-- Wallace Stevens
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According to the Poetry Foundation, Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955) is one of America’s most respected 20th century poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality.
-- Ted Kennedy, 1987 hearing for Robert Bork (who was not confirmed)
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According to the Biography web site, Ted Kennedy (1932 - 2009) was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. He was elected to the Senate when he was 30, and continued to work in Congress throughout his life. Though marked by scandal, Kennedy was viewed as an icon of political progressivism and liberal thought by the time of his death, on August 25, 2009.
-- Judy Garland
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According to Goodreads,
-- Doris Lessing
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According to Wikipedia, Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Leaving Everything provides Winspear's typical satisfying story, combining a social problem (in this case the treatment of Indians in London) with the killer's very personal motives. But reading it, I experienced a stronger than usual sense of melancholy and dread about Maisie's future and the future of her friends and colleagues. I felt like I was supposed to be on Maisie's side and share her desire for adventure and self-discovery, but I kept thinking "Poor James!"
[Spoiler alert coming up for Elizabeth George readers] Midway through her wonderful series of mysteries, Elizabeth George chose to kill off her detective's beloved and pregnant wife, Lady Helen. Readers were livid. George spent time explaining herself on social media and even wrote another entire book about it (What Came Before He Shot Her). In the end, I think most readers forgave her. As George explained, it was something she had to do for her series to continue. Writing her detective as a happily married man with a baby simply didn't work. It lacked the level of angst and drama that she needed.
And my point in recounting George's journey is because I think that Winspear has arrived at the same juncture. (Meaning she arrived there in 2013, when this book was published. And if you've read all her novels and know the answer, don't tell me!) I don't think she can see her way forward if Maisie becomes happily married to James, plus she needs to change up the cast of characters, replacing Billy and Sandra with new people. She's not exactly bored and out of new ideas, but she's definitely looking for a major change of scenery. When I read the next novel, I'll report back. I remain a serious Maisie Dobbs fan and don't expect to be disappointed with her next adventure.
-- Tracey Gendron
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Dr. Tracey Gendron is chair of the Department of Gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It.
-- Ukrainian Proverb
-- Elie Wiesel
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According to the Nobel Prize organization, The Nobel Peace Prize 1986 was awarded to Elie Wiesel (1928 - 2016) "for being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity."
I heard Maria Ressa interviewed this morning as part of an International Women's Day event. The bad news (the embarrassing news) is that I've never heard of her before. Somehow, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to two journalists last fall didn't hit my radar screen. The good news is that now I have heard of her and listened to her impassioned plea for truth in journalism, destruction of the disinformation machine, and reining in of social media.
After the brief and impressive interview this morning, I went in search of her Nobel lecture to learn more. Wow!! She is articulate, impassioned, and persuasive. And she is courageous. It is one thing to plead for the protection of truth in journalism in "the West," where you might suffer significant bullying both online and IRL. It is a whole different thing to make that plea in a society where going to jail for what you write and say is a reality.
Ressa is of course critical of countries like her native Philippines that regularly threaten journalists with imprisonment or government sanctioned violence. She tearfully listed fellow journalists who have recently died or been imprisoned around the world. But Ressa reserves her strongest criticism for the tech algorithms that come out of Silicon Valley. She calls it a behavior modification system that encourages fear, hate, and bigotry in the service of surveillance capitalism than monetizes our clicks.
I can't begin to do justice to her powerful speech. I plan to come back to it here whenever I find myself wondering if Facebook is really so bad.
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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According to the Poetry Foundation, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most widely known and best-loved American poets of the 19th century. He achieved a level of national and international prominence previously unequaled in the literary history of the United States and is one of the few American writers honored in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
I did learn enough about the Enneagram to fake my way through a conversation, but much to my surprise, I learned a lot more about Myers-Briggs. I first encountered Myers-Briggs several decades ago in a workshop at work. Since then, I've taken the test several more times. My results always come out the same (INTP) and my feelings about it haven't varied much over the years.
I have no trouble with the N (big picture versus facts) and the T (driven more by reason than emotion). I tend to be an ambivert but I'm OK scoring as an introvert. But I have always struggled with the P/J. In fact, I can never adequately even describe what they are. Not surprisingly, my P/J score is almost evenly split -- 51 to 49 almost every time I test. And that is the area of my life where I am most conflicted between how I think I should be and how I am.
Reading People gave me valuable new insight. Bogel described the cognitive stacks (how we process information and make decisions) that go with each different type. I'd never encountered this discussion of cognitive stacks, before. I read the descriptions before I looked at the stacks, and low and behold, my cognitive stack is definitely INTJ. And the two stacks (INTJ and INTP) are completely different. No wonder my results always left me feeling conflicted!
I can only say, thank you Anne Bogel. The book in general was delightful to read, succinct and friendly, informative without being academic. And you helped me come to terms, finally, with my Myers-Briggs. Worth the price of admission!!
-- Carl Jung
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According to Wikipedia, Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961), was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies.
-- James Clear
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James Clear is a widely respected speaker and writer who focuses on habits and self-improvement. His best-selling book Atomic Habits has sold over 5 million copies.
-- Samuel Johnson
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According to Britannica, Samuel Johnson was an English critic, biographer, essayist, poet, and lexicographer who was one of the greatest figures of 18th-century life and letters.
People who write book reviews are careful about spoilers -- either avoiding them or warning about them beforehand. In the case of Jodi Picoult's Wish You Were Here, everyone who writes about it is very careful not to spoil it for other readers because the unexpected turn it takes is such an important part of the experience. So I won't spoil it, other than to say that the turn was huge and made all the difference for me.
In Wish You Were Here, Picoult provides a nuanced exploration of the personal impact of COVID-19 from several points of view. Although this book feels very different from most of her other work, that nuanced exploration is very much Picoult at her best. She looks at survivor guilt experienced by those who are largely untouched (like me) side-by-side with the daily trauma felt by health-care workers. She spends more time than usual, for her, in examining romantic relationships. At times, this book began to feel like a romance novel and I almost put it down.
Parent-child relationships are central to the story. As she peels back the onion of the fraught relationship that Diana, the protagonist, has with her mother, Picoult takes her on a twisted, often painful journey of self-discovery. Forgiveness and redemption ultimately enable Diana to find her way in the world, but I confess to finding the outcome equal parts sad and uplifting.
This isn't Picoult's best work but even her "above average" is definitely worth reading.
-- bell hooks
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According to her New York Times obituary, bell hooks' incisive, wide-ranging writing on gender and race
helped push feminism beyond its white, middle-class worldview to include
the voices of Black and working-class women. Her work included over 30 books, and encompassed literary criticism, children’s fiction, self-help, memoir
and poetry, and it tackled not just subjects like education, capitalism
and American history but also love and friendship. She died in December 2021 at the age of 69.
I'm a native and inhabitant of "Yankeedom," and Woodard's summary rings true -- emphasis on education, pursuit of greater good for the whole community, faith in the potential of government to improve people's lives. What I didn't completely understand is why other "nations" don't share these values; why their heritage emphasizes different, even diametrically opposed beliefs and moral virtues.
Woodard provides a unique lens for viewing key events in our history and highlights the "life and death" battle that Yankeedom and the Deep South continually fight for control and for the ascendancy of their world view. Each considers the others' success an existential threat to their way of life. Each battles, with varying degrees of success, to form coalitions with the other nations to achieve that control.
Understanding the root of a problem doesn't necessarily solve the problem, but it goes a long way toward appreciating how we got here. I'm sure there are holes in Woodard's arguments that astute students of US history will find, but overall, his characterizations ring true and explain so much about the divisions we are experiencing today.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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According to Wikipedia, Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
