Today I finished reading Voices from Chernobyl. This book is an amazing oral history documenting some of the millions of lives irrevocably changed by this preventable disaster in the words of the people affected themselves, many of whom have since gone on to resettle the highly contaminated "exclusion zone" surrounding Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4. We're coming up on the 20th anniversary this coming 26th of April, and I'm just dying to find out whether anybody covers it at all.
I can not recommend this book too highly. The closest thing to it in terms of style might be A.G. Mojtabai's Blessed Assurance, which uses oral history as a starting point to document the lives of people around the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, where tens of thousands of Plutonium pits are stored. Both books are deeply moving, though for very different reasons. (Mojtabai's book inspired me to visit Amarillo, which in a rather roundabout way, led to my finally resettling in Albuquerque.) Rather than wax eloquent about Voices I'll just say it's summed up beautifully by the title for Part Three: Amazed by Sadness. I read the whole book in three long sittings. Having started I could literally not pull myself away from it.
For anyone not wanting to bother with a book, or else just more inclined to action, I'll recommend chernobyl.info.
I'm back to reading the Lincoln Perry ("Stepin Fetchit") biography now, which is completely different. Bluebear is fun, but it's fiction, and fiction is a waste of time, the way I read. So it's just sitting at the back waiting for me to need something completely, totally eescapist.
What else? I CLEANED THE STOVE TODAY. Big deal, right? Well -- it was filthy, and it didn't work, but now it's clean and doesn't work. Except three burners. Did my shopping like a Mexican again today and what a joy -- I bought three pounds of Carne Adobada from Hi-Lo Market on Fourth St. (just South of Menaul) and have been simmering it for four hours now. Three bucks a pound, as opposed to three bucks per burrito, just as long as I'm willing and able to cook it myself. I've already eaten some of it and plan to just let it simmer 'til it falls apart. Then I got potatoes at Rio Grande Fruit and Vegetable Co. down on Isleta Blvd. and boiled those. My house smells better than it ever has before. I went back to get a block of lard after I'd finished all my other purchases there and the cashier knows me by now and the look on her face was priceless when she saw the effeminate white guy who doesn't even pretend to know spanish go back just to get lard.
I've got four different kinds of tortillas, Mennonite cheese, eggs, salsa, potatoes, and now carne adobada and should not go hungry for a week. Amazing how my mood improves not just by eating but even just by having food inside the house! It's literally something to come home to, other than the cats, and I don't want to eat the cats.
23 April 2006
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3 comments:
You shopped like an American my friend. The places you shopped at are local places and have nothing to do with "south of the border".
The Lion
Border? What border?
American, Mexican -- all the same thing, more or less. But you have to admit, white people are generally afraid of lard, at least these days. I may not be sitting with the negroes in the balcony by getting it but still it's unusual enough for the cashier to take notice. Her look was priceless, dude. Priceless.
Now if only I could get the oven working I could make my own! The pilot stays lit but I can't fire it up to bake anything. Maybe someday. I'd love to get it working, rather than have to ask the landlord to replace it.
Well obviously one can't expect someone to drive all the way across the border just to buy groceries? Well maybe in El Paso that would be possible. Not so much in ABQ.
I'd love to tell you how to get your stove working, except I know nothing about them, and honestly anything regarding gas lines freaks me out a bit. All I know is how to relight a pilot, or shut it off at the meter, and thats it.
Chernobyl scares the crap out of me, and thats all I'll say about that.
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