Best Newspaper Read of the Year

Since Monday, the New York Times has featured a daily article in a series called Invisible Child. The stories, written by Andrea Elliott, chronicle a year in the life of Dasani, one of thousands of homeless children living in New York City. Dasani, along with her six siblings and parents (Chanel and Supreme) occupy a 532 square foot room in one of NYC's worst homeless shelters. Yesterday, in part four, Elliott wrote about Dasani's 12th birthday party. She received no material gifts. However, her mom tried to make the day special for the little girl by presenting Dasani with a beautiful white sheet cake, which Dasani did not know was stolen from a local Pathmark. Later in the evening, a neighborhood teenager, who was flirting with Dasani's uncle, a much older man, gave Dasani a $20. The girl's joy was palpable, even through the written word.

Reading through the articles while vacationing in Orlando, Florida, made Dasani's story especially powerful. Orlando's theme parks, such as Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and Sea World, are teeming with kids who have no clue that children like Dasani exist. While these kids are concerned about getting in line to meet Belle at Disney's Magic Kingdom or line up to ride the Incredible Hulk roller coaster, Dasani closely follows city politics, calculating how much more money the family would have to spend on soda if Mayor Bloomberg's soda-size limiting proposal becomes law. At present, one super-size soda is shared among the entire family, but if the proposal had passed, Dasani's family would have faced a significant increase in the cost of soda for the family.

Throughout the week, the articles have become a bit of a devotional for me. If there is a better time of year to reflect on Dasani's life and the lives of the homeless throughout the country and world, I don't know of it. We are bombarded during this season to narrowly think of our own wants and "needs." Yes, we get excited to give presents, but how much of that excitement is rooted in the knowledge that we will get some gifts in return? Jesus encourages us to give with no thought of reward. He encourages us to be blind to a person's outward appearance or material possessions. He encourages us this season to think of the neediest, to reflect on our own blessings, and then to make a difference. And it is not important if the world thinks you are making a big difference or a little difference. To the recipient, the difference will always be big and that is all that is important.  

I am writing this blog to spread the story of Dasani and her family. It is dreadfully tragic and reading the articles represents a big commitment of time, but I believe they are rewarding. Even if you can't do something about it this Christmas, this Christmas will still be more meaningful if you come face to face with Dasani's struggle and remember her and others like her as you bask in the blessings of this holiday.

You can find part one of the series at this link.

Movie - The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby 

Having read some reviews of this movie I was prepared for the chaotic blend of reality, CGI, and a spectrum of bright colors. One review referred to all of this as an orgy of color. That's about right. I thought it was a bit visually disruptive, but I got used to it/didn't let it bother me and as the very long movie (2hr 23min) progresses, these weird scenes become less intrusive. 

I have a lot of thoughts about Gatsby, the book. This movie made me think about why I was not a fan of the book when I read it the first time (8th grade, maybe?) and a little more of a fan when I read it the second time (2009, maybe?) and how I might truly enjoy it if I were to read it a third time. 

As an English major, I feel guilty for not falling head over heels for classics like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Of the former, I think its message was wasted on me in 8th grade. Of the latter, I've read it 2-3 times and it has never done anything for me. 

Gatsby, the movie, was good enough to evoke a strong desire in me to read the book for a third time. I thought the portrayals of Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan were exceptional. I thought the acting was mesmerizing and the movie did not seem at all to drag on, but to speed up and move toward the inevitable crash and unraveling of an ideal future. The use of Fitzgerald's words floating on the screen from time to time as Carraway reads them was a powerful touch too. 

I know this movie has a 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it green and rotten, but occasionally I don't see eye to eye with the consensus on that site. Dicaprio's portrayal of Gatsby is spot on. The guy still glows with this youthful exuberance and it's exactly what I expect Gatsby to look like, increasing the mystery of his wealth, the house, and the parties. 

I enjoy it when a movie makes me want to reread a book. If you're on the fence about this one, I think it's worth it. 

Quasi Movie Review - Oblivion

Oblivion

After reading Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Disbelief, I'll probably never look at Tom Cruise the same way again. So, it was weird that while I watched Tom Cruise traverse the post-apocalyptic Earth searching for downed drones and scattered aliens, I kept thinking of moments from his real life as a Scientologist, like when the church held tryouts for a "special mission." The mission, you ask? To be Cruise's next girlfriend. So, I kept a close eye on Oblivion wondering if its story or message had some hints of Scientology theology. I think it does, but revealing that would spoil the movie, which pleasantly surprised me. These days, I'm pleasantly surprised by any good movie, which stars Tom Cruise.

Now, does my endorsement of this movie as good, but not outstanding, mean I have endorsed any or all beliefs of the Church of Scientology? Absolutely not. But you can still think of this as a double endorsement. That of Oblivion and another of Lawrence Wright's amazing book, Going Clear. Truly, the book is astounding in its depth and research and that Wright hasn't been sued into Oblivion. Pun intended.

Pursue Happiness, But Kindness Most of All

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke at my commencement ceremony. It was fun to see such a high profile figure, who is intensely involved in global affairs, give a talk to the many graduates of the international studies program I was in, but I would have much preferred to hear a different address, one from George Saunders. He gave it at Syracuse this year. It is a remarkable take on the typical staid commencement address. Here is an excerpt, but you can read the rest at the link below:

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.  Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.  That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been.  Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s.  Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

The rest of the speech. Hat tip to my mom, who sent this my way today.

Quote of the Day

"When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as it should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye."

- From January 31st in Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner.

TPM - David Carr Interview

David Carr, journalist at the New York Times, was interviewed by TPM this week. I think Carr's take on journalism is a refreshing voice in the cacophony of talking heads on TV and the bad habit of news organizations to merely link to and summarize articles written by some other news organization. I'm looking at you, HuffPo. 


Good interview. Worth the read. Click it.

For the Readers and Writers...

Ann Patchett on this year's Pulitzer Prize announcement. Op-Ed in the Times. Worth the read if you read or not.

the War of Art: Redux

I first blogged about The War of Art on April 1, 2009 after reading it because this man recommended the book. Well, I’ve just been hit by a wave of anti-resistance. The resistance I write about in the older blog. You can read about it there. But I just wanted to share some passages that still rock my world. Thank you, Pressfield.

“Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be?”

“Resistance will bury you.”

“If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.” Pressfield brings it with this one.

“Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.”

“Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product.”

“What makes it tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it.”

Man, I hope one of these quotes just came up into your life and tossed things about like a little tornado in your soul, especially that last one. Read this book. And go do what everyone is telling you, you can’t do.

Currently

Currently reading Although of Course you end up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, by David Lipsky. I was about to write it’s Wallace unfiltered, but if you’ve read that much Wallace, you know there isn’t much of a filter. It’s pure Wallace, just like his nonfiction is, except just in conversation with a journalist who is clearly becoming a friend over the five days they spend together.

Here’s a brief passage, where Wallace and Lipsky just landed in the Twin Cities. Still on airplane. Over the PA system comes a voice:

PA: (Engines cycling down, that big, deep, vacuum-cleaner sound) Just a reminder: The airport here in the Twin Cities is a smoke-free environment. Smoking only is permitted outdoors.

(Corrects her) [Wallace] “Permitted only outdoors.” It’s not the only thing that’s permitted outdoors.

[[Lipsky]] [Irritated as a grammarian and as a smoker]

Currently obsessed with: The Suburbs, by Arcade Fire. This album has been out for a while now. Arcade Fire already won a Grammy for it, but I just picked it up two weeks ago and it is getting heavy rotation. It reminds me of discovering Neon Bible when I was working at a magazine in Denver and doing the drive from Longmont and just rocking out to “No Cars Go.”

The Shrinking Avenue to Readership

I suppose, like some of you, I have made a special trip to Borders this week to see if there are any good deals in their clearance sale. That’s right, ironically, if you don’t read, you may not have heard. Borders is going out of business. I have always enjoyed going into large bookstores. Outside of Portland, that leaves you with Borders and Barnes and Noble for the most part. When I was younger I flocked to Borders. I even worked there for five days, but that’s a different story. As I have aged (a little bit), I prefer Barnes and Noble. It seems more astute, more bookish. Maybe it’s the interior. I think it’s a little darker with higher bookshelves and I feel more likely to run into someone reading or writing some great tome in the corners of a big Barnes and Noble than in Borders.

I digress. I am getting way off point here. I go to Borders at least once a week since there is one in the building I work in. However, I did pay a special visit on Saturday to see what kind of deals could be had. There wasn’t much to be found, at least not yet. Those might come a little later with just days to go before Borders shuts down forever. But I did notice the people. They were everywhere. The place was packed. The last time Borders saw this much traffic was when the last Harry Potter book came out. My first thought at seeing the crowds was how much better the world would be if bookstores were always this crowded. And, how sad it is that it takes a closing of a bookstore to bring out the throngs. There were clearly a lot of readers there, snatching up armfuls of books that must have been on the “to buy” list, but had never made it to the “bought” list for some reason or another. Perhaps, in this economy, they were just too expensive.

What stores are left after Borders? How long will Barnes and Noble last? I don’t know, but I pondered those questions as I strolled through the aisles while making mental notes of the things people were grabbing at. A lot of DVD boxed sets, 2012 calendars, and board games. I stopped at an oft-ignored display of Moleskine journals, found one my size, and joined others in line. A $5.99 copy of Kindergarten Cop tempted me right before checking out. I could take it home and watch it and perfect some new Arnold lines. Not enough work. I settled with the Moleskine and it’s pliable leather cover and blank pages.

Maybe not quite The Best American Nonrequired Reading, but close to it.

I am reading some books off the recommended reading list for the graduate program I will be starting in the fall. I finished The Looming Tower last week. Lawrence Wright wrote it and I had started to read it in the fall and was distracted by several things, maybe applying to grad school and taking the GRE, but I finally finished it. It’s a great work of research and an accounting of the United States’ earlier attempts at killing Osama bin Laden. It details bin Laden’s earlier life and his progression from extensive farmer to infamous terrorist.

There are countless passages I would like to share and discuss on here, but I thought one in particular was telling of what knowledge so many of those who wish to attack America lack. It’s astounding how ignorance is such a strong characteristic of both sides of this battle. To give you some context, this was immediately after 9/11 and a 9/11 conspirator (Abu Jandal) was being confronted by an agent (Soufan):

“Abu Jandal was confounded by Soufan and what he represented: a Muslim who could argue religion with him, who was in the FBI, who loved America. He quickly consumed the history that Soufan game him and was shocked to learn of the American Revolution and the passionate struggle against tyranny that was woven into the American heritage. His worldview depended on the assumption that the United States was the wellspring of evil in the world.” – Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower : Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, p. 365.

Cool Show Watch

Tonight, Bill Bryson (one of, or perhaps tied for, my favorite author/s) will be on The Colbert Report. Easily two of my favorite guys ever on one episode. Check it out.

Stories From Rwanda

I first heard about We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda (by Philip Gourevitch) in college. Somewhat predictably, it was Aaron who suggested I read it and, like so many suggestions I receive, it took me years to get around to reading this book. I finally have, finishing it up last week and now I am passing on the suggestion to anyone who happens to check my blog and have an interest in such things, even if that thing is genocide in Rwanda. Even before opening the book up, I was trying to prepare myself for what I would encounter on the pages within. I was also trying to put into words why it was that I wanted to read about an event I already knew didn’t end well and then Gourevitch presented me with this paragraph:

Like Leontius, the young Athenian in Plato, I presume that you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extremity with me, you hope for some understanding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge—a moral, or a lesson or a clue about how to behave in this world: some such information. I don’t discount the possibility, but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it. The horror, as horror, interests me only insofar as a precise memory of the offense is necessary to understand its legacy.

This was the best-worded explanation of my desire to know about the genocide in Rwanda and similar tragedies. So, I read on, learning so much about the history of Rwanda, its people, and the players in the genocide, which proved to be the most efficient mass killing of human beings in modern history. Some estimates put the number of dead at one million, but it is clear that at least 800,000 people died in a three and a half month stretch in Rwanda.

From what I understand, the roots of the conflict—at least one of them—can be traced back to white Europeans, who, upon arriving in Rwanda, treated the minority Tutsis like they were significantly better in all ways than Hutus because they [Tutsis] more closely resembled—at least according to John Hanning Speke—a “Caucasoid tribe of Ethiopian origin, descended from the biblical King David, and therefore a superior race to the native Negroids.” From there on, things only get more complicated and it is pointless to elaborate when Gourevitch does it so well.

As a whole, the Western world is guilty when it comes to the genocide in Rwanda, but I didn’t know how France essentially enabled and prolonged the conflict by providing arms that they knew were being sent across the border to the interahamwe, a Hutu paramilitary organization responsible for much of the slaughter in 1994. Gourevitch points out that “In 1994, during the height of the extermination campaign in Rwanda, as Paris airlifted arms to Mobutu’s intermediares in eastern Zaire for direct transfer across the border to the genocidaires, France’s President Francois Mitterand said—as the newspaper Figaro later reported it—“In such countries, genocide is not too important.” By their actions and inactions, at the time and in the years that followed, the rest of the major powers indicated that they agreed.”

Perhaps I am naïve in assuming it is common knowledge that the West ignored the genocide in Rwanda. So it shouldn’t be shocking when the reader is reminded again and again of the West’s blunt refusal to aid Rwanda and to call what was going on within its borders genocide, but it was, both genocide and disturbing that everyone just stood by. Gourevitch keenly reminds us of this, all the while highlighting the Westerners who attempted to stop the genocide, like Lieutenant-General Dallaire, the Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda in 1993 and 1994, who went on Canadian television in 1997 and said, among other things:

Essentially, how many people really still remember the genocide in Rwanda? We know the genocide of the Second World War because the whole outfit was involved. But who really is involved in the Rwandan genocide? Who comprehends that more people were killed, injured, and displaced in three and a half months in Rwanda than in the whole of the Yugoslavian campaign in which we poured sixty thousand troops and the whole of the Western world was there, and we’re pouring billions in there, still trying to solve the problem. How much is really being done to solve the Rwandan problem? Who is grieving for Rwanda and really living it and living with the consequences? I mean, there are hundreds of Rwandans whom I knew personally whom I found slaughtered with their families complete—and bodies up to here—villages totally wiped out … and we made all that information available daily and the international community kept watching.

In fact, the international community paid little attention until the peak of the genocide had passed and thousands of Rwandans had wound up in refugee camps. These refugee camps were exactly what the Western media were looking for in terms of something they thought would make great television. Relatively accessible and not too graphic to show on TV, the refugee camps became the popular cause, raking in thousands of dollars in support and hundreds of volunteer organizations. What wasn’t reported is that a very large percentage of the refugees were Hutus who had fled Rwanda after killing their Tutsi friends, neighbors and co-workers. The camps were packed with murderers and now they were the ones benefitting from Western aid and support while their dead Tutsi compatriots fertilized Rwandan soil. No one reporting on the refugee camps knew the whole story or that Hutu Power organizations were allowed to flourish within the refugee camps. So the genocide continued and volunteers tended to many who committed the worst atrocities.

At one point in the book Gourevitch tells a story of a reporter “who was sent into Goma directly from Bosnia” to report on the refugee camps. The reporter told Gourevitch that “he knew what Hutu Power was and that he looked up at the volcano and prayed, “God, if that thing erupts right now, and buries the killers, I will believe that you are just and I will go to church again every day of my life.”

You could write a lengthy paper surmising about all the reasons for the West’s ignoring the genocide in Rwanda. There are many, but one from the book that stuck out is this, given by Bonaventure Nyibizi, “You cannot count on the international community unless you’re rich, and we are not. We don’t have oil, so it doesn’t matter that we have blood, or that we are human beings.” This is worth pondering. If Rwanda were rich in oil and if it was a big exporter to the United States, would the genocide have been allowed to go on for months? I highly doubt it.

The United States was slow to confess that they were guilty of inaction. Toward the end of the book, Gourevitch offers up this tale of Clinton’s visit to Rwanda in March of 1998:

If Rwanda’s experience could be said to carry any lessons for the world, it was that endangered peoples who depend on the international community for physical protection stand defenseless. On the morning of Albright’s visit to Rwanda in December, Hutu Power terrorists, shouting “Kill the cockroaches,” had hacked, bludgeoned, and shot to death more than three hundred Tutsis at an encampment in the northwest, and in the days before Clinton’s arrival in Kigali, as many as fifty Tutsis were killed in similar massacres. Against such a backdrop, Clinton’s pledge to “work as partners with Rwanda to end this violence” sounded deliberately vague.

Really, We Wish To Inform You…, is a book about two atrocities: the genocide in Rwanda and the West’s inaction to stop that genocide. You become familiar with the stories of many Rwandans, Hutus and Tutsis, and how they survive now, trying to move on and how some find that to be impossible. And by the end, there is a hint of a generation who makes no distinction between Hutu and Tutsi, a generation who calls themselves Rwandans and nothing else.

Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York, NY. Picador, 1999.

Hate for Hastings

I noticed it. All this contempt for this so-called freelance journalist, Michael Hastings, with the word 'freelance' uttered in such a way as to connote he is one of those not-so-good journalists who has to take assignments as they come to him and that's why he is writing for Rolling Stone, a magazine that doesn't do journalism anymore. On the contrary, the Hastings piece is the type of journalism that is now, for the most part, extinct at the larger media outlets. It is so extinct that the publication of a great story makes for a story itself, at least for all the mainstream outlets.

All this to say, there's a great piece over at Vanity Fair about the hate for Hastings. This is the second semi-political post in as many days and another interesting article. Here the link: Why the Hacks Hate Michael Hastings.

What I'm Reading - Sunday NY Times

A couple good reads from last week's Sunday NY Times. First, The Ahab Parallax, by Randy Kennedy, compares our quest for oil, and the resulting oil spill in the Gulf, through the increasingly prescient Moby Dick to the hunt for whales many years ago. Money quote:

One of the great underlying themes of "Moby Dick," Mr. Delbanco observed, "is that people ashore don't want to know about the ugly things that go on at sea.

"We want our comforts but we don't want to know too much about where they come from or what makes them possible." He added: "The oil spill in the gulf is a horror, but how many Americans are ready to pay more for oil or for making the public investment required to develop alternative energy? I suspect it's a question that Melville would be asking us now."

And second, the Thomas Friedman column, "This Time Is Different," which is also about the impacts of the oil spill and the guilty party, us. This is worth a read.

This Just In: People Make Mistakes

As my time in Milwaukee comes to an end, I am seriously considering rejoining Facebook—after a 19-month hiatus—in hopes that it will help me stay in touch with friends in Milwaukee. After spending a significant amount of time off the Facebook grid, it should be easy to evaluate whether or not I feel more connected to friends or if communication with them has been eased and made more accessible. If Facebook proves once and again to be inconsequential to maintaining close friendships, and instead becomes a waste of time (no matter how many minutes are burned up by it), then I will quit it again.

But just as I am about to sign back on, I read this article at NYTimes.com called “Company on the Verge of a Social Breakthrough,” by Michiko Kakutani. The article is about Facebook and a new book about it, which was written by David Kirkpatrick, titled The Facebook Effect. Kirkpatrick was granted unprecedented access to the Facebook team for months and was presented with arguments in favor of the social-networking tool’s presence in our lives. He writes in his book, “Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

I take issue with both of those claims. Firstly, I doubt the first statement is true. If it is, provide me with the numbers showing the decline of relationships having come to an end because of cheating. Facebook’s transparency does not contribute to moral fortitude, it perhaps makes having an affair or cheating on someone harder to hide, but when it comes down to that moment when you commit yourself to an affair, Facebook isn’t going to be in your decision making process. If you are going to cheat, you are going to cheat. Facebook, cell phones, text messages, Twitter and the blogs aren’t going to stop you. Additionally, people are increasingly voyeuristic (the other meaning) when it comes to their Facebook addiction. They love, in a sickly way, to see people stumble, to see flaws. And there are also those people who are more tempted to cheat on their boyfriend or girlfriend because of the social shockwaves it will send through Facebook. These people most certainly suffer from narcissism, they crave admiration and are willing to get it even if means self-abasement.

Secondly, let’s focus on the next statement about the transparency of Facebook leading to “a more tolerant society in which people accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.” Which is to say, what? That before Facebook people didn’t believe or accept the idea that everyone screws up every once in a while. Please. The fact that humans aren’t perfect isn’t exactly breaking news. Maybe folks over at Facebook and its most ardent supporters love to believe this, but to attribute the discovery of human infallibility, and its acceptance as a universal trait, to a social-networking site is absurd.

Furthermore, this statement assumes we benefit from knowing every bad or embarrassing thing our friends and acquaintances do. I am not convinced this is healthy. Concerning our lives, mistakes and errors in judgment included, privacy is important. While sharing with a close friend or relative about a bad thing you have done is very important, sharing about that bad thing you have done on Facebook via a status update hinting at a mistake, or a post, video or picture about it is not comparable or healthy. While the former approach is an attempt to heal, the latter is more of an exercise in narcissism once again and a cry for help from someone who doesn’t know how to share the old fashioned way. We are left to assume that friends of the person who takes the latter approach will meet the other person halfway and make a connection with them, but I don’t believe that is happening on Facebook, at least not in most cases. Why? Because Facebook—ironically called a social-networking site—is outrageously impersonal. It is too easy to walk away from someone crying out for help on Facebook. It is not too easy to walk away when they call you on the phone sobbing or show up on your front door completely broken. The latter scenario is both harder for the person seeking help and for the person who help is sought from.

Lastly, I wouldn’t be that surprised if the transparency on Facebook, which, people say, helps people accept that everybody does bad things, doesn’t lead to more tolerance, but leads to lowering the standards of human behavior and morality. I know, this makes me sound old, like some fuddy-duddy who just doesn’t get it. Well, is it so hard to imagine a world in which every one of our mistakes is known by our friends and relatives because of Facebook’s transparency? No, it isn’t and in this world would we become comfortably numb to errors in judgment from one-night stands to trying cocaine? Yes, it is possible. ‘Everyone screws up’ and tolerance are great things to practice, but it is dangerous to let them become your mantra because although we all screw up, we all need help too. While Facebook may help with bringing the former truth out of the shadows, the latter truth, the one that speaks directly to our love, compassion and our need to edify each other, isn’t exalted by the saturation of our world by Facebook and all of its friends.

More Orwell

"Stamp-collectors are a strange silent fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums." - "Bookshop Memories" - George Orwell

Sport as Warfare

With the World Cup nearly upon us, I find the following passage to be appropriate--almost necessary--to counteract all these lovely commercials on TV depicting football players and fans as cheery and peaceful. I love sports, but I have to agree with the following.

From George Orwell's essay, "The Sporting Spirit":

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

...

Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare.

The USA Today

I am about to finish up Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There. I thought I would complete the book before pulling some of my favorite quotes and putting them up on the blog, but this one can’t wait. The following passage is from the chapter on his time in Austria:

An old boy, who was dressed more like a housepainter than a waiter, brought me a cup of coffee without asking if I wanted one and, upon realizing that I was an American, began gathering up copies of USA Today.

“Oh, no, please,” I said as he presented me with half a dozen, “put these on the fire and bring me some newspapers.”

God bless you, Bill Bryson.

Giving It Up

No, not writing. At least not yet. I decided months ago that I was going to go give up TV for lent. It may seem like a trivial thing, but watching TV is serious business and actions need to be taken because of a feeling I always get when I have watched a lot of TV and it is this: it is the easy thing to do. And, oftentimes, the easy thing to do is the least enriching thing. I never come away from a session on the couch feeling like I have added to my life. Unless it is a great movie, the sum of my life is lessened by the beast in my living room.

I like addition, adding things to my life. TV won't be subtracting from it for at least the next forty days. This decision also aligns well with one of the main points in Donald Miller's book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, which I finally got around to reading and finishing this week, and that is, do the hard thing. It sounds simpler than it is and it is a rule I don't often live by. I am changing that.