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A CHILLING VIEW

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Death of the Adversary: A Novel

Written by: Hans Keilson, Ivo Jarosy

Narration by: James Clamp

“The Death of the Adversary” is a chilling view of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Hans Keilson never mentions the word Jew or Hitler in his novel about the 1930s but notions of history inform the listener of what Keilson is writing about. Names are not named because Keilson writes the story while hiding during WWII. He flees Germany to join the Dutch resistance when denied the opportunity to practice medicine as a Jew.

The main character of Keilson’s novel refuses to believe his father or acquaintances at work and school of the threat of the unnamed adversary in Germany. This anti-hero pursues his life as though the threat of Nazism would pass without affecting his life. However, as events unfold, the anti-hero hears the radio voice of “…the Adversary” and begins to understand the underlying murderous intent of a charismatic political actor who will turn German lives upside down.

words matter — The realized terror is that spoken words by one actor can lead to a genocidal mania on the part of a chosen people.

Keilson writes of a speech given by “…the Adversary” to give the reader/listener some insight to the power of words in the hands of a consummate actor. It is a terrifying realization both to the anti-hero and the reader/listener of Keilson’s book. The realized terror is that spoken words by one actor can lead to a genocidal mania on the part of a chosen people.

There is relevance in Keilson’s story for events today. Pundits and politicians use words to victimize and terrify immigrants, and minorities in the same despicable language of yesterday.

Next, Keilson tells a story of a meeting at a friend’s house where several young men congregate to discuss a local incident participated in by one of the young men. The anti-hero’s friend is a woman who is employed at his place of work. One of the young men is her brother. It appears the young men are relatively close friends that choose to allow the anti-hero into their conversation. One of the youngest tells of his recruitment in an obscure organization. He volunteers to go on a night mission under the organization’s leader.

The recruitment is for a team of hooligans to desecrate the graves of a cemetery which one presumes is a particular ethnic graveyard. The purpose is to defile the memory of a particular graveyard and the common beliefs which it represents. Some of the participants are ambivalent about the mission but go along with the leader’s direction. Head stones are overturned and graves are shat on.

GRAVEYARD DESECRATION — The anti-hero of Kielson’s story volunteers to go on a night mission under the organization’s leader. The recruitment is for a team of hooligans to desecrate the graves of a cemetery which one presumes is a particular ethnic graveyard.

BATTERED SUIT CASE — Keilson recounts the love and guilt of his anti-hero by explaining how his father prepares a suitcase for himself, his wife, and his son.

Keilson recounts the love and guilt of his anti-hero by explaining how his father prepares a suitcase for himself, his wife, and his son. The suitcase for the parents is preparation for the knock on the door in the middle of the night. The parents do not plan to leave their country in spite of the danger which the father knows. The suitcase for the son is for him to escape the country. The son seems resigned to let life happen. He is an anti-hero that is prepared to let events control his life; even though the consequence may be the loss of his parents.

The final chapters offer the anti-hero the opportunity to kill “…the Adversary”. He chooses not to and history shows his decision to be both right and wrong. It is right in light of the ultimate death of “…the Adversary” because of actions of others to stop his reign of terror. It seems wrong because of the death of many (particularly the anti-hero’s parents), and his failure to confront “…the Adversary” before it was too late.

One is compelled to wonder about oneself in listening to Keilson’s story. Who will choose to confront the adversary? Who will “go along to get along”?

REDEPLOYMENT

Commanders say we do not shoot children, but children are killed. Long range artillery and drones mask the consequence of killing.

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Redeployment

Written by: Phil Klay

Narration by: Craig Klein

PHIL KLAY (AMERICAN WRITER, MARINE VETERAN WHO SERVED IN ANBAR IRAQ 1.2007-2.2008)

“Redeployment” is a work of fiction. It is written by Phil Klay, a Marine officer who served in Iraq in 2007/2008. (Klay is the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for fiction for stories written in this book.) “Redeployment” is about military’ enlistment, deployment, redeployment, and combat.

recruiter — There is an unpaid price for a military recruit who goes into combat. The price is unseen and unknown until after it is experienced. Those who first join have no idea what is in store for them when placed in a circumstance of killing or being killed.

Joining the military, particularly when one is in their teens or early twenties, is often an escape.

Enlistment is often a way to escape (or transition) from parental control, poverty, or life’s rudderlessness. For a few, military enlistment is an adventure, a career, an opportunity to get in shape, a chance to see the world. For others, joining may be a family tradition, a romantic notion of defending one’s country, a desire to impress parents, guardians, or friends.

One of Klay’s characters joins because of financial help offered by the service to pay for an education; another character joins because of family tradition, another because it impresses his father. Klay’s stories offer insight by explaining most reasons are too simple, or clearly misunderstood by new recruits.

VIETNAM WAR — Klay’s stories show that training for combat is not being in combat. Military training creates a sense of team entitlement, i.e., of being tougher, more unified, more capable and important than civilians. Training is meant to break-down individualism. Military training masks the humanity of anyone that is not part of the team.

Orders are orders. Hierarchy of command is inviolable. If a commander orders flattening of a town, soldiers are expected to act without thinking and remember without conscience. Soldiers are able to act by dehumanizing those outside of their team. In Vietnam humans become gooks. In Iraq humans become towel heads. These are tricks of propaganda that allow short-term actions but often fail to leave soldiers’ consciences.

Klay tells the story of a soldier who wants to know how many of an enemy are killed in a bombardment. The soldier asks if there was an investigation. The commander says no and sees no reason. The soldier visits a behind-the-lines’ command post which cares for the dead. He asks if a team will be sent to the site that has been bombarded. The NCO asks if Americans were killed. The soldier says no. The NCO answers the question–“No, there is no investigation because we only concern ourselves with our own”.

BASEBALL IN THE VIETNAM WAR — Klay tells the story of the American financier that donates baseball equipment for Marines to teach Iraqi children how to play baseball. The request goes up and down military channels despite the ludicrous misapprehension of what is really happening in Iraq. A Marine officer is ordered to comply with the request to mollify the uniformed or ignorant financier’s request.

Another story is written about a civilian contractor hired to build a waterpower station in an Iraqi community. The Marine assigned to oversee the utility installation is told by a local Iraqi that the pumping station being built will create too much pressure and blow-up the plumbing in town. The Marine explains the problem to the civilian contractor, but it does not stop the project. It is an assignment that is being paid by the American government whether it works or not. All the contractor is concerned about is completing the job and being paid. Klay offers more stories, i.e., equally appalling–examples of wasted dollars and efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Klay writes of the misunderstandings that compound America’s mistakes in Iraq. There is the story of the Egyptian American recruit that speaks Egyptian Arabic but does not know Iraqi Arabic and must learn the difference on his own because the military believes there is no difference.

The character Klay creates who oversees the water plant construction and an Iraqi baseball assignment is also responsible for producing Iraqi jobs. This Marine’s civilian subcontractors are often ill-equipped to do what needs to be done. One of the opportunities is farming but the civilian subcontractor assigned to help knows nothing about farming.

Another story is of an Iraqi who starts a women’s clinic to help women in Iraq who need medical assistance. However, because her clinic is not creating enough jobs, there is little financial assistance to expand the service. Klay implies Iraq is a “Bizarro World” where no one seems to communicate understandably, and most act without accomplishment.

BIZZARO WORLD OF WAR

Klay implies the experience of becoming a Marine saturates the being of some soldiers. Their experience in combat and the comradeship of belonging compels re-enlistment and/or redeployment. Being a civilian becomes too unstructured. In some cases, Klay suggests civilian life is threatening to a soldier with experience of combat. Some redeployed soldiers become command officers that live in a world of only “us and them” with all of “them” as expendable sub-human beings.

America’s pending departure from Iraq is a betrayal of “you broke it, you fix it”. America tried and failed. In that failure, the realization is–“the fix” can only be made by Iraqi leaders. Iraq’s dilemma is America’s forgotten lesson of Vietnam.

(Baghdad Bombing kills 32 and wounds over 100 on January 21, 2021.) Baghdad Bombin kills 32 and wounds over 100 1.12.21

In a final story, Klay writes of a Marine veteran horribly disfigured by an IED. A Marine that joined and served in the same place and at the same time as the disfigured veteran is a close friend. The uninjured friend stays in touch with his fellow ex-Marine. They recall old times. They are close friends, but the IED has so profoundly changed their relationship that the friendship has devolved into a friendship of un-equals. Intimate civilian relationships, taken for granted by both before disfigurement, are now probabilistically experienced by only one of the friends. Klay’s stories show that combat is a psychological, often physical life changing experience.

Klay is a veteran. He seems to be saying it is important to understand what it means to become a soldier before signing up. “Redeployment” is neither right or wrong, but it can be right and wrong. The best civilians and soldiers can do is “try to do right”.

A MISOGYNIST SEA

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A Room of One’s Own

Written by: Virginia Woolf

Narration by: Juliet Stevenson

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941, BRITISH AUTHOR, A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME)

Virginia Woolf is a woman outside of time. As Woolf implies in the early twentieth century, women are drowning in a misogynist sea. Woolf is born when female inequality breaches the existential threat with a first wave; i.e. Women’s Suffrage in 1920. The preeminent feminist, Betty Friedan, is just born (actually, 1921). (Friedan later writes “The Feminine Mystique”–published in 1963.)

“A Room of One’s Own” is a contemplation on why women are underrepresented as great poets or fiction writers. With the exception of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Woolf suggests there are no 19^th century women renowned for fiction. Apocryphally, the unlikely story of Lincoln saying “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this Great War” is an apt coda for the insignificance of the public’s view of women writers.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886, AMERICAN POET, PRODUCED 1,800 POEMS IN 40 HANDBOUND VOLUMES)

(As one listens to her complaint, one thinks about Emily Dickinson. However, Dickenson did have a room of her own.)

Woolf wittily skewers male paragons of the pen and their misogynist comments about women. She sets the table for an explanation of why there is no female Shakespeare’, erudite Johnson’, or Longfellow word smiths.

Woolf’s point is that women had no money because they were dependent on men or family inheritance. Often, young ladies are discouraged from college by their families who feel marriage and bearing of children are their primary duties. Without educational support and few opportunities for gainful employment, women only had money if they inherited it or married a wealthy husband. Without money, there is little opportunity for independence; without money, there is little chance of having “A Room of One’s Own”.

There are many examples to support Woolf’s observation about money and the luxury of contemplation, having a room of your own. Michel de Montaigne’s essays are spectacular observations of life and living but the key to his success is in wealth that allows him time for observation and contemplation of life. He had a room of his own. In Woolf’s lifetime there were few women who had such luxury. Have things changed? Maybe, but #MeToo suggests women’s independence and wealth still involves misogyny.

In the last section of her lecture Woolf notes women write fiction with a mixture of public disdain and admiration. Disdain from implied colorlessness in writing but admiration for a twist in a story that suggests a first-time female author has potential.

Misogyny still roils the sea but more women writers have a room of their own. The second wave is forty years in the future but Friedan steadies the helm-bearing toward equality. At $.79 cents to the dollar in the 21st century, there is still a long way to go.

The frightening prospect of a Taliban government in Afghanistan is more threatening than wage differences in the U.S. The only concession they have recently made is to ban forced marriage of women. This is not to diminish America’s misogynist history but to show how backward and unfair the world can be to women.

However, for realization of potential, Woolf suggests the author needs to have a room of her own to have time to think and reflect. To prove Woolf’s bona fides, she ends “A Room of Her Own” with short stories. They are beautifully written and worthy of the theme of which she writes.

As Aristotle once said, contemplation is the highest form of activity for the soul. Woolf implies great literature; great fiction, and poetry come from authors who have time and a room of their own.

WIRED TO CREATE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

Written by: Scott Barry Kaufman, Carolyn Gregorie

Narration by: Nick Podehl

CAROLYN GREGORIE (SCIENCE WRITER FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST)

SCOTT BARRY KAUFMAN (AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, AUTHOR, SCIENCE WRITER)

The book “Wired to Create” is an internet sensation. It began as an article in the Huffington Post; written by Carolyn Gregorie. Based on the article, she co-writes a book with psychologist Scott Kaufman. The book is promoted as a loss leader (no charge) to attract customers to Google e-books and other internet savvy vendors. The book’s popularity is in the argument that intelligence is only one characteristic of a creative mind. With IQ as only one characteristic of creativity, the field of human subjects who fit the definition of creative is broadened.

PICASSO'S BULL'S HEAD — PICASSO’S BULL’S HEAD

Scientists, inventors, artists, sales people, mechanics, technicians, sports stars, and other unnamed categories of people are “Wired to Create”. This is no revelation. It is not unusual to find friends or acquaintances that are able to think in three dimensions, rotate objects in their mind, come up with solutions to complex problems, or create art out of ordinary things. Some of these creative people are great explainers; others are introverted and non-communicative. Some recall events in perfect detail; others only remember broad outlines. Some create art out of nothing; others say nothing about art but build cathedrals.

ST. SERNIN, TOLOUSE, FRANCE — ST. SERNIN, CATHEDRAL IN TOLOUSE, FRANCE

Kaufman and Gregorie identify some characteristics of creative minds. There is the ability to hold opposing concepts in mind while rendering something never thought of before; i.e. like a work of art that shows planes of a human face from every angle in two dimensions. There is a disruptive quality in a person with a creative mind. That disruption is often seen in school students who cannot sit still, are always talking, and are constantly interrupting class activities. It is the creative teacher who handles the disruption to gain participation of all students, including the disrupter.

Kaufman and Gregorie mention famous creative geniuses like Einstein, Edison, Wozniak, and Jobs who exhibit creativity in varied but similar ways. Einstein may rise above the others because of a creative universality but each exhibit a passion and intensity for what they think and do. Edison and Jobs are super salesmen; Wozniak is a tinkerer; Einstein is a conceptualizer. To varying degrees each practices the others’ skills.

“Wired to Create” notes that creativity is not restricted to either introverts or extroverts. Creativity encompasses all sociological categories. Creativity comes from persistence and resilience; driven by passion.

MIND DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENTS — (Competing theories of learning suggest human brain interaction with environment is too complex to measure; i.e. the way the brain reacts when stimulated by the environment is, at best, an evolving mystery.)

THOMAS EDISION (1847-1931, AMERICAN INVENTOR, BUSINESSMAN CONSIDERED BY SOME TO BE AMERICA'S GREATEST INVENTOR) — THOMAS EDISION (1847-1931, AMERICAN INVENTOR)

The authors note the many failures of creative people; e.g. people like Edison and J. K. Rowling. The authors note that only a handful of Edison’s thousands of patented inventions were successful.

J. K. ROWLING (MOST FAMOUS FOR THE HARRY POTTER SERIES)

Rowling had many publishers turn Harry Potter down until one publisher accepted her work. The tortured personality theory of creativity is addressed by the authors but it is only one of many factors that make people think what they think and do what they do. As noted with Einstein, Edison, Wozniak, Jobs and Rowling not all creative people are aberrantly affected by hyper activity, repeated failure, or intense focus. Kaufman and Gregorie imply some creative people may have tortured personalities but correlation is not causation.

PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903, PAINTER, SCULPTUR) — PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903, PAINTER, SCULPTOR)

Gauguin is financially unsuccessful as an artist in his lifetime because of the public’s rejection of his work. Gauguin’s paintings are sold for millions today. Kaufman and Gregorie imply creativity is no guarantee of money, success, or happiness. Gauguin’s lack of success may have led to use of drugs but it seems as likely that penury and failed acceptance, rather than misunderstood creativity, is the proximate cause of death. Taking drugs is a malady of the uncreative as well as the creative.

Vincent van Gogh, a contemporary of Gauguin, commits himself to an asylum in which he paints one of his most revered works of art, “The Starry Night”. However, like Gauguin, van Gogh is never financially successful. Gauguin and van Gogh succumb to the stresses of life; not because they are creative but because they are poor and unable to cope with their perceived failure.

VINCENT VAN GOGH (ONE OF MANY RENOWNED SELF PORTRAITS BECAUSE VAN GOGH COULD NOT AFFORD MODELS.)

Kaufman and Gregorie broaden the definition of creativity. However, there seems little revelation in their suggestion that creativity comes from intense interest, average or higher IQs, hard work, and persistence in the face of rejection. Talk of left brain, right brain activity, and frontal lobe brain waves are unconvincing physiological origins of creativity. Play theory seems passé. Competing theories of learning suggest human brain interaction with environment is too complex to measure; i.e. the way the brain reacts when stimulated by the environment is, at best, an evolving mystery. Mysteries of the creative mind remain undiscovered.

UNDERRATED MASTERPIECE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Breakfast of Champions

Written by: Kurt Vonnegut

Narration by: John Malkovich

KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007)

The author, Kurt Vonnegut, offers a fascinating glimpse of a mind teetering on, and then falling over the edge of reality into insanity. One might classify “Breakfast of Champions” as a surreal satire but that diminishes its insight to insanity.

JOHN MALKOVICH (ACTOR, DIRECTOR WHO HAS APPEARED IN OVER 70 MOTION PICTURES)

“Breakfast of Champions” is an imaginative and underrated masterpiece. The underestimation is realized by the listener in John Malkovich’s excellent narration.

There are no heroes in “Breakfast of Champions”. There are three main characters. There is the teller of the tale, Kilgore Trout, and Dwayne Hoover.

Vonnegut clearly satirizes the maladies of the American twentieth century but he concretely reveals how wealth, poverty, and escapism grind people down and compel abhorrent, often violent, and insane acts. He exposes the American dream’s illusion of happiness.

In Vonnegut’s story, our Creator is a tinkerer who creates machines that are known as human beings. These human beings are set in motion, endowed with consciousness, and no longer controlled by the Creator. They are machines that follow the laws of physics and are self-sustaining, reincarnating machines that live forever without recollection of past lives.

The teller of the tale is not revealed until the last chapters of the book. It is the Creator of humankind.

Kilgore Trout is a science fiction writer who is invited by an admirer of his books to receive an award, in a coal mining town, for his pornographic science fiction stories. The award is for the greatest writer of all time. Trout is at first reluctant to take the trip to the coal mining town but succumbs to their acclaim for his fame and begins hitchhiking across the country to receive the award.

Dwayne Hoover is one of the richest men in the coal mining town from which Trout is receiving the award. Hoover is an auto dealer. He is the best employer in town, with the best employment package; including employee health plans.

However, the largest employer in town is a coal producer. The coal company is an environmental polluter, low wage provider, and the biggest cause of citizen illness in town.

Trout and Hoover may or may not know each other but the Creator knows what is going to happen when Trout finally arrives. In Trout’s hitchhiking progress he meets fellow machines (people who are coping with life). Their stories are of middle class lives that remind reader/listeners of the passions, weaknesses, and desires of all human beings. At the same time, the Creator explains what it is like for people that live in coal mining towns. There is Hoover’s “girl Friday”, the homosexual piano player, and an artist who is recently awarded $5,000 for a painting. Each machine (person) plays a role in a developing crisis that approaches at the speed of Trout’s hitchhiking progress.

A reader/listener feels bad things are going to happen as the story progresses. Hoover is taking what the Creator calls “bad chemicals”.

At one point Hoover cannot speak except to repeat one word of a sentence said to him by another. Hoover crosses the street and feels, with each step, he is sinking into the earth. Hoover returns to his office, calls his girl Friday, and says he needs her to come with him to a local motel room to relieve a persistent erection. Both Hoover and his girl Friday have lost their spouses; i.e. Hoover’s wife by suicide; girl Friday’s by war. They have been lovers for some time.

Hoover continues taking bad chemicals. The Creator arrives at a bar in town. Trout arrives at the same bar. The piano player is playing. It is somewhat unclear but Hoover shoots the piano player in the back of the head, and bludgeons his girl Friday.

Trout tries to stop the beating of the girl, and the tip of Trout’s finger is bitten off by Hoover. Hoover is arrested. The piano player is dead. Girl Friday is concussed, and Trout has his hand wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. Hoover is taken to jail; girl Friday, the dead piano player, and Trout are on their way to the hospital.

Vonnegut seems to be explaining that money is not happiness. Human beings have free will to be good, bad, morally upright, or insanely brutal.

Having a job that barely offers the basic necessities of life only reinforces machine-like living. Destruction of the environment diminishes those who work for dirty industries and those ancillary businesses that suck off polluter’s productivity. Drugs are a way of escaping reality but they have consequences. Some machines (people) fall off the edge of sanity, become violent, and sometimes murder innocent bystanders.

STEPHEN CRAIG PADDOCK (PERPETRATOR OF THE LAS VEGAS, NEVADA MASSACRE.)

“Breakfast of Champions” is not only a story of the 1970s. It is the story of yesterday’s school shootings, postal syndrome killings, the Paddock atrocity in Las Vegas, and Donald Trump’s delusional attempt to void America’s 2020 Presidential election. Vonnegut suggests a human being, whether there is a Creator or not, has free will. Vonnegut implies humans are choosing to be machines.

THE VITAL QUESTION

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

Written by: Nick Lane

Narration by: Kevin Pariseau

Nick Lane, a biochemist, offers a science driven explanation for the origin of life. A non-scientist listening to Lane’s book may be overwhelmed by technical jargon without some additional research. The additional effort offers a better understanding of Lane’s explanation for a chemical theory of life’s origin. Though Lane’s story is laced with biochemical terms, he occasionally uses words that are understood by all; i.e. he argues the beginning of life comes from rock, water, and carbon dioxide that interact with each other when energy is introduced.

Planet earth is estimated to be four billion plus years old. At earth’s earliest, rock, and water were present. With an earthen core of molten rock, carbon dioxide is created from the interaction between rock and water. Modern evidence of that interaction is observable in

THERMAL VENTS:

Those early elements lead to microscopic unicellular prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) which have no nucleus (a center with a membrane), and only one chromosome (a genetic characteristic). Prokaryotes have DNA and an outer membrane with some of the elements of a bigger cell called eukaryotes.

PROKARYOTES AND EUKARYOTES:

Lane argues that over some period of time the constant motion of prokaryotes leads to a merge between one prokaryote and another to create a eukaryote; i.e. a new cellular formation with a nucleus (an internal element with its own membrane) and some added elemental features. One of the preeminent features of a eukaryote is its ability to become molecularly more complex; i.e. to become multicellular with multi-chromosome capability.

CHEMISTRY AS THE ORIGIN OF LIFE:

Lane argues, along with other biochemists, that the role of energy in the chemical creation of life is misunderstood until more recent times.

Lane reminds listeners of the physics law that says “energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed”. With the growth of eukaryotes, energy became an integral part of cellular function. Adenosine Tri-Phosphate (ATP) became the power plant of the cell.

With a built-in energy source, a race began to create life with permeable cellular membranes that allowed molecular interior change and exterior growth. Interior changes included mitochondrial DNA.

Exterior changes included molecular bonding and sustained energy for evolution.

Lane also explains why sex is important for evolutionary survival. However, he doubts life can be extended beyond the age of 120 without taking the risks of genetic manipulation. Lane’s “…Vital Question” remains a question at the end of his story. If life is just chemistry, where did the first prokaryotes come from? If they came from the big bang, what was there before the big bang?

MOLECULAR BONDING AND ENERGY:

CELL MEMBRANE& ATP (ADENOSINE TRI-PHOSPHATE) TRANSPORT:

ATP, THE POWER PLANT OF THE CELL: BACTERIA AND ARCHAEA (PROKARYOTES)- AND PROTISTS (EUKARYOTES):

THE CAPITALIST VEIL

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Souls of Black Folk

Written by: W. E. B. Du Bois

Narration by: Mirron Willis

W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963, AUTHOR, SOCIOLOGIST, HISTORIAN, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, CO-FOUNDER OF NAACP)

Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism.
Editorial comment in the NYT Sunday edition 5/21/2020 by Roxane Gay.

“The Souls of Black Folk” describes a veil of discrimination that covers the face of white America. Published in 1903, it reflects on the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, America’s reconstruction failures after the civil war, and a veil that fell like an iron curtain between black and white America. It is a veil that distorts the truth of human equality.

Slave Family In Cotton Field near Savannah

W. E. B. Du Bois is a great American who finally abandoned his country late in life because he could no longer tolerate the capitalist consequence of social, political, and economic discrimination. He describes discrimination in “The Souls of Black Folk” as a veil, a fine gauzy material that hides the details of black Americans who have the same potential as white overlords. The details are political, social, and economic discrimination imposed by a majority on a minority. Du Bois identifies that minority as people of color; i.e. specifically black Americans.

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SLAVERY (Slave owner that believed blacks are inherently less equal than whites.)

Du Bois is the first black American to receive a PhD from Harvard University. First he received a bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, a storied black college; went to Harvard to receive a second bachelor’s degree, and on to a PhD. Du Bois studied black history and wrote “The Souls of Black Folk” to explain what it is like to be black in America. He began with the end of the civil war and carries it through 1903 when the book is published.

Du Bois studied black history and wrote “The Souls of Black Folk” to explain what it is like to be black in America.

Du Bois explains how black Americans are treated, how they feel about it, and how they react to it. In the clarity of his writing, Du Bois presumes readers will understand humans, of any color, are the same. Du Bois notes that black Americans are offered freedom without a way of making a living, without education, without any respect by fellow Americans. Though they were no longer slaves by law they remain slaves to potential employers who see them as less equal, and less capable. Du Bois notes blacks are denied the tools of education, opportunity for work at a living wage, and the right to participate in the politics of leadership.

Without money, power, or prestige blacks are left with deception as their only defense against oppression. “Shucking and jiving” became a pejorative description of black behavior without white’s understanding its necessity.

Without money, power, or prestige blacks are left with deception as their only defense against oppression.

Du Bois misunderstood the difference between Russian and Chinese revolutions and American capitalism. The future proved promises of communism were false. This does not change the truth of Du Bois’s realization that a white majority denies minorities with false promises of capitalist equality of opportunity.

It is little wonder that Du Bois wandered to the idealism of communism with its false promise of equality for all. White America gave Negroes little alternative. However, Du Bois misreads history. The revolution of 1917 may have started with a minority of people called Bolsheviks but they were a part of a white majority. They promised a future of plenty to an uneducated population who were members of a majority.

Du Bois clearly shows how black American education, employment, and political participation are subverted at every turn in American history. Du Bois chastises Booker T. Washington for being an apologist for white suppression. Du Bois sees that, though education is improving for black Americans, they are still denied equal opportunity for employment, and are failing to capitalize on the potential of political power. Nearing 90 years of age, Du Bois gives up on America. Ironically, this is in the 1960’s when the Black Panther’s movement is forming.

The inherent nature of man “to be greedy” makes fools of us all.

Du Bois is a great American because he understood how American capitalism undermines core political beliefs like equality of opportunity and the equality of all human beings. Du Bois understood the importance of education, equal economic opportunity, and political power.

Du Bois misunderstood that the drive for money, power, and prestige distorts pursuit of the “good” in all forms of government. Communism, socialism, and capitalism require a Hobson’s choice; i.e. “a choice of taking what is available or nothing at all”. Even for minorities, it seems capitalism offers the best hope because it attempts to regulate the worst parts of human nature.

CREATIVE ADULT

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Words without Music: A Memoir

Written by: Philip Glass

Narration by: Lloyd James

“Words without Music” is a memoir of Philip Glass’s transformation to creative adult. This is a journey taken by every child–with greater and lesser degrees of actualized creativity. Glass explains how love by others transforms his life and why self-actualization is the fountain of creativity. This is certainly not a new revelation. Socrates, through the words of Plato, characterizes self-actualization in the dictum of “know thy self”. Self-actualization is explained as the penultimate goal of life by Abraham Maslow.

Glass recounts his childhood with a description of his ex-Marine father, and school teacher mother. Glass’s father is a small business man who raises his children in a rough New York neighborhood. Strength, determination, and adventurousness come from Glass’s father.

PHILIP GLASS (WITH HIS FATHER, A RECORD STORE OWNER, WHO SENT HIS SON TO HIGH-END MUSIC SCHOOLS)

The soul of Glass’s family is his mother. She is the conservator, the method-of-living key to Glass’s growth as an artist. Glass explains how his father feared little in a neighborhood of gangs; while managing his record business with an iron hand.

Glass learns how to overcome fear in working in his father’s record shop and taking the proceeds of the day to the bank at the end of the day. Glass sees himself, as though in a mirror, when he chooses not to tell his father of a customer’s theft of a record. Glass knows his father will act reflexively by overzealously punishing the thief.

women are the sun — WOMEN ARE THE SUN, THE SOURCE OF ENERGY AROUND WHICH MEN REVOLVE. (In Glass’s pursuits, he notes that his mother is his rock, his supporter and adviser.)

Glass strives to be a good student and is accepted by the University of Chicago based on academic tests rather than high school graduation. Glass chooses to become a musician based on early experience as a flutist, and later as a pianist. He finds from counseling, from a Julliard alumnus, that composing music rather than playing music is more conducive to his innate ability. In these pursuits, Glass’s mother is his rock, his supporter and adviser.

After graduating, Glass chooses to travel to Paris in pursuit of a composer’s education. He is mentored by an older woman who provides the technical skill and stern loving support he needs to continue his journey toward actualization. Glass chooses to leave his mentor with a woman of his own age and travel to India. Glass sees himself in a way that requires reinforcement from others. “Others” are teachers of the ancient practice of yoga.

Glass returns to America with a wife, with whom he has two children. He lives in New York and works as a furniture mover and taxi driver while pursuing his education as a composer. Glass is approaching thirty. He begins to have serendipitous success. The first big break is an opera called “Einstein on the Beach”.

JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963, NOVELIST, POET, ARTIST, FILM MAKER)

Glass’s journey is symbolized by his dissection of the works of Jean Cocteau; i.e. particularly La_Belle_et_la_Bête (Beauty and the Beast). Glass argues that Cocteau’s works are about human creativity and transformation. The symbolism in La_Belle_et_la_Bête is the story of Glass’s life. The rose in Cocteau’s movie symbolizes beauty (Glass’s body of work). The key is the method (Glass’s mother). The horse is strength, determination, and speed (Glass’s father). The glove is nobility (Glass’s renown as a composer). The castle is a prison that can only be escaped with love from another (Glass’s three wives, his children, his mentors, and friends). The Mirror symbolizes who you truly are (this memoir of Glass’s life).

This is a nicely written and narrated memoir of Philip Glass; considered by many as the most influential composer of the late twentieth century.

ARE YOU BLACK ENOUGH

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Negroland: A Memoir

Written by: Margo Jefferson

Narration by: Robin Miles

MARGO JEFFERSON (AUTHOR, FORMER THEATRE CRITIC FOR NYT, PULIZER PRIZE WINNER FOR CRITICISM, PROFESSOR @ EUGENE LANG COLLEGE)

Margo Jefferson’s memoir is a perspective on growing up in America. Jefferson is born in 1947. She is raised in Chicago by two professional middle class parents; i.e. one is a doctor; the other a teacher. What makes Jefferson’s memoir interesting is her middle class upbringing. It sharply defines answers to many questions never asked by Americans.

Are you black enough? Are you white enough? Are you female enough? Are you male enough? Are you American enough?

MARGO JEFFERSON (CLASS OF '71 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE) — MARGO JEFFERSON (CLASS OF ’71 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE)

Jefferson wrestles with many of the same baby to teenage insecurities all Americans face in their generation. However, there is an extra layer of complexity for Jefferson because of her color. Jefferson lightly touches on the history of slavery and its societal consequence but she personalizes that history in explaining how she became Margo Jefferson, an accomplished theatre critic and professor.

Chicago is a microcosm of America. Discrimination, crime, poverty, and failure in equality of opportunity are the same in Chicago neighborhoods as anywhere in America.

MARGO JEFFERSON AS CHEERLEADER IN THE 60'S (CENTER, TOP ROW)

What Jefferson does in “Negroland” is explain how American society makes her life different because of her color.

Like most girls and boys in high school, Jefferson wants to be popular. She tries to become a cheerleader. With success in her senior year, she wonders about the reasons for it taking so long. Is it because she is not pretty enough? Is it because she is nearsighted and has astigmatism? Or, is it because she is not white enough?

Jefferson recalls her family’s trip to Atlantic City for a doctor’s conference. Reservations were made but when they arrive, the hotel gives the family a poorly appointed room and suggests the restaurant would be off-limits for dining. They checked out of the hotel the next morning.

Jefferson notes concerns of her mother about how other people of color talk and act while warning her daughter not to emulate their speech or style. Jefferson becomes aware of the potential stigma of not being black enough among people who are proud to be black.

Jefferson explains how she becomes best friends with a handsome gay white man and revels in the looks black men give that seem to question her interest in being with a white man when she is black. At the same time, she notes how beautiful women hit on her friend without understanding that he has no interest in them.

LARRY WILMORE (COMEDIAN AND SOCIAL CRITIC)

In listening to Jefferson’s memoir the day after Larry Wilmore’s routine about Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, one gains better insight to Wilmore’s send-up of President Obama. Wilmore is unfairly criticized for his tart-tongued stand-up when thought of in light of Jefferson’s memoir.

The last part of Wilmore’s presentation seriously praises Obama’s accomplishment and then uses a pejorative word for black Americans to categorize Obama. Wilmore’s comment is badly interpreted by some. Wilmore is saying Obama is great enough to be both the President of the United States (in the sense of acceptance by all Americans) and black enough (in the sense of being accepted by blacks).

Jefferson’s memoir, and Wilmore’s routine shows that being American enough, black enough, white enough, male or female enough, is just being a part of the human race.

NARCONOMICS

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

Written by: Tom Wainwright

Narration by: Brian Hutchison

TOM WAINWRIGHT (BRITISH AUTHOR, EDITOR OF THE ECONOMIST)

“Narconomics” is about the business of illegal drugs.

Joaquin Guzman (aka El Chapo, captured 2.22.2014 and recaptured 1.8.16).

Tom Wainwright notes drug cartels are modern businesses. They benefit rich owners while liberally rewarding middle class managers with money, power, and prestige. The difference is–middle managers brutally terrorize employees, kill their customers, and murder innocent bystanders.

Drug Cartel murders Mormon Family living in Mexico in 2019.

Picture from the New York Post, Nov. 6, 2019.

These business conglomerates systematically brutalize the public. The manufacture and sale of illegal drugs is a growth industry, diversifying its practices and products while becoming global enterprises. An irony of Wainwright’s story is the ugliness and economic success of drug cartel businesses are abetted by bribe-taking government leaders.

President Enrique Peña Nieto (Former President of Mexico– accused of bribery from the Oil Industry and Sinaloa Drug Cartel.)

The substance of Wainwright’s book is that cartels are run with many of the fundamental principles (aside from overt terror and murder) that make international companies richly successful.

DRUG CARTELS (ONE OF SEVERAL MONOPOLIES IN THE WORLD)

Though policies like the war on drugs and alcohol prohibition were meant to save people from themselves, Wainwright suggests they failed.

When desire for money, power, or prestige is unmet, humans compensate with drug use; or other escapist behaviors.

Wainwright argues that understanding drug cartel business practices will show how their industry profits can be disrupted.

Wainwright suggests changing the focus from a war on drug producers and sellers to a policy for treating, educating, and rehabilitating users.

Wainwright shows how drug cartels capitalize on fundamental human drives and weaknesses. He goes on to suggest how drug cartels can be destroyed.

Rather than spending billions to militarize national police forces, Wainwright suggests those dollars be spent to treat, rehabilitate, and educate accused and/or incarcerated users.

An encouraging article in the WSJ (12/15/21) notes that Mexico and U.S. drug interdiction agencies are working on a framework to combat drug cartels “… likely to focus more on drug addiction”. In destroying the drug cartel’s consumer base, they lose profit. Without profit there is no money, no power, and no prestige. There is only a failed business model.

Wainwright goes on to suggest that drug use be decriminalized and regulated by the government. This is no panacea but history shows that the war on drugs is a failure. The heart of success for drug cartels is its adoption of business practices that generate profit. The reality of the fundamentals of well-run business organizations is that they do not disappear. Remove the source of profit and businesses either fail or are compelled to change.

Wainwright explains that the business of illegal drugs is a global enterprise.

A global level of government cooperation is needed for effective elimination of drug cartels. No single nation can eradicate cartels because of globalization. One nation’s success in the drug war only compels cartels to move to neighboring countries. The solution lies in treating, rehabilitating, and educating drug users. Only with decriminalization, user medical treatment, and public education will the source of profit for drug cartels be cut off.

Wainwright offers a compelling argument for attacking drug cartels by removing the source of their profits. The source of profits is the consuming public; not the illegal drug manufacturers and distributors.

The fact that drug cartels are run like businesses reveals an infrastructure that allows diversification. Once profits are reduced for drug manufacture and distribution, cartels will change to survive.

Wainwright notes that drug cartels have already diversified; i.e. they are human traffickers, and extortion consortiums. Government agencies and the general public are equally repulsed by human trafficking, murder, and extortion. Governments and the general public are more likely to cooperate in eradicating that type of criminal activity; less so with drug addiction.

The glimmer of hope is that cartel diversification does not pander to the desire for escape from reality offered by drugs.

There is no simple or cheap alternative to “the war on drugs” but there is a history that shows in its current form, war does not work. The drug war is no joke, neither is it a solution.

Illegal drug manufacturers and distributors are just the cost of doing business; not the source of profit. Cure the public of its need for drugs, decriminalize drug use, or at least treat the addicted, and drug cartels have no motive to be in the business.

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