Curiouser and curiouser

Earlier this year a friendly librarian changed my life. Again. She told me about this cool online service, Hoopla, which among other things allows you to download audiobooks to your smartphone or other devise.

I've always been a big fan of audio books, but used to listen to them in the Paleolithic era on cassettes and in the Neolithic era on compact discs... all of which had an irritating tendency to disappear or get damaged. Thanks to Hoopla I've been able to burn through dozens of books while driving, mowing or other tasks.

I took a classic wisdom bath and listened to unabridged recordings of Herodotus, Thucydides and Plutarch. I binged on my beloved (and admittedly crazy Nietzsche). I caught up a bit with my old friend Freud.

Just lately, to clear the palate, I listened to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I've been a fan of the Disney movie forever, the more recent version not so much though I like the actors, but it had been a while since I read the book.

Think Kafka for kids.

It was even more delightfully trippy than I remembered it, dreamlike and full of playing with language and logic.

Since we've gone down the rabbit hole lately, with and Orange King instead of a Red Queen screaming "off with their heads," it's even kind of timely. Electronically or otherwise, I highly recommend giving it another look.

Creative reading

The theme at Goat Rope these days is Ralph Waldo Emerson's influential essay on The American Scholar. In that lecture, delivered to distinguished Harvard alumni, he disparaged book learning separated from life. And, although I am a reader's reader, this is one time when he makes pretty good sense to me. They go better together.

Some of the best reading I've done has happened when I've been immersed in some struggle or other that called into play everything I had. For example, reading about the history of the civil rights movement or reading the works of social thinkers like the great Jewish sage Martin Buber or Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich  was much more nourishing and real when I was in the midst of a fight for racial justice or workers' rights and grappling with questions of means and ends. Likewise, reading Hobbes was more alive when I was working to reduce youth violence, just as modern philosophers like Habermas or Rawls were when I was trying to deal with and figure out different systems of domination.

Here's Emerson making what I think is the same point:

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant; and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. 

Sometimes I've returned to the same books that once burned on the page at a later date and a calmer time and found, with Hamlet, just words, words, words.

WILL HE OR WON'T HE? Here's the Washington Post interviewing WV's Senator Jay Rockefeller about the future of health care reform, including the question of whether WV's Governor Earl Ray Tomblin will expand Medicaid.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How not to kill yourself

Every so often I teach a college class in sociology, often on the topic of "Deviance and Social Control." One of the topics usually covered is suicide. Sometimes I bring in literary readings, including Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech (soliloquy being too difficult a word to spell); a section of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (not to be confused with the 70s rock group); and good old Moby-Dick.

Of the three, Moby has the best practical advice for people who may have self destructive thoughts but want to avoid acting them out. He has a safety plan. Safety plans are familiar to people working in the field of domestic violence. Potential victims are encouraged to devise a plan for escape if things ever get bad enough. As I understand it, even batterers undergoing treatment in intervention and prevention programs are encouraged to use safety plans when they feel the tension level rising. It's a way of getting the hell out of a situation when before the situation gets to you.

Ishmael, the windy narrator of Melville's classic, has his own safety plan when he gets a bit too morbid:

 Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

Maybe going off to sea on a whaling ship isn't the best option for people today when the hypos get the upper hand, but the basic idea is a good one. When things go bad, break the pattern.

We're just on the first paragraph of this greatest American novel and there's already been a potentially life saving tip. Who knows what else we'll find.

HERE'S ANOTHER GOOD IDEA: to wit, how not to give away the store and wind up with nothing when it comes to economic development incentives.

GOVERNMENT: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? Here are some ideas

SPEAKING OF READING, here's a look at how important it can be for the brain development of children. I say, make the little ones read Moby-Dick! (Actually, I think I did read a kid's version when I was young, which might explain a lot.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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Marginalia

I know that there are some people out there who are outraged when someone writes in a book or underlines passages. I do not subscribe to this viewpoint, which is just as well since I am one of those people who does that kind of thing. To me it's more like adding value. When I read library or otherwise used books, I'm always interested in what others have written in the margins and give underlined or highlighted passages a closer look.

Those markings can come in really handy in books you read more than once. I was delighted a few days ago to find my old beat up and marked up copy of Moby-Dick in my daughter's house. I'd been making do with another one, but this one had most the coolest passages underlined and bookmarked. Sure, it's in pretty bad shape and the binding has started to come apart, but I'd prefer it to a new one any day.

For that matter, aside from rare editions and precious manuscripts, I think books are meant to be consumed and used. If I was a real writer, I'd be more honored if my books were read, re-read, marked on, underlined, lived with and used up than if they sat in pristine condition unused on a shelf.

Speaking of Moby-Dick, I feel a long literary jag coming on.

NO LINKS today.

Since when was a marathon a sprint?

Even though the world is going to hell in a handbasket, I can't help but pause to note that Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai (birth certificate status unknown) ran the fastest marathon ever in Boston, with a time of 2 hours, two minutes and three seconds, almost a minute faster than the previous record.

It looks like it's only a matter of time before somebody breaks the two hour threshold.

I've done three marathons myself and usually it takes me about a week. Well, it seems like it anyway. I'm not sure I could go 26.2 that fast on a bicycle.

Maybe if it was all downhill...

THE FACTS ON TAXES can be found here.

DENY THIS. Here's something from the Washington Post on politically motivated climate change denial.

WHAT WE'RE MISSING OUT ON: a lot.

GOING FISHING, orangutan style. OK, so they use tools. But do they lie about the once that got away?

URGENT BUCKTOOTH DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Goat Rope book shelf: random items

I'm winding up Slacker Week by looking back at the year in reading. Here are some that I found to be diverting this year...

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson based on research by John Sergeant. I liked the movie, but the book was way more diverting--and weirder, especially since it's a work of nonfiction.

I also did some interesting reading about disasters and how people respond to them, including Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why and Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.

On a social science note, I enjoyed Len Fisher's Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, a book which I borrowed from a friend and probably haven't returned. Also enlightening was The Invisible Gorilla: and Other Ways our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

I could go on, but if I do, my employers will realize what I slacker I am all year round. Good reading in 2011!

The Goat Rope books shelf: religion and philosophy

During Slacker Week, i.e. those days between Christmas and New Year's Day, El Cabrero is doing as little as possible other than looking back at the year in reading. I was not particularly in a religious mode this year, if you don't count karate (which actually works pretty well as one), but I did read a bit about religion.

I don't always enjoy Karen Armstrong's books on religion, although I always seem to read them. I did enjoy one of her more recent books, The Case for God: What Religion Really Means.

I'm always a sucker for a good book on Buddhism, and Perry Garfinkel's Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness and the Man Who Found Them All fit the bill.

I paid another visit to Aristotle this year, re-reading The Nichomachean Ethics and The Politics, along with Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History. On the down side, I crawled through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and still don't know what all the shouting was about. It goes without saying that I revisited my old pal Nietzsche

The Goat Rope book shelf: history and biography

El Cabrero is slacking this week, which means no links or comments about current events. Rather, I'm taking a look back at the year in reading. Today, the topic is history.

By far the most engrossing book of this kind for me this year was Arthur Herman's Gandhi and Churchill, an account of the decades long rivalry between two worthy opponents. People of different political tendencies idolize one or the other of these men (usually not both, however). I'll pass. Both had their moments, but both also were capable of incredible blunders, callousness, and bull headedness. If I had to choose between one or the other, I'd pick FDR or Walter Reuther.

I've always been interested in the Pacific Theater of WWII, where my father and two uncles served, but my interest was piqued after my trip to Okinawa, where I toured the Peace Memorial and two museums that had exhibits related to the terrible battle that raged there. I really learned a lot from Max Hastings' Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945. The Nazis had no monopoly on atrocities.

Finally, what is it about Western powers that makes them want to make ill-advised forays into the Middle East, anyway? They've been doing it since the Trojan War and it never seems to work out very well. Juan Cole's Napoleon's Egypt provided another case in point. It's amazing that he got to be emperor after leading that monumental goat rope.

The Goat Rope book shelf: fiction

I'll wait for the movie on this one.

I like to think of the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as Slacker Week--and I plan to live up to it. There will be no links this week but rather a look back at the year in reading.

I make it a point never to divulge the number of books I get through in a year lest my employer realize that I'm pretty good at slacking the rest of the year too. I did get a bit less read this year, probably due to spending more time in physical training to prepare for karate my trip to Okinawa and to try to keep the edge.

While I didn't read a huge amount of fiction this year, here are some notable books:

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. I think I've read most if not all this writer (of Appalachian origins, let it be noted) has produced. Some of her fiction can be a bit preachy but her latest offering really hit the spot. It's the story of a young man who winds up hanging out with the likes of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky and then gets chewed up by the post WWII Red Scare. I think one reason I enjoyed it so much was due to our recent trip to Mexico where we hung out in the same places.

The Fall by Albert Camus. It's been decades since I read this one (The Plague being my favorite of his) and I was curious to give it another look. It has been interpreted as the author's own confession of his shortcomings and failure.

The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. I've read a lot of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy but not so much of Chekhov. The Good Doctor had a great eye for human actions and emotions and life's little situations. I plan on heading back for more.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction but La Cabra recommended this post-modern novel of separate but related stories across time.

Finally, I hit the children's section to take another look at Alice in Wonderland, an adult book thinly disguised as a children's classic. Also, I've never read any of Madeline L'Engle, but was inspired to try A Wrinkle in Time after seeing my nephew devour it.

In praise of literary crack

I usually fill in the blogging days between Christmas and New Year by going over the highs and lows of the year in reading. I'm jumping the gun a little bit now to say a few words in favor of literary crack.

Ordinarily, I have about five books going at any given time, often of a fairly solemn nature. I try to turn the page of each twice daily. At the moment, my pile includes Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (I'm up to Justinian), the Bhagavad Gita, Beowulf, Collapse by Jared Diamond, and a book on Tolkien.

But sometimes you've just got to blow it all out with some fun stuff. This week that meant listening to an unabridged audio of volume 2 of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's vampire trilogy The Fall. I mentioned volume 1, The Strain, here a while back.

These are not wimpy, sparkly, sexy or existential vampires. These are gross nasty viral parasites with bloodworms that do all kinds of nasty things, of which blood sucking is way down the list.

Reading something like this is kind of like gorging on burgers from White Castle or Five Guys. Not something to do every day but damn good every now and then.

I can't wait for volume 3.

END OF AN ERA. Here's an item on the departure of Don Blankenship from Massey Energy. The link includes video as well as text.

DENY THIS. Here's a profile of a pioneering climate change scientist and his work.

THE NEXT BAD DEAL? Dean Baker predicts a looming fight over the future of Social Security.

IN LIEU OF BARBIES, girl chimpanzees may play with sticks as if they were dolls.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The power on the page

Juno is a serious reader.

On my current pile of books lately is a gift from a friend titled A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel. It's a pretty wide ranging tome, interspersed with quotes from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

While reading it, I stumbled on some eloquent lines about the power of literature to help people deal with life and all its injustices and challenges. Here goes:

There may be no poem, however powerful, that can remove one ounce of pain or transform a single moment of injustice. But there may be no poem, however poorly written, that may not contain, for its secret and elected reader, a consolation, a call to arms, a glimmer of happiness, an epiphany. Something there is in the modest page that, mysteriously and unexpectedly, allows us, not wisdom, but the possibility of wisdom, caught between the experience of everyday life and the experience of literary reality.

Him write pretty but me think him right.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. I've blogged a lot this summer about the need for Congress and the Senate in particular to pass some additional fiscal relief to the states. Yesterday, the measure finally passed with a vote of 61-38. The House will be called back into session probably next week to finalize the bill.

The downside, as I mentioned yesterday, is that the package includes a rollback of expanded food stamp or SNAP benefits from the Recovery Act which will take place in 2014. But we can fight that one out another day.

ANOTHER UNLIKELY AGREEMENT. Things are really getting weird. Now I'm agreeing with former Reagan budget director David Stockman on letting Bush era tax cuts expire.

UPPER BIG BRANCH UPDATE. Here's an interesting item from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo about the latest twist in the investigation. This item from AOL News suggests that Massey's aggressive defense tactics have not been too well received.

DREAM ON. We all do it. But should we try to manipulate our dreams?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of reading, classics, vampires and such

I usually keep a pile of several books going at any given time and try to turn a page or two of each per day. Usually these are pretty dense and a page or two is plenty.

At the moment, my pile consists of some stories by Chekhov, The Fall by Camus, Vol. II of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aristotle's Politics and Eaarth, Bill McKibben's new book about climate change (which is a real downer, by the way). Oh yeah, and Thoreau's Walden.

I don't always see eye to eye with Henry, but I share his fondness for old classics:

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length give way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader far more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

Still and all, sometimes you need to clear the palate and there's nothing to do just that like a vampire novel. For fun, I've been listening to Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain. These vampires aren't sexy or teenybopper heart throbs or tragic existentialists. They are totally repulsive viral parasites with totally gross appendages. Listening to it made mowing the lawn a bit more entertaining.

I have a feeling Thoreau wouldn't have been a big fan of vampire novels.

PLAYING WITH FIRE. As I've been ranting for the last week or so, deficit mania could make the recession worse. And Krugman thinks so too.

WHATEVER. This is disappointing.

THIS COULD EXPLAIN A LOT. Research on voting behavior suggests that such decisions are often made on the basis of non-verbal and superficial factors.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Blenko Glass, a WV company that specializes in handmade glassware has fought its way back from the brink after nearly closing for good last year.

MONKEYS like TV too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Brother, can you spare a book?

I don't usually complain about this, but I'm about to have too much time to read. I'm talking air travel, including two 14 hour flights. Usually I have a pile of books going at any given time, but it's not really practical given limited luggage weight and limited space.

This has created an interesting dilemma...what to take?

Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. It's about time to read Don Quixote again, especially since I'm going on a Quixotic trip. It really is a hilarious book. There's an old story that King Philip III of Spain once saw a man reading a book and laughing until he cried. The King said something like, "Either that man is crazy or he's reading Don Quixote."

2. Since I'm headed there, I'm going to try Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa, a gift from the in laws.

3. A friend loaned me a copy of Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Or maybe Jared Diamond's Collapse. I listened to it before but it deserves a real read. The jury's still out between those two.

4. We get The New Yorker at Goat Rope Farm. Man, do those things pile up. I never seem to get around to reading them, although the Spousal Unit manages to. I'm thinking about rounding up all the old ones I can find and taking them along. I can scatter them as offerings to other travelers as I go.

That's the plan anyhow.

WHAT HE SAID. NY Times columnist Bob Herbert talks sense about job creation here.

ALL DONE. The "final" piece of health care reform legislation, which also overhauled student loans, was signed yesterday.

BANKING ON REFORM. Here's TARP oversight committee chairperson Elizabeth Warren on the need for financial reform.

URGENT BAT UPDATE here.

CUTE LITTLE ROAD-RUNNER DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lost in a tale

El Cabrero has been musing lately about how literature can enrich daily life (as well as working for social justice). In fact, I often feel like I'm experiencing aspects of this story or that.

To give an example I mentioned last week, watching the tide of a policy battle surge back and forth in my state legislature reminded me of a comic version of the Iliad. I've also seen things in public and private life that remind me of various comedies and tragedies.

Of course, you can run anything into the ground. It can be kind of dangerous sometimes to confuse literature with real life.

The two best examples of that come from...literature. The thing that makes Cervantes' Don Quixote both funny and sad is that he can't tell the difference between the world he lived in and the romances he read. Another example might be Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who got ramped up on another kind of romance writing and messed up the lives of several people, including her own.

There are plenty of other stories of that kind of thing. Come to think of it, it's stories all the way down.

WHILE THE ECONOMY TANKS, CEO pay is doing just fine.

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE. Here's a Newsweek profile of Harvard law professor, author, and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren. She was way out in front on the whole debt crisis. El Cabrero strongly recommends checking out her books.

IT MUST BE HARD TIMES. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship got a pay cut.

TAXES. Animals collect them too.

COMPASSION ON THE BRAIN. Its roots go deep.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

On living Moby-Dick

Note: this post was intended to come out Friday, April 17, but I got the date wrong. I apologize to email subscribers for any inconvenience.

Lately the theme at Goat Rope has been literature and its role in enriching life and work. Here's a personal example:

El Cabrero has never sailed on a whaling ship, nor am I likely to do so at this point. But I love Melville's Moby-Dick. It's one I keep going back to every few years. One thing they may not have told you in English class is that quite a bit of that book is laugh out loud funny, in a dark kind of way.

Moby-Dick is a great example of my definition of a great story as something you can find as well as lose yourself it. At different points in my life, it felt like I wasn't just reading it--I was living it. I've been several different characters in turn.

Like Ishmael, I sometimes find it to be a "damp, drizzly November in my soul," the kind of mood in which I

find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet...

Like him, I've sometimes found that on such occasions,

it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off...

(Usually that's a sign that something needs to change.)

And like him, I've found water--even a little creek--to be mesmerizing, since "meditation and water are wedded forever."

Sometimes I get in Ahab mode. My leg was never bitten off or otherwise amputated by a white sperm whale, but I have been bitten by poverty and never quite got over it. It made me want to hunt the beast down whenever the opportunity occurs. There is that inscrutable something in every instance of injustice gets me going:

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?

At other times, I've played the role of first mate Starbuck by trying to talk other people down when they're ramped up to Ahab mode. Then there are the days when I feel like poor mad Pip.

And, while I officially disapprove of whaling, I do know the savage thrill of the hunt, of scanning the horizon for some kind of opening and yelling "There she blows!" when one occurs.

Bottom line: I've found that both reading and life are more fun and interesting when they are integrated.

HAVE WE HIT BOTTOM? Maybe, maybe not.

I PREFER COFFEE, CONTINUED. Here's a good blog post on some taxing issues by Greg Coleridge, an AFSC co-worker of mine in Ohio.

ON THAT NOTE, here's more on the subject by economist Dean Baker and the Economic Policy Institute.

WRITING ABOUT VALUES seemed to help some students boost their grade point averages.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Don't read it, be it

El Cabrero has long believed and often stated that humans are creatures of narrative or story. We read them, watch them, listen to them, and make them up all the time--even when we don't think we're doing it.

That's my story anyway. And, yes, I'm sticking to it.

That's one reason why I think literature is so enriching to life. While it is probably beyond the reach of a Mud River pirate such as myself to attempt to define what great literature is, I do have a working definition of a great story.

Y'all ready?

A great story is one that you cannot only lose yourself in; it's one that you can find yourself in.

You can use that if you want (with proper attribution of course).

STATES SLASH SERVICES. Programs benefiting vulnerable citizens have already been cut in 34 states so far as the recession spreads. That will probably be the next big thing to hit WV.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when you overuse a word.

I PREFER COFFEE. Here's Krugman on tea parties.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO CLEAN out the brain.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No moral, just story

How good is your kung fu? Image courtesy of wikipedia.

As a rule, El Cabrero tries to keep a healthy distance between himself and our insect friends. But some of them are pretty cool.

My personal favorite is the praying mantis (even though the mating behavior of the females strikes me as totally unsportsmanlike). I even had the honor of being beat up by one of them once.

As I've mentioned many times here, I've long enjoyed practicing the martial arts. I've dabbled in several but spent the most time with Okinawan/Japanese karate, which traces itself back in legend anyway to Shaolin kung fu.

Now, if the Gentle Reader has watched the proper measure of Chinese movies, he or she will know that many Shaolin styles are based on the movements of animals. Five big ones are tiger, crane, snake, leopard and dragon.

(Don't ask me how they researched the dragon part...)

There are several other animal styles, including praying mantis. According to that legend, a monk who lost many matches gained insight by studying and emulating the movements of that insect.

One day several years ago, I was going with Rob, a karate buddy of mine to Parkersburg, WV to meet with community folks about how to respond to hate group activity. When we stopped at the sacred Milton Go Mart, there was a big beautiful mantis on the wall.

I asked my buddy if he thought this one knew his stuff. I thought they were bluffing. To find out, I picked a blade of grass and gingerly poked it at him. KAWHAM! He/she flew at me so fast that I was startled and tripped and hit the ground.

I've been stung and bitten by many insects in my day, but that was the first time I lost to one in a fair fight. I just felt like sharing that today.

OK, back to business...

INEQUALITY can be bad for your health.

READING can be good for your morals.

DARWIN, DARWIN EVERYWHERE, including in art and human creativity.

MORAL SENTIMENTS. David Brooks writes here about the evolutionary origins of morality and its basis in emotion. But the Scottish Enlightenment people like Hume and Smith got there first.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore

During this week of slacking, El Cabrero has been reviewing items from the last year's worth of reading material.

Today's selection involves Weird and Obscure Works that I Wouldn't Necessarily Recommend to Anyone Else. To wit, sometimes I go on extended reading jags about extremely arcane subjects. Good though. Here goes...

*Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, Walter Burkert. I told you these were obscure books. This one is about the role of hunting and later animal sacrifice in human culture, with a special focus on the Greeks.

*Violence and the Sacred, Rene Girard. This was my second time through that book, although the reasons for reading it again escape me at the moment. If I got it right, and I'm not saying I did, Girard views acts of violent scapegoating as key to maintaining the social order in early societies.

*Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion, Robert Parker. What can I say? It's a weird reading jag thing. I'm intrigued by the ancient Greek idea of miasma or pollution as a way of understanding contemporary violence. Short version of my theory: violence is kind of like a barrel of hazardous materials that gets dumped in some public place. Once it's out there, it's unpredictable and can pollute people far removed from the original act.

*The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature, Howard Rollin Patch. Again, what can I say? She lives.

Disclaimer: El Cabrero and the staff of Goat Rope assume no responsibility for those who actually try to read these things.

NO LINKS TODAY. I'm too busy slacking to deal with current events.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: OBSCURE

Fun books

It's that time of year at Goat Rope wherein the dying year's reading is discussed. Here are some fairly random but interesting ones that I'd recommend, presented in no particular order.

Note on method: some books included in the category of "fun books" are kind of downers but they are the kind of reading material you don't have to force yourself to read.

*All is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West, Lawrence Sutin. Call me weird, but I think this was my favorite for 2008.

*Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson and David Olive Relin. The true story of how a mountain climber found his life's vocation building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

*Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich by Robert Frank. After the financial meltdown, this may be more of a cultural artifact than a current account, but it was a fun tour through an alien world.

*Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp. This one got lots of people eating closer to home. At Goat Rope Farm, we're all about that. Plus, the authors are all Appalachians to one degree or another.

*Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls. If you think your childhood was rough, check out this autobiography. Sad to say, El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia didn't come off very well in this.

*The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A great poet (but not so great defense secretary) once said that there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. One of my pet peeves is dealing with people who think they can predict the future and plan without taking surprises into account. Too bad the people who really need to read this won't.

*American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China, Matthew Polly. You don't have to be a martial arts nut like me to enjoy this one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Make new friends but keep the old

This may be a bronze of the ancient Greek bard Hesiod. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It is the immemorial custom at this blog (for the last couple years anyway) to reserve the last week or so of the year to discussing items from the Goat Rope book shelf. This involves giving a shout out to some of this year's best reading material, although little if any of it was written in 2008.

(Note: While El Cabrero is pleased to discuss selected books, I cannot divulge the total number of books consumed this year lest my employer realize what a slacker I am.)

This first installment consists of classics, many of which have been revisited after years since the previous perusal.

So here goes, starting with the ancients. The ancient Greek bard Hesiod was no Homer, but he had his moments. I started 2008 with another run through the Theogony, his account of the origin of gods, the universe and everything. As he put it,

In the beginning there was chaos.

Come to think of it, there still is.

Then came another look at Plato's Symposium, a dialogue on the nature of love. For some reason, I liked it better the last time I read it. Followers of this blog will not be surprised that the Odyssey of Homer got another look, since I spent a couple of months taking the long way home with its hero.

I also took another look at Rome's answer to the Homeric epics, the Aeneid of Virgil. Virgil was a more elegant writer than Homer although I prefer the latter. One difference between the work of Homer (whoever he was/they were) and Virgil is that the Homeric epics grew while Virgil's was self-consciously written. Good though.

I love these lines from Aeneas' visit to the underworld (which make a great mission statement):

...your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.

That works for me...

On the borderline between ancient and medieval literature lies Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, a wonderful book by a man who was unjustly accused by the Powers that Were and which was composed while he prepared for a particularly nasty death. His musings on the nature of Fortune inspired this year's series on luck and randomness. It's definitely worth a look.

HEARTS OF DARKNESS, then and now, form the subject of this elegant rant by Chris Hedges. El Cabrero is a sucker for Joseph Conrad references.

LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO CUT SPENDING? There is quite a bit of indefensible "defense" spending which is really just corporate welfare.

EVERYBODY HURTS, but we hurt more if we think people are deliberately inflicting it.

PARLEZ USTED PAJARO? Here's an item on deciphering the songs of birds.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED