PV Reads

I'm going to start chronicling the books I read again.  I had gotten away from that activity because I was busy trying to write my own books and I have also been spending some time taking care of Franny's kids.  So I guess you could say the main reason I haven't been writing about books is because I haven't read very many lately.

I'm ashamed to admit to being childish and petulant, but since literary agents haven't been beating a path to my door trying to sign me up I've had a hard time reading any fiction at all.  That's a pretty startling admission for a retired literature teacher.  The thing is, if the piece of fiction is great, I just get depressed because I evidently can't write anything that would compete.  If the piece is mediocre and filled with pedestrian sentences, I get mad because my stuff is better and the stupid agents of the world are just too blind to see that.  Maybe I'll grow up some day, but I doubt it.

So I've been reading non-fiction instead and as long as I stay away from partisan political rants, I'm a happier man for it.  I read three such works in the week we were in Puerto Vallarta.

Between The World And Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

I love this writer.  He writes more powerful stuff than Baldwin at his best.  This book is a novella sized letter to his son that serves as the story of a young black man trying to survive in America and a brilliant analysis of the current state of race relations in our country.  As such, it is not your typical beach read.  I had to stop every five or ten minutes either to force Katherine to listen to me read a powerful passage out loud, or to wipe away my tears over the sheer beauty of his prose.

There isn't much more to say.  At the risk of sounding like a pompous ass, I didn't really learn anything new here.  Instead, I was reminded on every page of the injustices that occur daily in this "exceptional" country of ours.  I particularly like Coates' take on the idea of being exceptional.  He says that if people who insist on self-identifying themselves as White continue to stand by their claim of Exceptionalism, then they need to also hold their precious country to an EXCEPTIONAL moral standard, a moral view that doesn't systematically ignore some of our more disgraceful historical moments.  Until we can do that--and we never have--we will never be EXCEPTIONAL.  Bill O'Reilly take note.

David And Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell dispels the myth of the underdog.  In point of fact, underdogs emerge victorious about 50% of the time.  When the underdog defies accepted practices, he wins 67% of the time.  One need go no further than the war in Viet Nam or the current wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. to see the truth of that.

Of course, the story of David and Goliath serves as a controlling metaphor for the entire work.  When you examine the terrain, the history of warfare at that time, and the arrogance of the Philistine giant, you discover that poor Goliath never had a chance.  David possessed the better technology and anyone who witnessed the "fight" knew that David was going to kill the clumsy oaf the minute he took out his sling.  Slingers, it turns out, were accurate within a hair's width at distances of over 100 yards!  A slung stone had a velocity of about 180 mph and the stones in the valley of the battle were particularly dense (don't ask me why).  One of those stones flung at that speed would certainly penetrate a giant's exposed forehead.  Death would be the only result.  Even Jack in INTO THE WOODS knew that.

The book does make an inescapable political point.  All those folks yelling about launching a full-scale attack on ISIS, ISIL, or whatever other acronym we're using these days, clearly don't understand history.  Of course, they don't understand the constitution either, but that's another story.

The Boys In The Boat - Daniel James Brown

This is one of those books I was talking about earlier that made me mad.  It tells the fascinating story of nine relatively poor guys from the Northwest who tried out for crew at the University of Washington and ended up winning the 1936 Olympics right in front of a chastened Adolph Hitler.

The problem with the book is that it contains one awful sentence after another and the transitions from one scene to the next sound like something out of a travel book.  I got pissed every other page.  BUT the story of Joe Rantz and the rest of the crew told under the backdrop of the lead up to WWII was impossible to put out of my mind.  I read it in one day at the pool and the plane ride home.

It has the same feel as SEABISCUIT or CINDERELLA MAN in that it uses the story of a small group of individuals to illustrate an entire historical era.  If  you can get by the dreary sentences, it is well worth the read.

I Love My Cowboy Boots

This is Katherine.  I have a ton of things I need to do before we leave for Mexico the day after tomorrow.  I don't know why I am doing this.  I don't know why I do a lot of things.

I needed to get some medical papers together for Franny while we were going to be out of town.  Mom has had a couple of emergency trips of late and my brother has moved to Tennessee.  Handing them to her was a confirmation of what I already know--the girl has a great heart and always has.  I admire and respect her.  She does not, however, really understand cowboy boots.  I am a failure as a mother here.

When I was younger, the fact that my kids did not admire and adapt my taste was not a big deal.  They were, after all, entitled to their taste and privacy and secrets and all sorts of things that a reasonable young parent thought was well, reasonable.

Now, however,I wished they emulated me more.  I would like Franny, for instance, to  like cowboy boots.  It's a weird sort of immortality.  I could see myself in her when she wore cowboy boots.  I realize this is stupid, but it would be nice if more than my hair color went her way (she doesn't like that either).

Also, I have really cool cowboy boots that I will need to pass on and Franny just doesn't go for them and her feet are the wrong size and Brooklyn is not into cowboy stuff at all and Sammi's orthopedic devices are apt to be limiting and Christine and Ashley don't fit either because they have small feet which I definitely do not have.  That leaves Willa and Jaydee.  They are are my last chances for some cowboy boot enthusiasm and a place to send my really good boots when the time comes.

I bought Willa pink sparkly cowboy boots for Christmas.    We will see if Willa likes boots.  Surely there is a cowboy boot gene in the family somewhere.

Anyway,  if you ask a regular cowboy boot devotee about their boots,  that person can tell you the story of the boots or personal stories that simply wouldn't have happened without the boots.  For whatever reason, with packing and errands and laundry that needs doing at the moment, I feel the need to catalog the stories of my cowboy boots.  What can I say?

1.  The Baker's Brown Boots.  I came home from CSU for Thanksgiving and my dad, uncharacteristically, asked me if I wanted anything before I went back to school.  I asked for cowboy boots so I could hide a pint of liquor in the shaft of the boot.  He thought it was hilarious and took me to a mall type store (Baker's) and bought me some imitation cowboy boots that I wore for years.  It was the only gift my dad bought directly for me.

2.  The Nine West Series.  My years as a young teacher were spent in leggings and flashy Nine West imitation boots.  There was an all white pair with fringe and silver covered heels, a red and black pair, and a green and tan pair with cool engraving.  I lived in them.

3.  The Steamboat Boots.  Franny was going to Dustan and playing competitive softball.  She had a cool tournament in Steamboat and I wandered the stores during a lull between games.  In the back part of a main street store I found a pair of black and white Larry Mahan boots that were the softest calf leather I have ever known.  These were my first real boots.  These were the first I had fitted by a pro.  The boots were the only pair left and in my size.  They were $500 boots (years and years ago) for $85.  It was my first Gold Medal in Olympic Shopping.  It also meant I could never buy imitation cowboy boots again.  Walking in the Larry Mahan boots was different.  I was in love.

4.  The Judy Boots.   These boots were the first in a series of boots bought in Jackson, Wyoming and the name is just what they were called by the boot designer--I've always figured he had a wonderfully romantic vision of a girl named Judy in mind when he designed them.

For years and years Jackson felt the need to put cowboy boots on sale when I was there and whenever our finances could accommodate some boots, I took advantage and went boot shopping although I didn't find anything in my size for years.  I bought my first Jackson boots from a store that no longer exists.  The boots are brown and white and hand-stitched and scuplted and were my everyday shoes for the last ten years of my teaching career.  They are in my closet.  They are pretty tight.  I won't part with these.

5.  The Jackson Lucchese Series.  
A.  Emma's boots.  When I've bought boots in Jackson it was because we were staying in the Tetons nearby at Jenny Lake Lodge.  We were friends with the manager at Jenny and one year her daughter (Emma) was getting married in a field up there.  Emma accented her wedding dress with some pre-Uggs style boots that I was tracking down at The Bootlegger in Jackson.   I missed the Emma-style boots, but found my first pair of Lucchese boots and scored my second Gold Medal in Olympic Shopping.  There, in the stack of boots in my size, was a pair meant for me.   They were a style that was two years old and about $1,000 off and well, what could I do?

My first Lucchese Boots were the best fitting boots I had ever worn up until that point.  I have more Lucchese's now so I have several pair that feel this way.  This first pair has a sky blue vamp made of ostrich and a shaft is a lime green goat.   They are soft and comfy and have my favorite heel--it slants back.  These are Emma's boots because her wedding led me to Lucchese.

A cool side effect of Emma's boots is that the night I bought them,  I walked across the dining room at Jenny in an outfit selected to show off the boots and a man came over and to talk about them and I had the first of many Lucchese conversations I've had in my life.  Jim and I have been friends with Joe and his wife Carol ever since that moment.   Carol just sent a photo of her grey suede boots--Lucchese's.

B.  The Red and Black Boots.  These were the last of the Jackson boots.  Lucchese's again.  The red pair came first about five years after Emma's boots.  They are patterned with red leather over black and heavy because of that.  They are my first choice on a winter's day when there is no snow.  I don't know how real cowboys wore the suckers in the snow--they are slippery.

The black boots are my everyday pair now.  These are the shoes my teachers would identify as mine if they notice at all.  They are just comfy and basic and I don't know how I would go through the world without them.

Both of these were on sale and the cheapest of any of my boots because of the sale and my luck--my size was sitting in the stacks of boots.  Jackson doesn't have big July sales anymore.   The Bootlegger has a back room, but the wonderful boots don't go back there anymore.  I figured out I bought the black boots the first year I started coaching teachers through Metro State eleven years ago.  I haven't bought any boots up there since then.   The Jackson period is done.

6.  The Sante Fe Boots.  These are the dream boots.  I suspect they will be the last pair of boots I buy.

I always wanted a pair of boots that were appropriate for animal rights and were made of snake or lizard or something like that.  I wanted rattlesnake mostly.  There was a time that was okay and Lucchese had them on their website.   Then they stopped.    For a while they had manta ray boots, but they were stiff and had a weird sheen I didn't like.  I don't think anyone liked the manta ray boots.  I stopped looking.

Then I discovered Santa Fe.  Several years ago we started going to the Santa Fe Opera in August.  I found a Lucchese store on the Plaza.  I found a real live store devoted to my brand of boots and only my brand of boots.  This is the promised land for a girl like me.

I looked many times at this store over a number of years.  I saved my money.  I looked at the store many more times.  I saved more money.  Last spring when we met Joe and Carol for dinner in Santa Fe, I found my dream boots.  Cayman and available in three colors for an outrageous amount of money.  I had saved money.  I was close.  We were going back in August for the opera.  The chances were good the boots would still be there in August.  All I had to do was pick my color.  Red, black tan.  I think I wore out the Lucchese website looking at them and trying to decide.

We went to the opera and the day we arrived, Jim went with me and I bought my dream boots and we walked over to the rooftop at the Coyote Cafe and celebrated with margaritas.  The next evening  I wore them to Rigoletto.  After the performance I went into the shop to buy Brooklyn a birthday gift and the tenor who sang Rigoletto stopped to talk about my boots in between signing autographs.  It made my day and I still feel badly I didn't buy a CD and have him sign it.  It was the first of the boots stories.  They are amazing boots.  I love them.  I look forward to all the stories they will create.

One last thing and I am done.  There are rules about boots that I follow and must share.
1.  Take good care of cowboy boots and they will last forever.  Re-heel them yearly.  Re-do the whole bottom as needed.  Maintenance is everything with cowboy boots.  If my feet don't grow anymore, my boots will last as long as I do.

2.  If you are a real cowboy or a real cowgirl, wear as much cow-gear as your heart desires.  But if you are just in love with how the gear looks or feels, then limit yourself to one thing at a time.  If you wear a cowboy shirt, then wear only that.  If you wear your boots, limit yourself to the boots.  You just can't pull off too much cowboy gear if you don't ride a horse or rope a cow now and then.

3.  Get a good fitting.  They need to pull up a bit at the heel.  It's impossible to explain.

4.  Let the boots bring you stories and people.  For whatever reason, people like to talk about boots.  Let them talk and then talk back.  Friendships, no matter how brief they are or how they are devised, are to be enjoyed and cherished.  Just like Pete the Cat loves his white, then red, then blue, then brown, then wet shoes,  I love my cowboy boots.  Love makes them magic.

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert is a NEW YORKER writer on the environmental beat who manages to write about the impending end of civilization as we know it with wit and, yes, lightness.  This latest work is a case in point.

I haven't written much about the things I've been reading because I have been too busy with my own writing, my grandparenting, my husbanding, and all the rest.  Plus, I'm leaving for Puerto Vallarta in a few days.  The point is that I've had other things on my mind.  However, this book is compelling enough to force me down here to the computer instead of listening to Marshall Faulk explain why the Broncos are not going to the Super Bowl.

Kolbert takes us through the five great extinctions that have occurred on Earth and anticipates the sixth extinction, the one that we are going through even as I type this.  Each of these extinctions were caused by some factor--climate change, stellar collision, violent eruptions--that changed the living condition of our planet.  Those species who could not make the adjustment became extinct.  During the Pleistocene epoch, for instance, the planet teeter-tottered through periods of glaciation followed by warming reactions to the falling temperatures.  This wreaked havoc on the plants and animals of the age who either died out, or moved to different climes.

Now we are in the Anthropocene epoch and the agent of extinction is man.  Kolbert takes us on a depressing tour of places where we can see extinction in the works.  She visits a cave in New England, once the home of seemingly millions of bats, now virtually empty.  The ripple effect of such an extinction is frightening.

In her final chapters, she directs our attention to the gradual disappearance of the large apes that typifies the sixth extinction.  Homo sapiens will at once be the only large ape to survive and the reason why all the others die out.

In Kolbert's view, man was ultimately the cause of many relatively recent extinctions.  There are lots of theories about how Mastodons, for example, became extinct.  Glaciation.  Orbital changes.  Volcanic eruption like the Yellowstone caldera.  But ultimately it was man's arrival on the scene.  The mastodon's gestation period is so slow that even if a group of hunters managed to kill only one or two a year, eventually the species would die out.  The pattern is clear.  Wherever man migrates, the flora and the fauna of that area begins to change and in many cases disappear.

She ends her book with a fascinating comparison of man to the other great apes, especially Neanderthal man.  When homo sapiens made its way from the bowels of Africa to Western Europe, it met the Neanderthal, a species that was not wide ranging, but rather stayed put.  Homo sapiens did two things to Neanderthals:  killed them and mated with them.  If you have European origins, you are approximately 4% Neanderthal.  But why did Neanderthals stay put and our ancestors roam?  Ancient homo sapiens' DNA has been found in New Zealand, but none from the Neanderthal.  That means that man must have gotten up the courage to set out on the ocean on a ridiculously little boat  just to see what he could find.  Imagine how many of those boats didn't make it anywhere, but man kept persisting.

We still persist.  We send rockets to space in the hopes of finding something, anything.  If man had never migrated to Europe, Neanderthals would still be hunting giant creatures with hand axes in the forests of France.

Kolbert suggests that the homo sapiens genome must have mutated to create a "madness" gene.  We're the only species that seems to have one.  She follows some spelunkers into a cave that seems to go on forever.  They all have to crawl to get to the interior and they all carry lights.  Once inside, the cave drawings abound.  Neanderthals would never have made those drawings because they never would have been "mad" enough to crawl into the cave, to explore.  And the thing is, once you start depicting the natural world with pictures and words and ideas, you can start changing that world.  And that is exactly what man does.  He can't help it.

"If you want to think about why humans are so dangerous to other species, you can picture a poacher in Africa carrying an AK-47 or a logger in the Amazon gripping an ax, or, better still, you can picture yourself, holding a book on your lap."

That's the quote I keep coming back to.  It appears in her last chapter where she tries to offer a little hope by listing some advances and some hopeful experiments that bode well for the future.  It is small comfort.