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The Drowning Pool

Thanks to authors like Ross MacDonald, I think I’ll always read American detective novels. It’s just what I do. MacDonald’s character Lew Archer is quickly becoming one of my favorite fictional characters because of his keen observations, sense of humor, and taste in alcohol.

Archer seems to spend a lot of time in bars looking for information and MacDonald loves to add a little color by describing the place and the inhabitants (pg 76):

The place was built on two levels, so that the bar commanded a view of the dining-room. It was nearly two o’clock. The bar was doing a rush-hour business before the curfew knelled. I found an empty stool, ordered a Guinness stout for energy, and looked around me.

I love Guinness. MacDonald followed this with the introduction to some of the key characters. I didn’t recognize how important this character survey was at the time, but I learned my lesson.

Archer’s humor tends to the wry side. Here’s him recounting a trip to an opulent mansion looking for a black limousine (pg 99):

I climbed into my car, closing the door very gently so as not to start an avalanche of money. The loop in the drive took me past the garages. They contained an Austin, a jeep, and a white roadster, but no black limousine.

Hah, “an avalanche of money,” that’s funny stuff. I cracked a smile.

Or what about when he snuck up on a guy from a clump of trees (pg 109).

Reavis glanced at me, the color mounting floridly in his face. “Archer?”

I said: “The name is Leatherstocking.”

I’m rolling on the floor at this point. Not only does MacDonald toss in humor, but he pays tribute to one of America’s greatest writers. It’s really inventive.

The villains aren’t funny though.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This book contained a somewhat out-of-place scene with an evil doctor who uses high pressure water torture on his subjects (plenty of “drowning pool” references). Sue Grafton was highly influenced by MacDonald but I don’t think she’s ever created a villain so bizarre. If memory serves, neither has Burke or Hillerman, two of my other favorite authors. I’ll start paying more attention. Archer ends up escaping from this water torture chamber by filling it up until the door bursts open from the pressure. Then he gets washed out and kills the doctor. It was kind of James Bond-like. Interesting tactic by MacDonald. I’m okay with it.

This is book two with Archer and I’m ready to stay with it for the whole series. Both books were made into movies with Paul Newman, although they changed Archer’s name to Harper. I need to check those out. I’m reading almost all serialized fiction right now. I’m starting the Easy Rawlins series and have a Smiley and Samson novel queued up. Then there’s Game of Thrones book four and probably another Robicheaux adventure. I just don’t feel like branching out. I’m busy at work and throwing in some occasional non-fiction, so I’m not going to be adventurous with my fiction.

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Brave Dragons

I read one or two pieces of basketball nonfiction per year. This book is a mix of basketball and current affairs. It’s the story of a year in the life of the Shanxi Brave Dragons basketball team with occasional diversions into Chinese politics, history, and culture. Basketball is a great vehicle to give the reader a glimpse of the inner workings of China because it takes something distinctly American, something we can relate to, and charts its integration into Chinese culture.

The author, a foreign correspondent for the NYT, is basketball fan/Pulitzer prize co-winner Jim Yardley (stationed in China at the time, now in India I think). The team owner of the Brave Dragons, Boss Wang, gave Yardley insider access to the team as they tried to dig themselves out of the cellar of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) by hiring an American coach named Bob Weiss.

It’s been a decade since Yao Ming first entered the NBA so you may have the feeling that basketball is kind of advanced in China, that maybe it’s free of corruption and played in shiny new stadiums like the ones we saw in the Beijing Olympics. Ah, no. There’s plenty of corruption and anything shiny in the stadiums eventually becomes dingy from all the cigarette smoke.

Basketball is managed by the state, like most things in China, and they start the managing early. Here’s what happens with kids:

The winnowing tool is the X‑ray machine. In elementary school, children undergo medical tests that include a scan of their skeletal structure, with special attention paid to their wrist bones. Doctors examine the distance between the developing bones, and that distance provides a projection for future physical growth. Kids deemed likeliest to grow the tallest are encouraged to attend government sports schools, where coaches will steer them toward certain sports, like basketball. Other kids, the ones showing narrower spaces in the bone structure of their wrists, continue attending schools focused on academics, many of which offer no team sports whatsoever. (Kindle loc. 411–15)

If you’re lucky enough to make it to the CBA, you’ll get a place to lay your head, practice your craft, and hang out with plenty of cool people:

The Chinese players slept inside a three-story concrete dormitory painted burnt orange. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were taken in a canteen on the first floor. The gym was an old warehouse, as high as a barn and constructed with sheet metal. (Kindle loc. 570–72)

But man, these guys are so thankful to be playing the game. The work hard and don’t complain. In fact, they have an overriding feeling that the only way they can compete internationally is to outwork the competition because they feel that they are genetically inferior to the rest of the world. The Brave Dragons coach, Liu Tie, tried to explain this to the author and the conversation became uncomfortable quickly.

I realized we were having a strange conversation, or at least a conversation that would run roughshod over political correctness parameters in the United States. Garrison had been helping with some interpretation, and he rolled his eyes when Liu digressed onto the kung fu warriors. Yet nothing that Liu had said was considered outside mainstream thought in China. Even as the rest of the world regarded China as a rising power, as the country most likely to dominate this century, most Chinese regarded themselves as genetically deficient, at least individually. Mobilizing the masses, not inspiring individuals, had always been the priority of the Chinese leaders. The X-rays and bone tests conducted on Chinese boys like Pan Jiang and Big Sun were a systematic response rooted in assumptions of physical inferiority. No country on earth believed in Darwin more than China. (Kindle loc. 903–909)

Wow, it’s a whole society that won’t accept no for an answer, that’s ready to do anything it takes to dominate the world. Yardley also spent time in India and has this observation:

Ask an Indian intellectual in New Delhi why the capital’s libraries are mediocre or their infrastructure was poorly built and he might shrug and say, “We Indians are not especially good at that.” The Chinese, or at least their leaders, could not accept such a lack of ambition or national will; for China to reclaim its place in the world, China must be great at every endeavor. Yet the price was that daily life was a grinding stone. Everyone worked hard, often separated from family, as rebuilding and rebranding Chinese greatness was a round-the-clock enterprise. (Kindle loc. 4244–48)

So will China ever be a power in basketball like they are in manufacturing? I don’t know, the sport just may take too much creativity and artistry, things that can’t be mandated by the state very well. And each team needs a star, or two. The stats are pretty formidable, you don’t win without a superstar, which is antithetical to the Chinese collective way.

Bob Weiss had an impossible time installing any sort of American style into the Brave Dragons. In fact, after only a week he was demoted to a “consultant” and replaced by Liu Tie, his assistant. Then he was reinstated, then he was moved back to a consultant. It was quite a soap opera. But Weiss and his wife fell in love with China.

Weiss wanted to meet Prada, too. Because if J. T. Prada was angling to get back to the NBA, Bob Weiss had decided he wanted to stay in China. He was having a ball. Tracy loved it. She could even imagine returning to Taiyuan for the following season, though Weiss had a harder time imagining that. He was curious about other teams, other possibilities, and Prada knew people. (Kindle loc. 4882–5)

That’s cool. Weiss seems like a good guy. Yardley paints a detailed picture of him and many other characters. He delves into the lives of players and management but doesn’t stop there. Heck, he even spends a holiday weekend with the teams DJ.

I love basketball. I have a few basketball books queued up. This Thunder vs Heat series is awesome. I gotta get back to it.

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Mexico Set

This is the second book in the game, set, and match trilogy by Len Deighton, which is the first trilogy of the nine-volume Bernard Samson series. It’s classic, Cold War, British spy stuff. It’s a big undertaking and it’s going to take me a while to get through this, but I’m savoring it.

This book picks right up at the end of Berlin Game. Samson is dealing with the aftermath of his wife’s defection to Moscow, juggling job stress and family stress. His work task: get a high ranking KGB man to defect right out from under his wife’s nose. His personal task: find a way to take care of his two kids and protect them from his wife while warding off advances from two beautiful women.

It’s a great mix of spy craft and drama. So far it feels a little simpler and lighter than Le Carre’s Smiley series, but has comparable character development. There’s a lot of detail on Samson and I think he’s a little more approachable than Smiley. I’ll be able to talk more about this after reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (targeting late June).

**  PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW  **

Samson proved highly fallible in this book, almost ruining certain scenes. Twice he was duped by an attractive woman; in both cases I knew as soon as the women entered the scene. I felt kind of let down by the ease with which he was taken in. It’s a theme though that runs through Samson’s character, he is constantly confronted with women he can’t read correctly.

It adds an interesting dimension to Samson and makes the books a lot of fun. Deighton couldn’t pull it off though if he didn’t build some solid intrigue, which he does very well. The tension around who’s on who’s side in this game of spies doesn’t take a back seat to anything, all of the other fun stuff is just icing on the cake. The ending is packed with double crosses and epic spy stuff, truly unique batch of trickery played by all sides of the game. Awesome.

I have London Match queued up, which I purchased via Abe Books (like this one). I don’t think I’ll be able to hold off much past the end of summer. By the way, Abe Books is awesome for old books – cheap and reliable.

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The Ox-Bow Incident

I finished the last two chapters of this book on a plane coming back from Charlotte on a business trip. The flight was half empty and I was seated behind two drunk guys on their way to a bachelor party in Chicago. As I was sitting there in quiet contemplation, the guys in front of me engaged in a long and sometimes animated discussion about Trayvon Martin, Robert Zimmerman, and vigilante justice.

It was a strange confluence of events that forced me to think harder about this book.

If you’re not familiar with the story, you need to know right off the bat that this is generally regarded as the greatest Western novel ever. As a kid, I read a lot of Westerns, so this reading experience really hit home for me. It’s an incredible read and very appropriate for current times.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

The story takes place over about 48 hours in 1885 and chronicles a doomed hunt for three murderers by a 28-person posse from a small cowtown in Nevada. It’s told from the perspective of a cowboy in the posse named Art Croft, a sensitive and thoughtful person but a man ill-equipped for the deed at hand. He’s a perfect vehicle to tell the story.

It’s a short book, maybe 240 pages depending on the format. It’s broken down into five longer-than-average chapters. They aren’t titled, but if they were, I’d title them like this:

  1. The Saloon
  2. The Posse
  3. The Hunt
  4. The Hanging
  5. The Saloon Again

I read it over the course of a week in four sessions, the last two chapters being a single session. You’d have to be one heartless human to stop after Chapter Four, or just someone with serious time constraints.

This book points out the the evils and perils of the mob mentality and vigilante justice, but it goes deeper. One of the subtler topics Walter Van Tillburg Clark explores is the moral implication of doing the right thing. I’ll use a scene in the book to clarify so you don’t think I’m full of $^|+.

During formation of the posse, the ensuing hunt, and the hanging, there was one man who campaigned tirelessly to cease the charade of justice and bring the suspects back to town to be tried. His name was Davies and he was the local shopkeeper. Davies did everything he could; he got the local judge out of his office to try and stop the posse from going out, he confronted the leader of the posse and tried to reason with him, and he begged other posse members to see his point of view to try and build consensus for stopping the hangings.

Nothing worked. Three men were hanged and their innocence was discovered only moments later on the way back to town.

The aftermath is ugly. The son of the leader of the posse hangs himself when he gets back to town. His father, Tetley, commits suicide by impaling himself on his own sword shortly after hearing of his son’s death. A local rancher promises to take care of the widow and children of one of the hanged.

The reader, I think, finds these pretty meaningless. I still had a sickening feeling for the injustice done to the suspects because it could not be undone. Davies has the same feeling, but he also has a more complicated set of emotions. He feels a tremendous, crushing guilt in his cowardice.

What? Croft, the narrator, is incredulous and tries to talk Davies down from this. Croft expresses that Davies was the only one talking sense and the only one standing up to the leader Tetley, he should feel anything but guilt because he did all he could.

Davies doesn’t feel the same way. He knew the suspects were innocent. He just knew. He also knew that only way he could stop the hanging was to kill the leader Tetley. His guilt resulted from the feeling of relief he felt for not bringing his gun. He was relieved that he didn’t have to make the hard decision to do the only thing that could have saved three innocent men, kill Tetley.

“Yes, you see now, don’t you?” he said in a low voice. “I had everything, justice, pity, even the backing – and I knew it – and I let those three men hang because I was afraid. The lowest kind of virtue, the quality dogs have when they need it, the only thing Tetley had, guts, plain guts, and I didn’t have it.”

…

“All a great, cowardly lie,” he [Davies] said violently. “All pose; empty, gutless pretense. All the time the truth was I didn’t take a gun because I didn’t want it to come down to a showdown. The weakness that was in me all the time set up my sniveling little defense. I didn’t even expect to save those men. The most I hoped was that something would do it for me.” (pg 234)

Wow man, this blew me away. It was an ultra intense scene in the book and it reminded me immediately of the feeling I had after reading the Pat Tillman book. This feeling that some people just hold themselves to a higher standard.

I felt like Davies was a hero but Tillman, like Davies himself, would probably feel differently. Would Tillman have been the type of guy to stand in front of the unjustly accused with a gun and kill anyone who tried to hang them?

This prompted me to re-read my take on the Tillman book and it just led to more questions about my (our) place in this world. How do I guarantee an appropriate response in times of crisis and conflict, especially when faced with crushing peer pressure? When do you step in and when do you walk away? When do you act on what you really feel? When is it right to decide to take a human life?

Tough questions.

This issue was foreshadowed very early in the book but I wasn’t able to connect it until I reviewed things. As the posse was developing Davies tried to nip things in the bud by first reasoning with the group. He even seemed to think one person standing up to them in a non-violent manner would keep them from going. Croft didn’t think so and noted this:

I wasn’t so sure of that. Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you’re scared. If rarity is worth, then moral courage is a lot higher quality than physical courage; but, excepting diamonds and hard cash, there aren’t many who take to anything because of its rarity. Just the other way. Davies was resisting something that had immediacy and a strong animal grip, with something remote and mistrusted. He’d have to make his argument look common sense and hardy, or else humorous, and I wasn’t sure he could do either. If he couldn’t he was going to find it was the small but present “we,” not the big, misty “we,” that shaped men’s deeds, no matter what shaped their explanations. (pg 62)

So maybe my description of Croft as “ill-equipped” earlier was wrong and maybe Davies was even less-equipped to stop this charade of justice. Maybe only someone who could apply the “big, misty” morality to the here-and-now in the face of physical opposition could stop this thing. If Croft had this insight, why didn’t he take the action? Or, maybe worse, why didn’t he feel the same guilt that Davies felt? Is Davies just irrational and too hard on himself?

Food for thought.

This book is especially appealing to fans of the Western. It has many of the stereotypical western characters but does not have many of the stereotypical western scenes. There was no big shootout at a pre-arranged place and no hero swooping in to save the day with guns blazing. But there was a big woman called Ma who can fight like a man and a Civil war vet who still doesn’t think the war is over.

I’ve thought about this book a lot over the last 48 hours. I need to make a point to come back to it in a few weeks.

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A Storm of Swords

This is book three of the series. I started reading it after seeing the advertisements for the start of Season Two on HBO. They are pushing this thing pretty hard in print and on TV. I don’t have HBO so I’ve only seen an episode or so on the road and it looks pretty true to the books. Not that you care, but remember, I only started reading this because I caught an episode while traveling.

So here we are.

I was bored with this book at the half way point. It just wasn’t doing anything for me. But shortly after the half it took off like a shot and never looked back. There was a frenzy of death, bloodshed, hope, sorrow, victory, and disappointment over the course of a few chapters that caused a bout of late-night reading.

The story is complicated and there are plenty of deep characters, yet it can still be treated as a guilty pleasure. It goes both ways, sci-fi and fantasy addicts can discuss the story’s social significance and people like me can bang through it because it’s a ton of fun. I forget many of the characters and I don’t have any idea where they are geographically (in a relative sense, it’s a fictional land), but I can still follow it.

I’ve heard some say this book, number three, is the best in the series. I’ll leave that to the pundits, but I will say, the ending left me in a place that makes me think I’ll read the next book soon. These things are a thousand pages a pop so they’re not small endeavors, but that second half went quickly and left me hanging. I’ll target October for the next one.

I’m worried that my trilogy rule, which says things get shaky after number three, will hold true. The Dune “trilogy” rocked until the fourth book. I tried to stay with it, but couldn’t. W.E.B. Griffin’s Presidential Agent series made it to a solid fourth book but blew up on the fifth. I’m done with that, despite the fact that I said I’d give it a chance. I won’t.

Now this Song of Ice and Fire series (TV calls it Game of Thrones series) is already five books and Martin is shooting to make it seven. That’s big. Hopefully it ends up more like the American crime or British spy series I read which seemingly extend forever without losing momentum. Martin published the first one back in 1996 and there have been five and six years between the last two books, so I have time to read the next two before the anticipatory wait period.

Yeah, the anticipatory wait period, that’s fun stuff. It’s that time of analysis, punditry, speculation, and reflection that occurs during the run-up to potential new stuff in a series of successes. I may or may not be able to enjoy it, depending on how fast I consume the next two.

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A Murder of Quality

Oh yeah baby, this is George Smiley number two. I’m so close to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I can taste it. Yet it feels so far away because this book isn’t what I expected. It’s basically a murder mystery as opposed to the spy novel I was expecting.

Smiley is retired and gets a call from a friend about a murder at an elite boarding school. He gets on it right away because that’s what Smiley does, he figures stuff out, right away. In that way, he’s not much different from many spy novel heroes.

But Smiley, considering his outward appearance, is not your average spy novel hero. Le Carre, in fact, goes through great pains to portray him as overweight, clumsy, and downright ugly. I felt this in the first book, but not quite as acutely as in this book. Here is a passage describing Smiley scurrying up an escalator on his way to a meeting:

The descending escalator was packed with the staff of Unipress, homebound and heavy-eyed. To them, the sight of a fat, middle-aged gentleman bounding up the adjoining staircase provided unexpected entertainment, so that Smiley was hastened on his way by the jeers of officeboys and the laughter of typists. (pg 134)

That’s rough, almost mean. Le Carre also brings up similar sentiments when discussing Smiley’s ex-wife, a socialite who ran out on him and seems to have made a mockery of Smiley. This novel is set in his ex-wife’s childhood home and there’s a particularly cruel exchange with a socialite who, not acknowledging that Smiley is the actually ‘that Smiley’, makes note of how “quite unsuitable” the match was.

But the guy is competent. He’s a genius and has an admirable amount of spareness and frugality, in both his thoughts and actions. Here’s an example:

It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research, whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance. Accordingly, he did not speculate with the remarkable discovery he had made, but turned his mind to the most obscure problem of all: motive for murder. (pg 92)

All this, I think, makes Smiley into an endearing, vulnerable, highly competent hero who I’m expecting to dominate Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m just fired up for the book movie/combination sometime in 2012.

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Guitar Zero

Impulse buy alert! It was such an impulse that I can’t even recall what actually prompted it. I’m interested in brain health, lifelong learning, and rock ’n roll, so there’s a prompt in there somewhere. I’m certainly getting forgetful in my old age.

Here’s the gist of the book; a psych professor named Gary Marcus takes a sabbatical to learn to play guitar, testing on himself the notion that it’s way more difficult to learn technical stuff late in life. When I say late in life, I’m talking about maybe forty years of age.

Awesome book. What a cool guy.

I’m forty five and I’m worried about my brain. I can tell it’s struggling, which is a bad thing, because I’m already not very smart. Logic problems that used to be easy, aren’t. Things I used to remember, I don’t.

But I’ve also made progress. I feel like I can relate disparate sets of knowledge better than I’ve ever been able to. From an emotional standpoint, I feel like I’m more open-minded and thoughtful than ever.

But is it too late? Am I past my “critical period” of learning? Am I destined to be a dumb guy who sits around all day watching TV? Should I just get used to people shaking their heads in disgust when I spew profanities towards them after they tell me something that doesn’t comply with my world view?

I hope not. Marcus gives me hope, and I’m starting to take action. Here’s what he says about “critical periods” as they relate to language:

The more people have actually studied critical periods, the shakier the data have become. Although adults rarely achieve the same level of fluency that children do, the scientific research suggests that differences typically pertain more to accent than to grammar. Meanwhile, contrary to popular belief, there’s no magical window that slams shut the moment puberty begins. In fact, in recent years scientists have identified a number of people who have managed to learn second languages with near-native fluency, even though they only started as adults. (Kindle loc 84)

Note, “near-native fluency” is really, really hard.

Studies do abound that show how much more efficient it is to learn complex stuff at a young age, but is age a factor? Is it the only factor?

If kids outshine adults, it’s probably not because they are quicker to learn but simply because they are more persistent; the same drive that can lead them to watch the same episode of a TV show five days in a row without any signs of losing interest can lead a child who aspires to play an instrument to practice the same riff over and over again. (Kindle loc 1433)

Aha, so now we are getting to the heart of the matter. The more I look into it, the more evident how flimsy it is to use the excuse of “I’m old” for being stupid. In fact, at some point people will respond to my “I’m old” comments with, “Nope, you’re just lazy and close-minded with no drive.”

That will hurt, but it won’t crush me. In fact, it may push me to try and build more gray matter. That’s what it’s all about – increasing your gray matter by learning new stuff. Your physical, emotional, and intellectual selves all act the same way, use it and it gets stronger, and better, and faster. It may not even matter what that use is, be it learning music or otherwise.

People develop more gray matter when they develop skill in music, for example, but gray matter has also been shown to increase as people learn to juggle or learn to type. (Kindle loc 519)

There is a lot of rich stuff in this book about your brain. It’s a great mix of Marcus’ personal experience matched up with scientific studies. Marcus does some wonderful work here and I’ll eventually read a few of his other books.

The psychological parts of this book are very rewarding. That’s not all though. I haven’t even touched on the musical aspects yet, which are just as rewarding. This book has re-invigorated my respect for music and makes me want to learn more about it. I won’t go to the length of picking up an electric guitar and trying to learn some chords, but I am going to start paying more attention to things. I just want to be able to at least entertain the thought of thinking about music like Marcus began to after learning to play guitar:

I also understood the music I heard vastly better than when I’d begun the project. I could pick out bass lines, recognize different drumming patterns, and tell what techniques different guitarists used. I had developed a sense of arrangement and how different songs were put together. (Kindle loc 2882)

I don’t know for sure how I’m going to get there. The problem is, time. There’s not much of it. Being able to take a one year sabbatical would be nice.

In the interim, I’m trying to integrate things that improve my cognitive well-being into my everyday life. This blog is a good example from a couple of angles. The setup and administration of it is unfamiliar territory, requiring research and application of new skills/knowledge. Additionally, writing is outside of my comfort my zone, and anything outside of the comfort zone is a cognitive bonanza. On another front, I’m changing my running style from a heel-strike to a forefoot-strike. It requires a ton of concentration to retrain an important mind-body connection which has been in place for thirty plus years. It’s like learning a new skill. Plus there’s a lot of support for the cognitive benefits of regular exercise.

These items really don’t take any incremental time, but may not be adequate. At some point, I need to learn another language, take another vacation to a foreign country, and/or add a new sport to the mix (XT50 is actually helping already I think). This stuff can’t wait until retirement, for sure.

Well, that puts a lot on my plate. That’s gotta be good for my brain.

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God, Country, Notre Dame

My rocky relationship with the Catholic Church started when I was a kid and had to attend catechism classes on Tuesday nights, which caused me to miss Happy Days. The sex abuse scandal really had me questioning things and now I find myself a askew with the prioritization on matters of sex and relationships (same-sex marriage, contraception, abortion).

Things were most amicable in college, probably because of Fr. Hesburgh. People who dislike or disrespect him are probably either hard line, far right Catholics, or anti-religious as a matter of course. Rick Santorum displays a general disgust with the job Catholic universities have been doing and probably blames Fr. Hesburgh for pushing an agenda that contributed to an overall cultural corrosion. This would be bad, when you consider all the good Fr. Hesburgh accomplished in his life.

Gail gave me this book back in 1990. In fact, she got it autographed (pictured). I’ve been hauling it around between apartments and houses for 22 years now without cracking it open, but was prompted to read it when a high school buddy asked me a few weeks ago, “Why did Catholics vote for Obama?”

If you believe the stats, most polls peg the percent of Catholics who voted for Obama in 2008 at around 54%. My buddy’s theory, I think, was that it should have been much lower.

There’s a continuum of Catholic values that you can slap on the political spectrum. On the left you have things like helping the poor, expanding human rights, and world peace. On the right you have things like protecting the unborn, outlawing same-sex marriage, and controlling embryonic stem cell research. In general, it appears that Catholics weight the things on the left a little more than the things on the right, barely.

Enough of the politics for now, let’s get to Fr. Ted.

Early on you start getting a sense for his feelings on charity, race relations, and world peace, his big three hot buttons. Here’s a telling comment:

Father Bill, who was in his late forties at the time, told me something that has stayed with me, and I pass it on now. He never worried about being conned, he told me. If a panhandler asked for a dollar or something to eat, he always gave it to him because it was better to give the buck or the sandwich to someone who didn’t need it than withhold something from someone who did. (pg 41)

This folksy charm belies a high-achiever; a person who spoke five languages and eventually gathered 150 honorary degrees; a person who had the ear of presidents, world leaders, and corporate moguls and who used these connections to advance his view of Catholic values.

Here’s him talking to JFK:

On occasion I took him to task for what I considered at the time his reluctance to commit the federal government to an all-out fight against racial discrimination, particularly in the Deep South. I thought he was too cautious in leading the country on civil rights because of the perceived political liabilities inherent in such a battle. (pg 104)

Here’s him relating conversations with Ike:

… On another occasion, I heard him say, “Every dollar spent for armaments comes out of the hide of some hungry child or some underdeveloped nation.” I used to quote that line in my own speeches and most people thought that statement came from a pope or a peace activist, but I had it straight from Dwight D. Eisenhower. (pg 105)

Fr. Hesburgh practiced what he preached on these things. He was on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from it’s inception in 1957 through 1972. Those were important years for civil rights. In fact, to hear Fr. Hesburgh tell it, one of the most important Civil Rights documents was inked on Notre Dame soil. In 1959, the final report for the commission’s first two years was due and the team was overworked and frustrated with the American judiciary system. They ended up working on the report (and fishing, and drinking) at Notre Dame’s northern Wisconsin summer camp. Here are the results:

When we met with President Eisenhower in September, he said he could not understand how a commission with three Democrats who were all southerners, and two Republicans and an independent who were all Northerners, could possibly vote six-to-zero on eleven recommendations and five-to-one on the other. I told Ike that he had not appointed just Republicans and Democrats or Northerners and Southerners, he had appointed six fishermen.

Fr. Hesburgh was also the Vatican’s delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1956 through 1970. Wow, consider all the things that happened during these years and how influential a Catholic priest was. It’s kind of startling when you think about it.

He made Notre Dame co-educational in 1972. Shortly after that, Roe vs Wade passed, disallowing restrictions on abortion. This goes without mention in the book really, except for a short discussion he had about abortion with Jimmy Carter in 1976.

I think his agenda would falter today, it was a different time. I’m not saying it would be unpopular, but I think there would be more of a push from the right on religious values, which didn’t seem to have much momentum in his day.

The sex abuse scandal diminished the standing of almost all Catholic leaders. In retrospect, all of the good Fr. Hesburgh did had the backdrop of a rampantly corrupt church hierarchy that didn’t do enough to stop priests from abusing young people. A church hierarchy, by the way, that he was constantly at odds with. What if he’d been born 25 years later and these issues of world peace and racism had not tugged at him? Would he have focused his efforts on stopping the abuse? Or would it have not mattered?

I don’t know.

He retired when I was a sophomore in 1987. He is Notre Dame, the primary architect of the university we have today. Here’s an official summary of his life by the university.

He’s 94 years old now and understandably not involved in the day-to-day at the university. I think he would have been out in front of the President Obama graduation speech. I bet it would have gone off without all of the hullabaloo. At times the university and its community, especially the athletic department, seem to forget about the values he instilled. Fr. Ted had to rein in one of our most famous coaches, Frank Leahy (87–11–9, five national championships), because “he was running what amounted to an autonomous fiefdom.” I wonder what he would say about our sports program today.

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books

The Whiskey Rebels

If you like historical fiction, you’ll like David Liss. Most of his books have focused on Great Britain, but this one tackles the US during George Washington’s presidency and focuses on the rise of Alexander Hamilton as a political game-changer. It’s rich in history and has two great fictional main characters who share scenes in an alternating manner, both from the first person perspective.

I’m not as familiar as I want to be with Alexander Hamilton. He seems to get the “most influential guy you don’t know about” treatment a lot. He was in the mix with those who shaped our nation, but doesn’t seem to get the same notoriety as Washington, Jefferson, or Adams. I almost bought the Ron Chernow authored bio on Hamilton but I’m not in the mood for 800 plus pages of history right now. It just seems a little daunting.

I did, however, get The Federalist Papers, which Hamilton authored along with John Jay and James Madison. I got it for free on my Kindle. I’m going to try and plow through it casually by the end of this year, but it won’t be a priority. Somewhere in these writings are the roots of how Hamilton justified creating a central bank, which allowed the government to take on debt. This debt would then be paid off by taxes and tariffs that he instituted (since he was the first Secretary of the Treasury), the most famous of which being his tax on whiskey producers in the western United States.

This book tells two sides of the story of the (real) Panic of 1792 using a fictional woman named Joan Maycott and a fictional man named Ethan Saunders. Maycott is a western farmer who’s husband has figured out how to make some very flavorful whiskey and Saunders is a disgraced, ex-Revolutionary War spy who is recruited by Alexander Hamilton to ferret out some financial hijinks happening in the newly-created American financial community.

The Maycott character is serious and dramatic, while the Saunders character is crass and hilarious. This contrast breaks up the book nicely and makes for an enjoyable, fast read. It’s also thought-provoking, especially in this day and age of conservative/liberal polarization, our recent financial crisis, and the 99% camping out in downtown. There’s a point in here somewhere. I think one thing Liss is trying to say is that government corruption and cronyism and their inextricable links to the financial community are nothing new; that we should have seen this crisis coming because it happened from the beginning – in the earliest days of the central bank.

Political positions aside, Liss creates fun, likable characters and fictional plot elements that make it feel like a thriller. I’ve read A Spectacle of Corruption and A Conspiracy of Paper and loved them both. In fact, like clockwork, I’ve read a David Liss book in Jan/Feb every three years starting in 2006. He has four more books so I’m looking forward to getting started on the next one in 2015.

That’s idiotic. I’m especially discouraged by my lack of follow-up. I said back in 2009 that I wanted to dig up more stuff on Alexander Hamilton and I haven’t done anything, save for reading this book. This website does bear the ugly truth at times. I didn’t even remember making a tacit commitment to expand my knowledge of Hamilton, but upon re-reading my thoughts from three years ago, my procrastination and lack of follow-up are laid bare.

I gotta get to work.

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books

West by West

That’s the promo from the Jerry West segment on Real Sports a few months ago. I saw it and immediately bought his new book. It’s an auto-biography without a lot of cheer. He’s a tortured soul who’s unmitigated success in all things basketball hasn’t been able to stop terrible bouts of depression. It made for a tough read at times.

Basketball was my first sports love. To me, it’s about Magic’s ear-to-ear smile, MJ’s fist pump after the buzzer-beater over Ehlo, Larry diving for a loose ball, and LeBron clapping rosin in the air at the scorer’s table. It’s fantastic. It’s a spectacle, but a spectacle with substance. I still contend that these guys are the greatest athletes in the world. Period.

If you’re not careful, this book can suck that spectacle right out of the sport. West admits in the credits that he wasn’t writing a basketball book necessarily. In my view, this is a form of therapy for him.

Let’s talk about this guy and basketball. He is the NBA. I’m serious, he really is the NBA. He’s the guy on the logo. He was a great player for the Lakers (check his stats) and a great GM for the Lakers (think showtime and Kobe/Shaq). The guy threw down some amazing numbers. He then went on to have a successful, albeit short, stint with the Memphis Grizzlies. He’s achieved about everything you can achieve in the sport.

But it’s been a labor for the guy. He had an ugly childhood. His dad was abusive and he lost a beloved brother to the Korean War. These things, along with growing up on the brink of poverty in rural West Virginia, beat him down, but also made him hungry to make something of himself, to seek out a better life. He was, and remains, an intensely competitive individual, which probably contributed greatly to his success on the court. Off the court, his self-confessed personality flaws haven’t been much of a hindrance. Here’s how he describes his demeanor.

I am often painfully awkward or detached when I greet someone, including family, and today was no exception. I am not very demonstrative. I hardly ever hug. I rarely do it with my own children, or with Karen. It doesn’t mean I am not glad to see them; it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It’s the same as not easily picking up the phone to call someone; it’s just how I am. And much of that, I am convinced, has to do with the almost complete lack of nurturing I received as a child. Cookie refers to the home we grew up in as “the ice house,” but that isn’t even the half of it. (page 18)

You can see that he may not be very likable. He also described instances like this, which gives him kind of an unpleasant vibe:

… Aside from the fact I eat very quickly, I am also particular about what I eat (as I am about what I wear). One time I went to a little Italian restaurant in Los Angeles and I ordered a caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes. When the salad came out, I could see right away the tomatoes were not heirlooms and told the waiter that. He assured me that they were and I insisted they weren’t. So he went back into the kitchen and checked with the chef and came back to report that I was right. (page 110)

Let’s face it, you can’t get to know athletes while they are playing. They can cover up a host of foibles and flaws during their playing years because they really just have to go out every day and score.

The post-playing life is a little different. Some athletes are extroverted and intelligent, so they go on to be announcers. West, however, was introverted and intelligent, so he went into management. His success in management was about equal to his success as a player, so he’s had the media spotlight on him for much longer than the average athlete. That’s had to have weighed on him.

So he’s over 70 and reflecting on his life, which spans almost the whole history of the NBA, in an honest and forthright manner. That’s what old people do. They say what’s on their mind and don’t care so much about the backlash. I have to believe this was a wonderful release for the guy.

He cuts loose. Well, as loose as he can cut, I guess.

I do like his sensibilities. He’s thoughtful and it felt throughout like he was being very honest. Here’s his take on a few things and some of his ruminations:

On the average West Virginian:

What I don’t understand is that some of these coal miners make sixty to a hundred thousand dollars a year and yet their first impulse is often to get a new car. I am loath to tell other people how to live, but I feel strongly that if their first instinct would be to embrace the enduring importance of education, their children would be better off. (page 28)

On Tiger Woods:

I decided to reach out to Tiger because my sense was that very few people were. I sent him a letter and a copy of The Noticer, a little inspirational book that urges one to keep a larger perspective no matter what kind of crisis is being faced. … To this day, I don’t know if Tiger ever received the book, but if he did, I hope he read it. (page 53)

On racism, playing in the Boston Garden, and the fact that the Celtics play second fiddle to the Bruins:

I, on the other hand, always seemed to be a fan favorite. Part of the reason, I guess, was the way I played—giving my all each and every night—and part of it was no doubt because I was white. (page 128)

On Magic:

Earvin asked me all sorts of questions when he first came to the team, and I did my best to answer all of them. I liked that he didn’t come in with the attitude that he knew everything. He wanted to know “how to play in the NBA” and what the essential difference was between the pros and college. (page 151)

On Phil Jackson:

The difference was this: Pat and I were close and had a long history together; Phil and I had no relationship. None. He didn’t want me around, and he had absolutely no respect for me—of that, I have no doubt. (page 180)

On Wilt:

As for all Wilt’s claims of having slept with twenty thousand women? That is such a joke, because he was with me a lot of the time. When his sister Barbara would stop in unannounced to see him, she would go searching for any sign that a female had been there, but she could never find anything, not an article of clothing, not a photograph, nothing. (page 188)

On Kobe, referencing “the encounter with the woman in Colorado in the summer of 2003”:

I am not naïve about things like this, but to this day I feel he was set up. (page 198)

On Shaq, referencing the unveiling of the Jerry West statue in February 2011:

In the audience, Shaquille O’Neal, at the time a member of the Boston Celtics, if you can believe it, mouthed the words I love you, and I did the same in response. That he came meant as much, if not more, to me than anything. (page 304)

So that’s what you get, unvarnished, heartfelt, and kind of depressing. But it is an important glimpse into the NBA and a deep dive into a guy who’s always been kind of a mystery.