Book Report

Reading a book during the school year is always a challenge but now that summer is here, I've been reading day and night. Here's what I've finished this spring and in the past few weeks.

I learned from reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari that humans do human things.  I learned from reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson that Americans do American things.  Our normal is all we know and because of it, we don’t think about the system we live within.  The book is very well written and is full of history.  It’s a nice companion to Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen because it gives you the full picture of the past, helps you understand recent events, and prepares you for the future.  Reading this during the 2024 Presidential Election was very revealing.  Why would someone vote for him?  Oh, right, our caste system.  What is caste?  What is our system?  To quote Harari, humans believe lies.  Americans believe a unique lie.  We believe that people are black or white.  This sets up a social system that puts you into a category of being white or non-white.  We have had a variety of laws to support this lie.  Those laws have been fought over and debated.  Because it’s our normal, it helps to step outside of America to understand what we export.  In July of 1933, in Weimar, Germany, a newly formed political group wanted to create a segregated community.  Many in attendance had studied at American universities and had experienced American life.  They were aware of Virginia’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act that stated “one drop of Black blood made you Black” meaning having any Black ancestor excluded you from being White.  Those Germans thought America was too extreme and decided that having two Jewish parents or two Jewish grandparents was enough.

After that heavy reading, I needed something artistic.  I read The Creative Act by Rick Rubin when it was released but it’s one of those books that you can return to for inspiration.  Creativity is as simple as it is complicated.  On one hand, just go be creative…create something…no big deal…wait, what?...what should I create?...how should I create it?...I don’t know?...is it any good?...what’s the point?...just give me a second…ok…here it is.  Rick Rubin has navigated many creative endevors and has some healthy advice for the reader: “All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”  That statement alone can give you a clean perspective.  So much of what we think doesn’t matter; it’s just noise or as a friend calls “monkey chatter.”  Just make something without judgement.  For me, it’s just picking up the horn.  It’s making the horn more familiar.  The more familiar, the more creative I can be.  It’s not always about writing a song or even learning a song; the creative act is being in creative shape.

Lisa came home one day with a stack of books she had just purchased from Dog-Eared Books in Ames, Iowa.  Life in Three Dimensions by Shigehiro Oishi caught my eye.  At my age, I've searched for happiness and meaning and for whatever reason, I’ve learned to embrace the experience along the way. That's what Oishi presents: the experience. Happiness can be a trap. A survey of college students found that young people see happiness as victory or personal achievement. So, if you're not victorious or always achieving, what are you?  How about meaning?  Can you have meaning if you haven’t invented something or served in the Peace Corps?  Be careful, there’s a lot of pressure in our world?  What do we do?  We live life and we experience it.  It might be really boring or it might be really bad but whatever it is, embrace it both physically and psychologically.  In short, anything that causes you to reflect and reconsider how you think is a sign of a psychologically rich life.  It could be climbing a mountain or it could be taking a different way home from work.  It could be sitting quietly or it could be talking to a stranger.

I read Maus in one day.  It’s that good.  I’ve never experienced a book like it.  It’s beautiful storytelling, it’s horrific, it’s history, it’s a son trying to understand his father, and it’s a father trying to convey his story to his son.  The comic frames travel between New York City in 1978 to Auschwitz in 1944 and the characters drawn as animals makes them even more real despite what you might think.  The relationship between Art and his father, Vladek is very authentic.  It’s filled with love, patience, frustration, and an inability to completely communicate. 

I’ve been wanting to read My Search for Faith by Lucile Tretheway Libby for a year now.  Written by my sister-in-law’s great grandmother, it is a memoir of family, childhood, social and cultural experiences in the United States and China, religious dogma, faith, medical progress, and life experiences.  The first thing that struck me was how common death was before the 20th century.  Lucile begins her story by talking about her grandfather and his first two wives dying of disease and by giving birth.  Living in our modern world of medicine, research, and vaccines, death is less common but for those living 100 years ago, death was a way of life.  Lucile, like all young people, was searching for meaning.  She appears to me to be as smart as she was naïve and I mean that very respectfully.  She wanted to make a positive impact on society.  She studied hard and overcame many obstacles to become a school teacher and everything she learned would make her competent working at a hospital in China, one of the first to provide western medicine.  What I enjoyed most about her story was her empathy and understanding.  While working in Chicago as a social worker and helping the poorest of families, she learned to not refer to them as case numbers but as people.  She was driven by faith, she believed in her Christian upbringing, she valued the church’s opinion and trusted its judgement.  However, she wrestled with sin.  She never goes into detail about it but whatever she did, it challenged her, it gave her strength, and made her very compassionate. 

One of the classics that I’ve always wanted to read.  More important than ever right now.  I finished it just before attending an ICE protest and the No Kings protest.  This edition includes two essays titled Civil Disobedience.  One by Henry David Thoreau published in 1849 and the other by Hannah Arendt published in 1970.  Thoreau’s settles an old argument that slavery and colonialism was just the way it was and that it was part of the times and that’s just the way it was back then and it was accepted.  Well, I’ll stop you right there and point out that Thoreau didn’t want his taxes to support slavery or the unjust war in Mexico and it’s impossible to think that he was the only American thinking about this.  He see’s civil disobedience as part of democracy.  It is our right to be disobedient against unjust laws.  Both Thoreau and Arendt point out that civil disobedience is non-violent.  When it becomes violent, it becomes something else.  Hannah Arendt writes in praise of Americans protesting the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1960, she felt Americans had become complacent and apathetic about their citizenry but then she witnessed the 60’s and it gave her hope.  Thoreau and Arendt both argue heavily that we must participate if we want to be Americans.

My friend Nick said to me, “when I was in college, I thought I was Bukowski but then I realized I was just drunk all of the time and I wrote shitty poetry.”  I can’t think of a more Bukowski thing to say!  I’ve been wanting to read Bukowski for a while.  Too long really.  One of those writers I know about but had never read.  I wasn’t sure what to start with so I did an internet search and Ham on Rye appeared to be a celebrated book.  It was a wonderful read.  If you only know Bukowski for the dirty words, you probably only know Prince for the dirty words, too.  Get past them, get to the story.  Ham on Rye tells the story of a poor kid in a tough neighborhood that has to learn how to be tough.  Of all of the things he discovers, he discovers books in a library.  He found authors that spoke to him, that described the world, that described life.  Ham on Rye has one of the most beautiful endings to any story I’ve ever read.

If I had to describe Sonny Rollins after reading his notebooks, I would describe him as someone that feels.  He feels music.  He feels sound.  He feels emotion.  He articulately describes how the reed and mouthpiece feel on his lips and the position of the tongue inside his vocal cavity.  He is tuned into his body and his health.  The notebooks are filled with goals and action steps to improve his body, mind, and saxophone.  He is so reflective and aware but also so hard on himself.  And he is aware that he is hard on himself.  Sonny Rollins is one of the first saxophone players I was aware that I was listening to.  In 9th grade, I was asked to join a band with some older students at my high school.  The trumpet player, Scott Morgan, wanted to play St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins.  He gave me a cassette tape with a live recording of Sonny Rollins.  The trombone player, Mike Reagan, gave me a lead sheet and told me to learn it.  I listened and played along to it at home.  My dad thought the recording was the band I was joining!  Hahaha!  In 1996, I saw Sonny Rollins in concert.  He was the headliner at the Tri-C Jazz Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.  What a concert!

You never know where you’ll find inspiration and insight.  Sometimes a colleague needs to clean their office or in this case, clean out their office.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with Ted Brimeyer for the past eight years.  Anyone that loves music, food, family, and humor is a friend of mine.  I’ve always said, “Ted is so good at his job, he makes it look easy.”  He makes it look easy to sing, in the range of the highest and lowest voice part, conduct, play piano, give feedback, crack a joke that no one gets, identify the details, and not lose sight of the big picture.  As a drum major at Iowa State, Ted received a copy of The System: A Marching Band Guide by Gary E. Smith.  A marching band is a really big band with a lot of moving parts…pun intended.  What I like about Smith’s book is that he breaks down all of the different parts but also shows where they overlap.  By creating an environment where everyone can thrive, the experience is positive.  A positive experience leads to success. I'll be applying some of these points this school year. I'll let you know how they turn out. Maybe I'll make it look easy.

As always, thanks for reading...reading my blog but also for reading in general. Take care of yourselves. Stay inspired and engaged.