The Island of Humanity

The commercialism of “Black Friday” alone is enough to make me want to avoid it, but with modern online shopping it’s difficult to understand why anyone bothers.  I guess the special “in store only” discounts draw people in, but I have a small family of thrifty people, so lining up outside of a Wal-Mart doesn’t interest me much.  However, Half-Price Books (HPB) had a black Friday special that did interest me.  HPB’s deal was that the first 100 people in line at any location got a free reusable shopping bag with a $5 gift card inside except for one “lucky” bag that had a $100 gift card, you got a coupon good on black Friday only, and a free calendar with any purchase.  Also, the stores opened at 7:00am, rather than some insane 4:00am opening, so arriving at HPB this morning was similar to getting to work early.  I arrived at Richardson’s small HPB at 6:40 (rather than the giant ware-house sized Dallas location that I was sure would have 300+ people lined up outside) and got at the back of a long line.  Once we got inside the store, 4 people who had been in line after me received free shopping bags: I was the 96th person in line!

During the 20 minutes I waited, I chatted with some of the other people in line.  There was a mother who’s teenage son had taken a seasonal job at the mall and had to get to arrive at work at 3:00am that morning to get ready for the rush at his store  We talked about the sort of jobs we had had as teenagers, how spending money took on a whole new meaning when you could price something in terms of the number of hours you had to work at a crappy job.  I mentioned that I had grown-up in Illinois and had detasseled and pollenated corn for a seed company one summer.  A grandfather in line with his grandson mentioned that he too was from Illinois (the Chicago suburbs) and had cousins from Iowa who had done the same sort of work as teenagers.  I unzipped my jacket to show my Chicago Bears sweatshirt “Bear Down!” I said.  The grandfather lived in western Texas now but he was in Dallas because wife had had surgery earlier in the week.  I wished his wife well and said I hoped the surgery outcome was positive.  He said it was.  His grandson looked to be of middle school age, but was still friendly and talkative, rather than grumpy and sullen as many kids in that age group can be.  An African-American father and son were in line and talking with the mother I had talked to earlier.  The father looked well built and strong and was wearing a jacket with the name of a Judo club on the back.  His son had on a letterman style jacket with the USA and Japanese national flags on the back.  I wondered if they practiced judo together and if the father was an instructor, but the line started to move forward and I never got a chance to ask.

I was almost sad to go into the store...it was fun chatting with people in line.  In 20 minutes I had found and island of humanity in the sea of black Friday commercialism.  I’m glad I went out this morning!

Book 10 of 13 of 2013: Diary of an Early American Boy 1805, by Eric Sloane

I haven't been reading or writing as much as I was hoping to so far this year, but here's where I stand:

1. Born Standing Up

2. The Snowman

3. Hindusim A very Short Introduction
4. Borders of Infinity
5. The Coma
6. Buddhism A Concise Introduction
7. Child 44
8. The Emigrants II Unto a Good Land
9. Vagabond Volume 1 (French Translation of a Japanese Manga Comic)
10. Diary of an Early American Boy 1805
11. Never Coming Back: A Novel (My first Kindle loan from my mom)
12. The Kite Runner

Now onto this book!

Did you read "My side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George when you were in elementary school?  I did, and I loved it.  That book is about a young boy who goes to live in the Catskills on his in own the wild.  He builds a shelter in a tree, hunts and fishes, captures and trains a Peregrine Falcon, and generally is a boy-scout-bad-ass.  The story contains wonderful details on how he creates his life in the woods, and to a boy who would eventually grow up to be an engineer, this was heaven.  The "how-to" aspect of the details easily engages a child who wants to know how everything works.

"Diary of an Early American Boy" contains many of the same details.  In fact, that's what most of the book is: a detailed description of how a farmer in New England would have lived shortly after the revolutionary war.  It's a History Channel special in book form and I would have loved it as a kid.

Eric Sloane makes the comment in the story that "in those days" people took pride in making their own belongings and fixing something that was broken rather than running out and buying something new: because often they couldn't.  This comment struck a chord with me: mass consumerism irritates me, even though I know I participate as much as anyone else. 

I have an electric tea kettle that my sister got for me as a Christmas gift back when I was attending grad school.  Since growing in to a coffee snob, I started using it several times a day, when the mechanism that switches off the heating element once the water is boiling stopped working, I started to jump at the opportuniy to spend $100 on a new kettle with a built in thermometer and a spout specially designed for pour-over coffee brewing but I had just finished Sloane's book at the time and I took his words to heart...also, it was a gift from my sister.

So...it's working again now and I'm $100 richer in savings :-)

Le Tour and happy birthday U.S.A.!

One of my favorite American pro cyclists was cut from the Tour on Tuesday.  Riding in his first Tour de France, Ted King was caught up in a crash on the very first stage.  He suffered a separated shoulder, but still rode his bike the last 7 miles or so into the finish.  After visiting the hospital, he started and finished the 97 mile 2^nd stage, started and finished the 90 mile 3rd stage, and started the TTT (Team Time Trial) on the 4^th stage.

For my non-cyclist friends, a TTT is a special stage where each team races by themselves over the course (usually less than 40km).  They ride in a straight line so each rider on the team can take a turn at the front pushing through the wind while the others rest.  This type of racing takes a great deal of coordination and focus.  However, because of his shoulder, Ted couldn't ride his regular TT bike and had to use his road bike fitted with aero bars.  Because of the last minute switch, the timing chip was not added onto the road bike. 

At the start of the TTT, Ted was dropped almost right away by his team, and they had to push on without him.  He rode his bike alone along the 15km course at an average speed of 28mph at an average power of 365 watts and finished in 32:24 (with a separated shoulder) per his SRM power meter computer.

http://t.co/bebYFMBL0e

Because the timing chip was missing, the race judges had to base his time on visual observation of when he crossed the line and credited him with a time of 32:32 (I have yet to see a photo that shows this, but maybe one came up).  The fact that his power meter showed 32:24 doesn’t matter.  To make the cut, he had to finish within 125% of the winning team’s time.  The official time was 7 seconds short.

Ted is a domestique rider.  His job is not glamorous, and his function is that of a team player without much personal glory.  His job is to sit at the front of the peloton for long periods and keep the breakaway riders from getting too far ahead.  This allows his super-sprinter teammate Peter Sagan to swoop in at the finish and steal the win.  In a grand tour (Ted has ridden the Giro D’Italia twice), this often amounts to riding as hard as you can for several hours, falling to the back, and then riding up a mountain before you get up tomorrow and do it again.

Ted’s mother and father flew into France and arrived after the TTT to see him race his first Tour, but he had already been cut and couldn’t start the 5^th stage.  Ted’s father is a stroke survivor, and it is not easy for him to travel to Europe.  In support of his father, Ted leads a charity bike event every year for the Krempels Center: a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people living with brain injury from trauma, tumor or stroke.

http://kingchallenge.org/king-connection/

Although I have absolutely no sense of what it is like to be a professional bike racer, I always identified with this 30-year-old American who graduated college with a degree in economics and writes slightly nerdy blog posts about, for example, a great new recipe for pumpkin soup.  Here is someone, I feel, who is representing us fellow US citizens quite well over in France right around the birthday of our country. 

Happy birthday U.S.A.!

Book 7 of 2013: Child 44, by Tom Robert Smith

Book 7 of 2013: Child 44, by Tom Robert Smith

At the recommendation of my Mom, I jumped back into a "thriller novel" sooner than I had planned (also, I'm way behind on write-ups).

What struck my mom and I about this book was it's depiction of Stalinist Russia.  It's what the children of her generation feared as they practiced air raid drills at school.  For me I kept thinking about how the life that was depicted made me think of "1984."  I cannot imagine living a life ruled by fear.  I don't know how you could live with a clean conscious because the only way to protect against being stabbed in the back was to always be preparing to stab someone else in the back.  I don't what to ever have to live that way, and I'm pretty sure that it would break me.  I'm just not made for that.

While reading I was reminded of a friend who's family immigrated from Ukraine when she was in high school.  Her father, a professor, was unable to find work.   I asked if it was hard to find university jobs and she replied nonchalantly that jobs were easy to get if you had the money to bribe people.  The ease with which she made this statement really made me think about how sheltered a life I lead.  If, during an interview, the interviewer implied that I should bribe them I can imagine being so personally offended that I would stand up and walk out.  "How dare you sir to imagine that I would lower my self to such a level!" 

The opening 2/3 of the book captivated me like a kick in the stomach.  The horrifying nature of the being a government agent trying to believe what you were doing was ultimately for the good of the whole society, discovering evidence of gruesome crimes that did not "officially" happen, and the torture of innocent suspects made keep reading well past bedtime.  Then...there's a happy ending!  WTF?  OK, maybe not a rainbows and puppies happy ending, but there's a detectable shift in tone that made me feel let down.  The novel draws from the exploits of an actual killer, but is a work of fiction, so I don't mind holding Smith accountable for the "False" taste left by the novel's ending. 

Book 3 of 2013: Hinduism A very Short Introduction, by Kim Knott

I imagine that many yuppie types, like me, think of yoga only as American yoga classes: mostly geared towards fitness types with a few new-age type people sprinkled in.  I’ve only been to a few yoga classes, and did find it interesting from a physical perspective, but never really thought too much about any spiritual aspects.  I did not know until reading this book that what I thought of as “yoga” is actually Hatha Yoga, and along with Karma Yoga, the path of action, Raja yoga, the royal path (deep and profound meditation), Jnana yoga, the path of knowledge, and other types of yoga form one of the 6 philosophical systems called Darshana that are present in Hinduism.

For someone who is used to the highly structured nature of Western Christianity, Hinduism now appears to me as more of a regional culture that varies all over India and other parts of southeast Asia.  These variations all appear to have common threads, such as the divinely revealed Vedic scriptures, but the text gives examples of how the emphasis that is placed on which text, or which avatar (Krishna, Shiva, etc) is chiefly recognized as the incarnation of the godhead is not assured.  Knott raises questions regarding whether Hinduism is a religion, a regional culture, polytheistic, monotheistic, and touches on how Hinduism has influenced and been influenced by modern India, women, and the world outside of it's traditional geographical reaches.

To be clear, this is a 120 page book that I can imagine might be assigned as a quick read in the first week of a One-Oh-One college class.  More than anything, this Cliff-Notes-ish little $3 HPB impulse buy made me want to learn more about something I already had an interest in.  Reading this sort of book only made me more aware of how little I know.

Here are some of my favorite bits:

• The Ramayana television teries was a prime-time soap opera re-telling of an epic tale of the same name that was central to Hinduism (the epic, not the soap opera), and from what I gathered, it was the "Dallas" of India.
• When the Maharaja of Jaipur was invited to the coronation of Edward the VII in London, he took dried fruit, rice, cows, water from the Ganges, and even dirt from India along on a ritually consecrated ship for the journey.  These preparations allowed him to maintain his sacred person, fulfill his duty, and keep his subjects out of potential harm.
• "Tat tvam asi!"  is a Sanskrit phrase that is translated as "That's how you are!"  from the Chandogya  Upanishad (one of several Sacred Upanishads).  The phrase comes from a son being told by a father to drink from each corner of a container of water that has had salt placed in it.  The salt is everywhere, and it encapsulates the idea that the self  of each person is the essence of all other people and of the world and is all one life-force.  Naturally, not all schools of Hindu thought agree with this...

I don't know that I would recommend this book in particular to any random person, but I will recommend grabbing a book you think you might have only read if it were assigned back in college.  The book may be the academic equivalent of an episode  of  PBS' NOVA, but I love NOVA! and watching that still beats watching a re-run of "When Zoo Animals Attack IV" in my not so humble opinion :-)

Book 2 of 2013: The Snowman, by Jo NesbØ

Book 2 of 2013: The Snowman, by Jo NesbØ (Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett)

Good thriller, and I liked it, but I have to say that it didn't completely blow me away.  There’s a hard-nosed cop with issues, a serial killer, the story has twists, and it is thrilling…but it’s supposed to be, right?  I used to like reading mystery / thriller novels a lot, but reading this didn't make me want to run out and start one of his other novels right away.  However, it may be that my tastes have changed, and I certainly think it’s a fine example of its genre.

More than anything else, I would describe this book as “cinematic.” I couldn't help but keep envisioning the scenes in a movie seat in a dark theater.  Peppered throughout the novel are quick scene flips where an action or conversation is continued right through the two scenes, albeit with different characters or situations.  My favorite example is when Harry, the cop, cannot sleep, and gets up to listen to the radio and hear that George W. has been reelected.  He climbs back into bed and flips his covers over his head in lighthearted despair.  The scene flips and Jonas, a boy whose mother has gone missing and is suspected to be murdered, flips his own covers off his head when he hears a noise and is terrified.  Was she murdered?   Is the murderer back?  The novel moves from lighthearted to tense with the flip of a duvet.

Cinematic? Or have I been watching too many movies, and rather than this novel being “like a movie” are movies produced to be “like a well-written thriller?”

1-2-3

My first exposure to a waltz was in the animated Disney movie "Sleeping Beauty."  My mother explained to me that in a waltz you counted to 3 over and over again.

I know you.  I

walked with you 

once upon a dream.

I may have been 6 or 7 when my mother, my sister, and I performed this waltz as a trio at a recital given by students of The Conservatory of Central Illinois: my mother on piano, my sister on flute, and me on the snare drum and high-hat symbol.  Sounds crazy, but my mother had bought me fan brushes for the occasion  and I had been taught how to sweep them over the drum head to create a beat out of swishing sounds.  I thought those fan brushes were pretty cool.

I've got this song in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgCukvmi_4g

A waltz in a minor key: sad and mournful.  I know it's obvious that a song titled "the Sad Waltz" would make someone feel this way, but the more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems.

In high school when I first saw my band director conduct a 3/4 time piece as a single beat and in struck me how a waltz is a truly a repetition.  Yes, in 4/4, 4 leads back to 1, but there are 2 down beats.  In a waltz, 2 and 3 just lead back to 1 and that's it.  One of the most depressing parts of life is when you are in stuck in a rut: the lack of change leads to a depressed feeling and it seems like nothing will break you out of it.  1 causes 2 - 3, but then there's nowhere to go but back to 1.

There can be safety and familiarity in repetition.  A calmness.  I suppose it's best though if the safety and familiarity is leading to to something new.  In life you've got to hope there's a movement with the words "allegrissimo con brio" just up ahead.