History's Mysteries

Thomas Cahill is a history-light writer, think about How the Irish Saved Civilization for example. But I alway have trouble remembering the Middle Ages. I have trouble remembering MY middle ages. What is the Middle Ages? When did it happen? What was done during that period? Who lived and created during that period? This isn't my first book about the Middle Ages and I guess it won't be the last.

Cahill focuses on a few characters to illustrate how things that we consider to be very modern were first seen in the Middle Ages. So that would answer the question of who lived and created during that period: Abelard and Heloise, Elinor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assissi, Thomas Aquinas and Dante. Okay, I've heard and read about all these guys in the past. Cahill goes into a little more depth, draws some strange conclusions and then moves on to the next subject.

Have you heard about the new movie, Vantage Point? I hear it's pretty horrible. And that's too bad. The whole idea of observing an event from different vantage points and coming to different conclusions or having a different perspective on the event fascinates me. What an interesting idea for a movie. I wonder if they had a bad writer :)

That's why I like to read different books about the same time in history. Everyone has their own perspective, which authors put into their books. This really came to my mind as I slowly work my way through the H.L. Mencken book. I'm half way through the book and about to start the chapter on the Scopes Monkey Trial. Inherit The Wind is one of my favorite plays and movie. I didn't know that Mencken was a big force in the trial. But knowing him from the first half of the book, I suspect that he had more of an impact than a reporter should have. Can't wait to see this trial from another perspective.

What's this got to do with Mysteries of the Middle Ages? As far as history goes, you can't just take one version. Cahill's version is interesting, but it can't be your only view on events. You have to read about any period in history from various viewpoints. And I think you need to read various genres. That mystery I read about the woman doctor who did autopsies was placed in this period. It is so interesting to hear about the same people from a different writer. I'm beginning to feel more comfortable in the Middle Ages.

The same is true with the Mencken book. It takes place in turn of the last century Baltimore. He's a newspaper man, so he is involved in much of what's happening in the world or at least the East Coast. I've read a lot about this period. But he had a totally different viewpoint. His take on the Germans and British in WWI is so different from what I normally read. But then I normally read English writers. Maybe I need a different viewpoint. Maybe I need to read more German books. Just wait to see what I come up with.

Do Not Seek HIDE

What do you follow a really good novel with? A pretty mediocre mystery, of course. I understand Lisa Gardner is a writer of good mysteries, but this series doesn't appear to be up to her best work. Please don't read this if the thought of harm to children upsets you. You don't actually read about the dark deeds, but if you have a good imagination, you don't need to read the details.

The story is about a father who appears to have protected his daughter against an unknown evil when she was a child. Now the father is dead and the daughter is caught up in the results of this protection. The plot line is a little shaky, the characters are sort of interesting (faint praise if I ever heard it,) the resolution is hurried and jumbled. It's understandable, but hurried.

What this book is particularly good for is keeping you entertained while starting a new jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle is not as hard as the last one. There is lots of color and activity. I'm actually very good at this, seeing where the pieces go. This is a comfort as Alzheimer worries lessen every time I see where a piece goes.

I had dinner with Dan and Karen on Friday. Okay, dinner and beer. Dan left the Helpdesk a couple of years ago. He just got a job with the Unemployment Office as one of their Veteran helpers. He helps veterans find work. He was full of good job hunting information. This would have been very helpful to me if I was looking really hard for a job. I've been out of work for two months. I have ten more months of pay before I have to start bringing in some extra money. My friend Tom, from the Book Awards, is now the "oldest temp in New York." He just finished with a part in a play. It sounded like fun. Tom's even older than I am, as amazing as that seems. He's started a whole new life in New York after leaving The Times last year. Way to go Dan and Tom. You give hope for this old lady.

NObody's Fool

Oh, this was such a good book. It helps that I saw this movie with Paul Newman about 20 years ago. He played Sully, Don Sullivan, a 60 year old man with a bad knee. Does that sound familiar, or what? He is haunted by a horrible childhood and bad decisions that he made ever after, based on that childhood. That part is not similar to me, but the book is so well written that I could still feel his pain.

It's just a slice of life in a upstate New York town. I read some of the reviews in Amazon. One said that this is a dying town where people go "through the motions of life." Isn't that an odd statement? They seem to be doing all the things that we people who are living in towns that aren't dying do. They love, they die, they work, they try to get out of work. They enjoy each other's company, they have pasts that haunt them, they have futures that seem bleak or promising. The thing about this book is that the characters and locale are so well drawn that you know these people. You actually know more about them than the guy at the next desk whom you've known for the 30 years you sat at your desk.

I wonder if the writer envisioned a Sully as beautiful as Paul Newman. I think so. Everybody is charmed by him. He does pretty stupid things, and they still love him. He rents an apartment in the home of his old school teacher and has for the past 20 years. She was played by Jessica Tandy, just before Ms. Tandy died. There are probably a dozen central characters whom you get to know very well. The time period of the book is pretty brief. It starts at Thanksgiving and ends on New Year's Day. In a town where people are making the motions of living, a lot happens in such a short period of time. As a different Amazon review rightly says, this is more character-driven than plot-driven. There are very interesting characters driving this book. I don't think I'll miss them, but I'm glad to have been with them for a while.

The 22nd

I get books from Audible. Oh, you already knew that. :-) I pay a fee and get two new books each month. The 22nd of every month. I'm already reading 3 books that seem to go on forever: a book about Mencken (half way through this hard cover book), a book about the Middle Ages (over half way through this book on my Ipod), and a book about a small upstate New York town (almost done.)

Yet, when the 22nd came around, I was doing the Snoopy happy dance. I'd been putting books into my wish list all month, waiting for that moment. Okay, I don't buy just 2. I get two really expensive books that are charged against my credits and a few little cheap books to fill in my needs.

I really hate to shop, but I'm a great buyer. And my happy feet just can't stay still when the 22nd rolls around.

Definitely, Maybe, Probably Not

Today is my mother's birthday. She loved to take pictures of flowers and flowering trees and grandkids. When I saw this tree flowering in the Ralph's parking lot in the middle of February, I had to take a picture for Mom. Definitely, happy birthday, Gram.


I am reading a very long book. Can't reveal it until it's done. I decided to slip in another book between Audible sections. This little mystery, Improbable Cause, is a new series to me. It is a police procedural. The protagonist is a Seattle cop. My college room mate has lived in Seattle for a long time. The streets and neighborhoods were familiar to me. An obsessive-compulsive dentist is found dead in his office. Everyone who ever knew him is a suspect because he was one nasty dude. Pretty standard for the genre, but I enjoyed it. For me, this as a definite maybe.

Jeanne and I have started a weekly tradition of seeing a movie and eating and talking. This has been great. I really like being with her. Bob has started teaching his evening ESL classes again, so it's girls night out for now. I had grossed Jeanne out last week with In Bruges. This week we went romantic, Definitely, Maybe. We both agreed that it was too long, a bit pointless and more Probably Not than the other options. I had thought In Bruges was so wonderful because the writer directed the film and didn't ruin the words. Well, the guy who wrote Definitely, Maybe also directed it. And it's a bit of a mess. I've seen it with a lot of authors and forgot what I noticed. Some authors start out with good editors and write really tight books. Then they fire the editor because what do they add to the process anyway?

James Clavell wrote King Rat and Shogun, both great books. Then his books started to be overly long and flacid. Where did that editor go? Tom Clancy wrote Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, both griping thrillers. He must have changed editors shortly after that, because his books became improbable and, hum, stupid. Jack Ryan saving Prince Charles and giving marital advice?! Give me a break. Sometimes great writers need an editor. Sometimes great screenwriters need a different director. And sometimes they just aren't great to begin with.

I have been cooking vegetables in all kinds of ways, just to get more of the things into my body. There was the cream of broccoli and spinach soup, yum; stir-fried vegetables with tofu and noodles, yum; and puff-pastry wrapped asaparagus. Woozer. We had this appetizer at the IT Christmas party and they ran out of them when I went back for seconds. Aren't they pretty? And very easy. Yep, I'm having fun.

Do You Like?

I think I like the way this look makes my pictures look. What do you think?

Ashes and Blood

I get book review from Powell's Bookstore every day in my email. The one about the CIA book is so right on, I was going to link to it. For those who are wondering, I'm really not a computer whiz. The link was huge and took you to my email. But I am a whiz at copying and pasting. This Doug Brown, who I assume is not my Doug Brown from the LA Times, hit that nail on the head. You do end up respecting NO One. Nobody. When a presidential candidate says that he/she has experience with international affairs, consider that it is probably not as good as your experience. Whatever that is.

And You Thought NASA Was Screwed Up A Review by Doug Brown

Tim Weiner's excellent account of the CIA has already won many kudos and plaudits, including the National Book Award. There's not much I can add to that, other than to say folks really should read this book. After the film Syriana came out I read Robert Baer's See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, as the credits of the film stated it was loosely based on Baer's book. That book gave a pretty unflattering view of the CIA as an agency out of touch with the intelligence happening on the ground. Weiner shows that Baer only had a tiny fragment of the picture of the CIA's irrelevance and incompetence.

The CIA was originally established to be the president's newspaper, an agency to inform U.S. policy makers of what was happening in the world. Unfortunately, it was formed by the folks who had worked the OSS in World War II, and they wanted to keep playing cloak and dagger. Quickly the agency fragmented into intelligence and clandestine services divisions, which communicated little with each other and liked each other less. Meanwhile, presidents showed little interest in the day-to-day output of the intelligence side. Only a couple of CIA directors have had the privilege of meeting the president with any regularity -- and some only met with presidents once or twice in their entire term in office.

Legacy of Ashes will shoot down any illusions you may still harbor of the Kennedys (Jack and Bobby) being noble upright citizens. They were the ones who got the CIA into the political assassination business, and ramped up the activities of the clandestine service. And they were utter failures at it (futile attempts to assassinate Castro, Bay of Pigs, etc.). After Kennedy's assassination, the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission, triggering a thousand conspiracy theories (most of which give the CIA far too much credit and power).

Experience with the CIA in previous administrations gave Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld very low opinions of the agency. This disdain was part of the intelligence failure that led to Iraq. A larger part was the CIA's longstanding practice of telling presidents what they thought the administration wanted to hear. Very little data, mostly questionable, became "slam dunk" certainty when filtered through the CIA. And Osama bin Laden is either dead of old age or still out there somewhere.

It is very disconcerting that the last remaining superpower's intelligence agency has worse maps of Belgrade than Powell's Books does (hey, maybe we should run the country!), and those maps are used to select bombing targets. Most people at the CIA don't speak foreign languages, so communications between and within other nations go untranslated. Every director has been despised by the agents in the trenches. Fractionalized, marginalized, and far too often just plain wrong, Weiner's CIA doesn't bear any resemblance to the all-powerful agency depicted in films and spy novels. Eisenhower's description of the CIA during his term provides the books title: a Legacy of Ashes indeed.

Jeanne, Bob and I went to see In Bruges last night. What a good movie. Am I wrong in thinking that Colin Farrell is a bright young man? I hope this was all acting. He was denser than the magical fog of Bruges, dense as a fence post. People have complained about all the socially incorrect language. But fence posts are not empathetic to those around them. He was spot on. And Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleeson were equally good.

I wanted to see it because I had always wanted to go to Bruge. Bruges is photographed very well, you can see why someone would want to visit. I heard it is about hit men, so I knew there would be violence. Yep, there was a lot of that. Almost drove Jeanne under the seat. Sorry. It's also a black comedy. I could hear Bob laughing throughout the non-bloody parts. But even the bloody parts were interesting. I hid my eyes a bit, but you really can't miss the end. Did I say this is well written? Yep. It sure is. I'm so happy that the WGA is back to work. Please, producers and directors, please respect the work of these people. Your movies are sheit (how do Dubliners spell that) without a well-written script. Fortunately, the writer directed this script, so what's on the page is on the screen. Brilliant.

The CIA and Other Crimes

I have been cooking like crazy. It's been quite a bit of fun, seeing what recipes I can come up with for the esoteric ingredients I've been buying. The fresh ginger muffins on the right were the result of buying two hands of ginger at the Chinese market I went to in order to find chicken feet to make a really good demi-glace. This is gelatinous chicken broth reduced to its next to nth degree. The nth degree is called glace. The muffins went immediately into awaiting mouths. The demi-glace was packaged for the freezer, to be used at some later date when I need good quality chicken stock.

And I've been listening as I've cooked. Legacy of Ashes is a tough book to read. What a bunch of shameless boobs. The CIA chiefs, the Presidents who used their services, and all the self-serving men in between. Were we safer with Clinton, who never talked to these people and never sought any intelligence (what he sought instead is well known) or with all the others who thought they were getting reliable intelligence? There were Burma Shave sized signs going down the road to self-destruction, which said that the USSR had no money or ability to do any harm to us. They were great at disinformation and skullduggery. But that's only part of this very long story. It's all painful. But we should all know about our employees. The CIA works for us, right? How are they representing us? Are the effective? Can you fire them? Well, no. But you should read this anyway.

Do we all agree that I needed something light after that? Kill The Messenger is about a bicycle messenger who has difficulties. Lots of difficulties. It was your standard pulp mystery. I enjoyed it. One thing that was really fun is that as a guy on a bike in LA, the messenger, JC, knew all the streets that are around The Times building. It takes place between Chinatown and the court buildings. What fun. Sure people are getting killed and awful stuff is happening. But the kid takes the Gold Line; a shoot out takes place across from the Biltmore; he lives in Chinatown.

And speaking of The Times. :) Sigh. I'm trying to move on. I went to Lee, Hecht, Harrison - an employment service - to help me with my resume. The Times offered me their services. I think if I was looking hard for a job that I would really enjoy this service. So, I should be moving on, but I will be going to The Times tomorrow to see what havoc Sam Zell has wrought. They should be announcing the new editor today or tomorrow. My life is so peaceful these days. I can't imagine that my friends are enjoying much peace. That's sad.

UVWXYZ

We don't have far to go until this series is over. U is for Undercover, V is for Vigilence, W is for Wrong, X is for Xanadu, Y is for Yesterday, Z is for Zygote. When I started this series and was probably at C (1986), Adrian and I were walking through Old Town Pasadena, making up names for subsequent books. It was such a fun moment that I continue to read the series, even though my interest in waning. That's the memory that makes me smile, not the memory of Kinsey Milhone, the book's protagonist.

She's okay. In T is for Trespass, stuff happens, it isn't too violent, people are interesting. In other words, good for the genre. This one has a sneaky care-giver who was left out in the morals distribution. It's hard to see when people are doing evil when they are doing something you don't want to do. Reminds me of people in all those sub-low paying jobs. They aren't evil, but they appear to be doing something we don't want to do; or something we don't want to pay for.

Which reminds me, I voted today. I registered Republican a long time ago. It's so I could vote for good people in the primaries so I'd really have a choice in the general election. I found that I was doing battle with myself this time. I don't have anything against these men like I did Baby Bush. They may not think exactly as I do, but they aren't ignorant and vile. So I should have changed my party. It hurt too much having the lady call out that I was a Republican when I was getting my ballot. I wonder if those good Democrats who got their ballot just before I got mine thought that I had voted for Bush/Cheney in the last election. Noooooooooooooooooo.

I also finished one of my one-off books. Let Me Go is about a mother-daughter relationship. It's a true story. The mother was a death camp prison guard and good Nazi girl. She was a rotten mother and deserted her two children to take on this role. They met one between the end of the war and this final story, when the mother is in her 90's. At the previous meeting, she ignored her grandson and wanted her daughter to try on her death camp uniform. I think this woman was sick.

I'm not thrilled at my relationship with my mother, especially near the end of her life, but this book makes me realize what a gem I had. Being a good mother is a tough thing to do. The mother in this book never tried. All she ever wanted to do was to be a good and faithful Nazi. Yuckers. But it is a good book.

Went to a super bowl party at Sandra's house. Eric and I decided that we would throw one next year when I'm in Virginia. I'm looking forward to that. I understand they have a new big TV and their house is very well set up for parties. I baked banana cupcakes, little ones with a dallop of cream cheese frosting on top. Now that I have time to bake, I don't have groups of people to eat the food. Adrian and I surely don't need that. I'll think of something, some way to bake and not eat the results.

Jeanne and I saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly yesterday. That was a hard movie to watch, but it was so well done that I can understand its high acclaim. This part of being temporarily retired is fun. We had lunch first, found a great fish grill in the vacinity of the theater. Num. We talked about good things to eat that are good for you. That inspired me to cook a butternut squash and bean salad for dinner. I liked it, but Adrian didn't like the squash part. Oh well. Eating healthfully isn't always easy.