Once Upon a Town – The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen, by Bob Greene

Posted on May 7, 2025 by schoultz

Why this Book: I had read an OpEd by Bob Greene that I liked, and in the postscript about the author, it mentioned this book which sounded interesting, The subject appealed to me, and it appeared to be short, so I put it in my Audible library and listened to it.

Summary in 3 Sentences: In the late 1990s/early 2000s (the book was published in 2003) Bob Greene decided to visit North Platte Nebraska, to look into what he’d heard about the North Platte Canteen during WW2, which served troop trains stopping there for 10-20 minutes carrying troops to their units to fight in Europe or the Pacific. Greene writes what he learned from his research in the town’s archives, but mostly through his interviews with those (mostly women) who volunteered at the North Platte Canteen supporting the troops and interviews with men who had experienced their hospitality when the troop trains stopped briefly in North Platte. He also shares his experience and impressions of what has become of North Platte in the second half of the 20th century after the war, as our country has changed and the phenomenon of the North Platte Canteen has faded into history, as the town changed with the times and the rest of America.

My Impressions: Loved this book! I listened to it and thoroughly enjoyed the voice and inflection of the reader Fritz Weaver – which added to the emotional impact of the book. The book is only 6 hours long in its audible rendering, but the audible version has the disadvantage of not having pictures – and I assume the print version includes a lot of photos to help bring the story to life.

Early in the war, a number of citizens of North Platte assembled at the train depot to meet and give gifts to soldiers from their community who were to be stopping briefly at the depot on their way to their initial duty stations. But when the train stopped, they’ gotten incorrect information, and the train they greeted wasn’t the train with their young men on it. But they decided to give the food, gifts, and appreciation to the fellows who did happen to be on that train, and wished them well and good luck. And the citizens of North Platte were amazed at how much these men appreciated their gifts and support.

A young woman who had been part of that North Platte group was so moved by how those men reacted and the reception the group had gotten from the soldiers on that train, that she volunteered to organize a regular greeting party for ALL the trains coming through. She proposed that the people of North Platte and the surrounding communities organize to greet the trains to offer a little affection and support to the troops, and provide them with amenities that were not available on the train, like home cooked food, cigarettes, candy, magazines, desserts and other simple pleasures from home – to show the boys that what they were doing was appreciated. The town and other nearby towns and communities responded enthusiastically to the request..

A committe was formed in North Platte, which created a “watch bill” and an organization was set up. The different towns, clubs and civic organizations signed up and were present to greet each train, express appreciation to the soldiers and sailors and provide food and othr the amenities to the trooops on every train that came through – for over four years of WW2! It was estimated that during that window, in the vicinity of 6 million American servicemen were greeted and given home prepared food and other amenities, and received love and appreciation from volunteers working at the North Platte Canteen.

In doing his research Greene was able to find dozens and dozens of first hand accounts of the North Platte Canteen experience. He spoke to the women who so long ago had greeted and served the soldiers on the trains, but he also spoke to many soldiers and sailors themselves, expressing many decades later how important that experience had been for them. In the process of giving their interviews, they also shared their lives, where and with whom they’d served during the war, and how they had lived their lives since. Those interviewed were mostly in their 70s and 80s, with a few in their 60s and 90s, and their stories provide a picture of how different America was in the middle of the 20th century than it is now.

He noted that while the women were fairly matter of fact in describing what they had done and their experiences at the Canteen, a large percentage of the men got emotional and teared up during their interviews. Their stories moved me as well, and indeed I choked up several times, as I listened to the book on my walks through my neighborhood in Prescott, Arizona.

The nostalgia for simple and patriotic community values of middle America in that era is palpable – we feel it in the memories shared in those interviews, as well as in the author’s reactions to those interviews. He (and we) are amazed at how much sacrifice and effort the communities around North Platte made to support the troops, in what seemed like the small gesture of providing them a few amenities and a sense of home, hospitality, love, and appreciation for what they were doing for their country. They got no public funding or federal support for their efforts – they used their own ration stamps and resources to provide the food and amenities they gave to the soldiers and sailors, in addition to receiving generous donations in food and cash from individuals and private companies alike. They had a love for and faith in America, the government and what it was asking of its citizens that seems quaint and almost naive today. And they loved and respected the boys who were being sent off to fight. The story of the North Platte Canteen reflects a version of patriotism and love of country that so many of us miss today.

The book concludes with Greene describing how North Platte reacted to the news that Japan had surrendered in August 1945. In his interviews, he heard about the sense of relief, and the joyful celebrations that followed the announcement of the end of the war, and about the dances and other events to commemorate the victory. And of course, the relief and joy among the troops who were still coming through. The Canteen coordinating committee realized however, that their work was not done, and they continued for 8 more months after VJ day, serving the troops on the trains bringing them home, until that number grew fewer and fewer. The last troops were served at the North Platte Canteen on the evening of 1 April 1946.

Sadly, in the 1970s, the Union Pacific tore down the depot building that had housed the North Platte Canteen when passenger trains no longer served North Platte.

If you’re looking for a feel-good book about the heart of America and what hopefully remains good about our country amidst today’s heightened polarization, anger and acrimony, this is it. I only regret that I didn’t get to read this with my parents, both of whom grew up in Nebraska during that time frame – my father may even have experienced the hospitality of the North Platte Canteen as he went to war in 1943. My mother grew up in that same era in Falls City, Nebraska, a small farm town much like North Platte, but on the eastern side of the state. She would have loved and been able to personally relate to so much in this book that describes the culture and ethos of that small farming community, so much like the one she grew up in. I wish I’d been able to share the joy this book brought me with her.

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Spider World #6 Shadowland, by Colin Wilson

Posted on April 30, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:   The final book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Series, following The Desert, The Tower, The Fortress, The Delta, and The Magician.  In some configurations of the Spider World series, the first three books are combined into one, entitled The Tower, followed by The Delta, The Magician , and this book is volume 4 – the final in the series.  

Summary in 5 Sentences. This is the final book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Sci Fi series, and picks up where The Magician leaves off. Niall – the series protagonist – takes off alone to find and confront the Magician in Shadowland in hopes of saving his brother’s life and building an alliance between Spider World and Shadowland, which the Magician rules. Probably 2/3 of the book is Niall’s trip to find Shadowland during which he  confronts  non-corporeal beings, human-like beings who have evolved differently, and the remains of earlier human civilizations. During his  Odyssey,  he is joined by a renegade  spider from Spider World and together they navigate and deal with the challenges of finding Shadowland.  When they finally find and enter Shadowland, they find that life and reality are very different from what Niall -and we – are accustomed to.  Before  ultimately confronting the evil Magician, they spend several days exposed to supernatural and other high tech advances that the Magician had made real in Shadowland.   

My Impressions: A strange and different story, following the protagonist of the entire Spider World series, Niall into a land of different beings, different physical laws, and a different sense of reality.   It seems that Wilson intended to expose the reader to alternate realities, beings and entities which many believe actually do exist in our world beyond our cognitive awareness  – on what some have called the astral plane.   

The story itself is a Joseph Campbell-esque Hero’s journey – Niall leaves his comfortable world and puts himself at great risk for a cause greater than himself.  He leaves his comfortable world to seek and find the Magician – a super powerful and apparently evil being who lives in a land, far away from Spider World.    Niall  has been led to believe that only the Magician has the power to cure/save his brother, who is suffering from an unknown illness as a result of touching a blade that the Magician had forged for one of his soldiers. He also hopes to build a truce or alliance with the Magician between Shadowland and Spider World.

Two thirds of the book is Niall’s journey from Spider World to ind Shadowland, during which he encounters a variety of different beings and seemingly, different laws of nature.  The chameleons rescue him from an accident, nurture him and teach him some of their own powers.   He is often confused by what he is seeing and experiencing – and to deal with and respond to strange and new circumstance and creatures, he calls on his exceptional power to connect telepathically with the chameleons and other beings – some human-like, but in one case a bird, which allows Niall’s consciousness to step into that of the bird, and see  the world through its eyes. 

Also at one point during his journey, he connects with a renegade spider, Captain Makanda who’d been exiled from Spider World, and the two decide to travel and work together – that is an interesting dimension of this story. These two are former enemies, and very different beings but they develop a mutually supportive and trusting bond which gets them through many a close call.  During their journey in search of Shadowland and the Magician, they find remnants of earlier human civilizations and Niall is able to psychically connect with the beings who’d lived there. (another of Wilson’s nods to a different understanding of time and space)

Eventually they connects with a group of huge, human like creatures he calls Trolls who live outside of but near Shadowland and know something of it. They assist him and Captain Makanda  with advice and a crystal amulet with special powers, and which they told Niall would be a key in his interactions with the Magician.

Eventually Niall and Captain Makanda find and are able to enter Shadowland and are greeted warmly by the Magician’s representatives, and are shown around the incredible civilization that the Magician had created. But they sense that their arrival was not a surprise, and that the warm greeting they received was part of a different agenda.  The futuristic world that the Magician had created in Shadowland gives Wilson  a chance to  explore up and downsides to some of the technologies that he was seeing being developed for us living in this reality, when (he wrote the book in the early 21st century. )   A few of which: 

  • The Magician had experimented with creating better humans by manipulating DNA and some of the results were pretty bizarre and even horrific.
  • The Magician was a mad scientist –  amoral, secretive and obsessed with his own power.  His subjects were merely means for him to experiment with his theories that he hoped, would increase his and Shadowland’s power if/when his experiments succeeded. His humans were like lab rats for his experiments and plans. 
  • One of his experiments at managing procreation had backfired and women were not able conceive, and their population was thereby in danger – reminding one of Communist China’s efforts to reduce their population, as well as  declining populations today in the developed world. 
  • To keep the population engaged and entertained,  the Magician and his scientists created an entertainment arcade which allowed participants to enter a wide variety of virtual worlds and to psychically experience all thrills of whatever adventure they wanted, without physical risk. Kind of like simulated rock climbing or carrier landings. This was meant to offset the boredom and lack of opportunities for the real experience, similar to how video games and virtual reality for many in our world have become preferable to real experience – real courage not required. 
  • They had a population of factory workers who were kept happy with safety, routine, predictability, and other simple  physical pleasures, but who were separate from the elite classes.  
  • Marriage and committed relationships were forbidden, and seen as a threat to the most efficient functioning of society.
  • People were cowed by the power of the Magician as authority figure – not unlike in many authoritarian states. The Magician ruled with great physical and psychic power and ultimately,  thru intimidation.

When Niall was transiting the lands between Spider World and Shadowland and he experienced reality shifts and bizarre creatures with unusual capabilities, there were times it almost seemed like a psychedelic experience.  The amulet that he wore, which  gave him immense focus and energy when he needed it, exhausted him afterward.  It made me think of cocaine and its attraction.

In the end, the Magician’s true intent becomes known – to dominate Niall and eventually Spider World.  Niall and Captain Makanda are put into prison and Niall must rely on his strengths of character and his psychic abilities to save himself, his brother, Captain Makanda and his mission to build a bridge between Spider World and Shadowland. 

NIALL is the hero of the entire Spider World series.  His character reflects the values of the author .  I believe Niall’s character is one of the more interesting aspects of the book.  He is humble, curious, and courageous.  He is also not physically imposing, especially compared to  those who oppose him – the Spiders and his enemies in Shadowland are physically very strong. Niall then must use the tools he has – his mind and psychic strength, his imagination, creativity, and telepathic abilities to counter their efforts to control him and prevail.  He slowly, and with all due humility, realizes his gift of strong mental and telepathic powers, and over the course of the series, develops them and his own associated strong intuitive senses – largely by learning to blank his mind, shut out fear, anxiety and emotion, and thereby become completely receptive to signals around him that are otherwise not perceptible. 

 Niall was courageous but also had fear, and knew that he was physically and psychically vulnerable.  The Magician made that clear to him,and he realized his vulnerability  when confronting the Magician, found himself on the defensive and was overwhelmed.  When he found himself in trouble or under threat, he would quiet his mind,  listen to the environment and his heart, and take action on what occurred to him. These qualities are attributes that I assume Colin Wilson saw in many if not most of the shamans he explored in his books The Occult and Mysteries.  My sense is that Wilson chose to  use his literary license to somewhat exaggerate the many occult versions of reality that had been described to him in his research. Indeed I believe that with some skepticism believed in these not-easily-perceived realities that  were beyond his own ability to perceive or access, due to his rationally based up-brining and understanding of the world. 

While the series is long and the path to the end is winding. and occasionally windy, it was fun to read about our hero’s adventures, trials and tribulations in this imaginative world with its  unseen entities and new physical rules, and a very human character’s interaction with it all, using powers not unlike what many shamans and spiritual teachers tell us we all have.  

I found a good one page summary of the entire Spider World series which is worth looking at for anyone interested.  It is at:  https://raintaxi.com/sspider-world/

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A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin

Posted on April 30, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Recommened to me by several credible friends.  Also, having read >>>>Continie which also takes place in Northern Italy,  and now  that I have hiked 3 times in the Dolomites, where much of this novel takes place, I was intrigued.  

Summary in 3 Sentences:  The novel is written as a retropsective by the protagonist Alessandro Guiliani a man in his 70s looking back from the 1960s on his life in the early part of the 20th century as he describes it to a young Italian companion that is accompanying him on a long walk. The book begins with that 1960s setting, then moves on to Alessandro’s youth and growing up in early 20th century Italy, then his many experiences during and immediately after WW1 

My Impressions:   Not a book for someone in a hurry, but is impressive for a thoughtful person with patience and eclectic interests, and a willingness to engage in a long rich story. It is not for someone looking for a page turner and a lot of action.  But as a whole it can be very satisfying, although for as I read it, I was a  occasionally frustrated and impatient trying to understand the arc of the story. But I chose to stick with it, with Alessandro and his journey, and I’m glad I did.

It reads more like the Odyssey of an Italian Soldier in the Great War.  It begins with our protagonist Alessandro Giuliani as an old man of 74 (not THAT old!) in the early 1960s connecting with Nicolo Sambuca, a young uneducated working class man of about 18, after the two of them miss the bus to a town in the mountains outside of Rome.  Alessandro is clearly a wise, tough, worldly, educated man of  wide  and experience.  Since they are heading to the same general location, he convinces Nicolo to walk  together with him to their next destination,  though it would be a hike of more than 20 hours overnight through the mountains.  In the course of that hike, Alessandro tells of his life nearly 50 years ago to Nicolo, which helps us not only to understand how Alessandro became the wise tough old man that he is, but also tells us a lot about Italy in the early part of the 20th century.  His experiences during WW1 which make up the majority of the book, reveal much about the insanity and brutality, death and suffering resulting from of how the Italians fought the Austrians in WW1.  And indeed Alessandro had experienced a multitude of different aspects and dimensions of WW1 in Italy’s battles with Austria during WW1.

His experiences came in episodes, reminding me of Odysseus return to Greece after the Trojan War.  The “Odyssey” of  Alessandro’s story, proceeded as such:

  • Alessandro’s tells the story of his youth – as the son of a well-to-do attorney in Rome, hunting, mountain and rock climbing in the Dolomies, and studying philosophy, art and aesthetics at the University.  Then the war breaks out and against the wishes of his parents, he believes it his duty to enlist and play his part.
  • He goes through boot camp and finds himself on the north western front in Italy in WW1- style trench warfare with the Austrians – lobbing artillery shells at each other across a river valley.  Eventually the Austrians charge and take the Italian positon.
  • He survives that battle and finds himself selected to be part of a secret group the Italian government has commissioned to train and then covertly take a large craft around the heel of Italy to Sicily to find, capture and bring to justice deserters who had escaped to and were living in the mountains. They arrive in Sicily, secretly train in a remote location,  and then embark on operations which result in the capture of a number of deserters to bring back to Italy for summary  trial and execution.
  • During the return transit, there is some turmoil on the boat, the deserters are able to kill the senior Italian officer and escape over the side near the coast of Italy to swim ashore. Alessandro joins the deserters himself, swims ashore on hid oen, joins some shepherds, and with them,  returns to Rome and his family. There he is himself eventually captured as a deserter,  sent to the notorious Stella Maris prison where deserters are summarily tried and executed.
  • A friend of his father’s intervenes to commute his sentence, just before Alessandro was to face a firing squad with his fellow deserters from the Sicily campaign.  He is then sent to a work camp quarry where he engages in hard physical labor with other prisoners  working 16+ hours a day, mining marble appropriately enough, to be made into headstones for the graves of fallen solders.
  • He then finds himself sent to another infantry company, again to fight the Austrians, this time in the Dolomites in the northeast of Italy, where again, the Austrians and the Italians face each other over a big mountain valley. He is wounded in one of the battles, and while in the hospital, falls in love with his nurse and while he is recovering, the two have an idyllic romantic relationship until he is sent back to his unit. As his unit is marching off to serve on a different front in the Dolomites, Alessandro witnesses an air attack on the hospital where where his nurse lover was still working, and the hospital is completely destroyed – and he is certain his lover is killed as well.
  • The next phase of the Odyssey is in the extremely mountainous section of the Dolomites, where Alessandro, as an experienced former mountaineer and climber, is tasked with manning an observation outpost at the top of a cliff,  accessible only by technical rock climbing.   From this observation post, high above the valley,  he can see into the Austrian lines and report what he observes by a long land line to his unit’s leadership in the valley. He is to be there for a month but toward the end of his window, he fends off and is almost killed in an Austrian attack on his position and he is able to rejoin his unit.
  • Next on the Odyssey, he disobeys orders from his unit commander, and goes into the mountains to recover the body of his close friend who’d been wounded and left for dead on a perilous  reconnaissance mission.  He recovers his friend’s body but is then captured by the Austrians and becomes theier prisoner.  They turn him  over to their primitive Bulgarian allies who take him away from Italy to the north. Our still distraught Alessandro observes the brutality and idiocy of his captors, and even though he is far from friendly lines and escapees are summarily shot, he figures he has nothing left to lose,  so escapes again, deep in enemy territory without much hope for success.
  • Which leads to the next phase – he is recovered and recaptured by an Austrian unit, whose leader is an educated and sophisticated Austrian Prince, who recognizes Alessandro for the intelligent educated man he is, treats him with respect and assigns him work appropriate to his talents.  Alessandro travels with and become a friend and confidant of this Austrian prince until he is delivered to an Austrian PoW camp in Vienna toward the end of the war.  
  • Then begins the next phase of the Odyssey – a whole new adventure – Alessandro working as slave labor in the Austrian royal castle with other PoWs, serving the aristocrats and royalty of Austria.   While there  the armistice is signed, BUT negotiations for return of prisoners drag on, weeks become months, while he and the other prisoners continue to work as  slaves.   And so our hero escapes again, and is able to assume an identity of an Austrian allied soldier, finds his way back to Germany on a quest to find and kill the pilot who bombed the hospital where he’d been a patient and the woman he loved worked. 
  • His war concludes with him hiking over the Alps from Germany into Italy, avoiding Germans, Austrians, civilization, on a several day harrowing journey in which he almost dies of exposure and other dangers of the mountains, before he reaches Italy, to begin his new life.
  • Back in civilization Alessandro is uninterested in re-integrating and picking up where he left off.  His parents have died, his sister assumed he was dead and emigrated to America, and most of his friends have been killed in the war.  Alessandro is withdrawn, suffering what today we would call PTSD, chooses to work at manual labor and be left alone.  He pines for the nurse he’d met in the Dolomites and through dreams and other signs, becomes convinced that in fact she is still alive.
  • For several years, he survives in obscurity by performing gardening and other manual labor.   Through a series of coincidences driven by his own intuition, he finds and reunites with his lover from the Dolomites who has a son – his son..  Unbeknownst to him she was pregnant when he they last saw each other. At this point he is about 27 years old.

At this point, Alessandro’s  WW1 narrative concludes and we return to him telling his story to Nicolo as they walk through the mountains. In this section, Nicolo asks questions and makes comments and we get to know Alessandro again as the wise, tough, compassionate old man we had met at the beginning of the novel.  Here Helprin allows Alessandro to share his life philosophy and his spiritual beliefs in response to Nicolo’s questions and we get to know not only the fascinating man Alessandro, but also the fascinating man Mark Helprin.

It seemed that Helprin was writing an almost Forrest Gump-like approach to describing Italy in the early part of the 20th century, in that Alessandro plays a part in so many different settings in Italy’s participation in WW1.  We also see the Italian Army in its rather inept approach to fighting a relatively sophisticated European Army.  I had previously read The Sardinian Brigade (my review here) which gave one officer’s more detailed personal account of the incompetence of the Italian army leadership in that war. 

But I think another of Helprin’s key objectives was in creating the character of Alessandro – an ideal of manhood in the author’s eyes –  a Nietzschean Ubermensh dealing with the horrors and absurdities of war with courage, principle, detachment and wisdom.. The character of Alessandro himself was from my perspective, as important a theme of this book as was Italy, or WW1.

Alessandro was bold and independent, intelligent and well educated in the classics, with specialty in aesthetics and philosophy. He was passionate and principled, not afraid to commit himself and take a stand. Though he acted primarily on principle, he could be prudent when it made sense, and followed orders and “played the game.”  He was compassionate even/especially when it didn’t serve him well.  He took bold action, took suffering in stride and accepted the consequences of his actions. He didn’t consider himself in any way entitled to any special treatment because of his family, education, courage or intellect.  He was honest and unpretentious.  He didn’t enjoy killing and refrained from it when he could, often at the last moment when his conscience grabbed him.  He was unimpressed with and uninterested in rank, status, wealth and the fineries of the elite, but he could play their game when it served his goals –  independence and freedom for himself and others.  He could love and he did; he could suffer, and he did;  and what did not kill him, made him stronger (and he almost and should have died many times.)   He did not seek, but did not fear death. At the end he is a physically, mentally and spiritually strong old man who appreciates the beauty of nature, the world, of life. 

In his recounting, Alessandro repeatedly refers to himself as a soldier at heart, and reminds us constantly how the war and his experiences as a soldier shaped him as a man, and improved who he was.

We get to know Alessandro through his life as he relates it to Nicolo, and how he reflects on it at the end. This is when  we get to know him best, when as an old man, he tells his story to Nicolo and is responding to Nicolo’s questions.  We see his spiritual side more explicitly at the end, though he is explicitly not religious.  We see the acquired wisdom, strength, passion and detachment of a man who has lived well and fully, toward the end of his life.   He embodies the old saying “living well is the best revenge” against all the misfortunes and near-misses he’d experienced.   I think that was as much Helprin’s message as the story of Italy in the Great War.  And in listening to several interviews on youtube with Helprin, Alessandro reflects Helprin’s own values and ideals for himself.  

For those interested, a good summary which makes some interesting points that I don’t above  can be read at:https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/soldier-great-war-mark-helprin 

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Red Dog Farm, by Nathaniel Ian Miller

Posted on April 28, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  I’m planning to spend a couple of weeks in Iceland this summer and somehow this book came to my attention as a novel which takes place in rural Iceland fairly recently. I read it as part of my mental prep to get the most out of this trip, and help me appreciate the land and people I’ll be visiting. 

Summary in 3 sentences:  The story is told from the first person perspective of a young man about his life growing up on a remote, hard-scrabble farm in southern Iceland. He vividly describes the hard work and challenges of ranching cattle in that world, to include from the character of the land, the inclement weather, and the often uncooperative animals themselves, all while he wrestles with what he will do with his life as he enters adulthood.  His father is beaten down by the hardships, his mother is a professor at a local university and our young protagonist eventually goes through the classic challenges of falling in love and creating a relationship with a young woman, all while things on the farm and in his family are not going well. 

My impressions:   I loved the book – the story, the writing, and indeed the sense it gave me of farm life in rural Iceland.  I read the book primarily as an introduction to Icelandic culture, but what a bonus in that the story was so compelling and seemed genuinely authentic  to me. The book is told as a retrospective from the protagonist looking badk from his late 20’s on the events he describes. 

I listened to the book, and am glad I did. The reader clearly has native fluency in the Icelandic language, which added to the authenticity of the book, in his pronunciations of place names and other words of Icelandic origin. 

Characters in the book are interesting and believable.  I liked all of them.  Principle characters were our protagonist Ourie (sp?), his Papi, his Mama, his Ama (grand mother,)   Runa, their drunken neighbor’s daughter, Mihan, Oure’s  girlfriend,  and Riku their loyal and very intuitive farm dog,

Our ptotagonist is an introverted adolescent, an only child working with his father on the farm until  he goes off to the university in Reykjavic – something his parents expected and wanted him to do . His father because he wanted a better life for his son than the unrewarding drudgery of working the farm, his mother because she came from a university educated family and wanted her son to have that path open to him.    He’s not crazy about being a student, and when his father is injured and  struggling with the work on the farm, he willingly takes a leave from being a student and stays on the farm to help out.  

But it’s clear that he enjoys farm work, much  more than his father, and misses it when he’s in Reykjavic.  He doesn’t particularly like school and doesn’t enjoy the hustle and bustle of city life.  

Sub plots –

  • How the tension below the surface between Oure’s parents would resolve itself.
  • Whether Runa would be able to find a female partner 
  • Whether Oure and Mihan would ever get past their communications difficulties and become a couple.
  • Whether his father would ever get over his antipathy toward farming.
  • Whether Oure would go back to complete his degree program or stay and work the farm.

These sub plots are driven to a conclusion by an unanticipated event, that forces all concerned to make decisions that they were unwilling to make without being forced to. As the book concluded, I wanted more, and would enjoy a sequel.  

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Replay, by Ken Grimwood

Posted on April 16, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:   Selected by my Science Fiction reading group.  Though it was written in 19886 it won several awards  to include Worrld Fantasy Award for best novel in 1988.  Also apparently was the inspiration for the movie Ground  Hog Day.  I listened to it and was impressed with how the narrator read it. 

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Our protagonist Jeff Winston, has a heart attack at age 43 and watches himself die – then suddenly wakes up  aa himself,  at 18 years old in 1963 in his college dorm room with all of the memories he had as a 43 year old, and with the opportunity to start life anew as himself at age 18.  The story is of his choices and new adventures until he reaches the same date, and time again in 1988 and again dies and awakens again, somewhat later in is life than the first time.  This happens again and again, dying at the same date/time in each reliving, but waking up later in his original life.  In one of his lives, he finds and meets a woman who is having the same experience, and each life she lives ends at the same time and date as his.  They are able to meet again in future “replays” and much of the book is about their lives and traded insights dealing with this very surprising and strange fate. 

My Impressions:  I really enjoyed this book – engaging and fun to read as it progresses in profundity from Jeff Winston’s-  our protagonist’s – ability to live out all his adolescent/young man’s male fantasies of money/sex/power in his first cople of reincarnations, or “replays,” to a point where he seems to have fully scratched that itch, and his issues and  goals become more profound in their implications.  By the end of the book he is a man in his 40s but with a couple of centuries worth of experience. 

This book was published in 1986 and Jeff’s relived experiences coincide with much of my life -from 1963- 1988.  He re-experiences the John/Robert Kennedy assassinations, MLK’s assassination, the Vietnam War protests of the 60s, and the Cold War of the 70s and 80s.  He enjoys (again) the rise of the Beatles, and other popular music of the 60’s 70’s and 80’s, the counter-culture and sexual revolutions of the sixties and seventies and then the rise of the Yuppies in the 80s. And after he experiences them again and again, they become tireseome.  Most challenging to him was that he couldn’t share this experience and its challenges with anyone without being subjected to ridicule and potentially being committed to psychiatric care. 

The most powerful part of the book for me was when he connected with Pamela, a woman who was also in a replay cycle.  In trying to sort out their common experience and unravel and understand the implications of the replay phenomenon, they fell in love. And then they would both die again – on the same day in 1988 and each time they vowed to reconnect in their next life, beginning again 20+ years earlier. But that got complicated when they realized that they were being reborn in different times later in their lives – what they called the “skew”.    He might begin his next replay at age 23 and she, perhaps at age 16.  But in each case, when they were reborn in their next replay, they remembered all the lives they’d lived before, found a way to reconnect, but the skew made it each time more complicated – esp when one or the other had gotten married while waiting for the other to begin their replay -not knowing when or where. 

Again, lots of fun reading this book.  A very engaging and touching romance between Jeff and Pamela, dealing with truly difficult issues related to their unique experience.  Issues that came up for me were the superficiality of fulfilling primal desires for sex, pleasure, power and wealth,  and the ultimately lack of fulfillment from the freedom that comes with those.  Love, marriage, intimacy, loneliness, life purpose are all subtly issues in this fun and fascinating book.  What would I do were I reborn at age 18 – how different would it be from what Jeff did?  And if reincarnation is real  (it could be…) how complicated would it be to know all that one had experienced before, in previous incarnations, with whom, consequences and emotional impact.  

Really enjoyed this read – highly recommended for thoughtful people with a senee of fun. 

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The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt

Posted on April 8, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  Selected by the SEAL book club I help run.  We had previously read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind and found it insightful and enlightening. 

Summary in 4 Sentences: This books makes a strong case with impressive amounts of data, that giving children and teenagers unfettered access to smart phones and social media is harming them and society. He has separate chapters on impact on boys and girls, noting that girls have had the most negative consequences of full access to social media in their late childhood and teenage years, as evidenced in the significant increase in suicide attempts and other psycho-social disorders, but boys have suffered as well, but differently. He also makes the case that smart phone usage and helicopter parenting are reducing the amount of free play that he believes develops confidence, autonomy and adaptability that youth will need as adults.   He concludes by offering four  solutions to how to fix this negative  rewiring of American youth – what government, schools, parents can do to reverse these negative trends. 

My Impressions: An excellent and well documented treatment of the impact that smart phones are having on youth in America – and all over the affluent civilized world.  Haight writes for both the social scientist and the lay person – he offers the data, the charts, graphs and resources for the social scientist, but also provides a personalized touch with his own anecdotal observations for the lay reader.  He also makes the book easy to skim and review by offering bulltetized summary points at the end of each chapter.

He has two themes and he gives significant attention in mulitple chapters to each of these:  

  • The Decline of Play-based childhood, which addressees the need that children have for free space to play, take risks, learn to play with others and how these opportunities are declining for children, esp in America.
  • What he calls “The Great Rewiring” – the rise of the phone-based childhood and the wide variety of dangers that presents. 

Then he concludes the book with recommendations – what we can do about these challenges. He makes four major recommendations to each of us as parents, grandparents, citizens  witha  chapter on each:

  • Preparing for Collective Action
  • What governments and tech companies can do now
  • What Parents can do know
  • What schools can do now.

The book is filled with convincing data that shows that a significant percentage of American youth have become increasingly depressed, unhappy, too often with  suicidal ideation or attempting or committing suicide in the last decade.  He describes what he calls the “tidal wave” of  the conjunction of the proliferation of smart phone usage with social media activity on the part of pre-adolescent and adolescent youth.  More social media time almost always means less in-person contact with others, less outdoor play time, less quiet thoughtful time. And he convincingly argues that these areas which smartphone/social media have reduced are fundamental to healthy maturing and to becoming happy, productive adults. 

He has a chapter entitled The Four Foundational Harms – “Social Deprivation, Sleep Deprivation, Attention Fragmentation, and Addiction.”  In this chapter he points to these as multi-faceted harm and collateral damage resulting from extensive smart phone and social media use.  Each of these have key negative impact on the development of children and adolescence. None of this surprised me, but the massive amount of evidence he gave drove home the point. 

One of the chapters which I didn’t expect, but which grabbed my attention was one he called “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation.” There is a lot in this chapter about how extensive smart phone and social media use distracts all of us, but particularly young people from the quieter, more transcendental aspects of living on this planet.  He notes how a “phone based life distracts us from aspects of living that engender a pull to the more profound, to spiritual values.”  “As we’ve seen before, our phones drown us in quantity while reducing quality   You watch a morally elevating short video, feel moved, and then scroll to the next short video, in which someone is angry about something….If we want awe and natural beauty to play a larger role in (our children’s) lives, we need to make deliberate efforts to bring them or send them to beautiful natural areas.  Withoug phones.”  (p215)  

HIS CONCLUSION:  He concludes the book with chapters entitled: “What Governments and Tech Comapnies Can Do Now,”  “What Schools Can Do Now,” “What Parents Can Do Now,” and a final chapter entitled “Bring Childhood Back to Earth.”

SEALBOOK CLUB reaction   The 30+ SEALS who joined the discussion were overwhelmingly positive on the message of the book.  Author Jonathan Haight  joined us for about 30 minutes of the discussion and a number of the active or former SEALs asked questions about how best to implement his recommendations at home with their kids. JH gave advice essentially right out of his book, and recommended making many more fun alternative activities available for them to do, as many as possible outdoors..  Other interesting things that came up in our discussion.

  • JH pointed out that the movement to reduce and manage smartphone use by youth and adolescents has been one of the fastest social change movements he’s ever seen.
  • Since his book came out, he’s seen more parents acting, schools acting, and family time has become a fight over “screen time”. The biggest success is more and more people are buying into no smartphones before high school.
  • He pointed out, as he did in the book, that forbidding phones in class is not a solution, since, between classes, at recess, at lunch, kids will be on their phones instead of interacting in person with their friends. And in class, they will be thinking about what they will do on their phones as soon as the bell rings. Phones need to be forbidden for the entire school day.
  • He pointed out one of the biggest collateral damage effects of smartphones and social media, being always connected (and this applies to adults as well as youth, is what he called “attention fragmentation.” 
  • Multiple countries have legislated against smart phone availability and use during public school time.  I recall Australia and some European countries.  In the US, 12 states have legislated against smartphones in school.
  • Regarding his advocacy for more free play and parents giving their children more freedom and responsibility, this is a price parents have to be willing to pay. Helicopter parents have to be willing to accept measured risk. Also, parents need to work together and cooperate in this, and local governments have to loosen up child protective service guidelines
  • JH points out teens are terrified of being socially cut off. Terrified of being left out. Terrified of becoming “socially dead.”  They are very susceptible to FOMO – and this is driving  teenagers to stay engaged on their phones and with social media.
  • One person calling in from Brazil noted that Brazil is one of the most active countries in the world on social media.
  • JH was quick to point out that he believes AI and Generative AI will have by far the most profound changes in Western Society, eclipsing all concerns about Social media and smart phone culture. And he warned us to keep our eyes open – this tranformation – for good, ill, or whatever is already beginning to take place and will be very evident in less than 5 years. 
  • One retired SEAL pointed out that the research cited in the book describing the nefarious influences of smartphones and social media on youth encompass probably less than 1/3 of Gen Z.    This officer and a few others in the group noted how their experience with more select groups from Gen Z  eg Naval Academy, Elite High Schools, SEAL trainees – is that they are incredibly accomplished and capable, compared to previous generations.  Bill McRaven separately in an interview refuted the narrative that Gen Z are all pampered, self centered wimps, noting that his experience has him very much admiring Gen Z.  That doesn’t necessarily argue against JH’s thesis, but points out that it is more complicated – than simply stating that smart phones and social media are ruining our youth.  It’s clear that social media and smart phone access affects different people differently – some social groups more than others. 
  • In support of that last point, JH pointed out that the negative impact of excessive use of smartphones and social media seem to disproportionately impact the lower income and less affluent populations in America, where there is a single parent,  or both parents are  working, not able to give adequate attention to what their children are doing during their free time. The smart phone becomes an un supervised and easily corruptible babysitter.
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The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

Posted on April 6, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book:  While I was reading All the Beauty in the World, this book kept popping up on my google and Amazon feeds – if you liked All the Beaurty, you’d probably like this.  I looked it up, the story sounded intriguing so I got it on Audible  and listened to it. 

Summary in 3 Sentenes:  The story is told in the first person from the perspective of a Malaysian woman of Chinese descent whose story we hear from her perspective as an old woman looking back on her life, sharing her story as a young woman working for a renowned Japanese gardner in the mountains of Malaysia, and  as a prisoner in a Japanese slave labor camp during WWII. The story bounces around in the timeline, but the meat of it was when she worked as an apprentice to the Japanese Emperor’s former gardner, helping him buid his masterpiece garden in the mountains of Southern Malayia

My Impressions: Loved this book. It moves slowly, but in a deliberate manner.  At first the slow pace was a bit off-putting and I wasn’t sure what was happening, but patience won out and I”m so glad it did.  Like a great, unhurried meal, it offered tidbit apetizers to let you warm up to the main course,  and by the time it started picking up, I was entranced and very engaged.   It never really got to be a so-called “page-turner,” but the story was powerful and told in a way that will appeal to most sensitive intelligent readers who are not looking for a “fast food” novel.  When I finished the book I wanted to spend more time with the woman whose story I’d been listening to for weeks. It wss nominated for and received many awards.

Given that I listened to it, it’s worth commenting that the reader did an awesome job of creating different voices for not only the main character in different stages of her life, but also for the multitude of men and women of different nationalities who came into her life. 

I was surprised to learn that the author is male – the voice of the female protagonist Yun Ling was very convincing. 

This story introduces us to Malaysia in the period from before  WWII until the 1980s.  We learn something about Malaysia as a British colony, the anglophone Chinese subculture of British Malaysia, then how the Brits abandoned Malaysia to the Japanese and the brutality the Japanese Army imposed on Malaysia (and the rest of it’s conquests,) to include their treatment of PoWs in slave labor camps.  And then the aftermath of the War – the brutal communist insurgency in Malaysia, how the British sought to suppress it, how the British and the Malaysian Chinese  were distrusted by the native Malaysians as they worked  together for Malaysian independence from Britain.  We also learn of  the existence of Indigenous Malaysians who lived separately and were somewhat disenfranchised by the Brits and elites of Malaysian society.  We also got various different views and perspectives of different Japanese involved in the war. 

And of course we learn a lot about different philosophies and art of Japanese gardening, as Aritomoa explains its nuances to Yun Ling.  Also surprisingly we learn about the Horimomo – the esoteric art of Japanees artful tatooing,  

All of that was background and setting for the protagonist’s story – how after the war and her traumatic experiences in a Japanese slave labor camp, she left a promising legal career in Kuala Lumpur to fulfill a promise to her sister who had died in the slave labor camps. Yun Ling and her sister had made elaborate plans to work together to build a Japanese Garden together after the war.  After leaving Kuala Lumpur, Yun Ling dedicated herself to fulfilling this dream she and her sister had had.  At her request, Yun Ling becomes an apprentice to Aritomo a master Japanese gardener who had formerly been  Emperor Hirohito’s gardener prior to the War. Aritomo had been let go and gone into exile in Malaysia, and was creating “Yugiri” -his own ideal garden in the Highlands of Southern Malaysia. Yun Ling initially has a difficult relationship to Aritomo, as she clearly suffers from PTSD based on her experiences in the Japanese slave labor camp.  Aritomo is patient when she erupts with animus left from that experience. Slowly she grows, matures,  and is less consumed by her anger.  

Much of the book centers around Yun Ling’s strained but evolving relationship to Aritomo as she learns more about the art of the Japanese garden, and about the quiet and mysterious Aritomo himself. Also included in the story are several other colorful charactrs – Magnus – a close friend of Aritomo’s and eventually of Yun Ling, and his nephew Frederick – both expats from South Africa. As the book progresses, we learn more about and get to know Yun Ling, Aritomo, Magnus and Frederick. There are indeed some surprises.  The more I got to know these characters, especially Yun Ling the protagonist, the more I became immersed in the story and loved what it was telling me.  I was sad to finish the book.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it and will read more by this author.  

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Self and Soul – A Defense of Ideals, by Mark Edumndson

Posted on March 22, 2025 by schoultz

Why this Book:  I had not heard of this book when Doug Watterson sent it to me as a gift, with the note that it was one of the best books he’d ever read.  Doug is an infantry officer in the Army, who used to be in the Navy.  Respecting Doug, I said, OK – I’ll read it.  Glad I did

Summary in 5 Sentences: The author discusses in three separate chapters, three fundamental human archetypes (he doesn’t use that word) that he has identified as representing ideals in Western Civilization: the Hero, the Saint, and the Thinker.  These archetypes he associates with the Soul – concern about and willing to sacrifice oneself and one’s worldly well-being for something bigger than oneself. He also identifies another archetype which he believes has some Ideal qualities –  romantic love as portrayed by the Romantic Poets of the 19th century.  In contrast to these, he discusses the cult of the Self  which entices us away from such ideals – the pragmatic striving for what’s good for me- comfort, security, health, pleasure, longevity. And he offers two separate chapters on individuals who he identifies as legitimizing this very pragmatic (and human)  approach to life, arguing that selfless ideals are unrealistic, often misguided, and not natural to us:  Shakespeare and Freud. 

My Impressions:  Engrossing and powerful. Thought provoking and challenging. The author is thoughtful and very well versed in the humanities and makes a convincing case based on empirical evidence, and his thorough study of the examples he cites. At the bottom of this post, I argue a bit with his premise. 

I have recommended this book to my most thoughtful friends who I believe are introspective enough to be willing to challenge  and reexamine their own values and decisions in life – because indeed this book challenges the life style and values most of us have chosen.  Most people are unwilling to look too closely at such issues – though church leaders, and secular moral leaders regularly challenge us to do so.  

Two sentences of his that I believe sum up much of this book: 

  • “Often throughout this study, Self has been understood as the state that stifles Soul.  The pursuit of power and pleasure and social ascendancy block the hope of achieving unity-of- being through contemplation, compassion, bravery, or the use of imagination.” (p217)
  • “Self often yearns for Soul. Those who live in the State of Self – the state that takes the fulfillment of desire as it’s ultimate horizon – understand, on a level often too deep for words, that their lives lack an essential quality.”  (p217)

I chose to read Self and Soul  first thing in the morning, when I was fresh, after a cup of coffee (or two,) and  could only read 10 or so pages at a time.  I highlighted a lot of it as particularly cogent, insightful and useful for me to consider.  There is a lot in this book.  Below is a brief summary:

The Heroic Ideal – also often represented by the value of “courage” is exemplified by Homer’s Achilles, who chose to live up to his ideal of the courageous warrior, though he knew it would cost him his life.  He sacrificed the opportunity for family, secuity comfort and life to live up this ideal. He contrasted Achilles with Odysseus, the ultimate practical man.

The Saintly ideal – also represented by the value of “compassion” is exemplified by Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius. Each of these in different times and cultures, explicitly renounced Self as defined in this book (what I’ve previously called WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?)  in order to show compassion for and take care of others, and to pursue a higher purpose.  Each chose to live a life consistent with their ideal values that subordinate personal comfort and well-being to the well-being of others and the greater good. 

The Thinker Ideal – also represented by the search for Truth, is exemplified by Plato, Socrates, and Nietzsche.  He discusses at some length also Emerson and Thoreau as well.   This is the contemplative ideal – the person who will not abide any deception – to self or others.  The thinker’s pursuit of a clear eyed view of reality and Truth – as best we can know it – are paramount.    If we think of the loner philosopher we are confronted with Socrates who was very social – to the point that it cost him his life.  He would not compromise his freedom to explore and search for Truth in return for any comfort, including to save his life.  The author notes that the thinker is often a wanderer, who is afraid that marriage and family would be a poison that would force him to compromise his  search for Truth with the demands of Self – and family. 

The Romantic Poets:  represented selfless romantic love as a source of energy and motivation for subordinating Self to the other.  Edmundson is equivocal on this point but points to how certain of the Romantic Poets – Blake and Yeats in particular – sublimated their erotic passions toward their beloved to humanity and the greater good.  The willingness to put the other – and then the others – above oneself, was worth noting as selfless ideal.

But he is ambivalent. He concludes this chapter noting that the Romantic quest has possibilities which have not been “completely explored, it’s validity far from decided. Is the Romantic quest ultimately an affair of Self or of Soul? We do not entirely know. But we still live within its dangers and possibilities. ” (p216)

Advocates for the primacy of Self:

Shakespeare. Edmundson makes a case for Shakespeare as the people’s voice for middle class practical values.  He explores many of Shakespeare’s best known and some lesser known plays and  points out how the idealists seem never to prosper and are always victims to the schemes and cunning of the more pragmatic actors in his plays.  He was playing to his audience and amplifying their prejudices – his audience consisted mostly of poor and lower middle class attendees who had little love for, and good reason not to trust the supposed elites who claimed to espouse high ideals.  “For though it may be difficult to see what Shakespeare valued …it is palpable what he condemns:  chivalry, honor, nobility, the heroic code.  Titus, Hotspur, Othello, Macbeth, Timon, Coriolanus, Caesar, Lear, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and the entire sorry cast of Troilus and Cressida leave this beyond doubt'” (p 172)  But there is an exception.  “To this rule there is a salient exception. In Hamlet – the poet’s greatest creation -one often encounters the free play of intellect. At times he thinks pragmatically…..But he can also think in quest of the Truth…to explore what might be true for others, true perhaps for all men, at all times.”  (p174)

The chapter is entitled “Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self” and Edmundson makes the case that Shakespeare is the best known early voice of the movement toward the modern, practical man, setting the stage for Dickens, Freud and others later.  “Few can be as enchanted with honor as the man who has had to thrust it aside in order to get where he is going in the world….Hal (Prince Henry, Henry V) is Shakespeare’s primary man – and he is, perhaps , the future.” (p183)

Freud.  Edmundson states that “Freud took the Soul State seriously. He feared it and in some measure, was drawn to it.”  But after close examination, Freud decided that its allure was a pie-in-the-sky deception and could only lead to disillusionment and unhappiness.  So he put forth a version of the integrated Self as his Ideal.   Edmundson calls Freuds authentic man “the antiheroic hero.”  

This chapter goes into Freud’s  triumvirate of the Id, Ego and Super Ego. Through psychoanalysis, Freud seeks to bring those three into harmony – the Id being reality and the external world that each of us must confront and live in;  the Ego being how one lives in the world, striving to fulfill one’s desires and goals, and to find compromise and balance between the demands of the world and other people;  and the the Ego must contend with the often tyrannical demands of the Super Ego – the parental overseer, always judging and harassing.  The Ego he argues must be “the great negotiator” between these three forces.  Freud believed that we are not born, nor designed to be “happy” and psychoanalysis helps us accept and learn to live with dissatisfaction, unhappiness, not getting our way – and to be “less unhappy” than most of us actually are.  Freud has dismissed the joys of State of Soul as a fantasy and a mirage. He advocated investing in self, in such a way that helps us live in this challenging world of practical limitations. 

My thoughts: This book challenged me. That’s why I liked it so much.

I think the author makes an excellent case for how Western – especially American – culture has evolved.  We prize and honor those who are winners – no matter how they win.   Except in the most egregious cases, character doesn’t seem to matter as much as one’s ability to win and succeed.  Aristotle had a great phrase:  Clever men know how to get what they want. Wise men know the right things to want.  It seems we honor cleverness more than character and honor. This book is about the tension between the two.  

The book implicitly begs each of us to ask when, and how often we fudge our values, fudge the truth, or don’t do what we know or believe to be the really “right” thing. We avoid the hard right decision, for convenience, in order to get something we want or to avoid accountability.  Hard question to ask ourselves,  and for those of us who are honest, the answer is often uncomfortable. 

And while I honor and respect Edmundson describing this Soul – Self duality,  he doesn’t until the very end point to where these are not necessarily two absolutes.  I was waiting for this, and it was not until the end that he recognizes that the realities of daily life require practical skills and compromises, and notes in reference to a woman struggling with the practicalities of Self required to take care of her family, that “in every act of courage or compassion or true thought, she will feel something within her begin to swell, and she’ll feel a joy that passes beyond mere happiness…intimations of a finer and higher life…and she’ll feel then the resurrection of her Soul.” (p 259) 

I believe he is saying we need to have and hold on to Ideals, that we must feed our Souls by listening to and honoring them, rather than discarding them as most people expect us to do, in  order to follow the practical path to meet social expectations and do well for our Selves.  We should hold on to the ideal of the State of the Soul in order to at least sometimes to get beyond What’s In It For Me. To have a family and live in society, compromises are often necessary.  But the tendency is to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” and give up ideals entirely or compromise them to such a degree that they are never an inconvenience..

A couple of other quibbles> 

  • I could argue that some of those who seem to follow the ideal are actually largely driven by ego – and I’d claim that about Achilles.  His “Self” was all about his reputation and his legacy – about him becoming immortal as an icon.  I know of people who went to Vietnam with the explicit intention of earning a Medal of Honor – out of Self motivations – while many/most MoH recipients indeed abandoned all hopes for Self in the inerest of duty and their fellow soldiers/sailors.  
  • He doesn’t mention artists or musicians – or those people so dedicated to creating beauty that they forgo most pleasures of civilized life. Great musicians who refuse to make popular music that would earn them a living; great artists who paint what inspires them and fits their own visions of beauty. So many such artists and musician have lived their ideal and created in obscurity and gone unappreciated in their own lives. 

Of course we need practical men and women  in the real world.  We need those who are willing to make some compromises to achieve a greater good for the greater number.   Idealists who are unwilling to compromise to fulfill pragmatic objectives do not get elected to public office, nor succeed if they do. Politics is the art of compromise, and while those idealists who Edmundson praises serve as noteworthy examples for our character, leadership that hopes to make a difference in the real world, has to have a very pragmatic component. 

I see the Self – Soul tension as being not bipolar but on a spectrum. There are some things even the most vile of us won’t do out of principle, and there are some compromises that the most principled of leaders will choose, out of respect for the greater good, or those who may not share their spotless idealism. The salient question for me is not whether I am a self-centered pragmatist, or a self-sacrificing idealist, but where on the spectrum between the two I most try to live my life.  I am sure I’m not alone is admitting that there have been times when I was more one than the other. Where am I now? Where do I want to live in the future?

In ethical philosophy this tension is described as being between the philosophy of Deontology as professed by Immanuel Kant (principle is everything), and Utilitarianism, as professed by John Stuart Mill (consequences are everything.). The debate between the principled act and what’s best for the greater good for the greatest number has been going on for centuries.  Even the most principled leaders must sometimes sacrifice principle for the greater long term good. 

I would have liked this book more if he’d looked at some more modern well-known characters – like Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Bertrand Russell, or Elon Musk, or Greta Thunberg, or Conrad Adenauer or even Woodrow Wilson – and how their pragmatism served their idealism.  I’d like Edmundson to discuss where they were pragmatic on some issues in order to fulfill more important or significant ideals.  Or when they had to violate one principle in order to serve another more important one. 

I recently saw Kevin Costner’s special on Yosemite which included a short piece on how John Muir influenced Teddy Roosevelt. John Muir was an idealist in the mold that Edmundson describes – something of an ascetic, very much self sacrificing for his ideals. Teddy Roosevelt had a huge ego and his ideals were tied to his ego.  Teddy Roosevelt was inspired by John Muir and then had the practical political skills to fudge the rules, bypass bureaucratic restrictions with some half truths, in the interest in the greater good of protecting our natural spaces, and which eventually resulted in creating our national park system.

Paul Petzold coined a term which has become the foundation of the National Outdoor Leadership School which he called “Expedition Behavior” or EB.  EB requires that the good of the group be paramount, BUT each of us must take care of ourselves, often first, in order to be a productive and contributing member of the group. If you are part of a group or team, if you don’t take care of yourself, you become a liability to the group. The good of Self and Soul merge.  Edmundson’s book was clearly not concerned with people not taking care of themselves, but lamented the loss of ideals of the Soul as a counterbalance to what he sees as primarily Self serving, pragmatic behavior and values in today’s culture. 

Back to Aristotle.  Ideally we want the Wise AND Clever man or woman to lead us.  They are hard to find…..How to live in the world, with friends, family and community AND ALSO have the joys of communion with higher values, ideals, and the ineffable. 

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All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringly

Posted on March 14, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: Recommended to me by my friend Francine, which I convinced my book club to select, since it was a shorter and a relatively easier read than our last selection, which was One Hundred Years of Solitude. 

Summary in 3 Sentences: Written as a personal memoir of a brief period in the author’s life, when he worked as a guard at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art.  After college he worked briefly at the New Yorker, then after caring for his brother dying of pancreatic cancer, he left the New Yorker and opted for a quieter, more contemplative job as a guard at the NYC MET. From his narrative we learn about the culture of the guards at the MET, background and his impressions on the art in the various sections of the Met, his impressions and interactions with the many visitors, and ultimately how the 10 years he spent there positively shaped his growth and quality of life. 

My Impressions: Loved this book!  Through his experience and perspectives, the author treats us to a meditation on the intersection of life and art as seen through the lens of a thoughtful  and well educated layman. He is writing for laymen like me – who know enough about art to superficially appreciate it, but don’t really understand it.  He describes his impressions of a number of pieces of art, some great masterpieces, others less well known,  and shares his reflection on what the artist may have been thinking, feeling, trying to convey, and what a particular painting, sculpture or other objet d’art says about the author’s as well as our life and times. 

There is no action or plot – it is not a page-turner – it would appeal to someone sympathetic to a Buddhist perspective on life and the universe (I am) but that said, it held my attention and I always looked forward to opportunities to listen to it.  The author himself reads it, so his voice and inflection add to the depth and sincerity of his text.  The writing is superb. 

To help me appreciate this book, I purchased a coffee-table book The Masterpieces of the MET which my wife and I have enjoyed.  A nice addition, but not necessary to appreciate the book, but a pleasant and informative reminder of how spectacular and diverse the collection of art is in the MET. But a friend subsequently send me a link which incldes pictures of many of the pieces discussed in the book   It is at https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/all-the-beauty-in-the-world/

Super Summaries does well at summarizing the main themes of  All the Beauty in the World.  They list 3 main themes below with my comments impressions: 

  1. The ineffable nature of art – how words are poor tools to describe and evoke the experience of art – whether it be looking at, listening to, or touching, tasting whatever.  Describing it is a poor substitute, though it can augment, the experience of art is ineffable. One quote from the book that makes this point:  “… I experienced the great beauty of the picture even as I had no idea what to do with that beauty. I couldn’t discharge the feeling by talking about it—there was nothing much to say. What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint—silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest.”
  2. Art and Mortality. The paintings, sculptures, pottery, etc that we experience in the MET or anywhere, are like the footprints left by humans who are long dead.  In contemplating each piece, his mind goes to the person who created it, to his/her life and times, long past, reminding us that our  experience of this persons art is  also an ephemeral moment in our lives, in time.   His experience of his brothers death was a constant reminder to him and us of the privilege we have of being able to enjoy life and art. A quote: “The frenzy of the day has passed and only the death remains, the blunt fact, the impenetrable mystery, the immense and immovable finality. As a watchman I can use this picture in something like the way it was intended to be used, and for that I am grateful.”
  3. Museum as Sanctuary Life and routine in the museum are apart from the hustle and bustle of what goes on outside the museum.  He takes us outside to the street during his breaks, to a pub with his fellow guards, to home with his wife and child – all of which contrast sharply with the calm and stable experience  of being inside the MET.  It is indeed a sanctuary from the tensions and conflicts which we face in our daily lives. 

To conclude – All the Beauty in the World is a great read to ground the reader in a quieter, more spiritual retreat from the many trivial as well as important and critical issues we deal with in our daily lives. It is short – 6 hours to listen to -which was satisfying to me; only 200 pages to read.  I echo my friend Francine who recommended the book to me, when she told me she now really looks forward to going to NYC and visiting the MET.  I will re-read the book before I do. 

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Spider World #5 The Magician, by Colin Wilson

Posted on March 14, 2025 by schoultz

Why this book: The next book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Series, following The Desert, The Tower, The Fortress, and The Delta. In some configurations of the Spider World series, the first three books are combined into one, entitled The Tower, The Delta is number 2, and this book is number 3. 

Summary in 5 Sentences: This book begins with Niall now recognized as the lord emissary of the plant goddess who the spiders recognize as their worldly and spiritual leader, and as such,  Niall is given full authority and treated as a demi-god.  The truce between the Death Spiders and humans is based on an agreement that Spiders would not harm humans and vice versa. But when one of the Death Spiders is found murdered, the treaty and the Death Spiders’ trust in Niall’s willingness and ability to fulfill it is in jeopardy and Niall cecomes the lead detective investigator to find out who killed the spider and why.  In his research, Niall slowly realizes that there is another threat to the peaceful world he rules – and it appears to come from a different group of beings that live outside Spider World, led by a powerful leader  called The Magician who apparently has supernatural and paranormal powers that exceed Niall’s or the formidable powers of the Death Spiders

My impressions. This volume of the Spider World series is a who dunnit as Niall desperately needs to solve the murder of one of the Death Spider’s guards in order to protect the fragile treaty that he had negotiated with the Death Spiders to free the humans from their role as workers and slaves subject to the Death Spiders.  In Spider culture it was inconceivable that another Spider could have murdered one of the guards to the Death Spider’s palace, but it was inconceivable to Nial that a human would choose to, much less be physically capable of murdering a spider.

Niall metaphorically puts on his Sherlock Holmes hat to investigate the murder, looking at the evidence, pursuing the clues, considering all possibilities.  In this process we learn more about the Death Spider culture, its history and the city they live in.  We also are introduced to more of the mental powers the spiders have, how energy and communication can flow between beings mentally, and how the Spiders are able to project images and scenes of what they recall telepathically to others – to Niall as well as other Spiders.  And we learn that in this world, objects can carry and transmit energy from powerful beings who are physically offset from that object  – like an amulets or a talisman in the Occult world.

Niall knows he’s up against something powerful and evil, but he doesn’t know who or why.  He goes into the white tower to consult the Steegmaster, and sensors inside the white tower also pick up something different and possibly nefarious that seems now to be in play.  His investigation leads to Niall being given the privilege of being able to interrogate the memories of long dead Spider Lords who explained to him the long history of the Spider world, who their antagonists were several centuries ago, when the Spiders were indeed at war with a group in the mountains,  but for centuries, they hadn’t bothered one another. Then this murder. Why? 

Niall follows leads, gathers clues that he must  put together before he can  decide how to keep this murder and potential future murders or assaults on the Spiders from destroying the  peace treaty he’d negotiated with the sSpiders.  He came to understand that the leader of the mysterious and powerful hostile force is known as The Magician who it seems lives in an underground city deep in the mountains outside and away from the Spider City. The Magician is powerful enough to be able to remotely influence, control or do damage to people and things a great distance from his city.  Niall is helpless to save one person who had been hexed, and his own brother is in a precarious state of health, a victim of the Magician’s pwoer. 

The book concludes with Niall deciding that he had to personally go find and confront the Magician. 

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