Oxford by Matthew Rice

   Matthew Rice, with his beautiful illustrations of Oxford architecture, reminds me of an earlier book titled 750 Years of Paris. In a city with old buildings, the history is preserved, not only to show the city’s origins, but how it has changed over the years. In this book, the watercolor illustrations of Oxford buildings go from the earliest standing structures, to the modern era. We learn how the city was dominated by the famous school from its earliest days, and how the students and teachers were a major influence on the community. He writes how Oxford is ringed with green pastures, and since it never industrialized, it avoided the pollution and overcrowding of the other English cities. One other blessing of non-industrialization is the lack of crime.

   This book teaches us a lot about how and why Britain retained its storied history. Take for example Godstow Abbey, of which only a wall remains. The ruins sit in a field and haven’t been torn down, so it remains there as a reminder of what the town used to be. One reason for its posterity is that there was no building boom (no factories means no housing demand) so nobody was desperate to clear the land. Then you had the landowners, who liked having mock ruins, or “follies,” in their gardens, so having a real ruin was even better. At the most recent, you have the National Trust, set up to preserve the lands and ancient homes (or take them off the hands of dirt-poor aristocrats who can’t pay the inheritance tax).

    Differences in architecture abound in the city of Oxford. Christchurch Cathedral is built in the Gothic style, with arches, columns, flying buttresses, and huge windows, while St. Cross and St. Ebbe’s are built in the earlier Saxon style after the Norman conquest of England. The Saxon style has similarities to Romanesque architecture, with heavy doors, thick walls, small windows, lack of décor, and a generally defensive structure. Their sturdy build is in line with their second use as a secure building, as the Saxon and Norman eras were a period of instability. 

   In another nod to history, England’s architects were often loath to let go of old styles, which is why some of the houses look older than they are. The Beaumont Street houses were all built in the 1820’s, and designed to look like the St. Gile’s houses, built a century earlier. No. 78 Woodstock road, built in 1892, looks a lot like Hampton Court Palace; it has red brick walls, peaked windows, and a stone arch entrance. Oxford’s free-standing stone towers were part of the city walls but were left behind when the walls were torn down years ago. Over the years they’ve been refurbished with new material, but their original styles remain. My research shows that in the 1800’s, the Church of England sold off a lot of the small old churches, and the new owners kept them intact. Many of the older churches have been converted to restaurants, preschools, and gift shops. You can say that oxford’s buildings are a curious mix of old and new.

    The illustrations have a very warm and intimate tone, less of an architectural drawing and more of a children’s book illustration. I think that the author could do a version of this as a picture book, to teach children about Oxford’s history.

Organized Money by Keith Mestrich and Mark Pinsky

   Robert Kiyosaki, in his Rich Dad books, says that the rich can make their money work for them. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe half of what Kiyosaki says but he has a point here; of you have a strong grasp of how money works, then you have a strong chance of sustainability. If you think of loans (or worse, credit cards) as a money tree, they you’ll lose the game. You have to know where the money goes.
    Both of the authors of Organized Money are financial experts, working towards the goal of community development through money management. Throughout the book they give you a tour of anti-conservativism, and a strong dislike for President Reagan’s policies in the 1980’s. They describe him as having wiped out all of the New Deal programs, especially the ones that regulated banks and prevented interdependence. However, they are not so warm to President Clinton either, because he signed further legislation that further deregulated the banks.

   I don’t agree with a lot of their opinions, however. They write that conservatives oppose a woman’s right to choose, racial integration, and the extension of personal rights. But what about the conservative who does in fact support women’s rights, yet opposes spending public money on a Women’s Studies program at a state college? What about the America who has no problem with non-traditional gender roles, and doesn’t object to a boy wearing a dress to school, but is irked at having to find gender-neutral books for the school library? Does that make the person a sexist?

    Another theme of this book is the notion of “be wary, government help comes with a price.” They use, as an example, President Trump’s Investing in Opportunity Act of 2017. Why would the most conservative president in history want such a program? Why would Trump, of all people, want to invest in low-income communities? The answer is that he doesn’t! It’s just another way for him to exert (conservative) government control over how the money is spent on a low-income community. Those who assume the money will go to daycare and preschool, will find the money going to the county jail. However, I do believe it was the (conservative) President Reagan who warned us to beware of anyone who says “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

   These guys give no usable advice on how to make the system work for progressives. They make no mention of how to avoid bad debt, nor do they advise against money-wasters like credit cards and Christmas shopping sprees. Have they been to Kmart (or FAO Schwartz, or Walmart) in the week before Christmas and seen people filling their carts with junk? With loads of gifts for other people? Things that will end up never being used? All of this while struggling to pay the rent? It’s a sad thing to see, and even sadder to see how these two financial experts wasted their time on this rant of a book. Better they should use their time to start a financial counseling program for the poor.

Kids At Work by Emir Estrada

   Few American teenagers have jobs these days; some blame it on the decline of retail, and others blame it on kids having too much homework. Emir Estrada, in an extensive study, finds that this is not the case with the children of Hispanic immigrants, often in this country illegally. In Los Angeles, a sizeable number of Hispanic kids work as vendors, under their parents’ tutelage, and still graduate high school. Though they attend school full-time, they spend afternoons and weekends minding the stalls (rarely licensed) and contribute to the household income, rarely cutting into their schoolwork. Though he believes the ethnic and cultural backgrounds are not the sole explanation for this phenomenon, he does find that it exists almost entirely among the Hispanic population, not the Chinese, Indians, Armenians, or Koreans in Los Angeles.

    This book got me thinking about the work-versus-school choice in this world, often debated in the UN. The image of third-world kids working instead of going to school always leaves us outraged, and why wouldn’t it? Why would anyone think it fair, that a teenager should have to work instead of going to school, losing any chance of a good future, and probably not even getting to enjoy the money he/she makes? But on the streets of LA, Hispanic teens are working and doing well in school. The author interviews a 13-year-old girl, who says that her peers have too much time on their hands, and it gets them in trouble. Her afterschool vending teaches her to communicate, focus, be aware, measure, keep accounts, be responsible for the goods, and stick to a schedule. While she (and other teen vendors) acknowledge that there are rude customers, the kids learn a valuable skill – communicating with adult professionals – which will serve the kids well in college applications and job interviews.

   One of the teen vendors, Adriana, allowed Estrada to print her schedule, listing her school arrival/departure times, he daily location of her stall (staggered, probably to avoid the cops) and the revenue for each day. While some kids make fun of her, most of them envy her. The chapter titled If I Don’t Help, Then Who Will is all about juggling work, school, and caring for siblings, and it can be highly educational. Some of the teens, like 18 year old Martha, lament the lack of leisure in their lives, especially since her classmates are all rich! She goes to a Catholic school, which her father pays for in full, and her vending gig allows him to devote his whole paycheck to her tuition and the mortgage. Her classmates assume her father is a drug dealer because she won’t say what he does, but at the same time, she has no idea how screwed up the Valley kids can be!

    I’d like to recount from personal experience, how I saw the results of kids having no work at all. A thirteen-year-old, from a rich family, had everything except skills. When it came time to apply to high schools, the essays were all about “afterschool activities that show dedication to learning” or “a skill that you could teach to others,” or “solving a serious problem on your own.” Now let’s see, what could this boy do? Playing Fortnite online was not going to impress the principal, nor would softball. He couldn’t cook, do laundry, or shop for groceries. In every upper-class family, it was the same thing; they spent all their time at school and homework, the housekeeper did the chores, and they spent their time playing video games, skateboarding, online, or in front of the tv. But then I had a student, Maria, who lived in a crammed apartment with her extended family, and had to help out in her father’s store. She wrote her essay about taking inventory, keeping the books, signing for deliveries, stacking the rack, cleaning floors, cleaning the sidewalk, getting rid of the bums, painting over graffiti, and sorting the produce. Needless to say, she had offers from a lot of good high schools.

    Remember the scene from Back to School, where Rodney Dangerfield schools the snobby professor on how to really run a business? Remember how the other students all turn to him and start taking notes, while he talks about all the under-the-table wrangling needed to build a factory? The reason he knows more than the professor of business is that he’s the only one there who’s ever been in business! If you go to an Ivy League school, the professors are all lifelong academics, but in a working class community college, the professors are all industry professionals. Your local junior college has instructors who have current work experience with the subjects they teach, and they know the score. This book dwells on the question of whether or not a young American can juggle work and good grades, and after reading this book, I say the answer is yes, they can! The reason they do well in school is that they have more to write about. They do well in math because they have to keep the accounts. They do well in social studies because they experience every known personality. They impress their teachers because they are not lazy. Let’s face it folks, work makes your schoolwork better.

Apple Tree: Writers on Their Parents

    I remember reading the essay On Seeing England for the First Time by Jamaica Kincaid, and that essay touches on all that she inherited (or didn’t) from her parents. One of the things they try to give her is their love of England, a place that (a) they never visited, (b) hadn’t given them anything, and (c) she rejects the first time she sees it. After reading Kincaid’s ode (or if you prefer, a fast eulogy) to England, I read Amy Tan’s essay Mother Tongue, which is also about the author’s parents. In Mother Tongue, Tan’s mother is taken for a fool when she doesn’t use English, when in fact she is quite shrewd. She uses the façade to trick snotty Anglo-Saxons into dropping their guard. In every memoir I’ve read, the author’s parents are a strong influence (for better or for worse) and in this collection, 25 authors recount their experiences with their parents. Yet in each essay, the influence can be one of acceptance or rejection.

    Not all of the essays in this book give much in the way of literary value, but the one by Angelique Stevens really got my attention. Her family moved constantly (like Jeanette Walls in The Glass Castle) and her mother an avid reader, yet she spent most of her daughter’s life in the looney bin (like Allen Ginsberg’s mother) in Rochester, New York. Now for those of you unfamiliar with Rochester, it’s a run-down and crime-ridden city in Upstate New York, right on Lake Erie, a prominent member of America’s Rust Belt. Like Swansea was to Dylan Thomas, Rochester is “the graveyard of ambition” on most levels. The author’s family lies in that graveyard, as her father was a lifelong alcoholic, and her sister became a prostitute to pay for a crack habit, but at least the author went to college at age 27. Her adult life consists of dealing with her parents’ breakdowns, and when they die, it’s of no issue to her; she treats her father’s burial as though she were giving away an old sofa. When her mother dies, she barely mourns, yet she is surprised by the great books found in the apartment – Hemmingway, Twain, Baldwin – that her mother kept on the shelf all her life. The first irony is that these cheap little books are desired by ragpickers more than clothes or furniture. The second irony is that all those writers came from dysfunctional families. Just like hers.

    Some of the authors, like Avi Steinberg, question their family traditions. Steinberg’s family moved around a lot (am I seeing a pattern here?) including a stay in Israel, where his mother was a zookeeper. She was also a bit of an underachiever, never staying in any place long enough to make a career for herself. Now here is where the author is unsure: was she a restless adventurer, or was she trying out every kind of job to find one that suited her? Then he goes into how Judaism is patriarchal, and the idols that the Rabbis despised were often female (okay, most Semitic deities are female) and it was the men who made the decisions. He uses, as an example, Rachel refusing to get off her seat because she was menstruating (another irony, because in biblical times, menstruation was the only excuse a woman had to disobey her husband). The author’s mother came from an abusive home, so the constant moves may have been a way to avoid structure and control. Both Stevens and Steinberg are the product of crazy intellectuals.

    I’m not so sure if it’s worth having Kyoko Mori’s essay in this collection, as she has written two books on the same story already. The first was her autobiography, published in the 1990’s, and then a teen novel, which was basically a fictionalization of the autobiography. She doesn’t offer much in the way of new insights into her abusive childhood, which I will not spend time going into. Most of the authors included in this book had a lousy experience while growing up, but so did a lot of other great memoirists. Tobias Wolfe wrote about his horrible childhood, and it became the 1988 memoir This Boy’s Life, now considered a classic. Jeanette Walls recounts her crazy childhood in The Glass Castle, and the recent memoir titled Educated, by Tara Westover, is all about growing up in a survivalist family in the mountains. Andre Dubus III (son of the great Andre Dubus II, and neither are featured in Apple Tree) wrote in his memoir about how his college professor father left the kids to suffer in a violent town. The memoir, titled Townie, is full of fights, parental neglect, and deprivation. Same thing with Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future. Same thing with David Smalls’ Stitches.

   In the grand scheme of memoir, I assume that a lousy childhood makes for great writing. But are there no writers out there with great childhoods? Is there no great memoirist whose life wasn’t stinky? Lucy Knisley’s Relish (okay, it's a comic, but it's still about her life) is a great celebration of food and eating. She learned good things from her parents, and while her childhood had ups and downs, the contrast between the enjoyable and the lousy were part of the learning. The contrast between good and bad creates a greater dynamic, and contrasts and conflict are a major part of literature. The great memoirs, like This Boy’s Life, are not just about having a lousy life, but surviving one.

   Stories that are only about bad things are not interesting, nor can we learn from them. You can’t know your life is bad unless you see a good one too.

Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

    Vera, I feel your pain. I can relate to your experience at camp. It’s a time-tested American tradition, going to sleepaway camp for the summer and having a great time or a terrible time. You’re stuck out in the countryside with people you hardly know and you’re with them 24-7. You can’t go home at the end of the day, you can’t ask your parents for advice, and you have no privacy.

   Be Prepared is a graphic novel (though not really a novel because it’s not fiction) based on the author’s experience in a Russian camp in Connecticut. As an immigrant kid growing up in Albany, she doesn’t fit in with the rich kids, nor any other group for that matter. One of the saddest scenes in this book is her “failed sleepover” (also a time-tested American tradition) and the huge disappointment it brings. The scene sets the tone for the rest of the book, where the underprivileged kid becomes a social outcast. It’s a theme throughout the book; she always ends up being the kid who doesn’t get. As for the camp, I assumed it would be one of those young Pioneer camps they had in the USSR, but no, it’s no that kind of place. While it is Russian in terms of language, it’s run by the church, and not designed to foster economic and social equality.

    Brosgol captures the essence of childhood perfectly. Her eyes are almost as big as her face, enlarged by her oversized glasses, which seem to form a barrier against the world. Those huge eyes show all her hope, fear, anxiety, and hopelessness. In the sleepover scene, she goes from wide-eyed optimism to disappointment to being completely resigned. The artwork is perfect, with olive greens that give you the essence of nature. She also captures facial expressions and body language perfectly, making her mother look both resolute and feeble at the same time. When it comes to the portrayal of the kids, the author uses head size, posture, and facial expressions to show the age difference. Vera is only ten years old in the book, but she’s out in the bunk with fourteen-year-old girls, and as you guess, she feels outnumbered and invisible.

    Like I mentioned earlier, going to camp can be a source of happiness or pain. For Vera, she’s a kid from a less well-off family, whose mother is faced with two difficulties; first is her absent husband, and second are the children who want what they haven’t got. I can really relate to this, because I grew up around kids whose families were on a limited budget, and they felt guilty for asking for things that other kids had. At the same time, the parents had no idea that their kids were outcasts, and were trying desperately to fit in. You’re never sure if you should feel sympathy for the parents, or be annoyed because they’re feeble.

    I will recommend this book to kids over ten years old. It’s not hard to read, there are plenty of illustrations, and it has a story that kids can relate to.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

    "Just Kids" is predated by a 1995 biography of Maplethorpe and his relationship with Patti Smith. It takes you back to an era when bohemian life was possible, when there wasn't a great obsession with being a success, and people were satisfied with less. It was the 1960’s, a time when there were cheap apartments, abundant jobs, but also greater dangers. It wasn’t a safe time to be in Manhattan, but if you didn’t look like you had money, you might survive. If you did survive, life could be quite fun.

    Patti Smith came from a liberal family in a conservative town near Philadelphia. At the start of the memoir, she doesn't fit in with local mores and norms, so she takes a bus to Brooklyn and expects to stay with friends near the Pratt Institute. When she gets there, they've moved out, so she couch surfs and ends up with a dropout artist named Robert, who might be gay. For the next four years, they hop from one dirt-cheap pad to the next, eating one meal a day, and making art from cast-off junk.

    The title of "Just Kids" is perfect for the book. It's about young people doing what all young people dream of; living far from their parents, doing whatever they want, not having a care in the world, working just enough to support themselves. All those things were possible in 1968 New York. Rent was cheap, and as long as you didn't carry any valuables, you were relatively safe. Nowadays, however, I can't see any of this happening. If Patti and Robert had come to New York City (or even Brooklyn) in 2013, they'd never be able to live this way. The only cheap apartments are in the worst neighborhoods, and it would be a long commute from anything they’d want to do. The commute to work would be long, and you'd never be able to have an apartment on a bookstore clerk's salary. Would they mind living six to a tiny apartment in Williamsburg? Would they mind commuting from Brighton Beach all the way to Midtown? Would they be happy without an iPhone, a laptop, internet, gym membership, the latest footwear?

    Bohemian life doesn't flourish in this city the way it did in the 60's. Most of the so-called "hipsters" today live on money from their parents, but Patti and Robert lived in a bare-bones apartment with whatever furniture they could get, and when it came to clothes, they wore a weird mix of.....well I guess we could say they wore what they could get. Today's "hipsters" wear expensive clothing, eat in costly restaurants, and have high-priced technology.

    I give this book 4 stars instead of 5, only because it's repetitive. There's too much name-dropping about all her favorite poets, and that distracts from things. I would have like to have seen a greater description of the physical aspect of New York at the time.

Standing With Standing Rock: Voices From the #NoDAPL Movement

    Native Americans protests are nothing new, at least not since the 1970’s, but the mass protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline involves more than we’ve dealt with previously. Starting with the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, the protests involved Wounded Knee,  The Trail of Broken Treaties (1972) and the “Protect Our Peaks” movement (2004). These protests were about broken treaties, bad memories, and modern problems, issues like pollution, sovereignty, water rights, and funding, but the anti-DAPL movement is different; it involves every single issue, and not just one specific complaint.

    In Standing With Standing Rock, we have a collection of writings (essays, narratives, and poems) about the anti-DAPL effort and its significance. One entry to start with is The Great Sioux Nation and the Resistance to Colonial Land-Grabbing. The land-grabbing phenomena is nothing new in the USA, and it’s been a problem for all Americans, not just Native American people, thanks to eminent domain.  However, tribal reservation lands seem to get grabbed the most, and it’s not just for farming and ranching (the historical reason) or mining and drilling (the modern reason) but for things like golf courses. It isn’t just a problem in the USA, but in Canada as well, as we saw with the Oka protests in Quebec in the 1990’s. News stories of greedy stock and oil men, drooling over a tribe’s land, won’t shock anybody.

    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States) uses her essay on land-grabbing to show how the treaties between the tribes and the US government changed over time (usually with dismal results.) First there was the treaty with the plains tribes (1805) which was of no consequence, because there were few settlers west of the Mississippi. However, the fur trade soon began, and the US had more incentive to put forts in the area. She says that when the tribes found that they could trade furs for European guns, horses, and other goods, they became more dependent on them (though she doesn’t expressly mention it, I bet alcohol may have played a part.) Then you had farmers moving in, then gold was found, then oil, and because the country’s industries were resource-dependent, there was more incentive to break the treaties.

    Another point made by Dunbar-Ortiz is that the government kept the reservations scattered to keep them from unifying. There were six Sioux reservations, miles apart from each other, so it was difficult for them to work together. She also shows how giving the tribes the reservations was, is, and will be, akin to snatching a man’s property and giving him a cheap gift. Essentially it was “here’s a piece of land where you can hunt all you like, now we’ll take the rest of the land, and we’re sure you’ll be satisfied with what we’ve given you.” After looking at Google Earth/Map, and seeing the reservations, I really have to wonder why the Sioux (and other tribes) can’t have more space. The area surrounding the Pine Ridge reservation is unfarmed, unsettled, unbuilt, devoid of roads, and you can drive for miles without seeing anyone or anything. It’s not like anybody wants the land, seeing as it’s far away from anything. One would think the state of Nebraska would love to be rid of responsibility for it, and if it were given to the reservation, it would become the Fed’s problem. The answer may be in the origin of the treaty; Congress wouldn’t give away land they might need, and today they won’t risk losing the right to the minerals.

    Tribal sovereignty is another issue covered in this book, and a major bone of contention with regards to the DAPL. Maybe it seems trite to say it, because running a pipeline over anyone’s territory is bound to cause trouble (look at Ukraine for an example.) Andrew Curley’s essay Beyond Environmentalism is all about the way that the DAPL protests gained broad support, thanks to the mutual concern over ecology. He also writes on how the indigenous  people, once portrayed as backward and lazy, became the “noble ecologists” who lived with nature. He does, however, note that the image is still racist (remember the Crying Indian commercial?) and pigeonholes the people as one-dimensional. Still, he argues that the need to protect the land from pollution was the reason that the outsiders came in to help, and the outside help is usually attracted by a mutual benefit.

Of G-Men and Eggheads: The FBI and the New York Intellectuals

    This book isn’t as much about the New York intellectuals of the 50’s as it is about the politics of surveillance. According to the author, there was little protection against wiretapping until the 1990’s, so the FBI bugged homes and cars at will. The courts would not allow wiretaps to be used as evidence, but the FBI still listened in on Charles Chaplin, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and countless others. There’s irony in that too, because none of those men posed any real danger to the American people. I’m not surprised by the author’s revelations on FBI bugging, given that that Hoover and his henchmen were never warm to the intellectuals or activists. Nonetheless, this book raises questions on two issues; firstly, the threat that the targets actually posed, and secondly, the goals that the FBI had in mind.

    Lionel Trilling is prominent in this book, and in the greatest irony, he was suspected of being a Trotskyite. I say irony, because Trotsky was anti-Stalin, which the FBI plants (spies if you prefer) never realized. As for his years of teaching philosophy at NYU, he doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact. Dwight MacDonald, another forgotten intellectual, was another weird obsession for J. Edgar Hoover. Again, nothing gained by either side.

    This entire book has zilch to do with New York City or its intellectuals, so don’t bother. It’s an ineffectual book about ineffectual people.

Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by In America

    Let it be known, that Barabara Ehrenreich’s book is about three problems in American life; first, that minimum wage jobs are full of worker abuse, secondly, that they’re not enough to live on, and third, this is even more likely if you’re a woman. I’ve seen few women in the well-paid,  blue-collar jobs, like trucking, construction, cab driving, and restaurant kitchens. Here in New York City, some of the best-paid jobs for those with no college degrees are the building staff – doormen, concierges, and porters – with few women on staff. Let it also be known that the author does not survive off charity, and when she does get free food from a food bank, it’s crappy canned food and Hamburger Helper, full of salt.

Ehrenreich wrote this book in the early 2000’s, in order to see if the 1996 Welfare Reform had made things better or worse for the poor. She finds that the average minimum wage job is barely enough to support a single woman, and certainly wouldn’t be enough to feed the kids, rent more than one room, pay the medical bills, and eat well. Worse, there are towns where the only unskilled job is in Walmart, and she finds that Walmart abuses the employees and often tries to cheat them. In Florida, she takes a job waitressing at a restaurant where tourists go, and under the state laws she gets less than minimum wage; a common problem for tipped employees. While the customers are supposed to leave tips, many do not, and the employers rarely bother to obey the law and make up the difference. She tries working at a cleaning service, and here’s where she encounters another troubling factor. There’s a protocol for cleaning the bathrooms, and it requires a huge mental effort to learn the routine. Thanks to the high turnover rate, the boss can change your schedule at will and without notice. You can be at the end of your shift and be told to stay late and work at night. You have to pick your kid up from the babysitter? Too bad. You can’t get childcare with no notice? Too bad.

One of the more surprising things in this book is the drug testing of employees. I’ve only been drug tested twice in my life, once at Chase Manhattan Bank, and once by the Department of Education. None of the brokerage houses where I worked ever drug-tested me, and neither did the construction jobs or tutoring services. I find it surprising, because a construction company, with safety issues to consider, can least afford a worker with a drug problem. But Walmart? Would it make much difference? Another problem that a lot of poor neighborhoods are facing is what we call the criminalization of the poor. Parents can be fined if their children are absent from school, and face jail time if they haven’t got the money to pay. When you’re on the move from one homeless shelter to another, and have no transportation, getting your kid to school is a problem. If you need any kind of government aid, you can expect to be drug-tested.

Ehrenreich starts out her journey with only $1,000 and tells everyone she has a high school diploma. The question is whether the money she has with her will be enough to start off, and she finds that it isn’t. Her savings are barely enough to pay the deposit on an apartment, and local cheap hotels aren’t that cheap in the end. Renting a car costs more in the long run, but without the startup money to purchase one, she has no choice. The poor neighborhoods are food deserts, and the only food available is salt and fat.

There is a cure for the problem, and that is solidarity. People who live in a food desert can club together with someone who has a car, chip in for gas, and drive to a place with a cheap supermarket. Some people form food co-ops, so they can buy good quality food at wholesale prices. If several families live together in one home, they can gain two benefits; first is a lower living cost, and second is available childcare.  In the book Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street, the artists in Soho formed food co-ops, daycare co-ops, and others that provided home repair, homework help, art supplies, and more. The problem with charity is that it’s a “top-down” program, where the money on top can dictate, but solidarity is a “bottom-up” effort that allows the people to decide for themselves. It is my belief that this is why Jewish immigrants in the USA (and later Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants) did better than others. The Jews relied on each other for housing, food, education, and health, with benevolent lodges that provided emergency funds for medical bills and burial costs. You had three generations of a family living in one apartment, so the grandparents watched the kids while the parents worked 12 hour days.

In another book about poverty, Joanna Lipper’s Growing Up Fast, we see how a hotel employs women housekeepers while the cooks are all men, and while the women are paid a pittance, the male cooks eat well from the leftovers. Another difference is that the male cooks have a greater opportunity to work their way up the ladder, while a female cleaner can only be promoted to head housekeeper, with few levels in between. The cooks and the maids are on their feet all day, but the maids have to kneel and stoop. It’s a similar thing with construction; laborers don’t have to dress up, don’t have to buy expensive uniforms, and aren’t at the mercy of decent tips.

The end result is that the 1996 Welfare Reform law didn’t make things better. This book was published back in 2001 and is still read frequently, so it remains to be seen how the issues in this book will pan out in later generations. With the decriminalization of marijuana, there will be fewer people in prison, and thanks to bail reform, we’ll have fewer people missing work while they sit in the lockup.

Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim

    Elizabeth Kim describes her mother as a headstrong young woman, whose first big transgression was leaving home to work in a noodle stall. I couldn’t help but feel bad for this woman; all she wanted was her independence, and moving to the city to work shouldn’t have angered anyone. But when she got pregnant by an American serviceman, then her troubles really began. Unmarried pregnancy was a major embarrassment to her family, and she became a pariah in her community. Kim’s recollections are of happy times with her mother, until the day her mother was murdered for disgracing the family. It wasn’t a stoning by a mob, but more calculated; her father and her brother wanted her to sell the child into servitude, and when she refused, they hanged her. Then they tortured the child and got rid of her.

The next part of the book is more disturbing than the first, because it lasts longer. She gets adopted by an American couple, and her life improves physically, but stinks emotionally. Her parents have heads full of ideas of what they expect to get from their new daughter, and they’re awful to her, blaming her for the most mundane things. It’s not even clear why her parents adopt her, since there were plenty of white children to adopt in 1950’s USA. Maybe it had to do with their fundamentalist Christian views? Was it their way of “civilizing a savage” and bringing the heathen to Jesus? Did they think they were doing the Lord’s work by taking in a half-Korean child?

In some ways the treatment her mother got in Korea mirrors what she received in the USA. Women didn’t really have any rights in the USA either, and as a teen, she marries a deacon from their church. It’s not clear why. Maybe she’s pressured by her parents? Maybe she just wants to escape her home?  Whatever the reason, her husband turns out to be an abusive man, having sex with other women and forcing her to watch, beating her (even while pregnant) and making her life impossible. Her life doesn’t get much better after divorcing him. She does, however, land a job at a newspaper, and her boss and his wife become surrogate parents.

While I sympathize with the author, I don’t approve of a lot of the things she does. First off, she implies a feeling of nihilism to her daughter, and while it may be the reason her daughter grows up independent and self-reliant, I’m not sure it’s worth the risk to a child. Secondly, she raises her daughter in a house that’s geographically isolated, in an effort to recreate the home where she once lived with her mother. The isolation of the home puts them in danger on several occasions.

Honor killings have been in the news a lot lately, but we hear about the ones in the Middle East, not South Korea. I’ve heard of honor killings happening in Sicily, usually because of a disapproved marriage, or a daughter’s mistake that shames the family. They didn’t have honor killings In Ireland, but unwed pregnant teenagers got a raw deal; their parents left them at the Magdalene Convents and forgot about them.

 Like most Asian countries, South Korea doesn’t have a good record on women’s rights, but what makes it even more shocking is the way her family committed the murder. The events in the USA afterward aren’t much better, but you have to wonder how much has really changed? Today’s news is full of stories about women being thrown out of pools over their bathing suits, or girls being sent home because their clothing distracts the boys. 

When you treat the woman as a temptress, you open the floodgates to abuse.

Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money by Ken Honda

   Ken Honda, a self-help star in Japan, pulls no punches hen it comes to money woes. Happy money is the term for the money you gain for your own benefit, while unhappy money is gained through a job you hate, or ends up going to your ex-wife and creditors.  Years ago, I read a similar argument in Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad/Poor Dad rag, and while I agree with less than 0.03 of what Kiyosaki says, both he and Honda have a point; you’re not wealthy if someone else has a claim to your money.

    Honda gives good advice on saving. Too often, we feel pressure to buy the latest electronics, and then you have families under pressure to take their children to Disney World, dress them to impress, and spend to impress others. Then there’s the FOMO problem, or Fear Of Missing Out, which I confess to having experienced many times. He recounts an experience where his daughter, with her limited command of English, asks him what her classmates mean by “it’s not fair.” He puts the blame on parents who use the term, as in “it’s not fair that he makes more than me,” or “it’s not fair that I have to pay taxes.” Then the parents will probably use that term every time they have to do something they don’t want, like “it’s not fair that I have to host the Christmas dinner,” or “it’s not fair that I have to pay such a huge share of my parents’ anniversary gift.” The question is, why do the parents do it in the end?

   His advice rests on restraint and differentiation. First off, one needs to have the guts to say no, and ignore the pressure to “keep up with the Joneses.” Secondly, you have to admit the reason you want money. Is it serenity? Do you want security? A comfortable lifestyle? Luxury? Power? Attention? Revenge? These things will make all the difference in how we spend and save. Donald Trump (who I thoroughly dislike) gave on important piece of advice in his book. He says that every marriage must have a prenup, whether you trust your spouse or not. It all makes sense in terms of trust; lack of trust means you need a prenup, and if you trust each other, you won’t be suspicious of a prenup.

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

    Charles Fishman has been reporting on the US space program since the 1980’s, when we celebrated NASA’s accomplishments, and at the same time mourned its 1986 failure. He starts the book by giving credit to the thousands of people involved in the 1969 moon landing, and the scientists were only a tiny fraction. The space suit was designed by men who worked for an underwear company, and a team of expert sewers – all of them women – sewed the suits together. When the moon landing was broadcast on TV, they were the ones who were afraid. Would the suits take the pressure difference? Would their stitching hold together? Never mind that ordinary non-scientists had made the suits, a lot of the products used by those astronauts are considered mundane today. Velcro, tang, microchips, digital clocks, and high-speed computers, were invented years earlier, but not widely used until the moon landing.

NASA would be a proving ground for a whole lot of American technology, and it benefited the US economy. In every state, there were industries that got NASA contracts, whether it was fuel, rocket engines, TV screens, telecommunications, cameras, etc. The USA, at least in those days, was a nation that worshipped science, and NASA was the ultimate citadel of science and technology. The Soviet Union had gotten to space first, but every time they did something great, US scientists did it better. What did we do that the Soviets didn’t?

Aside from the scientific accomplishments, the moon landing was also a political triumph. We’d started the 60’s with the Bay of Pigs invasion (a farce for the CIA) and then came the Kennedy assassination (testing our comfort zone) followed by the violence of the Civil Rights movement and urban riots (discord and instability). How would the USA restore unity and credibility, at home and abroad? In Moscow’s Red Square, Kruschev hoisted Uri Gagarin onto a pedestal, and declared his meager to-hour space ride a triumph of communism. Would US capitalism be outdone by communism, the Europeans wondered? But the Soviets never made it to the moon, and their satellites never worked as well as those in the USA. They did manage to build a space shuttle like NASA’s, known as the Buran, flew it once by computer and then mothballed it a year later when the USSR broke up. In 2005, the shuttle, now dust-covered and abandoned, was destroyed when the decrepit storage hangar collapsed on it. The Soviets had spent billions on a space program that got them nowhere.

In the end, it was just ordinary American work that made the moon landing happen. Mathematicians calculated the trajectory, air force airmen operated the communications, and the astronauts got their start as military pilots. The lunar vehicle was just a dune buggy, but it took 400 engineers to make it collapsible, and then they had to design a motor that wouldn’t shut down in sub-zero weather. Their creation would later become the electric golf cart. Technologies that are bought cheaply today are thrown away when they wear out, but 50 years ago they were a triumph of science.

Fishman doesn’t shy away from the controversy over the moon landing. Was it worth it to got to the moon? Was it worth it to spend all the money? Gil Scott Heron’s poem Whitey’s On the Moon, is an example of the distrust in the space program, a massive money-eater when the cities were crumbling. Then there’s the question of what, if anything, was there left for us to conquer? Supreme Court justice Earl Warren, in his farewell address, said that we’d be on the moon in a few months, but “it would be better if our universities taught us how to live in our great cities.” At least the 1969 moon landing made microchips cheaper (previously nobody knew what to do with them) proved new uses for Velcro.

Why do Americans love space? Maybe it’s because our kids love adventure. Maybe it’s because we’re a nation built on expansion. Wealthy Americans are known to love big projects, and working-class Americans love the jobs that they bring. Some big projects bring profit. Others bring prestige. In the end, NASA brought both.

My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

    I wonder if US colleges will ever include Lobotomy in the history textbooks. Will it be included among all the other injustices in our history? We teach our students about Segregation, the Japanese Internment, and the Wounded Knee massacre, but what about the people who were lobotomized? Was it any less an injustice to the people whose lives were ruined by it? Perhaps historians dismiss it as part of the medical ash heap, along with other quack treatments – insulin shock therapy, radiation therapy for colds, and patent medicines – that we now agree caused more harm than good. However, I see Lobotomy as something more. It influenced far more people than other questionable medical practices, and it was part of a broad desire for a “quick fix,” or even worse, parents who wanted easier control of their kids. This is where Howard Dully comes in; he was one of the last Americans to have a lobotomy, and the victim of a vengeful stepparent who wanted to turn him into a vegetable.

    The story begins in the USA during the Baby Boom era, a time of calm prosperity and scientific accomplishment. Howard Dully’s mother is dead, his father has remarried, and the 12 year old doesn’t get along with his stepmother or her kids. We’re not talking about shoplifting or truancy here, just a moody adolescent who leaves the lights on in the daytime and doesn’t make his bed or clear the table. The stepmother convinces her husband that his son is a buddy violent criminal, and she hears about Dr. Walter Freeman, whose miracle procedure cures all mental problems. The operation, known as a Trans-Orbital Lobotomy, is simple; knock out the patient, insert a steel spike through the space above the eye, crack through the bone, swish the spike back and forth, severing the frontal lobes, and the patient goes home the same day. It would cure violent rages, depression, or other bad behaviors. If not, at least it would make the patient into a vegetable who wouldn’t make any noise.

    Howard Dully was Lobotomized at age 12, in the early 1960’s, at a time when the operation was already being discredited. It began in the 1940’s, and probably fell out of favor once Thorazine was invented. This book tells two parallel stories, one about the author, and the other about the operation and what it did to people in the USA. When he dredges up his medical records, he sees that his stepmother went to multiple health professionals, all of whom wrote that she was the problem, not the boy. It reminds  me of how today’s parents are tempted to medicate special-needs children, in order to keep them quiet, and avoid the hard work and patience they require. Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard it is to raise a kid with ADHD, OCD, ODD, or IED, but too many parents just want a quick fix. The good news is that the worst a parent can do is dope up the kids with Ritalin, Dexedrine, Aderall, and Risperdal, not mangle their brains with an ice pick and turn them into drooling zombies

    After the Lobotomy, Dully spends his teen years in reformatories, jails in his 20’s, and alcoholism in his 30’s. He writes how the Lobotomy left him with a part of his emotion missing and he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. During his time in the state homes for boys, he encounters an orderly named Napoleon Murphy Brock – yes, the same one from the Frank Zappa band – who was studying psychology at a local college. He recalls Brock wondering openly why a seemingly normal kid was in a reformatory that was meant for juvenile delinquents.

    What shocks me the most about this story is that few medical professionals spoke up against Dr. Freeman. The book includes examples of how the medical establishment was generally uneasy about Lobotomy, and how they were not impressed by the zombies that resulted from the operation. It wasn’t scientifically proven, so I can’t figure out why the medical establishment green-lighted Freeman to do the operations. In a twist of dramatic irony, the Soviet Union banned Lobotomy. Despite the horrible things that the Soviet dictators did, they thought it was wrong to destroy someone’s ability to think.

    My Lobotomy was published back in 2006, and I read it eagerly, because I was fascinated by how quickly Lobotomy came and went, yet it ruined so many people in its time. It wasn’t just poor orphans who were ruined by the operation, but a woman from a prominent family, who also was the sister of a US president. Howard Dully is now a bus driver and driving instructor and didn’t learn about his Lobotomy until he was 56 years old. In another ironic twist, Dully finds that Dr. Freeman, despite being a sloppy surgeon, kept extreme records of all his patients, now in the George Washington University archive. Freeman’s records show that the stepmother described the boy as savage, defiant, refused to go to bed, wouldn’t listen, and the doctor advised a lobotomy to cure the behavior. When he finally gets his elderly father to speak about it, the old man makes a shocking admission; it as all the stepmother’s idea, and he admits to being too spineless to object. Then he admits that after the operation failed to turn the boy into a vegetable, it was she who insisted on handing the boy over to the state.

    I wonder why Walter Freeman, a neurologist, was allowed to do operations. One possibility is that in the old days, physicians were treated as being beyond criticism, even when they injured patients. We no know that doctors were doing radiation experiments on people in the 1950’s, and most history books mention the Tuskegee Experiment. There’s suspicion that the children at Willowbrook were used for experiments, and there’s proof that prisoners in Pennsylvania were used to test drugs (see the book Sentenced to Science.) Those of you who read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks know how Black Americans were neglected by the doctors, but at the same time the doctors helped themselves to tissue samples to use for their experiments. If you visit Chicago, you should visit the Museum of Surgical Science, for examples of medical quackery. They have a model of an old drugstore, full of medicine bottles, most of which contain cocaine, morphine, or mercury. They even have a foot X-ray machine, which were common in 1950’s shoe stores, and probably gave cancer to countless children.

    Lobotomy, and the reason for its onetime popularity, remind me of an argument I read in the recent book Rethinking Incarceration. Too many Americans, whether in the medical profession, education, or simply in the role of parent, want to avoid the hard work and sacrifice needed to raise a child. The “quick fix” problem starts at home and goes all the way up to court and prison. Even the prison system wants to pawn things off on other people, which is why the private prison industry is so profitable. As for Mrs. Dully, she didn’t want to have to accept that her 12-year-old stepson was moody, sulky, and would never be obedient. The rest is history.

    I once had a Black student ask me why White parents go to great lengths to discipline their kids. He asked “Why do they do all those time-outs, reward charts, talking to their kids, when Black people just smack the kid and he straightens up?” I answered that smacking the kid doesn’t work in the long run, it just establishes dominance, it teaches the kid that might makes right. Now I have to wonder, now that upper middle class families are fazing out corporal punishment, will the lower classes do the same? Will spanking, slapping, paddling, and butt-belting go the way of the rotary phone? Will people see its danger and futility the way they did with Lobotomy?

    Each year, the US history textbooks are not only updated, but past events are added. Will the injustice of Lobotomy be included? Thirty years ago, the Japanese Internment as left out, and information on Native American abuse was limited. Today, these issues are not only taught in college, but also represented in children’s books. The Stonewall Inn Riots, AIDS activism, and Ryan White are all making their way into the textbooks. It remains to be seen if Lobotomy will be included.

  

The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara

   Sunkara doesn’t come off as the radical socialist, and he actually respects capitalism. He admires the Swedish approach, where enterprises like healthcare and education are considered to be the government’s problem. That leaves the people free to be productive without having to worry about college bills and doctor’s fees.

He writes about how new technologies led to the Industrial Revolution, and with that came a need for labor. What Sunkara doesn’t mention, however, is that the labor all came from ruined farmers. If England’s farmers hadn’t been unemployed, I wonder where the workers would’ve come from. Would the British have imported slaves directly into England? Would they have encouraged Russian Jews to emigrate? He’s right about the relation of the Industrial Revolution and socialism, because it was the English factory workers who began what we call organized labor.

Sunkara, on the subject of business, doesn’t deny that it’s needed. He also dislikes the Soviet model, when was in fact very poor in quality. He thinks that socialism should be more concerned with worker safety, ending discrimination, ending sexual harassment, and pollution control. If you look back to the early gains in worker’s rights, the first thing they accomplished was a fixed workday. Then came child labor laws. Then came fire safety. Fixed hourly wages came last.

I’m going to sum up with a story in the recent book Food and the City, recounted by the owner of a tortilla factory. He says “in Mexico, hen you go to the hospital, you pay upfront or they leave you to die in the street, but here in New York, they patch you up and then ask how much you can pay.”

The Secret Wisdom of Nature by Peter Wohlleben

   The NYC Parks Department recently found a natural way to de-weed their green spaces – by bringing in a herd of goats to eat them! Apparently the plan worked a little too well, and now the goats are getting territorial about the bushes. I have to wonder if there was this much undergrowth in the days when deer roamed Manhattan? Back in the 1700’s, New York City’s entire topography was different, and I don’t just mean in terms of the landscape. There were giant oysters in the harbor, and there were seals, both of which generated interesting cuisine in the taverns. These animals lived in harmony in the harbor, along with turtles, and yes, turtles were a popular dish too. The USA also had a native chestnut tree, but a fungus imported from Japan wiped all those trees out. When the land’s native flora and fauna die out, what are we losing besides local ingredients? This is what Wohlleben’s book tries to figure out.

    Peter Wohlleben, a conservationist from Germany, begins with Yellowstone Park’s program to rebuild the wolf population. The result has been a reduction in the elk herds and an increase in beavers, bears, and native trees. Even the flooding has been reduced. He also shows how domesticated dogs are a far greater danger to humans than the wolves, which are essentially harmless. Far fewer people have been attacked by wolves than by feral dogs, and when the wolves and bears do attack humans, it’s because the humans have been stupid enough to feed them. Then we have the giant salmon that fertilize the plants along the riverbank, and feed the bears and birds. When non-native trout were introduced, they crowded out the native salmon, and that starved out everything else.

    Hate seeing a dead deer by the roadside? To the wolves and vultures, a dead deer is a ten-course dinner. Bears and wolves are attracted by the smell, and they come to gorge, and then the vultures and ravens smell the stink of the rotting meat, and they come in to pick at the leftovers. Ravens show up too, but due to size differences they have to wait until the end of the line. Due to their sensitivity, the ravens alert the wolves if bears are close, so they can gobble as much meat as they can before the slower bears come lumbering in. When all the other carnivores are done, mice come in to pick the hard-to-reach parts, then the insects eat the rest, and the birds and bats eat the insects. When all the beasts have finished, the decaying bones fertilize the soil.

    Excessive light from cities, waste from livestock, human waste, and climate change are all covered in this book. The science of how fish, carnivores, and elk function together has been portrayed in an earlier book by Gary Larson, titled There’s a Hair in My Dirt. A young worm, fed up with his life, learns how much he really means to the environment, along with all the other dirty animals. He learns how dead trees help the forest grow, and how forests need fires every now and then, and how chirping birds are actually cursing at each other, and how snakes prevent diseases by eating rats. Even better, the worm learns how the biggest problem is the two-legged mammals who get in nature’s way.

    Here in New York City, the Peregrine Falcon has made a comeback in the last 20 years, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them swoop down to snatch rats. In New Jersey, I had the pleasure of seeing a vulture eating a deer carcass, the stink of which I could smell from a hundred feet away. Every time I got close enough to take a photo, the vulture would fly away and sit on the fence, as if to say “that’s alright, I’ll wait for you to leave, and then I’ll eat my lunch in peace.” I tried several times more to photograph the vulture, but he kept flying to the fence to wait for me to leave. To this day I admire his patience.

Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis

    Robyn Griggs Lawrence discusses the use of cannabis in history as mainly ingestion, rather than smoking. She brings forth accepted historic proof that the herb was cultivated for the fiber and seeds,  which were known in the ancient era for mind-altering properties.  Then she buttresses her claim with the research of the French botanist Jean Baptiste-Lamarck. He described cannabis’ properties as “going through the head and disrupting the brain,” and making the user feel drunk and happy. He also researched, and noted, that there were different species of the plant and each one had different strengths. However, Lawrence also claims that the plants controversial status hampered the scientific research into its use. Medieval physicians suggested it as a way to relieve gout, but without modern studies it’s difficult to argue in its favor. The anti-cannabis lobbyists, even the early Reefer Madness films (based on sensationalism and exaggeration) have always been powerful.

   The author doesn’t say it outright, but it seems that pot was considered foreign to the USA, and that may have fed the distrust. It came through Asia before reaching Europe, and was banned by Napoleon. Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas both consumed it in the form of cakes, with the recipe included in Toklas’ famous cookbook. Unfortunately for her (and the US readers) the recipe was removed by the US publishers in an effort of self-censorship, given that it was the 1960’s, and the publishing houses were still in their “Mad Men” stage. Something tells me if they’d waited until the 70’s, Gale Sheehy of New York Magazine would’ve hyped up the recipe in one of her radical chic campaigns. There were high-society characters who brought cannabis to the upper crust of America, like the food writer  Jeremiah Tower, who served cannabis chicken stock in his lavish dinner parties. He would put the cannabis infused soups right between the meat and the watercress, so that it would kick in around dessert time, and the simplest dessert would feel like a religious experience.

   Amsterdam’s cannabis industry, well-written in this book, was ground zero for its use in food, and the city’s tolerance of the herb was a complete opposite of the USA. The Netherlands, aware of the increase in heroin use worldwide, decided to ignore anything that was not scientifically proven to be addictive. There was never any solid conclusive study as to the health risks, but cannabis addicts weren’t going though withdrawal, and there was no prof that it was a gateway drug. However, the Netherlands did not legalize the importation of cannabis, nor write any laws regarding cultivation, so the source was in the hands of criminals.

    Lawrence writes that Cambodia is a country where cannabis as rarely smoked (American backpackers did that) but was used in soups, and the word “happy” became a code word for any food with the herb in it. It found its way into drinks with the multitude of spices available in the region, but thanks to US pressure, Cambodia banned it. Fortunately, the country never had the resources to do a large-scale crackdown.

    While this book is a wonderful trove of history of cannabis in cooking, the author spends a little too much time on the legal issues, and not enough on the benefits. I’m eager to see how it will make its way into the restaurant industry now that states are loosening the laws. Will it find its way into drinks? Will it replace beer and wine? Maybe it will be to 21^st Century USA what Absinthe was to 19^th Century France.

Agent of Influence

    Jason Hanson is a former CIA operative who applies his spy skills to modern business. His most important lesson (or at least the one that sticks the most) is that you have to sharpen your memory, never relying on the internet or GPS. Always use maps, memorize your destination, and always have alternate transport. The second lesson is that when you travel, you have to know all the bus routes, where to catch the bus or train, always have spare cash, and now where you can get a room. I remember the time when I failed to plan my trip thoroughly, and almost missed my Greyhound in Dover, Delaware. The fear wasn’t extreme, as the area wasn’t dangerous, and the police weren’t hunting down the out-of-towners or anything of the like. The fear as that I’d be stuck there overnight, and if I couldn’t book another hotel room for the evening, I’d be toast. On a smart move, I kept spare cash in my shoe, and knew the locations of all the motels in the region. Traveling light was a big help too.

The first chapter is devoted to the science of preparation and routine. It includes listening (pay attention, talk less, study others, don’t judge) and how the behavior of others is always an indicator. The second chapter is about social situations and how to make people like you. Paying with cash is recommended, because it serves two purposes; it makes people think you have money, and it makes them feel indebted to you. Passing bills can also help buy your way out of trouble.

Hanson shows how all this can be used to audit employees, screen out the ones who aren’t trustworthy, and scope out new clients.

Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment

    Linda Hirshman charts the course of the movement against sexual harassment, which like most left-wing movements, was in the works for years. We had Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, then Anita Hill’s testimony, then further court cases and the #metoo movement. Hirshman also writes about the resistance to change, much of it from women – like Phyllis Schafly – who Hirshman believes was looking to avoid losing the security of her husband’s money.

The author uses a case I was not familiar with, that of Cornell physics professor Boyce McDaniel, and how he sexually harassed women administrators in the 1970’s. It led to women in higher education documenting the abuse they put up with, including ogling, inappropriate stares, unwanted touching, pressure to have sex with their bosses, and loss of promotions (or even their jobs) if they refused. The book Sexual Shakedown (also n to me) showed how there was widespread abuse of women recruits in the Washington DC police, and at the time, police departments had only recently begun recruiting women on par with men. Though not quoted by Hirshman, a 2005 book by ex-NYPD detective Kathy Burke documented the same thing. I also recall a scene from Margaret Cho’s memoir, I’m the One That I Want, where she encounters intimidating behavior from boys at a military school; they jump on stage and do push-ups during her performance. I found it surprising for two reasons; the first is that you’d think the boys in a military school would be taught better behavior, and secondly, in the Jewish high school I attended, interrupting a guest speaker would’ve gotten you expelled!

Hirshman blames past problems on the lack of codified laws regarding workplace harassment. There were certainly none in the 1970’s, and there was also the question of whether the individual harasser or the employer was responsible for the damages. It wouldn’t be until 1986, when the case of Michelle Vinson highlighted the “hostile environment” as actionable in court. Then there was the question of whether it was sexual abuse or just boorish behavior and bad manners. Would a plaintiff have to be physically injured to collect a settlement? The case of Bill Clinton and Paula Jones from 1999 shows another problem in sexual harassment cases, involving social class. Was Paul Jones, a low-wage woman with no degree, considered an easy target for a man with power? While he may have exposed himself and/or propositioned her, he never threatened her job, so the media was quick to dismiss the issue. Then again, it can be very disturbing for a woman to be called to her boss’ hotel room and propositioned. If it caused an emotional interference and her work suffered, then that would be a problem.

Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein are the cap of the story, though I wager there will be a lot more to write about in the next three years. Let’s look back at previously disgraced luminaries to see how things turned out. First off is the Frugal Gourmet, sued and de-aired for sexually abusing young men, but since few remember him, it’s no longer a disgrace. Then there’s the actor James Stacey, imprisoned for sexually threatening little girls in the 1990’, his career ruined and forgotten. Then there’s the TV personality Rolf Harris, actor Jeffrey Jones, singer Gary Glitter, Judge Wachtler, Father Bruce Ritter, and a New York City Montessori principal, to name a few. They all ruined their careers with systematic, sexually abusive behavior. Now I have to wonder, do we really need these people? Will the word lose anything if they can no longer work? When it comes to Harvey Weinstein, I have to wonder if the film studios were afraid OF him, or afraid of losing him? Were they afraid that nobody could do as good a job as him? Now that Bill Cosby is disgraced and ruined, his former admirers feel betrayed, but does America need Bill Cosby?

When the Weinstein scandal broke, Howard Stern said “I’m 60 years old, tall, thin, and ugly, and Harvey’s 60 years old, short, fat, and ugly, and if you saw me naked, you’d die of fright. Harvey, you’re old and ugly, women don’t want to see you naked in the shower!” Now I wonder, Howard Stern if the most vulgar man in the USA, so why hasn’t HE been a target of more complaints? What about all the other sleaze-jocks in the USA, like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Al Goldstein, Russ Meyer, and others? Why were they rarely accused of sexual harassment? Maybe this country’s morals police were more interested in what people said than when they did? For years the FCC went after obscene content, but ignored inappropriate behavior.

Behavior standards have obviously changed, and with it, the definition of sexual harassment. It remains to be seen how it will be defined in the next decade.

We Speak for Ourselves: A Word From Forgotten Black America

    D. Watkins doesn’t seem to like the well-known Black American pundits, nor the elite Black professionals who he meets at an Oprah Winfrey event. He finds that the Black professors, who go on TV and talk about Black issues, have no real interest in talking to an unemployed Black man. Throughout the book, he compares the Black pundit to a drone; viewing the people from too great a distance, and not seeing what’s really going on.

One of the more disturbing parts of this book is the collective reaction to the Charlottesville tragedy, where a woman was run over by a White supremacist. Watkins mocks the TV pundits for crying about the racist tiki-torch boys but not shedding a tear for Heather Heyer, who got killed. Then he realizes the problem, which is that they are somehow surprised by open White racism, and that surprises him. He wonders why they’d cry over open racism, but not cry about the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddy Grey, or any of the other unarmed Black men (or women, or kids) killed by White police. Then he wonders if any of these elitist Black Americans know anyone Black outside of their social circle. He finds it comical that with all the horrible things happening in the USA, these people are crying over a sparsely attended rally in a town that nobody had heard of until the tragedy.

Watkins’ chapter on police brutality is titled An American Tradition and uses the difference between rich and poor neighborhoods as a test of American policing. In the more affluent community, the police will make fewer stops, while in a poor one, everyone is a suspect. This point I agree with, because I once lived in a dominantly White area and there were few police stops. Based on what I saw growing up, the worst thing a cop ever had to worry about was a group of teenage skaters. The next problem discussed in this chapter is the “police as heroes” myth, and how it plays into protecting bad cops. However, the author didn’t really do his research on this topic, because there are many reasons why it’s difficult to fire bad cops, and almost impossible to get a conviction. Few police officers have been convicted of committing a murder while on duty (except for Joseph Kent McGowan in Texas), and reasons include unions, arbitration, high-priced defense lawyers, incompetent prosecutors, and the common law doctrine of sovereign immunity.

Once again, on the subject of bad cops (a subject that has dominated political discourse for the last five years) the author writes that while the Freddy Grey cops got off the hook, the system worked for the eight cops convicted of other crimes. At this point in the book, we need to step back. The Baltimore cops whom Watkins refers to are not an example of how “the system works.” The reason that these cops were convicted of drug-dealing, gun-dealing, payroll fraud, and money laundering, is that the prosecution was easier. When a cop makes a false statement, steals from the evidence locker, or gets caught with illegal drugs, the evidence is impossible to dispute. He can’t say “I stole guns and sold them on the street because I had probable cause!” He can’t say “I broke into the store and stole 300 pairs of sunglasses because I was afraid for my life!” Try as he might, no cop could get off the charges by saying “I drove drunk because the guy had a gun.” Furthermore, a cop has no protection for a crime committed while off-duty, which is why Antoinette Frank (from New Orleans) was convicted. The problem is that if a cop shoots someone while on duty, he can claim that his own safety was compromised. All he has to do is say “I thought the thing in his hand was a gun,” and that’s that. For on-duty killings, the burden is entirely on the prosecutor.

Another problem that I have with this book is that the author keeps waxing nostalgic about living in the Baltimore housing projects. There’s no law that says people must live there. And it was never quality housing to begin with. Now that segregation is over, why does he not want his people to get out of the projects? What could he find good about living in disgusting run-down buildings that were designed to segregate? The public housing is the worst form of charity and has led to a further dependence on charity. He writes about classmates whose lives were ruined by teenage pregnancy and absent fathers, but nobody seems to encourage birth control. Watkins is right about police brutality, and he’s right in that the rudeness he encounters is often race-based, but the cards stacked against him involve a lot more than racism. Things like poverty, drug use, poor nutrition, and family violence, can do a lot more damage than a racist cop.

To Sir With Love, by E.R. Brathwaite

Few in history have disobeyed the racist warning of To Kill a Mockingbird, or more Black writers would follow Brathwaite’s path of criticizing low-class Whites. Before I mention anything about the White working class to a Hillbilly Elegy debate, let me remind that Brathwaite is an Englishman and his memoir takes place in London. Ignoring the silly 1967 film version, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which takes place in 1948, when London was struggling after WWII and there was no G.I. Bill. This book is a contrast to most stories of adventure, because it’s usually the upper-class Englishman exploring Africa, not a Black Guyana-born former RAF officer surviving in London. Furthermore, this man behaves like a judgmental English explorer when he ventures among the White youth of darkest London; they are dirty, unwashed, uncouth, uncultured, and with little appreciation for their country’s gifts to history.

    To Sir With Love is a book that is unfortunately ignored today, a loss to all of us. However, most books on the proletarian experience of post-WWII Britain are ignored as well (Been in the Snooker Club, A Kid for Two Farthings, An East End Story) as opposed to more “classical” works by writers like Mary Wesley. Even if you’re not especially interested in the race or education aspects of the book, you still get an eye into what Britain was like after the war ended. The author comes out of his service in the Royal Air Force (where he experienced no hostility) and finds that everyone – employers and the public alike – regards him as a nuisance. There are dirty looks on the train and bus, signs advertising rooms for rent are suddenly a mistake, and the fact that he risked his life for Britain means nothing. Though he doesn’t mention it in the book, the Polish RAF pilots got the same treatment. The British were happy to have them while there was a war going on, but once the war ended, they were asked if they wouldn’t mind leaving the country. Bloody decent of the Brits!

    In terms of plot, the memoir is relatively simple; born and educated in Guyana, graduate work at CUNY, RAF crewman in WWII, demobbed in 1945, and unemployed (like most war veterans regardless of color) in post-war UK. Unable to find work as an engineer, he takes a job teaching 14-year-olds in a crappy school on Cable Street, and here his adventures begin. This educated West Indian, espousing upper-class airs, looks down on their foul mouths and foul hygiene. The famous scene in the movie with the burning bra? Yes, it happens in the book. The scene where he boxes with the class moron? Yes, that happens too, but at the very beginning. These two events serve as a kind of icebreaker.

The story of the new teacher who flies in to rescue the bad kids can be a genre unto itself. We have The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, and Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter, though in the latter, the hero teacher fails. Then there’s Coach Carter, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, Death at an Early Age, they’re all cultural icons. Unfortunately, the main character is always the nice White guy or the nice White lady rescuing minority kids, never a Black man rescuing White kids. At the same time, how often do you see (in USA, Canada, Britain, or anywhere else) a Black man or woman teaching White kids? It’s rare. Coach Carter and Lean on Me had one or two White kids, but they’re portrayed as misunderstood and suspicious. Both movies are also part of the “Black disciplinarian” genre to which An Officer and a Gentleman belongs. To Sir With Love is set apart from that genre because Braithwaite isn’t tough, but snobby, with a clear disdain for Cockney ways. It’s a reverse of Heart of Darkness, with the horrors of Africa  replaced with gloomy East End London.

    The kids who the author tries to cultivate are misunderstood in every sense of the word. In the 1967 film, they were nasty and stupid for no reason, but the book explains that in 1948 they were all angry. They’d lost their fathers during the war, and their neighborhood had few male role models. The next problem was that they weren’t expected to graduate high school in those days, so why would they make any effort? Kids in the UK usually left school at 14 to work, unlike in the USA, and there was no GI Bill or cult of upward mobility. When you grew up poor in London, there was no expectation to move up the social ladder, and even Booker T. Washington made note of this in his book Up From Slavery. When Washington visited the UK in 1900, he noted how the American wants to be his own master, but the Englishman wants to do the best he can in the position he has.

While Booker T. Washington refused to give his opinion on the English work ethic, Brathwaite makes his disdain very clear. He would clearly like to see the kids do better in life, so I can forgive him for being such a snob. I would also point out a British film from the 1960’s, called Spare The Rod, which is also about a bleak London school. The kids are rude and dirty with no prospects, and the teachers are too upper-class to relate to the kids. The difference between the two stories is that in Spare The Rod the teachers whip the kids. I had to wonder why the kids in Spare The Rod didn’t just hit the teacher back? They’re not going to stay after 14 anyway, so what do they have to lose? What is the school going to do, expel them a month before they age out?

   Omitted from the film is the eyebrow-raising romance between him and a sexy blonde White teacher at the school. They get nasty remarks from two old biddies on a train during the field trip, and they get attitude from a waiter in a restaurant. When he meets her parents, they’re not averse to him, but apprehensive. It seems that a lot of the xenophobia in the story has to do more with apprehension than outright fear or jealousy. An employer tells him “I’m sorry, but we have Englishmen who’ve been working here for years and we wouldn’t be able to make you their boss.” There’s a funny scene where he gets a hostile response while checking a room for rent, but just as she’s about to slam the door at him, a girl peeks out and goes “oh no, Mum, that’s Sir!” For some reason, I found the woman’s rudeness comical.

    Brathwaite’s version of the events is disputed in the book An East End Story by Alf Gardner. The former student states that Brathwaite was mean, abusive, gladly used the rod, and the girls were uncomfortable around him. He also states that while the headmaster had officially banned caning, Brathwaite used it anyway. However, I wonder if Brathwaite was just too much of a Victorian moralist for Gardner’s tolerance? None of the other pupils have come forward (if any of them are still alive) and the school’s radical headmaster Alex Bloom died in the 1950’s. Was Mr. Bloom a Jew? There are several Jewish characters in the book, though their goals and aspirations are different from those you’ll know in the USA (there are few Jewish doctors in the UK.) From my experience, the Jewish Briton doesn’t make a spectacle of himself, probably thanks to centuries of Anti-Semitism. You won’t see lots of noticeably Jewish comedians in the UK either. No Adam Sandlers or Rodney Dangerfields there.

    I’m not sympathetic to all the kids in the book, by the way. When the biracial student named Seale loses his mother, they all buy a wreath, but won’t take it to his house. They don’t want to be seen going to a colored person’s house, because “people will start to talk.” They all go to the funeral, pressed and clean, but won’t visit the house, and this is the part where I got upset. The class asshole, a boy named Denham, likes to be the tough guy, but he’s too afraid of housewife gossip to show solidarity. I wonder sometimes if the ultimate test of toughness is standing up to your own friends and family? When A. Philip Randolph supported Albert Shanker and the Teacher’s Union, he lost a lot of support from his own people. Fidel Castro, another famous leftist, supported everything the Soviets did, and was seen as a desperate puppet. Unlike Castro, Romania’s communist dictator denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and won worldwide respect.

    Perhaps Brathwaite, a teacher in 1949 Britain, had the same problem as US teachers 70 years later? When your dealing with lower-class kids from troubled backgrounds, it’s like trying to de-brainwash a cult member. These kids have been taught that it’s cute to be stupid, and that insults have to be avenged, and that you get respect by being bad. Think of all the White (or educated Black) teachers who keep saying “no, it’s not okay to shoot someone” and the kid is never convinced. It took Brathwaite a while to convince the girls that skankiness is not a turn-on.

    I found the book much better than the movie, in part because Sidney Poitier’s acting style is annoying. The fact that Brathwaite is not an American is a big help, because the social class dynamic plays a big part. During my time in the UK, I found that class differences were a taboo subject that were only mentioned in the occasional comedy. It’s a sore point in the UK, whether Cockney accents are acceptable or not, and whether proper speech means polished vowels. If you go into the courts, you’ll hear the judges and barristers all speaking with refined posh accents, no low-class drawls in the court. Go into a US court, and you’ll hear judges with Staten Island accents. You’ll hear low-class accents among police chiefs, judges, army officers, doctors, and politicians. They’ll wear it like a badge of honor.