Enjoying an Amanda Cross Mystery

The last Amanda Cross mystery was published over 10 years ago - but I’ve discovered them recently. I just finished my third - and favorite so far: Sweet Death, Kind Death. It was published in 1984. As I read it I realized that I am enjoying it more now because of the growing up I’ve done over those 30 years. It is easier to identify with the victim - a woman in her late 50s that believed in women’s lives ‘beginning again just when it was supposed to be over.’ It is counter to what our culture tells us but more and more women in 2013 - boomers - are discovering the 'beginning again' path for themselves.

Another appeal is that the author was an English professor (Amanda Cross was a pen name for Carolyn Gold Heilbrun) and the sleuth in her books, Kate Fransler, is an English professor. What fun to have an imagined set of stories as tangents of a real life! The settings are college campuses and include the challenges that female college professors encountered (or at least the three novels I’ve read so far do…but they are all from the mid-80s or earlier).

I even like the liberal use of quotations from literary sources. They always seem just right for their placement in the story. The dialog is witty - and intellectual…probably realistic for groups of academics.  Before I pass my copies of the books on, I’ll have to glean some favorite quotes (either Heilbrun or her quotes from others).

Not all the books are in print. I have gotten my set from paperbackswap. I have 11 more of the mysteries to savor this winter!

Tangents from a Book

I just finished reading Marilyn French’s Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals. It was written in the 1980s and is somewhat dated. There were quite a few items that surprised me as I read and made me realize how naïve I was about the limitations on women in the US while I was growing up. For example - women were not allowed to serve on juries in Alabama until 1966 when the Supreme Court struck down the state law. There were still many limitations on property ownership in the 1960s as well. But much had improved by the 1980s and early 1990s. Somewhere along the line, progress slowed and increased limitations on women are the new trend - once again, as it has many times before in history.

As I read, my mind jumped very easily to related topics from my own life (since this book was written) or the news:

• I was part of the peak of women entering the computer field. That happened in the mid-80s and has been declining ever since. When I was in school, the college courses for people that wanted to go into programming were in various departments: math, business, and engineering. It was new field and there was an excitement about it. In my classes there were about equal numbers of men and women. The same was true when I started work. Over the years, there were fewer women. I’m sure there are many reasons for the decline - but the move to put computer science almost universally in the engineering department is probably a significant factor.
• Years later, my daughter was in an engineering physics course - one of two women in the class. The professor was not a problem (but was not helpful either). The male students picked on the other woman (said that she wasn’t qualified to be in the class) but fortunately left my daughter alone. She had to beg the other woman to stay in the course….and then study hard without the benefit of a study group. What does this say about what these men will be like once they are in the work force? It causes me to shudder.
• Another experience my daughter had was on a geology field trip - in a van full of people, only two of them women. The guys talked about ‘hot’ women all during the trip. My daughter chose to stay silent and hope they would stop soon. It was not a pleasant field trip. Are the guys rude or just clueless? I assume that it is probably a little of both.
• And in the news - Lindy Boggs died recently. What a great lady she was --- and a champion for the cause of women’s economic rights! Her efforts came after this book was written.

For much of my career, I assumed that the trends toward increasing opportunities for women were on the right track….that the progress made had an unstoppable momentum and that, in time, the perspective of women would be fully integrated into our culture. For the past 10 years or so - I am no longer as certain that is true - and there is a possibility that the trend has reversed. Reading this book reminded me of that.

Cookbooks

I am prompted by Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking to think about cookbooks. Does everyone that cooks have some reference they use at least occasionally? I have three that I use periodically - and almost always for some kind of bread or dessert.

The one I use most frequently is a Good Housekeeping Cookbook my grandmother gave me for Christmas just as I was beginning to help out in the kitchen - about 50 years ago. It was not something I used at first but I liked having such a ‘grown up’ present. I appreciated it more as soon as I was on my own in the kitchen - it was the book I had for guidance. The index is the most referenced part of the whole book but that doesn’t show. The splashes on recipe pages are obvious markers in the book and reveal the favorites. In this book it is corn bread, gingerbread, baked custard, popovers, applesauce cake, coffee cake, and apple brown betty (which I made with peaches at least as often as with apples). Now that I am looking at this book more closely….there is a yummy looking recipe for baked barbeque chicken (homemade sauce); it may be time to look at the other sections of this book!

There are only two pages that are food splattered in the Williamsburg cookbook purchased when I first visited Colonial Williamsburg: Christiana Campbell’s Tavern Sweet Potato Muffins and Sally Lunn. I’ve made the muffins with all kinds of variations: pumpkin instead of sweat potato, left over baked sweet potatoes, canned sweet potatoes, mini-muffins, muffin tops, raisins and nuts depending on what is on hand.

The last cookbook was one I inherited from my mother-in-law. I’m not sure whether it was something she had for years or that she bought not that long before she died at a used book sale. Either way - it has a wonderful spice cake recipe (that includes cayenne pepper).

After thumbing through these old books - I’m ready to try a new recipe!