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Valerie Richter, homemaker, businesswoman, Stacey's mother.
I'll tell you a little bit about the author: Her name is Terry
Tempest Williams and she's a profound writer. She's a naturalist
and poet who grew up in Salt Lake City, where I also grew up.
It's called Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place,
and it's a memoir about her mother's illness intercut with meditations
about a bird refuge. The refuge is sandwiched between the Great
Salt Lake and a fresh water inlet, so any changes in the water
level of the lake affect it greatly. It's very interesting the
way she's done it. She's using two interspersed narratives--the
story of her mother's cancer and the story of a naturalist worried
about the rising lake level. In the '80s the lake began to get
very high. The Utah legislature wanted to save the industry around
the lake while Williams wanted to save the bird refuge. In the
meantime, it's her place of solace. She takes little trips there
with her mother and gives a lot of information about the birds.
Sometimes the behavior of the birds relates to how the legislature
is acting and what they're trying to do with the water. My mother
knew the Tempests--they were from the same small town in Utah.
She went to high school with (Stacey's) grandmother and they belonged
to the same golf club.
Margaret Tilton, kindergarten teacher and Jim Nintzel's mom.
I'm a kindergarten teacher, so an awful lot of my reading
has to do with that. It doesn't leave me time for much else, but
when I have time, I like to read a lot of nonfiction. But now
I'm almost finished with a mystery--Dead to Rights: A Joanna
Brady Mystery, by J. A. Jance. It's part of the Joanna Brady
mystery series; you know, like the old Nancy Drew mystery series,
but for adults. Jance has written a series of books that take
place in Seattle, too, and now she's begun a series that takes
place in Southern Arizona, which is wonderful because it mentions
so many places in areas that I know. This one takes place in Bisbee;
the heroine Joanna Brady is the sheriff of Bisbee. She inherited
the job when her husband died. The series follows different crimes
she's investigating. In this one it's the murder of a man who's
a veterinarian in Bisbee. They think the person who murdered him
is the husband of a woman he killed in Phoenix in a hit-and-run
accident. Jance has a very easy, smooth writing style. It's very
enjoyable to read.
Al Perry, Hotel Congress desk clerk. I recently read Twelve
Days on the Road: The Sex Pistols in America, by Noel
E. Monk and Jimmy Guterman. It reminds me of when punk rock used
to be somewhat threatening. I remember how shocked I was listening
to the Sex Pistols in '77. Now and it just sounds like basic rock
and roll, but after that bland '70s stuff like Journey it sounded
outrageous. The story of their tour of the U.S. is just hilarious.
The whole thing was a disaster from start to finish. Their manager
thought they should go to the South thinking they would spur riots--or
that people would love them because they were working class and
bored, like punks in England. The band hated the audience and
the audience hated the band. In San Antonio the audience got pelted
with everything they could find to throw at them--pig's feet,
whatever. Somebody said it was the greatest rock and roll show
they'd seen because it had excitement and violence. They hired
these Hell's Angels and Vietnam vets as body guards, but even
all the rock excesses of the '70s didn't prepare them for Sid
Vicious. The first thing Vicious does is start picking fights
with these guys who are supposed to protect him. I kind of miss
that kind of confrontational energy in rock.
By Stacey Richter
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