Category: MEMOIR

DISABILITY AND DEATH

One chooses how they live life, but death is nature’s or God’s choice, a thing beyond human’ control.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Theater of War” What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today

By: Bryan Doerries

Narrated By: Adam Driver

Bryan Doerries (Author, Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions, an evangelist for classical literature and its relevance to today’s lives.)

The title and book cover of “The Theater of War” is as puzzling as Bryan Doerries’ beginning vignette of his personal life. Doerries graduates from Kenyon College where he majors in the classics. He goes on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the University of California. “The Theater of War” recounts Doerries’ journey to become cofounder, artistic director, and historian for creation of a theatrical teaching tool about life and death. The trigger for his understanding comes from the last days of his personal relationship with Laura Rothenberg who dies at 22 from cystic fibrosis. Her death is the introduction to why “The Theater of War” is created.

Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman are co-founders of “The Theater of War” Productions. Ms. Kaufman was the producing director from 2009 to 2016. She died at the age of 92 in 2023 but was instrumental in organizing production events, coordinating actors, and ensuring practical aspects of theatrical presentations.

“The Theater of War” is about the living and how to deal with permanent disability or death. Death comes in many forms from different causes but as the Latin expression says “Memento mori”, “Remember you must die” because death is a part of every life. Doerries explains how famous Greek tragedies were, and still are, teaching tools for those who have life and death influence over others. What “The Theater of War” creates are acted reproductions of classic Greek tragedies for living life when you or someone you know is permanently disabled or killed.

With the help of actors like Adam Driver (who narrates the book), the great tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus are presented to military, penal, and nursing audiences across America.

Combat veterans, prisoners, and terminally ill patients face extreme conditions of life. Combat may end in death or future disability. Prison life is about loss of control of oneself and being under the control of others. Terminal illness is also about loss of control of oneself when one is diagnosed as destined for death.

The suicide of Ajax as depicted on an ancient vase in the British museum in London.

Sophocle’s tragedy, “AJax”, offers the truth of psychological trauma and moral injury from battle. In despair, Ajax kills himself because he feels deeply humiliated by the gods for not being given the armor of Achilles who is killed in the Trojan war. Achilles’ armor was given to Odysseus rather than him.

Sophocle’s “Philoctetes” explains the pain and personal isolation that comes from the physical and emotional damage from war. Today, it is diagnosed as PTSD.

Sophocles “Antigone” deals with civil disobedience, justice, and conflict between personal and state ethics. These conflicts are reflected in mobs of unruly citizens demonstrating against what they perceive is wrong.

Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound” reflects on the unfairness of a penal system that infringes on human rights.

The recited dramas offer cathartic release and potential change to those who are personally affected by their situational experience. That is the purpose of the presentations. Doerries creates theatrical readings of these classics before military, penal, and nursing personnel.

The presentations lead to questions and answers about the truth of societal disagreement, death’s inevitability, and how to live with their consequences.

Some military generals and prison guards are offended by the implications of their mistakes, but the plays recitals provide a forum for discussion that offer potential for improved human understanding and societal decisions and action.

The Greeks understood dying is part of life. One chooses how they live life, but death is nature’s or God’s choice, a thing beyond human’ control.

TRAVEL

Understanding our place in the world as a democratic nation is the real value of travel.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The New Tourist” Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

By: Paige McClanahan

Narrated By: Paige McClanahan

Paige McClanahan (Author, journalist, world traveler.)

“The New Tourist” offers a mixed message about travel outside of one’s own country. As a journalist, paid for her travel, Paige McClanahan explains the power and peril of travel in a way that misses the point. She explains the power of travel as an economic benefit to travel writers and countries which travelers visit. One peril she notes is the destruction from tourists who damage pristine natural environments because citizens of a host country are often not accustomed to crowds of travelers. One who travels and writes of their adventures encourages travel to exotic places that may or may not be prepared for high tourist traffic. Unpreparedness is partly due to host countries interest in the economic benefit of tourist visits but are disinclined to spend potential profits on preparation for high tourist traffic that may not arrive.

Like the Maui wildfires in 2o23, better Hawaiian’ preparation may have saved 102 lives and the beautiful town of Lahaina.

Ironically, travel writers like McClanahan are partly to blame for writing of great travel experiences they have had as tourists. They make a living by writing about their travels around the world.

There is a balance between tourist satisfaction and host countries’ benefit but finding the balance is a work in progress that may not begin before damage is done.

What McClanahan misses in her book, is the great benefit of traveling to learn about other cultures.

From personal experience, I have been surprised by natives of other countries who know so much about life and what their personal experiences have meant to them. In Africa, a native guide explains the night sky in a way that reminds one of a college astronomy course. In the former Yugoslavia, an older person explains how much she misses Tito as the ruler of her country. Visiting Turkey’s Cappadocia, one visits an underground “city” meant to protect Christians from people of another faith. In China, the incident of Tiananmen Square is told by a young man in a way that makes one understand authoritarianism carries a threat. In India, one is overwhelmed by the gap between the rich and poor, the monuments of a great nation’s antiquity, and the remnants of British colonization. In Thailand, you find there are citizens who admire their king, others that revile the army that is running the country, and youth that want change. A traveler learns of the killing fields of Cambodia and the mine fields left behind by America and Vietnam as a reminder of America’s folly in believing the lie of falling dominoes. These are a few examples of what can be learned by travel to other countries.

McClanahan briefly alludes to some of cultural benefits of travel, but her book focuses more on travels’ economic benefits for writers and host countries.

Understanding our place in the world as a democratic nation is the real value of travel.

FATHERS

One recognizes the many mistakes a father or parent can make in their lives in failing to be the best they can be for their children.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“An Odyssey” A Father, a Son, and an Epic

By: Daniel Mendelsohn

Narrated By: Bronson Pinchot

Daniel Adam Mendelsohn (Author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator, Professor of Humanities at Bard College.)


“An Odyssey” is a memoir that combines Mendelsohn’s life and educational experiences with Homer’s “… Odyssey”. As most know, “The Odyssey” is one of two ancient Greek epic poems, the other being “The Iliad”. Both are attributed to Homer who is questioned by some scholars as neither the soul creator nor (necessarily) its singular author. Both poems are said to have come from an oral tradition in ancient times, told and re-told, with no written editions until the late 8th or early 7th century BCE. Homer is believed to have lived in the 9th or 8th century BCE which makes it possible for him to be the originator, but no one really knows. Homer seems a singular source, or one of many who told and retold the epic poems.

In a broad sense, Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir is about parenting but in a more succinct view, it is about fatherhood and the inevitability of death.

“An Odyssey” is a tribute to Mendelsohn’s father, his intellect and his impact on his son’s understanding of life. Mendelsohn cleverly intersperses “The Odyssey” of the heroic life of Odysseus with the accomplished life of his father.

The two poems tell the history of the Trojan War with the main character of “The Iliad” being Achilles, while Odysseus is the main character of “The Odyssey”.

Both heroes are characterized in “The Odyssey”. Achilles is recalled as the greatest warrior of the Trojan War who dies as a hero. Odysseus is also a warrior but is noted as a strategist who skillfully manipulates others with his cunning wit and intelligence. In Odysseus’ return, he meets Achilles in a nether world to find Achilles regrets his fate. Achilles explains he would have rather continued in life than being remembered by the living as heroic in the nether world of death.

Daniel Mendelsohn, like Odysseus, is a witty teacher who uses his intelligence to dissect “The Odyssey” by giving listeners a memoir of his relationship with his father.

In that dissection, one gains some understanding of “The Odyssey” while glimpsing what it was like to be raised by a loving but strict father.

What Mendelsohn introduces is every father’s role in raising children.

A theme that runs through “The Odyssey” is Odysseus’s troubled ten-year journey to Ithaca after the Trojan war but what Mendelsohn introduces is every father’s role in raising children. Mendelsohn’s father is nearing the end of his life. He is a retired engineer who worked for the American government on high security projects before becoming a professor. In retirement, his father chooses to attend his son’s class on “The Odyssey”. Mendelsohn combines his father’s attendance in his class with a real and reimagined trip they take to retrace Odysseus’s travels in “The Odyssey”.

Mendelsohn’s father has strong opinions about the character of Odysseus, and he expresses them in class.

Mendelsohn’s father characterizes Odysseus as a poor leader who lost all his men in his return to his homeland. Mendelson’s father gives the example of the cyclops who imprisons and eats some of Odysseus’s men but, after a clever escape, Odysseus foolishly chooses to taunt the cyclops. The cyclops nearly sinks the ship and appeals to Poseidon to kill the escaped sailors (none of which survive) because of Odysseus’s taunt. Mendelsohn’s father characterizes Odysseus as a poor leader of men, a braggart, liar, and cheater on his wife, Penelope.

There is a sense of the Professor learning many things about his father from discussions in the class. At the same time, listeners gain personal knowledge of the epic poem, its universal meaning, and why it is considered a classic. From the class discussion about Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, one realizes the tale is about the role of fathers and, to a lesser extent, mothers in educating their children. Mendelson admires his father for his intelligence, fidelity and what he believes is unbending truthfulness. On the other hand, Mendelson is embarrassed by his father’s slovenly dress, eating habits, and what he perceives as his father’s parental neglect during his childhood.

Mendelsohn’s father does not fear death but is afraid of the mental and physical deterioration that comes before death.

Mendelsohn seems hurt by his father’s emotional distancing but becomes less hurt as he gains a clearer understanding of where that distancing comes from. Mendelsohn’s father lives in a black and white world. Everything is one way or another. The end of one’s life is often gradual and only becomes one way or another at the very end. There is an inkling of tragedy to come as his father finally dies.

Truth and a lie are two sides of a coin. The fear of losing one’s physical or mental abilities is not a choice but something beyond one’s control.

Understanding what is black, white, true, or false loses meaning as one nears the end of life. Mendelsohn’s father has lived a life where he depended on himself. He made his own choices. As one’s body or mind deteriorates, depending on oneself become problematic. That loss of control is the fear of Mendelsohn’s father. Here is the tragedy of Mendelsohn’s story.

Mendelsohn’s father’s life is extended by the desires of his family and his doctor’s ministrations, despite the diminishing quality of his father’s life. Mendelsohn’s brilliant father lives months after his debilitating stroke. The only point one can see in the extension of life when death is imminent seems to be a family’s grief, and a kind of selfishness over loss of a loved one. There seems a high degree of selfishness in extending the life of one who is at the end of their life.

As a father, there is much more to be learned in Mendelsohn’s story about what it means to be a good father.

One recognizes the many mistakes a father or parent can make in their lives in failing to be the best they can be for their children.

DRAWING THE LINE

A reader/listener will come to their own conclusions about Ms. Fox’s epilogue. Where does one draw the line?

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum” The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss

By: Margalit Fox

Narrated By: Saskia Maarleveld

Margalit Fox (Author, copy editor for the New York Times.)

Fox writes a memoir of America’s equivalent of Fagin in Dicken’s “Oliver Twist”. Mrs. Mandelbaum, like Fagin, created a school of crime for New York City street-dwellers in the mid-nineteenth century. An interesting insight by Fox is how people slip into crime. Mrs. Mandelbaum makes a living for her family in New York by becoming a fence for merchandise collected on New York’ streets. Like any sales business the key was buying low and selling high. Street merchandise is cheaper than store merchandise because of lower overhead and, of course, theft.

The Chief of Police of New York City at the time (pictured to the far right) considered the criminal Fredericka “Marm” Martha Mandelbaum an admirable businesswoman.

Fox notes the Mandelbaum family emigrated from Germany in 1850. Mrs. Mandelbaum’s husband, Wolf Israel Mandelbaum, made a living as a peddler in Germany. Martha Mandelbaum sees similar opportunity in New York City. She becomes a fence, a kind of peddler, for New York city street’ merchandise. However, Mrs. Mandelbaum recognized that the quality and quantity of merchandise she fenced could be improved by theft. She created a school like Dicken’s Fagin to teach the craft of theft. Her “school” began teaching young acolytes the art of pickpocketing and petty theft. She began building a criminal empire that evolved into financing bigger crimes like fabric store theft, jewelry store theft, and most lucrative of all, bank robbery.

Mandelbaum provided financing for specialized research of banking personnel and bank activity for intended bank robberies. She paid for sophisticated tools needed for the robberies, and then brokered robber’s thefts to buyers.

Mandelbaum grew her business into a million-dollar enterprise. She carefully remained in the background of her lucrative business. She became the “Queen of Fences”. In July of 1984, “Marm” Mandelbaum and her son Julius were arrested by Pinkerton agents and taken into custody. She allegedly punched the arresting officer and protested her innocence but went to trial where she was required to post a $10,000 bond after spending a night in jail. She and her son jump bail and cross the border into Canada. They were detained in Canada but without a law allowing extradition, she and her son could not be returned to the United States.

Mrs. Mandelbaum and her son open a store in Canada after contacting many of her associates in New York to explain her plan to sell merchandise out of this new store location. One presumes her associates continued their criminal ways of acquiring New York merchandise and shipping it to Canada for resale.

Julius J. Mandelbaum (1905-1988, son of “Marm” Mandelbaum died at age 83 in Long Beach New York.)

Fox’s story takes an interesting turn in an epilogue of her memoir about Mrs. Mandelbaum. “Marm’s” daughter, who was 18, died of pneumonia in New York. Mrs. Mandelbaum risked incarceration by surreptitiously returning to New York for a Jewish funeral for her daughter. She is not arrested and successfully returns to Canada.

Fox infers Mrs. Mandelbaum is as much a victim of her time as she was a criminal.

Fox explains in a Jewish family, women have essential roles in managing households, raising children, and contributing to their communities. In some circumstances, Fox notes Jewish wives engage in business while managing the household. Fox suggests Mrs. Mandelbaum simply carries out those duties in her life in New York.

A reader/listener will come to their own conclusions about Ms. Fox’s epilogue. The question that comes to mind is whether some people died as a result of Mrs. Mandelbaum’s financing of illegal activity, including bank and jewelry robberies. Where does one draw the line?

Mother Mandelbaum died without an exact cause of death at age 68. She was given a grand funeral in New York City that drew community elites, politicians, and undoubtedly, criminal associates.

EUGENICS

On the one hand, genetic science may cure the incurable. On the other, genetic science may destroy civilization.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Why Fish Don’t Exist” A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

By: Lulu Miller

Narrated By: Lulu Miller

Louisa Elizabeth Miller (Author, Peabody Award-winning science reporter for NPR.)

Lulu Miller’s “Why Fish Don’t Exist” reveals the flaw in believing intelligence or position are measures of admirability. David Star Jordan is a founding president of Stanford University. He served from 1891 to 1913 after being the Indiana University president from 1884 to 1891. Jordan gained his academic qualification as a recognized ichthyologist (a zoologist who specializes in studying fish species).

David Starr Jordan (1851-1931, Scientist, founding president of Stanford University.)

Miller begins her memoir in admiration of Jordan but ends in vilification. Jane Stanford appointed Jordan as the first President of Stanford. Their collaboration laid the foundation for what became a research powerhouse for engineering, business, humanities, and sciences. Ms. Stanford’s relationship with Jordan is reported as less than harmonious because in the University’s beginnings there were financial difficulties and differences of opinion about faculty.

Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (1828-1905, American philanthropist and co-founder of Stanford University.)

Jane Stanford rejects an economics professor’s contract renewal because of his politics and his criticism of immigration. (Ms. Stanford’s and her husband’s wealth came from the railroad industry which was hugely benefited by immigration.) It is alleged that she pressured Jordan to refuse the professor’s contract renewal. Five faculty members resigned after the professor’s termination. Ms. Stanford had a reputation for requiring total devotion to her beliefs which, at times, conflicted with Jordan’s management of the University. More significantly, Ms. Stanford’s drive alienates and makes enemies of many people associated with the University.

Ms. Stanford dies in Hawaii in her 70s. The cause of death is attributed by authorities to be poisoning from strychnine.

What makes her death an ongoing mystery is that Jordan hires a medical investigator who argues Ms. Stanford died from natural causes, a heart attack, brought on by overeating. In much of America, Jordan’s hired investigators’ cause of death is accepted. That is, until a book is written by Richard White in the 21st century, that reaffirms the authority’s earlier opinion. Miller does not suggest Jordan had anything to do with Stanford’s murder, but Miller’s inference is that he initiated a cover-up.

In one sense, Miller is Jordan’s character assassin. In another, Miller reveals the dark side of science.

Jordan is shown to believe in eugenics that advocates selective breeding of the human race. Eugenics is a science meant to selectively breed human beings. Miller explains Jordan believes in forced sterilization (which surprisingly exists in the United States until 1981). Eugenics is the same belief held by Adolf Hitler when he tried to exterminate Jews and create an exclusive Nordic or Aryan race. Hitler established laws for forced sterilization, euthanasia, and selective human breeding.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Miller’s memoir of David Starr Jordan shows how science is a mixed blessing. Jordan’s remarkable work in zoology and his role as the first President of Stanford is tainted by his expressed belief in eugenics. The threat of eugenics is greater today than in the past. On the one hand, genetic science may cure the incurable. On the other, genetic science may destroy civilization.

UNENDING PURSUIT

Science is an unending pursuit of knowledge that is refined and advanced by new techniques of examination.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Gene Machine“

Author: Venki Ramakrishnan

Narrated By: Matthew Waterson

Venki Ramakrishnan (Author, British-American structural biologist, shared 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath.)

“Gene Machine” tells reader/listeners of the discovery of the structure of ribosomes. Ribosomes are elemental cellular organisms (organelles) made up of proteins within living cells. They are genetic factories that process protein within the body. Without ribosomes, life as we know it, would not exist. Ribosomes repair cellular damage, maintain cell structure, and direct chemical processes within the body.

In the 20th century, after years of research, Ada Yonath, Venki Ramakrishnan, and Thomas Steitz discover clues to the structure of Ribosomes. Ramakrishnan story is about the complex process of scientific discovery. He reveals how scientists are motivated by the same desires of all humanity; namely money, power, and/or prestige. This is “the way” of the world, whether its religion, science, or society.

To the lay reader/listener, Ramakrishnan’s story is most interesting because it illustrates science research is more than a quest for knowledge. Curiosity and thrill of discovery are important, but it is the reward of being first and the accompanying money, power, and prestige that are scientists’ greatest reward.

Ramakrishnan somewhat ambivalently acknowledges Ada Yonath is the first scientist to recognize the critical role of ribosomes in genetic engineering. Ms. Yonath pioneers the use of crystallization in studying the elusive ribosome existence. However, Yonath fails to reveal a clear picture of the ribosome because of repeating the same chemical means of freezing the image of the elusive organelle. Ramakrishnan and his team of graduate students manage to come up with a chemistry formula that clears the image enough to make the structure of ribosomes more accurate.

Thomas Steitz helped perfect x-ray crystallography to more clearly map the structure of ribosomes.

Steitz’ work justified his inclusion in the Nobel award. The significance of Ramakrishnan’s story to a non-scientist is his unabashed and self-effacing humility when explaining his role in discovering the structure and purpose of ribosomes.

One wonders if Ramakrishnan harbors an opinion that Yonath’s pioneering of ribosome research is overblown.

Ramakrishnan criticizes Ada Yonath for being too verbose when participating in public conferences by recalling a conference that limited presenters to 15 minutes. Ramakrishnan explains Yonath went on for over 30 minutes despite the audiences expressed discontent. In the end, he acknowledges Yonath’s role in being among the first to suggest ribosome research was important. She was the first to use crystallography to identify its structure. Ramakrishnan notes those two facts justify her Nobel’ selection.

Ramakrishnan suggests winning a Nobel opens doors to opportunities that are unjustified in ways that have little to do with the specific work or a particular discovery.

Ramakrishnan explains much of the public think a winner of a Nobel could talk about any scientific subject with expertise. He notes the Nobel Prize is a great honor but is proffered to scientists that have achieved a finite discovery in a specific discipline, not a general understanding of all science. He goes on to explain how his country of birth (India), the country of England, and one suspects America, wish to claim him as representative of their countries–when, in fact, he is an individual who achieved success by dint of hard work, the help of others, and personal discipline. Ramakrishnan’s story explains how he pursued understanding of crystallography because it could help him achieve a goal. His point seems that the hard work of many scientists, not nationality or Nobel recognition, are keys to successful science research.

Ramakrishnan story is about science as an unending pursuit of knowledge that is refined and advanced by new techniques of examination.

In today’s science research, chemistry of crystallography is made less valuable with the invention of the atom-level microscope that offers direct, firsthand observations of the structure of human organelles like the ribosome. Ramakrishnan suggests science is an eternal search for knowledge.

BELIEF IS NOT ENOUGH

“Believing” is not enough. The nature of humanity needs to change,

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Minor Feelings” (An Asian American Reckoning)

By: Cathy Park Hong

Lectures by: Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong (Author, writer, poet, and professor, graduate of Oberlin College with an MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop.)

“Minor Feelings” is a mild representation of a social malady that plagues humanity. Ethnic differences, social hierarchy, and political power create and embolden nation-state’ inequality. It seems in the history of the world, with the exception of most Asian and African countries, the white race rules society. This seems odd when only 16% of the world’s population is white.

Hong offers a memoir of her life in America. Born in Los Angeles, California, Hong notes experiencing discrimination between white Americans and Asians.

Hong acknowledges discrimination within, as well as outside, ethnic cultures by recounting her somewhat comic effort to seek help from a Korean therapist for a recurrent facial tic. The therapist said Hong should seek help from someone else without explaining why. Of course, one wonders if that classifies as discrimination or therapeutic professionalism.

Mosaic of children from around the world, including, Kayapo, Indian, Native American, Inuit, Balinese, Polynesian, Yanomamo, Cuban, Tsaatan, Moroccan, Mongolian, Karo, Malagasy, and Pakistani.

All humans have a tendency to generalize ethnic qualities based on human difference. Those differences can range from the obvious to the miniscule but have the common failing of not seeing the humanity of every human being. Hong notes how Asians are generalized by many ethnic groups, including Asians according to Hong, as industrious, intelligent, and hard working without recognizing the individual. Whether generalization about an ethnicity is true or not, the individual’s success or failure is diminished by generalization.

In what was called social studies in the 1960s, I remember our teacher asking if we were prejudiced. No one commented.

Then, the Social Studies teacher asked the class if any of the boys had asked an Asian girl if she had been asked to go to the prom with them. No one answered but I, for one, felt guilty about not even thinking of it. Though the teacher inappropriately asked the question, he demonstrated how America is as ignorant about Asian discrimination in the 1960s as Hong illustrates in “Minor Feelings”. (Parenthetically, the teacher’s question was even more inappropriate and hurtful because the Asian girl was in the class.)

The truth is every nation-state’ political structure, whether white, off-white, or black, discriminates against whomever is not part of the government in power. In China it is the Han, in Russia it is Aryan Russians, in India it is the Indo-Aryans, in Botswana it is the Tswana. Each of these ethnicity’s discriminate against minorities not in power.

This is not meant to diminish the truth of what Wong explains about her life experience. “Minor Feelings” is a difficult book to read or listen to because it offends many Americans who believe they look at every person as an individual. However, “believing” is not enough. The nature of humanity needs to change.

CYCLE OF ABUSE

“The Beauty in Breaking” is about life as an eternal recurrence that offers some peace of mind in a world troubled by its inhumanity.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Beauty in Breaking” (A Memoir)

By: Michele Harper

Narrated by: Nicole Lewis

Michele Harper (Physician, Author, Public Speaker.)

Leaves fall from the tree to expose the bark and bite of life. Michele Harper’s memoir shakes the tree of American life. Relying on the veracity of Harper’s story, she is raised in a family with a physically abusive father who divorces her mother, an art dealer.

Harper notes her paternal father was physically abusive.

After Harper’s paternal father leaves Harper’s mother, Harper notes he offers some financial assistance to Harper in college. Harper explains she passes some of that assistance on to her mother while attending Harvard. Harper earns a BA in psychology. She goes on to acquire a medical degree from a New York university to become an emergency room physician.

Harper’s story touches on the complexity of life as a Black American. She marries a white man while at Harvard, but they divorce at his choice. The failure of their marriage is shown to be hard for Harper, but she is driven to succeed and moves on to educate herself in her chosen field of work.

Harper’s experience of childhood abuse, her personal marriage break-up, and work as a physician in three different emergency room positions, are lessons for life and living.

Her focus is on overcoming her trials to be good at her job even though much is beyond her control. The notion of not knowing what crises you will face in a medical emergency room, let alone a doctor’s experience as a Black American, offers a unique perspective to Harper’s memoir.

Abuse comes in many forms.

There is child abuse that occurs in many homes throughout the world. There is being a minority in a culture controlled by a majority that discriminates against those who are different. There is inequality of opportunity that creates an underclass that is trapped in an eternal cycle of poverty. Harper is denied promotion to Administrator in her first hospital job because she is a woman. Her supervisor notes a woman, let alone a Black woman, has never had the Administrator’ job in that hospital. Misogyny triumphs once again.

Harper chooses to leave the hospital that denied her the promotion.

As an administrator in another hospital Harper sees the consequence of poverty. Poverty seeps into nearly every culture in the world with its accompanying violence, compounded by weak to non-existent gun control laws in the United States. Harper writes about her encounter with a young boy who has his sneakers stolen by a bully at school.

Harper interviews the young Black grade school child who is thinking about getting his shoes back with a gun.

Harper calls a child services employee to explain her concern about the child’s access to a gun at his home. The child service’s person explains she sees this in many children’s homes where poverty is one lost job away from a family being on the street. This young boy’s parents both work to keep the family housed and fed. The social services person explains gun accessibility and violence are common in poor black neighborhoods. Where poverty is a fact of life, child services can only go so far to change what is toxic in a child’s environment. Gun availability is beyond the control of Harper or child service’s employees. The extent of Harper’s intervention is limited to raising the issue with the young boy’s parents–with the hope that they will act to be sure no gun becomes available.

Harper finds a third job as a VA hospital administrator. She interviews a female patient seeking psychological help. In the interview, Harper is told by the patient she had been raped by her supervising sergeant and another soldier in Afghanistan.

She became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. That experience continues to traumatize her life. She seeks help to overcome its affects. Harper becomes the patient’s lifeline for the counseling she needs to overcome her abuse.

There seems no “…Beauty in Breaking” as one nears the end of Harper’s memoir but one begins to realize the “Beauty…” is “…in Breaking” the cycle of abuse.

The cycle can be broken with exposure, rehabilitation, caring, and acting to remove the causes of abuse. Harper’s memoir shows how it is done. Breaking the cycle of abuse is a long, laborious process that begins with people focusing on incidents of abuse and acting to mitigate its causes and consequences. “The Beauty in Breaking” is Harper’s way of exposing abuse and illustrating what can be done about it.

Harper’s ultimate theory for the resolution of human abuse is belief in Lifes’ recurrence. Her theory is that every life is eternal. When one dies, they will be reborn into another life. Harper comes to grips with her life as it is and makes it better through meditation. Her belief about life as an eternal recurrence offers her peace of mind about the people she saves or loses in a hospital emergency room.

UNIONIZATION

Nolan clearly illustrates how important political power is in balancing corporate owner/managers’ disproportionate incomes and privileges with labor.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Hammer” (Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor)

By: Hamilton Nolan

Narrated by: Franklin Pierson

Hamilton Nolan (Author and free-lance Journalist)

“The Hammer” is a paean to unionization. Unions lost much of their political power in the early 1970s. Political power of labor was diminished by State governments, poor labor union management, and a diminishing number of labor union members. Nolan’s argument is workers have to reestablish political power to change their unfair and inequitable relationship with business.

The widening gap between rich and poor is traced to the era of President Reagan when the first deep cuts in corporate taxes occur.

Reagan fought unionization by firing air traffic controllers that sought better wages. Reagan’s supporters believed government social programs were out of control and their cost diminished the power of free enterprise. Much of the American public either agreed or were apathetic. However, as the gap between rich and poor accelerated, Americans began to complain about inequality. With extraordinary income increases for business owners and CEOs, and repressed wages for workers, the need for unionized political power became self-evident. Nolan introduces his book about unionization with a brief biography of Sara Nelson.

Sara Nelson (AFA president of the Association of Flight Attendants.)

Nolan writes about Sara Nelson who became a union member when she worked for United Airlines as a stewardess. Nelson was born and lived in Corvallis, Oregon. She applies for a job with United Airlines in St. Louis. She gets the job but her first paycheck is late. She couldn’t pay her rent. A check is given to her by a union employee to tide her over until her first check is delivered. From that day forward, according to Nolan, Nelson became a supporter of unions. Eventually Nelson becomes the president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA).

Liz Shuler (President of the AFL-CIO since 8/5/21.)

Ironically, the first woman President of the AFL-CIO is also from Oregon. Liz Shuler received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from U of O in Eugene, Oregon. She became a union activist after college and worked to organize clerical workers at Portland General Electric. She is elected as the President of the AFL-CIO in 2021 after serving as the first woman Secretary-Treasurer of the organization.

Nolan’s book addresses State conflicts with unionizers and family-income for low-income workers. The first states he addresses are South Carolina and California. Nolan notes South Carolina has become a haven for businesses wishing to avoid unions. South Carolina’ State laws discourage unionization which appeals to businesses wishing to relocate. Nolan notes South Carolina attracts businesses looking to improve profits by reducing labor costs. The consequence of business’s lower labor cost is to reduce South Carolina workers’ standard of living. South Carolina’s workers are among the lowest (19th out of 50 States) paid workers in the U.S. Nolan implies South Carolina’s income inequality is a consequence of the State’s policy of discouraging unionization.

California has the fourth largest income inequality in the U.S.

Nolan notes the cascading negative of unfair compensation for domestic labor. Though California now allows childcare servers to be unionized, their unionization efforts are discouraged by government regulation, as well as the fragmentation of its poorly compensated workers. The consequence of State government regulation keeps wages low and discourages entrepreneurs from starting childcare’ businesses. A compounding negative is created when users of childcare’ service, women in particular, are unable to work in regular work-day jobs. Workers are compelled to stay home to take care of their children, reducing family income and further impoverishing low-income childcare’ workers. It becomes a vicious cycle, hurting entrepreneurs trying to start a childcare service, employees wishing to increase family income, and employers needing more workers.

Nolan expands his argument by noting how service industries in Las Vegas, the State of Florida, New Orleans, and Mississippi are benefited by unionization.

Vacation and gambling meccas like Las Vegas, Florida, New Orleans and Mississippi need service industry employees. These vacation and gambling meccas depend on service quality for visiting tourists. Lack of representation for service employees diminishes employee’ standards of living which indirectly damages the reputation of the entertainment and vacation industry.

In Las Vegas, where Nolan lived for twenty years, the service industry is protected by the Culinary Union.

Nolan notes how strong the Culinary Union has become in Las Vegas and disparages casino owners like the Fertitta’s who have fought unionization. Numerous examples are given to show how union actions have improved the lives of Casino workers, many of which are immigrants from other countries.

Nolan’s argument for the value of unionization is compelling but his encomium for the union movement ignores America’s immigration crises.

The vast need for immigration reform is not being forcefully addressed by unions. Compensation inequity is a noble fight carried out by unionization, but it needs to broaden its role in immigration. Unions need to use their power and influence to change immigration policies to equitably treat a labor force that is sorely needed in America. Unions need to help educate and house legal immigrants, so they do not become a part of America’s growing homelessness. Additionally, unions could use their recruiting expertise to get Americans off the street by providing job training services and gainful employment.

Public perception of unions could be monumentally improved with a program to recruit and indoctrinate the homeless with training for jobs in the 21st century.

There is so much that unions could do to far exceed the minimalist goal noted in Liz Shuler’s plan to add a million union members over the next 10 years. Nolan pitches for Sara Nelson as a more dynamic leader for the union movement. Maybe Nelson would be better than Shuler, but growth, value, and public perception of union members could be monumentally improved with a program to recruit and indoctrinate the homeless with training and jobs for the 21st century.

Whomever the leaders of unionization may be in the future, Nolan clearly illustrates how important political power is in balancing corporate owner/managers’ disproportionate incomes and privileges with labor.

NO NO KNOW

Addiction is a terrifying and destructive disease that requires an addicted person’s self-understanding and their wish to break its cycle of destruction.

Audio-book Review
 By Chet Yarbrough

Blog: awalkingdelight)
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Recovering (Intoxication and its Aftermath)

By: Leslie Jamison

Narrated by: Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison (American Author, Harvard graduate, Professor of non-fiction writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.)

Leslie Jamison’s memoir is a personal and intimate account of her struggle with addiction and recovery. Jamison recalls her life in an upper middle-class family, interrupted by her parent’s divorce when she is eleven years old. Jamison chooses or is compelled to become an addict. A listener will use the experience of their own lives to argue whether addiction is a choice or environmental predilection.

To some, the course of one’s life is a matter of choice. Others believe life is ordained by a supreme being or fate, something beyond one’s control.

Still others believe life is just a matter of luck and circumstance. The examples of Jamison’s life prove nothing but tell the truth of her own addiction. If one is an addict in recovery, Jamison’s story may give one hope. On the other hand, her life is not your life, her education and intelligence are not yours, nor are her financial circumstances and environment. What one will get out of “The Recovering” is a jarringly truthful perception of Jamison’s experience of the world.

What Jamison shows is addiction is an equal opportunity victimizer, wherever it comes from and whatever its cause.

Jamison refers to the addiction of Amy Winehouse whose song alludes to addiction by saying “No, No, Know” that capsulizes what addiction meant to Winehouse. Jamison reveals what addiction and “Recovering” means to her after years of “…Recovering”.

Amy Winehouse (Famous English singer and songwriter, 1983-2011, died at age 27 from alcohol poisoning.)

Jamison explains addiction is numbing. When one becomes an addict, one is always recovering. Jamison reveals sexual relationships in her years as an alcoholic are sometimes good and desired, sometimes bad and endured. The bad and endured times are an implied condition of her drunkenness. Addiction is lonely. Addiction liberates. Addiction infects. Addiction kills. Addiction is a subject for a writer to write about.

The last chapters of Jamison book are about “The Recovering”. It begins with the chapter titled “Shame”.

Jamison explains working at a bakery in Iowa is an important part of her recovery because of its routine. At that time, Jamison notes her relationship with Dave, a man who becomes an essential partner in her life. These are shown as two fundamental reasons for her drive to become sober.

Dave has his own strengths and weaknesses like any person who chooses to commit themselves to a relationship. Jamison shows her insecurity by secretly peeking at his cell phone to find he is flirting with another woman. The flirtation implies infidelity, which is possible, even in committed relationships. Dave resents the implication, but no person is likely to deny their sexuality. Despite his denial of denial, Dave sticks with her through her beginning struggle for sobriety. A reader/listener realizes how important that personal support is to an addict’s recovery.

“The Recovery” becomes tedious in its remaining chapters for those who have not experienced addiction. However, Jamison’s memoir is a well-reasoned and detailed explanation of why punishment as treatment for addiction is a waste of time and money. Only personal relationships, social, and medical help for the addicted offer a chance for addicts to recover.

Jamison’s book is a condemnation of the “War on Drugs”.

Addiction is a terrifying and destructive disease that requires an addicted person’s self-understanding and the public’s support to break its cycle of destruction. Jamison explains recovery begins with wanting to break addiction’s cycle, but implies the addicted will only succeed with help and commitment of others. In Jamison’s case it is with the help of her then partner, Alcoholics Anonymous, and her commitment to be sober.