The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore tells the story of the young women who worked in factories painting iridescent numbers on watch and clock dials. In New Jersey and Illinois after WWI, girls were hired to use paint made with radium to make the dials glow in the dark. The technique they were required to use was to lick the tip of the brush, dip it in the paint and paint the numbers. Then they were to repeat. No step to clean the brush.

At the time radium was believed to be an ultra-healthy substance. No safety precautions were taken.

These girls were proud to earn good wages and had a good lifestyle. Proud of their work, when they would go out dancing, they would take the radium dust rub it on their eyelids and skin, which made them glow.

As you can imagine, the women started to get ill. One woman had awful jaw pain, and when she went to the dentist her jaw fell out, which was the first of many ailments that inflicted her and her colleagues. One after another, the girls began to experience horrific health issues. The radium would attack their bones. Others, as you’d guess, got rare, devastating cancers.

Statue of a Radium Girl, Ottawa, Illinois

The girls began to take legal action and the two radium companies fought them tooth and nail. The story soon turns to one of courage and tenacity as these women fight for their lives and fight for justice in the courts against two Goliath companies.

In many ways the story is hard to take, but because these women banded together and had great resilience and remained strong in spirit and clung to hope, The Radium Girls was not a depressing story. My only critique is that the author’s scope covering two factories which weren’t that connected, made the book confusing at times. Yet I understand her desire to tell the full story. I think it would have been better if Moore had focused on fewer girls and added an epilogue about the others. I highly recommend reading The Radium Girls.

 

Easter, 1916

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

 

Just So Happens

Fumio Obata illustrated and wrote the gentle, beautiful Just So Happens, a graphic novel set in London and Japan. It’s the story of Yumiko, a young woman from Japan who’s settled in London. She likes her job, her fiancé, and life, but realizes her heritage comes with barriers. She’ll probably always be something of an outsider.

As she’s mulling over her outsider status, she gets a call from her brother. Her father’s died suddenly so she returns to Japan for the funeral. This trip makes her reconsider where she belongs and how her decision to stay in London is more by chance than decision. Throughout the story, Yumiko is haunted by a Noh theater actor, who embodies the Japanese spirit.

The watercolor graphics are stunning and evokes the feel of Japan. Yumiko’s journey feels authentic and heartfelt.

 

Poem of the Week

God’s Grandeur

by Gerald Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale

Kafu Nagai’s Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale presents a world that seems more realistic that Memoirs of a Geisha, which was the rage 10+ years ago. In Rivalry, Komayo is a former geisha. She left the profession when she married. Unfortunately, her husband dies. There’s no reason to stay in the countryside up north with rude in-laws for the rest of her life, so she returns to Tokyo and her geisha house.

One of her first “patrons” sees her and takes up with her. He’s just a little bit older than she is and spending time with him is far better than with the fat, bald, ill-mannered middle-aged customers. Life’s not so bad.

Then Komayo meets an attractive actor and they have a dalliance. Then they have another and another. Her first patron was going to buy Komayo’s contract. He proposes marriage and Komayo isn’t sure. The patron hears some gossip about Komayo and the actor so he buys the contract of a fleshy, jovial but uncouth geisha. So there! (Talk about biting off your nose to spite your face.)

Komayo’s life spirals and shame haunts her. At times the story meanders, but generally the realistic tone which describes geisha life (without getting as flowery as Arthur Golden sometimes did) makes for a pleasant read.

The ending seemed to pat and undeserved, but forgiveable.

 

Marshall Field’s: The Store that Helped Build Chicago

I thought I knew most of what there was to know about Marshall Field’s the still beloved department store that started in Chicago, but I learned a lot more about how the business started, who Field’s partners were, how big their whole sale business was and how subsequent CEO’s like John G. Shedd, of aquarium fame, behaved at the helm. Seems every descendant of a Chicagoan knows that “the customer is always right” and “give the lady what she wants’ were first said by Marshall Field and we know the various explanations for the naming of Frango mints, but there’s still a lot we don’t know and  Gayle Soucek enlightens readers on all aspects of Fields in a pleasant breezy style. It’s a quick read and pleasant till we come to the end when evil Macy’s takes over the store and changes the name.

Field was a good man, and something of a straight arrow. He held true to his credit terms — even after the Chicago Fire in 1871 when creditors wrote him offering to change the terms. He came from Puritan roots and stayed true to them. (His son did not and I for one believe Junior was shot at the Everleigh Club, another interesting Chicago establishment.)  The man was a genius with incredible foresight and respect for people. I wish I could have been in the store when it had a library, offered information (to provide tourist information, ship times, railway routes, etc.)  and accommodation bureaus (which booked theater tickets,made sleeping car arrangements,  checked bags, offered stenographer services, and more). Services didn’t stop there. One anecdote tells how a man told a clerk he was “mourning the accidental estrangement of his brother, who had traveled to Europe and lost contact. The word went out to Field’s foreign buying offices, and in a short amount of time the wayward sibling was located.”

The book mentions Harry Selfridge, the brash man, who worked his way up to partner, a position Field’s was surprise Selfridge had the audacity to ask for (Field’s planned to offer it and was just a more reserved man). It mentions Selfridge as originating the bargain basement and later buying his own store, where he always kept a portrait of Marshall Field in his office. So much of Selfridge’s store is an homage to Field, which is why the book connects with the PBS program.

The book ends with an appendix of famous Field’s recipes.

I still can’t stomach that and haven’t made a purchase in Macy’s since they took over. Marshall Field’s, State Street, was a store you could love in a way current stores just aren’t. We’ve got smart phones so we can make our own travel arrangements or notes on the fly and we can shop online or in person in countless stores, but this personal touch is largely gone or on the way out.

 

 

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (You don’t want to ruin the book for others.)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine:

From Michael Chabon‘s Maps & Legends:

A third innovative stroke of Conan Doyle‘s was to find a new way to play the oldest trick in the book, to revise the original pretense of all adventurers, liars, and storytellers–that every word you are about to hear is true.

Holmes was not only aware of his status as a subject of Watson’s “chronicles,” he resented it, and mocked it, even as he profited by the fictional version of the very real success that the stories enjoyed . . . .

From We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

It’s 21:30. The blinds are lowered in the room to the left of mine. In the room on the right, I see my neighbor: bent over a book, his bald patch, knobbly with hummocks, and his forehead, a huge, yellow parabola.

Related articles

• Teaser Tuesdays (July 31) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday 2 (timeforreading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesdays (July 31) (apaperbacklife.wordpress.com)
• An Early Peek at Michael Chabon’s New Novel, ‘Telegraph Avenue’ (theatlanticwire.com)
• Teaser Tuesday (timeforreading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesdays (July 24) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday (xingu2.wordpress.com)

 

Dr. Zhivago

Last fall my EFL students read a simplified version of Doctor Zhivago and then we saw the movie. Our discussions were quite lively and it was interesting to delve into Russian history and literature. Thus I decided to read the novel this summer.

Both the movie and the graded reader leave out quite a bit from this hefty classic. I enjoyed getting every detail and event. A thoughtfully written novel is one of my favorite ways to come to know history. This novel, published in 1960, gives readers a close up at the enthusiasm, chaos, and violence surrounding the Russian Revolution.

Yes, the names are long and everyone’s got a nickname, but I got a sense of who’s who without a chart, maybe because I saw the movie first.

Most of the Russian literature, I’ve read has taken place before the Revolution, while Doctor Zhivago takes place before, during and after. What a time that was! Pasternak’s novel reminds me of Dickens because not only do readers see the hero’s journey, but we see so much of what happens throughout the society. I found that fascinating. So many people had so many struggles and tragedies.

The hero is Yurii . At the beginning of the story he’s a young boy who witnesses his father’s suicide. He’s adopted by relatives and marries his cousin Tonia, a lovely, smart woman. The sort of girl people think he should marry. (And he does agree.)

As a young man in Moscow and later after the revolution when Yurii’s out in the Ural Mountains, his path crosses that of Lara, an enigmatic, alluring, albeit troubled woman. Her father died when she was young and her mother becomes beholden to Komarovsky, a rich, powerful man who wants Lara when she’s in high school. Lara picks up on her mother’s implicit message that she should do what she needs to for the family. This action defines Lara making her feel a guilt she never completely overcomes. It taints her marriage to Pasha, an intelligent, innocent promising student she meets in university.

All the characters cross paths and influence each other as they strive to make sense of the confusion of the revolution that steamrolls over so many Russians back then. Pasternak constructs a masterful story full of drama and insight.

If you’re not sure about reading the book, try the film or the BBC miniseries.

 

Oil!

Oil!by Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, caught my eye at the library. I’m so glad it did.

Oil! is a brilliantly constructed satire or exposé of the oil industry in the early part of the 20th century, with many parallels with recent history, sadly. Sinclair makes each character realistic and flawed. He has great insight into people and how they muck things up because they’re too soft, too greedy, too idealistic, too divisive, etc.

The main relationship is between Bunny, who is a young teenager, and his father, an oil man who’s driven to make more and more money and to give his son a good life. The father feels that school doesn’t teach much of importance so when Bunny’s middle school age, he travels around with his father learning how things are done. (When there’s time a tutor comes to get the boy, who eventually does go to high school and college, up to speed on the three R’s.) The father is a self-made man who can sincerely justify any short cut in business. He reminded me of the first Richard Daley, since he was more street smart than book smart and really often came across as clueless about how things should be done.

Bunny, is a refined, nice boy, who attracts some interesting friends. There’s Paul a boy about his age, who’s run away from home and trying to escape a father who’s a religious fanatic, while earning money for his siblings’ food. There are Socialist friends at college and a movie starlet girlfriend. Since he’s a sympathetic person, Bunny becomes associated with people from all walks of life, often on very different sides of the era’s burning issues. He uses the money his father earned from fields fleeced from families like Paul’s to pay Paul’s bail when his friend cum hero is arrested by instigators his father’s associates hired to put an end to unionizing. There are many shades of gray though it’s clear some are far darker than others to Sinclair.

Through this story which follows Bunny as he matures, Sinclair skewers business, government, religion, Socialism, academia, college sports, the movie industry, well just about every institution in the society with the exception of the food industry, which he tackled previously in the 1903 novel The Jungle.

There are many history lessons in this novel as Dad is one of the men who funded or bought Harding’s way to the White House.

This book is action-packed and witty. It reads fast, but it’s no longer in print, even though it was the inspiration for the film There Will be Blood. It should be at your library though.