Tips

This week I finished: In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-Wai: It's hard not to first mention this movie's style in the qipaos, hair, make-up, ties, and music. Each dress and hairdo must have taken hours to get right each time, looked sewn-in. The word I keep coming back to for the style is: perfect. What a beautiful movie. But the movie covers more than style. Who hasn't had their heart broken? Who hasn't been cheated on? Who hasn't had to live with choices we couldn't take back but had to keep living with them? Despite the gravity and emotion of the characters' situation, it felt impersonal to me through most of the movie. That is, until the end, when it became universal.…

This week I finished: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn: I'm sure I read this book before, but long enough ago that this time was almost anew. I've been reading about liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. I've read and written about slavery and the Holocaust. Soviet / Stalinist gulags are on par, but different, and equally important to understand what a nation, or dominance hierarchy, can devolve into. I won't try to put into words the world that Solzhenitsyn can and did. He lived it for eight years. The book conveys a dystopia human beings created for each other. It's personal and human beyond what history books convey. I'm learning more about the history too. I'm not sure if or…

This week I finished: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It, by podcast guest Chris Voss: I read this book before recording the podcast with Chris and liked it, but not enough. This time I loved it. I think last time I compared it with Getting to Yes and thought it didn't add much knowledge. It mostly promoted the value of practice and tactics beyond the more theoretical Harvard book. This time it hit me how much more Chris presents besides the value of rehearsal and practice. Though it teaches specific tactics, they aren't just tips he found that work. They're embedded in strategy, mission, and vision based in more than just one guy trying things out. He developed them…

This week I finished: This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore: I've seen Jill Lepore's books at the top of bestseller lists and read pieces she's written in the New Yorker and probably other places. Her work seems to overlap with authors I've found valuable: Akhil Reed Amar and Gordon Wood. Her two big books These Truths and We the People are huge and daunting, though reviews say they're wonderful to read. This book is shorter, so more accessible. It describes the difference between patriotism, which describes liking your country or people, and nationalism, which implies putting down others. I read her as motivated by seeing Trump and other populists gaining support, put off by liberals who fear patriotism, especially after World…

This week I finished: As of today, Sunday, my usual day to post on what I finished this week, my solar battery is very low (as I posted yesterday: And just like that, I’m almost out of power for a couple days. Batteries have a lot of problems), so I'm limiting my time using the computer. For now, I'll just post the works. When there's more sun, I'll write more. As of Sunday evening, that time looks like Tuesday at the earliest. On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder: . . . . . . . The White House Effect, directed by Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen: . . . . . A Vindication of Bjorn Lomborg, by Marian Tupy inQuillette and Climate Change Might…

This week I finished: I Am Not Your Negro: directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin's manuscript Remember This House: You can probably tell that Baldwin's views resonate with me. How he describes the perspective from the bottom of a dominance hierarchy. He attributes it to color, which I see as a proxy for access to a resource with no alternative, but the view is the same. Partly it speaks to my time growing up as a minority in school and my neighborhood. He also survived a lot. This movie, and I suppose his manuscript on which it is based, deals with the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. It also features Bobby Kennedy, whom Baldwin also knew,…

This week I finished: Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin: After last week's Fire Next Time, and August's debate between Baldwin and Buckley, I want to learn more about Baldwin. I like his analysis. It's hard to gauge how much of his analysis was new. I read that Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that Baldwin "articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time." Reading his work seventy years later, I've heard that articulation before, but suspect a lot of it originated in Baldwin. I'll be candid. I don't understand a lot of his language. I kept saying to myself, "I'm glad I have a PhD in physics so I…

This week I finished: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin: I've known about James Baldwin for years but never read his work. I've seen him speak on videos, but a book is another story. A book takes time to compose. Almost always when I finish a book I reread at least the first few paragraphs, sometimes the first few pages. A teacher in college told me that authors can't help make the opening what the book is about. I went through this whole book twice. Partly because it's short, but more because it grew on me while listening. I confess that at the beginning I wasn't engaged. He doesn't write like most authors. I became more engaged as the composition revealed itself and the…

This week I finished: Led Zeppelin: The Biography, by Bob Spitz: I saw a different biography of Led Zeppelin by chance at the library. After reading memoirs of Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen, plus for a diversion from all the studying of constitutional and corruption stuff, I felt like reading it. I looked up reviews and opted for this one. I loved it. I couldn't stop. I grew up loving classic rock. I knew their music but not much of their history. Most of all, I loved the vision and resolve of Jimmy Page to start a band based on music he wanted to play, knew the world would love, and that no one was doing. Then I loved hearing of them playing together, hitting…

This week I finished: Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave, directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery: If you've followed my pursuit to learn about the pattern of how people are induced to act against their values by culture around them---also known as corruption---you'll recognize the subject of this movie. It's about high school history teacher Ron Jones, who in 1967, when his students asked how Germans could become Nazis, threw some experiential teaching their way. He started teaching them strength through discipline, unity, and community. They inadvertently fell into Nazi youth-like behavior. I recently watched the made-for-TV special The Wave I had seen as a kid and the German movie Die Welle, plus tons of interviews and documentaries. This movie, Lesson Plan,…

This week there wasn't much sun, so I read and listened more than usual since they take little to no power. I finished: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, by Bill McKibben: I've met Bill and support his environmental work. Bill writes in this book that he doesn't believe people will change their levels of consumption so concludes that only by producing more clean, green, renewable energy can we avoid catastrophe. For the rest of the book he relays his optimism that solar and wind can replace fossil fuels and save us. We only need big government support for renewables, he conveys, and to stop supporting fossil fuels. I've written many times in this blog…

This week I finished: "Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound," by Larissa MacFarquhar in the New Yorker: A few years ago I learned that most people, when they imagine something visual, actually visual something, as if they were seeing it. By contrast, when I imagine seeing something, I don't see anything. I just imagine it. Apparently nobody knew of this distinction until recent decades and only recently has it become well known, studied, or verified through methods like brain scans. It also acquired a name: aphantasia. For my part, it's relieving to know I'm not alone. It explains a few things that didn't make sense, like how counting sheep wasn't a complicated exercise. When people told me to visualize things like…

This week I finished: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, directed by Marc Rothemund, starring Julia Jentsch: This movie was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language movie in 2005. I confess I only learned of the White Rose movement, and two of its key members, Hans and Sophie Scholl, this year. I recommend learning more about them, especially if you're interested in learning what leads people to oppose a culture acting against your values. You are almost certainly acting against your values, induced by our culture. Hans and Sophie Scholl were siblings raised in Germany in the wake of World War I. The movement was mainly students who organized against the Nazis in and around Munich. This movie focused on Sophie, in the events…

This week I finished: The SCUM Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas: I'd heard about this book, or manifesto, by the woman who shot Andy Warhol. I listened to a podcast or two about it first. They couldn't tell if the author was serious and crazy or sarcasm or what. Seeing as how she shot an innocent person, I'm inclined to think she's crazy. The diatribe is bizarre. I kept wondering what would happen if a man wrote it with the sexes reversed, would he be locked up. Mostly I thought of the pattern I can't prove but seems to apply every time I check: when someone insults someone, they're describing themselves more than the other person. Next mostly I thought of the society that could lead…

This week I finished: The Radicalism of the American Revolution, by Gordon Wood: Wow, what a book. I'd never read a history like it. It didn't just present dates and events. It talked about how people lived, how their lives changed, how culture changed. I found it fascinating. I learned plenty, including areas I thought I knew well before. His perspective put me more in the moment, understanding changes from their perspective. The book contrasts with Howard Zinn's history of America. Wood's coverage seems as comprehensive and he seems as thoughtful, but he paints a very different picture. Wood loves America, though not blindly. His description of life in the colonies and how things worked before the revolution reveals how it differed from any other.…

This week I finished: Tokyo Story, directed by Yasujiro Ozu: Someone in my meditation group recommended this movie after I spoke about how much Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day affected me. I didn't know what to expect. I'd never heard of the director or even the movie. I'm sure I'd seen the title since so many best-movie-ever lists include it. Many reviewers write how it is about a family but so universal that it's about all families. It seemed to me to be so universal as to be about life in general. Yes, it's about an old couple, their children, their children's families, and their grandchildren. It's also about times changing faster than people are prepared for, therefore about war and peace (it…

This week I finished: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution, by Gordon Wood: I've been reading, watching, and listening to Akhil Reed Amar's work. He praises Gordon Wood so I borrowed this book from the library and watched a bunch of videos of his talks. This book covers the history around the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It covers the events prompting the colonists developing new views on liberty versus monarchical rule, developing principles like separation of powers and the people being sovereign, voting for representatives, checks and balances, and other developments, some new in history. This book led me to realize how easy it's been to consider declaring independence and writing a constitution obvious steps. The parallel processes of creating thirteen state…

This week I finished: The Devil's Climb, starring Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell: I got tickets to watch this movie followed by a talk including Honnold and Caldwell. My nephew is a rock climber, so I invited him, who invited a climbing partner friend, plus a coaching client is a climber, so the four of us attended. The movie was engaging, heartwarming, and thrilling. It touches on climate but not other issues of polluting and depleting. On the other hand it shows their camaraderie. My nephew's friend said he thought it skimped on the climbing details, but I lacked the background to tell. Plus we met the two stars and members of their team after, in person. It was part of "Climate Week," where something…

This week I finished: The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of our Ira, by Akhil Reed Amar: I have been studying the Constitution like never before. The path to it was realizing sustainability meant changing culture, which forced me to ask if it was possible, which pointed me to abolitionism, which pointed me to Lincoln and abolitionists, which led me to the Thirteenth Amendment, which led me to the Constitution. Another path branched off to learning about Robert Carter III, which led went through learning the flaws of founders like Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Franklin, which led to the Constitution. Amar is a constitutional law professor like podcast guest Michael Herz. I first found Amar looking up James Madison. There are dozens, maybe…