Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Lion of Saint Mark: A Tale of Venice in the 14th Century by G. A. Henty (Preston-Speed, 2000; originally published 1889)

When we decided to make a visit to Venice, Porter reviewed the appropriate lectures from our Great Courses Guide to Essential Italy and studied Rick Steves' website and Venice travel guide thoroughly.

Me?  I read G. A. Henty's The Lion of St. Mark.

Because Henty's works are primarily about young men and written with an audience of boys in mind, they devote more print to battle scenes than I would prefer; nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure novel set in historical Venice. The story was fun, I liked the characters, and the historical setting seems reasonably accurate based on what I learned from our time there. Now that I've actually walked through the setting, I'm re-reading the story and enjoying it even more.

Henty's books have been republished, and I had a hardcover copy to read. But The Lion of St. Mark is also available as a free Kindle book.

How far should we go in an effort to understand someone else's pain?  Although the Catholic Church strongly discourages the practice, in the Philippines there are people who even experience some aspects of crucifixion on Good Friday. I think we can all agree that's going too far.

Part of the raison d'être of the arts is to show us worlds outside of our own, to help us enter into other people's experiences. Eugene O'Neill's semi-autobiographical drama Long Day's Journey into Night provides the audience with an intimate and painful glimpse into the lives of a highly dysfunctional family of New London, Connecticut in the early 20th century. Why someone would want to enter into that experience is beyond me, but apparently the American literary world has more in common with the Philippines than I thought.

Recently we had the opportunity to attend the Mad Cow Theatre's production of O'Neill's masterpiece. I have to acknowledge its masterpiece status: it's considered O'Neill's best work and won both a Pulitzer Prize for drama and a Tony Award for best play. Any English teacher would assure me of its literary significance. And the local newspaper critic loved this performance. Porter and the friends who were with us thought it was great, too. I realize I stand alone here, but I'm still struggling to find something redeeming about the play.

Oh, the evening was great!  A delicious lasagne dinner, good company, good conversation. Being with friends even made the 45-minute wait to get out of the parking garage almost pleasant. But the show?  Not so much.

As I've said many times in the past, as far as I'm concerned a good book (movie, play) is one that inspires me to be a better person. Strike one against O'Neill's magnum opus. Mostly what it inspired me to do was to run screaming from the room, though that was too impolite to be possible.

I have nothing against the actors, who as far as I could tell did a fine job. Mad Cow actors usually do. But the play was a Presbyterian sermon on steroids. You know what I mean:  A Presbyterian sermon usually makes a good point, but takes three times as long as necessary to say it. Long Day's Journey into Night is a four hour play, with two intermissions, and it says the same things over and over and over and.... The first hour was more than enough. Strike two.

I realize I'm more sensitive to some things than most people, from shirt tags and wrinkles in my socks to the smell of mildew to suspense and horror in movies. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest made me want to vomit and it took months before I managed to suppress the memory of some scenes. I've learned that there are some (many) productions I'm just better off not viewing. Long Day's Journey into Night turns out to be one of them. Fortunately, the horror is verbal, not visual, so I'm not having to repress images. I've also gotten better, since the Cuckoo's Nest days, at protecting myself during the event. When the onslaught of anger, black thoughts, verbal abuse, and insane repetition became too much to handle, I simply blanked it out as much as possible: I closed my eyes, focused my thoughts on something else, and sometimes even fell into the oblivion of sleep. Those episodes were short, but necessary. How can I explain why?  The anger and hurtful words were like a physical assault. If you've ever experienced Restless Legs Syndrome, imagine that same feeling over your entire body. As I said, running from the room screaming was not an option, so I took the next best course of action. :)  It was the third and final strike.

Believe it or not, I'm glad I attended the show, but for some of my readers I highly recommend that if you want to experience this apparently important literary work, you do not attend a live performance, but either read the play or see a film version, where you can stop at any point and take time to process what you've seen—or abandon the effort altogether. You know who you are.

One of our daughters, being an avid and quick reader, would finish her assigned high school English books well ahead of the progress of the class, so that by the time the exam was given, several weeks had passed. Usually she would take some time to skim the book again before the test, to freshen the events in her mind. When the assignment was Lord of the Flies, however, she stated fiercely, "Mom, I will fail the exam before I will open that horrible book again."

She, at least, will understand. (And she aced the test anyway.)

When I complained that Long Day's Journey into Night was unrealistic, more than one person in our party assured me that it resonated well with their own experiences, making me all the more grateful that I grew up in a family where people did not scream, swear, and demean one another. I'm sure it's important that I know of this pain that hides in other people's lives, but this experience was a little too Filipino-Good-Friday for me.

It's not that I want my stories to be all sweetness and light, without complexity or ambiguity. Far from it. But they must always have hope.

Art without hope is failure.

Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body by Jo Marchant (Crown Publishers, 2016)

Jo Marchant is a scientist and a skeptic when it comes to alternative medicine, but could not deny the anecdotal evidence of its successes. In Cure she documents the efforts of researchers to figure out just what is going on with that, and concludes that the interaction of our minds and our bodies is a lot more complicated than we currently understand.

The placebo effect, and its evil twin, the nocebo effect, turn out to be much more powerful than initially believed, creating observable, measurable changes in our brains, and there are several ways to trick our minds into healing our bodies, some of them bordering on the absurd:  people can be healed by placebo pills even when they know they are placebos, even when they know the capsules they are swallowing are filled with nothing but air.

Hypnosis is fighting its way back from its circus sideshow beginnings and proving to be a powerful tool, especially in pain relief and autoimmune disorders. Meditation, too, is shedding its spiritual roots and looks promising for physical as well as mental problems. So does biofeedback. Virtual Reality therapy can apparently do a better job of controlling acute and chronic pain than high doses of addictive drugs.

As medical practitioners are pressed more and more to cut the time they spend with patients, evidence is mounting that health outcomes are greatly improved by listening, caring, reassurance, and ditching the traditional doctor-patient relationship for one in which the patient is considered a full partner in his health care. Family, friends, and social support also have a tremendous impact on health.

Cure is a fascinating book with two important drawbacks. The first one, the author recognizes:  acknowledging the power of the mind to affect the body may lead people—and/or their caregivers—to believe that their real, physical illnesses are "all in their heads"—or worse, that it's their own fault if they don't get well. Marchant hastens to explain that the mind-body interaction is a whole lot more complicated than that. I was reminded of the advice given by a pastor to the woman who reported that people were telling her she could throw away her cane if only she had enough faith. "Next time they tell you that," he advised, "Whack them over the head with your cane and say to them that it only hurts because their faith isn't good enough."

The second problem I doubt Marchant sees herself.  But the only section that disappointed me is where she tackled the possible effect of prayer on healing, and abandoned her otherwise balanced and open-minded approach. It shows through clearly that she didn't want to find any consequence of prayer that couldn't be chalked up to the placebo effect or a supportive social situation. Even worse, as is true of many researchers she treats "prayer" as if it were an abstract force independent of the particular faith of the pray-er and of whatever entity is on the receiving end of the prayer. As if the cause of a prayer's effect must be solely inside the person praying, so that there can be no difference whether one prays to Allah, Jesus, Thor, or the kitchen sink. With this weakness in methodology, it would have been better to skip the section on prayer entirely.

Here are a few quotes that stood out:

Big pills tend to be more effective [as placebos] than small ones. ... Two pills at once work better than one. A pill with a recognizable brand name stamped across the front is more effective than one without. Colored pills tend to work better than white ones, although which color is best depends upon the effect that you are trying to create. Blue tends to help sleep, whereas red is good for relieving pain. Green pills work best for anxiety. The type of intervention matters too: the more dramatic the treatment, the bigger the placebo effect. In general, surgery is better than injections, which are better than capsules, which are better than pills. There are cultural differences.... [A]lthough blue tablets generally make good placebo sleeping pills, they tend to have the opposite effect on Italian men.

[T]he placebo effect has a dark side. The mind might have salutary effects on the body, but it can create negative symptoms too. The official term for this phenomenon is the "nocebo effect" ... and it hasn't been much studied because of ethical concerns. ... Nocebo effects are even one explanation for the power of voodoo curses. ... [M]ost of the side effects we suffer when we take medicines are not due directly to the drugs at all, but to the nocebo effect. ... Italian researchers followed 96 men.... Some did not know what drug they were taking, whereas others were told about the drug and that it might cause erectile dysfunction. The percentage of patients in each group who subsequently suffered this side effect was 3.1% and 31.2%.

When we were prescribed Malarone as an anti-malarial, we deliberately did not read about the side effects, although I packed the information sheet just in case one of us started having weird symptoms. I guess that was a good idea.

[P]erhaps the most fundamental lesson from research on placebos [is] the importance of the doctor-patient encounter. If an empathetic healer makes us feel cared for and secure, rather than under threat, this alone can trigger significant biological changes that ease our symptoms.

Unfortunately, despite the public health disaster being wrought by prescription painkillers, there is relatively little research interest in non-pharmacological methods to help people deal with pain.... [P]art of the reason for the lack of enthusiasm is economic. Pain relief is a billion-dollar market, and drug companies have no incentive to fund trials that would reduce patients' dependence on their products.... And neither have medical insurers, because if medical costs come down, so do their profits. ... [T]here's no intervening industry that has the interest in pushing it.

That could be about to change, however. In March 2014, Facebook bought a little-known California startup called Oculus for $9 billion. The company specializes in VR [virtual reality] gaming and has just developed a headset called Oculus Rift, similar in size and shape to a scuba mask. Whereas the VR equipment [used with stunning success for pain relief] costs tens of thousands of dollars, Oculus sells its headsets for just $350 each. That promises to bring virtual reality within reach of ordinary consumers, who will be able to run wireless masks from their tablets or smartphones. ... Developments like this mean that people will soon be able to use virtual reality pain relief ... at home. It also means that virtual worlds are about to get much more sophisticated ... as video game companies throw resources at developing software to go with the new headsets. As well as better games ... that could lead to better pain therapies.... [W]e might soon see pain relief trials funded not by drug companies, but by the gaming industry.

Randomized trials comparing planned home and hospital births are almost impossible to do, because it's not practical or ethical to force women to give birth in a particular place. But there are plenty of large, observational trials.... These studies compare women who choose hospital birth with those who try to deliver at home (regardless of whether they have their babies there or end up transferring to hospital for pain relief or medical intervention). It turns out that simply by choosing home birth, women are less likely to require drugs to induce or speed up labor or relieve pain; less likely to be cut open or to tear; and less likely to need a C-section or instrumental delivery. Their babies are born in better shape and are more likely to breastfeed. ... It seems that when you replace easy access to technology with caring for a woman's emotional state, she and her baby fare much better—not just mentally but physically too. ... [T]he reassurance of someone we trust is not a trivial luxury. The right words can be powerful enough to replace aggressive medical intervention and transform physical outcomes.

All too often when we receive medical treatment, our mental state is seen as a secondary concern, and our role as a patient doesn't go much beyond signing consent forms and requesting pain-relieving drugs. ... The three projects described [in Chapter 7]—midwives supporting women during childbirth; radiologists changing how they talk to patients; and doctors discussing difficult questions with the terminally ill—instead give patients an active role to play. These might seem like commonsense interventions, but they all embody a fundamental (and for our medical system, revolutionary) shift in what it means to care for someone. Medicine becomes not an all-powerful doctor dishing out treatments to a passive recipient, but a partnership between equal human beings. This principle is at the heart of many of the other cases we've seen so far, too.... Instead of medicating their way out of problems with ever-greater doses of drugs and interventions, these medical professionals are harnessing their patients' psychological resources as a critical component of their care. They're doing this for adults and children; for chronic complaints and for emergencies; from birth until death. This approach provides a better experience for patients. It costs less. And it improves physical outcomes. Patients suffer fewer complications, recover faster and live longer.

[E]xperiences of social exclusion or rejection—such as being shunned in a game, receiving negative social feedback, or viewing images of deceased loved ones—activate exactly the same regions of the brain as when we are in physical pain.

The impact of loneliness ... depends not on how many physical contacts we have but how isolated we feel. You might have only one or two close friends, but if you feel satisfied and supported there's no need to worry about effects on your health, [researcher John] Cacioppo tells me. "But if you're sitting there feeling threatened by others, feeling as if you are alone in the world, that's probably a reason to take steps."

The most resilient kids were brought up by firm, vigilant parents.... But crucially, these parents were also affectionate, communicative and highly engaged in the children's lives. ... These kids knew where the boundaries were, and that there would be sanctions for bad behavior. But they also knew this was because their parents loved and cared about them.

I'm not sure why we needed a study to tell us that one.

Western medicine is (rightly) underpinned by science and trial evidence, and to many policy-makers and funders, physical interventions just "feel" more scientific than mind-body approaches do. Bioelectronics researcher Kevin Tracey is now enjoying millions of dollars of private and public funding to pursue his idea of stimulating the nervous system with electricity, even though as I write this, his largest published human study is in eight people. Gastroenterologist Peter Whorwell, by contrast, can't persuade local funding agencies to pay for his [Irritable Bowel Syndrome] patients to receive gut-focused hypnotherapy despite decades of positive trials in hundreds of patients.

At the heart of almost all the pathways I've learned about is one guiding principle: if we feel safe, cared for and in control—in a critical moment during injury or disease, or generally throughout our lives—we do better. We feel less pain, less fatigue, less sickness. Our immune system works with us instead of against us. Our bodies ease off on emergency defenses and can focus on repair and growth.

[R]ather than putting our faith in mystical rituals and practices, the science described in this book shows that in many situations, we have the capacity to influence our own health by harnessing the power of the (conscious and unconscious) mind. If you feel that alternative remedies work for you, I don't see any need to abandon them, especially when conventional medicine does not yet provide all of the same elements. But be critical of the advice that you may be offered by alternative therapists. And give your brain and body some credit. It's not necessarily the potions or needles or hand waving that make you feel better. Consider the possibility that these are just a clever way of pushing your buttons, enabling you to influence your own physiology in a way tha teases your symptoms and protects you from disease.

Or as Michael Pollen famously said, "Be the kind of person who takes supplements—then skip the supplements."

The Road to Character  by David Brooks (Random House, 2015)

I read this book on the recommendation of our rector, so I'm sorry to say how much I dislike it. I read it through to the end, hoping it would improve—and because I'm the kind of person who finds it very hard not to finish a book once I've started it, even if I find it depressing.

Generally, I don't read depressing books. If I want to be depressed, I can turn on the news, or spend too much time on social media. As I've said so often, a good book is one that inspires me to be a better person. I don't need books that inspire me to throw up my hands in despair at the state of the world and crawl back into bed.

The sad thing is that this book was intended to have just the opposite effect. From the introduction:  This book is about ... how some people have cultivated strong character. It's about one mindset that people through the centuries have adopted to put iron in their core and to cultivate a wise heart.

Here's a mystery for you. The above is as much as I had written on this review back in January. The book has long since been returned to the library, and I have absolutely no desire to read it again, not even for a review. But I have pages of quotations that represent a lot of work and would be a shame to waste. In addition, there's the following intriguing quote from C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, which I remember that I included because it struck me as representative of what bothered me about several of the people the author chose to use as his postive role models.

"Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you," said Digory.

"Rotten?" said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look.

"Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I'm sure, and I'm very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys - and servants - and women - and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."

As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle's face ... and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew's grand words. "All it means," he said to himself, "Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants."

To the best of my recollection, my quarrel with David Brooks was largely over this attitude; he appears to justify heinous behavior for the sake of a particular character trait he respects. I'm sorry I can't give concrete examples, but the book really isn't worth rereading to find them. Take my word for it, or not.

But the book's not all bad, so here are the quotations:

From the introduction

Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable. Their virtues are not the blooming virtues you see in smart college students; they are the ripening virtues you see in people who have lived a little and have learned from joy and pain. Sometimes you don’t even notice these people, because while they seem kind and cheerful, they are also reserved. They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline. They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all. They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They just recognize what needs doing and they do it.

They make you feel funnier and smarter when you speak with them. They move through different social classes not even aware, it seems, that they are doing so. After you’ve known them for a while it occurs to you that you’ve never heard them boast, you’ve never seen them self-righteous or doggedly certain. They aren’t dropping little hints of their own distinctiveness and accomplishments. They have not led lives of conflict-free tranquility, but have struggled toward maturity. They have gone some way toward solving life’s essential problem, which is that, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either— but right through every human heart.”

These are the people who have built a strong inner character, who have achieved a certain depth. In these people, at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to the struggle to deepen the soul. ... These are the people we are looking for.

From Chapter 1:  The Shift

It occurred to me that I had just watched more self-celebration after a two-yard gain than I had heard after the United States won World War II. This little contrast set off a chain of thoughts in my mind. It occurred to me that this shift might symbolize a shift in culture, a shift from a culture of self-effacement that says “Nobody’s better than me, but I’m no better than anyone else” to a culture of self-promotion that says “Recognize my accomplishments, I’m pretty special.”

…

For example, between 1948 and 1954, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was revisited in 1989, and this time it wasn't 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent of boys and 77 percent of girls.

Psychologists have a thing called the narcissism test. They read people statements and ask if the statements apply to them. Statements such as “I like to be the center of attention… I show off if I get the chance because I am extraordinary… Somebody should write a biography about me.” The median narcissism score has risen 30 percent in the last two decades. Ninety-three percent of young people score higher than the middle score just twenty years ago. The largest gains have been in the number of people who agree with the statements “I am an extraordinary person” and “I like to look at my body.”

Along with this apparent rise in self-esteem, there has been a tremendous increase in the desire for fame. Fame used to rank low as a life’s ambition for most people. In a 1976 survey that asked people to list their life goals, fame ranked fifteenth out of sixteen. By 2007, 51 percent of young people reported that being famous was one of their top personal goals. In one study, middle school girls were asked who they would most like to have dinner with. Jennifer Lopez came in first, Jesus Christ came in second, and Paris Hilton third. The girls were then asked which of the following jobs they would like to have. Nearly twice as many said they’d rather be a celebrity’s personal assistant— for example, Justin Bieber’s—than president of Harvard. (Though, to be fair, I’m pretty sure the president of Harvard would also rather be Justin Bieber’s personal assistant.)

Frankly, if I learn that the last statement is true, I will lose all respect for the president of Harvard.

People who live this way believe that character is not innate or automatic. You have to build it with effort and artistry. You can’t be the good person you want to be unless you wage this campaign. You won’t even achieve enduring external success unless you build a solid moral core. If you don’t have some inner integrity, eventually your Watergate, your scandal, your betrayal, will happen.

…

[C]haracter is built not only through austerity and hardship. It is also built sweetly through love and pleasure. When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits. When you love a person deeply, you want to serve them and earn their regard. When you experience great art, you widen your repertoire of emotions. Through devotion to some cause, you elevate your desires and organize your energies. Moreover, the struggle against the weaknesses in yourself is never a solitary struggle. No person can achieve self-mastery on his or her own. Individual will, reason, compassion, and character are not strong enough to consistently defeat selfishness, pride, greed, and self-deception. Everybody needs redemptive assistance from outside— from family, friends, ancestors, rules, traditions, institutions, exemplars, and, for believers, God. We all need people to tell us when we are wrong, to advise us on how to do right, and to encourage, support, arouse, cooperate, and inspire us along the way.

…

The most important thing is whether you are willing to engage in moral struggle against yourself. The most important thing is whether you are willing to engage this struggle well—joyfully and compassionately. [British author Henry] Fairlie writes, “At least if we recognize that we sin, know that we are individually at war, we may go to war as warriors do, with something of valor and zest and even mirth.”

…

People with character may be loud or quiet, but they do tend to have a certain level of self-respect. Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. It can only be earned by a person who has endured some internal temptation, who has confronted their own weaknesses and who knows, “Well, if worse comes to worst, I can endure that. I can overcome that.”

From Chapter 3:  Moderation (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

[T]he moderate knows she cannot have it all. There are tensions between rival goods, and you just have to accept that you will never get to live a pure and perfect life, devoted to one truth or one value. The moderate has limited aspirations about what can be achieved in public life. The paradoxes embedded into any situation do not allow for a clean and ultimate resolution. You expand liberty at the cost of encouraging license. You crack down on license at the cost of limiting liberty. There is no escaping this sort of trade-off. The moderate can only hope to have a regulated character, stepping back to understand opposing perspectives and appreciating the merits of each. The moderate understands that political cultures are traditions of conflict. There are never-ending tensions that pit equality against achievement, centralization against decentralization, order and community against liberty and individualism. The moderate doesn’t try to solve those arguments. There are no ultimate solutions. The moderate can only hope to achieve a balance that is consistent with the needs of the moment. The moderate does not believe there are some policy solutions that are right for all times (this seems obvious, but the rule is regularly flouted by ideologues in nation after nation). The moderate does not admire abstract schemes but understands that it is necessary to legislate along the grain of human nature, and within the medium in which she happens to be placed.

…

The best moderate is skeptical of zealotry because he is skeptical of himself. He distrusts passionate intensity and bold simplicity because he know that in politics the lows are lower than the highs are high—the damage leaders do when they get things wrong is greater than the benefits they create when they get things right.

Let's hear that again:  in politics the lows are lower than the highs are high—the damage leaders do when they get things wrong is greater than the benefits they create when they get things right.

Eisenhower warned the country against belief in quick fixes. Americans, he said, should never believe that “some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” He warned against human frailty, particularly the temptation to be shortsighted and selfish. He asked his countrymen to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.” Echoing the thrifty ethos of his childhood, he reminded the nation that we cannot “mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.” He warned, most famously, about the undue concentration of power, and the way unchecked power could lead to national ruin. He warned first about the military-industrial complex—“a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” He also warned against “a scientific-technological elite,” a powerful network of government-funded experts who might be tempted to take power away from the citizenry. Like the nation’s founders, he built his politics on distrust of what people might do if they have unchecked power.

…

This was the speech of a man who had been raised to check his impulses and had then been chastened by life. It was the speech of a man who had seen what human beings are capable of, who had felt in his bones that man is a problem to himself. It was the speech of a man who used to tell his advisers “Let’s make our mistakes slowly,” because it was better to proceed to a decision gradually than to rush into anything before its time. This is the lesson that his mother and his upbringing had imparted to him decades before. This was a life organized not around self-expression, but self-restraint.

Although I was around during Eisenhower's administration, I knew nothing of his politics (and, frankly, that's still true). But this chapter makes me wish he'd been the one to craft our national health insurance policy. "Let's make our mistakes slowly" is so far from today's attitude, prevalent among politicians, manufacturers, and software developers, of "Let's throw something together and fix it later."

From Chapter 4:  Struggle

[quoting Dorothy Day] “one of the hardest things in the world is to organize ourselves and discipline ourselves.”

From Chapter 5:  Self-Mastery

The work of the Roman biographer Plutarch is based on the premise that the tales of the excellent can lift the ambitions of the living. Thomas Aquinas argued that in order to lead a good life, it is necessary to focus more on our exemplars than on ourselves, imitating their actions as much as possible. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argued, “Moral education is impossible without the habitual vision of greatness.” In 1943, Richard Winn Livingstone wrote, “One is apt to think of moral failure as due to weakness of character: more often it is due to an inadequate ideal. We detect in others, and occasionally in ourselves, the want of courage, of industry, of persistence, which leads to defeat. But we do not notice the more subtle and disastrous weakness, that our standards are wrong, that we have never learned what is good.”

One more time:  We do not notice the more subtle and disastrous weakness, that our standards are wrong, that we have never learned what is good.

From Chapter 7:  Love

Sometimes you see lack of agency among the disadvantaged. Their lives can be so blown about by economic disruption, arbitrary bosses, and general disruption that they lose faith in the idea that input leads to predictable output. You can offer programs to improve their lives, but they may not take full advantage of them because they don’t have confidence that they can control their own destinies.

…

Self-control is like a muscle. If you are called upon to exercise self-control often in the course of a day, you get tired and you don’t have enough strength to exercise as much self-control in the evening. But love is the opposite. The more you love, the more you can love. A person who has one child does not love that child less when the second and third child come along. A person who loves his town does not love his country less. Love expands with use.

He's right about love, but I’m certain, despite recent studies, that he is wrong about self-control. Perhaps it is true in the short term, but I’m convinced that over time, self-control gained in one area makes it easier to gain self-control in another. Using his own analogy, muscles grow by use.

From Chapter 9:  Self-Examination

The Germans have a word for this condition: Zerrissenheit—loosely, “falling-to-pieces-ness.” This is the loss of internal coherence that can come from living a multitasking, pulled-in-a-hundred-directions existence. This is what Kierkegaard called “the dizziness of freedom.” When the external constraints are loosened, when a person can do what he wants, when there are a thousand choices and distractions, then life can lose coherence and direction if there isn’t a strong internal structure.

…

Today many writers see literature and art only in aesthetic terms, but [Samuel] Johnson saw them as moral enterprises. He hoped to be counted among those writers who give “ardor to virtue and confidence to truth.” He added, “It is always a writer’s duty to make the world better.” As [literary critic Paul] Fussell puts it, “Johnson, then, conceives of writing as something very like a Christian sacrament, defined in the Anglican catechism as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us.’  ”

…

Many try to avoid sorrow by living timid lives. Many try to relieve sorrow by forcing themselves to go to social events. Johnson does not approve of these stratagems. Instead, he advises, “The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment…. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life and is remedied by exercise and motion.”

From Chapter 10:  The Big Me

If you were born at any time over the last sixty years, you were probably born into what the philosopher Charles Taylor has called “the culture of authenticity.” This mindset is based on the romantic idea that each of us has a Golden Figure in the core of our self. There is an innately good True Self, which can be trusted, consulted, and gotten in touch with. Your personal feelings are the best guide for what is right and wrong.

…

According to an Ernst & Young survey, 65 percent of college students expect to become millionaires. … parents with college degrees invest $5,700 more per year per child on out-of-school enrichment activities than they did in 1978.

I include the statements in the last paragraph just because they exemplify one of my pet peeves with writers who throw numbers around casually. The author thinks he is supporting his points, but these numbers are meaningless. "Millionaire" does not mean the same thing in 2016 as it did 100 years ago, when there were just over 200 in the whole country of 102 million people.^* And a bare figure like "$5,700 more" means nothing unless you know whether or not it has been adjusted for inflation, which between 1978 and now was 363%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  What's the point of using numbers in this way? At best they confuse; at worst they deceive.

The Fatal Tree by Stephen R. Lawhead (Thomas Nelson, 2014)

This is the final book in Lawhead's Bright Empires series, of which the first four were The Skin Map, The Bone House, The Spirit Well, and The Shadow Lamp.  I enjoyed reading The Fatal Tree, which only took me a few hours, but was nonetheless disappointed.  As with my experience reading the Harry Potter books, this series got better and better for the first three books, then largely fell apart.

The premise—combining the concept of ley lines with quantum physics and multiverse theory—is brilliant, as are many of the ways the author works the concepts out in the lives of his characters.  I wish the last two books had fulfilled the promise of the first three.  The confusion of so many characters from many times and places, and the dizzying way the book jumps around, enhance the story in the early books, mimicking the confusion of ley travel and multiple universes, but sadly the last book does not draw all the threads into a coherent whole.  Rather, it feels hasty and incomplete.

What's more, Lawhead is a Christian writer, and where his faith is kept in the backgound it adds depth and beauty to the stories.  Unfortunately, when it becomes explicit, as in the last two books, it feels forced and awkward.

I still recommend the Bright Empires series, because Lawhead had a wonderful idea and worked it out in some very clever ways.  I'd rank it well below The Lord of the Rings but well above Harry Potter.  It's just a pity that Lawhead, like J. K. Rowling, stopped at good when he could have reached great.

Manjiro:  The Man who Discovered America  by Hisakazu Kaneko (Riverside Press, 1956)

This book was apparently my paternal grandmother's:  her name is scrawled with some other notes on the back of the dust jacket.  I suspect it made its way to my bookshelves in one of the eight large boxes I took home when my father—a book lover indeed—moved out of our family home.  Inspired by my 95 by 65 goal to read some of those books at last, I chose Manjiro to be my final book of 2015.

The only problem with this project is that I was hoping to declutter at the same time—but I keep finding such interesting books!

Manjiro was the impoverished, uneducated son of a Japanese widow, who by working on fishing boats helped his mother eke out a living.  When he was 14, he was shipwrecked by a storm and rescued from a deserted island by an American whaling ship.  Proving himself both bright and ambitious, he could have made a good life in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the home of his rescuer and foster father.  But Manjiro had dreams of helping his insular country open its doors to the wider world, and eventually made his way back home, not long before the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853.

This book is not the only one written about Manjiro's experiences, but I love its style, which retains a feeling not only of 1950's America, but of Japanese culture as well.

There's more to the book than the quotes below, but I especially enjoyed his observations of mid-19th century America.

When he was invited by the Tokugawa Government, soon after Commodore Perry and his fleet appeared in the Bay of Uraga in 1853, he had a vital role to play for the wakening of the Japanese people to world civilization. Upon his arrival in Yedo, the former capital of Japan, he was examined by Magistrate Saemon Kawaji before he was officially taken into government service.

Answering the questions put to him by the investigating official, he revealed his own observations about America to the amazement of his listeners. Never can we overestimate the value of these observations which undoubtedly influenced the policy of the Tokugawa Government in favor of the opening of the country to foreign intercourse when Commodore Perry revisited Japan in February, 1854.

The next quotes are from Manjiro himself:

The country is generally blessed with a mild climate and it is rich in natural resources such as gold, silver, copper, iron, timber and other materials that are necessary for man's living. The land, being fertile, yields abundant crops of wheat, barley, com, beans and all sorts of vegetables, but rice is not grown there simply because they do not eat it.

Both men and women are generally good-looking but as they came from different countries of Europe, their features and the color of their eyes, hair and skin are not the same. They are usually tall in stature. They are by nature sturdy, vigorous, capable and warmhearted people. American women have quaint customs; for instance, some of them make a hole through the lobes of their ears and run a gold or silver ring through this hole as an ornament.

When a young man wants to marry, he looks for a young woman for himself, without asking a go-between to find one for him, as we do in Japan, and, if he succeeds in finding a suitable one, he asks her whether or not she is willing to marry him. If she says, "Yes," he tells her and his parents about it and then the young man and the young woman accompanied by their parents and friends go to church and ask the priest to perform the wedding ceremony. Then the priest asks the bridegroom, "Do you really want to have this young woman as your wife?" To which the young man says, "I do". Then the priest asks a similar question of the bride and when she says, "I do," he declares that they are man and wife. Afterward, cakes and refreshments are served and then the young man takes his bride on a pleasure trip.

Refined Americans generally do not touch liquor. Even if they do so they drink only a little, because they think that liquor makes men either lazy or quarrelsome. Vulgar Americans, however, drink just like Japanese, although drunkards are detested and despised. Even the whalers, who are hard drinkers while they are on a voyage, stop drinking once they are on shore. Moreover, the quality of liquor is inferior to Japanese sake, in spite of the fact that there are many kinds of liquor in America.

Americans invite a guest to a dinner at which fish, fowl and cakes are served, but to the best of my knowledge, a guest, however important he may be, is served with no liquor at all. He is often entertained with music instead when the dinner is over.

When a visitor enters the house he takes off his hat. They never bow to each other as politely as we do. The master of the house simply stretches out his right hand and the visitor also does the same and they shake hands with each other. While they exchange greetings, the master of the house invites the visitor to sit on a chair instead of the floor. As soon as business is over, the visitor takes leave of the house, because they do not want to waste time.

When a mother happens to have very little milk in her breasts to give her child, she gives of all things a cow's milk, as a substitute for a mother's milk. But it is true that no ill effect of this strange habit has been reported from any part of the country.

On every seventh day, people, high and low, stop their work and go to temple and keep their houses quiet, but on the other days they take pleasure by going into mountains and fields to hunt, while lower class Americans take their women to the seaside or hills and drink and bet and have a good time.

The temple is called church. The priest, who is an ordinary-looking man, has a wife and he even eats meat, unlike a Japanese priest. Even on the days of abstinence, he only refrains from eating animal meat and he does not hesitate to eat fowl or fish instead. The church is a big tower-looking building two or three hundred feet high. There is a large clock on the tower which tells the time. There is no image of Buddha inside this temple, where on every seventh day they worship what they call God who, in their faith, is the Creator of the World. There are many benches in the church on which people sit during the service. All the members of the church bring their Books to the service. The priest, on an elevated seat, tells his congregation to open the Book at such and such a place, and when this is done, the priest reads from the Book and he preaches the message of the text he has just read. The service over, they all leave the church. This kind of service is held also on board the ships.

Every year on the Fourth of July, they have a big celebration throughout the land in commemoration of a great victory of their country over England in a war which took place seventy-five years ago. On that day they display the weapons which they used in the war. They put on the uniforms, and armed with swords and guns, they put up sham fights and then parade the streets and make a great rejoicing on that day.

As the gun is regarded as the best weapon in America, they are well trained how to use it. When they go hunting they take small guns, but in war they use large guns since they are said to be more suitable for war. Ports and fortresses are protected by dozens of these large guns so that it would be extremely difficult to attack them successfully. Before Europeans came to America, the natives used bows and arrows, but these old-fashioned weapons proved quite powerless before firearms which were brought by Europeans. Now the bow and arrow has fallen into disuse in America. To the best of my knowledge, they have never used bamboo shields, as we do, although they use sometimes the shields of copper plates for the protection of the hull of a fighting ship. They are not well trained in swordsmanship or spearsmanship, however, so that in my opinion, in close fighting, a samurai could easily take on three Americans.

American men, even officials, do not carry swords as the samurai do. But when they go on a journey, even common men usually carry with them two or three pistols; their pistol is somewhat equivalent to the sword of a samurai. As I said before, their chief weapon is firearms and they are skillful in handling them. Moreover, as they have made a thorough study of the various weapons used by foreign armies, they believe that there are hardly any foreign weapons that can frighten them out of their wits.

More and more both fighting ships and merchant ships driven by the steam engine have been built of late in America. These steamships can be navigated in all directions irrespective of the current and wind and they can cover the distance of two hundred ri a day. The clever device with which these ships are built is something more than I can describe. While in America I had no chance to learn the trade of shipbuilding, so that I would not say that I can build one with confidence. Since I have looked at them carefully, however, I shall be able to direct our shipwrights to build one, if I could get hold of some foreign books on the subject.

While I was in America I did not hear any good or bad remarks in particular about our country but I did hear Americans say that the Japanese people were easily alarmed, even when they see a ship in distress approaching their shores for help, and how they shoot it on sight, when there was no real cause for alarm at all. I also heard them speak very highly of Japanese swords, which they believe that no other swords could possibly rival. I heard too that Yedo of Japan, together with Peking of China and London of England, are the three largest and finest cities of the world.

The book ends with a letter written to Manjiro's eldest son by U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

My dear Dr. Nakahama:

When Viscount Ishii was here in Washington he told me that you are living in Tokyo and we talked about your distinguished father.

You may not know that I am the grandson of Mr. Warren Delano of Fairhaven, who was part owner of the ship of Captain Whitfield which brought your father to Fairhaven. Your father lived, as I remembered it, at the house of Mr. Trippe, which was directly across the street from my grandfather's house, and when I was a boy, I well remember my grandfather telling me all about the little Japanese boy who went to school in Fairhaven and who went to church from time to time with the Delano family. I myself used to visit Fairhaven, and my mother's family still own the old house.

The name of Nakahama will always be remembered by my family, and I hope that if you or any of your family come to the United States that you will come to see us.

Believe me, my dear Dr. Nakahama,
Very sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

The letter was written on June 8, 1933, just eight and a half years before our two countries would be fiercely at war.

The Billion Dollar Spy  by David E. Hoffman (Doubleday, 2015)

This is not a book I would necessarily have picked up myself, but Porter thought so highly of it that I couldn't resist.

He was right.

There are many, many reasons why the Berlin Wall finally came down and the Cold War ended, as varied as President Reagan's firm stand, internal weaknesses created by Communism, and the influence of the Catholic Church in Poland.  The Billion Dollar Spy reveals yet another:  Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer who fought the system he loathed with the best weapon he could:  giving critical information on Soviet military technology to the country best able to make use of it:  the United States.  This knowledge was beyond value.

Not that we didn't bungle again and again his attempts to help us.  The incompetence of the CIA at certain times in history and its unfathomable paralysis at others had me cringing as I read.  And in the end Tolkachev and his mission were brought down by a disgruntled former CIA employee who betrayed him to the KGB. 

In the meantime, his work exceeded the CIA's wildest expectations, and the story as Hoffman tells it makes for great reading.

The Story of Western Science:  From the writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory by Susan Wise Bauer (W. W. Norton, 2015)

I didn't intend to read this book yet.  I had put it on my Amazon wish list with the thought that I might receive it for Christmas.  I've barely started Bauer's The History of the Renaissance World (95 by 65 goal number 64), which I felt I should finish before starting another of her books.  But then our library purchased the book, and I thought it would be a good idea to skim it and make sure I wanted to keep it on my wish list.  I quickly became hooked.

(The book I read had a slightly different title, though apparently the same content.  According to Bauer, it "was originally published as The Story of Science, but my publisher has now changed the title to The Story of Western Science."  Does that mean they expect a sequel about Eastern science?)

In keeping with the pattern Bauer set with her books of history, this is not so much the history of science as the story of science.

It traces the development of great science writing—the essays and books that have most directly affected and changed the course of scientific investigation.  It is intended for the interested and intelligent nonspecialist.  It shows science to be a very human pursuit:  not an infallible guide to truth, but a deeply personal, sometimes flawed, often misleading, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world.

Each part presents a chronological series of "great books" of science, from the most ancient works of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Plato, all the way up to the modern works of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, James Gleick, and Walter Alvarez.  The chapters provide all of the historical, biographical, and technical information you need to understand the books themselves.

Not that it's necessary to read the books themselves.  Bauer's chapters can stand alone to provide a solid introduction not only to the development of science, but to the science itself, on an intelligent but non-technical level.  For those who want to dig deeper, Bauer's website provides excerpts from the older and less accessible books.  Deeper still?  She recommends sources for the originals (translations where necessary) in both print and electronic formats.

Most of us are fed science in news reports, interactive graphs, and sound bites.  These may give us a fuzzy and incomplete glimpse of the facts involved, but the ongoing science battles of the twenty-first century show that the facts aren't enough.  Decisions that affect stem cell research, global warming, the teaching of evolution in elementary schools—these are being made by voters (or, independently, by their theoretical representatives) who don't actually understand why biologists think stem cells are important, or how environmental scientists came to the conclusion that the earth is warming, or what the Big Bang actually is.

Scientists who grapple with biological origins are still affected by Platonic idealism today; Charles Lyell's nineteenth-century geological theories still influence our understanding of human evolution; quantum theory is still wrestling with Francis Bacon's methods.

To interpret science, we have to know something about its past.  We have to continually ask not just "What have we discovered?" but also "Why did we look for it?" In no other way can we begin to grasp why we prize, or disregard, scientific knowledge in the way we do; or be able to distinguish between the promises that science can fulfill and those we should receive with some careful skepticism.

Only then will we begin to understand science.

The Story of Western Science is a solid, intellectual work, but not intimidating.  I think our twelve-year-old grandson would enjoy it, and lay a solid foundation for further growth.  His nine-year-old brother might even get something from reading through it, though both would benefit from rereading it at a later date.  So would I—and I have a degree in mathematics and a stronger background in physics than most.

The book is also a pleasure to read because Susan Wise Bauer writes so well.  I do object to her persistent use of the term "different than" instead of "different from," which is a pet peeve of mine—but that's easy to forgive for the overall delight her writing brings.  I recommend The Story of Western Science wholeheartedly.

Having read it, however, there's no longer any reason to keep it on my Amazon list—unless, of course, for the sake of those aforementioned grandchildren.

The Martian  by Andy Weir (Crown, 2014)

Our Christmas present from the library:  we made the top of the wait list for The Martian.  It was worth the wait and with one exception ranks as one of the best books I've read this year.

The exception?  The profanity is even worse than in the movie.  Unlike the movie, there's sexual innuendo, but nothing graphic.  There's no violence at all, unless you count all the explosions that happen.  Still, definitely NSFG (not safe for grandchildren).  Which is a pity, because I know one, maybe three, who would love it.  (This conundrum is the only drawback I know to having early and eager readers.)

That aside, The Martian is the perfect engineering nerd book, yet perfectly engaging for less technical folk.  It's also incredibly well-written, and I'm picky that way.  I'm guessing Andy Weir aced both the Math and the Verbal sections of his SAT's.

Having read the book, I can enthusiastically endorse the movie, which is remarkably, though justifiably not completely, true to the book.  So go ahead, watch the movie.  But don't stop there:  read the book.  There's more to the story.

1066 and All That:  A Memorable History of England by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman (Barnes and Noble, 1993, original 1931)
It All Started with Columbus:  An Improbable Account of American History by Richard Armour (McGraw-Hill, 1953)

Attention teachers and parents:  Next time a child whines, "Why do I have to learn history?" you are free to use my answer.  "So you will be able to understand why these books are funny."

They are funny, and clever to boot, but without a solid grounding in history, and some literature as well, you're not likely to get the jokes.  As poor as my knowledge of history is, I'm confident I know more about British history than most Americans; even so, a good bit of 1066 and All That left me scratching my head.

It went better with It All Started with Columbus, which does the same thing for American history, a subject on which I am still apallingly ignorant but at least savvy enough to get most of the jokes.  It doesn't cover as many years, America having less history than England, but unlike the British book, it gets past World War I.  Not much past, however.  I wonder if anyone's written a sequel to either of the books.

I think Armour was the better writer, but that may just be the influence of my greater familiarity with his subject.  Armour pays homage to his inspiration in the book's dedication:

Humbly dedicated, in an attitude of gratitude, to Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman, who wrote the wonderful 1066 and All That

From 1066 and All That:

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa.  It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).

From It All Started with Columbus:

[Benjamin Franklin] was self-educated, which means that he was too poor to go to school and therefore got a good education.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers  by Mary Roach (W. W. Norton, 2003)

This was another gift from my library-book-sale-scrounging sister-in-law, who does an amazing job of finding books I like.  This one I doubt I'd have picked out on my own, but it was fascinating reading.  Best of all, Mary Roach is an excellent writer.  I'd reckon not many people could write about such a gruesome topic with respect, accuracy, and humor.

The hardest chapter to read was on cannibalism, especially about the consumption in China, "for medicinal purposes," of aborted babies.  Wanting to find out if this was true or an anti-Chinese urban legend, the author investigated and was told that it used to be true, but the government had subsequently declared the practice of selling aborted babies illegal.  Further investigation revealed, however, that the reason for the ban was so that the government could hold a monopoly on the business....

The chapter on head transplants was nearly as disturbing, and reminded me strongly of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, which was written in 1945 and shows the influence of early experiments in the field.

The most interesting and informative chapter was on the use of forensic analysis to help determine the cause of an airplane crash.  Analysis of remains helps determine if a bomb was involved, and if so where it was placed (how fragmented are the bodies, and what is the pattern of embedded shrapnel?), if the plane was hit by a missile (what parts of the bodies were burned?), and where the plane broke apart (which bodies were clothed, and which nude?).  As I suspected, the purpose of all the airplane safety lectures is to help with near-ground crashes.  Break up in midair and, as Roach puts it, you've booked your final flight.  The kinds of problems that cause a plane to rip apart high in the sky are simply not survivable.

Take-off and landing crashes are potentially survivable 80 to 85 percent of the time.  However...

The key word here is "potentially."  Meaning that if everything goes the way it went in the FAA-required cabin evacuation simulation, you'll survive.  Federal regulations require airplane manufacturers to be able to evacuate all passengers through half of a plane's emergency exits within ninety seconds.  Alas, in reality, evacuations rarely happen the way they do in simulations.  "If you look at survivable crashes, it's rare that even half the emergency exits open," says [injury analyst Dennis] Shanahan.  "Plus, there's a lot of panic and confusion."  Shanahan cites the example of a Delta crash in Dallas.  "It should have been very survivable.  There were very few traumatic injuries.  But a lot of people were killed by the fire.  They found them stacked up at the emergency exits.  Couldn't get them open." Fire is the number one killer in airplane mishaps.  It doesn't take much of an impact to explode a fuel tank and set a plane on fire.  Passengers die from inhaling searing-hot air and from toxic fumes released by burning upholstery or insulation.  They die because their legs are broken from slamming into the seat in front of them and they can't crawl to the exits.  They die becajuse passengers don't exit flaming planes in an orderly manner; they stampede and elbow and trample.

The secret to surviving in such a situation?  Sitting close to an exit is number two, but the most important, statistically, is to be male.  I guess "women and children first" only works on ships, where chivalry has time to overrule our basic survival instinct.

Cadavers are useful for more purposes than people think when they nobly declare, "I want to donate my body to science": from anatomy class, to surgery practice, to automobile safety labs (crash test dummies can only go so far), to research on the most practical and ecological ways of disposing of bodies (intended to inform funerary practices, not murderers seeking to hide evidence).  They're also used to analyze the effects of weapons of war, and I include the following for its Swiss reference:

Theodore Kocher, a Swiss professor of surgery and a member of the Swiss army militia (the Swiss prefer not to fight, but they are armed, and with more than little red pocket knife/can openers), spent a year firing Swiss Vetterly rifles into all manner of targets ... with the aim of understanding the mechanisms of wounding from bullets.

And one more, to show the kind of humor with which Ms. Roach lightens this difficult subject.

Our conversation has moved from White's lab to a booth in a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant.  My recommendation to you is that you never eat baba ganoush or, for that matter, any soft, glistening gray food item while carrying on a conversation involving monkey brains.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

While there's no substitute for seeing a play live on stage, as it was intended, I'm thankful for the opportunity provided by the BBC and Netflix to work on my 95 by 65 goal #67, Experience all 37 of Shakespeare's plays (attend, watch, and/or read).  Last night we watched their version of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.  Back in 2007 we'd seen a reduced version of the play produced by our local Mad Cow Theatre, but it's safe to say we remembered almost nothing.  Wikipedia provided a synopsis that helped greatly in following the convoluted tale.  Fortunately, the diction and accents were not as difficult as they often are with Shakespeare, because this version included no option for subtitles, which we often find very helpful.

It's not one of the classics, and is suspected of being a collaboration between Shakespeare and a lesser playwright.  Nonetheless, Pericles was one of the most interesting plays we've seen so far, largely because of its unfamiliarity.  There's another reason why it's not studied in high school—or at least not in our high school days:  the play begins with incest, and goes on to attempted rape, prostitution, a hint at lesbianism, kidnapping, attempted murder, and some pretty bawdy lines.  Mild for today, but NSFG (not safe for grandchildren)—except, of course, that much of it would fly over their heads, especially without subtitles.

The Kids from Nowhere:  The Story Behind the Arctic Educational Miracle  by George Guthridge (Alaska Northwest Books, 2006)

Jaime Escalante in Los Angeles, Marva Collins in Chicago, John Taylor Gatto in New York City, and George Guthridge in Gambell, Alaska, on the tip of Saint Lawrence Island, as remote as it gets:  What do they have in common?  A lot, it turns out.  Each saw potential in children the educational system had given up on, each led those students to levels of academic excellence that would be envied anywhere, and each ran up against the most unbelievable opposition from other teachers, administrators, and the system itself.    People who rock institutional boats are not generally well-liked, even if—maybe especially if—their results are outstanding.

In some ways George Guthridge reminds me of Bob Goff:  a bit of a loose cannon, initial trouble finding his way in life, an unconventional thinker with an emphasis on action.

(click the image for an interactive version in Google Maps)

Guthridge, along with his wife and two school-aged daughters, moved to a small, isolated Alaskan Native village on an island near Siberia.  The school in which they were to teach was troubled, threatened with closure, and expected almost nothing of its students.  Teachers rarely lasted more than one year, sometimes less, and tended to give out good grades for any number of non-academic reasons:  not wanting to damage the students' self-esteem, to avoid being beaten up, or simply out of laziness.  The students were as unmotivated and disruptive as in any inner-city school written off by the educational system.

Out of this, despite very hostile colleagues and administrators determined to stop him, Guthridge created and coached teams for the Future Problem Solving competition, leading these children—to whom nearly nothing had been given academically and from whom even less had been expected—to two astonishing national championships.

More than just another testimony to the high capacity of children for excellence when they are respected and inspired, and to the criminality of a system that thwarts that excellence, The Kids from Nowhere is valuable for the thought processes by which Guthridge and the students learned to solve their problems.

Not until I was on sabbatical, working on a doctorate, did I start to understand what the kids and I had done ... the welding together of two ladders of learning.  We married Western culture's syllogistic, abstract, linear thinking to the holistic, nonlinear, realistic reasoning of indigenous culture.  The result is a communicator who addresses the world in a new way.

For that reason, and more, I highly recommend this book to any educators, but especially to homeschoolers, many of whom already have a desire to meld different ways of thinking and to look at the world in new ways.

This book was a Christmas gift back in 2013, and I picked it up recently primarily to make progress on 95 by 65 Goal #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves).  I couldn't put it down.  Part of my reasoning behind Goal #63 was to read books and then declutter them.  But too often after I read them I don't want to get rid of them!  This can't just go into the library book sale pile, though I'd be happy to pass it on to a good home—say to a homeschooling daughter?

Oddly enough, I have only three more quotes to add.  I wasn't initially planning to review this book, just to read it and check it off of my list....  That's okay, though.  You should read the whole story.

"[What can you do to] turn common ideas into original ones?" ... With a flourish I open the box and lift the funnel in triumph. ...  "You funnel down the ideas," I say, holding the thing before them like a chalice. ... "Make them smaller.  General ideas are almost never original ideas," I tell them.  "That's because almost everyone knows general information. ... To have any hope of having original ideas, you have to be very precise. ... In writing, it's the little things that are important, not the general ideas.  The same is true for Problem Solving.  You funnel down the general to the specific."

So many faculty fear disappointing students that each kid ends up with several Certificates of Achievement.  There seems to be little room for anything except success in contemporary education, as if no one fails in the real world.  The trashcan outside the gym ends up with most of the certificates.

When Bruce and I review what are supposed to be rough drafts, I am stunned at how much the kids understand about genetic engineering....  The depth of their learning is almost comical, were it not so impressive.  Because Bruce and I have made no distinction between the simple and the complex the kids don't either.  They accept as second nature concepts that other kids might groan over. [emphasis mine]

At least at the time of publication, all the royalties from The Kids from Nowhere were being donated to build a school in the Himalayas.

Lullaby by Steph Shaw

Here's a shoutout to our very talented cousin-in-law.  (If there's a word for "son-in-law's cousin" I don't know it.)  Steph Shaw is a singer-songwriter and the mother of three adorable girls.  "Lullaby" was written with the first, recorded with the second, and released with the third.

Naptime.  It's what you make of it.

Enjoy!  And don't forget to check out Steph's Facebook page.

Love Does:  Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World  by Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson, 2012)

I learned of Bob Goff through reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller.  To me, the story of how Goff and his family became friends with heads of state from around the world was by far the best part of the book.  But I never followed up, never looked further into the man and what he might be doing.

It was Janet who tossed his name back in my direction.  She distills the best of Love Does in her post at Blue Ocean Families, so be sure to read it.

I could say that Bob Goff is the anti-me, both good and bad.  He epitomizes extroversion and spontaneity.  He cares little for details and less for the kind of theology that involves studying.  He is a loose cannon—at first I wondered why all those non-profit organizations turned down his offer of the services of his law firm, gratis, but now I think I know why they wanted someone more predictable, if also more expensive and less creative.

However, I am inclined to believe that the Bob Goff who shows up in this book is an exaggeration of his character for dramatic effect:  Surely no one can succeed as a lawyer, not to mention as the head of a non-profit organization, without caring more for structure, organization, and planning than the man portrayed here.

Take your ten-year-old daughter on a spur-of-the-moment trip to London, without the least idea of what you're going to do, not even where you're going to stay?  Okay, I can see that.  They speak English (of a sort) there, he's an experienced traveller, and he has enough money to fund last-minute air fares and hotel stays.

Take your ten-your-old son climbing Half Dome in a blizzard, on purpose?  As one with personal connections to the expert and experienced climbers who perished on Mt. Hood in 2006 due to unexpected bad weather, this strikes me as less adventuresome than plain stupid, even if it turned out to be a great experience for them both.

I have to believe that Goff was much more prepared for both adventures than he lets on.

There's no doubt, however, that a good deal of that preparation was provided by a lifetime of sponanteous action.  Bob Goff lived the "just do it" slogan long before it became a Nike ad, and his life is a testimony to the incredible things that can arise from that attitude.  As Janet's article states, what he has done is so amazing that it's hard to imagine him as a role model for us ordinary mortals.  But he certainly can be an inspiration.

To that end, I do not necessarily recommend reading Love Does.  At least not first.  Instead, go to Goff's website.  You'll get a good introduction there, and his informal style works better in a speech or on a blog than in a book.

It was in the fifteenth chapter that I learned why the style of Love Does bothers me so.

Don is a friend of mine.  He's written a bunch of books. ... Don actually played a big part in this book.  He would review what I wrote and tell me to keep working on it or take it out of the book.  Sometimes he'd tell me to start over entirely or tell me what to do to make it better.

That's right; the above-mentioned Don Miller, whose style rubbed me the wrong way in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, was the primary influence on how Goff wrote his book.

Here's an example of his fingernails-on-the-blackboard style, which I acknowledge some will enjoy.  Just not me, if it's in a book or other formal publication.

In the Bible there's a guy named Timothy who gets a letter from another guy named Paul.

What also sets my teeth on edge is the number of times I've groaned, "Didn't anybody read this book before publishing it?"  I don't blame Goff so much—it's hard to find the errors in one's own writing.  But where were the proofreaders and editors here?  Where was Don Miller?  How, for example, could they publish "laundry mat" instead of "laundromat," "cast" instead of "caste," "track homes" instead of "tract homes," and "chalks" instead of "chocks" (the last from his website)?

I'm nitpicking, you say, and you're right.  Neither the style nor the errors negate the value of what Bob Goff has to say.  Nevertheless, there's a reason even the most brilliant job-seeker is advised to dress appropriately for his employment interview, and the most innocent (as well as the most guilty) defendant to ditch the nose ring and cover the tats for a court appearance.  Even Bill Gates has assistants to keep his personality quirks from reducing his effectiveness.

Okay, I'm done with the complaints.  Bob Goff is amazing, and inspiring.  I just need to find my own path to being secretly incredible.

I think God's hope and plan for us is pretty simple to figure out.  For those who resonate with formulas, here it is:  add your whole life, your loves, your passions, and your interests together with what God said He wants us to be about, and that's your answer.  If you want to know the answer to the bigger question—what's God's plan for the whole world?—buckle up, it's us.

Being secretly incredible goes against the trend that says to do anything incredible you have to buy furniture and a laptop, start an organization, have a mission statement and labor endlessly over a statement of faith.  Secretly incredible people just do things. ... [T]he task would probably be even nobler if we didn't talk about it and just did it instead.  It's not about being secretive or mysterious or exclusive.  it's about doing capers without any capes.

Sometimes my clients have to be deposed, which means they are the ones asked questions by the other guys' lawyers.  It can feel intimidating with a big room full of lawyers all staring at you.  So when my clients are being deposed, I tell them all the same thing each time:  sit in the chair and answer the questions, but do it with your hands palms up the whole time.  I tell them to literally have the backs of their hands on their knees and their palms toward the bottom of the table.

I'm very serious about this. ... When their palms are up, they have an easier time being calm, honest, and accurate.  And this is important, because it's harder for them to get defensive.  When people get angry or defensive they tend to make mistakes.

If you're like me, I'd ask myself at the end of a book called Love Does—so what do I do?  It can be a tough question to answer, honestly, but it can also be an easy one.  Let me tell you want I do when I don't know what to do to move my dreams down the road.  I usually just try to figure out what the next step is and then do that. ... What's your next step?  I don't know for sure, because for everyone it's different, but I bet it involves choosing something that already lights you up.  Something you already think is beautiful or lasting and meaningful.  Pick something you aren't just able to do; instead, pick something you feel like you were made to do and then do lots of that.