Solomon's Secret Arts

Paul Kleber Monod’s book starts out on a humorous note. The alchemists of the middle ages were after the legendary “philosopher’s stone” that would turn base metals into gold. The Protestant enlightenment of the time was ripe for a pipe dream like this, and even the kind of England got involved. It didn’t work, but along the way the alchemists discovered new alloys, pigments, and many other metal-based chemicals that are still in use today.

     Now let’s look at John Webster, alchemist and astrologer. He spoke out against witchcraft in in England, while enjoying the attention of people fascinated by his kooky scientific studies. Keep in mind that these famous scholars were all upper-class Englishmen, and they wanted to keep all the credit for themselves. In fact most of the great scientists, writers, and explorers of the era were from the upper classes, not the lower ones. But the author tells how this would end.

    The American Revolution really wounded the confidence of the British. Into that era came Ebeneezer Sibly, who wrote a bestselling book on mysticism. He published the names of “demons” that only he knew about, gathered from “texts” that only he’d seen. He had his own printer to churn it out, and aimed it at lowbrow readers, releasing the book in the form of installments that the poor could afford. He used this market to sell his own quack medicines.

    Today we have horror writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and countless others, some of whom write stories for paperbacks that you see in the airport news stand. A genre that was once seen as fact is now popular fiction. If Stephen King had written ‘Salem’s Lot in 1650, he could’ve claimed it was true and everyone would’ve believed it.

Human Rights In Our Own Backyard

The Us Constitution makes things clear; the religious clergy can’t run the show, and the military can’t either. But there’s no prohibition against rich men controlling things. The chapter Preying on the American Dream is all about lenders and their subprime loans in poor (often black) neighborhoods. Throughout the USA, you’ll find run-down neighborhoods full of small houses, often at the “bottom” where the floods are, or on “the other side of the tracks.” Less affluent families want smaller homes, but these are often built in the physically less desirable areas. If you go into a “nice” neighborhood, like Bergenfield (New Jersey) you’ll see that the safe streets have large two-story houses. The small ones are all built on the main road, with constant traffic noise, and the danger of a kid being hit by a car. The reason is simple; big houses cost more to build, and nobody wants to spend $250,000 on a house in an unsafe area. Now there are empty foreclosed houses in Bergenfield, because the banks want too much money. If you’re willing to pay $100,000 for a small home, you have to find another area.

The chapter Food Not Bombs discusses dumpster divers who provide free meals to the homeless. The book brings up the debate over whether food is an entitlement that should be provided for free (like free school lunch) or a privilege that you pay for. Housing is another debate of entitlement versus privilege; after Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans, FEMA wanted everyone out of their trailers by 2009, but the old houses still had no running water.

In the post-9/11 America you have the Homeland Security department, with its massive budget eating into our tax dollars, and the terror suspects being dealt with heavy-handed tactics. It seems that the more desperate the government gets, the more they resort to extreme methods.

The Morenci Marines

1960’s, nine small town boys enlist in the US Marines, not unusual even today. Small towns have often furnished a large share of enlistees in our history. But the boys from Morenci weren’t just looking for adventure or the GI Bill, they really wanted out. There’s was a company town, where the only jobs were in the mines, and there was almost no opportunity. They were a motley group; Robert was half Mexican and his father had deserted the family, while Joe was from a traditional Navajo family and his father was a medicine man. The nine could all ride horses and shoot, just the kind of young men that Teddy Roosevelt would’ve recruited 66 years earlier.

The book doesn’t mince on the issue of Vietnam as a “poor man’s war.” Local Mormons usually got deferrals so they could travel as missionaries after high school, and since they often married young, they were even further from being drafted. Single men, like the nine from Morenci, got drafted first. As for college deferment, it was out of the question for these young men with no money. The Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard were safer than the Army or the Marines, but they didn’t need as many people. Most of the troops in Vietnam came from the Army and USMC, so they recruited more heavily.

The recruiters for the service were all locals, so they knew who to look for. More important was the way they could appeal to local sensibilities. When asked why he’d prefer the Marines, one recruit said “they’re going to draft me anyway, so I’d rather serve with motivated people.”

Indian Resilience and Rebuilding

Native American activist Russel Means once said that the “tribal governments” were in fact alien to his people. It was not the natural way they’d done business historically, never along the lines of American democracy, with voting and representatives. The first part of this book is about the way in which the reservations didn’t work, with the parceling of land among the tribes leading to failure. Land wasn’t allotted to families, and war booty was shared. Great leaders derived power from how much charity they could give, and a warrior’s wealth was in the respect he got.

    Donald Flixico’s book Indian Resilience and Rebuilding is based on extensive research, and he does a great job explaining the 150 year effort to survive under the US system. Some benefited from the Federal aid packages, others didn’t, and some would accept or resist efforts to educate Native American children in the US model. The AIM brought attention to these problems, but eventually split. There were some leaders like Wilma Mankiller who made strides in bringing in clean water, sewage lines, jobs, education, and fighting alcoholism. But the Cherokee Nation has had trouble for years with corruption, and casinos can’t cure everything.

   Casinos, crime, family violence, repatriation, and reparations are all covered here. But most of the problems seem to involve a lack of strong leaders to get things done. I also wonder if the problem has to do with nomadic tribes settling into permanent homes, as is the case in Saudi Arabia. With a modern welfare state, the old way of sharing the prize disappears, and the family heads can lose their standing, leading to depression. If modern ways meet traditional society, the women may object to traditional roles, and could that lead to conflict? With any kind of modern government, you’re going to attract corruption, and the people running for office may have axes to grind. Perhaps Russel Means was right in that modern government systems would not work on a reservation.

    

    I would not recommend reading this book alone. Other texts on Native American philosophy should be read along with it to get a broader understanding of the clash between traditional societies and modern habits.

Women Of Faith: Chicago's Nuns and the Foundation of a Religious Community

Chicago is a city with character. It gave us great writers, great artists, great musicians, and unfortunately some notorious criminals. Like most US cities, it was a boomtown that grew in spurts, and when urbanization happens to quickly, you get all the problems of a city. Fortunately the McGirr sisters (Mary Vincent and Mary Frances Xavier) arrived in the 1840’s to open hospitals and schools, before Chicago would be renowned. They were there through the Civil War, the great fire of 1871, and all of the great and terrible things that Chicago would be renowned for.

Women of Faith begins with the nuns’ entry into American life in a time of anti-Catholic sentiment. Nuns were seen as strange curiosities, but they weren’t the subject of attacks or anything like that. By the time the Civil War began there was a massive Irish Catholic presence in the military and the nuns provided nursing care for Union soldiers, even aboard the ships heading south.

According to the events of this book, Convents seems to have been a place for women who wanted careers and not marriage. By entering as a postulant, a woman would have a place to live, a job, and a chance to go to college. There was greater pressure on women to marry and have children in the pre-lib days, and even if you kept your job after you married, you’d still have to cook and clean for your husband on top of your job, and once you had kids, forget about a career. Convents weren’t luxurious, and the nuns probably weren’t paid much for their work, and they only got to take two college classes a semester, but it was better for some than living with your parents or being married to a jerk. And the convent schools were run by nuns, so there wouldn’t be a nasty male principal to deal with.

Perhaps the point of this great book is that religious groups provided most of the services for education, health, and child care in the days when the government didn’t. Today, fewer women want to be nuns, and a lot of Catholic schools in Chicago (and other cities) are closing. Even the Jewish schools went the same way, and there are many buildings in the city that used to house Jewish schools or vocational centers, now empty or turned into apartments.

This is a great book for the study of US history. The Sisters of Mercy were an integral part of life in the USA, particularly Chicago and other Midwestern cities, from the prairie days right to the crumbling of the cities, right up into the present, where parents are struggling to get their kids into the best school they can.

Caring Democracy

In 1991 there were articles in Europe’s press about the aging population. How would 1 million thirty-somethings care for five million 80 year olds? You’d have medical bills, hospice costs, transportation costs, and countless other expenses in caring for the elderly, all on the shoulders of people who have children to support. But there is an advantage; you’ll have more mentors to care for the younger generation.

Caring Democracy discusses the origins of the idea that the politician is responsible for the nation’s social progress, as well as economic. Though not mentioned in this book, you can see examples with New York City in the 1960’s, when the governor, Nelson Rockefeller, increased funding for public arts and housing. Then again, he did create the Rockefeller drug laws and their outrageously high sentences for drug offenders, but I guess every politician is allowed to make a mistake.

The author of this book refers to Marion Young’s “social connection” to show how easy it is to contribute to the problem by hypocrisy. For instance, a group of university administrators might claim their school is dedicated to progress, while at the same time their sports team’s jerseys are made with sweatshop labor. The hypocrite liberal is unfortunately rather common today, especially in New York City. Take as an example the Village Voice newspaper, which claims to care about the people, but in the last 20 years got the bulk of its advertising through ads for prostitution. In addition, the Village Voice never made any real effort to recruit and train minority writers, which is exactly what Andrew Young did with his City Sun from 1984-1996.

What Caring Democracy doesn’t answer, however, is the reasons for the US v Europe discrepancy in the aspect of caring for the population. Countries like Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands have fewer people to care for, in addition to them being smaller. Their defense budget is miniscule compared to that of the USA, so there’s more money to set aside for social welfare. Lastly, these European countries are homogenous, so there’s no debate going on in the legislature about minority issues. Here in the USA, politicians waste time trying to prevent same-sex couples from having civil unions, then they waste time trying to ban hijabs in courtrooms, then they’ll honk like a bunch of geese about how they want to remove Darwin’s theories from the public school curriculum. While all this is going on, teenage girls of their own faith and color are getting pregnant, and forget about birth control, because if there’s anything more wicked and immoral than believing in evolution, it’s getting an abortion.

The History of Somalia

Somalia has an unusual history. It’s a multiracial and multilingual strip of coastline, once an important trading hub for land and sea travel, and now it’s a mess. It went from being a city of business and commerce, perfectly safe and desirable (if a bit on the dirty side) but now it’s a lawless place of anarchy. This book tells the colorful history of the nation, starting from the ancient days to present.

Njoku’s book blames Somalia’s instability on colonialism’s tampering with nature. Prior to the Italian invasion, there were nomadic tribes, farmers, and city dwellers, all of whom coexisted while keeping their distance, just like the rest of Africa and the Middle East. The nomads needed grain from the farmers, the craftsmen in the cities needed milk and meat from the nomads, and in short order, there was synergy. Then the Italians drew the map to cut off grazing routes, and when they left, the new borders made no provisions for the nomads, who had to travel to graze their animals, nor the tribes, who couldn’t always coexist side by side. This led to friction.

The second problem blamed on colonialism is the lack of education. The Italians and British didn’t prepare the Somalis for independence, so when they left, the country lacked infrastructure, schools, and communications. India didn’t exactly prosper under British rule either, but at least that country was left with schools, newspapers, courts, and plenty of railroad. The reason for India’s opportunities, however, have a lot to do with resources. The British needed railroads and harbors to take out all the tea, cotton, indigo, and other cash crops. Somalia, on the other hand, was of no use to Britain with regard to crops or resources. The Italian and British colonists had no incentive to build anything there, and when they left the country, they left nothing behind.

When Ibn Batuta visited Muqdasha (now Mogadishu) he said that the city stunk from fish and camel meat, but other than that, the princes who ruled the city kept everyone honest. Travelers were well treated, and business was good. Nowadays you have a failed state that can’t provide basic services, and those with navigational skills have turned to piracy. Not that I blame them, because from what I’ve read in Njoku’s book, Somalia has been a wreck for the past 40 years and the future looks pretty bleak.