The 28th president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust was the first woman and the first Southerner in the job. She had a relatively long tenure,The 28th president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust was the first woman and the first Southerner in the job. She had a relatively long tenure, 2007-2018, given the way things are going now. This memoir outlines her family's family and "how she got to be that way," but what it really does is show how she sprung singular from the head of Athena, the war goddess.
It seems Faust was always destined to fight against the strictures and unfairnesses she observed from her place in restricted White southern society. But her way of telling the story chafed. Perhaps it is because I am nearly her age and I ache to think no one was able to break down the barriers behind which her mother hid before her early death. Faust is smart, well-educated and articulate but she chafes, knowing so much.
She ends her memoir at the time of her graduation from college. One presumes she went on to honors and studying history. I remember when she was chosen to lead Harvard--I was impressed and proud, being a woman myself. I admire what she was able to do but I don't have to like her, do I?...more
This Vintage paperback original published just published this October is the kind of thing people slaving away in their individual silos might like toThis Vintage paperback original published just published this October is the kind of thing people slaving away in their individual silos might like to read in snatches to put major figures in history in their proper perspective. I always wanted something like this when I was learning history: ordinarily we look individually at parts of the world. This book integrates history.
Each figure Montefiore chooses to introduce ordinarily gets a page or two. This is just enough to tell the major contributions of figures you may have only heard of but didn’t know why they were remembered. What was so interesting for me was that the history is chronological so we can see widely disparate events, discoveries, inventions with their contemporaneous personages elsewhere in the world, Walter Raleigh was roughly contemporaneous with Tokugawa Ieyasu and Akbar the Great.
In one memorable entry, Montefiore places the Borgias together: Pope Alexander VI and his children, Cesare and his sister Lucrezia. The details of this family are so gruesome—the face slowly destroyed by syphilis and covered with a golden mask—that we wonder their foothold lasted so long and the conditions of society that produced it. Rodrigo Borgia, who eventually called himself Pope Alexander VI, was reputed to be seductively charming in person but that hardly seems enough to sustain a reign of debauchery and vice. Montefiore gives a few clues which the interested reader might pursue to a more rigorous study.
Women, South Americans, and Black Africans get relatively short shrift, but then so have they through time. These are names we for the most part recognize already, giving us a few short details about the lives of each. Isaac Babel and Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov have back-to-back entries, Babel being noted for his Red Calvary stories relating the brutality of Lenin’s 1920 war on Poland. Yezhov is remembered for the frenzy of his arrests as a secret policeman under Stalin, anticipating the direction of the leader without explicit instructions. He does the job requested of him but “he doesn’t know when to stop,” is how a colleague described him.
In the modern day, relatively few people are singled out, and those are mostly politicians or government leaders. JFK, Gorbachav, Elvis, Saddam Hussein, Muhammed Ali, Pol Pot, Thatcher…there are a few others, but the weighting is clear. In the end this book is grist for the mill. We can argue about what the author has chosen, but we would have to put together a series of arguments. It could be a fruitful endeavor for someone interested in how individuals shape events....more
This first novel by Cusk won the Whitbread Award for First Novel in 1993 and it seems worthy of that distinction. It is less tentative than we would hThis first novel by Cusk won the Whitbread Award for First Novel in 1993 and it seems worthy of that distinction. It is less tentative than we would have reason to expect though it depicts a just-new woman carrying a load of insecurities while trying to navigate a large city.
Ultimately Agnes manages to find her way outside the maze inside her own head, recognize the privilege of her upbringing, and to feel something for the difficulties of others, but it is a tough couple hundred pages until she gets there. It is not so much funny as pathetic, and that is because we recognize something of ourselves (and perhaps our children) in her.
I wish I’d had more time to concentrate on this novel, though the reason l didn’t is that I always found time to do something besides read it. Reading about Agnes was uncomfortable. Agnes (what a name!) was so unsure of herself it was painful. I do remember those years but do not miss them. It is a miracle we make it through, though Cusk puts in a couple reminders that some folks nearly don’t, and many don’t come through without damage.
We see the promise of Cusk in this novel in that her seemingly lightweight protagonist manages to discern the outlines of consequential existential questions— about the purpose of life— and this doesn’t change in her later work. Cusk is a heat-seeking missile for “the heart of the matter” and that is why readers eagerly seek out the next installment in how she describes what she has discovered.
Ultimately I was reading this novel at this time is for completionist reasons, but it also strangely dovetailed a major life moment. My oldest brother who’d had a major influence on my life trajectory died suddenly. Preparing his memorial service involved creating a short slideshow—he was a photographer and oceanographer, among other descriptors. He’d taken pictures of me beginning my travels overseas alone at the age of Cusk’s Agnes. Reading of Agnes’ mental circularities, uncertainties, and anxieties reminded me what I’d ditched as soon as I could.
I am having a look at all Cusk’s books to see how she got from here to her adaptation of Medea and the Outline trilogy. I have one novel left, The Temporary, before I will need to circle back to read her later work again. I admire her writing and think her work resonates, particularly for white women of a certain level of wealth, education, and age. That is not to say her later work doesn’t speak to universal experience—I think it does—but I wonder if the humor translates as well. She is easily in the ranks of America’s now dead male writers, Updike and Roth, whose work was claimed by a generation of white men of a certain level of wealth and education.
This early novel feels dated now: it was written twenty-five years ago. Reading about Agnes’s travails reminded me that young women today likely have different experiences with first sex, with boyfriends, girlfriends, even parents. Our relationships have been changed by cell phones and connectedness, and at the risk of seeming out of touch, I venture that the rate of change truly has speeded up. Perhaps everything we really need to learn can, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, be found in our own backyards after all. There is something to be said for getting a firm foundation in a more limited environment before being hit with the world, but perhaps those faced with choice early are better at navigating it. Whatever the case, we’re not in Kansas anymore. ...more
Scott Walker could be likened to a sharpened pencil. He does what he is told to do, but appears wooden. This is clear even from the words he uses in hScott Walker could be likened to a sharpened pencil. He does what he is told to do, but appears wooden. This is clear even from the words he uses in his own memoir of his time in the governor’s office, when he faced a recall vote a year and a half after taking office. This man, after fighting the most bitter and divisive fight in his state’s history against collective bargaining rights for public unions, wants to take his show national. The mind reels.
Having previously been a Milwaukee County Executive before running for Governor in 2010, Walker was undoubtedly aware of problems Milwaukee faced. His plan to cut benefits (retirement & health care contributions) to public employees would initially cause a financial transfer to wealthier counties who saved more in cuts to employee compensation than they lost in state aid. “… the city of Waukesha, Milwaukee Public Schools, and Milwaukee County—Walker’s old charge—lost more than they saved, at least in the short term.”
“In the long term, there was a clear advantage for the budgets of Milwaukee Country and the Milwaukee Public Schools, which faced problems funding retiree health care and pensions far in excess of the typical local government in Wisconsin…An actuary found that the district lowered its projected obligation to retirees by a whopping $1 billion, or 42 percent, between 2009 and 2011.”
However, Walker did not keep another of his campaign pledges to the working poor. Walker cut the earned income tax credit by $40 million over two years and froze the homestead tax credit, which helps low-income homeowners and renters. Additionally, he cut aid to local governments by $1.25 billion because he refused to raise taxes while trying to balance the budget. But “…we are providing almost $1.5 billion in savings through our budget repair bill,” Walker explained. It's difficult to decide but Walker sounds like he is too thick to get it. Saving money that people need to live may not be productive.
Anyway, this book is quite nuanced in its examination of just how the protests played out, how less than two hours’ notice was given after 4 p.m. to convene state Republican legislators to force a vote upon quorum requirements, which allowed them to bypass Democrat approval, and to finally pass a bill limiting collective bargaining for public employees. Because the legislature refused entry to some citizens wishing to view proceedings when the bills were presented, the new law faced legal challenges and the bitter enmity of Democrats. It was a very ugly business.
I don’t think this is what our founding fathers had in mind, though maybe it is. We’ve read of vicious battles fought in the name of governing that have come before. Procedures here were challenged, declared null, challenged again…just like happened when voting districts were drawn in the middle of the night by WI Republicans alone to favor their own party & limit debate, using maps made up by the national GOP. This gerrymandering was declared unfair by the state supreme court, challenged again by Republican lawmakers and sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be pushed aside in this summer’s session, undecided.
What is amply clear is that events in Wisconsin presage the division we now see splitting states around the union. Clearly there are differences of opinion about who “deserves” more, which is something we really do need to reach agreement on. Considering Republicans have only money and not even smart spokespeople or good ideas (if their ideas are so good, why is it so hard to convince people of their efficacy?), we who do not agree with the way they cut the cake are going to have to show that money is not the most valuable thing we can own.
The truth is, I would go along with some ‘conservative’ ideas if wages were higher and more equitably distributed. We can’t force companies to change their wage scales, but we can make it impracticable to give enormous bonuses to a few while forcing virtual enslavement (and state assistance) upon the rest. Tax them. If we take taxes off the table, the ‘Republican’ budget packages go bust because after all, they are protecting corporations, not people. Now, our economy is based on corporations, so everyone wants them to succeed. We just have to be honest about who we’re looking to serve. All of us, or just a few? Are we a nation or a rug for billionaires?
The hateful disregard among dissenting points of view that we experience now is very difficult for me to take. This book shows us how bad things can get, and what we have to face if we can’t control people’s anger. We should all be trying to lower the level of acrimony, learning as much as we can so as to find some answers that work for all of us. This book allows us to make decisions on what can happen without having to go through it ourselves. It is very useful....more
Kurlansky is justly famous for his earlier works about Salt and Cod, among other things, so when I saw this 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing nonfiction abouKurlansky is justly famous for his earlier works about Salt and Cod, among other things, so when I saw this 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing nonfiction about Milk, I was interested. I was particularly interested to see what he would say about humans consuming milk after infancy, when approximately sixty percent of the world's human population appear to lose their tolerance for and ability to digest lactose. Europeans, Middle Easterners, North Africans and some of the Indian subcontinent appear to lack a gene which shuts off production of lactase--an intestinally-controlled enzyme which digests lactose present in all milk.
In 2006 Cornell University's T. Colin Campbell published his thirty-year study on the eating habits of Chinese people called The China Study. The findings of Campbell's study blew me away, one of which was that consumption of milk products can cause osteoporosis in adults, a finding exactly opposite to what we have been told here in America. Kurlansky does not mention this startling information, sadly. But Campbell's study made me look closely at where the promotion of milk products was coming from—the industry itself, and lobbyists targeting government scientists, commercial attachés, and spokespeople.
Kurlanksy does remark on lactose intolerance briefly at the beginning and again in the section on China. He indicates that while there is a growing tolerance for dairy products gradually in China among the wealthier and more worldly citizens, it fights with the notion that the Chinese are genetically lactose intolerant. It may be that livestock was discouraged in a country which needed all possible land for food production, and that reintroducing dairy stimulates the production of lactase.
Kurlansky mostly elucidates the uses of milk in the part of the world that uses it daily, giving recipes that have survived the ages, showing some changes in those recipes over time. And certainly coincidentally but with a weird synchronicity he discusses breast-feeding throughout the world and throughout history. Breastfeeding has come and gone in popularity, with scientists in the past forty years generally concluding that until clean water and sterile bottles and low pricing for formula could be achieved throughout the world, perhaps breast milk was superior to any industrial formula.
It is now de rigueur to pump breast milk, offering convenience and nutrition. Pumping breast milk induces lactating mothers to produce more than they need, which has led to an oversupply. Some entrepreneurs have endeavored to sell soap made with breast milk; those selling breast milk ice cream in London found they couldn’t keep up with demand. Some sell breast milk on the internet to athletes who believe it makes them stronger. Some people buy it when they are ill, believing it has medicinal qualities. Some testing internet purchases found 10% of the time cow’s milk was mixed in, while 75% was contaminated with bacteria and/or pathogens.
It turns out that yogurt made from yak milk makes that made from cow’s milk seem boring and tasteless due to the high percentage of fat in yak’s milk. Consumption of milk in the United States has declined almost 40% since the 1970s, and now large scale industrial farming is the key to survival of the industry. At the end, Kurlansky takes another quick trip around the world to look at how dairy farms manage and what problems they are encountering now, including some of the profit calculations small producers are making.
Kurlanky is a wonderful writer of nonfiction who manages to take on big subjects and make them intelligible to the non-specialist. If you are looking for specific information, this book may simply be too diffuse, but Kurlansky is a wonderful host for a general reader....more
I guess one doesn’t get to be ambassador to a nation important to our security concerns by being a shrinking violet. McFaul clearly is not that. RightI guess one doesn’t get to be ambassador to a nation important to our security concerns by being a shrinking violet. McFaul clearly is not that. Right from the start he admits that he sometimes mixed his academic concerns with activism. He thought the moment for the Russia’s transition to democracy was at hand, and he not only wanted to witness it, he wanted to midwife.
My biggest objection to this over-long memoir of McFaul’s time studying & serving as U.S. government apparatchik in Russia is that I didn’t learn anything. We hear beaucoup details of the results of McFaul’s tweets, meetings with dissidents, official meetings, but nothing stood out as new information. Except perhaps one thing.
I wasn’t aware that Putin appeared not to like the foreign policy side of his work running the government. While Medvedev was President of Russia (2008-2012), McFaul had a conversation with then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who turned away any questions regarding foreign policy, referring them to Medvedev, while he appeared content to concern himself with military affairs, readiness, weaponry, etc. This could have just been Putin wisely not wanting to inadvertently wander outside his wheelhouse, compromising his stated role. Later he felt confident returning to role of president, and presumably still finds the foreign policy side difficult.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is mentioned so seldom in McFaul’s memoir that this reader is curious. McFaul clearly felt he had the ear of President Obama…and didn’t waste time adding any layers to his reporting. He did speak later more effusively and extensively of John Kerry, who came after Secretary Clinton. It makes me think Kerry insisted upon being the intermediary between McFaul and Obama, as I would have done.
McFaul seems capable enough, but he is seriously loud when it comes to blowing his own horn. I am suspicious of anyone so sure of what another country should be doing politically. I’m afraid I agree that, within limits, we really shouldn’t interfere in other countries’ affairs. I don’t object to studying nascent movements of liberation and democratization, but I do have a problem with influencing the course of events in an overt way (or perhaps more importantly, in a covert way). No wonder Putin doesn't like him.
Of course McFaul should not be questioned by Putin & there is no moral equivalency with what McFaul did and what the Russian operatives did to influence our election. McFaul does give us examples of how the 'false news' narrative was happening in Russia a long time before it showed up in the U.S.--exactly the same kind of thing we are experiencing now with officials actually denying what they just said or did. Freaky. Who would have believed it? but it turns out to be effective.
I began reading this memoir but quickly realized I could not just sit there & handle the level of detail McFaul included. I switched to audio so that I could listen while working on other things (refinishing furniture, as it happens), and it was not the voice of the reader, L.J. Ganser, that made me peevish but the words that McFaul chose and the things he decided to tell us. I'm sure he is a perfectly nice person, but I'm also sure he would roll right over me....more
I am interested in this topic but perhaps I have read too many of this type of book--can anyone read too much of this topic?--e.g., that objections thI am interested in this topic but perhaps I have read too many of this type of book--can anyone read too much of this topic?--e.g., that objections that we're in a post-racial society have exaggerated our successes when speaking of the race issue in America.
Wise writes well and has a long pedigree for working on anti-racism issues. He certainly is able to articulate instances of bone-headedness and lack of careful thought around the arguments presented by those who oppose racial equality. Perhaps it is the articulation of the prejudiced arguments before presenting counter-arguments that bothered me. The arguments almost don't bear rebuttal, they seem so infantile.
The form of this book was also difficult for me: there were simply two large chapters with no place to rest one's argument or take a breather. It seems almost as though the author or editor could have placed individual arguments in their own chapter to make it easier for us to find if we needed to look for them again.
She's funny, there's no doubt about it. However...you know how some comedians have no 'off' button, or in some cases, no understanding of 'too much'? She's funny, there's no doubt about it. However...you know how some comedians have no 'off' button, or in some cases, no understanding of 'too much'? Yeah. This book makes you ask yourself if Irby is just too much. Open to ANY page and begin reading. You're absorbed immediately. It's a book with only dirty bits left in, none of the boring or predictable bits. Who can live like this?
It's exhausting. But in small doses, it can be just the ticket.
To say Irby has a potty mouth is understating, but her instincts for what is funny are undeniable. We get inklings of what she was like as a youngster: I dare say she was an innocent once...she just wised up faster than all of us. She can write like a dream, and shines a bright light on serious topics. She pokes fun at herself, so you can bet she's not gonna spare you. Weight, race, sexual orientation, class, part of the country...all come under her gaze, and she catches us out.
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I just want to register the notion that Irby has my permission to actually relax a little, not fake-relax as in writing jokes. She doesn't have to be 'on' all the time, though it looks from these popular books that she feels an obligation to keep it up nonstop. Nah. Unnecessary. Look, no one else in the world is doing it. Because they can't. Because it may not be that healthy. I'd like to see under the mask ... now, I SAY that, but maybe I don't... really...NO!
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P.S. I am tired of adding books to the 'race' shelf if a writer just touches on race in their commentary. Like Zadie Smith says in her book of essays, Feel Free: Essays, there was a moment in the history of American literature when the work of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow were so spectacular and spoke to so many of us that Great Jewish-American Writer was turned into Great American Writer. I want that for us again. I acknowledge race, but it's not all there is, as this woman shows us. We're all Americans. Is it time for that change? I feel I am ready, but I am usually in advance of the pack. (That's not always usually a good thing.)
This is a terrific two-book series. I am even more impressed with the second book than I was with the first. This so completely encompasses the non-whThis is a terrific two-book series. I am even more impressed with the second book than I was with the first. This so completely encompasses the non-white majority in the world, I started to wonder if the first one was mostly white Europeans and Americans. But it wasn't.
The books are composed of completely engrossing personal profiles of interesting women who managed, despite dysfunction in their society or families, managed to make something of their dreams. It is written as though for girls, but anyone over the age of ten would find something entrancing in here.
In the early days of Goodreads, I initially chose a user name for myself that was long-lived, historical, distinctive, and not often chosen by others.In the early days of Goodreads, I initially chose a user name for myself that was long-lived, historical, distinctive, and not often chosen by others. I chose the name Clytemnestra. I didn’t really know anything about her; I vaguely remembered there was some violence attached to her name. When a couple of people mentioned that user name when they contacted me, I thought, you know, that I should really find out more about Clytemnestra before I couple her name with my own.
Years later, I have this lovely, dense paperback written by Robert Graves, poet, historian, novelist, memoirist. In it, Graves explains that the story of Clytemnestra—her death at least—is not fixed exactly, and is still disputed. Suffice it to say that she was killed, somehow, by her son Orestes, some say for good reason. However, I am more inclined than ever to couple her name with mine and may again one day, after learning what I have about her life in this book.
Unless I am missing something, it appears Clytemnestra was married to Tantalus, King of Pisa, when Agamemnon killed him in battle and forcibly married Clytemnestra as war spoils. Clytemnestra was Helen of Troy’s sister, and therefore, we deduce, not as lovely as the famed Helen but perhaps not so far behind in terms of beauty and skill. Clytemnestra’s brothers, The Dioscuri, came to rescue her from Agamemnon in Mycenae, but Clytemnestra’s father Tyndareus forgave Agamemnon and allowed him to keep Clytemnestra.
Clytemnestra bore Agamemnon one son, Orestes, and three daughters: Electra, Iphigeneia, and Chrysothemis. Iphigeneia may have been Clytemnestra’s niece, daughter of Helen and Theseus, whom she adopted. When Agamemnon set sail with Menelaus for Troy to bring Helen back after she left with Paris, winds whipped up by Artemis prevented them from getting to Troy, and so Agamemnon decided unilaterally to sacrifice—as in kill—Iphigeneia to appease Artemis.
Clytemnestra, who already hated Agamemnon for killing her first husband and forcing her into marriage against her will, was beside herself for Agamemnon’s killing an innocent teen she looked upon as her daughter. In the ten years Agamemnon was away, Clytemnestra had a sexual relationship with a man who also had a reason to hate Agamemnon, Aegisthus. When she learned from a provocateur wishing to inflame her feelings of vengeance that Agamemnon planned to bring back the King of Troy’s daughter Cassandra and the children she bore to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra’s thoughts turned bloody.
Up to this time, Clytemnestra is entirely blameless. She slept with a man not her husband, but her current husband had killed her first husband, forced her into marriage, and was spreading his seed far and wide. It is said she would have been happy had Agamemnon never returned, but he did, and she beheaded him in the bath after pretending to welcome him home. Clytemnestra was unafraid of divine retribution, thinking her own acts retribution in themselves.
So what of the children from the union of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon? Orestes was raised by his grandparents Tyndareus and Leda. He was ten years of age and not at his mother’s place when Agamemnon returned from Troy. When he learned Agamemnon had been killed and his body disrespected in burial, Orestes felt he had to avenge the death. Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover, lived for seven years in Agamemnon’s place, but was subservient to the true ruler of Mycenae, Clytemnestra, who finally came into her own as a ruler and leader.
When Orestes had grown to manhood and consulted the Delphic Oracle, he learned Apollo’s answer, authorized by Zeus, that he must avenge the death of his father lest he become an outcast from society and stricken with leprosy. At the same time, the Furies would not look kindly on matricide, so Orestes must defend himself against the Furies with a special bow of horn, which Apollo gave to Orestes. Some twenty years later, he returned to his mother’s house. Clytemnestra did not recognize her son. After Orestes had killed Aegisthus, whom he had tricked into letting down his guard, Clytemnestra saw he was her son. Some versions say he beheaded her at her own home, some say he gave her over to a court of law and they convicted her to death. (Why do I mistrust this version?) Another version says that Electra entices Clytemnestra to visit her home with news that she bore a child to her peasant husband. Clytemnestra, eager to see a grandson, was killed by Orestes who was hiding in Electra's house. This one actually breaks my heart.
Electra, Clytemnestra’s first daughter, had been betrothed to Castor of Sparta, but Aegisthus was afraid she might bear a son to avenge his grandfather and wanted to kill her. Clytemnestra forbade this, but allowed Aegisthus to force Electra to marry a Mycenaean peasant who was then afraid to consummate the marriage. (It is said he feared Orestes' wrath.) Electra was thus powerless, kept in poverty, and threatened with imprisonment and banishment if she called Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ‘murderous adulterers.’
Her sister, Chrysothemis, unmentioned in this telling and despised by Electra for her subservience and disservice to her father’s memory, is a fascinating child of myth. In some viewpoints since this myth came into being, Chrysothemis was the pious and noble daughter according to the matrilineal law still golden in some parts of Greece at this time. (Who knew?) Ignorant as I am, I must have picked up in various places the notion that Clytemnestra was perfectly within her rights to kill the philandering, murdering husband who left her. Call it matrilineal if you must, but at some point you must call a spade a spade.
This is what the notes by Graves have to say:
1. This is a crucial myth with numerous variants. Olympianism had been formed as a religion of compromise between the pre-Hellenic matriarchal principle and the Hellenic patriarchal principle; the divine family consisting, at first of six gods and six goddesses. An uneasy balance of power was kept until Athene was reborn from Zeus’s head, and Dionysus, reborn from his thigh, took Hestia’s seat at the divine Council; thereafter male preponderance in any divine debate was assured—a situation reflected on earth—and the goddesses’ ancient prerogatives could now be successfully challenged.
2. Matrilinear inheritance was one of the axioms taken over from the pre-Hellenic religion. Since every king must necessarily be a foreigner, who ruled by virtue of his marriage to an heiress, royal princes learned to regard their mother as the main support of the kingdom, and matricide as an unthinkable crime. They were brought up on myths of the earlier religion, according to which the sacred king had always been betrayed by his goddess-wife, killed by his tanist, and avenged by his son; they knew the son never punished his adulterous mother, who had acted with the full authority of the goddess whom she served.
Is this relevant to the world we live in today? It could very well be relevant. I’d had no idea about matrilineal law in ancient Greece, and somewhere along the way this got superseded with a patrilineal system, a kind of law I like far less well. Matrilineal law has always made sense to me, not just because I am a woman.
Crucial myth, indeed. Graves tells us the Furies had always acted for the mother only: Aeschylus is “forcing language” when he speaks of The Furies avenging paternal blood. Moreover, the White Goddess Leprea inflicts or cures leprosy, not Apollo or Zeus. “In the sequel,” Graves tell us, not all the Furies accept Apollo’s Delphic ruling and Euripedes “appeases his female audience by allowing the Dioscuri to suggest Apollo’s injunctions had been most wise.”
I will read Euripedes’ plays. I may have, in ignorance, chosen the perfect avatar in Clytemnestra, situated as she in between a society who reveres and respects matrilineal rule and and the struggle with a patrilineal line. Clytemnestra was not especially kind to the children she bore with Agamemnon, and this is regrettable. I would have preferred she love her children regardless of where they were sourced, but since she is not the one who gets to tell the story, we’ll never know the truth of it. She intervened to prevent overt harm to her children several times; we must take this at least at face value....more
bell hooks was especially prolific in the early part of this century, publishing sometimes two books a year. This book, published in 2001, has two epibell hooks was especially prolific in the early part of this century, publishing sometimes two books a year. This book, published in 2001, has two epigraphs to set the tone.
“Salvation is being on the right road, not having reached a destination.” —MLK, Jr.
“…to be aware of who we are, what we are, what we are doing, what we are thinking, seems to be a very easy thing to do—and yet it is the most important thing; to remember—the starting point of the salvation of oneself.” —Thich Nhat Hanh in The Raft is Not the Shore
This is another of hooks' conversational books, not so academic that we stumble on the words or the concepts, but with clear sentences. Perhaps one day, with all the struggle for fairness, justice, and rights, black people will lead the nation and show the world how to resist domination. She quotes Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright who died so tragically young and who will nonetheless never be forgotten for her timeless play, Raisin in the Sun:
‘Perhaps we shall be the teachers when it is done. Out of the depths of pain we have thought to be our sole heritage for this world—O we know about love’
hooks points out that “Baldwin and Hansberry believed that black identity was forged in triumphant struggle to resist dehumanization, that the choice to love was a necessary dimension of liberation.”
In Chapter One, hooks lays out a spiritual crisis—an emotional and material crisis—in the black community, members of which are experiencing lovelessness. hooks wrote this is 2001, but it is something we can see clear as day in our society right now.
“As long as black folks normalize loss and abandonment, acting as though is an easy feat to overcome the psychological wounds this pain inflicts, we will not lay the groundwork for emotional well being that makes love possible.”
That just makes so much sense to me, and it is clear that some white and black folks don’t expect love from anyone, and they don’t know how to share it, either. Love does not play a part in their lives at all. hooks’ chapter headings in this book give us some idea of where she is going with the thinking in this book:
The Issue of Self-Love Valuing Ourselves Rightly Moving Beyond Shame Mama Love Cherishing Single Mothers Loving Black Masculinity Heterosexual Love Union & Reunion Embracing Gayness Unbroken Circles Loving Justice
On this 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, it is appropriate for bell hooks to praise what MLK got entirely right: that his love ethic is central to any meaningful challenge to domination. But what he missed, hooks says, is that although MLK addressed the need for black folk to love their enemies and oppressors, but he did not address enough the need for black folk to love themselves.
hooks tells us that MLK and Malcom X were both assassinated just when they’d begun to hone a truly revolutionary vision of liberation, one rooted both in a love ethic and a willingness to resist domination in all its forms. But we’re still here, and we need that vision more than ever in this world of haves and have-nots. We are all foot soldiers in this battle for right....more
I was unprepared for this comedic play which seems impossibly modern and slapstick. I was looking for a copy of The Frogs, attributed to Aristophanes I was unprepared for this comedic play which seems impossibly modern and slapstick. I was looking for a copy of The Frogs, attributed to Aristophanes and performed 405 B.C. This particular edition was translated by Richard Lattimore, who translated a popular version of the Iliad, though it seems dated now. This play, on the other hand, virtually jumps off the page with vitality & energy.
Lattimore has translated this humor broadly; he says in his introduction to this play that he hates to explain the humor to us because that always makes it unfunny, but I would guess it is beyond the vast majority of folks to understand he is satirizing Aeschylus and Euripides...I suppose it works as general comedy, but it would certainly be better for those who have studied Classics.
I give it four stars only because I'm not sure I got it completely...and I wouldn't want to give Aristophanes less than that....more
bell hooks shares her upbringing and personal history with us in this book, and for that reason it is worth savoring. She has a very conversational stbell hooks shares her upbringing and personal history with us in this book, and for that reason it is worth savoring. She has a very conversational style in this book; she is not writing a polemic. But she is teaching. This book reminds us that America does indeed have a class hierarchy, and indicates how that plays out for citizens.
hooks reminds us that in a culture where money is the measure of value, it is believed that everything and everybody can be bought. But money is not the standard where other values are more important:
“Solidarity with the poor is the only path that can lead out nation back to a vision of community that can effectively challenge and eliminate violence and exploitation.”
Acquiring wealth or items of value make us fearful that someone will take those things away from us. hooks herself had such an experience, having bought a fancy car she found herself being less generous. A material object with which she identified altered her relationship to others. She caught this recognizable mindset exactly: human beings do this. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t admire or have lovely things. We just have to acknowledge they change us and our relationship with others, and find a way to compensate for this. Money or beautiful things is not the point, not the point of our existence. We have to look harder, deeper for that.
This book was published in 2000, shortly after hooks’ prolific period studying, writing, speaking in the 1990s. The push for more—more money, more power—has always been with us but hadn’t infected the vast middle class, perhaps because it was unimaginable, until this period when unheard-of wealth was within reach for many in the middle class. hooks is just reminding us not to lose our sensibility to the false god, gold.
Chapter Five, called “The Politics of Greed,” is just as relevant now as it was when written twenty years or so ago, perhaps more so. That’s the thing with bell hooks: she seems to have sprung full-grown from the head of Athena or whomever. She is grounded in a way we can dream of, finding her way to answers some of us will only discover in old age, if at all. She talks about addiction in a way that hurts, it seems so familiar to many now.
“Those who suffer the weight of this greed-based predatory capitalism are the addicted. Robbed of the capacity to function as citizens of any community (unable to work, to commune with others, even to eat), they become the dehumanized victims of an ongoing protracted genocide. Unlike the drugs used in the past, like marijuana and heroin, drugs like cocaine and crack/cocaine disturbed the mental health of the addicted and created in them cravings so great that no moral or ethical logic could intervene to stop immoral behavior.”
We recognize this language today, though the drug choice has changed to opioids.
In her chapter entitled “Being Rich,” hooks explains that the poor and working class have been taught by mass media to think like and aspire to the values and attitudes of the rich ruling classes, ideologically joining with the rich to protect their class interests. We are all taught to believe that the wealthy have earned their right to rule because they are rich, without examination into the sources of that wealth and the exploitation it may represent, and we therefore often abandon any political commitment to economic justice.
In the old days of an emerging Christian ethic, the disciples were puzzled to learn from Jesus that the rich must work harder for grace because they will be tempted to hoard their wealth and exploit others to increase their wealth.
“Nowadays much new age spirituality attempts to undermine traditional biblical condemnation of the greedy rich by insisting that those who prosper are the chosen, the spiritual elect. But there is a great difference between celebrating prosperity and the pursuit of unlimited wealth.”
In later chapters hooks addresses the new wealth of American blacks and how allegiance to the new class interests of successful black people may supersede their racial solidarity. We must be mindful that an exploitative rule set allowed certain talents to break barriers most cannot and this should not be taken as the kind of success any of us consider complete. In general and from the outside, it does not appear that successful blacks are ignoring their brethren, but I do not think the same can be said of white citizens. hooks actually addresses this in her chapter entitled “White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility.”
While the black poor were ostracized in the larger society, they managed to stick together, live together, worship together. In some ways, this was unavoidable where the society was segregated. But poor whites lived everywhere, and because of segregation, had no common cause with poor blacks, and were not accepted by wealthier whites. Doubly despised, we could say.
It is not so far from that time to today, when poor whites embarrass their wealthier brethren. hooks is saying that we must bridge this divide and recognize the basic humanity we all share, across race, class, sexuality, and national origin. We have to surrender our attachment to material possessions, eliminate the false hierarchies based on wealth, color, sex, etc. and interact based on more lasting values. A final few chapters suggest ways for us to ease into new relationships with one another.
hooks is indispensable as a thought leader....more
Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 201Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 2015, and seems to have taken into consideration most of the complaints about earlier cultural tourism. It looks like a fun book--teachers may find themselves skimming but getting caught in the interesting detail and in imagining how they would present the material in class. It is a colorful round-the-world tour of certain countries and parts of the world, e.g., A for Australia...
To my eye, it looked appropriate for 10-year-olds, but I have seen it listed for third-sixth graders, in the U.S., that would be 8-11. That seems about right.
It has a current feel. Women are shown, not all working in traditional jobs, and there is a sort of poem at the start of each new letter that can be put to a beat, if one wanted. Could be useful for class projects....more
Celeste Fremon met Father Boyle and learned of his work in the early 90's, and she published the first version of this book in 1995. Since then she haCeleste Fremon met Father Boyle and learned of his work in the early 90's, and she published the first version of this book in 1995. Since then she has added an Introduction and Epilogue and continued her work witnessing and documenting the work of Father Greg Boyle in East Los Angeles. She is a senior fellow for Social Justice/New Media at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and runs a website on Criminal Justice in the public interest at WitnessLA.com.
She tells the story of Father Boyle that he cannot tell, the successes and failures, perceptions of him among the community, the totality of what he brings to the marginalized. The only problem is that everything seems thrown together, which I understand is because it is real life and moving and therefore difficult to capture. I guess I'd hoped a journalist could do with language what us ordinary folks cannot. In any case, this is important documentation of an underserved community, to understate the situation. ...more
Fuchsia Dunlop may be an original. Certainly she has dedication to subject, in this case, Chinese food.
The recipes in this book I can tell are wonderfFuchsia Dunlop may be an original. Certainly she has dedication to subject, in this case, Chinese food.
The recipes in this book I can tell are wonderful reproductions of Sichuan classics. Probably the way we can tell authenticity is the simplicity of the recipes. A famous cooking show in China gives contestants oil, soy sauce, and rice wine & determines how many different kinds of dishes each can make. It all has to do with quantities, heat, ratios rather than a wide variety of ingredients. How else could everyone have managed for so long?
Anyway, this seems just fine, if beyond my reach. Love that she made a career from this particular fascination of hers....more
Yuck. Steve Bannon has a twisted sense of the world. One wonders how he got from the Navy & Harvard to the raving, unshaven ideologue he is today, butYuck. Steve Bannon has a twisted sense of the world. One wonders how he got from the Navy & Harvard to the raving, unshaven ideologue he is today, but one guesses it was because he discovered good looks, money, and brains weren't enough to make him happy. But one could use these things to blow up the world.
[image] Steve Bannon at Harvard
Joshua Green undoubtedly deserves at least four stars for being able to write and having the material no one else did. But I'd been following pretty closely this past year and really had a hard time spending another nanosecond thinking about this creep who can go to his grave without a single person to mourn him.
One thing that hadn't been entirely clear to me was the whole Fox News fight & subsequent ass-licking but I see it now through Green's careful, annotated timeline. I also hadn't been aware of the role of Bannon's Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in discrediting Hillary's candidacy. That was useful to understand. And, of course, the explicit statement by his colleagues and underlings, "Truth and veracity weren't his top priority. Narrative truth was his priority rather than factual truth."
I am going to have to call on other GReaders to tell me about the title of the Afterword: Kali Yuga. I sort of see Kali Yuga defined on Google as four stages of man's development & consciousness in Hinduism...please don't tell me Bannon is applying this...like he even cares. It could be that Green himself is applying the prophecy, which states that in the longest, and darkest, stage of Kali Yuga is the expectation "A person is considered unsuccessful and unholy if he does not have money, and the society will accept hypocrisy as a virtue." But that is from a quick search and not from deep understanding. Anyone else figure this out?
Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan is a difficult man to dismiss. Here he tells three stories based around computers and two strange Australians and makesScottish writer Andrew O'Hagan is a difficult man to dismiss. Here he tells three stories based around computers and two strange Australians and makes something weird and wild and kind of spectacular. The first story, "Ghosting," regards the time he was asked to interview for the opportunity to possibly ghostwrite Julian Assange's biography. O'Hagan is distant, observant, and precise, early on telling us
"It was interesting to see how he parried with some notion of himself as a public figure, as a rock star, really, when all the activists I've ever known tend to see themselves as marginal and possibly eccentric figures. Assange referred a number of times to the fact that people were in love with him, but I couldn't see the coolness, the charisma he took for granted."
Assange comes across as a paranoid narcissist, deeply confused about his role and his life, about what he does and how he wants to be remembered. O'Hagan put the time in, listening and writing, and comes away burned.
The second story, "The Invention of Ronald Pinn," feels dangerous. O'Hagan takes on the identity of a young lad who'd died young, Ronnie Pinn, so that he could enter the Deep Web and see how it operated. O'Hagan's invented Pinn
"tended toward certain enterprises of his own volition...[including] with secretive experts about drugs and false documents and guns...The 'people' now moderating the Dark Web don't care about the old codes of citizenship and they don't recognize the laws of society. They don't believe that governments or currencies or historical narratives are automatically legitimate, or event that the personalities who appear to run the world are who they say they are. The average hacker believes most executives to be functionaries of a machine they can't understand."
When O'Hagan finally gives up the online ruse, he finds Pinn lingers longer in cyberspace, and in his psyche, than he'd anticipated.
The final essay, "The Satoshi Affair," was originally published in LRB a year or so ago. It is a very long, totally immersive essay about the possible originators of Bitcoin, and what the currency will mean for revolutionizing business and banking. If you haven't read much about the subject, this is a good place to start. Don't worry if some of it slips by without your understanding. I have a feeling we're all going feel that way for quite awhile.
O'Hagan is special. You won't be wasting your time, reading about his fascinating interface with the world....more
The idea was just to see what the psychiatrists had done with the concept of viewing DJT from afar and telling us what they could see. I was skepticalThe idea was just to see what the psychiatrists had done with the concept of viewing DJT from afar and telling us what they could see. I was skeptical, truthfully, and happen to agree with the Goldwater Rule: that mental health professionals should not make statements about the mental health of people they have not examined. But an introductory essay by Robert Jay Lifton was so smart, measured, and upfront about how their work could be considered political that I thought I’d read a little more.
Lifton, a leading psychohistorian, points out that psychiatrists should have a role in not normalizing evil as in the case of Hilter’s regime, normalizing the use of a nuclear weapon in WWII, or normalizing the enhanced interrogation techniques of the Iraq War. He thinks that psychiatrists have a moral obligation to use their skills to benefit society. He says that professional psychiatric organizations don’t often discuss that professional ethics should also include
“who we work for and with, and how our work either affirms or questions the directions of the larger society. And, in our present situation, how we deal with the malignant normality that faces us.”
In “Unbridled and Extreme Present Hedonism” Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword detail classic symptoms of the narcissistic personality disorder and pair recorded instances of DJT’s speeches, his tweets, his on-the-record remarks with reporters, biographers, and ghost writers. The authors are not using private privileged medical information to frame someone. They are taking the public persona of an individual who claims to be telling the truth and are showing parallels to a pathological narcissism.
Craig Malkin does something similar in “Pathological Narcissism and Politics.” If at one time the citizenry expected they were observing an individual who appeared to be joking about the extreme positions he consistently takes, I doubt we feel the same way after a year of observing his continued positions and behaviors.
In “Sociopathy,” Lance Does explains that “the failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.” Here we must ask ourselves if what we are observing of the man is actually the man or some funhouse mirror reproduction of the man. Hard as it is to believe that someone with such a severe deficiency could get as far as he did, we have to admit there were people along the way, DJT’s ‘friend’ the real estate magnate Steve Wynn for one, who said not to trust him.
The mental health professionals whose essays were published in Part 2 feel a ‘duty to warn’ the country about the possible need to replace DJT, based on their understanding of the demands of the job he has undertaken and his mental capacity. Leonard Glass takes on this question directly in his essay, “Should Psychiatrists Refrain from Commenting on Trump’s Psychology?” Glass believes that “a professionally informed perspective” can be useful for citizenry so they may judge the man and the press about him.
Even mental health professionals can exhibit bias, Glass tells us, but professionals make extra effort to recognize and account for said bias, if only to preserve their own reputations. Glass says we can’t know if DJT knows what he says is demonstrably untrue or not. What we do know is that he cannot recognize having been wrong, nor does he appear able to learn from the experience so that he does not repeat the untruth or failure another day.
Not all the essays were as measured as the ones cited above. Ones I thought could have been left out were those by DJT biographer Tony Schwartz (The Art of the Deal), and one by Gail Sheehy who, however admirable an author and journalist, is not a psychiatrist. In addition, Diane Jhueck in “A Clinical Case for the Dangerousness of Donald J Trump” says DJT “should be of lower risk to violence than the average citizen…[he is] supposed to be our protector, and he is unwell and harmful.” I am not sure risk of violence was on the ballot. If anyone is to blame by those lights, it is the Republican Party, who allowed DJT to be primaried.
The point is that indications of unfitness to serve may not appear until after a candidate is in office. If our government is to stand the test of leadership, we must rely on heroic bureaucrats who still have jobs to place obstacles in the way of business as usual, challenge their superiors at every step, and raise the specter of unfitness. When Howard Covitz begins to raise the notion of conscience within the context of “Health, Risk, and The Duty to Protect the Community,” I honestly thought he was going to speak about the duty of bureaucrats and psychiatrists to speak out about aberrant behaviors.
Actually, Covitz was asking if DJT has a conscience. Somehow I don’t feel we distant observers of the DJT phenomenon, even those with medical degrees, can reasonably be expected to answer that question. In Part 3 the essays try to explain what having a person like Trump in the WH means for trauma, anxiety, and feelings of abuse in the population at large. Again, I am not sure this should be the focus of the mental health professionals’ ‘duty to warn.’ If a major incident were handled badly by this president, they can say they made their fears known through this volume....more
I tried to read this several times, beginning back when I almost convinced myself I might be able to understand (read: respect) what Republicans were I tried to read this several times, beginning back when I almost convinced myself I might be able to understand (read: respect) what Republicans were thinking. I'm sorry to say that is over, at least for now. If we can lie, cheat, and steal our way to power, what difference does it make what is just?
I made some notes before I gave up. Putting them here in case I ever get back to this in time to challenge Paul Ryan personally.
This book has gone through so many editions, it is worth noting which one is referenced. Bruce Caldwell, Professor of Economics at Duke University, wrote the introduction to this 2007 edition, published, as ever, by the University of Chicago Press. It is said current Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan gives out copies of this book to his staff when they begin working for him The staff must discuss the book in small groups like bible study because—I guaran-f-ing-tee you—a young and busy staff in D.C. will not know what the heck Hayek is talking about, much less apply it to the U.S. economy in the context of the world.
The ideas in this book began as a memo to the director of the London School of Economics in the 1930s, which then became a magazine article, and then, during WWII, became a monograph of its own. When it was published in the United States—was it 1944?—it became a surprise popular hit, though hated by the intelligensia.
I skimmed the book only. Words like “freedom” are bandied about with great earnestness—freedom from coercion—and I can’t believe we are still talking about this in 2017. No, I am not going to go back and fight these arguments all over again. We spent much of the twentieth century watching one insufficiently great man after another tell us they’ve got our backs.
In the end, after a lifetime of hard knocks, we find that, no, in fact, corporations took care of themselves and cared about us only insofar as we needed enough money to buy their product. We discovered that corporations really needed rules and regulations to do the right thing because they defined their responsibility more narrowly than we did. After all, they were responsible to shareholders, not customers, not citizens who give them space, water, energy, raw materials.
I’m tired of replaying this argument over and over because over and over we discover that corporations don’t actually do the right thing.
p. 20 “If you have any comprehension of my philosophy at all, you must know that one thing I stand for above all else is free trade throughout the world.”
p. 28 “A final criticism has sometimes been called the “inevitability thesis” or the “slippery slope” argument: Hayek is claimed to have said that, once a society engages in a little planning, it is doomed to end up in a totalitarian state….Any departure from the practice of free enterprise, any joke that reason and science may be applied to the direction of economic activity, any attempt at economic planning, must lead us remorselessly to serfdom…”...more
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