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heidihaverkamp's review against another edition
4.0
A spiritual geography of northern Minnesota. There's a chapter on Holden Village, which cracked me up - Holden is in Washington State, but when I was there, like 80% of the people were Minnesotans or alums of St. Olaf.
mattstebbins's review against another edition
4.0
So good, and definitely one of the best Minnesota / Dakota sense of place works I've read. That's not my home anymore, but it was once, and will always be a part of me.
[4 stars of lakes and trees and wintry corn fields and so many memories of places and years past.]
[4 stars of lakes and trees and wintry corn fields and so many memories of places and years past.]
elineedsmoreshelves's review against another edition
4.0
I picked this book up because the author is a friend of a friend. I didn't know much about it - just that my friend Carolyn told me I'd enjoy it. She was right.
The author explores the effects that place can have on a person's development - the way the land, the water, the home that we return to impacts the way we see the world. As a concept, I would have found this interesting, and her writing compelling, enough to keep me engaged until the end.
But, then there's the kicker - this place of the author's is also MY place. The small Minnesota towns she writes about are the towns of my ancestors - the towns we returned to every summer, and still return to as a family, each year, even though our ancestors are no longer with us. Reading her thoughts about these SPECIFIC places made this book heart-stirring for me in ways that I didn't expect.
Standout essays for me include Roald Amundsen's Teeth, which talks about the idea of The North as a choice, a place people seek out as an escape; The River - 1997, about the flood of the Red River Valley; Grain Elevator Skyline, which had my favorite sentence of the whole book - "The homeplace is where you go to be reminded of what you know."; I-90, about road trips, and soundtracks, and the highways that become part of your heart.
I expect I will read this book many times, sometimes in its entirety, but more often in pieces. It feels comforting and embracing - for me, it feels like home.
The author explores the effects that place can have on a person's development - the way the land, the water, the home that we return to impacts the way we see the world. As a concept, I would have found this interesting, and her writing compelling, enough to keep me engaged until the end.
But, then there's the kicker - this place of the author's is also MY place. The small Minnesota towns she writes about are the towns of my ancestors - the towns we returned to every summer, and still return to as a family, each year, even though our ancestors are no longer with us. Reading her thoughts about these SPECIFIC places made this book heart-stirring for me in ways that I didn't expect.
Standout essays for me include Roald Amundsen's Teeth, which talks about the idea of The North as a choice, a place people seek out as an escape; The River - 1997, about the flood of the Red River Valley; Grain Elevator Skyline, which had my favorite sentence of the whole book - "The homeplace is where you go to be reminded of what you know."; I-90, about road trips, and soundtracks, and the highways that become part of your heart.
I expect I will read this book many times, sometimes in its entirety, but more often in pieces. It feels comforting and embracing - for me, it feels like home.
bigfrickingswede's review
4.0
Some writers make you feel like you’re coming home after a long, hard day. You kick off your shoes, stretch out on your favorite couch or recliner, and say to yourself, “maybe today isn’t so bad.”
Karen Babine’s introduction to Water and What We Know might have led me into this feeling: she contemplatively sits on the couch at her grandparents’ beloved cabin with a warm mug of tea at her elbow, looking out the window at a lake beyond. But it was more than that: it was her loving appreciations and contemplation of her Scandinavian and Minnesotan roots, and her fixation on water—both its beauty and its danger. It was her love of simple things like the variety of greens in Minnesota. As Babine says, it’s “more than a color and more than textures. Green becomes the color of light; it becomes the taste in your mouth when you wake up in the morning and step outside your camper; it becomes a sound.”
My personal connection to Babine’s lovely book of essays does not mean that it is only relegated to those of us who have an appreciation and longing for the north woods, however. At its heart, this book is about an “ethic of place.” For Babine, this is more than mere location: “Place is context, everything you bring to a location.” It means connecting to and understanding where we are: its geography, its environment, its history, the good and bad that we should remember and often forget.
This is an ethic any reader can connect with, and Babine makes our connection effortless. In a deeper meditation on the mythology and desire we give to the idea of “the North,” she brings in such oddities as Roald Amundsen’s teeth, two of which were donated to Concordia College after a bit of dental difficulty the famed arctic explorer encountered during a lecture tour. Silliness and delight that nevertheless relates to a point is always enjoyable in a writer. I was similarly slain by the voice of Babine’s grandmother in the essay “The Inheritance of Apples.” Besides passing on philosophy about life and apples, Babine’s grandmother also pronounces some apple cider they drink to be “too zippy.”
Details like this all evoke a feeling of place in the reader, so we’re each drawn into a connection with the places she describes. When she describes the great floods that regularly take place on the Red River, particularly that of 1997, we’re right there with those who fought to save their homes, only to see the floodwaters rush in despite days of backbreaking labor. When the firsthand account of a Grand Forks resident says, “If we could have had one more row of sandbags, we might have been fine,” we can feel our own shoulders slump. We had a dike that could hold back a river that rose to 53 ½ feet, but it rose to 54. This is not math, this is life. “Ground yourself,” Babine urges, and she makes it hard not to do so with these places and stories that she brings to life.
These days, it is perhaps too easy to remain comfortable—to sit in our favorite chair and let the world spin by. While something of Babine’s essays felt like home to me, they also pushed me to get to know more about home, this place where I (and all of her readers) live. Whether you’re a kindred spirit to the north woods or the most confirmed city dweller, she reminds us that the only way we can be grounded in this world is to know our place in it.
(original review on Split Rock Review, http://www.splitrockreview.org/gilbertredman )
Karen Babine’s introduction to Water and What We Know might have led me into this feeling: she contemplatively sits on the couch at her grandparents’ beloved cabin with a warm mug of tea at her elbow, looking out the window at a lake beyond. But it was more than that: it was her loving appreciations and contemplation of her Scandinavian and Minnesotan roots, and her fixation on water—both its beauty and its danger. It was her love of simple things like the variety of greens in Minnesota. As Babine says, it’s “more than a color and more than textures. Green becomes the color of light; it becomes the taste in your mouth when you wake up in the morning and step outside your camper; it becomes a sound.”
My personal connection to Babine’s lovely book of essays does not mean that it is only relegated to those of us who have an appreciation and longing for the north woods, however. At its heart, this book is about an “ethic of place.” For Babine, this is more than mere location: “Place is context, everything you bring to a location.” It means connecting to and understanding where we are: its geography, its environment, its history, the good and bad that we should remember and often forget.
This is an ethic any reader can connect with, and Babine makes our connection effortless. In a deeper meditation on the mythology and desire we give to the idea of “the North,” she brings in such oddities as Roald Amundsen’s teeth, two of which were donated to Concordia College after a bit of dental difficulty the famed arctic explorer encountered during a lecture tour. Silliness and delight that nevertheless relates to a point is always enjoyable in a writer. I was similarly slain by the voice of Babine’s grandmother in the essay “The Inheritance of Apples.” Besides passing on philosophy about life and apples, Babine’s grandmother also pronounces some apple cider they drink to be “too zippy.”
Details like this all evoke a feeling of place in the reader, so we’re each drawn into a connection with the places she describes. When she describes the great floods that regularly take place on the Red River, particularly that of 1997, we’re right there with those who fought to save their homes, only to see the floodwaters rush in despite days of backbreaking labor. When the firsthand account of a Grand Forks resident says, “If we could have had one more row of sandbags, we might have been fine,” we can feel our own shoulders slump. We had a dike that could hold back a river that rose to 53 ½ feet, but it rose to 54. This is not math, this is life. “Ground yourself,” Babine urges, and she makes it hard not to do so with these places and stories that she brings to life.
These days, it is perhaps too easy to remain comfortable—to sit in our favorite chair and let the world spin by. While something of Babine’s essays felt like home to me, they also pushed me to get to know more about home, this place where I (and all of her readers) live. Whether you’re a kindred spirit to the north woods or the most confirmed city dweller, she reminds us that the only way we can be grounded in this world is to know our place in it.
(original review on Split Rock Review, http://www.splitrockreview.org/gilbertredman )
kerrianne's review
4.0
If I had to choose one word to call this book I'd call it lovely.
I'm a big fan of memoirs/stories/essays centering on sense of place/history of place/preservation of place, and so it's really no surprise I'm a big fan of this book.
There were a couple essays/chapters that had I been Babine's editor I might have suggested re-working or maybe cutting altogether. A couple of essays that maybe didn't quite feel done. Or perhaps just a couple of essays I didn't fully connect to as much as the others. But the majority of the prose really was lovely, and heartwarming, and often reminded me of coming home. (And not just because at various points she was actually talking about my hometown, roads I've driven so much they're etched into my eyes, part of the mountain (north)west where I was born and raised, and to which I still feel so deeply and irrevocably rooted. But also because of that.)
My two favorite quotes: "Everywhere I have lived is stolen land."
"Stories can be lost, but they can also be replanted, transplanted. It is important to be able to read the stories when there are no voices to tell them..."
[Three-point-five stars for waterlogged memories with the power to keep us afloat.]
I'm a big fan of memoirs/stories/essays centering on sense of place/history of place/preservation of place, and so it's really no surprise I'm a big fan of this book.
There were a couple essays/chapters that had I been Babine's editor I might have suggested re-working or maybe cutting altogether. A couple of essays that maybe didn't quite feel done. Or perhaps just a couple of essays I didn't fully connect to as much as the others. But the majority of the prose really was lovely, and heartwarming, and often reminded me of coming home. (And not just because at various points she was actually talking about my hometown, roads I've driven so much they're etched into my eyes, part of the mountain (north)west where I was born and raised, and to which I still feel so deeply and irrevocably rooted. But also because of that.)
My two favorite quotes: "Everywhere I have lived is stolen land."
"Stories can be lost, but they can also be replanted, transplanted. It is important to be able to read the stories when there are no voices to tell them..."
[Three-point-five stars for waterlogged memories with the power to keep us afloat.]
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