The Book Blog

September 2002

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The room is still spinning.  Saw a very jolly doctor today and had a good laugh about Brandt-Daroff exercises.  I think I wrote about this before.  This is where you sit on your bed and throw yourself from one side to the other.  Okay laugh- but they can make vertigo go away within three days!!!

Tomorrow its off to the CT scan...

So anyway, we are having a huge problem with houseflies.  Like 10 more doing aeronautics every morning.  I got the old-fashioned sticky-strips that come rolled up in a tube.  I remember them from my childhood, and they are so old-fashioned looking.  The fancy new kind didn't say that they were better for any reason, and they were $1.00 each while the old kind were $0.25 each.  But they don't really work.  The DH very helpfully said, "Hey, those don't work in India either."  Great.  So, anyone have any advise for houseflies?

Did you know that To Kill a Mockingbird was written after its author was given one-year's income as a Christmas gift?  Friends gave her the gift because they "believed in her" and wanted to give her a chance to write without interruption.  More interesting facts about the life of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, now an old woman who has lived out her entire life in private.

Blonds are on the way out.  So the geneticists say.  As a blond married to someone from India, I'm doing my part to give generations years from now a little surprise in their non-blond generations. (turns out to be a hoax- see 10-06-2002)

As anyone who has every had vertigo knows, there is not a very good medical treatment.  Quite frankly, my experience has been that most treatments consist of sedating you enough that you don't care that the room is spinning.  This is called the mysteriously positive effect that antihistamines have on vertigo.  Yea right.  I got Meclizine.  The room is still spinning.  Can I start cursing yet?

And I'm a little sickened by my local law enforcement.

     First we've got the hostage negotiator talking to the press. Show some class and shut-up already!  The hostage and the kidnapper both died, by the way.

     Then we've got the forensic photographer showing his cool computer system on Apple's web site, complete with photo of dead body.  Respect, privacy... never mind.

Links

http://www.wral.com/news/1686137/detail.html

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2002/09/forensics/

It's proven that lack of sleep increases your chances of getting a cold.  So I blame my boss for this...

Here is a list of ways to keep from getting sick.  But you already know all that.

Economic oddities- a Starbucks will increase sales at the nearby independant coffeehouse [link seen on Metafilter]

Kansas Dad goes "fishing" for man peeping on his daughters. (CNN)  Go Dad!

Charlatans: Read Living In Process by Anne Wilson Schaef.  Rather nutty, but you can see how hard it is to distinguish this fluff from the real thing.  Actually, some say she actually dangerous- go here for more.

Ah, the real thing:  reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (trans. Joachim Neugroschel).  I had felt impressed to read this book and am through the first few chapters.  Very impressed so far; will report back when I finish.

Neither here nor there:  The Road Less Traveled and Beyond by M. Scott Peck.  Further breaking my rule about reading a dozen books by the same self-help author, but I still like reading it.

Beliefnet.com:  I started a thread on the Mormon Fellowship board about symbols of other faiths.  We'll see where it goes.

An increadably touching story of a Canadian rest home specializing in the care of Holocaust survivors with dementia.  For many of these aging survivors, Alzheimer's disease means they are re-living the Holocasut.  [link seen on Metafilter]

This article is also about terror survivors, the women of Cambodia. [link seen on Metafilter].  But what I found most interesting about it is the role that UNICEF and the American government has had in the restructuring of the family.  I think that we try to pretend that if government programs don't mean to affect values, that they won't.

And here is a 100-year-old cowgirl from Texas who was also the first female student at the University of Texas Law School.  She says that sometimes she has something to say to the women she sees today.  I'm sure she does!

God Squad at Newsday.

Check out the Evite to the war on Iraq. [link seen on Just One Thing] And P.J. O'Roarke's article in the Atlantic Monthly (kind of long). [link seen on Arts and Letters Daily]

This is all the Friday "lite" you get folks.

Oh, this is the best thing all day.  I like dogs, but I love a curmudgeon! (Jimmy Breslin in Newsday)

Berry berry sick.  So many things have happened since last time I was berry berry sick...

     For one thing, I got older.  I used to not understand people that couldn't think when they were sick.  When I had pneumonia, I fell over at work before I realized that I was sick with a 104 degree temperature.  Now I get a little sniffle and I might as well just stay home.  I can't stay home though, so instead it takes half-an-hour to figure out how to use the fax machine.

     But the best thing that has happened since last time I was sick is that the nice people at Proctor & Gamble and all those other giant companies have finally come out with products that actually serve civilization.  Like cherry-flavored NyQuil.  Now there is something we really needed.  I remember standing in my dorm room wishing my mother were there to make me take my medicine.  And tissues with lotion in them.  Don't you feel sorry for the folks that had to be sick last century?  It was intolerable without lotion coated tissues.  And about one hundred different kinds of throat drops.  I buy several different kinds, from the heavy-duty vapor bombs for when I'm so miserable I'll take anything to the organic-herbal-honey flavored ones when I just need to take the edge off.

Still reading Informal Logic by Douglas N. Walton.  Just finished Chapter 4, "Appeals to Emotion."  Here is a small bit of it: "...many arguments on controversial issues, for example in politics and religion, may quite rightly be based on passionate conviction.  Especially when morals and values are involved, to ignore our 'decent instincts' may be to overlook some of the best reasons for adopting a certain position." (p. 83)

     I am for the most part opposed to the "gug, I like it" and "gug, I don't like it" theory of morality.  Morality has a certain reasonableness about it; emotions are a shifting sand.  You can see from my comments on Sunday that God would have a difficult time planting any kind of mark on my heart.

     And yet even I can see that we as a culture are often willing to follow logic straight to hell.  We worship logic- we shudder in horror at the unruly nature of business in many other parts of the world, even though the very orderly evil on America's balance-books may have done more harm than any shady street deal in a third-world nation ever could.

     It may be that emotion and thought are equal tools, feeding something that is above them both.

Okay, she's reading self-help books again.  But they're so gooy and nice... I just can't stay away.

     This time it's Peck, The Road Less Traveled.  I read People of the Lie the other day (08/06/2002), so thought I should also take a look at the main thing.  Thus breaking my rule (08/07/2002) about reading multiple books by the same self-help author.

     Please note my rant a couple of days ago about taking the time to create logical interactions and make statements that have meaning.  I made these comments (09/09/2002) as I was reading a book of informal logic and considering what an effort it would take to have an actual meaningful conversation.

     So then along comes The Road Less Traveled and there is a section titled "Problem Solving and Time" (pp. 27 - 32).  Peck relates a story in which he learns that his talents and lack of talent are no so much about what he is capable of doing, but about what he has taken the time to learn to do well.

     I think of a popular story of a society matron who swoons at a premier violinist, "I would give my life to be able to play the violin like that."  The violinist replies, "Madam, I have."

Today listened to a Prophet of the Lord speak.  Thomas S. Monson, FIrst Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke at a regional conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Like many people, President Monson has many shortcomings.  For instance, making sense of his speeches can be a bit like deciphering a Ouija board.  However in all his disjointed stories and comments, a love for live and and a focus on serving humanity comes through.

     He spoke of being lead by Jesus Christ and seemed amazed at his own experiences.  He spoke of personal interactions and acts of service, showing how close he felt to the people he has come in contact with.  He said, "Anything that is invested in human being is eternal."  He also spoke quite about about learning and about the cultural wealth we have available to use, quoting haphazardly from books and stage productions including Charles Dickens and Fiddler on the Roof.

     I have to admit that I'm a bit blasé about the whole Mormon thing.  Even an indoor arena full of Mormons and some very good opening speakers didn't really perk me up.  And again, President Monson's wandering speechifying is not terribly impressive. But I also have to admit that it did indeed strike me that he was a Prophet, which I guess means that I have to keep dragging myself to church and all that other stuff.  And I did feel just a little bit inspired to try to be a nicer person because of that whole "eternal" thing.

Read a recent article by President Monson.

The LDS Church's website for people interested in an overview of information about the church.

Last night went to a late, late party and thus utterly forgot about blog posting duties.  Kind of a different experience for me...

Bookcrossing.com stories:

Children's book's found- 220403, 181262, 181227

Book goes through two releases on a theme- 155289

This is a repeat, but it's just too good: "I thought I was stealing it." - 211766

I keep hearing that talking heads say that now we move on to September Twelfth.  As if that were a good thing.  After thinking about it, it seems that the archetype of mourning should be two years rather than one.  One year to wish it weren't so and be angry and be in disbelief that this person who was all this things is gone.  They is supposedly enough- one mourns for a year.  But how do you survive when you wake up that first day of the second year and now the person is really really dead and you are supposed to look forward and plot out a like that takes that as a fact?  I didn't even lose anyone on September Eleventh and I am thinking this thing.  September Twelfth, whatever day that may be, had got to be one of the bleakest days of anyone's life.

What's the last thing you have when all the world is falling?  See the answer is the prose-poem "Leap."[seen on Metafilter.com]

The night of September 12, 2002 my mother was rushed to the hospital, overcome with the effects of her bone cancer.  I had learned that she had bone cancer twelve days before on August 31st.  I will never know if I feel such emotion last September because of the collapsing buildings or because of my mother's collapsing skeleton.

     At 7:00AM on September 11, 2001 I was driving to work, sobbing.  I had been working very hard to improve my life by walking every day, and on Friday I had injured my ankle.  It was one of a series of injuries.

     Around 9:15AM I walk to the bathroom, all the way across the building from my desk, very slowly because I am on crutches and my ankle flops around painfully.  Several groups of employees are huddled in little groups.  I figure it must be someone's birthday.  Several people's birthdays.  When I get back to my desk I learn what has happened.  No one works; we all stand in the isles between our cubes and stare down the hall.  My company puts a T.V. out and sends out an email that no one has to worry about their billable hours today.  And that they are sorry for the rotten timing, but they laid off 200 people this morning.  The next day they will have a small ceremony and place a flag in our reception area.

     At 11AM I drive down the freeway to my doctor's appointment.  Most of the people coming the opposite way on the freeway have their fingers in their mouths.  I feel exposed and look up at the sky for airplanes.  I wonder if I should be doing something else, but I can't think of what else I would do except go on with my day.  At the doctor's office the radio is on and everyone listens quietly.  I've had the same injury before, I know what I'm talking about, the doctor examines me quickly to make sure it isn't something more serious, gives me an orthopedic boot, and I leave.  Last time I took heavy painkillers for several days; this time I just stay up all night for a week listening to the radio and crying and write more than 100 pages in my journal.

     My husband's sister worked on the first floor of the World Trade Center.  I had never know that before; it hadn't mattered before.  Around 3AM Wednesday morning she shows up at a relative's house in Queens.  We guess she had been walking in the city all night.  She won't say anything about it and has not to this day.  She sleeps for a week before returning home to her husband and small children.

     I am afraid for my husband- he is from India.  I am afraid for my mother.  My life has been turned upside down by the injury.  My Dad tells me to take care of my husband.  I tell my Dad to take care of his wife.  We laugh at my so-soon return to crutches.

     I don't travel, but most of the people I work with travel four or five days per week.  They are stuck in hotels across the country and they start driving back.  Some show up on Thursday and some more on Friday.  By Monday everyone is back.  They are crying at their desks.  I put on big headphones and listen to loud music so that I cannot hear.

     I go out to lunch with a friend.  They are power-washing the building and the water and all the yellow machinery and Caterpillar tractors make me think of Ground Zero.  I can barely eat.

     This is my personal story.   All around the world almost everyone has a story like it.  We have heard so many of them.  I can't say anything pithy about September eleventh; I can't do much for the families left behind.  I understand that many people who had everyday losses that day --parents who died of cancer, husbands who died of heart attacks, children who died of their own cruel diseases-- feel very confused.  Like their grief was swallowed up by our grief over the attack, and how dare they complain?  A year later as I limp along and my mother limps along and my husband starts to go out at night again, that I understand completely.

revised once

Are you gonna fly a flag tomorrow? Are you gonna vote in November?

September Eleventh may have been the thunder-clap opening to this century's clash of ideas between the West and the East, except no one has time to think up any ideas and communicate them.  The hijackers probably took more time learning to fly the airplanes than anyone in this world is spending actually having authentic communication about what happened and what it means.

     I thought of this today as I was reading Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation by Douglas N. Walton.  Walton has written a great many informal logic books (this is the kind of logic we use in everyday conversations) and this is the first one I've read.  I was reading the author's advise on how to deal with certain kinds of verbal interactions, and I thought to myself that it is nearly impossible to take the time to make these kinds of responses.

     The talking heads of our generation (one being Stephen Covey, who I wrote about last month) talk about taking time being all about soft skills and personal interaction.  You take the time to put people first.  Rushing about means we put people last; we put the most important thing about life last.

     But it's worse than that: we don't even take the time to have rational conversations.  The fact is that even a computer takes a measurable amount of time to create a rational process.

     So the question is, if anyone ever slows down enough to listen, are you going to slow down enough to something that has meaning?  We had better start soon because our culture is losing the ability to think.

By the way, there is an interesting reader comment on Amazon.com that this is a good book to read by someone perfecting English as a second language.  Interesting concept.

Walton also wrote splendid book called Courage: A Philosophical Investigation.  I started reading it last October and finished it the week after September Eleventh, and it really is the perfect book for the time.  Unfortunately it may be a difficult book to find.

I haven't read thoroughly enough lately to refer to any specific articles, but have I said lately how much I enjoy Arts and Letters Daily?

Just finished reading Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. It is amazing to look at the pictures of complete dislocation as these family were traveling in their covered wagons, and then look at the established lives of the children and grandchildren from these families.  There is mention in one of these stories about a women who lost her entire family except one child, and that child became the wife of a California state legislator.

     The book ends with the text of several diaries.  I in particular liked the diary of Lydia Allen Rudd, who started her journey with her husband in 1852.  She has a wry humor that I appreciated.  Describing a man who is traveling to California with nothing but a wheelbarrow (p. 189), she writes "I think that he will get tired wheeling his way through the world by the time he gets to California."  Later she sees a wagon being pulled by five harnessed men (p. 190).  She writes, "They must be some of the persevering kind I think Wanting to go to California more than I do."  As is typical of her script, she uses a capital letter for a new sentence, but only uses a period at the end of a complete idea or paragraph.

     In the end, everyone else looks more brave and also more pathetic, more prepared and also more absurd.  Not to different from our new, frightening journeys.

     I posted the book on Book Crossing today and will be sending it to my Mother, one of "the persevering kind."

A good Book Crossing story (seen on the Book Crossing Forum):

"I thought I was stealing."

People thought they were clever ten years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago when the declared this the "Age of Anxiety."  Yea, right.

So now that we are actually in the Age of Anxiety, how about some books on anxiety!

Today I picked up Anxiety and Its Disorders by David H. Barlow at the library.  The library has recently stocked three copies of the new edition, so I thought that was a good sign.  I've just read a few pages, but it looks pretty good so far.

A very readable and approachable book is The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May.  This is the golden 1950's of psychology- May thinks that he acquired and then recovered from tuberculosis as a result of having and then overcoming anxiety, and he also uses Rorschach tests as scientific evidence.  Nonetheless, it is a timeless book that will always be central to the study of anxiety.

     The books is sort of a high-level self-help book the author wrote to himself; an important project to him since he believed that he would save his life by overcoming anxiety.  The title gives away the point- finding meaning in anxiety.  I highly, highly recommend this book.

I listen to a news comedy/quiz show on NPR called "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me".  The week of September Eleventh I was wondering what they were going to do.  They ran a re-run.  The next week, the host of the show said, "Last week I found myself the most useless person in America: the host of a news comedy show."

So much for Friday "lite."  Meanwhile, I'll pass it over to The God Squad.

Parrot tries to rescue owner from murderers. Parrot is murdered too, but not before obtaining a handy DNA sample from the murderer, pending review may find more DNA samples from the parrot.  Prosecutor states, "Bird was valiant."  Said valiant parrot was carried to the morgue on a stretcher along with his owner. Bird was murdered by being stabbed with a fork. (CNN)

Bookcrossing.com:  I like this charming entry because the woman who is reading Bridget Jones Diary is taking it to her investment club to share.  Something about a woman who is reading some serious "chick lit" and also clearly has some clear minded "masculine" goals in mind.  Go grrrrls!

See, it's my hometown news that always takes the cake.  Today a whale jumped on a fishing boat, smashing in the pilot house and leading to the death of one fisherman.

Landed on a child sexuality link because of a post on Metafilter.com about some brouhaha in Belgium.  Someone linked to a forum discussion between several writers on nerve.com called "Politicizing Purity: The Zoning of Child Sexuality in Art, Advertising and the American Household".  This is the second time I've landed at Nerve this week.  There were also a few books links

--Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England.  Apparently they defined it.  Book by Louise Jackson.

--Random Violence:  How We Talk About New Crimes and New Victims by Joel Best.  Same author has written several books about how everyone is out to make something off the statistics and no one is terribly interested in just figuring out the truth.

--Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims, also by Joel Best.

"Nothing can be more timely than that, given all the crooks on Wall Street," Talbert Shaw said. "What we've got today is intellectual giants and moral pygmies. Our students realize there is another aspect of academic development -- personal integrity. We need more business ethics, but no matter what students study here, they get character development."  From an article about colleges that require religious training (Raleigh News & Observer)

I'm probably the only person in America who read More, Now, Again before reading Prozac Nation, which has given me an odd perspective. I wrote earlier (08/31/2002) that I wondered how she could have written an entire book on depression and still be messed up enough to end up where she was for More, Now, Again.  And the answer is that Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed In America: A Memoir is more about evil than it is about depression, and the only cure for that is clarity about the world, a clarity she doesn't develop.

     Idiotic people marrying, breeding, divorcing, and so it all plays out into her life.  These weren't terrible people that hit or seriously abused their children, these were just people that played out their everyday evil in a society that aids and abets.  The center of this book isn't depression, it is quality human life turning to garbage, and rather than say it stinks we all say its lemonade.  Wurtzel writes in the middle of the book:

     "Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead.  Sometimes I wish there were a way to let people know that just because I live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt so bad the morning after." (p. 195)

Since Prozac Nation and More, Now, Again, Wurtzel has written a book about happiness called Radical Sanity: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women.  From what I've read of it, it is somewhat beneath her.  From what I've read of her previous books, it is a badly needed letter to herself.

A database of arts media created for medical students.  Of course Wurtzel is listed.

In the news:  "She was definitely a hero," said Luther Sharbono, a fire district chief."She shucked her clothes and she bailed off in there."  Eight-one year old woman saves drowning motorist. (CNN)

inks from Today

www.news-observer.com/front/News/story/1689246p-1707740c.html

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/about.html

The 19-year-old American wife of a Saudi citizen is going be permitted to leave Saudi Arabia by her husband (Saudi women can only travel with authorization from a male relative), only after America assured her husband that American citizens can travel anywhere they want and the woman could return to Saudi Arabia if she chooses.  The woman was kidnapped from America by her Saudi father years ago. (CNN)

Hitchhiking is alive and well in Isreal.  "Dear Motorist," the sign will read once someone has pressed the connecting button at the wait-stop, "somebody is waiting for a ride to Eli." (From Newsday)

Sat down and read Lucky by Alice Sebold.  Sebold is the author of the beautiful and lithe The Lovely Bones that everyone seems to be reading right now.

     Lucky is her memoir of her violent rape during her freshman year in college.  I'm a bit jaded on the rape memoir- they are generally all the same and not that interesting- but I decided to read this one because the novel is so great and she has such articulate and fresh things to say about rape in her interviews.

    Unfortunately Lucky seems to have been written a while ago, with a postscript about the things she talks about in her interviews tacked on at the end.  She talks about how she went to therapy years after the attack and formed her thoughts and feelings then.  But this book ends before she goes into therapy.

     The problem with a rape memoir is that they only have a couple of things going for them: either they are going to show such heroism under attack that we are all going to be inspired, or the are going to paint a fresh tension with the universal understanding of rape, PTSD, and recovery, or they are going to show such depths and beauty of recovery that we will be amazed.  Ms. Sebold was heroic in surviving the event and aftermath of her rape, but she doesn't have anything interesting to say about it other than just the facts.  When writing the memoir Ms. Sebold was mostly ignorant of PTSD or even the idea that a lot of women are raped, had been raped already, and might have a community of experience that would help her.  And almost no one who writes a rape memoir is particularly recovered; that is, after all, why they write the memoir.

     Read The Lovely Bones though- there's nothing else in the world quite like it.  Today I saw it reviewed as "fluff" several times.  You are wrong, follow readers, it crispness, clarity, and litheness.

Bookcrossing.com: Registered three books today that I'll be giving to friends over the next couple of days.

Links from Today

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/08/31/
saudi.us.teen/index.html

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39   - 07-08

47 - TOTAL

This page last updated  07 March 2004.

thecactus@loafingcactus.com

Original content copyright 2001, 2002.