Notes, Quotes, and Questions

Atlas Shrugged ~ by Ayn Rand, 1957, fiction

2011-05-13T18:20:00.029-04:00

The Essentials of Objectivism

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
— Ayn Rand, p. 1074

INTRODUCTION

NOTE: My introduction is by Leonard Peikoff, copyright 1985, though the book says "50th Anniversary Edition." He shares some passages from Ayn Rand's notes.

(p. 3) Ayn Rand's notes from April 18, 1946: Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

NOTE: I'm guilty of having too much faith in people's rationality. I tend to think people will be reasonable if only I explain things to them clearly enough. I've had to learn that reason is not a great concern of most people.

(p. 5) Peikoff: Ayn Rand's basic purpose as a novelist was to present not villains or even heroes with errors, but the ideal man — the consistent, the fully integrated, the perfect. In Atlas Shrugged, this is John Galt, the towering figure who moves the world and the novel, yet does not appear onstage until Part III. By his nature (and that of the story) Galt is necessarily central to the lives of all the characters.

NOTE: Yes, the author is a product of her time, but I will need to explore what I consider an ideal woman, along with that ideal man.

(p. 6) Ayn Rand's notes from May 4, 1946: In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, if, and to the extent that they can.

NOTE: Figuring out what kind of world I want to live in could get complicated.

(p. 7) Ayn Rand's notes from May 4, 1946: It may be said that the first purpose of a philosophical book is the clarification or statement of your new knowledge to and for yourself; and then, as a secondary step, the offering of your knowledge to others. But here is the difference, as far as I am concerned: I have to acquire and state to myself the new philosophical knowledge or principle I used in order to write a fiction story as its embodiment and illustration...

NOTE: So she has fleshed out her ideal world. Let's see if we like it, too.

Part One ~ NON-CONTRADICTION

I ~ The Theme

(p. 13) The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, age seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside — just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.

Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly lookingo the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayal — the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, not his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to the house. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since.

NOTE: What an image! I visualize damage to oak trees just like that, only the ones I saw three weeks ago were knocked down by tornadoes, not by lightning. And some were hollow and black, as described here. I wonder what this image portends for the story of Eddie Willers — or the people around him.

(p. 23) Engineer to Dagny Taggart: "Whoever's responsible for it, he'll switch the blame to us if we move. So we're not moving till somebody tells us to."

"And if nobody does?"

"Somebody will turn up sooner or later."

"How long do you propose to wait?"

The engineer shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"

"He means," said the fireman, "don't ask questions nobody can answer."

She looked at the red light and at the rail that went off into the black, untouched distance.

She said, "Proceed with caution to the next signal. If it's in order, proceed to the main track. Then stop at the first open office."

"Yeah? Who says so."

"I do."

"Who are you?" . . .

"Dagney Taggart." . . .

She went on, in the same tone of unstressed authority. "Proceed to the main track and hold the train for me at the first open office."

NOTE: I like her "unstressed authority," especially since that was a time when women were rarely in positions of authority. And here we get an explanation for the question: "Who is John Galt?" It means don't ask questions nobody can answer. Yet Dagney has answers.

(p. 25) Dagney, whistling: It was a few moments before she realized that she was whistling a piece of music — and that it was the theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto.

She felt someone looking at her and turned. The young brakeman stood watching her tensely.

NOTE: A bit of foreshadowing here, making me curious about how a concerto fits into the story.

II ~ The Chain

(p. 33) It was the first heat for the first order of Rearden Metal.

NOTE: I can understand that Rearden would want to watch this, a first. Yet his family faults him for never being at home when he promises.

(p. 43) Hank Rearden, about his family: He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his being. ... He could not condemn them without understanding: and he could not understand.

NOTE: Interesting family dynamics here.

(p. 45) Larkin looked away. "That's life," he said.

"Damned if I see why. Can you tell me that? What's wrong with the world?"

Larkin shrugged sadly. "Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?"

Rearden sat up straight. "No," he said sharply. "No. There's no reason to feel that way."

NOTE: I hope we learn why "Who is John Galt?" became synonymous with a shrug.

(p. 42) "God, Henry, but you're conceited!" said Phillip.

NOTE: I came back to add this about "conceited" (see page 54).

III ~ The Top and the Bottom

(p. 50) Orren Boyle to Jim Taggart: "The public has a vital stake in natural resources, Jim, such as iron ore. The public can't remain indifferent to reckless, selfish waste by an anti-social individual. After all, private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole."

NOTE: Who came up with that definition of private property? What do you think?

(p. 50) Jim Taggart: "Since I hold the purse strings, I expect to get my money's worth and at my pleasure."

NOTE: That would (or should) be true, then, of anyone who pays for anything.

(p. 50) Their discussion continues: "Jim, you will agree, I'm sure, that there's nothing more destructive than a monoply."

"Yes," said Taggart, "on the one hand. On the other, there's the blight of unbridled competition."

"That's true. That's very true. The proper course is always, in my opinion, in the middle. So it is, I think, the duty of society to snip the extremes, now isn't it?"

"Yes," said Taggart, "it is."

"Consider the picture in the iron-ore business. The national output seems to be falling at an ungodly rate. It threatens the existence of the whole steel industry. Steel mills are shutting down all over the country. There's only one mining company that's lucky enough not to be affected by the general conditions. Its output seems to be plentiful and always available on schedule. But who gets the benefit of it? Nobody except itw owner. Would you say that's fair?"

"No," said Taggart, "it isn't fair."

"Most of us don't own iron mines. How can we compete with a man who's got a corner on God's natural resources? Is it any wonder that he can always deliver steel, while we have to struggle and wait and lost our customers and go out of business? Is it in the public interest to let one man destroy an entire industry?"

"No," said Taggart, "it isn't."

"It seems to me that the national policy ought to be aimed at the objective of giving everybody a chance at his fair share of iron ore, with a view toward the preservation of the industry as a whole. Don't you think so?"

"I think so."

NOTE: This whole passage irritates me. Ayn Rand is either stating her philosophy or somebody's she's planning to swat down, but it isn't a conversation. Look at Taggart's responses — except for the first one, he isn't saying anything. Questions:
1. How is "the blight of unbridled competition" the opposite of a monoply? For that matter, what is unbridled competition? And how is it a blight?
2. Did you notice the only mining company is simply "lucky"?
3. These men see everything as a competition — "How can we compete...?" Yet they seem to think they want cooperation, as opposed to any one person (sorry, "man") having "a corner on God's natural resources."
4. Lastly (for this section), I want my "fair share of iron ore," which I plan to store in the living room where I can enjoy it. Where do you plan to put yours?

(p. 51) Larkin: "If everybody could pull for a common purpose, then nobody would have to be hurt! ... I wish we didn't have to hurt anybody."

NOTE: Everybody, nobody, anybody, and somebody (in the quote below). Who counts? Not the little nobodies of the world. But then Taggart says:

(p. 51) "That is an anti-social attitude," drawled Taggart. "People who are afraid to sacrifice somebody have no business talking about a common purpose."

NOTE: And sacrificing someone is not an anti-social attitude?

(p. 54) Dagney: She felt the excitement of solving [mathematical] problems, the indolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to met another, harder test. ...

"You're unbearably conceited," was one of the two sentences she heard throughout her childhood, even though she never spoke of her own ability. The other sentence was: "You're selfish." She asked what was meant, but never received an answer. She looked at the adults, wondering how they could imagine that she would feel guilt from an undefined accusation.

NOTE: Conceited and selfish. From some of what I've read, I know Ayn Rand has her own ideas about selfishness, so I'm looking forward to where she's going with this.

(p. 55) Dagney: She had never aspired to the presidency; the Operating Department as her only concern. When she went out on the line, old railroad men, who hated Jim, said, "There will always be a Taggart to run the railroad," looking at her as her father had looked. She was armed against Jim by the conviction that he was not smart enough to harm the railroad too much and that she would always be able to correct whatever damage he caused.

NOTE: Arrogance (or being "conceited" again), but from what I've seen of him, it's probably true.

(p. 56) Francisco d'Anconia: ... no one had ever beaten him in any transaction ...

NOTE: Once again, it's all about winning the competition.

(p. 59) Dagney: She fired Jim's friends and found a contractor who completed the job in one year.

NOTE: She does get things done.

(p. 66) Eddie, about Dagney: I've been coming to the office an hour earlier than usual, but she beats me to it. She's always there first. . . . What? . . . I don't know what she does at night. Nothing much, I guess. . . . No, she never goes out with anyone. She sits at home, mostly, and listens to music. She plays records. . . . What do you care, which records? Richard Halley. She loves the music of Richard Halley. Outside the railroad, that's the only thing she loves."

NOTE: So is this unnamed man Richard Halley?

IV ~ The Immovable Movers
V ~ The Climax of the D'Anconias
VI ~ The Non-Commercial
VII ~ The Exploiters and the Exploited
VIII ~ The John Galt Line
IX ~ The Sacred and the Profane
X ~ Wyatt's Torch

Part Two ~ EITHER-OR

I ~ The Man Who Belonged on Earth
II ~ The Aristocracy of Pull
III ~ White Blackmail
IV ~ The Sanction of the Victim
V ~ Account Overdrawn
VI ~ Miracle Metal
VII ~ The Moratorium on Brains
VIII ~ By Our Love
IX ~ The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
X ~ The Sign of the Dollar

Part Three ~ A IS A

I ~ Atlantis
II ~ The Utopia of Greed
III ~ Anti-Greed
IV ~ Anti-Life
V ~ Their Brothers' Keepers
VI ~ The Concerto of Deliverance
VII ~ "This is John Galt Speaking"
VIII ~ The Egoist
IX ~ The Generator
X ~In the Name of the Best Within Us

List of characters:

John Galt (p. 11)
Eddie Willers, age 32 (p. 11)
James (Jim) Taggart, age 39, Taggart Transcontinental (p. 14)
Henry (Hank) Rearden, steel industrialist (pp. 16, 34)
Orren Boyle, Associated Steel (pp. 16, 48)
Ellis Wyatt, Wyatt Oil Fields (pp. 16, 57)
Pop Harper, chief clerk at Taggart Transcontinental (p. 19)
Dagny Taggart (p. 20, named on p. 23)Richard Halley, composer (p. 20)
Brakeman (p. 21)
Owen Kellogg (p. 30)
Philip Rearden, Hank's brother (p. 38)
Lillian Rearden, Hank's wife (p. 39)Paul Larkin (p. 43)
Francisco d'Anconio, age 36, genius playboy, copper mines (p. 56)

Ragnar Danneskjold, philosopher pirate
Dr. Robert Stadler, professor
Hugh Akston
Wesley Mouch

The Church of Facebook ~ by Jesse Rice, 2009

2009-10-20T00:54:00.025-04:00

Subtitle: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community

NOTE: I'm reading this book with Jenn Taylor and Nancy Horner, and we plan to discuss it in a Facebook discussion group. Loril Paluzzi may be joining us.

The book is divided into six chapters, two in each of the three parts.
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PART ONE ~ There is a force that is capable of synchronizing a large population in very little time, thereby creating spontaneous order.
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Chapter 1 ~ Connection

Dalton Roberts says, in a newspaper article: "Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- means as much to us as love."

Jesse Rice disagrees, saying in "The Church of Facebook" that the most important thing is connection:

(p. 28) "In other words, connection is the key to happiness."

(p. 34) "...connection is not just 'what causes happiness.' It is also our most basic need."

(p. 43) "If connection can make us happy, then disconnection can make us unhappy. No matter how it was tested, though, connectedness mattered."

(p. 43) "As we saw with Harlow and his monkeys, connection lays the groundwork for growth. In connection we find comfort and safety. ... Apart from connection we fall to pieces."

On the other hand, maybe "connection" and "love" are pretty much the same thing, on one level. That is NOT what the book is about, but we do CARE about our friends and what they have to say (those wonderful comments) when we post words or photos or links. This from the book sort of relates that idea:

(p. 48) "When we go looking for a best friend, we go looking for home. When we turn our attention to the divine, to spirituality of all kinds, to God Himself, we are looking for home."

Home, connection, love -- there's a pattern here.

Speaking of CONNECTION, I've found two interesting online short articles about Facebook:

Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines

'Refuseniks' Say They'll Pass On Facebook, Twitter

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Chapter 2 ~ Revolution

I posted this teaser on Bonnie's Books. It's from the second chapter of this book.

This teaser is from page 77 of The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community by Jesse Rice, which came out on the first day of this month:

"Do you remember how your high school bedroom tried to reflect everything about who you were as a person -- your likes, dislikes, beliefs, affiliations, and attitudes -- in the space of just four walls? Facebook serves a similar end, allowing us to decorate our pages with any kind of flair necessary to demonstrate the things that are closest to our hearts."

Makes me want to analyze what's on my Facebook page: family photos, visit from an out-of-town friend, quotes from books (books? me?), links to issues and kitten with deer and climate change and humor and another book. Uh-huh, I'd say it represents "me."

I liked his list in this chapter of the four things about HOME:

1) Home is where we keep all the stuff that matters most to us.
2) Home is wherever we find family.
3) Home is where we feel safe because we can control the environment.
4) Home is where we can "just be ourselves."

As I said about chapter one: "Home, connection, love -- there's a pattern here."
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PART TWO ~ This spontaneous order can generate outcomees that are entirely new and unpredictable.
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Chapter 3 ~ Dispensation

(p. 107) "The figure of 150," Dunbar says, "seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us."

Rice says, in a note at the bottom of that page, "It is interesting to note that -- as we saw in chapter two -- the average Facebook user has 120 people in their friends list, a number rapidly approaching Dunbar's theorized maximum."

By doing a little research, I discovered:
Bonnie ~ 81 friends
Nancy ~ 59 friends
Jenn ~ 430 friends ~ Loril (92 friends) called you "The Jennerator"

(p. 112) "In effect the hyperconnection of Facebook changes the nature of our relationships by turning our friends into audiences and us into performers."

Ah, but Jenn, you ARE an actress. Would you say you have an audience of 430? Nancy doesn't know you at all yet, but, even though I have never met you in person, I know you "Jennerate" laughter and joy with your daily remarks, on your blog while you lived in the Netherlands and now on Facebook, now that you are living in the States again.
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Chapter 4 ~ Illumination

(p. 137) "In an online survey of three hundred adults, ages eighteen to sixty ... their emailed responses to "What is a friend?" provided some clues as to how the hyperconnected think of friendship in spite of blurring boundaries."

When I read that in the book, I promptly updated my status to: "What is a friend?" I wanted to see what would happen. I got four responses from my Facebook friends, which you (my friends) have probably noticed, though you wouldn't have realized it's a Facebook survey for our reading of this book.

1. Dalton Roberts said, "A friend is someone who is a cool drink of water when you have crawled for miles across hot sand."
2. Laura Trent, a preacher friend in Vienna, said, "I like this, Dalton. It'll preach... "
3. Cindy Baxter said, "A friend is someone who smiles when you show up."
4. Madge Woods said, "A friend loves you unconditionally."

Interestingly, I know three of these four in person and the fourth via an online book club and telephone. I don't know whether it matters that three of these are over sixty (ages 18-60 in the book's survey), while the other is in her late fifties.

When that "status update" got buried, I asked folks to take a look at THESE friends, Tara and Bella, and then answer the question, "What is a friend?"
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/video/video.php?v=164737013134&ref=mf

Neither of you answered my question, either time, but here's are comments I got by asking a second time:

5. Emily Franklin said, "Sharing...trusting....caring......helping........ hmm......friendship is an action verb."
6. Bonnie Jacobs said, "This, coming from my action friend who periodically has to get up and dance, makes a lot of sense. Thanks for caring and helping after my surgery, as well as all the sharing."
7. Cindy Baxter (see #3 above) said, "Thanks Bonnie for sharing this inspiring story, friends are there no matter what. I like what Emily wrote...friendship is an action verb."
8. Martha Yeomans didn't answer the question: "What a beautiful story of a very special friendship. Thanks for sharing it."
9. Margie Hyatt said, "Friends! The basis of love, loyalty, honesty, and enjoyment. Definitely a VERB, with responsibility..... Love and friendship the only reasons to breath."

Cindy was a repeat and I don't count, but of the three others who spoke up, I know two very well and one (again) from that online book club and phone calls (the book club pair also know each other and have met face to face). I'm very tempted to send an IM to a friend currently on FB who has not answered today's question, partly because she took me into her home for eleven days after surgery -- and we'd met only 15 months earlier. Nah, I'll refrain.

So what have I learned? Generalizing from an admittedly small sample of the FB population (even the population of my FB friends), it seems people are more willing to define friendship when they are telling someone who really IS a friend, especially if the friendship has been close or is long-lasting.
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PART THREE ~ These unpredictable outcomes require the affected population to adapt their behavior to more adequately live within he new spontaneously generated order.
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Chapter 5 ~ Adaptation

This chapter deals with the WHAT, WHO, and HOW of community.

WHAT is community and can it really be found online?

Shane Hipps says that "virtual community" isn't really community at all (p. 163), but is "mostly a disembodied, and largely cognitive, connection" (p. 168). A community has four qualities: a shared history, a sense of permanence, proximity, and a shared imagination for the future.

Scot McKnight (blog = The Jesus Creed) says that "there are clearly dimensions of fellowship at work in blog communities" (p. 165).

Anne Jackson (blog = flowerdust.net) says, "I believe what happens online is connection -- not community. People can be vulnerable and honest online. And at times these online connections can be more life-giving than many of our offline relationships, but they are not the same" (p. 167).

NOTE: Look at the words they use: community, fellowship, connection, relationships.

WHO is my community?

Mark Scandrette (www.reimagine.org) says that "perhaps in actuality most of us have all the 'community' we need: neighbors, coworkers, relatives, and friends. Our challenge is to learn to embrace, nurture, and cultivate these relationships to their fullest potential" (pp. 171-172). I like his focus on "intentional engagement" with the people in our lives.

HOW we do community may be more important than where we do community.

This may be especially important, since Jesse Rice says that "for a growing number of people -- especially those from younger generations -- 'community' is not understood as a dichotomy between 'real' and 'online' relationships, but as a composite of both" (p. 170). I think reading and discussing this book is "intentional engagement" with my online friends Jenn and Nancy, neither of whom I've met face to face (yet).

Also, I've discovered something interesting in my new community (I moved here last December): St. Elmo (a historic district) has a Neighbors Listserv. Any of us who join the group may post to everyone on the list, and I've seen things like lost dogs and cats, where to find a good contractor in the area, giving away or selling whatever you are cleaning out, and learning details about a church fire in my block. Even though I haven't met all the people on the listserv, notice that I called my neighborhood a COMMUNITY.
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Chapter 6 ~ Regeneration
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Talk Before Sleep ~ by Elizabeth Berg, 1994

2008-10-04T11:10:00.008-04:00

Synopsis:
What do women talk about when they know they don't have forever? They talk about what they have always talked about, only they go deeper and more honest: with outrageous humor they try to mitigate pain. Intimate and uncensored sharing, the kind of connection women prize, is at the heart of this deeply moving novel about the grit and power of female friends. Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can -- honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams. For Ann, cautious and conventional, her closeness to the outspoken and eccentric Ruth brings about discovery and liberation, a chance to say whatever she wants, and, most important, under the insistent tutelage of Ruth, to become herself. Over the years, the women have shared recipes, quilting patterns, child care, delicate and dangerous secrets. Each rests secure in the knowledge that they will be friends forever. Then something happens that will change their lives forever, and the women begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted.

(p. 62) Helen is Ruth's oldest friend. ... She works in a bookstore, sits on a stool behind the counter reading all day, and makes customers wait if she's at a good part.

NOTE: No way, Jose!

(p. 76) I could smell her shampoo, feel the slight pull her weight created on her side of the bed. I could see the dim outline of all her things around us, her furniture, the art on her walls, the restless flutter of her curtains in the night air.

(p. 89) After a movie together: The stars were so clear and beautiful I felt rebuked. I stopped to stare up at them and said, "Well, here I go, home to my lover. The man whose idea of foreplay is the eleven o'clock news."

"I'm so happy to go home alone," Ruth said. "I can call someone to come over, or I can get into my bed with my book. And most of the time, I like the book better. I'm finding out that I lvoe being without a man."

(p. 104) Looking at that print, you could feel the warmth of the pale-yellow sun on bare shoulders, you could smell the grass, you could know the exquisite relief of the passing breezes and the presence of other women who lay down with you.

(p. 129) Ruth: "And I feel like ... I feel so ... sort of ... vague, you know? It's not just weakness, it's vagueness."

(p. 144-145) Visiting cemeteries: The name of the person is on the headstone in formal / capital letters, then the dates the person lived, then a simple and essential listing of roles: father, husband, son. It occurs to me that this matter-of-fact reduction is the kind of reorientation we need from time to time, that there is a value and a comfort in being here and understanding what matters most is only who you were to someone else.

NOTE: Then my headstone should read: grandmother, mother, (maybe) sister, daughter, teacher, and friend. [Skip "wife."]

(p. 145) Next paragraph: There are many flowers on the graves, some plastic, most real but frozen now, bent over as though in sympathy, the petals curled up and blackened. Ruth stops before the grave of an infant, a lamb carved into the stone above the baby's name. She stoops down, traces with her fingers the dates of life. The baby lived six weeks. I had forgotten these things happen. Maybe Ruth is old.

(p. 156) When I came home, I'd found a snow woman, wide-hipped and big-breasted, standing beside the lamp post in my front yard. She wore a wreath of evergreen around her head, and her arms were shaped so that it looked as if her hands were on her hips. She had an attitude, even as she melted.

: ) Nice image.

(p. 208) After Ruth's funeral: I like to think that she [Ruth] looked out the window one last time on the night she died, and saw with a new understanding the placement of the stars. I like to think something incomprehensibly vast and complex moved into her soul at that moment, and that it, not pathology, was what took her breath away.

NOTE: Wow! "Took her breath away" is a perfect ending.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ~ by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, 2008

2008-09-30T05:28:00.007-04:00

(p. 15) I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers -- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no proprietor in his right mind would want to own one -- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it -- along with first dibs on the new books.

NOTE: Hey! The authors really understand why anyone would be fool enough to open a bookstore. Maybe secondhand books are best because they are no worse for wear after I've read (or in fact re-read) them before selling them in the store.

(p. 10) I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.

Synopsis: January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends — and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island — boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever. Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

A Journey to the End of the Millennium ~ by Abraham B. Yehoshua, 1998

2008-09-08T23:59:00.004-04:00

This book is subtitled "A Novel of the Middle Ages" to let us know, I presume, that the millennium that's ending is the first and the novel is set in the year 999.

The Freedom Writers Diary ~ by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell, 1999

2008-08-24T00:32:00.007-04:00

This book has gotten lots of press, and I myself have already talked about it on several blogs: Banned Books, Bella Novella, and Book Buddies. It's a very interesting book which reads quickly.

Diary 21
(p. 43) Renee [Firestone] ... came to speak with us at my table. She showed us the tattoo on her arm from Auschwitz. The tattoo looked like little numbers from a barcode. She told us how some of the needles they used were infected and that some people got skin diseases. She told us how one person sucked out the ink from her skin because the doctor who gave her the tattoo quietly told her to. If she had not sucked the ink out, she would have been sent to the gas chamber the next day, because her number was called.

(p. 93) Diary 47
As she [Zlata] was answering questions, a couple of adults asked her what ethnicity she was, Croatian? Muslim? Serbian? ... Zlata looked around stared at us, and simply said, "I'm a human being." ... Ever since that day I've tried not to accept society's labels, but to fight against them. ... Now if you ask me what race I am, like Zlata, I'll simply say, "I'm a human being."

(p. 94) Diary 48
Even though the Bosnian war was one of ethnicity and religion ...
NOTE: This is a different student than the one above, who may not have known (it isn't clear) that "Muslim" is not a person's ethnicity.
(pp. 95-96) also Diary 48
When Zlata wrote about Bosnian children becoming "soldiers" and the soldiers becoming "children," at first I didn't get her meaning. After hearing Tony's story, I understood. In war / the innocence of a child is lost, and though the soldiers feel theirs is a worthy cause, they behave like children when trying to achieve their goals. Knowing that a grown man entered a child's bedroom stealing his innocence, makes me sad. They stole his smile. Tony wears the permanent scars of war on his face, just as I wear the scars on my soul.
NOTE: A soldier shot the child in the face while he slept in his own bedroom.
(p. 98) It made me realize that senseless violence doesn't only happen in history books or movies.

(p. 110) Entry 5 - Erin Gruwell (about Bosnia)
There is still a lot of animosity and racial tension.

(pp. 132-133) Diary 64
The color purple was coming from my mother's eye where my stepdad had punched her. That's / when I began to understand that the color purple isn't just a color or the name of a book.

(pp. 198-200) Diary 101
Dear Diary,
I feel like crying and running out of this house and never returning. I have no idea where I am going to get $800! The landlord keeps on calling me and asking me if I have the money for rent. And just today, I received a letter in the mail saying that if I don't send in my car payment within five days my car will get repossessed. Tomorrow it is going to be two months since my cousin was murdered and my parents left the country. Since then, I've been the head of the household, taking care of my younger sister and myself, working my mom's job, baby-sitting to get extra / money, cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and trying to keep my grades up in school.

Yesterday, my science teacher told me that I'm failing her class and I need to pass the class to graduate. I feel so depressed, all my life I was an A and B student and now I am failing. I've never gotten an F in my twelve years of schooling. My teachers always told me I was an example for the rest of the students. I was always known as one of the most responsible students in my classes and I feel like I'm letting everyone down. I haven't been attending school on a regular basis either. When I do show up, my teachers look at me like they want to lecture me about how irressponsible they think I am. The teachers' disapproving looks really hurt. I feel like they've turned on me. I try to explain to them that I'm going though [sic] really bad times, but they don't seem to care. All that matters to them is that I am not doing their work. Most teachers don't want to be bothered with the reasons why. In my yearbook class, I volunteered to do the Freedom Writer page and I did. I did it at home, but when I finished it, it was after midnight. Unfortunately, the day it was due, the collection agency showed up at my door trying to get the money and I didn't make it to school. The following day I showed up at school and my advisor didn't accept my yearbook page. She said it was too late and someone else had to do it for me.

Those few months have been the worst of my whole life. My senior year was supposed to be the most fun of all my years, but I guess things happen for a reason. I hate to pour out all my problems to you, diary, but I have nowhere else to turn. After all, I always dreamed of going to college and being someone in life. Now I feel like I only have one alternative -- dropping out of high school and getting a full-time job to help my parents with all their payments until they come back home.

After my advisor rejected my yearbook page, it made me want to say "Forget this!" This is just enough to make me want / to quit everything I was doing. At the end of the day, out of desperation, I went to talk to Ms. Gruwell and my fellow Freedom Writers. I told them I felt like dying and was going to drop out of high school. I just broke down in tears. They just hugged me and listened. They didn't judge me or put me down like the others. I couldn't believe how understanding they were. They even convinced me to stay in school and offered to help me catch up on my assignments. Despite all this drama, I've decided not to give up. I'll get the money for rent somehow, I'll catch up in my classes and I'm even going to make time to go with everyone on a college tour with Ms. Gruwell. With such a loving "extended" family, I got back the strength to fight for my dreams: to graduate form high school and go to college.
Bonnie's NOTE: This one is so sad. It will have to stand in for others equally sad, which I won't type up here on this blog, like the next one, about hazing.
(pp. 214-216) Diary 111
[Enduring hazing in order to be popular]
Bonnie's NOTE: I'll write about 1950s high school hazing later and add it here (or a link to what I write).
(pp. 232-233) Diary 119
In my opinion Peter Maass is more than just a journalist, he's a hero ... I said, "I watch National Geographic on television and I don't understand how a journalist can just sit and watch an animal die? Is it the same when you're covering a war? Do you simply sit and watch people die?" The room became silent. Some / of the Freedom Writers were shocked by my question, and others seemed to be offended on Peter's behalf. But I just had to know.

After the silence, Peter began to explain how he often has to push his personal views aside and not get involved. He told us that anything he did other than being a journalist could upset some wicked balance. If he got involved in a dangerous situation, he would not only jeopardize the lives of the people he was trying to help, but his life, and the life of his crew as well. If he were to be killed, his death would ensure that there would be more Bosnias. After he was done explaining his role as a war correspondent, I felt content. Now I have an even greater respect for his courage. He wasn't letting evil prevail by watching and doing nothing. By writing about the images he saw in Sarajevo, he was ensuring that no one would deny that ethnic cleansing was taking place, and that thousands of innocent men were being taken to their deaths.

Jumble Pie ~ by Melanie Lynn Hauser, 2007

2008-08-22T14:03:00.005-04:00

"IN THE BEGINNING, there was the pie. The pie was without form and texture (and any manner of identifiable filling), and darkness was upon the face of the Home Ec Teacher."

So begins the story of two girls, a friendship, and a pie. Jumble pie, to be exact. A Home Ec project gone very wrong, except for the fact that it brings together two very different young girls and helps them form a friendship that lasts through bad haircuts, unrequited love, endless incarnations of Madonna, and their own evolving dreams. Until New Year's Eve, 1999, when another pie comes along, resulting in a pre-party blow-up that sets Juliet and Emily, women now, to remembering how it all got started. Jumble Pie is the story of the elusive nature of friendship, sometimes clinging, other times liberating; a story for any woman who has ever lied to her best friend just to make her feel better -- and who has been brave enough to tell the truth, even when it hurts. And of course, it's a story about the remarkable healing power of pie.

Emily, the nerdy scholar:
(p. 15) I am imperious to physical pain today.
(p. 22) I shake my head in exacerbation.

Suite Francaise ~ by Irene Nemirovsky, 2006

2008-07-22T00:19:00.003-04:00

Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940, Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at the thought of losing their jobs, even as their world begins to fall apart. Moving on to a provincial village now occupied by German soldiers, the locals must learn to coexist with the enemy — in their town, in their homes, even in their hearts.

When Irène Némirovsky began working on Suite Française, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown. When Suite Française appeared in France in 2004, it became a best seller. The novel is in two parts, which could be called novellas: "Storm in June" and "Dolce." The New York Times published a review of the book when it was published in 2006, giving us some background information:

Némirovsky had more plans for Suite Française, as an appendix to this volume makes clear. In her notebook, she sketched the possibility of a work in five parts. "Storm in June" and "Dolce" were to be followed by: "3. Captivity; 4. Battles?; 5. Peace?" The question marks punctuate Némirovsky's peculiar problem; she was trying to write a historical novel while the outcome of that history remained unknown. The fourth and fifth parts of the book "are in limbo," she observed, "and what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens."

Irène Némirovsky died without every knowing the outcome of World War Two, and we, unfortunately, will never know how she might have written other parts of the book. Here's the first chapter.

The book is divided into these parts:

"Storm in June" (War)
"Dolce" (Occupation)
Appendix 1 (author's notes)
Appendix 2 (correspondence)
Preface to the French Edition

Book Buddies is reading this novel for August.

Dear John ~ by Norma L. Betz, 2008

2008-07-19T01:13:00.003-04:00

When financial aid director Susanna Smith goes to Massachusetts to settle her aunt's estate, she never suspects that her well-ordered life will take an unusual turn. Susanna and her faithful companion, Quincy, embark on a journey into the past that not only revelas the life of an ancestor -- a famous historic figure -- whose circumstances parallel her own but also results in an important discovery about her own life. The excursion develops into an adventure, with a cast of old and new friends, some historic drama and a dash of unexpected danger.

Susanna is named for her late aunt, Susanna Abigail Smith, who was a direct descendant of Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States. Susanna hates her name. The family history is weighty, and Susanna has always tried to ignore her famous ancestor. But now that her aunt is dead, she has to face her family's heritage by going to Weymouth to settle her aunt's estate.

In her debut novel, Norma L. Betz immerses readers in the chaos and excitement on the brink of the American Revolution as Susanna and Quincy's excursion to Weymouth reveals an historic drama and unexpected danger.

What If...? ~ by Steve N. Lee, 2007

2008-07-18T07:20:00.008-04:00

During the U.S. Presidential election, a disillusioned journalist and a charismatic healer are thrust into a life or death struggle with corporate America, organized crime, and even the White House, all of which fear losing their power.

NOTE: The two main characters are John Connolly and Mary Shelley.

(p. 56) JC: "People confuse religion with semantics. Any fool can read a book on horticulture and grow a rose, but only the enlightened will see its beauty and smile."

(p. 57) JC: "The world's evolving, so religion has to evolve alongside, or it loses its relevance."

(p. 57) JC: "If God had intended the Bible to be an unchallengeable rulebook for all time, and He'd sent his Son to Earth, why didn't His Son write it, in plain language, so there were no misinterpretation over what was meant?"

(p. 58) Mary: "If religion isn't the evilest of Man's inventions, I don't know what is."

NOTE: All the caps here and on the quote above are annoying.

(p. 58) Mary: But when you've seen the light about what a con religion is, it's like discovering the truth about Santa -- there's no way you can believe again."

(p. 83) JC: "If I healed everything, people would take life for granted. So far from appreciating how precious life is, they'd lose what little respect they have and abuse it even more."

(p. 86) Michael, on president's staff: "...all this talk of miracles is insulting to Islam."

(p. 86) Ryan, on president's staff: Ryan continued, "--and an act like this, with the right marketing, the guy could be richer than Jesus. The guy's after something."

NOTE: "richer than Jesus"?

(p. 88) President Tom Stevens: "If we have to bury him, I want it fast and clean."

(p. 88) President Tom Stevens: You didn't need religion to lead a moral life, so the sooner people saw it for its xenophobic failings, the better.
__________

Nancy Horner's review at Bookfoolery and Babble

Burger's Daughter ~ by Nadine Gordimer, 1979

2008-07-10T01:09:00.017-04:00

Burger's Daughter is a novel by South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, originally published in Britain in 1979 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. It follows the life of Rosa, the title character, as she comes to terms with her father Lionel's legacy as an activist in the SACP [South African Communist Party?] over the course of 30 years. The perspective shifts between Rosa's internal monologue (often directed towards Lionel or her semi-lover Conrad) and the omniscient narrator. Burger's Daughter, published in June, 1979, was banned one month later; the Publications Committee's Appeal Board reversed the censorship of Burger's Daughter six months later, determining that the book was too one-sided to be subversive.

(p. 16) One is never talking to oneself, always one is addressed to someone. Suddenly, without knowing the reason, at different stages in one's life, one is addressing this person or that all the time, even dreams are performed before an audience.

(p. 54) She [Auntie Velma] was the sister of Burger and she and her husband had a farm and ran the local hotel in the dorp of the same district.

(p. 56) Rosa read very well but the shop signs in these pictures were in a foreign language; the word she could recognize was 'Paris' -- a place far away in England, she was able to tell Selena and Elsie [hotel maids] as she followed them round from room to room, talking above the noise of the vacuum cleaner and the radio they kept turned up while they worked. [NOTE: a child's self importance.]

(p. 90) But two months after they were married, following a new wave of raids on the homes of radicals in all the large towns, Lionel Burger was re-arrested. He and his fellow members of the Central Executive of the Communist Party in Cape Town were charged with sedition as a result of that miners' strike which had postponed but failed to disrupt his marriage plans.

With this observation the biographer provoked a slow wide smile from the daughter of the marriage. For a few moments the list of raids, arrests and trials was the family album: the couple had only just dumped their belongings in their Johannesburg flat when the raid came; there was Lionel Burger's often-heard story of how the police, instructed to search the contents of cupboards and drawers, found these empty, and had to do the unpacking of the suitcases and crates of books instead. He and his new bride simply hung up cups and arranged plates and pots and pans as the police squatted among newspaper and straw, doing the dirty work.

[Radiation, Race, and Molly Bloom: Nadine Gordimer Talks with BookForum, BookForum, Feb. / March 2006.]

Book Forum: You have written hundreds of short stories. Do you prefer writing short stories over novels?

Nadine Gordimer: I love short stories and I've practiced writing them all my life. But no, it isn't my preferred form. It's a totally different thing. To me the short story is like an egg. I mean, an egg is so wonderfully complete. There's a shell, there's the white around it, and then the yolk. So when I begin to think about a story, it tends to be like that, in its totality. I know where I'm beginning. I know where I'm going. And I know exactly how it's going to end. With a novel it's quite different. It's a long journey, so that I know exactly my theme. I know the kind of characters that are going to carry that theme in the narrative. But I'm not sure how we're going to get from point A to point B, with all the different changes, until we come to the end. I would really like to know at the beginning what the end will be, but, as I say, the journey is only partially in view in my mind and I move along with it as I write, so it is a different process.

Two more:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1991/gordimer-lecture.html
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/articles/wastberg/index.html

Welcome to Your Brain ~ by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, 2008

2008-07-01T15:14:00.006-04:00

It was the sub-title that got me:
"Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life."

(p. xix) Quoting Emo Phillips: "I used to think my brain was my most important organ. But then I thought: wait a minute, who's telling me that?"

(p. 13) There is good evidence that we "erase" and "rewrite" our memories every time we recall them ...

Jim the Boy ~ by Tony Earley, 2000

2008-07-01T15:03:00.023-04:00

Who? A boy named Jim. What? The fatherless boy is being raised by his mother and three uncles. When? During the Depression, starting on Jim's tenth birthday. Where? Aliceville, North Carolina. What else? Jim has never traveled more than 30 miles from Aliceville. The book will take us through a year in the life of this young fellow.

PROLOGUE
Read these lines from a review of Jim the Boy.

"Jim is 10. His mother is a widow. They live in the small town of Aliceville with Jim's three uncles, Zeno, Coran and Al. And they're content."

Does it make you want to read the book? If you like thrillers, it could be a turn-off. Did reading the prologue change your mind?

Book I ~ BIRTHDAY BOY
MY NOTES:
When is Jim's birthday? Zeno's letter (Prologue), dated June 16, says Cissy gave birth to a son yesterday, so he was born on June 15, 1924. If Jim's mother is "not yet thirty" (p. 7) now, she must have been 19 when he was born ten years ago. Would that have been unusual in 1924?

Growing an extra digit in his age seemed a miracle to Jim, now 1-0 instead of merely 9. Do you know anyone who grew a third digit and became 1-0-0? Tomorrow (July 5th) will be my oldest granddaughter's 21st birthday, a milestone. For some the special birthday is Sweet Sixteen. For others the darkest one is the half-century mark, celebrated by friends wearing black. What birthday stands out for you?

What birthday presents did Jim get?

(p. 34) a baseball from Whitey
(p. 41) a birthday cake with ten candles from his mother
(pp. 42-43) a Rawlings baseball glove and a genuine Louisville Slugger baseball bat from his family (uncles and mother)

Overall, what did you think about Jim's tenth birthday?

I noticed he used the broken handle of the hoe to bat rocks out in the field that morning. But the best thing was at twilight, when all three uncles played ball with him (p. 47):
"Batter, batter, batter, batter," Uncle Al chirps in the field.

"Say, whatta-say, whatta-say, whatta-say," chants Uncle Coran in the ancient singsong of ball players. The uncles are singing to the boy. He has never heard anything so beautiful. He does not want it to stop.

What did you make of the scene about baptizing the chicks? And what do the uncles mean by this exchange (p. 39)?

Uncle Zeno: "Allie turned out to be a pretty good farmer, when you consider how he started out."

Uncle Coran: "At least we can be thankful he didn't try to become a preacher."

Uncle Al: "That's for sure ... I would've had to be a Methodist to keep from drowning people."

One, they joke playfully with each other. Two, they are probably NOT Methodists, who sometimes baptize using a handful of water on a person's head, rather than by dunking them, as Al did the baby chicks, in the rain barrel. So what did they grow up to be (pp. 9-10)?

Uncle Zeno, who is 40-something, farms with Al and operates the gristmill on Saturdays.

Uncle Coran runs the feed store and the cotton gin.

Uncle Al, Coran's identical twin, manages the farm and is proud of it.

Cissy, who is not yet thirty, is Jim's widowed mother and cooks for them all.

Book II ~ JIM LEAVES HOME

(p. 60) The store crouched among broad, fallow fields coming up in cockleburs and broom straw and small cedar trees. Jim Knew that the presence of cedar trees meant that the land was cotton ground that had been farmed too many years in a row. Now the ground was too poor to make a crop, the farmers who had tilled it were gone, and the store where the farmers shopped was closed. The uncles never planted cotton on the same ground two years in a row, and tended to look down on farmers who did.

(p. 69) Uncle Al: "Don't ever make fun of the misfortune of others, Jim."

"I won't."

"No good will ever come of it. God will bring you down. If you use his blessings to look down on other people, it's like cussing. It's like taking his name in vain. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

NOTES: Those are two of the teaching moments, but the uncles are always teaching Jim things. I wonder if Uncle Al took Jim on the trip out of town as another teaching opportunity. What did Jim learn from the incident with the horses and his first view of the ocean?

(p. 197) On the mountain it was still late spring; back home in Aliceville it was already full summer.

(p. 225) As the sun began to set, Jim and the uncles watched the last yellow light of the day slide up the mountain toward the bald, dragging evening behind it.

Rules Are Rules ~ by Julie Scandora, 2008

2008-06-28T19:28:00.006-04:00

This book, full of beautiful watercolors, lets children know that people of all ages deserve respect. Even children like Maya.

Big Woods ("The Bear") ~ by William Faulkner, 1942

2008-06-28T01:21:00.008-04:00

This book has four "hunting stories":

(1) The Bear (1942), considered among the best stories written in the twentieth century, is the reason I got the book.

(2) The Old People
(3) A Bear Hunt
(4) Race at Morning

"The Bear" was recommended to me by John Bailes, and that may be the only story I read from this book. Ike McCaslin, confronts both his place in the natural world and the social responsibilities foisted on him by his Southern heritage. I'll be looking for archetypes.

(p. 4) Part of Faulkner's description of the pioneer Anglo-Saxon: ... uxorious and polygamous: a married invincible bachelor, dragging his gravid wife and most of the rest of his mother-in-law's family behind him ...

uxorious (adj.) = doting upon, foolishly fond of, or affectionately submissive toward one's wife.
polygamous (adj.) = having more than one mate at a time [ant: monogamous].
gravid (adj.) = in an advanced stage of pregnancy; "was big with child"; "was great with child" [syn: big].

I quit reading this book in the middle of the Read-a-Thon, explaining why in my response to the Hour 19 mini-challenge:

Care's Word-Sentence Challenge: Write about (A) strangest new vocabulary word found during entire read-a-thon, and/or (B) most interesting / annoying / favorite RUN ON sentence encountered.

I can do this (I think). Both examples are from Faulkner's book that I was trying to read during the Fifth Hour, when I wrote this:

..... I'm putting aside the Faulkner book with its sentences half a page long that I have to read and re-read to make myself cognizant of what was said. I guess I'm not really much interested in a boy's "apprenticeship ... to manhood" (p. 15) by taking part in a hunt for a bear who'd been shot and trapped and mutilated multiple times since before the 16-year-old boy was born. I'm just not into that.

There were three words in (part of) a single long sentence that I just had to stop and comment on, but I guess I'd pick the first one as "THE" word for this challenge:

WORD = (p. 4) Faulkner describes a pioneer Anglo-Saxon as "uxorious and polygamous: a married invincible bachelor, dragging his gravid wife and most of the rest of his mother-in-law's family behind him."
uxorious (adj.) = doting upon, foolishly fond of, or affectionately submissive toward one's wife.
polygamous (adj.) = having more than one mate at a time [ant: monogamous].
gravid (adj.) = in an advanced stage of pregnancy; "was big with child"; "was great with child" [syn: big].

Technically the sentence I've chosen to share is not a "run-on" sentence, but it DOES run on and on and on and on! It takes up one line more than half of page 13:

SENTENCE = "It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect had not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, and through which ran not even a mortal beast but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant;--the older bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of mortality--old Priam reft of his old wife and outlives all his sons."

Moses and Monotheism ~ by Sigmund Freud, 1939

2008-06-28T00:39:00.019-04:00

I'm reading this one along with the two books by Carl Jung to discuss with my friend Ginnie.

Freud speculates on aspects of religion to explain certain characteristics of the Jewish people in their relations with the Christians. He comes to the conclusion that Moses was an Egyptian, who (1) was in some way related to the ancient Egyptian monotheist Akhenaten, and (2) gave his own religion to the Jews.

(p. 21) Amenhotep (IV) ... undertook to force upon his subjects a new religion, one contrary to their ancient traditions and to all their familiar habits. It was a strict monotheism, the first attempt in the history of the world, as far as we know; and religious intolerance, which was foreign to antiquity before this and for long after, was inevitably born with the belief in one God.

NOTES:
*** Amenhotep IV ruled from 1375 B.C. until he died in 1358 B.C. = 17 years (p. 31).
*** Breasted calls Amenhotep IV "the first individual in human history" (p. 31 note).
*** J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt (1906) and The Dawn of Conscious (1934) according to a note on page 32.

(p. 23 note) Amenhotep's beloved spouse Nofertete.

(p. 23) There is no doubt that ... he worshipped the sun not as a material object, but as a symbol of a divine being whose energy was manifested in his rays.

MY SPECULATION: What if Moses was Amenhotep himself? What if he didn't DIE after 17 years, but fled Egypt in 1358 B.C. after killing "the Egyptian," as the Bible says -- BUT -- he (or the priests?) used THAT body to bury or entomb the "alleged Amenhotep"?

(p. 24) ... opposition among the priests of Amon that raised its head against the reforms of the king. In the sixth year of Amenhotep's reign this enmity had grown to such an extent that the king changed his name, of which the now proscribed name of the god Amon was a part. Instead of Amenhotep he called himself Ikhnaton.*

FREUD'S FOOTNOTE: I follow Brested's spelling of this name (sometimes spelled Akhenaton). The king's new name means approximately the same as his former one: "God is satisfied." Compare the English Godfrey and the German Gotthold.

(pp. 24-25) Soon after his change of name Ikhnaton left Thebes, which was under Amon's rule, and built a new capital lower down / the river, which he called Akhetaton (Horizon of Aton). Its ruins are now called Tell-el-Amarna.

(p. 25) ... after the king's death ... His end is wrapped in mystery. ... Already his son-in-law Tutankhaton was forced to return to Thebes and to substitute Amon in his name for the god Aton.

(p. 26) ... and his (Amenhotep IV's) memory was scorned as that of a felon.

NOTE: This would work, too. Moses killed "an Egyptian," thus making himself a felon.

(p. 27) I venture now to draw the following conclusion: if Moses was an Egyptian and if he transmitted to the Jews his own religion, then it was that of Ikhnaton, the Aton religion.

(pp. 27-28) The Jewish creed, as is well know, says: "Schema Jisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod." If the similarity of the name of the Egyptian Aton (or Atum) to the Hebrew word Adonai and the Syrian divine name Adonis is not a mere accident, but is the result of a primeval unity in language / and meaning, then one could translate the Jewish formula: "Hear, O Israel, our God Aton (Adonai) is the only God."

(pp. 29-30) Moses gave the Jews not only a new religion; it is equally certain that he introduced the custom of circumcision. ... Herodotus, "the Father of History," tells us that the custom of circumcision had long been practised [sic, British spelling] in Egypt, and his statement / has been confirmed by the examination of mummies and even by drawings on the walls of graves. No other people of the eastern Mediterranean, as far as we know, has followed this custom ...

(p. 31) If Moses gave the Jews not only a new religion, but also the law of circumcision, he was no Jew, but an Egyptian, and then the Mosaic religion was probably an Egyptian one ...

(p. 32) ... he [Moses] had lost his native country. ... Moses' active nature conceived the plan of founding a new empire, of finding a new people, to whom he could give the religion that Egypt disdained. ... Perhaps he was at the time governor of that border province (Gosen) in which ... certain Semitic tribes had settled. These he chose to be his new people. A historic decision.

(p. 32 footnote) If Moses were a high official, we can understand his being fitted for the role of leader he assumed with the Jews. If he were a priest, the thought of giving his people a new religion must have been near to his heart. In both cases he would have continued his former profession. A prince of royal lineage might easily have been both: governor and priest. In the report of Flavius Josephus (Jewish Antiquities), who accepts the exposure myth, but seems to know other traditions than the Biblical ones, Moses appears as an Egyptian field-marshal in a victorious campaign in Ethiopia.

(p. 32) According to our construction the Exodus from Egypt would have taken place between 1358 and 1350 B.C. -- that is to say, after the death of Ikhnaton and before the restitution of the authority of the state / by Haremhab.

FOOTNOTE: This would be about a century earlier than most historians assume, who place it in the Nineteenth Dynasty under Merneptah ...

NOTE TO MYSELF: I want to buy a copy of Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism by Jan Assmann.

ANOTHER NOTE TO MYSELF: Maybe I should also get Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi:

(p. 1) In a conversation which must have taken place around 1908 Freud told Theodor Reik the following joke:
The boy Itzig is asked in grammar school: "Who was Moses?" and answers, "The son of an Egyptian princess." "That's not true," says the teacher. "Moses was the son of a Hebrew mother. The Egyptian princess found the baby in a casket." Itzig answers: "Says she!"
The joke catches our attention on two counts; first, because the precocious Itzig seems already to display a talent for what Paul Ricoeur, referring to Freud's own method, has elegantly called a "hermeneutics of suspicion"; and second, because it was Freud, after all, who taught us to take jokes seriously.

(p. 2) ... Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last major work ...

(p. 3) A skeptical inquiry to the Freud archives at the Library of Congress eventually brought me, to my surprise, a photocopy of the original draft of Moses and Monotheism dated August 9, 1934, and different in significant ways from the published version.

(p. 5) That Moses was, in fact, an Egyptian is stated explicitly by such ancient pagan authors as Strabo, Manetho, Apion, Celsus. ... John Toland ... speculated pointedly as to whether Moses had been "an Egyptian priest and king" who had "left his country because of dissent about the public state of religion."

(p. 36) ... the idea of the Exodus being facilitated by the anarchy prevailing in Egypt. The kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty following Ikhnaton ruled the country with a strong hand. All conditions, internal and external, favouring [British spelling] the Exodus coincide only in the period immediately after the death of the heretic king.

(p. 37) Nor can we reject even the possibility that many character traits the Jews incorporated into their early conception of God when they made him jealous, stern, and implacable were taken essentially from their memory of Moses, for in truth it was not an invisible god, but the man Moses, who had led them out of Egypt.

(p. 38) The report [that Moses was said to have been "slow of speech" -- that is to say, he must have had a speech impediment (p. 37)] may, in a slightly distorted way, recall the fact that Moses spoke another language and was not able to communicate with his Semitic Neo-Egyptians without the help of an interpreter [ Aaron ... who is called his brother (p. 37)] -- at least not at the beginning of their intercourse. Thus a fresh confirmation of the thesis: Moses was an Egyptian.

(p. 38) What the distorting tendencies were we should like to guess, but we are kept in the dark by our ignorance of the historical events.

(p. 41) E. Meyer: "Moses in Midian is no longer an Egyptian and Pharaoh's grandson, but a shepherd to whom Jahve reveals himself."

(p. 171) In clearly recognizable transitional stages the totem animal was ousted by the god. The god, in human form, still carried at first the head of an animal; later on he was wont to assume the guise of the same animal. Still later the animal became sacred to him and his favourite companion or else he was reputed to have slain the animal, when he added its name to his own. Between the totem animal and the god the hero made his appearance; this was often an early stage of deification.

(p. 172) Infantile feelings are far more intense and inexhaustibly deep than are those of adults; only religious ecstasy can bring back that intensity. Thus a transport of devotion to God is the first response to the return of the Great Father.

(p. 173) The people met with hard times; the hopes based on the favour of God were slow in being fulfilled; it became not easy to adhere to the illusion, cherished above all else, that they were God's chosen people.

(p. 174) ...casual and adjuvant causes for the mood of dejection then prevailing among the peoples. ... Although food for the idea had been provided by many suggestive hints from various quarters, it was, nevertheless, in the mind of a Jew, Saul of Tarsus, who as a Roman citizen was called Paul, that the perception dawned: "It is because we killed God the Father that we are so unhappy." ... in the place of the enrapturing feeling of being the chosen ones, there came now release through salvation.

(p. 175) Original sin and salvation through sacrificial death became the basis of the new religion founded by Paul. ... Originally a Father religion, Christianity became a Son religion. The fate of having to displace the Father it could not escape.

(p. 176) Only a part of the Jewish people accepted the new doctrine. Those who refused to do so are still called Jews. Through this decision they are still more sharply separated from the rest of the world than they were before. They had to suffer the reproach from the new religious community ... tha they had murdered God. In its full form this reproach would run: "They will not admit that they killed God, whereas we do and are cleansed from the guilt of it."

NOTE: This sounds like the kind of forgiveness in the novel Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward, where the TRC of South Africa exacted confessions in return for forgiveness and not being punished for acts committed during apartheid.

A Three Dog Life: A Memoir ~ by Abigail Thomas, 2006

2008-06-27T23:11:00.007-04:00

This is one of the books I've chosen to read (or have available) during Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon on June 28th. Some of the others are already on this blog because I'll be trying to finish one or two of them tomorrow. Having just this week finished two of Abigail Thomas's books this week, spending less than a day on each of them, I know her books read quickly and keep my attention, which is good for a marathon read. I like her writing style! I googled to find the WHOLE dust jacket photo that wraps around front and back of the book, and this is what I could find:

Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life ~ by Abigail Thomas, 2000

2008-06-25T15:56:00.010-04:00

NOTE: A reviewer on BN.com wrote: "From life's muddle, meanings emerge."

(p. 8) She will have to tell her class. Make up an assignment. Write two pages in which something valuable is given away on the street. What will they come up with, she wonders, wanting to know.

(p. 12) Invent a New Creation Myth
Her old friend, formerly her second husband, is sick in bed. She has brought him lunch. Once upon a time when they were married he was always upset. With her housekeeping. With her cooking. There is no marmalade on this table, he might well have said. But now they are friends, and he loves her to bring him food. "When did you become such a good cook?" he wants to know. She no longer reminds him that she was always a good cook. She smiles instead. "Eat," she says. Around his place at the table there is always a little circle of spilled food. Rice, peas. She watches him now sitting on pillows, eating in the sunlight, talking to her, happy, and now and then crumbs fly out of his mouth, small particles borne on his breath, his excited talk. Maybe this was how the universe was created, she thinks. A deity at breakfast, talking with his mouth full, and the crumbs shooting forth became the stars and galaxies. She laughs but doesn't tell him the thought. Am I making a mess? he might ask her. She wants him to keep eating. She wants him to get well.

(p. 17) ... the baby kicked ...

NOTE: I remember "the baby" (Barbara and Sandra) first kicked on the day after Christmas in 1959. When I was pregnant with David, he first kicked on a January evening (the tenth, I think) when Clyde and I were sitting in the balconey listening to a concert by clarinetist Pete Fountain that went up-up-UP-UP to such a loud squeel that I covered both ears. And the baby kicked. Hard. I laughed, because the baby had no way of protecting his ears from the high sound reverberating up in our corner of the auditorium. Years later, I gave David an album by Pete Fountain and told him the story of that day when music rocked his world ... and he kicked back.

(pp. 22-23) Mrs. Gregorette loved to iron. She took a mouthful of water from a glass she kept on the counter and then sprayed it on the clothes. Right out of her / mouth!

NOTE: I remember sprinkling clothes. We had a cork gadget about the size of a salt shaker that we stuffed into the mouth of a Coke bottle full of water. Then we'd shake it over the clothes to dampen them. If Mom wanted extra crispy white shirts for Dad, she would roll up the dampened shirts and put them in the Fridge for a few hours. Ironing was a big part of every week, especially ironing men's shirts, though I also remember the work of ironing Barbara and Sandra's intricate little dresses.

(p. I can still remember the silky feel of the cellophane bag...

(p. 26) I ran away from my first husband.

(p. 26) I made $56.90 a week.

(p. 41) "Hey Jude" was on the radio, it was her prayer, her manifesto, almost her dwelling place. She sang it everywhere. The music made her cry then; it makes her cry now. Listening to it now brings back memories so sharp they taste like blood in her mouth.

NOTE: hip-hugger jeans, posters on the wall, mattress on the floor

(p. 42) Mumps and My Second Husband

NOTE: I remember mumps, measles, chicken pox ... and when my children's chicken pox lasted from Christmas into the new year of 1964.

(p. 44) Nine months later we were married. We made each other laugh. What could go wrong?

NOTE: I ruined a perfectly good friendship full of laughter by marrying Gordon. What could go wrong? Money and children.

(p. 54) Definition of "Marriage"
My mother said to me, "Your father likes to think he is personally responsible for the sunrise. He thinks that if he didn't stand in front of the window every morning and supervise, the sun would never come up. What he doesn't know," she went on to say, "is that he couldn't do any of it if I didn't get up first and make the coffee and open the curtains." For the longest time that was the definition of "marriage" for me.

(p. 68) I seem to remember some beautiful and exotic jewelry and combs in her swept-up hair, but perhaps my mind has embellished her.

NOTE: I wonder how much embellishing my minds does. I especially wonder about my dreams. I wake with a feeling and a sort of vague idea of where I was and what was happening in the dream. Lying still and thinking about a dream brings helps me "remember" more details, but were they added as embellishments? Or were they already there?

(p. 71) Her affair
The funny thing is now she can't remember anything about that afternoon except the Great Dane part. And they weren't even there.

NOTE: This remembering of something that did NOT happen made me laugh out loud.

(p. 98) Looking at a photo of her father and her second husband looking up at a tree: What was on their minds that afternoon? There's nobody to ask.

(p. 101) Now and then she sees him [her father] on the city street. A stranger pushes his wheelchair. For just an instant her heart turns over. It is so hard to comprehend gone.

(pp. 104-106) When he died, her father's secretary wrapped each stone separately in a paper towel and sealed it with Scotch tape and sent them to her in a big manila envelope with the ashtray at the bottom. She didn't open them. Sometimes she took one out and felt its shape through the paper and put it back again. She couldn't open them. She wanted the moment to be right; she didn't want to do this just anytime; she was waiting to feel in the exact center of something. Meanwhile, as long as she didn't unwrap them, there was something of her father still to come.

(p. 142) You died, and the past separated itself from me like a continent drifting away.

(p. 163) She had learned by then it wasn't necessary to keep setting the record straight.

Thinking About Memoir ~ by Abigail Thomas, 2008

2008-06-24T13:24:00.024-04:00

My friend Ginnie shared a poem she wrote nearly a decade ago that touched lightly on points of her life, like "letting go of my mother's hand" at age one and learning to ride a bicycle at age ten when she "rode the wind." In the accompanying email she said, "I am thinking about writing a more complete memoir to leave to my children and grandchildren, and to clarify my thoughts about my life and where I want it to go next." For friends as close as we are, that was enough to set us off on a memoir-writing adventure. She told me about this book, and we both ordered it. My copy arrived an hour ago. I knew it would spark ideas, and it already has.

(p. 25) We lived at 1488 Branston Street and our telephone number was MIDway 8-8237.

Oh, oh, I suddenly remember learning my address and phone number when I was very little. We lived at 3208 5th Avenue and our telephone number was 2-9060. Yes, only five digits. When we got the new prefix words, I think 2-9060 was preceeded by MAdison. When I was a teenager, our prefix (at a different address) was OXford with an 8, but I can't remember the numbers that went with it. I used to call my band buddy Ginny so often when we were teens that I could still rattle off her phone number a few years ago, complete with prefix word. She could probably tell me my phone number from those years, now more than 50 years past. And that reminds me that my high school Class of '58 has planned a sock hop for this fall. Can I hop ... or rather, be-bop? Would I dare risk slipping and sliding in sock-feet on our old gym floor? I think not! (Sheesh! Abigail Thomas rattled off her old address and phone number, and before I know it I'm dancing in the gym!)

(p. 35) Write two pages of a fading memory -- something you have to squint to see.

That's easy. I'm squinting to see that OXford-8 phone number. (Ginny? Are you reading this? What was my phone number? Do you remember? Not that it matters ... who puts old phone numbers in a memoir?)

(p. 38) Memory seems to be an independent creature inspired by event, not faithful to it. Maybe memory is what the mind does with its free time, decorating itself. Maybe it's like cave paintings. The thing is, I'm old enough now to know that the past is every bit as unpredictable as the future, and that memory, mine anyway, is not a faithful record of anything, and truth is not an absolute.

(p. 39) Memoir is not about perfect accuracy of recording -- it's more about finding perspective. Is there one image or object that appears over and over in your memories?

(p. 46) Maybe just saying what it is you can't remember gets the engine to turn over.

(p. 47) Write two pages about where you would fly if you could.

Ooooo, I could do this! I would fly between the limbs of a tree, following a pathway only the birds can see.

(p. 51) Write two pages of no fun at all.

(p. 41) Write two pages of what you wish you could still do.

I wish I could still stand on my head. Ginny, you may remember this. You were visiting from Florida and I showed you how easy it was to use my jutting elbows as "steps" for my knees as I got my feet going up, up, up, and over my head to touch the wall. I still remember looking at you from upside down, with my head on the floor between my balancing arm-steps, when you said, "And you're pregnant!" Oh, yeah! I had (temporarily) forgotten. But it was no effort at all for a 19-year-old mother-to-be. Carol, I know YOU remember the last time I tried to stand on my head (maybe 10-15 years ago?) ... and couldn't quite do it. Yeah, we still laugh about that.

(pp. 56-57) Where there's a will
My sister Judy suggests that a good way to get going on memoir is to write your will. You have to decide who gets all your treasures, and this involves looking at them, and remembering / where you found them.

(p. 57) "Treasure" is a subjective term.
(p. 58) Judy tells me ... "I want my stuff buried with me."

(p. 58) Write two pages of what you can't pass down.
(p. 58) Write two pages ending with "That's typical."

(p. 59) I insisted, happy to discover than now that I'm sixty-five I don't have to have everything.

(p. 59) Write two pages about what you don't have to have.

(p. 60) Write two pages of what goes through your mind while you're packing for a trip.

Ah, another easy one for me. The FIRST thing I think, even before I start packing, is "what book(s) shall I take this time?" Anyone who has known me for even a few hours knows that books are very important to me and, therefore, that I take at least one book whenever I leave the house. What if I have car trouble and end up waiting for my car to be fixed? I'd need a book wouldn't I? So obviously I need books on any trip for which I need to pack a suitcase.

(p. 61) Nothing caught my attention until she talked about the cold winters and the unheated house, and how, to keep her children warm, her mother put newspapers between the sheets and blankets for insulation. Now that was interesting.

This made me think of the times it rained when my family lived in a leaky apartment. My brothers and sister would go running to cover up their beds, not wanting to sleep on wet sheets and mattresses; I, on the other hand, ran to cover up the World Book Encyclopedias that my mother was buying for us at something like 50-cents a week payments. The way I figured it, getting wet might be a miserable experience, but I'd dry. If the encyclopedia got wet, it was ruined. I couldn't stand the thought, so I "saved" the books and the many things I wanted to learn. Did I not just say above that books are very important to me? Then I can end this section with as Abigail Thomas suggested above: "That's typical!"

(p. 62) Keep track of what you notice
What you look at is part of who are are.

Many's the time when someone would be giving me directions, using clothing stores or television stores as landmarks, and I would say, "Oh, you mean the place near Such-and-Such Bookstore!" What do I notice? You should be figuring that out by now.

(p. 64) The need for story
Recently I went to a conference given by the Brain Injury Association of New York State, and I sat in on a talk given by the director of a traumatic brain injury rehab facility. She said the first thing they do to assist a person who has experienced a loss, not just of memory but of self, is to make a story. With the help of family and friends they write a story of the patient's life -- the events, names, and faces. It is basic, our need for story, perhaps because it is such a handy way to carry our experiences around -- story as container, so to speak.

This is probably why I have been writing small "stories" about my life for years. I do it rather like when my family sits around the table after a meal, reminiscing. We tell stories. Someone will say, "That reminds me..." And the stories go in all sorts of intriguing directions. This week I assembled the various pages of stories I've written down over the last few years (there are many more in boxes and notebooks on shelves), and I actually made a list of the titles I had put at the top of each page. This list is very diverse!

(p. 66) ... if you could somehow put your entire life into a huge bag, what would be the prevailing sound?

I never thought of anything like this. Verr-rr-rry interesting! I immediately thought my life would sound like a bassoon, though occasionally I think there would be bagpipes piping from a distant hillside. Most of the years are filled with lively music pounded out on my piano, and my sixties definitely sound like "Whippoorwill" played on a cedar flute by R. Carlos Nakai ... or by myself.

(p. 71) Write two pages of what you learned to overlook.
(p. 72) Write two pages of what you could not overlook.

(p. 82) Lost objects, lost childhood, lost dreams, lost innocence. Lost loved ones.

(p. 82) Write two pages of what would have to be taken away to make you no longer who you are.
(p. 83) Write two pages about your relationship to Sundays, in ten-year-intervals.
(p. 89) Write two pages of the perfect room for the perfect activity ...
(p. 93) Write two pages about the loss of mobility.
(p. 96) Write two pages of the vices you no longer have.

(p. 100) Writing memoir is one way to explore how you became the person you are. It's the story of how you got here from there.

(p. 107) Write two pages in which a child comforts an adult.

(p. 110) What ... difference will my life have meant when I have come to its end?

The Measure of All Things ~ by Ken Alder, copyright 2002

2008-06-23T02:45:00.006-04:00

The Measure of All Things is subtitled The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World.

Imagine two intrepid astronomers setting out from Paris, one to the north, one south. Add that the French Revolution has started, and the men are making observations across the whole of France. What a great plot for a novel, right?

Yet Alder is writing history. The two men are Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain, both members of the Academy of Sciences. Their measurements will help define the meter.

But one of them makes a mistake. He tries to cover it up. Only after the meter has been announced does his partner learn about the mistake. The guilt from his mistake drove one to the brink of madness, and his partner has a decision to make. The meter is in error. Now, which matters more, the truth or the appearance of the truth?
__________
This was a short review for the local paper in 2005. My online review was posted March 26, 2008.

A Redbird Christmas ~ by Fannie Flagg, 2004

2008-06-23T02:12:00.007-04:00

(p. 35) Mildred looked at her, highly incensed. “And just how am I supposed to know what I want until I get there? That’s why it’s called shopping, Frances!” And with that she marched out the door.
__________
NOTES from 2005

Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis ~ by Jimmy Carter, 2005

2008-06-23T02:02:00.003-04:00

(pp. 34-35) I soon learned that there was a more intense form of fundamentalism, with some prevailing characteristics:

· Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.

· Although fundamentalists usually believe that the past is better than the present, they retain certain self-beneficial aspects of both their historic religious beliefs and of the modern world.

· Fundamentalists draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil.

· Fundamentalists are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs. They are often angry and sometimes resort to verbal or even physical abuse against those who interfere with the implementation of their agenda.

· Fundamentalists tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restricted, to isolate themselves, to demagogue emotional issues, and to view change, cooperation, negotiation, and other efforts to resolve differences as signs of weakness.

To summarize, there are three words that characterize this brand of fundamentalism: rigidity, domination, and exclusion.
__________

NOTES from 2005

Ecotopia ~ by Ernest Callenbach, 1975

2008-06-23T01:29:00.007-04:00

ECO- from the Greek oikos (household or home)
-TOPIA from the Greek topos (place)

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.
~~~ Barry Commoner

FOOD, SEWAGE, and “STABLE STATES”

(p. 16) “Maybe they have gone back to the stone age.” Hunters used fancy bows and arrows to kill a deer.

(p. 16) A dog was with the hunters: “A large hunting dog padded along with them – first pet I’ve seen in Ecotopia, where animals are evidently left as wild as possible, and people seem to feel no need of them as company.”

CAR-LESS LIVING IN ECOTOPIA’S NEW TOWNS

(p. 26) New minicities, like the sleepy village of Alviso: “Around the factory, where we would have a huge parking lot, Alviso has a cluttered collection of buildings, with trees everywhere. There are restaurants, a library, bakeries, a ‘core store’ selling groceries and clothes, small shops, even factories and workshops – all jumbled amid apartment buildings. These are generally of three or four stories, arranged around a central courtyard … They are built almost entirely of wood, which has become the predominant building material in Ecotopia, due to the reforestation program. … The apartments themselves are very large by our standards – with 10 or 15 rooms, to accommodate their communal living groups.”

THE UNSPORTING LIFE OF ECOTOPIA

(p. 38) “So the youngsters have a high level of physical activity throughout their school years. School groups often go on expeditions: it’s common to see six-year-olds, with heavy backpacks, trudging along with older kids on hikes which … may last four or five days, and in quite forbidding country. As they move on into higher levels of school … much of the children’s time is allotted to training in fishing and hunting and survival skills, at the expense of basic educational skills. They are forced to learn not only the basic techniques but also how to improvise ecologically acceptable equipment in the wild: hooks, snares, bows, arrows, and so on. … The experiences of the children are closely tied in with studies of plants, animals, and landscape.”

ECOTOPIAN TELEVISION AND ITS WARES

(p. 42) Ecotopians claim to have sifted through modern technology and rejected huge tracts of it, because of its ecological harmfulness. However, despite this general technological austerity, they employ video devices even more extensively than we do. Feeling that they should transport their bodies only when it’s a pleasure, they seldom travel ‘on business’ in our manner.”

THE ECOTOPIAN ECONOMY: FRUIT OF CRISIS

(pp. 47-48) “What was at stake, informed Ecotopians insist, was nothing less than the revision of the Protestant work ethic upon which American had been built. … But the profoundest implications of the decreased work week” [to 20 hours] “were philosophical and ecological: mankind, the Ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production, as the 19th and early 20th centuries had believed. Instead, humans were meant to take their modest place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms, disturbing that web as little as possible. … People were to be happy not to the extent they dominated their fellow creatures on the earth, but to the extent they lived in balance with them.”

(p. 51) “[P]eople really were ready for change. They were literally sick of bad air, chemicalized foods, lunatic advertising. They turned to politics because it was finally the only route to self-preservation.”

(p. 51-52) “Mysteriously, the Ecotopians do not feel ‘separate’ from their technology. They evidently feel a little as the Indians must have felt: that the horse and the teepee and the bowand arrow all sprang, like the human being, from the womb of nature, organically. Of course the Ecotopians work on natural materials far more extensively and complexly than the Indians worked stone into arrowpoint, or hide into teepee. But they treat materials in the same spirit of respect, comradeship. The other day I stopped to watch some carpenters working on a building. They marked and sawed the wood lovingly (using their own muscle power, not our saws). Their nail patterns, I noticed, were beautifully placed and their rhythm of hammering seemed patient, almost placid. When they raised wood pieces into place, they held them carefully, fitted them (they make many joints by notching as well as nailing). They seemed almost to be collaborating with the wood rather than forcing it into the shape of a building.”

IN ECOTOPIA’S BIG WOODS

(p. 63) Certainly Ecotopians regard trees as being alive in almost a human sense … And equally certainly, lumber in Ecotopia is cheap and plentiful … Wood therefore takes the place that aluminum, bituminous facings, and many other modern materials occupy with us.”

DECLINE WITHOUT FALL?
THE ECOTOPIAN POPULATION CHALLENGE

(p. 68) “Decentralization affected every aspect of life. Medical services were dispersed; the claim is that instead of massive hospitals in the city centers, besieged by huge lines of waiting patients, there were small hospitals and clinics everywhere, and a neighborhood-oriented system of medical aides. Schools were broken up and organized on a novel teacher-controlled basis. Agricultural, fishery, and forestry enterprised were also reorganized and decentralized. Large factory-farms were broken up through a strict enforcement of irrigation acreage regulations which had been ignored before Independence, and commune and extended-family farms were encouraged.”

(p. 73) “Our point of view is that if something’s worth doing, it ought to be done in a way that’s enjoyable – otherwise it can’t really be worth doing.”

SAVAGERY RESTORED: ECOTOPIA’S DARK SIDE

(p. 77) Ritual War Games.

(p. 80) “Ecotopians … had always regarded anthropology as a field with great practical importance. After Independence they had begun to experiment in adapting anthropological hypotheses to real life. It was only over a great deal of resistance that a radical idea such as ritual warfare had become legally practicable … But its advocates had persisted, convinced … that it was essential to develop some kind of open civic expression for the physical competitiveness that seemed to be inherent in man’s biological programming – and otherwise came out in perverse forms, like war.”

THEIR PLASTICS AND OURS

(p. 85) “I have the impression that despite the undeniable Ecotopian scientific achievements in plastics, the future may well belong to the purists. For in this as in many areas of life, there is still a strong trend in Ecotopia to abandon the fruits of all modern technology, however innocuous they may be made, in favor of a poetic but costly return to what the extremists see as ‘nature.’”
(p. 89) “Don’t you have any sense of privacy?” I blurted out. She got furious at me for this. “What are you talking about? These people live with me and love me. Naturally they want to know what is happening with me! So I tell them. They give me reactions, advice, they look at me, I see myself through them as well as through myself.”

WOMEN IN POWER: POLITICIANS, SEX AND LAW IN ECOTOPIA

(p. 92) “They divided the country into five metropolitan and four rural regions. Within these they also greatly extended many powers of governments of the local communities.”

(p. 92) “A meeting has no formal agenda; instead, it opens with a voicing of ‘concerns’ by many participants. As these are discussed (often amid friendly laughter, as well as a few angry outbursts) general issues begin to take shape. But there are no Roberts’ Rules of Order, no motions, no votes – instead, a gradual ventilation of feelings, some personal antagonisms worked through, and a gradual consensual focusing on what needs to be done. Once this consensus is achieved, people take pains to assuage the feelings of those members who have had to give ground in order to achieve the consensus. Only after this healing process takes place is there formal ratification of the decisions taken …”

WORKERS’ CONTROL, TAXES, AND JOBS IN ECOTOPIA

(p. 102) “Curiously, despite the importance Ecotopians attach to agriculture and other rural affairs, the Ecotopian constitution is city-based where ours, inherited from an agricultural era, is rural-based. With us, the states have broad powers over cities (including the right to give them legal existence and set their boundaries). The Ecotopian main cities, however, dominate their regions through a strict application of one-person-one-vote principles. Furthermore, the county level of government is omitted entirely.”

RACE IN ECOTOPIA: APARTHEID OR EQUALITY?

(p. 107)

NOTE: These are my notes from several years ago, which just happened to be in the computer. For whatever reason, my notes stopped on this page. I was re-reading the book for notes, having read the book several years earlier, so maybe I ran out of time before my book club meeting?

Forgive Me ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward, 2007

2008-06-21T17:54:00.013-04:00

Nadine Morgan, journalist, returns to South Africa after hearing the story of Jason Irving, an American student who was beaten to death during the apartheid era. When the killers apply for amnesty, Jason’s parents fly to Cape Town, with his mother dead set against it. Can any mother forgive her child's killer? What does forgiveness really mean?

Masha Hamilton: "So cool that you are reading Amanda's. I also really recommend her first novel, SLEEP TOWARD HEAVEN."

As I re-read this novel, I'll be looking for discussion ideas for my Bella Novella book club, which will meet on Tuesday, July 8th.

To read an article Amanda Eyre Ward wrote about writing, click on Taking notes as an observer.

(p. 7) NOTE: Jason Irving died ten years ago, and Nadine flew to Cape Town after reading about his death.

(p. 8) NOTE: Cape Cod Times exists.
(p. 12) NOTE: Maxim was shot in Cape Flats.
(p. 14) NOTE: forgive and forget?
(p. 19) NOTE: I didn't notice before that Nadine had a photo of her mother Ann in her notebook
(p. 21) NOTE: In A Separate Peace Phineas dies of a broken bone.
(p. 26) Jason, killed by African girl, age 15.
(p. 27) NOTE: TRC -- Evalina's appearing before TRC from 10-year-old article.
(p. 29) A bureau chief, Padget Thompson, told Nadine, "Your work needs perspective. ... what can we do0 about it?"
(p. 30)

(p. 224) Nadine woke, and made her decision. She wanted this baby. She wanted to raise him on Nantucket, Massachusetts. There were children who dreamed of living in a wooden house with a screen door you could leave unlocked without the fear of someone coming in and taking your mother away. There were children who wondered if such a place was real, if it was possible in the same world as theirs. Nadine didn't know what she could do to deserve the gift she had been given. For one thing, she could stop pretending it wasn't a gift, and start being thankful.

Hank would look at Nadine and see a mother. He would take a guest room and create a nursery. Nadine could live in his vision, she could try. She could stop pointing out the cracks in the ceiling, the horrors in the world. Maybe Nadine could find a drug and stop seeing them herself. Nadine could say to one child, I've got you. You live in a great country. You are safe.

Nadine could say it, and she could try to believe it, as well.

Winston of Churchill ~ by Jean Davies Okimoto, 2007

2008-06-19T12:19:00.003-04:00

Winston of Churchill ~ by Jean Davies Okimoto, 2007

Maggie Again ~ by John D. Husband, 2008

2008-06-19T11:12:00.008-04:00

Maggie Again ~ by John D. Husband, 2008

Alfie is "sensitized" and is aware of things that are hidden to others. Something happens when he, Tom, Gordie, and Maggie hop a freight car.

(p. 19) Alfie was staring soberly into the distance. ... "No, I'm okay. I just have a funny feeling."

"Oh, oh, what's the matter?" Tom asked. "Is something wrong? Shall I get Dad?"

"No," Alfie said. "It was the jump. There's something really funny about that jump. It's really important." ... Alfie seemed to be in a trance. Maggie had never seen him this way before. ... He looked at Maggie. "It's your jump."

"My jump?" Maggie was surprised. "What was the matter with my jump?"

"I'm not sure. It's very confused. It's very sad," Alfie said, looking far into the distance. "Very, very sad. And really happy. But it didn't happen yet."

Using a modern idiom brought me up short; she wouldn't say it that way.

(p. 15) Maggie looked at his hand clutching her waist. She looked away for a moment then looked Tom straight in the eye. "Are you trying to feel me up?" she said.

"No," Tom proclaimed, quickly removing his arm and sliding away. "No. Of course not."

The difference between Cobblers Eddy and New York City:

(pp. 40-41) There was an engaging sense of timelessness in Cobblers / Eddy. Except for Tom's father, no one seemed to hurry. No one seemed to hurry. No one made an entrance. People just suddenly were there. Some came from across the concrete road, some walked through the fields, others emerged from the back of the lawn, and still others came out the church door without having seemed to go in it first. Social events sprang to life effortlessly in Cobblers Eddy -- as if they had lives of their own. No one seemed to be in charge.

(p. 46) The strawberry social ended with the same mellowness with which it had begun. Cobblers Eddy people didn't say goodbye and good night much. They just seemed to step into the shadows and not step out again, until soon the only people left were those who had volunteered to clean up.

(p. 54) She couldn't help contrasting the pace of the city to that of Cobblers Eddy, particularly to community events like the strawberry social. In New York, people exploded onto the scene -- any scene. They came with the roll of drums and the clap of thunder. While they were there, they filled the air with bustling, frantic activity. There were all business and all energy. And when they left, the earth shook with the deliberateness of their departures.

Fever 1793 ~ by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2000

2008-06-19T10:58:00.004-04:00

Fever 1793 ~ by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2000

1858 ~ by Bruce Chadwick, 2008

2008-06-19T10:51:00.002-04:00

1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and the War They Failed to See ~ by Bruce Chadwick, 2008

The Portable Jung ~ edited by Joseph Campbell, 1971

2008-06-06T23:29:00.010-04:00

Yesterday I bought The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell. Going about this in my own inimitable way, I started with Chapter 13, the chapter about "The Difference Between Eastern and Western Thinking." I'm already underlining and adding marginalia, and I probably won't add that here. But I've decided to do a course of study in Jungian psychology, maybe using this outline of a course taught in 2003. I'll be reading (at this time) only two of the three required texts (this one and Memories, Dreams, Reflections), so Jung himself will be my teacher.

Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland. He died on June 6, 1961 at the age of 85 in Zürich, Switzerland.

Here's a link provided by Ginnie to the Jung Society of Atlanta.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections ~ by C. G. Jung, 1961

2008-06-06T23:26:00.022-04:00

When I bought The Portable Jung yesterday, I couldn't find a copy of Memories, Dreams, Reflections -- Jung's autobiography -- so I got a copy today from the library and started reading. The book begins with the introduction by Aniela Jaffe, who recorded what Jung said and edited the book for publication. The very last line on the very first page has this sentence: "We began in the spring of 1957." And stamped below that was the date my library acquired this "cop.1" (first copy): JUN 1963.

Oh, what fun! In the spring of 1957, I was finishing my junior year in high school and would graduate in the class of 1958, exactly 50 years ago! Yes, I'm older than dirt, but we elderly grads have planned a sock hop for this fall. The synchronicity is not simply that "June 1963" is exactly 45 years ago, though there's that, but that seeing the date took me back to the birth of my son in June 1963. I'm gonna guess that going through this self-imposed course of study of Jungian analytical psychology will be like birthing something new for me. I have read a bit by and about Carl Jung, but I've never really set out to integrate the big picture into my thinking. Now back to the book, which (according to the dust jacket) is essentially a record of the inner experiences "which alone seemed worth the telling."

Since this is a library book, marginalia is a no-no. So I'll be keeping my notes here:

INTRODUCTION ~ by Aniela Jaffe

(p. x) There was his insuppressible curiosity concerning everything that had to do with the contents of the psyche and its manifestations -- the urge to know which characterized his scientific work.

(p. xii) Quoting Jung: "I have suffered enough from incomprehension and from the isolation one falls into when one says things that people do not understand."

(p. xiii) Jung was constantly defining his concepts in new and different ways, for a ultimate definition, he felt, was not possible.

PHOTOS ~ following page 110

(p. vi) Bollingen, the Stone

Hey! This stone is used on the cover of Alice Walker's book Possessing the Secret of Joy. Strange as it may sound, I bought the book because of the cover and have never read it. Maybe I should, now that I know its origin.

PROLOGUE ~ by Carl Jung

(p. 3) My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.

(p. 4) Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity.

(pp. 11-13) At about the same time ... I had the earliest dream I can remember, a dream which was to preoccupy me all my life. I was then between three and four years old. ... In the dream I was in this meadow. Suddenly I discovered a dark, rectangular, stone-lined hole in the ground. ... /... It was a magnificent throne, a real king's throne in a fairy tale. Something was standing on it which I thought at first was a tree trunk twelve to fifteen feet high and about one and a half to two feet thick. It was a huge thing, reaching almost to the ceiling. But it was of a curious composition: it was made of skin and naked flesh, and on top there was something like a rounded head with no face and no hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing motionlessly upward. ... I heard ... my mother's voice ... "Yes, just look at him. That is the man-eater!" ... That dream haunted me for years. Only much later did I realize that what I had seen was a phallus ... I could never make out whether my mother meant, "That is the man-eater," or, "That is the man-eater." in the first case she would have meant that not Lord Jesus or the Jesuit was the devourer of little children, but the phallus; in the second case that the "man-eater" in general was symbolized by the phallus, to that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit, and the phallus were identical. ... The hole in the meadow probably represented a grave. / The grave itself was an underground temple whose green curtain sysbolized the meadow, in other words the mystery of Earth with her covering of green vegetation. The carpet was blood-red.
NOTE: I'm surprised he never envisioned what immediately came to MY mind: the phallus in a "hole" which "eats," or takes in, a man would be a woman.
(p. 15) One evening my father took me out of bed and carried me in his arms to our porch, which faced west. He showed me the evening sky, shimmering in the most glorious green. That was after the eruption of Krakatoa, in 1883.
NOTE: When I read Krakatoa by Simon Winchester in 2003, I wrote myself a note speculating about my grandmother having seen that sky. She was born in 1880, and the sky was darkened for many months (years?) after Krakatoa blasted the whole island into the atmosphere.
(p. 18) One of my reasons for liking school was that there I found at last the playmates I had lacked for so long.
NOTE: Mother liked to tell the story about the first time she took me into the nursery at church. She had always taken me into her adult Sunday school class, but one Sunday when I was about one-and-a-half years old, she told her class she'd probably miss a few Sundays because she would be staying with me until I was willing to stay in the nursery without her. When she opened the door, however, I was enthralled and said, "Oh, Mother! Boys and girls!" I never looked back, and she never missed a single Sunday in her own class. Think of all those Sundays I was stuck with the boring adults when right across the hall were -- *gasp* -- all those boys and girls! I was an only child at the time, until my brother came along when I was two-and-a-half.
(p. 27) I felt a downright fear of the mathematics class. The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers really were. They were not flowers, not animals, not fossils; they were nothing that could be imagined, mere quantities that resulted from counting. To my confusion these quantities were now represented by letters, which signified sounds, so that it became possible to hear them, so to speak. Oddly enough, my classmates could handle these things and found them self-evident.

(p. 30) The time thus gained was not spent solely on play. It permitted me to indulge somewhat more freely the absolute craving I had developed to read every scrap of printed matter that fell into my hands.
NOTE: My passion was stories. Being among the tallest my age, my desk was on the back row when I was in the first grade. Two things conspired to get me in trouble one day. First, Mrs. Curry had the class writing a whole page of little L's, which are no more than straight lines, over and over and over. I could write my name before I got to school, and my middle name is Lillian (see all those L's?). It was boring. Second, the class was divided into reading groups called red birds, blue birds, and yellow birds. Mrs. Curry had the yellow birds in a circle of chairs at the back of the class, just behind my desk. They were reading a story that wasn't IN my book, and I was listening. Soon I was turned around in my desk raptly listening to the story they were reading. Mrs. Curry told me to turn around and do my work. My "work" was scratching boring straight lines all over my paper, and the story was too compelling. It wasn't long before I found myself turned around again facing the story circle, and that's when the teacher called me back there and turned me over her lap for a paddling. It hurt my feelings and my dignity that I wasn't allowed to learn what happened in that story.
(pp. 32-33) I was taking the long road to school from Klein-Huningen, where we lived, to Basel, when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud. I knew all at once: now I am myself! It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an "I." But at this moment I came upon myself. Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me. / Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist. Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed. This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was "authority" in me.

(p. 38) Adam and Eve were the first people; they had no parents, but were created directly by God, who intentionally made them as they were. They had no choice but to be exactly the way God had created them. Therefore they did not know how they could possibly be different. They were perfect creatures of God, for He creates only perfection ...
WHOA! Jung has started with some big assumptions here! God created, Adam and Eve were literal as well as perfect, God creates "only perfection." Where'd this come from? His father the preacher, of course. His belief in God comes with preconditions, like this:
(p. 40) In His omnipotence He will see to it that nothing really evil comes of such tests of courage. If one fulfills the will of God one can be sure of going the right way.

(p. 42) I know things and must hint at things which other people do not know, and usually do not even want to know.

(p. 42) In my mother's family there were six parsons, and on my father's side not only was my father a parson but two of my uncles also.

(p. 43) Later, when I was eighteen years old, I had many discussions with my father ... I was convinced that if he fulfilled the will of God everything would turn out for the best. But our discussions invariably came to an unsatisfactory end. They irritated him, and saddened him. "Oh nonsense," he was in the habit of saying, "you always want to think. One ought not to think, but believe." I would think, "No, one must experience and know."
NOTE: Think, believe, experience, know.
(p. 43) I hated all competition, and if someone played a game too competitively I turned my back on the game.

(p. 45) Nature seemed, like myself, to have been set aside by God as non-divine, although created by Him as an expression of Himself. Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism -- all qualities with which I was only too familiar from myself ...

(p. 46) To me, it seemed that one's duty was to explore daily the will of God. I did not do that, but I felt sure that I would do it as soon as an urgent reason for so doing presented itself. ... It often seemed to me that religious precepts were being put in place of the will of God -- which could be so unexpected and so alarming -- for the sole purpose of sparing people the necessity for understanding God's will.

(p. 48) I remained alone with my thoughts. ... I played alone, daydreamed or strolled in the woods alone, and had a secret world of my own.

(p. 50, note 3) The "natural mind" is the "mind which says absolutely straight and ruthless things."

(p. 55) Communion as an absence of God: ... but this ceremony contained no trace of God -- not for me, at any rate. ... none of it had anything to do with God as I experienced Him."

Staircase of a Thousand Steps ~ by Masha Hamilton, 2001

2008-05-29T22:29:00.045-04:00

POWERFUL STORY
. . . . . . WOW . . . . . .
I'll have to think about this one before I can review it.

Jammana
( p. 3) She "remembers" her mother's birth, 18 years before her own. After her grandfather's funeral, she thinks, Now I'm alone. She has become an American, living in Providence in a new century, with "secrets demanding to be told."

(p. 6) Wadi al Ahlam, Jordan
North of Jerusalem, west of the River Jordan
1966

(p. 10) He [Jammana's father, Ahmed] cannot be Abu, the title conferred only on the father of a boy.

I found an article about a young woman named Hadeel Abu Kawik and emailed Masha with a question about names. Throughout the article the young woman is called Abu Kawik. My question is about names and how Abu functions in Palestinian society. Was Hadeel's father called "Kawik" before he had a son? Or did the names "harden" years ago because of Western influence, being handed down through the generations? Or does my question even make sense?
Here's Masha's answer: "In my experience, for those who follow tradition, a man is named, say, Ahmed. Then his first son is born, named, let's say, Mohammed. He becomes Abu Mohammed and his wife, the mother, becomes Umm al Mohammed, or mother of Mohammed. I'm not sure how the exceptions work, unless it is simply a case of turning one's back on traditions, part of the natural order of the world!"

(p. 20) "You know what worries me about Allah?" Jammana says as she catches up with Grandfather and Faridah. "He seems to care more about men than women." Faridah laughs.

(p. 24) Ein Fadr, where Mama warns that voices of the dead travel on breezes, and Grandfather Harif intuits each neighbor's history of troubles as surely as he senses the changing of seasons. Where once, nearly three decades ago, Faridah caught Mama as she tumbled into the world. Faridah helped by Jammana, though no one but Jammana seems to know this.

(p. 27) Harif
Harif heads toward the tree that rises like an affirmation to Allah -- Moses' Finger, mulberry of twisted trunk, purple fruit, and one bough that soars above the others. By day, women peel its bark to make brews against worms that hide within their children's bodies, or crush its heart-shaped leaves for juice to treat serpent bites.

Is this true, Masha? Is juice from the leaves used to treat serpent bites? If so, is this tree what the Bible says people should gaze upon, to cure snake bites? A "twisted trunk" could sort of resemble snakes entwined around a staff, as in the Caduceus (the symbol for medicine) or as in the bronze serpent of Moses:
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” 6 Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. (Numbers 21:4-9 NRSV Bible)
Here's Masha's answer: "All the herbal treatments and superstitions in Staircase are real, and based on research. Especially the research done by Hilma Granqvist, for which she was not recognized sufficiently during her lifetime."

I had already noticed that Masha dedicated this book to Hilma Granqvist (1890-1972), saying, "A Finnish ethnologist whose work inspired me and whose words enlightened me." Click here to read more about Hilma Granqvist.

(p. 35) Haarif ... "I was born with the gift of seeing the future, just as my granddaughter was given the ability to see the past."(p. 51) At work to the end, she died while mending her husband's shirt. Faridah hasn't been that meek in decades, and it confuses the men. How satisfied they would be to cover her skin with soil.

Where does men's fear come from? Why have men of so many cultures feared women? Is it our ability to bear children, as some say? Men can do things women can't, so that doesn't make sense. But then, maybe it is a senseless fear, born of (some) men's insecurities.

(pp. 101-102) Rafa to Faridah: "He can't help it, you know. Ahmed wants to be a modern man, but he grew up with old-fashioned / beliefs. His father was an imam who, in the name of Allah, simply erased his mother. Her wishes meant nothing."

"Most men of this land are of stone," says Faridah.

(p. 115) "Did you know a mulberry has always been rooted in this village, as far back as its history reaches?" the woman asks. "Our farmers are a bit superstitious about it. Eventually they will decide it is time to tend one of Moses' Finger's babies so that when the old tree dies, a replacement will be ready. In this way, they believe, Ein Fadr's heart will ceaselessly beat."

(pp. 140-141) ... in Bethlehem ... There, on Daraj al-Alf Darji, the Staircase of a Thousand Steps, he discovered his heart had matured." Faridah gestures, and they all follow the upward / movement of her hand. "The staircase starts from the spot where Jesus was born, and ends at the marketplace where merchants cheat and old women plead. In Bethlehem, they say the ascent represents the arc of life, beginning with birth, when one is so cherished, and ending with old age and its inadequacies. Where better to meet your future? ... He was going up, she coming down, a fasket of eggs balanced on her head. ... Harif and Hannan!" Faridah goes on, her eyes now hard and unseeing. "She must have felt him staring, bcause she giggled as she passed, reached out and tugged his ear. Such bravery in an Arab girl. The most spontaneous act of her life, I would guess. Her touch left him" -- here Faridah gulps -- "breathless."

(p. 147) Some twenty years ago, a traveler fell down a shaft near Ein Fadr. A passing village woman heard his cries and reached to pull him out, but slipped and tumbled in too. When her brothers returned from the gardens, they heard their sister yelling. They rescued her and the stranger from the depths. The traveler was given food, drink, and a night's lodging. As for the unmarried woman who had spend the day alone with a stranger-man, the mukhtar, Nabeel's father, ordered her tied to a tree and stoned to death.

(p. 184) Harif: "Rafa is worth as much as any boy. So is Jammana."
Ahmed, husband of Rafa and father of Jammana: "Of course they're not."

(p. 270) "Past and future are no more separate than the tree trunk from its branches."

(p. 270) Ana antemee ila, I belong to.
Enta tantamee ila, You belong to.
Howa yantamee ila, He belongs to.
It was a verb without a direct object.

(p. 273) Then I learned again that a life lived only in forward motion is not a life at all.

(p. 273) Memory sometimes hides more than it reveals.

(p. 273) Faridah's seven silver bracelets and Grandfather's worn prayer beads. ... They should have been dropped together each night on a dirt floor / in a home shared by a shepherd and a midwife, I thought.

(p. 274) Harif to Jammana: "Recall it all, Jammana. Death and birth, dung and jasmine. But recall it gently."

NOTE: I had forgotten this until just now, reading back over my meeting with Masha in Kingsport, Tennessee.
I really enjoyed hearing her read excerpts from each book: about the midwife who refused the Bedoin's marriage proposal in her first novel, and about the reporter in her second novel who stays in journalism in spite of the violence ("The blood is his and he's gone"). When she read the excerpt from The Camel Bookmobile, Donna turned to me and grinned ... it was the very same passage Donna had singled out to read to me as we were driving to Kingsport. (Donna has borrowed my copy of the book, so I can't type here what Masha read, but it's the part starting on page 49 where the librarian decides Siti, the lead camel, is his own mother reincarnated and ending with "To continue the efforts might even cost him his job" on page 53.)
And I didn't make a note of it when I read about "the midwife who refused the Bedoin's marriage proposal." I do remember it, though, and the man's arrogance in asking. Let's see if I can find this section.

Ah, yes, here it is. The Bedouin is Lafi abu Arudi al-Salman (p. 29).

(pp. 59-61) JAMMANA

Jammana hears the shuffle of approaching hooves and the restrained whinny of a patient beast pulled too sharply to a halt. Faridah raises her eyebrows. "Who's come in a rush?" She flings the door wide to the Samarian hills and strides into her courtyard.

The Bedouin Arudi al-Salman towers on his camel. A keffiyeh wrapped around his head trails down beyond the shoulders of his robe. He nods regally at the woman and the girl, then begins to speak.

"For three days I've not touched food,
My liver's been long dry.
M heart's been restless since she left,
My soul leaks away." /

Jammana glances at Faridah, who seems as perplexed as she. The Bedouin saturates his words with gestures, recounting a tale of a woman at a well and the warrior who wins her love. He describes the warrior's devotion with enormous feeling. Jammana cannot look away. When he finishes, he joins his hands on his lap. For several minutes, the only sound is that of his camel sniffing the ground.

Faridah speaks at last. "I know you. You're the one who brought great trouble to Harif. All the village is muttering against him because you made him seem a liar." Her hands sit on her hips, and each time she says "you," she says it hard.

"That was not my intention. Further, it's not why I'm here now." Arudi al-Salman smoothes his robe. "We go today to Amman. We will return in a week's time. I would like you to join me then."
At last, Jammana understands. So this is how men propose! She wonders if Faridah will mount the camel immediately and depart with the Bedouin. She wonders if she could go, too. There is a musical pause of possibilities -- the crisp beating of a wing above, the slight rustle of a passing lizard.

When Faridah speaks, however, she wrinkles her nose. "You want to marry?"

The Bedouin king gives the barest of nods.

"Perhaps you have not noticed," Faridah says. "My days for weddings are gone."

Jammana studies Faridah, remembering with some surprise that she is as old as Grandfather. But her body bends easily as a sapling, her fingers can fly faster than sight, and her light-colored eyes reveal a quality, fierce and untouched, that makes her seem a girl.

"Nonsense." The Bedouin sweeps his hand as though to / dismiss the issue. "What is time but the changing of the sands? Your spirit moves me, its strength and intensity."

"What do you know of my spirit?"

"I've seen you walk," the Bedouin says. "Heard you speak -- evidence enough."

Faridah waves her fingers through the air and chuckles. It is a dismissive sound. "You say you know me. Yet you believe that I would choose to spit sand from my supper all my remaining days? To rise before dawn and draw your morning milk from the udders of cranky beasts? All this to become Wife Number - what? Four? Five?"

Faridah's merriment is so infectious, Jammana almost laughs herself. Instead, she glances at the Bedouin. Suddenly, he looks nothing like the man who played his instrument, nor the one who gave audience to Grandfather's story. Certainly not the one who just captivated Jammana with his proposal. His eyes are hooded. His mouth, stratched in anger, almost disappears. He draws himself up, handling the saber at his waist. Jammana backs away. "This is a cruel response to the compliment of my proposal," the Bedouin says. "You have insulted an honorable man."

The camel lifts his head warily, and then, as if realizing the Bedouin's anger is not aimed at him, lets it fall again.

"If you think to frighten me," Faridah replies, "you know nothing of my spirit."

The Bedouin raises his chin so high, his eyes are only slits. "Springs should run dry in your sight," he says. "You should end your days bent, like lavender without water." Jammana reacher for Faridah's skirt. "Yallah!" the Bedouin calls to his camel, and the animal haltingly turns away.

"Come." Faridah turns to Jammana, a smile still at her lips. /

Jammana shudders as she watches the Bedouin ride away. "Will he try to hurt you?"

"He'll be gone by lunch, and we'll never see him again." Faridah links her arm through Jammana's "A Bedouin stays nowhere for long, and certainly not where his pride has been wounded."

NOTE: More about this book can be found here, along with an interview with Masha and the discussion questions found at the end of the paperback version of the book. Here's another set of discussion questions.

The Gathering ~ by Anne Enright, 2007

2008-05-23T23:45:00.035-04:00

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2007

(p. 28) We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more.

NOTE: After reading 45 pages of the book, I still have no idea where it's going or what it's about. Since I keep wondering about the order of the narrator's siblings (she's Veronica Hegarty, I'm told on page 11), I need to go back and add the list here.

(p. 7) My mother had twelve children and -- as she told me one hard day -- seven miscarriages. The holes in her head are not her fault. Even so, I have never forgiven her any of it. I just can't.

I have not forgiven her for my sister Margaret who we called Midge, until she died, aged forty-two, from pancreatic cancer. I do not forgive her my beautiful, drifting sister Bea. I do not forgive her my first brother Ernest, who was a priest in Peru, until he became a lapsed priest in Peru. I do not forgive her my brother Stevie, who is a little angel in heaven. I do not forgive her the whole tedious litany of Midge, Bea, Ernest, Stevie, Ita, Mossie, Liam, Veronica, Kitty, Alice, and the twins, Ivor and Jem.

NOTE: The list is repeated on page 44:
CHARACTERS:
Midge ~ died at 42 of pancreatic cancer (p. 28)
Bea ~ "drifting sister" (p. 28)
Ernest ~ lapsed priest in Peru (p. 28)
Stevie ~ little angel in heaven (p. 28)
Ita ~ "most disliked among us" (p. 112)
Mossie ~ Mossie-the-psychotic (p. 154)
Liam ~ has died (p. 8), sent to Grandma Ada's (p. 46)
Veronica ~ narrator, sent to Grandma Ada's (p. 46)
Kitty ~ sent to Grandma Ada's (p. 46)
Alice ~ born 1967 (p. 46)
Ivor ~ "He has never been called 'gay' by a member of his family before" (p. 209)
Jem ~ says to Ivor, "Also you're gay, you eejit" (p. 209)

Rebecca ~ Veronica's 8-year-old daughter (pp. 2, 68)
Emily ~ Veronica's 6-year-old daughter (pp. 2, 68)
Tom ~ Veronica's husband (p. 26)
Maureen ~ Mammy (p. 4), "loveliest woman in Dublin" (p. 12), "beautiful, of course" (p. 13)
Ada Merriman ~ Gran, their mother's mother (pp. 4, 16, 85)
Charlie Spillane ~ their mother's father, Granda Charlie (pp. 22, 103)
Lambert ("Lamb") Nugent ~ Nolly (pp. 13, 101)
Auntie Rose ~ their mother's sister (pp. 85, 87)
Uncle Brendan ~ at St Ita's "hospital" (p. 115)

(p. 44) ... Midge-Bea-Ernest-Stevie-Ita-Mossie-Liam-Veronica-Kitty-Alice-and-the-twins-Ivor-and-Jem.

NOTE: Maybe I need to go all the way back to the first paragraph:

(p. 1) I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I feel it roaring inside me -- this thing that may not have taken place. I don't even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones.

(p. 2) I do not know the truth, or I do not know how to tell the truth. All I have are stories, night thoughts, the sudden convictions that uncertainty spawns. All I have are ravings, more like. She loved him! I say. She must have loved him!

(p. 6) The last time I cried in this kitchen I was seventeen years old, which is old for crying, though maybe not in our family, where everyone seemed to be every age, all at once.

(p. 6) He didn't even like her.

NOTE: He, who? This sentence is just plunked down in the middle of the page, a paragraph unto itself, with no reference. Who is Veronica thinking about? I don't know. This book is like a puzzle, which I must solve by combing over things I have already read once or twice or three time, finding something new each time.

(p. 11) Who am I to touch, to handle and discard, the stuff of a mother's love?

(p. 13) The seeds of my brother's death were sown many years ago. The person who planted them is long dead -- at least that's what I think. So if I want to tell Liam's story, then I have to start long before he was born.

(p. 23) There is the coffin to consider, of course, and for some reason I already know that I will go for the limed oak -- a decision that is up to me, because I am the one who loved him most.

(p. 25) There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were girls with seven or eight -- which was thought a little enthusiastic -- and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that wre just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit.

(p. 26) I had to be polite to him, and apologise a little that my brother had died all over his Thursday afternoon.

(p. 27) There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. ... even the meeting your husband has, the vital meeting, was not important (how could you ever, even for a moment, think such things were important?) and he love you completely for the half an hour, or half a week in which your brother is freshly dead.

(p. 29) I can feel laughing at me. Or I feel his absence laughing at me. Because, somewhere, over there to the side -- the place you can't quite see -- he is completely there, and not there at all. He is not unhappy, I realise, now that he is dead. But it is not just his mood I feel as a warmth at the base of my spine. It is his disappeared, dead, essential self. It is the very heart of him, all gone, or going now.
Goodbye Vee
Goodbye
Goodbye
I open the door and climb out into the rain.

(p. 53) I don't think we kissed. The Hegartys didn't start kissing until the late eighties and even then we stuck to Christmas.

(p. 54) Alcohol wrecked him, as it does. But I am trying to put a time on it -- when I stopped worrying about him and started to worry about his drinking instead.

(p. 66) Nugent was there all along: for Liam's bravery and Kitty's cutey-pie piety and for the huge bubble of selfishness rising and bursting in my chest.

NOTE: Ah! I should have read the dust jacket first, though I think the story should stand on its own. Anyway, here's what it says:
...a large Irish family haunted by the past. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, who drowned in the sea. His sister Veronica collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him -- something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, she shows how memories warp and secrets fester.

(p. 87) ... my mother in her chair in the good room, my uxorious father standing beside her, slightly stooped ...

uxorious = "excessively submissive or devoted to one's wife."

(p. 97) ... when Daddy died no one in Ireland ate mango, though I think kiwi was all the rage by then. And I feel I must console him for mangoes. I must console him for the distance we have moved from the place where he stopped.

NOTE: Hmmm, when my dad was killed in a traffic accident at the age of 45 in 1964, the Interstate highway system was under construction in Chattanooga. That was 44 years ago this week, and the whole world has changed since then. Should I "console" my dad for having missed the internet, a system that transports people to more places than a highway system ever could? He missed knowing half of his dozen grandchildren; wouldn't that have seemed more important to him? And it's entirely likely that he never tasted a mango, either, unless he tried them when he was in the Philippines during World War Two.
From Wikipedia: "Cultivated in many tropical regions, mango has special significance in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Philippines."

(p. 100) ... my father in the kitchen ... shouting at Liam in a careful voice ... 'I LOVEd your MOTHer from the DAY I first set EYES on her. I WOrshipped the GROUND she WALKED upon.'

(pp. 101-102) Mr Nugent ... On a Friday he came round to the front door to knock, and he always had sweets for the children. He wore a hat, which he doffed when Ada opened the door. It was many years before I wondered at the formality of this arrangement, or what was going on. Ada called him Nolly, though we all knew that what you called him was Mr Nugent, if you called him anything at all, which we didn't. ... / there was always a slight sweat on him, and he cleared his throat a lot, and you could tell how much he wanted Gran.

(p. 101) [Ada] would say something strangely memorable like, 'Sex gets you nowhere in this world. Remember that, sex will get you precisely No Where.'

(p. 102) [Nolly] sat like someone who wasn't getting much sex, now that I see him in my mind's eye -- and his glance was too casual, in a way that I also now recognise. Though he had, in his grim way, four children and a wife we never saw, called Kathleen.

(p. 104) I couldn't tell you what Nugent did, though it has stuck somewhere in my head that he was a bookie, or a bookie's clerk, that he put on a grey cashmere coat from time to time, and got into a black car, and was driven to the race-course. All I really know is that he used the garage out the back for his old jalopies and you never knew if he was in there or not. I thought -- if I thought anything at the time -- that Ada allowed him to use it because she had no car of her own, and by that time, Charlie did not drive.

(p. 109) Ada's horse came first. But it was only a horse -- it's not exactly her fault. So maybe it is her sense of justice that makes her choose Charlie, who is pleased for her, as opposed to Nugent who is insulted by her good luck. But there is no doubt -- the choice has been made. ... Charlier has won Ada, Nugent has lost her.

(p. 110) I do not know why Ada married Charlie when it was Nugent who had her measure. ... She thought she could marry someone she liked and be happy with him, and have happy children. She did not realise that every choice is fatal. For a woman like Ada, every choice is an error, as soon as it is made.

(p. 129) I am attracted to people who suffer, or men who suffer, my suffering husband, my suffering brother, the suffering figure of Mr Nugent. It is unfortunately true that happiness, in a man, does not do it, for me.

(p. 181) I was living my life in inverted commas. ... And I didn't seem to mind the inverted commas or even notice that I was living in them, until my brother died.

(p. 208) We uncork it anyway, and put it into glasses where it sits, thick and sweet. This ritual is strange for us because, although the Hegartys all drink, we never drink together.

(p. 216) And when I walk into the front room all is silent. There are no ghosts in with Liam's body, not even his own.

(p. 217) After 1975 there is nothing. Pages of nothing. I wonder was this the year that Nugent died? I lift the book and turn to show it to Liam, and I see Ada watching us from the doorway. There she is. I see her not as I 'saw' the ghosts on the stairs. I see her as I might see an actual woman standing in the light of the hall.

(p. 218) So I stayed up for a while, and then I went upstairs and had sex with my husband for the last time. That was not my intention, of course. After the night I'd just had it wasn't my intention to have sex of any sort, never mind terminal sex.

(p. 221) It was Ita at the door, of course, I should have known. It was not Ada, it was my addled older sister; psychotic with drink, and with a stupid new nose. This is what I remembered, when I saw her. I remembered a picture. I don't know what else to call it. It is a picture in my head of Ada standing at the door of the good room in Broadstone. I am eight. ... And on the other side of me is the welcoming darkness of Lambert Nugent. I am facing into that darkness and falling. I am holding his old penis in my hand. ... This is the moment for blame. ... This is the moment when we realise that it was Ada's fault all along. The mad son and the vague daughter. The vague daughter's endlessly vague pregnancies, the way each and every one of her grandchildren went vaguely wrong. This is the moment when we ask what Ada did -- for it must, surely, have been something -- to bring so much death into the world. But I do not blame her. And I don't know why that is.

(p. 224) These are the things I do, actually know. I know that my brother Liam was sexually abused by Lambert Nugent. Or was probably sexually abused by Lambert Nugent.

(p. 228) All the Hegarty children have a hangover, including the one in the box.

(p. 242) 'This is Rowan,' she says, reaching round to extract a child from behind her elegant legs, and I look down, for the first time, at my brother's son. ... he is only three -- going on four -- years old.

Why Women Should Rule the World ~ by Dee Dee Myers, 2008

2008-05-22T23:40:00.019-04:00

(pp. 4-5) So my grandmother -- by fate, rather than design -- was a small-business owner and single mom long before women routinely did either, let alone both. And I've often wondered. What would have happened to another family if the mother had died and left the father with five young children? How many men could have managed to run the business, raise the kids, and volunteer at church [playing the organ for mass] six days a week, all by themselves?

(p. 28) And so it is that women are judged by their performance -- while men are judged by their potential.

(pp. 53-54) Almost every professional woman I know -- whether she works in law, business, medicine, academia, politics, or something else -- had had this experience: You're sitting in a meeting in a room full of men. You make a suggestion, and no one responds. A few minutes later, a man says virtually the same thing, and everyone agrees that it's a great idea. What gives? To be sure, some women don't state their views forcefully enough. But there's no way that can account for the frequency with which this happens. In a recent study looking at various strategies women use to confront bias, one of the respondents suggested that when someone tries to "restate" one of their ideas, women have to confront them directly. "You've got to nip it in the bud," she said. "So you need to, with the right finesse, be able to go back to -- let's say it's Joe Smith -- and say, 'Joe, it's so great you thought my idea was right on target. I like the way you've reworded it, and you are exactly on the point I was on, / and so' -- to the collective audience -- 'what do you think about implementing my suggestion that Joe Smith just articulated so nicely?"

NOTE: This is the best advice I've seen for this problem. I need to remember it.

(p. 55) As crazy as it seems, it wasn't until the early 1990s that clinical health studies routinely included women. ... In other words, almost everything that was known about women's biology was learned by studying men. I can assure you that the people who devised this system were not women, since most of the women I know are quite certain their bodies are not just like men's, only with different hardware.

(pp. 56-57) For example, heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women. But until recently, all the research into the disease was conducted on men. As a result, doctors and their patients believed that men and women experienced heart attacks in the same way -- massive chest pains. To be sure, some women do have chest pains. But they are more likely to experience other symptoms: shortness of / breath; flulike nausea, clamminess, and cold sweats; and pain in areas other than the chest, such as the shoulders, neck, or jaw. But since women don't always recognize the symptoms, they are less likely than men to believe they're having a heart attack -- and more likely to delay treatment. No doubt, thousands and thousands of women have died or been disabled unnecessarily as a result of a culture that paid less attention to women's health than to men's.

NOTE: Though I didn't get much out of Rita Mae Brown's book Cat's Eyewitness, I did get this great quote: "So long as 'man' is the measure of all things, women will be shortchanged" (p. 72).

(p. 81) There is no unisex brain, there is no unisex norm. There is only the male norm. And it undervalues the powerful, sex-specific strengths and talents of the female brain.

(p. 103) If the three wise men had been women, they would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts, and there would be Peace On Earth.

Of course! But they weren't women, so the wise men got there late -- and brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. Can you imagine what Mary -- who's just delivered a baby on a bale of hay without an epidural -- must have thought about that?

(pp. 110-111) A recent World Economics Forum study looked at Cameroon, Bolivia, and Malaysia and concluded that when women had more control over spending, they spent less on the military. In addition, a series of studies by Harvard psychologist Rose McDermott found that / the more money a country spends on its military, the more likely it is to go to war. ... In other words, more women mean fewer wars. Maybe it's not that simple. Then again, maybe it is.

... First, women often bring a different point of view and different priorities to questions surrounding war and peace. And that perspective cn be crucial to ratcheting down the violence, creating opportunities for reconciliation, and beginning the process of rebuilding.

... "Women think long and hard before they send their children out to kill other people's children.

(p. 112) I think mothers have a different standard for measuring the costs of war -- and the price of peace.

NOTE: Yeah, I guess I think like a woman, since I've had this in the sidebar of my my Continuing the Quest blog for nearly a year now:
PEOPLE PAY THE PRICE
Somebody's son, somebody's daughter,
somebody's daddy, mother, uncle, cousin, best friend.
Somebody died.

(p. 116) "Men exhibit a tendency to see the world in black and white, 'war' or 'peace.' I know of at least 7,000 other options in the middle."

(p. 116) "For men, negotiation is a synonym to playing cards. They would assemble in a room with a long table, sit one against the other and try to conceal their cards as much as they can," Greenblatt [said]. "They are inclined to treat the man in front of them as an opponent, not as a partner. Women, on the other hand, would assemble and sit at the same side of the table. We put the strife and pains in front of us, look at them courageously and come up with a win-win formula. The Palestinian woman with whom I converse would be my neighbor eventually. I have no intention or any interest in playing infantile games with her. Making sure she leaves the room with a good feeling is in my utmost interest."

NOTE: This seems so logical to me, yet men are said to be the logical ones? The NYT editorial Talking With the Enemy (May 23, 2008) records an example of men playing games: President Bush doesn't want Israel to talk with Syria, even though it may be in Israel's best interests to do just that. Bush would rather keep the "enemies" apart, though isolating Syria exacerbates the situation.

(pp. 126-127) Bonobos, the "peaceful apes" ... have forged a "threefold path to peace. They have reduced the level of violence in relations between the sexes, in relations among males, and in relations between communities." How?

First, the sexes are "codominant." .../...

In addition, female bonobos cooperate with each other -- they build relationships -- in ways that males don't. ... female bonobos work together to keep male aggression in check ...

Finally, bonobos don't stage murderous raids on other groups of bonobos, as the chimps in the Bombe did. ... meetings between neighboring communities can be peaceful, even friendly. And the friendliness is always initiated by the females.

In the end, all these behavioral differences add up to a single, inescapable conclusion: Male bonobos are less violent than male chimpanzees. And the reason? Girl Power.

(p. 143) COMMUNICATION, COLLABORATION, CONSENSUS
When you don't care who gets credit, it's easier to work together.

(p. 145) In discussing how she would approach being president, Senator Hillary Clinton said it was very important for a president to gather information from a wide variety of sources. "I seek out people who are not only able to come with some expertise or relevant experience, but are willing to debate and discuss differences of opinion," she told Newsweek. "Sometimes it surprises people to see how seriously I seek out that kind of debate. Obviously, I can't know every nook and cranny of what a decision might mean. I want people to try to reach a consensus, but if a consensus is not easily available, I want to know all sides of an issue."

(p. 167) "Having day care on site is a huge help for working mothers. And we need to continue to improve on that because every society that has women as equals in the workforce is more prosperous. Obviously, if you're using 100 percent of your brain power, you are getting ahead."

(p. 168) Leaving talented women stranded on the side of the road is a flat-earth approach to the changing global economy.

(p. 178) According to Dr. Louann Brizendine, girls are more comfortable making decisions together, and they often use an "affiliative" style of speech, the kind of language I hear my daughter and her friends use all the time. "Let's go upstairs and play with our American Girl dolls, okay?" one of them will say. It's part suggestion, part question; it seeks consensus before action.

(p. 179) Rosabeth Moss Kanter ... said ... "There is sometimes a difference between the men and women in the willingness to claim airtime in class. The men seem to feel that they can start talking and eventually they'll have a point to make. The women are more likely to feel that they ought to have something valuable to say before they say it."

(pp. 179-180) "Middle school is the moment of bifurcation," says Fern Marx, a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women. / "Girls and boys begin to differentiate academically and in terms of interest." They also begin to differ in terms of confidence. A girl without the right answer believes she's dumb. A boy just thinks he's unprepared.

(pp. 182-183) So take an example where a woman gets another offer. She's at her current job and she comes into her boss's office, and she says, 'If you don't match my salary, I'm out of here.' That approach, which a man might be able to get away with, may not fly with a woman. So she needs an approach which would be something like, 'Hey, I got this other offer. But I like working here, and I'd really like to stay. Can you find a way to match the offer?' So it's a little bit of a softer approach / because people don't accept a really aggressive approach from a women."

(p. 185) Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman elected to the U. S. Senate, was once asked what she would do if she woke up in the White House. "I'd go straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. Then I'd go home," she said.

(p. 192) "Women take criticism more to heart than men, and I think that can be a problem."

(p. 192) Women may not get as much credit, but what they get, they seem more willing to share.

(p. 193) "...these guys have to best one another ... and we tend to just want to get the job done. ... Yeah, and we just tend to concentrate on the work and not concentrate on who won."

PATHBREAKERS
(p. 200) It wasn't about tennis ... It was about forcing the world to take women seriously. To this day, every time I hear Billie Jean's name, I practically break into a chorus of "I Am Woman"!

A few years later, when I was a senior in high school, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Great Britain. ... I remember the sense of possibility I felt as she stepped confidently onto the world stage. Then, the week after I graduated from college, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space ... Each of these achievements broadened the range of possibilities for lme, even though I knew I would never be a professional tennis player, a British prime minister, or an astronaut. These women, these pathbreakers, mattered to me.

(p. 205) Virtually all of the women I spoke to for this book talked about the importance of role models.

NOTE: Role models are important for boys, too. After I moved on from pastoring a small country church, I got a call from a boy (about eight or ten, as I remember) and his grandmother. He was having a hard time with the man who replaced me because, having never been to any other church or had any other minister, he thought his preacher should be a WOMAN.

(p. 207) And the more women see other women succeeding, the more they are drawn to the business, and the cycle of success continues.

(p. 238) The bottom line is: The more women succeed, the more women succeed.

(p. 240) Almost always, I've found, when there are enough women in the room so that everyone stops counting, women become free to act like women.

NOTES:
(p. 28) Women "Take Care," Men "Take Charge"
(p. 53) when someone tried to "restate" one of their ideas: Catalyst, The Double Bind Dilemma, 28
(p. 111) Sally Fields speaks out <http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/james.hibbard/2007/09/sally_field_at_the_emmys.php>
(p. 178) girls are more comfortable making decisions together: Brizendine, Female Brain, 22.
(p. 187) <http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/>

Windfalls ~ by Jean Hegland, 2004

2008-05-17T06:41:00.010-04:00

Windfalls is divided into four sections,
so that's how I set up the discussion questions:

May 3
Because
After canning beets all day, Anna's grandmother told her she'd lost a daughter at birth -- her only daughter -- whom she'd named Lucy, from the Latin word for "light." She'd just told Anna about her "conceit" about canning, that she imagined herself "preserving light, you know, caught in those vegetables and fruits -- I was putting up light in those glass jars, saving sunlight down cellar until we needed it, in the dark of winter" (p. 56). Anna lost a child, too, because she chose to have an abortion (pp. 28-30). Cerise decided to keep her baby, a girl she named Melody "because, as she remembered the elementary school music teacher explaining on one of her rare visits to Cerise's classroom, a melody was at the center of every song" (p. 46).

The 1970s were the time of Roe v. Wade (1973) and the Equal Rights Amendment (U.S. House of Representatives in 1971, U.S. Senate in 1972), which read: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex").

Questions:
Does anybuddy remember the 1970s? When were you in school? Can you relate to either young woman's situation? Do you know someone who has lost a baby? Do you know someone who raised a child alone? I may be opening a can of worms here, but what's your opinion about abortion?
__________

Later, in the next section, is this line ... which may add to whatever we say about these choices:

"Anna remembered how learning of her grandmother's loss had given her a way to face her own" (p. 76).

__________

May 8
Into the Flux
It's interesting that what we notice in reading concerns whateve is going on in our lives at that time. I noticed this section about Cerise brushing her daughter's hair. See if you can figure out why this part stood out for me:

"On weekdays Melody had to brush her own hair. But Saturdays Cerise could fix it for her. On Saturdays she could take her time, glorying in the golden heft and gloss of her daughter's hair, brushing until it shone and crackled, and then, when it lay across Melody's shoulders and down her back like a tamed waterfall, trying out the styles she'd imagined all week as she dusted and mopped" (p. 62).

You would never guess. My 8-year-old granddaughter has lost her hair, which used to be long and blonde like Melody's, cascading over her shoulders. Now she wears a ballcap or a hairband around her baldness (as in this recent photo of her), which is caused by Alopecia areata totalis. Otherwise, she looks like a newborn yet to grow hair.

All in all, this was a depressing section to read, maybe because things in the world today seem as bad as in the book. We have rising gas prices and food priced beyond the ability of some people to pay for it; the book has a pregnant Anna whose husband has lost his job, and Cerise who is back in school with a rebellious daughter who has been fired from McDonald's.

QUESTIONS:
What depressing things have you picked up in the book? What positive things?

What do you think will come of this fight between Cerise and Melody about the battery?

"Don't worry, Travie," Melody called after them as she opened the refrigerator. "Meedee'll get you a new battery. I promise" (p. 126).

__________

May 16
Beyond the End of Everything

*** SPOILER ***
If you are still waiting for the book to arrive,
don't read this post until later.
This was a very hard section to read, and I have several areas for our discussion.

1. Travis ~ The battery in his talking toy is already starting to lose strength. This is a biggie, so don't fail to notice it. Cerise noticed the toy, but did not question why the battery was running down so quickly.

It sounded a little slow, the voice wearier than it had been the day before. Even though Travis would probably have another tantrum, Cerise hoped that meant the battery Melody had got for it was finally wearing out. She hated that toy. (p. 150)

2. Melody ~ Melody burned herself on "the red spiral of the element" (pp. 133-134), just as Cerise had burned herself "against the hot edge of the iron" (pp. 21-22), leaving "stripes on Cerise's wrists [that]turned to scabs" (p. 30). Why do people do things like this? A young woman told me once that cutting herself was less painful than her life, but I don't understand that thinking at all.

3. NICU ~ When Ellen was born (pp. 137-146), she was rushed to NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Have you ever been in an NICU? Tell us about it.

4. Respirator ~ One of my granddaughters (not the one I mentioned last week) was in the NICU for the first days of her life and then was on a respirator, like Ellen. If you have experienced anything like this, please share.

The first three days of Ellen's life, the alarm on her respirator rang so many times that Anna got almost used to the sickening flush of terror that swept over her each time it sounded. (p. 153)

5. Cerise ~ After the fire in the trailer (pp. 157-160), Travis suffered "respiratory insufficiency (p. 164) before he died (p. 171). That's hell in itself for a mother, but can you put yourself in Cerise's shoes enough to understand what she did after that?

Someone was speaking from the doorway. It was the young nurse ... Timidly she said, "We've called Travis's father, Ms. Johnson. And sent for the social worker and the chaplain. They'll be here any minute to talk to you. Is there anything -- should I stay with you until they come?"

Savagely Cerise shook her head. She didn't want the nurse to stay with her, didn't want to have to see Jake or the chaplain or the social worker, didn't want to have to do any of the things words were used to do -- explain, defend, excuse, or soothe. She wanted to be as alone in the room as she was in her anguish, wanted only to scream and howl and moan. But the nurse's question had diminished her to silence. ...

She bent to kiss him [Travis], but the thought came that she was kissing him good-bye, and her body convulsed, propelling her back from that abyss. She turned and stumbled from the room ... (p. 172).

6. Homeless ~ What would it be like to know, suddenly, that you were quite literally homeless? What would you do?

It was not until she stood on the street that she realized she had nowhere to go. ... She began to walk ... (p. 173).

__________

May 23
A Glimpse of the World's Rough Grace
A couple of quotes stood out for me in this section:

"Where there's life, there's hope," the shelter director was always saying. But hope was a hoax, just a way of trapping people into staying alive. Hope was a mirage, a trick. Hope meant nothing, and still life ground on, still Cerise combed the streets for nooks and hidey-holes, still she went to the soup kitchen at noon to eat cheap food and scan the crowd for Barbara. ... It was a relief to be unknown and unencumbered again ... It was a relief to leave the little worries and the heartrending sorrows of other people behind. (p. 280)

Cerise let herself be lulled a little by the frogs, let time pass until finally she felt almost used to the awful ache that was her life. (p. 281)

The first tells me Cerise had given up hope, though she kept doing the things needed to stay alive, like finding a place to curl up and sleep and lining up for food so she could eat. The second quote sums up Cerise's life ... it was an awful ache. I made friends with a woman who lived in her car after an auto accident nearly killed her and caused her to lose her job. Nobody should have to live like that, but she survived and had a house and a job when I met her. Last fall I was seriously wondering if I'd end up homeless, as I continue to pay off bills and expenses we had after closing our bookstore while living on Social Security and a very small pension. While Cerise had no skills to save herself, I simply had no desire to go live with one of my children. Was that unrealistic? Probably, but that's one choice. Maybe I'm just too stubborn. As we sum up our thoughts about this book, let's talk about the skills Cerise lacked that might have helped her cope when her life fell apart. Maybe this could be one of our final questions for the book:

1. What would YOU do if your house burned down, leaving you homeless and with no material resources at your command?

2. Was there anything Cerise could have done to make a better life for herself?

3. How was it a good thing that Anna and Cerise met each other at this time in their lives?

The Secret Life of Lobsters ~ by Trevor Corson, 2004

2008-05-14T13:34:00.025-04:00

The Secret Life of Lobsters : How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean ~ by Trevor Corson, 2004

Prologue: Setting Out, 2001
Lobsters are fewer than in previous years. Bruce Fernald's boat in 2001 is the Double Trouble, and Jacob Pickering is his sternman. Jack Merrill has the Bottom Dollar. Bob Steneck, a scientist, is on the R/V Connecticut, with the ROV Phantom.

Part One: Trapping
1. A Haul of Heritage

In 1973, after 4 years in the Navy, Bruce goes out with his father Warren in the Mother Ann. Bruce's great-great-great-grandfather Henry Fernald settled on Great Cranberry when lobster traps were "newfangled technology." Jack's family lived in suburban Massachusetts, and he spent his summers on Little Cranberry Island because his father's ancestors had come from Maine. Jack learned lobstering from Warren Fernald.

2. Honey Holes

Bruce's boat was Pa's Pride, which he bought from his brother Mark, who had bought it from Warren. Their brother Dan bought a fiberglass boat in 1974. Lee Hamm "has a knack for planting his traps in the depressions in the seafloor, where lobsters liked to hide and hunt. He called these spots his honey holes" (p. 33).

Part Two: Mating
3. Scent of a Woman

Jelle Atema, who came to America from the Netherlands, studied lobsters at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, starting in 1970. He first hypothesized that a sex pheromone from female lobsters attracted the males.

4. The Man Show

Jelle Atema had huge new lobster tanks and was surprised to find the females going to the dominant male in the tank, who "simply waited at home" (p. 62). When the first female left, another female came calling at the home of the dominant male. Meanwhile, the human males of Little Cranberry Island were also looking for mates.

5. Sex, Size, and Videotape

Diane Cowan began watching lobsters in the tank. She discovered the non-dominant male (of two in a tank with five females) did NOT get to mate because females waited their turn with the dominant male. Later, Diane snipped antennules, so the lobsters couldn't smell, and one experiment got ugly. "Cutting the antennules off males had left them pugnacious and inept, but the females had still managed to cajole the noseless males into a standard courtship routine. Cutting the antennules off females, by contrast, had nullified the routine and caused chaos" (p. 81). The females' ability to smell was key to successful mating.

Part Three: Fighting
6. Eviction Notice

When Bob Steneck, marine ecologist at the University of Maine, tried to sneak up to observe lobsters, they were alerted by pressure waves emitted by the bubbles in his scuba regulator and turned to face him with claws raised (p. 88). So he set up lobster "neighborhoods" of PVC-pipe homes and watched them from a boat using a miniature ROV that didn't bother the lobsters (p. 91). I loved the lobster eviction process, with the larger lobster knocking on a claw (like on a door), the smaller one coming out and stepping aside, and the big guy moving in (p. 97). I wanted to see a big lobster "at home" in his cubbyhole. Enlarge the photo by clicking on it, and you'll see this one up close and personal.

7. Battle Lines

One of the lobstermen told Bob that if he wanted to do research in their territory, all he had to do was ask. Because he was keen to observe ever better neighborhoods, it wasn't long before Bob had talked Arnie and his colleagues into removing their traps from a section of their best fishing ground so he could census the local population of lobsters. It was a feat unequaled in the history of lobster science, and it signaled a new era of collaborative research. (p. 112)

8. The War of the Eggs

The government argued that the minimum size of lobsters needed to be raised to increase egg production (p. 122). Jack Merrill used the same report to argue that: "The V-notching program holds substantial promise as a means of protecting the brood stock. If we assume for the sake of comparison that one out of every four un-notched egged females that is caught gets V-notched every year, then total egg production will be more than doubled for only a slight decline in catch" (p. 123).

9. Claw Lock

Lobsters have an interesting fight method, with one giving up before his shell shatters. The real battle reported in this chapter, though, is between Maine's lobstermen and the government scientists. The government calls into question the scientific expertise of Bob Steneck, who is on the side of the lobstermen. Bob had shown the large lobsters easily fight off the small ones, but when presented with a whole crowd of contenders, the big ones would rather walk away than fight constantly. But the government ruled that "Dr. Steneck's work ... does not provide sufficient scientific evidence to advise terminating the gauge increases" (p. 135).

Part Four: Surviving
10. The Superlobsters

(p. 144) Rick [Richard Wahle] learned to chant Bob's [Bob Steneck's] mantra of ecology -- patterns, processes, mechanisms ...

(p. 145) Over millions of years, evolution had clearly favored lobsters that fought aggressively to secure protective cover. But when, exactly, in the young lobster's life did shelter matter most, and why?

(p. 152) ... the physics of the sea interacted with the biology of its creatures ...

(p. 153) Damariscove Island's narrow, north-south profile ran nearly perpendicular to Maine's east-west coastline. The southwesterly wind was pushing the surface water containing the superlobsters up against Damariscove's western edge. At the same time, it blew across the island's narrow waist and pushed surface water away from the eastern edge. Combined with the effects of tidal currents around the island, the southwesterly breeze was creating a superlobster hot spot on one side and a corresponding shadow on the other, despite the presence of hospitable cobble in both places.

11. Attack of the Killer Fish

(p. 159) A superlobster that failed to find shelter before transforming itself into a baby would become fast food for these enforcers [two types of fish called sculpins and cunners]. So far, Rick's theory that small lobsters needed shelter was holding water.

(pp. 169-170) Now, over a few generations, Maine's fishermen had switched lifestyles. Instead of hunting scarce cod offshore they had settled down to farm their local lobster plots, setting rows / of traps almost as though they were cultivating corn. In the vocabulary of ecology there is a term for this type of human activity: "fishing down the food web." With the apex predator out of the way, species that are lower on the pyramid explode in abundance and become the new human harvest. It's a nearly universal phenomenon in the sea.

12. Kindergarten Cops

(p. 183) Trying not to rush, Diane rearranged her grip on the tiny lobster she was holding. "Hold still, sweetie," she whispered. She inserted the hypodermic needle between the pincers at the end of the lobster's leg and pushed until the chip was lodged in the muscle of the animal's forearm. The baby hardly flinched. The magnetic chip would serve as a tag in case she recaptured the lobster. Implanting it in the muscle tissue was the only way to be sure the tag wouldn't be lost when the baby shed its shell. Whenever she came to Lowell's Cove, Diane brought along her magneto-field detector, a blue box with switches that beeped when it located a lobster carrying a chip. With a pair of scissors Diane would snip off the leg with the chip -- the limb would regenerate -- and implant a new chip in another leg. Under a microscope, the bar code would reveal when and where Diane had first captured the animal. The tagging data would help Diane determine the rate at which baby lobsters grew and how long they remained in the nursery.

(p. 185) The beach had been a vast sweep of cobblestones. ... The lobster-settlement index the ecologists had envisioned was becoming a reality.

Part Five: Sensing
13. See No Evil

(p. 189) The eye of the lobster is of such novel and ingenious design that it inspires religious faith and scientific admiration alike. The eyes of most creatures on the planet use lenses to refract light. A lens forces rays of light to pass, at an angle, through a medium that slows them down, thus altering their trajectory. But the lobster's eye, in a design shared with only shrimps and prawns, focuses light by an entirely different principle -- not refraction, but reflection. There are no lenses under a lobster's cornea but instead a grid of mirrored boxes. Each box is a long square duct, open at the top and tapering to a point at a package of retinal cells. The four interior walls of the duct are coated with a crystalline lining, and as rays of light enter the open end of the box, they glance off one of the sloping walls at a shallow angle. Like speeding cars grazing a highway guardrail on a gentle curve, the rays of light change direction just enough for them to converge onto the retinal cells at the far end. Each of the lobster's two eyes consists of some thirteen thousand of these tapered boxes.

(pp. 190-191) Estonian zoologist ... Jakob von Uexkull ... promoted the idea that animal behavior could be understood only from the animal's perspective. Each organism had its own subjective worldview ... a sensory environment where the perception of / objects and of other animals was defined by the organism's specific needs.

(pp. 195-196) Three forms of water current are controlled by the lobster around its body, and these currents are crucial to how a lobster senses the world. At the base of the lobster's walking legs, hidden under the bottom edge of the carapace, are twenty pairs of feathery gills and a series of leaflike fans that draw water into the gill chambers. This powerful current is expelled straight forward from either side of the lobster's head, creating an expanding plume of water that reaches seven body lengths in / front of the animal. But the lobster can also hold a piar of its mouthparts just in front of the outflow ducts, deflecting the current backward. With another set of mouthparts the lobster can then fan its own face, generating a current that sucks water from in front of the animal toward its antennules. Finally, the lobster can pulse the swimmerets along the underside of its tail, creating a rearward thrust that can help propel it up a rock face or eject water out the back door of its shelter, drawing fresh water in.

(p. 196) Quite possibly, lobsters were sensing each other and sending signals -- "I beat you up last night, remember?" or "Would you like to mate with me, I'm about to get undressed?" -- by pissing in each other's faces.

(p. 199) The dominant male waited in his shelter, peeing out the door of his apartment at the females who came calling. A female would poke her head in and pee back at her prospective mate, a love potion in her urine suppressing his bellicosity and putting him in the mood for courtship. He would stand on tiptoe and pulse his swimmerets, drawing her urine in and fanning it appreciatively about the boudoir.

14. Against the Wind

(p. 207) ... lobsters might be not just smelling but, in a sense, listening to the symphony of the ocean's currents ...

Part Six: Brooding
15. Gathering the Flock

(pp. 221-222) The breakthrough for studying lobster behavior around traps came when Win and some of his students invented what they called the "lobster-trap video," or LTV. It was a regular trap with a kitchen containing bait and a parlor, except that it was also outfitted with a camera that looked down through a Plexiglas roof, a waterproof VCR unit, and a red LEG lighting array for night vision. The researchers could set the LTV on the bottom and run it for twenty-four hours to see how many lobsters entered the trap, and what they did once they were inside. ... Soon after the LTV landed on the bottom, lobsters smelled the bait and quickly found their way to the trap. If the trap's kitchen was unoccupied, more than half of those that approached entered and nibbled at the bait for about ten minutes. / An astounding 94 percent of them walked right back out. Furthermore, while one lobster was eating, other lobsters were battling among themselves to be the next to enter, reducing the potential catch drastically -- especially since the one eating also did his utmost to githt off the intruders between bites. In one twelve-hour period recorded on video, lobsters in the vicinity made 3,058 approaches to the LTV. But most of the approaches were repelled because of aggressive interactions with other lobsters. Only forty-five lobsters succeeded in entering the trap, and of those, twenty-three ambled out one of the kitchen entrances after eating. Twenty prolonged their stay by entering the parlor, but seventeen of those eventually escaped, leaving just five in the trap. Of those five, three were under the legal size. When Win and his students hauled the trap up, they had caught a grand total of two salable lobsters.

16. Victory Dance

Using a four-man submersible, the Johnson Sea-Link, Bob would be visually looking for brood-stock lobsters along the coast. The submersible took videos:

(p. 229) The lobster walked directly toward the sub -- its pincers wide. A claw struck out toward the camera, scattering the children in the front row. The lobster backed up a few paces, raised both claws over its head, and spun in a circle. One of the boys whooped. "It's doing a victory dance!"

(p. 232) By the year 2000, following half a century of catches that had hardly wavered, Maine's haul of lobsters had tripled in just over a decade. Still, no one knew exactly why. The American lobster was now the most valuable marine species in the northeastern United States. Two-thirds of all lobsters caught in New England were coming from Maine.

(p. 234) So far, the data ... indicated that more egg-producing lobsters roamed the bottom than government scientists had been willing to admit. ... But if there were enough eggs, what had caused the number of superlobsters and babies to plummet, even as the catch rose? The ecologists returned to their original question.

17. Fickle Seas

(p. 236) The ecologists explained ... that three independent sets of data -- superlobsters, babies, and juveniles -- suggested that catches could fall in western and midcoast Maine sometime in the next few years.

(pp. 240-241) The Gulf of Maine: Water flow inside the bowl is dominated by a huge, gulfwide gyre that constantly circles counterclockwise along the rim. Water from the North Atlantic enters the gulf across the Scotian Shelf and along the northern wall of the Northeast Channel and flows up the coast of Nova Scotia, past the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and southwest along the Maine coast. ... The currents inside the gulf are chaotic, and a myriad of eddies and vortices complicate / their movements. Oceanographers have calculated that an average parcel of water spends about one year traveling inside the gulf before it leaves.

(p. 246) When the Connecticut passed into Canadian waters, Erin witnessed ... the seafloor off the island of Grand Manan. ... The Phantom had gone only a short distance when a circular depression appeared, a dish five feet wide. Hunkered in the center was the biggest lobster Erin had ever seen. It was a female, at least two feet long, and from her tail hung perhaps a hundred thousand eggs. A few yards beyond was another pit with another mammoth mother, eggs bursting from under her tail. ... The bottom off Grand Manan was a vast expanse of egg-bearing lobster dens, one of the greatest aggregations of fecund females that had been found in the Gulf of Maine.

(p. 250) Salmon return to their exact birthplace to hatch their eggs every generation, which leaves them vulnerable to natural or man-made shifts in the environment. By contrast, female lobsters as a group appeared to be hedging their bets by fanning out. To Diane, hatching eggs in as many places as possible seemed a wise strategy for a species that cast its young into the fickle currents of the ocean.

(p. 251) Shifts in prevailing winds, the orientation of the jet stream, cloud cover, and even the amount of ice melting in the Arctic could all affect how water moved around the Gulf of Maine. Any combination of effects was possible. A given nursery could experience both the retention of local larvae and the delivery of distant larvae. Or it could experience one without the other. Or, in the worst case, it could experience neither. Because of climatic and oceanographic conditions inside the gulf, it was conceivable that an entire region of the coast could explode with baby lobsters or slump into vacancy, regardless of fluctuations in the number of female lobsters producing eggs.

(p. 253) After the lobster crash of the 1920s and 1930s, the lobster industry had recognized the need to protect the supply of eggs. Beyond that, most lobstermen believed that fluctuations in the catch were beyond their ability to control.

Epilogue: Hauling In, 2001
(p. 278) "While I do not know for certain, I believe that lobsters may feel pain," Jelle says. "When we kill them for food we should do so quickly. But we should also honor them with thoughtful appreciation for what they have done for us. I believe we should strive for this in all corners of our lives."
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(I read parts I, II, III in March 2007 and IV, V, VI in May 2008)

Great Possessions ~ by David Kline, 1990

2008-05-14T02:52:00.044-04:00

Subtitle: An Amish Farmer's Journal

(p. xv) The Amish are not necessarily against modern technology. We have simply chosen not to be controlled by it.

(p. xvii) Most of us aren't too concerned if there are some weeds and grasses in our corn. In fact, I want some there. Occasionally we get summer thunderstorms that dump several inches of rain in half an hour or less, which is more than even the most absorbant soil can take. During storms like this we depend on a smattering of quack grass and on sod waterways to hold the topsoil.

According to researchers at Oberlin College, the strength of our topsoil can be attributed to the tilth of our soils. Their study shows that our traditionally horse-worked farms absorb almost seven times more water before becoming saturated than the conventional no-tilled farms.

(p. xx) By working and farming the way the Amish traditionally have done, we make our place more attractive to wildlife. ... Along with a diversity of crops and livestock and minimal use of pesticides, there should be some overgrown fencerows -- which harbor a host of wild creatures from catbirds to cottontails -- brushy woods' edges, sod waterways, trees around the farm buildings, an orchard, lots of flowers (both garden and wild), maybe a patch of prairie.

(p. xxi) By farming and living independently of electricity the Amish are not contributing, at least not directly, I hope, to the destruction of hundreds of farms and communities in southeastern Ohio where the Ohio Power Company is strip-mining coal to supply its power plants on the Ohio River. Along with the destroyed farms, the mammoth power plants spew out sulfur dioxides that contribute to the acid rain killing forests in the Northeast and lakes in the Adirondacks.

The Amish have traditionally maintained a scale of farming that enabled each farm to be worked by a family. Few farms have more than eighty tillable acres, which is about the maximum a father and son can easily work. If more help becomes available the operation may be expanded to include more livestock or possibly specialty crops such as vegetables. Rarely are more acres added.

... The Amish have maintained what I like to think is a proper scale, largely by staying with the horse. The horse has restricted unlimited expansion. Not only does working with horses limit farm size, but horses are ideally suited to family life. With horses you unhitch at noon to water and feed the teams and then the family eats what we still call dinner. While the teams rest there is usually time for a short nap. And because God didn't create the horse with headlights, we don't work nights.

(p. 19) Listing Birds

NOTE: This chapter made me want to know more about the noisy bird who likes the tree in our postage-stamp-sized garden outside the apartment. It makes an awful racket, and today Kiki begged to go out when it started screaming its taunts from our tree. Opening the door, of course, scares away the bird. Maybe it's a grackle like this fellow, whose song is "a variable series of sharp notes and harsh guttural trills" and who calls "sharp CHEK notes and whistles."

(p. 24) Living as we do in the country, surrounded by woods and fields and streams, birds are very much a part of our everyday lives. Recording the different kinds we see sharpens our awareness and makes us appreciate even more one of God most beautiful and varied creations.

(p. 27) If one sees a dead elm with no holes, it's bound to be a slippery or red elm. These trees are too hard for woodpeckers to excavate. We cut the red elm for firewood and leave the American elm for the birds.

NOTE: I like this Amish farmer's attitude toward birds and wildlife.

(p. 34) I tend to think that in a farming area where there is diversified farming, with hayfields and meadows interspersed with fencerows and woods, there are ample numbers of meadow mice and cottontails available for food, thus enabling owls to remain in an area indefinitely.

CHIPMUNK STORY
(pp. 38-39) Chipmunks are remarkably diligent in storing food. Several years ago one of them took up residence beneath my parents' / porch and raided their bird feeder to stock up for winter. My parents asked our boys to live-trap the chipmunk and move it to the woods. The boys had no problem catching it with corn for bait. However, instead of taking it to the woods, they decided to keep it in a cage in the house for a while. (Mom was not overly enthusiastic.) Though we still do not understand how it managed, the little raider escaped the cage and for several weeks had free run of the house. All attempts at locating the chipmunk failed.

Finally, one morning when coming in from the chores, we surprised Chippy in the kitchen. With everyone's help we recaptured the little animal and took him to the woods. During those two weeks, we had noticed that the chestnuts we kept in a bowl to age and sweeten kept disappearing. But we had no idea what was happening until later in the winter when every flower pot in the house began sprouting chestnut trees.

(p. 60) Most of us who farm have seen toads in early fall, hardly bigger around than a nickel, in the middle of plowed fields. Many times I have assisted them in their attempts to escape the team and harrow.

(p. 87) Since it was a splendid morning I took the long way, which was through the woods, for the same reason the bear went over the mountain -- to see what I could see.

NOTE: I love this!

(pp. 106-107) Brushy fencerows are in a sense a gift from man to nature -- at least if, after the posts are dug in and the fence stapled to the posts, nature is given some free rain. Birds sitting on the fence and posts will pass undigested seeds in their droppings. Some of these seeds of blackberry, wild cherry, elderberry, bittersweet, sassafras, mulberry, and unfortunately, in some areas, multiflora rose, will take root in the loose soil around the posts and later in soil dug up by woodchucks. Chipmunks scurrying along the fence will bring and bury acorns and hickory nuts, / while the wind will deliver dandelion, milkweed, and thistle seeds -- all ingredients for a healthy fencerow.

(p. 108) The predominant tree along the fencerow, though, is the wild cherry, and, as food for wildlife, it is the most important.

(p. 109) For a fast-growing tree, seasoned cherry is a surprisingly good firewood. The wild cherry stumps will quickly sprout shoots, growing sometimes six to eight feet in the first year, and the cycle will be repeated. Cutting some of the trees will not greatly harm the value of the fencerow for wildlife, particularly if the brush is left in piles for additional cover.

Sadly, fencerows have become unfashionable. They began disappearing when the bulldozer became affordable, farm size increased, and the 2-4-D barush killers were developed. Soon after the demise of the fencerow, hunters began complaining about the scarcity of rabbits and pheasants. The blame was mistakenly put on the fox and the owl.

NOTE: Who knew the fencerow was so important?

(p. 125) The polyphemus and promethea [moths] are common here on our farm. We have a Chinese elm in our yard, and at the base of this tree we often find the polyphemus cocoons. In its larval stage this strikingly colored moth feeds on elm, apple, maple, oak, and other shade trees. One year, almost as if on cue, several dozen polyphemus caterpillars came crawling across the lawn, across the siding of the house, and along the walks to an everygreen shrub beside our proch steps. This occurred over a period of two days. There within the shrub and on the leaf litter beneath it they spun themselves into cocoons. The caterpillars began with a single strand of silk and rolled their heads around and around until they disappeared from sight, woven within a cocoon that contained from one to five miles of silken thread. This shrub proved to be a good location, safe from woodpeckers and other enemies. Needless to say, the next year we had a lot of polyphemus moths to enjoy.

In a way I wished this phenomenon had happened while I was still in school, when we had annual contests to see which pupil could find the most cocoons of the three common species. Our teacher, C. F. Zuercher, had a point system worked out: each promethea cocoon, considered the most common, counted five points, the cecropia twenty-five points, and the polyphemus fifty. Anyone finding twenty or more fifty-pointers would have been a sure winner. (The reason the polyphemus cocoons are hard to find is that they're often on the ground and blend in well with the leaves.)

NOTE: It's hard for me to imagine a bunch of school kids so well trained that they are able to FIND moth cocoons, much less IDENTIFY them. I wonder how the cocoons are different.

I found some photos for polyphemus caterpillars and cocoons, a whole page of the process. I learned something else from the article, that the polyphemus is a "silkmoth." To see the silk spun from this species, click here. Here are photos of polyphemus cocoons, caterpillars, and adult moths. (Click to enlarge photos.)

polyphemus catepillars

polyphemus cocoons

polyphemus female moth, with narrow antennae

polyphemus male moth, with feathery antennae

The Cecropia, or Robin moth, is America's largest moth, according to this site, where I found photos of cecropia cocoons, caterpillars, and adult male moths -- no photos of females here, but Wikipedia had one. (Click to enlarge photos.)

cecropia caterpillar

cecropia cocoon

cecropia male moth

cecropia female moth

(p. 127) It is amazing that the huge green cecropia larva on our apple tree, with its many segments and legs, could spin itself inside a cocoon, and while doing so already begin to shrink in size -- to reappear ten months later, without having eaten a bite, a fully developed insect with three segments and three pairs of legs, one of the most beautiful creatures in God's Creation. I can't comprehend a change so complex and so complete.

"The promethea moth is somewhat smaller than the cecropia or polyphemus," according to this site, where I found photos. (Click to enlarge photos.)

promethea caterpillar

promethea cocoon

promethea female moth

promethea male moth

It's almost more than I ever wanted to know about moths, but nevertheless it's fascinating to see the differences. I've never spent a lot of time on these creatures, but this photo of butterflies and moths of North America is beautiful.

(p. 126) The luna has been called our most beautiful insect, and because of its scarcity it is now considered an endangered species. For years I have longed to see a luna moth up close. Once we found one dead in a neighbor's woods, and so I know there are a few around. And twice I have seen live ones, but neither gave me the opportunity for close-up viewing and appreciation. ... The other one I saw fluttering around a mercury-vapor light in town. Although I was tempted, I refrained from climbing the pole for a better look.

NOTE: I didn't know it was endangered. David Kline is Bishop of the Elm Grove East church, according to an Amish site. Can you imagine a bishop "climbing the pole for a better look" (p. 126)?

(p. 128) Many of the hundreds of thousands of insects in our world are helpful or at least not harmful to mankind. Actually, without insects, life as we know it may not be possible. They are important pollinators of fruits and vegetables, they help in fertilizing the soil, and they provide such commercially valuable products as honey, beeswax, and silk.

(p. 129) The praying mantis ... Their main diet consists of beetles, bugs, caterpillars, and other insects. ... During the first days of their lives, they eat small creatures, such as plant lice, and will not hesitate to dine on each other. In fact, if they hatch in confined quarters such as a mason jar, they will devour each other until only one remains.

(p. 131) The katydid ~ The warmer the weather, the more rapid the chirps. Their notes are so consistent that a formula has been worked out by which one can fairly accurately tell the temperature. Count the number of chirps in fifteen seconds and add forty. The total is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

(p. 132) Unlike the drab-looking chrysalises of most butterflies, the monarch's is a work of art. Smooth and waxy green, it is decorated with spots of shining gold. ... Strangely enough, birds never eat monarchs.

(p. 154) We never try to take out all the dead trees because they are so vital to cavity-nesting birds. ... Dead trees are an important part of a natural woodlot.

(p. 155) Incidentally, a cord of good seasoned hardwood, which is equal to a ton of coal, will leave about sixty pounds of ashes, while the ton of coal will produce from two hundred to three hundred pounds of ashes.

(p. 167) The beaver is North America's largest rodent and is the only animal that alters its environment to suit its needs.

(p. 169) A beaver is considered full grown when it weighs between forty and sixty pounds. They differ from most mammals, however, in that they never stop growing. The largest one on record was trapped sixty years ago in northern Wisconsin. It weighed 110 pounds.

DEER STORY
(p. 185) Two years ago, on the last day of the gun season, we were at the supper table when I happened to see my neighbor walking down the road on his way home from hunting. I went out on the porch to ask him if he had any success.

"No," he replied. "I haven't seen a live deer since Tuesday." Suddenly, a doe jumped into our pig lot, and following her was a nice buck. The buck stopped hardly more than 150 feet away and looked at us. In the growing dusk I thought I detected a grin on the buck's face. Levi quickly checked his watch, which said 5:10. The season closed at five. With a wave of his tail the buck jumped across the fence, passed the pond, and the last we saw of him he was headed down the valley. Safe for another year. "Where was he all week?" Levi ruefully asked.

FLIGHT OF A TEAL
(p. 188) The spring migration is usually fairly rapid, especially for the birds that nest in the far north, whereas the fall flights are usually more leisurely. Some fall flights are fast though, as is evidenced by a young male blue-winged teal that was banded along the Athabasca River in northern Alberta and traveled thirty-eight hundred miles to Maracaibo, Venezuela, in exactly one month, for an average of 125 miles a day.

NECESSARY ENOUGH?
(p. 210) Maybe our farm now shows as a tiny colored pin on a migration wall map somewhere marking where XZ89 was "sited." Interesting. But is this information really necessary? Is it necessary enough to justify reuiring XZ89 and the other neck-banded geese to wear those annoying plastic collars for the rest of their lives? It seems that some of our wildlife is being literally researched to death.

EXTINCTION
(p. 215) In less than two hundred years North Americans have wiped out at least five species of the continent's birds, a record unmatched on any comparable land mass in the world. By contrast, Europe has not lost a single species in its recorded history.

1 ~ great auk (1844, p. 215)
2 ~ Labrador duck (1878, p. 215)
3 ~ passenger pigeon (1914, p. 214)
4 ~ Carolina parakeet (1918, p. 216)
5 ~ heath hen (1932, p. 216)
6 ~ ivory-billed woodpecker may already be extinct (p. 217)
7 ~ Eskimo curlew was thought to be extinct ~ last one was shot in 1915 ~ remnant remains (p. 218)

(p. 218) To quote Bent again, "The story of the Eskimo curlew is just one more pitiful tale of the slaughter of the innocents. It is a sad fact that the countless swarms of this fine bird and the passenger pigeon, which once swept across our land on migrations, are gone forever, sacrificed to the insatiable greed of man."

8 ~ Bachman's warbler ~ now rare (p. 218)
9 ~ California condor, North America's largest soaring land bird, now exists only in captivity (p. 218)
10 ~ whooping crane, whose wingspread is almost as wide as the condor's, is steadily coming back from a low of fifteen birds in 1937 (p. 218)
11 ~ Kirtland's warblers ~ endangered, but protected and holding their own (p. 218)
12 ~ peregrine falcons ~ endangered, but protected and holding their own (p. 218)
13 ~ snail (formerly Everglade) kites ~ endangered, but protected and holding their own (p. 218)

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword xi
Introduction xv
Winter
Winter Visitors 5
A Winter Walk 10
Sugaring Time 14
Listing Birds 19
Woodpeckers 25
Arctic Migrant 30
Night Hunters 33
Hunger Moon 38
Sassafras 43
Spring
Wings of Spring: The Canada Goose 49
The Horned Lark 53
Wetland Music 57
Woodland Jewels 62
A Spring Walk 66
The Thrushes 71
Swallows 75
Of Warblers and Mushrooms 83
Summer
Flying Scavengers 93
Bats 97
Hayland Birds 101
In Praise of Fencerows 106
The Rails 111
The Upland Sandpiper 115
Life in the Marsh 118
The Wings of Summer Nights 123
The World of Insects 128
Butterflies 134
Fall
The Waterfowl Flyways 143
A Tall Oak 148
The Beauty of Wood 152
Autumn Colors 158
Woodland Gold 162
The Return of a Native 167
Autumn Hawk Flights 173
October 178
The Adaptable White-tailed Deer 182
The Mysteries of Migration 186
Farewell to the Giants 190
Beyond the Seasons
The American Chestnut 199
Aliens 203
XZ89 209
Extinct and Endangered Birds 213
Planting for Wildlife 220
Winter Bird Feeding 225
Giving the Birds a Hand 230
__________

NOTE: Although I didn't take notes on what Kline said about plowing, it stuck in my mind. Having found this cartoon, however, I decided I'd better copy Kline's words before the book goes back to the library.

(pp. xviii-xx) I enjoy plowing. Just this past year the SCS technician told me, in all seriousness, that if I'd join the no-till crowd I'd be freed from plowing, and then my son or I could work in a factory. He insinuated that the extra income / (increased cash flow) would in some way improve the quality of our lives.

I failed to get his point. Should we, instead of working the land traditionally, which requires the help of most family members, send our sons to work in factories to support Dad's farming habit? Should we be willing to relinquish a nonviolent way of farming that was developed in Europe and fine-tuned in America (by what Wendell Berry calls "generations of experience")? Should we give up the kind of farming that has been proven to preserve communities and land and is ecologically and spiritually sound for a way that is culturally and environmentally harmful?

And there are the pleasures of plowing -- plowing encompasses more than just turning the soil. Although I can't fully describe the experience, it is like being a part of a whole. In early spring, my son and I, each with a team as eager to be out as we are, turn the mellow soil, feeling its coolness and tilth. We take pleasure in the transient water pipits and pectoral sandpipers feeding on the freshly turned earth abounding with life. As we rest the teams, I listen to the joys and uncertainties of teenage years.

Maybe I'm blind, but no matter which angle I look from, I fail to see any drudgery in this work. And I am convinced that if one farms carefully, soil erosion need not be a problem.

Several springs ago -- actually it was in late winter -- following a week of unseasonably warm weather, Dennis Weaver, our neighbor to the south, couldn't resist the urge any longer and started plowing. I wasn't aware of it until, while walking to the barn, I suddenly caught the aroma of newly turned earth. I stood there, closed my eyes, and reveled in it: the promise of spring.

With no-till I would have the means to farm his fifty tillable acres, in addition to my own, and he could be "free" to work off the farm. I know I wouldn't be able to do the escellent farming / he is doing now, and I would miss the rich fragrance of his fertile soil. But more than that, I would miss my neighbor.

There are lessons to be learned from small-scale diversified farming. By working and farming the way the Amish traditionally have done, we make our place more attractive to wildlife. Should we be removed from the land and our farm turned into a "wildlife area," I'm almost positive that the numbers and species of wildlife would dwindle.

The Distance Between Us ~ by Masha Hamilton, 2004

2008-05-13T15:40:00.018-04:00

(p. 32) They're off the highway now, driving among the blond bricks of the city, following a finger of Jerusalem to its very palm.
NOTE: great image!
(p. 44) "Go drink the sea at Gaza," the Palestinians say, when they mean go to hell. Why did she think she [Caddie Blair] could find consolation here?
NOTE: another good image
(p. 53) Get too close, feel too much, and you're sunk. That's what she'd told Marcus. What she believes.

(p. 55) "The earth is hungry, it takes as it needs," he [the man in the silk tie at the Gaza hospital] calls after her. "If we knew where we were going to fall, we could spread straw."

(p. 73) She hears the door open. For a moment she doesn't recognize the man standing there. Then she realizes he's the silk tie. The out-of-place would-be poet with the Russian accent and black eyes. (p. 75) Caddie: "A simple question. What's your name?" "Goronsky. Alexander Goronsky."

(p. 79) Goronsky leans forward, his long fingers fluttering softly on the tabletop like moths against the window.

(p. 80) Caddie to Goronsky: "I heard an ambulance siren. I tailed it all the way into pandemonium, clean and simple. The county hospital. Seven dead, a dozen or so injured. I spent the night interviewing and calling in reports, then drove out at dawn to assess the damage. And there it was, everywhere you looked -- smashed houses, scattered toys, as though some god had flown into a fury. ... That's how I got addicted. A chance to find the seams. Live more than one life."

NOTE: I have always thought I can live other people's lives whenever I chose to read fiction. Then I found this by S. I. Hayakawa and posted it in the sidebar of Bonnie's Books: "It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."

(p. 81) "That," she says, "is how closely you follow the howling wind."

NOTE: Did Masha get addicted? Did she follow the howling wind?

(p. 86) God and gunfire, the combustible combination.

(pp. 86-87) She squints and can nearly see Marcus joining this dangerous / dance, his hands cupping the lens the way a florist might an orchid, his face pressed to the viewfinder, staring through the lustful eye of his camera, absorbed in the poetry of the scene.

(Opp. page 1) Anyone who has watched people crowding around the scene of an accident on the highway realizes that the lust of the eye is real. Anyone who has watched the faces of people at a fire knows it is real. Seeing sometimes absorbs us utterly; it is as though the human being becomes one great eye. The eye is lustful because it requires the novel, the unusual, the spectacular. It cannot satiate itself on the familiar, the routine, the everyday. -- J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors

NOTE: Lust of the Eye would be a much better title.

(p. 87) Night-haired boys pitched against their helmeted half-brothers on an ancient battlefield ...

NOTE: "Night-haired boys" = Palestinians; "helmeted half-brothers" = Israelis; "ancient battlefield" = 4,000 years of fighting among the sons of Abraham.

(p. 95) Goronsky: "Everybody seeks the drug of risk-taking from time to time. Dangerous jobs, dangerous sports. Reckless driving. Fierce drinking. Makes life less bland." He looks directly at her. "Or dulls the pain."

She shakes her head. It's not my appetite for violence that's at issue here. It's the appetite of the newspaper's readers."

NOTE: Is it? Is it their lust to see and know? Or does Caddie love it herself? She did move out into the middle of the action, to the annoyance of her photographer.

(p. 96) She doesn't want to talk about violence, what it means to her or what part she plays in it.

(pp. 115-116) After her bus was attacked, Caddie: She stops then, halted by a sudden clarity about what she needs to write. "Revenge is a physical craving, like / for food or sleep," she says. "Your mind may say you don't need it, you don't want it. But your body insists you do."

(p. 118) "Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu..."

NOTE: I dated a Jewish man after I was divorced and elicited a grin from him when I said, over a meal (which included bread) we were having together, "Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu, melech ha’olam, hamotzi lehem min ha'aretz." It means, "Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King/Ruler of the universe, who makes bread come forth from the earth." He knew I wasn't Jewish, but I didn't know until that moment that HE was the son of a rabbi.

(pp. 120-121) These endless awkward requests, this shuffling around in foreign neighborhoods and living rooms, this thrusting of herself into settings where she's so clearly the outsider, if not the enemy. Why does she do it?

She once thought that she'd become a journalist out of an entirely personal impulse: the need to observe people who / were, on some level, more real than she. People who enmeshed themselves in a community instead of observing it.

(p. 126) "I remember, Ema," the girl says.

NOTE: I taught my son David to say, "Shalom, Ema," when I was learning Hebrew letters and sounds at the Jewish Community Center. Ema means Mama, rather than the more formal Mother. David was three. David Jacobs ... sounds very Jewish, no? Mrs. Jacobson, sitting next to me, asked if I was learning Hebrew so I could visit family in the Holy Land. It made no sense to her that I wanted to read her Tanakh/Bible in the original language. I never did get very good at it, though a trip to Israel would have helped, I'm sure.

(p. 128) Lights are out, the girls asleep in one bed, leaving the other for her. She slips out of her jeans and into sweatpants.

(p. 130) Moshe acts as though she hasn't spoken.

(p. 130) Living a consistent, predictable life is deadly, she knows from her teenage years.

(p. 130) She wants ... to sink into this man ...

NOTE: Why? She doesn't know Goronsky. And what about AIDS? Why does she keep going to bed with him?

(p. 136) Their driver, that pockmarked man with his squinty eyes, seized Marcus's shoulders while Sven, his face half-averted, hauled Marcus's feet, and together they lugged him to the back of that passing truck. ... It matters even now, that the driver handled Marcus like an ungainly piece of furniture. Though it shouldn't, since clearly that wasn't Marcus anymore. This was the first time Caddie had ever experienced it in quite that way -- someone with her the moment before ... and then so gone, so not Marcus.

(p. 157) In weak moments, she's even wondered if having a child might save her from herself somehow, plant her in one place, solidify her. But those moments are short-lived. What sticks with her longer is the diminishing power of motherhood, the way choices seem reduced. Moms either erase part of themselves, as Grandma Jos did, or flee, like Caddie's mom. Without doubt, getting quotes from children is far preferable to having them.

(pp. 160-161) Caddie: "The violence is the story now."
"Okay," Ya'el says, "then cover it. But why obsessively?" /
Caddie squeezes the steering wheel. For the adrenalin hit, damnit.

NOTE: I wonder why Masha chose Ya'el as this character's name. The story of Ya'el (Jael) is one of the bloodiest in the Bible (see Judges 4, but especially 4:17-22). I see several possibilities: (1) Deborah's song of praise to Ya'el (5:24-27), juxtaposed with the part of the song of Sisera's mother worrying about him, is among the very oldest writings in the Bible; (2) Ya'el is a very praise-worthy woman; (3) Masha knew ... or knew of ... someone named Ya'el; (4) the name is a combination of the two names most frequently used for God, alternating in the stories of Genesis, but both used in prayers recited by Jewish people today (see my comment on page 118 above): YAhweh and ELohim.

(p. 162) Amber marshmallows of dust rise from the car wheels.

(p. 163) Halima holds a baby. Caddie didn't think this girl was a mother. Even though she's about seventeen, which makes her old enough to have been given in marraige and borne a child or two, she doesn't have a mother's eyes. Her gaze is too lacking in caution.

NOTE: Are these cautious eyes found only in mothers in Israel and Palestine and other war zones?

(p. 180) Yes, she'd tell Marcus, photographers and reporters do suck up images and details at the worst moments in people's lives, becoming briefly as intimate as lovers before vanishing. But it's not immoral. Recording people in moments of anguish, documenting it and then moving on, serves a purpose. It yanks the privileged from their complacency, sometimes. And sometimes, someone comes to help. At the very least, the horrors don't go altogether unnoticed.

NOTE: A few years ago I called the executive editor of our local newspaper to complain about the in-your-face photo of a tearful mother on the front page above the fold. It was one of those "how does it feel to lose your child" kind of photos, and it did NOT add to the story ... though looking back at it from the perspective of this book, perhaps it was satisfying the "lust of the eyes" of the readers. Tom, a speechwriter for President Reagan, took me to lunch at a very nice place to placate me (he didn't succeed), though his justification was more on the order of "the people want it" than the philosophy expressed here. I wonder if this is Masha's philosophy. (Lest you think I'm among the privileged who know people who run with world leaders, let me explain that Tom and I worked together on our university newspaper back in our college days ... he even gave me bylines and occasional front-page features. I guess you'd say Tom is a contact in my address book, not a close friend ... see page 121 for the line about people who keep "address books with names of friends, not contacts.")

(p. 181) The man on her right pushes the button to roll down his window. The first burst of moist air refreshes, but it quickly turns heavy like a hand over her moutn. ... She wants to ask ... But when she clears her throat, the men on either side of her grow rigid. Words will not be welcome, evidently. Questions are not permitted. Observation only.

NOTE: Two images of being silenced: "heavy like a hand over her mouth" and silenced by the men's rigidity.

(p. 193) Caddie: "Avraham responds, yes. But is responding necessarily good?"
Goronksy: "Always. As long as it is measured. You have to respond when you are hurt. Otherwise, you lose yourself."

NOTE: I had to read this section three or four times because I was confused by who said what. Maybe that's the point? Maybe Caddie's thinking is more like Goronsky's than she wants to admit.

(p. 197) ... world without end, amen.

NOTE: What's Masha's religious background? I'd guess some form of Christianity, from easy quotes like this.

(p. 209) ... this less-than-Holy Land ...

(p. 210) Rob: "In this game there's no thrill like survival."

(p. 210) Rob to Caddie: "Those moments on that Lebanese road are going to brand us for the rest of our fucking lives. Nothing will ever be the way it would have been if Marcus hadn't bit it."

(p. 212) Rob to Caddie: "Get close enough to violence," he says, "and you'll get burned in the end. That's the lesson of Marcus. Burned."

(p. 214) Since Marcus, though, she has imagined it. Her body sprawled, one leg bent awkwardly, blood seeping from above her right ear. ...

(p. 226) Why does speaking seem more frightening than covering the clashes?

(p. 228) Goronsky to Caddie: "Just moving on is not a virtue when people we care about are destroyed ... Integrity requires something more."

(p. 232) The quiet of Caddie's childhood was a painful, enforced restriction. Now that she can choose, she shuns, out of conviction, all those stuffy places where No Noise is required: churches, libraries, lecture halls. She and days of mandatory silence are as compatible as a Jewish prayer shawl and a Palestinian keffiyeh.

(p. 256) Marcus: "War strips us naked. I'm horrified by what I find in me."

(p. 279, final words of the novel) There are ... two types of people. There are those who leave, and those who stay.

RIDDLES:

(p. 182) "What excuse did Adam give to his children for why he was expelled from Eden? ... He told them, 'Your mother ate us out of the garden,'" Avraham [said].

(p. 186) "Who was the greatest financier in the Torah? ... Noah, because he was floating his stock while everyone else was in liquidation."

(p. 257) "What kind of man was Boaz before he married Ruth? Ruth-less."
__________

ReadingGroupGuides.com provides a list of Discussion Questions.

Take a look at Masha's Amazon Blog.

In an interview after publication of her first novel, Masha was asked: "What are you working on now?"

A novel manuscript, also set in the Middle East but in current time. The main character is a journalist. Its working title is Lust of the Eye, which is a phrase from the Bible but also alludes to a news reporter's determination to see everything in order to do her job. In part, it's about how news reporters and photographers can become addicted to risk. How the drug of danger and near-misses can offer an escape from the painful or mundane parts of their lives, and make them feel more alive.

And here's Masha's story behind the book and some discussion questions.

On Writing ~ by Stephen King, 2000

2008-05-09T03:04:00.018-04:00

(pp. 103-107) What Writing Is

Telepathy, of course. It's amusing when you stop to think about it -- for years people have argued about whether or not such a thing exists, folks like J. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing process to isolate it, and all the time it's been right there, lying out in the open like Mr. Poe's Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation. Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but even if I am we may as well stick with writing, since it's what we came here to think and talk about.

My name is Stephen King. I'm writing the first draft of this part at my desk (the one under the eave) on a snowy morning in December of 1997. There are things on my mind. Some are worries (bad eyes, Christmas shopping not even started, wife under the weather with a virus), some are good things (our younger son made a surprise visit home from college, I got to play Vince Taylor's "Brand New Cadillac" with The Wallflowers at a concert), but right now all that stuff is up top. I'm in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images. This is a place I've built for myself over the years. It's a far-seeing place. I know it's a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place / should also be a basement place, but that's how it is with me. If you construct your own far-seeing place, you might put it in a treetop or on the roof of the World Trade Center or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. That's your little red wagon, as Robert McCammon says in one of his novels.

This book is scheduled to be published in the late summer or early fall of 2000. If that's how things work out, then you are somewhere downstream on the timeline from me . . . but you're quite likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages. Not that you have to be there; books are a uniquely portable magic. I usually listen to one in the car (always unabridged; I think abridged audio-books are the pits), and carry another wherever I go. You just never know when you'll want an es ape hatch: mile-long lines at tollbooth plazas, the fifteen minutes you have to spend in the hall of some boring college building waiting for your advisor (who's got some yank-off in there threatening to commit suicide because he/she is flunking Custom Kurm-furling 101) to come out so you can get his signature on a drop-card, airport boarding lounges, laundromats on rainy afternoons, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy is running late and you have to wait half an hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times I find a book vital. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library (if there is it's probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books, hat-ha, joke's on you, Steve).

So I read where I can, but I have a favorite place and probably you do, too -- a place where the light is good and the vibe is usually strong. For me it's the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sunporch, the rocker in / the kitchen, or maybe it's propped up in your bed-- reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.

So let's assume that you're in your favorite receiving place just as I am in the place where I do my best transmitting. We'll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000. And here we go -- actual telepathy in action. You'll notice I have nothing up my sleeves and that my lips never move. Neither, most likely, do yours.

Look -- here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course: some receivers will see a cloth which is turkey red, some will see one that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To color-blind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome -- my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out.

Likewise, the matter of the cage leaves quite a lot of room for individual interpretation. For one thing, it is described in terms of rough comparison, which is useful only if you and I see the world and measure the things in it with similar eyes. It's easy to become careless when making rough comparisons, but / the alternative is a prissy attention to detail that takes all the fun out of writing. What am I going to say, "on the table is a cage three feet, six inches in length, two feet in width and fourteen inches high"? That's not prose; that's an instruction manual. The paragraph also doesn't tell us what sort of material the cage is made of -- wire mesh? steel rods? glass? -- but does it really matter? We all understand the cage is a see-through medium; beyond that, we don't care. The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number of its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never open ours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room . . . except we are together. We're close.

We're having a meeting of the minds.

I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. I'm not going to belabor the point, but before we go any further you have to understand that I'm not trying to be cute; there is a point to be made.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair -- the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. /

I'm not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.
__________

(p. 118) Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word -- of course you will, there's always another word -- but it probably won't be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean.

(p. 119) ... grammar ... you are capable of remembering the difference between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective).

(p. 120) Bad grammar produces bad sentences. My favorite example from Strunk and White is this one: "As a mother of five, with another one on the way, my ironing board is always up."

(p. 124) ... passive voice ... And remember: The writer threw the rope, not The rope was thrown by the writer.

(p. 124) The adverb is not your friend. ... Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind.

(p. 125) I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs ...

(p. 127) I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.

(p. 128) ... energize your prose with active verbs. ... Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.

(p. 128) ... remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said and she said is divine.

(p. 134) I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing -- the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words.

(p. 135) Words have weight. Ask anyone who works in the shipping department of a book company warehouse, or in the storage room of a large bookstore.

(p. 136) You will build a paragraph at a time, constructing these of your you vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar and basic style.

(p. 142) ... two theses, both simple.

The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments.

The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

(p. 145) If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. ... Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones. ... One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose ...

(p. 147) We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles. ... If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life.

PASSIVE SENTENCE(p. 148) Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway. ... Reading takes time ...

(p. 150) The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

2,000 WORDS A DAY(p. 154) I believe the first draft of a book -- even a long one -- should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and -- for me, at least -- the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs ... I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book ... only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.

ADVERB(p. 157) And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night ... so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.

(p. 160) When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

(p. 161) Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God know why, but they do.

(p. 162) Grisham has been there, spied out the land and the enemy positions, and brought back a full report. He told the truth of what he knew ... Grisham's make-believe tale is solidly based in a reality he knows, has personally experienced, and which he wrote about with total (almost naive) honesty. The result is a book which is ... both brave and uniquely satisfying. ... What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave ... tell us all you know.

(pp. 163-165) In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.

You may wonder where plot is in all this. The answer – my answer, anyway – is nowhere. … my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course). ... / ... Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.

I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. ... I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety – those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot – but to watch what happens and then write it down.

The situation comes first. The characters – always flat and unfeatured, to begin with – come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set / of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it’s something I never expected. For a suspense novelist, this is a great thing. I am, after all, not just the novel’s creator but its first reader. And if I’m not able to guess with any accuracy how the damned thing is going to turn out, even with my inside knowledge of coming events, I can be pretty sure of keeping the reader in a state of page-turning anxiety. And why worry about the ending anyway? Why be such a control freak? Sooner or later every story comes out somewhere.

(pp. 169-170) A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question:

What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem's Lot)
What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation)
What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit (her employer)? (Dolores Claiborne) /
What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo)

These were all situations which occurred to me ... and which I eventually turned into books. In no case were they plotted ... although some of the stories (Dolores Claiborne, for instance) are almost as complex as those you find in murder mysteries. Please remember, however, that there is a huge difference between story and plot. Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.

(p. 173) Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant. ... it's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's also a question of how much to. ... (p. 174) If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition. ... It's also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.

(p. 175) For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else. In most cases, these details will be the first ones that come to mind. ... in most cases, your first visualized details will be the truest and best.

(p. 176) It's always important to remember it's not about the setting, anyway -- it's about the story, and it's always about the story.

(pp. 176-178) Example of using DESCRIPTION

The first four things which come to my mind when I think of Palm Too are: (a) the darkness of the bar and the contrasting brightness of the backbar mirror, which catches and reflects light from the street; (b) the sawdust on the floor; (c) the funky cartoon caricatures on the walls; (d) the smells of cooking steak and fish.

If I think longer I can come up with more stuff (what I don't remember I'll make up -- during the visualization process, fact and fiction become entwined), but there's no need for more. This isn't the Taj Mahal we're visiting, after all, and I don't want to sell you the place. It's also important to remember it's not about the setting, anyway -- it's about the story, and it's always about the story. It will not behoove me (or you) to wander off into thickets of description just because it would be easy to do. We have other fish (and steak) to fry.

Bearing that in mind, here's a sample bit of narration which takes a character into Palm Too:

The cab pulled up in front of Palm Too at quarter to four on a bright summer afternoon. Billy paid the driver, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and took a quick look around for Martin. Not in sight. Satisfied, Billy went inside.

After the hot clarity of Second Avenue, Palm Too was as dark as a cave. The backbar mirror picked up some of the street-glare and glimmered in the gloom like a mirage. For a moment it was all Billy could see, and then his eyes began to adjust. There were a few solitary drinkers at the bar. Beyond them, the maître d', his tie undone and his shirt cuffs rolled back to show his hairy wrists, was talking with the bartender. There was still / sawdust sprinkled on the floor, Billy noted, as if this were a twenties speakeasy instead of a millennium eatery where you couldn't smoke, let alone spit a gob of tobacco between your feet. And the cartoons dancing across the walls -- gossip-column caricatures of downtown political hustlers, newsmen who had long since retired or drunk themselves to death, celebrities you couldn't quite recognize -- still gambolled all the way to the ceiling. The air was redolent of steak and fried onions. All of it the same as it ever was.

The maître d' stepped forward. "Can I help you, sir? We don't open for dinner until six, but the bar--"

"I'm looking for Richie Martin," Billy said.

Billy's arrival in the cab is narration -- action, if you like that word better. What follows after he steps through the door of the restaurant is pretty much straight description. I got in almost all of the details which first came to mind when I accessed my memories of the real Palm Too, and I added a few other things, as well -- the maître d' between shifts is pretty good, I think; I love the undone tie and the cuffs rolled up to expose the hairy wrists. It's like a photograph. The smell of fish is the only thing not here, and that's because the smell of the onions was stronger.

We come back to actual storytelling with a bit of narration (the maître d' steps forward to center stage) and then the dialogue. By now we see our location clearly. There are plenty of details I could have added -- the narrowness of the room, Tony Bennett on the sound system, the Yankees bumpersticker on the cash register -- but what would be the point? When it comes to scene-setting and all sorts of description, a meal is as good as a feast. ... / More about the restaurant would slow the pace of that story, perhaps annoying us enough to break the spell good fiction can weave. In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it "got boring," the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.

(p. 195) My job (and yours, if you decide this is a viable approach to storytelling) is to make sure these fictional folks behave in ways that will both help the story and seem reasonable to us, given what we know about them (and what we know about real life, of course). ... And if you do your job, your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own.

(p. 195) ... practice is invaluable (and should feel good, really not like practice at all) and ... honesty is indispensable. Skills in description, dialogue, and character development all boil down to seeing or hearing clearly and then transcribing what you see or hear with equal clarity (and without a lot of tiresome, unnecessary adverbs).

(p. 208) ... a word of warning -- starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to themes; it almost never begins with them and progresses to story. ... But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions. To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own.

(pp. 209-210) The first draft -- the All-Story Draft -- should be written with no hlep (or interference) from anyone else. /... Keep the pressure on; don't lower it by exposing what you've written to the doubt, the praise, or even the well-meaning questions of someone from the Outside World ... the great thing about writing with the door shut is that you find yourself forced to concentrate on story to the exclusion of practically anything else.

(p. 211) How long you let your book rest -- sort of like bread between kneadings -- is up to you, but I think it should be a minimum of six weeks.

(p. 212) You're ... not ready to go back to the old project until you've gotten so involved in a new one (or re-involved in your day-to-day life) that you've almost forgotten the unreal estate that took up three hours of your every morning or afternoon for a period of three or five or seven months.

(p. 214) I'm asking myself the Big Questions. The biggest: Is this story coherent? And if it is, what will turn coherence into a song? What are the recurring elements? Do they entwine and make a theme? I'm asking myself What's it all about, Stevie, in other words, and what I can do to make those underlying concerns even clearer. What I want most of all is resonance, something that will linger for a little while in Constant Reader's mind (and heart) after he or she has closed the book and put it up on the shelf. ... I'm looking for resonance. Most of all, I'm looking for what I meant, because in the second draft I'll want to add scenes and incidents that reinforce that meaning. I'll also want to delete stuff that goes in other directions.

(p. 220) Pace is the speed at which your narrative unfolds.

(p. 222) I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: "Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%. Good luck."

(p. 223) What the Formula taught me is that every story and novel is collapsible to some degree.

(p. 223) Back story is all the stuff that happened before your tale began but which has an impact on the front story. Back story helps define character and establish motivation.

(pp. 224-225) ... in medias res ... "into the midst of things" ... I don't like it. In medias res necessitates flashbacks, which strike me as boring and sort of corny. ... As a reader, I'm a lot more interested in what's going to happen than what already did. ... / ... I like to start at square one, dead even with the writer. I'm an A-to-Z man; serve me the appetizer first and give me dessert if I eat my veggies.

Even when you tell your story in this straightforward manner, you'll discover you can't escape some back story. In a very real sense, every life is in medias res. If you introduce a forty-year-old man as your main character on page one of your novel ... you'll still have to deal with the first forty years of the guy's life at some point.

(p. 227) The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn't very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don't get carried away with the rest.

(p. 236) You don't need writing classes any more than you need this or any other book on writing. ... You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

(p. 256) He [Bryan Smith] and Bullet [Smith's rottweiler] left the campground where they were staying, he later tells an investigator, because he wanted "some of those Marzes-bars they have up to the story." When I hear this little detail some weeks later, it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character right out of one of my own novels. It's almost funny.

(p. 269) Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.
__________

Reading Group Guide

1. Do you agree with Stephen King that the desire to write always starts with a love of reading?

2. What role did Stephen King's childhood play in his evolution as a writer? Did your childhood experiences influence your desire to write?

3. King was encouraged from a young age by his mother, who told him one of his boyhood stories was "good enough to be in a book." Was there someone in your life who encouraged your earliest efforts?

4. At what age do you remember thinking you wanted to write? What do you remember writing when you were young?

5. King's wife Tabitha is his "Ideal Reader," the one-person audience he has in mind when writing a first draft. When you write, do you envision a particular Ideal Reader? Who is that person and why?

6. While King delights in the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of the writing process, he concedes that good writing involves magic as well. Do you agree with King's assertion that "while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one?" To what degree can a writer be made? To what extent can writing be taught? What writerly skills do you come by naturally, and which have you had to work to acquire or improve?

7. Discuss King's "toolbox" analogy. What "tools" do you find most indispensable when you write? Are there any you would add to King's toolbox?

8. King believes that stories are "found things, like fossils in the ground." Discuss King's extended metaphor of "writing as excavation." Do you agree with this theory?

9. According to King, good story ideas "seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky," and often don't ignite until they collide with another idea that also comes unbidden. Do you find that ideas for stories or writing projects come to you out of the blue, or do you have to search for them? What serves as the basis for most of your stories? A situation? A character? A moral dilemma? King recalls a dream that led him to the writing of his book Misery. Have you ever gotten a story idea from a dream? Discuss how you discovered your best ideas and how they evolved into finished stories.

10. King describes the dangers of seeking reader response -- or "opening the door" -- too early or too frequently. At what stage in a writing project do you solicit critical feedback from others? When you do "open the door," who are the first readers you ask for advice? Why do you trust those readers and what are you looking to hear from them?

11. King doesn't read in order to "study the craft" but believes that there is "a learning process going on" when he reads. Do you read books differently as a writer? Are you conscious of "the craft" as you read?

12. In the first foreword to On Writing, King talks about the fact that no one ever asks popular writers about the language. Yet he cares passionately about language and about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. Do you think there is a false distinction between writers who write extraordinary sentences and writers who tell stories?

13. Often, King says, "bad books have more to teach than the good ones." He believes that most writers remember the first book they put down thinking "I can do better than this." Can you remember a book that gave you that feeling? Why?

14. King's self-imposed "production schedule" is 2,000 words a day and he suggests that all writers set a daily writing goal. What kind of discipline, if any, do you impose upon your own writing efforts? Do you always write at the same time of day? If so, when and why? Do you try to maintain a steady pace? Does adherence to a strict routine help your writing efforts?

15. King tells a story about getting his fantasy desk, a massive oak slab that he placed in the middle of his spacious study. For six years, he sat "behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of [his] mind." After sobering up, he replaced the desk with a smaller one that he put in a corner. "Life isn't a support system for art," he figured out. "It's the other way around." Discuss King's "revelation" and the symbolism of the placement of the desk.

God and Empire ~ by John Dominic Crossan, 2007

2008-04-28T08:35:00.013-04:00

God and Empire:Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now ~ by John Dominic Crossan, 2007

(p. 46) The monastery presents an alternative lifestyle that implicitly criticizes the greed, injustice, and oppression of our everyday world.

(p. 50-51) I look at four major parables:

on the primacy of distributive justice in Genesis 1;
on the responsibility of human morality in Genesis 2-3;
on the tragedy of inaugural fratricide in Genesis 4; and
on the divine punishment of the flood-destruction and the divine promise of "never again" in Genesis 6-9.

These four parables recounted as the Bible begins its story must be read as stages in an ongoi9ng narrative where the failure of divine violence by the end of Genesis 1-11 demands a new and nonviolent start in Genesis 12.

(p. 51) The creation story in Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a is not from ancient Sumerian traditions but emphatically and uniquely from Israel's priestly concerns. Those authors had no intention of writing about the origin of the world -- about which they knew they knew nothing -- but about the meaning of the world, about which they thought they knew a lot. And they did.

(p. 51) Look at the figure on the next page and notice that the repeated inaugural sequence of "God said, let..." (that is, let something be created) appears eight times but must be doubled for the third and sixth days if eight chunks of divine creation are to fit into six days of divine work. Why? So that God could rest on the seventh day, not the ninth day. In other words, in creating the universe, not even God could skip the Sabbath. Put yet another way: in creating the universe, God crowned it with the Sabbath.

(p. 52)
Day 1:
(1) Then God said,
"Let [LIGHT be]."
And there was
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the first day.

Day 2:
(2) And God said,
"Let [FIRMAMENT be]."
And it was so.
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the second day.

Day 3:
(3) And God said,
"Let [SEA/LAND be]."
And it was so.
And God saw that it was good.
(4) Then God said,
"Let [PLANTS/TREES be]."
And it was so.
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the third day.

Day 4:
(5) And God said,
"Let [SUN/MOON be]."
And it was so.
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the fourth day.

Day 5:
(6) And God said,
"Let [BIRDS/FISHES be]."
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the fifth day.

Day 6:
(7) And God said,
"Let [ANIMALS be]."
And it was so.
And God saw that it was good.
(8) Then God said,
"Let [Humans be]."
And it was so.
And God saw everything
was very good.
And there was evening and
there was morning,
the sixth day.

(p. 54) The Sabbath Day was not rest for worship but rest as worship. It was a day of equal rest for all -- animals, slaves, children, and adults -- a pause that reduced all to equality both symbolically and regularly. The Sabbath Day was about the just distribution of basic rest-from-labor as symbol and reality of God's own distributive justice.

(p. 55) The parable of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:3b - 3:24 is about the human choice of moral knowledge over eternal life.

Examine the text to see if "eternal life" is meant, or simply "life."

(p. 86) That opening phrase, "in days to come," expresses the unspecified time of the future eschatological moment. At that time, all peoples and nations will convert to the God of nonviolence in a world without weapons and to the God of justice in a world without empires.

(pp. 91-91) Josephus groups all types of Roman resistance under the rubric of a "fourth philosophy," thereby ignoring any distinction between / nonviolent and violent action but also quarantining resistance safely from the three philosophies or ideologies of the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. Those Jewish philosophical options, he hints, are just like the Roman philosophical options of, respectively, Phythagoreans, Stoics, and Epicureans.

(p. 94) Thus, Judas, not Jesus, was the first Galilean to proclaim nonviolent resistance to violent injustice in the first quarter of the first century CE.

(pp. 94-95) The ambiguity of divine power suffuses the Christian Bible in both its Testaments and therefore presses this question for us Christians: how do we reconcile the ambiguity of our Bible's violent and/or nonviolent God? My proposal is that the Christian Bible presents the radicality of a just and nonviolent God repeatedly and relentlessly confronting the normalcy of an unjust and violent civilization. Again and again throughout the biblical tradition, God's radical vision for nonviolent justice is offered, and again and again we manage to mute it back into the normalcy of violent injustice.

The Christian Bible records the ongoing struggle between the normalcy of civilization's program of religion, war, victory, peace (or more succinctly, peace through victory), seen in chapter 1, and the radicality of God's alternative program of religion, nonviolence, justice, peace (or more succinctly, peace through justice), seen here in chapter 2. But that struggle is depicted inside the Bible itself. That is its integrity and its authority. If the Bible were only about peace through victory, we would not need it. If it were only about peace through justice, we would not believe it.

The Christian Bible forces us to witness the struggle of these two transcendental visions within its own pages and to ask ourselves as Christians how we decide between them. My answer is that we / are bound to whichever of these visions was incarnated by and in the historical Jesus. It is not the violent but the nonviolent God who is revealed to Chrstian faith in Jesus of Nazareth and announced to Christian faith by Paul of Tarsus. ... The person, not the book, and the life, not the text, are decisive and constitutive for us.

(p. 117) The Kingdom of God ... is about the transformation of this world into holiness, not the evacuation of this world into heaven.

(p. 122) The [Sea of Galilee] boat represents what Antipas's Romanization by urbanization for commercialization did to the ordinary peasant -- fishers who used the lake before Tiberias was built.

(pp. 122-123) Jesus spent his time on and beside the lake because it was precisely and specifically by the shores of the Sea of Galilee that the / redicality of Israel's God confronted the normalcy of Rome's civilization under Herod Antipas in the 20s of the first century CE.

NOTE: (pp. 124-125) "son of man" means a truly human New World Order (Daniel 7:13-14) replaces the bestial (or beastly) Old World Order (Daniel 7:1-8). About the struggle in Daniel:

(p. 125) None of this is imagined as a simple political or military or even religious conflict. It is a transcendental struggle between heaven and earth over control of the world here below. It is a struggle between the holy angels of God and the imperial powers of earth. This anti-imperial vision so affronts the violent normalcy of civilization's brutality that it requires a heavenly engendered alternative. Notice especially that God's Kingdom comes from heaven down to earth and not -- or ever -- from earth up to heaven. It is always about the holiness of this earth as God's creation.

(p. 127) God has given the Kingdom to Jesus, and all are invited to enter it -- but that involves following Jesus through death into resurrection and a life here below absolutely opposite to the way of the world's imperial normalcy.

(p. 131) Mark insists that Jesus knew in very specific detail what was going to happen to him -- read Mark 10:33-34, for example -- but that is simply Mark's way of insisting that all was accepted by both God and Jesus. Accepted, be it notes, but not willed, wanted, needed, or demanded.

(pp. 131-132) Jesus went to jerusalem that one (or last) time because it was a capital city where religion and violence -- conservative religion and imperial oppression -- had become serenely complicit. ... Jesus went to Jerusalem because that was where his deliberate double demonstration against both imperial injustice and religious / collaboration had to be made. ... It was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism against Jewish religious cooperation with roman imperial control. It was, at least for Christian followers of Jesus, then or now, a permanently valid protest demonstration against any capital city's collusion between conservative religion and imperial violence at any time and in any place.

(p. 140) Blood sacrifice should never be confused with or collapsed into either suffering or substitution, let alone substitutionary suffering.

(p. 140) Jesus died because of our sins, or from our sins, but that should never be misread as for our sins.

(p. 140-141) Jesus's execution asks us to face the truth that, across human evolution, injustice has been created and maintained by violence / while justice has been opposed and avoided by violence.

(p. 151) We meet here a major Lukan theme in the Acts: it is Jewish jealousy, not Pauline teaching that constantly creates trouble.

(p. 190) How, then, does the biblical tradition in general, and the Pauline tradition in particular, hold together justice and love?
. . . . My proposal is that justice and love are a dialectic -- like two sides of a coin that can be distinguished but not separated. We think of ourselves as composed of body and soul, or flesh and spirit. When they are separated, we have a physical corpse. Similarly with distributive justice and communal love. Justice is the body of love, love is the soul of justice. Justice is the flesh of love, love is the spirit of justice. When they are separated, we have a moral corpse. Justice without love is brutality. Love without justice is banality.

(p. 228) God's Kingdom ... I repeat, it had already started here below with and in Jesus of Nazareth as the radicality of God's justice climatically opposing the normalcy of civilizations injustice.

(p. 229) ... that terribly violent ethnic cleansing ...

(p. 230) In conclusion, therefore, the Book of Revelation is the Christian Bible's last and thus far most successful attempt to subsume the radicality of God's nonviolence into the normalcy of civilization's violence.

(p. 230) ... waiting for God to act violently while God is waiting for us to act nonviolently.

(p. 231) The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with its divine presence.

(p. 234) To turn Jesus into a divine warrior allows once again ... the normalcy of human civilization's violent injustice to subsume the radicality of God's nonviolent justice.

(p. 235) Once again, as always, the fundamental question is whether we Christians imagine our God as violent or nonviolent.

(p. 237) Three questions

... How is it possible to be a faithful Christian in the American Empire?
... How is it possible to be a nonviolent Christian within a violent Christianity based on a violent Christian Bible?
... How is it possible to be a faithful Christian in an American Empire facilitated by a violent Christian Bible?

(p. 238) John of Patmos deradicalizes the nonviolent Jesus on the donkey [on Palm Sunday] by transforming him into the violent Jesus on the battle stallion.

(p. 241) This book is ... a witness in religious responsibility.

The Soul Genome ~ by Paul Von Ward, 2008

2008-04-25T16:36:00.012-04:00

(p. 56) David McClelland (1917-98). His human motivation theory posited that three primary psychological needs motivate humans: The desire to

(a) accomplish a personal level of achievement,
(b) exercise power over others, and
(c) have them affiliate with us.

I hypothesized a fourth social motive. I posited that humans had a "need for interpersonal competence." By that I meant all humans are motivated to learn how to get along effectively with others.

(p. 57) My search for a more plausible theory led me to study

Sigmund Freud's concept of the unconscious,
Carl Jung's idea of a collective consciousness,
Edgar Cayce's reading of the Akashic records, and
Teilhard de Chardin's notion of a noosphere.

Their concepts suggested to me that somehow human minds merge in space to form archetypes or morphic fields that influence future generations.

(p. 67) Would reincarnation meet some of nature's needs? I believe that if natural laws produce the evidence we interpret as reincarnation, the phenomenon must play a development role in Homo sapiens evolution.

(p. 73) The psychoplasm offers a hypothesis that plausibly explains the imprinting ... and adds insight to our present theory of genetics.

(p. 76) ... the higher frequencies of other dimensions.

(p. 78) From the array of corresponding biographical data I had from a selected group of cases, I constructed five somewhat mutually exclusive categories that reflected the major elements of the human personality. I have called them

the physical genotype,
the cognitive cerebrotype,
the emotional egotype,
the social personatype, and
the creative performatype.

(p. 78) This book's hypothesis posits that an infant begins life with its past-life legacy. With it as a foundation, the infant interacts with its new environment and social network to create its own unique contribution to the ongoing process of evolution.

(p. 80) Psychologist-philosopher Jeffrey Mishlove has formulated an alternative hypothesis based on Carl Jung's concept of archetypes to account for the phenomena associated with reincarnation. ... He posits that individuals may activate an archetype associated with someone who lived in another era when confronted with a surprising set of coincidences or synchronicities.

(p. 81) The fact that one can find similarities between the bodies, personalities, and careers of a dead person and a living one does not prove the latter is the reincarnation of the former.

(p. 82) Integral Model (see p. 61 ~ to "evaluate all components" and p. x ~ "mini-hypothesis")

(p. 82) ... traits identified in the past and present should also result in identifiable behaviors that reflect them in both lifetimes. ...

What does he look like?
How does he behave?
What skills does he have?
What are his habits?
What kind of friends does he have?
How does he react to stress?

(p. 84) If we posit the psychoplasm or soul involves itself with only parts of the subject's DNA package, we would also have to identify the third-party "decider" who chooses what to leave out and what to put in.

(p. 84) [T]he complete set of physical patterns existing at the moment of death would comprise the legacy genotype that reappears the moment of the next conception.
__________

(p. 98) Our brain seems to act as the processor through which data is transferred to and from someplace else. Memory is everywhere in the brain, but not really anywhere. One part of the brain can pick up for another when it is damaged or cut away. ... it is not unreasonable to assume the mind is more extensive than, and outlives, the physical brain.

(p. 100) Humans continue to live with that inherited legacy, usually suppressing conscious awareness of it, until choices are made to engage in learning experiences to change it. Changes in a soul's emotional legacy from one life to another appear to be made on the basis of insight from experience.

(p. 102) Personatypes may be described by traits like liveliness, social boldness, privateness, vigilance, and self-reliance.

(p. 110) We know humans reshape their own memories or descriptions of events.

(p. 112) Unconsciously adjusting memories comes easily.

(p. 118) ... the skeptical but open mind.

(p. 119) Intuitive material must be corroborated with tangible evidence. ... Regardless of where one begins, if a case is valid, its interwoven threads should lead from one to the other.

(p. 143) ... began to examine metaphysical concepts such as altruism and "supraconsciousness."

(p. 159) Evolving through the process of reincarnation in a self-learning universe seems to require the discipline of actual learning.

(p. 168) Aid in Personal Development. The primary purpose of the factor-rating scale is validation of specific past-life identifications. However, it could also be a useful aid for self-reflection. Regardless of whether one is able to validate a specific past-life identity, use of the scale to rate oneself in the present can provide insights into what is likely to have been brought forward. Identifying unexpressed needs or conflicts with today's circumstances may reveal tensions between a soul legacy and aspirations for growth in this lifetime.

NOTE: but I still haven't figured out why it matters -- why should anyone want to identify a past life? Maybe:

(p. 169) Self-guided, past-life research using the Integral Model approach may provide a better understanding of our own internal conflicts. Use of the factor scales to clarify whether one's life decisions are internally consistent or at odds with some inherent aspirations may help identify alternative, or perhaps more soul-based, behavioral choices.

And maybe:

(p. 194) Some of them believe they have returned together for a specific social purpose. Others believe they have been able to become more conscious of these previous lifetimes in order to help document the reality of reincarnation for the public.

NOTE: My question remains: What's the reason (or the good) of knowing about or believing in reincarnation? Why does it matter?

(p. 197) While identical twins share the same set of chromosomes, they do not share a psychoplasm. ... It seems to be established that being twins does not mean having the same soul.

NOTE: And this is based on TWO sets of twins? How scientific is that?

(p. 199) Charlotte, who is one of the core cases in the experiment ... was first identified as the reincarnation of Dolley [Madison] and then, a year later, as a soul-split of Dolley. During this experiment, personality evidence surfaced that could link her to the life of Dolley's sister Lucy [Payne Todd Washington]. Faced with three possible identities, she had to sort out her feelings.

(p. 203) "Does the individual psychoplasm have any choice over the time and location of its next incarnation?" ... A central question is "What happens between lives?" ... "What determines, if any, the relative shifts in personality traits from one lifetime to another?"

(p. 204) I now believe that a mechanism somewhat like the psychoplasm evolves -- as does an individual cell -- and sequentially shapes the members of each new generation of humans.

(p. 205) I believe the evidence suggests that ... the learning from previous lives provides each of us with an innate legacy to build upon. It does not matter who or what we might have been in a previous life. We cannot change that. What really matters is to consciously develop in this one the legacy each of us would like for his or her soul genome ... to energetically transfer into a new-human form.
__________

Web sites to investigate:

http://www.vonward.com/
http://www.reincarnationexperiment.org/
http://www.thegnosticoracle.com/
http://peterteekamp.com/
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The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears ~ by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, 2007

2008-04-17T07:34:00.009-04:00

Synopsis: In the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government shifted its policy from trying to assimilate American Indians to relocating them, and proceeded to forcibly drive seventeen thousand Cherokees from their homelands. This journey of exile became known as the Trail of Tears. Historians Perdue and Green reveal the government's betrayals and the divisions within the Cherokee Nation, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle the hardships found in the West. In its trauma and tragedy, the Cherokee diaspora has come to represent the irreparable injustice done to Native Americans in the name of nation building — and in their determined survival, it represents the resilience of the Native American spirit.

Biography: Theda Perdue , Ph.D., formerly was president of the American Society for Ethnohistory. She is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been appointed to a Guggenheim fellowship. Michael D. Green, Ph.D., is a professor of history and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ALWAYS SEEKING MORE(p. 2) Like the Cherokees, the Europeans believed that their ancestors, Adam and Eve, had lived in a paradise created for them, but their god had expelled them from the Garden of Eden for a flaw with which Cherokees would become all too familiar -- they could not be content with what they had. The apple that Eve offered Adam promised more, and when Adam sank his teeth into it, they and their descendants got far more than they had bargained for -- a life of toil, death, the pain of childbirth. Cast out of the Garden of Eden, they became wanderers, always seeking more.

(p. 3) Instead of being forced from their homeland like Adam and Eve, the Cherokees learned how to live in it.

BALANCE(p. 4) Animal spirits sent disease "to afflict humans who killed them without asking pardon of the deer's spirit," but "The plants overheard ... and decided to help people by providing medicine to counteract disease. In this way, plants balanced animals."

(p. 4) Although they were rife with conflict, the creation stories of the Cherokees emphasized the importance of respect for other living things, not dominion over them.

(p. 4) The Cherokees associated spiritual power not only with plants and animals, but also with rivers, mountains, caves, and other land forms.

(p. 5) The lessons taught by the Cherokee landscape were central, not only to accounts of the distant past, but to the ways they lived their lives every day.

(p. 6) Because of their dependence on the land, the Cherokees knew their environment intimately.

(p. 7) Cherokees were conscious of being part of the natural world, and they did their best to conserve it.

(pp. 13-14) The role of women as farmers contributed to the perception that farming played a secondary role in the Cherokee / economy. If it had been truly important, Englishmen reasoned, the Indians surely would not have put women in charge.

(p. 15) acquisitiveness

(p. 28) Rewarding the squatters by purchasing from the Cherokees the land they had occupied illegially set a pernicious precedent. Intruders learned that they could get away with violating the boundaries that supposedly protected Indian lands.

(p. 33) Missionaries taught not merely reading, writing, and arithmetic but also farming, housekeeping, personal grooming, table manners, and other skills that they believed constituted "civilized" life.

HOSPITALITY(p. 33) Missionaries kept regular mealtimes, and, in a clear violation of the Cherokees' hospitality ethic, some did their best to avoid feeding Cherokees who dropped by uninvited.

ETHNIC CLEANSING(pp. 42-43) Indian policy had always been about getting the land and getting rid of / the Indians who lived on it.

(p. 44) Racist explanations for the deficiencies of the Indians had been around for a long time, but until the early nineteenth century, they had rarely overwhelmed the Enlightenment ideas of racial equality and human perfectibility.

(p. 45) Governor Joseph McMinn of Tennessee wrote in 1816 that detribalized Indians living in his state would be "entitled to all the rights of a free citizen of color," a limbo of second-class citizenship with virtually no civil right.

AND NOW GEORGIA'S TARGET IS TENNESSEE!(p. 55) The Creek Nation was its target more often than the Cherokees, but neither escaped the continual demands of Georgia for more land.

(p. 58) To justify their [state of Georgia's] thinly veiled threat of force, the legislators adopted the cry, "The lands in question belong to Georgia. She must and she will have them."

(p. 93) oath of allegiance to the state [of Georgia]

(p. 103) Georgia racism

(p. 105) A "fortunate drawer" had already laid claim to Ross's home, but the chief hired an attorney and got him evicted. The next time it happened, early in 1835 while Ross was in Washington, he lost. Having been gone for several months, the chief rode up to his house to find a strange Georgia family sitting at his dinner table. It was too late to pree on so he rented a room for the night, and the next morning he found his wife and family in a two-room cabin across the line in Tennessee.

(p. 106) racist discrimination of the states

(p. 110) "these aborigines"

(p. 114) No one could look at the history of the Treaty of New Echota and conclude that it was honestly and fairly made by the United States with the Cherokee Nation.

(p. 116) In late summer 1838 a detachment of Cherokees began to exit the stockade where they had been held for months awaiting the long journey to their new home west of the Mississippi. "At this very moment a low sound of distant thunder fell on my ear," recalled Cherokee William Shorey Coodey. "In almost an exact western direction a dark spiral cloud was rising above the horizon and sent forth a murmur I almost fancied a voice of divine indignation for the wrongs of my poor and unhappy countrymen, driven by brutal power from all they loved and cherished in the land of their father, to gratify the cravings of avarice."

(p. 124) Ross's Landing

(p. 125) Greedy whites often witnessed these scenes because they had flocked to the Cherokee Nation "to seize whatever property they could put their hands on."

(p. 126) General Scott exempted one group of Cherokees from the roundup -- the Oconaluftee Cherokees in western North Carolina. The treaty of 1819 ceded the land on which they lived and, rather than relocate within the new boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, they had taken 640-acre reservations and become citizens of the state of North Carolina. In 1837 the North Carolina legislature and the federal government acknowledged the right of the Oconaluftee Cherokees to remain. These Cherokees lived near the Cherokee Nation, and they had friends and relatives who did not qualify for their exemption. Some of these took refuge in the mountains when Scott began his roundup. The fugitives suffered from want of food and shelter, and by fall many of them were starving. Materially unable to offer much help, the Oconaluftees also feared that these fugitives might jeopardize their right to remain in North Carolina.

(p. 127) On June 6 the first party of approximately 800 Cherokees embarked by boat from Ross's Landing (Chattanooga) followed by 875 more on June 13.

(p. 131) The prolonged drought restricted the navigability of the rivers taken by earlier detachments, so the Cherokees had no alternative but to go by land.

(p. 131) The soldiers had refused to permit most people to bring their belongings.

(pp. 131-132) A final party of about 230 Cherokees who were too old and sick to make the journey by land left by boat in early December after water levels had risen. John Ross, who had stayed to supervise the earlier departures, and his family were in this group.

(p. 134) For Cherokees the land had meaning far deeper than its commercial value. Their creation as a people tied them to this place, and now they were being compelled to surrender it and march west, the direction associated with death.

(p. 138) Just after disembarking at Little Rock to continue overland, Chief Ross buried his wife.

(p. 164) Racism, greed, and political partisanship can subvert even the noblest American ideals.

Cherokee Women ~ by Theda Perdue, 1998

2008-04-07T15:24:00.044-04:00

In Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, Theda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. She argues that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices.

Theda Perdue is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her works include Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866 and Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina.

(p. xi) [A] culture can have very different responses to change.

(p. 1) In the center of the smooth, level stomp ground burned the sacred fire, earthly representative of the life-giving sun.

(p. 2) As midnight neared and dancers tired, a young singer and some of his youthful relatives began to circle the fire calling for people to dance. No women joined the circle. For several minutes, probably an eon to the stranded singer, he continued to call for women to join him. Ultimately, a woman dancer, perhaps a relative, stepped in behind him, set the rhythm, and permitted him to sing. Without a woman, the dance could not have taken place" (p. 2).

(p. 2) [C]lans are matrilineal.

(p. 9) The stomp dance taps a deep reservoir of feelings about sacred fire, the earth and the people who inhabit it, the Cherokees and the world beyond the stomp ground. Most significantly, it embodies a Cherokee construction of gender. The sound of the rattles summons a world in which women and men balance each other as surely as rhythm and words combine to make the stomp dance. That world is the subject of this book.

(p. 9) The story of most Cherokee women is not cultural transformation ... but remarkable cultural persistence.

(p. 11) Native women emerge from the historical shadows only if we approach their study on two levels. We must pay attention to how women and men related to each other within their own societies, and we must look at ways in which those relations became part of the larger debate over Indians and Indian policy. Thus viewed, Native women become major players in the great historical drama that is the American past.

Part 1 : A Woman's World

(p. 13) ...their ancestral mother, Selu ... They conceived of their world as a system of categories that opposed and balanced one another. In this belief system, women balanced men just as summer balanced winter, plants balanced animals, and farming balanced hunting.

(p. 13) ...a hunter named Kana'ti and his wife, Selu.

(p. 14) Kana'ti provided the meat and Selu contributed corn and beans ...

(p. 15) The concept of balance was central to their perceptions of self and society, and the responsibility for maintaining balance fell to men and women.

1. Constructing Gender

(p. 17) ... corn, which the Cherokees called selu ...

(pp. 17-18) A person's job was / an aspect of his or her sexuality, a source of economic and political power, and an affirmation of cosmic order and balance.

SINGING TO THE PLANTS(pp. 18-19) At the final cultivation, the owner of the field, either accompanied by a spiritual leader or alone ... sang songs to the spirit of the corn.

(p. 19) Complementary plantings of corn, which removes nitrogen from the soil, and beans, which replace nitrogen, helped preserve fertility.

GREEN CORN CEREMONY ~ reconciliation(pp. 25-26) All wrongs were forgiven; retribution was arranged; unhappy spouses were released from their marital bonds. This / ceremony forced restoration of internal order whether or not the parties desired reconciliation. This separate feast became subsumed in the Green Corn Ceremony, and corn became emblematic of community harmony.

(p. 27) A communitarian ethic pervaded Cherokee life. The effort to reconcile aggrieved people at the Green Corn Ceremony was one manifestation; another was the redistributive aspects of the Cherokee economy. In a redistributive economy, the people contribute a portion of their goods and produce for the welfard of the community, a kind of voluntary taxation.

SOUNDS LIKE "THE RED TENT"
BY ANITA DIAMANT(p. 29) during their periods, Cherokee women retired to specially constructed menstrual houses. ... Other women in the household or even men, if necessary, assumed her chores.

(p. 35) War, hunting, childbirth, and menstruation required strict rules of behavior because they all involved blood. James Adair maintained that the Indians' aversion to blood stemmed from their beelief that "it contains the life, the spirit of the beast."

IS "FEAR" THE BASIS
OF OUR HOMOPHOBIA?(p. 39) Why did the Cherokees joke about men and honor women who crossed gender lines? Both were anomalies, but only women acquired considerable prestige by crossing the line. ... As an anomaly, she possessed extraordinary power: through war and menstruation she had male and female contact with blood. Each experience singly was a source of power and danger; when the two came together, the power was phenomenal and permitted these women to move between the worlds of men and women. Men who farmed had neither opportunity -- war or menstruation -- to obtin power, and therefore the Cherokees had no reason to fear them.

(p. 40) Cherokee women farmed and men hunted; women spilled blood in menstruation and childbirth and men in hunting and war. Female and male, feminine and masculine, women and men had no real meaning apart from the context in which they lived.

2. Defining Community

(p. 41) Cherokees traced kinship solely through women.

(p. 42) Cherokees of the historic era had seven clans: ... Wolf ... Deer ... Bird ... Paint ... Blue ... Wild Potato ... Twister.

(p. 42) According to the principle of matrilineal descent, people belonged to the clan of their mother: their only relatives were those who could be traced through her. Blood relatives included siblings, the maternal grandmother (mother's mother), maternal uncles (mother's brothers), and maternal aunts (mother's sisters). The children of mother's sisters were kin, but those of mother's brothers were not. children were not blood relatives of their father or grandfather; a father was not related to his children by blood.

(p. 43) The only permanent members of a household were the women. Husbands were outsiders; that is, they were not kinsmen.

(p. 46) Consequently, a male presence in a household was irregular. The Cherokees, in fact, referred to the moon as male because it "travels by night" like men who paid only nocturnal visits to their wives' housees. ... Single men often preferred to sleep in the council house rather than in the houses of their mothers and sisters. ... Members of each of the matrilineal clans were dispersed throughout Cherokee territory, and every town usually had representatives of all clans. Although an individual might be personally unknown in a town, he or she always found a warm welcome among clan kin.

(p. 47) Clan members accepted children whose natural mothers had died because "mother" was a social rather than a strictly biological role. Children, in fact, had many "mothers," maternal aunts and other female clan members of their biological mother's generation. The same rules of behavior governed their interactions with all their "mothers."

(p. 50) James Vann
(p. 51) Elias Boudinot
(19th century editor of the Cherokee Phoenix
(p. 54) Nancy Ward

(p. 54) In 1776 Nancy Ward, the War Woman of Chota, reportedly rescued from the stake Mrs. William Bean, who lived in one of the illegal white settlements along the Holston River in what is today northeast Tennessee. The War Woman took Mrs. Bean to her house and ... learned from her how to make butter. Ultimately, Mrs. Bean was restored to her family.

(p. 55) Mothers also conveyed Cherokee identity; no one could be a Cherokee unless he or she had a Cherokee mother.

(p. 57) Although female infidelity rarely perturbed men, husbands who strayed caused considerable disharmony in the community.

(p. 58) Adair: "My Indian friend said, as marriage should beget joy and happiness, instead of pain and misery, if a couple married blindfold, and could not love one another afterwards, it was a crime to continue together, and a virtue to part and make a happier choice."

(p. 59) Cherokees grounded their sense of self in the clan, and individual identity melded into clan affiliation.

Part 2 : Contact

(p. 61) Nancy Ward ... reminds us that Cherokee women did not exist in a vacuum in the eighteenth century.

(p. 63) Europeans arrived and the status of women plummeted. ... Finally, despite a new respect accorded to individuals who acquired wealth and political position, most Cherokees still subscribed to an ideology that located power in relationships with the spirits controlling the natural world, subsistence, health, and the future. Women, as well as men, had access to this spiritual power.

(p. 64) The impetus for any shift in gender relationships among the Cherokee ... grew out of the need to meet the challenges of European contact, not out of a battle of the sexes. As a result, Cherokee economic and political life began to move toward concepts of individualism, hierarchy, and coercive power that had become firmly rooted in male culture. Women tried to channel these changes in ways that validated their traditional roles, but increasingly, women became the conservators of traditional values while men entered a brave new world.

DETOUR: The Cherokee by Theda Perdue, 1989
Before hearing Dr. Perdue speak at UTC, I checked out a couple of her other books from the library and skimmed or read them. The list of clans differs:

Cherokee..........The
Women............Cherokee
1998...............1989
(p. 42)..........(p. 21)

wolf...................wolf
deer..................deer
bird...................bird
paint..................paint
blue...................long hair
wild potato........blind savannah
twister...............holly

NOTES from The Cherokee
(p. 21) Every village probably had households representing each of the clans, and so a Cherokee could always find relatives in a village even if he had never been there before.

(p. 22) Council meetings were run democratically; villagers debated an issue until they reached consensus.

(p. 24) Nancy Ward was a War Woman of the Wolf clan who lived in the late 18th century.

(p. 24) Cherokees believed that the principal people's major purpose was keeping the world in harmony and balance.

RELIGION(p. 25) Cherokee religion centered on sustaining harmony. At the Green Corn Ceremony the Cherokees tried to wipe out any disorder that had crept in during the year and begin anew. At this time, villagers cleaned private houses and the council house, threw away broken baskets and pottery, discarded any food left over from the preceding year, and extinguished old fires in a ceremonial gesture of renewal. The women presented the village with new corn, which had just become edible, and prepared a great feast. The Cherokees also dissolved unhappy marriages at this time and forgave all old wrongs except murder. People began the year with a clean slate and the knowledge that order had been restored. (And now back to Cherokee Women.)

3. Trade

(p. 72) Women shared what they produced; men sold their bounty.

(p. 73) The Cherokees' hospitality ethic plus their custom of constantly having food available so that they could eat when hungry meant that no casual visitor had to purchase dinner.

(p. 76) Two economies characterized by very different economic values began to emerge -- an agricultural economy of women and a commercial hunting economy of men.

(p. 81) Deerskins instead of corn had become the commodity required to sustain Cherokees, and so women managed to appropriate these emblems of a more individualistic worldview to traditional community use.

(pp. 83-84) As long as agriculture was the bedrock of the Cherokee economy, the cooperative ethic of farming dominated Cherokee life, but the shift to hunting made individualistic pursuit / and triumphs not only acceptable but expected. The precipitous growth of individualism threatened the Cherokees' communitarian values. women struggled to keep both the values and their public expression alive.

(p. 84) An earlier notion of a world of discrete categories in which summer balanced winter, farming balanced hunting, and women balanced men no longer fitted the economic realities of Cherokee life. ... Participation in a commercial system beyond their control challenged the Cherokees to modify their attitude toward the exploitation of game and the acquisition of material goods. Traditionally, the killing of deer involved a complex set of beliefs. Animals, the Cherokees believed, caused disease, which plants could cure. Ideally, however, one avoided disease by placating the spirit of the dead animal. ... Central to this myth is concern over the unnecessary killing of animals ...

(p. 85) The Cherokees began to see distinct advantages in killing as many deer as possible for their skins alone, and in a society heavily dependent on the trade, failure to do so condemned one's family to severe deprivation. A hierarchical worldview began to emerge that gave men dominion over the animals and placed them at the top of a human hierarchy as well. When this worldview extended to gender, women no longer balanced men.

(p. 85) In this [Cherokee world] view, animals kept people in check through disease; plants cured disease and balanced animals. The whole Cherokee cosmology rested on this system of opposites that balanced each other, and maintaining equilibrium gave individuals' lives purpose and meaning. Similarly, men and women balanced each other and both contributed to subsistence.

4. War

(p. 93) The new power invested in warriors was a departure from the Cherokee political system that had operated until at least 1730. Characterized by widespread participation in councils and decision making by consensus, the traditional system involved little in the way of delagated power or coercive authority.

(p. 94) [F]rom the 1730s, the realities of dealing with Europeans undermined consensual politics, and warriors came to dominate Cherokee decision making.

(p. 97) The soldiers ... "pull'd up all the Corn, cut down the fruit trees, & burn'd the Houses."

(p. 106) The assortment of native household structures -- granary, summer and winter houses, menstrual hut -- gradually gave way to the typical pioneer homestead.

(pp. 107-108) Eighteenth-century warfare contributed to the demise of towns, the loss of a rich ceremonial complex involving agriculture, the loosening of kinship bonds, and the silencing of women's public political voice. The rise of warriors as a governing body, the delegation of authority, and the centralization of power jeopardized women's status. Furthermore, foreign policy came to dominate political participation. The productivity of a woman's fields and the well-being of her household depended on the skills of warriors on the battlefield and at the treaty conference. Male concerns -- war and foreign affairs -- still were male concerns, but they threatened to subsume the female domain.

Part 3 : "Civilization"

(p. 109) Guided by an idealized view of men and women in their own society, reformers sought to turn men into industrious, republican farmers and women into chaste, orderly housewives.

(p. 112) Beyond Washington's economic message, however, was an even more ominous signal to Cherokee women: in a "civilized" society women belonged to men, who both headed households and governed the nation. The president addressed Cherokee women only through men: "your own women"; "your wives and daughters."

(p. 113) Trade and warfard had accentuated traditional roles for men and women, but "civilization" threatened to usher in new roles by making men farmers and women housewives.

5. A Changing Way of Life

(p. 116) women envisioned "civilization" bringing improvement, not profound change. The matters Hawkins discussed with them were perfectly comprehensible because farming, tending livestock, and making utilitarian items had long been part of their world.

(p. 119) Meigs summarized the civilizers' major concerns. First of all, hunting promoted idleness rather than the industriousness on which civilization is based. Second, the common ground encouraged a disregard for private property. And finally, "wilderness" stood in direct opposition to "civilized" towns, pastures, and fields.

(pp. 119-120) That is, individual ownership of other kinds of property not only "civilized" Indians, but it eventually made them more receptive to the notion that land -- like deerskins, / fabric, or livestock -- was a commodity to be sold.

(p. 120) Cherokee men exhibited little interest in keeping hogs, cattle, or sheep. Instead, they commonly regarded such animals as game. ... White backcountry farmers as well as the garrison at Fort Loudoun complained constantly about the loss of livestock to hunting parties. Because livestock usually foraged in the forest until late fall, the Native assumption that these animals were game was not implausible.

(p. 125) In the eyes of Meigs and other "civilizers," farming constituted labor but herding, like hunting, did not. In their attempt to avoid women's work -- farming -- men seemed to be avoiding any sort of labor at all.

(p. 126) Instead of becoming the yeoman farmers so admired by Washington and Jefferson, most Cherokee men (like Washington and Jefferson) seemed more inclined to adopt the aristocratic planter as a role model.

(p. 126) The introduction of slave labor into the economy had a profound effect on Cherokee women and men. Cherokees were in the process of acquiring the racial attitudes of white southerners, and the use of this subject race in agriculture demeaned the traditional labor of women. The fact that slaves cultivated the fields of upper-class Cherokees made all Cherokee men less likely to embrace farming since one risked ignominy by agricultural labor. The use of slaves in farming also challenged women's view of themselves. If growing corn contributed to the gender identity of women, what happened when black men joined or replaced them in the fields? Gradually they saw their traditional role as women compromised.

(p. 132) With the end of the deerskin trade and colonial wars, men had lost an acceptable way to express the aggressive, competitive, individualistic male culture that had shaped their lives. ... Now they saw an opportunity to reorient male culture toward the acquisition of "individual property," and property became an emblem of success.

(p. 134) In more fundamental ways, however, Cherokee lives remained remarkably untouched: the Cherokees had adapted "civilization" to their own expectations of men and women. Cherokee women used the civilization program to embellish their culture, but they did not transform it. Certainly, women added new crops, cotton in particular, and new skills such as spinning and weaving, but they continued to farm, keep house, and tend children just as they always had done. Similarly, men's culture retained the basic ethic of eighteenth-century hunting and warring. Aggression and competition, however, found expression in the rapidly expanding market economy. ... Men and women shared many of the same concerns about both real and chattel property, but their property interests were rooted in different gender conventions: individual property reflected male culture while common ownership of realty formed the basis of women's culture.

6. Women in the Early Cherokee Republic

(p. 135) A centralized Cherokee government originated in the late eighteenth century out of the need to coordinate foreign policy and to protect the entire nation from violence provoked by the actions of individual warriors. In 1794 the last belligerent Cherokees made peace with the United States, and the Cherokee political agenda shifted from war and peace to property, a chief concern of the "civilization" program.

BALANCE(p. 135) Protection of individual rights characterized the Cherokees' approach to personal property. Hunters and warriors had embraced individualism far more strongly than farmers who worked as a group on land shared by their matrilineage, and consequently, personal property expressed male values. Commonly held real property, on the other hand, reflected the corporate ethic that governed women's lives. As the Cherokees created their republic in the early nineteenth century, they struggled to reconcile these two value systems and to create a code of laws in which individual and community, private and public, men and women balanced each other.

(p. 136) When the Cherokee council referred to "Mother Earth" in 1801, they gendered their homeland. ... the crops that took root in the earth had a clear cosmological association with women through Selu, whose blood soaked the ground and germinated corn. Men had no such mythical connection to the land: when kana'ti discovered his wife's death, he became a wanderer who never returned to his homeland. Like Kana'ti, men went abroad in search of game while women stayed home, hoed their corn, and became Selu's heirs.

(p. 137) Clothing, jewelry, and items of personal use traditionally belonged to an individual, and the Cherokees so closely associated these things with a person that they interred such items with the owner's corpse. Through eighteenth-century trade, Cherokees acquired an enormouse array of goods, many of which had considerable value, and by the time of the American Revolution, the Cherokees had largely given up the practice of burying valuable trade goods, like guns or hoes, with the deceased.

(p. 139) Although the inheritance of property had normally been of little consequence to the Cherokees, since they lived at the subsistence level and buried personal items with the dead, this new inheritance law threatened to reorder descent and to replace maternal blood ties with paternal material ties.

(pp. 142-143) [A] most sacred duty had passed from the matrilineal clan, an extended kin group that included / women and conveyed memgership through women, to the exclusively male council. The role of matrilineal clans in protecting a person's life had invested enormous social, political, and spiritual power in families and in women. Rendering clans powerless had a corresponding effect on women.

(p. 143) The council's admission of the descendants of traders, Tories, and other white men who had settled in the Cherokee country and married Cherokee women reflected two distinct realities of Cherokee life. First, because their mothers were Cherokee, the matrilineal Cherokees considered these men to be Cherokee, not mixed-bloods or "half-breeds," as whites saw them. Second, in a period of increasing contact with the United States and its citizens, bilingual and bicultural men possessed the expertise essential to a new Cherokee way of life and commanded the kind of respect that prominent warriors had when their skills were in demand.

(p. 146) By reordering inheritance and depriving clans of coercive authority, the council seriously undermined the matrilineal kinship system on which women's traditional status partly rested.

(p. 149) United States agents and Protestant missionaries had considerable influence in the early Cherokee republic, and Cherokee laws clearly reflect their views. When the Cherokees established a national police force, reordered inheritance patterns, abolished clan vengeance, extended Cherokee citizenship to descendants of intermarried white women, disfranchised women, and made polygamy and infanticide illegal, they won the approval of these power forces.

(p. 156) Allotment destroyed common ownership of land by dividing the Nation into parcels and assigning individual ownership to each parcel.

(p. 157) Furthermore, the Cherokees gave notice that they would negotiate no additional cessions -- a resolution so strongly supported that the United States ultimately had to turn to a small unauthorized faction, led by men who had white wives, in order to obtain the minority treaty of 1835.

(p. 157) As mothers they argued against any action that would "compel us, against our will, to undergo the toils and difficulties or removing with our helpless families hundreds of miles to unhealthy and unproductive country." Some fathers, however, had begun to rely on their own judgment rather than respect the will of the community, and this time, the "consideration" was sufficient for them to sell their homeland. ... women as well as men suffered the consequendces of the Treaty of New Echota.

7. Selu Meets Eve

(I expect this part to be the most fascinating of all.)

(p. 159) The new view of womanhood promoted by policy makers, agents, and missionaries also recognized difference [between men and women], but the roles ascribed to women left them in a distinctly subservient, largely powerless position.

(p. 164) Missionaries did link prosperity and Christianity, primarily because they believed Christian values of self-restraint and discipline brought material rewards, whereas the indolence associated with "savagery" condemned one to poverty.

SO WHY WOULD ANYONE
WANT TO BE CHRISTIAN?(p. 168) When Cherokees ultimately comprehended "the sinfulness of man; -- the sufferings of the Savior -- & forgiveness through him," they became anxious and unhappy.

(pp. 170-171) Few women in the Cherokee Nation could equal Catharine Brown ["this lovely convert from heathenism"] or, at least, her memory. Most did not seem to want to. They preferred their traditional religion, which did not distinguish between the physical and spiritual worlds, which emphasized harmony and balance, and which placed the needs of the community above those of any individual. Those Cherokees who converted to Christianity became part of a hierarchical religion that promised little control over the physical world (that is, illness and weather), defined relationships to the natural world and other human beings in terms of dominion and submission, and placed responsibility for salvation, behavior, and success squarely on the individual.

(p. 171) Selu gave people corn and beans; Eve took an apple and gave them sin. Why would anyone want to abandon the Corn Mother?

(pp. 172-173) In 1824 mission teacher Sophia Sawyer suggested that "the Cherokees think much more of their sons than of their daughters." A more likely explanation is that parents believed that commerce and politics, the pursuits of men, demanded an education, whereas farming and housekeeping did not.

(p. 173) At home, women presumably did tasks that needed to be done, but they did not work merely to work, that is, they placed no value on the labor itself. On the other hand, missionaries abhorred indolence and sought to fill every minute of the day with productive activity: "When not employed in the dining room & kitchen, they are employed in sewing, sweeping, making beds, &c."

(p. 173) Missionaries regarded men as the appropriate providers for families and attempted to eliminate the role of women as farmers. They also sought to restructure the place of women in families. In the missionaries' worldview, the domestic sphere belonged to women but husbands and fathers headed the household. Furthermore, except in the case of death, this patriarchal household was permanent: men and women / had no freedom to separate and remarry.

(p. 177) While these people may have been interested in the Christian message on some level, they do not seem to have been likely to transform their domestic relations.

(p. 177) The increasingly isolated nuclear families that had replaced large extended kin groups and close-knit villages in many parts of the Nation could not always accommodate and support divorced spouses and dependent children. ... The development of nuclear families apparently had, in some cases, severed the ties to mother's brother and extended family without forging bonds between fathers and children, husbands and wives. In the war on "savagery," women and children suffered collateral damage.

(pp. 177-178) Before the upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, of course, the matrilineages would have taken care of these children. Maternal uncles would have provided much of the support and guidance that missionaries expected of fathers while children would have remained in the houses of their mothers and maternal kin.

(pp. 178-179) The mission and the church became a child's family instead of the clan. ... Furthermore, missionaries publicly identified children with Christianity and the missions by renaming them. ... In contradiction to their advocacy of patriarchal families, missionaries made little effort to promote the use of paternal surnames. As a result, Cherokee siblings sometimes did not share surnames. Elias Boudinot, / for example, took the name of the president of the American Bible Society with the approval of missionaries, but his siblings used Watie, their father's name. The Christian family took precedence over both traditional extended families and western-style patriarchal ones.

(p. 179) Most Cherokees enjoyed peaceful domestic relations, perhaps because they simply separated instead of fighting...

(pp. 180-181) Even the Baptists, who managed to forge a syncretic religion incorporating some aspects of Cherokee culture, insisted on chastity and on the sanctity of marriage. In familial relations, missionaries left little room to wiggle. For women, of / course, the restrictions on sexuality further compromised their autonomy and, in practice, placed control of their sexuality in the hands of fathers before marriage and husbands afterward.

(p. 181) Missionaries along with United States agents mounted an assault on Cherokee culture that had profound repercussions for women.

(p. 182) Witches used their power in evil and selfish ways. In particular, witches sought to extend their own lives by appropriating the life force, centered in the liver or heart, of others. Consequently, very old people sometimes fell victim to charges of witchcraft because they had lived beyond what Cherokees considered to be a normal lifespan.

(p. 183) [C]onjuring ... was the way in which traditional Cherokee religion intersected people's lives most frequently and intimately. Conjurors possessed a range of skills from determining the appropriate name for a baby to resolving marital problems.

(p. 184) In other words, the "mass and common" women refused to abandon their own ways of doing things and adopt the values and lifestyle that missionaries advocated. Selu had met Eve, but she had not surrendered.

Conclusion

(pp. 185-186) Some Cherokees -- both men and women -- embraced change. They turned to the acquisitive individualism of nascent capitalism, limited the body politic, and converted to the evangelical Protestantism that offered theological justification for individualism and hierarchy. ... On the other hand, many Cherokee women as well as men continued to adhere to a traditional belief system that linked the spiritual and physical worlds into a coherent balanced whole, emphasized the importance of community and harmony, and sanctioned the autonomy, complementarity, prestige, and even power of women. ... / Among these Cherokees, cultural persistence, including traditional constructions of gender, is at least as significant as change.

(p. 186) Cherokees lived on the fronties of aggressively expanding empires...

(p. 188) [P]oliticians maintained that no people had a right to land they did not cultivate.

(p. 189) Cultivation of the soil by men constituted legitimate ownership of land: minimal farming by mere women did not entitle one to possession.

(p. 189) Societies in which women worked outside the home became suspect: Jefferson, for example, suggested that heavy labor by women indicated extreme poverty. ... Albert Gallatin wrote ... "that the labor necessary to support a man's family is, on the part of the man, a moral duty; and that to impose on woman that portion, which can be properly performed only by man, is a deviation from the laws of nature." The real problem with Native societies ... was that women instead of men did the farming.

(p. 190) Proponents of removal ... advanced the claim that Native peoples dependent on hunting had no more right to political independence than they had to the land itself.

(p. 190) Political ideology and rhetoric employed familial imagery (i.e., the father of his country, the founding fathers), and republicans believed that family polity had enormous influence on government. An unregulated family life could not be expected to produce civic virtue; chaos within the family translated into anarchy within the state.

(p. 191) Euro-Americans might employ familial imagery and pay homage to the "father of his country," but family could not substitute for government among a "civilized" people. Nevertheless, extended families -- clans -- continued to have some role in Cherokee government as late as the 1830s.

(p. 192) These people seemed so devoid of any notion of property that men did not enjoy an exclusive proprietary interest in their wives, certitude of the paternity of their wives' offspring, or control over their children. The absence of property and proprietary rights was at the very heart of Native "barbarism." Property created citizens.

PROFOUND IGNORANCE(p. 194) Such schemes, however, illustrate the profound ignorance of advocates for removal.

(p. 194) Only those Cherokees who were likely to have patriarchal families -- "white men . . . or halfbreeds" -- seemed interested in going west in 1830, and when a small group of Cherokee men illegally signed a removal treaty five years later, several of them had non-Cherokee wives.

(p. 195) Service to community rather than individual achievement still distinguishes Cherokee women and brings them acclaim. In 1985 Wilma Mankiller suceeded a male banker as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She rose to prominence as a community organizer who worked with isolated and impoverished Cherokees. In 1995 the Eastern Band of Cherokees in North Carolina impeached an allegedly corrupt chief who had used the office for personal gain and replaced him with Joyce Dugan, a teacher who had served as superintendent of schools. These women did not become chiefs by succeeding in business or law; they became chiefs because they embodied the values of generations of Cherokee women, values apparently still honored and respected by men and women alike. The story of Cherokee women, therefore, is not one of declining status and lost culture, but one of persistence and change, conservatism and adaptation, tragedy and survival.

Change of Heart ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2008

2008-04-01T20:29:00.026-04:00

There are several parts of the book I'd like to discuss, so I'll be adding to this post over a period of time.

Question 1 asks a question from page 221 about what's in the Bible. Question 2 asks about Shay Bourne's possible motivation in keeping a certain secret. I've given my answer to Question 3, which comes from Gigi. And then there's Question 4.

_________

... 1 ...
_________
"What if the Church forefathers had gotten it wrong?"
(p. 220, copied below).

The men of the church chose what would be included in the Bible ... and what would be left out. This novel goes a long way toward addressing that issue. A Biblical canon, having an official version of the Bible, means some folks decided to limit what would be "accepted" as the word from (or about) God. With a canon, the Church can say, "No more, God. You've said all we'll allow you to say." What Father Michael is wondering, in the novel, is whether the gospel of Thomas was the "right" gospel, instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John. In my opinion these were all ways early Christians were wrestling with what they had learned from Jesus. Therefore, I'm all for studying ALL the early gospels. Maybe they recognized something that would be helpful for those of us in the twenty-first century. I kind of like the gospel of Thomas, along with the gospel of Mary Magdalene (incomplete as we now have it, and not mentioned in this novel).

_________

Michael (pages 218-221)
_________
In 1945 two brothers were digging beneath cliffs in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, trying to find fertilizer. One -- Mohammed Ali -- struck something hard as he dug. He unearthed a large earthenware jug, covered with a red dish. Afraid that a jinn would be inside it, Mohammed Ali didn't want to open the jar. Finally, the curiosity of finding gold instead led him to break it open -- only to find thirteen papyrus books inside, bound in gazelle leather.

Some of the books were burned for firewood. The others made their way to religious scholars, who dated them to have been written around A.D. 140, about thirty years after the New Testament -- and deciphered them to find the names of gospels not found in the Bible, full of sayings that were in the New Testament . . . and many that weren't. In some, Jesus spoke in riddles; in others, the Virgin birth and bodily resurrection were dismissed. They came to be known as the Gnostic gospels, and even today, they are given short shrift by the Church.

In seminary, we learned about the Gnostic gospels. Namely, we learned that they were heresy. And let me tell you, when a priest hands you a text and tells you this is what not to believe, it colors the way you read it. Maybe I skimmed the text, saving the careful close analysis for the Bible. Maybe I whiffed completely and told the priest who was teaching that course that I'd done my homework when in fact I didn't. Whatever the excuse, that night when I cracked open Joel Bloom's book, it was as if I'd never seen the words before, and although I planned to only read the foreword by the scholar who'd compiled the texts -- a man named Ian Fletcher -- I found myself devouring the pages / as if it were the latest Stephen King novel and not a collection of ancient gospels.

The book had been earmarked to the Gospel of Thomas. Any mentions of Thomas I knew from the Bible certainly weren't flattering: He doesn't believe Lazarus will rise from the dead. When Jesus tells His disciples to follow Him, Thomas points out that they don't know where to go. And when Jesus rises after the crucifixion, Thomas isn't even there -- and won't believe it until he can touch the wounds with his own hands. He's the very definition of faithless -- and the origin of the term doubting Thomas.

Yet in Rabbi Bloom's book, this page began:

These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas, wrote them down.

Twin? Since when did Jesus have a twin?

The rest of the "gospel" was not a narrative of Jesus's life, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but a collection of quotes by Jesus, all beginning with the words Jesus said. Some were lines similar to those in the Bible. Others were completely unfamiliar and sounded more like logic puzzles than any scripture:

If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you don't bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.

I read the line over twice and rubbed my eyes. There was something about it that made me feel as if I'd heard it before.

Then I realized where.

Shay had said it to me the first time I'd met with him, when he'd explained why he wanted to donate his heart to Claire Nealon.

I kept reading intently, hearing Shay's voice over and over again:

The dead aren't alive, and the living won't die.

We come from the light.

Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, you will find me there.

The first time I had gone on a roller coaster, I felt like this -- like / the ground had been pulled out from beneath my feet, like I was going to be sick, like I needed something to grab hold of.

If you asked a dozen people on the street if they'd ever heard of the Gnostic gospels, eleven would look at you as if you were crazy. In fact most people today couldn't even recite the Ten Commandments. Shay Bourne's religious training had been minimal and fragmented; the only thing I'd ever seen him "read" was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. He couldn't write; he could barely follow a thought through to the end of one sentence. His formal schooling ended at a GED he'd gotten while at the juvenile detention facility.

How, then, could Shay Bourne have memorized the Gospel of Thomas? Where would he even have stumbled across it in his lifetime?

The only answer I could come up with was that he hadn't.

It could have been coincidence.

I could have been remembering the conversations incorrectly.

Or -- maybe -- I could have been wrong about him.

The past three weeks, I had pushed past the throngs of people camped out in front of the prison. I had turned off the television when yet another pundit suggested that Shay might be the Messiah. After all, I knew better; I was a priest; I had taken vows; I understood that there was one God. His message had been recorded in the Bible, and above all else, when Shay spoke, he did not sound like Jesus in any of the four gospels.

But here was a fifth. A gospel that hadn't made it into the Bible but was equally as ancient. A gospel that espoused the beliefs of at least some people during the birth of Christianity. A gospel that Shay Bourne had quoted to me.

What if the Church forefathers had gotten it wrong?

What if the gospels that had been dismissed and debunked were the real ones, and the ones that had been picked for the New Testament were the embellished versions? What if Jesus had actually said the quotations listed in the Gospel of Thomas? /

It would mean that the allegations being made about Shay Bourne might not be that far off the mark.

And it would explain why a Messiah might return in the guise of a convicted murderer -- to see if this time, we might get it right.

I got out of my chair, folding the book by my side, and started to pray.

Heavenly Father, I said silently, help me understand.

_________

... 2 ...
_________
Why do you think Shay wanted to protect June from knowing what he knew about her husband and child?

_________

... 3 ...
_________
Did you have a little lightbulb go off when you saw on pg. 211 that Kurt, on the stretcher on the way out of the house, said "Sorry"?

Interesting that Kurt's last words to June were "I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry." Yes, Gigi, I did pick up on it when I read it, and that's why I knew he was guilty (of something) and Shay was probably not guilty as charged. By the time I had gotten to the end of the book, though, I had forgotten about that specific incident. So thanks for zeroing in on it.

_________

... 4 ...
_________
Why do you think the narrator tells us herself that we shouldn't believe what she says?
"... you shouldn't believe what you hear about me, least of all that which I tell you myself." (from the excerpt on jodipicoult.com)
__________

Discussion Questions

1. The author uses several famous quotations from some of the greatest thinkers in history, including Lewis Carroll, Voltaire, Woody Allen, Mother Teresa, Mark Twain, the Dalai Lama, Bono, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Einstein. What effect do these philosophical tidbits have on the telling of this story? Which one resonated most with you?

2. Discuss the theme of belief in this novel. What does Shay believe, and who believes in him? Apply this same question to Maggie, Michael, and June. Did this story call any of their beliefs into question? Which ones?

3. When Shay is moved to the I-tier, some very strange things start happening -- water turns to wine, Calloway's pet robin is brought back to life, a tiny piece of gum becomes enough for all to share. Some call these miracles while others call them hijinks. What do you make of these incidents? Were you convinced that Shay had divine powers, and if so, at what point did you make that conclusion?

4. Michael tells Maggie that "there's a big difference between mercy and salvation" (142). What is that difference? Which characters are pursuing mercy and which are pursuing salvation? Which, do you think, is granted in the end for each of the main characters?

5. Having lost a daughter and two husbands, June's life is fraught with grief. How do you see that grief shaping her character and informing the choices that she makes? Do you think she makes choices in order to reconcile the past or in hopes of a better future?

6. How do the three religions referenced in this book (Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism) imagine the presence or reappearance of the divine? Compare Michael's vision on p. 71 with Rabbi Bloom's explanation of the Jewish Midrash on p. 96 and Shay's depiction of heaven on p.106.

7. Consider the passage on p.165 where Maggie thinks "the penitentiary [Shay] was referring to was his own body." In what ways are some of the other characters in this book (Claire, Maggie, Lucius) imprisoned by their bodies?

8. Discuss June's questions on p. 184: "Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?" How do the characters answer this question?

9. June thinks that if Claire accepted a heart transplant from Shay Bourne and had to absorb the emotional pain of her father's and sister's murders, it would be "better to have no heart at all" (238). This statement eerily echoes Shay's own statement to June that her first daughter, Elizabeth, "was better off dead." How do you feel about the adults in this novel making such grave choices over the life of a child? Do you feel like they are being protective or presumptuous?

10. Why do you think Shay never puts up a real fight for his innocence? Do you believe he is resigned to his fate or is an active participant in choosing it? Has he made the ultimate sacrifice or is he just trying to make the most out of circumstances beyond his control?

11. Does Change of Heart have a hero? If so, who is it?

12. In Change of Heart, religion seems at times to bring characters together and at others to drive a wedge between them. Ultimately, do you think religion unites people or divides them?
__________

Book club discussion questions for My Sister's Keeper

1. Reread the prologue to My Sister's Keeper. Who is the speaker? Is it the same person you thought it was the first time you read it?

2. What is the metaphorical relevance of Brian's profession as a fire chief?

3. Why is Jesse's behavior so aberrant, while until now, Anna has been so compliant?

4. What might be a possible reason for Brian's fascination with astronomy?

5. On page 98, Kate is being admitted to the hospital in very serious condition. She mouths to Jesse, "tell Anna," but is unable to finish. What do you think she was trying to say?

6. On page 122, Julia says, "Even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do." Who understood better how to "help" Kate, Sara or Anna?

7. Did Anna do the right thing, honoring Kate's wishes?

8. Do you feel it was unfair of Kate to ask Anna to refuse to donate a kidney, even though this seemed to be the only way for her to avoid the lifesaving transplant?

9. On page 142, Brian says that when rescuing someone from a fire, that "the safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always." How does this apply to his role in his own family?

10. On page 144, Brian says, "Like anything that's been confined, fire has a natural instinct to escape." How does this truth apply to Kate? to Brian himself?

11. On page 149, Brian is talking to Julia about astronomy and says, "Dark matter has a gravitational effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction." How is this symbolic of Kate's illness?

12. For what reason(s) did Brian offer Anna a place to stay at the firehouse while the legal proceedings were underway?

13. How does Anna's decision to pursue medical emancipation parallel Campbell's decision to end his relationship with Julia after his accident?

14. Do you agree with Brian's decision not to turn Jesse in to the authorities for setting the fires?

15. Do you feel that it's ethical to conceive a child that meets specific genetic requirements?

16. If not, do you believe that there should be specific exceptions, such as the purpose of saving another person's life, or is this just a "slippery slope?"

The Camel Bookmobile ~ by Masha Hamilton, 2007

2008-04-01T13:08:00.019-04:00

1:00 pm today (April 1, 2008) ~ UPS delivered the book, right on time!

OUTLINE

Scar Boy ~ February 1989 ~ Mididima
A hyena caused his scar.

Part One (pages 5-75)

The American ~ December 2002 ~ Brooklyn
The first Swahili word Fiona learned, Mbu mosquito, became a metaphor for her fears of unknown Africa.

The assumptions people made about one another were invariably wrong, she'd found. (p. 11)

The Girl ~ February 2003 ~ Mididima
Kanika wants to escape marriage and go where books abound.

This was Library Day. (p. 14)

If she wanted to read, the elders had told her many times, far better to learn to read animal scents on the breeze, or the coming weather in the clouds. (p. 15)

Mothers watched with a mixture of envy and resentment as she shared some mysterious secret with their offspring. They didn't respect her any more than ever. But they were afraid of her, she knew -- afraid of the skill she possessed that they didn't have. (p. 16)

She was rising earlier and earlier now that she was an assistant teacher, now that she had books to read. (p. 19)

The American
I love Fi's enacted simile (pp. 21-22): throwing Mr. Abasi's lunchbag to the ground in frustration to illustrate that throwing books to the ground is equally destructive!

"Mididima. In their tribal language, it means Those Rooted in Dust." (p. 25)

The Grandmother
Kanika's grandmother Neema sounds like a bit of a rebel herself, especially against her brother-in-law Elim, who says:

"Lines and curves carved onto paper are meaningless ... Worse than meaningless. The hours you waste staring at pages -- that, Neema, is a rotten sin." (p. 33)

When she sank into a page and the others' voices, music began within again, the tripping rhythm and beat that carried all life forward." (p. 36)

The Teacher
He and his wife have very different ideas about books and life.

Jwahir, about a book of recipes: "How many separate foods are wasted to make one? ... Ten, sometimes fifteen. How much time is spent on such a project? A full morning? More? ... What use is such a book, when maize mixed with camel blood and baked over an open fire is a treat for us?" (p. 39)

Matani, the teacher, wanted to tell her: "How the Camel Bookmobile offered the only chance of survival for this collection of half-nomads with only one toehold in the future." (p. 39)

The Teacher's Wife
When the bookmobile arrives, Jwahir meets secretly with Abayomi, Scar Boy's father.

The books? They were for the foolish or misguided of Mididima. But the library did bring a gift, one known to her and Abayomi alone. (p. 48)

The Librarian
Mr. Abasi, who thought Miss Sweeney was meddlesome, had his own definition of education and considered the inclusion of inappropriate books for the bookmobile an indication of the ignorance and arrogance of Western idealists.

These foreigners couldn't understand that literacy was not the only path to education. In tribal settlements, the tradition was an oral one... (p. 51)

The American
Fi has a childhood memory of starving children in Biafra (starvenbeeoffrans, p. 60), which seems so recent to me, especially after reading Half a Yellow Sun.

The Teacher
Ah, the inevitable has happened:

"A young man has failed to return two books," Mr. Abasi said. (p. 69)

Part Two (pages 77-123)

The Teacher
He's reading The Pearl and wondering why Miss Sweeney would suggest it to him, wondering if it was another omen.

His father-in-law made a point of telling him "one of our stories, Matani" (p. 82), to emphasize the difference between outsiders and ourselves. The point was made: "When one is shamed, disaster follows. Always. ... The books ... must be returned" (p. 83). "This is a question of honor and survival. For all of Mididima" (p. 84).

"The fact is, your father should never have helped save the mangled child. ... The luck of our tribe is like a stockpile of grain, a guard against future drought. In his unlikely survival, Scar Boy used up our store of good luck. That's all" (p. 84).

Jwahir's father frowned. ... "Let us tell them that when an elder dies in Mididima, a dozen libraries are lost, each more valuable than the one that comes on camels' backs."

"No one thinks to replace one with the other."

"Intended or not, it will happen. The young will begin to think the words of the books are more important than the words of elders. And then we will slide into a world that you would say holds greater learning, but that I would say holds less" (p. 85).

Here's the crux of the matter: "If we are to survive as a tribe, we must gauge the wind's direction, Matani said.

"Or shield ourselves from it" (p. 86).

Scar Boy
Dancing and singing in the kilinge sounds a bit like the Cherokee stomp dance.

"For the next hours, those in the kilinge would keep the tribe safe with their drumming and stories and recollections, their praises to the ancestors" (p. 89).

Scar Boy vowed "he would never ask for anything. He would do without, when he could. And what he needed, he would take" (p. 91).

The Girl
Kanika asked Taban (Scar Boy) to return the book, but he said:

"They wouldn't want them" (p. 93). Her solution: "The books are like the night for you, aren't they? ... You can hide in the stories, and grow there, and come out different. ... I'll send you books from the Distant City. As many as I can afford. Only give these back, so I can leave" (p. 95).

The Grandmother
This is Neema's husband's tribe, not hers. Small Hunger was an ache to them, but Big Hunger "pricked like a thousand thorns" (p. 98) and worried the tribe. Neema says Kanika saved her life because the 4-year-old would drink milk, sip for sip, when her grandmother would join her. Neema enjoins Matani to "take with you your unflinching" (p. 104) to deal with Scar Boy, reminding him of his "resolute side" (p. 102) when he killed an aging cow or "one of the favored camels that had broken its leg" when he was only sixteen.

"Already they were pleading with the Hundred-Legged One in their nighttime songs, begging for water. But He, seeing things they did not, would respond in His own impenetrable way. Last time, after the land grew dry and the rituals failed, the elders, decided not to risk another Great Disaster, and they had taken the tribe to a feeding center. She knew it was a humiliation they would not repeat" (p. 98).

"Our children's children can pull behind them a joy as big as the moon, Matani. You will find that out yourself" (p. 100).

"Survival and change are linked," she said. "Who better than we knows that? We've always adjusted to stay alive, by moving to follow drops of water, to avoid enemies, to find grass for the animals. ... But we know, you and I, that even if books are pieces of other worlds, they are not inhabited by evil spirits. And that learning to read will bring necessary change. ... We'll survive what is to come only if we make it to the modern world, she said. "Those who stand in the way must be ignored if possible, displaced otherwise" (pp. 102-103).

The American
What is Mr. Abasi's point in telling Fiona this story?

"Let me tell you a story," Mr. Abasi said, sitting again, "about another settlement not too far from Mididima. The people there fetched water from a well that was a four-hour walk away. A few years ago, a Christian mission raised money and started to build a well that would be only fifteen minutes away. Before they could finish, it was destroyed. They began to build again, and again it was destroyed. Finally, they asked the people of the settlement if enemy tribes were wrecking the well. No, the people said. They were destroying it themselves. The women had always walked those four hours, once a week, and it didn't seem too long to them. It allowed them a break from daily chores and a chance to visit their neighbors. Also, it had become a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood, a part of their culture. Whey didn't want a well fifteen minutes away." He rubbed the back of his neck. "These people have connections to the land and their traditions that outsiders might not understand" (p. 113).

Mr. Abasi: "Have you heard ... that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? ... But if you know fewer than five, they owe you not even a sip of water" (p. 114).

The Teacher
When Abayomi brought his mangled child to Matani's father, Matani had bolted, "cowering like a child" (p. 129).

"He would have emerged a different man if he'd been born someone else's son. A hunter. A warrior, perhaps. It wasn't predestined, his current life as Mididima's teacher" (p. 115).

Part Three (pages 125-174)

The American
(p. 127) Fi had never accepted Mr. Abasi's claim that Mididima and settlements like it could disappear with a still breeze -- that the next time the Camel Bookmobile came, there might be no sign that life had ever huddled there. She'd considered this assertion nothing more than another attempt to talk her out of making the trip he hated. It seemed to her, in fact, that the houses of Mididima were rooted directly in the earth's subsurface, and that during the coming generations the settlement could only spread.

(p. 127) Books, it occurred to her now, were enduring, even immortal. Some ... had been part of the world's consciousness for so long that they were no longer singularly identifiable. The maxims of Zen masters and the stories of Homer had been tossed into the soup of human consciousness, blending and emerging at lunchtime as one's own thoughts, as if they were original.

The Teacher's Wife

The Teacher

Scar Boy
(p. 146) Taban was sketching when he heard them at the door -- sketching so intently that he'd become the soft scratch of the pencil; he'd vanished into curves and shadows, the shapes he wanted to make pop off the page. The curve of a cheek, a set of eyes, those lips. ... He knew only that when he drew, he felt part of something.

The American

The Teacher's Wife

The Grandmother
(p. 157) "Hey," she said. "Have you ever tried a cartwheel?" ... cartwheels used to make her mother smile. Matani looked at her quizzically. "I don't know the word." [Fi showed him, had him try too, and later thought of herself as "the Cartwheel Queen" (p. 158).]

(p. 158) ... white Irishwoman drawn to an African tribe, a zebra among giraffes.

Part Four (pages 175-222)

The American
The Librarian
Scar Boy
The Drum Maker
The Teacher
The Girl
The American

Part Five (pages 223-268)

The Teacher's Wife
The Girl
Scar Boy
The Teacher
The Grandmother
The American

Part Six (pages 269-398)

The Girl
The Teacher
The Drum Maker
The Librarian
Scar Boy
The American