Achieve Anything in Just One Year by Jason Harvey

This is such a wonderful book. It reads like a calendar with an inspirational message for each day of the year. They range from inspirational messages to questions about our fears and hopes. Each day has a quote from someone of great accomplishment; J.K. Rowling, Dr. King, Franz Kafka, Woody Allen (“eighty percent of success is showing up”) and Oprah Winfrey (who else could inspire so many people?) to name a few.

Take for instance day #142. It begins with a quote from Washington Irving; great minds have purpose, others have wishes. The entry proceeds to question the reason why we wish. Are we fantasizing about things? What do we want them for? What purpose does it have? This makes sense, because if you want something, let’s say a well-paid job, then the chances are that you can accomplish it if you know exactly why you need it.

My only problem is that the book gets a wee bit repetitive after a while. Some of the entries could’ve consisted of stories about people who accomplished things. For instance, Ben & Jerry’s started out as just another ice cream parlor run by two guys with zero talent, and don’t tell me that’s not inspiring. If you want proof that success is an average person making above average effort (Colin Powell said that one) then look at Woody Allen. He made a lucrative career out of portraying himself as a talentless, ugly, awkward little guy, so damned smart that he can’t see how ignorant he is.

Now who wouldn’t be inspired by that?

Killing Jesus by Stephen Mansfield

Jesus came from the Galilee, and because of that, he was more rugged and independent than the people of Jerusalem. The Hellenized gentry and the priests (who were probably Hellenized too) didn’t like this bumpkin Rabbi from up north, nor did they like any Rabbi who had ideas of his own. But up in the north, Joshua Son of Joseph was out of reach!

Stephen Mansfield’s book is the most straightforward work on Jesus that I’ve read so far. I love the way he portrays the conflict between Jesus and the people of Jerusalem as a conflict between the simple (and often more religious) folks and the genteel urbane city people. He believes that the killing of Jesus was the work of corrupt priests, who were getting rich off of bribes, taxes, and kickbacks from the money-changers. They didn’t take kindly to Jesus showing up in the capital and chasing all the marketers out of the Temple grounds.

There are, however, some things that the author left out, and that is the origin of the Temple’s corruption. The Kohen Gadol (high priest) at the time was Ciaphas (from the Aramaic “Bar Kapha” meaning “son of a monkey”) and he was not the legitimate Kohen Gadol. The reason is that 140 years earlier, when the Macabees reconquered Jerusalem, they started tampering with the Kehunah, appointing men who had blood on their hands to oversee the Temple services. By the time Jesus was born, the Kehunah had been corrupt for years, and anyone could become a Kohen if they paid enough of a bribe. As for the Temple itself, was it the Lord’s beautiful house, or was it a monument to Herod’s megalomania? Some Jewish scholars today believe that the Temple was not holy at all. Herod was a murderer, and a murderer can’t be trusted to make anything sacred. Regardless of whether the Temple was truly sacred, or whether the Kohanim had a right to their jobs, one thing is clear. The faithful pilgrims who thronged to the Beit Hamikdash were nothing but profit.

Indeed, there was a conspiracy to kill Jesus. It wasn’t the work of Rome (why would they care?) nor the entire Jewish community. It was the work of the corrupt puppet clergy who sold out their people to the Romans. Any Rabbi will tell you that Jesus was innocent; he never claimed to be anything he wasn’t. As for Ciaphas, he had no right to question Jesus, because the Torah prohibits the Kohanim from getting involved in civil affairs, let alone sit on a court.

Today, the Temple courtyard still throngs with the faithful, who come to pray at the Western Wall (built by King Herod, no less.) Just like in the time of Jesus, there are lots of religious hucksters who offer blessings in exchange for money. There are probably money changers too. Only this time there’s no need to chase them out. The clergy aren’t getting any kickbacks.

Finding Family: My Search For Roots and the Secret of My DNA

Richard Hill’s autobiography reads like a thriller. He was born in 1940’s Michigan, adopted as an infant, and had to do some serious detective work to find his birth mother. His family and their friends only know a tad here and there, and since the adoptions in the old days were private, there was no record of his. A million leads later and he finds his half-brother, alive and well, who accepts him with no conditions. His birth mother is long dead, and it will be a while before he finds out who his father was.

Perhaps this book is a story about the USA in the 1940’s? Hill’s mother dropped out of school to marry at 16, had one child, then separated from her no-good husband. She got pregnant by another man, then left both her sons with a neighbor so she could party with low-life bums. But can you really blame her? This was 1944, and women had no rights. She got pregnant by a lousy guy (his sister calls him a “lousy brother and even worse husband”) and had no choice but to marry him. Unmarried mothers in those days were outcasts. It wasn’t like she could continue going to high school while pregnant, the principal would’ve just thrown her out. Birth control was hard to come by for an unmarried teenager (especially if you didn’t want to risk a beating by your parents) and abortions were dangerous. Maybe this woman had a right to want to go out and party like a 19 year old?

What amazes me the most is that Richard Hill traced his family without the help of the internet. In the 1980’s, his detective work had to be done by writing letters, patiently waiting for a response, visiting record offices, and chasing down people with no contact information. But the fact that the information was buried doesn’t surprise me at all. According to the author, adoptions were always private because of the stigma. Adopted kids were seen as second-rate, and the parents were afraid of their kids having that stigma (except for Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, and Josephine Baker.)

Fortunately, Hill’s discoveries don’t open huge cans of worms. Nowadays, adopted kids who go looking for their birth parents don’t often like what they find. Who wants to find out that their father is a serial killer serving 200 years for gory murders? Maybe the truth isn’t always the best thing.

Eat Healthy With the Brain Doctor’s Wife Cookbook

When I opened this book, the first thing I saw were the meatballs, and they looked great. That, in my biased opinion, follows the iron law of diets; if it doesn’t look good, taste good, smell good, nobody’s going to want to eat it and the diet won’t work!

Tana Amen’s cookbook is full of simple, healthy recipes that don’t require elaborate preparation and aren’t salty or fried. The burritos and rancheros in the breakfast menu are good, but I am not a fan of the smoothies. I’d rather have more recipes that let you retain the fiber, color, and taste of the fruit rather than something you’d drink. On the lunch menu, the seared ahi (a fish I’ve never heard of until now) and cucumber salad are tops, but I’m not sure about the coconut oil. Then again, you’re only searing the outside, so you’re not using so much oil that you’d clog your arteries.

I’ll give this cookbook high marks for sticking to the basics. She uses a lot of seafood and salts are kept low.

Shaping Language Policy in the USA

Scott Wible, a professor of English, has written a well-researched narrative on how US schools became tolerant of non-Anglophone speakers. I was not expecting any surprises, because I knew that no language other than English had ever been accepted in our public schools, at least not before the Civil Rights movement. If you came to school in the Southwest knowing only Spanish, or you were a Cajun in Louisiana who spoke Creole French, well too bad. It was “speak English or go home,” no accommodations were made. But at what point did this change? That is what Professor Wible tries to formulate.

The author goes back to the early 1970’s, when CUNY changed its entrance requirements to having only a high school diploma. Gone were the entrance exams and essays; all you needed now was to have graduated from high school. This led to a large number of freshman who could barely write. Now, instead of having scholars who were all ready to prove themselves, you have students who didn’t have a clue. Though not mentioned in the book, this was typical of New York City by the late 1960’s; industries were shutting down and with few job prospects, more working class Black youth opted for college. The problem was that students from working-class backgrounds hadn’t been prepared for college. They were prepared for more repetitive skill-based work-stenography and typing for girls, industrial trades for boys. They were not ready to read St. Thomas Aquinas! It’s a problem to this very day.

There’s a chapter in this book on how President Bush and the Defense Department wanted Arabic-speaking employees. An Israeli diplomat warned Bush that “you can’t win a war in Afghanistan unless you know the local language,” but who in the USA understands Pashtun and Urdu? Of the few Americans who speak it, how many want to join the army? Do you think an educated Pakistani-American with a good career will give it up for a US Marine salary? Not likely! Furthermore, despite Bush’s NCLB act, there’s been no increase in foreign language fluency. The average American kid only knows English, and he might not even know it well enough to go to college.

Perhaps the main problem is the lack of resources for educators here in the USA. Day care and preschool are notoriously lacking when compared to Europe, and that is where the children begin their education. The average six year old comes to 1^st Grade with no social skills or language skills, so teaching them to read is a double job.

Freedom From Your Inner Critic

We all know the story of the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. We all know of the ego-id-superego theory of Sigmund Freud. But in Dr. Jay Earley’s book Freedom From Your Inner Critic, he introduces us to another entity; the creature in us whose only goal is to criticize.

The book has solutions to low self-esteem and hypercritical self-assessment, broken down into manageable steps. He stresses getting to know the critic, and learning the critic’s goal. What does the critic want? What is it trying to protect you from? Has it accomplished anything? He further identifies seven types of inner critic, ranging from the taskmaster to the underminer.

The final chapters deal with the addiction to perfection, and the role of gender in self-criticism. At the end of the book is a glossary with the definitions of the terms used in this book.

Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought

Vern Sheridan Poythress has crafted a brilliant tome on how our belief in God stems from a need to understand nature. He uses as an example the story of Absalom, who led a rebellion against his father, King David of the Israelites. The question is, were Absalom's actions the result of need or greed? Was there a "clear and present" danger in his father being the king, or was Absalom tempted by the thought of ruling a nation? Logic will answer the question, because whatever Absalom was feeling, anyone else could feel in their life as well.

Another example he uses is the idea of the belief in God influencing subordination in Humans. He says that it is natural for some people to have kings who they bow to, and if they're accustomed to subordinating themselves to a God, then why not to a monarch. The question is, however, do peope have a logical need for a master? Some people (like the Bedouin of Arabia) prefer to have separate tribes, and they follow radical Islam. But do they really care that much abotu Islam? Would they accept a religious preacher who tells them they're wrong?

According to Dore Gold's book Hatred's Kingdom, the answer is probably no. If they have a logical need for independence, they're not going to hear otherwise from anyone, nto even their own clergy.

Machiavelli in the Making

If one were to sum up the tone of Machiavelli’s philosophy, it would probably come out as “practical.” The great Italian philosopher wasn’t much of an idealist by today’s standards; he promoted a philosophy of “whoever makes it work will be in charge,” and that’s often how things turn out, for better or for worse.

The author of this book, Claude Lefort, cites Machiavelli’s praise of the Borgia regime. While the Borgias were indeed corrupt and dishonest, there was no other leader stepping in to replace them. The family’s money brought them to power, but they stayed in power by being shrewd. He says the same thing about Machiavelli’s work with regard to the empires of history-Roman, Ottoman, British-that lasted for so long but eventually split. Whatever it was that kept them in power for so long eventually wore out.

In another chapter, Lefort uses Machiavelli’s discussion of Marcus Aurelius as an example of how moderation can only work “in moderation.” The emperor Aurelius was one of the “barrack emperors” who started out as generals, and was more of a moderate than his successors. But according to Machiavelli, that moderation could only be done because the army wasn’t entirely corrupt yet. As the empire got bigger, it became impossible to manage, and the emperors would be at the mercy of the military governors of the provinces. This is an early example of a philosopher promoting an “anti-expansion” philosophy.

However, Machiavelli predated the peak of the British Empire by nearly 300 years. He did not know that by 1880, Suez Canal and the advent of steamships and telegraph lines would make travel and communication easier. Thanks to these modern inventions, central powers could keep an eye on their colonies. For the British Empire, expansion was profitable for decades. I guess that’s “real politic” for you!

Doing Time For Peace

There’s a passage in here where Robert Ellsberg (son of the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg) talks about why he joined the Catholic Worker movement. I found it humorous, because a century earlier you would never have seen left-wing activities among American catholics. The Catholic churches were, in the early 20^th century, some of the most conservative platforms in the USA. It shows you how much the USA had changed by the late 1960’s; the idea of disagreement with authority had become commonplace. But there is no guarantee that anyone would pay you any attention.

Doing Time For Peace consists of interviews with peace activists in the USA, most of them from religious groups. They all did short jail sentences for trespassing and obstruction of private and government business, over things like war industries, pollution, and businesses that can damage communities. I did wonder, after reading the story about Michele Naar-Obed, if all this was worth the effort. When you’re in a jail, you won’t have time for constructive work. Hearings can be delayed for a long time, and in the time you’re waiting for the judge to decide on how much bail you’ll have to pay, it makes more work for your lawyers.

As far as history goes, the earlier accounts are from the Vietnam era, when young people all over the USA voiced their opposition to the Vietnam War. After the Vietnam era, most of the activism concerned nuclear weapons, ecology, and by 2005 it was the war in Iraq. The 1980’s were an era when a lot of the activists were ignored, blame the Reagan administration for making Conservative outlooks popular. But in the 90’s, with draft-dodging Bill Clinton in office, and Forest Gump in the theatres, there was a renewed interest in the 60’s. All of the activists were stars again.

Today we have the Occupy Movement, which has pretty much fizzled, and the Tea Party movement, which kind of stopped itself once it made its point. Who says the right wing can’t be activists too?

Illness is a Weapon

Australian and American natives have a raw deal. Before the Europeans arrived, they were doing just fine, and now they’re stuck on reservations where you have alcoholism, family violence, teen pregnancy, and worse. In the first chapter of this book, the author discusses how white Australian nurses couldn’t treat “aboriginal” diseases, which they first saw on the reservation areas. It’s understandable that they couldn’t treat the diseases, because what kind of medical professional can handle an illness that he/she has never seen? But these were not really “aboriginal” diseases; the afflicted people had never seen them before either. They were in fact reactions to foods and lifestyles that their bodies were not accustomed to.

Eric Saethre’s book is a fine and detailed work on the dangers of the industrial diet. In the chapter Food, Meaning, and Economy, the indigenous Australians are given free food from the government, consisting of white flour and other refined foods. The result-diabetes, high blood pressure, and tooth decay. Later chapters cover excessive pill use, which isn’t good either. Many of the illnesses seen in native peoples can be avoided with the traditional diet. The problem is that the government pushes for the “civilization” and “modernization” of peoples, which is not what they need. Another reason is that it’s cheap to ship processed carbs and meats, because they don’t rot and don’t need refrigeration. Traditionally, these people hunted for meat, but with their hunting lands gone, they have no choice by to use salted ham. Until the Europeans arrived, they had no salt at all.

I am reminded of the book Looking For Lost Bird, where a Navajo woman, adopted by whites as an infant, returns to her tribe as an adult. She’s faced with a dilemma; a 13 year old boy is punching the girls on the school bus, and nobody knows what to do. So she asks the tribal elders what the arrangement was before the whites arrived, and they say “boys and girls were kept separate from each other.” She then asks what the tribe would’ve done about this boy 200 years ago, and they say “his family would’ve been told to leave if they couldn’t control him.” Well that’s exactly what the tribe did. They told his family to pack up and leave the reservation! The only way to handle the problem is to go back to the traditional form of discipline.

Even Gandhi had these issues in mind when he began his quest for Indian independence. The first thing he did was return to traditional handcrafts, foods, clothes, and exercises. Now if you look at India, they’ve thrust themselves into the “modern” world. They’ve traded traditional foods for pizza and cake, and diabetes is rampant.

Luther's Aesop by Carl Springer

Carl Springer’s book is about how Martin Luther used Aesop’s fables to promote his new form of Christianity, largely by manipulating them. In the chapter A Lutheran Fable Book, he takes the story of “The Rooster and the Pearl” and shows how Luther rewrote it, removing all of its meaning. The true meaning is that when the rooster says “someone would love to have you, but I have no use for you,” it shows how the working class prefer survival before aesthetics. But in Luther’s version the chicken represents an ignorant, vulgar man who doesn’t take the opportunity to appreciate Jesus.

I would be apt to believe everything in this book based on a historical context. Luther’s (possibly apocryphal) 99 Theses came at the time of the Renaissance, when Europeans were rediscovering Greek and Roman mythology, art, architecture, and language. An educated man, Luther would doubtless have come across ancient literature, translated from Greek, and these works obviously had a profound and lasting effect. But we also know that Luther was extremely opinionated, pig-headed, and vindictive. He thought his crowning achievement would be converting the Jews en masse to Christianity, and when they politely refused, he became a raving Anti-Semite. He was not as open-minded as the high school history textbook would lead us to believe.

Springer deserves praise for his unbiased writing and his informative approach. He has crafted a narrative of Luther’s use of Aesop’s fables, from his days as a translator of the stories into German, all  the way to his use of the fables as parables for his religious arguments.

Learning From the Bumps in the Road

There was a chapter in this book where the educators are talking about “consistency,” and a Kenyan says “in our country there is no constant adult presence, but many adults who the kids learn from.” It’s one of many anecdotes in this book, which is essentially about the importance of diversity in education.

The four educators in this book come from diverse backgrounds and they discuss their experiences with multiethnic students. Schools are no longer homogenous (especially in metropolitan areas) and while nobody expects the teacher to know six languages, you’re going to have to be able to deal with six different habits. For instance, Janet Gonzalez-Mena talks about the issue of “greetings” in her life. Hers is the “hi, how are you” kind of greeting, very informal, while her Mexican husband’s family has more physical greetings that take longer. Kids from outside the USA may have an awkward transition to the American way of the classroom, especially if it’s radically different from how they’re treated at home. Think of the eight year old in your classroom whose lack of eye contact drives you crazy. You think it’s annoying, but where he comes from, a kid who looks adults in the face is considered rude.

Holly Elisa Bruno discusses gender, and how you deal with the parents expectancy. For instance, with all the hoopla today about transgender teens (like the much-publicized Kim Petras) you’re likely to have kids playing games that aren’t typical for their gender. So what do you do if the parent insists that restrict what their child does? If you the parent tells you that their son is not to play with dolls, do you enforce THEIR rules in YOUR classroom? Will they threaten to sue you for teaching them that gay people aren’t crazy? These are all issues that teachers will face today in the average classroom.

The teachers in this book go on to critique each other’s discussions about all the troubles you have in the classroom. I’m not referring here to the usual things, like throwing paper planes or making farting noises, because those are things that kids do if they’re bored. This book is about recognizing the social problems that can get in the way of learning. One nice piece of advice here is to be vigilant about the community, with regard to the people living there, changes in the demographic, the economics of the neighborhood, etc. I remember in my first year of teaching, the kids used to drop their garbage right on the sidewalk and the floor, and it drove me crazy. Then one day as I was walking past the public houses next door to the school, I saw the adults doing that and realized what the problem was; kids learn by example, and their parents made a bad one. I would have to start from the beginning, and teach the kids why garbage cans are good for the community.

Like they say to any new teacher, it’s all about planning. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

It Starts With Food by Dallas Hartwig

It Starts With Food is a radical book by nutritionist Dallas Hartwig, on how our eating habits control our lives (and vice versa.) First off, the book makes no secret of the fact that people like sweets; it’s a natural instinct, and all races enjoy them in some way or another. As an example, he writes about how you might get a sudden desire for cookies. But you’ll only desire the taste and texture and smell, not the idea of satisfying hunger. This, he says, is a craving, and it wrecks our eating habits.

Chapter 5 is all about the hormones (like insulin) that regulate the food once it’s in there. Lower levels of insulin mean that sugar ends up being stored in huge amounts, causing weight gain, among other things. It makes the body burn sugar, not the stored fat. You end up feeling hungry when you shouldn’t be, and you don’t feel like eating when you’re supposed to.

One example of this, which I bet countless parents deal with in their kids, is the breakfast problem; you wake up feeling lousy, don’t feel hungry enough for breakfast, eat something sugary (like Captain Crunch) with coffee, and by mid-morning, you’re starved. At lunch time you pig out on salty comfort food, and now you’re screwed. The Hartwigs’ advice is to stick to basic protiens and vegetables, while eliminating the processed foods. By leaving the “frankenfoods” out of the diet, you limit the sugar you’re eating, and that gives the body the chance to burn stored fats.

On a funny note, Hartwig debunks a mass-media diet myth, and that myth is the juicer. We all saw it somewhere, maybe on an infomercial, maybe a promotion at a store like Bed, Bath & Beyond (with a sexy model on the package, no doubt.) But the juicers are bad for you. They give you the liquid from the fruits and none of the fiber, so you end up satiating your taste buds, not the hunger.

Eat the foods, not the bi-products. You’ll feel full for longer.

Cure Tooth Decay

Ramiel Nagel’s book tries to prove that natural foods, and not dental checkups, prevent tooth decay. We’ve heard it all before, the theories about “caveman diets” and how traditional nomadic people have the best smiles. Well this isn’t necessarily true (even cave men lost their teeth) but there is a point to it.

Dr. Nagel uses old and new research to compare ethnic groups’ teeth. The primitive Hebrides islanders lived on shellfish and oats, and their teeth were marvelous. But the more urbane peoples of the region had cavities. The reason was simple; the more “modern” the people become, the more access they have to refined white flour, sweets, caffeine, and sweetened foods. Fruit preserves,  which (unfortunately) form a large part of the modern diet, are high in sugar. If you eat them every day, but have less milk, meat, and greens in your diet, then you throw off the nutrition balance.

The book goes further into the danger of mercury-based fillings and how to remove them, but the part on nutrition is better. I would rather have seen the book as a series, with the first part devoted strictly to the nutritional aspect of caring for teeth. But overall it’s an excellent book on how to save on the cost of dental care.