Books, Books, Books

It wasn't my intention when I started this blog to devote the majority of it to books I have been reading, but I have found some wonderful ones and I would like to share their titles with you.  The first one is called Merchants of Doubt.  It concerns a group of cold war scientists and their efforts to deny a variety of scientific phenomena that have been going on for the last forty or so years.  When the Cold War ended, they had to fasten on other issues.  They got a variety of grants from conservative think tanks and funders to do this.  They followed the playbook of the tobacco industry, which for forty years worked very hard to muddy the waters and confuse the public about the proposition that smoking causes cancer.  They started with acid rain, denying that it was taking place and denying, if it were, that it caused important harmful effects.  They moved on to the issue of the growing ozone hole, with the same purpose and the same tactics.  Then they moved on to the issue of global warming, denying that it is taking place and that it will have disastrous effects.  They were not above actually telling lies and openly trying to deceive the public, as this book describes.  The latest focus of their denial concerns DDT.  They quote the conservative political commentator Thomas Sowell as claiming the the ban on DDT in the United States resulted in 50 million deaths, mostly in Asia and Africa.  A few instants of thought shows this to be false.  The banning of DDT was a law in the United States.  We do not legislate for other countries.  Other countries obviously remained free to make their own decisions about whether or not to use DDT.  The folks responsible for sowing doubt about these issues did it in a variety of cunning, devious ways, and it should be of interest to everyone just how they achieved what they achieved.

I highly recommend this book.  It is thoroughly researched -- it has something like 70 pages of references for the information in it.  It is very well written.  I found it so interesting that I reread much of it twice, underlining parts and actually studying it.

One of My Favorite Books.

You don't hear much about this book these days because it is overshadowed by Melville's masterpieces, Moby Dick.  But one of my favorite books by him is an earlier one, Typee.

The story concerns a seaman who jumped ship in the Marquesas around 1850.  It is based on Melville's actual experiences.  He and his friend Toby climbed one of the incredibly steep ridges that surround most of the harbor at NukuHiva to get away from their ship.  This was at a time when the Marquesans were headhunters and cannibals.  Their greatest worry was that they would end up being discovered and eaten by the tribe named Typee.

It doesn't give away much to tell you that they were captured by the Typee.  The experiences of Melville while among them for a few months, and his ultimate escape, are what makes this book fascinating and forever enduring.

Why is this one of my favorites ?  Partly I love it because it describes how a totally non-Western people lived at that time.  Melville was a careful and astute observer, and he shares what he saw and leasrned in an account much more interesting than it would have been as a formal ethnography.

But partly I love it for two other reasons.  First, I have been to the Marquesas several times, so Melville's account has a ring of familiarity about it.  And second -- and most important -- much of what happened to Melville among the Typee greatly resembles the life I led when I lived in a Samoan village for a year, and when I returned to Samoa many, many times.

I am working on a new edition of Typee.  I don'tr see anything done by other editors who have any knowledge of Polynesia, which I have studied and written about elsewhere, so I think I can present the text and an introduction that will add to anyone's enjoyment of this book.

I've Been Reading Some Great Essays Recently

I've been reading some wonderful essays recently.  Just finished the book pictured above, "The Best American Essays 2011," which not only contained some wonderful work, but also contained what I think is probably the best essay I have ever read.

It's called "What Broke My Father's Heart" and was written by Katy Butler.  I had never heard of her before, but a quick check on Amazon.com shows that she has written a number of books.  I have stacks of books at home that I'm meaning to get through, including a number of volumes in this "Best American . . ." series, but I think I will read some of Butler's other work before I get much farther along in what I already have stacked up.

"What Broke My Father's Heart" is about the decline of his father's health, the various procedures he went through to lengthen his life, the feelings of himself, his wife and his daughter, and the ultimate death of both himself and his wife.  I've never read anything as poignant as this essay.

It did not surprise me when I discovered in the blurb about Butler in the back of the book that the article was named one of the 100 best articles of all time.  Here's the URL of that web page, which I am sure lists many more memorable essays.   Knowing what I now know about the quality of this essay, I am anxious to read more of this author's work.

Recent Great Reads

Every so often I come across readings I find wonderful and worth telling other people about.  I picked up a copy of Studs Terkel's book "American Dreams: Lost and Found" the other day and came across one of the most moving and informative accounts of what Native Americans have been through.  The book is organized around about 100 conversations Terkel had with various people he encountered as he traveled across the country.  As I go through this book, I'll probably post mention of other section, but I was deeply moved by what native American Ramona Bennett had to say (pages 171 - 178).

The feeling of history usually gets lost in impersonal summaries and statistics, but here you have the point of view of an intelligent woman who has not only gone through a bit of native-American history but who sums up a lot of it for us from her perspective.  Maybe you have been left feeling just about nothing when you've heard what native Americans have gone through due to prejudice and murderous treatment on the part of whites.  This will change all that.  This one entry is worth the price of the book.

[American Dreams: Los and Found, by Studs Terkel, Pantheon Books, New York, 1980]
 

 



This American Life

One of the wonderful programs I've found on National Public Radio is "This American Life." It's been running now for quite a few years, but every weekend there's a new one-hour show, each time devoted to a single theme. The host, Ira Glass, introduces the theme of the week in his laconic voice which has become his trademark. For anyone fascinated by the infinite variety life unfolds, this show is a must.

The other night I lay in bed listening to one of his programs devoted to "Classifieds." He and his staff poured through the classified ads in two papers one day, then went out to meet the people in charge of classifieds at one of the papers and, more importantly, the people who placed the ads in the newspaper. Were they young or were they old ? Were they hunting for something lost (a stolen dog) or were they financially desperate and trying to sell their belongings to stay afloat ?

Another program, organized around the theme of "Fall Guy," included four stories. One concerned a child who had a dog named Noodles and whose grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's moved in with him and his family. One night the boy had to pee and couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. The grandmother suffered from an inability to control her bowels and wore a diaper, The boy peed on a rug, and the rest of the family attributed this to Grandma's having had "an accident." The boy started peeing all over the house. Eventually his parents blamed the dog and took the boy's dog to the pound, where he was "put down." The boy continued peeing, and finally the grandmother was sent to an "institution." He never told his parents that he'd been the one responsible .

Most of the shows are devoted to anecdotal episodes like these. But now and then an entire show will be devoted to investigating something and explaining it.

A recent program entitled "The Watchers" closely examined very closely the causes of our recent financial collapse. We've been told that mortgages, some good, many bad, were bundled and sold, and that when the bad ones collapsed there were so many of them that they caused the failure of the whole system. In the conventional press, that seems to be as far as explanations go.

"The Watchers" digs deeper. Wasn't someone, some regulatory agency, supposed to be supervising all these activities and transactions ? Yes, there was an agency, one you have probably never heard of. And that agency simply didn't do its job.

Congress, using a law signed by Clinton, hampered the agency from doing what it was supposed to do. What was responsible for AIG's fall? AIG was fragmented into so many different pieces in so many different locations worldwide and within so many different states that the pieces fell under dozens of different regulatory agencies. There were so many that no one could keep track of all the pieces and their activities.

Three companies, including Standard and Poor, rated the bundled investments (mortgages). Many people within those companies knew that the packages were poor investments. But because these rating companies were paid by the very companies whose offerings they rated, and since a huge percentage of their business came from the companies offering the bundled mortgages (we're talking 50 %), they had a strong incentive NOT to tell the truth about the huge risk the bundled mortgages exposed investors to. So they didn't.

As "The Watchers" explains, there is a lot of blame to spread around, and the public isn't being told this.

There is Much to be Thankful For

Today was not an extraordinary day for me, but there was much to be thankful for.

Not the least, of course, is that this morning I woke up and managed to put my feet on the floor and start functioning.

My greatest joy these days is my dogs.  They are great companions for someone like myself who lives alone.  And I would say that their long life and health and welfare are these days my greatest priority.  Like all wise dogs, they stay in bed and snooze under the covers even when I get up around seven and start pottering around.  Yes, they sleep in the same bed with me.  And let me tell you, on a cold winter night their warm little bodies snuggled up to me a very welcome.  If you are shocked by the idea of sleeping with one or more dogs, then you probably don't have dogs.  Everyone I know with one or more dogs sleeps with them.  Or perhaps I should put it that everyone I know with dogs lets them sleep in the same bed.

There was too much today to be detailed about every single pleasure I enjoyed.  But several simple ones stand out.  First and most important, I think, was my reading.  I have been reading several volumes in a series called "The Best American Mystery Stories.  Each year another volume is issued, and each volume contains some terrific stories."  Scott Loring Sanders' "Pleasant Grove" and Ed Kurtz' "A Good Marriage" are just two that stand out.

At any rate, if you are a mystery fan, seek out this series, because it is wonderful.  I might add that you should get on the mailing list of an organization called Daedalus Books (www.Salebooks.com) because they sometimes have past years' volumes at hugely discounted prices -- such as $5.98 instead of $14.95.  If you like books of any kind, you really should get on Daedelus Books' mailing list.  (P.O. Box 6000, Columbia, MD 21046).

I did my reading today largely at Nellie's Coffee shop in the Montclair section of Oakland.  Nellie's is my favorite coffee shop in all Oakland.  Nellie, herself, is a wonderful person, kind and very caring. When you talk to her, you quickly learn that what she cares most about is the comfort and satisfaction of her customers.  The coffee is all organic, which I think shows in the flavor.  The seating consists mostly of comfortable armchairs.  And quite a few people go there regularly, park themselves at a table, and work on their computers while sipping coffee and eating some of the treats Nellie sells.

So today I had my good cup of coffee and some leisurely reading time at Nellie's.

Another enjoyment I had was lunch at one of the local Subways.  A five-inch sub of sweet onion and chicken is a very satisfactory meal.  By the way, did you know that there are more Subway outlets in the world than there are MacDonalds ?  That bit of trivia came up on the Internet a week or two ago and surprised me greatly.  Subway is usually quiet and inconspicuous, even in its TV ads. MacDonald's is making a lot of noise these days as it slowly loses market share.

By the way, did you see the Internet feature a month or so ago in which the authors bought a hamburger at each of perhaps a half dozen fast food outlets, then let the hamburgers sit for a month just to see what would happen.  I can't tell you which ones rotted most quickly or in what order they degenerated in fuzzy moldburgers, but I can tell you that they reported that after one month, one burger was just about unchanged -- no mold on it.  And whose burger was that ?  The authors said it was MacDonalds'.  Just a bit of interesting trivia you devotees of fast food might wish to think about. 

Some Great South Pacific Reads

Anyone who knows me more than a superficial "Hello" knows that I spent 10 - 12 years voyaging to the South Pacific about 5 times a year.  I traveled to some incredibly remote places you've probably never heard of -- Manihiki, Pukapuka, Rakahanga, the Lau Islands, the Tuamotus including Rangiroa, all the major islands of Samoa, the three major islands of Tonga, and so on.

If I left my heart somewhere, it was in Fiji.  I traveled from Suva, the nation's capital, by bus for an hour or two, then stopped at the mighty Rewa River, where I got into a motorized launch -- really a large rowboat with a motor on it.  We would go upriver for an hour or two, then climb ashore via a slippery, muddy bank to a place at the foot of some mountains.  Either there were horses there, or more usually we simply hiked for about three hours up the mountains to our village destination.

Around the Yaqona Bowl in the Village in Fiji

Make no mistake about it -- in doing all this it was as though we slipped backwards in time three or four hundred years deep into primeval Fiji.  In some places in the mountains, you could look across the valley at the meandering river, and see giant clumps of bamboo thrusting their feathery fronds a hundred feet high.  The houses in the village I visited were a combination of split bamboo or thatched homes.  There were no water pipes (the river flowed just a hundred feet away), nor was there electricity.  Time there seemed to have ceased and you could easily think that you had slipped hundreds of years in the past.

Fijian Portrait

In one of the villages I visited, the houses were huge, thatched dwellings perhaps forty feet long and 15 feet high.  The door into these houses were only about three feet tall.  You stood outside the house and proclaimed loudly, "Ndua o!"  I do not know the translation of this greeting, but it seemed to me to mean something like, "I am here."  If you were welcome, permission to enter was give loudly by someone inside.  The three-foot high doorway was short because you would have to be stooping over to enter.  If you were an enemy, this relatively defenseless posture would allow the occupants to club you to death.

In a Fijian Village

While these days Fijians do not eat human flesh, and have not for many years, I did meet one old man who told me stories of his youth -- and his cannibalism.  Elsewhere I have described an incident involving him in a short piece called "Lunch with a Cannibal."

But I have said enough here to make clear that I shall never forget my ventures into what could have been ancient Fiji.  And I have made it clear why one of my favorite stories is by that consummate storyteller and experienced South Pacific hand, Jack London.

The story is called "The Whale Tooth."  Read it, and you'll know why I've included mention of it here.  While you're at it, read his other South Pacific tales, too.  They describe the real thing, the real South Pacific as it was perhaps 80 years ago and as isolated areas of it still are.  Conrad once wrote that the job of the author is "to make you see."  That's what London's tales do.

Should you wish easily to find the text of "The Whale Tooth," you may find it at: 

 http://readingsandstuff.blogspot.com/