Local, Organic, Food (Part 1)

I don't know about you, but I'm still digesting a hearty, caloric, too-high carbohydrated, Thanksgiving meal. So one would think it would be unlikely that I would again be writing about food today. But, here I am, posting about food again, even though I'm not too interested in eating much of anything now.

Late in the summer, we received word about a benefit dinner, sponsored by Slow Food Indy, for local chefs who were planning on attending the biennial Terre Madre conference in Italy. We attending two of these dinners, one at a one of our favorite restaurants (R Bistro locally owned, local foods, great chef) and one at a farm in a nearby community where dinner was served in the barn. At both of these events we were treated to wonderful, locally grown, in season food.

I think that one would have to have been living (or eating) under a rock if one were either a foodie, or environmentally oriented, not to at least have an inkling of an idea about the local foods movement. But, as a consumer, one is bombarded by terms like organic, local, natural when at the grocery store and sorting out the marketing bandwagon hype from the local movement can be slightly daunting.

I don't think that I had really taken any time to educate myself about why locally grown is a good thing until this summer. I'm not an expert, by any means, but I have learned much in the last few months. For the last several spring/summer seasons, we've frequented the local farmers' markets. There is now one within walking distance from me, although I usually buy at a larger one that is in the same area as other places I go while making the rounds for my usual Saturday morning tasks. This year, there is a Winter market that I'll try, and there is small market stand that sells local produce in season that will be open this winter. There isn't much local produce one can buy in the winter months in the Midwest, but I want to see this place survive -- and Florida oranges are Florida oranges whether I buy them here or at the big-chain market -- so I'll continue to go there.

On top of the pile of books I've started and have been meaning to complete are Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

But, the event that I'm looking forward to most immediately, is a lecture next week by Alice Waters, chef at Berkeley's Chez Panisse, local-food, slow food guru, and originator of the Edible Schoolyard project. Waters is speaking at the Indianapolis Musuem of Art. The IMA's blog has posted a portion of an interview with Waters (here). I particularly liked what she had to say about working with artists:

The reason I’m interested in working with artists is to take food out of that ‘foody’ place and put it into the beauty of culture. Food is a universal language.

I'll be posting about the lecture soon.

Olympic Ceremony in Real Time

Go to www.cyclingfans.com and scroll down for the second link to NRK. I think this is in Danish. My info on the language may be wrong, but it doesn't matter because I can't understand it. However, there are some things that are universal: "anti-doping", "conflict Dafur", "basketball", "dream team".

More importantly universal: the smiles on the faces of the atheletes. Very cool!


Why is there someone from the UAE in the parade speaking on his cell phone? (He smiled too when he realized he was on camera!)

live blogging Obama

Obama isn't on stage yet. Thousands of people standing in Indianapolis in American Legion Mall -- IN THE RAIN. And Stevie Wonder is singing !!!!!

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Updated: I can't say I saw Senator Obama, but I could hear him! Local news stations are estimated that there were 21,000 people in the Mall, a park in downtown Indianapolis about 2 blocks long (1/4 mile long) & 1 block wide.



I think this little guy had one of the best seats in the house.



Well worth standing for 2 hours & walking 1.35 miles in queue to get into the park area about 500 feet from our car! Everybody in Indiana & North Carolina: GO VOTE TOMORROW.

Fireworks

Indianapolis boasts of the largest Children's Museum in the world. While this is true, I find no value in its size; I dislike self-reported claims of being the biggest, tallest, largest anything, because these terms have nothing to do with quality. But, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis is a worthwhile place, with great quality learning experiences for kids and their adult guides. It is a fantastic environment for children, one that presents learning experiences in a fun way.

Several years ago, when my son was in grade school, we went to an exhibit of Alexander Calder works at the Children's Museum. I loved this idea of bringing art to a place dedicated to children. Not only did Calder's whimsical works seem at home in the exhibit space, but the way in which the artist's work was presented -- on the level of a child and in a hands-on way -- was outstanding. The words "Hands-on" and "art" used together may frighten a curator with visions of chocolate and peanut-butter hand prints leaving greasy marks on once priceless, now ruined canvas. But hands-on for this exhibit meant activities like jumping under a mobile to generate air currents to set the sculpture in motion, or being given the materials to make one's own mobile inspired by Calder's work. Over the years other exhibits dealing with art have been at the museum. A few years ago, for example, there was an exhibit of Norman Rockwell paintings and his Saturday Evening Post magazine covers. Incorporating child's play with art is something that isn't done often enough.

Then, last year, the museum did something else: the installation of a 43-foot glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly in the main staircase of the museum. The sculpture, Fireworks of Glass is playful. It is composed of thousands of pieces of primary-colored glass curlicues. It sits upon a glass ceiling.

I visited the museum recently and saw Fireworks of Glass for the first time. This was not the first Chihuly exhibit I had seen; in fact, I've seen several previously. While his glass chandeliers that I have seen (like this one at the V&A in London) are composed of translucent glass that catch the light, the sculpture at the Childrens' Museum is made up of opaque pieces of glass. The pieces of glass seem to swirl around the main column, as if caught in a vortex by tornadic winds. The tower is capped by a starburst. Looking at it from either the top or bottom floors of the museum, it does resemble a fireworks explosion, suspending in air, just before the burning embers tumble towards the ground and disappear as they cool. The tower is in the middle of an enormous staircase -- a ramp system actually -- that takes the visitor to each of the 5 floors of the museum. The piece seems to fit so perfectly in the space, you would think that the ramp was designed around the sculpture. Despite all of the times that I have been to the Children's Museum over the years, I cannot tell you anything about the central staircase before the glass tower was added. The sculpture not only fills the space, but it defines it as well.

Visitors to the museum can sit under the sculpture, on the basement floor, and look upwards through the glass ceiling to the sculpture. The museum is currently featuring a short movie about the artist and there are hands-on exhibits for children to learn about the art of glassmaking. Very cool. There is even a rotating bench that you can sit upon, reclining slightly, to look up through the ceiling at the sculpture and the lights sparkling off of it. When I was last at the museum, I was there for a benefit. Dressed in formal wear, I couldn't bring myself to recline on the bench and look up at the tower. Nor did I see anyone else doing that. An evening dress and heels are not exactly conducive to rotating reclining benches. Plus, I wasn't certain that I would have been able to return to a vertical position after sitting on that bench -- at least not in any sort of graceful manner.

Later I realized how sad this was that we didn't say 'screw decorum', sit upon the bench and gaze up in child-like wonder. After all, isn't art suppose to spur you to think and to feel? Ah, apparently only if you let it take its full effect.

More on Thomas Paine - Paine and Religion

No wonder Thomas Paine was controversial. And ignored by those who blindly believe that all of our "founding fathers" were supportive of a "Christian" nation.

From Thomas Paine's Rights of Man

Throughout this work, various and numerous as the subjects are, which I have taken up and investigated, there is only a single paragraph upon religion, viz. "that every religion is good that teaches man to be good"

I have carefully avoided to enlarge upon the subject, because I am inclined to believe, that what is called the present ministry, wish to see contentions about religion kept up, to prevent the nation turning its attention to subjects of government. It is, as if they were to say, "Look that way, or any way, but this."

But as religion is very improperly made a political machine, and the reality of it is thereby destroyed, I will conclude this work with stating in what light religion appears to me.

If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any particular day, or particular circumstance, made it a custom to present to their parents some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little devises, as their genius dedicated, or according to what they thought would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather what it thought the prettiest flower it could find, though, perhaps, it might be but a simple weed. The parent would be more gratified by such a variety, than if the whole of them had acted on a concerted plan, and each had made exactly the same offering. This would have the cold appearance of contrivance, or the harsh one of control. But of all unwelcome things, nothing could more afflict the parent than to know, that the whole of them had afterwards gotten together by the ears, boys and girls, fighting, scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about which was the best or the worst present.

Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with a variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? For my own part, I am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an endeavor to conciliate mankind, to render their condition happy, to unite nations that have hitherto been enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of war, and break the chains of slavery and oppression is acceptable in his sight, and being the best service I can perform, I act it chearfully.

I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.

(Common Sense and Other Writings, p250-251)

Paine lays out a more elaborate argument against organized religion, specifically Christianity, and supportive of Deism, in The Age of Reason. I don't agree with many of his arguments in The Age of Reason, but as an indictment of some organized religious institutions, I think this is on target. In some ways, it seems that Paine was doing 200+ yrs ago, what some vocal atheists are doing today (Dawkins, etc.). That is, attacking the organization as if it were the same as the faith. That said, he has a point about the bickering, the belief in the superiority of one faith over another, and the unwanted and ill-advised mixture of politics and organized religion. It's as true today as it was when Paine wrote.

Election Day Reading

I sat down this evening to read Thomas Paine's Common Sense, but instead, read Paine's Rights of Man (1791, 92).

Paine's arguments for the right to choose one's government, 215 years later, seem self-evident, so obvious as to make one wonder how society did not universally accept the natural rights of man. Yet, it wasn't universally accepted in Paine's time. The purpose of Paine's work was a defense of the necessity of the French Revolution as an assertion of those natural rights. In his work he called for the establishment of a British constitution, an act that lead to his being tried, in absentia, for treason.

From Paine's Rights of Man:

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

We have not to review the governments which arise out of society, in contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.

It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

The news tonight claimed an 'surprise upset' and a 'landslide' in local election. I didn't vote for the victor, and I don't understand his campaign which was more 'against' a specific situation than 'for' anything. But, how I feel is irrelevant now that the election is over.

I arrived at my precinct polling place 50 minutes before the polls closed. The electronic voting machine indicated that I was the 288th voter today. I don't know how many people are in my precinct, but I suspect it is far more than 288. Aren't those who abdicate their right by not voting allowing themselves to be 'knaves and fools'? Aren't they truly the fools, rather than those only thought to be by those who usurp power? By putting your trust in the voting process, you are part of the process of constituting a government, a process that people were willing to die for, a right that people elsewhere are denied.

Making Lists of "good" books

Recently, I posted a list, a book meme that has been circulating, of 100 selected titles. I commented regarding the oddity of the list. There seemed to be no underlying pattern to the works selected. It contained both classics and popular fiction; high brow and low brow and everything in between. Several commented here or on their own blogs about how eclectic the list was (Anne, Pinky, Gayle, Sassy).

Then I came across Myrtias's blog with a listing from the Modern Library's identifying their picks for Best 100 Novels. (Danielle posted this list too.) At first I thought I could do the same thing, marking those I had read, those I was unfamiliar with, those that I wouldn't touch with a metaphoric literary 10-foot pole, those that I owned, as if their presence on my shelves accrued some additional value or meaning. I scanned the list and realized that the stats for my reading (or not reading) was similar for both lists. I had read a few more works on the 100 books meme (23 vs 35) , there were about a dozen works on the Modern Library list that I might want to read in the future (vs 9), those that I was unfamiliar with was about the same (11 vs 15) and there were 5 fewer works on the ML list in the keep at least 10-feet away category.

The more interesting thing, though, was to analyze these two lists, not what I had read. There were only 8 works in common (The Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, and Ulysses). The first list was dominated by women authors -- 42 works by 38 different authors; the Modern Library list had only 9 works by 8 female authors. 42% of the Modern Library list represents 17 authors, almost exclusively male. The ML list does not include works in translation; the first list does (e.g., Tolstoy, Garcia Marquez, Saint-Exupery, Hugo, Dostoyevsky).

Maybe the point is, it doesn't matter who compiles the list. Is the Modern Library list any less esoteric than the other? Like the other list, it reflects a certain perspective, a bias of the list-makers. One could argue endlessly about the makings of a literary canon and the gender biases (or ethnic, cultural, etc. ) of those who establish that canon. I think those discussions are important ones in terms of understanding the inherent biases, but it doesn't mean that such a list in invalid, only incomplete, or not in harmony with many people's experiences.

I prefer to read "good" works of fiction, but I don't know that I can define what that is. A trek through my bookshelves would certainly yield an interesting and esoteric list. Some of what I have read is good, some bad, some "trash" that I loved despite not having any lasting value beyond the fun of reading and the actual content of the work forgotten moments after closing the cover.

You will find The Modern Library's complete list posted here, along side the 100 Best Novels list by readers. The reader list has several works by Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged is ranked #1 on the Reader List), L. Ron Hubbard, Frank Herbert, along side Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Hemingway. This explains the origins of the lists, developed in 1998. The goal of the "100 Best" project was to get people talking about great books. We succeeded beyond our wildest imaginings — more than 400,000 avid readers rushed online to cast votes for their favorite books...."

Perhaps it isn't possible to make a list without some controversy, with an unbiased perspective. But, if the goal is to talk about books, does it really matter? Does it matter if what I consider a good book is different from yours?

I don't think so.

Colts Win!! Bears DeClawed!

No Lying

Susan Hill has a post up on her blog today about the books people most often lie about, at least according to a survey done in the UK by the Museums and Libraries Authority. Sometimes I think these surveys are pretty silly. (Hill does too, apparently.) Yet, I always find such lists curious. Why these books? What differences in the list would exist if another group did the survey, a different group was sampled?

Here is the list of the most 'lied' about books.

1. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R Tolkien

I've read all of the Hobbit, all of the 1st book, and skimmed or read aloud the 2nd or 3rd books while helping my son with a school project in 5 grade (yes it was too ambitious for a 5th grader). Like root canal without anesthesia. The kid has read them all at least twice since. I'm thankful that I'll never have to read them again!

2. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

I've tried. Haven't made significant progress but it still sits in the current read stack where it's been since July.

3. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

Nope.

4. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus – John Gray

Tried. Thought it was ridiculous. Restrained myself from throwing it across the room and told sibling that her future spouse was an idiot for making her read it She dumped him, but not on my advice.

5. 1984 – George Orwell

Yep. In Jr. High. Then in High School. Then in College. (A rather long period of fascination with dystopian literature). Then, of course, in 1984.

6. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone – J.K Rowling

Aloud on a long family road trip to the seashore. (I wasn't driving....)

7. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

Never read any Dickens. I've thought about correcting that situation this year. Maybe I will.

8. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

I think I read it as an adolescent, but I don't remember if I finished it. I'm so familiar with the plot that I really don't know if I read it or not, I may just know it from discussions and watching various movie adaptations.

9. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Ugh! (That's a No.) Likely not to read it, based on negative reviews from people whose opinions matter to me. The Kid's assessment: "It's silly, but I was bored sitting in the airport. It's junk food reading."

10. Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank

Yes. Several times. Assisted with directing the play too when I taught h.s. eons ago.

I also haven't read Joyce's Ullysses. Or Proust. Or a lot of other works.

I'm not sure why anyone would lie about reading any of these books. I think sometimes non-readers think that seeing the movie is the same thing, confusing plot with the whole of the book. What is the motivation for lying about these? Who would be impressed that you had read Gray's book or Brown's? Might someone feel guilty that they hadn't read these? Perhaps one might claim to have read them if pontificating about the relative merits of the book, but wouldn't anyone who cared and had minimally functioning crap detector discover the truth quickly?

I'm sure that there are plenty of other books that people lie about reading. I was surprised that the Bible wasn't on this list. I know very few people who have read the entire Bible -- Hebrew and Christian Testaments -- completely. I'm frequently skeptical when someone claims that they have, especially if they claim to have read the Apocrypha. Maybe I'm just cynical. I've read parts of it, am doubtful that I'll ever read all of it.

I'd also add to this list Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I heard or read this referred to as perhaps the most unread bestseller of all time. (Sorry can't find the source right now.) I've tried to read it. The science was far beyond my comprehension and I just wasn't that interested in it at the time. I've learned more about the theories in Hawking's book since attempting to read it years ago, but I don't know that I have the motivation to try to read it again. With some books, I think it is okay to have read a good synopsis or book review. There is one level of knowledge regarding theory that is sufficient for the lay person's needs, without reading the original source materials. This book falls into that category for me, but I would never claim to have read it.

Have you read any of the above books? Which books do you think might be likely to appear on such a list?

In which I write about a topic unfamiliar to this space....

COLTS WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GO COLTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I would have a heart attack during the last minute of that game.

Reading Controversial Books

I found this list recently at Mischievous Muse, although I saw this list circulated a few months ago during banned books week. The list is from the ALA's list of 100 most challenged books. I'm always surprised that any book is challenged in schools or libraries. Often the reasons seem ridiculous to me, but I know that it is a very serious issue. Thinking is threatening to many; encouraging others to think means that there is a possibility that they might come to different conclusions, adopt different ideas. Encouraging new, maybe divergent ideas -- shouldn't that be the one of the aims of education, institutional or otherwise?

As I worked through this list I realized how many I had read. At first glance that made sense; I studied literature in college and many are in the canon. But in reviewing the list further, I realized that I read nearly half before college, while attending midwestern public schools. Perhaps it is a stereotype that most requests to remove books for classrooms and school libraries happen in conservative communities. And, maybe that is more common now that when I was in high school 30 years ago. Still, many of the titles on this list, in addition to ones that I have read, are works that I know are on school reading lists in my area. That is a good thing.

What about you? How many banned books have you read? I recommend that you read a controversial book this year and find out why some may have found it objectionable.


36 read (all or excerpts)
7 started but not finished for one reason or another
1 in process
14 (**) read in Jr. high or high school

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain **
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain **
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer**
#9 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne**
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli**
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank**
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 The Autobiography of Ben Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell**
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire (in French & English)**
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee**
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 The Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck**
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 The Red and the Black by Stendhal (in process)
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire (in French)**
#38 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley**
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 The Lord of the Flies by William Golding**
#47 Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys
#48 The Sun Also Rises by Ernes Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (in French)**
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles**
#76 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 The Red Pony by John Steinbeck**
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 The Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Breathing Space

My office is located in one of the most beautiful office parks (an oxymoron if ever there was one) that I've ever seen. Lots of green grass and trees. Two lakes at the edge; just beyond, a river. Not much traffic: the lay of the land is such that it hides the nearby expressway. Only now that the last leaves have fallen can I look out and see other buildings and an apartment complex. Nothing hints that this is located in a busy city of over a million people. It is a good thing to have beauty so readily at hand during the day. It makes it a tranquil place to pass the time, if one needs to be at work in an office building that is.

Sometimes, though, in the course of business, I need to be at my employer's other offices. Unlike my regular work location, there aren't any nearby trees or greenspaces to camouflage the city. Like my office, there is water nearby: the building sits adjacent to the bank of a river. And, though in a much different way, one can look out the window and see a breathtaking landscape, it isn't the same. When I sit in the 'guest' office, I look at a marvel of an urban cityscape. I have always looked in awe at the skylines of the great American cities -- Chicago, San Francisco, and the daddy of the them all: New York. But, I can't look out that window, gazing across the river at what is there without seeing what isn't there. You see, the river is the Hudson, and the office is directly across from lower Manhattan.

I've been to New York a few times since 9/11 and have stood in silence at the WTC site, trying to re-imagine the space as it had been. I last saw the towers about a month before the attacks, while staring out the window at Newark International, waiting to catch a plane. On 9/10, I saw a photo taken of my son a few months earlier, sitting in the same airport, the towers in the distance rising above the planes on the tarmac and the river and the other buildings. He is looking the other way, the photo's background one that should have remained inconsequential, just a part of the steel and glass skyline, not something that was a symbol of anything, not something that would, beginning the next day, forever dominate that snapshot. They were just buildings, impersonal concrete, no thought given to the commerce that occurred there, the people who worked and would die there. It wasn't until this fall, five years later, that I had looked at the Manhattan skyline from the New Jersey shore. My mind's eye kept trying to fill in where the towers had stood.

Shortly after that last trip to NJ, I was browsing at the library at church. Perhaps I unconsciously thought about the scenery that I had looked at for the preceding week as I looked for something to read. Maybe that is why I picked up Rowan Williams slim volume Writing in the Dust: After 9/11.

Rowan Williams, now the Archbishop of Cantebury, was two blocks away from WTC attending a meeting when the planes hit. This book, written in the weeks immediately after the attacks, is his reflection on the meaning of that day and what he suggests should have been the appropriate response to the events of 9/11. The title, as Williams writes in the epilogue, refers not only to the dense dust he was surrounded by after the buildings collapsed, but also to the temporary nature of his reflections. "This isn't a theology or a programme for action", Williams writes, "but one person's attempt to find words for the grief and shock and loss of one moment. ...[I] hope only that they may help to take forward someone else's mourning. ".

What strikes me though, having read the book twice through in one sitting, is that these words should not be temporary; or at least, they are not ready for dissolution yet. They are as relevant today, while we are embroiled in the war in Iraq with no easy or clear-cut way out of the mess we have made, as it was in the days immediately following the terrorist attacks on WTC and the Pentagon.

Williams first writes of the nightmare of being in the area of the attacks, of escaping only to feel the rumble of the second tower collapsing, and breathing in the thick debris-filled air. He writes of a void, "the emptiness and anaesthesia", in the midst of terror and death, but how we shouldn't be eager to fill that void too quickly, with easy answers. He writes of the perversion that would make someone do such an incomprehensible act, how it couldn't be in the name of religion despite the terrorists' claims. He warns of what he calls the "great lie of religion: the god who fits our agenda". He contrasts the truly heroic actions of the responders, working for the secular goal of community health and safety, with the wrongly self-proclaimed heroism of the religious zealots who hijacked the planes. And, in his first chapter, Williams calls for a 'breathing space' to consider what happened and how we should respond.

It is this idea of a breathing space that Williams returns to throughout his reflection, encouraging a breathing space to understand what happened and to know an appropriate response to and punishment for such unspeakable violence. We need breathing space to know how to move forward and prevent such angry violence from happening again. We need breathing space to speak of, and maybe to redefine, our belief in God. That is what he wrote at the end of 2001; I don't know if he was right, but I do believe that if our country had done what Williams suggested, we might not be in the current situation in Iraq.

At the time Williams was writing this, America had just begun the campaign in Afghanistan. Williams writes of the decision to go to war, questioning whether it was an act of 'just war':

A good deal of the moral capital accumulated during the first days and weeks has been squandered. From a situation where Muslim nations, even Iran, expressed shock and sympathy, we have come to a point where the shapelessness of the campaign leads Muslims to ask whether there is any agenda other than the humiliation of an Islamic population. We may think this an outrageously wrong perception, but it becomes -- or should become -- a rather urgent factor in calculating how to restore a sense of lawfulness that would sustain some coherent action to punish and to secure a future that will be more settled and just for everyone.

But terrorism is not a place, not even a person or a group of persons; it is a form of behaviour. 'War' against terrorism is as much a metaphor as war against drug abuse. It can only mean a sustained policy of making such behaviour less attractive or tolerable. As we've been reminded often, this is a long job; but there is a difference between saying this, which is unquestionably true, and suggesting that there is a case for an open-ended military campaign. (p. 37).

He continues:

We could ask whether the further destabilising of a massively resentful Muslim world and the intensifying of the problems of homelessness and hunger in an already devastated country were really unavoidable. We could refuse to be victims, striking back without imagination.
The hardest thing in the world is to know how to act so as to make the difference that can be made; to know how and why that differs from the act that only releases or expresses the basic impotence of resentment. (p46-47).

By attacking a country that was not the attacker, Williams reasons, we have only deepened the gulf of misunderstanding between the West and the Arab world:

Every transaction in the developed economies of the West can be interpreted as an act of aggression against the economic losers in the worldwide game. However much we protest that this is a caricature, this is how it is experienced. And we have to begin to understand how such a perception is part of the price we pay for the benefits of globalisation. (p. 55)

So, there is a particularly difficult challenge here, to do with making terms with our vulnerability and learning how to live with it in a way that isn't simple denial, panic, the reinforcement of defenses.( p 57).

The most important point, though, in Williams brief book (at approx 70 pages, it's really a long essay), is that it is important to understand the misuse of symbols. Symbols, Williams writes, can be manipulated, and abused to the point where it is the symbol one supports, rather than the reality behind it. Just as the twin towers became, for al-Qaida, a twisted symbol of Western greed and gluttony, the towers or the terrorists can be a symbol of our fear, and hatred of others we do not understand, veiled behind the symbol of an outrageous act.

'Using other people to think with'; that is, using them as symbols for points on your map, values in your scheme of things. When you get used to imposing meanings in this way, you silence the stranger's account of who they are; and that can mean both metaphorical and literal death. Death as the undermining of a culture, language, or faith, and, at the extreme, the death of tyranny and genocide. ...The collective imagination needs the outsider to give itself definition -- which commonly means that it needs somewhere to project its own fears and tensions.

Living realities are turned in to symbols, and the symbolic values are used to impression the reality. At its extreme pitch, people simple relate to the symbols. It is too hard to look past them, to look into the complex humanity of a real other. (p. 64-65).

It's tough to think of the WTC towers as a bad symbol, but that isn't what Williams was suggesting, and I don't mean it either. Rather, Williams means that anything, when reduced to a symbol can be negative, representing only the distillation of our own misinformed interpretation. It's like the flag: it can be a symbol of patriotism, of loyalty to one's country. But, it can also represent the bullheaded idea of 'my country as I see it, my country right or wrong, my country as my agenda'. Here is where we get caught in symbols and they begin to define us, rather than the other way around.

So, is a bad thing that I look at the skyline of Lower Manhattan and re-image the outline of the towers? No...as long as I hold that symbol as something to make me think about what happened, and not just how I might have reacted to it initially. It is the moral and spiritual thing to do; the right thing. To quote Williams again:

What use is faith to us if it is only a transcription into mythological jargon of the mechanisms of that inhuman grief that grasps its own suffering to itself as a ground of justification and encloses the suffering of others in interpretations that hold it at a safe distance?

And Christian faith? Can we think about our focal symbol, the cross of Jesus, and try to rescue it from its frequent fate as the banner of our own wounded righteousness? (p 72-73).

We are beyond taking a 'breathing space' now with the war. If we had in the initial days, or even sooner, the conditions in Iraq may not have deteriorated to the state they are in now. A louder voice would have been crying out sooner regarding the steps taken to put ourselves in the middle of a war in the Middle East. But are we not all to blame for not listening to those who were the loud voices, not to blame for not hearing them, for not being reflective instead of reflexive?

We need to evaluate all symbols and sloganeering that we encounter. What is really meant by a War on Terror? What is meant by an 'axis of evil'? How can we move beyond stereotypes, to foster true understanding with others elsewhere in the world? While that might not answer the question of how we pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, it might help us post-deployment with finding the path forward.

2 Kinds of Art, 2 kinds of People

When I started reading blogs a few short dog years ago (I think the leaves were just starting to turn....) one of the first blogs I started reading was Terry Teachout's About Last Night. Originally, I was looking for theatre suggestions for an upcoming trip to NYC, but I've become a regular reader. How could I not be intrigued by a site that had this quote in the 'About...' section:

Clement Greenberg, the great art critic, believed that "in the long run there are only two kinds of art: the good and the bad. This difference cuts across all other differences in art. At the same time, it makes all art one…The experience of art is the same in kind or order despite all differences in works of art themselves."

and that endeavors to be

...a meeting place in cyberspace for arts lovers who are curious, adventurous, and unafraid of the unfamiliar.

A few days ago, Teachout posted a rerun of his Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index. A not too serious 'test' -- not of one's arts knowledge but of one's art likings, as compared to Teachout. Check out this link or this one for the original explanation. Well, I'm always behind the curve -- apparently a year on this one, but I took the 'test' anyway. Below are my answers, with a few explanations.

Bear in mind my favorite "2 types of people" joke is this one:

There are 10 types of people in this world: those that get binary, and those that don't.

Yeah, I'm a geek. I have no defense. But I strive to balance all of the technical stuff that consumes my worklife with the arts in whatever form I find them. And the arts are everywhere!

So, just for fun and to give you a little idea of what I'm like, here are my responses, with a few explanations, to the Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index. I didn't really expect a strong concurrence with TT, so I was surprised by my score of 60. What does this mean? Not much, but it was fun!

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Gene Kelley. I always thought he looked like he was having more fun!
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Gatsby. Frances made this comment about Gatsby recently on LitLove's blog: "imagine that empty, hungover feeling you have at 7am the morning after a May Ball, that exquisite blend of a longing having been fulfilled and sadness now that your goal‚’s been taken away, and made into a book, that’s it." I couldn't have captured the essence of that book half as well.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Count Basie.
4. Cats or dogs? DOGS!
5. Matisse or Picasso? Matisse. A tough call, but Matisse surprises me more and seems to engage all of my senses. Sometimes I imagine I can actually smell a Matisse, but maybe that's because I've harbored a little green-eyed envy for 30 years that a high school chum actually got to touch a Matisse once while working stage crew. I think it was this backdrop.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats. "In a Station of the Metro" is probably the poem that most frequently flutters through my brain, usually when I walk through a crowd but sometimes without any prompting, so if it were Eliot or Pound, I might have answered Pound. Still, Yeats is the best.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Buster Keaton, because he doesn't have the cynicism of Chaplin.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? O'Connor
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? To Have and Have Not, although I've probably watched Casablanca more.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? Pollock, by a splash.
11. The Who or the Stones? The Who. As I was growing up, the Stones were frequently stopped by my mother's demands to turn off the radio, but The Who somehow creeped in undetected. Still, I was never allowed to see Tommy when it was in the theatres.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Plath. Plath was one of the first poets who affected me; if I encountered both for the first time with an adult sensibility, Larkin might win. Maybe I should revisit him.
13. Trollope or Dickens Can't answer, never read Trollope.
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Ella Fitzgerald.
15. Dostoevsky or Tolstoy? Tolstoy.
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? The End of the affair (never finished reading The Moviegoer).
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Balanchine.
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Hamburgers, except in Chicago!
19. Letterman or Leno? Letterman -- he eeks out a victory on this one only by about 10 million laughs. He was making me laugh when he was doing the weather on the local Indianapolis station back in the 70's.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? ???
21. Verdi or Wagner? Verdi more than any other operatic composer; almost all of them more than Wagner.
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Grace Kelly.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Cash. The man had a mystique. Loved Monroe's Bean Blossom festivals though.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? Can't answer.
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Mitchum.
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Can't answer. Unfamiliar with Morris.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Vermeer. If I lived in NY, I'd want to stop in the Frick weekly to see or this picture or this one.
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky.
29. Red wine or white? Red. Keep whites in the wine rack for people I don't like as much (just joking....maybe).
30. Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde? Wilde.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity.
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich.
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Baryshnikov.
34. Constable or Turner? Constable, by a brushstroke.
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Can't answer.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Comedy.
37. Fall or spring? Spring.
38. Manet or Monet? Monet.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Oh, come on...do I have to answer this? The Simpsons, but only because I'll watch it with my teenage son and it makes him laugh, which makes me realize that he understands the difference between sarcasm and satire and that reminds me just how smart he is.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? Gershwin.
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad, no James, no Conrad.
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunset. Don't see sunrises often unless I'm going to work early and then they aren't enjoyable.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Porter, maybe?
44. Mac or PC? Mac if choosing for cool and useful, aesthetically pleasing, great marketing (once again), proving both FORM and FUNCTION are possible in technology. But what makes sense in my work life, the kid's school life, etc: sadly, the PC.
45. New York or Los Angeles? New York. Is this even a question?
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? can't answer.
47. Stax or Motown? can't answer. Don't know Stax.
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh. THe VanGogh/Gauguin exhibit gave me a new appreciation of Gauguin, and made me realize how good Van Gogh was.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Steely Dan. Maybe just because "Hey, Nineteen" reminds me of a boy, except he was too old to be a boy, and I was, well, just 19.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Blogs. I like the diversity of editorial content, rather than one editorial perspective that would be found in a magazine.
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? can't answer.
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown.
54. Ghost World or Election? can't answer.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Minimalism (I think).
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? "Eh, What's up doc?"
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism.
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Jeepers creepers. Batman.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Emmylou.
60. Johnson or Boswell? Johnson.
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Austen, although I don't really like either of them.
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Dick Van Dyke.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Eames.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Can't answer (don't know Out of the Past.)
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Figaro. The three duets in the final act is the most beautiful piece of operatic music ever written.
66. Blue or green? Sky Blue, Navy Blue, Ocean Blue, Blue eyes. Just blue!
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? Midsummer Night's Dream. Even a poor performance of Midsummer Night's Dream can be magical.
68. Ballet or opera? Opera.
69. Film or live theater? Film.
70. Acoustic or electric? Acoustic.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? Vertigo.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler.
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? can't answer.
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? The Music Man.
75. Sushi, yes or no? YES!
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? can't answer.
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Williams.
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? can't answer. Haven't read Portrait of a Lady.
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? can't answer.
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Wright.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Krall.
82. Watercolor or pastel? Watercolor.
83. Bus or subway? Subway. I'm a midwesterner -- subways have the aura of the unusual. If I had to depend on one for daily transportation, I would probably eventually come to prefer buses where I could see the world at street level.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Stravinsky.
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? NEITHER. Peanut butter is gross! In a "eat it or starve to death" situation, would want to have crunchy over smooth. But I wouldn't eat it unless the situation was desparate.
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Cather.
87. Schubert or Mozart? Mozart.
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? Fifties.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Huck.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Mann.
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? can't answer.
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Dickinson.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Lincoln.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? can't answer.
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? piano.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? NO! (allergic)
98. Short novels or long ones? short.
99. Swing or bebop? swing.
100. The Last Judgment or The Last Supper? The Last Judgment. Maybe The Last Supper would make me gasp like The Last Judgment did when I first saw it, but I'm doubtful.

Don't like NYT's 25 best books? For a twist on the top 25 list, check out Playboy's 25 sexiest novels of all times, complete with plot summary and rationale for inclusion on the list. To quote from their intro: "If reading is thinking with someone else's brain, then erotica is feeling with someone else's body parts."

I've never heard of several of the works listed. At first, I was surprised by Judy Blume's Forever , but I agree with the rationale. And I remember having to resort to stealth methods to read it when I was 15!

And the number 1 book? Fanny Hill, published in 1749 and subject to centuries of censorship. Playboy quotes it as "the first deliberately dirty novel in English" (no citation to source of the quote given).

Years ago, I was teaching a Intro the Literature class and had students complain about a story by Hal Bennet,"Dotson Gerber Resurrected" because the notes in the Norton anthology indicated that the story had been published first in Playboy and therefore couldn't be literature. BTW, that short story is in no way 'erotica'. Things don't change much over the years, do they?

Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the link.

What Middletown Was Reading 100 Years Ago

Being a lover of books, I'm often intrigued by old books. Deep within the pages, between the dust and the type, untold stories linger: Who owned this book? Did the reader like it, cherish it, recommend it to others? Would the original reader's reactions be similar to mine? Did the author ever imagine that someone might read it 50, 100, 125 years later?

Thanks to some library serendipity, library record books from 1894 - 1902 belonging to the Muncie Public Library have been re-discovered and are now the focus of a research project of the Center for Middletown Studies of Ball State University. While the project won't uncover what an individual reader thought of a book, it will provide analysis of reading habits and book-borrowing in a Midwestern town at the turn of the century.

"Middletown" was a sociological study of a 'typical' American town conducted in the 1920's in the East-Central Indiana town of Muncie. In the years since, additional studies have been done, making Muncie one of the most studied towns in the country. How fitting it is, then, that these records have been found and can provide researchers with information on reading habits 100 years ago.

For more information, check out the Center for Middletown Studies and read Professor Frank Felsenstein's article What Middletown Read recently published in the Ball State Alumnus magazine. It was Felsenstein's discovery that lead to this project which intends to digitize the library ledgers and create a database for further study.

Neo-Con Bashing, or Are We at Peril of Losing Our Democratic Soul?

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, Jimmy Carter, 2005.

Former President Jimmy Carter's latest book presents the argument that the effect of the current 'conservative' movement in American politics undermines the values upon which America was founded and is taking the United States on a radical departure from core democratic values. Carter states up front that political values cannot be separated from one's moral belief system. He is unapologetic about his Christian beliefs defining him; these beliefs, he explains, are the foundation of his political views. His traditional Christian view -- a perspective he argues is mainstream -- is very different from the minority Fundamentalist view that dangerously dominates today's political landscape. Rather than 'conservative', Carter posits, it is a radical attack on the beliefs the Founding Fathers presented in the guise of traditional values and righteousness.

In a series of essays Carter addresses the often volatile and polarizing political issues of our time: abortion, equality regardless of gender, race or sexual preference, separation of Church and State, terrorism, human rights, nuclear proliferation and the environment. In each essay he presents a traditional Democratic stance and describes how his personal Christian values support that position. Intertwined with summarizations of the religious values that constitute his moral center is discussion of relevant events from Carter's presidency and his humanitarian work at the Carter Center during his post-presidential years. After establishing his framework for each issue, he presents the actions and decisions of the Fundamentalists and Neo-Cons that are counter to this position. Rather than present the opposites as Republican or Democrat, he argues that his position is 'traditional' while the current Republican party has moved to a radical Fundamentalist position that is contrary to mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs. The difference between the two positions is clear.

While Carter at times writes in detail about the issues, presenting both facts and antidotes to support his argument, the book falls short of making its point fully. Too much attention is paid to events Carter has been personally involved with and how those efforts are at odds with political decisions being made today. While the contrast is evident, Carter's book fails to present the long view. The effect of this is that the book feels like merely an attack on the policies of the Bush administration and the efforts of the Southern Baptist Convention, rather than an argument that the underpinnings of American democracy are at stake. The reader can't help but understand that this was Carter's goal, but he doesn't provide enough insight or historical perspective to convince a "non-believer" -- or maybe even a centrist who doesn't see all issues as Red State vs Blue State -- of the errors of the ways of the Neo-Cons. In an effort to make the book a readable, accessible work, Carter is often too superficial and thus seems only to present the liberal Sky Is Falling line that a few misguided ideologues are the source of the imminent downfall of America.

Carter's position is not flawed; it simply doesn't go far enough to pinpoint how our values are 'endangered' and that the consequences of current political decisions are not something that might be easily reversed by the next political wind to take hold in Washington.

Talk to the Hand: Rants, Shoots and (Rudely) Leaves

Talk to the Hand #?*! The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. Lynne Truss. Gotham Books, 2005.



Cam's Concise Critique: A long-winded bellyache on our bad manners. An arrogant, unhumorous look at the fall of western civilization brought about by cell phones, traffic jams, tv, and poor customer service that offers trite examples of the problems without offering real solutions.


My Rating: Skip it.


Review: In her first book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Lynne Truss elevated a spot-on, sincere rant to a book-length argument against improper grammar. In her second book, Talk to the Hand, Truss tries to ride on the coattails of her earlier success to rage against a decay in manners throughout society. However, far from writing an enjoyable sequel to Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Truss has delivered a long, ill-humored, unoriginal whine about how the world is falling apart due to the unruly, ill-mannered Visigoths rallying at the gates, talking on their cells phones, and screaming "Eff-off" at the slightest offense. Society is bad and all that, but Truss' book, in the end, is an arrogant and rude diatribe.

Although there are feeble attempts at appearing scholarly -- Truss quotes repeatedly from other works decrying the fate of Western Civ and includes a 3 page bibliography -- the book seems padded, little more than a term paper bloated by quotations to meet a word count. Little in this book is original. Who hasn't complained about the insincerity of the customer service voice mail that repeatedly claims 'We're sorry for your wait'? About the woman who describes her recent surgery to the disembodied, never-present listener on the other end of the cell phone while seated at the next table in a restaurant? About the world-weary, road-raging driver who displays the "You're # 1 sign" when cut off in traffic?

As for being humorous? Standup comics have done a better job of portraying our anti-social failings. They usually are funny; Ms. Truss is not. A comic will point out our flaws and we laugh at the universal truths of our failings. While some bits in Ms. Truss' book are funny, she tries to rally the reader to be like her, to see himself as a curmudgeonly fuss-budget who staunchly stands with Truss in believing that all of culture is being flushed down the toilet with little hope for redemption. Salvation lies with those who are above the offending manners marauders. But, even when she tries to find commonality with the offenders, her faux offended persona falls short of holding up a mirror to our failings. We may indeed be like the examples of Rudeness Incarnate in her book, but with the whining, belly-aching, assault Truss presents, one reads this book hoping not to be as arrogant and contemptuous of others as she is.

The reader who enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves should not waste her time with Talk to the Hand. You will miss Ms. Truss' ability to take the mundane and make it laughable. But, you won't forget about Eats, Shoots and Leaves as you read this. Ms. Truss mentions the earlier work throughout her new book, least you forget that she is skilled at ranting humorously about society. This helps to lengthen her short, magazine-length complaint to its published book length form.

This book neither amuses or instructs. It adds no new insights as to why people behave how they do. It presents no real solutions to the issues presented. The 'flame of hope' offered at the beginning is lamely summarized in the last one and 1/2 pages of the book: we should be kind and friendly and polite.....and roll our eyes and smugly smirk at those who don't realize we are trying to rescue the ill-mannered from themselves.