N.L. Brisson's Blog, page 6

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Story by James McBride – Book

From a Google image Search – WHYY

I hesitate to write about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride because so many readers already have done so, but I do like to obsessively keep track of the books I read. Besides, there are things to say. I know, that’s what Julia Roberts said in Notting Hill. Now you all know that I have watched that movie too many times. 

McBride’s tale takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1936. The fact that his points, and there are points, intersect with where we are now in the twenty-first century is both surprising and rather shameful. James McBride is a musician and a writer of fiction, a rare crossover. He won a National Book Award in 2013 for his novel, The Good Lord Bird. 

We are not surprised that Jews and Black folks were American scapegoats in 1936. Hitler had just begun his awful politics in Europe and many Jewish people, perhaps already aware that they were about to be persecuted once again, left Europe to settle in America. Black folks have been persecuted continuously in America. As the tale begins some work on the Pottstown water system turns up a mezuzah and a human skeleton at the bottom of a hole where there is a connection to the local water reservoir. The rest of the story tells us how the mezuzah and the body got there.

Moshe had wandered down to Pottstown from New York City. He was a Jew who loved to party. He opened a theater, invited Klezmer musicians, and sold tickets to people to come in and dance. He became well-known to other agents who also booked musicians, and he had a brother, Isaac, who ran a very successful theater operation in Philadelphia. 

Moshe also owned the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. He married Chona, a beautiful woman who was not considered marriageable because she had a disability. Chona loved the other people who were their neighbors on Chicken Hill, even though they were black folks. They were her customers at the grocery store which she ran after her marriage to Moshe. Many of the Jews from Chicken Hill had moved to town, but Chona refused to leave Chicken Hill or to close the grocery story. She knew that human warmth and loyalty were worth more than social climbing. Her customers loved her and were protective of her.

In 1936 in America, people who were immigrants themselves from all over Europe looked down on Jews and considered Black folks a threat. These were the times when Germans chanted “Jews will not replace us.” We heard this refrain recently in America in Charlottesville when Trump was President #45. It was given a more general scope when some chanted “You will not replace us.” The only Americans indigenous to this continent are not European immigrants and yet the chant of “blood and soil” was also transplanted from Europe as if there are Americans who can authentically lay claim to being the “real” Americans (hint: they mean white Christian Americans).

If you read Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, or Matthew Desmond’s books, Eviction, and Poverty by America, these authors speak of their belief that countries tend to need scapegoat groups, untouchables so to speak, for reasons such as holding onto power and hoarding money. Jewish and Black folks are our scapegoats in America, although not necessarily for the same reasons. They are easy to target because they stand out, one based on religion and the other based on skin color. These groups cannot easily hide or blend in with white or Christian Americans. Many of us are disgusted by this tendency, yet we see that these biases are kept alive by stereotypes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. This prejudice ties those early Hitler years to present-day attitudes that persist in America. In contrast to the supportive relationship between Jewish and black people in McBride’s book, there are attempts made in this century to divide these two groups, to make Jews targets of hate and to turn black folks into people to be feared. 

Chona often needs to see a doctor because she has seizures. The only doctor in Pottstown is white and he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Everyone knows this because he also has a limp. Dr. Roberts went to school with Chona, and he has always desired her. In a key moment, Dr. Roberts sexually abuses Chona as she lies unconscious from a seizure in the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Dodo is the nickname of a child rendered deaf from a stove that blew up in his home before he became homeless. Chona and Moshe have taken Dodo in, and Dodo sees what Dr. Roberts does to Chona. Soon he finds himself committed to a local institution for homeless, deranged, and disabled people. Dodo is a black child. Nate, his wife Addy, and the entire black community of Chicken Hill are touched when Moshe and Chona take on this good child. 

Thus begins a chain of events that comes to a head on the day of the Memorial Day parade. Besides the plans for rescuing Dodo, another problem is addressed on this same day. It is related to the question, “Why is there a bullfrog in the mikvah?” The rescue of Dodo from the clutches of a monstrous man called Son of Man and the institution at Pennfield, and the explanation for how the mezuzah and a dead body got in the hole with the town’s water pipes depends on events that happen on this same chaotic Memorial Day occasion. It’s a great story that also highlights how little we have learned about our common situation as humans on this earth. Social commentary and social justice occur all in one fell swoop of the pen of James McBride. We should heed the lessons this tale teaches us with humor and also with its descriptions of shameful human behavior. You may end up saying along with Dodo, “Thank you, Monkey Pants.” I listened on Audible and since this book is full of dialects it was a pleasure.

Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter – Book

From a Google Image Search – Columbia School of Arts

Today there was a powerful earthquake in Morocco and the internet tells me that over 1000 people are dead. We live in a world where existential events seem to be occurring with frightening regularity. And I have just finished reading a book called Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter which perfectly echoes the instability of the present moments of our life on this planet. It doesn’t read like a book about climate change, but extinctions are the bass line that runs through Leichter’s amazing fiction book.

My mind got tangled in the time shifts. What would a family tree of these characters look like? “Terrace” is the first chapter of the book, It describes the home and the relationship of Ann, Edward, and Rose. It’s a tiny space until Stephanie, a coworker of Ann’s, enters their lives. Stephanie was born with the odd ability to enlarge the space around her. As Stephanie tries to deal with her own separateness, as she carries the blame for her sister’s death, as she crashes through the lives of those around her, as she is betrayed over and over by Will the world keeps changing. Relationships don’t last. Couples who seem well-matched part. Trout go extinct, Salmon. Shrimp. Crows. This is a story of climate change and how it might affect people. “People are dropping like flies,” the author tells us. “It’s the latest trend.”

From the “Terrace” to the “Folly” to the “Fortress”, which is both a person and a place” to the “Cantilever” this is a unique work of fiction – fascinating, disturbing, brilliant, confusing – with time all bolloxed up, making it difficult to tell who is related to whom. There is a story of a Queen, a King, and a Hermit created from the ruins of a folly encountered at a funeral attended by Ann’s mother and father. Ann’s mother wrote about extinctions. Her father was a professor of medieval history. Lydia and George, Ann’s parents are separated when George is seduced by his graduate student, Patricia. It’s complicated but engrossing. Do the relationships matter, or just the extinctions? Perhaps the relationships exist so that extinctions have some meaning and so that there is a sense of time.

Anyway. Mind Blown. I am still listening to books (waiting for my eye appointment). I had to listen twice. I loved this book. Perhaps you will too. It ends in the new suburbs in space. It ends almost at the end. 

Poverty by America by Matt Desmond – Book

From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House

Matt Desmond has, once again, given us a textbook on poverty just as he gave us a textbook on evictions in his newest book Poverty by America. He offers factual evidence to prove his point that an affluent society such as our does not have to allow such poverty to exist, that poverty in America is made in America and serves no purpose except to create a permanent underclass. Then he offers many ways to end poverty if we will only implement such solutions. We live in a society that increasingly turns a deaf ear to inequality and even makes policies to make sure that poor people, especially poor black people, stay poor. We build walls between “us” and “them” and then turn down policies that might “tear down those walls.”

What Desmond said.

In his Prologue/ Matt Desmond asks, “Why are so many Americans poor? Why is there so much hardship in this land of abundance.” He talks about his childhood in Winslow, Arizona, and his pastor father. His father lost their house to foreclosure, and they survived but life was difficult. Eventually Desmond attended Arizona State University where he often hung out with homeless people. What he saw around him was so much money. In Tempe, he remembers, they built a fake lake two blocks away from a homeless area. Desmond describes his work in Milwaukee and tells us that he has met poor people around the entire country. We are, he says, “the richest country on earth with more poor people than any other democracy.” “More than one million of our school children are homeless.” “More than 2 million families don’t have running water or flushing toilets.” “America’s poverty is not about lack of resources.” “The most fundamental question is why some lives are made small so that others may grow.” To resolve this poverty problem requires that we become “poverty abolitionists.”

Chapter. 1 The Kind of Problem America’s Problem Is /A person is considered poor when s/he can’t afford food, shelter, and basic needs.  Molly Orshansky set poverty thresholds such as one in 2002-$27,750 for a family of four. Desmond tells the story of Crystal Mayberry born prematurely when her mother was stabbed. Both survived. Her mother smoked crack cocaine. She left Crystal’s father and moved in with another man who molested her. Crystal ended up in foster care. She argued with other girls in group homes. Crystal put on weight. She stopped going to high school. At 18 she aged out of foster care – went through 25 different foster care situations. When her mental problems were diagnosed, she qualified for SSI. She found an apartment which took 70% of her income. She got evicted. She lived in shelters. She walked on the streets in the day or rode busses or the subway. Then they took away her SSI and left her with only food stamps. She turned to prostitution.

Poverty is an endless piling on of pain. Desmond talks of toxins in work and home environments. He speaks about no dental care. He reminds us that the poorest Americans don’t qualify for Obamacare. Their lives are marked by violence.

Chapter. 2 Why haven’t we made more progress/ We cured smallpox, invented the internet and cell phones. Graphing poverty shows a gently rising and falling line. How do we account for poverty? After all poor people have access to cheap sweets and cheap entertainment from TV and movies. However, Desmond says, access to appliances does not prove that there is no longer poverty – costs of health care and rent have increased. Utilities increased 115% in price. Michael Harrington said in his book The Other America, “It’s much easier in America to be decently dressed than to be decently housed or afford decent health care.” Reagan cut back on housing but was unable to shrink antipoverty spending. The spending grew precipitately. The greatest increase was on healthcare. The US has not become stingier over time which makes it even more confusing. Examination shows that much of aid never reaches the poor because it is given in the form of block grants which often get diverted to other expenses. Desmond gives examples of how some of these funds have been diverted. He looks in detail at TANF dollars. It’s eye opening.

Chapter 3 How we undercut workers/ We blame the poor for their own poverty. It’s popular these days to trace poverty back to big changes like deindustrialization and other social causes. If arrangements that infect the poor have existed for decades, doesn’t it suggest that it was intended to be this way. People benefit from poverty in all kinds of ways. “Who gets eaten and who gets to eat”, Steven Sondheim said as a comment on the Darwinian aspects of wealth and poverty. Think about how landlords make a living by renting inferior properties to the poorest Americans. Complexity is the refuge of the wealthy. They claim that the matter is complicated. “One man’s poverty is another man’s opportunity.” “Do employers have to pay so little. Would paying more lead to higher unemployment?” Stigler said that if employers had to pay people more per hour unemployment would rise and he made this statement without collecting any facts. Subsequent data showed that raising the minimum wage has negligible effects on employment levels. Stigler was wrong. Between 1940’s to 1970’s progress on wage raises happened and America experienced one of the most equitable periods in its history. Unions are credited with this effect. Black workers were excluded. Women were not a force in the job market. Labor was blamed for our subsequent economic slump. Desmond talks about the firing of all the air traffic controllers which taught corporations to ignore unions. Corporate interests insured unions remained weak. An arsenal of tactics has been developed to prevent unionizing.

Chapter 4 How we force the poor to pay more/ There are many ways to be exploited such as underpaying workers (labor exploitation), raising prices and interest rates (consumer exploitation) and more. Rentals exploded in price and apartments got partitioned into smaller units – apartments in poor areas can cost more than those in more affluent areas – ghetto boundaries were written into law. Ghetto landlords had a captive rental base so they could take advantage and they did, especially absentee landlords. Money made slums because slums made money. Rising rents is not just about lack of housing. Poor people and particularly poor black families don’t have much choice about where they can live. Desmond quotes a study estimating landlord’s profits. Landlords in poor areas make twice the profit of landlords in affluent neighborhoods. Some landlords will rent housing and let it get rundown and then just move on to another city.

Chapter 5 How We Rely on Welfare/ In this chapter Desmond talks about shutdowns during COVID = March 16, 2020, millions of people needed unemployment so the government stepped in and expanded unemployment benefits and other benefits – poverty did not increase during our economic shutdown; in fact, these payments cut child poverty by half. A percentage of Americans blamed our slow recovery on stipends which assuaged poverty. Kevin McCarthy said that Americans weren’t getting back to work because they were receiving too many benefits. States that cut benefits were experiencing a loss of consumer spending. We did not look for other reasons why people didn’t return to work. Capitalists decry any attempt to aid the poor. They protect one kind of dependency, dependency on work and speak out against supposed dependency on aid. End welfare as we know it was the advice of conservatives. The propaganda of welfare says that if you help people by making sure they have enough money to live on through welfare, they will not work. Another study showed there was not much long-term dependency on welfare. Welfare is insurance against temporary misfortune. Welfare avoidance is a far bigger problem. Why do needy people say no to billions in federal aid each year? We are all on the dole. He gives facts and figures. Far more aid goes to affluent families than to the poor, but it is often invisible. We accept the current state of affairs because we like it.

Chapter 6 How We Buy Opportunity/ The early aughts have been called the Second Gilded Age. Many of us are colossally rich. We are much richer than other countries, even other rich countries. Yet people feel so deprived and anxious. Our perspective prevents us from seeing what is going on. Working class people bear the costs of our amusements. Rich folks complain that Russian oligarchs are gobbling up the east side of NYC. How many Russian oligarchs are there? We don’t even call our own oligarchs, oligarchs.

What happens to a country when people with such different resources live alongside each other. This same problem was reported in ancient Rome. Galbraith said in The Affluent Society that personal fortunes grow while public services decay. Money brings independence from the public sector. “We used to wish to be free of work, now we want to be free of bus drivers,” Desmond quips. We see violent juxtapositions of degradation and affluence or, using different words, private opulence and public squalor. We spend more on private consumption and less on public investments. Desmond brings up the tax cuts and says a major driver was the tax cuts of 1981 resulting in growth of the deficit. In 1982 Reagan raised taxes a bit. Tax cuts are the main engines of public squalor and private opulence. Proposition 13 in California led to a revolt, an angry response to white people being forced to share public spaces with black people. White people withdrew from public spaces. Taxes came to be considered compulsory donations to black people so then white people came together to protest taxes. City public schools lost almost all their white students. “More for me, less for we,” says Desmond. Forced busing didn’t work. Housing vouchers did not move the poor out of their neighborhoods. Then we thought perhaps we could provide opportunities to these communities. Each program had effects, but no program has changed stubborn poverty areas. Local zoning ordinances tell you all you need to do about cities. Residential 1 (R1) districts do not allow multifamily housing or apartment projects. People want more public housing, but they don’t want it in their neighborhood. One group’s gain does not have to come at another group’s expense. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.

Ch. 7 Invest in Ending Poverty/ In this chapter Desmond talks of Tolstoy who moved to Moscow in the late 19th century and who was shocked to see the grueling poverty coexisting with opulence. He concluded that poverty resulted from those who hoarded wealth. Even in America someone bears the costs of opulence. We could help solve this in part by collecting taxes that the wealthy should but don’t pay. The rich ask, “but how can we afford it?” We could afford it if we paid taxes. Affluence breeds affluence, poverty breeds poverty. There is a wall between the wealthy and the poor. Starvation and dignity do not mix well. We could make sure people get the welfare they qualify for. People don’t take advantage of aid because we have made it hard and confusing. Even using a better font makes a difference. 

How much would it cost to end poverty? 177 billion dollars is a good start (number of people below the poverty line x amount to bring them above the poverty line.  There are many advantages. Start with the IRS cheaters. IRS estimates that they owe 1 trillion dollars. Companies are doing everything to avoid paying what they owe. Tax shelters and offshore accounts for example. Bump up the top tax rate. Tax an investment banker differently than a dentist. Put it at 35%, or 46% as it once was. Evidence does not back a drag on the economy from raising taxes on top earners. Desmond tells us where we could get the money to end poverty. Expand the Earned Income Credit. Invest in new and public housing. Invest in public transportation. Make UBI less polarizing, make the nation more politically stable. Back bigger tent programs that cover a broader spectrum of low earners -“targeted universalism.” Different groups require different kinds of aid. Fundamental message – make policies that kindle cooperation rather than resentment. Redistribution is not a helpful way to look at this. Why are we so focused on helping the wealthy? Rich people – pay your taxes. We need more poor aid and less rich aid. Emergency Rental Assistance during COVID cut evictions in half across the US. It was amazingly effective. But when it worked it got little attention. The program became a temporary program, and now we are back to seven evictions every minute. When we refuse to acknowledge what works we risk the message that these things don’t work. We don’t just need more anti-poverty investments; we need different ones.

Ch. 8 Empower the Poor/ Choice is the antidote to exploitation. Offer the poor more choices about where to work, where to live, and where to shop. Raise the minimum wage. Sponsor humane and periodic reviews of the minimum wage. Congress should outlaw degrading wages. We should promote worker empowerment. A new economy calls for new labor laws. New labor must be inclusive. Make organizing easy. Right now, workers must organize one Amazon warehouse or Starbucks at a time. We must go about this in more collaborative way – Sectoral Bargaining. Come up with a Clean Slate for Worker’s Power. Use the results of the 2020 convention or meeting to make suggestions for new ways to organize. Subsidized housing has advantages for the children who live in such settings. Banks have shown little interest in funding subsidized housing. Government could provide on-ramps to home ownership. Image a post-poverty world by looking to people who are already working on this – (“Commoning”). Tenants buy apartment buildings from landlords – coops. Examples are IX organization and the landbank in the Twin Cities. Devise ways to fight exploitation in the housing market. Adopt a singular goal to end exploitation of the poor in work, housing, and banking. Expand low-income people’s access to credit beyond predatory lenders like pay day lenders. Reproductive choice – women’s empowerment was tied to their reproductive empowerment-freedom to pursue a career or a college education. There is a history of enforced sterility or contraception among black women which works against this dynamic. Desmond cites the Turn Away Study from Southern California. Those forced to give birth were found to be in lower income groups four years later. The children suffered too. A nation as wealthy as ours could use our funds to make sure that women and children have the supports they need. Poverty in America is something we all contribute to. Become a poverty abolitionist. It’s easier to change norms than beliefs. Advertise private acts of poverty abolitionism.

Ch. 9 Tear Down the Walls/ “Our walls, they have to go!” Still, we act as modern-day segregationists by living in separated neighborhoods. Even policies like UBI (Universal Basic Income) don’t affect segregation. Segregation poisons our minds and souls. It brings out the worst of us making us fear each other. Integration means we all have skin in the game. It interrupts poverty on a spiritual level and eventually may do the same for integration. We need to be advocating more housing options. Author says he has never heard of an empty low-rent apartment project that was located in a nice neighborhood. 

Rucker Johnson studied kids who experienced an integrated education vs kids who did not. Black students experienced positive outcomes while white students did not experience negative outcomes. Even when we expand the budgets of low-income schools the advantages are not as great for students as in integrated schools. Corruption of opportunity can end with us. 

Replacing exclusionary zoning laws allows us to build kinds of housing low-income people need. Passing inclusionary zoning makes mixed development likely (and offers a density bonus). New Jersey leads the way on this in the US. When affordable housing is built to blend into the surrounding community and is well-maintained it does not have to affect property values. 

Those who wish to stay behind their walls should get no help for this. George Romney came up with these ideas about inclusion and lost an election. White homeowners would not have it. They elected Richard Nixon. Pro-segregationists have worked hard in local politics to keep the walls. They are often the only voices. 

Society improves only when citizens do the difficult things. Charity is already important but it’s not enough. Funding scarcity is something we have legislated. It’s not real. It will cost us to fight poverty but it’s easier to stomach raising property taxes on the rich than stomach increasing homelessness and stubborn poverty – (fabricated scarcity). What we have now is white worker against black, Native worker against immigrant. Blame anyone you can except those who are really responsible. We are a land of bounty. No one in America needs to be poor. Why do we continue to accept scarcity when there is no need? Lift the floor. Rebalance our social safety net. Turn away from segregation. Change is painful. There are costs to better economic balance. There will be tensions and arguments. We could give up the shame of perpetuating poverty. Ending poverty would not end income inequality. However, it would bring a net gain in our feelings of positivity.

These are things that Matt Desmond said in Poverty by America, but since I was listening to the book on Audible and since it was difficult to keep up while taking notes at speed, direct quotes may be mixed with paraphrasing. The problem with a spoken book is that you don’t have access to the text to double check what you put in your notes. Still, I believe I got this essentially right. The doctor has given us a prescription to cure the disease. Will we heed it and take the cure? The outlook is not good, but things do change. Thank you, Matt Desmond for speaking truth to power. 

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay – Book

From a Google Image Search – Barnes and Noble

At the heart of the novel The Housekeepers by Alex Hay, is a heist for the ages. The prime mover of this elaborate theft is the indomitable Mrs. King and her somewhat shady but loyal friends and family. Mrs. Bone may be not quite the thing in the eyes of polite society, but she has turned her small business into a big business and owns property all over the city of London. Her intuitive understanding of finance and human needs has made her a very rich woman. Lucky for Mrs. King, Mrs. Bones is a friend, and she loves a challenge. 

It’s 1905, no high-tech assistance can be tapped to help this author with this massive operation that uses lower class ingenuity and connections to fight a class system that would never offer up justice through a biased legal system without some incontrovertible proof. There is a document which must be found before there can be any true justice. So far plenty of clandestine searching has not unearthed this single essential piece of evidence. Once Mrs. King is fired as the housekeeper at the Park Lane mansion further searching is stymied.

Mrs. King’s bold plan depends on finding talented people and spreading around the eventual proceeds of the theft. Mrs. Bone provides the upfront money, but not without misgivings. This extravagant heist is not about greed; it’s about revenge and family. Some other horrific clandestine business turns up as the heist progresses which gives the surprisingly straight-laced Mrs. Bone her own reasons to complete Mrs. King’s plan. 

Are the details of the heist believable? Who cares. Suspend your disbelief and just enjoy this delightful British novel where the tables are turned in an age when upward mobility was nearly impossible, and the best of the lower class put one over on the worst of the upper class.

Since I listened to this book on Audible the accents the reader used for the various characters enhanced the fun and the satisfaction of the final victory but, as usual, made it difficult to know how to spell the characters names. Fortunately, most of the names were quite simple as befitted the lowly status of the characters, who were anything but lowly in character. Very enjoyable and a fine example of how “girl power” might have functioned in times that granted almost no rights to women.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton-Book

From a Google image Search – Shondaland.com

For me the jury is still out on Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. Our first impressions when we finish a book may change with time, either increasing or decreasing our favorability rating of the book. The title comes from the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and I must say that Shakespeare understood human nature and would most likely have not been shocked by these folks. I will also say that if you plan to be evil you should at least be good at it. 

Lady Jill Darvish and the newly knighted Sir Owen Darvish own the property and the farmhouse where Jill Darvish grew up. It is near the New Zealand town of Thorndike. A recent avalanche has made it more difficult to access the farm and the land, although not impossible if you go in through the national park land adjacent to the property. 

This hard-to-reach piece of land ends up hosting an astonishing array of people and machines. An American, Robert Lemoine, made an offer to buy the property, without the farmhouse, before the avalanche. He’s a billionaire who says he wants to build a bunker to survive the coming climate apocalypse. Some people are disgusted by this display of wealth, others feel that it’s a dumb plan because supply lines will become problematic, but almost all people who are aware of the project are curious about what the bunker will look like. But does a bunker project require armed security guards? What is Robert Lemoine really up to?

Birnam Wood is a collective of environmentalists. They are gardeners who plant crops on any untended land they can find, and they are sometimes guerilla gardeners, planting on land owned by others without their permission. The group attracts young idealists who travel light and live cheaply. They meet regularly to plan their stealth planting operations. They sell the produce they grow to help finance tools, seeds, and transportation. The group also accepts donations. We meet two young women who are the current leaders of the group, Mira, and Shelley. When they learn about the land at the Darvish farm, cut off as it is from the world, it seems an ideal place to do some real farming. When they meet Robert Lemoine, who still seems to want to buy the property, and who in fact says he has bought the property, he wants them to come to the land and farm it. He even deposits upfront money in the Birnam Woods account, ten thousand dollars. 

What could go wrong?

Of course, I cannot tell you the details, but a series of chain reactions is set in motion which would do justice to any book by George R. R. Martin. After all greed is one of the seven deadly sins and, in one way or another it affects every character in this novel. Again, I had to listen on Audible until my eyes get corrected, and the story flew by. The connection to Shakespeare I found rather tenuous although Macbeth and Robert Lemoine have a few things in common.

Did the author go overboard on the complications involved in her plot? Did it have to end the way it did? Was the ending much too abrupt? The way the author contrived to get the entire cast of characters all together on a property that was cut off by an avalanche should interest any fiction writer. I enjoyed it but did I love it? Time will tell.

American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin – Book

This image is from Amazon.com

I chose to read the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin before I knew that it had been made into a movie. Cormac McCarthy’s book The Passenger led me to hunt for a book about Oppenheimer. McCarthy’s characters in The Passenger and in Stella Maris are Bobby and Alicia Western, a brother and sister whose (fictional) parents were part of the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. These two knew the work of all the famous theoretical physicists of the era. Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and Paul Dirac are names shared by the Oppenheimer biography and McCarthy’s fictional story. 

Imagine learning that what your often missing-in-action parents were up to in your childhood was making a weapon that would be too powerful to use again after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What would you think when you were grown and understood that this scientific product of a partnership between science and government would hang over the world and be used as a threat of total annihilation by any nation that happened to understand the physics, build the appropriate equipment, and collect the raw materials – the uranium and the plutonium – that could build such a bomb? 

The biography that Bird and Sherwin wrote is a voluminous and detailed story of Oppenheimer’s life, and it is a history text, as well as the story of this famous American physicist. Oppenheimer lived through several important eras in American history so as we learn about Oppy’s life, and as that life of science also becomes entangled in the world of government, we get an interesting spyhole into the events he lived through. 

Although Oppenheimer was born to a well-to-do family, he was slow to mature and had some worrisome quirks. One ill-considered action could have made him a murderer if the results had been different. In the various schools Robert’s parents sent him to and in college, Robert had problems with socializing. He also had similar problems in his early adult years in Germany where the predominant theoretical physicists were to be found at the time. By the mid 1930’s he was at the University of California at Berkeley where he felt at home. He was far more mature and consequently more productive and confident than previously. However, Berkeley is also where he and other intellectuals joined the Communist Party or at least attended meetings sponsored by the Communist Party,

Oppenheimer’s friendships with American communists (including his brother Frank who did join the Communist Party), the money he gave to local communist causes for humanitarian activities and because of his sympathies in the Spanish American War, all his actions before the Manhattan Project were used by a powerful enemy of Oppenheimer to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation after his work at the head of the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was the director at Los Alamos, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was built and successfully tested. While originally praised for his accomplishment in leading the project to a successful conclusion, Oppenheimer’s loyalty to America and his security clearance were soon under examination, and the possibly illegal proceedings that followed turned against him. 

Achieving the distinction of both conquering the physics of atomic fission and seeing the horrifying repercussions of its use as a weapon of war, it would seem normal to feel both celebratory and aghast at what your efforts had wrought. If you see the possible repercussions of some new knowledge, should you do all you can to keep that knowledge locked away from the world? Compare this to our present arguments about the ethical considerations of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Given the circumstances of Hitler in Germany and the bombing of Pearl Harbor it had seemed easy to justify making the bomb. Oppenheimer assumed, as did others in the project, that several nations were trying to make a working atomic bomb, and Oppenheimer believed that they would eventually make such a bomb. America needed to be first, everyone (the scientists, the military, the government) agreed. It was, as we know, a race to be armed. Oppenheimer won and he also lost. It’s a great and awful story. 

Isn’t it possible to believe that any Communist leanings Oppenheimer might have had were turned by circumstances into total loyalty to America and a dedication to winning World War II. But the things we do that we think are in the past can come back to haunt us. Although Joe McCarthy did not lead the case against Oppenheimer, America was soon to witness the Black Lists and the show trials that hounded anyone who ever expressed any sympathies that leaned too far to the left (at least anyone who was famous).

We are asked by the title to remember Prometheus, the god who gave fire to mankind against the wishes of the rest of the Mt. Olympus crew. Prometheus was tied to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains and everyday an eagle came and ate part of his liver. Then each night the liver would regrow, which meant he had to endure his punishment for eternity. (As Google tells it). The parallels are obvious. Revered scientist creates the bomb he is requested to deliver and then receives his punishment from someone he ticked off along the way. But Oppenheimer’s life does not end there, and of course, his liver was never attacked so he finds a new chapter in his life in which he learns to sail and spends part of his year on a harbor on St. John (Virgin Islands) and giving lectures at the invitation of admirers. 

My six degrees of separation moment with Oppenheimer – we both spent an entire week watching the TV coverage in the aftermath of the assassination of John F Kennedy. I was 19, Oppenheimer was 58. He was scheduled to be awarded a medal by President Kennedy; I was not. Oppenheimer won the Fermi Award, I, of course, did not. End of the degrees of separation saga.

There is no way that I can do justice to this incredibly detailed and readable book. There are just too many people mentioned to enumerate out of context without driving you to commit seppuku. There are the wives and lovers, surprising as Oppenheimer’s life focus was not sensual in the least. He tended to fall in love with intelligence in females, which most men felt intimidated by. I guess it made him quite lovable to those few smart women he singled out. There are his students, many who considered him a mentor for life. There are all the meetings, conventions, parties, and dinners. It’s amazing to immerse yourself in someone’s life with so much depth, but it’s not fodder for a brief commentary on the book. I understand the movie does an excellent job and I look forward to seeing it. As to my own love affair with all things physics and the physicists who understand the science, I haven’t a clue why I find the subject so enticing. I used to tell my students that physics is the science that explains the movement of nonliving things. That is what helped me understand how the inorganic sciences are related to each other. 

As I read this book, American Prometheus, I could not help going back to McCarthy’s book The Passenger, wondering if J. Robert Oppenheimer is the passenger missing from the mysteriously undisturbed aircraft sitting underwater that Bobby Western enters when his diving service is hired to investigate its disappearance. Everyone on the flight died, except one passenger who is not still aboard the plane. Who was that passenger? What did Bobby know about him? Was the FBI following Bobby because of the money he had found buried in his grandparent’s basement? Were they the tax men? Or was the government in possession of some secret about the passenger that they didn’t want Bobby to reveal? Bobby went back once to the site of the underwater plane, and he went beyond the plane and ended up on an island which showed signs of someone being dragged and of footprints. All signs ended abruptly. Weird. Oppenheimer died on the island of St John and was cremated, his urn buried at sea. Oppenheimer was hounded by the FBI and later by the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission (he was a member of the board until Lewis Strauss had him thrown off). 

Oppenheimer ended up repeating a sentence from the Bhagavad gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The Passenger ended with Bobby Western telling anyone who will listen that neither math nor physics will give us the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Douglas Adams said that the meaning of life is 42. Mr. Natural said, “It don’t mean she-eit.” None of these sources bode well for anyone who likes to believe there is a prime mover and a plan and that we will either somehow end up with “the best of all possible worlds,” or at the apocalypse or the Rapture depending on the state of your spiritual side. This is a biography that inspires deep thoughts.

Note: I am having some problems with my eyes so I listened to this book on Audible.

The Great Reset and the War for the World by Alex Jones – Book

From a Google Image Search – Current Affairs

I made a new friend who said that he liked Alex Jones and thought that everyone should listen to what he has to say. I wanted to say a few choice words about Mr. Jones but when I searched my Alex Jones schema in my old gray matter, I found that my scaffolding was shockingly full of holes. What I did know is that he claimed on his media platforms that the Sandy Hook massacre of twenty-six school children, teachers, and staff never happened, that it was “fake news.” He was convicted in a civil suit of defamation and ordered to pay a very large financial penalty ($473M). This factoid certainly doesn’t work in favor of Jones in my estimation, but my friend is, in fact, a genius, and he thinks this guy is brilliant so, in an attempt to fill in the holes in my brain, I decided to read Alex Jones’ book The Great Reset and the War for the World.

It turns out that Alex Jones is either very paranoid and is offering us a timely warning, or has been misguided by his right-wing leanings (or both). His book is written in the style used in Bible studies as an exegesis of books by other authors. He begins with a detailed discussion of Klaus Schwab’s book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum which sponsors the annual meeting of the wealthy and powerful from around the world in Davos, Switzerland. Jones quotes a section of Schwab’s text and then reacts to it. His theory is that these world leaders are up to no good in Switzerland, or whenever they speak together. He sees “globalization” as a danger to ordinary humans. He is talking about global government rather than global trade although he does address global trade later in his book. Jones warns us that world leaders plan to rule over all nations and will destroy all national governments, economies and cultures replacing individuals with essentially human clones. They will do this through surveillance, fear, threats, whatever it takes. They will be free, we won’t. 

Jones’ paranoia extends to the area of vaccines. Vaccines could be used for nefarious purposes. They could be used for mind control. They could be used to control overpopulation. They could just be toxins that are slowly killing us on behalf of the rich and powerful.

He expresses the right-wing paranoia about strategies that are supposed to be designed to improve livability factors that are being challenged by climate change. If climate change is made up or if, as right-wingers contend, humans didn’t cause it and nothing we can do will fix it, then perhaps the issue is simply being used, he suggests, as more tactical ammunition for globalists who want to corral us all into cities where we will be easy to spy on and where we can be put to work at menial tasks which limit any time we might have to exercise freedom of thought or action. 

Another chapter is dedicated to the messages that environmentalists are putting out about our food. Without nitrogen-based fertilizers, the manufacture of which releases lots of CO2, we will not be able to grow enough food to feed the growing earth population. Bill Gates, for example, has a factory/research center to design plant-based meats that can replace beef, chicken, and pork because all of these animals are sources of methane emission, and contribute more to global warming than things that release CO2 directly. “What if,” asks Alex Jones, “even what is going on with our food is part of the global takeover by the wealthy class?” (Not a direct quote). He asks the same question about the supply chain.

We can all tap into this paranoia about what the rich and powerful are up to. We all would like to believe that climate change is a made-up crisis. We may not make millions or billions from fossil fuels as many of the rich and powerful have, but we have kept warm in winter and cool in summer fairly predictably with fossil fuels and we’re not sure that alternative energies are up to the job or will offer the same comfort. But we suspect that we cannot trust people in the oil and gas industries to speak the truth in these matters. Those who argue about changing our habits to lessen our CO2 emissions do not seem to have a dog in the fight as the oil and gas people do. 

How paranoid should we be? Can we stop these guys from world domination? How would we go about that? Would we be willing to give up our freedom if our creature comforts were protected? Would we be willing to fight for our freedom when we have such a nebulous grasp of what freedom means that we think wearing a mask to protect us from disease is a true risk to our freedom? 

Whether you believe Alex Jones’s paranoia is justified and an important forewarning of a future we always hoped to defend against or not, this man, with only an associate degree from a community college in Austin, Texas has managed to make a fortune on social media and podcasts and radio, etc., preaching the gospel against globalism and blaming everything bad on the left, while the right-wing chooses dictators as cohorts, dictators like Orbán in Hungary and Putin in Russia.

Is he a “shock jock” with a suitably raspy voice and the disheveled grooming of a modern philosopher, is he a true philosopher, or is he just a guy who knew how to exploit the gifts life gave him. I find him confusing. He says things we have all thought about the rich and powerful but attributes the policies that will help the globalists win to the Left, while we can clearly see that it is the Right protecting the hoarding of money with tax cuts, giving money human rights as in Citizens United v the FEC, and thus growing the power of the wealthy.

Perhaps the rich and powerful do not divide the world into left and right; rather simply by rich and not rich. I have not become an Alex Jones devotee, but I have learned more about him. If making a fortune is the test of brilliance, then well-done Alex. However, simply accruing wealth does not offer absolute proof of genius, or at least it didn’t used to. Perhaps we no longer know what true genius is. None of our heroes seem able to pass the tests of a divided nation/world.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – Book

From a Google Image Search – Chicago Review of Books

There have been two books by beloved fiction authors published recently that are set in the same area in India, along the southwestern coast. Salman Rushdie’s offering, Victory City, is a mythic fantasy that is inspired by the site of an ancient and fallen civilization. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is set in the years from 1900 – 1977 as a family saga and an exploration of how the effects of a hereditary condition affect the fortunes of the family. Verghese, who also wrote the best-selling novel Cutting for Stone, is known for the medical stories he tells. 

The Covenant of Water takes place in the watery landscape that is known today as the state of Kerala. We begin in the years of British occupation, although this is not a story about imperialism and winning independence. India does win free of Britain during this period, but the novel is the story of a family living on a property known as Parambil. A very young woman is contracted to wed the owner of Parambil and we share her trepidation as she travels along the waterways that provide transportation throughout the area. She is a Christian woman and is marrying a man who belongs to the same church of St. Thomas. Her husband lost his wife to childbirth and the child lived. He gives his twelve-year-old wife time to grow into the relationship. 

Big Ammachi is the name that this child-woman becomes known by as she becomes the stable and enduring center of the family. She discovers that many of the members of this family she has married into suffer from an aversion to water. This is a big deal in the watery world they occupy. When those who are afflicted get into water they become disoriented, and grievous accidents and drownings cause beloved family members to die early. The family keeps a family tree that records the tragic path of destruction that “the Condition” has left behind. There is no science to explain this type of hereditary situation in 1900, and in fact the physical basis for this condition is not known until we arrived in 1977 near the end of this book. 

In a parallel story we have the promising doctor, Digby Kilgore, in India but from Scotland, who is beginning a career in surgery. He is partnered with a doctor addicted to alcohol who leaves all the Indian patients to Digby while he treats the very few white patients who are admitted into a separate ward. Digby falls in love with Celeste, the talented wife of this addicted surgeon who should have already lost his right to practice medicine. Their passion leads to a fire that changes Digby’s life forever. With his burned hands he knows his time as a surgeon is over. Connections he has made as a surgeon lead to the next chapter of his life which becomes intwined in the life of a man who builds a compound for lepers. He falls in love again with Elsiamma the beautiful wife of Philipose, Big Ammachi’s grandson. Eventually this connection leads to finding the cause of “the Condition.” Mariamma, who believes she is the child of Philipose and Elsie learns about her true parentage when her life crosses the life of Digby Kilgore.

Besides offering glimpses into a part of the world we were basically unacquainted with, we get a sense of the slow development of our store of information about disease and the hereditary roots of it. Science cannot offer insight until the tools that allow observations inside the body have been invented. And the brain is almost impossible to study humanely while we are alive, at least this was true before modern imaging and is still true to some extent. It took three-quarters of a century to trace the origins of this one disease, which affected so few people that the discovery of its roots was almost stumbled upon by accident. If Mariamma had not decided to become a doctor the discovery may have been delayed even longer. 

There is an aspect of both Rushdie’s Victory City and Verghese’s The Covenant of Water that gives them common cause besides geography and that is the focus given to women, their victories, and their heartbreaks. Pampa Kampana, the woman who creates Victory City, ironically never gets to rule it. She does, however, establish that women will one day give up entering the fire, as her mother did, when their husband dies. Since the women in The Covenant of Water are rarely affected by “the Condition” and since Big Ammachi did not have this genetic defect she forms the backbone of her family and her village, offering warmth and love to all who inhabit her world including “Damo” the elephant who often visits and who Big Ammachi once caught looking into her kitchen with his big old elephant eye. Romance is also a part of Verghese’s story, although even the happiest of unions face tragic circumstances. Even the lepers are treated lovingly and the research on leprosy makes possible the research on “the Condition.” This is a long novel, but following at least three, possibly four generations of one family takes time and we learn that, simple or fancy, life makes unsung heroes and heroines irrespective of economics.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie – Book

From a Google Image Search – American Kahani

Salman Rushdie, prolific and celebrated author, was born in Mumbai (Bombay) India. He was born to Islamic parents but became an atheist. One of his early books was The Satanic Verses. It was considered sacrilegious by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran who issued a fatwa on February 14, 1989, requiring the faithful to seek out Rushdie and kill him. For many years Rushdie lived in hiding in London under the protection of the British government. The Ayatollah died without lifting the fatwa, so it was never rescinded but Rushdie felt secure enough to live freely in NYC for many years. On August 12, 2022, standing on the stage at the Chautauqua Institute in New York Rushdie was attacked by 24-year-old Hadi Matar who stabbed him multiple times with a knife before security and participants were able to apprehend him. Rushdie was severely injured and lost the use of one eye.

Victory City is the first book Rushdie has written and published since his near-death experience. Salman Rushdie is back on home turf with this book. His heroine, as a nine-year-old girl, sees her mother walk into a fire to die as custom required of widows. She is shocked that her mother would chose the fire rather than stay with her. But she is given a gift from the goddess Pampa who she is named for. She is given two gifts by the goddess. She is gifted with long life. She is also gifted with the magical ability to sow seeds and grow her own city.

The goddess tells her, “You will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, you will live long enough to witness both your success and your failure, you will see it all, tell its story and then you will die immediately. Nobody will remember you for 450 years until they unearth your verses.” (not an exact quote). It turns out that knowing your future often brings both joy and pain.

First Pampa Kampana spends years reaching her maturity in the cave (mutt) of a spiritual teacher and sexual predator, Vidyasagar. Fortunately, Vidyasagar studies for long hours as he memorizes all the holy texts, but he occasionally finds time to rape Pampa . The monk seeks the answers to two questions. The first is whether wisdom exists or there is only folly. The second question is to find out if there is such a thing as Vidya or true knowledge, or only many different kinds of ignorance. His goal is (ironically) how to ensure the triumph of nonviolence in a violent age. Although grateful for learning the contents of the holy books, she never forgets the humiliation she suffered when she was helpless to fight back.

When Pampa Kampana is eighteen two cowherds arrive at the mutt. She sends Hukka and Bukka Sangama out to sow the seeds of her city. She names the city Bisnaga or Victory City. Since her city is peopled by people who have no personalities, who know no history, who don’t know their identities, Pampa Kampana whispers to fill the minds of each individual in Bisnaga. It is a city created by magic. 

Magic is one of the best aspects of Rushdie’s writing. The existence of magic allows him to be a great storyteller in the Eastern manner. This book does not have Islamic roots; it celebrates Hinduism but as myth more than religion. It’s interesting that Pampa Kampana’s life and the life of Victory City are exactly 247 years, the same as the life of the American Republic (probably not an accident). There is plenty of commentary on the rise and fall of great cities, or great empires. Why are empires successful and why do they fail? Is failure inevitable? 

In our world we have no magic that we know of. We live in non-magical times. We can’t blame the gods and goddesses for our failure. We have only ourselves to blame. Still, a good story entertains us and makes us think in new directions. Victory City is an engrossing tale of magic and life that centers around a female heroine who builds a great empire, which is quite rare. Salman Rushdie is writing again and that is cause for celebration.

Theresa, et al by Jean Hacker – Book

From a Google Image Search – Amazon – the ratings are from readers on Amazon

A rather chilling abortion story has been written by Jean Hackel in her book Theresa, et al. When Theresa decides to have an abortion the Dobbs decision has not yet turned abortion laws over to the states. Abortion is still legal. Theresa goes to the wrong clinic however, and winds up in the hands of some women who have formed an abortion vigilante group. Theresa’s mother, a very devout Catholic, who honors her religion above her children, allows a fanatic named Lucy Meyer to come into her home with some of the militant women from Maureen Haig’s church. Theresa is living in her family home while her husband is on active duty in the armed forces. Theresa is shocked that her mother pretends that she (Maureen) does not seem to see that these women plan to stop her daughter from completing a personal choice about her pregnancy. They eventually kidnap Theresa.

“Theresa sat on the bed, her back against an iron-spindle headboard. Both of her wrists were attached to the grillwork. Her feet were tied together with fabric to prevent kicking. Lucy sat down on a wooden chair at the edge of the bed.” (p. 132)

There are many repercussions from this violent and criminal act. Could this really happen? Perhaps it already has but this may also be a graphic way to discuss forced birth and the effect it may have on women, families, and even children. 

Where were the authorities in this situation? There were eventually many agencies involved, but Theresa got no justice. On top of all the pain of. being a victim, Theresa’s husband is injured by an IED on the way home to her and when he finally gets to a hospital in the states, he has a tough recovery ahead. Since the hospital is in Alabama, when Theresa is found in Minnesota where her own family lives, Woodrow (a great guy) takes her to stay with the Coles who are Charlie’s family. From her cold, judgmental mother she enters the sphere of a warm and loving family, and her life begins to normalize. Turns out though, that justice is far harder to come by given the strength of the “pro-life” movement. Quite a timely novel, which calls to mind The Handmaid’s Tale, although it is completely original.