Languages In Africa

The premise of this book is that Africa’s numerous languages make education cumbersome. In this well-researched study, the authors discuss how the many tongues of the continent create a need for a common language, yet there’s apprehension over whether to use it. The Muslims above the equator want Arabic, but that takes longer to learn to speak and write. English seems like the best choice for language, as it’s already used in much of Africa, yet Senegal, Niger, Ivory Coast, Benin, and other still use French. As for Francophone Africa, the people haven’t benefited much from French or Belgium in the last 30 years. Which one will they use?

A statistical study was done on children in Cameroon, and some small African nations, along with Belize and the Philippines. The results were that the highest math scores occurred when the teacher was highly proficient either in English or French. When his/her mastery of that language was weak, the students’ scores were weak. Cameroon had high scores, because the teachers in that country are expected to be proficient. Ghana, which has had government funded education for the last 20 years, has seen success in teaching the students bilingually. Each school teaches the students in their local language, with English taught separately. The students are broken up into small classes for English, then grouped together for everything else. This allows them to get more attention in English class, while the math instruction is easier because the teacher and students have no trouble communicating. Think of it in terms of any language; if you were teaching English speaking kids to learn French, you would make French a separate class. You would not expect them to learn math, science, and history in the foreign language.

Further chapters discuss the subject of advertisements in Kenya, which are different depending on the region. It means that different posters have to be processed for each language area, which can make things costly, but at the same time the advertisements don’t work if people can’t understand them. The Latin alphabet is always used, because aside from Latin and Arabic script, Africa has no writing system. In a funny twist, a Paypoint advertisement appeared in two languages, but the product name had to come at the end of one ad and at the beginning of the other. As with the French-English difference, adjectives will come in the beginning in one language, or at the end in the other.

There are, however, some pieces missing from this book. It doesn’t have any case studies of Africans who move to NY, London, Paris, or Israel. I’m keen to know what they do about the language, and whether they benefit from knowing English or French once they arrive. The 2009 book Dead Aid by Dambissa Moyo (an economist from Zambia) was all about how “helping” Africa doesn’t work, and I would love to know her opinion on the continent’s language issue. There are many other great African writers who’ve spent time in Europe and the Americas, and I bet they’d have a unique perspective on this topic.

Ecclesiastical Knights: The Military Orders of Castile, 1150-1330

Sam Zeno Conedera tries to answer long-pondered questions about the religious based military orders. Firstly, how effective were they in military and government affairs? Secondly, how sincere were they in their religious belief? While there were many such orders, most famously the Templars and the Knights of Rhodes, the author focuses on the Iberian orders only. These “fighting monks,” as they are often known, existed in Spain before the country unified, so we might start by saying that they were the origin of Spain as we know it. As discussed in the book, they provided heavily for Spain’s defense, as well as economy.

In the chapter Interior Castle, we learn that the Iberian order weren’t all combatants; they had levels of knights, sergeants, clerics, and sister. The knights were nobles who took vows, while the sergeants were the more numerous commoners. There were clerics who acted as chaplains, and women members who served in the medical field. Thought history books ignore them, the nuns had greater medical knowledge than the doctors of the era, as attested by their surviving journals. After all, it was the nuns who ran the hospitals and cared for the sick, though the men get the credit (not with killing their patients.) The knight-sergeant arrangement was probably the same as that of the modern officer and enlisted man; the sergeant would lead common fighters, while the knight was involved in the planning, equipping, and overall decision making.

As far as religion goes, it was a kind of synergy, where the combatants and the clergy needed each other in several ways. The nation needed an army for defense, and the monasteries needed the knights to defend their vast property. Since the various Iberian states could easily get into conflict, the Catholic church was something of a unifying factor. If it could keep the Iberian knights from fighting each other, then they’d be less distracted when it came to fighting the Muslims. If they had charters from the Pope in Rome, then it would protect them from being attacked by the French and/or English.

I do remember a similar argument in the book Women of Faith, about Catholic sisters in Chicago, where the author promotes the nuns’ contribution. According to that book, the convents, with their schools and hospitals, provided a service to a land that was not well served by the government. They also provided a place for women who wanted education and work, but didn’t want to get married and by owned by a man. Similarly, a free-born peasant boy, uninterested in farming, and lacking any skill, could join one of the Iberian orders, learn to fight, and would no longer be subservient in the way a tenant farmer was.

The Iberian orders were one of the few options for upward mobility in the days when Spain wasn’t unified. They would eventually go into a decline as the nation consolidated.

The Complete Book of Pickling by Jennifer MacKenzie

What Julia Child did for French cooking, Jennifer McKenzie does for pickling. She has crafted a great book to teach inhibited cooks about preserving fruits, vegetables, and sauces, using ingredients you can buy anywhere. She starts with basic scientific information about preserving foods, and the benefits of pickling. When I say benefits, I mean she provides reasons to pickle cucumbers, onions, and peaches, not only for the great taste, but also for the health benefits.

Take for instance her recipe for pickled figs, using marsala and vinegar. You can make the figs last longer, without having to dry them, and they will have a sweet or sour taste. Dried figs have an excessively sweet taste, but when you pickle them, you can control the taste and texture. There are recipes for pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, and plums, and she gives instructions for pickling them in the refrigerator, or hot-water pickling, which means you can leave the jars in the pantry.

The benefits of home pickling are many. Firstly, you can preserve the fruits and vegetables for a long time, which is great if you haven’t got room in the fridge. If you grow your own vegetables, and end up with more than you can store, pickling may be the best way to see that they don’t go to waste. Secondly, there are health benefits, because fruit and vegetables that are preserved in vinegar can have great effects on your heart. Lastly, when you buy pickled cucumbers or tomatoes in the store, they’re made with dyes, sodium, and all kinds of preservatives, but home-made pickles won’t have any of these harmful additives.

If you’re looking to start pickling your own foods at home, this book is a great help. It gives easy to follow instructions, and the ingredients are affordable.

The Jews of Iran

Iran’s Jews have an interesting history. They arrived by force during the Babylonian captivity, survived the conquest by the Persians, the empire’s conversion to Islam, persecution, constant resettlement, and humorously, conflict with Ashkenazi Jews in Queens! Their customs were a mix of ancient Jewish practices couples with Persian traditions, some of which they retained, others they lost after leaving the country.

This wonderful book discusses the customs and history or Iran’s Jews, with historical scholars contributing essays in each chapter. One of the biggest issues is the Jewish community’s place in Muslim society, mainly whether they were tolerated or distrusted. Haideh Sahim, a professor of literature at Hofstra, gives an interesting background to the persecutions, using the Mashadi community as an example. The Jews of Mashad were caught in the middle of a conflict between opposing armies, one of which was anti-clergy, and since Mashad is home to a Shiite shrine, this put them into a dangerous situation. Some converted to Islam to survive, but practiced Judaism in secret. There was some benefit to the Jews’ presence in Mashad, however; the British traders, wary of being robbed by Turkumen tribesmen, needed the Jews to act as go-betweens and make loans (so they wouldn’t have to carry cash.) The British couldn’t trust the Armenians, because they had ties to Russia, who wanted to sabotage the British trade efforts. When Britain attacked Iran in the 1830’s, the Jews were blamed for it and their quarters were attacked.

Shalom Sabar, professor at Hebrew University in Israel, discusses a more positive aspect of Iranian Jewish life, namely the decorated Ketubah. For Ashkenazi Jews in Europe, and even Sephardic Jews in Italy, the fancy artistic marriage documents were for the wealthy. In Iran however, all people had them decorated. He points out that the decorate Ketubahs of Europe used the square calligraphy of the sofer, but in Iran, the writing was done in common cursive script. Calligraphy was used only for the brachot, or anything that had the name of the creator. In Iranian Ketubahs, there is also, according to him, a lack of imagery. Islam prohibits human faces, so an Iranian Ketubah would not show the bride and groom, or images of Jerusalem, or any biblical imagery. It’s only going to have vines, flowers, or decorative motifs.

I went to Yeshiva until I was 18 years old, but I never had a really well-rounded education on Judaism like I got from reading this book. If you’re studying Jewish history, this book will make you an expert, because each chapter is written by a different scholar, offering diverse theories and opinions.

From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom

In the book of Genesis, Lot faces a mob of Sodomites intent on harming the men in his home. His offer is surprising by today’s standards; “I have two daughters who have known no man, I will give them to you to do with as you please, but do not harm the men who took shelter under my roof.” Most would be horrified at this offer, as this would mean throwing two twelve year old girls to a frenzied mob, who would not protect them from something as trivial to them as a gang-rape. However, to the people of the time, it was of no consequence to them. Women were nothing but property.

From Abortion to Pederasty is a wonderful collection of essays by today’s scholars on controversial topics in the classics. Sexual violence, child abuse, and rape often figure in the bible, mythology, and other forms of classical literature, and we often wonder how we can reconcile that against today’s codes of conduct. Sharon James, for instance, writes how many students and female coworkers confided in her that they were the victim of sexual assault, which she finds rife on today’s college campuses. For her, it’s difficult to hear this when the classics in her curriculum often have instances of rape, just not blatantly stated.

James, like other writers in this book, looks at this from the standpoint of the scholar, not a prosecutor. She welcomes the opportunity to have open dialogue on this topic, and have the students compare the treatment of women in the classics to the norms of today. Whether it’s the story of the Sabine women, Lucretia, these issues can’t be ignored in the classroom.

The Deerholme Foraging Book

The mushrooms, onions, and berries that we buy for a fortune at the farmer’s market can be had for nothing out in the woods, if you know where to look. Thanks to the Deerholme Foraging Book, you can learn how to recognize edible plants and wild fruits, and reap the bounties of nature as our ancestors did centuries ago.

For starters, chantrelle mushrooms, white and globby looking, grow wild. You also have lobster mushrooms, named for their orange color, and black morels, which are cone shaped. If you want free seafood, you can harvest manila clams, geoduck, and crabs. The geoduck are harder to find now that they’re a delicacy, and they take years to mature, but smaller clams and mussels are available. This book comes with cooking instructions for the crabs, so you’ll get the most out of your harvest.

Recipes are included, such as seaweed pesto, which is absolutely wonderful. Jams made of wild berries can be preserved if they are jarred using the hot-water process, only problem is that they require a lot of sugar. However, it’s better to make them yourself, because they store-bought preserves will be full of dyes and preservatives. Wild rose seedpods can be eaten, but they have “hairs” that need to be strained out, or they irritate the digestive system.

This book is full of excellent photos for identifying edible mushrooms and herbs, and has great recipes. Unfortunately, most of the plants identified in this book grow in the Pacific Northwest, not on the East Coast, but it’s still a great asset for anyone interested in forest foraging. I would definitely buy it if I were going to live in Washington State.

Origins of the National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman

This book is a collection of essays on the origins of the US concept of national security, particularly in terms of Truman’s presidency. Beginning with the first chapter, by Douglas Stewart, we see how WWII brought about the need for a government agency devoted to being the “eyes and ears” for what was going on overseas. We had the FBI for internal security, and J. Edgar Hoover concentrated on rooting out subversives, but until WWII, there was no overseas branch of US intelligence. It wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that Congress saw the need for this, and what we started with was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which would eventually become the CIA.

One of the problems that Stewart points out is that the military has always had the upper hand when it comes to foreign intelligence. This is a problem, as a lot of the threats today, from terrorism to drug cartels, require closer surveillance than the military is ready for. The US military can guard the borders, but how are they at spying? What about phone tapping, close observation, and undercover work? As far back as the 1980’s, Columbia’s drug cartels were experts at evading armies, navies, and coast guards, so how effective would the military be at fighting them? In the post 9/11 world, the threat isn’t from national armies like the Soviet Union, but fighters who answer to no government. What this country developed under Truman’s Cold War policy doesn’t work well now.

A later chapter by Benjamin O. Fordham tackles the changes in military spending. He notes that Woodrow Wilson wanted to increase the role of the USA in foreign affairs, but it didn’t happen. You can’t really blame the president for it; Congress had always been in favor of neutrality, and the wealthiest men in the country wanted it too. They didn’t want the USA to have a bigger military budget because then the government would have to raise taxes, which no American wants. He writes that the huge military expenditures began in the Truman administration and continues to this day. In some ways I wonder if maybe it began because he could get away with it? While the USA had huge war debts to pay, we also had a monopoly on shipping, air travel, manufacturing, and agriculture, with low gas prices and a much smaller prison system budget. Workers were paid less, insurance was low, and we weren’t paranoid about drug dealing and terrorism. Perhaps we spent more on the military because there was less debate on how to pay for it?

These scholars all give good insights on the involvement of the USA in foreign affairs after WWII ended. Compared to the War on Terror of today, it makes me wonder how much of this fear is based on paranoia.

Weird Ghastly Horror

The horror comics of the 1950’s are an interesting media in United States history. They came in an era when the country was unusually stable, both economically and mentally, and they were a counterpoint to the conservative attitudes of the time. The stories were often lurid, full of sleazy cops, private eyes, crazy scientists, and political themes. In the 1988 documentary Comic Book Confidential, publisher William Gaines says that they were based on the pulp paperbacks of earlier eras, with material that would not have been allowed in the movies under the Hayes Code, and certainly not on television. Then the Congress got the idea that horror comics were causing juvenile delinquency, and the Comics Code Authority began, and the horror comics were no longer accepted by newsstands. Just about everything that was good in the comics industry was instantly wiped out.

Weird Ghastly Horror is a collection of these 1950’s horror comics, all of which came from public domain. Let me begin by saying that these are NOT the EC comics of the 1950’s. The comics in this book were more of a low-budget type that obviously tried to out-gore the EC comics with even more insane and lurid stories. Stiff artwork predominates, images are often repeated, and the titles seem to have been chosen with a bit of good natured self-mockery in mind; The Ant Master, Fleshless Horror, and Terror Town. These comics also try to out-sex the EC comics, with lots of shady broads, exposed skin, and see-through dresses. As for imagery, it’s pretty nasty, with blood, skeletons, and rotting flesh.

Let me give you an example of just how violent and lurid these comics were. The story Beyond the Past is only four pages long, and not at all dynamic; a professor takes home The Necronomicon, makes his daughter nervous, he says the spell, a creature shows up, and soon he’s eaten down to his skeleton. As for his sexy, well-figured daughter, she puts on a robe that might as well be made of cellophane. I don’t know if women in the 1950’s slept naked, but I can’t imagine that this young lady, frightened by noise, would go downstairs wearing a see-through garment and nothing underneath. The amount of skin shown here would’ve been a no-no even for EC’s most lurid pieces.

As for the artists, they’re rarely even mentioned in the comics. Unlike EC, where the artists and writers’ names were listed, you don’t see who was involved in these. Only two names could be seen, Tim Kirk and Lou Morales, and there’s almost no information on either of these guys on the web. When I think of the sexy imagery, I have to wonder who the target audience was. I can’t see grownups, or even teens, buying these in the 50’s, if they had money for the EC’s. Were they meant for 10 year olds? If so, why bother showing all that skin? When I was 10 years old, my chief interest weren’t creamy thighs and 38-DD bustlines! But the naughty bits? My friends and I probably would have enjoyed looking at them down in the rec room when my parents thought we were playing Scrabble.

There is one story here that could’ve been extended. A little girl, raised as a foster child, kills every grownup that gets in her way. Not the police, judges, or lawyers believe her foster parents’ insistence that she’s really a circus midget who just looks like a kid. For those of you who saw The Orphan, you might remember the theme of the homicidal dwarf masquerading as a child, and it was scary. 

Joel Meyerowitz Retrospective

I’m ashamed to say that after 20 years in New York I hadn’t heard of Joel Meyerowitz until I found this book. He is one of the founders of what we call “street photography,” long before it was fashionable. He was an employee of an advertising company, he saw Robert Frank’s photo book, The Americans, and figured he’d give it a try. Using a small camera, he started documenting the people on New York City streets, following that with a year in France and Spain, experiments with color and black and white photography, returns to New York City, and stays in Mexico.

This book is a retrospective, so you’re going to see a little of everything here. What fascinated me the most were his pictures of New York City in the 60’s, because I’m always keep to study the clothes and other norms of the time. Most of the people in his New York images look perfectly happy to be there, but then again, he wasn’t taking pictures in the Lower East Side, where things were lousy. I also noticed that almost all the photos contained no children, and that, I believe, is due to the old New York life. This city has always been popular with single adults, but it was never a good place to raise children. Until  around 2000, once the families started growing, they’d move out to the suburbs. New York City kids always had a reputation of being spoiled. Meyerowitz’ photos include the World Trade Center Site, which I didn’t find that interesting. I would rather have seen more about the people working there, and I bet they’d have stories to tell. But his photos pf Mexico don’t get much attention here. I bet they show a lot of sleaze.

Street photography has gotten a lot of attention in the last decade. Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York documents the improvised fashions of the city’s people, many of them children, so we can see how the average age of a New Yorker has changed.  Jamal Shabaz’ A Time Before Crack documents the style of Black Americans in the city in the early 80’s, though he didn’t publish it until 2005. I suspect that someone out there has a pile of photos they took in the city, way back when it was rough, and it’ll become a bestseller.

Into the Heart of Meetings

The great economist Thomas Sowell once said “people who enjoy meetings shouldn’t be in charge of anything,” and I tend to agree. When you go into the average meeting, people end up discussing every inane nuance of what paper to put in the printer, while you’re barely willing to give it five minutes. This book shows you how to structure a meeting, so that you don’t waste time or annoy the members present.

There’s a wonderful chapter here on international meetings, where you have different attitudes on what to expect. The authors tell me something I never thought of; Italians will not stop just because their time is up. They will keep on going, and tempters will flair. To Scandinavians, however, this is grossly unacceptable. Another example of a culture clash is a meeting where the mayor is late, then calls to say she’ll be later, then calls to say she probably won’t make it. This might not seem like problem; after all, just start anyway, and the mayor can speak at the end. The problem is that in some countries, they can’t start until they get a “greeting from the authorities.” In Korea and Japan, showing up late is not acceptable at all. It’s the equivalent of picking your nose in public.

The authors give advice on how to arrange the seats, the tables, and the schedule. Some meetings do well as round table discussions, and others, especially when you have visual presentations, need a long table where everyone can see ahead. Then we get to the role of the host (or facilitator) who’s in charge of making sure everyone has their turn to speak. You don’t want a meeting turning into a free-for-all or a shouting match, especially when you’re on a deadline.

The funniest thing in this book was in the chapter on international meetings. A conference goes overtime, and everything’s late, but Italian attendants all walk out when it’s time for their free pasta lunch. You can waste time, cheat, and be rude in Italy, but the mealtimes are sacrosanct!

This book is more than a guide to structuring a meeting. It’s a funny book on the way different peoples communicate.

Nashville Food Trucks: Stories and Recipes From the Road

Julie Festa and Brooke Stevens interview food truck operators in Nashville, Tennessee, about the foods they serve and how they got into the business. Each chapter tells us about the food they serve, the trucks they use, and a favorite recipe. Some of them serve Mexican street food, some serve burgers, one of them even serves pies. They got the idea in Australia, where pies are sold on the street.

Riffs Fine Street Food was founded by some chefs who merged a bunch of food truck companies. Hoss Burgers was founded by an MBA grad with a passion for food. I wonder if perhaps the more successful food truck companies are the ones started by professional restauranteurs or business people? Not all food trucks are good, as NYC, my hometown, has many serving terrible food.

The book was published by The History Press, and it seems that food trucks have become a new phenomena in the years since the economic downturn. Perhaps it’s cheaper to run a food truck than a café? You don’t need to have tables, waiters, or rent a store. At the same time, however, the food is no cheaper than most takeout stores. Maybe they’re successful in areas where there aren’t a lot of places to eat?

I’ll give the writer and photographer a thumbs up for good writing and photography. However, I think that the book itself is unnecessary. It would have done better as a series of articles in a magazine, because in its book form, fewer people will read it.

If I Can Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, Why Can’t I Brush My Teeth?

Nan Little describes herself as leading an active life before she had problems with her arm. Biking, hiking in the Pacific Northwest, lots of social activity, and excellent health, with all these things combined, she couldn’t understand why her arm became rigid. Unlike most books about Parkinson’s Disease, this one doesn’t focus on the disease itself, but the person coping with it.

She first notices her symptoms while fly fishing; whereas once she could bring in the fish with graceful dexterity, now it took longer. She describes going through different diagnoses, then different medications, some work, some do not. All the while she continues to enjoy her physical activities, but has to adapt with one arm being unavailable, or one hand having uncontrolled movement.

One of the main themes of this book is that despite having uncontrolled tics and spasms, the personality doesn’t need to change. Not being able to do the things you did before doesn’t mean that the “essential you” is gone for good. She quotes a speaker at a conference as saying that it was a change from what he was used to; people in his community had once looked up to him, and that all changed when he fell off a letter, got a head injury, and woke up with Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, and other degenerative illnesses are going to be a greater problem in this country in the next decades. People are living longer than ever before, and someone with Parkinson’s, especially if they live alone, may require more care than others. This means that long-term health insurance is more important now than ever before,  along with disabled-accessible housing, adaptive technology.

Japan: The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide

The best travel guide isn’t going to be all about maps and hotel prices, but things to see and interesting things to make it worth visiting. This guide to visiting Japan appeals to the intellectual traveler, who wants not only the flashy sites, but also the historical ones, and the best museums. The book starts with the landscape of Japan, and all her great natural wonders, like Mount Fuji, the bamboo forests, and the hot springs where the monkeys stay in the winter. Then we’re treated to a spread on modern Japan, the native Shinto religion, and country living.

Each and every aspect of Japanese life if covered in this book, including music, plays, food, tea ceremonies, and manners. Most travelers will probably want to go to Tokyo, but there are others who might prefer the less expensive and more bucolic areas. There’s a “special interests” section, where the reader is guided to more “authentic” firsthand experiences. One of them is the home tour, where you can pay to have lunch at the home of a local family, and see exactly how they live. There are “conversation” lounges where you can practice Japanese.

I’d definitely buy this book and study it carefully before visiting Japan.

The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction

For a non-Jew reading the story Sex On The Brain, it will probably be like watching a foreign movie. A Jewish-American stops off in Israel for vacation, and marvels at the country’s changes (cell phones everywhere, long before the Americans had them) and the lack of changes, which are even more unusual to an American. For starters, Israeli men will shamelessly proposition American women in public, without fear of getting slapped or arrested. I suppose the Israeli attitude towards life is “you could get blown up in the street, so what can it hurt to try?”) She also thinks of the Americans who show up for a two week immersion course, or a four month stay on a kibbutz, and go back to the USA, England, Canada, or France, thinking they’ve been in the army. She tells her Israeli ex-boyfriend that we call it “slumming.”

In The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones, a girl from a non-religious family stays with her religious relatives for the summer, experiencing both the nuisances and the happiness of their lives. The nuisances are that they have to wear long skirts and aren’t allowed to swim when men are watching, and for the average American teen, that ruins your summer. On the other hand, she finds that Friday night dinners are more enjoyable; everyone’s happy, the kids are having a good time, and they’re all thankful for what they have. Quite a contrast, she finds, to the dull, quiet, mannered mealtimes in her home. She’s not there because her parents have any interest in piety; on the contrary, they decorate their house on Christmas with pagan Yuletide chintz. She’s there because her mother’s in the hospital, her father’s absorbed in his work, and there’s nobody else to take care of her. It reminds me of the young adult novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond, in the way the urbane worldly girl ends up with her Puritan relatives. Unlike that novel, however, the protagonist here isn’t in danger of being killed for heresy. Everyone in this story is there by choice.

As a Jewish-American, I grew up seeing a lot of stereotypes in the media regarding Judaism. My non-Jewish friends were surprised to hear the truth about us; braided loaves of bread have nothing to with Judaism, only little children get presents on all eight nights of Chanukah, and despite what happens at Grossingers, we do not have a tradition of booking comedians on the “High Holidays.” They’re also shocked to hear that (a) Israelis don’t like Jewish-Americans, (b) the names Schwartz, Weiss, Goldstein, and Stein are NOT Jewish names, and (c) Sephardic Jewish customs, names, cooking, and clothing are like nothing they’ve ever seen.

Maybe we need to let US high school students read stories like these. I remember reading books about foreign lives; Things Fall Apart, Nectar in a Sieve, All Quiet on the Western Front. These were required reading back in school, and they really open your eyes to how people live. I once read The House On the Roof to some Christian fifth graders at a Catholic school, and it clearly left an impression. What they’d learned about Judaism from their textbook was shallow, nothing about all the other holidays.

Governing the Nile River Basin

Anyone who ever paid a modicum of attention in history class knows that the Nile River is like a tree of life. For thousands of years it fertilized an entire nation’s farmland, brought conquering armies through a continent, and dictated the health and economy of a civilization. It is also a contestable entity, because of the efforts to harness its water and power.

This book blames a lot of the troubles with the Nile on colonialism, which it blames on the US versus British economies. When the US was having a Civil War, her cotton exports stalled, so Britain used Egypt as a cotton farm. That drew labor away from the food farms, and made Egypt into a one-cash-crop colony. As for the countries high above the Nile Basin, they were denied any effort by Britain to use the Nile, because that would’ve drawn away from its use in Egypt’s cotton production.

Later chapters go further into the UN rules on international waterways, governing the dams, diversions, pollution, etc. While these rules are meant to govern, they have no enforcement authority, especially when whole economies are at stake. The Aswan Dam, for instance, only had an impact on Egypt, but if the Nile were dammed in Sudan, that would have consequences for Egypt as well. If the lakes north of Egypt were polluted, that would have an effect on Nile water quality.

Perhaps the underlying problem is that Africa, like many developing nations, relies on heavy agriculture and industry, rather than Japanese-style light manufacturing. Rather than learn to farm on minimal water and use solar energy, Egypt built the massive Aswan Dam. The same thing happens all over the rest of Africa, and you end up with lakes that are breeding grounds for deadly pests, or polluted beyond repair.

The Death of the Hat

Classical poems are illustrated with simple watercolors, bordering on abstraction. While the illustrations are of good quality, they won’t have much appeal for children. This is not the kind of book I’d have enjoyed reading as a child, and I feel like this book is a bit of a “sampler.” It might have done better if it had concentrated on one author, like Stevenson, rather than a whole bunch of them.

Monet's Palate Cookbook

Monet’s Palate Cookbook recreates the recipes he would have used for himself, illustrated with photos, as well as original paintings by Monet of vegetables and fruits. The recipe for lentil soup uses relatively cheap ingredients, mostly lentils, onions, and potatoes, and doesn’t take much effort to make. Monet lived in France, but this is not the stereotypical intimidating French cooking. On the contrary, a lot of this is really country cooking, the type that French farmers would eat. You have hearty soups, lots of roughage, and dishes that can be served cold.

Monet put as much effort into his meals as he did with his paintings. He kept a garden called a “potager” at his home, where he meticulously grew the vegetables that he’d serve to guests. According to this book, he would host massive dinners, where they’d serve hearty vegetable stews that could be made with little effort. The French use the word potager for kitchen garden, and since the word potage means soup in French, it probably originated with a garden where people grew carrots, beets, cabbage, and other crop that could last a long time.

One of the book’s suggestions is having picnics or outdoor lunches, just like Monet did in his famous garden. The book advises the use of prepared (but not processed) foods like pate, smoked meat, and fresh bread. Like most of the recipes, it keeps things simple and fresh, so that you won’t exhaust yourself. After all what use is great cooking if you’re too tired to enjoy it?

Paleo Eats by Kelly Bejelly

Kelly had a collection of health problems common to many Americans. Her diet was high in carbohydrates, lacking in protein, and she had a dislike of going to the doctor. She tried being a vegetarian, and found that the best foods she could get were once again high in carbohydrates. Obese and having anxiety attacks, she bit the bullet and started eating meat.

One of the main points of this book is that the grains you buy in stores today are nothing like the grains of old. Today’s breads are made from genetically modified seeds, with enzymes added to keep the bread from going stale. Processed foods contain corn syrup, soy additives, and a host of other chemicals that don’t help. Kelly Bejelly’s book advises using raw ingredients, but doesn’t go completely “paleo” like a caveman. There’s still room for fruits, and it has healthy alternatives to milk.

For example, there is a recipe for sweet potato fries, and since sweet potatoes are more like healthier than Idaho potatoes, they fit the Paleo diet more closely. Unlike most French fry recipe, she calls for frying them in lard, which is not on the list of the healthiest fats. However, if you eat them in a small portion, say just enough to fill a teacup, that will NOT destroy your health. If you eat coarse greens beforehand, it will slow the digestion, and keep you full longer.

As for milk, the book advises the use of almond and coconut milk, which doesn’t have the same irritation on the system as cow’s milk. For flour, or any of the cookie and cake recipes, she uses almond flour. Dates are used as a substitute for sugar, and they add flavor of their own. For rice, she uses chopped cauliflower, which takes on a resemblance to white rice.

I suppose the problem with vegetarian diets is that they ignore the basic tenet of eating, which is that nobody wants to eat things that don’t taste good. Indian cooking is on the vegetarian spectrum, because meat and poultry were not widely available in India, as opposed to Northern Europe and Britain, where the terrain and climate are conducive to raising cattle and pigs. Indian cooking relies heavily on seasonings, which are used well in this book. Bejelly also pushes for experimentation with different ingredients, to replace the less healthy grain and hormone-infused dairy products that we’re accustomed to.

If you’re considering a no-bread diet, this book will definitely help. While some might not enjoy the lack of milk and cheese, there are alternatives, and it can definitely help with weight loss.

Tex-Mex From Scratch

Mexican cooking isn’t all fried foods and beans, smothered in hot pepper. There are many healthy and exotic dishes available, made of fresh vegetables and fish, and they retain their color throughout. One such dish is called Baja Ceviche, basically cubes of white fish marinated in lime juice. According to this book, the marinating of the fish is an alternative to cooking, so you keep the flavor and texture, and you can add salsa made of green herbs. Not only does the food in this book sound wonderful, but it looks beautiful as well. Roland Persson’s photographs make the foods look absolutely beautiful, giving them a rustic and colorful flair.

When it comes to Salsa, the author Jonas Cramby takes it seriously. It’s not the mono-color stuff you buy in the jar, he warns, but a carefully prepared dish, and it’s not just hot peppers. There’s Salsa Roja, made from tomatoes, and Salsa Verde, made of tomatillos, and they both make use of herbs like cilantro. Pickled vegetables come into play as well, and they don’t involve that much salt, so they won’t scare off the health-conscious cook. One example is pickled watermelon rind, a super-sour side dish, or pickled eggs, which use beet juice to give them a distinctive color and taste.

Perhaps one of the most important factors of the recipes is that they are meant as small side dishes. You can prepare the Salsas without having to do any cooking, and use them to add flavor to otherwise bland foods. 

The Cannabis Encyclopedia by Jorge Cervantes

You can call this book the most comprehensive guide to Marijuana cultivation and usage. It begins with the general medical use for the plant, and then proceeds to the way of growing it at home. The growing section takes up most of the book, because there process is not easy at all. It takes work to properly cultivate cannabis, and this book breaks down the steps to keep you from wasting time and losing money.

George Cervantes begins with the medical aspects of cannabis; the oils are used to treat nausea from chemo therapy, or joint pain from arthritis. They can be used to relieve the pain from herniated disks, osteoporosis, and trapped nerves, most of which would have to be treated with painkillers. Remember the 20/20 episode titled Hidden American: Children of the Mountains? Remember how half the town was on painkillers thanks to back injuries they got in the mines? Somehow, I think cannabis-derived oils would be safer than oxyxontin, percocets, codeine, and Vicodin.

When the book discusses the growing procedure, including chapters on fertilizers, insecticides, greenhouses, and electric grow lights. Greenhouses are a frequent issue for cannabis cultivation, because the temperature needs to be assured, but there are many benefits to using greenhouses. Firstly, the greenhouse keeps plant eating animals out, and if you’re in an area with deer, this will be a factor to consider. Secondly, growing them indoors brings the bugs indoors, and if you’re doing indoor hydroponic growing, it can cause the buildup of harmful salmonella bacteria.

Further chapters cover things like drying the leaves and buds, extracting the oils and resins, and their various needs with regards to packaging and weighing. Unlike growing tomatoes, cannabis has a much longer growing season, so it needs to be a long-term investment. Unlike food crops, the rules about insecticides and fertilizers are not as strict, and this means greater opportunity for pollution. Since the profits are greater with cannabis, the farmer won’t lose money on the electricity costs for the grow lights. However, this means greater power usage.

If you’re considering going into the business of cannabis, then this book is just what you need.

So Loud, It Hurts by Elaheh Bos

Gus (who appears to be about 5) is looking forward to his birthday party, except that loud noises terrify him. Hearing everyone sing “happy birthday” is too much, and he flees to his room, hides in his playhouse, covers his ears. Fortunately, his father realizes what’s going on, and they talk about the troubles people have.

This book is good for kids who have problems with loud noises. It shows them how it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and that everyone has their unique quirks and phobias. As Gus’ father explains, his grandmother prefers colorful clothes, and his aunt has a high shrill voice, so everyone has something that’s unusual. In the scene where Gus initially runs to his room, he feels too ashamed to come back, and this is something that a lot of kids with Asperger’s are facing. They’re afraid that their fears and phobias will anger people, and I’m afraid they’re right. After you turn down too many party invitations, you’re friends start excluding you. It’s tough for a kid to handle.

I can really relate to this book, because I had the same problem as this boy. Growing up, I hated noisy crowds, unfamiliar situations, and having to speak before groups of people. Worse, at my grandfather’s Synagogue, he’d want me to sing in front of the 900 people there, and it was terrifying. If I refused, he would give me a resentful look, and my father would bully me into cooperating so as not to displease his important father-in-law.

I have one fault with this book, and that is the way the parents DON’T handle it. If you know that your kid has a problem with noises, you need to set things up beforehand to avoid trouble. Leave out the foods he doesn’t like to smell, don’t sing, make sure there’s plenty of room for everyone. This kid feels overwhelmed when they sing “happy birthday,” so why not leave it out? Just cut to the cake (literally) because that’s what everyone’s there for, no?

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a controversial and complex character, and as an artist, his work will no doubt be studied for years to come. His paintings all have an atmosphere of roughness, like wallpaper scratched by a cat. His biography, as stated in this book, places him in a comfortable middle class home in Brooklyn, from which he ran away as a teenager, living rough in the East Village. As discussed in the book Art After Midnight (Steven Hager, 1986), he was right at home among the starving artists and musicians of Alphabet City, where there was no money, but lots of life going on. It wasn’t a place to raise kids, but for a single man with no dependents, you were free to do as you liked.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates, a great scholar of US history, provides a written preface in this book. He says that Basquiat was born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, which so far I know from al the other writings about him. He states that the artist grew up bilingual, which I’d assume, and that he frequented the Brooklyn Museum, which adds a bit of intrigue. His mother was often hospitalized for mental illness, and his Haitian father, an accountant, was a bit of a snappy dresser, yet as a boy he ran away from all this. Was he looking for “rougher” life? His art definitely shows a liking for frenetic things. Gates also says that the art was a fusion of influences. Was Basquiat torn between being a Haitian, a Black American, and a Puerto Rican?

The first piece of Basquiat’s is a drawing of Joe Lewis, with “St. Joe Surrounded by Snakes.” He definitely had education in classical art, he couldn’t have drawn something like this without it. We see his affinity for African American characters, only he draws this with a little more attention to modeling than in his other works. The next artwork, “Famous Negro Athletes,” has absolutely no attention to modeling or faces. The heads are merely black shapes with eyes and teeth gouged in, like primitive African masks. From the looks of it, he must have been full of energy at the time. There is, unlike both, a funny drawing of (what I assume is) a man named Leslie, lying in bed with a cigarette. It reeks of Bohemian life, almost reminding me of Oscar Wilde. In fact, it is completely unlike anything else he drew.

The artist’s “lost notebooks” reveal a lot about this man. He was a true “starving artist,” working with whatever art materials he had, on whatever paper he had, in this case a speckled notebook. The only thing missing from this book is the artist’s own words. He died in 1988, so there’s no way to ask him to talk about his work. The book doesn’t go into his relationship with Andy Warhol, which was another unusual aspect of his life, particularly since the two artists had absolutely nothing in common with each other. Then again, the sensitive and eccentric Warhol did have a liking for rough things. In the book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (Will Hermes, 2009) the 1970’s New York gay scene fell in love with the shaggy-haired and scruffily dressed Bruce Springsteen, in his debut at Max’s Kansas City (another defunct and lost New York spot.)

Perhaps Basquiat’s “starving artist” lifestyle was what Warhol dreamed of? We’ll never know.

Through My Daughter’s Eyes: Kadina’s Story

I remember the days, when kids with learning problems or developmental delays were labeled “retarded,” and put in the special ed class, never to be taken seriously again. Today, if you look at a textbook about teaching kids with special needs, they say to avoid labels; instead of “Willy, Down’s Syndrome,” it’ll be “Will, 5^th grade.” The teachers are encouraged to group the kids together, and whatever extra help they need, that comes after ward.

Most of the “problems” that they have are really the same things that any parent would have to deal with. One of the most prominent stories is a “daycare nightmare,” where their one-year-old daughter ends up scratched and bruised, not from the adults, but from a two year old! Apparently the manager walks out, leaves his 11 year old son in charge, and he has no idea how to handle an aggressive child. I bet a lot of parents have this problem, where they’re strapped for child care and they have few alternatives.

The author wrote this book as though it were coming from his daughter’s own words. As a former special education teacher, and can appreciate how hard it can be to raise a child on the autism spectrum, because they don’t communicate the way others do. Some parents can get frustrated easily when their kids don’t do what’s expected of them, and for a kid that doesn’t pick up everything naturally, it can be even more frustrating. When I said earlier that it’s not good to label the kids, it’s the same way with raising any child. It’s hard work. You have to learn to accept the kids as they are.

City of Disorder: How Quality of Life Campaigns Transformed New York Politics

In 1990, the author Alex Vitale was in San Francisco, part of Mayor Art Agnos’ program to deal with the homeless. Let’s be frank, the program failed, and the reasons were mostly economic. There wasn’t a lot of affordable housing, skid row had been gentrified, and the Tenderloin district was full. Even if it wasn’t full, a whole lot of homeless people weren’t desperate enough to live there. Agnos resorted to letting the police scare them off, and that didn’t win him any admirers.

In 1993, Vitale came to CUNY for his graduate studies, just as Mayor Giuliani was starting his “kick-em-out” campaign. Homeless men were being forced off the streets and into shelters, which were often less safe than the streets. The citizens, even the most liberal ones, weren’t interested in what the homeless were thinking. As the author stresses, they felt that they’d done their bit, and now they just wanted to live in peace. They were fed up with crime, fed up with aggressive panhandling, fed up with being bullied every time they walked down the street. They were fed up with Larry Hogue smashing windows on 96^th street, fed up with Tompkins Square Park, and fed up with 42^nd street. So what if Larry Hogue was a traumatized Vietnam veteran? So what if the men in Tompkins Square Park had nowhere to go? The taxpayers were fed up, and they’d lost patience.

I appreciate this book, because the author does not blame the so-called “NIMBY” ideology for the problem. He doesn’t fault people who say “not in my backyard,” because there were the same people who fought for integration and civil rights. He does, however, fault Giuliani’s clean-up effort, because the uptick in arrests for petty offenses led to increased incarceration. He also points out that in the 70’s, a lot of Jews protested, along with the Italians, when it came to forced school busing. It wasn’t so much the idea of minorities going to school with their kids, but that that the government was forcing them to sacrifice. There was also a kind of loose alliance between the Orthodox Jewish community of New York and the conservative Catholic voters, especially when it came to the gravediggers strike.

The liberals in the city fought to bring zoning changes, brought business to Soho, and you can credit them with whatever improvements happened economically. But the homeless, they were left to the mercy of social services, which were underfunded and unready. To be fair, the NYPD busted the squeegee men, and made the city safe enough for more kids to live here. Psychotropic drugs also meant large scale discharges from mental hospitals, but there’s no way to know if they’re taking their meds. For the average New Yorker, the attitude is “I’ve got my own problems.”

From what I remember, the homeless in the 1980’s were often mentally ill, talking to themselves and screaming at things that weren’t there. Today, I see a lot of young homeless people, usually Caucasian, always from outside of the city. The parents may throw them out, others choose to live on the streets. But some of them are drug addicts from other towns, forced to leave by the local police. Rather than have to arrest and process a drug-addicted shoplifter, they simply encourage him to run away from home. With the economy in a shambles, there’s greater incentive to throw kids out of the house, and if you’re a small-town police chief, run them out of town. New York City is where they end up, and our Mayor has no provisions to deal with it.

This book raises many points in how a city deals with the homeless, but some things are missing. Vitale doesn’t write very much on the programs that worked, and while there wasn’t a lot of success, I’d be hard-pressed to believe that there was no success at all. There also aren’t a lot of interviews in this book, and I’d like to hear the views of the people who were involved with these efforts in the 1990’s. Would they do things differently now? What fallacies, in their opinions, did their ideas contain?

With hindsight, what would the author have done differently? I wonder.

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy

In this book, renowned historians discuss religious reform in Italy after the Reformation. John Jeffries Martin recounts the artist Lorenzo Lotto, and his paintings of Christian themes, under the patronage of both the borgoise and the church. Michelle Fontaine writes about the Protestants, and other persons who questioned the church, who resided in the city of Modena. She gives several reasons for why the church had to tolerate it, ranging from the lack of a central Bishop, to other matters that diverted the Pope’s attention. When a Bishop was appointed to oversee the city’s religious life, he knew that he couldn’t fight “heresy” with edicts or opinions; that would just generate more arguments for him. His solution was to make the church a bigger draw than the scholar, and to do that, he made his speeches more entertaining. Huge crowds attended, and something tells me that America’s theatrical preachers probably learned of this and copied his ideas.

I suspect that the church in Italy failed to stamp out dissent for reasons both political and economic. Firstly, the Italian states were all separate of each other, and in smaller city-states, the authorities didn’t have enough police to back up the church. If the Inquisition showed up in Modena, and the people refused to recognize its authority, who would enforce the Pope’s will? As for the economic factors, many of the “heretics” were probably from the merchant classes, and what kind of governor would risk angering his biggest taxpayer? The Inquisition was rampant in Spain, but keep in mind that Spain was a unified nation, with a powerful central government, and a powerful military culture. There was no shortage of men to use terror and force.

What I find most interesting about this book is that while the Protestant religion never took hold in Italy, the country was still a hotbed of radical ideas. Though not mentioned explicitly in this book, Italy was where the Greek scholars fled after Constantinople fell, and they brought with them their knowledge of ancient works. This was the beginning of the Renaissance, or the rebirth of interest in art and literature, and no doubt it influenced the country’s thinkers. Those that could read went searching for old books, and their learning put them at odds with the church. Ironically, it was monastery libraries that preserved those books after the fall of Rome.

Today, despite the stereotype, the church is not as powerful in Italy as it once was. I doubt that Milan’s wealthy classes bother to go to mass, and the non-Christian population is increasing. Even in the 1500’s, the church’s power in Italy would have been ebbing away, thanks to money. You had increasingly powerful merchant families in the north, like the Medicis, and the city governors needed their money. If it was a choice between listening to the church and listening to the merchant class, the government would’ve sided with those who could pay.

Jesus, Jihad, and Peace

In the book of Genesis, when the young and old of Sodom surround Lot’s house, what does he do? He offers his two daughters to the mob. He says “I have two daughters who have known no man, I will give them to you to do with as you please, but do not harm the men who took shelter under my roof.” Then we have Judah, the future leader of a nation, who finds that his dead son’s widow is pregnant. He says “take her to be burned.” Now let’s look at these things clearly; Lot was going to throw two pubescent girls to a mob, and Judah was going to kill a pregnant women. What does this tell you about women’s rights in the Old Testament era?

As the bible progresses, the status of women changes. Women can inherit their father’s property, sue a man in court, and it’s all because the laws are codified. What does this tell you about Jewish habits over time? It tells you that they advanced and progressed, with regard to law and justice. Damages were fixed, slavery was set at seven years maximum, and there were rules regarding how the master could treat the slaves. If you ask a Talmudic scholar, he’ll tell you that Lot and Judah did nothing wrong, because they were “Bnei Noah,” meaning they came before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. After that, laws had to be followed.

The author of this book tries to promote the idea that Islam, mainly in the Arab world, can’t have peace because it can’t have law and order. As for law and order, he thinks it can’t happen in the Middle East because it’s Judeo-Christian, and clashes with (what he believes is) a culture of revenge. He starts with Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who immolated himself over his treatment by the police. They were extorting him terribly, stealing every last penny he had. Going to the court was useless, because the citizen could not petition against the authorities. The author then describes the Arab dictators; Ghaddafi, Mubarak, and Assad; they were evil, but they made everyone get along and play nice. Then again, it had to be their way or you’d die. Under their rule, peace was achieved through force.

The chapter “The Prophet and the Koran” depicts Mohammed as an opinionated, self-righteous megalomaniac. Apparently the Jews had no problem with him at first, but his own tribesmen did. It was after the Jews refused to accept his “revelation” that he turned on them, conquering their cities and expelling them from Arabia. It kind of reminds me of Martin Luther, who became a raving anti-Semite after the Jews of Germany rejected his teachings. He thought it would be his crowning achievement; he’d thought he’d be the guy that finally got the Jews to say “hail Jesus.” But no, the Jews refused, so Marty goes haywire, writing that their Synagogues should be turned into pigsties, their books burned, their Rabbis forbidden to teach on pain of death. Now look at Mohammed and Martin Luther together; they had everything going for them, be it respect, followers, wealth, and fame. So why would they feel the need to trash the tiny minority that disagreed with them?

Two earlier books, titled “How Capitalism Failed the Arab World” and “How the West Won” tell us what the problem is. In the Middle East, the cultures are extremely combative, and that makes it hard to adapt to western ideas, even if they would strengthen Islam. In Tunisia, Mohammed Bouazizi’s trouble wasn’t just the police, but a female official who was allowed to spit on him publicly. The author believes that this insult to his manhood was too much for a Muslim man to take, and that Islam may have been the driving force behind the Arab Spring. Keep in mind, the Arab dictators were all followers of Ba’ath philosophy, which stressed Arab nationalism over Islam. Today, however, the Ba’ath party is finished.

Perhaps democracy and human rights can never come to the Middle East because they’re based on Judeo-Christian ideas? The idea of equality between the sexes is a European one, as are the right of all sexes to be educated. That doesn’t jive with Sharia, which is what a lot of Muslim worldwide want to see. At the same time, if only men can staff certain jobs, what does that say about the available talent pool?

I heard of an Iranian UN diplomat who said he didn’t like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, on the grounds that it was Judeo-Christian and at odds with Sharia. That’s fine with me, it’s his opinion, and I don’t live in Iran. But if Iran is a country where a woman can’t talk back to her husband, what does that say about how they’ll treat neighboring countries who disagree with them? The future looks pretty bleak.

On one last note, Judah probably was committing  a sin when he ordered his son’s widow executed. Under the “Noahide Laws,” all disputes have to be settled in courts of law, which Judah wasn’t doing. The biblical patriarchs weren’t as thoroughly decent as we’d like to believe. They had a long way to go.

American Dance: The Complete Illustrated History

I’m not a fan of dancing myself, but I loved this book. I portrays dancing styles as a way of studying the history of the USA, from the Colonial era to present. If you look at all the different styles, you’ll see that they reflect the norms and mores of the time, along with class distinctions and the nation’s economy.

The book starts with Native American dancing, which probably resembles the Jewish ones than European. The men and women danced separately, and it was usually ceremonial or religious in nature. The idea of men and women dancing together is something that originated in Europe, and came to the continent with European settlers. However the European dances would become a source of trouble, though humorous at the same time.

When the Louisiana Purchase was made in 1804, it brought French settlers under Anglo-American control, and the dances became a source of conflict. The French wanted the Quadrille, and the English-speakers wanted English country dances. The communities had to pass ordinances regarding dancing in public places, including one that limited English dances to 12 couples. They didn’t want to start a fight with the French by crowding the dance floor!

The book progresses with constant-changing styles that became common after the Civil War. New York City was home to the country’s best-known dancing school, owned by Edward Ferrero, who created the styles on his own. You could say he set the standards regarding dances, but he also was responsible for thousands of deaths. During the Civil War, Ferrero was put in charge of the New York troops, on the basis of his choreographing parade drills. He was drunk during the battle of Petersburg, and sent his men running into a crater, where they found themselves trapped and massacred by the Confederates. Ferrero’s incompetence in battle didn’t kill his career though; he made a fortune as a dance instructor after the war.

The dancing styles of the nation reflect the changing immigrations and attitudes towards others. Tap dancing came from the Irish jig, and thanks to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, became popular with movie audiences. Swing dancing became popular in the Great Depression, as dance hall owners were under pressure to fill the space while charging as little as possible. Disco was imported from Europe, break dancing began as a non-combat competition between gangs, and MTV helped popularize hip-hop moves. Perhaps you could say that movies and TV were a major influence on styles in the USA?

I’m not going to give away anything else from this book, because it’s a pleasure to read and I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience. Biographies, photos, and all kinds of historical background are included.

Quality Literacy Instruction for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Christina Carnahan and Pamela Williamson see reading as a difficulty for kids with autism. The reason isn’t a case of “can or can’t read,” but a case of what part they will read. They discuss how an autistic child might have what they call “selective attention,” where they’ll focus on only one part. This makes sense, because autistic children often focus on certain shapes or colors, not on the whole picture. If you think of it, they may have a sort of “tunnel vision” that a baseball pitcher would have, as opposed to the outfielder, who has to be watching the whole field. The question is, what does the teacher do about it?

In a later chapter, Dr. Kara Hume gives an example of scheduling to keep the student aware and one task. Each student is given a schedule that shows what is expected for that day, so they know what to expect when they come in. So far so good, all students need structure. But what about the student who is easily distracted, or has trouble with multiple instructions? For this, Dr. Hume suggests a “visual schedule,” where symbols or illustrations are used. For an activity that involves listening, a picture of a kid with headphones can be used. For math problems, 2+2 can be used, or you can use a pie chart, ruler, or abacus. This can be applied to reading a chapter as well; you can break it down into characters, events, or how the characters change.

What we have here is a case study on literacy for autistic students, written by a selection of experts on educating students with special needs. The general purpose of the book is to provide instructional approaches for literacy, but in a way that allows them to be educated with all other students. The use of visual cues and scheduling teaches time management, while story diagramming teaches them to focus on multiple factors, not just one.

Unfortunately, many of the services discussed in this book, such as resource rooms, will be unavailable in many schools. It remains to be seen how the nation’s schools will improve with regard to special education services.

Icon: The Life and Films of Marilyn Monroe

According to the author, Norma Jean was born deprived. She came from a long line of frontiersmen with a family history of alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse. There were broken homes, failed foster placements, and failed marriages. Childhood was spent in poverty, teenage years were spent in WWII factories. She came from a background that was nothing but lousy, and ended up with her life being dictated by the studio system

Icon portrays Jewish leftist playwright Arthur Miller very positively, in contrast to studio boss Harry Cohn. Like most movie moguls, Cohn expected to have his way with his “stars” and tried to get Marilyn onto his yacht while his wife was away. She refused, he fired her.  Miller, however, she always recounted as a gentleman, married at the time, who didn’t try to take her to bed. It was Miller who introduced her to intellectual pursuits, like bookstores and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. Unfortunately, she was stuck in the Hollywood studio system, and it dictated what the actresses could wear, eat, say, and do in their free time. It even dictated which men they could date. She escaped into pills.

As the book progresses, we learn that she was suspicious of men, thanks to the sexual abuse she endured as a teen, but at the same time she was eager to please. It portrays Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio as perfectly decent and moral, but she had trouble adjusting to any kind of stable life. Worse, as discussed in many other books, he doctors were all quacks. He therapists engaged in practices that would today be considered inappropriate.

This is a great biography. It tells her life story against the backdrop of not only the studio system, but the way society dealt with women at the time. Nowadays actresses can start their own production companies, move on to direct movie, and we have women in all aspects of production. In Marilyn Monroe’s time, however, the studios treated women like any other company did. Lifestyles were dictated, and there was no opportunity to advance.

Prelude to Prison

I kind figured out what I’d see in this book long before I read it. Kids today, especially in rough neighborhoods, get suspended for just about anything, and if that’s not bad enough, they can get arrested too. A kid is nodding off in the classroom, the teacher yells at him, he says “shut up,” and the teacher calls in the dean to remove him. The kid refuses to leave, they call in the school safety officers, and they handcuff the kid. He’s taken to the lockup, booked, and even if the judge throws the charges out, it still costs time. By time I mean instruction time in the school, the police officer’s time, and the court’s time. Taxpayers pay for it all.

Prelude to Prison gives many examples of how these injustices are ruining entire communities. White kids get suspended for pranks or improper clothing, while minorities get suspended for getting into fights. In Delaware, a 7^th grader was suspended for “butt slapping.” In Florida, a boy was suspended for pointing his finger at a teacher and saying “pow-pow.”  The author interviews parents, teachers, police, judges, and blames them all equally.

There isn’t much of a solution to these problems, except maybe birth control. Teachers should not be able to throw kids out just for disrespect, which is usually just plain old immaturity. If a kid says ‘that’s stupid shit” that doesn’t mean the kid’s being disrespectful, it might just be an impulse. Kids from troubled families aren’t going to be easy to convince of anything, so they’ll be wary of learning.

The Southern Manifesto

This 1956 tome on segregation reminds me of Strom Thurmond,  portrayed in the book Step by Step as a supporter of a cause that he knew was a failure. The die-hard segregationists knew they were fighting a losing battle, but they stuck by it with typical rebel tenacity. They knew Jim Crow was doomed, but still they wouldn’t budge, even as their platform was collapsing. This book raises the question, not of the racism, but how much of it had to do with southern politicians trying to preserve their sovereignty.

Nobody’s sure who wrote the Southern Manifesto, but that’s not the point. This book gives background information on the document and the people that abided by it as the Civil Rights movement was changing the county. Jim Crow was a doctrine, not a law, so whatever racists laws existed in the South were based on norms and mores. After World War II, segregation began to ebb, as Black troops returned from the war and wouldn’t put up with it. In the industrial cities of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit, Black workers were joining the unions in record numbers, not so much out of equality, but to keep them from becoming strike breakers. Then came increased enrollment of Black army veterans under the GI Bill, and when segregation kept them out, they fought back. Almost all of the changes occurred through peaceful protests, not laws. Brown versus the Topeka BOE was a ruling, it couldn’t change the law. Changing the laws were the result of protests.

Senators Oliver Eastland (Mississippi) and Strom Thurmon (South Carolina) both saw the Brown decision as an intrusion on states’ rights. Even if they had no founded objection to Black and White children attending the same schools, their typical southern sense of honor drove them to fight it right down to the last filibuster.  At the same time, they were wary of the bad publicity from the Emmet Till murder.

The issue of whether the anti-integration effort was a result of racism or southern stubbornness will no doubt occupy scholars time for years to come.

13 Things That Mentally Strong People Do

There are times in life when we stew over our rotten luck, without knowing that it might be our own fault. It could be the loss of a house in foreclosure, where we might say “it shouldn’t happen to me” when the real reason is “I shouldn’t have taken out the loan in the first place.” It could be a teenager pissing about not making the basketball team, even though there were 33 other kids who didn’t make it either. We often have a tendency to wallow in self-pity, rather than find ways to make ourselves happy.

Like any great book about self-help, this one has case studies. For instance, we learn about the divorced parent who has constant competition with the ex-wife. Dad will plan on taking his daughter to Disney World, so the ex will take her there first. He’ll say he’s taking her to a theme park, so his wife does it first to one-up him. After seeing a therapist, he realizes that the problem is with him. He’s trying to buy his child’s love in order to get back at his ex-wife. The solution is to ask his daughter what SHE wants.

There are more examples in this book, one of which was a woman who spends so much time trying to please others that she can’t be happy. Nothing she does makes anybody happy either, and she ends up feeling unfulfilled. She eventually learns to stand up for herself, avoid people who make her angry, and do things that benefit her life, not others.

Booker T. Washington used to say “as long as you hold me down in a ditch, you will be in the ditch with me.” This saying really means “if you spend all your time seeking vengeance, you will have no time for anything else.” Too often we spend all our time wishing we could get back at the people who wrong us, and as a result we prolong the hurt and anger. For example, there were kid back in high school who treated me like dirt, and I hated them for it, but where are they now? They have kids who whine too much, wives who spend too much money, big mortgages to pay, and long hours at the office to pay for it all.

Thou shalt not covet his neighbor’s house. The neighbor is probably in debt because if it.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture

Great art historians provide essays on classical sculpture in this excellent study. Elizabeth Bartman begins with an essay on just that; the beginning. She chronicles the origin of where the art form began, and the time when wealthy Italians began collecting the art of ancient Rome. All scholars will accept that serious collecting of Roman sculpture began in the Renaissance, but Bartman tells of how the bas reliefs were the most popular. The connoisseurs were after any kind of Roman art that would tell them about the history, and it was the reliefs, on sarcophagi and the triumphal arches, that told the story of Rome’s history. Though she doesn’t mention it, Trajan’s Column was a popular artefact for scholars, thanks to its numerous depictions of war. Thanks to its height, most of it was spared from the defacement at the hands of the Christians, for nobody could reach the higher reliefs in order to destroy them. Someone did, however, manage to remove the statue at the top and replace it with one of St. Peter, leaving the original of Trajan to be lost to history.

One thing that Bartman discusses, which I have waited years to read about, is why the Popes of the Middle Ages tolerated the pagan symbols. For some reason, the Popes of the Renaissance era didn’t object to statues of Zeus, Medusa, and Poseidon, whereas earlier Popes had Roman arches and reliefs defaced. Perhaps these Popes loved art? Were they enlightened by Greek scholars who fled Constantinople after the Turkish conquest?

Bartman’s essay is about the origins of the study of classical sculpture, but Jerry Podany, of the Getty Institute, discusses the early conservation of the artifacts. For starters, the wealthy Italians who displayed the statues in their villas and palaces can be credited with saving them. Today we’d say “they plundered archeological sites” and accuse them of theft, but in their day, that was the only conservation available. If the Medici family hadn’t desired ancient sculptures for their gardens, the marble would’ve ended up being ground into plaster. Most of the statues they acquired were broken, so they would hire sculptors to create replacement limbs out of marble and plaster, which were then stuck on. Today we can’t be sure of the accuracy of these medieval restorers, but we must credit them with drawing attention to these classical masterpieces. Few ancient marbles, save for those on the Parthenon, were found intact, so the restorer had to use his imagination. As for bronze statues, they were rarely found intact, as bronze was valuable and frequently recycled.

Collecting in America gets a small chapter, and not surprising, given that the US patrons of the arts weren’t especially fond of Europe. While the British nobility had classical educations, and even gone on the famous Grand Tour, most American millionaires didn’t care much for classical art. Andrew Carnegie, for instance, had his home decorated by American artists, who sculpted and painted American wildlife. For a US millionaire, Audubon’s Birds of America were more desirable than marble statue of Zeus. Not mentioned in the book is The Metropolitan Museum’s sculpture collection, which eventually turned out to be full of junk.  In the 1880’s, the museum hired an Italian general (and Civil War veteran) Luigi Palma di Cesnola as its curator for antiquities, and he proceeded to stuff the galleries with randomly-collected artefacts from Kurion. Even in the 1880’s, there were debates as to whether his “digs” were in fact looting, and the restorations, which he directed, were considered inaccurate even then. He was merely an amateur archeologist, with no experience, study, or training, but he was an Italian, so to the Americans, he was an expert. When the wing was reopened in 2006, some of the marbles he brought to New York were now thought to be scraps from art schools of the time. The professor must’ve taken his students’ homework, thrown it in a box, and said “here General Palma, ancient marble feet and hands.” This Italian “genius” couldn’t tell the difference!

One of the best essays in this book is by Bjorn Ewald, with his treatise on Roman sarcophagi. While the bas reliefs depict war, and the statues depict Roman gods, the burial boxes tell you about the regular people. You’ll quickly learn what they wore, what they did, how they lived, and what class they belonged to. Togas and hairstyles depict the social class, while different symbols show the kinds of jobs they had. Women are usually depicted in luxurious poses, probably because a woman who could afford a stone sarcophagus would’ve been a very wealthy woman! Wreaths symbolize the patrician class, grapes, associated with Bacchus and Dionysus, symbolize luxury and wealth.  Poppies, found on some marble funeral sculptures, symbolize freedom from pain.

This is a brilliant work, using Roman sculpture as a primary source for studying history. However, I would like to have read some discussion on Giovanni Battisti Piranisi, whose etchings depict the Roman ruins half-buried in the earth. The Roman Catacombs are not mentioned, probably because no sculptures are found there. The Catacombs are, however, a great source of frescoes depicting early Christianity. Perhaps we’ll see another book like this, about Roman paintings?

Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle In the New American Nation

In the first chapter, the author quotes John Jay saying that Christian ideals as the foundation of public behavior, and crediting Christian values with many of the traits that led to independence . However, let’s look at this in context of Christianity at the time; the Anglican church favored monarchy, the Congregationalists  looked down on English holidays as a holdover from Catholicism, and all the other sects, be they Quakers or evangelicals, got along as best as they could. Jay wasn’t sure about having a minister deliver opening prayers at the Continental Congress, out of fear that any one of the numerous denominations. At the same time he tried to exclude Catholics from the legislature, on the grounds that they were only loyal to the Pope in Rome.

This book uses examples of early Federalists to explain the role of religion in society at the time. For instance, you had Caleb Strong, a Massachusetts politician, who was something of a “law and order” type. Maybe it was shay’s Rebellion, maybe it was the lawlessness following the revolution, either way he believed that religion was essential to order. He was big on public morals, public observation of the Sabbath, but he wasn’t about to force everyone to go to church, nor would he have tried to fund the churches with public money. In those days it was common to force pubs to either open later or close altogether on Sunday, and even close regular stores on Sunday. Religion at the time had more to do with morals and behavior than anything spiritual.

My only fault with this book is that the characters should be listed in the introduction. Most of these were men I’d never heard of, so the book is a bit difficult to follow. I also would have liked some photos in the book, because I have no idea what a lot of these men looked like. There’s an illustration available online, of the men at the Continental Congress kneeling on the floor and praying, hands clasped together or raised heavenward, which I suppose would prove that all those delegates were god-fearing. However, it would’ve been painted long after the fact, and I would also question it in terms of practicality. Would all those guys have stopped proceedings to pray like that? The delegates were all businessmen, and they were all under deadline, so I suspect it would’ve been more like 5 minutes of bowed heads and silence, followed by a short sermon.

Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community, I went to the Synagogue every Saturday, and saw no patience on the part of the educated businessmen. They couldn’t stand the Cantor’s yodeling, and by the last four prayers, everyone was unruly. Something tells me that the founding fathers would not have had the patience to sit through a three hour Baptist service every Sunday.

World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery

I have to hand it to St. Mary’s Press, they publish the greatest books on religion. This one not only gives you a comprehensive study on religion, but it also comes with activities that can be used in a classroom. For instance, the question might say “compare Islam to Mormonism” or “think of a time when you expected something to happen, but didn’t, now compare it to the prophecies of the Jehova’s Witnesses.”

The book doesn’t concentrate on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, like most do. It begins with the roots of religion, where it began with animism and nature. Then it moves on to ancient religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other religions of Asia and the Middle East. The reason is that these religions came first, long before Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, so if you’re a high school student learning about religion, you might as well learn about the ancient ones first.

The chapters on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, cover the prayers, holidays, and teachings, along with their histories and different sects of the religions. It also discusses the role of the clergy in modern life, and the place of religion in the modern world.