Recently Read:The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers

The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SRP Why Bite: Insightful.

There is not much to say about this short, little book. Fred Rogers was a smart, insightful man who said a number of wise, smart, and insightful things. I’m surprised the book isn’t longer. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about Mister Fred McFeely Rogers from the Foreward written by his wife and the short biography at the end of the book. Did you know Mr. McFeely, the postman was named after his grandfather? I didn’t. My only other comment is that I’ve never read a book of quotes before that included the person quoting other people. I found this a little odd, but since I liked the quotes (and the individuals Mister Rogers quoted) it didn’t affect my enjoyment one iota.

Quotes I liked:

“The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.”

“I believe it’s a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families. It’s not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.”

“Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren’t perfect.”

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

“Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”

“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.”

“The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: ‘Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and learn to love the questions themselves.’ ”

“When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.”

“[W]e don’t have to understand all of someone else’s creative efforts. What’s important is that we communicate our respect for their attempts to express what’s inside themselves.”


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Recently Read: Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou

Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a nutshell, this autobiography, raw with emotion, reads more like a memoir than an autobiography.

My introduction to Maya Angelou, like many others, was being assigned I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in high school. I remember finding it incredibly moving, especially since it read like a novel. It was also my introduction to the novelized autobiography, a rare but beautifully effective genre. I probably don’t have to point out that high school was quite a while ago for me. I haven’t reread Caged Bird, though I feel like I should. My memory of the book is sketchy at best. Till now, it was the only one of Angelou’s autobiographies that I have read, although I have read much of her poetry. Having now read Mom & Me & Mom, I think I should remedy that. I have now read her first and last autobiographies. I plan to read the ones in the middle after I reread the first.

What has always struck me about Angelou, particularly in her poetry, was her strength and confidence. It seems odd that I connected with her poetry, particularly when I was a shy, quiet, reserved, white teenage girl growing up in a somewhat sheltered upbringing in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My life experience has been radically different from Angelou’s. There is very little I have in common with a woman who seemed so regal to me, having achieved such wondrous greatness, rising from disastrous tragedy and pain. I couldn’t relate to her struggles. I couldn’t possibly understand why she had to fight her whole life for things I took for granted. Yet, there I was, sitting in my college dorm room soaking up her inspiring poetry, applying her wise words to my life, my situations. Angelou has been called “America’s Poet,” and rightly so. There is universality to her words, themes and messages. Her eyes have seen more, she has lived through and survived much more than most of us will ever experience. Yet, she had a knack for expressing thoughts that we have all felt, speaking to each of us and all of us in terms we could relate to. Her poetry was about the human condition, and that is the one thing we all have in common. We are human, first and foremost.

I’m not sure what I expected when I started reading Mom & Me & Mom, but I certainly did not expect the level of insight this autobiography contains. It begins with Angelou’s birth and ends with her mom’s passing, but the events in between are not consistently written chronologically. Not even remotely resembling a novel, it reads more like a memoir than an autobiography in that it seems Angelou told stories as they occurred to her. The order was chosen for how it illustrated the point she was making at the time. As the title suggests, the primary focus is Angelou’s relationship with her mother, although she also touches on her relationships with both her brother and her son. Angelou does not hold much back. She speaks frankly about the circumstances of the episodes she chose to include. She describes situations and characteristics of people as if they were normal and average. Many events described would have made excellent plot ideas for “The Sopranos.” She included actions she wasn’t particularly proud of, and many things her mother shouldn’t have been proud of. Still, you get the impression that they were mostly actions that made her proud of her mother, and actions her mother would never feel the need to apologize for.

The overall, lasting impression this autobiography left me with was the important role that Angelou’s mother played in her becoming the strong, confident woman she was known to be. Before, I felt that such qualities must have been bestowed by her grandmother who raised her till she was thirteen, who wasn’t physically affectionate, but would proudly boast of Angelou’s attributes. In this autobiography, it is clear that her mother, Vivian Baxter, was the one who showed her, taught her, the strength necessary to succeed as a black, single mother at a time when society in general was against all those things. When she lacked the confidence to try, Angelou was supported by the faith her mother held in her. When she wasn’t sure she could do what she set out to do, her mother believed in her and propped her up till she gained the confidence to keep going on her own. Her mother made mistakes. No one is perfect. Their relationship had its troubled times. Angelou saw the flaws, but they were overshadowed by their love and appreciation for each other. The role of a mother, or at least part of it – the part Vivian Baxter did best – is to instill in your child such strength and confidence. They should grow up knowing their worth and taught to fight for themselves. They should know, as teenagers and adults, that the key to happiness is to like yourself, be proud of yourself, know your faults, your limitations, and accept help when necessary. Go out into the world, do what is necessary to get what you want, and know that you are capable. Be the person that you can proud of. Give to others with an air of gratitude for the way in which they enrich your life, and don’t give anyone the power to hurt you. Angelou’s mother taught her these lessons in a harsh way, but she wouldn’t have been the person she was, the legend we now mourn, if it wasn’t for Vivian Baxter.


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Recently Read: "Postcards from Ed" by Edward Abbey

Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast by Edward Abbey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been fascinated by Cactus Ed since reading "Desert Solitaire" for an Environmental Ethics class in college. The only other book by Abbey that I've read is "The Monkey Wrench Gang," so I didn't know a whole lot about the man before reading this book. The only thing I was clear on was his overall views on the environment and mankind's encroachment on untouched and supposedly protected lands in the U.S. After reading this collection of letters, I now know a whole lot more about the man. The man had more layers than an onion. While many of his opinions I agree with, there were a few ideas that surprised me. I’m actually pleased at this. I like the idea that someone I admire held some ideas and opinions that I disagree with. It brings new interest to his writings.

The book opens with a letter Abbey wrote to his parents while in college. He humorously asked for money and was rather candid about his extra curricular activities. Yet his philosophical references gave away that he was actually studying. A hilarious letter to open the book with! The collection spans from his college days to the last month of his life, March 1989. It includes personal correspondence to family and friends, correspondence (both personal and professional) to colleagues, fellow writers, editors, publishers, etc., and quite a few complaint letters to book reviewers as well as a large number of letters to the editors of various newspapers and magazines. These last type of letters usually espoused Abbey's opinion on various hot button topics of the day. Many of these topics are still major points of contention in our society decades after Abbey argued about them. And oh boy was Abbey argumentative. He was also witty as hell. If Abbey were alive today, I'm sure he'd be making headlines with controversial and irreverent Twitter posts. I have yet to join Twitter myself, but if Cactus Ed were tweeting, I'd be following him for sure. I found myself reading this book with a pencil, underlining one liners and passages that I wanted to remember, quote and/or come back to later. I also found the personal insights into the publishing and writing business particularly interesting. Some may find the letters regarding business details of getting a book out to print mundane or boring. As a would-be-writer, I found these glimpses into the business fascinating.

My only complaint is in regards to the formatting. The editor chose to use end notes, rather than footnotes. I found this distracting. I would have much preferred footnotes on the bottom of the page so that I did not have to constantly flip to the end of the book to see who the recipient of the letter was or the explanation to some random reference in a letter. This disrupted the flow of reading for me. However, even that is not enough of a complaint for me to take away a star from the Goodreads rating.

Clearly Abbey was taken well before he was done. In letters from 1988, he referred often to future dates, like when he promised Robert Redford an advance copy of his last novel when it was published in 1990. It's such a shame Abbey died before he could finish what he started, both personally and professionally. After finishing this book, I’m inclined to explore more of his work. I want to read more of his fiction, nonfiction, and especially the posthumously published journal entries. I’m currently interested in desert writing, which is an underrepresented genre. Edward Abbey is definitely the perfect example of someone with great talent, writing about a region of this country he loved more than the one he was born in. It is clear that the editor was a close friend of Abbey’s by the loving and careful way the letters are presented, by the concise introductions to each year of correspondence, and by the careful explanations in the endnotes.

(Originally posted on Goodreads.com)
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Two poems to share

I have two poems to share with you. The first is entitled “Simple Girl”

The other day I experienced a moment of inspiration. For the first time, in a rather long time, I actually wrote a piece of poetry. I must admit I’m a bit out of practice. I went about it “old school” and dusted off my journal. What I put to paper was actually rather long and rambling. The germ of the idea was there, but the form and language were clumsy. It was a horribly wordy attempt that came across as somewhat preachy. The odd thing is that the theme was not something one would normally be preachy about, so that confused me a little. So I put it down for a while and returned to it later. After rereading the mess of images and ideas, I pieced together a completely different poem. Still free verse, this time there was a semblance of order, and the words expressed the ideas in a much more concise fashion. While there is still a little more “tell” than I’d prefer, the second attempt had a little more “show” in the way of images, which is usually what I’m aiming for in my poetry.

The other poem, “Summer Storm” was written last summer. The weather in the desert can be incredibly fascinating, as if each storm has it’s own personality.

Vonnegut & Stringer Rubbed Elbows with Deity

I’m a Kilgore Trout junkie. I was first exposed to its affects in high school. I read Cat’s Cradle sophomore year and was hooked. I had almost kicked the habit, till I read Slaughterhouse 5 for Dr. Schwartz’s class in college.

After that class, I asked Dr. Schwartz if he’d be my faculty advisor instead of the philosophy professor I had been assigned. I had nothing against that professor, but he wanted me to be practical and think of practical matters. During Frosh orientation, he had asked each of us what we wanted to be after graduation. I had it all figured out. I had been writing lousy poetry for a couple years and was one of the few incoming freshman with a declared major. I was there to study English so I could be a writer. He said, “That’s great. What do you plan to do for money?” Where the philosophy professor wanted me to think about my future, Dr. Schwartz allowed me to procrastinate for four years while I explored literature in ways completely inapplicable to any career goals. He was the type of English professor you find in novels and independent films: messy office, slightly disheveled appearance, leather satchel full of papers and paperbacks, the light in his office still on long past midnight. Maybe I’m romantizing my memories a bit. He was the type of professor who graded your papers based on the ideas you presented, not how many typos he could find. He engaged me to consider themes and find the author’s points of passion, while never actually betraying any of his own passions, beliefs or biases. In fact it wasn’t until two years ago, while talking at an alumni event, that I learned he was gay. Earlier that year, he had married his partner of 20 something years during the small window when California had legalized gay marriage. I liked Vonnegut before college. I read Vonnegut, but it wasn’t until Dr. Schwartz that I consumed his writing, actively participating in the experience.

I had promised myself when I graduated that I was going to read all of Vonnegut’s novels. While I have read the last few books he published before his death, I have yet to read all of the old dusty books I bought years ago at Bart’s Books in Ojai, CA. The funny thing about being hooked on Kilgore is that it takes a long time to work through your system. I think the last fix I had was A Man Without a Country in 2007. It took three years for me to feel the pangs of withdrawal. Vonnegut’s writing is like that. It sticks with you for a while, much like a most excellent dinner at your favorite restaurant. You may not get to go as often as you wish. When you do make it there, you savor every morsel and if you’re lucky, there are leftovers to devour later on.

I just finished the short Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing featuring Kurt Vonnegut & Lee Stringer. It is the transcript of a public discussion that took place in a bookstore in Manhattan in 1999. Vonnegut had most recently published Timequake, a book, by the way, of which I received two copies for my birthday. One was from my parents, the other from my future husband. Lee Stringer had published his first book entitled Grand Central Winter, a memoir of his life being homeless and writing for “Street News.” I’ve never read it, and honestly wouldn’t even have heard of him if it wasn’t for his relationship with Vonnegut. Vonnegut praised Stringer, comparing him to Jack London.

The 78 pages of Shaking Hands is an interesting read. There are many points where Stringer and Vonnegut debate each other in the good-hearted way that colleagues do. For instance, Vonnegut sees writing as a method of activism. “Anybody reading the book is bound to say: My God, something’s got to be done about this.” He saw Stringer’s story as a call to action. Stringer, however, dismisses Vonnegut’s idealistic optimism that people can affect change. He wrote Winter with the intent for the reader to determine their relationship with homelessness, not do something to help with the problem. “I don’t know if there’s anything to be done about it [homelessness] . . . except to find what your relationship is to it. . . . . Not to eliminate what offends our sense of what should be, or who we are. Just to find a relationship to it. . . . I mean, how as human beings do we relate to each other?” Even when Vonnegut asked Stringer if he would help a friend get off the street, Stringer replied that it was all he could do to help himself.

Overall, I found the transcript of two writers conversing on their craft to be inspiring, particularly thoughts put forth by Vonnegut. I freely admit my bias here. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

On the writing process:

Vonnegut: “If you have a hell of a lot on your mind, the language will arrive, the right words will arrive, the paragraphing will be right.”

Vonnegut in the novel Timequake:

“There is this: Attempted seductions with nothing but words on paper are so stuff for would-be-ink-stained Don Juans or Cleopatras! They don’t have to get a bankable actor or actress to commit to the project, and then a bankable director, and so on, and then raise millions and millions of buckareenies from manic-depressive experts on what most people want.”

Stringer: “I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how I was going to fill up these pages, and then, convinced that I’m not going to figure it out, bingo! Something happens. It’s like shaking hands with God. It’s really a great payoff for the hours you sit around wondering if you can do what you’re trying to do.”

Vonnegut: “But again, I’ve written a hell of a lot of crap. I’m glad I didn’t publish most of it. But there it was. I’d write for three or four hours, or all day, and ‘This is lousy.’”

Vonnegut: “Now we’re talking politics . . . . There was a time, if you were gay, you would cut out anything in the book that would give that away. Because gays were hated. And you don’t want the reader, no matter what a prick he or she may be, to hate you. . . . But that’s no longer a consideration.”

On writers and the reasons they do what they do:

Vonnegut: “And so I said in a piece in Harper’s, or a letter I wrote to Harper’s, about ‘the death of the novel’: People will continue to write novels, or maybe short stories, because they discover that they are treating their own neuroses. And I have said about the practice of the arts that practicing any art – be it painting, music, dance, literature, or whatever – is not a way to make money or become famous. It’s a way to make your soul grow. So you should do it anyway.”

“[Bill] Gates is saying, ‘Hey, don’t worry about making your soul grow. I’ll sell you a new program and, instead, let your computer grow year after year after year . . .’ – cheating people out of the experience of becoming.”

Vonnegut: “I just want to add that virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.”

“Because music gives pleasure as we never can. Music is the most pleasurable and magical thing we can experience.”

Vonnegut: “Novelists do not envy each other, and if a writer succeeds, makes a lot of money, say, that makes all other writers happy.

So it’s a most agreeable field we’re in and I think, in a sense, we are veterans of the same battle and we know what the hell it was like. We’re not like Duke Wayne, who was never in a battle. We know what that fight was like and we respect each other for making it.

And anyone who has finished a book, whether the thing is any good or not, is a colleague of ours.”

On the reading audience:

Vonnegut: “Expecting a large number of people to be literate is like expecting everybody to play the French horn. It is extremely difficult”

(By “to be literate,” Vonnegut means to be able to read using their imagination to envision the story in their mind, to be players and produce a production, if you will, of the story for themselves. By this definition, I was not able to truly read Vonnegut until college.)

Vonnegut: “You cannot fool a reading audience!”

Vonnegut: “Partly it’s about how you hold an audience. Because they can leave.”

Vonnegut: “Nobody gives a fuck about you. They care about the book.”

On experiences of life:

Stringer: “What I’ve taken away is a certain brand of optimism. Even the bad stuff is an opportunity. There are possibilities there. In fact, I see more possibilities in adversity than in, say, lying on satin pillows.”

Vonnegut in the novel Timequake:

“We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”

Vonnegut: “Because some people are born musicians, some people are born chess players, or whatever. In school some people could run a lot faster than I could. I could write better than most people could. So, yes, I’m lucky.

Joe Heller and I recently confessed something which is shameful for writers to confess. We’d both had relatively happy childhoods, which is no way for a writer to begin.”

Vonnegut: [Regarding education] “I went to a good high school, and everything was noise after that.”

So now that I’ve had a small taste of the magic elixir that is Kilgore Trout, I need more. I can’t decide which to devour next, Player Piano or God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. What exactly is Kilgore Trout, you say? You’ll have to read Vonnegut’s works to find out.

Vonnegut, Kurt, Lee Stringer, and Ross Klavan. Like Shaking Hands with God: a Conversation about Writing. New York: Seven Stories, 1999.

[Editor’s Note: With the exception of Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5 and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the links attached to book titles will take you to a preview of each book on Google Books. If you enjoy the preview, I suggest purchasing the book, either electronically or in hard copy. I recommend hard copy because . . . well that’s a subject for another blog post. The links attached to Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 will take you to entries for the titles on vonnegutweb.com (This is a great site except for the fact that it was evidently abandoned in 2005 and lacks mention of both A Man Without a Country and Vonnegut’s death in April 2007. Otherwise it is a great source of information.), which include short passages and a synopsis taken from Gale Research. These two titles are not available on Google Books, or at least I could not find them. Interestingly enough, both titles are listed among books routinely challenged or banned each year.]

Inspiration

Nothing can bring out a poem faster than being inspired by the one you love. Nothing can be more inspirational than when he (or she) shows his support of you and your passion during a trying election process, celebrates with you when sweet victory is announced at 8PM Pacific time, and remains by your side, katana in hand, when the struggle continues. Your muse is never more present when he is comforting you when you feel hurt and abused by a friend, except perhaps in that precious hour you steal for yourselves when the baby is napping.

I will be posting 3 poems on the theme of love. It is a subject very much on my mind of late, and not just because of the wonderful man that I am so lucky to call my husband. Love is the only reason to marry, or it should be. The institution of marriage is threatened by those who take for granted the privilege and marry for money, position, power, or some other reason. When marriage is little more than a business arrangement, it is abused. But it will survive as long there are more of us who marry for love and nothing else. It is a sad time we live in, when some who wish to marry for love are prevented from doing so. Marriage may be wounded, but in time it can be healed.