Lift Up Your Hearts!

Food, Inc. (2008, Magnolia Home Entertainment, directed by Robert Kenner, PG )

I first heard about Food, Inc. seven months ago, and at that time posted the trailer, a couple of links, and my determination to see the movie when it became available on Netflix.  Just before Christmas the disk arrived in our mailbox, so we packed it in our luggage and were able to enjoy it with my brother and his family, which was only fitting, as they are the ones who alerted us to the movie in the first place.

Everyone who eats should see this film.  Alas, it only touches the surface of the problems in our food industry and doesn't have time to say much about solutions—but it's quite enough to inspire further research.  The film's website might be a good place to begin.

It Happened in Italy:  Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust, by Elizabeth Bettina (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2009)

Imagine:  You are suddenly torn away from your home and possessions and are removed with others of your kind to a place where you must check in daily with the police and obey a strict curfew.  You can't leave, practice your profession, carry anything that might be used as a weapon, visit a bar, or attend any meeting or any form of entertainment.  You are imprisoned there for years, and yet for the rest of your life you will be passionately grateful to your captors and will remember your incarceration as pleasant.  You are a Jew during World War II, sent to a concentration camp—in Italy.

Elizabeth Bettina, a third-generation Italian Catholic from New York City couldn't get over the picture:  Taken in the 1940's of a gathering on the steps of the church where her grandparents were married, in the tiny, Catholic town of Campagna, the snapshot clearly included a priest, a police officer, and a rabbi. A rabbi?  Bettina's research into the unmentioned history of her grandmother's hometown reveals a surprising tale of ordinary goodness in a time of extraordinary evil.

The writing and style of It Happened in Italy are only mediocre, but the story itself is compelling and well worth reading.  Italy was Hitler's ally in World War II, and Mussolini enacted laws against Jews that would have been terrible in a better time and place.  Yet Bettina uncovers a bright candle in the darkness of the Holocaust, told mostly through stories of people who survived only because they lived in Italy, protected by exceptional heroes like Giovanni Patalucci ("The Italian Schindler," a police official who saved thousands of Jewish lives before being discovered and sent to Dachau, where he died); by ordinary townsfolk who endangered themselves and their families with their stubborn resistance to the idea that Jews were anything other than "people like us"; and yes, even by the maddeningly inefficient Italian approach to life and government, which enabled official orders concerning the Jews to be tossed in a drawer and "lost."

Bettina also deserves credit for her tireless efforts to find these survivors, document their stories, and in many cases facilitate highly emotional and deeply meaningful reunions.  The story of her quest is interesting in itself, although it dominates the book more than I would like, often overshadowing the greater story.

You can preview It Happened in Italy, or purchase it from Thomas Nelson.  (I get no kickbacks; I'm including the link because they provided my review copy of the book.  You can, of course, buy it from other stores.)

 

One who makes a practice of passing written judgement on books would do well to reveal at least some of the background and prejudices that go into those judgements, so I will make a brief attempt at so doing.  Whether or not I like a book is determined by many factors, not all of which I know myself.

I'm a writer—if you can say that of one whose paid, professional writing experiences ended several decades ago—so I like well-written books.  I like good grammar, correct spelling, and well-organized paragraphs.  I like coherent ideas presented logically and accurately.

I'm reasonably intelligent and well-educated, so I do not like being talked down to.  I don't like books that assume I have the vocabulary and attention span of an average fourth grader.  I especially don't like folksy books that sound like conversation.  That's great for blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, but if an idea is worth putting ink to paper, it's worth a more serious, careful treatment.

I'm a human being, so books that ring true to my own experiences and beliefs will be more positively and enthusiastically received than those that do not.  By that I do not mean that I only want to hear what I already know, or never to be challenged by new ideas and approaches, but that the new data should fit in with all I have thus far learned of reality.  I love trying to fit the next piece into a jigsaw puzzle of the Grand Canyon, but not if the image on the piece is part of the Empire State Building.

Books that teach, enlighten, and inspire me are more likely to get positive reviews, whether they are non-fiction or imaginative.  Dark, depressing books are likely to get panned unless they are really, really good in other ways.  In fact, if I had to choose one criterion for judgement, it would be the effect the book has on my soul.  Depressing books are worse than unworthy of the time spent reading them.  I don't mean that books must always be upbeat, and ignore the sad, alarming, and darker parts of life, but if they don't offer hope and encourage positive action, they only contribute to the plague.  On the other hand, a book that provides a glimpse of what is good, true, and beautiful, and inspires readers to seek and find and toil for that reality—such a book is a treasure indeed.

Bottom line, as simplistic as it may be:  If a book makes me want to become a better person, I like it.  If not, I don't.

  A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1965)

I picked this book up to re-read it because I needed an antidote to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  You can tell this particular copy has been in my library for a long time by the printing date above.  The price on the book is 50 cents. The book itself was written in 1904, and can be found online.

Burnett's characters are as one-dimensional as most of Haddon's, and her heroine is a little too good to be completely believable.  But "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" and the question of how much of our good behavior is merely a response to pleasant circumstances is by no means a shallow one.  A friend of ours has a daughter who is very much enthralled by the Disney Princesses, an infatuation her mother wisely turns to a learning opportunity, reminding her as often as necessary that princess is as princess does.  This is the theme that runs through A Little Princess, as Sara, sneeringly dubbed "princess" for her wealth and spoiled childhood, has her character tried through hardship.  If the ending of The Curious Incident was unsatisfactory, that of A Little Princess is definitely contrived and coincidental—but at least it's fun.  The book also wins points by making me wish to be a better person, an idea I'll return to in a subsequent post.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Jonathan Cape, 2003)

As with Born to Run,  I picked up this book because it was lying around and the title caught my eye.  I don't recommend it, but that doesn't mean I found it easy to put down.  I had intended to take the book on the airplane with me, but finished before my boarding pass was printed.  The story is initially compelling and the premise unique:  a murder mystery through the eyes of a teen with Asperger Syndrome.  Whether the portrayal of the way someone with Asperger Syndrome might think or act is realistic or not, I can't say.  But it's an interesting viewpoint, and I loved the math problem at the end (though it was somewhat poorly worded) and the fact that the chapter numbers are all prime.

The age of the protagonist, and the length and easy reading level of the story might mislead someone into thinking this is a children's book, but it's not.  Then again, it's not an adult book, either.   If the language and subject matter make it unsuitable for the young, the meagre story line (too thin to be called a plot) and unsatisfactory ending make it unsuitable, period.  The main character's handicap is no reason for the author to ignore the basic rules of mystery writing.

I am not categorically against profanity in books and movies, although for the most part I find it unnecessary, a cheap and lazy way for authors to make their point—as it is in real life.  In the case of this book, however, the foul language is beyond gratuitous.  It is pointless, nauseating, and killed what little empathy I had with the characters.  It's a bit disconcerting to find I have more in common with autistic Christopher than with his bizarre, potty-mouth parents.

As much as I actually enjoyed reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the more I reflect, the more disturbing I find it.  Worse than the profanity, worse than the poor story-telling—the book is dismal.  There is no joy, little love, less goodness, and only a minuscule potential for hope.  Despair and disillusion abound, along with anger, self-centeredness, and minor obscenities that remind me of the Objective Room in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength:  nothing so gross as to arouse the protective mechanism of disgust, but everything just a little bit wrong, calculated to reach deep into the unprotected psyche.  Some would say this is real, this is life, and books should reflect reality.  I reply that it is only part of real life, and that the love, joy, kindness, and triumph I see every day are at least as real and a whole lot more inspiring.  If I grant that all of us, at our worst moments, will find within ourselves all the ugliness modern literature can portray, and more, I still insist that depressing books do not help.  I need positive role models, not negative ones.  A muddy rag cannot clean a grimy face.

What a great idea this was for a book!  I wish it had been given a better treatment.

 Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall (Knopf, New York, 2009)

A book about running?  Not my thing.  On my daily walks (where by "daily" I mean five days a week and only when I'm not on the road) I've managed to work my way up to doing a quarter of my four miles at what could charitably be called a slow jog, but there my interest ended.  However, my nephew received Born to Run for Christmas, and I was curious enough to flip quickly through it.

Born to Run is a fascinating and groundbreaking book.  Actually, it's at least three books, interwoven, and it's no coincidence that when I perused it I couldn't decide if it was meant to be nonfiction or a novel.

The first thread—the tale of an ultramarathon race in the nearly-inaccessible Copper Canyon region of Mexico, featuring a bizarre cast of characters from a topnotch American ultramarathoner to primitive Tarahumara Indians to a couple of drunken 20-somethings who just happen to run really, really well—is a moderately interesting adventure story, though the bad language and "adult" content detracts from the tale and prevents me from recommending the book without serious reservations.  Perhaps worse is the "docu-drama," fast-and-loose-with-the-truth approach, in which the author reports as verbatim thought processes and conversations which he could not have known.  This technique works as fiction, but in this context damages the book's credibility.

Of less interest to me was the second, spiritual, thread, which extols traditional Tarahumara society as an unfallen Eden, and postulates that not running is—I kid you not—Original Sin, responsible for all mankind's problems.  You might find this thesis more intriguing if your idea of Paradise includes mad, adulterous, drunken orgies.

The final thread was by far the most interesting, and deserves better than to be commingled with the others.

• People were designed ("evolved," if you prefer), for long-distance running, from the intricate construction of the foot to our breathing processes and sweat glands.  We're not the fastest animals on earth, but our heat-dissipation mechanism is not dependent on respiration.  Between this advantage and our ability to work cooperatively, we can run down dinner, which is what our ancestors once did.  Now we have takeout, and an aversion to sweat.
• Mexico's Tarahumara Indians (the "Running People"), along with a few other dwindling tribes around the world, preserve this ability in their cultures, running ultra long distances with joy rather than pain and exhaustion.
• These primitive tribes are not freaks or savants; running ability is a learned skill, not a genetic mutation.  This joy is our birthright as human beings.
• High-tech running shoes have ruined both our feet and our running ability.  When it comes to running, less is clearly more.  Barefoot is best for the foot, although inexperience and difficult terrain can necessitate some form of protection, in which case a minimalist shoe like the Vibram Five Fingers or other thin-soled shoe is called for.  The Tarahumara run in sandals.  Even 50s-style Keds are better than the latest springy, gel-filled, microchip-embedded specialty shoes, which weaken the foot and encourage injurious running habits.
• If this inspires you to take up barefoot running, go slowly.  Your feet have been imprisoned since you were a toddler, and that weakness can't be overcome all at once.
• Contrary to what most of us believe—and what we are usually told—running is not something we must give up as we age, nor are we locked out of it if we're already old, overweight, and out of shape.  Long-distance running is a sport nonagenarians can enjoy, and one in which men have no competitive advantage over women.  One woman placed in the top ten of an ultramarathon even though she stopped at the aid stations to nurse her baby as needed!
• Good running is less about speed than enjoyment.  The joy is more in the journey than the goal, more in running than in winning.

From my first flip through the book until I reluctantly closed the covers, Born to Run reminded me of Ina May Gaskin's Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.  Both are stories of a natural, rewarding function (running/childbirth) lost to modern society through ignorance, laziness, and greed (people, podiatrists, and shoe manufacturers/parents, obstetricians, and lawyers).  (That's an oversimplification, but how much can you do in one sentence?)  Both postulate that the same medical and technological advancement that has worked miracles has also demonized and dehumanized physiological processes that generally work best with minimal interference.  And both bring us into contact with people who we will be tempted to shrug off as irrelvant to our own lives.

Thread 1 of Born to Run will lead you to believe that long-distance runners are folks with a masochistic obsession and a touch of madness, the sort who would bike a million miles, or climb Mt. Everest twice in Pittsburgh.  From Thread 2 you would get the idea that they are throw-back hippies, the vegan followers of some never-existed-before blend of paganism and imagined Eastern religion.  In other words, runners are Them.  Not Us.  Definitely Not Me.

But the joy of running is the birthright of nearly every human being on the planet.  Whether we have sold our birthright for a couch potato lifestyle, or it was stolen from us by greedy, deceiving, corporate shoe manufacturers, does not in the end matter.  The power to change is all ours.

Run.

The Franklin Insitute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I don't remember my first visit to the Franklin Institute; I believe it must have been on some visit to Philadelphia when I was very young; all I remember was walking through the heart.  Later, however, we moved to the Philadelphia area, and were regular visitors.  For two summers I worked in the Franklin Institute Research Labs in the building next door, and even more important to me than my paycheck was the ID badge that allowed me to take the tunnel between the buildings and spend most of my lunch hours in the museum.

After he retired, my dad became a Franklin Institute volunteer, and it was natural for him to take his grandchildren there when they came to visit.  By that time, the museum had grown an addition, with new exhibits that made it look like any modern science museum, but the kids' favorite, and my own, was the old building, with its greater educational content and more detailed, written information with each exhibit.  Now Dad's grandchildren have children of their own, and on our recent visit to Philadelphia we all looked forward to watching them delight in our old favorites.

The great-grandkids were happy enough, but the rest of us were somewhat disappointed.  To our delight, the heart is still there, as is the train that Dad used to drive as one of his docent duties (it's easier to keep a 350-ton locomotive than to get rid of one) but the "new building" style has now infected the old building, too.  Many of our favorite exhibits are gone, replaced by displays designed for shorter attention spans and lesser literacy.  The math room that had kept our kids entranced for hours was nowhere to be found, and when I finally asked a docent, "Excuse me, it's been a long time since I was here last, and I can't find the math room," he replied, "It has been a long time since you've visited; they took that out years ago."

It took a bit of effort, but we did find Newton's Dream, the kinetic sculpture that so entranced Heather as a child.  It's in a different place now, and has been cut down in size, but that didn't stop the children from following it with the same fascination.  Also riveting was Der Lauf der Dinge, a Swiss-made movie of a 30-minute Rube Goldberg setup with lots of pyrotechnics and impressive chemical reactions.  Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you, too, can see this amazing performance, albeit broken into three segments.  (Here are the links as well, since I note that embedded videos don't always show up in feedreaders:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Lest I be seen as a totally hopeless conservative who never likes anything new, the museum's newest exhibit, Amazing Machine, is also excellent, and we could have spent much longer playing with its cams, gears, pulley, and linkages had we not been nearing the end of our visit.  (Heather:  That's what I want for Christmas.  You can turn a mechanical engineer into a joyful homemaker, but the engineer is still there.)

 

The American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York

On my first visit to the American Museum of Natural History I was probably about as young as when I first encountered the Franklin Institute, but in this case nearly half a century elapsed between visits.  The AMNA, however, shows more respect for its old exhibits, and the wonderful dioramas that are all I remember from my first visit are still featured, with all their high information content and long descriptions to read.  I could easily have spent the entire day among them.  Porter found one, the African buffalo, that was sponsored by George Eastman, and remarked, "He sponsored the Buffalo because there is no animal named Rochester, but he should have sponsored the Kodiak bear."  Yes, we're still married; I happen to like that kind of humor.

The museum has several new exhibits as well as the old, most of which were quite good.  There was a bit of a "politically correct" feel in a few places, but it was not unbearable, and in general the educational value and written descriptions were sufficient.  Despite my primary concern for material to read, I am also particularly sensitive to the layout of displays—color, font, background, use and placement of images and other media—and this, too, the AMNH exhibits did well.

One disappointment was the Hall of Minerals, chiefly because whoever is responsible for lighting must have been on vacation.  For several months.  It was dark.  At first I thought the gloom was meant to provide contrast to the brilliance of the minerals and gems, but many of the lights that should have been highlighting the rocks were also out.  We very nearly missed the famous Star of India because it was in the dark.

In addition to the old favorites, we signed up for several special exhibits and shows.  Traveling the Silk Road was disappointing, but only because I had expected the most from it.  It was well done, but crowded, with not as much information as I had hoped and not enough time in the crowd to do justice to what was there.   The best part was the section on silk making and sericulture.

I believe Journey to the Stars was a better-than-average planetarium show (more information, less mindless entertainment), but unfortunately I responded the way I always do when faced with a movie or movie-like substance in a dark room, awakening only at the end.

The Butterfly Conservatory was interesting, though I think I've seen more fluttering in the butterfly garden at our own Leu Gardens.

Frogs:  A Chorus of Colors was great; Heather would have loved it.  Except the part where we learned about the devastation being wrought by the chytrid fungus.

Where Bd [Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis] thrives, generally in moist cool habitats, 50% of amphibian species and 80% of individuals can be expected to disappear within one year.... Currently it cannot be stopped in the wild and a minority of species seem able to survive with a Bd infection as larvae or as adults and these animals likely serve as a reservoir and vectors for future outbreaks. Notable among resistant species are worldwide invasive pest species including marine toads, American bullfrogs and African clawed frogs.

The American Museum of Natural History is well worth visiting more often than every 50 years.  The dioramas alone are a homeschooler's paradise.

Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green (Puffin Books, London, 2002) and The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green (Puffin Books, London, 1994)

These two books are meant to be read together, with the story of Troy second.

After my very positive experiences with Green's books on Robin Hood, King Arthur, and ancient Egyptian stories, I expected too much of these two.  I still recommend them; they are worth reading, and I found that within a week something I read there helped me understand a story I heard later.  Nonetheless, there are drawbacks.

First, they are ambitious, especially Tales of the Greek Heroes.  Green's scrupulous attention to historical and literary accuracy is commendable, as is his desire to present the stories in a manner that demonstrates their logical and chronological connections.  However, although I consider myself moderately familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, I soon found out how little I really know.  These books are written for children—for example, he gives a clear, age-appropriate explanation of why the Immortals had so many wives, not pressing the distinction among wives, lovers, and victims of assault—but with children I wouldn't begin here.  Perhaps the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths would be a better introduction.  I found all the names of the Greek Heroes, Immortals, and mortal men (and women) to be terribly confusing—I, who had no trouble whatsoever keeping track of all the characters in The Lord of the Rings.  Pronunciation would be a read-aloud nightmare, too.

Then there's the matter of content.  I am reminded of why I never made it through The Iliad, getting heartily sick of all the battle scenes early in the poem.  And why G. A. Henty's With Lee in Virginia left me groaning, "Not another eight paragraphs on battle strategy!" even though I've like most of the Henty books I've read.  Those who enjoyed the endless battles in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings may do fine with this, but there's only so much swaggering pride, battle lust, and vengeance I can take.

One surprising effect it all had one me:  I came through it with a better appreciation for spectator sports.  By all means, let the screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth Gator fans swear vengeance on the equally insane Seminole fans.  As the history of man goes, it wasn't all that long ago they were tossing boulders instead of basketballs, swinging clubs instead of baseball bats, throwing spears instead of footballs, and sacrificing daughters instead of holding tailgate-party barbecues.

In some ways, however, things haven't changed much.

[Heracles] wandered far and wide until at length he came to another cave in which he found a mysterious creature.  [He asked,]

"Strange maiden, have you seen my horses?"

"Yes," she replied, "it was I who took them in when they strayed this way.  But I will never give them up to you, unless you wed me, according to the custom of this country.  Here we are married when we have kissed thrice; and the marriage lasts only for as long as we both wish it."

The ancient Greek stories, like the Bible, Shakespeare, and much of what is called classic literature, are important to know because of the insight they give into human nature, history, and culture, whether or not one appreciates the content.  And like all great literature, they won't be mastered through one book, nor in a single reading.  Green's books may not be the best introduction to the topic, but they'd be a great second or third step.

RootsMagic, my favorite genealogy database program, has released RootsMagic Essentials, a version you can download that is absolutely free!  In case anyone is wondering, I don't get a thing for this endorsement; I just like RootsMagic, and I like encouraging interest in genealogy.  It looks as if one can do a lot with Essentials, and it might be a great, commitment-free way to keep track of family information even if one doesn't have (yet) a desire to delve any further.  Sadly, one of my favorite features, color coding of families, is not part of the stripped-down version, but—tanstaafl—if there is, sometimes, a free lunch, the full-course dinner always costs.

If any of my family members decide to download RootsMagic Essentials, I'll be happy to send along a copy of my database.  :)

This actually seemed like a good idea at the grocery store.

V-Fusion, by the same folks who brought you, "I could have had a V-8."

I should have had something else.

It's a good idea.  I love passionfruit juice (at least when I can get it without sugar, as we did in Brazil), and I love tangerine juice.  It's 100% juice, and not just fruit juices:  there's enough carrot and sweet potato juice in there to allow them to claim that an eight-ounce glass provides a full serving of vegetables as well as a full serving of fruits.  Should be good, and good for you.

But oh my, how sweet it is.  Sickeningly sweet.  Not even the passionfruit and tangerine flavors could redeem the taste.  There's no "sugar" added, but sweet juices (apple and grape) in abundance.

It's just as well.  At $4.99/bottle it cost too much anyway.  And that's not sour grapes, though sour grapes would improve the juice.

Funny how things click together in this world.

I would never have heard of the award-winning Swiss movie, Vitus, had it not happened to be featured in an article in the Hartford Courant when our daughter's Swiss in-laws happened to be in Connecticut, and happened to look through the newspaper.  (Why, O why does English not have a word for the "our child's in-laws" relationship?  I have need of it often enough.)  Knowing my interest in Swiss German, her father-in-law cut out the article and sent it to me.  (I am going to have to invent my own term, I can see.)

That was months ago, and only recently did I have the sense to see if trusty Netflix could provide the movie.  Much to my surprise, they could!  We watched it this afternoon.  Our intention had been to watch part during lunch and finish it during dinner, but we couldn't bring ourselves to turn it off.

I've deliberately not included any links to Vitus, because they contain spoilers that I certainly would not have liked to have known about before seeing the film.  But I do recommend it, as we thoroughly enjoyed it.  It's PG, with a few words I wouldn't want the grandkids to pick up, but that would require reading the subtitles.  I'd say they'd probably lose interest in a foreign-language film, but Swing Girls was a hit even though in Japanese.

Vitus combines some of my favorite themes:  brilliant children, music, and loving families.  Sure, I could complain about one or two things, but overall it was a delightful movie.  Actually, the main disappointment was the language, which was falsely billed as Swiss German.  I caught a few Swiss German words (and felt for the student being told by his teacher to speak High German only), but mostly I'd say I understood far too much of the German for it to have been anything other than High German throughout most of the film.  I'd be interested in the verdict of those who know better, however.  The characters freely mix English words and phrases in their speech, so maybe they are equally freely mixing the two Germans, and I'm only catching the few High German words and the much fewer Swiss German phrases I know.  Or Swiss German words similar enough to High German that they sound familiar to my ear.

One question I had from the beginning was how they managed to get the actors to look so much as if they were really playing the piano—it looked far too good to be fakes.  Here's the answer:  Teo Gheorghiu, who plays the older Vitus.

How do we know this is really a Swiss film?  The characters carry their cut flowers upside down!

Tales of Ancient Egypt, by Roger Lancelyn Green (Puffin Books, 2004)

King Arthur was my introduction to Roger Lancelyn Green's books, and this inspired me to find more by the same author.  Tales of Ancient Egypt did not disappoint.  Egyptian gods, goddesses, stories, geography and history are rather muddled in my head, and this book is a great help in beginning to sort them all out.  Like Green's Arthur stories, the tales are simultaneously appropriate and enjoyable for children and adults.

Two stories particularly interested me.  One is the Egyptian take on the story of Helen of Troy.  (Hint:  The real Helen remained safely hidden in Egypt until Menelaus could reclaim her; it was a sort of spirt double that went to Troy with Paris and inspired all the Greek-Trojan bloodletting.)

The fascination of the second, entitled Se-Osiris and the Sealed Letter, lies in what it did to my understanding of the Biblical story of the Exodus.  In The Sealed Letter, Egyptian magicians boast of their prowess with claims such as, "I could bring a great darkness over the land of Egypt that would last for three days," and "I...could bring a blight upon Egypt that would destroy its crops for one season."  The Exodus story of Moses and the plagues always seemed unsatisfactory to me, first in the very strangeness of God using plagues of blood, locusts, darkness, etc. to motivate Pharaoh, and second that the Egyptian magicians would counter Moses's plagues with plagues of their own, rather than the much more logical (and useful) removal of the effects the plagues.

What this Egyptian tale shows me, however, is that God was speaking to the ancient Egyptians within the context of their own culture, in a language they understood.

As an avid fan of mystery stories, I’m sure I would enjoy The Da Vinci Code, especially since I’m attracted to Robert Langdon by name alone.  As a rational human being, however, I’m reluctant to open its pages.  Not knowing any better, I’ve enjoyed such quasi-historical movies as Amadeus and Braveheart, learning only later how fast and loose the productions had played with the facts.  Now it’s too late:  the false images are burned into my consciousness, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace them with the truth.

That’s the worst of historical fiction.  At its best, it provides a wonderful gateway into the fascinating field of history itself, breathing life into the dry and confusing swirl of names, dates, and places that normally overwhelms us in school.  But truth should never be sacrificed on the altar of art; if you want to tell the story your way, make up your own characters—don’t lie about real people and events.  The Teaching Company, one of my favorite educational organizations whose products I highly recommend, produced two complimentary lectures on fact and fiction in The Da Vinci Code; because we were specifically given permission to pass them on to our friends, I’m posting links to them below.  If TTC complains, I’ll take them down.  They’re each about half an hour in length.

Who can say why one book becomes a best-seller and another doesn't?  Who could have predicted the Harry Potter phenomenon?  (Certainly not his creator.)  No doubt there are many reasons for the wild success of Dan Brown's fiction, not the least of which is the intriguing stories.  Ross Douthat, writing in The New York Times considers another factor: Dan Brown’s ideas speak to the heart of American popular religion today.

It isn’t just that he knows how to keep the pages turning. That’s what it takes to sell a million novels. But if you want to sell a 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain—to present a fiction that can be read as fact, and that promises to unlock the secrets of history, the universe and God along the way.

Brown is explicit about this mission. He isn’t a serious novelist, but he’s a deadly serious writer: His thrilling plots, he’s said, are there to make the books’ didacticism go down easy, so that readers don’t realize till the end “how much they are learning along the way.”

In the Brownian worldview, all religions...have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.

These are Dan Brown’s kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah—sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

But the success of this message...can’t be separated from its dishonesty. The “secret” history of Christendom that unspools in “The Da Vinci Code” is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling...nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—jealous, demanding, apocalyptic—may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

The Teaching Company lectures

• Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code:  Constantine and the Formation of the Christian Canon
• Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene

Google Fast Flip seemed like just another gimmick, but having given it a test drive I'm already hooked.  Pick a newspaper, say the New York Times.  Or a topic, such as Health.  You're presented with an eye-catching snapshot of the beginning of the first article.  You can see the headline, the first several paragraphs of text, and probably a graphic, pull-quote, or summary.  Oh, and also some ads—but (shhh, don't tell Google) the ads are blessedly easy to ignore.

If you like what you see in the article, you can click on it to read the rest.  Or you can hit your computer's arrow key and move quickly on to the next article.  Did I say quickly?  That's why I'm so excited about this.  No point-and-click, no waiting for a page to load, just one keystroke and you're there.  In a flash.  It takes me about a second per article to determine whether or not I want to know more—usually not, it doesn't take much time to scan a lot.

This is far more satisfying than scanning news headlines in a feed reader.   The headline itself does not usually give enough detail, and I find myself wasting too much time clicking on links that might have been interesting but are not.  With Fast Flip I can take most stories with a single glance, while for many others I find that reading the first several paragraphs tells me what I want to know without having to bother to click through to the whole article. When I want more detail, it's there—but doesn't intrude unless I seek it out.

What will Google think of next?  I hope this catches on in a big way; as yet there is not a great choice of sources.

Chocolate Unwrapped:  The Surprising Health Benefits of America's Favorite Passion, by Rowan Jacobsen (Invisible Cities Press, Montpelier, Vermont, 2003)

Like chocolate, this delicious book goes down easily, and the facts about chocolate's health benefits are not hard to swallow.  At a mere 126 pages from introduction through references, it's a quick and easy read—I read most of it on the way to and from church today—and yet manages to cover the history and production of chocolate, a good deal of detail on why chocolate—which begins as a fruit, after all—should be considered a health food, environmental and labor issues in the production of chocolate, unusual chocolate recipes, and list of great chocolate sources.  It is necessary to ignore a few insults to Columbus, the Puritans, and anyone who likes milk chocolate, but on the whole these are minor annoyances.

Did you know that there are three types of cacao plant?  The criollo beans of Mesoamerica have the best flavor; but the forastero beans of South America (transplanted to Africa) have taken over 90% of the market, because their trees are hardier and more productive.  Trinitario, a hybrid of the two, was developed in Trinidad and though it supposedly carries the best characteristics of each, it runs a far-distant second.  It is a familiar story, this choice of quantity over quality:  think instant coffee, Velveeta cheese, cheap wine, Wonder Bread, and red-rock tomatoes.  But as more and more people join the taste revolution, choosing to enjoy whole grains, local vegetables, and espresso, so also are the more flavorful varieties of cacao becoming popular.  And as with wine and cheese, where chocolate comes from—the soil, the climate, the environment—makes a difference in the flavor.

It's not too surprising that the darker the chocolate, the more beneficial components it retains. The author recommends 70% cacao, as beyond that the melt-in-your-mouth effect is lost.  I figure I'm close enough with my Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips.  :)

And what are those beneficial components?  Legion.  Anti-oxidants galore—it blows away the competition, including blueberries, red wine, and green tea.  "[O]ne good-quality dark chocolate bar can have more polyphenols than two whole days' worth of fruits and vegetables."  You know how some doctors prescribe daily 81-milligram doses of aspirin for its clot-prevention effects?  Turns out a couple of squares of dark chocolate have the same effect.  Hmmm...I know what my choice would be.

Chocolate also contains a whole slew of low-dose, mood-altering chemicals, including anadamide, which is nearly identical to the THC found in marijuana.  Seems those marijuana brownies of our college days did more than just disguise the illegal drug.  (And no, I didn't partake, didn't even have the opportunity.  But I can't follow President Clinton in saying I didn't inhale, because second-hand smoke of more than one kind was unavoidable back then.)  There's a reason eating chocolate makes us feel better.

The section on environmental and labor issues is balanced, pointing out that the issues are complicated.  In attempting to combat child labor on cacao plantations in Côte d'Ivoire, for example, one must take care not to do more harm than good.

For these cacao laborers, a poor-paying job is still better than none.  And preteens working in agriculture alongside their parents has been part of African culture for centuries, if not longer.  Of the one million cacao farms in West Africa, the vast majority are tiny (less than five acres) family affairs. The child labor abuses reported were confined to the few large plantations, but boycotting cacao from Ivory Coast would affect the family farms even more severely than the plantations.

Jacobson supports the Fair Trade program, which has grown beyond coffee to include cacao, and has two sets of standards, one for small farmers and another for plantations and factories.  He also recommends buying organic chocolate, which is grown in a more environmentally-sustainable fashion—and also is more likely to contain the better-tasting criollo beans.

There's one more delightful side effect of Chocolate Unwrapped:  last night I read a section of it out loud after dinner, and Porter immediately brought me a bowl of Publix Chocolate Trinity ice cream and a glass of red wine.  :)