“Suicide by Botany – A Rant and a Prayer”

I found the wild blue irises growing in a certain roadside ditch. 

I’m not a “real” botanist.

I knew I took a chance, near homes full of guns. Hostile signs threaten me. 

I don’t trespass, but I fear I might provoke gunfire.

I imagine a confrontation in which I say, “That’s okay, I’m a bit suicidal, so go ahead and shoot me.” 

Feeling sarcastic, I imagine saying, “But you’ll have to clean up the mess, and take care of the paperwork. You probably can’t just leave my body on the roadside…”

I only encounter a polite homeowner who asks if I am “okay”. That’s code language for “Why are you looking at my ditch?”, but I’m good with that.

I’m grateful for my calm neighbor. He was willing to assume I was harmless.

May his day and mine be filled with flowers. 

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“Ghostbuster’s Daughter – Life With my Dad, Harold Ramis” by Violet Ramis Stiel

This book was recommended to me by my comedian son, who lives in Chicago, home of the Second City Comedy troupe and, for a time, Harold Ramis and family.

But the real “hook” for me was Ghostbusters! The movie was released in 1984, the same year my older son was born. A huge hit! Wildly funny. Lots of ancillary products, like T-shirts. I can’t remember at what age we first took Ben to see it. It totally captured his imagination, and became his first “commercialized” passion. Our best purchase was Ghostbuster coveralls, with “Who You Gonna Call?” on the back. Both boys wore them. I’d have bought a pair for myself, if I saw them in my size.

Phrases from the movie worked their way into our daily conversation and have remained to this day. The best were “Back off, man, I’m a scientist!” and Ramis/Egon’s great deadpan line “I collect spores, molds and fungus”. We still refer to any deteriorated property as “a unique fixer upper opportunity” and remind each other “everybody has three mortgages”. “You really eat this stuff?”

So I have to tell you I was hoping for more details about Ghostbusters, which the book did not provide. The book moves sequentially through Steil’s life. I hadn’t known how many films Ramis was involved with as actor, writer, director and/or producer. Steil visited the sets of most of the movies, but her reminisces weren’t particular enlightening.

The personal chapters were more interesting. Violet Ramis Steil is a lively and perceptive writer. This wasn’t my first entertainment world autobiography. Bottom line, I don’t know how the children of celebrities survive! They are exposed to drugs and crazy adult behavior, and sometimes forced to grow up fast because their parents are irresponsible. Harold Ramis had his wilder moments, but settled down in his second marriage. He became wealthy and was generous towards his daughter and many other people.

Stiel’s discussion of her education and career choice was interesting. She knew she did not want to join the entertainment world. She wanted to help people, and went to graduate school to study social work, specializing in maternal and child health and welfare. Approving wholeheartedly, Ramis subsidized her so that she could live in Manhattan on a social worker’s salary. 

The chapters about Ramis’s death are terribly painful. In 2010, he developed diverticulitis, followed by infection and a brain damaging stroke. Thinking he might recover and return to the work he loved, his wife limited the information that was shared outside the family. Four years of terrible struggle followed. Ramis experienced painful and repeated complications, seizures, treatments, and rehabilitation. No one should suffer that way.

I can’t find out what Violet R Stiel has been doing since her book was published in 2018. After the reviews, she’s been relatively invisible – not in Wikipedia, minimally present on Facebook. (Maybe I just don’t know where to look.) I hope she’s writing. Maybe she’ll provide commentary on the pandemic! 

“Call Sign Chaos – Learning to Lead” by Jim Mattis and Bing West

Published 2019, 300 pages including maps, color pictures, notes, index and seven appendices.

I don’t need to review this book. It was released in September of 2019 and Amazon posts 1658 reviews. If you are looking for biographical information about Mattis, Wikipedia is a good place to start. There’s no personal information in Call Sign Chaos. The book ends when Mattis left the  United States Central Command in 2013, and does not cover his experiences as Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, January 2017 to December 2018.

This book is divided into three sections

• Direct leadership
• Executive leadership
• Strategic leadership.

I think I would have split it in two – leading from the top (direct leadership) and leading from below. (In the military, a strict hierarchal framework is assumed.) Certainly, in either an executive or strategic leadership position, leading “up” becomes essential, and I found those parts of Mattis’s memoir most interesting. He dealt with elected and appointed office holders, ambassadors, contractors, consultants and a wide range of “influencers”.

Mattis is an avid reader and sensitive to language. He includes several of his own letters as appendices to Call Sign Chaos. In Holding the Line, Guy Snodgrass talked about learning to write in General Mattis’ “voice”, so he would sound consistent and could speak comfortably. Interestingly, one review on Amazon (by “Kyrkie”) said Call Sign Chaos was more reflective of co-author Bing West’s voice than of Mattis. West published ten books, including one novel. Several look interesting to me.

Mattis liked aphorisms. “Semper fi” (always faithful) is, of course, the Marine motto. “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” was his favorite description of the Marine Corps. Mattis added “First, do no harm” (from the medical Hippocratic oath) to his statement of intent or “letter to all hands” (February 2004) before he led Marines back to occupied Baghdad as the city spiraled into chaos and towards civil war.

What does Mattis mean when he enjoins his troops to “Do no harm”? It’s war. The General is asserting the importance of protecting non-combatants, a tough goal during “irregular” warfare in a densely populated urban setting. He says “The enemy will try to manipulate you into hating all Iraqis. Do not allow…that victory.” He refers to honor, precision and crushing battle capabilities. His letters of intent are included on pages 93 and 119 of the book (not cited in index).

Mattis is big on “process”, which interests me since I deal with process in the tiny microcosm of a Quaker congregation. (Quakers call it “discernment”.) He cites Albert Einstein as having said, when asked what he would do if told the world would end in one hour, that he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes saving the world. Hmmm…

At the end of the book, Mattis falls back on “E Pluribus Unum” in a short, pained discussion of the Trump administration. In summer of 2019, Mattis said “we all know that we are better than our current politics.” That was before the pandemic. Recently he denounced Trump as “a threat to the Constitution”. “E Pluribus Unum” (from many, one) now feels ever more distant.

This book is worth a careful read, with special attention to the book list in Appendix B. There’s another, shorter booklist in Chapter 12 (“Essential NATO”). Transitioning to the international arena, Mattis read 22 books, consulted various experts and met with “practitioners of strategic leadership” including Henry Kissinger.

War is still hell.

“Such a Pretty Girl – A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride” by Nadina LaSpina – Covid19 #5

New Village Press, 2019, 332 pages, with photos.

I can’t read this book. In my first Covid post (#1, March 25) I wrote about the epidemics that impacted me, starting with polio in 1952.

Nadina LaSpina was born in Italy around the same time as I was born in the US. She survived polio at age 16 months, losing the use of her legs. Her family came to the US when she was thirteen years old, and she participated wholeheartedly in the political battles for disability rights and minority dignity. I’m glad the title of this book doesn’t include the terms “polio” or “paralysis”. The emphasis, rightfully, is on Ms LaSpina’s amazing life and leadership. Her police record (~50 arrests) attests to her willingness to engage in civil disobedience, including participation in Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

Yesterday, during a small Zoom gathering, a dear friend shared her memories of polio, which sickened her brother and forced the family into quarantine. The fear is such a vivid memory.

Now, in the midst of an epidemic that is taking many lives, I focus on daily activities and whatever sources of encouragement I can find. A little web surfing yielded up to date information about Ms LaSpina. She had a full calendar of readings, book signings and discussions planned for this March and April, but all have been cancelled. I like this recent picture. I hope she’s waiting out Covid19 someplace safe and comfortable.

 

“Here for It – or, how to save your soul in America” by R. Eric Thomas – Covid19 #4

Ballantine Books, 264 pages, 2020. (That’s EARLY 2020, before the pandemic.)

In the text, R. Eric Thomas tells us he wanted this book to be called Casual Nigger but EVERYBODY (editor, agent, who?) went nuts. Hence, the less controversial Here for It. Here for what? Life, actually. Thomas battled depression and struggled mightily to “find himself”. In these essays, he lets us in on his battles, small and large.

The title, of course, is on the cover, and I find the cover image alarming. On a pink background, a “black” man’s hand is tossing confetti. Fine! But the hand is deformed. I know hands. The thumb joint is WAY out of line. Injury? Age? Is it painful? Does Thomas know the hand is damaged? Was the choice intentional? My hands (both, regrettably) are less obviously deformed, but cause pain daily. But I digress…

R E Thomas is funny. Goodness knows, a funny sociopolitical commentator is a real find! He’s a wise guy. Sociologically, he’s “intersectional”, expressing African American, LGBTQ and Christian identities. Here for It is autobiographical. He was born in Baltimore and spent decades in Philadelphia.

I was particularly interested Thomas’s college years at Columbia University and University of Maryland (Baltimore Campus).

Toward the end of the book, in a Chapter entitled “The Past Smelled Terrible”, Thomas waxes both prophetic and patriotic. HOW DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS COMING??

“I can’t help but think constantly about the end of the world…Listen. Here’s my living will, okay? I have no desire to survive the apocalypse…if the post-apocalypse comes about because of a massive plague or something, I have no useful medical or scientific skills…I would like to be Patient 15. Maybe Patient 20. No higher than 50. I don’t want to be Patient Zero, because then everyone would blame me, which is rude…I just want to go early, while they’re still doing nice tributes to the victims on television and I can get my own grave plot.”

WTF? Did Thomas know something? Where is he now? I hope he’s riding out the pandemic someplace comfortable. (I started to say “safe and comfortable”. No place is “safe”.) I grabbed this book from my public library on March 11, just before the big shutdown. I knew enough to grab extra books, maybe a dozen. Good luck, Eric!

“When I Was White – A Memoir” by Sarah Valentine

 

Another lucky grab from the “New Arrivals” shelf at my local library. Sarah Valentine was a mixed race child born into an otherwise white American family.

Ms. Valentine’s childhood was in most respects idyllic – suburbia, good schools, friends, family (including two younger brothers). Her parents were devoted to their children. She was athletic as well as academically talented.

Her parents kept from her the fact that she had a different father from her two younger brothers. She was told that her skin tone (darker than her brothers) and relatively curly hair came from her father’s Greek and Italian ancestors. There’s too much for me to summarize here. Ms. Valentine still identified as white when she finished college, but considered herself African American or multiracial when she finished her PhD (in Russian literature) at Princeton University.

One thread running though is book is the power of secrets. The choice to keep a secret, to withhold important information from another person, is weighty. Secrecy distorted Ms. Valentine’s relationship with her mother and greatly troubled her brothers.

Ms. Valentine was a very high achieving child and continued to earn academic honors during college and graduate school. In this respect, she reminds me of Michelle Obama, whose memoir I reviewed on December 14, 2018. I wonder if the two ever met? Each is a very accomplished woman, but Ms. Obama has never had to wonder who she was or where she came from. Her identity was secure, though she occasionally encountered criticism for being “too white”. Ms. Obama, who has spent at least 15 years in the public eye, may envy Ms. Valentine’s “private citizen” status.

“When I Was White” is a wonderful, energetic autobiography and a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of race in our country.

“Drawing Fire – A Pawnee, Artist and Thunderbird in World War II” by Brummett Echohawk with Mark R Ellenbarger

University Press of Kansas, 2018, 215 pages plus Glossary (Native American Terms and Phrases, also designations of weapons), Dramatis Personnae (Echohawk and his comrades used both Native and mainstream names, as well as tribal affiliations) and Index. More than one hundred portraits, sketches and photographs.

In early June, my local public library featured a display of books about World War II, in honor of the D-Day anniversary. I grabbed two books. Drawing Fire caught my attention because of the generous inclusion of artwork, most produced on the battlefield by the author.

Don’t you love the name Echohawk? Brummett Echohawk was born in 1922, into a Pawnee family long connected with the American military. At age 18, he joined the Oklahoma National Guard. His unit, which included more than 1000 Native Americans, was deployed in the retaking of Italy in 1943. This memoir is a battlefield classic.

Echohawk identified as both a soldier and a warrior, bringing TWO lives, languages, skill sets and worldviews into the war. “Warrior” carries profound cultural/spiritual weight in addition to what English speakers generally mean by “soldier”. In addition to being bilingual, the Pawnee (and members of other tribes) used sign language (hand signs) which improved their communications. They also used animal calls to communicate between units, usually just to say “We’re here, good night” but occasionally to warn of danger.

It’s not clear to me just how Echohawk wrote these memoirs. Diaries and journals are discouraged (forbidden?) on the battlefield, because they could reveal classified information to the enemy. Echohawk was a diligent artist, drawing at every opportunity. Some of his sketches are on stationery provided by the Red Cross – many are tattered and stained. Most are annotated with names and locations. He sketched prisoners of war as well as soldiers from various allied nations. Many of his subjects were his closest friends, not all of whom survived.

The recapture of Italy was grueling and sometimes seemed impossible. At one point, Echohawk’s infantry division was told to prepare for the possibility of being overrun and captured. He ripped out the front page of his Bible, because it identified his Army unit, but then he hid it in a sketchpad. The native American fighters discussed their dilemma – Pawnee warriors (who call themselves “Men of Men”) do not surrender, but American soldiers follow orders, surrendering if their superiors tell them to.

The war ground on and on. Everything was in short supply, even water. The soldiers rigged improvised weapons and haunted the first aid stations (from which the injured were being evacuated) to replace their destroyed uniforms and to scavenge parts for their guns. The scale of waste and suffering and loss is hard to comprehend.

Echohawk survived the Italian campaign, returned home and died in 2006, after a distinguished career as artist and illustrator. Read this book!

 

 

 

“Becoming” by Michelle Obama

I wanted to write about this book BEFORE checking out reviews and other feedback, but it’s becoming more difficult every day! I just got a Facebook message from the man himself (Barack Obama) recommending the book, and offering a few other comments. He did not yet release his annual list of favorite books.

One of the first questions I was asked (by a friend) was whether Mrs. Obama had a co-author. There’s none on the title page. She mentions many people in her acknowledgements (which run to three pages and end, unpredictably, with a gratitude towards “every young person I ever encountered during my time as First Lady… Thank you for giving me a reason to be hopeful”). So, the answer is “no”. There was no co-author.

Michelle Obama emphasized one thing over and over. Each of us has a story to tell. Each of us matters. Much of her public speaking has involved telling her story – that of growing up on Chicago’s side, seeing her neighborhood change from diverse to decidedly minority dominated, wanting SO MUCH to achieve, to be approved of, to get high grades!

Once, when she was in high school, Michelle was asked (by a relative near her own age) why she talked “like a white person”. Surprised, she didn’t really answer. Her parents and other adult relatives had emphasized diction and standard usage. My guess is that Michelle Obama is functionally bilingual (in two forms of English).

So much of Michelle Obama’s life was spent “juggling”. Between being “too black” and “too white”, and everything else. Too tall. Too earnest. Too “pushy”. She found her path, but became, in many understandable ways, cautious. She was always aware of the balance she needed and/or wanted to strike.

I was interested in the First Family’s life in the White House. Michelle wanted her mother to join them, but Mrs. Marian Robinson was reluctant. She had lived all her life in Chicago. Michelle enlisted her brother Craig to help change her mind. Mrs. Robinson was able to occasionally evade the constant Secret Service presence. She slipped out of the White House to run errands. If someone said “You look like Michelle Obama’s mother”, she smiled politely and said “Yes, people say that…”

I get the impression that Michelle and the President didn’t play any games AT ALL with the Secret Service. They accepted the fact that the stakes were way too high for that.

We all wonder what’s ahead for the Obama family. Leadership is so urgently needed, but they deserve a break, at the very least a long vacation, and I wish them all the best in the future.

“Unlearning God – How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe” by Philip Gulley

Amazon is having time trouble – you know, publishing reviews of a book before its publication date… Somebody better call the Chronopolice (Literary reference! Get it?) But, hey, Amazon is supposedly remaking America. So what if they mess with time?

The three reviews published by Amazon award Gulley one, three and five stars. The jury is still out.

The first two thirds of this book constitute a memoir. Gulley’s personal history is interesting, but bashing the churches of his childhood is small minded. Humor should be used very gently in such writing. Every author should have a “humor editor”, to help achieve desired tone and balance.

I liked the later part of the book better, when Gully wrestles with contemporary issues and discusses the role of change in spiritual life. Can you change your mind about an issue and remain faithful to your spiritual tradition?

So how did I acquire this book? It arrived unsolicited in the mailbox at my Quaker meeting. The publisher seems to have been unaware that there are several kinds of Quakers. Gulley is a pastor and has spent his adult life in paid employment with a Quaker congregation. My kind of Quaker, generally referred to as “unprogrammed”, does not ordain pastors or employ paid spiritual leadership. Nonetheless, we decided to look at Gulley’s book in our discussion group. His informal and lively approach worked well for us and supported several good sessions, so I recommend it to anyone interested in the role of faith in contemporary life.  But it’s far from the “whole story” when it comes to Quakerism!

Recent Reading

Hello, Friends! I’ve gotten WAY behind in writing for this blog. The last time I said that, I stated that the reasons were all positive – travel and other enjoyment. I’m afraid I can’t say the same this time. A close family member had serious health problems over the winter. I’ve been distracted, to put it mildly. Now, I can say (with cautious optimism) that things are back to normal.

For completeness sake, here’s a list of what I read but failed to write about:

“The Man Who Loved Books too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession ” by Alison Hoover Bartlett

Three novels by Alexander McCall Smith:

• “The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine” from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series
• “Sunshine on Scotland Street”
• “The Novel Habits of Happiness” (Isabel Dalhousie series)

“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

“The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue” by Mackenzi Lee

“The Orchardist” by Amanda Coplin

“The Word Detective – A Memoir – Searching for the Meaning of it All at the Oxford English Dictionary” by John Simpson

“The Glassblower” by Petra Durst Benning

“American Gods”: The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman

So… I’ve been on a major fiction kick! Only two non-fiction titles in the list. One item in the Young Adult category, “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue”. More female authors than male.

I’ll write about some or all of these sooner or later. Leave a message if there’s a book here about which you feel particularly curious. Thanks!