Coconut Writers Room

• January 2, 2025 - Saving Capitalism For the Many, Not the Few by Robert Reich

Robert Reich once ran for Governor of Massachusetts, he came to Greenfield and talked at the High School in the lobby. I went and listened and really liked his personality, his thoughtfulness, and his perspective. A few weeks ago I found one of his books on the shelf of a friend's house and stole it to read. I'm glad I read it, I wish everyone did...even if they disagree with his position or his proposed solutions...at least we'd be talking about what's really going on.  A quiet Class War against the bottom 99%. The book is pretty dry and if I didn't have his voice narrating a lot of it in my head, I likely wouldn't have been able to finish it...despite its critical importance.

• January 7, 2025 - Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translated by Olena Bormashenko

Leave it to the Russians to make a sci-fi book where humans aren't the stars of the show. The whole point of the book is that we as humans are not the end of the universe and the single most important things out there. It is a really fun story about what would happen if the earth was visited by a more advanced species, took no interest in us, left an intergalactic mess and shipped off without saying so much as hello. The book is from 1972, but I had no sense of age in it. In the final scenes, when the protagonist has the opportunity to ask for literally anything in the world, he works his way from revenge through to world peace in moments. Fun.

• January 13, 2025 - United States of Jihad by Peter Bergen

In 2001 there was a terrorist attack against the USA on September 11.  This book comes 15 years later and is a deep analysis of how the US Government(s) dealt with this attack, and how the threat has changed these many years later.  Roughly, the idea is that terrorists in America are almost always Americans who became radicalized after some traumatic event that acted as an opening for them. They are very often middle class, successful sons of first generation immigrants. They are most often upset by the US DRONE program, which killed many thousands of bad and neutral guys and girls and babies alike. Our govt's mostly failed us by doing a poor job of understanding who these perpetrators are and often tracked folks that should not have been considered risks.  The Tsarniev brothers story is the most compelling for me, as we were in the area while they were in the shootout in Watertown.  Good book, dated. Would read an update if one came out today, 3o years later.

• January 20, 2025 - Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

I almost never buy new books, there are just so many amazing books that are free or $0.50 or $1.00, it's nigh on impossible to justify spending 15 or 30 times that for a single book. But there are times when buying the book is the important part, like if you want to support the author or book vendor. In this situation, I wanted to support the writing of more books by or about people and places I know.  Our local library has a book club and they are reading this author's newest book...I wanted to start at the beginning. Morgan Talty is a Penobscot Indian, and he writes about their island reservation, where I have been and continue to this day working with the environmental department of the tribe, so I purchased this book full freight. It was a smart investment. This is a trick of a book, as it starts with a pretty weak short story and you have yourself thinking "self, this book is going to suck"...then you read the next story and there is the same voice, but this time it has something...more. I read story by story and grew more and more inquisitive about the characters, what has, is, would happen to them. How badly would Dez fuck up, and can I see myself in that selfsame situation making the same decision? Too often I could. I don't know these people, but I know addiction and family and poverty and hate...and that is really what these stories are about, and they connect very deeply.  I think the author has room to grow, but if I could read another book where the quality progresses at that pace, I'd be floored. I'll get that next book ordered.

• January 24, 2025 - The Deerfield Massacre by James L Swanson

Glad that I read this, as it does provide another angle on an important local event, but rather disappointed. The book bounces between graphic descriptions and questioning the thoughts of the actors of the 1700's in these events, to rationalizing or justifying or just poorly contextualizing various perspectives. It does a good job of weaving a more complete picture of Deerfield across time from before the time of english settlers through the 2000's. The author doesn't mention that the town is functionally a wealthy hideout for the "old rich". I've proposed unannounced reenactments of the Deerfield Massacre in the past, and I still think it would be a wonderful idea some February night when the snow is deep to rush THE STREET with air horns and bright flashlights and remind peolple that even today there are peoples in the woods waiting for their turn.

Oh, and I found a factual error - the books says there was an article about Deerfield published in the JULY 1969 National Geographic, when if fact, it was JUNE. Fucker.

• January 30, 2025 - Tarzan the Invincible by Edgar Rice Burroughs

1931 adventure novel written from the perspective of a racist english douche.  The adventure parts are cool, but they are so suffused with crazy racist bullshit that you can't enjoy reading the story. This isn't like vaguely maybe possibly offensive, this is the downright explicit horseshit you don't get many chances to read.  I won't' repeat them here and I'll be disposing of the book.  I don't want anyone else exposed to this at my hand.  I'm only glad I read this because now when I hear about tarzan, I can go - Fuck that racist asshole.

• February 17, 2025 - Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

Ann Rice creates characters that I don't enjoy interacting with. They are vain and vapid and even their deepest sentiments seem foolish and silly, despite them being hundreds or thousands of years old.  Vampires are dumb. Bampires are cool.
I'm sure in 1988 when this was written that a vampire rock star would make for a super cool story, but reading it today it's like watching a passably good show on TV.  You know there' s probably something better you could be reading.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't my jamboree.

• February 28, 2025 - The Roald Dahl Omnibus by Roald Dahl

I mistakenly thought I was reading a collection of children's stories, and I end the book with a man turning into a 7' penis. This was not a children's book. It was brilliantly written and funny and was full of twists that you'd never see coming. I believe there are 22 stories and each is a gem. I'd share this book willingly with lots of adults and would be happy to read it again. It has murder, intrigue, and lots of humor.

• March 5, 2025 - Life Hacks For A Little Alien by Alice Franklin

It is not my common practice to pay full price for books. I don't hate authors or publishers or paper, there are just so many options that are free or nearly that. When I heard a short bit of an interview with this author on public radio, my interest was piqued. I paid full price and ordered the book which was just published this year.  

What a fascinating perspective.  The book is literary and childish and odd, but not in an off-putting way. Through written words, a person who struggles to be normal in society is able to share that frustration, confusion, and joy. We get to experience some very difficult things but in a way that provides comfort. It feels like a loving book.  I really like that.

• March 30, 2025 - Two Wheels Good by Jody Rosen

The subtitle of the book is "The History and Mystery of the Bicycle".  The real mystery for me is why I devoted almost a month to this book.  It's not a bad book, really.  It's also not a book really, except that it's pages bound together of words referring roughly to bicycles or bicycling or bicycling culture or the author.  The book feels like a college student's term paper that was regarded as excellent by a lazy professor and was supported by a publisher that maybe just loved bicycles.  Reading the back of the book just now I see that the author is usually a magazine article writer, which explains the disconnected feel of this thing.  It reminded me a bunch of times of a magazine article that I'm reading because I'm stuck at the dentist and it's only vaguely interesting. Some sections were downright dumb, like the hyper-sexualization of bicycles. Seemed more an author's fetish than useful information.

I'll put it in the free pile and maybe someone with a love of bikes will connect with it.  It certainly wasn't for me.

• April 1, 2025 - Push by Sapphire

I often, almost always forget how lucky I am. I am also often reminded of this because of a book.  Books allow us to hear a voice we wouldn't hear otherwise, and to almost feel as though they were a tiny bit you, and you just didn't realize it.  The story lets you understand yourself better, or to put your own life into a different context or lens.  This is a beautiful book.

This is an important book.  The way the book develops, the pacing and the progression all contribute to this sense of character awakening and growth.  Awakening to what, though - to what terror and tragedy, and for what? So that the cycle could be broken, at least in this one family. I know about waking up, I've experienced it and I hope to experience it more, and books like this one help us to do just that.

• April 7, 2025 - A White Heron and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett

Some long time ago I recall reading The Country of the Pointed Firs by this author and I enjoyed it. This book was also very enjoyable, though so clearly not intended for me, much like the previous entry.  This book was written around 125 years ago up in Maine and shows a bit of life there...the work, the people, the faith, the troubles.  Fascinating really.  It is mostly about working women or elderly women, and in some ways its much like English books about society, in that much of the story is in the interpersonal relationships.  It has the upper hand in my mind to a Middlemarch or Jane Ayre because it is so much closer to home physically, and the people seem much more relatable to me.  

Perhaps the thing I will lament most, having read this, is our collective loss of "plant knowledge".  We think of ourselves as modern, and we don't need roots and berries to get healthy, but I think we're completely wrong.  It's a tragedy. We're in the Dark Ages of plant medicine...it's shunned and ridiculed, but I think it's our only hope.

• April 17, 2025 - The Plague by Albert Camus, Translated by Stewart Gilbert

Set in Algiers (somewhere French) in 1948, this is the story of a smallish city that experiences an epidemic of bubonic plague.  It's partly just a story about people and how they react under pressure, but it's also a story about loneliness and faith and general existence.  The book has a narrator retell the story, and coming to me only 5 years after COVID, it hits hard in many ways.  There are flaws though that I see - like when the plague receded...it drifted away on the wind...that's not how I experienced plague.  For me, it's still here and we've simply learned to live with the lion in the cul-de-sac that occasionally takes an old or a kid. There is a character that fancies himself an author and he frets over a single sentence for the entire book - I found that part to be so funny, inside all the darkness. Hat's Off!

• January 1, 2024 - Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rich people dealing with issues. Book starts with a girl being raped by her father because he was lonely and her mother was dead and she was just too darn hot. She meets a psychiatrist, falls in love with him and he becomes her doctor/lover/husband.  They have fun when she's doing well and don't when they aren't. By the end of the book their marriage is in shambles, she has moved on and apparently been healed through psychiatry, but he is a failed man who crawls into a cave somewhere to disappear. Same dude who wrote the Great Gatsby.  He's a good writer, but who gives a fuck.

• January 4, 2024 - The Hummingbirds' Gift by Sy Montgomery

Sy writes books about animals that are also about people and how we relate to animals and often, one-another. An inoffensive author, but rarely deeper than a genuinely good National Geographic article.  Worth a read, not worth a purchase at retail price. Hummingbirds are light, they are filled with air, they are delicate, they fight hard with each other, and they are difficult to care for when returning to the wild after injury or death of a parent. The sub was Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings...I think that's overselling a bit.

• January 7, 2024 - The Big Year by Mark Obmascik

`A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession` - Three guys from different backgrounds and different walks of life each devote a year to spotting as many birds in the US as they could.  Much less a book about nature, this is more a book about obsession and competition and how people choose to spend their time and money.  Nothing much rewarding about the book, the rich guy wins, the poor guy suffers.  I'll watch the movie, but not excitedly.

• January 11, 2024 - The Education of T.C. Mits (The Celebrated Man in the Street) by Lillian R. Lieber

How do you not purchase a book when the back page recommendations include one from Albert Fucking Einstein. 

Lillian Lieber wrote this book just as the US was getting into WWII.  It was so important at the time that they made pocket editions and sent them to soldiers overseas.  The purpose of the book is to introduce the average person to ideas and concepts in Mathematics, from Algebra, to Geometry, to more advanced theoretical math.  The book also tries to use math to prove that Democracy is the only and best option for government. The book does a great job of showing that Math is just a very precise way to talk about ideas and concepts, but that math isn't immutable, that we have to agree to specific rules together for math to work at all.  But, when we are capable of communicating very complex ideas to one another, we can accomplish amazing technological feats which otherwise would be impossible.  The book also explains that there is a place for ideas and concepts with NO immediate commercial use - that it isn't the job of the idea-man to also find a use for their newfound concept. A great Einstein quote is included "ALLES WAS WIR MACHEN IST FALSCH" or "Everything we make is false".

• January 21, 2024 - I Must Say : My Life As A Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short

Talk about a book not aging well.  This came out 10 years ago, but is so chock-full of half-racist, half-sexist, half-misogynistic jokes and characters that I can't imagine it could get published today.  I can take a few good things from this otherwise pretty awful book - I appreciate his commitment to his craft. This is someone who really has devoted his life to being an entertainer, I just wish he'd been more to my tastes in his comedy.  He tells stories about being surrounded by people whose autobiography I'd rather be reading. There is one point in the book where he discusses how he does weekly self-assessment on 9 characteristics.  While I don't want to do that, I think some self-reflection is really smart and important, and I might try to do that more.  Otherwise, this book is a stinker.

• January 28, 2024 - The Last American Frontier by Frederic L Paxson

1910 book about the United States and its travel westward throughout the 1800's. As it was written at the turn of the last century, there are plenty of the old classic racist tropes about inferior races, manifest destiny, and the inevitability of a more advanced people to overcome and replace a less advanced society. Surprisingly, however; the book takes a very honest look at the role that white settlers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the US government played in mistreating and double-dealing with the native peoples of this land. It does a great job of explaining the chronological intersections of the Civil War, the Gold Rushes, Intercontinental Rail, and war with various indian tribes.  It even delves into some history I didn't know anything about - the early days of Mormonism.  I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad I can still learn something helpful and real from a fatally flawed tool.

• February 10, 2024 - Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

A novel from an Italian historian with a focus on early european history and secret societies.  The premise is that a guy who edits books and knows a bunch about the Templars (because he's working on his PHD) meets a few other guys who work for a company that publishes books.  There are two arms of the company, one that does "real" works that are well supported and sell a lot of copies, and another arm that lets cranks write and self-publish their own stuff.  The guys decide to use the templar secret society whackjobs to sell a ton of a new series of books on the occult.  Since the three editors don't actually believe it, they can pretend, and having their access to the stories, and real history, they do such a good job that the cranks believe its all real...and maybe all of the editors do as well by the end.  It was a fun adventure story with too deep a background for me, but for history buffs probably a slam dunk homer.

• March 16, 2024 - Unabridged Autobiography Volume 1 by Mark Twain

Monstrously giant part 1 of 3 nontraditional autobiography of Mark Twain, aka Samule Clemens. The thing that makes this autobiography unique, apart from the Author's uniqueness, is his decision to use connected stories based on things other than chronology. He doesn't start as a child and get to a certain age in this volume, instead he starts where he is...something like 70 years old and tells a story. The stories are not a continuous chain, rather just small connected vignets.  In that way we learn about his suffering, and his bitterness at people and society. He had it rough, but also had an adventurous life. I'm excited to read more of his books.

• March 19, 2024 - The Silent World by Captain J.Y. Cousteau w/ Frederic Dumas

1953 book with inset photos in black and white and color. What an amazing book.  Easy to read. Easy to understand. Easy to be amazed and mesmerized by the stories of the AquaLung - the first ever scuba mask with an automatic regulator.  Jacques and Frederic could for the first time in human history swim for lengths of time underwater unimpeded by huge helmets or hoses. There are so many wild stories about using artificial light underwater in depths seeing coral reefs in colors no human had ever in history seen. So good.

• March 25, 2024 - The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On -Poems  by Franny Choi

UGH.

What an amazing - disgusting, disheartening book of poems.  I have so little in common with the author, short of living in the same small city, but I can taste the feelings. This is what I want all poetry to do.  This hurt and made me jealous. Northampton MA Poet Laureate.

• April 3, 2024 - Zorba The Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

This is a book in a series of books that I read only because I've heard cultural reference to the title in the past, another example was The Scarlet Pimpernel.  I'm so glad that I read it, it was so enjoyable.  I didn't like the way women were treated in the book, but this may have been an accurate depiction of the culture at that time.  The author clearly has a belief system that they are trying to pass on to the reader, and honestly, I'm cool with it.  The story is fun.  The depth is there.  I'm going to go watch the movie now.

• April 15, 2024 - The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu Translated by Ken Liu

Netflix turned this book into a show and I sort of wanted to watch the show so I read the book.  It's a book about what would happen if humanity made contact with an intelligent life force in space.  There are some interesting bits, but mostly it reads like a television show with wooden dialogue interspersed with complex space jargon made to seem real smart.  I mean, it was fine.

• April 24, 2024 - The Boat Who Wouldn't Float by Farley Mowat

60's slacker adventure story, this time on a boat. There isn't much slack at all in this book, it's really all about how his boat breaks all the time and puts his life into constant danger.  There are some really fun characters to be sure, and some wild stories of the sea, but it was billed as a comedy and for me it was rather tragic.

• May 23, 2024 - The Poetry of Robert Frost Edited by Edward Connery Lathem

I'd known of Robert Frost before buying this book. It would be hard to go to school in New England and not have had to memorize at least one of his poems... (From memory) FIRE AND ICE - Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, from what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire, but I think I know enough of hate, that for destruction ice is also nice and would suffice.

But there is so much more in this.  He could write so well, and so funny...There is a poem about a guy smacking his head on a door in the dark and getting his similies mixed up.  

Maybe don't sit and read page after page in one go...it gets sing-songy that way, just throw it in the shitter and read one or two.

• June 2, 2024 - Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

This should be required reading throughout America in every school and should be the focus of an annual discussion because I fear we have lost most of the message and are slipping. The book was first published in the 1850's when slavery was still legal in many states. Hers was a plea to stop it by way of a beautifully written tear-jerking Huckleberry Finn meets Quentin Tarantino book. I am so thankful for finally opening my eyes to this book which hurt so much to read that I often had tears in my eyes. 

All of that said, I think there are paths to freedom that don't involve Christ and I don't think "sending them back to Liberia" was maybe the best way to end the book.  But those are just my opinions, and by no means should dissuade one from picking this up.

• July 12, 2024 - Hard Times by Studds Terkel

Studds is my man, I love him so hard. Studds writes these books where they are really just a series of edited interviews with people discussing a common theme.  He spends time documenting the beliefs and opinions of everyday folks on topics of national importance. In the 1960's he wrote this book about the Great Depression of 1929-1936 (or later as some claim it wasn't resolved until and because of WWII). I was fascinated to learn about the now mostly unknown roles that communists and socialists of all stripes played in defining America and American culture today. We also learn about how the Capitalists tried to overthrow the US government. Some people believed we were close to a revolution, while others didn't know there was even real hunger out there.  Many people talked about how poverty was made less painful by knowing that it was a shared experience amongst all around them, and how they banded together to take care of one another and how they thought that in the 1960s this wouldn't be the case.  I don't wonder about today because I know full well that were a great depression to come, it would be every single person for themselves. Sad but I think very true.

• July 15, 2024 - War Is A Racket by Smedley D. Butler

The second book in the silly author name series.  Butler was claimed to be America's most decorated soldier, fighting in wars before, during and after WWI.  He died before US intervention in WWII, but this book is mostly devoted to trying to talk the US out of engagement.  He expresses his belief that US engagement in WWI was because we sold England and France ammunition and then it looked like they would lose the war and not be able to pay their bills. He said that we have a perfectly nice continent here and if we mind our own business, we'd be able to protect it much better than if we go bailing out Europe. Included in the book is a Constitutional Amendment for Peace, and a photo series of the killed and maimed of war. I think everyone should read it.

• July 20, 2024 - End Game A Play by Samuel Beckett

"Fool me once, shame on me...fool me twice...I won't get fooled again" - GW Bush

Fuck this guy. God damn. If I could meet this artist I'd kick him square in the nuts. Nobody should read this shit, much less act it out on stage. I should have known better, I should have said to myself "self, how come you remember this author name so vividly?".

• July 22, 2024 - Innocent Erendira and other stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It's been a few books since I was reminded why I read - this is really incredible, especially considering this is a translation - one that at times seems to struggle. Overall this is a group of stories about death, murder, bad situations, bad people...all this bad written so beautifully. There is a part in one of the stories where the author describes the slow collapse of the body through illness into death into decomposition and reanimation throughout the earth. I think it was the most accurate representation of my own beliefs I've ever seen put to paper. Looking forward to reading more from this author, and someday would love to be fluent in spanish so I can read the original versions.

• July 30, 2024 - The Rebel Worlds by Poul Anderson

When I was younger, I couldn't get enough of sci-fi and fantasy writing. I could just disappear into it, these days not so much. This was a relatively well written star war book with a lady needing rescuing, a big bad villain and a young dashing hero.  Some of the tech written about was really accurate to our current future considering it was written in 1969. I think the part I'll take from it most of all is this heesh character, which is really a physically connected entity comprised of 3 unique individuals. In this case, a rhino type animal with a bird thing on one shoulder and a monkey on the other connected by hummingbird tongue-things. Main character is supposed to be the good guy, but he's a scumbag around women and he sort of rapes an enemy animal by forcing it to join with two of his own, clearly against its will to form a helper animal, that I don't think ever actually comes in handy besides as a remote on/off switch.

• August 3, 2024 -Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion

A series of essays written around 1965. Author has a very acerbic style of tearing loved items down and showing the flaws and issues with socially protected ideals or beliefs at the time.  It's broken into three sections, the first about the hippy scene around Haight-Ashbury, the second about personal beliefs and thoughts, and lastly on geographic places. This book achieved what I want a book to achieve, it made me look at something I thought I knew about in a new and unique light, and there are some genuinely dark and funny parts.  I'll look for more from this author.

• August 4, 2024 -The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

In my previous reading, I've come across Hemingway two or three other times, and I'm always left wondering what makes his writing so special or worthy of note, because I wasn't getting it. He seems to always write very Manly things in a very 1950's Manly way...drinking and bullfighting and fist fighting and women.  This book almost justifies all the hype, although it is also just a good story and not much more.  It is about an old man and his life reflections while out chasing a too-big fish. I still don't think I'd go hunting down any more of ol' Ernie, but it was a fun story all the same.

• August 7, 2024 -Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

From the guy that brought you Jurassic Park, a story about what could go wrong if we decide to start bringing samples from space back to earth. The book is from 1969, but has a very advanced understanding of the human microbiome and what it really means to be a living entity inside a planet and its atmosphere.  This is a classic movie style medical thriller; can they find the cure before all humanity ends?

• August 21, 2024 -One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Another translation of the most beautiful misery ever written. This book is essentially a Charles Dickens novel that replaces all of the sad brittish shit like hungry kids and abusive teachers with torture, starvation, rape and murder. The author has presented the story of a town and a family  across many generations from founding to collapse. Even the joyous moments in the book are dirtied and corrupted with awfulness. I have a neck-ache from reading this book because it attracts me with the lyricism and repulses me with the all too human details, much like a flipped camry in a highway median ditch. I'm taking a break though...it's all a lot to absorb.

• September 15, 2024 -Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

The title almost says it all, or rather I wish it did. I know more about Edward Gorey than any person needs to know about another person thanks to this detailed book.  It's so detailed that it sure feels like a good chunk is conjecture by the fanboy author.  I've read biographies that were too detailed or boring before to suit my tastes, but this was an exercise in frustration. It was the biographical equivalent of Waiting for Godot, which I fucking hate.  Listen, this isn't a bad book, and if you jizz when you think of ol' Ted Gorey then take this for a spin...otherwise, save yourself the 3 weeks it takes to suffer through.

• September 19, 2024 -The Cunning  Little Vixen Translated by Tatiana Firkusny, Maritza Morgan and Robert T Jones

Pictures by Maurice Sendak. This is a Chech translated story about a fox that is taken as a child into a human family and escapes later in life to live in the wild and annoy humans. The story is rich and fun and not childlike really at all.  Thankfully there is very little in the way of tragedy, so a sort of fun romp.

• October 8, 2024 -Destinations : Essays from Rolling Stone by Jan Morris

Short articles originally pulled from Rolling Stone magazine in the late 1970's. Each story is an exploration of a city somewhere in the world at that time.  It reminds a little of Studs Terkel, but this has opinion and great descriptions from one woman's perspective. I'm jealous that this person was able to travel and explore so extensively and I hope to someday be able to do the same. The story about Rhodesia taught me some important history I didn't know, as did the article about South Africa under apartheid. 

• October 19, 2024 -Brideshead Revisited  by Evelyn Waugh

Don't judge a book by its cover it is said.  Well, I had been judging this book by its author and title for a long time. I had imagined it a Jane Austen style book. I was wrong.  It was much more like Hemingway.  This is the story of a rich kid who becomes a wealthy famous artist and how none of it matters in a world war.  We get to see his youth and relationship with a doomed family. The writing is from around WWII, and it is very easy to consume. A wonderful story about people I would struggle to care any less about. 

• October 22, 2024 -Last Letters from Stalingrad Translated by Franz Schneider and Charles Gullans

Fuccck. War is bad m'kay. We don't need to be reminded, and yet we keep doing it.  These are fragments of letters that left on the last mail plane out of occupied Russia, written by the German Nazi soldiers who were left there to die by Hitler, as a strategic decision or a failure in his war planning. These aren't the good guys.  They were fighting for evil, but they were still human beings...many of whom knew perfectly well that they would be dead within weeks. It's a whole book of last words, some angry some sad some very poetical. All the waste. 

• November 5, 2024 -Stryker's Children by Joyce Anne Schneider

A thrilling medical drama centered around the most advanced scientific advancements in human reproduction occurring in 1984. First year doctor Raney has discovered something terrible is happening to the women who visit her hospital's clinic. Fetal abnormalities, genetic problems...weird shit.  She figures it out in the end, but of course had to be saved by her boyfriend. It was a fun easy read, like a decent TV movie. I liked hearing the very real fear of those technologies that are so ubiquitous today.

• November 17, 2024 -Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon by Peter Ames Carlin

If you were ever on the hunt for a book about someone who devoted their life to one singular thing and doing that thing to the best of their abilities...then this is your book. Paul Simon loved music, moreover he loved communicating, and he loved being able to master something completely; and he was rewarded for it.  The book does not chronicle many difficulties or challenges beyond some simple relationship issues and what I'd consider normal "daddy" issues. He was blessed and allowed to do what he came to do, and we were all rewarded. I don't know all the songs, so some sections were wasted on me, but I learned a lot about an interesting person and their easy life of wild success. Something I'll remember is that despite my impression of ease, he struggled internally. Good to remember.

• November 26, 2024 -Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories by Various Authors

Fourteen really great ghost stories.

Mr. Dahl claims to have read 750 to pick these 14. 

He did a good job.

Not a stinker in the bunch.

• December 8, 2024 -Will the Circle Be Unbroken by Studs Terkel

I'll start with a little honesty, and say that I love the writing of Studs Terkel.  He interviews people and writes down what they say.  He never says a lot with his own words, but he paints with the words of others a picture he wants us to see. Each book has a theme, and this one is death.  There are a lot of interviews in the book, from paramedics to surgeons to people who have died and come back. The interrogation of our beliefs around death is so fascinating. I'm learning what my own beliefs are simply from reading the beliefs of others and asking myself...Do I agree? 

Studs was in his 80's when this was written and he'd recently lost his wife, you can feel in the book the searching. Very moving.

• December 11, 2024 -Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

I'd heard of this book many times in my life.  Almost always as the butt of some joke about how stupid and backwards an idea it would be to pretend to be a black person in the south when you are actually white.
It sounds offensive, and simplistic to the point of infantility.

Then I read the book and now I feel like the jerk.

How can it be that it was only 60 years ago that people of color were treated so badly, and I know there is still so much trouble today, but...I don't know.

People trying to get to our Country today are probably in close to the same situation. I'm glad I read this. I think we'd all be better people if we read and discuss this with honesty.

Maybe that's where we need to go with this book - bring it back out into the light and disect it as a community. How are we doing?

• December 16, 2024 -A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles

This book is a sort of Diary of Anne Franke, except instead of a young girl, he is a wealthy middle aged man. Instead of Germany under Hitler, he is in Russia under the Bolshevik revolution.  Instead of a working class person of little means, he is royalty with money hidden everywhere.  Instead of a paucity of friends, or friends with power, he finds himself surrounded by friendly movie stars, KGB operatives, and the best food and wine in the world. They're both in an attic. He busted through some walls and had many rooms. He was free to roam the hotel at any time day or night.

Yes there was dread of the power of the government, but not the same visceral threat. He was able to live fully, love fully and at the end escape any tragedy at all, really.

I'm ripping this book to shit, but I loved reading it.  It was fun. It was easy and engaging.  There's a part in it where he explains the thing about russian literature that has been a real challenge for me...the idea that one character can have 4 correct names depending upon the speaker and the situation.  I'd read more from this author.

• December 18, 2024 -The Triumph Of An Idea by Ralph H. Graves

In 1934 a Henry Ford superfan wrote a book about the man. This is that book.  The book explains the amazing and exclusively positive impacts this man had upon his world.  From his early days in the 1890's through to the books printing between WWI and WWII.

I did not know that Henry Ford raced cars (mostly just to sell them), he built airplanes, he took over control of almost all aspects of car building, from the rubber tree forests for the tires to the soybean fields for the proto-plastic. I didn't know about his museum or his school. In WWI he commissioned a Peace-boat to stop fighting. He hired spies to track his employees. 

Were I to only know of this man through this book I might be inclined to think of him rather majestically, as we do with folks like Thomas Edison, who Ford worked under for many many years.

For me the takeaway from the book is, we were solving our materials problems with farms before plastic factories, and that people can achieve amazing things, even while being assholes.

The book never mentions Ford's hatred of the Jewish people, or his newspapers and books he self-published and distributed throughout the world explaining that the primary problem of the world were the jews. The fucker was evil. Hitler loved him.

• December 30, 2024 -I Want To Be Like Stalin  Translated by George S. Counts and Nucia P. Lodge

In 1947, these two translators pull out sections of sanctioned Russian educational documents so that Americans can know what they are up to.  Recall that Russia and the US were buddies at this point - at least we were working together against Germany and Japan in WWII.  The Russians overthrew their King/Queen style gov't and replaced it with communism.  We hate communism, if there was anything I was taught as a boy in NY in the 1980's is that communism is pure evil.

Reading about their philosophy, it doesn't seem evil at all.  It seems methodical, and it certainly creates too much love and trust in a central government, but otherwise - damn if communism worked, that shit would be rad.

They are very clear that you can't hate people because of race or class or even ability - You can't hate any other Russian, you are comrades, and if they are fucking up it's your job to help them do better.

Now, the enemy, he is not human, so their required humanism doesn't extend to these others (us). The best thing you can do for Russia and your fellow man is to become the best person you are able to be, to serve your neighbor and elders and party and army and to have a hatred of the enemy. This isn't blind hate, it is very reasoned - they want to take away our communism, they want to separate us and not allow us to help one another.

Communism has the most obvious flaw that there are powerful rulers that are not even with the rest...but if that were the worst flaw, it would still be about where we are in the USA today.  The President is above the law, we are reminded regularly, as are his billionaire friends.

This isn't an advocacy for Communism, Fuck Stalin, but...you know fuck Hitler too, and Fuck DJT.

GREENFIELD – 

Newell is a multinational corporation that owns, among other things, the Sharpie brand, the Rubbermaid brand, and Yankee Candle brand. A local paper announced recently that 350 jobs would be leaving the area as Newell consolidates businesses and seeks efficiencies in operations. This story is so far from unique that it wouldn’t be worth noting, except that I think I have a bit of a unique perspective on the subject by having worked six years at Yankee Candle, by having helped design the facility they are closing, by having been both loved and mistreated egregiously by the company, and by having an audacious plan to get just a tiny bit of retribution or remuneration. Around the year 1997, I was 18 years old with a wife and baby son. I was working at a local vegetarian food factory doing manual labor, packaging and light warehousing. I saw an advertisement in the Greenfield Recorder for warehouse workers at Yankee Candle with a starting pay over $12 per hour. When I got that job I thought I was the luckiest person on earth. In 1997, this would be enough for rent and food and a car if I busted my butt. Prior to this my only daily transportation was a mountain bike. I started out on Christian Lane in Whately, loading boxes onto belts and into order-picking bays, and transitioned to driving a forklift shortly thereafter. I learned to drive a forklift by visiting an offsite warehouse with another young employee where Mike Kittredge stored some of his car collection, right along with excess candle merchandise. My first pallet move was over the hood of a black Porsche 911 Turbo. I met some of the most amazing people at Yankee, and am still very close friends with a guy who now lives in Sacramento. When I started working there, Mike K. was still the owner – he hadn’t yet sold it to the first of many subsequent owners. Things were good in the Mike K. years. There was free pizza for lunch every Wednesday. While the pizza came on Wednesdays, there were always leftovers on Thursdays, and often still on Fridays. This meant that my total lunch costs for the week usually worked out to about 80 cents, I would eat a pouch of Ramen noodles with microwaved water on Monday and Tuesday, and pizza for the remainder. Around 1999, Yankee began to build a new office headquarters and a new distribution center – both now closed or scheduled to close. The new D.C. would use the latest warehouse management software, so trainers were needed to teach the staff how to use these tools. Managers and Supervisors in the company selected some of their most capable floor workers to become Trainers. I made that list. After a successful transition, the company made my role permanent and I became a Warehouse Management Systems Specialist, which was a salary! No longer hourly, I’d have security to raise a family, with a second baby on the way. At the same time, things were changing for Yankee – Mike K. sold the whole shebang to a private-equity firm. The salary, I found out, was the lowest legal salary that could be offered without having to pay overtime and other hourly benefits. The minute I became a salaried employee, my relationship with the company changed. I was told to work all shifts, ensuring training was consistent throughout. I was told to stay as late as necessary to get certain jobs done. Our first inventory after the switch to the new WMS system was a huge debacle, and I was told “you do not go home until this is done,” I was on site 20 hours one day, and across three days was in the facility 50-plus hours. I was so sleep-deprived that I found myself one morning in the women’s bathroom, wondering what the machines on the wall were for, and why they weren’t there yesterday. I saved up vacation time, sick time, and whatever else I could so that I could be with my wife when my second son was born. I had three weeks accrued. The day he was born – five weeks premature, moved to Baystate’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit – I got a call from work. There is a problem, you need to come in. I told them I have time, I have a sick baby, a distraught wife. They said be here or you no longer have a job. I worked 12-hour days at Yankee, and from there went daily to Springfield to spend the night with the baby, stopping at the company gym to shower. I was tasked once with finding out why our shipping costs were wrong with a certain carrier. I worked with another leader, a very smart woman, and we figured out the issue was double-billing in the software we were using. We alerted the company, which in turn got a rebate check from that carrier for over $750,000. I was thanked with a $100 YCC gift card. I owe a tremendous debt to this company. Yankee put me on an airplane for the first time in my life – I went to visit distribution centers in Salt Lake City, Utah, and call centers in North Carolina. They paid me well. They taught me a ton. People were kind most of the time. In or around 2002, the changes that private equity had put into place were making life at Yankee pretty bad. Pizza was still free, but only once a month. The pool tables were removed from the breakroom, and the summer picnics no longer had vacation prizes, lobster, and steak on the grill. Those were the superficial niceties that disappeared, but the real trouble was when the company decided to institute productivity quotas. If you’ve never worked in a factory or manufacturing facility, a quota is a set amount of work the average worker should be able to complete in a given workday. This seems reasonable enough, but as anyone who works for Amazon or C&S will tell you, management slowly turns the dial... higher and higher until the average worker fails and only the strongest, hardest working survive... until they also burn out and get replaced. Workers are not people under a quota system; they are tools that can be replaced when they fail. A forklift operator I’d worked with for many years at Yankee approached me at my cubicle one day, I now having a luxurious office job. He told me that while they were setting the quotas, it would be helpful if the workers knew the metrics being used, so that they knew where they had to perform best and where they were being judged less harshly. Inside that request was a moral quandary. Is my responsibility to the mega-corp that paid me, or to my co-worker who simply wanted to make each work day a bit more survivable? I chose to help him. I told him the internal metrics that would be used. Someone overheard us – again, it was cubicles, not some clandestine meeting at Wolfie’s – and ratted us out. I was pulled into HR, where I first lied, then knew I was caught. I called a high school friend who ran the “packaged applications” (IT) department of Ringling Brothers Circus, and he got me a job in DC. That was how I left Yankee. I reached out to some friends still there years later, and was told in no uncertain terms that there was in fact a “DO NOT HIRE” list and I was on it. I’m kind of proud of that fact now, but at the time being barred from employment with the biggest name in the county was a challenge. So, to wrap this all up... Newell just announced they are closing this Distribution Center. Last year they closed that new corporate office building. In related news, Mike Kittredge’s son Mick has recently listed his father’s house in Leverett on the market for $23,000,000. It has a bowling alley, movie theater, lazy river, classic car garage, tennis courts... Mike worked hard to earn those things. He was smart. He was kind. He was savvy. Mike deserved this, all of it. I don’t know Mick, I’ve met him three or four times... shared lunch with him and a friend twice... argued with him about the stupid Dunkin’ in Bernardston. He might be as great as his Dad, I don’t know. But he didn’t start a business in his mom’s basement. He didn’t bust his ass to become a billionaire with a 270-foot yacht. He was just lucky enough to be born. I think the best way to honor Mike Kittredge’s true legacy would be to open that mansion as a public park and use some of his riches to pay to keep it clean, open, and free. Mike was a rockstar, both figuratively and literally. (The house has a full stage!) At the very least, and I mean really the very least... Open a weekend invitation to former Yankee Candle employees to visit the house, or the yacht. Let them drive one of the cars, drink one of the $500 wines. Why not? 

Chris Joseph lives in Greenfield. 

It was a cold night. I will not describe it further. It was cold.

TV said the space show would start after 10 pm

As I watched the first streak by

I began to wish one would 

The More You Know

straight at my face

what a warm and wonderfilled

way to die.

Have an honest talk with your school age children.

Are they really learning right now in their virtual classroom? I’d wager the answer for the overwhelming majority is No.

Is that the fault of the student? No, they were never taught how to learn remotely. It takes completely different skills than learning in person. There are variables that just don’t exist in a school — internet connectivity, internet attention magnets, no eye contact, limited one-on-one help, volume controls, screen reading, brothers, sisters, just a world of differences that we can’t pretend don’t require new techniques to learn around.

Since March I haven’t seen a local, state or national plan to teach these skills.

Are the teachers to blame? No, they were hired to teach in a classroom. They went to school and practiced in a classroom; they were taught a pedagogy based on in-person teaching. This is akin to asking veterinarians to play doctor. They can, and often do play this role in an emergency, but they don’t become doctors forevermore after the event.

Since March I haven’t seen a local, state or national plan to teach these skills.

Our state and local school boards are telling us that this global emergency requires we enlist all the classroom teachers to automatically become online virtual education teachers. They are telling us that because it is unsafe for kids to be in classrooms in person that the only alternative is to “go online.”

Virtual education is useless for allowing parents to go to work.

Virtual education will fail our students if they and the teachers aren’t trained in its use.

Physical classroom education is stupid and deadly right now.

Maybe we need to think bigger, shut down all schools completely, and use that time to teach our students, teachers, faculty and family what it takes to succeed in a remotely connected world.

We need to stop pretending COVID will just go away, and we need to wake up to the new reality.

This half-assed approach to education isn’t helping teachers, students or parents.

I was born in America. I grew up a proud American. As I came to understand that we are a nation with a violent and sometimes cruel history, I learned to love America, warts and all. …

But then ...

Yesterday ...

I had to drive to a pharmacy in a storm and wait in a line in hopes of getting some leftover vaccine that might keep us alive a bit longer. I’m remembering the stories of people waiting in line to buy bread. I used to wonder … how could they let this happen?

I was third in line. The woman first in line had arrived 15 minutes earlier than me. She got the vaccine that day, I did not. Fifteen minutes. I thought to myself … what if I was a millionaire? I could walk up to this woman and offer her $10,000 cash for her spot and she would have taken it. Extrapolate just a tiny bit and you see … how was it that I could be in line instead of at work? How was it that I even knew to go check for leftovers, except that I have access to high-speed internet and a good running truck?

In the greatest country on earth, how is it that to get medical care I have to use the skills I learned to buy concert tickets online through TicketMaster?

This is not a COVID-19 problem.

This is an America problem.

I was born here and raised here and I know that there is evil and I know that there is good but this American In-between is getting to be too much.

I wrote before the last election about how I’d be voting for Biden because, while I held out little hope for our nation, I felt he was the best of the little hope we could have.

I saw a photograph this week of President Biden fist-bumping Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That was the man who personally had a U.S. resident journalist tortured and murdered in an embassy while trying to get a marriage license. This was recorded and audio is available to this day on the internet. I’m certain our sweet uncle Joe heard it before his visit.

How, after this, can we pretend … even a little that we are a moral country? What is our center, if not basic justice?

Our own president has shown us that, in our country, only money matters.  I knew this was true of the modern Republicans, but I somehow thought the Democratic party were different. I was born here and raised here and I know that there is evil and I know that there is good but this American In-between is getting to be too much.

Sometimes a simple question requires a complex answer, and sometimes folks will just say that so they can profit from keeping the solution hidden.

How do we solve Hunger in America?

Our current solution is to setup a network of food banks, layers and layers of non-profit organizations and scores of volunteers filling bags in church basements. Selling pies and magazines and begging for change. Put a box near the cash register. SNAP benefits…

Stop just a minute and ask yourself a few questions:

• Who has all the food? (Warehouses full)

• Who has the means to transport food? (Big Rigs and Refrigerated box trucks)

• Who is profiting from Hunger? (Wholesale Grocers)

• Who uses food banks and SNAP regularly? (Warehouse workers)

The solution is right there. If you want to make literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profits from moving food, well then, you also have to be the framework that feeds the hungry.

Sending pallets of food to a Food Pantry is exactly the same as sending to a Piggly Wiggly. The only difference is the profit margin.

In our area, the Wholesale Grocer isn’t some evil multi-national corporation – it’s America’s #8 Largest Privately Owned Business with $30 Billion (with a B) annual revenue.

Something to think about anyway.

I just finished reading the complaint against the Greenfield Police Department. I am sick.

Why hasn’t the Recorder made this obvious corruption the top of every page?

Why hasn’t the mayor resigned in shame? Why hasn’t her chief of staff?

They let this all happen, they knew! Where was the oversight?

If you haven’t read it — it is so much more than just passing over a guy for a promotion.

Getting a nurse fired and calling child services for revenge. Frightening an innocent man to the point of physical illness over dating a cop’s daughter.

Drunk-driving in cruisers, not to mention the fake promotions and uninvestigated accusations. 

The Greenfield Police clearly do not care about protecting or serving anyone other than themselves.

I am ashamed and sorry that this happened in my city.

Shame on you all.

I am petitioning the city of Greenfield MA to change the name of Eunace Williams Drive to Eunace Williams Drive.

As I'm sure you know, Eunace Williams Drive is home to the pumping station, a man-made waterfall dam, one house, and the Eunace Williams Covered Bridge.  The only covered bridge in Greenfield.

The covered bridge and the road were named after a woman, Eunace Williams, who was killed during a forced march in 1704, led by French soldiers and mostly Mohawk and Abenaki Indians.
There is a monument on the site, written by her husband about the blood thirsty savage who slew her with one swing of the hatchet.

While it is tragic that a woman was murdered, we don't traditionally name streets after tragedies.

While it is true she was slain with a single stroke (at least that's what the people who witnessed it reported (not including her husband who was waiting for them at the top of the hill)), this was not malicious or blood thirsty action; rather this was a professional team of soldiers moving a large group of people to Canada quickly, so that they could be used as hostages (to free a Pirate (not joking)) by the French in their active war with England being fought in the colonies, specifically the Massachusetts bay colony (Queen Anne's War).  Eunace had just given birth 6 weeks earlier and witnessed the baby being killed back at their home in Deerfield, along with one of their two slaves (did I mention they kept slaves in Deerfield in the 1700's)...the witnesses say she wasn't keeping up.

These Indians and soldiers were tasked with getting as many people over to Quebec as they could as quickly as possible...a slow grieving woman probably wasn't worth the lost time to them, and they made a cruel decision.

So -

Instead of naming the place for a tragedy compounded by generations of hate against native peoples for their savagery, perhaps we should name if for someone from a similar era who maybe provides a better, more honorable, and more realistic view of the people and the time we venerate. In this we could use Eunace Williams, daughter of Eunace Sr., and "unredeemed captive".

The younger Eunace was 7 years old on the day her family was taken on that march.  She was never delivered to the French to barter with, instead she was given as a sort of reward to one of the Mohawk families that participated in the raid.  Eunace was raised by this family - now please don't be confused and think because she was raised by Indians that she was somehow more wild or rugged or backwards than any of the Europeans living in the colonies at this time - in fact she went to church very regularly and was raised in a Catholic Mission Fort.

Her dad was not nearly as upset that she was with savages, as he was that she believed in the Pope. He tried the remainder of his life to Redeem her and return her to her puritanical salvation, but remember how Puritans treated women? Yeah, she passed on the offers - married and had two kids and lots of grandchildren, and she died at 89 years old.

The younger Eunace was stolen from her family, which is a tragedy in itself, but she was redeemed by a family that loved her and gave her choices and opportunities she never would have had as a daughter in puritan Deerfield in the 1700s. Daughter Eunace's story has more meaning, more reality and more hope than Mother Eunace's story and it is the one I think we should be celebrating on beautiful fall days as we drive past the monument to murder and confused hate across a bucolic new England landscape.

And, best of all - nobody needs to update their address with the Post Office!