When I work in Mr. Bell’s chair, he likes to sit with me, typically between my knees with the keyboard on his back. I was amused today when Mr. Shadow tried to horn in, essentially making it impossible to work by packing the chair with cats:

I like having a job which allows me to sit around with a cat on my lap all day.

Walking to the library the other day, I found myself for some reason remembering the car that my father had when I was a child, and I started to list all of the cars which I remembered my father owning. People often have very interesting relationships with their cars, and it’s sometimes neat to become caught up in various car tales, as almost everyone remembers something odd about at least one car they or family members have owned. I fact, my relationship with one of my cars was the subject of a college admissions essay (I got in) which I stumbled across the other day.

The Saab

When I was very young, my father had a bright red Saab. I don’t really remember very much about this car, so this tale comes secondhand, but apparently I was heartbroken when the Saab finally died, its clutch cable giving out along with an assortment of other parts. The car was deemed a piece of scrap, and allegedly when the tow truck arrived to remove it, I was quite distraught. Obviously the Saab was replaced with another car which was later sold when we moved to Greece, but for some reason, I don’t remember that car.

The Volvo

I do remember the Volvo. The Volvo was a white sedan from the 1960s, and we picked it up at the Salvation Army in Litton Springs when we returned from Greece. My father drove this car for years, and many of my childhood car memories take place in this very vehicle. As time wore on, the car slowly decayed. The first thing to go was the mechanism for the driver’s side window, causing it to fall alarmingly into the door one day. After fishing it out, my father taped it into place so that it couldn’t fall again. The floorboards in the back also rotted out, allowing us to see the road as we drove, and my childhood friend and I loved to drop things onto the roadway and shriek with glee. In the front, the carpeting on the passenger’s side grew a delicate meadow of gently waving grass.

Alas, someone sideswiped the Volvo driving home from the Caspar Inn one night. We actually pulled the frame back out with the tractor, but the hood kept popping open as we trundled down the road. Remember this, because it is foreshadowing.

The Nissan

So, one day, my father came to pick me up from school, and pretended that the Volvo had gone mysteriously missing, and “stole” a Nissan stationwagon. I was still young enough for this ploy to work for several days, but eventually I figured it out. The Nissan was a piece of crap. It was light golden, sort of like an anemic cat turd, and it drove like a boat. It also had a woman with an obscure accent deep within its innards. She would say things like “your door is ajar,” and “your lights are on” until I bashed the center console in a fit of rage one day.

I remember at one point someone had it out for my father, and they loosened the screws on the driveshaft, causing to to plop out of the bottom of the car one day, thankfully when we were driving down Caspar Road at a relatively slow rate. When my father went to fix it, he discovered the tampering, and the police came. It was very exciting. Then someone slashed his tires. Who knew the world of college English instruction was so cutthroat.
The Nissan’s downfall came when we were playing soccer in the street one day, and Tommy Brown kicked a soccer ball right through the front quarter panel. I remember the ball sailing all the way through the engine compartment, but I think my brain has embroidered the event a bit for the sake of dramatic flair. At any rate, it was obvious that the body of the car was completely rusted out, and it was time for a replacement.

The Honda

The Honda, which my father still drives, is a bright red sedan. It was a fairly unremarkable car when he purchased it, and it continues to be unremarkable, except for the lopsided grin it has acquired thanks to an, er, unfortunate incident.* I think it’s rather rakish, personally, but it irritates the hell out of my father because it squeaks like a demon and the hood is rather difficult to open.

The Ford

My very first car was a Ford Escort, in a delightfully nondescript shade of blue. The Ford and I had a number of exciting adventures, like the time I accidentally stole someone else’s car because apparently Ford ignition keys are not entirely unique. The first sign of trouble in our relationship was when the passenger side doorhandle stopped working from the inside, leading to tactless jokes about “rape doors,” although most people just thought I was insanely courteous for jumping out and opening the door for them.

The real trouble came when it developed a stealthy carbon monoxide link in the intake manifold and almost killed me. I have to say, I’m not a fan of capital punishment, but I really enjoyed watching the Ford get crushed at the salvage lot. Mmmm. Yes, I did.

The Jeep

For a very brief period after I crushed the Ford, I drove Jeep. A big, giant, honking Jeep Grand Cherokee. Which paired really well with my vanity plates, in that way that people catcalled at me and threw eggs. I decided to embrace the situation, and I added an “I’m changing the climate, ask me how!” bumpersticker. After about six months, I ended up selling the Jeep and entering my current carless state, which has endured for two years as of today, according to the bill of sale squirreled away in my chaotic filing system.

The Volkswagons

In high school, several friends had Volkswagons. My friend A had a shiny black Jetta, and I remember we used to put the back seat down and have picnics in the back, often with tirimisu from the Meat Market. I also remember going on reckless driving races which pitted A against Tristan and his silver Volvo stationwagon (a car about which I also have fond memories). Another friend, Kat, also had a Volkswagon, a black Golf, which she still drives to this day, although apparently it is dying an ugly death at the moment. We used to listen to terrible pop songs, eat tirimisu from the Meat Market (see a theme?), and have deep conversations on the Headlands. Later, Tristan acquired and briefly drove an ancient white Jetta, which is still hauled out on special occasions (like when he’s home), thus perpetuating the Volkswagon theme.

The Lotus

When I was in college,  a friend had a Lotus. If you don’t know what a Lotus is, go look it up, because you won’t understand how remarkable and excellent it was that I was able to drive said Lotus until you know what a Lotus is. Lotus. Oh, yeah.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in other cars, of course, but these are the ones which I think stick out, worthy of their own history. A lot of Hondas, Volvos, and Volkswagons, and a few flashier cars like Maseratis have passed my purview, but for such brief periods that most of them don’t really stick in my mind. Cars for me bring up memories of long trips, singalongs, dark nights, thinking, discussing, arguing; the American culture of the car is really quite unique, and while I am not a fan of cars, I’m kind of glad to see that it’s still alive and well in some corners of the world.

*I am going to keep referencing the Great Honda Incident until I feel like writing for it. It really deserves a post all its very own.

A word of the day site takes on a whole new level of meaning when it’s run by the Oxford English Dictionary.

The cost of meat is rising, not just literally but in environmental terms. Mark Bittman writes about the impact that rising meat consumption rates may have on the global economy and environment.

Fallujah isn’t looking so hot these days.

Rich nations are accruing environmental debt at a pretty astronomical rate. What are we going to do about it?

Starving children exist in the first world, too.

The Tennessee legislature is pondering new and exciting ways to restrict reproductive rights; by attacking their own state constitution.

Plastinated bodies are on display in many parts of the world, but where are the bodies from? The California legislature wants to find out.

I heard the author of this book interviewed on NPR the other day, and it sounded interesting, so I added it to my order list at the library. I was actually surprised that it came so quickly, because usually when a book is featured on NPR, a bunch of people order it. I must have slipped in under the deluge of holds.

At any rate, A Long Way Gone is a book about being a child soldier.  Beah was forced into military service by the army in Sierra Leone (or an armed organization claiming to be the army), and he served for several years before being sent to a rehabilitation centre run by several NGOs. When war broke out again in Sierra Leone’s capital, he fled to the United States, taking shelter with a woman he had met at a UN conference in New York. Ultimately he went on to graduate from Oberlin, and to work with organizations which advocate for child welfare.

This book is really good. It is also really intense. Beah reports on very horrific events with  a matter of fact attitude, telling his story and letting the story speak for itself. I like that. A lot of memoirs are emotionally wrought, and his, while beautifully written, has been written without ornament. It is not designed to manipulate the emotions of the reader, because the contents are so awful that he doesn’t need to bother manipulating us.

A Long Way Gone reminded me of a penpal from Sierra Leone that a friend had in high school. In one of the last letters she got from him, he mentioned very casually that “my sister’s hands were cut off by the army yesterday,” and his next letter included a photograph of them, his sister stretched out on the straw with raw, bleeding stumps, and him kneeling beside her, grinning for his American penpal. I don’t think it occurred to him that in the United States, having your hands cut off by the army is a horrifying and momentous event, not the sort of thing one drops casually, like “I went to the store yesterday for some bread.” This is what happens when you become inured to awful things.

I read this book through in one sitting last night, first because I loved his vivid images of growing up in Sierra Leone as a youth, and then because I felt gripped by the story, and I had to read it to see what happened next. I don’t think I’m giving away too much of the story by saying that he was a boy soldier, considering that the book is subtitled “memoirs of a boy soldier,” but the story about how he arrived at that point, and the things that happened along the way, is heartbreaking. I’m not fond of using that word in book reviews, but there it is. I defy you to read this book and not be heartbroken.

Not so much because he was a child, although that is terrible, but because war in general is terrible. The events which he describe stretched the boundaries of credibility for me, as he constructed a world where ordinary citizens are afraid of groups of boys, where seven year olds pick up AK-47s, where any sort of peace and happiness is only temporary, as people wait for the other shoe to drop. I think that this book should be required reading for all high ranking individuals in government.

Demographics:

A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah. Published 2007, 229 pages. Memoir.

Girl Meets God was recommended by reader Bronwyn, who often makes thought-provoking comments about faith and Christianity, so I was looking forward to reading it. The book is by a woman who converted to Orthodox Judaism, and later to Christianity, talking about the steps along the way and discussing the nature of faith and Christianity.

One of the things that I really liked about this book was that the author is incredibly well educated. Her discussions of both Judaism and Christianity are informed by extensive knowledge, and she’s spent her life reading, writing, thinking, and studying about faith. I like that she’s the kind of person who pulls out a book to explore a question, because that’s something I do a lot myself. I like that she throws Latin, Greek, and Hebrew around in her discussions, because I think it adds a deeper level to her book, and it really forced me to take her seriously, as a reader.

I’ve always been interested by books discussing faith, especially books by authors who embrace a new faith and talk about their journey. The nature of faith is fascinating to me, perhaps as someone who identifies as agnostic at best and, on a bad day, entirely atheist. I’ve explored my fair share of religions, attending shul and various churches (I am in fact baptized into the Eastern Orthodox Church), but I haven’t yet been gripped by faith, filled with a conviction and the simple knowledge that something is true.

In a way, I am a bit jealous of people who have firm religious convictions and beliefs. I often think that at the end of the day, at least they have their faith to sustain them, and I rarely think about crises of faith and the fact that faith is rarely simple. It’s one thing I liked about this book; Winner pulls no punches, talking about moments when she is really frustrated with God, challenging Him to prove things to her, and struggling with her beliefs. I found the chapter on sin especially interesting, as she discussed her frustration with repeating the same sins over and over again.

I also love that this book serves as a form of witness, which it seems is something that Winner struggled with. In the early stages of her conversion to Christianity, she talked about her awkwardness, her desire to hide her identity as a Christian, until one Ash Wednesday when she wore her ashes proudly on the Columbia campus, and people approached her to ask questions, and she found herself witnessing and talking about Christianity. I think that one of the most important things about religious faith is the ability and the obligation to witness, to speak about your faith with people who are curious, and I have immense respect for people who do clearly identify themselves, who don’t just live as silent Christians, for example, but act as Christians who are informed and enriched by their faith. I think that witnessing enhances the depth of your own faith, that by affirming your religious beliefs to others, you confirm them within yourself.

Having read this book, I am tempted to read the Bible again, because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there. Winner quoted a lot of verses that I don’t even remember, and reminded me of the depth of the Bible, and of the fact that people really do dedicate their lives to academic study of it. Rather than trying to digest the whole Bible as a chunk, I think I’ll be studying it in smaller sections, so that I can savor it more thoroughly. I’d like to think that Winner would be pleased.

Demographics:

Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner. Published 2002, 303 pages. Biography.

I used to be a very dirty person. Leaving food in the corners of my room until it rotted kind of dirty, with belongings strewn across the floor, forcing visitors to navigate a minefield of broken toys, cracked plates with unidentifiable foods on them, moldering clothing, and Pete knows what else. Sometimes plants would sprout from the floorboards, and a young Mr. Bell would mince delicately through the room, lips drawn back over his teeth in disgust. My room often smelled very strange, as one might imagine, and I sometimes smelt a bit peculiar too.

And then one day I wasn’t filthy anymore. I went from being completely disorganized and horrifically dirty to being a control freak with a penchant for perfect order. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I’m not quite sure what triggered this moment, which was accompanied with the decision to discard years of horded crap while labeling drawers with their contents. The dirty phase of my life endures in only one place, the bottom drawer of my desk, which gradually accumulates bits and pieces (though not food!) until I clean it out, typically about every six months.

My need for perfect order has endured to this day, to the point that people comment on it, and I think some people are a little creeped out. I know it drove my roommates in San Francisco crazy, the need to be perfectly organized, but I couldn’t control myself. I remember in college, my friend Kenneth once said “I don’t think you actually live in this room. I think you pretend to, and then when you think no one’s looking, you steal away to your real room, which is as filthy and disorganized as everyone else’s. This one is kept in a pristine state by the CIA, presumably because you work for them.” I think that comment pretty much sums up the various houses I have lived in over the years.

My father is a fairly orderly person, although I don’t think he is quite as manic as I am, so it’s possible I picked the seed of the habit up from him. I certainly picked up the habit of cleaning the kitchen as I cook from him, along with the tendency to do dishes as soon as they appear. We both actually enjoy cleaning, which is sometimes difficult for people to fathom. Yet, neither of us washes produce, which is sort of funny. Apparently we must have a pretense of external order,  but we don’t care about grubs in our salads. (My rationale, as I explained to a friend the other day, is that a little dirt never hurt anyone, and things like pesticides, herbicides, bacteria, and Pete knows what else aren’t going to come off with a quick rinse under the tap.)

Habits and the ways in which they develop fascinate me. You’re either a produce washer or you’re not, you take your shoes off when you come inside, or you don’t. Some people remember to brush their teeth on a regular basis, while others  only do it when they make a conscious effort. Some habits seem to be genetic, while others are learned, and some seem to develop out of nowhere, like my superstition about reading at least as many pages as I have years before I go to sleep every night.

Any conversation about habits is bound to bring up a few interesting confessions, I’ve found.

Because my obsession with order is pretty infamous, sometimes people apologize when I come over to their houses, even when their houses are perfectly clean and tidy. They seem almost ashamed, and I try to explain that I really don’t care, that my need for order extends only to my own house, and that I really, genuinely don’t give a fig for what someone else’s house or office or desk looks like. That they shouldn’t be so worried about it. And they never seem to believe me, until I say:

“I used to be a really dirty person, you know. Leaving food in the corners of my room until it rotted kind of dirty…”

Alles gut.

You’re probably reeling in disbelief about there being three Book Project posts in one day, especially given that two of the books are pretty lengthy, but I really did just finish Fragile Things, and I did say that I was going to report on every book I read this year. And, to be fair, I started Road From Ar Ramadi last night and finished it this morning, so I didn’t actually really all three books in one day. This is what I do in the rain, is read all day (and cook). I thought about making a lemon tart, but I’m making a lemon meringue pie later next week, so I felt like it would be kind of silly to make a tart today and a pie in six days, so I didn’t. But if this weather keeps up, I might make a tart this weekend anyway.

I do hope the rain lets up long enough for me to hit the library, as I apparently have a stack of books on hold there.

At any rate, Fragile Things is a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman.  I didn’t used to like short stories, but in recent years I have grown fond of them. For one thing, you can bounce about and navigate however you please. For another, when a story is bad or not interesting, you can skim over it and not feel as guilty as you would for not reading a whole book.

And these short stories are incredibly varied, so it would be fair to say that some of them didn’t really grip me. I also hate poetry, and a few poems were included in the book, so I kind of glided over those rather than actually reading them (which explains why I was able to read the book in a few hours).  I liked “Harlequin Valentine,” “A Study in Emerald,” “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” and “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire.” I don’t want to get into details, because I wouldn’t want to ruin the book for you if you’re planning on reading it.

Neil Gaiman is an interesting sort of man, and these were interesting sorts of stories. Some were certainly better crafted than others, and in some of them it almost seemed like he was trying a bit too hard to be macabre. “The Problem of Susan” bordered on the pornographic, and it was really quite strange; when I went back to read the introduction* I noted that he had been very sick before writing this story, and I think that explains a lot.

Many of the stories had a note of tension, and I kept waiting for something awful to happen. I like that in a story; it’s not the sort of thing you can keep up in a full length book, but it is something that works in a shorter piece. As my friend Tristan points out in his criticism of The Sparrow, “I really hate this kind of something is going to happen, SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN, type writing. I feel like it is a stupid shitty way to build false excitement.”  As a general rule, I agree, because I think that the process of maintaining tension throughout a book is very challenging, and most authors cannot accomplish it. But in short stories, it generally works (although sometimes it just covers up for an author’s inadequacy). There’s also something delightful about reading a story which is structured in that way, and then never finding out what happens, because this allows your imagination to construct something truly awful.

Gaiman has a very Southern Gothic feel, which is interesting, because he’s British. But he manages to pull it off with flair, and I dig that.

*I read introductions after I read books. I like to approach a book with a minimal amount of personal prejudice, and I feel like introductions really ruin books for me. So typically I read a book and then skip back to read the introduction, along with the ending author’s notes and so forth. I find that this system allows me to appreciate books more, approaching them with an uncluttered mind.

Demographics:

Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman. Published 2006, 360 pages. Short stories.

It’s raining today and I’m not working, so after I finished Road From Al Ramadi, I charged through Danny the Champion of the World as well. I picked this book up at the bookstore’s sale, because I believe that having a complete collection of Roald Dahl is very important, and for some reason my copy had vanished into the ether.

This may be my favourite Roald Dahl book. First of all, it reminds me a lot of my relationship with my own father, and it highlights class issues while coming up with clever and silly ways to quietly get back on the upper classes. And I dig that. I like the idea of kids reading this book and being inspired to do something brilliantly revolutionary. I know it certainly inspired me, as a young reader.
For those of you who haven’t read this book, it’s about a boy and his father in a rural village in England, and a great pheasant poaching escapade. The pheasants, of course, are poached from a mean local grandee who drives a fancy motorcar and froths at the mouth when he gets upset, so the poaching is framed as a strike against the evil upper classes as well as a fun lark. Naturally, this being Roald Dahl, the father is a brilliant, silly man who enjoys telling stories, and the two hatch a plan to feed the pheasants sleeping pills on the eve of a big shoot so that they can steal all the pheasants at one swoop. The Quentin Blake illustrations are pretty fabulous as well.

Dahl closes the book with an exhortation to parents, telling them that stodgy parents are no fun at all, and this is something I definitely agree with. Danny and his father have a relationship which I think is pretty excellent, behaving more like friends than anything else, and I think that’s a pretty good way to raise children. This might be, of course, because I was raised that way, and my father and I have a very similar relationship. But as a child, I saw a lot of parallels between my situation and Danny’s, and rather than being jealous of my friends for living in nicer houses than mine, I felt secretly superior because we had a fun, happy house with special quirks. In a way, I think that’s a real gift, to grow up lower class and not really see it as a negative thing (although it might explain some of my reverse classism today), but rather as a positive to be celebrated. That alone is reason enough to put this book into the hands of every child I know, lower class or not.

Demographics:

Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl. Published 1975, 205 pages. Children’s fiction.

Road From Ar Ramadi is a book by Camilo Mejia, who became a cause célèbre in 2004 when he chose not to return to Iraq after a brief period of leave. He went underground for five months, ultimately surrendering to the military and applying for conscientious objector status, on the grounds that after his time in Iraq, he could not support participation in any war in any way. (And yes, it is Ar Ramadi in the title, although the Arabic is usually transliterated as Al Ramadi; Mejia claims that he did it to emphasize the correct pronunciation. I think it’s a bit pretentious, personally.)

This book was interesting in a number of ways. The first section talks about his deployment to Iraq, as a member of the Florida National Guard, and the experiences he had there. One thing that he made clear is that abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians was widespread from the start of the war, and this was obviously deeply troubling to him. Mejia also revealed the fact that higher-ups in the military deliberately risked the lives of soldiers for promotion, medals, and awards, something which I personally found rather sickening.

People join the military for lots of reasons; Mejia, for example, joined because they said they would pay for college, and after his service in the Army, he transitioned to the National Guard to complete his obligation because he was assured that as a member of the National Guard, he would primarily help with domestic issues like disaster relief. I do think that the military has an obligation to the men and women who serve in it, and this obligation includes a mandate to keep people out of unnecessary danger. Obviously, war is dangerous, but there are ways to make war less dangerous, and Mejia documented situations where he and other soldiers were basically used as bait to initiate enemy contact.

I think we all know at this point that the military uses very coercive tactics to get people to enlist, including outright lies about terms of enlistment and benefits. It should probably come as no surprise to learn that the military lies to you after you enlist, too, but it was disappointing to have that fact spelled out and discussed with such frankness. The very structure of the military is designed to foster blind obedience, making it very difficult for people to explore their own consciences, let alone speak up for them.

He also talked about injured soldiers being forced to return to their units to keep numbers up, which is rather heinous. It sounds like a lot of superiors were more interested in personal advancement than in caring for their men, and that seems like a fundamental violation of basic military ethics. Having just finished Rule Number Two, it was also interesting to read his opinion of psych services in the military, which is basically that most psychological support in the military is crap, designed as a public relations exercise more than anything else.

Mejia’s discussion of his time in Iraq set the backdrop for his decision to remain in the United States when his leave ended, rather than returning to Iraq. He also discussed efforts undertaken in Iraq to end his military service, primarily centered around the fact that because he wasn’t a citizen, his extension under stop loss was actually illegal.

Mejia presents his position as one of conscience, arguing that he could not morally return to Iraq because he disagreed strongly with the war and the actions of the military there. It was certainly interesting to read about the evolution of his conscience, and his regrets at not speaking out sooner. As someone with a lot invested in self integrity and conscience, I can understand how Mejia’s decision (and ultimate jail time for deserting) was incredibly empowering. I think that he also encouraged a lot of soldiers to reconsider the war and their roles in it, and that is a very good thing.

This book was also simply well written. Mejia (or his editor) has a nice, strong writing voice. My major criticism of the book has to do with the descriptions of his time in Iraq, which sometimes felt very chaotic and disorganized, but as I read further, I began to realize that this section of the book feels chaotic and disorganized because this time in Mejia’s life was chaotic and disorganized. Iraq is a very stressful place to be, and Mejia captured the confusion, the conflicting orders, and the lack of support for the lower ranks in the military very well. There were parts of the book which seemed outright crazy, and it’s astounding to me that the military has inculcated blind obedience so well that commanders won’t question orders which are explicitly dangerous, dumb, and pointless.

Whether or not you agree with the war (or the concept of war in general), I think you might find this book both eye opening and enjoyable. There was definitely information in the book that was new to me, and I keep up on military issues. I also think that any book which stimulates people into behaving rightly and with conscience is a good thing. Road From Ar Ramadi is certainly one of the better books I’ve read coming out of the war in Iraq.

Demographics:

Road From Ar Ramadi, by Camilo Mejia. Published 2007, 312 pages. Memoir.