Thanksgiving Frolics

We are just back from visiting Andy's sister Ellen in Clinton, CT for Thanksgiving. We drove drove back today-- Andy, me, Joel, Sarah. It was a good Thanksgiving--lots of laughing and eating, Ellen and her son Jon and daughter-in-law Bethany and dog Dombey; her neighbors across the street, then Andy and Ellen's brother David, his wife Ann, plus Leah and Nathan, and then Joel, Sarah, Andy, and me. The usual suspects-- Ellen's other son Greg off to Japan where he is doing Zen sittings. We had turkey, carrot souffle, two kinds of potatoes, squash, beans, Brussels sprouts, gravy, rolls, stuffing, and seven or eight desserts. And then came our crazy idiosyncratic traditions: the movie Jurassic Park, which the kids have been demanding since it first came out on tape, lots of cheering for favorite scenes (when the lawyer gets eaten hiding in the toilet; the "Things In the Mirror Are Closer than they Appear" T Rex chase scene; the Australian hunter and the "clever girl;" the kids and the velociraptors in the kitchen scene.

And then! At midnight! about half of us went shopping! That's right, Ellen's outlet mall had something called "Midnight Madness" with huge discounts and there were so many people you could hardly move. It was totally unpleasant and also very funny. Joel said that after last night the economy should be in great shape. (For David's take, see his blog here then look for November 28 Black Friday entry--and in the comments for my husband's comment on his comments). I walked around buffeted by the crowds and groggy with weariness, but did manage to buy two colors of a nice rayon-nylon sweater, very warm. Also, yet another black jacket that needs sleeves shortened.

We got to bed in the motel by 3 a.m. or so and then up and at Ellen's for breakfast (bagels, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, pound cake, cookies, date nut bread..), then off for New Jersey.

Back home, I went down to the garden to get salad and cilantro for cilantro pesto over pasta. The cilantro pesto tasted so green and alive– I loved going down to the garden in the fading light, hands cold, birds on the feeder behind me, that dun and brown calm with gray branches, last clinging leaves, sharp cleanliness of late November. Very late November, actually: two days left. And now I'm waiting for Joel and Sarah to finish visiting with Alice and Howard Robinson Gilman and bring the parakeet home!

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers #114

November 15 , 2008

As I write this, a week-and a half after the 2008 Presidential election, I am still stunned and gratified that a black man has won the American presidency. A few weeks before the election, I read President-elect Obama’s memoir, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, a serious, good book, written with considerable grace and a great deal of self-reflection, and I recommend it for its own interest, aside from who wrote it. We have elected a president who not only has a brain (Bill Clinton was smart) but has an inner life as well. Anyhow, good luck to him and to all of us as he takes on that enormous job.

In the last weeks I’ve been reading somewhat randomly, for entertainment, for pleasure, to learn something. I’ve read a couple of literary novels, an excellent nonfiction book, some science fiction and – new for me– high fantasy.

I rented and liked, although maybe less than I thought I was going to, the National Book Award winner THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY by Lily Tuck. This story of a nineteenth century South American dictator’s common-law Irish wife was gripping, vivid, and apparently grimly accurate in many of its details. Lily Tuck includes the lives and deaths of characters at many levels of society. I like the story for the breadth of its characters and for the lively adventuress-protagonist. The farther you go in the story, however, the more you become aware of how the downfall of a dictator takes so many living beings with him. Ella is a survivor, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of her life turns out well. There is so much venality and violence– it’s a rousing yarn that left a bad taste in my mouth, anyhow.

Also set south of the U.S. border was SENSELESSNESS by Horacio Castellanos Moya (photo below). In this novel, a writer is hired to copy edit the stories of witnesses to hundreds of murders of “indigenous people” during the bloody ascendancy of the Guatemalan military in the 1980's. The writer goes nearly crazy from reading of the horrors (and discovering that one woman who was repeatedly raped and unspeakably brutalized works in the same office he does) Increasingly he becomes convinced that the military is going to try to kill him too. He also has an unfortunate one night stand with an attractive woman whose feet stink, and he becomes convinced that her boyfriend is also trying to kill him. You think at a certain point that the novel is going for a story about insanity, but at the same time, the military really IS still in charge, and there is evidence that something is going on but you can’t quite figure out what it is. It’s an interesting novel that keeps you off balance.

I also read the redoubtable Jared Diamond’s THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, another of his excellent surveys of how human beings got to be who we are, and where we’re likely to go next. This one chronicles our similarities to the primates and other animals as well as our similarities to our precursor species– especially our tendency to commit genocide and to cause the extinction of other species. We killed off, for example, all the giant birds– moas, elephant birds, dodos, etc. I wonder how the ostriches survived? Maybe just because they had more time to learn how to avoid the nasty tool wielding little primates? Diamond’s work is always stimulating and worth reading.

Then I read my first high fantasy– which is fantasy in the wizards and magic and epic vein of Tolkien. I thought I didn’t care for ti, but ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE by Robin Hobb (the pseudonym of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, a prolific fantasy and science fiction writer) was a real pleasure. Lots of blood and guts and action and love and mysterious events and also animals and coming of age. There was a little too much world building for me– an invented history in the form of epigraphs for each chapter, but I just read that part rapidly and got on with the story. The world is in technology and general aspect a version of medieval Europe, Scandinavia or maybe the northernmost British Isles, but it is that world as if Christianity had never arrived, and where some people have certain specific magic abilities which generally need to be nurtured and mastered. The precision of the limitations on the magic particularly pleased me. Also, Hobb does animals wonderfully, and the primary evil, aside from some nasty individuals, is that sea raiders are somehow creating soulless people– they kidnap people then send them home as monsters who look fine but have no morality, no sense of community at all– are individualistic eating and killing machines. I assume this will be in later volumes of the trilogy. Also, the protagonist is a young boy who is being trained to kill people– as a political poisoner.

And finally, I read the long-awaited last novel of Judith Moffett’s (see photo right) science fiction Holy Ground trilogy, THE BIRD SHAMAN. It was a very gratifying book, especially to have questions answered that were raised in the first two novels in the trilogy, THE RAGGED WORLD an TIME LIKE AN EVER ROLLING STREAM. I loved finding out what happened to the characters, but you don’t need to have read the first books to read THE BIRD SHAMAN. It follows the other volumes by many years and has all the information you need to make sense of things. The novel is about the last act of a humans and aliens story, in which two alien forms, the Hefn and the Gafr, are trying to force human beings to stop trashing earth. The way they do this is refreshingly unviolent (although they are capable of violence too). They have created a general ban on human reproduction. A handful of children is still being born, enough that the species won’t die out if the ban isn’t lifted, but the world as everyone knows it is fading fast. The novel is set in the final year of the human opportunity to change their ways before the ban is made permanent.

What happens is not what you would expect of, course: the alien species are not, in the end, all-powerful or, for that matter, all-altruistic. Moffett’s main character is the acerbic Pam Pruitt, who has been in therapy for years learning to deal with herself and her past with an abusive father and distant mother. Other important characters include a young girl, one of the few children born in recent years, who is also abused– and a popular actress! Much of the story is set in Utah, with splendid landscapes as well as the misdeeds and courage of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. There is child abuse in many forms, native cave paintings, shamanism, lucid dreaming, gardening and birds– a wonderful cornucopia of unexpected delights (unless you are already a fan of Moffett, in which case you know what to expect).

It is also, as is all the best science fiction, a suspenseful and rousing good story.

-- Meredith Sue Willis

CHRISTINE WILLIS ON THE LAST LECTURE

Christine Willis writes to recommend THE LAST LECTURE: “Maybe the idea of THE LAST LECTURE appealed to me because a cousin was dying with a variation of Randy Pausch’s disease: pancreatic cancer, or maybe it was because I thought that someone so certainly facing his mortality might have some interesting insights into life. The notion of a final lecture, a summation of sorts, is appealing on its own. But Pausch was facing the additional challenge of leaving as much of himself via language as he could for his children who would be too young at the time of his death to be able to recall him.

“Pausch’s little book (written with Jeffrey Zaslow) explains what a last lecture is, and the lecture frames his book in the world of academia. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon and was approached to prepare and give his last lecture in the throes of his final months of life.

“The chapters include Randy’s wooing and winning his wife, how he was able to realize his childhood dreams, and how to live life. He even left words of wisdom for his eighteen month old daughter: ‘When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.’

My favorite chapter, however, is ‘The Parent Lottery.’ The first two sentences are: ‘I won the parent lottery. I was born with the winning ticket, a major reason I was able to live out my childhood dreams.’ It is a chapter of gratitude and a description of superior parenting. The environment his parents provided for him yielded this world view: ‘…I thought there were two types of families: 1) Those who need a dictionary to get through dinner. 2) Those who don’t.’

“Pausch’s book is uplifting even with the knowledge that he is relinquishing his children, his wife, his students, and indeed, his life."

BOOKS ON RELIGION: SUSAN SCOTT’S RECOMMENDATIONS TO A YOUNG SEEKER

I asked Susan Scott for recommendations of intelligently written books about Christianity to recommend to a young friend. She wrote: “I have to be honest that I don't read much in the way of Christian apologetics these days, but I have a few ideas for books, though I can't guarantee that they are ‘assumption-less.’ C.S. Lewis is an oldie but goody – MERE CHRISTIANITY and THE CASE FOR CHRISTIANITY are two titles.
“A local church minister friend of mine also suggested an author whose name is Lee Strobel, who if his name is googled gets you to his website and books of his. I not sure whether Strobel's apologetics approach is up my theological alley or not, but that's not necessarily important. If I come across other titles/authors I will advise.
To my mind, Judaism is less of a stretch theologically than Christianity which presents the whole hurdle of understanding what it means for Jesus to be called the Son of God, and some camps of Christianity have taken to worshiping Jesus rather than God, which I don't think Jesus ever intended. The whole ‘dying for our sins’ tradition of interpreting Jesus' death on the cross, is another hurdle – not to mention the Trinity! I have my own approaches to some of these that are probably less than ‘traditional,’ but which make it possible for me to still self-identify as a Christian.

“The reader may also want to read Sharon Salzberg's book, entitled, FAITH: TRUSTING YOUR OWN DEEPEST EXPERIENCE (Riverhead Books, 2002) --- not a Christian apologetic, but written by a Buddhist who is looking less at God and more at faith itself in our human experience. . . hence the title!”

At Susan Scott’s suggestion, I read that one, and found that Salzberg’s FAITH: TRUSTING YOUR OWN DEEPEST EXPERIENCE really fits my understanding of how things work: human beings have these insights, these moments of being, these break-throughs into something else, these moments of sensing oneness and wholeness (as well as all the opposites of those things), and we then seek ways to put these insights and feelings in different containers: Christians say they’ve received grace, Buddhists say they’ve discovered the Buddha within.
Jews and Buddhists and Ethical Humanists and some others don’t demand exclusivity in dogma for everyone. All of us of course are dealing with our human knowledge of coming of our own deaths. We assume the animals and plants don’t know they’re going to die, but maybe dying as an individual is meaningless to them–certainly to some bacteria that divides and divides and divides or to a honey bee whose self is about the larger structure, individual death isn’t very significant.

Salzberg talks a lot about faith as simply a kind of willingness to live, to go on the journey, which we are all part of anyhow, so the choice is between embracing it and avoiding the truth of it. These are my words, not hers. Suffering and change are the constants in the Buddhist universe, and their basic profession of faith is the ‘I take refuge,’ – in the Buddha, which means in the possibility of enlightenment/awareness within ones self; in the way or practice; in the community. Salzberg says, “With faith we can draw near to the truth of the present moment, which is dissolving into the unknown even as we meet it. (Sharon Salzberg, FAITH: TRUSTING YOUR OWN DEEPEST EXPERIENCE, New York: Riverhead, 2002, p. 14). I’m not a Buddhist, but there is a lot here that, as they say, resonates.

FROM ANNA SMUCKER

Children’s author Anna Smucker writes to say, “Just a quick note to thank you for putting the info about my new book GOLDEN DELICIOUS: A CINDERELLA APPLE STORY on your terrific Books for Readers newsletter. The book made its grand debut at the WV Book Festival (http://www.wvhumanities.org/bookfest/bookfest2.htm) last weekend. I was delighted with the response. Both the WV Book Company and Borders sold out of their copies! Quite a few of the descendants of Anderson Mullins, the Clay County farmer who discovered the apple, came to the festival to hear my presentation, some from as far away as Washington, D.C. They're all very proud to have their "family story" in a book. As always, the festival was a great energizer for me. I love being with so many other authors and with all of those great people who love books. I was especially impressed with Ann Pancake who read from her powerful STRANGE AS THIS WEATHER HAS BEEN. Take care and keep up the good work. Thanks for keeping us all informed.”

HOW TO MARK A BOOK

“How to Mark a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. (http://www.radicalacademy.com/adlermarkabook.htm ) is a wonderful and wonderfully old-fashioned essay about books as physical objects versus books as interactive communications. Adler compares books to the scores of musical works--the music happens in the performance, and the book really “happens” in the responsive reader’s interaction with it. I think there is probably some relationship here to the swirling controversies over ownership of creative works and new technologies.

LISTEN

Nigel Beale has a blog that includes audio interviews of writers: NOTA BENE BOOKS . . The current interviewee is Nam Le, winner of the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize, author of THE BOAT.

GOOD BLOGS ONLINE!

And speaking of Shelley Ettinger! She has a brand new literary blog called READ RED, at http://readwritered.blogspot.com/2008/10/at-library.html. Her interesting October 9, 2008 post is about her continuing relationship with libraries.

Barbara Riddle-Dvorak also has a new blog that is worth getting to know at http://poodlesontheroof.blogspot.com/

Musicians in the House!

This is a big Social Responsibilities week-end– I’ve got my nephew Alex Kato-Willis the pianist and Master’s student at USC and a violinist friend of his Kirsi Marja Alanen from Julliard staying. They are out at Ethical Culture right now practicing for a performance in Stanford, New York tomorrow at the Stanford Friends of Music . They’ll take NJ Transit to Penn Station tomoprrow early and catch an Amtrak north, where they’ll be picked up and ferried to the place where the concert is.

They are both young, in their early twenties, Alex the same age as Joel, very passionate about music, which he both performs and composes, but also his studies in Nietzsche’s work. He is very interesting to talk to, and charming– I haven’t seen him, by the way, since he was 15 or 16. “Maria” as we seem to be supposed to call her, is Finnish, and has a near perfect American accent, a good ear for languages as well as music. She is studying with some one that Joe Gluck, our friend who is retired from the New Jersey Symphony, recognizes– Lewis Kaplan. Alex says that the west coast classical music scene is largely separate from the one in the east. His teacher is Daniel Pollack , and Alex is very enthusiastic about him.

They tell stories about their teachers, who they admire, and they talk about the “imagination” that is require to play, and about the pieces of music they are playing. We talked about pianists and hand sizes–Alex’s fingers are small but he has a wide reach. He says big hands require far more precision to hit piano keys cleanly! I love the stimulation of a glance at a new world like this!

Oh my– what I wonder at is how they speak articulately about music and other things, and yet what they love most is not made of words, whereas my art form uses words just as ordinary language does. In my piece about Jayne Anne Phillips for Appalachian Heritage, I was able to quote hersaying of her fiction that the prose she writes, the language itself, “becomes a seduction, especially in the paragraph form. Unlike the formal lines of poetry, prose seems, visually, the same ordinary language in which we read instruction manuals and newspapers. Reading prose, the reader perceives something ordinary,” and then is, as she says, sucked into something extra-ordinary.

It Really Happened!

I woke up this morning, and I'd had a dream that Barack Obama & the Democrats had won the presidency-- oh, wait, that really happened!

I just feeling like saying it: for this one time, the good guys really have won. Whether they will stay good, succeed or fail, we can't know. Will they end the war? Change the minds of bigots? Stop the horrific degradation of the environment? We don't know yet.

But it was an amazing feeling to see the Obama and Biden families up there on the podium in Chicago last night. They looked like America.

San Francisco Notes

Christine Willis and MSW on Octrober 28, 2008

October 29, 2008

It’s Wednesday, and I’m exhausted after a night at my sister Chrissie’s in San Luis Obispo. Joel drove me down as Andy still had the conference. I worked yesterday morning Tuesday, and then took the BART out to Berkeley where I was picked up by Joel and we headed down 880 to 101 through Oakland then South Bay then towns like Gilroy and Bradley in the middle of farming nowhere (garlic! kale! cabbages! romain lettuce!) and then to San Luis Obispo. I really enjoyed riding with him stopping for Bun and Run I mean In and Out, talking talking about religion about our family about Sarah’s family. Chrissie was home to meet us, then Goro arrived with an enormous platter of sushi which we consumed with gusto, and then custard pie and home made brownies and figs from down the street and Japanese persimmons from Chrissie’s tree.Finally a long walk with Chrissie, stunning stars and milky way overhead, cats she petted, friendly Tillie and Marvin, feral Sophie that sleeps outside her sliding doors, and a conversatin about religion and other big topics. Bed, got up early, drove 3 and a half hours back, Joel and me talking all the time about family, religion, and economics. We stopped at Garlic World or something lke that in Gilroy.
Back, Andy done with conference, we had lunch and Tartine, then walked past mission Dolores, and he went off to ride the Cable Cars and I to the Asian Museum where I overdosed on narrow waisted Hindu gods and calm golden buddhas. Much bigger museum than I expected.
Then dinner at Shalimar in the Tenderloin and a drink at Bourbon and Branch. Hard work, having fun!

October 28

Notes on the Contemporary Jewish Museum yesterday: Beautiful, clean, relaxing space. I would have paid at least half the fee just to walk around the space. I adored the "In the Beginning" exhibit, especially the aphorism-God slot machine game. It made me laugh out loud. Actually, all the participatory works engaged me a lot-- I made a contract to create a word/art work, stuck my face in the big metal Gramophone thing. Andy Warhol's ten top Jews of the 20th century was fun, too. Had a great time, altogether.

October 27

Report on yesterday: journal and reading in the a.m., then Joel and Sarah picked me up and we went over to the Mission District to to Precita Eyes for the mural tour. Precita Eyes, which appears to be run by artists of the old hippy and hipster variety, the office actually is a working space with post cards but also materials for sale and workrooms. Everything nice and funky. The tour guide was a crusty 70 year old who looked like people I know, three day beard, big headed Jewish from San Francisco and Richmond and East Bay. Loved the little Balmy Alley with murals all along, from last year to done in the seventies. The tour ran an hour and a half, and part of what impressed me was the rehabs of old work, the occasionally little tags by graffiti artists, the sheer exuberance.

Andy met us for Shanghai dumplings, then he went back to a meeting and Joel and Sarah and I went on to Muir woods which was much for fun than I expected because of how we ended up on a semi strenuous ( “moderate”) hike on reddish yellow redwood duff, up a hill quite steep, in deepening dusk/fog. Then we met Andy back downtown and grabbed fast food at a food court and went to see W. ! So that was a super busy day, and today was quieter, revising an article for Appalachian Heritage then the Jewish Contemporary Museum with a great exhibit of artists reacting to the first chapter of Genesis. Then I hung out here and there, at the pier watching birds and an otter, coffee and reading, Borders, finally meeting Andy and Sarah and having dinner in Oakland at Zachary's pizza with Fenton's homemade ice cream and then home. I'm beginning to get into this indulgence and relaxing.

October 26

Joel, MSW, Andy, & Sarah on Saturday night at a freeloaders' delight for rheumatologists & friends

Andy took off very early for meetings and I went down and did the stationary bike for ten minutes, have been reading The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. Today, Joel and Sarah are taking me to the Precita Eyes tour and then maybe dumplings, maybe Muir woods. Not sure. I’m really feeling on vacation, eating mucho too much! Yesterday, as today, it was Starbucks coffee and muffin to start, but then we had the lunch at Chez Panisse, and my first trip to East Bay, West Oakland looking pretty funky, North Oakland and Berkeley as pretty and cute as can be. Young professionals and young families country, the inexorable sun and medium heat, the tropical traces: palm trees, brilliant purple vines and red, and some huge hanging yellow blossoms. Houses mostly single, although J & S are in a six unit apartment, and the ambiance is of small craftsman style cottage houses, not much property per house, but trees, flowers, and this style I have trouble naming, which is part craftsman, part a wooden interpretation of Japanese? Berkeley campus quite stunning, on a slope, a gorgeous giant eucalyptus tree grove that blew me away. Sproul square, the free speech movement A “free speech” café full of kids and laptops, and images of the free speech movement.

Before that, though, Chez Panisse: again the lovely cozy wood, rafter, brick style. Open kitchens to watch, a yellow tomato soup with creme fraiche that was splendid, and pesto ravioli with tomato coulis for me, some name brand ranch turkey for Joel, salmon with corn and cilantro for Andy, and etc. etc. Glass of wine, plus desserts. Too much, and then in the evening, a big drug extravaganza at the Museum of Modern Art, the whole lobby with tables and foods stations and wine tastings! Sushi, shrimp! I really loaded up on shrimp in hopes of not entirely gorging. A walk through the museum’s modern holdings, a little O’Keeffe, a couple of Riveras and a Kahlo, lots of Klee (arthritis sufferer) and big nice red and black Rothko. And then back down to sit near the dessert extravaganza (creme brulee! Tiramisu! Cookies, berries with whipped cream oh my). Long conversation about drug companies and their relationship to doctors, to ethics, to capitalism.

I think I want to ask Sarah sometime to day what she thinks of the endless arguments.

And the big news: Tak and Chiaki had twin baby girls!

October 25

Saturday morning in the Hotel Whitcomb in San Francisco, regrouping! The room is small, but the hotel is terrific with high ceilings and a sort of marble and steak and whisky mahogany elegance in the public areas. It was once, briefly, the town hall of San Francisco.

I’ve got my Starbucks coffee from the shop downstairs at hand, and I’ve had an apple-bran muffin and read a little in the New York times. I’m headachy and all, but slept reasonable considering that we had dinner at eleven p.m. Eastern Daylight. We ate at a neat place called B-Star that is Burmese Fusion– Sarah had soft shelled crabs and deviled tea eggs, and Joel had a neat thing with meatballs and rice porridge, Andy had a fancy salad but with the peppered french fries and curry mayonnaise! And I had an absolutely delicious wild rice dish with peanuts, cilantro, red cabbage, and shiitake mushrooms– I don’t know that this sounds as good as it was. Ginger lemonade, etc. And a big helping of discussion about religion and belief in God! Andy takes the position that we probably shouldn’t have discussions like this, and Sarah’s family, as I understand it, prefers to avoid conflict, but Sarah likes to discuss, and Joel and I apparently adore this.

We had just been to services at Beth Shalom with plenty of singing and good feelings. At dinner, we had a big religious discussion: Andy takes the basic line that If there is an all-powerful ostensibly loving God, what the hell does he think he’s doing with the Holocaust for starters? Sarah essentially is deeply culturally Jewish, but sounds like a Deist in belief: God may have been involved in a daily way at one time, started it all rolling, but no longer. Joel is looking to believe, and was never satisfied with Ethical Culture as a religion. And I’m looking for the psychological connection (and I do believe this) that we all humans have experiences, awareness of something greater, epiphanies, mystical moments, connections to the oneness, whatever, and we put it in various containers built of culture.

So except for being really tired, that was fun.

It was an okay flight, rather a lot of turbulence that I breathed my way through, eyes closed in and out. Xanax thank you. I didn’t sleep as much as I’d hoped, but (is the drug an amnesiac?) I don’t remember suffering too much. Stuffed 737 plane, whimpering and yowling babies, but not as bad somehow as it could have been. And I didn’t get out of the seat the whole time. So something was relaxed. Dry muffin in the airport, biscuit and egg and fruit on the plane plus a tiny yogurt later, then a big La Taq burrito that left me feeling bloated the rest of the day and finally that meal at night. So that looks like four or five meals yesterday, and we're scheduled for lunch at Chez Panisse!.

October notes

Andy and I went up to the lake for an overnight, and driving back, saw this in Western Berkshire County! A Democratic farmer!

October 18

Lovely reading at the Ardsley (New York) United Methodist Church (“My Boy Elroy.”) It was a real church supper with pot luck deliciousness, an apple theme (“Apples for Appalachia”), and today they’re having a sale of crafts from Eastern Kentucky with sisters from the Mt. Tabor Monastery.

The event felt at once like an Ethical Culture supper and also for me like the First Baptist Church of Shinnston, West Virginia when I was growing up. Sister Kathleen talked about Mountaintop Removal and knows Silas House. I had been vaguely expecting an affluent upscale bunch, and I’m sure some of the Methodists there are plenty affluent, but at least for this meeting in this church basement, there was a terrific homey-ness, a diversity of race and ethnic group, and a wonderfully genuine interest in sharing Appalachia, learning about Appalachia, helping the Appalachians who need help.

And it was fun to have Andy with me, too. I usually do these writer events alone, but he was a good sport in all ways, had fun appreciated the food.

And those Methodists know how to eat! Incredibly succulent pork roast and roast potatoes, several kinds of Waldorf salad, lasagne, beans carrots– apple crisp with ice cream for dessert.

October 13

Bill Higginson, poet and haiku guru died on October 11, 2008. See obituary and one of his websites. There are several obituaries on various blogs if you Google his name. I didn't know him well, but he was an important member of the New Jersey literary community for many years, and a teacher with the New Jersey Writers project. Lovely man, contributed to my newsletter a few months ago, just because I asked.

October 12, 2008

Well, I got off my newsletter and finished reading Obama’s Dreams from My Father , which gave me a very strange sensation–is it possible that we might have a president who can write a graceful sentence, and more to the point, has an inner life? An interest in his own personal past, a desire to explore other people, other cultures? Was once a community organizer? Has a father who was African and a mother who was from Kansas?

It seems too heady a possibility, just the phrase, "a president with an inner life"– now, I believe all human beings have inner lives, but recent presidents, even someone intelligent like Bill Clinton, have run from that part of themselves full speed. At least for the time it took him to write his first book, Barack Obama did the opposite. The book ends, by the way, with his wedding, which he uses as a symbol of coming together--many nationalities, many religions, his Kenyan sister and brother as well as his white mother and half-Indonesian sister, Michelle's South Side Chicago family. Touching and inspiring, and a neat closing to his book.

And now-- Obama's lead is narrowing, and I had a brief conversation with my recently deceased cousin’s widow in which she listened in dead silence as I said the usual things about William Ayers having done some despicable things, but having also paid his debt to society (although he never did jail time), working as a college teacher, education reformer, etc., and mainly that Obama was eight years old at the time of the Weatherman implosion. She watches television and goes to church. Education by Fox News.

But my mother voted by absentee ballot! And she's an 89 year old Obamagirl, bless her heart.

And yet, part of me says, we don't deserve thoughtful presidents. Presidents don’t agonize over the meaning of life.

My most realistic assessment is that the Democrats CAN win, but that it is going to be much closer than it has been in the last few days, that the attack via William Ayers is doing damage, racism is still alive out there. Karl Rove's slimy nastiness thrives in these last weeks before the election.

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers #113

October 12 , 2008

SPECIAL ON ESPIONAGE LITERATURE WITH JEFFREY SOKOLOW

The following notes, except if otherwise credited, are from Jeffrey Sokolow, who stresses that he is a reader, not a scholar, but that he has developed an interest in the spy craft of the Cold War, both histories and memoirs. This month, then, we’ll learn about some books we might explore in this area.

Jeffrey writes: “Since an old friend told me to read Gilles Perrault's THE RED ORCHESTRA (and later I discovered Leopold Trepper's memoir, THE GREAT GAME), I have had an interest in reading espionage literature. Why stories of clandestine work would appeal to me I cannot imagine. One rich source of information is participant memoirs. Two books by spouses of murdered agents are very worthwhile: OUR OWN PEOPLE: A MEMOIR OF ‘IGNACE REISS’ AND HIS FRIENDS by Elisabeth K Poretsky and WILLI MUNZENBERG: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY by Babette Gross. There are also two recent biographies of the remarkable Munzenberg, who practically invented the front group. Best after his widow’s memoir is THE RED MILLIONAIRE: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF WILLY MUNZENBERG, MOSCOW'S SECRET PROPAGANDA TSAR IN THE WEST by Sean McMeekin. (The sensationalistic title is unfortunate.) A second biography by Stephen Holder is so tendentious politically that I really cannot recommend it.

“Another recommendation is SONYA’S REPORT by Ruth Werner. Werner was a very successful agent who remained loyal to the German Democratic Republic to the end. Her memoirs were published there before the Wall fell. It is an exciting read. Also recommended is SECRET SOLDIERS OF THE REVOLUTION: SOVIET MILITARY INTELLIGENCE 1918-1933 by Ramond Leonard, the first full-length discussion of Soviet military intelligence, known by the acronym GRU. The majority of books...deal with the more glamorous and well-known Cheka (‘the unsheathed sword of the proletarian revolution’) and its successor organizations (OGPU, GPU, KGB) while ignoring military intelligence, which was even more active in the espionage field. Leonard deals with many of the people whose books I cited elsewhere (Reiss, Poretsky, Krivitsky, and others).

“Although not specifically about espionage, Aino Kuusinen's memoir (THE RINGS OF DESTINY: INSIDE SOVIET RUSSIA FROM LENIN TO BREZHNEV) is noteworthy. Her husband, Otto, was a Finnish Communist, a favorite of Lenin's who rose to be a member of the Soviet politburo whereas her path took her from the corridors of the Kremlin to the Gulag.

"Two Soviet master spies lived to write memoirs. General Orlov, who wrote THE MARCH OF TIME: REMINISCENCES, had a long life (he let Stalin know he knew who was who in the Cambridge ring but would keep quiet if he and his family were untouched) while General Krivitsky died in mysterious circumstances. Krivitsky’s book is IN STALIN'S SECRET SERVICE.

“Although written by a former FBI agent, A TIME FOR SPIES: THEODORE STEPHANOVICH MALLY AND THE ERA OF THE GREAT ILLEGALS by William E. Duff, a biography of the tormented priest turned master spy, is very sensitive and sympathetic to the protagonist's moral qualities. A short summary of the cases discussed above may be found in the first of these two works by Gordon Brook-Shepherd: THE STORM PETRELS: THE FLIGHT OF THE FIRST SOVIET DEFECTORS and THE STORM BIRDS: SOVIET POSTWAR DEFECTORS.

“Although I have not read it, THE LOST SPY: AN AMERICAN IN STALIN'S SECRET SERVICE by Andrew Meier seems of special interest.... According to the blurb, it's the story of Isaiah Oggins, said to be ‘a Columbia University undergraduate who joined the fledgling Communist Party in 1920. Recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1926, he went to Europe in the guise of an academic; his residences acted as centers for Soviet espionage. After 1930 he sailed to China and Manchuria for various undercover schemes, then traveled to Moscow in 1939 during Stalin's purges. Despite long, loyal service, he was arrested and sent to an Arctic gulag, and despite frantic pleas for Oggins's release from his wife, and more modest U.S. government efforts, the Soviets murdered Oggins in 1947 to keep his story from getting out.’

“The literature on the Cambridge spies Philby, McClean, Burgess, Caincross, and Blunt is vast. The most recent books based on long interviews with Philby and those based on the Soviet files are of most interest....The latest books I am aware of are these: MY FIVE CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS (by Yuri Modin -- written from the perspective of a KGB handler); THE PHILBY FILES by Genrikh Borovik and Philip Knightly (makes use of KGB files; ironically, the Center had its own version of James Jesus Angleton, who was so paranoid and suspicious that she led the Center to discount the reliability of their greatest assets); PHILBY: KGB MASTERSPY by Philip Knightly ( Knightly is a serious British scholar who spoke to Philby in his final year, when he wanted his story set down more or less accurately); and THE PRIVATE LIFE OF KIM PHILBY: THE MOSCOW YEARS by Rufina Philby, a personal memoir by Philby's widow.”

To this list of books, Woody Lewis adds, “I think Kim Philby is one of the most fascinating tragic characters in this space. There are so many stories wrapped up in his, and the influence, both ideological and literary (Greene, Fleming, Le Carre, et al), is beyond question. Even Ishiguro's REMAINS OF THE DAY, though concerned with Nazis and not Communists, shows the receptivity with which the ruling class approaches those systems that compete with western democracy, however one defines it.”

To which MSW would add another literary take on espionage in the twentieth century, John Banville, THE UNTOUCHABLE. See notes .

-- Meredith Sue Willis

VIETNAM AND SPIES

More frm Jeffrey Sokolow: “I just remembered a wonderful book by Larry Berman entitled A PERFECT SPY about about the Vietnamese reporter for TIME magazine during the war, Pham Xuan An. He also worked as a secret agent for the resistance and was really the North's eyes and ears inside the American camp. He earned the respect of his American colleagues for his honest reporting and kept their respect after they learned that as a patriot his loyalties lay with the Vietnamese rather than the American side. He was uniquely loyal both to his side and also to individuals whom he befriended on the other side. It's quite a story. The book is based on interviews witn An in his final years. The Vientamese also published a short book on An but it's probably a lot harder to get hold of. Anyway, it's not as revelatory as Berman's book. This could open a look at other memoirs of the war by Vietnamese sources, including those who were afterwards disillusioned. I found quite interesting A VIETCONG MEMOIR: AN INSIDE ACCOUNT OF THE VIETNAM WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH by Truong Nhu Tang (former justice miniser for the NLFSVN), FOLLOWING HO CHI MINH: THE MEMOIRS OF A NORTH VIETNAMESE COLONEL by Bui Tin (a journalist, as senior officer on the spot, he took the surrender from the last S. Vietnamese president) and FROM ENEMY TO FRIEND: A NORTH VIETNAMESE PERSPECTIVE ON THE WAR by Bui Tin and Nguyen Ngoc Bich.

“Finally, I understand at least one volume of General Giap's memoirs have appeared in French but not in English; his theoretical works are in my opinion unreadable to the general public but the sections of the memoirs I've seen translated are gripping. Hopefully he will find an American publisher. He is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding military figures of the last century.”

MORE BRIT LIT

I read UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch, and found it charming, funny, and altogether a pleasant read. It was the first time I felt like I really got what Murdoch is doing. Maybe I needed the first person point of view to hold things steady for me. The tone takes off in a tone of twentieth century Oxbridge frivolity, and the story stays light in the sense that narrator Jake Donahue continues to act foolishly and get into scrapes from which he only disentangles himself with great effort and pain. He makes multiple errors of judgement and lays out red herrings of plot for us wherever he turns– and this works, because they are red herrings to him too. Then, towards the end, he takes his first real job ever, and becomes downright touching in his desire to do well. This is really a story about how a man’s arrogance and errors cause him to suffer, and also about how he comes out a better man at the other end, which makes it a comedy, of course! My hands-down favorite Murdoch so far.

POLITICS AND CREATIVE WRITING

Shelley Ettinger writes to comment on Orson Scott Card's political views (I praised ENDER’s GAME in the last issue– see http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive111-115.html#112). She says, “Thought I might as well pipe up and let you know that this guy is an ultra-reactionary anti-gay zealot who has repeatedly written and circulated vicious anti-lgbt rants. His rants have gotten a lot of attention from lit bloggers, who are more or less generally progressive and so are appalled by his politics and then torn over whether his politics mean they won't read his fiction anymore.”

Whether a person’s fiction can be separated and enjoyed and respected separately from the person’s political views is worth discussing. To judge Orson Scott Card ’s political views for yourself, take a look at a recent editorial piece by him in the at MORMON TIMES .

NEW BLOGS ONLINE!

And speaking of Shelley Ettinger! She has a brand new literary blog called READ RED, at http://readwritered.blogspot.com/2008/10/at-library.html. Her interesting October 9, 2008 post is about her continuing relationship with libraries.

Barbara Riddle-Dvorak also has a new blog that is worth getting to know at http://poodlesontheroof.blogspot.com/

LISTEN

Cat Pleska’s October essay on West Virginia Public Broadcasting at http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=4806

GOOD NEWS, GOOD READING

Anna Egan Smucker’s new book for children is just out– GOLDEN DELICIOUS: A CINDERELLA APPLE STORY is a true tale is set in the American heartland more than 100 years ago. The Stark brothers dream of cultivating the perfect new apple in their Missouri nursery, and a poor farmer in the hills of West Virginia finds a new tree with Golden Delicious apples in his field. He sends the fruit to the Starks, and the brothers are dismissive of the yellow apples– until they taste them!

Noel Smith’s poems THE WELL STRING have been published by Motes books (http://www.motesbooks.com/TheWellString.html) with a foreword by Silas House. Lee Smith calls the poems “highly charged with intensity and originality,” and Ron Rash says, “THE WELL STRING is a significant contribution to Appalachian Literature.”

Also new from Motes Books is Jim Minick’s new book of poems HER SECRET SONG at http://www.motesbooks.com.

A CURE FOR SUICIDE by Larissa Shmailo has just been published by Červená Barva Press at http://www.cervenabarvapress.com

Janna McMahan has an enjoyable article about her family coming to appreciate her writing career at http://www.travelingmom.com/travel_tales/traveling_mom_gets_book_tour_reality_check.html
– and she has a new book coming out in 2009!

Dory L. Hudspeth’s book of poems I’LL FLY AWAY has just been published by Finishing Line Press at http://www.finishinglinepress.com . George Ella Lyon says “Dory’s Hudspeth’s poems catch your attention sideways, surprise your field of vision, lift off just when you think you’ve got them in focus.”

The multi-talented poet Arthur T. Wilson narrates “The Sketchbook” on the Raymond Wojcik CD PICTURES AND STORIES. See http://www.albanyrecords.com

The fall issue of THE SALT RIVER REVIEW is up at http://www.poetserv.org/

The Autumn 2008 issue of PERSIMMON (http://www.persimmontree.org.) is up with poetry from Northeast women over sixty, including Judith Arcana, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Alicia Ostriker, and Susan Donnelly. Also sculpture by Lorraine Bonner, fiction by Elizabeth Morris and Louise Smith, and nonfiction by Bonnie Lee Black and Marian Clark. They are accepting West Coast women poets’ work from Nov. 1st to Dec. 15th. Check guidelines at http://www.persimmontree.org .

Fall 2008 issue of THE INNISFREE POETRY JOURNAL is now available at http://www.innisfreepoetry.org. In addition to established and emerging poets, there is in their "Closer Look" series, a generous selection of poems from the books of Marianne Boruch, including her new collection, GRACE, FALLEN FROM (Wesleyan University Press, 2008). You can read Innisfree 7 three ways: (1) online, (2) as a downloadable PDF file, (3) as a 106-page, 6x9, perfect bound hard copy you can purchase from the print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com for $6.65 plus shipping. The direct link for a hard copy is http://www.lulu.com/content/3773113.

PLOT AND STORY STRUCTURE

In the September/October 2008 issue of the SCBWI magazine (The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators at http://www.scbwi.org/), Joëlle Anthony shares some websites on plot, story, structure, and more: take a look at http://www.sydfield.com ; http://members.aol.com/DgSWEET/index.html; http://mckeestory.com; and http://www.truby.com/index.html .

WORKSHOPS

FICTIONALLY SPEAKING: FICTION AND CREATIVE NONFICTION, a workshop with with Thaddeus Rutkowski on Saturdays, Nov. 1, 15, 22, noon to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, 7-9 p.m. At the Asian American Writers' Workshop, 16 W. 32nd St., 10th floor. This is a workshop for writers new to fiction or creative nonfiction, as well as those who want to take their work to the next level. Traditional and experimental prose writers welcome. Cost: $175 general, $150 members. Contact: desk@aaww.org or 212 494-0061. For more information, go to http://www.aaww.org.

Also starting in November if you happen to live in suburban New Jersey is MSW's Prose Narrative workshop for Playwright’s Theater on Thursdays 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM starting in mid- November. Go to http://www.ptnj.org/PubCL/AdultClassesA.htm and scroll down to “Writing Prose Narrative.”

Wake Up America

A Blog of women's views of the
Republican Vice-Presidential candidate

Sherry Suttles on the election

Paul Bloom's report on the Democratic convention in Denver

This election frenzy has infected me. I've been looking at the polls far too often, and talking, of course, almost strictly to people who agree with me, and we all wail: Why aren't the Democrats up by ten points? Actually, I think I know why. I think the reason is that white Americans really are having a serious problem voting for a man of color, even if his mother and her family are white Kansans. He isn't a white guy. He bespeaks the coming end of a white majority in this country. There would have been a problem with Hillary Clinton too-- more or less I don't know.

Here's my prediciton, which I'm making in public in my totally unprofessional way: It is going to be an extremely tight election, and if the Democrats win-- and I think they can-- it will be because of the organizing at the precinct level that Howard Dean et alia have been working on for four years, and if they make sure there is no hanky panky in the toss-up states.

Sarah Palin's biggest contribution to McCain's campaign is that she has energized the fundamentalist Christian right wing, which is truly an asset, but she has also been energizing progressive women who see her selection as an insult.

September 11, 2001

This is the end of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, and Obama and McCain were in New York doing the required. Various voices on radio, reading the names of the dead, on NPR two families honoring their lost sons with volunteer work.

Emails have been going around like crazy from an ad hoc group asking women to say why they are NOT voting for Sarah Palin ("we invite you to reply here with a short, succinct message"). One of my Barnard classmates (president of the class) wrote the following and gave me permission to include it here:

I, Sherry A. Suttles....add my voice to those opposed to Gov. Sarah Palin representing women in the Vice Presidential Candidacy she recently launched.

I was a staunch Billary fan for years, though voted for Barack Obama in the South Carolina primary as an absentee voter (before moving to FL), and am African American by the way.

And that is the point, Hillary was not my choice just because she is a woman, but because she is an intelligent, competent, experienced woman who has paid her dues as an active first lady (health plan) to an equally intelligent, competent and experienced husband President Bill Clinton and as a U.S. Senator from New York State for six years.

And now I wholeheartedly endorse and campaign for the Democratic nominee Barack Obama, not because he is African American, but because he is an intelligent, competent, experienced (yes State Senate and the only African American U.S. Senator of 100), who has paid his dues, not as long perhaps as others, but long enough to get the big picture and to move the country forward.

Both the Democratic prospective nominees are family-oriented, law abiding, ethical, and global minded, and lawyers trained at the highest education institutions in the land.

Sarah Palin has some credentials as a small town mayor and a small state governor, but her stated positions on sex education, choice, the environment, free speech, church and state, etc., are typical of her experiences--they are small, exclusive, diminishing, and petty.

This is 2008--the 21st, not the 18th century.

More power to her as a woman, mother of five, including one unwed teen, making her soon to be a grandmother at 44, with a stay at home husband. In our community, though, that combination would be considered "ghetto" and "irresponsible".

Now, the Republicans are lifting that up not only as a role model, but as the perfect person to stand (not sit nursing) a heartbeat away from the oldest President to be seated (if elected).

Unconscionable and Unacceptable.

Sherry A. Suttles 9/11/08

September 5

I'm working on the West Virginia issue of the Hamilton Stone Review. Response has been amazing, big names, less well known names, that wonderful mountain equality. The mechanics of creating the web pages can be if not a pain at least repetitive, but I'm enjoying the virtual camaraderie and the poems and prose alike-- whether the subject is redbud or Starbuck's, it feels like home.

Labor Day; Paul Bloom at the Democratic Convention

We had an exhausting Labor Day--everyone up early, cleaning and moving boats. Andy hung the kayak from the ceiling of the boat house, Aunt Ellen scrubbed the kitchen floor twice, etc. etc. Nathan and hid friend went water-skiing, then we all packed hurriedly because David had to be on a plane to Norway at 7:15 PM. Took the boat out at the boat ramp (Nathan drove it over), the Geller Weinbergers headed off for Brookline, Andy and Taxi and I took the boat to Connecticut and dropped it off, came home, unpacked, washed clothes, picked tomatoes, made the season's first raw tomato sauce over penne--very nice.


I'm on a listserv with other veterans of the 1968 student protests at sit-ins at Columbia University-- a fascinating group of people. Paul Bloom gave me permission to include this report of his time in Denver outside the Democratic convention, which seems appropriate as the Republicans go about their business hampered by Hurricane Gustav and perhaps by unexpected fecundities. Here's Paul's piece:



I was outside the DNC for the four days of its life in Denver. The heavily armed, massive police presence in Denver was daunting even to convention delegates. Police on horseback, police on motorcycles, SUV’s rolling down the street with three or four helmeted police on both side running boards and on the rear bumper, squadrons of cops leaning against buildings, lurking in alleys, and poised on street corners suited in protective gear reminiscent of Star Wars, armed with gas guns, tasers, shotguns, semi-automatics, and who-knows-what gadgetry; Denver police and sheriffs, police from other jurisdictions (one afternoon i found my way blocked by mounted police from Cheyenne, Wyoming), dozens of federal police agencies and countless armed private security guards were ubiquitous.

One evening i was walking down the street past a federal courthouse talking into a cell phone when a guy pulled up and jumped out of his car to take a picture of a church across the street. Immediately, a couple of armed security guards ran out of the building and grabbed his camera. “Hey, that’s a nice church, make a nice picture,” i volunteered. “Just keep moving!” was the reply. “I’m not in your way,” i rejoined. “This is federal property, just keep moving!” I was on the city sidewalk.

Still conversing on the cell phone, describing to my friend what was happening, i moved to a bus bench at the end of the block and watched as more guards and police emerged from the courthouse. One of them (Federal Protective Police) came over to me and demanded ID. As i handed it to him i asked ”What’s the problem?” “You were interfering with the officers.” “No, i wasn’t in their way at all.” “What have you been smoking?” “I don’t smoke.” “Put that cell phone down when i’m talking to you.” “I’ll just keep it on, thanks.” Wham! He grabbed the phone and shut it, and put me in handcuffs. “For your protection and mine.”

Ten minutes later, after ID checks had run their course, he let me go. This was not an uncommon experience --- in the days following i heard countless similar tales.

Unlike Chicago ’68, where a peace plank had been introduced on the floor, and where Connecticut Senator Ribicoff in his nominating speech for George McGovern denounced the “Gestapo tactics” of Mayor Daley and the Chicago police, there was a great disconnect between the official Democratic Party convention agenda and protesters. Denver Mayor Hickenlooper, a Democrat, did everything he could to isolate demonstrations and make protesters invisible. Only as a result of the Iraq Veterans Against the War march was a bridge put in place between street demonstrations and the party inside.

Prior to the opening of the convention, a federal judge had ruled that security needs outweighed First Amendment considerations, and affirmed the city’s right to restrict protesters to a fenced-in area out of sight of convention attendees. The Free Speech Zone, which actually appears as such on official maps, consisted of a 50,000 square foot parking lot surrounded by a 10 foot high chain link fence and an inner rail iron fence, with no bathroom or porta-potties.

Addressing a rally Sunday prior to the convention, Ron Kovic pledged: “I gave three-fourths of my body in Vietnam and i’m not going to be put into a cage in silence.”

No demonstrations took place in the Free Speech Zone.

However, in a park far from downtown and the Pepsi (convention) Center, the mayor had permitted organizers to place tents and hold support activities but forbidden them to sleep. There a national group called Tent State University facilitated much of the organizing, including logistics for Wednesday’s IVAW-sponsored Rage Against the Machine concert at the Coliseum, and including Resurrection City Free University, a 4-day series of more than 40 colloquiums on the park lawn with presenters such as Vincent Harding, Cynthia McKinney, Vincent Bugliosi, and Stephen Zunes.

Because they were forbidden to camp at Tent State, at the end of long, hot days 30 or 40 people trekked to what they called the Freedom Cage to sleep. No fires were permitted, amended to “no heat sources” after someone tried to cook breakfast on a battery-powered hot plate. Campers had to walk three or four blocks to bathrooms, harassed at police blockades coming and going. Stadium lights were kept on at all times and, as people started to retire, giant floodlights were turned on for the remainder of the night. Police in cherrypickers kept an all-night vigil over the 30 or 40 campers who woke each morning to find themselves surrounded on the ground by Secret Service among others.

On Wednesday, after a free concert by Rage Against the Machine which opened with a stirring speech by Ron Kovic, about 100 Iraq war veterans, many in uniforms, led a crowd of four or five thousand around the Free Speech Zone to one of the barricaded roads leading to the Pepsi Center. There everyone waited hopefully for a response to a letter the Vets had sent into the Obama camp which read in part: “Sen. Obama, millions of people are looking to you to restore our reputation around the world ... In this ominous time, you symbolize a hope for a better America.”

The letter went on to express three goals: immediately removing U.S. troops from Iraq, providing full health-care benefits to returning veterans, and paying reparations to Iraqis for damage done during the war.

When no one from the Obama campaign emerged from the arena to speak to the group after more than an hour, veterans led demonstrators to another Pepsi Center entrance where we were met by lines of police in riot gear, and above us sharpshooters in cherrypickers poised to shoot pepper balls and who knows what into the crowd.

The veterans made a line of their own facing the police, and began walking toward them. Police warned them to stop or face pepper spray and arrest. As protestors behind them began to prepare for mass arrest, many donning bandanas to protect against gas, two white-shirted Obama staffers arrived and asked that representatives of IVAW be escorted over to speak with them.

After a brief conversation, the representatives returned to the crowd to announce that they had been promised a meeting with Phil Carter, Obama’s liaison for veteran’s affairs, and that Obama would receive their letter.

A cheer went up, and many cried tears of relief that victory was achieved, and a dangerous confrontation avoided.

The discipline of the march, the joy of success, and the spirit of the people resulted in the warm and amazing sight of demonstrators shaking hands with police and thanking them. The police, too, seemed relieved. To one crowd of six heavily armored police Ron Kovic introduced himself: “I was a Marine wounded in Vietnam 40 years ago. I wrote Born on the Fourth of July.” The officers took off their helmets, shook his hand, and asked to be photographed with him. As all six gathered around him, one of his friends took picture after picture with each of the officers’ cameras. An unforgettable moment!

Too Many Movies...

As I watched Obama's speech last night, every time the camera panned around those thousands and thousands of people in a big establishing shot, I waited for the jump-cut to the close-up of the assassin meticulously putting together his rifle-- too many cliched movies, but the danger is really real.

Michelle Obama...

..was terrific to look at and did an outstanding job, and her kids were cute as buttons: "Where ARE you Daddy?"

But I was moved by Carolyn Kennedy being interviewed by Brian Williams, who tried to draw her into moaning about the emotional weight of being a Kennedy and she said politely something like, Well, what really matters is the party. And while I don't agree about it being the party, I do agree that it's not the sob stories and the physical attractiveness but something else-- the issues-- that we ought to be paying attention to.

It's very green...

...looking out from my screened back porch as evening comes on. I've been reading Saramago's Seeing, the Olympics are over, the Conventions beginning. Obama has picked Biden for his running mate; there is the fear that Bush will come up with an October surprise to get McCain elected (bomb Iran?)

Meanwhile, T.V. doing the one thing it does very well, which is to "cover" things, new things, real things, as-they-are-happening things.

The last week of August coming up, and there is a dire illness of a family member of mine that I'm not in a daily relationship with, but that affects my 89 year old mother a lot; my son is in the process of moving from one apartment to another (and his move is going very normally, which means it's been awful-- a broken truck and cat pee on the new carpet being only the easiest things). We went to see Tropic Thunder last night, and ate at the texmex chain Desert Moon, and I helped distribute flyers for the the Village Colonials' block party and several little chores like thinning plastic storage containers, and a bike ride, humid today, but the temperature in the low eighties, so it's been an inexplicably relaxing, pleasant, happy day.

Joel sent a whole slew of his Israel pictures, but here are some representative ones. He was especially moved by history (the Kotel or Western wall, Masada, and the church of the Holy Sepulcher) but he aslo rode a camel and really enjoyed the food. Below, Joel on the top of Masada at dawn, looking toward Jordan, then Joel and his Birthright roommate on a camel, and finally an Israeli feast on his last night. The blackened stuff is what he called the best chicken wings he ever had.

My Glowing Career

It is a disappointment when you discover that when you weren’t looking, you slipped from being a talent with a wide open future to being someone on the downhill side who is probably not ever going to be famous. Reasons for this include the state of publishing, but also that my particular obsessions have not been the ones that masses of people resonate with. Perhaps even more important is that the changes in entertainment habits and reading are making conditions not conducive to creative writing as a career.

I am as I write this editing an issue of a literary journal that will appear totally online-- digitalized poems and fiction and essays. Reading these poems and stories and essays will be a very different experience from reading a book or hard-copy journal. The private joy of curling up with a good book has not been replaced, but is sharing the position of leisure time activity with a whole slew of technologies– including my brother-in-law's Kindle with its downloaded books and newspapers on a small cool paper-like screen.

There are other technologies that have created activities that are related to reading, but different, especially by being interactive. There is this blogging world of relatively unpolished ideas and stories that people read and then respond to both in messages on the blog and in their own blogs. There is fan fiction in which readers write their own adventures and chapters for popular books– usually genre fiction. There is the constant stream of text messaging and emailing that people of all ages are doing– which is, of course, a new form of letter writing, a favorite literary activity of the past. I myself turn to the Internet for more and more of my information, and I adore the group-created public encyclopedia Wikipedia– we are like a hive there, working, on the whole, for the good of the group. Who would have imagined that tens of thousands of people would join together to create such a thing?

One doesn’t even know if the kind of novel writing career I imagined as a college student will even exist in fifty years. My personal opinion is not that we will stop reading, and not that there will be no novels, but that we are probably returning to a time when literature will be once again primarily an amateur activity. The amateurs I'm imagining, of course, include folks like Lady Murasaki Shikibu and Geoffrey Chaucer. Shakespeare himself never made a living as a writer but rather as a theater person who did whatever his troop needed to make theater, whether it was business activities or acting or writing plays. In the past, far fewer people could read, so the reading public was small; we are now coming out of a brief period when enough people could read and had the time to read to support professional prose and poetry writers. During the nineteenth and into the middle of the twentieth centuries, people read for entertainment– and for a large part of that period, the only entertainment was the printed word. Thus, people consumed everything thing written– narrative poems, novels, serialized stories in periodicals, broadsides, sermons, long letters– and here's the special thing: highly personal and artistic and experimental work was consumed right along with the conventional and the trashy because people needed material to read.

Today, the available materials for entertainment are myriad: movies and television and all the forms of entertainment like video and role playing games– the choice is vast, and the number of people who can make a living selling their creative writing is shrinking. The fact that so many people want to write (or at least to be writers) is an interesting sideline to this. Is it the experience of reading that has led them to this? Or the myth of the heroic novelist who suffers and then wins the Nobel Prize for Literature? Or is it only the leisurely life style people imagine novelists having? Thousands take writing classes, thousands more spend time writing privately. The general American belief that you can do what you put your mind to, plus the increasing interactivity of many of our media, supports this, and with the incredible affordability of book publishing with print on demand technology, many more will write, fewer will read; almost none will make a living as professional poets and fiction writers.

Had I been given the choice, would I have preferred to be a female Philip Roth– an artist but also popular, making a good living? Of course I would have chosen that. So, laying aside the whiff of sour grapes, I am having an exciting and deeply satisfying life in writing. I began by imitating (and wanting to be part of) the comic books that delighted me when I was five or six. I continued without any special awareness of what I was doing, playing as children do, imitating, engaging in dialog with, all the books I read, and the movies and television I saw, and of course with the life I lived.

Mirabile dictu, I have been writing for more than fifty years, and I expect always to be writing-- until they pry my cold dead fingers off keyboard– or my brain gets too fuzzy to bother with making sense of the world.

Books for Readers #111

August 8, 2008

Rainbow in the Berkshires

I’m writing this at the Weinberger family lake cottage in Western Massachusetts. We have spotty internet access, but the electricity usually works, so there are moments when I’m at my laptop, Andy is at his, and David at his! David even has a Kindle– the first one I’ve ever seen in the flesh, as it were. He likes it, but says everyone should wait till the price goes down and they re-engineer it so that when you shift your hand you don’t turn the page by accident.

David’s wife Ann, however, reads books.

So, I am on the screened porch overlooking lake, trees, humming birds, chipmunks, red squirrels, etc., feeling social and relaxed, and as I write this, it seems a good moment to thank some of the readers who send in suggestions, especially most recently: Ardian Gill (who suggested CARAVANS, an early James Michener novel of travel and adventure in Afghanistan); Jeremy Osner, who keeps an interesting blog (see below); Bill Higginson (poet and haiku blogger) who suggestions a novel; and Carol Brodick with suggestions for youth reading.

I’ve been extremely unsystematic in my reading lately, everything from the Michener novel to an excellent magazine/book of poetry MOBIUS to the popular boy-fun FIGHT CLUB (which I thought my son recommended, but it turns out he was talking about the movie with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton) to a couple of interesting books with World War II as a background.

First, Marion Cuba’s (see her essay in issue # 110) novel SHANGHAI LEGACY about the psychological damage done to a woman who lived through deplorable conditions in Shanghai during World War II. Shanghai was one of the few places where German Jews could get a visa to leave Germany, and this is about one of the families that went– and how their suffering under the Japanese occupation was visited on the narrator Maya, whose life is ostensibly satisfying and certainly comfortable, but no less damaged for all that. What is most fascinating is this ghetto that most of us know little about– in Shanghai. One of the great reasons the great genocides and holocausts are so horrible is how the precious fabric of ordinary life is rent beyond repair and even into the next generation.

An older book also with a Second World war setting is a surprising memoir by Mary Lee Settle, ALL THE BRAVE PROMISES. Settle recalls and writes about her early years when she, an American, wanted to be part of the great action of her generation and volunteered for the British Women’s Army Air Force. So much of this is totally unexpected– the way an American is treated during the Battle of Britain, class stresses among the British, lots of daily tedium and the occasional shock and horror of war. The style is breathless and occasionally repetitive, depending on swoops of rhetoric and a few too many generalizations assuming we know what she means or will agree without being convinced. It is, however, overall very readable and enjoyable--., an aspect of war that was new to me.

FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palaniuk, which was made into the popular movie, has an odd afterword that claims it was begun as a writing seminar exercise. It is in some ways a novel about men who wish they could have gone to war, with its tone of testosterone pretentiousness and delight in transgression. Knowing it’s at bottom literary makes sense. I kept reading, but can’t say I see a lot of point to it, except for early on some very funny passages, especially about two main characters who are addicted to 12 step program/support groups and make up appropriate illnesses. The verbal flights have a poetry too– in other words, it has some good writing and some funny stuff but I’m not sure this particular game was worth the candle to me.

Finally, I read the latest issue of a contemporary poetry magazine that is a very different experience. This was MÖBIUS: POETRY IS THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE. It has a beautiful silvery cover, and it is rich and full of poetry. The represented poets include Nikki Giovanni, Marge Piercy, Simon Perchik, the late Rochelle Ratner, and Queens Poet Laureate Julio Marzan. There are pieces by Joseph Bruchac and Robert Bly and Colette Inez and the publisher-editor herself, Juanita Torrence-Thompson (see a short review of her latest book of poetry below). The issue is dedicated to the filmmaker Gordon Parks, who was himself a poet, which I never knew: “So my heart lifts praise to a smiling autumn– /To those fallen years that no longer exist. (“No Apologies.”)

The book is full of wonderful lines, wonderful poetic journeys: “My mother’s mind was an attic” writes Marge Piercy in “The Conversation,” and Daniela Gioseffi writes a wonderful moment called “My Old Husband Has Brought Me Lilacs." There’s a brilliant prose poem by John Amen that is about trying to use a dying mother to shore up a failing marriage (“Coming Clean”), and a hilarious explosion of events beginning with a bottle of salad dressing (Bruna Mori’s “Cilantro Dressing from Trader Joe’s”). Along with the pieces by people whose work I’ve long enjoyed and known, there were poets I was delighted to meet, like Rhina Espaillat. It’s really a wonderful book, a pleasure to hold and dip into. It’s available from P.O. Box 671058, Flushing, NY 11367-1058 and from the web page .

-- Meredith Sue Willis

BILL HIGGINSON

“If you've ever thought about writing an autobiographical exposé, you might want to give Margaret Atwood's 2000 novel THE BLIND ASSASSIN a read first. The novel opens with the suicide of the younger of two sisters, who goes on to become a famous one-novel writer with her posthumous ‘book’ that gives this book its title. As things progress, we have three braided pieces of genre fiction: The elder sister's autobiography’ is really a mystery story that gradually becomes the center of the book. The younger sister's tale is a romance, of sorts. And the title work is a piece of fantasy science-fiction spun by the younger sister's lover, or so it seems. All of this is set mainly between the coming home of an injured WWI veteran, who is the sisters' father, and the immediate post-WWII period when the younger sister suicides. Economics and external tensions between capitalist-industrialists and unionists affect the families involved, but internal family politics makes these stories work together to a satisfactory, almost poetic, conclusion. Here I rediscovered Atwood's great gift for melding historical events and a wonderfully quirky, grudgingly self-revelatory character that I first found in her book of poems from 1970, THE JOURNALS OF SUSANNA MOODIE. In Atwood's hands, mortality is an elegant psychological adventure. If that entices you to seek her book out, good! I knew I was reading this braid, but it only occurred to me toward the end that I was reading these three different pieces of genre fiction."

JEREMY OSNER

Jeremy refers us to his notes on reading Sarakmago’s THE CAVE at http://readin.com/blog/?k=book:thecave . He asks, “What do you think about my idea that dialog in Saramago plays an opposite role to what it does in most novels -- I generally see dialog as sharpening the focus and bringing the reader in close to the scene, but Saramago's dialog has more of a softening effect, pulling the lens back and making you consider the story as a whole rather than the current scene.”

ARDIAN GILL

“I share most of the comments on THE ROAD (see issue #110) , but one has to stretch to find Hope at the end. One thing that bothered me was why are they going to the shore. It's bound to be bleak too. I took it merely to mean that he had to provide some hope for the kid and chose the shore, without any knowledge that it would reward the journey.

“I just read Michener's wonderful novel CARAVANS, set in Afghanistan in 1946. Before the Taliban, though the mullahs were there stoning an adulteress; before the Russians when they and the Americans were finagling for maximum influence. The story concerns a second tier embassy employee who has been assigned the job of locating an American woman married to a western-educated Afghanistan man. Her family hasn't heard from her for over a year and an important senator has put pressure on the state department to find her or learn of her fate. In the process he finds her Afghan husband, crosses a desert in an incredible experience with heat and desolation, is connected with a German Nazi doctor on the run from the Allies and useful to the medical poor Afghans. I won't give the story away but there are surprises galore when he finds her and I do want to tell that the history Michener piles in, the geography (they see the giant Buddha blown up by the Tailban) and the people in all their variety. Imagine the scene where 80,000 nomads are gathered in one place, with many more than that in camels, sheep and goats. By one mode or another they crisscross Afghanistan from east to west then south to north so ranging from the Indian border to the Russian one.It's a wonderful read and makes the latest Afghan book, the KITE RUNNER look like the second-rate work it is.

“On the other hand, a view of present-day Afghanistan is marvelously portrayed by THE PLACES IN BETWEEN, the story of a hike across Afghanistan from India to Iran (I think). Authors name forgotten but he's now in Iraq among the swamp people.”

CAROL BRODTRICK

Carol writes to say that she has found “some treasures in the latest batch of books from the library.”
She recommends A BEGINNING, A MUDDLE, AND AND END by AVI, “a book about writing for middle grade readers. But honestly, it's a book for every reader who enjoys play on words and humor with a bit of a twist. It's the story of two friends, Avon the snail and Edward the ant. Avon decides he wants to be a writer only he doesn't know how to proceed, so Edward helps out. Together they stumble along, never quite discovering a story to write, but discovering lots of good rules for writing. It's a charming book, fun for everyone, including writers.”

Next, she suggests MY DOG MAY BE A GENIUS by Jack Prelutsky.”This is a book of poetry for kids that grown ups can read aloud and laugh about with their children, and that children will love reading themselves. Some of the poems are nonsensical and it's the cadence and rhyme that makes them delightful. All the poems are quirky and humorous, like ‘I Do Not Like November.’ It goes like this:

I do not like November.
November is no fun.
I do not mind the other months,
but truly dread this one.

It is the month we celebrate
Thanksgiving in our land.
Alas, I am a turkey--
perhaps you understand.

The author, Jack Prelutsky, is known as the first Children's Poet Laureate, and the illustrator, James Stevenson, has illustrated many books for children.”

Finally she recommends THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, “an absolutely entertaining adult read, full of danger, mystery, revenge and lust. Stephen King describes it best, and I quote: ‘If you thought the true gothic novel died with the 19th century, this will change your mind. THE SHADOW OF THE WIND is the real deal, full of cheesy splendor. . . .’ And it is. The book begins in Barcelona, in 1945 when Daniel Sempere discovers a mysterious book by a mysterious author, and a rich adventure begins, spinning like a top through an intricate plot that incorporates unsavory characters, beautiful women, and obsession.”

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

In his July 7, 2008 column for THE MORGANTOWN DOMINION POST (http://www.dominionpost.com.), Norman Julan reviews and recommends two books about the extraction of coal in West Virginia and its effects on people: MONONGAH from West Virginia University Press and COAL RIVER by Michael Shnayerson, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

POETRY BOOK!

Juanita Torrence-Thompson’s latest poetry collection is called NEW YORK AND AFRICAN TAPESTRIES. She writes poems about New York and the world. Her work is full of a gusto for life and an enthusiam for her subjects. One group of poems is called “Eleven on Nine Eleven.” She writes of travel both geographic and through time. My favorites include two separate odes to the Queens Borough Bridge, “We’ll Always Have Queens Borough Bridge, ”which describes the structure as “Layer upon layer/like gray strawberry shortcake,” and “Ode to the Queens Borough Bridge,” addressed to “Oh durable sister/luminous in the sunlight.” Her poems about her mother are sharp and vivid, and come as close as you can in words to touching the essence of a vital human being who stays vital and human even at the end of life. One family poem that I like especially is “If Only I Could...” which is at once about the ordinary tasks of a real life and about the accompanying music of imagination.

POETRY ONLINE

If you have an interest in Haiku, renku, and other Asian poetry, don’t miss Bill Higginson’s blog and more at http://haikaipub.wordpress.com/about/ .

MORE ONLINE READING

Now Available! THE HAMILTON STONE REVIEW, Issue 15, Summer 2008 online at http://www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr15.html Featuring poetry by Allen Bramhall, Janet Butler, Craig Cotter, Chad Heltzel, Reamy Jansen, Sheila Murphy and Douglas Barbour, Rick Marlatt, Simon Perchik, Meg Pokrass, Gabriele Quartero, Joseph Somoza, Ron Winkler, and Robert E. Wood; and fiction by Nora Costello, Hallie Elizabeth Newton, J. C. Frampton, Sharmila Mukherjee, and Luke Rolfes. THE HAMILTON STONE REVIEW publishes three times a year: in June, October, and February.

GOOD NEWS

Of Redjeb Jordania’s new book ESCAPE FROM SOUTH FORK AND OTHER STORIES, Dominic Ambrose says, “If every person’s life story can fill a book, Redjeb Jordania's can fill a bookshelf. The brilliant stories in this collection are just a small taste of the vast panorama of his experiences. From the waters of Montauk to the mountains of the Caucasus and Paris in war times, he takes you on a whirlwind tour that opens unexpected vistas and insights. With easy wit, irony and masterful description he brings us into his world to make us better understand our own.”

Larissa Shmailo’s new poetry cd, EXORCISM, is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2, and her new chapbook, A CURE FOR SUICIDE, is now available from the Cervena Barva Press bookstore at http://www.thelostbookshelf.com. See below for her upcoming appearances.

Nathan Leslie’s latest is BEST OF THE WEB 2008, is the first-ever anthology of online literary work from online magazines. He is the series editor. It’s a compilation of the very best stories, poems, and essays of last year. The book has received some nice initial reviews and a forthcoming review is slated to appear in the L.A. Times. Here’s a link: http://www.dzancbooks.org/bow.html .

Rosary Hartel O’Neill’s plays have just been published: A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN AND OTHER NEW ORLEANS COMEDIES and GHOSTS OF NEW ORLEANS. These two volumes of plays collect work of much produced and honored Rosary Hartel O’Neill set in and about her home town of New Orleans, Louisiana. The Plays in GHOSTS are historical– about figures like Edgar Degas and John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, who all had New Orleans connections. The LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN plays are about people in New Orleans in the more recent past– the years just before Hurricane Katrina. The characters are vivid and naturally dramatic– there is a joie de vivre in language, in emotion, even in struggle. Everyone seems born to be on stage– that is, the characters see themselves as having dramatic, expressive, and meaningful lives– and readers are pulled in and believe it too. The characters and the city seem equally essential here; one feels enriched and enlivened for having encountered them.

Barbara Crooker has yet another poem on WRITERS ALMANAC with Garrison Keillor, "Patty's Charcoal Drive-In." Listen to it on the web. Visit her website at http://www.barbaracrooker.com .

WORKSHOPS. READINGS, BOOK PARTIES

Poetry Workshop taught by Ellen Bass in New York City on October 25 and 26, 2008. Both experienced and beginning poets are welcome. Class size is limited to fifteen poets. For information, get in touch with Ellen Bass at Ellen Bass ellen@ellenbass.com or see http://www.ellenbass.com .

Larissa Shmailo will be at the Cornelia Street Cafee on Wednesday, August 20 at 6pm. George Wallace presents an evening of poetry. $7 includes house drink. More Larissa: September 13 at 8pm The Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street and at The Stain Bar on September 26 at 7 pm, 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn.

SUBMIT

The Appalachian Writers Anthology is encouraging submissions of original works of poetry and fiction (up to 2500 words). The submission deadline is September 1, 2008. For information about the anthology and submission guidelines, please see http://www.shepherd.edu/ahwirweb/anthology/.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

FULCRUM #6 is available at http://fulcrumpoetry.com for more information or to acquire a copy.

I LOVE TO WRITE DAY

Here’s something different: Take a look at http://www.ilovetowriteday.org/