Chad Comello

  • 13 In ’13: A Pop Culture Omnilist

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    Standard operating procedure for making year-end culture lists says to rank your ten favorite films/albums/books, but I’ve recently soured against this convention. Choosing a pre-determined number of “the best” among many great works, as all award shows do, is great entertainment but entirely arbitrary. So this time around, I decided to institute my own arbitrary yet entertaining convention of naming the best 13 films, albums, and books from 2013 I encountered last year.

    This omnilist honors the fact that consuming art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I don’t wait to watch a movie until I finish reading a book, or until I’ve listened all the way through an album. These things happen concurrently, swirling around my head and heart together like cultural stew. With that in mind, I heard, saw, and read a lot in 2013, but these are the ingredients (divided by form and alphabetized) that came together the best in 2013.

    Books

    An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
    I followed Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut and ISS commander, on Twitter during his mission last year. In addition to the beautiful ISS-view photos of cities he’d frequently post, Hadfield made several short videos documenting how quotidian tasks like cutting fingernails and using the toilet are accomplished in zero gravity. Likewise, his memoir brought his life as a pilot and astronaut down to earth, describing the lessons on leadership, work, and sacrifices he’s learned both on this earth and outside of it. Entertaining, informative, and very insightful, this book shows that Neil DeGrasse Tyson isn’t the only Space Publicist out there.

    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher
    I heard about this book after I started reading Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative. At times memoir, biography, history, and cultural commentary, Little Way documents Dreher’s struggle to come to peace with the small Louisiana hometown he fled, and his saintly sister Ruthie, a schoolteacher who happily stayed put. When Ruthie gets terminal cancer, Dreher sees how the town he couldn’t wait to leave rally around his sister and her family, leading him on his own emotionally-fraught journey home. Dreher writes honestly, lovingly, and critically of his sister while pondering the true meaning of home.

    The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
    This was the first book I read in my nine-novel November marathon, and it ended up being one of my favorites. It also initiated me into the Gaiman oeuvre, something I’m keen on exploring more after reading this novel. The prose’s lean style allowed the fantastical elements of the story to interplay nicely with the more grounded parts, like the boy’s interactions with his father and the new woman in his life. I often forget how life could seem more terrifying as a child, but I forget just as often that we undervalue the strength that kids have to overcome that terror.

    Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
    I found this very much of a feather with N.D. Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, another whirlwind theology book I read this year. While I also enjoy the earnest, intellectual theological writings of C.S. Lewis and the like, books like this one breathe much-needed fresh air into the faith-based discourse that can often come off as stuffy and anticultural. This is a book of and for the heart. Spufford isn’t asking if we can believe the reality of God; he’s asking if we can feel it. The Message translation of the Bible set out to rewrite the scriptures in contemporary language to keep its message “current and fresh and understandable,” but I think Unapologetic does this far better.

    Film

    Honorable mention films here.

    12 Years A Slave
    It’s hard to avoid the trap of talking about a film like this in award-season terms, judging its quality and worth by its viability as an award contender. This film is and will be an award-winner, but that descriptor in itself doesn’t say much about the tense, focused interpretation of Solomon Northup by Chiwetel Ejiofor, or Michael Fassbender’s typically immersive and impressive performance as a strident slaveowner. Two decades before the Civil War, Northup fought against the dehumanizing institution of slavery as an unwilling combatant, a Northern free man in a Southern slave’s shoes. If Abraham Lincoln became the biggest political lever of the Civil War, then Northup was the fulcrum. This film duly honors the pressure and pain Northup endured serving as the metaphorical fulcrum of the struggle against slavery’s destructive regime.

    Before Midnight
    When I saw this with Jenny in Chicago this summer, we got to the showing a few minutes early and walked into the theater. The movie was already playing, which I found odd since I knew we were a bit early. But we sat down and watched what we soon figured out was the very last scene. Lightbulb: we were in the wrong screening room. We went to the correct room and watched it from the beginning, but I found this snafu altogether fitting: seeing the end of this film at the beginning echoed the start of the whole Before trilogy, which found Jesse trying to convince Celine, despite all the odds and circumstances, to take a chance on him. Kudos to Richard Linklater & Co for making this beautifully wrenching and wrenchingly beautiful series happen.

    Gravity
    Though another (very fine) 2013 film already has this title, Gravity could have just as easily been named The Spectacular Now. For all its fireworks and heart-pounding brinksmanship and wide-eyed views of Earth and outer space, Gravity never departs from the now, the relentlessly present moment Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s astronauts are experiencing. Director Alfonso Cuarón grabs hold of us right away and says, Better hold on… and we do, barely. But the spectacle of the ensuing ninety minutes, for me, wasn’t just a nonstop roller-coaster (which it pretty much was), but a series of beautiful images like the one at top: Bullock’s capsule, accompanied by flaming space debris, catapulting toward Earth like a chariot of fire.

    Her
    In a year full of thoughtful, challenging films, this one has inspired the most post-viewing contemplation. It’s a kind of Rorschach test for the digital age: when you see this story of a broken, unsocial man who is befriended by, then falls in love with, a highly intelligent and customized operating system, do you think it’s a dream or a nightmare? Does this futuristic fable portend the end of human interaction, or does it show technology’s restorative promise? That the similarities between Her‘s near-future setting and the present day are so many—the constant connection to mobile devices, the self-imposed social isolation—suggests that we don’t have to wait for the future to answer that question.

    Like Someone In Love
    I don’t watch horror films because I don’t want to be haunted. Little did I know that Abbas Kiarostami’s follow-up to Certified Copy would be as haunting as anything I’ve seen in a while. There’s nothing paranormal in this Tokyo drama, but rather a fraught, mysterious air that permeates the simple story of an elderly widower connecting with a prostitute in unexpected ways. Like This Is Martin Bonner (below), the restraint Kiaronstami shows tightens everything on screen like a vice. No shot or line of dialogue is wasted. (This was released in 2012 but not in the U.S. until 2013).

    Short Term 12
    If Her is for the brain, then Short Term 12 is for the heart. This portrait of the staff and patrons of a short-term foster care facility for at-risk teens focuses on Brie Larson’s Grace, but moves around the facility’s sphere, capturing connections between Grace and the kids, and between the kids themselves. When Grace’s own troubled past starts hijacking her attempts to guide the teens through their own crises, her tough shell starts to crack. In addition to having young actors who can actually act, this movie sympathizes with the risk opening up requires.

    This Is Martin Bonner
    “I’m inclined to believe that director Chad Hartigan is some kind of superman when it comes to restraint.” That was critic Jeffrey Overstreet (who has been a particularly passionate supporter of this film) on This Is Martin Bonner, which follows a pastor and a prisoner on their interweaving paths through life. Overstreet rightly praises the film’s restraint, which other faith-based films often lack. But the faith in This Is Martin Bonner isn’t didactic or caricatured; it’s real, which means it’s messy and imperfect but infused with love. This is currently available on Netflix, so see it while you can.

    TV

    House of Cards
    Like any good work of art, House of Cards rewards repeated viewings. Knowing the full trajectory of the first season allowed me, when rewatching it, to see all of Frank Underwood’s gears turning as his master plan progressed. It’s also a visual feast, taking the noir aesthetic from the David Fincher-directed pilot and propelling us further into the dark underworld of politics and power-wielding. Not sure if I have Valentine’s Day plans yet, but I hope season 2 will be part of them.

    Music

    Lucius EP by Lucius & Days Are Gone by Haim
    (I’m cheating here by listing two separate albums in one slot: my omnilist, my rules.) Wedding receptions are pretty much the only place I full-on dance. But when listening to Lucius and Haim, I can’t help myself. How can you not move and sing along to the Michael Jackson-flavored “Falling”? Or to Lucius’ “Turn It Around”? If women-powered dance rock groups is becoming a trend, consider this guy on the bandwagon.

    (image via)

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  • Get Open And Wait

    A poem

    Get open and wait—
    And suddenly the world becomes clear.
    Like a sunbeam across a prairie
    The atmosphere cracks and shouts a violent hello.
    A burning yellow rainbow—
    light itself enlightened.
    We seek illumination in our days;
    we crowd them still with noble desires
    of seeing the sunset once again.
    Just one more time.

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  • iLibrary: Resistance Is Futile

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    If a library doesn’t have books, does it cease to be a library? The coming of BiblioTech, a new Apple Store computer lab bookless library in San Antonio, the first in the nation, begs the question. It has also brought with it rhetorical musings on whether the future of libraries is already here, and whether the end of those pesky paper books is finally nigh.

    Disclaimer: I love technology (sometimes too much) and I’m a library school graduate hoping to work in a library/archive, so I’m far from being a fist-shaking, card-catalog-carrying luddite librarian. But I have grown healthily skeptical of new technologies that come with fantastical declarations of What It All Means. If we’ve learned anything from the very company that BiblioTech models itself after, it’s that the newest available product is the greatest creation in the history of the world — until the slightly-altered updated version comes in a few months. “New device desirable, old device undesirable.”

    So when Mary Graham, vice president of South Carolina’s Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, looks at BiblioTech and says, “I told our people that you need to take a look at this. This is the future. … If you’re going to be building new library facilities, this is what you need to be doing,” I can’t help but wonder whether the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and influential civic bodies like it around the country will be building the next truly revolutionary and innovative development in the library & information world, or the next Segway.

    What makes me so hesitant to hop on every wave supposedly headed to the bright, beautiful future — waves like the all-digital library or Google Glass or flying cars (there’s still time for that one, DeLorean) — is the air of inevitability usually attached to them. This is the future, so there’s no sense in resisting it. Given historical precedent I understand the reasoning for that argument, but that doesn’t make it any more justified.

    Michael Sacasas dubbed this inevitability-argument the Borg Complex, a way of thinking “exhibited by writers and pundits who explicitly assert or implicitly assume that resistance to technology is futile.” Some symptoms of the Borg Complex, according to Sacasas:

    • Makes grandiose, but unsupported claims for technology
    • Pays lip service to, but ultimately dismisses genuine concerns
    • Equates resistance or caution to reactionary nostalgia
    • Announces the bleak future for those who refuse to assimilate

    Nicholas Carr, one of my favorite tech writers, quotes Google chairman Eric Schmidt talking about the company’s Glass product: “Our goal is to make the world better. We’ll take the criticism along the way, but criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it.” Don’t even try to resist Glass or any new technology, Earthling, for resistance is foolish.

    Perhaps BiblioTech (and Google Glass for that matter) is the future. Perhaps physical books are indeed becoming glorified kindling. I highly doubt that, even setting aside my own predilection for them. But I don’t know the future. Our world is becoming more digitized, and libraries in the aggregate are reflecting that reality. Whether we become the wholly digital society BiblioTech is modeling (expecting?) remains to be seen. I’d love to check out the place in person one day, if only to back up my snap judgments with first-hand knowledge. Until then, I’ll be satisfied with libraries that are truly bibliotechy, achieving a healthy balance of physical and digital resources that honor the past, present, and future.

    (Image via BiblioTech)

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  • Seeing In Black And White

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    Rod Dreher recently wrote about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments about, essentially, how happy he believed Black Southerners were in the 1950s before the civil rights movement. To Dreher, Robertson’s comments demonstrate the power of narrative, of the stories we tell ourselves and how they affect how we see the “truth” of our own situations, even when we don’t see the whole truth:

    You can tell a lot about who has the power in a particular culture by what you are not allowed to talk about without drawing harsh censure. And in turn, the thoughts you are not allowed to have become internalized, such that you train yourself not to see things that violate those taboos. In the 1950s rural South, a white man was not allowed to speak out against the injustices inflicted on blacks; is it any wonder that he wouldn’t “see” them?

    This is a very insightful way at contextualizing Robertson’s ignorant and hurtful comments. Dreher spotlights Alan Ehrenhalt’s (excellent) book The Lost City to add further context to Robertson’s remarks, but I’m finding just as much relevant background and insight in my current read: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff.

    This amazing book takes an angle I’d never considered before when thinking about and studying the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s: that of the journalists, publishers, and other press figures who were instrumental in wrestling the civil rights struggle to the front page as the movement simmered after World War II to its boiling point in the ’60s.

    In newsreels and history books we’ve seen a great deal of the figures directly involved in the decades-long civil rights fight: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, the Little Rock Nine, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and many others. But what of the people behind the cameras, the ones braving the fire hoses of Birmingham and angry mobs in Greensboro right along with activists to capture the moment for print, radio, or the nascent television news?

    For a thesis statement of sorts, Roberts and Klibanoff go back to what they view as the foundational work from which all academic and journalistic interpretations of the postwar civil rights movement emerged: An American Dilemma, a comprehensive study of race in America underwritten by the Carnegie Foundation and spearheaded by Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist and sociologist.

    The study found the central problem to be an overwhelming ignorance among Whites (in the North and South alike) about the lives and living conditions of Black Americans. It was easy for Whites to ignore the discrimination Blacks faced every day because they didn’t see it. White newspapers completely ignored the Black community and the Black press along with it. Myrdal believed that to overcome “the opportunistic desire of the whites for ignorance,” the Black community needed one thing: publicity. “There is no doubt,” he wrote, “that a great majority of white people in America would be prepared to give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.”

    Facts, they say, are stubborn things. But so were the segregationists. And the thought of high-minded out-of-towners coming into the South to tell good Christian people what’s wrong with them and upend generations of tradition didn’t sit well with angry sheriffs and townspeople, who would have every judge and jury (all white, of course) on their side should they decide to teach someone a lesson, or worse.

    As a Mississippi attorney put it to Freedom Summer volunteers venturing into the South: “a dark highway at midnight was no place to lecture a Mississippi deputy sheriff with a second-grade education on the niceties of constitutional law.”

    Still, the whole point of the civil rights movement, and one that Martin Luther King understood deeply, was to shine a light into the dark places. To walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and bring reporters along for the walk. King knew, as did the other movement leaders in SNCC, CORE, and NAACP, what Myrdal knew: publicity meant power. The more White America would be exposed to the everyday injustices Black Americans faced, the more likely they would be to sympathize and inspire positive action.

    The Emmett Till trial was the catalyst. That gruesome murder and clear miscarriage of justice coupled with the earth-shattering Brown v. Board of Education decision to start the movement snowballing toward bus boycotts and Little Rock, through the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins and Ole Miss, each encounter seeming to attract more attention than the last.

    While the Freedom Riders and marchers were enduring fire hoses and batons and angry mobs, journalists were close by to report on it. They understood as much as their subjects the power of the pen and camera, and had to wield that power in unexpected ways.

    Peter Kihss, a New York Times reporter who was reporting the Autherine Lucy saga at the University of Alabama, decided to abandon traditional journalistic remove and intervene when an elderly Black man became surrounded by an unruly mob. “If anybody wants to start something, let’s go,” he told the crowd. “I’m a reporter for The New York Times and I have gotten a wonderful impression of the University of Alabama. Now I’ll be glad to take on the whole student body, two at a time.”

    A similar situation involved John Chancellor, newspaperman turned NBC broadcaster, in the infancy of television news. Chancellor was gathering reactions in Mississippi after the Till trial when “a flying wedge of white toughs” descended on him and a Black woman he was interviewing:

    Chancellor squared off against them and held up the only object he could find to defend himself, an object whose power he had not, until that moment, truly fathomed. Thrusting his tiny microphone toward the men, Chancellor blurted out, “I don’t care what you’re going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it.”

    He later called his microphone “the technological equivalent of a crucifix.” The microphone and the newspaper and the camera collectively became a tool and a weapon. They performed the basic service of documenting reality, ugly and unvarnished as it was, while also fighting back against the South’s deeply entrenched culture of silence and racial hegemony.

    Their power seemed to coalesce in the fall of 1963 when they broadcasted Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and then the news of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four Black children. Having the nation witness events like those up close, according to Jack Gould of the New York Times, was a major hurdle overcome for the Negro race as a whole, because until then its biggest challenge had been “communicating and dramatizing” its struggle: “Not to the integrationists, not to the unyieldingly prejudiced, but to the indifferent white millions for whom integration or segregation was of scant personal concern.”

    In other words, to the Phil Robertsons of the day. The story White Southerners like him had been telling themselves (and anyone else who had dared to disrupt the narrative) about race and their culture disagreed with the reality of being Black in America. It took over a decade of protests and violence and struggle and political hand-wringing, but finally, Myrdal’s prescription for publicity was working. It wasn’t a panacea, but it was progress.

    However, when hit with the reality of someone else’s story, some, like Gov. George Wallace, ignored the cognitive dissonance and dug in their heels. While Phil Robertson is no George Wallace, their shared inability to see beyond the stories they told themselves left them blind to what the cameras were showing in bright lights.

    It’s easy to judge from afar in situations like this without thinking about the blind spots we’ve self-imposed today. Racism isn’t over, nor discrimination writ large. The press is different today, as is its power. We’re not so enthralled by television or newspaper editorials anymore. Publicity itself seems an inadequate solution for dealing with the problems we face today when all people do in our selfie-obsessed world is publicize. Simply getting a hashtag trending on Twitter won’t solve homelessness or end abortion.

    In that way, our problem is the same as that of generations before us: we need the courage to hear new stories, to not wait for tragedy to spur us to action, and to follow the Atticus Finch model of walking (or marching?) a mile in someone else’s shoes.

    The Race Beat goes into great detail about the individuals and institutions involved in this decade-long story. Courage, cowardice, and great copy abound on every side of the tales told that, all together, paint a lush picture of how the movement and its press worked together to change the country forever.

    (photo via NYT)

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  • The Cold Is A Sharpener

    A poem

    The cold is a sharpener. A whetstone on the world.

    It makes the sky stronger, like marble, more vivid in its crepuscular color.

    It makes the air thicker: the crunch of my boots on the sidewalk’s new coat of snow slices through it, so clean and clear.

    It makes my body taut, every breath in and out a miracle of muscle and will. Even the golden porch-light is bolder in the cold.

    It makes my mind work harder: with every blink I fight its paralyzing touch on my thoughts. Every thought is a thought of cold.

    The cold makes us sharper. And that’s just the way I like it.

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  • What Is This Feeling?

    I made a goal to see more theater (musicals especially) and this year I’ve succeeded. The Book of Mormon, then Once, and now Wicked, which I saw on Thursday. I loved the music of Once in its own right, but it’s different from the others, which are more traditional showtunes. That said, there is something I love about showtunes I can’t easily describe. It’s almost entirely about the music itself, not the show’s plot or characters. I consider the people who write them to be craftsman of the highest order.

    Consider “What Is This Feeling?” from Wicked (above). The first go of the chorus (which starts at 1:12 in the video) is a sparse iteration that builds to the second chorus, which adds the undulating strings beneath the backing band that’s punctuating the singers’ lines. The final two choruses are even bigger and better with the ensemble chiming in and the leads cranking up the melody. The chord structure of the orchestral undertow isn’t anything elaborate, nor are the sung melodies and harmonies; but when combined, it’s like beautiful musical alchemy.

    That’s just one example of the many songs created for both the stage and screen that tap into the deep power of music. While I’m sure entire books and dissertations have been written on how music affects emotion, for me it’s not academic. I don’t know why the chorus of Anathallo’s “All the First Pages” gives me goosebumps. Or how the heroic strains of Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” makes my heart soar. They just do. And the people who make that music get a standing ovation from me.

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  • An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

    Chris Hadfield couldn’t just be a fighter pilot, engineer, astronaut, photographer, musician, or the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station: he just had to be a damn good writer too.

    At one point in his superb memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Hadfield describes what it’s like to exit the ISS into the vacuum of space for the first time:

    What’s coming out of my mouth is a single word: Wow. Only, elongated: Wwwooooowww. … It’s like being engrossed in cleaning a pane of glass, then you look over your shoulder and realize you’re hanging off the side of the Empire State Building, Manhattan sprawled vividly beneath and around you. … It’s overpowering, visually, and no other senses warn you that you’re about to be attacked by raw beauty.

    There was something similarly surreal and dreamlike about the sight in front of me now, which I couldn’t reconcile with my prosaic fumbling with the tether hook a moment before. Holding onto the side of a spaceship that’s moving around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, I could truly see the astonishing beauty of our planet, the infinite textures and colors. On the other side of me, the black velvet bucket of space, brimming with stars. It’s vast and overwhelming, this visual immersion, and I could drink it in forever.

    In addition to telling the story of his life’s journey to the ISS, Hadfield dispenses great life advice he’s learned over the years and dishes on the culture of NASA. Contrary to the view we have of astronauts as swashbuckling daredevils, Hadfield is humble and forthright about his failings. He’s also candid about the sacrifices he and his family has had to make for him to pursue his dream. Reading this along with Mary Roach’s Packing For Mars provides great insight into the weirdness and wonder of space travel, and the men and women who are just crazy enough to do it.

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  • Ötzi: A Life

    Radiolab has produced another winner in their “An Ice-Cold Case” episode, an illuminating portrait of Ötzi, a 5000-year-old natural mummy discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. The details scientists have been able to ascertain about this mountain man are astounding.

    Radiolab, as usual, brings the story alive, telling what we know of Ötzi’s life and death, down to the meal he had before he died. I find it fascinating to imagine the life this mysterious “Iceman” lived before he died alone on a mountain and was mummified by the ebb and flow of ice and snow over millennia. That he didn’t decay like every other carcass, and instead lives among us now as an avatar for a primordial age, is a peculiar miracle that I’m glad to have heard from Radiolab — a crew that seems to delight in the many peculiar miracles around us.

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  • A Novel Ninevember

    Fiction usually isn’t my thing, but I want to get better at it. So I’m reading nine novels in November’s thirty days and writing about them here. I’ll update this post as I go along. Some spoilers, natch. Update: Just made it through the ninth book, with only hours to spare. I’m very glad to have deepened my exposure to and enjoyment of fiction in its many faces, but just a little bit gladder to be able to read nonfiction again. Thanks for joining me on this fictional escapade. 

    Book 9 of 9: Fortunately, The Milk, Neil Gaiman

    Reason number one I read yet another juvenile book: it was short and I was on a (self-enforced) deadline. Reason number two: ending my fictional month with the same author I started it seemed fitting. What a delightfully madcap yarn this one is. Beautifully illustrated too. I greatly appreciate in artists, specifically writers and filmmakers, the ability to tell different kinds of stories in different genres yet still retain their style throughout. That Gaiman can publish something as composed and heart-full as The Ocean at the End of the Lane (see Book 1 below) in the same year as something so zany as Fortunately, the Milk is a great testament to his durability and literary prowess. (Thanks to Jenny for loaning me the book.)

    Book 8 of 9: The Giver, Lois Lowry

    Continuing my accidental quest to read books most kids read in middle or high school, I was eager to pick this one up because I knew so little about it — the elderly bearded man on the cover being my only clue. (Bunny trail: I knew this was an unorthodox book choice for a twenty-something dude like me when a woman on the train asked me out of the blue why I was reading it. Turns out she was an eighth grade teacher who taught the book regularly to her students, so we got to talking about our love of dystopian stories and other great YA literature.) I was delighted to find in The Giver an excellent coming-of-age story sitting atop an undercurrent of dystopia and, as the book would call it, “stirrings.” While I’m not surprised it has been so frequently challenged in schools and libraries due to certain scenes, I’m glad adolescents are exposed to it because it meets them where they are in life. Like Jonas, tweens and teens approach junctions in their lives thinking they know everything, only to be challenged, sometimes painfully, when the curtain falls and real life reveals itself.

    Book 7 of 9: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

    I’ve been searching, so far in vain, for a book or movie that accurately captures my high school experience. This isn’t it, but it’s closer than most other depictions I’ve seen. Where it diverges most distinctly is the protagonist; I don’t subscribe at all to the “real men don’t cry” machismo thing, but Charlie cries so much in this story, often for no discernible reason, that I started losing some sympathy for him. Pull it together! I often thought. The epistolary style was the right narrative choice, because it was refreshingly different, and the stream-of-consciousness diary-like model is an expository format that most teenagers can relate to.

    Book 6 of 9: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

    A decade later, I’m still getting around to reading books I didn’t get a chance to read in high school. I’m a much bigger fan of Nineteen Eighty-Four (which I did read back then) than this one, but its focus on books and literacy is especially relevant to me after having gone to library school. The central theme seems at once antiquated and prescient, given that it was written in 1953 in response to the rise of television and McCarthy-era threats of censorship but also rings true with today’s book burnings and the dumbification of news. While the amount of and access to knowledge has never been greater thanks to the Internet, we’re losing something important in the increasing obsolescence of physical books. Books in reality aren’t being cast off out of fear, but disinterest. It’s fitting that the group of vagabonds at the end of the novel became books themselves, stand-in vessels for the knowledge being willfully destroyed. We ought to preserve as much knowledge as we can of whatever we can in whatever ways possible — through oral tradition, manuscript, digitization, or other means — and not take for granted the privilege of such knowledge. To do otherwise is folly.

    Book 5 of 9: Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

    This was like a fantasy thriller disguised as a high-school YA novel. Like the protagonist, I kept trying to figure out who, or what, Stargirl was, what she would do next, and why. Whether she had a grand life plan I can’t say, but what I did figure out pretty quickly was that she was a textbook example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, a proto-Zooey Deschanel for the adolescent crowd. The ukulele and friendship with a rat were especially in keeping with the MPDG’s propensity for quirk and kindness. While a little MPDG-ness goes a long way, the moral of Stargirl’s changing favors within her peer group is a good one for teens to hear: It’s hard to see it in the moment, but you’ll regret not being yourself. (Thanks to Jenny for the recommendation.)

    Book 4 of 9: Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

    I get a special thrill when a book I’m reading has a word in it that’s also on my cool-word list. (This time it was crepuscular.) While this book, perhaps purposely, meandered a bit, I found the diary narrative to be pleasant and redemptive. Ames was almost too likeable and saintly, and very self-aware. But perhaps the end-of-life letters he was writing to his son brought that out in him.

    Book 3 of 9: The Alchemist, Paul Coelho

    It felt like my opinion of this book changed every few pages. Just when its hippyish mysticism became too Oprah to be taken seriously, Coelho dropped a surprisingly deep thought nugget that kept me reading. For example, amid talk of “listening to your heart” and discovering the Soul of the World (eye roll), the titular character tells the boy on the quest that “the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” A bit trite, yes, but it rings true. The central fable, though anchored by a few strong key points, seems overly simplistic and eager to fit into any and every spiritual worldview. Perhaps this is an effect of the language translation from the original Portuguese, in which no doubt the story would be more beautiful. (Thanks to Nainita for the recommendation.)

    Book 2 of 9: Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

    Read this as a youngster but didn’t remember it, so in anticipation of the movie I thought I’d revisit it. The boy in me enjoyed the zero-gravity battleroom scenes, which seem like high-tech laser tag. The biggest hurdle to clear for me was how well-spoken the kids were. I suppose that since it’s set in the future, Card made the choice to make kids sound more adult (though I thought kids are getting dumber thanks to the Internet, or “nets” as Ender’s Game calls it), but it’s jarring nevertheless. I never really grokked Ender himself, but I cheered for his struggle against The Man and was happy with how things ended.

    Book 1 of 9: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

    My entrance, beside seeing Coraline, into the Gaiman oeuvre. Since I’ve nothing to compare it to, I can only say that I really enjoyed this book’s lean, loving style and deep sense of wonder. A favorite passage:

    “Do you still know everything, all the time?”
    She shook her head. She didn’t smile. She said, “Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you’re going to muck about here.”
    “So you used to know everything?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Everybody did. I told you. It’s nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play.”
    “To play what?”
    “This,” she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars.

    The pièce de résistance was the view I had when I finished reading:

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  • Ru-thi-oooo!

    My great friends Tone and Brian adopted a baby this weekend. Tone wrote about the process here, detailing the long, sometimes painful but ultimately fruitful journey they took from first beginning the process last year to finally holding their first baby, Ruth Marilyn, in their arms last Friday.

    When I first saw the name they decided on, I immediately began thinking about an awesome nickname I could give her. Since they call me Chacho, a name-relic of the service trip we went on together to Colombia in 2010, I knew my fake-niece needed a nickname that would pair together with Chacho well — in case we’re in a sitcom together or become a crime-fighting duo. Naturally, I arrived at Ruthio (or Ruthia), in honor of Rufio from Hook. Though Ruth is only days old, I can already tell she’ll exemplify Rufio’s wild yet virtuous nature. The perfect mixture of badassery and femininity. That’s my kind of gal.

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  • Area Man Sad

    I could see it coming, but I read the news about The Onion ceasing all print publication with sadness.

    Growing up in Madison, the Onion‘s hometown, and now living in Chicago, its current headquarters, I’ve had easy access to the weekly editions. Lately my Onion diet has been exclusively online, so the print copy is hardly essential to the reading experience. But I’ve often grabbed a copy before hopping on the L or the bus, which allowed me to read through whole articles rather than simply skimming the headlines, and to enjoy the little bits you don’t get online.

    To go tangential: Like most younger folks these days, I get pretty much all my non-satirical news online. Really, the only time I pick up a newspaper is at my parents’ house, and that’s usually for the crossword. If I’m at the doctor’s office or the bookstore I’ll eagerly devour a print magazine, if only because I’m less liable to become distracted than if I were to read it online, just a tab away from another distracting Internet nugget (Internugget?).

    But besides books (no thanks, e-readers) and the occasional magazine, I’m a largely paperless information consumer. I’m OK with that, but that doesn’t mean I won’t miss carrying The Onion with me.

    I’ll have onion in my dinner tonight, in loving memory.

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  • Information In The Little Way

    Rod Dreher, in his new book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, writes about his sister Ruthie’s fight with lung cancer and about his complicated relationship with his family and small-town life in Louisiana. After her diagnosis, Ruthie told her doctors and loved ones not to tell her specifics about her condition, nor even how long she should expect to live. Dreher didn’t understand why:

    If I had cancer, I’d demand to know everything at once, on the theory that information is power. And then, me being me, I would surely brood over it incessantly. Ruthie, on the other hand, figured that information would be disempowering. She understood that she was in some respects living an illusion, but if she was going to live at all, she had to be able to curtain off the terror of death.

    Dreher later expands on how Ruthie’s way of dealing with information that collided with her worldview or pre-existing opinions was often handicapping to her and harmful to him, but this is an instance where it seems her ruthless resolve served her well.

    Like Dreher, I am someone who values information-gathering for a number of reasons: to expand my mind, to gain sympathy for the other side of an argument, to weigh all consequences of a decision or action. I’ve found this trait has served me well in a number of ways.

    But I also get stuck in my own head, and the constant theorizing and hand-wringing and countering my own inner arguments gets very tiresome. In a situation like Ruthie’s, throwing on more hard truths wouldn’t have helped: “All the extra information could only sap her will to resist. The truth — the whole truth, that is — would not set her free, but would make her captive to anxiety, and tempt her to despair.”

    Though I’m not battling cancer, I know that the more voices and information I add to my thought-stream, the more overwhelming it seems to get. (Maybe I’m the type of person Matthew 11:28-30 is talking to.) Sometimes I would love to be more like Ruthie Leming — sure of my life’s purpose, simple in my goals, and sacrificial above all. But I’m not. At least, not always. This has been Dreher’s discovery, documented in Little Way, and will continue to be part of mine. The book contemplates what made him eager to leave his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana, and decades later what brought him back. Ruthie’s way is central to this story, and it’s one that will stick with me for a long time.

    (Meanwhile, Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative has become essential reading.)

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  • The Glass Cockpit

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    Is the Internet making us smarter or stupider? It’s a question Q the Podcast recently tackled in a lively and in-depth debate between lots of smart and interesting people. There is enough evidence to support both sides of the debate. But what I concluded after listening to the show was that for all of the doomsday talk about the technologies and processes that have become embedded in our digitized culture within the last decade or so, how we use the Internet is ultimately not up to the Internet.

    No matter how incentivizing are the apps and social networks we frequent; nor addicting the silly games we enjoy; nor efficient the tools we use, there is still a human being making decisions in front of a screen. So while I certainly sympathize with those who profess addiction (willing or otherwise) to Tweeting or checking Facebook, I remind everyone using technology of any kind of Uncle Ben’s famous maxim: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

    We as autonomous, advanced-brain human beings have the power to do or not to do things. It’s a great power to have, but it also requires perseverance. The allure of instant gratification the usual Internet suspects provide won’t be defeated easily. It takes a willpower heretofore unknown to modern peoples. It takes resolve to fight temptation that is equal or greater than the temptation itself.

    Do you have what it takes? Do I? Eh, it’s day to day.

    But flipping this entire argument on its head is Nicholas Carr’s recent article in The Atlantic called “All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines,” which delves into the burgeoning world of automation. He writes about how we’ve become increasingly reliant on computers to perform more elaborate and complicated tasks that had previously been done by humans. The benefit of this is that we’re able to get tasks done quicker and more efficiently. The downside is that some human services are no longer required, which means the skills needed to perform those services are eroding.

    Carr uses the example of airplane pilots, who have been increasingly relegated to monitoring digital screens (the “glass cockpit”) as the computers do the heavy lifting and only sometimes take the plane’s reigns. While the usefulness of autopilot is obvious, when computers take away control of the primary functions of flying they are also taking away the neurological and physiological skills pilots have honed over years of flying.

    This is a problem, says Carr, because “knowing demands doing”:

    One of the most remarkable things about us is also one of the easiest to overlook: each time we collide with the real, we deepen our understanding of the world and become more fully a part of it. While we’re wrestling with a difficult task, we may be motivated by an anticipation of the ends of our labor, but it’s the work itself—the means—that makes us who we are.

    Computer automation, he says, disconnects the ends from the means and thereby makes getting what we want easier without having to do the work of knowing. This just about nails social media, doesn’t it? It’s so easy to get what we want these days that the work we used to have to do no longer is required of us. To research a paper in college, one had to go to the physical library and pull out a physical book and transcribe quotes by hand; now a quick Google search and copy-paste will get that done in a jiff (or is it GIF?).

    This isn’t a bad thing. I’m thankful that many tasks take eons less time than they used to. (I mean, typewriters are cool, but they’re not very amenable to formatting or mistakes.) My point is it’s important to understand how and why we use technology the way we do, and to acknowledge that we have agency over that use. To disregard that agency is to refuse to accept responsibility for our own power. And we know what happens then.

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  • 12 Years A Slave

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    I was having a bad day. And then I saw 12 Years A Slave and regained some perspective.

    Director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s incredible memoir was remarkable in its restraint. Though a strange thing to say about a film that has been lauded for depicting the horrors of slavery accurately and harrowingly, it’s not surprising given McQueen’s adeptness in showing versus telling, and capturing a moment’s deeper truth without resorting to platitudes or judgement.

    An example (with spoilers): years after being kidnapped and sold into slavery, Northup meets a white man who is serving as an indentured field hand on the same plantation. Downtrodden after years of humiliation and forced labor, Northup finally works up the courage to ask the white man whether he would be willing to send a letter for Northup without telling his plantation master. The man agrees but quickly betrays Northup, which almost gets him killed by his sadistic, mercurial master if not for Northup’s quick wit and evasion. Nonetheless, McQueen shows Northup burning the letter, focusing on his face as the light from the alit letter — his desperate grasp at liberation — slowly extinguishes, along with his dwindling hope.

    It’s a small moment, played beautifully by Chiwetel Ejiofor, that in other directorial hands could have been something lesser, like the protagonist shaking his fists at the sky or angrily monologuing. Instead, it was the perfect image of what slavery’s power did to beat down the slave’s hope and determination for freedom. Northup overcomes this oppression, but he was fortunate compared to his fellow slaves.

    The film is full of other subtly strong moments like this, driven by a cast of heavy-hitters. It also follows Northup’s memoir very well, though I hope viewers will be compelled to go back to the book to read the details of this story in Northup’s strong literary voice.

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  • Rhinelander, Russia

    Pushing through Command and Control, Eric Schlosser’s new book about America’s history with nuclear weapons. A fun tidbit: Strategic Air Command, the agency in charge of the Cold War bombers and missiles after World War II, used American towns for training their pilots:

    The town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, became one of SAC’s favorite targets, and it was secretly radar bombed hundreds of times, thanks to the snow-covered terrain resembling that of the Soviet Union.

    There’s a reason Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the upper Midwest were a Scandinavian haven. I guess they missed home.

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  • Flag Abuse

    Responding to the anti-shutdown right-wing protest in front of the White House on Sunday (which featured the Confederate flag and a rebel yell), Ta-Nehisi Coates gets at something that has long gnawed at me:

    If a patriot can stand in front of the White House brandishing the Confederate flag, then the word “patriot” has no meaning. The Nazi flag is offensive because it is a marker of centuries of bigotry elevated to industrialized murder. But the Confederate flag does not merely carry the stain of slavery, of “useful killing,” but the stain of attempting to end the Union itself. You cannot possibly wave that flag and honestly claim any sincere understanding of your country. It is not possible.

    I am a Yankee through and through, born and raised in the liberal hotbed of Madison, Wisconsin, and a denizen of Obama’s Chicagoland. I’m self-aware enough to acknowledge my lack of understanding for the Southern mindset in all things politics and culture. But for the love of Ulysses S. Grant, I refuse to give any credence whatsoever to the belief that wielding the flag of Dixie so loudly and proudly represents a mere appreciation of “heritage” and “freedom” and not what it actually represents: treason.

    Let’s not forget: Robert E. Lee and his Confederate military colleagues were traitors. Not grand heroes of a glorious rebellion against the forces of evil, as their past and present acolytes believe, but willing participants in a war against their own country. Lt. Col. Robert Bateman writes in Esquire that Lee, “as a traitor and betrayer of his solemn oath before God and the Constitution, was a much greater terrorist than Osama Bin Ladin… after all, Lee killed many more Americans than Bin Ladin, and almost destroyed the United States.”

    It’s staggering to see Robert E. Lee, hero of Dixie, compared to Osama bin Laden, chief executive terrorist and national bugbear. As a genteel general Lee wasn’t a terrorist, but on both points Bateman is nevertheless correct: Lee willingly betrayed his solemn oath and went on to kill thousands more Americans than bin Laden ever did.

    I think of Robert E. Lee because people today who wave the Confederate flag and tell the president to “put the Quran down” and “figuratively come out with his hands up” are him. They are him for inciting a destructive rebellion (Civil War, meet shutdown) that was 100% caused by their own party. They are him for scorching the earth to grandstand against laws they don’t like. They are not freedom fighters, nor righteous citizens. The Confederate flag stands not for freedom, but for the abuse of it. In their minds they are still Johnny Reb, fighting a battle that is long over yet insisting that his side won and remains the true keeper of the flame of freedom.

    The line between protest and rebellion is wide. Crossing that line requires a deliberate jump that most incidents of dissent don’t make (Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, I think, are included). Properly registering dissent in America is relatively easy. Elections are the clearest means of making one’s voice heard (although apparently these protestors don’t agree with that given their obduracy toward the legally enacted and upheld health-care act). When that doesn’t work, civil disobedience is next (see The Civil Rights movement). But once you make the leap from civil disobedience to contempt for the law, you’re dangerously close to the precipice into which our country fell once before.

    The Dixie flag-wavers don’t seem to understand this. They’re off in la-la land where the Confederacy was a great place with “honor” and “heritage” before those damn Yankees ruined everything.

    I’ve been to the South. The South has friends of mine. South, you’re no Confederacy. So why do you act like it?

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  • Silence Is Beholden

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    I was on a solo hike a few weeks ago on a beautiful northern Californian day in Shasta Trinity National Park. It was a weekday morning, so I had the place to myself. I followed the Waters Gulch trail for about a mile or two as I trekked the path toward Packers Bay. The river (pictured above) was low, exposing the golden sediment beneath the thick green trees. It wasn’t long into the trail when the bustling world outside the Park faded and the world hushed. Though I knew I was walking through a vibrant and wild ecosystem of life in many forms, I was awed by its absolute silence.

    Not a car. Not a plane droning above. Just my boots on the gravel. It was divine.

    I wanted to capture that moment to take with me back into civilization, but I knew that some moments are better left uncaptured, free to roam on in time for the next eager seeker in need of some bliss. But I think some ought to be documented, if only because places like that — where noise doesn’t intrude on the soothing symphony of nature — are an endangered species.

    And that’s why I suspect Gordon Hempton has the best job in the world. He’s an “acoustic ecologist” who records rare nature sounds and the few places on earth where silence still rules. He’s also the founder of One Square Inch of Silence, a research and advocacy project to protect the naturally silent habitats of the Olympic National Park in Washington.

    I learned about Hempton through On Being, a podcast hosted by Krista Tippett I recently started listening to. It’s a great interview series featuring makers and doers of many stripes. Some recent guests include a Zen master and poet, a mathematician, a physicist, a pastor, and an oceanographer. Each has their own area of expertise and interest, but what I like about the series so far is how each show, despite the varying subject matter, still lives within the same sphere held together by the centripetal forces of truth, discovery, beauty, and meaning.

    Tippett’s conversation with Hempton was so serene and poetic and enlivening. He defines silence not as merely the absence of sound but instead as “silence from all these sounds that have nothing to do with the natural acoustic system.” He sees the world as a “solar-powered jukebox” and links our modern world’s lack of silence to our inability to listen.

    I don’t need an excuse to seek out quiet. My introversion calls for a degree of separation from the world in order to recharge, and often that separation leads me to a quiet place, where I can only hear waves overtaking shoreline rocks, or rain falling on leaves. It’s so hard in an urban setting to escape the noisiness of the world, but it’s important to do so. Quiet, as Gordon Hempton says, is a “think tank of the soul.” We don’t have natural ear-lids for a reason.

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  • Electrick Children

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    And you’ll see the glitter of crashing cymbals
    and you’ll hear the thunder of rolling drums
    and the shimmer of trumpets.
    Ta-ta-ta!
    And you’ll feel something akin to the electric thrill
    that I once enjoyed.
    — “Seventy Six Trombones” from The Music Man

    How does God speak? Through nature, according to the book of Job. Through Jesus and a holy spirit, says the New Testament. But ask Rachel, a teenaged fundamentalist Mormon who believes she has experienced an immaculate conception in Rebecca Thomas’ 2012 film Electrick Children, and she would tell you God spoke to her through a song.

    On a rustic Utah compound, Rachel, dressed in plain Amish-type clothing, lives simply and dutifully within her Mormon sect’s rigid culture. On the day she undergoes “ecclesiastical interview” by her pious father that is documented on a tape recorder, the existence of which she only then learned. The device is intriguing and mysterious, but according to her pious father, “can be used for evil” and must be guarded only by those who can be trusted.

    But when Rachel can’t shake the allure of this (to her) new thing, she does what many teenagers do when confronted with the forbidden fruit: she breaks the rules. Picking out a cassette seemingly at random, she sneaks a listen of The Nerves’ 1976 song “Hanging On the Telephone” (covered by Flowers Forever) and is immediately transfixed. It’s like lightning through her body, an electric thrill that fills her with a spirit she hasn’t known before.

    Weeks later, her thoughts (via narration) are told as if recorded onto a tape. “A few weeks ago, I experienced a miracle. An angelic voice came unto me and when I heard it, I was troubled… The only voice I heard was from a song on a tape. Could it be that he did this to me? This wonderful blessing of heavenly light. The voice that sang those words, wonder and spirit: Don’t leave me haaaaaaaaaangin’ on the teeeeelephone. Is he the one who felled me with this Jesus baby?” Juxtaposed with a telling of the story of Mary’s virgin birth, Rachel’s symptoms of pregnancy allude to a possibility too confounding to believe.

    But it’s a possibility that her father does not believe, which leads Rachel to flee from an arranged shotgun wedding out into Las Vegas, the wilderness of civilization to her. “I travel beyond the walls of a home I cannot again call my home, in search of the father of my holy child — the man who sings on the cassette tape.” Static clogs her thoughts as she enters the unknown land. She’s on a quest and, though her zealous brother Will follows her in search of a confession of Rachel’s sins, she’s on her own.

    The theme of encounter continues along Rachel’s journey. She meets a ragamuffin skater rebel, Clyde, who must have experienced the same electric thrill in Rachel as she did in the tape, for he becomes her shepherd even though he himself is a lost sheep. Later on she even finds the source of the voice on the tape, in an encounter that adds new light to her search for the father.

    Spirit is alive in this story’s searchings. Rachel, Will, and Clyde all seek an encounter and a resolution to the dissonant tones clouding their minds. They are infused with an unnamable aura compelling them to act: Rachel, to find a (or is it The?) father; Will, to find atonement for (or escape from) sin; Clyde, to find reconciliation with his family and purpose for his connection with Rachel.

    Electrick Children tells this nuanced fable with visual snap and a serene flow. Thomas, who also wrote the script, demonstrates care for the characters and respect for the wide-eyed searching that Rachel undergoes. This is a film not about where a journey ends but about how and where it begins. And the how and the where for Rachel’s odyssey happen to be the same electric thrill of encounter with a simple cassette tape. From there her quest, and that of the other wandering souls, is merely a response to the voice’s exhortation: Don’t leave me haaaaaaaaaangin’ on the teeeeelephone…

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