It must be... 22 years

I never thought I'd miss you
Half as much as I do
And I never thought I'd feel this way
The way I feel
About you
As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

How can it be that we can
Say so much without words?
Bless you and bless me
Bless the bees
And the birds
I've got to be near you
Every night, every day
I couldn't be happy
Any other way

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

It must be love, love, love...

 

 

Here a word, there a word

There has been much lamenting and handwringing over the isolating effect technology has on us - and rightly so.  (This video is my favorite.)  Human interactions are reduced to texting and messaging, sometimes even when we're in the same room.  We witness birthdays and events through tiny screens instead of watching them happen in front of us.  We post what we ate for lunch and share pithy memes, political rants, and cat pictures for all the world to see.  But I wonder who really cares what our score was on Pet Rescue Saga, what song we're listening to, or if we just saw a clown make a balloon animal.  How often do we go back and watch those videos, and how do they compare to half-missing the real thing?  It's kind of pathetic when you think about it, or as Syndrome might say: "Lame, lame, lame!"

And yet, it's not all lame.  Apparently, some of us who are staring at our phones while in line at Burger King aren't playing BubbleLand but are actually reading Emily Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, or even M.M. Hastings.  It's being called interstitial reading - using those fragmented moments of otherwise wasted time to read - and many of us are reading the classics we slept through in high school.  After all, you can download them for free (or nearly so), and who cares if it takes three or four months to finish?  Personally, I just finished Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  No, Miss Haltiner didn't assign it in high school, but it's one of those books you hear quoted often enough and is worth reading.

Pip is being "raised by hand" by his older sister (which apparently means she was pretty hard on him), and she is none to happy about it.  Luckily her husband, Joe, takes a liking to the small boy and occasionally intervenes on his behalf.  A couple of notable events happen to young Pip: first, he runs into a frightening escaped convict while wandering the marshes and helps him with food and a file to remove the leg iron.  Second, a neighbor arranges for him to visit Miss Havisham, the wealthy and eccentric old woman who has wasted away in perpetual bitterness at having been left at the altar.  But as he grows into a young man he is informed that he has "great expectations" and has come into a future inheritance from an unknown benefactor.  His life changes drastically; he leaves Joe's blacksmith forge and moves to London, where he begins his training as a gentleman, but with limited guidance he frequently falls into debt and folly.  

Dickens is a master of the English language, and in the beginning I often found myself laughing and highlighting humorous comments.  The story, however, languished for me in the middle while Pip is in London.  I imagine this could be why some critics complain that since Dickens was being paid by the word, his writing becomes a bit wordy and the story drags a little at this point (and maybe that's why it took me several months).  Still, the characters are fascinating and add to the eventual conclusion - which I found very satisfying.  I've previously admitted that it's not often I guess the mystery before it's revealed, but I didn't think Pip's "great expectations" were hard to figure out.  Nonetheless, that didn't detract from the story and I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone with a little interstitial time while in line at Burger King, waiting at the doctor's office, or... wherever.

Brave men

Several years ago when my son was still in elementary school, he had to interview a hero.  He chose my wife's grandfather who had served in the Navy during WWII.  I still remember that afternoon when he said many times with a distant look in his eyes that he wasn't a hero – the guys who didn't make it back were the heroes to him.  Then he quietly talked about driving a landing craft full of Marines toward beaches in the Pacific, trying to get them in as close as possible to the sand because the more water they had to run through the less likely it was they'd make it.  He'd never even told his family about those experiences, and I feel grateful to have heard it at all.  Jack passed away a few years ago, and there's probably a lot more to the story that he kept to himself.

"I want to tell you what the [D-Day invasion] entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you." — Ernie Pyle

At the beginning of The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 by Cornelius Ryan, he says the book is "not a military history" but "the story of people."  Published in 1959, it was based upon the accounts of actual participants (who were still living) and is probably one of the best accounts of D-Day. It starts with a few stories immediately prior to the invasion but the main focus is on the events of June 6, 1944.  It does not give extensive detail about the strategies or even full accounts of each and every unit or battalion involved but instead weaves the experiences of both generals and soldiers into a very readable account. It can feel somewhat confusing at times, mixing both broad plans with on the ground accounts, but this style gives the book a very human feel. And it's not just confined to the Allies' viewpoint, but includes many stories from German soldiers and officers as well as a few from French civilians and the Underground Resistance. And all are presented in a surprisingly even and fair manner, without demonizing either side, which also gives it a somewhat detached feel at times. 

Another "classic" on WWII is Brave Men by Ernie Pyle, published in 1944.  Pyle was a war correspondent and this is a compilation of his newspaper columns while he was with soldiers fighting in Europe. Pyle was killed the following year on Iwo Jima, but he was especially popular for his intimate style of reporting that focused on the perspective of soldiers.  Reading this book really gives you a feeling for what they went through, both the grueling horror and the intense boredom. He covers not only the infantrymen on the front lines but the artillerymen behind them and the fighter and bomber pilots above. He tells what their days were like, what they ate, what kind of reception the locals gave. He shares his experiences at sea with the Italian invasion, how the supply chain worked, and how difficult it was to rebuild bridges that were blown up by retreating Germans. He tells not only of "GI Joe" but of "Sad Sack" and all the others who served, no matter how gloriously or not. It was surprising to see the names and home addresses of soldiers, but I can imagine people back home watching his columns, hoping to see a familiar name or maybe even writing to strangers. It's all done in a folksy way that must have forged a stronger connection between home and the front.  

I'm amazed at the sacrifices of the earlier generation and what they accomplished, and just as amazed at how little we sometimes seem to appreciate it now.  And I think Jack was a hero not just for what he did during the war but for his life afterward.  He came home, became a school teacher and later a principal, and raised his family – which I'm honored to be a part of now.

The BIG picture

When you read war histories you find they often fall into a couple of different perspectives: the leaders and their strategies, and the soldiers and the action.  And while it might be tempting to dismiss books that focus more on strategy as academic, scholarly, and even boring, it's also a valuable perspective to better understand the course of history and why events unfolded as they did.

Most WWII history buffs are familiar with Operation Overlord.  It was the largest seaborne invasion and included over 6,000 ships and landed over a million men on the beaches of Normandy beginning June 6, 1944 – it was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.  But Overlord was part of a larger operation called Neptune which encompassed the entire plan to take the battle to Continental Europe, including the Mediterranean.

Even before Pearl Harbor, the US was involved in the war in Europe by providing armaments to Britain and Russia.  And once the US was committed to joining the war, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill that defeating Hitler needed to be the priority.  But Churchill had little faith in the untested and green US troops – and with good reason it turned out.  So even though Roosevelt, Marshall, and Eisenhower urged for a mainland cross-Channel assault, Churchill consistently redirected the attention toward the Mediterranean.  Initial fighting was in North Africa and eventually moved up into Italy, where it stalled.  Part of this British reluctance was a desire to keep Germany from controlling the Mediterranean and the important Suez Canal in Egypt (the shortest route to the British colonies in the Pacific).  But another influence was the British disaster at Dunkirk, where they barely got off the continent alive and able to fight another day.  The issue from the American perspective was that it wasn't facing the problem head-on and seemed to be dragging out the conflict.  Also, and perhaps more significantly, it didn't provide enough relief for the Russian troops fighting on the Eastern Front – a problem Stalin never hesitated to complain about.

This is just one of the interesting understandings I gained while reading Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings by Craig L. Symonds.  It's an excellent history of the bigger picture of what was going on, and deals mostly with the higher political and military figures.  It's also very much a view from the Allied perspective – there isn't much about the enemy here.  And while I found it very interesting in it's own way, I'll admit it's kind of dry information and I almost set it aside.  But everything changed when Symonds got to the actual invasion and I found myself unable to put the book down.  Suddenly the men on the ground and in the boats became alive and the action was intense.  There are plenty of individual stories and accounts woven into the narrative, but it still retains an orderly 'big picture' feel to it instead of the chaos that usually comes through in other books on the topic.  And while the paratroopers dropped behind the lines were given scant attention, Symonds tells in excellent detail the saving contribution of the destroyers, which maneuvered inshore in dangerously shallow depths and within range of the big German guns to provide the kind of coverage the air bombing had failed to achieve on that heavily overcast morning.

I've already written about a couple of books about the D-Day invasion of Normandy (The Bedford Boys and The Boys of Pointe du Hoc) that emphasize the fighting men and I'll follow up with a couple more that are considered "classics."  But if you're looking for a book which not only explains the lead-up to D-Day but also gets into the troubles of pulling together such an enormous armada as well as the challenges of getting so many men onto a thin beach with a long shallow approach full of mines, you'll probably enjoy this one and appreciate Symonds' excellent writing.  (I received an advance copy of this book from Amazon Vine.)

Homebodies

Once upon a time kids had the freedom to roam.  Now everything is structured and 'play-dates' have to be scheduled and fun must to be planned ahead of time.  When I was a kid I spent most days outside and at friend's homes.  My mom usually knew sort-of where I was, but often when I left the house I was simply going "bike riding."  Even with such vague destinations she could still track me down with a phone call or two - even without the tether of cell phones.  And although I spent plenty of time each day out and away, I always felt the pull of home and would have to come back periodically.  Not because it was mom's rule or anything; I just felt that need to touch base at "home" for a few minutes or an hour, then I could head back out into the neighborhood and whatever fun or trouble (yeah, right!) I could find.

Interestingly enough, there are corollaries with the idea of "home" in the animal world.  It's pretty well-known that salmon are able to find their way back from the ocean to the exact stream or lake where they were born.  Eels do the opposite: they're born in the ocean but spend their lives in freshwater streams or lakes before returning to a (still undiscovered, I think) central location in the ocean where they spawn and die.  Many birds migrate thousands of miles each year, returning not just to the same general areas but oftentimes to the same exact locations.  Bernd Heinrich discusses this phenomenon in The Homing Instinct: Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration (which I received from Amazon Vine), and it's a lot more prevalent than you might realize.

Birds and fish aren't the only ones.  Sea turtles migrate as do some butterflies, and although with their short lifespan they may not complete a round-trip journey themselves, their offspring will pick up the same route.  Bees find their way back to the hive, and ants return to the nest.  Heinrich explains that a variety of methods are employed - sometimes animals use polar magnetics to orient themselves (like pigeons) and other times it's the sun and stars.  Sometimes it's visual cues (bees) or scents (ants) or even just the influence of the crowd (grasshoppers, schooling fish, and even passenger pigeons), but frequently our understanding of it all falls a little short.  He takes the concept further, though, and discusses how birds and bees decide upon where to build their nests and hives - and there's a lot more to it than just chance.  He even discusses his own "homing" instincts in returning to the Maine woods where he grew up, and the activities that draw him there.

This is a wide-ranging book that looks at the science behind many of these behaviors and it's so much more than just migration.  But while it's sometimes a fascinating book, it's not always the most compelling and probably won't appeal to everyone.  Heinrich has an easy and poetic style, but parts of it ramble excessively into memoir and I felt the book bogged down a little as he went into unusual detail about his own "homing" and deer hunting each year.  Still, his experiments with planting chestnut trees near his cabin and even the spider living over his cabin desk were interesting, and I mostly found it an inspiring read that made me marvel even more at the wonders of nature.  (And his own illustrations are a nice bonus.)

Maddie liked the painting on the cover so much she painted her own.  I think we've got a budding little artist at our house.



Quotes about writing

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."

— Anne Frank

 

"There are three rules for writing a novel.  Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

— W. Somerset Maughan

 

"I know I was writing stories when I was five.  I don't know what I did before that.  Just loafed, I suppose."

— P. G. Wodehouse

 

"Write a short story every week.  It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."

— Ray Bradbury

 

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood.  I'd type a little faster."

— Isaac Asimov

 

"It's doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction."

— Jonathan Franze

 

 "I think 'write what you know' is the single worst piece of writing advice.  Instead, write what you're really interested in.  Write what is going to keep you awake at night; write what you don't understand; write to figure something out.  Good novels are journeys into the unknown, for their authors as well as their readers."

— Toni Jordan  

“People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.” 
— Stephen King

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” 
— George Orwell

"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important."
— Gary Provost

Quotes about reading

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

— Frederick Douglass

"There is no future for e-books, because they are not books.  E-books smell like burned fuel."

— Ray Bradbury

"Read to your heart's content. Though if you are a reader, the heart is never content."

— Jenny Hubbard

"There are worse crimes than burning books.  One of them is not reading them."

— Ray Bradbury

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

— G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer, as paraphrased by Neil Gaiman

"The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book – it makes a very poor doorstop."

— Alfred Hitchcock

"A library of mostly unread books is far more inspiring than a library of books already read."

— Gabe Habash

You'll scream too

As a kid I loved ghostly mysteries.  My favorite series was Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators which featured three boys – Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews – who formed their own detective service and solved mysteries in Southern California.  They'd go into haunted buildings and face scary situations but the ghosts were never real in the end.  But it was great fun and I still enjoy the books (although now I don't have kids young enough to read them with).  But I just found a new series that reminded me a little of those books, except in this one the ghosts are not only real but they're a "Problem."

The Problem began about 50 years ago when ghosts and hauntings became much more prevalent and dangerous.  For the most part only kids can see them so agencies employing the young have sprung up to deal with hauntings.  Lockwood & Co. is different because there are no adult supervisors – just Anthony Lockwood and George Cubbins.  Except for burning down a client's house, they're fairly good at what they do.  Lucy Carlysle, the newest member, can't see the ghosts as well as the others but she can hear and feel them much better.  But when they're called on to deal with a "cluster" of very dangerous ghosts at Combe Carey Hall, one of the most haunted houses in England, they just might be in over their heads.

Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud  is a well-written book and Stroud has a great way with words.  (I loved this quote about George when Lucy first meets him: “His face was uniquely slapable – a nun would have ached to punch him – while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick.”)  The characters are interesting, the story is compelling, and the suspense is palpable.  It's a bit intense toward the end and I found myself unable to put it down (reading more than half of it at once), but I think it's appropriate for middle-school kids and up.  I'm not usually one to guess an ending ahead of time but I thought it was a bit predictable.  Nevetheless, I'm enthusiastically recommending it and already looking forward to reading the second in the series when it comes out.  (I received this book from Amazon Vine.)

Ungrateful children

YA books (which generally means middle school and teen) are really big right now.  Some are being made into movies (not always with success, however) and even though many adults (like myself) have always preferred them, more are reading them with less embarrassment.  (For the record, I still feel self-conscious if I'm reading one in public, however.)  But a lot of YA books fall into a couple of categories: paranormal (vampires, werewolves, fairies, and even mermaids) and dystopia (futuristic-ish, but with society falling apart like The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.).  We've definitely seen too many paranormal stories*, but now some readers are wondering if dystopia has run its course and maybe there aren't any fresh ideas anymore.  The 'world-building,' after all, tends to sound alike at a certain point.  But what if the world was limited to one home?  There are challenges with such a limited setting, but it can be pulled off quite well if the author is talented (if you've ever seen Hitchcock's Lifeboat you might understand).  At any rate, that's the premise behind Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee (which I received from Amazon Vine).

The winter is getting colder and 12 year-old Merciful Truth's mama just died after a long illness. Her 15 year-old brother, Gospel, says that they can't bury her because the ground is frozen. The minister tells them it's not right to leave the dead unburied and castigates them for being ungrateful children to the mother than birthed them - but he's just a cat. And as the storm worsens and the world outside shrinks they can't possibly dig a hole, so they put her under the kitchen table. But then Merciful hears the lullaby her mother used to sing to her before the sickness got too bad... and it's coming from under the kitchen table.

This is an incredibly creepy story with a very twisted world - and I'm still mystified by the minister. Vanhee tells the story with cleverness in the voice of Merciful, with - I think - an Appalachian dialect and feeling, and I found it nearly impossible to put down, finishing the last couple hundred pages in an evening. However, not being able to put down a book might make it "compelling," but doesn't necessarily mean it's an enjoyable read. It's a bleak and lonely world, and although Vanhee skillfully wrings every last drop out of a small and limited setting and brings characters to life (in more ways than one!) with amazing "voice," I just found myself reading to finish and be done with it. It's certainly a well-crafted story and I "liked" it, but I wanted to like it more than I did. Still, if you want a really creepy "end-of-the-world" tale and don't mind a stiff dose of darkness, you might find yourself clinging to this one right to the last page.

*Incidentally, some are speculating that "ghost stories" may become the "next big thing," which is what my novel turned out to be - and I hope so.  I'll post a ghost story next week.

Miasmas – or – just take the handle off the pump

We live longer now than we used to, you know?  One thing I've learned from books I've read is that cancer probably appears to be increasing because people live longer, and cancer is mostly a disease of older people.  But we're living longer in part because we're much better at preventing and treating other diseases – diseases that used to kill lots of people – like cholera, which you rarely hear about anymore.*  Now we understand what causes those diseases and how they spread.  Before scientists had powerful microscopes and understood the role of germs, the theory was that most illness and even epidemics were due to "miasmas," which is a Greek word for polluted or unhealthy air.  After all, a truly awful smell can affect both your nose and your stomach if it's strong enough, and might even inhibit your mental capabilities.  

But in 1854 a cholera epidemic broke out in the Soho area of London and affected both upper and lower-classes of people, and both clean and filthy houses.  But two people who spent a great amount of time visiting those afflicted in the area – without becoming sick themselves – were able to pinpoint the cause of the problem.  One was an English physician named Dr. John Snow.  He visited the houses affected and concluded correctly that the water from the Broad Street pump was the culprit. Even though not everyone was convinced, the pump handle was removed and the epidemic died out. The Reverend Henry Whitehead also visited those afflicted and was able to prove Dr. Snow's conclusion, even tracking down the exact source – both the individual and the defective sewer that had leaked cholera into the water supplied by the Broad Street pump. 

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson was incredibly fascinating.  The detail of how Dr. Snow came to his conclusion and how Rev. Whitehead proved and tracked it back to the source; the descriptions of how cholera is transmitted and what it does to the body; and the explanations of how it affected the city and those who suffered had me hanging on every word.  If Mr. Johnson had stopped there I'd be singing his praises, but... the "ghost map" comes up in the lengthy conclusion and epilogue when he compares the mapping efforts by Dr. Snow, the Rev. Whitehead, William Farr, and others with today's disease tracking methods.  Unfortunately, he strains credibility by stretching this idea further into Google and Yahoo maps for coffee shops, etc. then goes on a rant about the "population explosion" and the benefits and problems of densely populated cities. In fact, while the idea of urban environments is a thread throughout the book, he tries to analyze their value as a solution to global warming against potential nuclear disasters and terrorist attacks (with a lengthy discussion of Sept 11).  While I highly recommend the history in the book, the author's attempts to apply the lessons (however tenuously) to several modern-day concerns was dull and I found myself wishing the book would just end.

So, watch what you drink and skip the epilogue.

* Although cholera is unheard of here in the U.S., it still affects 3-5 million people worldwide and as many as 130,000 die each year (2010 estimate), primarily in developing countries.