Sungsook by Portia S. Choi

Source of book: I own this

 

It isn’t that often that I blog about a local author that isn’t that well known outside of my part of California. A few years back, I talked about Ardis Walker, a local poet, teacher, and environmental advocate. (I think we should rename a local mountain currently named for a Confederate traitor after Walker, because of Walker’s association with that area.) 

 

This book is by another local writer, one who is still living, and was recently named as the honorary Poet Laureate of our county. For years, she has been active in the local poetry scene, a board member of Kern Poets, in addition to her decades as a public health doctor. 

 

When our local paper did an article about her recently, I decided to get her poetry collection from our local independent bookstore, and check her out. 

With swag from a local coffee shop that hosts poetry events. 

Sungsook is mostly about Choi’s experience as a young girl during the Korean War, which erupted while her father was working in the United States. Her family was displaced, separated, and eventually reunited in the United States when she was age 8. The name itself is her original Korean name, before it was changed by her parents to something easier to say in English. More mainstream, although the Shakespeare reference isn’t as familiar as it should be. 

 

Over the last few years, I have ended up reading a number of books about the trauma and displacement of that civil war, triggered by the end of Japanese colonial occupation, and unfortunately fueled by interference from communist China and imperialist America. I’ll link to those at the end of the post. 

 

For Choi, the trauma was real and personal. Since she was very young, the perspective is that of a small child who doesn’t always understand what is happening or its significance. The book is a poignant view from inside the mind of that child. 

 

It’s a very short book - only 37 pages, of which 25 are the actual poems. I selected two of them to feature. 

 

Heartbeats

 

Up and down

up and down

rocked on back of mama.

My arms grasp her,

my legs dangle

my bottom and back

tied to mama

with strips of cloth.

 

(Before, before

inside mama’s water-warmth

her heartbeats muffled.)

 

Mama’s arms support

my bottom, her heartbeats

through her blouse like

on slow walks from church,

rocked to sleep, home.

 

Shouts, awake,

rush, frenzy;

a grandma

falling down.

 

Mama’s heartbeats.

I am on her back,

protected 

 

in the sweat-blood rush

of refugees.

 

Spring Treats

 

In the hush of early spring,

 

            sun’s brightness awakened tender sprigs beneath

                        the melting snow.

 

            Squeals of other children entice

                        me outside. I speed into the

                                    marketplace. 

 

A tan tube of billowing cloth undulates

            from pop-popping rice--

 

                        Roasty aroma fills my nose.

 

            A man takes huge scissors, snips the candy brick

                        lying on his cart.

 

            With red-puffy fingers, he picks up the candy,

                        reaches to us crowded

 

                        ‘round his cart.

 

            Ah-ah, yuh-yum. Sweetness melting

 

all around--

 

            taste safety.

 

If you are interested in obtaining this book, you can order it from Russo’s Books here in Bakersfield - they will ship anywhere in the US, I believe. If you live elsewhere, I would give them a call, as they usually find ways of making it happen. 

 

***

 

The Korean history list:

 

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Shoko's Smile by Choi Eunyoung 

 

Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray

Source of book: I own this

 

I previously read The Omni-Americans for Black History Month, and loved it. This time, I decided to read one of Albert Murray’s books on music, since these works are considered his most influential.

 

Stomping the Blues is all about the blues as a musical genre, but more than that, about a whole philosophy and history surrounding the music. 

 

To this end, he starts with the blues in the psychological and religious sense: the “blue devils” of depression and associated emotions, the constellation of the effects of the fact that life is hard and is even more so if one is poor and of a lower social caste. 

 

To Murray, there are two complimentary approaches to this reality in black American culture: the Sunday Morning Service and the Saturday Night Function. The one looks to religion and the hope of an afterlife, and is characterized by a certain kind of ecstatic musical tradition. The other seeks to “stomp the blues” through dance music and secular revelry. 

 

The two are simultaneously in competition and yet also closely related, particularly in the musical sense. 

 

Blues music is the Saturday Night Function music - it is not an expression of self-pity as too many white critics have made it out to be. It is a means of driving the blues away through music which acknowledges the blue devils while subverting them into a celebration of life and human art. 

 

Murray also takes on the unfortunate tendency of the fans of European art music to see blues music as "primitive," or “spontaneous,” where in fact it is every bit as virtuosic, highly developed, and carefully practiced as their music. It is just a different set of rules and conventions and skills. 

 

Furthermore, as music historians are all quite aware, blues itself evolved in numerous directions over the last 150 years: jazz, rock, and pop genres are all in varying degrees descended from blues (and from spirituals, the competing genre), and represent the further development of uniquely American musical tradition. 

 

Murray also notes that the blues are uniquely American. Music by black musicians has taken completely different directions elsewhere in the world, and Murray argues that just like African Americans are a mix of black and white, blues is a mix of African elements and European music that came together in a unique combination because America is a unique place and culture. 

 

This is something I have pointed out to a number of fundie and ex-fundie acquaintances regarding the white person freakout about black music - the belief that black music gives you demons, etc., taught by Gothard and others.

 

The various forms of African American music - blues, jazz, rock - have much in common with European music, and that includes the “beat” used as a pseudoscientific rationale for denigrating black music. 

 

There is literally more in common between Bach and Chuck Berry or Duke Ellington than between the latter and traditional African music. 

 

And, let us not forget, even the “whitest” American genres of music - Country and Bluegrass - actually are themselves descended from Old Time music, a genre invented by a combination of poor Appalachians, enslaved Blacks, free Blacks, and immigrants from southern Europe. You can literally see the combination in the instruments: banjo from black Caribbeans, fiddle from Ireland and Scotland, guitar from Spain, mandolin and bouzuki from Greece, dobro from some inventive brothers from Slovakia. 

 

It’s all interconnected, and, to borrow from the previous book, omni-american. 

 

If any genre is the closed to purely black, it is the blues, however. The blues got their start and came to a high development in the juke joints and barrelhouses of the South, the dancehalls across America, and in the earliest musical recordings. 

 

It was in the late 1800s, when the new recording technology aided Scott Joplin and other pioneers of a new riff on blues idioms, Ragtime, in bringing black music to the American mainstream.

 

Naturally, this was followed by a moral panic on the part of racist white people, who freaked out that it wasn’t their precious art music that would become the American sound, but the vibrant rhythms of the formerly enslaved and currently segregated that captured the imagination of the world. 

 

It is beyond the scope of this post to get into all the stupid arguments I had with my mom over the years after she bought into the racist tripe about music that Gothard and others regurgitated from the early days of Ragtime and Jazz, but you can find bits of that story throughout this blog. Maybe someday I will do a whole post about that issue. 

 

The book covers a lot of ground for its relatively modest length, from history to culture to music. Murray was a well-regarded music critic, so his musical analyses are excellent. As both a musician and lover of history and culture, I greatly enjoyed his thoughts on this vibrant form of music. 

 

One thing I might add before diving into some quotes is that I have played more than just classical music. Starting in my teens, I played my violin for church musicals. Soon after, I would add drums and guitar to my skill set, playing mostly for church, but also for fun in other genres. 

 

My guitar skills are nowhere near good enough to do blues - I’m competent at rhythm, but not lead - but I can do some things on my violin. Over the years, I have enjoyed some great blues jams with fellow musicians, and I love improvising within the genre, with a few twists of my own borrowed from classical and bluegrass thrown in. 

 

One of these days, I hope to get some time to work on jazz improvisation - although playing in two orchestras and sometimes a third has tended to limit my free time a bit. Oh well. Anyway, I love blues, and would love to be part of a jam again in the future.

 

Anyway, here are some passages that I particularly liked. 

 

Sometimes a carefully controlled frown or even the faintest of supercilious smiles will work as much havoc as a scream or a shout. 

 

This is the underappreciated irony of blues lyrics. One shouldn’t make the mistake of taking them literally and deadly seriously. There is that layer of parody, of irony, of satire that is so often present. Don’t listen to B. B. King and decide he is a male chauvinist - he is using a specific blues convention, that of the complaint about a faithless lover, that goes for both genders. 

 

Come on, “I gave you seven children, now you want to give them back” is dripping with irony. 

 

And yes, there is the female equivalent. Here’s a bit of Bessie Smith. Although to be fair, she isn’t exactly wrong…

 

Murray discusses some problematic ways of addressing the blues: alcohol and drugs, and compares them with music. 

 

But of all the age-old ways of dispelling the ominous atmosphere that comes along with the blues, the one most people seem to have found to be the most consistently effective all told also turns out to be essentially compatible with a great majority of the positive impulses, urges, drives, cravings, needs, desires, and hence the definitive purposes, goals, and ideals of their existence. Nor should its identification come as a surprise to sufficiently attentive students of culture and civilization, and certainly not to students of the nature and function of aesthetics. The blues counteragent that is so much a part of many people’s equipment for living that they hardly ever think about is as such anymore is that artful and sometimes seemingly magical combination of idiomatic incantation and percussion that creates the dance-oriented goodtime music also known as the blues. 

 

In the discussion of the complex roots of American music, Murray notes that both the word “blue” and the concept of that color being associated with sorrow and depression are expressly European, and do not appear in African language or culture.

 

Thus the chances were that blue-oriented Afro-Americans acquired both the word and its special connotation from their European American ancestors. English usage of the term blue devils to designate baleful demons has been traced back as far as 1616. Its figurative use as a metaphor for depression of spirits has been traced as far back as 1787…

 

As a musician, I have to say I love Murray’s insistence that as important as blues lyrics are, they are a distant second in importance to blues music as the music itself. In fact, tunes without lyrics can very much be blues by themselves. 

 

As compelling as so many blues lyrics so often are, and for all the apt phrases, insightful folksy, and striking imagery that blues singers have added to the national lore, the definitive element of a blues statement is not verbal. Words as such, however well chosen, are secondary to the music. What counts for most is not verbal precision (which is not to say vocal precision) but musical precision, or perhaps better still, musical nuance. 

 

And this as well:

 

Blues musicians play music not only in the theatrical sense that actors play or stage a performance, but also in the general sense of playing for recreation, as when participating in games of skill. They also play in the sense of gamboling, in the sense that is to say, of fooling around or kidding around with, toying with, or otherwise having fun with. Sometimes they also improvise, and in the process they elaborate, extend, and refine. But what they do in all instances involves the technical skill, imagination, talent, and eventually the taste that adds up to artivice. And of course such is the overall nature of play, which is so often a form of reenactment to begin with, that sometimes it also amounts to ritual. 

 

Heck yeah. I can confirm. 

 

Talking about the skill and practice needed to make improvisation sound “spontaneous”: 

 

Obviously, such skill and taste are matters of background, experience, and idiomatic orientation. What they represent is not natural impulse but the refinement of habit, custom, and tradition become second nature, so to speak. Indeed on close inspection what was assumed to have been unpremeditated art is likely to be largely a matter of conditioned reflex, which is nothing other than the end product of discipline, or in a word, training. In any case practice is as indispensable to blues musicians as to any other kind. As a very great trumpet player, whose soulfulness was never in question, used to say, “Man, if you ain’t got the chops for the dots, ain’t nothing happening.” 

 

Again, can confirm. When you hear an amazing improvised solo, understand the thousands of hours of practice that made that possible. 

 

All of which makes what is only a performance seem like a direct display of natural reflexes, because it obscures the technical effort. But blues performances are based on a mastery of a very specific technology of stylization by one means or another nonetheless. 

 

I mentioned early in this post the conflict between Saturday and Sunday. While my experience has been far more of the racist moral panic about black music, I also got plenty of the “secular music is bad” simply because it was secular. Except for secular Classical music, of course. Go figure. 

 

Murray brings out that this is also present in black culture, with the Blues seen as an evil competition to the Sunday singing. This particularly accelerated with the advent of recorded music, which gave secular music an advantage for weekday use. 

 

As soon as records went mainstream, they “began by being condemned in so many Sunday Morning Sermons as the diabolical apparatus of the Devil’s agents of wickedness. 

 

And why not? They clearly filled some of the same psychological - and physical - needs that the spirituals did. 

 

Because such dance steps as consisted of bumping and bouncing, dragging and stomping, hopping and jumping, rocking and rolling, shaking and shouting, and the like, were (and are) precisely what all the percussive incantation was (and still is) all about in the first place; and obviously such movements add up to a good time regardless of the lyrics. Purification and celebration/affirmation without a doubt. But not because the participants proceed in such terms. So far as they are concerned they are out for a good time, which of course is not only reason enough but turns out to be the same thing in any case. And besides, aren’t the most functional rituals precisely those that have long since become the most casual conventional and customary procedures?

 

And more:

 

All the same, it is the symbolical and ceremonial aspects of honky-tonk and ballroom dancing that downhome churchfolk object to first of all. 

 

All this adds up to the conclusion that the idea of blues as gloomy misses the point. The ritual, the physicality, the symbolic dancing away of the blue devils - that is the point. 

 

This book isn’t exactly addressed to white people, per se. At times, it seems it is more directed to a combination of people who already love and care about the blues, and at a black audience.

 

But damn if he doesn’t get some sick burns in at white critics. He doesn’t say “white,” but….it is obvious they are white. Here is one of my favorite passages:

 

Many also overlard their copy with downhome and uptown slang expressions, such as dig for understand and appreciate, bad for excellent, taking care of business for performing in an outstanding manner, and so on, as if to prove that their contact with the idiom is that of a very hip which is to say sophisticated insider. But sometimes the results are even more exasperating than ludicrous. Item: The use of the word funky to mean earthy and soulful. The insider’s traditional use is synonymous with foul body odor and connotes the pungent smell of sweat-saturated clothes and unwashed bodies, undeodorized armpits, improperly wiped backsides, urine-stained and fart-polluted undergarments. 

 

Acknowledging that in the intervening decades, the white-bread use of the word has come to be accepted, Murray is right. Here is a great example of the classic usage of the term. And there is nothing more awkward than nerdy white people trying to sound hip. 

 

Later in the book, Murray talks extensively about the evolution of the blues into jazz, particularly through all-time greats such as Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who were as comfortable in the concert hall as in the dance hall. 

 

Part of this development was the fusion of the blues dance tunes with the spirituals and with the pop art song. Again, black and white, sacred and secular, all coming together to form a new genre. 

 

There is nothing at all ironic about Stomping at the Savoy and Moten Swing being written by musicians for whom the Saturday Night Function was as much a part of what life is all about as is the Sunday Morning Service. Nor does there seem to be any compelling reason why the audiences for whom such music was written and performed in the first place should not continue to be able to enjoy it in its natural setting simply because another audience now exists in the concert hall. 

 

Murray clearly shares my love for Basie and Ellington, as he discusses both of them at length. I also loved that he specifically called out Ellington’s work for the concert hall, several of which I have heard played by orchestras, and one of which, Harlem, I got to play earlier this year. (So very, very much fun, even though I am still working on getting jazz idioms to swing right.) 

 

But of course, dance is still at the heart of blues and jazz and rock and the rest. Murray argues that this is actually the case with music generally. 

 

And besides, as little as has been made of it by students of culture, not to mention assessors and technicians of social well-being, the quality of dance music may actually be of far greater significance than that of concert music anyway. Dance, after all, not only antedates music, but is also probably the most specific source of music and most of the other art forms as well. It is not by chance that poetry, for instance, is measured in feet, and that drama was originally mainly a combination of poetry and choreography performed not on a stage but in the orchestra, in other words, a dancing place! Furthermore, dance, according to impressive anthropological data, seems to have been the first means by which human consciousness objectified, symbolized, and stylized its perceptions, conceptions, and feelings. Thus the very evidence which suggests that the pragmatic function of concert music is to represent the dancing of attitudes also serves to reinforce the notion that dance is indispensable. 

 

Murray also spends a chapter looking at the differences between folk art and fine art - as well as the blurry line between them in history. This also ties in with his argument that folk art is actually highly sophisticated and stylized. Indeed, it is often more rigid than fine art. In any case, it is the pinnacle of technology for a society, not a spontaneous expression of primitive emotion. 

 

Sometimes such people seem to have as many academic pieties about the inherent merits of folk music as some others seem to have about the intrinsic superiority of the music of the European recital hall. Few hesitate to declare, if only by implication, that folk art is the most valid, reliable, and comprehensive representation of actuality - as opposed to the distortions inherent in the artificialities of fine art. And yet in the case of blues music, it so happens that their own firsthand contact with the actualities of the experience being stylized is often extremely limited, to say the least. Nevertheless, they seem to regard themselves as being fully qualified somehow to reject the professional blues musician’s preoccupation with craft and refinement out of hand. Because in their view it can only result in pretension and decadence.

 

Murray points out that the opposite is true:

 

The seldom questioned assumption that folk creativity is the primal source or wellspring of sophisticated art and technology is also misleading. Being inherently conservative or traditional, folk expression is necessarily imitative and thus not primordial in any intrinsic sense at all but derivative. Moreover, what it imitates and is itself derived from is such sophisticated art and technology as it has been able to come by and through the process of corruption and vulgarization, or in a word, popularization. Folkways are always the old ways. Folklore is the old lore. Folk music is the old-time music. In other words, folk expression is old sophisticated technology, wisdom, and art, only now it is assumed to be indigenous to unsophisticated craftsmen, sages, and artists.

…

And as for those inclined to take exception to the notion that folk craftsmen and artists are lacking in imagination and inventiveness, perhaps they have forgotten what folk expression is really like. To begin with, it is predictable, not experimental. In truth, it places no premium on newness as such. It is as far as is possible the same old stuff time and again. 

…

Invention comes from people of special talent and genus, not from those who are circumscribed by routine. 

 

Murray further notes that no small part of this notion of folk art as being more “pure” lies in a false belief about human nature generally. 

 

But after all what really seems to underlie most of the notions of those who prefer folk art to fine art are the same old essentially sentimental assumptions that make for pastoral literature (and for political theories about noble savages). Thus, much the same as pastoral poetry presents its rustics as being on better terms with life that courtiers because they are closer to nature, so would promoters of folk art as true art have you believe that a provincial musical sensibility is somehow a greater endowment than a more cosmopolitan sensibility plus a greater mastery of technique. It absolutely is not. It limits not only what folk artists can do but also what they can perceive and imagine in the first place. 

 

Thus, for Murray, artists like Duke Ellington are the pinnacle of the art of the blues, bringing in the special genius and talent as well as that cosmopolitan experience and imagination. It is hard for me to disagree. The same is true of the use of folk traditions in Classical music. 

 

I also noted the passage on the difference between hipsters and the genuine article. 

 

In any case the hipster’s application of the disposition to riff with elegance is usually limited to jiving and woofing on his street-corner hangout and to shucking and stuffing along the mainstem, as if the night club, the ballroom, the music hall, and the bars that the performers, gamblers, and the sporting crowd frequent were what life itself were all about. Indeed, some hipsters, not unlike some churchgoers, are so preoccupied with the trappings and procedures of the ceremonial occasion per se that their involvement amounts to idolatry. They misconstrue the symbol and the ritual and the ritual reenactment as the thing itself. 

 

The chapter summing up Murray’s own philosophy of the blues is amazing. 

 

What it all represents is an attitude toward the nature of human experience (and the alternatives of human adjustment) that is both elemental and comprehensive. It is a statement about confronting the complexities inherent in the human situation and about improvising or experimenting or riffing or otherwise playing with (or even gambling with) such possibilities as are also inherent in the obstacles, the disjunctures, and the jeopardy. It is also a statement about perseverance and about resilience and thus also about the maintenance of equilibrium despite precarious circumstances and about achieving elegance in the very process of coping with the rudiments of existence. 

 

Wow. Just wow. 

 

The ending is also truly badass:

 

When the storybook hero is reported to have lived happily ever after his triumph over the dragon, it is not to be assumed that he is able to retire but rather that what he has been through should make him more insightful, more skillful, more resilient, and hence better prepared to cope with eventualities. Because there will always be other dragons, which after all are as much a part of the nature of things as is bad weather. 

Nor has anybody ever been able to get rid of the blues forever either. You can only drive them away and keep them at bay for the time being. Because they are always there, as if always waiting and watching. So retirement is out of the question. But even so old pro that you have become, sometimes all you have to hear is the also and also of the drummer signifying on the high-hat cymbal, even in the distance (as it is as if it were the also and also of time itself whispering red alert as if in blue italics), and all you have to do is keep them in their proper place, which is deep in the dozens, is to pat your feet and snap your fingers.

 

If you love music, if you love the blues, if you love well-written thoughts by one of America’s great thinkers of his time, check out this book.

 

***

 

I linked a few, but maybe I can give you a handful of my favorite blues performances that I keep returning to. There are so many more - I am definitely not remembering them all. 

 

Obviously, got to have the King.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXSomPE_FY

 

And some Joe Bonamassa.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLOJS30JeDg

 

Bessie Smith.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bo3f_9hLkQ

 

Ella.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRIs5-uur_Q

 

Howling Wolf

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M95tCfMxwiM

 

Robert Johnson

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYsnRc09csQ

 

If you like, put your favorites in the comments. 🙂

The House of Dias Drear by Virginia Hamilton

Source of book: Audiobook from the library, but I also own this.

 

One of the joys of parenthood is discovering kid books that you somehow missed as a kid. A quick look through the indexes of this blog will reveal that the kids and I discovered a lot of interesting books together over the years. 

 

Alas, with most of my kids adults these days, we don’t have nearly as many kid books on our audiobook list as we used to, and they mostly have their own lives. But it was a lot of fun while it lasted, and I at least have so many great memories. 

 

While in a lot of cases, the kids found the books before I did, there are a number that I found on my own, often through the lists of past Newbery Award winners. 

 

The discovery of Virginia Hamilton came when the Library of America released a hardback collection of her best-known books. We are now up to three of her books read (or listened to), and I really do have to say that it is a shame that I didn’t discover these books when I was young. The House of Dias Drear in particular is a great haunted house tale that I suspect I would have read multiple times as a young boy. 

 

One of the things I have enjoyed about modern children’s literature by black authors is the way that the stories don’t have to be about civil rights or racism, but are often just about ordinary life and people, with the realities of white supremacy in America more as a background than as the focus. Not that there is anything wrong with the other kind of book, which the kids and I have also read, but that there is a power in simply normalizing the everyday existence of children and families and communities that just happen to be black. 

 

But Virginia Hamilton was doing this back in the 1960s and 70s and 80s. 

The House of Dias Drear is actually the first book of hers I have read that has slavery as a key plot point. But the book is a lot more than that. It is a great ghost story. Well, a ghost story the same way that Scooby Doo is about ghosts. It is also about a family, about the experience of being a young boy who is caught between trying to be brave and grown up and independent and still being a kid at heart. 

 

The protagonist is Thomas Small, age 13, who experiences a huge life change. His family packs up from their home in North Carolina, and moves to Ohio. His father is a history professor who has just been offered a job at a local university, and also the chance to rent the historic mansion of Dias Drear, an abolitionist who used the place as a stop on the Underground Railroad. 

 

Mr. Small also is in possession of a great deal of information about the house and its history, and he suspects that somewhere there might be a collection of historical artifacts that will be of use to the historical society. 

 

Oh, and the house has a bit of a reputation for being haunted. And no one who has lived there has made it past a few months before leaving, telling strange tales about their experiences.

 

Thomas starts off unhappy about the move (particularly about leaving his grandmother behind - she refuses to move with the rest of the family). He is both fascinated by the existence of secret passageways and tunnels and scared of a potential haunting.

 

And then there is the caretaker, Mr. Pluto, so nicknamed because of his reputation as being (perhaps) the lord of the underworld. I mean, he’s a blacksmith and lives in a cave, so why not? He is getting old, however, and Mr. Small assures the family that he is a good man, if a bit gruff.

 

Sure enough, though, once the Smalls move in, strange things start happening.

 

Metal triangles (which we eventually learn are signs left to guide those fleeing slavery) appear stuck on door frames during the night. The neighboring family, the Darrows, seem hostile. The visit to church is strangely unfriendly. 

 

And Thomas has a series of encounters with Mr. Pluto, in which he sometimes seems like a crippled old man, and other times like a supernaturally strong and fast apparition. 

 

He also meets Mac Darrow, a kid his age, who seems more friendly than the other Darrows. And also Pesty, a young girl who has become Pluto’s protege, and who seems able to charm a horse like a professional rider. 

 

With rumors of a treasure, a lurid story of how Dias Drear was finally killed by enslaver thugs, and the story of an enslaved person who escaped the disaster, there are the makings of quite a thrilling story.

 

And did I mention secret passageways, and tunnels, and hiding places, all with historic connection to the Underground Railroad? 

 

Oh yes. 

 

I really enjoyed this book. It has the right combination of excitement, daring do, realistic characters, and a great look inside Thomas’ head as he tries to navigate change and fear and growing up. It’s a really excellent read. 

 

I can’t say any more without spoiling all the fun surprises in the book, though. 

 

I will add, however, that this is a great example of how Hamilton highlights different African American experiences in her book. Each of the three I have read have had different slices of life presented. The working class Appalachian rural culture, where Irish and black families live side by side. The farming families. And, in this book, the educated middle class. Hamilton seems intent on showing that there are many ways to be in the world, and that the stereotype of black poverty and all the racist assumptions that go with that, are myths. 

 

The Smalls are a family that any of us can identify with. The exhaustion of caring for twin toddlers. The stress of moving and finding community in a new place, where people have different ideas of what “friendliness” looks like. Parents who love their children yet have to find the balance between freedom and protection. They are good people, and they rise to the occasion in this book. 

 

I think that it is high time that Virginia Hamilton be recognized as one of the best writers of her era. Her books have aged quite well, and seem every bit as relevant today. 

 

***

 

The other Virginia Hamilton books:

 

Zeely

M. C. Higgins the Great

 

I also recommend checking out my list of black authors. There are so many amazing books, including some of the best fiction being written today. 

 

Twenty-five Years After 9/11, the Terrorists are Winning the Long Game

All of us of a certain age can remember where we were and what we were doing when the aircraft hit the buildings. I was at home getting ready for work along with my wife who was getting ready to go to her nursing school classes. 

 

I was twenty-five years old, newly married, and far too naive about a lot of things, as one often is at that age. This was compounded by my being homeschooled and raised in an ultra-conservative religious fundamentalist bubble, although I was already starting to shift in my views, embarrassing Rush Limbaugh era notwithstanding.

 

So, 9/11 happened a half a lifetime ago for me. Literally half of my life has now been defined by those events and the aftermath. 

 

It is impossible to look back now without noticing that the terrorists are winning the long game.

As I said, I was naive, and failed to understand what the terrorists understood: a majority of white Americans - especially the religious ones - would gladly commit national suicide given a provocation. 

 

I will get into exactly how this is happening later in the post, but I want first to look at the internal dynamics that the terrorists understood, but many of us well-meaning Americans didn’t at the time.

 

A significant portion of white Americans were simmering in their rage, and just waiting for an excuse to act.

 

This rage was longstanding, and had been carefully stoked for decades by politicians like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Buchanan, to name just a few. It was further stoked by media figures like Rush Limbaugh. And, let us not forget, by religious charlatans, especially James Dobson. 

 

Many white Americans, particularly Evangelicals, were still furious about the end of Jim Crow. They were furious about the immigration of the last 100 years because it was mostly darker-skinned people. They were furious that women had gained rights in society and in the family. They were furious that gay and transgender people had the gall to exist publicly. 

 

Twenty-five years ago, I was a white Evangelical, and I didn’t see this truth. Some of it was that it is hard to notice the air you breathe. But also, for social respectability, the truth was hidden behind dog whistles and euphemisms. 

 

9/11 changed a lot of that. You could see the break in a pair of country music songs - I wrote about that a few years ago. 

 

Now, with the rise of Trump as the embodiment of this racist and misogynist fury, it has become all too clear that it was there all along. 

 

What the terrorists understood was that America would devour itself, with white conservatives turning on their neighbors in hate and rage. 

 

All it took was a flesh wound, and they would go ape-shit on the rest of us. 

 

Sure, it started with hate against Muslims and Middle-easterners. But within a decade - if that - it also became rage against all immigrants with brown skin: Latinx immigrants, Haitian immigrants, Asian immigrants - anyone who wasn’t white. 

 

I can sum it up in the moral disintegration of my own father, who went from praising immigrants and refugees as hard-working people seeking a better life, to calling for mass deportations (aka ethnic cleansing) and a complete shutdown of the refugee program. 

 

It started as “Islam is an evil religion, and we shouldn’t let Muslims in.” Never mind that there are three million Muslims in the US, that they commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born white people, are more educated than native-born white people, and that they are an important part of our communities. 

 

It then progressed to “The problem with our country are these refugees. We should shut that whole thing down.” Never mind that refugees are literally the least likely group to commit crimes, or that they have filled crucial jobs and brought new life to fading small towns.

 

And then, by 2018, “I don’t like Trump’s style, but at least he is finally doing something about the Hispanic problem.” And also complaints that there is nowhere left in America where you can get away from minorities. Yeesh. 

 

So yes, the terrorists were playing the long game and they are winning.

 

Let’s look at the ways. 

 

Our country is more divided than we have been not only in my lifetime, but in any time since the Civil War was fought over the right of white people to enslave black people.

 

We invaded two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which was actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Rather, the terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, who we depend on for enough oil to deter us from attacking them. And Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan, something which we apparently knew. But better to just go after unconnected countries we didn’t like, right?

 

A quarter century later, it is pretty obvious that we didn’t solve anything. Iraq gave rise to a new terrorist group, ISIS, as the result of the civil war we triggered. It was at least a decade and a half before Iraq returned to at least some level of stasis. 

 

The cost in lives for that war is staggering. The US sacrificed more than 4000 of its soldiers, with many times that wounded. But that is dwarfed by the over one million Iraqi civilian deaths. Is it any wonder that we aren’t particularly beloved in the Middle East?

 

And then there is Afghanistan, which we spent two decades fighting, with the result that the Taliban, which is a terrible group in pretty much every way, even more entrenched.

 

It shouldn’t surprise us that this happened, of course. Going in and blowing up a country doesn’t endear you to its citizens. 

 

In fact, the truth of the matter is that the United States has done more to create radical Islamic groups than anyone. From our CIA coup that ended democracy in Iran and our support of the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, to our current endless wars in the region, we have managed to legitimize religious fanatics as the best counterweight to American imperialism. 

 

Fast forward to Trump’s illegal and profoundly stupid war against Iran. Which he is losing badly. Iran’s regime is more entrenched than before we attacked. Iran has realized that it can in fact control the Strait of Hormuz, and there is no way to put that genie back in the lamp. Our military bases in the Middle East look vulnerable, so much so that we were literally unable to re-provision an aircraft carrier. 

 

No matter what we do from here, it is likely that Iran becomes the major power in the region, we lose access to our bases, and our influence becomes fairly irrelevant.

 

We have elected - TWICE! - a grossly incompetent wannabe dictator, whose only appeal is to the worst of human nature: racism, misogyny, bullying, transphobia, xenophobia. And that is why he won. (See my father above…)

 

Not only has this divided our country, but it has greatly reduced our world influence and power. Because we have turned on our allies, including freaking Canada, of all things, we are no longer seen as reliable. 

 

Rather, the world knows that enough of us are profoundly stupid and filled with hate and rage, that any election can put another Trump in power, and we are back to the toddler tantrums. 

 

China looks like the most obvious winner here in the long term. 

 

Twenty-five years later, and there is no doubt that America no longer is the dominant superpower. And that we are crumbling, eaten from within. 

 

Other suicidal stuff? We are defunding the infrastructure that made our country great. From science to healthcare to vaccines to public transit, we have chosen instead to devote our government to ethnic cleansing and mass wealth transfers to the billionaire-predator class. 

 

Honestly, it is hard to think of any enemy the US has had that has been this effective in destroying us. (Although major assist to Russia and Vladimir Putin here as well.) 

 

In my view, this happened because the terrorists understood the nature of religious extremism better than we did.

 

We should have listened to Salman Rushdie, who grasped this fundamental truth:

 

“Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It is about power.”

 

All those white Evangelicals (and a disturbing percentage of white Catholics, Mormons, and Mainliners as well) may not have thought of themselves as extremists, but they had the necessary ingredients. 

 

And that most important of that was fear, hate, and rage against outsiders. Here in the US, where white supremacy is our national sin, and has been since the beginning, the ugly root is and always has been a burning fury against black people. Like any wildfire, this rage never stops with one group, but expands until anyone different at all - including those of the other political party - are consumed in the “we will not allow people different from us to exist.” 

 

The terrorists understood this, and knew that white religious people in the US would be all too easy to radicalize. 

 

Because the root of religious fanaticism isn’t about religion at all. It is about hatred of “the other.”

 

And here we are. 

 

Where one political party has turned full fascist. 

 

Where there are open calls - from the White House! - to deport one-third of Americans. The non-white ones.

 

Where there are mainstream movements to end voting rights for women. 

 

Ultimately, it turned out that the greatest threat to America was religious religious fanaticism. 

 

But it wasn’t Islam. It was white “Christianity.” 

 

And that is how the terrorists are winning the long game. 

 

***

 Crucial to understanding the long history of American interference and exploitation of the Middle East:

 

A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny 

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer 

 

***

Also beneficial is Rebecca Solnit's excellent book, A Paradise Built in Hell. She recently re-issued a revised version of the chapter on 9/11 online, which you can read here.  

 

Replaceable You by Mary Roach

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

Note: Once again I have been forced to remove references to male genitals from this post, because it got flagged for a warning. The same is not true for female genitals, for reasons I do not understand.

 

There are very few authors for whom I have read everything they have written. I’m not sure how many they are - I guess I would have to go back and find all the ones who wrote one book and nothing else. Harper Lee ruined my streak posthumously - I haven’t read her new one, and it isn’t high on my list.

 

I am sure, however, that I have again read everything by Mary Roach. This is my third time. She keeps writing new ones, which is good, of course. There is always a sad feeling when I get to the end of her latest and know I have to wait for the next. 

 

I have reviewed nearly all of her books, the only exception being Bonk, which was the first one I read. I actually was blogging back then, but I still cared too much about what Evangelical friends and family would think if I wrote about a book with sex stuff in it. Suffice it to say that those days are long gone. I haven’t been a church member for nearly a decade, am estranged from my parents, and most of the people whose opinions I once cared about have outed themselves as racist, misogynistic, and homo- and trans-phobic. So, my remaining fucks will be reserved for better things. 

Replaceable You is a return to Roach’s fascination with human bodies. And, as she always does, she finds a way to participate in the things she writes about. 

 

The book is about the things one can replace on humans. Or that we are working to figure out how to replace. She starts with some pretty mild stuff, like Tycho Brahe’s nose, and skin grafts for burn victims. Not that this isn’t fascinating, but you might need a strong stomach for the chapters on tissue donation and organ transplants. 

 

Roach, of course, cannot be actually grossed out, as far as I can tell. She is game for just about anything that is merely unpleasant (as opposed to actually harmful or dangerous) or nausea-inducing. Watching the bones be removed from a corpse? Of course! Getting a hair transplant to her leg? Why not. Donating hair follicles for research? She’s a public citizen! And yes, of course there is plenty of talk about genitals. Because Mary Roach. 

 

I’m not going to go through all the topics, but I do want to share some great quotes and quips. And footnotes, where she buries some of the snarkiest stuff. In case you wondered, yes she makes fun of the Elongated Muskmelon - I’ll highlight those. 

 

Anyway, I’ll start with a bit of the introduction, “First Thoughts,” and a bit that triggered my memory. About dentures. 

 

Roach cites a 2015 survey by Poligrip, and highlights a few fascinating statistics. Some are just sad, like the fact that a quarter of those with dentures were afraid to kiss someone. 

 

But the one that stood out to me is that more than half of the respondents got their dentures when they were younger than age 45. 

 

Yeah, that’s surprising. But I also recall that when I was a young kid, my mom’s parents both had full dentures. They couldn’t have been older than early 50s. Which, well, I recently hit that half century mark myself, and I can’t imagine having all replacement teeth. But it used to be more common. Even people like my grandparents, who lived long lives, ended up with bad teeth early. 

 

These days, implants are far more common, thankfully. 

 

Skin transplants make for an interesting topic. I actually knew a lot about this from reading a book about Dave Dave, a burn survivor whose case at the time was considered unsurvivable. Technology developed at that time has made for huge improvements in burn care since. 

 

In both books, the various steps of skin transplantation are discussed, from the use of cadaver skin for protection during healing, to the thin shaving and growth of skin cells from the burned person to eventually re-cover the body. 

 

Leave it to Roach, of course, to note that one part of the procedure reminded her of a shawarma shop. 

 

And also to observe that the frozen grafts have stickers reminding staff “DO NOT MICROWAVE” for thawing them. 

 

The chapter on hearts and blood was fun for a variety of reasons. I donate blood, so I appreciate the advances that have been made in anti-coagulation technology. On that topic, there is a footnote where Roach describes early blood donation (which is depicted in Dracula, by the way), which had to be direct from donor to donee. 

 

Roach, naturally, describes the attempts at privacy as being “Blood bank glory holes.” 

 

I also liked that chapter on genital replacements. She talked a bit about this in Grunt, because war has a tendency to blow soldiers’ d!cks off. This book looks more at the creation of vaginas, which typically is done for transgender and intersex women, but cancer patients have also benefited. 

 

But it isn’t just vaginas. A lot of the use of intestinal tissue has expanded into other areas, because our guts are apparently very flexible and take well to repurposing. 

 

The best quip comes regarding the case of the cancer patient from over a century ago, who insisted on a replacement vagina, despite the significant risks in that era, because she was sure her husband would leave her if she didn’t. The physicians - all men of course - agreed with her on that. 

 

Roach’s response:

 

“And here we see how the anus can be used as a substitute for the male brain.” 

 

Roach, no surprise, is a feminist who is affirming of sexual and gender minorities, and has no end of snark for sexist males. At the opening of a passage on the phallocentric approach to pen!s construction or reconstruction, she has this observation.

 

When cisgender male surgeons let their sexual worldview dictate their practice, it’s not only women who endure the consequences. Garcia has had at least four trans men who came to his clinic for a pen!s reduction because the excessive girth of their new phallus made it impossible to penetrate their partner. 

 

She also notes a journal paper that explored the myth that nose size correlates to pen!s length. It doesn’t. “Big nose, big hose” is just a myth. 

 

I’ll also note here my wife’s experience as a nurse. She has, naturally, seen and catheterized a great many pen!ses. She reports that when the female nurses get a guy with a huge one, the reaction isn’t positive. Usually, the comment is “ouch.” It’s not the size of the tool, it’s the skill of the one who wields it. 

 

The chapter on joint replacement even ended up containing some great stuff about sex. The discussion starts with an article by Dr. Ban Saw, orthopedic surgeon. (Actually, his name was San Baw, but the letters were inadvertently switched in publication and wasn’t caught for years.

 

To head off speculation that Roach chooses her sources because of the names, she notes that the first choice for her interview was a person who, after the first contact, turned out to be the person Roach lost her virginity to. 

 

She then, in a footnote, talks about it without revealing the name. This stuff is comedic gold:

 

A friend from high school and I, townies both of us, had gone to a frat party with the aim of choosing someone cute and “getting it out of the way.” Boom, done. The man spends more time inside the hips of a typical arthroplasty patient than he did in mine. 

 

If you want to take a guess, she notes he is an orthopedist with the Mayo Clinic. She is 67, so he would have been presumably of similar age or slightly older. I’m heterosexual, so perhaps I am biased, but Roach is way hotter than any of the old guys in this list. (Hey, I have celebrity crushes too…)

 

The chapter about amputations was more interesting than I expected. There is the question of whether it is better to have a “natural” but strongly dysfunctional limb, or to cut it off and get a good prosthesis. In the case of feet and pain, the answer is often the latter. 

 

Roach observes that most of us either have or will have a prosthesis at some point. 

 

We all will, should we live long enough, be disabled.

 

This is a truth that I wish right wingers could understand. There is no point in looking down on the ill, the disabled, the unhealthy, and assuming they are at fault for their suffering. All of us will, unless we die young and suddenly, end up disabled. And sick. That is the progression of life and death. Better that we care for each other with love, and receive that care in our turn. 

 

Roach also initially claims that she doesn’t have a prothesis, but then realizes that she does. (And so do I, by the way.)

 

Oh wait, I do. Without my artificial lenses, I’m legally blind. Ezra puts on a leg in the morning. I put on contacts.

 

I made it to age 45 with my natural eyes. But they have gone downhill pretty fast after that age. Without my glasses - and I have two different pairs, one for reading, and one for music and computer work - I couldn’t read, write, or make music. With them, I can read a Mary Roach book and write about it. And then go out and play a symphony. 

 

There is a whole chapter on ostomies, which is quite interesting. As part of my professional practice, I have had clients with long-term ostomies due to a variety of conditions. One of my most stupid stories is about a client who applied for Medicaid due to disability, and the examining physician for Social Security entirely failed to note the presence of the ostomy. That’s malpractice level incompetence, likely driven by the pressure on SS doctors to deny benefits - the United States has as one of its personality traits a deep hatred toward the poor and disabled that leads to treating them with suspicion when they need help. Sorry, I could write a whole post about that. 

 

Needless to say, we appealed the denial, had a hearing in front of the administrative law judge, who was appalled at the doctor, and granted coverage. I am proud of that case. 

 

Anyway, Roach decided to attend the fundraising run for Ostomy Awareness Day. 

 

“The Giant Inflatable Colon will be on-site,” he added. If you know me, you know that that is, for better or for stupid, the sort of thing that tips the balance. I booked a flight.

 

And now we come to hair transplants. Roach asked that some follicles of her head hair be transplanted to her leg. Just because. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful. And worse, her donated follicles weren’t all that great at growth. Oh well. Her hair is still good where it grows, though.

 

This is the first of the appearances of the Elongated Muskmelon. The discussion is about the work to figure out how to use stem cells to create hair follicles. Although they in theory could make other things. Like sperm and egg cells. 

 

Human “in vitro gametogenesis," should it make its way into practice, presents intriguing scenarios. The ability to generate eggs or sperm from, say, one’s blood cells, would present novel solutions for infertility. It would mean that gay and lesbian couples could produce offspring with genetic material from both parents. Also, in theory, a person so inclined - Elon Musk comes to mind - could use iPS cell technology to generate his own eggs, fertilize them in vitro with his sperm, and produce offspring with no genetic input from anyone else.

 

And yes, the Muskmelon is the first person who comes to mind in that scenario. I would myself very much prefer that this technology benefit gay and lesbian couples, rather than narcissistic sociopathic billionaires, but maybe that’s just me. 

 

Oh wait, there is another Elon Musk bit. When transplanting hair, the best practice is to not make lines too even and straight. 

 

“It’s a zone of transition. It can’t be too straight or too abrupt. You want some irregularity.” This is achieved by implanting follicles in a slightly meandering manner, a technique called “snail-trailing.” “And you don’t want to give a fifty-year-old the hairline of a twenty-year-old,” Chaffoo says. The name Elon Musk comes up. 

 

I didn’t win the genetic lottery in a lot of ways. I’m okay with being short, but the allergies and the tendency toward illness are not fun. But I did get good hair. Which is ironic, because if I were to go bald, I think I would just shave it. It’s no big deal. 

 

Speaking of stem cells, I love that Roach calls out the marketing industry for some serious bullshit. 

 

Not long ago, walking through Target with his wife D’Amour stopped to examine a jar of moisturizer. It was on sale, but that wasn’t what caught his eye. It was the words WITH STEM CELLS. And there they were in the ingredient list: “apple stem cells.” D’Amour points out that the plant stem cells are found in the shoots and roots, not the fruit of the plant. While it’s possible to culture them in a lab, that’s unlikely to be the case in a cheap Target product. His guess is that the company just added some cells from apple stems. 

 

This being Mary Roach, it is no surprise that butt enhancement makes an appearance in the book. And plenty of snark about male surgeons. After all, there is this whole paper about “what makes buttocks beautiful” - and the “scientific” method used to determine this apparently was a panel of plastic surgeons who “pointed out which buttocks they considered attractive and harmonious, and features on which this attractiveness depended.” As Roach says, “Oho!”

 

She then discusses the Golden Ratio, and talks about a website called “Math Is Fun,” which she says convinces no one. Oh well, I kind of like math. In moderation. 

 

I want to end with a downer, unfortunately. The epilogue was written after Trump’s second election, and the DOGE cuts. Several of the programs she discusses in the book no longer exist, thanks to the cuts. This is unfortunately something that we are going to see increasingly as the Big Billionaire Bill’s delayed cuts kick in next year. 

 

Already, my home county has lost its Alzheimer’s Disease Association and its associated adult day care that served so many of my clients - due to the cuts. I am thoroughly frustrated that local media dropped the ball on this when the bill was enacted, and still refuses to call out our local congressmen - David Valadeo and Vince Fong - who voted for it. And of course, Trump and his ghouls and goons. 

 

People are going to suffer, and the US is going to continue to lose its scientific and medical infrastructure as the result. 

 

And yes, I am so fucking furious at the people who voted for him. Even though, in the case of ADAKC, I suspect that a LOT of people who voted for Trump are now suffering after they essentially killed their own program. It’s beyond stupid, but here we are. 

 

Things could have been so much better. And perhaps in another generation we can repair the damage so my children can have a decent life. 

 

I’ll just end by pointing out that this all is a blazing example of how racism makes you stupid. And link to Jonathan Metzl’s excellent book, Dying of Whiteness - which is the perfect term for what we are experiencing. 

 

***

 

 The Mary Roach list:

 

Fuzz

Grunt

Gulp

Packing for Mars

Spook

Stiff