’re so inclined, think of doing it Now because as I understand it, in the publishing business the pre-sale numbers will determine much else that happens with the book going forward. (“It turns out these pre-orders go towards some special accounting in the sky that matters more than other kinds of sales. I don’t know why, but I do know that it’s true. If you’re planning to buy the book anyway, please do so now through Amazon (it’ll save you five bucks too)”.

THANKS for reading!!

Several years ago I had the privilege of hearing David Sedaris read his short story “6 to 8 Blackmen” (I don’t know its official title), Live, in Olympia, Washington. (I was with one other American, a very recent immigrant from Sweden and a Filipino man. The other American and I nearly fell out of our chairs laughing but the other two just stared at us — I think in an embarrassed kind of way. We took this to mean that humor really is cultural, but maybe we really were just embarrassing…)

In the narrative Sedaris re-tells a conversation he had with a cab driver in Holland about Christmas customs there. I cannot do it justice so just please listen to it, but among other things, the cab driver told how in Holland, traditionally, Santa has 6 – 8 helpers when giving out gifts (and doing other unique-to-Holland kinds of things. (I really don’t want to give it all away.)) Of course originally the helpers were Moorish slaves; now, however they are something like black “helpers”.

Brian and I are going to Amsterdam tomorrow and there’s a chance we’ll see the parade this weekend when Santa (Sinterklaas) arrives from Spain (yep! But as I say, I really don’t want to spoil the story) with his 6 – 8 “helpers” who now apparently parade in “blueface”, (something much like blackface) because blackface is now too controversial.

However it will go down I really hope we get to see Sinterklaas arrive in Amsterdam on a boat, then parade around town on a giant white horse with his 6 – 8 blueface helpers in tow…

Look at the jasmine, whose branches are green
as topaz, and its stems and leaves –
while its blossoms are white as bdellium.
With carnelian red in its shoot
it looks like a pallid boy who’s shedding
the blood of innocent men with his hand.

– Shmuel Ha’Nagid (993-1056)
Field Commander and Chief of Staff for Baiis, Berber King of Granada

When we first moved to Granada 2 ½ years ago, I worried pretty much constantly about doing the “right” things and behaving in the “right” way in all manner of social, business (and other) situations. This is not because I believe that there is in fact any right way to behave but because I wanted to show respect for our new culture, our new peers, and our new community. To this end I watched and watched and watched. I eventually figured out (I think!) the most polite way to order beer or coffee, to ask for a check, to greet newcomers, and so on. For me, it’s fairly simple: in social situations women almost always greet everyone – even those they are meeting for the first time – with a kiss to each cheek. It’s possibly more complicated for men who also employ handshakes, slaps on the back and the occasional hug depending who they are greeting. We never really figured it out however because unlike me Brian never worried much about the “right” way to greet people and for well over a year just kissed everyone (women and men) he met on each cheek. At first this drew some complicated looks from people. We figured out that it was not necessarily “normal” but with his sincere and unabashed cheerfulness, no one seems to really mind anymore and they seem to have adapted to him as much as he’s adapted to them.

All of this becomes a bit more complicated when you introduce even more cultures, as is often the case with our large group of international friends in Granada. We host a fair number of parties and events at our house, and as often as not several guests arrive at the same time. This is the true test of the etiquette paranoid. The first person through the door could be Spanish, Italian, Dutch, British, Japanese, Swiss, or even, American. In a situation like this your guests may or may not follow the “when in Rome” philosophy and may still greet the way they do in their home country. I’ve found that some British people (but only some) do not like to be hugged or kissed for example. If I’ve read the body language correctly I’ve scared more than one Japanese guest in my home by leaning in for the double cheek kiss at the same time they start to bow at the waist. The most difficult of all of these however are the three kissers that start with the opposite cheek. In Granada, you always lean in to kiss a person’s right cheek and then you kiss the left. If everyone follows this it’s comfortable and passes without incident. However, if both people lean in the same direction your first contact is a big crack on the cheek bone. Once you’re off on the wrong cheek it’s nearly impossible to recover and on the most dramatic of these occasions I once nearly brained myself on my guest’s forehead.