Undress me in the Temple of Heaven, Jane Gilman

Undress me in the Temple of Heaven,  Jane Gilman

This has to be one of my all-time favorite travel memoirs.  Take two young women just graduated from a prestigious Eastern College – one rich, one on student aid and put them in an IHOP.  Over food and conversation about what to do with their lives comes the intrusion of a placemat with pancakes all over the world.  “Let’s eat pancakes around the world.”  And that is the beginning of a plan that takes place really quickly between two people who really do not know each other very well – yet they commit and start – in Communist China in 1986.  It is not a good place for rooky travelers, which of course is what we need as readers.

This is not only their grand adventure, but the author’s first foreign trip!  They run in to the normal bureaucratic issues, language challenges and a nation that had just opened itself to tourists, but had no mechanism for dealing with them.

They meet travelers from other nations and this creates a mixture of issues, but everything has been complicated by Jane’s partner who begins to exhibit psychological issues.  Paranoia creates some really dramatic scenes which are funny in reading, but had to be shocking in person.  Convinced that she is being spied on and is part of an international conspiracy she creates amazing problems for her inexperienced partner.

This leads to yelling and army waving outbursts, disappearances, and hospitalization, jails, plunging naked in to the river and more.  I hesitate to tell more and even feel bad telling this much, but I do want to encourage you to read it. 

One wheel Many Spokes, Lars Clausen

This book was a very fun read because Lars not only lets us learn about his unicycle ride through all 50 states, but he also invites us in to his thinking and feelings.  We learn about the people he meets, the roads he rides, and the personal growth that comes from a long distance commitment to exploring and travel.

His mission is to raise an endowment for a church in Nome Alaska but his ride challenges his religious philosophy, his understanding of the US and our history of abuse to minority peoples, and the machinations of a used RV that causes most of the troubles and frustrations that he has to deal with.

His family rides in the RV and he rides back roads, mountain roads, desert roads, and city streets on his epic travel.  At the end it is a glorious success on one level, but falls short on the fund raising end.  We know that Kalamazoo, MI was the worst place to ride because of the drivers and MI overall was the worst state, but there are other places where he has to face severe head winds and mountain passes that challenge his physical endurance.

Some places reek with loneliness, but others – the reservations – are steeped in hopelessness.  Yet, it is the reservations where Lars finds his greatest connections. 

Like all adventures of this type there are multiple facets to the experience and you can explore many of them through Lars’ writing.

http://onewheel.org/ 

The mother tongue, Bill Bryson

The mother tongue, Bill Bryson

Bryson explores the English language in America and England with a few glances to other nations.  It is obvious Bryson loves the language, but as a tour guide he loves having fun with what he is showing us – giving us, for example, a look at our food – Vermicelli means little worms, hot dog, spotted dick, faggots and gravy…

But the essays are not just confined to the funny; he also checks the pathway that our language has followed to become what we talk today.  He explores the Basque language that many feel is the most ancient of current languages and one that seems to have no connection to other language groups, the isolated Ainu of Hokkaido whose language seems related to European roots, and the shared roots that connect many languages through the basic framework of similar words.

Why so many languages? Bryson notes – “Not only did various speech communities devise different languages, but also different cultural predispositions to go with them.  And of course all languages change over time, except for Icelandic that is still consistent with the sagas written over a thousand years ago.

For those who defend the purity of English they need to see where our words come from – puny = Anglo-Norman puis ne’ and curmudgeon = French Coeur me’rchant  and breeze = Spanish brisa – as examples.  Bryson takes us much deeper with fun.

In conversation Bryson says “…they don’t talk like this, theytalklikethis…” and we separate the puffs and syllables and words in to meaning. 

“Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling, and pronunciations tend to wander around like hemlines.”  And then we have the evolution of ok, o.k., okay – for a word that has a variety of claims for root meaning, but none substantiated it serves as verb, interjection, casual assent, enthusiasm, filler, and adjective – OK?

His wandering goes to word games, names and even swearing where he has a lot of fun.  For example when people say “Get Fucked” as a curse, Bryson says they “…might as well say Have a Nice Day...’ since the act is bound to have more pleasure than whatever is going on when it is uttered.

The book is a wonderfully incomplete treatise that is more fun that scholar and because of that has more to teach than most.  Written in 1990 means the book has missed the age of social media, but many might be surprised to know that the majority of words were already in use and, maybe more surprising to many – today, is that fact they could get along find without LOL.

The Rope, Nevada Barr

The Rope, Nevada Barr

Perhaps Nevada Barr had dragged poor Anna Pigeon through as many changes, threats, dangers, and parks as we could accept as she continually aged along with the series.  So what to do?  Let’s go back to where Anna entered the NPS and where she could once again be put through the Perils of Pauline script that covers here adventures.

We meet a fragile Anna in Glen Canyon Dam recreational park with the wonderful duty of shoveling up the excrement of boaters, campers and other user/abusers.  But if that is not enough she is attacked, left naked in the bottom of a sink hole with only a corpse for a partner and she must find a strength that she had not used in her career in the theater.

She is here to recover from the death of her lover, but instead it is about Anna finding her own inner strength and the pathway she will lead through the books that many of us have already devoured. 

There is a combination of wonderful natural landscape and complex and flawed people to spice up the route and add twists to the stories natural flow.  I found it refreshing to meet the young Anna.  Like so many series there is a point where you feel saturated by the character and their angst so it is nice to step back and change the perspective.

http://www.nevadabarr.com/

Voices on the River, Walter Havighurst

Voices on the River, Walter Havighurst

This is a compendium of river history and stories that encompasses the Ohio, Missouri, and other tributaries as well as the Mississippi.  It includes the normal colorful characters like Samuel Clemens, Horace Bixby and Grant Marsh while showing us the tragedies and conflagrations of the steamboats and flatboats that traveled the wild river before dams, locks, lights, and dredging simplified the river travel.

“In a time long past an ocean gulf reached northward, between the Ozark Mountains and the highlands of Tennessee, narrowing to the river mouth near present day Cape Girardeau.  Here, in a grandeur that no eyes ever saw, the primordial Mississippi plunged 285 feet from its rock ledge to sea level.  And here began the ancient delta, by which the silt-laden river extended its course through land of its own making.”

To which the author adds – “Rivers are more alive than any other of earth’s features, except for the briefly violent volcano.  A river is always carving its channel and always depositing sediment along the way.”

The river is a who’s who of American history and this book does more than list the names and dates.  The author gives us the embodiment of the stories that surround the dates and names.  You can learn, for example, about the role of riverboats in General Grant’s battles and how they helped him with his first great victories, or the conflict at Vicksburg that had riverboats involved in both strategies with great losses to both armies.

The cities, forests, floods, earthquake, and civil unrest that is found throughout the nation’s history is found here in depth and we learn that the river is a microcosm of the expansion to the west.

In The Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien

In The Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien

It’s hard to classify this book as a mystery or thriller, although it has all the elements of both, but it is more of a novel with its exploration of complex ideas and situations.  O’Brien explores the life and death of a couple caught in politics, magic, and the horrors of war.

It is unsettling and in the end you wonder what you just read and what really happened, but then we will never know.  The principal character has a flawed childhood that manifests itself in a quest to be a magician.  It is an escape from an alcoholic father who damages his son with words, words that he does not realize are bullets and knives to the young mind.

From there the John Wade goes to war and in Vietnam his magic persona gains him the soubriquet – The Sorcerer.  It is a title that he personalizes and relishes, but he is not able to use magic to make his participation in the My Lai massacre go away, although he attempts to remove it from his life through illusions and stories he creates in a political lifestyle that leads to an attempt at the Senate.

The story begins in the aftermath of his disastrous loss,  and the revelations of the My Lai trails that insured his loss and the loss of the special magic he had always relied on.  At Lake of the Woods he and his wife Kathy go to restore their life together, but it is impossible, even for a magician, to restore such a shattered glass.

Kathy goes missing, John goes to the deep side of his war scarred personality, and we are left with illusions, deceptions, what ifs and a narrative that is unsettling and in the end unresolved.  It is a book that is extremely well written with lots of the misguiding movements that magicians use to lead the audience from the act that we perceive as magic.  In fact the book is a collection of what ifs – did he kill her, did they run off together, did they both die?  It is the indifference of the demeanor of the sorcerer that unnerves the locals and creates ambiguity in the reader.

“Although the inconclusive ending irritates many readers, O'Brien tries to argue that this is the truest way to tell a story…”  and in the end I am not sure how well I feel about the lack of an ending, the drift into uncertainty.

Blind Your Ponies, Stanley Gordon West

Blind Your Ponies,  Stanley Gordon West

This has to be my favorite book of the year.  Thanks to a gift from Brad Webb, I had the pleasure of a wonderful story set in Willow Creek, MT that captures the mood, tragedies, and expectations that are part of rural life.  Here is a set of characters that could move in to our little town of Willow River and fit right in.  The author, a Minnesotan who has forced his literary talents into the market place in spite of all odds, has really captured the language, the voices, and the foibles that give the story life.

The title comes from an Indian legend, they do not kill any ponies in the book.  Rather, the book is the convergence of a group of boys who become the town basketball team.  This is a team that lost 96 straight coming in the year, and they suddenly focus the hope of the entire community.  How many times have I heard that if they close the school we will lose our team and our town will lose its identity?

Small town teams carry the soul of the community on their shoulders when the play and in this case they become the focal point for numerous stories to converge and be shared as the town people reach out to each other to form a support for the team, not realizing that the team is supporting them, until the end.

It is a book with good pacing, fun sub-stories, and mostly happy endings.  What more can you ask for?

BLIND YOUR PONIES

Stanley Gordon West

Paperback
Algonquin Books
ISBN: 9781565129849

About the Book

Hope is hard to come by in the hard-luck town of Willow Creek. Sam Pickett and five young men are about to change that.

Sam Pickett never expected to settle in this dried-up shell of a town on the western edge of the world. He's come here to hide from the violence and madness that have shattered his life, but what he finds is what he least expects. There's a spirit that endures in Willow Cree, Montana. It seems that every inhabitant of this forgotten outpost has a story, a reason for taking a detour to this place --- or a reason for staying.

As the coach of the hapless high school basketball team (zero wins, 93 losses), Sam can't help but be moved by the bravery he witnesses in the everyday lives of people --- including his own young players --- bearing their sorrows and broken dreams. How do they carry on, believing in a future that seems to be based on the flimsiest of promises? Drawing on the strength of the boys on the team, sharing the hope they display despite insurmountable odds, Sam finally begins to see a future worth living.

Author Stanley Gordon West has filled the town of Willow Creek with characters so vividly cast that they become real as relatives, and their stories --- so full of humor and passion, loss and determination --- illuminate a path into the human heart.  http://www.bookreporter.com/features/holiday_cheer_2010/blind_your_ponies.asp

The Author
Stanley Gordon West

Stanley Gordon West was born in 1932 and attended St. Paul Central High School in Minnesota. He lived in Bozeman, Montana for several years, and now resides in Shakopee, MN. All of his novels are popular book club selections: Blind Your Ponies, two other novels set in the same time and place as Until They Bring the Streetcars Back - Finding Laura Buggs and Growing an Inch - and his most recent, Sweet, Shattered Dreams. His novel Amos was made into a CBS Movie of the Week starring Kirk Douglas that stirred national controversy over abuse of the aged in America. When Kirk Douglas testified before Congress and wrote in the New York Times on the issue, he pointed out that animals had been protected by law for one hundred years before children or the aged. While Amos focused on elder abuse, Until They Bring the Streetcars Back explores the other vulnerable end of the age spectrum.

http://edinareads.org/streetcars/author.htm

Evolving God, Barbara King

Evolving God, Barbara King

This fascinating book looks back at the full history of human evolution and asks when people first began to imagine gods and spirits and create rituals and religions.    King states that she is fascinated with “the evolutionary history of empathy; meaning-making; rule-following; imagination; and consciousness.  As a researcher she has worked with many of the ape species and sees these closest relatives as a place to look for clues.

There is no written record, no continuous oral tradition so she must reach, sometimes a little far for comfort, but as she looks at the findings of the Neandertals and the cave paintings, rock sculptures, and burial excavations of the cave people of Europe there is a pattern that seems to recognize or at least hope for a continuation of life.

Boyer has established a list of eight findings of anthropology that convey the diversity of beliefs and practices and this becomes the beginning point for defining a religion – Religion Explained.  In some cultures (like the Osage Indians) the elders deny that there is a religion The “whole cuture and social structure was and still is infused with a spirituality that cannot be separated from the rest of the community’s life at any point.”  George Tinker.

Some of us, like Frank Lloyd Wright say “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”  And Emily Dickiknson’s poem captures that sense of spiritualism absent religion.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church-
I keep it, staying at home -
With a Bobolink for a Chorister-
And an orchard, for a Dome-

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice-
I just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton ---sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman-
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last -
I’m going all along.

Behavior in a group setting requires cooperation, co-regulation and order and ritual is one tool for creating order.

I suggest studying the cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites and the burial at Regourdou to understand some of the observations.  Anthropologist Roy Rappaport states that “ritual does not just contact the sacred, it creates the sacred.”

It is a fascinating look at pre-history, artifacts and anthropological sites through the lens of discovering religion.

 http://www.barbarajking.com/evolving_god_96577.htm

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/lascaux/index.php

Patrick Henry by Thomas Kidd

Patrick Henry,  Thomas Kidd

Patriot, icon, little known: Patrick Henry was best known for his fiery speech to move Virginia to action in the Revolutionary war that ended in “…give me liberty or give me death.”  But what we lack is the lifetime context of Henry.  He was renowned for his legislative resolutions against the stamp act in 1775 and then he gained infamy in his speech before the Virginia Assembly on the ratification of the constitution, “…consequent happiness or misery of mankind – I am led to believe that much of the account on one side or the other, will depend on what we now decide.” – He was against the constitution.  He lost this close vote, but the nation would not have coalesced had he gotten his way.

This is my second Patrick Henry bio in the last year – Lion of Liberty was the other one.  Lion of liberty gave me a better sense of the individual, but this was a more thorough construction of his impact on the revolution and the post war creation of a nation. 

Patrick Henry is most noted for his “give me liberty or give me death” speech which roused the country and especially Virginia where he would be governor, spokesperson, lawyer, land owner and regrettably slave holder.  He was a patriot of Virginia and was an outspoken man who challenged and often feuded with Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington. 

After the war, with designs on owning land in the west, taking it from the Indians , of course, he opposed the new constitution and the creation of one nation with strong national government. 

It is intriguing politics.  We see Jefferson, resigning his post as governor as the threat of British invasion is intimate and in the cowardly action loses the respect of many in Virginia and Henry in particular.

Reading this narrative with its many good quotes and details I find the references to Great Britain make slaves of the colonists an interesting reference when slavery is such an apparent and awful paradox.  The whiteness of the colonies is very apparent and the seeds of the civil war and the expulsion of Indians and the expansion to the west are woven in to the threads of our revolutionary history.  It is also apparent what a struggle the nation would have with religion and its separation from government in the rhetoric of Henry as he opposes the less fervent Jefferson and Washington. 

In the end I find myself really happy that Henry did not rise to the leadership of the nation and that his views were muted by the work and thoughtfulness of the group that did design the national model.