Nosireebob

The snow in Winona is nearly gone except for on the north side of buildings or walls. The sun is warm enough to melt the ice from the concrete. Yet it's still cold enough to keep a shelf of ice above the concrete. One of my all time favorite things to do is to step on that ice shelf and listen to it crack. The sound is SO SATISFYING!

But now I am elderly. I can't afford to fall on concrete. I try to avoid ice. Does that stop me from cracking the ice on the sidewalk? Nosireebob!

 

How Democracies Die

 I have been attending a class every other week at the university on war and peace. I didn't sign up nor pay for the class but I got an email saying the general public was welcome. Initially I wanted to go in order to help myself process the immigrant crisis in our state. Even in Winona three Hmong employees were hauled away. Last week we discussed the situation in Iran and Gaza. One of the people in the group was a professor of physics. He clearly explained how Uranium 235 can be enriched to Uranium 238. The United States enriched Uranium with long underground tunnels in Tennessee. The Uranium is propelled through the pipe slowly and the enriched Uranium gets distilled by going through the long tunnels many times and floating to the top of the pipe. The other way to enrich Uranium is through specially made centrifuges which are hard to come by. Another person in the class said that anytime a country sends that many aircraft carriers and battle ships to an area war is surely to follow. He was right. Earlier in the class a person recommended the book written by Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt called How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future. My audio book was 8.5 hours long. These two authors have spent several decades studying the governments around the world and doing research on authoritarianism. They have studied Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Hungary, Turkey and Russia.  Years ago democracies died with a military coup. This is not the case in modern times. Democracies die a slow death. Law and the constitution is attacked. Voting rights are attacked. Legitimacy of elections are attacked. Legitimacy of political opponents are attacked. Violence is tolerated or encouraged. Civil liberties are attacked. In the years before and after the Civil War, mutual toleration was gone. Mutual toleration is the belief that although you disagree with your political opponents are decent, patriotic, and law-abiding citizens. These days it feels like some of us have lost mutual toleration. The arguments made in this book are convincing and depressing. It was published in January, 2018.

 

 

Dwelling

Dwelling is a novel with a hint of magic in it. Written by Emily Hunt Kivel the story starts out with Evie who lives and works in New York City. The city is collapsing. All renters are evicted simultaneously. Evie has no family except a younger sister who is in an insane asylum in Colorado. She puts her stuff in storage in the basement of her apartment house and tries to figure out what to do. She remembers her Mom, before she died, had a sister living in Texas. That sister had a daughter who she thinks is a real estate agent. She decides to fly to Texas and hope for the best. She can work from home so no problem there. She moves to Gulluck. At first she stays in a backyard cottage at her cousin's house. Her cousin is married and has four children. Eventually she finds a place to rent. Odd thing it, the house is shaped like a shoe. People keep bringing shoes for her to repair and she tells them she doesn't know how. Eventually she looses her job. She decides she will go to the community college and take a shoe repair course. This turns out to be her calling. This book had very many funny moments in part because Evie is the queen of making understatements.

 

 

 

And Furthermore

I read Judi Dench's autobiography called And Furthermore. She told the story to a writer who put it in book form. She starts out with her childhood and two older brothers. Then she proceeds to detail every performance from school play to playing "M" in six James Bond movies. I liked her performance in the television series called "As Time Goes By." In it she plays a woman who fell in love before the war. She never got his love letters and ended up marrying someone else. He married someone else too. Her spouse died. He divorced his spouse. Now they meet again, both single, and both a little angry with each other at first. But then they gradually fall in love all over again. According to Judi that series was way more loved in the United States and Australia than it was in the UK. She mentions the series had a fan club that would, on several occasions, fly to New York or London to watch her perform in a play. Most of her book is mentioning the other actors and actresses. She had a running gag with one actor where they handed a gray glove to each other at most inopportune moments. I do like her impish sense of humor.

 

 

 

Oil!

Years and years ago I read Upton Sinclair's novel about the meat packing industry in Chicago called The Jungle. I loved that thick book. I also loved Oil! much more than I thought I would because it wasn't nearly as popular as The Jungle. I admire Upton Sinclair for his writing and also for his activism and his inspiration for us to uncover societal wrongs and do better. This book is about the Teapot Dome Scandal where money bribes to the cabinet of President Harding were made to keep money in oil business executives and to destroy the unions that protect oil workers. The Tea Pot Dome scandal is ranked right up there with the Watergate scandal. I liked the first chapter the best. The first chapter is written in the first person narrative while subsequent chapters are written in the third person narrative. The first chapter is about a little boy and his Dad. Bunny (James Arnold Ross, Jr.) is riding with his father (James Arnold Ross) across tarred roads in southern California on their way to a meeting. His father likes to ride at 50 miles per hour even when the speed limit is 30 miles per hour. His Dad shows Bunny how to avoid the speed traps. The story happens after 1900. The love between Bunny and his Dad is very evident. Bunny admires his businessman father. The father is rich and divorced. He has an older daughter who is a society girl, his mother (Bunny's grandmother), and his aunt to help him raise his children. Rather than Bunny going to school, Bunny accompanies Dad on all business. A tutor is hired to help Bunny with his studies between meetings.  When Bunny and his Dad arrive at the meeting in California, Bunny takes a seat on the windowsill while his father tries to convince a room full of landowners to sign a contract with his oil company so he can install oil derricks on their property. Bunny hears a voice of a boy names Paul through the window. Paul convinces Bunny to open the kitchen door so he can grab some food from his aunt who owns the house. Paul convinces Bunny that he will only take what is necessary and will pay his aunt back in the future. To me this sounded like a scam but it turns out that Paul is honest and true. This makes a huge impact on Bunny. As Bunny matures and finishes college, the contrast between Dad and Paul is evident. To his father's dismay Bunny chooses to admire Paul more than his father. As it turns out his father is part of the "good old boys" system of bribes and corruption. What a great story!  

 

 

The Best American Short Stories 2013

Elizabeth Strout is the editor of The Best American Short Stories 2013. One  of the stories, written by Junot Diaz, is one I had read before. I enjoy his writing. This story is called "Miss Lora." If Miss Lora was a real person she'd hopefully be arrested for child abuse because there is no way a high school teacher should be taking advantage of a student. Another story I read before was "Train" by Alice Munro. A veteran is on the train coming home when he impulsively decides not to return home by jumping off the train. In nearly every story there is someone who is broken. One of the stories I really liked was called "The Best Is Yet To Come." This is a story about a young farm wife in New England at the turn of the previous century. She is trying to get by after the death of their baby. She is inporportionately cheered by the visit of the farm wife at the next farm. There are a lot of great stories in this book.

 

 

Oryx And Crake

Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel that the author, Margaret Atwood, describes as speculative fiction. I think she means a story like this could happen in the future. The story is about a boy named Jimmy. As an adult he is known as Snowman. One day his mother disappears and for years government officials repeatedly question him about her whereabouts. Jimmy lives with his Dad who is a scientist. In this society, each company builds living quarters for their employees to keep them safe and isolated from the crumbling world elsewhere. Jimmy is an average student. One day a new student named Glenn starts at his high school. Jimmy and Glenn spend much time together playing video games and smoking weed. On his extinction video game Glenn uses the handle Crake and Jimmy uses Snowman.  Glenn is a top notch student. After high school Jimmy gets into an art school where he learns how to write advertising. Glenn becomes a genetic pharmaceutical engineer. Later, after they are working for a few years,, Glenn asks Jimmy to help him write advertising for the new humanoid he has designed called Crakers. Things go wrong at this job and Snowman is left starving and barely surviving out of the compound in some trees next to the sea with some Crakers. Two more stories follow this one but I am going to have to pace myself. Maybe I will read one a year. This is an incredibly possible and sad story.