Questionable Things

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Richard

Due to my exposure to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius at a formative age, I’ve always had a weakness for biographies of historical figures with a healthy amount of scandal. There is an admittedly voyeuristic pleasure at poking around the lives of others. Along with that goes a rather questionable, though undeniable, desire to judge the historical figure by your own standards: Are they guilty or innocent? Good or bad? Sympathetic or villainous?

Two biographies I recently read are great at taking this desire on the part of the reader and turning it on its head. Both introduce you to individuals who may have done “questionable things”. Instead of becoming an indictment or whitewash of their character, however, each author sketches a figure that is complex and hard to define. This ultimately frustrates the reader’s desire to judge, but leads to even more meaningful insights.

Vera Gran: the Accused by Agata Tuszynska.
We are first introduced to the subject of this biography, Vera Gran, as an elderly and paranoid woman who rarely leaves her small Paris apartment. The author must first interview her in the hallway since, according to Vera, spies are everywhere and the apartment is bugged. Eventually she is allowed inside the cramped and document filled space and Vera begins to tell her story.

And what a story it is. Vera Gran, the stage name she went by the most often, was a torch singer from Poland who established a career before the German occupation of her country during World War II. It is her activities during the war that, for better or worse, defined her life in her own and many others eyes. Vera and her family, being Jewish, were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto and in order to survive Vera, as well as many other Jewish entertainers, continued to perform.

Almost the entirety of the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto were murdered but Vera was one of the few to survive. The very act of survival, however, brought up questions after the war concerning complicity, culpability and possible collaboration. It is this struggle to defend her actions that becomes the focus of Vera’s life. Her relationship with Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist who also survived the Ghetto and whose life became an Oscar-winning film, eventually becomes the focus of this all-consuming need to clear her name.

Vera Gran: The Accused is a character study that delves into the ideas of guilt, survival and what it actually means to be an “honorable” person during horrific times. As a reader you start to question your own actions and begin to see society’s intense need to judge the past as inherently flawed.

The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel Harrington
Based on a personal journal from Renaissance Germany, this book is the story of Meister Franz Schmidt who was the executioner of Nuremberg from 1573 to 1618. As you can imagine, there are some pretty gruesome details involved in the telling of this story, execution by “the wheel” is not a pretty sight, but the author endeavors to fill out a full sketch of the man and his times and reserve judgment.

Franz Schmidt was actually born into a family of executioners, the odious profession was forced upon his father by an unscrupulous aristocrat, and he had few options to pursue other careers since the profession was considered unclean and inherited. In fact, his whole life’s goal was to ensure that his own family could somehow get out from under the social stigma and transition into a more respectable profession.

In addition to the personal drama of Schmidt’s life, the author paints a vivid portrait of his times describing how the executioner and the citizens of Nuremberg lived day-to-day. While death was all around, in the form of a high infant mortality rate and periodic deadly disease outbreaks, crime and punishment were considered issues of the utmost importance. In the end, the author finds more similarities than are comfortable to admit between our ideas and the attitudes of those who walked the streets of Meister Schmidt’s Nuremberg.

His final conclusion rings true as an assessment of the figures in both books:

Perhaps, in a cruel and capricious world, there is hope to be found in one man defying his fate, overcoming universal hostility, and simply persevering amid a series of personal tragedies.

Richard

Timothy Egan and Nancy Pearl at the Library!

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Leslie

I hope you know that you’re invited to a free public literary event with Timothy Egan and Nancy Pearl on Saturday, April 6^th at 7 PM at the Everett Performing Arts Center. This should be a great evening for lovers of both history and literature. Timothy Egan will read from his latest book, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, and then will be interviewed by legendary librarian Nancy Pearl, who is herself the author of Book Lust and its sequels and is a regular NPR commentator on books. There will be books and also wine available for purchase. Sounds perfect!

Timothy Egan writes for the New York Times and we are lucky to have him in our backyard and yes, I do consider Seattle to be Everett’s backyard. In addition to his journalism, he has written a slew of non-fiction books which are mostly set in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s a quick rundown.

Let’s go chronologically through Egan’s books and start with The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest. Atop Mount Rainier, Egan checked the map to see which glacier would best feed his grandfather’s ashes down into streams where the man loved to fish. A minor glacier called Winthrop looked best, and that’s where the ashes went. Egan’s research led to the writings of Theodore Winthrop who spent three months exploring Oregon and Washington in 1853. Egan retraced Winthrop’s route and we get fascinating comparisons between what the two men saw roughly 150 years apart. It is a great travel history of the Pacific Northwest and I highly recommend it as fascinating reading.

Breaking Blue is the true-crime story of a Sheriff who worked through 54 years of police cover-ups and solved the oldest open murder case in the country. It is the chilling story of the abuses of the Spokane police department during the Great Depression. Egan unravels the story in engrossing detail, illuminating a host of horrible acts committed by the cops in that city, including robbery, murder and extorting sex from Dust Bowl refugees.

Wild Seattle: A Celebration of the Natural Areas In and Around the City is a celebration of the wild lands, parks, preserves, and wildlife of the greater Seattle area and features more than 130 superb color images by renowned nature photographers. Egan wrote the engaging text for this beautiful coffee table book.

Lasso the Wind is a look at the eleven states “on the sunset side of the 100th meridian” that Egan regards as the true West. Fishing rod and notebook in hand, he travels by car and foot, horseback and raft, through a region struggling to find its future direction under both the weight of the “Old West” and the commercial threats of the present. He covers the story of what he calls the New West in essays that choose a localized story. The stories are often about a controversy or a change that is happening in the area. Skip around and read an essay or two as time allows and you’ll be rewarded with funny and incisive writing.

My first introduction to Egan’s writing came when I read the popular The Worst Hard Time which chronicles the hardships of those who endured the horrible dust storms of the Great Plains during the depression. Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region as they went from sod huts to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. Read this book to understand the devestation that these massive dust storms had on the high plains.

We actually listened to The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America while we were driving to Idaho, the site of the largest forest fire in America. It is an outstanding, highly readable history of the Great Fire of 1910 that burned 3.2 million acres in and around the Bitterroot National Forest in Idaho and Montana. Egan moves deftly between the immediacy of the fire and the experiences of people caught up in it, and the powerful business and political interests whose actions both contributed to, and were affected by, the disaster. In the end this book serves as a history not only of the biggest U.S. fire of the 20th century, but also as an examination of the national politics of the first dozen years of the century, and of the origins of the U.S. Forest Service.

And now we come to Egan’s most recent book, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. This biography of the famous photographer starts in Seattle and follows him through his obsessive quest to document all of the tribes of North America that were still intact. Curtis’ 20 volume The North American Indian was published between 1907 and 1930. We are all familiar with Curtis’ famous photographs. This book chronicles all of the sacrifices that Curtis made for his obsession. He was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave up his marriage, family and successful career in Seattle to pursue his great project. At once an incredible adventure and a fascinating biographical portrait, Egan’s book tells the remarkable untold story behind Curtis’ photographs, following him throughout Indian country from desert to rainforest as he struggled to document the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes.

Even with the backing of Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, it took tremendous effort (six years alone to convince the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony). The undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. He would die penniless and unknown in Hollywood just a few years after publishing the last of his twenty volumes. But the charming rogue with the grade-school education had fulfilled his promise—his great adventure succeeded in creating one of America’s most stunning cultural achievements. I downloaded this book from the library and listened to it while painting our basement over the course of a rainy week-end. I always think of Curtis when passing through the basement. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to hang a few (reproduced) Curtis photos there?

I hope to see you April 6^th when the Everett Public Library brings this accomplished author to town!

Leslie

Voices in Your Head

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Richard

Not to cast aspersions on your sanity, dear reader, but in all likelihood you often hear a voice in your head. I’m not talking about a sinister whisper suggesting unspeakable acts, like eating that jelly-filled donut or calling in sick to watch every cut of Blade Runner back-to-back. No, I’m thinking of the voice you hear when you read a book. The words are on the page, but you have to provide the inflection, tone and, occasionally, sound effects.

When you listen to an audiobook, however, all of that narration is provided for you. And therein lies the rub. No matter how good a book is, if you can’t stand the narrator’s voice or presentation, the experience is not going to be a pleasant one. In order to avoid bad narrators, one of the rules I’ve learned is to always be wary of audiobooks that are read by the author. Good writing doesn’t always translate into good narration alas.

There is one case, though, when you absolutely want the writer to be the narrator: comedic books. To prove my point here are a few titles where it is essential that the author reads his or her work. In fact, even if you have read the book already, you might want to check out the audio version for an enhanced “reading” experience.

America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert
This irony drenched reaffirmation, or is that affirmation, of all things America is best heard rather than read. The material is tailor-made for the author and he deftly delivers. If you were to read the book you would just insert the star of the Colbert Report’s voice anyway so why not give it a listen? Enjoy all the truthiness.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
While this book is technically a memoir, it reads, or listens as the case may be, like a series of comic vignettes from Fey’s life. Her delivery while telling these stories is spot on and her many impersonations are all here including, of course, Sarah Palin. Also included are plenty of anecdotes from her Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock days for TV fans and those just wanting to know what working with Alec Baldwin is like.

I Drink for a Reason by David Cross
First of all, great title. Secondly this is a great series of riffs on a myriad of topics that enter David Cross’ wonderfully deviant brain starting with his observations on seeing the bumper sticker “Don’t Abandon Your Baby.” Cross proves the point of this blog piece by having another narrator attempt to start reading the book and failing miserably. Clearly you need Cross’ narration to get the full impact of the material, though I must admit it was hard not to imagine Tobias Fünke while listening.

When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
I just chose one representative title, maybe because of the gruesome cover art, but any of Sedaris’ audiobooks are excellent. Don’t get me wrong, he is a great writer, but once you have heard him read his material you will demand to listen to his books from then on. Luckily we have a great selection of his work on audio from which to choose, so you can get your fix.

God, No! by Penn Jillette
What fun would it be to simply read a rant by Penn Jillette? You need to hear the slow buildup in his voice and then the eventual thundering denunciation of one hypocrisy after another. The topic here is religion, or lack thereof, so be prepared to be offended. But really, what else would you expect from one half of Penn & Teller, a duo dedicated to demystifying and debunking everyone’s sacred cows in a raucous way?

So there you have it. Just a few examples to whet your appetite. Now go out there and listen!

Richard

Dwarf: A Memoir

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Jennifer

I’m so short that at the age of 35 I still have to hop up on the kitchen counter if I want to get something from a high shelf. Sure, I could get the step stool but I’ll hop up there while I’m still able to. And I’m lazy. I don’t want to go the ten feet to get the stool.

Dwarf: A Memoir tells the story of Tiffanie DiDonato who was born with dwarfism. She decided to undergo a grueling series of operations to make her taller. The surgeon broke her arms and legs (at separate times) and set them with screws that Tiffanie had to twist twice a day to get the bones to stretch. She missed huge chunks of middle school and high school.

Her one true friend Mike was angry with her for having the operations because he thought she should accept herself the way she is. She explained to him that she wants to be able to do all the things most of us take for granted like walking up the stairs, walking across a street (she isn’t able to cross streets with enough confidence that she’s being quick enough) and being able to reach the coffee pot on the counter. Before her surgeries her arms were so short she couldn’t reach her own ears. Can you imagine not being able to give your ear a good scratch?

Kids can be cruel. We all know that. But adults can be worse. Tiffanie’s gym teacher gave her the stink eye one day and said “Look, I don’t know what kind of disease you have but you’re obviously a dwarf. Why don’t you tell me what you can and cannot do?” During one of Tiffanie’s long recoveries she plotted revenge on the teacher. It was something pretty diabolically clever but she didn’t go through with it because she realized she’s better than that. I wish I could learn that lesson. My brain still zooms to revenge when I get mad.

What we think of as basic dreams and needs are monumental achievements to Tiffanie. She gets into college and spends her first six months squirreled away in her single room eating microwave dinners while listening to the kids in her dorm storm the hallways on their way to parties (or coming back very drunk from parties). Lonely and homesick, Tiffanie nearly quits college to return to the safety of home.

And then she begins to make friends with girls she’d nod shyly at in the hallways. She bites the bullet and joins a sorority. Not one of those “My daddy bought me a BMW and a diamond bracelet for my birthday so I thanked him by throwing up in the backseat and hocking the bracelet for Grey Goose money” sororities though. This is a sorority where everyone is welcome, fat girls, skinny girls, shy girls, and girls who spent the better part of their teenage years stretching their bones so they wouldn’t be identified as a dwarf.

Even though at times it is a little too “rah rah rah never give up!” for me, Dwarf: A Memoir nonetheless blew me away. Tiffanie’s determination to lead as normal a life as possible made me look at my own problems and realize how stupid and small they are. I was kind of hoping she’d do something most of us would do while spending months recovering: indulging in a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. She only breaks down once and allows herself to cry over her pain and her struggle to get to where she wants to be. Her rock, her biggest supporter and best friend is her mother who at times can seem almost cold in telling Tiffanie not to waste any tears.

Without her mother her story might have turned out differently. On the other side of the coin is Tiffanie’s father who is in constant fear for his daughter’s health and safety. One day Tiffanie looks at her father’s car and idly wonders if she’ll ever be able to drive. Her mom orders her into the car against her husband’s worried protests. Tiffanie can’t quite reach the gas pedal. She doesn’t want to get a specialized car with the gas and brake on the steering wheel. She wants to drive a real car. She tries each week. And one day she does it, her foot reaches the gas pedal.

As Tiffanie’s life unfolds, we see a brave human who gives us just a glimpse of the kind of determination (and plain old stubbornness) that humans are capable of when conquering their struggles, and the pure joy of coming out of the other side of years of surgeries and pain.

I’d still indulge in a nervous breakdown. But I’d blame it on the pain medication.

Jennifer

It’s the Final Countdown

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Lisa

So we’re finally there – the week of the alleged Maya apocalypse. For those of you who have managed to avoid the hype, the world is supposed to end on December 21, 2012. At this point the coverage has become as corny, dramatic, and oddly-addictive as that Europe song – you know the one. Yet like the Europe song, while people may joke about the Maya apocalypse in public, many privately hold some pretty serious views about it. In an excellent interview with NASA astrobiologist David Morrison, listeners of the APM radio show The Story recently heard about the distraught emails that Morrison was receiving by the dozens seeking advice about when the cataclysm would start (not if), and what actions should be taken to minimize the suffering of family and friends.

I take the position that nothing of note will happen on the 21st of December, and I base this on my background in anthropology and Maya studies. Unfortunately there is currently a lot of fear and misinformation being spread about an event that is largely misunderstood, and the consequences are potentially serious. In order to combat this misinformation, it’s important to understand some basic things about Maya calendrics.

The ancient Maya were very accomplished astronomers who saw the movement of celestial bodies as supernatural patterns that gave insights into destiny (kind of like modern horoscopes, but much more specific). Through careful study of the movements in the sky, the Maya developed several different kinds of calendars, ranging from a 260-day tzolk’in that was used to name newborns and helped predict the paths their lives would take, to a ‘Long Count’ or b’ak’tun calendar that recorded a time span of about 394 years, to something called a piktun, which measured over 7,800 years (the current piktun doesn’t end until the year 4772).

It’s the Long Count calendar that is causing all the ruckus this month; we are reaching the end of the current cycle, counting down to 13.0.0.0.0 (dates actually get smaller as a cycle progresses), after which the 14th b’ak’tun begins. Cycle is the important word in that sentence. Just as we have days, weeks, months, decades, centuries, and millennia, the Maya had (have, really – the Maya are still alive and well) k’in, uinal, tun, k’atun, b’ak’tun, piktun, and beyond. The ancient Maya placed no special emphasis on the end of the current b’ak’tun, and even created other calendars with dates that go centuries beyond 12/21/12. Amazingly, there is even a unit of time that stretches into the millions of years called the alautun, which lasts roughly 63,081,429 years!

So, if you must plan for anything on the 21st of December, plan on a big ol’ New Years Eve party of the 1999-2000 variety, because we’re just rolling over to the beginning of a new unit of time: 14th b’ak’tun of the Long Count calendar. Once you’ve recovered sufficiently from your New B’ak’tun Eve (NBE) revelries, you might want to consider coming down to the library to check out some books about the Maya – they were and are a truly fascinating people who contributed much to the world.

Some titles of note:

The Order of the Days by David Stuart is a good place to start if you want to do some pre-NBE reading. Stuart has done a great job of explaining the different theories about December 2012, and then debunking them. Even better, Stuart goes on to talk about why the Maya, stripped of all their new-agey and other-worldly mystique, should be respected as an ancient culture that accomplished much in creative and enduring ways. I also like that Stuart takes the time to talk about all the positive things that the Maya contributed to the world, especially in the areas of agriculture. Did you know that without the Maya we wouldn’t have chocolate? No chocolate – now THAT is my idea of an apocalyptic scenario.

If you happen to be interested in learning how the Maya developed and used their system of calendars (my explanation is extremely simplified) Daily Life in Maya Civilization by Robert J. Sharer is a great place to start. This very readable book has a great chapter on Maya calendrics and writing that is packed with interesting facts, one being that the Maya developed a system similar to our leap year in order to correct for flaws in the calendar caused by the manner in which the Earth travels around the sun.

The Code of Kings by Linda Schele and Peter Mathews tells the story of seven sacred Maya sites using translations of inscriptions found on temples and tombs. The Code of Kings includes some wonderful photographs of Maya sites, as well as a collection of highly-detailed illustrations of inscriptions. This fascinating account of Maya civilization and culture is written in a very accessible way that doesn’t cater only to those who study the Maya in-depth.

Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens by Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube is just what it sounds like! Collected here are the stories of the 152 kings and 4 ruling queens in recorded Maya history. I love books like these because they take what is often a dry discussion of inanimate objects (sites, artifacts, etc.) and introduces a human element. I think many of us tend to unconsciously imagine tombs, carvings, and statues when we think of ancient cultures, so it’s great to be reminded that there were real people behind those images of the past. Sprinkled throughout this book are helpful discussions about basic aspects of Maya civilization (geography, historic timelines, cultural practices, deciphering the glyphs, etc.) that make the stories of the royals more understandable.

Look Close See Far by Bruce T. Martin is a beautiful collection of photographs that depict modern Maya, as well as significant ancient sites. These images are accompanied by explanations written by eminent scholars of Maya culture.

Four Creations: an Epic Story of the Chiapas Mayas edited and translated by Gary H. Gossen is by far my favorite book that I discovered while writing this post. In order to truly understand Maya culture, it is important to learn more about how they believe the universe works. The best insights into these views usually come from storytelling and mythology. In Four Creations, the author gathered stories from modern Maya storytellers and historic texts, covering pre-contact origin myths all the way to newer mythologized accounts of modern events. This is a fascinating read, accompanied by the artwork of modern Maya. I love that each translation is printed next to the stories in their original Tzotzil-language form. A final plus is that this book treats the Maya as a living, breathing, very much in-the-present people, rather than a culture known for past glories and an early demise.

Lisa

I Ain’t Got No Home

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Lisa

A group of young men posing with bedrolls. Picture scanned from the Everett Public Library Archives

I ain’t got no home, I’m just a-roamin’ ’round,
Just a wandrin’ worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
-Woody Guthrie – I Ain’t Got No Home

Like the cowboy, the lumberjack, and the old prospector, the hobo is a figure from the American past that seems to have slipped into the realm of cartoons and folk heroes. What generally comes to mind when hobos are mentioned are sad clown paintings with patchy clothing, people cooking boot stew, and Charlie Chaplin playing a lovable tramp. Beneath the stereotypes and folklore is a more interesting story of a group of Americans who were vital to the expansion of non-Native settlement West, and the feeding of a young nation.

But first, a little lesson in classification. Hobo, tramp, and bum were originally not meant to be interchangeable terms; when the terms first became common, they had very different connotations. Hobos were people who generally lacked a permanent residence and traveled from town to town to work odd jobs. Tramps were individuals who lived on the road out of preference, and panhandled or stole to pay their way. Bums were folks who did not work, and stayed in one location. Today all three are generally referred to more politely as ‘homeless,’ though this term obscures the differences between the three social groups. If you are interested in learning some Depression-era hobo slang, Wikipedia actually has a pretty decent glossary.

The Everett Public Library’s collections have a lot of great resources that talk about the history and culture of American hobos. To learn more about this very fascinating chapter in American history, look up a couple of these titles:

Hoboing in the 1970’s: The Compleat Freighthopper’s Manual for North America by Daniel Leen
Hoboing in the 1970′s is an interesting combination of practical advice, photography, poetry, and ‘it ain’t like it used to be’ musings about the author’s experiences as a hobo. Anyone interested in trying to adopt the hobo lifestyle would be advised to read the author’s disclaimer entitled ‘Railroad Darwinism.’ A common theme in hobo memoirs is the recognition that conditions have drastically changed since the heyday of hobo living, and that traveling by hopping trains is no longer safe to attempt (not that it ever was, as you will see).

Yankee Hobo in the Orient by John Patric
This account details the travels of the sometimes controversial late Snohomish County eccentric John Patric as he moved through pre-World-War-II Japan. During his time in Japan Patric lived on a few cents a day, sleeping in his car and supporting his travels by selling rubber stamps and doing odd jobs. Patric also left a nearly complete manuscript of his time living as a hobo in the United States, called the Hobo Years, which can be viewed in the Northwest History Room.

Once a Hobo: The Autobiography of Monte holm by Monte Holm and Dennis L. Clay
Once a Hobo is the life story of a Moses Lake man who lived as a hobo to survive the Great Depression. This story follows Holm from birth, through his hobo years, and on to his reemergence into mainstream society. This book opens with a full-page disclaimer not to ride trains, explaining that conditions are drastically different from what they were in the early years of freighthopping.

Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West by Mark Wyman
If you were to read one book about the history of the American hobo, this would probably be your best pick. Wyman has done an exhaustive amount of research into the history of the American hobo and how he or she (men, women, and children lived as hobos during the Depression) had an important function in American society. Initially the territory of Americans of European origin, the hobo scene quickly became multicultural. During the early years of Western farming, hobos were vital to successfully bringing in the harvest because large farms were isolated operations that didn’t have enough manpower to bring in the crop before it spoiled. Despite the West’s reliance on hobo labor at harvest time, these itinerant workers were run out of town for being an ‘undesirable element’ as soon as the work was done. Far from being a romantic portrait of a drifter lifestyle, Hoboes details the brutality and hardship that hobos encountered as they moved from job to job.

Wanted: Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane! Fighting for Free Speech with the Hobo Agitators of the I.W.W. edited by John Duda
This book was compiled from firsthand accounts, speeches, and newspaper stories. Wanted isn’t strictly about hobos, but it includes the stories of people who lived a hobo lifestyle to travel from battleground to battleground in the I.W.W. free speech fight.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild is the biography of a man named Christopher Johnson McCandless. In 1990 McCandless disappeared shortly after graduating from college. Years later his body, journal, and some undeveloped film were found in an abandoned bus in rural Alaska. Over time it was pieced together that he had traveled across the United States living and working as a hobo, and eventually made his way to Alaska to attempt to live off the land. This book was also recently made into a motion picture.

Four on a Flatcar by G.D. Jacobson
Set in the 1940′s, Four on a Flatcar tells the true story of four Seattle boys who choose to hop freight trains to travel across the country in search of a missing father.

Hard Traveling: A Portrait of Work Life in the New Northwest by Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes
While Hard Traveling isn’t exclusively about hobos there is a lot of really interesting information about itinerant workers and how they traveled in the early days of Northwestern industrialization. Readers can get an idea of the kinds of jobs that hobos worked as they traveled through the region, and have the chance to look at some great historic pictures.

Harvest Gypsies by John Steinbeck
In 1936, Steinbeck was commissioned by the San Francisco News to write a series of articles about farmers that had been forced into a life of itinerant labor by the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck’s research laid the groundwork for his landmark work of fiction, The Grapes of Wrath, which also discusses the hardships of living and working as a hobo.

Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac
Lonesome Traveler is part autobiographical sketch, part lament for the death of the American hobo lifestyle as it was in the Great Depression. Kerouac tells a series of stories about periods of his life that inspired his more famous works, and ends with a piece that discusses how changes in the American economy and culture have transformed the hobo from migrant laborer to homeless criminal.

The Road by Jack London
London wrote The Road about a period of his life, in the 1890′s, when he lived as a hobo. This is a collection of short stories, sketches really, about what life as a hobo was like before the Dust Bowl turned being a hobo from a choice to a necessity.

Riding the Rails
Riding the Rails is a PBS documentary that tells the story of teenage hobos during the Great Depression.

The Great Machines: Poems and Songs of the American Railroad edited by Robert Hedin
The Great Machines has a small collection of songs and poems written about hobo life. While some of these paint a more pop-culture ‘charming tramp’ picture of the lifestyle, others describe the brutality and struggle involved with a life lived on the rails.

Various Bits and Pieces of Hobo Culture

To add a soundtrack to your hobo reading, check out some of the CDs in the Everett Public Library’s collection that have hobo-inspired music.
To learn how to write like a hobo head to this web glossary of hobo signs – it’s a system of hieroglyphics that was created and used by hobos to tell other ‘bos details about the towns they were passing through. Modern developers have even created a QR code version for people who travel and live off the grid.

Who to Be for Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Leslie

Do you dress up for Halloween?

I do, but it’s not always easy to think of a great costume, is it?

Stella Ehrhart, age 8, of Omaha, Nebraska, has no such trouble. She opens her book, 100 Most important Women of the 20^th Century, then she opens her closet and poof! She is Oprah Winfrey! The next day she will be Joan Baez. This third grader has done this every single day of school since the start of second grade. Here is the article from the Omaha World Herald if you don’t believe me.

If all of this sounds like way too much work for you, why not read about these 100 most important women instead? I love a good biography because not only do you learn the facts about a person’s life, you get to know that person and open your mind to a bigger understanding of others. Sometimes you even learn a few juicy tidbits of shocking gossip.

One of the ‘most important women’ is Julia Child. I actually dressed up as Julia Child a few years ago when my book club read My Life in France, Julia’s autobiography.Written in her own words, this is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her true calling.

Now I’m on to listening to the recently published account of Julia’s entire life, Dearie by Bob Spitz. This is a wonderful biography that brings the Julia we know and love to life.

Another of the 100 most important women, and one with a French connection like Julia, is Coco Channel. The recently published Sleeping with the Enemy by Hal Vaughan gives you a quick biography of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, but mostly deals with the details of her sympathizing with the Germans during the WWII occupation of Paris. Quite shocking.

A deeper, more in-depth, and I think, more interesting biography is Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney. Chanel revolutionized women’s dress. She came up with the ‘little black dress’ and who can live without that? She was the twentieth century’s most influential designer of clothes and perfume. Her fascinating and unconventional journey from poverty to a new kind of glamour helped define the modern woman. There are shocking details in this book also.

Reading about Julia and Coco is much easier and more interesting than dressing up like them. Just splash on a little Chanel #5, eat a baguette with lots of butter, and dig into these books.

Leslie

Freddie For a Day

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Carol

I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up in a time when Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, was alive and popular. I didn’t start listening to music until the 90s and sadly by then he was gone. That didn’t stop me, in adulthood, from chasing down everything he and Queen did, both musically and visually. I couldn’t get enough of their writing, his singing, and all that amazing music. And I still can’t get enough to this day.

Imagine my glee when I discovered that there is a worldwide remembrance on Freddie’s birthday. Every September 5th is Freddie For a Day. People all over the world dress up like Freddie Mercury to celebrate his life and to help promote awareness of AIDS. In many cases, people actually acquire sponsors whose donations go to AIDS charities.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first Freddie For a Day, and I’m psyched to participate. I’ll be wearing some Freddie-esque attire to work, possibly including a moustache. I’ll also be hosting a Freddie bash for my friends. And, of course, any holiday wouldn’t be complete without the appropriate reading material to get me in the spirit of it all.

40 Years of Queen by Harry Doherty is designed to look like the ultimate roadie’s scrapbook. Band members Brian May and Roger Taylor introduce this authorized history of the band, complete with reproductions of memorabilia and over 200 photos. If you don’t have a lot of time but really want to learn more about Queen, you’ll definitely want to check out this book.

Is This the Real Life? The Untold Story of Queen by Mark Blake and Mercury: an Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury by Lesley-Ann Jones are still on my to-be-read shelf. Both are written by former music journalists who have not only done their research but also conducted new interviews with everyone central to Queen and Freddie Mercury. Each book is about 400 pages long–but don’t worry. There are many pages of photos in each to keep you going.

Proper holidays also demand some great music for an appropriately festive celebration. For Freddie For a Day, we have at our disposal the majestic music from both Queen:

A Night at the Opera (Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon and Seaside Rendezvous, while not the obvious hits, are still my favorites from this album)

Jazz (Dreamers Ball and Don’t Stop Me Now are my all-time favorite Queen songs)

Sheer Heart Attack (Killer Queen and Now I’m Here get me moving–and singing–every time)

News of the World (mega hits like We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions dominate, but Spread Your Wings will warm your heart)

Platinum Collection: Greatest Hits I, II, III (Under Pressure, Seven Seas of Rhye, and Princes of the Universe hold their own against Hammer to Fall and Crazy Little Thing Called Love)

…and Freddie on his own:
Lover of Life, Singer of Songs: the Very Best of Freddie Mercury Solo (The Great Pretender and I Was Born to Love You will always break my heart)

There’s also an emotional and in-depth documentary, Queen: Days of Our Lives, that’s worth screening for the more devout Queen follower. Recent candid interviews with band members Brian May and Roger Taylor are interwoven with footage of past interviews with Freddie, Top of the Pops performances, and clips from music videos, both from Queen and Freddie’s solo works.

Freddie For a Day has the potential to spread awareness about a disease that has not been cured, contrary to what many people believe. It also has the potential to be the most fun holiday of them all. So grab your caterpillar moustache and glam-rock attire and join me on September 5th as I remember a great man and become a part of his legacy.

Carol

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (a Mostly True Memoir)

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Jennifer

I say inappropriate things. I mean, they just fall out of my mouth. That little voice inside my head is always saying “Ohhhhh, I can’t believe she just said that. I’m glad I’m in here and not out there.”

Jenny Lawson (also known as The Bloggess), the author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, is known to her friends as “that chick that says the f-word a lot.” She’s lucky enough to have a husband and a few good friends who understand her constant f-bombs. I’m lucky to have two good friends (thanks Kathy and Carol) who don’t seem fazed when the f-word slips out of my mouth.

Sometimes I sit in my parked car, keep the windows rolled up and shout every single swear word I know (and interesting combinations that would get me arrested in 13 states). I can’t shout in the unisex bathroom at work anymore. Last time I did it someone gave me the stink eye when I came out. I now go to my car and scream obscenities. I’m a lady.

Jenny Lawson is known for her blog on the bizarre things that happen in her life (and for some reason most people can relate to the craziness). Let’s Pretend This Never Happened has some of the best posts such as:

“It Wasn’t Even My Crack”: Jenny moves to a new house and her polite father-in-law, while holding up a sandwich bag of white powder, asks if it is her crack.

“Thanks for the Zombies, Jesus,” : I’m an ardent believer that yes, Jesus was technically a zombie in the strictest sense of the word.

“The Psychopath on the Other Side of the Door”: Who hasn’t been in the bathroom and been positive they’re alone in the house until someone starts banging on the door?

“If You Need an Arm Condom, It Might Be Time to Reevaluate Some of Your Life Choices”: A chapter about the the adventure that is artificial cow insemination.

“No One Ever Taught Me Couch Etiquette”: Jenny meets her future mother-in-law for the first time. When she sits on the couch and leans back she gets the evil eye. Couch cushions are for show only and not for comfort.

“Stanley, the Magical Talking Squirrel”: Jenny’s father is a taxidermist who tries out his creations on his two daughters. He shoves a dead squirrel into a cereal box and convinces them it’s an actual talking squirrel that does tricks.

And my favorite:

“The Dark and Disturbing Secrets HR Doesn’t Want You to Know”: Jenny worked for 15 years in the human resource department at various companies. One day a woman came in to reapply for a job that she quit a month earlier. On “reason for leaving” she wrote: “That job sucked. Plus, my supervisor was a douche-nugget.”

I went back and reread that one because I was laughing so hard. I think I’ll highlight it in my own copy. Yes, the book was so good I went and bought it.

This is a quick read and it’s one of those books you continue laughing about even after you have put it down. I’ve told several of my co-workers about it (and forcibly put it on hold for my favorite co-worker) and can’t wait for them to read it.

They’d better read it. If they don’t, I’ll be forced to put a stuffed squirrel named Stanley on their desk chair.

Jennifer

Mr. Peabody’s Corner of Research and Revelation: Doc Holliday’s Wild West

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Ron

Today’s topic of interest is a steampunk novel of the Wild West by Michael D. Resnick titled The Doctor and the Kid: a Weird West Tale. In Resnick’s steampunk universe, first described in The Buntline Special, the United States ends at the Mississippi River with territories further west controlled by magically powerful medicine men, most notably Geronimo and his ally/nemesis Hook Nose. In an effort to combat this magic and expand U.S. borders the government sends inventor Thomas Alva Edison to Tombstone, Arizona to work on magic-negating inventions with fabricator Ned Buntline. Also prevalent in the story are Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers who try to keep Edison and Buntline safe.

The Doctor and the Kid picks up one year later with the infamous Doc Holliday losing his life savings in a drunken poker game, money he’d earmarked for a comfortable room in a sanatorium to ease his inevitable demise from tuberculosis. In an effort to recoup his gambling losses Holliday decides to hunt down the outlaw with the largest bounty on his head, newcomer Billy the Kid. But in order to have a chance to defeat the Kid (who has magical protection provided by Hook Nose), Holliday has to make a reluctant deal with Geronimo and to enlist the inventorly genius of Edison and Buntline.

Most of Resnick’s characters are real historical figures, although he plays around with timelines and circumstances. Still, I yearn to learn more about the history of the story’s setting. Here are some questions that come to mind and some titles that might help provide answers.

1) In Resnick’s book Doc Holliday is 32 and nearly dead from tuberculosis. Is this an accurate portrayal of his medical condition?

2) What is tuberculosis and how prevalent was it in the late 19^th century?