Posted in A&I

Book Review: Power Couple

 

Book Review: Power Couple by Alex Berenson
(Simon & Schuster) Feb 2021

Reviewed by Bonnie Tollefson

Bonnie Tollefson

Alex Berenson is the author of 12 fast paced books in the John Wells series but Power Couple is one of his stand-alones. Brian and Rebecca Unsworth are in Europe on a trip to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. Rebecca is a lawyer turned FBI agent working the Russian counterintelligence desk. While her career has stationed her in Alabama and Texas, she now works in Washington DC. Brian in the meantime was at first a stay at home dad then had various computer related jobs before he ends up in DC on a crack team for the National Security Agency. Traveling with them in Europe are Kira, their 19 year old first born, and her younger brother, Tony. One evening in Paris, Kira and Tony meet a good looking French graduate student named Jacques. Kira is attracted but unfortunately, the family is leaving for Spain the next day. Jacques offers to follow them to Spain and meet Kira in a famous bar he knows of. Jacques is not what he seems and things go downhill for Kira. No spoilers here, but this story has more twists and turns than a curvy mountain road and somebody ends up dead. It is available in large print at the RVM Library as are two of the John Wells series.

June Library Display

by Anne Newins

Dedicated readers usually enjoy prowling through bookstores and libraries.  So, library volunteers thought it would be fun to have a display of books about libraries and bookstores.  You can enjoy your Memorial Day hotdog and beverage with a good book.

You might be surprised how many authors incorporate these two subjects. For example, there are books about book mobiles, prison libraries, and historical libraries.  There are numerous mysteries featuring book thieves, as well as bookstore owners, library cats, and more.

Readers will find well known authors on display, such as John Grisham, Susan Orlean, Nina George, and David Baldacci, along with less familiar writers.  Enjoy!

Manor Penthouse Bonsai

photo collage by Reina Lopez. Please see also “Bonsai at RVM” in the May 2021 issue of Hill Topics.

Timely Word Play

by Connie Kent

It’s time. We’re on time.

We spend time. We buy time. We save it (to spend later?) Many times we squander it. On occasion, we even kill it.

At times, we don’t have enough. We run out of time. We need more. We make time. Sometimes we just take it.

We use our time – wisely or not. We fill our time. We allow enough of it – or not. We have it on our hands. Sometimes it’s heavy on our hands.

Sometimes, time’s on our side. Sometimes not.

Time passes. Time flies. Time drags. Time slows down. Time stands still. We take time out.

All the time. Most of the time.

Time heals.

The time is past. The time is yet to come. The time has come.

Time’s up. We’re out of time.

Still More Words at Play

Priceless Treasures Excavated by the Consummate Word-miner,

Tom Conger

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.  Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll

 

For this chapter, we are indebted to Why Do We Say That?  compiled by Graham Donaldson and Sue Setterfield, Dorset Press 1989.

 

Put a sock in it! – “In these days of compact discs, videos and digital recordings, it is astonishing to think that only fifty years ago [1939] people used wind-up gramophones with the sound emerging from a large horn. A volume control was a thing of the future. So when Aunt Agatha complained of that dreadful Charleston noise there was only one thing to do—put a sock in it—literally.  One or more woolen socks were pushed into the horn of the gramophone to muffle the sound. Today it means, quite simply: ‘shut up’.“

 

load of old codswallop – “When somebody says something which is nonsense, far-fetched, or simply untrue, they are often accused of speaking ‘a load of codswallop.’  We have a certain American gent called Hiram Codd to thank for this colourful expression. In 1875 he patented a  special bottle of mineral water which became very popular—except among hardened beer drinkers.  The word ‘wallop’ was already well in use to describe alcoholic drinks and so, sneeringly, Hiram’s concoction—and other weak drinks—became known in bars as ‘Codd’s Wallop.’ Gradually, anything inferior or false became known by the single word ‘codswallop’.”

toady – “This saying is used to criticise somebody who, to further his own ends, says or does anything to please his superior.  It comes from the days of traveling medicine men in the American ‘Wild West.’ They used to sell useless potions to the public. Taking advantage of the popular but false belief that toads were extremely poisonous, the ‘quack’ doctor would get an accomplice to swallow, or pretend to swallow, a toad. He would then immediately drink one of the doctor’s potions and, much to the amazement of the crowd, walk away fit and well.”

 

hair of the dog – “After a party, it is not unusual for some of the guests to wake up the next morning with a hangover. The cure is said to be another drink, or ‘The hair of the dog.’  This is based on the superstition that people who are ill after being bitten by a dog can only be cured by swallowing a piece of burnt hair from the same animal. In truth, the ‘cure’ seldom works.”

rigamarole – First you do this, then you do that, then you do another thing, then…oh, what a rigamarole!’ That’s just what we call a long, involved, complicated way of doing things.  The 700-year old expression began life as the Ragman Roll, given to King Edward I by Scottish noblemen. Each signed a deed pledging loyalty to the king and affixed his seal. The deeds were then joined together to form a document 40 feet long!  The Ragman Roll is kept at the Public Records Office, London.”

 

deadline – A deadline is the final time by which a job must be finished. Journalists use the word a lot [see: The Complement…]. If they don’t meet their deadline their work is useless [not going there…]—or dead—because it will have missed the edition.  The phrase comes from the American Civil War in the 1860s. A line was marked all around the wire fence of the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp and any prisoner seen crossing the line was, without warning, shot dead.”

 

“A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

RVM Spring Birds

photo collage by Reina Lopez

May Library Display

The library volunteers decided that it is time for Oregon natives and transplants to recognize our beautiful state despite all the troubles of the past year.  With that in  mind, a wide variety of books about Oregon are on the Manor Library display table for your reading and visual pleasure during the coming month.  These include books by Manor authors John Kemper, Ann Sutton, and Carol Barrett.  There are volumes about Medford and the Rogue River.  There are even some novels based in Oregon.  A small sample of the books are listed below:

History of a People, by Stephen Dow Beckham.  This is considered a classic history of Southern Oregon native peoples during the 1850’s and the Rogue River Wars.

Skookum, by Shannon Applegate.  This is a recounting of the Applegate family, early settlers in our area.

Camp White–City in the Desert, by George Kramer.  Learn about the many events at Camp White during World War II.

Oregon Wine:  A Deep Rooted History, by Scott Sursa.  All about the development of wine making in Oregon.

Display created by Bonny Turner

Book Review: Gods of the Upper Air

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists
Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century,
by Charles King (Doubleday, 2019)

Reviewed by Anne Newins

Anne Newins

Many of us may remember a class that changed our world view.  In my case, it was a cultural anthropology class taken during my freshman year of college. Even though I was raised in a highly diverse environment, I had not thought about how much behavior and values were dependent on one’s culture. In four short months, I became much more tolerant and accepting of others’ viewpoints.

Gods of the Upper Air allowed me to revisit those heady days. Charles King, a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University, has taken a thought-provoking side trip. King’s absorbing account is about the development of cultural anthropology as an academic discipline, but it also is part adventure story and part biography. The book profiles the father of cultural anthropology, Franz Boas, and a number of his protégées, including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Cara Deloria.

Since the field examines cultural variation among humans, cultural anthropology often  relies on fieldwork that take place in far flung locations. The researchers must develop productive working relationships with their study subjects, while trying to decide if what they are learning from their informants is accurate or highly subjective. Obviously, this is not easy to do and takes enormous time, patience, and strong observational skills.

These lively and energetic scholars often had to cope with personal poverty, disease and danger during their fieldwork. They were confronting historical opinions that were racist, sexist, and frequently unaccepting of women in academia. Among others, of their major adversaries was Madison Grant, a well-known eugenicist of the time.

Most have heard of Margaret Mead and her groundbreaking work in American Samoa and New Guinea. Ruth Benedict was a lover, and most importantly, her mentor at
Columbia University. African American Zora Neale Hurston is famous for fiction writing, but was noted for her work about American folklore. Ella Cara Deloria, of Dakota Indian descent and linguistically fluent, conducted complex work about the Sioux.

Reviewer Anthony Clemons describes the book as “creative storytelling with rich historical detail to show the reader that facts contradicting established norms rarely outmatch the willingness of the masses to cling to those norms, leaving the potential for ideological change to the tyranny of time.”

A copy of the book may be found at the Rogue Manor Library.

Book Review: How to Avoid Climate Disaster

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster – The Solutions We Have and The Breakthroughs We Need

By Bill Gates, Reviewed by Sally Densmore

Sally Densmore

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are best known for their work through their Foundation to rid the third world of devasting diseases like malaria. Through that work, he realized that these low-income peoples were also the most vulnerable to the perils of climate change. Being a scientist, he decided to inform himself of the facts and the possible solutions. And that’s what he has laid out in this very readable book.

I have been a conservationist and recycler for years, and have had a Prius since 2006, so I didn’t need to be persuaded of the need to deal with this crisis. This book, however, has convinced me that we can’t really keep nibbling around the edges. Bold action is needed now. And I’ve learned things I’ve never heard anyone else discuss.

There is so much talk about the need for all of us to start driving electric vehicles, but very little about the fact that two-thirds of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. The biggest surprise was the fact that 31% of our CO2 emissions comes from the manufacture of concrete, steel and plastics.

First he delineates the causes of greenhouse gases: how we plug in, how we make things, how we grow things, how we get around and how we keep cool and stay warm. Then he discusses how we will have to use innovative research to adapt to a warmer climate. The first page states:

Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically

adds to the atmosphere every year. . . . This is where we are today. Zero

is what we need to aim for. . . .This sounds difficult, because it will be.

In order to get to zero by 2050, we’ll have to have tough governmental policies in place by 2030.

Gates doesn’t pretend to be the perfect spokesman, guiltily confessing that he is a rich man who has an enormous carbon footprint (he now buys sustainable jet fuel). I really appreciate the easy, conversational tone he uses in the book, giving excellent examples of the scientific concepts involved. I highly recommend this.

Do Cats Grieve?

                                                 Daphne and the cats

By Bob Buddemeier

My wife, Daphne Fautin, exercised the Death with Dignity option on March 12.  I have written about the human aspects of the process, but humans aren’t the only creatures in our lives or our household

Before

Why cats? Well, they’re family.  Frank, the compulsively friendly Siamese and Kip, the neurotic but amusing Tabby, had been with us since somebody dumped them at our house in rural Kansas in 2013.  We named Frank after Sinatra with his blue-blue eyes.  And Kip was named from Yom Kippur, the holiday we were celebrating when they arrived at our doorstep.

Frank and Daphne

Going beyond that, when you start trying to look Death in the eye, I think it makes you more appreciative of all forms of life, not just your own.  Frank was especially close to Daphne – both in terms of bonding and physically.  They spent many hours together on the couch, with Frank napping up against her leg while she read or did crosswords

As her time dwindled down, one of her most frequently expressed regrets was her inability to explain to the cats what was going on.  Other cat people at RVM (there are many) would say “Oh, they know.”   I have to agree, professional skepticism notwithstanding.

                                    Kip

As time went on, Kip, although a stand-offish cat for 7 years, started sleeping on the bed –even when Daphne took a nap there in the afternoon. Then in the last month, she would get up on the edge of the bed in the evening when Daphne was lying on her back reading.  Kip would put her forepaws and chin on Daphne’s ribcage or belly, and sit propped against her until the lights went out.

At about the same time Frank (always friendly anyway) adopted a new behavior – he would get onto Daphne’s lap, press tight against her chest, and push his head up under her chin.  About as close to a hug as you can get when you have short forelegs.

Neither behavior was seen before that, or with anybody else.  Do they smell leukemia?  Is there some “it’s almost over” cue in body language?  Nothing is certain, but if I had to bet, I’d say that some kind of recognition was going on in their little kitty minds.

After

Daphne died on a Friday; the atending relatives left on Monday.  That morning: Kip didn’t put in an appearance until 11 a.m., and when she did, she was almost completely silent. Both behaviors are very atypical.  Frank got up 6:30-ish and went out on his leash – but only for a very short period. When he came in, he went to sleep on the couch for the rest of the morning.  Also very atypical. Visitor fatigue?  Grief? The answer probably depends on how much of a cat person you are.  The next week cements it in my mind – definitely grief. If a cat can be said to mope, he mopes – sleeps even more than his usual 16 hrs/day, doesn’t claw or climb his cat tree, lies on the floor (instead of on elevated surfaces), responds to but doesn’t solicit petting.

Kip comes back into a more normal mode after a few days, but it’s almost 10 days after Daphne’s death before Frank starts to play with things, rub against legs, and sneak out w/o leash to find his neighborhood buddies who dispense belly rubs.  I continue to try to remember that I need to seek him out and give attention.  He’s a little like Daphne – I’m supposed to know when I should pay attention and not wait for invitations.  A totemic animal — I’ve apparently been married to a member of the Cat Clan for 34 years.

Neither of the cats has ever demonstrated again the behaviors that they consistently showed with Daphne in the interval just before she died.

I put the attractive little chest containing Daphne’s ashes near one of Frank’s favorite napping spots.  Rank superstition?  Positioning the unrecognizable remains of a dead person and an animal as if it would make a difference to either?  Well, so what.  It felt right so I did it.  I spend enough time thinking.