My subconscious never runs out of ways that I can hide. A large part of my cyber-phobia is stage fright. After blindfolding myself, I have set out to speak to an audience that extends to infinity on all sides.
The first name I chose for this site was “humchum”, which, after a while, started to suggest to me background nonsense noise or flan pudding. Was this to keep people from finding me?
I logged on to two of my favorite sites, Smoking Gun (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) and the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com). Both have edgy names, and each has a mission. Missions aim to address issues and solve problems. Missions are born as obsessions.
What is your obsession? I believe you won’t have to look far. What do you think about most of the time, when there are all kinds of other activities you’d rather put your heart into?
For me, one of the most difficult things about solving a problem is to define it and put it into words. I’d been describing myself as a techno-retard, a chortle thrown in to soften the remark.
But inside I was not laughing. When did that technological-revolution bus take off? Why did I miss it? I hired my tech tutor, and we started with what I considered essentials. By the time I decided to launch a blog, I considered myself fairly competent when using the computer technology that I needed: laptop, word processing, and digital visuals.
So right now my problem isn’t fear of computer technology in general, but rather of cyberspace in particular — of glitches, of crashes, of committing an unforgettable, unpardonable breach of cyber-etiquette, and of identity theft.
So I changed my blog’s name from “Humchum” to “Cyber-phobe Diaries.” (My tech tutor suggested that I hypenate "cyberphobe" so that it would be easier to read.) My blog's mission is to share my journey into cyberspace and, I hope, to unravel a few of the Internet’s mysteries.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Me, a Cyberphobe
I’m a cyberphobe.
From webmaster@cyberphobia.net: a cyberphobe is a person who has an irrational fear of or aversion to computers, specifically, the fear and/or the inability to learn new technologies.
I love new computer technologies, but fear cyberspace, especially scams and glitches. For my condition, I don’t need medication or exposure therapy. I’m getting appropriate help, from my tech tutor. Gently, he suggests possible symptoms I might have: he asked me why I gave the top ranking to all of the books I reviewed for Amazon.com. My answer: because I won’t review a book unless I feel it is excellent — the truth, but a non-answer.
I’ve never written a book. Who am I to badmouth a book that an author has labored over for years? I’ll only review what I think are the best.
If you read this site, I’d welcome what you have to say about cyberphobia. If you suffer from it, what brought it on? How did you overcome it?
Friday the Thirteenth, January 2006, 3:00 p.m. sharp: my tutor arrived. He is not superstitious, and neither am I. We’ll have to see. When we got down to work after my four-week binge of rabid surfing, I felt like an undiagnosed myopic donning corrective lenses for the first time.
By now I was in such despair that I was considering online market research — ten bucks per questionnaire submitted. My tutor hasn’t heard good things about these kinds of opportunities. Sign up for “free”, but then you’re asked to purchase some kind of kit or package for three or four hundred dollars.
For a clear view of cyberspace, you need a lens, and the best lens is your intention. Once again, what would I do on cyberspace? Ask daily.
My tutor didn’t think it would be too bigheaded of me to consider using a blog as a portfolio of writing samples to show to interested online publications. I enjoy writing nonfiction, but I haven’t done much recently. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter/photojournalist for a neighborhood paper in southern California. I wrote a profile of a light-and-earth artist/sculpture for an in-flight magazine, and also two catalogs for a vocational rehabilitation network.
Last fall, when the urge to write again hit me, I joined a local writers’ group, which led to an article about the local Quilters’ Guild in the local paper. I “practiced” cyberspace writing on Amazon.
My tutor and I logged on to two blog hosting sites and selected the free one, Blogger.com. Instructions were simple. I selected a template for my site, gave it a name, and pasted my first few paragraphs (“Daydreams for Cyberspace”). What a beautiful blog after so little effort!
In boring earnestness, during my surfing binge, I’d brainstormed for names, coming up with “dreamstoker”, “minderskeepers,” “storystork”, etc. My mind, wanting me to lighten up, offered up “humchum”. Yeah!
Humchum doesn’t mean anything, yet. My tutor likes it. We got silly toward the end of our meeting. His blog portrait is a photo of a baby’s face blocking is own. Could I use my dog’s?
From webmaster@cyberphobia.net: a cyberphobe is a person who has an irrational fear of or aversion to computers, specifically, the fear and/or the inability to learn new technologies.
I love new computer technologies, but fear cyberspace, especially scams and glitches. For my condition, I don’t need medication or exposure therapy. I’m getting appropriate help, from my tech tutor. Gently, he suggests possible symptoms I might have: he asked me why I gave the top ranking to all of the books I reviewed for Amazon.com. My answer: because I won’t review a book unless I feel it is excellent — the truth, but a non-answer.
I’ve never written a book. Who am I to badmouth a book that an author has labored over for years? I’ll only review what I think are the best.
If you read this site, I’d welcome what you have to say about cyberphobia. If you suffer from it, what brought it on? How did you overcome it?
Friday the Thirteenth, January 2006, 3:00 p.m. sharp: my tutor arrived. He is not superstitious, and neither am I. We’ll have to see. When we got down to work after my four-week binge of rabid surfing, I felt like an undiagnosed myopic donning corrective lenses for the first time.
By now I was in such despair that I was considering online market research — ten bucks per questionnaire submitted. My tutor hasn’t heard good things about these kinds of opportunities. Sign up for “free”, but then you’re asked to purchase some kind of kit or package for three or four hundred dollars.
For a clear view of cyberspace, you need a lens, and the best lens is your intention. Once again, what would I do on cyberspace? Ask daily.
My tutor didn’t think it would be too bigheaded of me to consider using a blog as a portfolio of writing samples to show to interested online publications. I enjoy writing nonfiction, but I haven’t done much recently. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter/photojournalist for a neighborhood paper in southern California. I wrote a profile of a light-and-earth artist/sculpture for an in-flight magazine, and also two catalogs for a vocational rehabilitation network.
Last fall, when the urge to write again hit me, I joined a local writers’ group, which led to an article about the local Quilters’ Guild in the local paper. I “practiced” cyberspace writing on Amazon.
My tutor and I logged on to two blog hosting sites and selected the free one, Blogger.com. Instructions were simple. I selected a template for my site, gave it a name, and pasted my first few paragraphs (“Daydreams for Cyberspace”). What a beautiful blog after so little effort!
In boring earnestness, during my surfing binge, I’d brainstormed for names, coming up with “dreamstoker”, “minderskeepers,” “storystork”, etc. My mind, wanting me to lighten up, offered up “humchum”. Yeah!
Humchum doesn’t mean anything, yet. My tutor likes it. We got silly toward the end of our meeting. His blog portrait is a photo of a baby’s face blocking is own. Could I use my dog’s?
Article for Local Newspaper, December, 2005
As seen in the Ravalli Republic, the Entertainment Connection, issue of Friday, December 16, 2005
"The Bitterroot Quilters: An Opportunity for the Visual Artist in You,"
By Bonnie Trotter (a.k.a. Marian W. Trotter)
A festive group filled the well-lit, spacious Woodside Grange community hall as the Bitterroot Quilters’ met in October.
Strangers (like me) and beginners were welcomed as the quilters cheerfully answered questions and explained the basics of their organization. They meet once a month, all year around.
Eighty-five ladies showed up that night, chatted, and laughed with one another before settling down for the evening’s presentations.
Before us, a series of blocks or panels, 12-inch quilted squares, honored the season of autumn. Each panel was created by a different artist. We saw a variety of interpretations; all of them depicted with fabrics of solid colors and prints cut and skillfully stitched together.
Artist-quilters had carefully selected subtly striking hues found throughout the fall spectrum - brick, eggshell, sienna, olive, muted powdered turquoise, pumpernickel, ivory, umber, ochre, and black and bright white for dimension. Prints commemorating autumn revealed pumpkins, corn, berries, fruit, water, paisley, and plaid. A moderator raffled off the entire collection. Unless you had produced one of those squares, you couldn’t enter.
I’d come to the meeting because I want to explore and write about exceptional creative outlets in the Bitterroot Valley. Impressed by the Bitterroot Quilters Guild’s high morale and healthy attendance, I wondered what made this group so strong, while others with similar hopes shrink and eventually die.
Underscoring the Guild’s success is the pride these artists take in their accomplishments and in cultivating a large, active membership.
The support that the participants give one another eliminates that pest known as performance anxiety.
At the meeting, ladies displaying their works-in-progress enjoyed a full house of attentive viewers, who were absolutely delighted by what we saw.
Squares, like those raffled off at the meeting, were stitched together to form quilts velvety and cool to the touch, but cozy for cold winter nights. Quilts like these typically incorporate vaguely kaleidoscopic patterns of geometric squares, rectangles, and triangles that mirror one another. Designs represent motifs of migrating birds, stars, leaves, mountains, the sun, the moon, abstracts, portraits, or landscapes. Artists tell you to compare a quilt to a sandwich. Material called batting lies between two sides. Sewing batting and sides together requires careful integration into the quilt’s look.
One artist displayed her quilt that she’d designed to look like a wall of framed photographs. She used real snapshots captured on pieces of fabric.
Another quilt portrayed a picture gallery. We saw what’s called the “Card Trick,” the eight-pointed star — overlapping squares, one corner of each meeting at the center.
We saw thread embossments, ruffles, lace, beads, and fabric sculpture. An abundance of meaningful activities also ensures the success of a group like the Guild. In addition to designing and making quilted products, members go on retreats and tackle projects, like fundraisers, charity undertakings, and exhibitions for the public.
Over time, participants develop long-term friendships. At annual retreats, this year’s held in March at Seeley Lake, quilters stitch their quilts, check out each other’s progress, exchange ideas, and invent new designs.
Their successful fundraisers — including membership drives and quilt raffles at biennial exhibitions held at Corvallis High School — pay for top ranked professionals to share their techniques.
October’s meeting featured a beading expert, who showed the group how to incorporate beads into a quilt’s design. Suddenly an exquisite jewel of a doll appeared in my hands, passed to me down the line. It was covered with beads of various sizes, shapes, and autumn colors. One of the beading expert’s students had made it, a delicate treasure that you can hold snugly in one hand.
Bitterroot Quilters make and donate quilts for local children at risk (Quilts for Kids) and comforters for hospice, chemotherapy, and dialysis patients. Volunteers ship quilts to victims of natural disasters, this year to military families who live in the wake of Katrina. The ladies enjoy meeting together to sew these quilts, assembly-line fashion.
You can’t learn how to make a quilt at Guild meetings, but you can at local fabric shops or through adult education offered by Corvallis Schools. In addition to quilts, you could make tote bags, sofa throws, table covers, pillows, and items entirely new under the sun. As with clothing patterns, some quilts come with blueprints, but as one participant says, the result is entirely yours. You choose your own fabrics, your own colors, and your own embellishments.
For inspiration, visit the Guild’s annual exhibition mounted at the Ravalli County Fair. Watch the Ravalli Republic events calendar for news of other exhibits, specifically those held at Corvallis High School every other year. If you can’t wait, search the Internet for “quilts” at Google.com.
Here, among the Bitterroot Quilters, you can meet the artist that lives inside you and others, make good friends, cultivate leadership and fundraising know-how, and just possibly earn some money.
* * *
"The Bitterroot Quilters: An Opportunity for the Visual Artist in You,"
By Bonnie Trotter (a.k.a. Marian W. Trotter)
A festive group filled the well-lit, spacious Woodside Grange community hall as the Bitterroot Quilters’ met in October.
Strangers (like me) and beginners were welcomed as the quilters cheerfully answered questions and explained the basics of their organization. They meet once a month, all year around.
Eighty-five ladies showed up that night, chatted, and laughed with one another before settling down for the evening’s presentations.
Before us, a series of blocks or panels, 12-inch quilted squares, honored the season of autumn. Each panel was created by a different artist. We saw a variety of interpretations; all of them depicted with fabrics of solid colors and prints cut and skillfully stitched together.
Artist-quilters had carefully selected subtly striking hues found throughout the fall spectrum - brick, eggshell, sienna, olive, muted powdered turquoise, pumpernickel, ivory, umber, ochre, and black and bright white for dimension. Prints commemorating autumn revealed pumpkins, corn, berries, fruit, water, paisley, and plaid. A moderator raffled off the entire collection. Unless you had produced one of those squares, you couldn’t enter.
I’d come to the meeting because I want to explore and write about exceptional creative outlets in the Bitterroot Valley. Impressed by the Bitterroot Quilters Guild’s high morale and healthy attendance, I wondered what made this group so strong, while others with similar hopes shrink and eventually die.
Underscoring the Guild’s success is the pride these artists take in their accomplishments and in cultivating a large, active membership.
The support that the participants give one another eliminates that pest known as performance anxiety.
At the meeting, ladies displaying their works-in-progress enjoyed a full house of attentive viewers, who were absolutely delighted by what we saw.
Squares, like those raffled off at the meeting, were stitched together to form quilts velvety and cool to the touch, but cozy for cold winter nights. Quilts like these typically incorporate vaguely kaleidoscopic patterns of geometric squares, rectangles, and triangles that mirror one another. Designs represent motifs of migrating birds, stars, leaves, mountains, the sun, the moon, abstracts, portraits, or landscapes. Artists tell you to compare a quilt to a sandwich. Material called batting lies between two sides. Sewing batting and sides together requires careful integration into the quilt’s look.
One artist displayed her quilt that she’d designed to look like a wall of framed photographs. She used real snapshots captured on pieces of fabric.
Another quilt portrayed a picture gallery. We saw what’s called the “Card Trick,” the eight-pointed star — overlapping squares, one corner of each meeting at the center.
We saw thread embossments, ruffles, lace, beads, and fabric sculpture. An abundance of meaningful activities also ensures the success of a group like the Guild. In addition to designing and making quilted products, members go on retreats and tackle projects, like fundraisers, charity undertakings, and exhibitions for the public.
Over time, participants develop long-term friendships. At annual retreats, this year’s held in March at Seeley Lake, quilters stitch their quilts, check out each other’s progress, exchange ideas, and invent new designs.
Their successful fundraisers — including membership drives and quilt raffles at biennial exhibitions held at Corvallis High School — pay for top ranked professionals to share their techniques.
October’s meeting featured a beading expert, who showed the group how to incorporate beads into a quilt’s design. Suddenly an exquisite jewel of a doll appeared in my hands, passed to me down the line. It was covered with beads of various sizes, shapes, and autumn colors. One of the beading expert’s students had made it, a delicate treasure that you can hold snugly in one hand.
Bitterroot Quilters make and donate quilts for local children at risk (Quilts for Kids) and comforters for hospice, chemotherapy, and dialysis patients. Volunteers ship quilts to victims of natural disasters, this year to military families who live in the wake of Katrina. The ladies enjoy meeting together to sew these quilts, assembly-line fashion.
You can’t learn how to make a quilt at Guild meetings, but you can at local fabric shops or through adult education offered by Corvallis Schools. In addition to quilts, you could make tote bags, sofa throws, table covers, pillows, and items entirely new under the sun. As with clothing patterns, some quilts come with blueprints, but as one participant says, the result is entirely yours. You choose your own fabrics, your own colors, and your own embellishments.
For inspiration, visit the Guild’s annual exhibition mounted at the Ravalli County Fair. Watch the Ravalli Republic events calendar for news of other exhibits, specifically those held at Corvallis High School every other year. If you can’t wait, search the Internet for “quilts” at Google.com.
Here, among the Bitterroot Quilters, you can meet the artist that lives inside you and others, make good friends, cultivate leadership and fundraising know-how, and just possibly earn some money.
* * *
Book Reviews for Amazon.com, December '05 and January '06
Public Reviews written by Marian W. Trotter (Bonnie) for Amazon.com
Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, by Don Oberdorfer
“Firm and Brilliant,” January 11, 2006
Michael Joseph (Mike) Mansfield's approach to Congress could instruct many of the politicians in power today. Unlike his bombastic, controlling predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Mansfield, as Senate Majority Leader, retreated from the glare of publicity so that his fellow senators, from both parties, could take pride in successful legislation that they initiated, all the while guiding that body with a steady hand.
Because of the statesman's honesty, his intellectual capacity, his ability to connect immediately with people, no matter their views, and his brilliance as a public servant, his home state Montana kept him in Congress from the year they first elected him in 1942 to 1977, when he retired from the Senate. They loved him because he put their interests first, regardless of what was occurring on the world's stage.
When Mansfield retired from the Senate, he expected to "loaf, read, and think," but the government couldn't let go and sent him to Japan where he served as Ambassador, a position from which he retired in his mid-eighties. After that, Goldman Sachs hired him to be its East Asian Advisor.
Above all else, human relationships ranked highest in importance for Mansfield. When his wife died, he said during her eulogy that without her he would have been nothing. Early in their marriage she urged him to leave his work as miner and mining engineer to pursue and complete his education.
I recommend Don Oberdorfer's "Senator Mansfield" to readers interested in a look into the bowels of politics, particularly during the Vietnam War era and its aftermath. I felt as if I were hiding under a desk eavesdropping. Reading parts of the tapes that Nixon made of himself, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or weep.
* * *
In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity, by Thomas G. West
“Computer Graphics and Gifted Dyslexics,” January 6, 2006
In the Mind's Eye is the most interesting book I've ever read. Author Thomas G. West shows how advanced computer graphic technology is starting to provide an educational and professional home for the dyslexic visual thinker. In delightful and precise language, he illustrates why this new world of processing requires a global perspective, or the ability to see the whole of a phenomenon, as opposed to the blinkered view of an isolated part, and thereby to recognize patterns and quickly identify irregularities and problems. A three-dimensional view of each trader's performance could have saved Baron's Bank from the rogue trader who destroyed it.
The brain design that enables the visual thinker to grasp vast amounts of data by seeing it from a global perspective often comes with dyslexia or other learning difficulties. For these people, the traditional classroom and bureaucratic organization are nightmares. Schools, universities, and corporations flush out many dyslexic visual thinkers at great cost to the progress of civilization.
Nowadays computers eliminate what in earlier systems caused problems. They handle spelling and calculations easily. Another kind of student and professional is needed, an individual who is talented at manipulating images, rather than those facile with arithmetic and able to recite on demand memorized passages assigned by a teacher.
This extended essay would interest the general reader as much as it would the visual thinker. West exposes you to a careful look at gifted, dyslexic visual thinkers who made extraordinary contributions to civilization. You will read about how these giants refused to buy into the dominant clerically oriented educational and professional systems and forged ahead to devise original ways to build on their strengths.
I was particularly interested that for these profiled individuals, what they had on hand was enough for their pursuits - the expertise and material available to them through their studies, work, or personal interests. They were able to shrug off professional, family, or societal expectations, giving themselves plenty of time to think quietly. Their passions lay in engagement rather than whether their inventions or discoveries would work or would sell. Their ideas and activities will trigger pyrotechnics of thought and, possibly, a myriad of ideas for projects to pursue in your free time.
* * *
Rebuilding the Indian, by Fred Haefele
“Craving Variety and Adventure,” December 22, 2005
Fred Haefele, in his 2005 memoir Rebuilding the Indian, will inspire anyone who has sworn off the cubicles, the clock punching, and bureaucracy of conventional working life. An individual who craves variety and adventure, he beckons you away from the staid and the insipid.
At age 51, the author started rebuilding a vintage motorcycle from a pile of scrap. As the parts of the Indian Chief gradually and arduously came together, so did other dreams: to start a second family; to build enduring relationships with his adult daughter and son from a previous marriage; and to get his novel published. Throughout his life, Haefele paid attention to inclinations toward exciting activity and a recurring boyhood dream: In full control, he floats quickly just above the ground waiting for flight. In 1969, he bought a motorcycle, a shield against the stifling bourgeois lifestyle.
After he graduated from college, he took up tree surgery, another shield, this one against the politics so chaotic in the late 1960's. Rather than build a nest egg, he developed courage, physical strength, and the alertness and agility necessary to avoid catastrophic accidents. Until he sold his tree surgery business recently, it supported him and his family -- and the Indian Chief -- continuously, in sharp contrast to some conventional jobs that have become obsolete, leaving workers to face new bouts of long and expensive training.
His descriptions of migrating birds of all sizes and types, frost on land "jewel-like in the moonlight", and steam hovering over water in the process of freezing just may inspire you to go on out there and pick up a long-ago dream just to see what might happen.
* * *
The Macmillan Visual Dictionary : 3,500 Color Illustrations, 25,000 Terms, 600 Subjects, by Jean-Claude Corbeil
“Inspiration Found in a Dictionary,” December 19, 2005
For thirteen years, I've been consulting my 1992 edition of The Macmillan Visual Dictionary. Searching its publisher's web site for a newer edition, I got 0 results. If I ran the world, this fine work would be on the Internet, its entries updated daily.
To artists and writers: it's such a classic, I don't really miss the would-be updates. Using computer technology, the authors use vivid descriptive color, each component delicately outlined. You start by finding the term you're looking for within one of the general categories, each color tabbed for clarity. Or you may find the page numbers for it in the index. What is a fetlock? Within the animal kingdom, you will find two double-page spreads of the horse, its exterior and its skeleton. Or look for your term in the index: curb bit, page 649, how it fits in the horse's mouth, and page 650, pictures of nine types of bits.
Let's say you have a picture of a thing in your mind, but you don't know its name. Find this image in one of the 28 color tabbed categories.
For artists, this visual dictionary is loaded with sources for inspiration. Take gems alone. Sketching facets, I want to compare my imaginary world found in the facets of a sapphire to that found in those of an emerald. What medium would best represent your idea? Photography? What kind? Here you will find cameras and accessories, for both still and video. For writers, specific terms along with clear pictures of what you are writing about increase accuracy and help bring your poetry and prose to life.
* * *
The Elements of Style Illustrated, by William Strunk Jr.
“Somebody Else's Umbrella,” December 18, 2005
For forty years, writers have been consulting this handy bible to clear away verbiage fog. Look for the name of your problem in the index, and you'll find the number of the page where the distinction between "tortuous" and "torturous" is made in a little over two lines. Lend is the verb, loan the noun.
This edition is different from the others. It's illustrated, by artist Maira Kalman, whose dreamlike, impressionistic images reminded me how important a mental picture is to remembering a scene in history, the location of a business, or even a person's name. Her pictures capture what you might see with your mind's eye, or at a passing glance.
To depict the construction design necessary for a solid piece of composition, Kalman paints an interior corner covered by door-shaped, geometric outlines. For the possessive indefinite pronoun, use an apostrophe: "Somebody else's umbrella." Kalman's female character, dressed in yellow and standing in front of a dark blue background, turns away from a cherry red umbrella.
What I believe you might find particularly helpful are the verbal illustrations and examples. Throughout, the authors use columns: On the left side is what looks like a first stab at a phrase or sentence, loaded with unnecessary words that render it tame and dull. On the right all superfluous words are gone, the result brief and sharp.
Left column: Owing to the fact that
Right: Since (because)
In only 153 pages, "The Elements of Style" gives you immediate access to common usage problems and ways to correct them. I don't see how a writer could work without it.
* * *
Burning Fence : A Western Memoir of Fatherhood, by Craig Lesley
“Riveting Tale of Two Fatherhoods,” December 14, 2005
When Rudell Lesley told his wife Hazel he had to go out for a while to look for a lost flashlight, he never returned, leaving her to raise their eight-month old son alone. The baby, christened Martin Craig Lesley, emerged with remarkable academic ability that came with a talent for remembering and processing every experience on an unusually deep level.
As I read, I marveled that the child didn't suffer a nervous breakdown or withdraw completely into fantasy. Relatives made vague, brief, derogatory comments about his father. Hazel said, "He just didn't give the slightest damn about anything." Rudell was shell-shocked from his fighting in the war. He was a backslider who poached. Trying to three-dimensionalize his father using this information began the stirrings of rage. Also Craig needed a target for his anger because his stepfather Vern was too terrifying to defy openly.
Badly injured in an accident at fifteen, Craig finally drew his father's attention. Rudell appeared with his young wife and four half-siblings. From that time until his father's death, Craig takes a spellbinding journey into the lives of his father's family and associates.
Rudell, with all his entertaining stories ("stretchers"), fails to say what would have meaning for Craig: why Rudell left, and whether he thought he made the right decision. With all of his hard physical labor as a fence builder, Rudell keeps himself and his family in squalor. Mixed into all this is Craig's adopted handicapped son Wade who burns Rudell's stack of freshly cut fence posts, believing that he's scaring off Big Foot.
If you would like to live inside the mind of a man who overcame a harrowing childhood to become a successful writer and university professor, this memoir is for you.
* * *
American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
“Martyr for the Sake of Many,” December 3, 2005
Who or what has protected us against an atomic bomb attack? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans)," I learned that the director of the atomic bomb's development, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was used successfully against Japan. Before Presidents, Generals, and Atomic Energy officials, he argued for the weapon's containment and control, proposing a coordinated effort by all powerful nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.
The authors describe Oppenheimer as naïve, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naïve in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. I don't believe the physicist was naïve. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, not his own back. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career. He clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions until the Atomic Energy Commission expunged him from government service in 1954 by not renewing his security clearance.
J. Robert Oppenheimer's story is frightening. President Truman and Eisenhower, Generals, politicians, and specifically high-ranking officials serving on the Atomic Energy Commission showed the same blind pig-headedness that we see today in the mishandling of Iraq. One of the only bright spots these days is independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the kind of lawyer that Oppenheimer badly needed.
I recommend this book for the general reader as well as for the historian. The authors weave facts and dates into the narrative without interrupting the flow. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking the loss of your job. The book will give courage to anyone facing such a decision.
* * *
Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, by Kent Nerburn
“Chief Joseph's True Greatness,” December 3, 2005, December 3, 2005
I loved this book. In vivid detail, Kent Nerburn, in his "Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce," fulfills his promise to show Chief Joseph's true greatness, which myth has obscured, eventually rendering the great man what the author aptly describes as a kind of "hood ornament."
When the U.S. military captured the Nez Perce, other chiefs fled. Joseph stayed with and cared for his bands during their circuitous, grueling travels as prisoners of the U.S. government, while the President and military officials decided how inexpensively they could house the Nez Perce from then on.
Joseph, already a myth in the eyes of the U.S. populace as the leader of the Nez Perce tribe's masterly escape from the "best that the U.S. military had to offer," used his fame to advocate for his bands before Presidents and Congress. Although feted and celebrated, he failed to get adequate results. He was unaware that Indian genocide was being considered.
This is the most horrific account of displacement I have ever encountered. A huge number of Nez Perce died on route, particularly the elderly and the very young, sickened by starvation and killed by white diseases to which they had no immunity.
"Chief Joseph" took place during Reconstruction following the Civil War, a time when government resources were lacking and nerves worn. Soldiers and officers assigned to the Indian front typically lacked basic military skills and the experience necessary to handle Indians with sensitivity and tact.
I recommend this book to people who like history that is presented as narrative, offering the kind of momentum and characterization that you find in novels.
* * *
Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, by Don Oberdorfer
“Firm and Brilliant,” January 11, 2006
Michael Joseph (Mike) Mansfield's approach to Congress could instruct many of the politicians in power today. Unlike his bombastic, controlling predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Mansfield, as Senate Majority Leader, retreated from the glare of publicity so that his fellow senators, from both parties, could take pride in successful legislation that they initiated, all the while guiding that body with a steady hand.
Because of the statesman's honesty, his intellectual capacity, his ability to connect immediately with people, no matter their views, and his brilliance as a public servant, his home state Montana kept him in Congress from the year they first elected him in 1942 to 1977, when he retired from the Senate. They loved him because he put their interests first, regardless of what was occurring on the world's stage.
When Mansfield retired from the Senate, he expected to "loaf, read, and think," but the government couldn't let go and sent him to Japan where he served as Ambassador, a position from which he retired in his mid-eighties. After that, Goldman Sachs hired him to be its East Asian Advisor.
Above all else, human relationships ranked highest in importance for Mansfield. When his wife died, he said during her eulogy that without her he would have been nothing. Early in their marriage she urged him to leave his work as miner and mining engineer to pursue and complete his education.
I recommend Don Oberdorfer's "Senator Mansfield" to readers interested in a look into the bowels of politics, particularly during the Vietnam War era and its aftermath. I felt as if I were hiding under a desk eavesdropping. Reading parts of the tapes that Nixon made of himself, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or weep.
* * *
In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity, by Thomas G. West
“Computer Graphics and Gifted Dyslexics,” January 6, 2006
In the Mind's Eye is the most interesting book I've ever read. Author Thomas G. West shows how advanced computer graphic technology is starting to provide an educational and professional home for the dyslexic visual thinker. In delightful and precise language, he illustrates why this new world of processing requires a global perspective, or the ability to see the whole of a phenomenon, as opposed to the blinkered view of an isolated part, and thereby to recognize patterns and quickly identify irregularities and problems. A three-dimensional view of each trader's performance could have saved Baron's Bank from the rogue trader who destroyed it.
The brain design that enables the visual thinker to grasp vast amounts of data by seeing it from a global perspective often comes with dyslexia or other learning difficulties. For these people, the traditional classroom and bureaucratic organization are nightmares. Schools, universities, and corporations flush out many dyslexic visual thinkers at great cost to the progress of civilization.
Nowadays computers eliminate what in earlier systems caused problems. They handle spelling and calculations easily. Another kind of student and professional is needed, an individual who is talented at manipulating images, rather than those facile with arithmetic and able to recite on demand memorized passages assigned by a teacher.
This extended essay would interest the general reader as much as it would the visual thinker. West exposes you to a careful look at gifted, dyslexic visual thinkers who made extraordinary contributions to civilization. You will read about how these giants refused to buy into the dominant clerically oriented educational and professional systems and forged ahead to devise original ways to build on their strengths.
I was particularly interested that for these profiled individuals, what they had on hand was enough for their pursuits - the expertise and material available to them through their studies, work, or personal interests. They were able to shrug off professional, family, or societal expectations, giving themselves plenty of time to think quietly. Their passions lay in engagement rather than whether their inventions or discoveries would work or would sell. Their ideas and activities will trigger pyrotechnics of thought and, possibly, a myriad of ideas for projects to pursue in your free time.
* * *
Rebuilding the Indian, by Fred Haefele
“Craving Variety and Adventure,” December 22, 2005
Fred Haefele, in his 2005 memoir Rebuilding the Indian, will inspire anyone who has sworn off the cubicles, the clock punching, and bureaucracy of conventional working life. An individual who craves variety and adventure, he beckons you away from the staid and the insipid.
At age 51, the author started rebuilding a vintage motorcycle from a pile of scrap. As the parts of the Indian Chief gradually and arduously came together, so did other dreams: to start a second family; to build enduring relationships with his adult daughter and son from a previous marriage; and to get his novel published. Throughout his life, Haefele paid attention to inclinations toward exciting activity and a recurring boyhood dream: In full control, he floats quickly just above the ground waiting for flight. In 1969, he bought a motorcycle, a shield against the stifling bourgeois lifestyle.
After he graduated from college, he took up tree surgery, another shield, this one against the politics so chaotic in the late 1960's. Rather than build a nest egg, he developed courage, physical strength, and the alertness and agility necessary to avoid catastrophic accidents. Until he sold his tree surgery business recently, it supported him and his family -- and the Indian Chief -- continuously, in sharp contrast to some conventional jobs that have become obsolete, leaving workers to face new bouts of long and expensive training.
His descriptions of migrating birds of all sizes and types, frost on land "jewel-like in the moonlight", and steam hovering over water in the process of freezing just may inspire you to go on out there and pick up a long-ago dream just to see what might happen.
* * *
The Macmillan Visual Dictionary : 3,500 Color Illustrations, 25,000 Terms, 600 Subjects, by Jean-Claude Corbeil
“Inspiration Found in a Dictionary,” December 19, 2005
For thirteen years, I've been consulting my 1992 edition of The Macmillan Visual Dictionary. Searching its publisher's web site for a newer edition, I got 0 results. If I ran the world, this fine work would be on the Internet, its entries updated daily.
To artists and writers: it's such a classic, I don't really miss the would-be updates. Using computer technology, the authors use vivid descriptive color, each component delicately outlined. You start by finding the term you're looking for within one of the general categories, each color tabbed for clarity. Or you may find the page numbers for it in the index. What is a fetlock? Within the animal kingdom, you will find two double-page spreads of the horse, its exterior and its skeleton. Or look for your term in the index: curb bit, page 649, how it fits in the horse's mouth, and page 650, pictures of nine types of bits.
Let's say you have a picture of a thing in your mind, but you don't know its name. Find this image in one of the 28 color tabbed categories.
For artists, this visual dictionary is loaded with sources for inspiration. Take gems alone. Sketching facets, I want to compare my imaginary world found in the facets of a sapphire to that found in those of an emerald. What medium would best represent your idea? Photography? What kind? Here you will find cameras and accessories, for both still and video. For writers, specific terms along with clear pictures of what you are writing about increase accuracy and help bring your poetry and prose to life.
* * *
The Elements of Style Illustrated, by William Strunk Jr.
“Somebody Else's Umbrella,” December 18, 2005
For forty years, writers have been consulting this handy bible to clear away verbiage fog. Look for the name of your problem in the index, and you'll find the number of the page where the distinction between "tortuous" and "torturous" is made in a little over two lines. Lend is the verb, loan the noun.
This edition is different from the others. It's illustrated, by artist Maira Kalman, whose dreamlike, impressionistic images reminded me how important a mental picture is to remembering a scene in history, the location of a business, or even a person's name. Her pictures capture what you might see with your mind's eye, or at a passing glance.
To depict the construction design necessary for a solid piece of composition, Kalman paints an interior corner covered by door-shaped, geometric outlines. For the possessive indefinite pronoun, use an apostrophe: "Somebody else's umbrella." Kalman's female character, dressed in yellow and standing in front of a dark blue background, turns away from a cherry red umbrella.
What I believe you might find particularly helpful are the verbal illustrations and examples. Throughout, the authors use columns: On the left side is what looks like a first stab at a phrase or sentence, loaded with unnecessary words that render it tame and dull. On the right all superfluous words are gone, the result brief and sharp.
Left column: Owing to the fact that
Right: Since (because)
In only 153 pages, "The Elements of Style" gives you immediate access to common usage problems and ways to correct them. I don't see how a writer could work without it.
* * *
Burning Fence : A Western Memoir of Fatherhood, by Craig Lesley
“Riveting Tale of Two Fatherhoods,” December 14, 2005
When Rudell Lesley told his wife Hazel he had to go out for a while to look for a lost flashlight, he never returned, leaving her to raise their eight-month old son alone. The baby, christened Martin Craig Lesley, emerged with remarkable academic ability that came with a talent for remembering and processing every experience on an unusually deep level.
As I read, I marveled that the child didn't suffer a nervous breakdown or withdraw completely into fantasy. Relatives made vague, brief, derogatory comments about his father. Hazel said, "He just didn't give the slightest damn about anything." Rudell was shell-shocked from his fighting in the war. He was a backslider who poached. Trying to three-dimensionalize his father using this information began the stirrings of rage. Also Craig needed a target for his anger because his stepfather Vern was too terrifying to defy openly.
Badly injured in an accident at fifteen, Craig finally drew his father's attention. Rudell appeared with his young wife and four half-siblings. From that time until his father's death, Craig takes a spellbinding journey into the lives of his father's family and associates.
Rudell, with all his entertaining stories ("stretchers"), fails to say what would have meaning for Craig: why Rudell left, and whether he thought he made the right decision. With all of his hard physical labor as a fence builder, Rudell keeps himself and his family in squalor. Mixed into all this is Craig's adopted handicapped son Wade who burns Rudell's stack of freshly cut fence posts, believing that he's scaring off Big Foot.
If you would like to live inside the mind of a man who overcame a harrowing childhood to become a successful writer and university professor, this memoir is for you.
* * *
American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
“Martyr for the Sake of Many,” December 3, 2005
Who or what has protected us against an atomic bomb attack? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans)," I learned that the director of the atomic bomb's development, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was used successfully against Japan. Before Presidents, Generals, and Atomic Energy officials, he argued for the weapon's containment and control, proposing a coordinated effort by all powerful nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.
The authors describe Oppenheimer as naïve, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naïve in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. I don't believe the physicist was naïve. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, not his own back. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career. He clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions until the Atomic Energy Commission expunged him from government service in 1954 by not renewing his security clearance.
J. Robert Oppenheimer's story is frightening. President Truman and Eisenhower, Generals, politicians, and specifically high-ranking officials serving on the Atomic Energy Commission showed the same blind pig-headedness that we see today in the mishandling of Iraq. One of the only bright spots these days is independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the kind of lawyer that Oppenheimer badly needed.
I recommend this book for the general reader as well as for the historian. The authors weave facts and dates into the narrative without interrupting the flow. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking the loss of your job. The book will give courage to anyone facing such a decision.
* * *
Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, by Kent Nerburn
“Chief Joseph's True Greatness,” December 3, 2005, December 3, 2005
I loved this book. In vivid detail, Kent Nerburn, in his "Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce," fulfills his promise to show Chief Joseph's true greatness, which myth has obscured, eventually rendering the great man what the author aptly describes as a kind of "hood ornament."
When the U.S. military captured the Nez Perce, other chiefs fled. Joseph stayed with and cared for his bands during their circuitous, grueling travels as prisoners of the U.S. government, while the President and military officials decided how inexpensively they could house the Nez Perce from then on.
Joseph, already a myth in the eyes of the U.S. populace as the leader of the Nez Perce tribe's masterly escape from the "best that the U.S. military had to offer," used his fame to advocate for his bands before Presidents and Congress. Although feted and celebrated, he failed to get adequate results. He was unaware that Indian genocide was being considered.
This is the most horrific account of displacement I have ever encountered. A huge number of Nez Perce died on route, particularly the elderly and the very young, sickened by starvation and killed by white diseases to which they had no immunity.
"Chief Joseph" took place during Reconstruction following the Civil War, a time when government resources were lacking and nerves worn. Soldiers and officers assigned to the Indian front typically lacked basic military skills and the experience necessary to handle Indians with sensitivity and tact.
I recommend this book to people who like history that is presented as narrative, offering the kind of momentum and characterization that you find in novels.
* * *
MBR's Reviewers' Choice
Midwest Book Review’s “Reviewers’ Choice” for January, 2006.
Website Address: http://www.midwestbookreview.com
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Alfred A. Knopf
www.aaknopf.com
ISBN: 0375412026, $35.00 US $47.00 CAN, 721 pp.
Bonnie Trotter (aka Marian W. Trotter)
Reviewer
In 1951, our elementary school, located in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., conducted air raid drills to prepare us for the possibility of an atomic bomb attack. While our teacher led us single file across the entire campus, I worried that an atomic bomb would certainly not wait for us to reach a safe place. Once the student body assembled in the cafeteria, each of us crawled under a desk, pulled our legs up under us, and covered our eyes by burying them in the crook of an arm.
That bomb never did drop. I kept waiting for it. When I was in high school, my heart still thundered at the sound of any kind of whistling or whining from the skies above. As of now, 2005, it still hasn't dropped. Who and what protected us? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs, the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, ending WWII when Japan surrendered a few days later.
I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans), I learned that the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was successfully used on Japan.
When a riveting and highly-acclaimed biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer reached the shelves, I bought it, read it, and chose to review it because I want to know happened behind the closed doors of government during the era of the gestation and birth of nuclear war technology.
American Prometheus greatly intrigued me by its tale of how Oppenheimer, during the aftermath of its use against Japan, advocated before Presidents and generals its control and containment through coordinated effort by all nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.
Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer, this brilliant man of such stark contradictions? The authors paint a vivid portrait: rail thin, penetrating blue eyes, dark hair. He wore a porkpie hat. After he bummed a cigarette from a friend while a youth, he chained smoked for the rest of his life. To direct the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, even though he failed the phyical because he was 27 pounds underweight.
His strength and stamina, however, showed that he was no weakling. He thrived on long, arduous workdays at Los Alamos, extended horseback rides on a horse named "Crisis" that only Oppenheimer could ride, and reckless sailboat excursions through tempestuous waters.
Surviving a painful, prolonged adolescence, the shy and awkward young man matured to become a captivating lecturer and conversationalist, his verbal generosity warm and sprinkled with dry wit, particularly at social gatherings where friends and colleagues considered him a marvelous entertainer.
At 36 years of age, he married Katherine Peuning Harrison, "Kitty", and they stayed married until the end of his life. Kitty, although plagued by emotional illness and alcoholism, stepped forward to help her husband very effectively through excruciating ordeals, particularly the Atomic Energy Commission's hearing in 1954 to determine whether or not the physicist's top security clearance should be extended. It was not. Her testimony during this hearing was truthful and articulate, while still shedding the best possible light on her husband.
Robert Oppenheimer enjoyed a close relationship with his younger brother Frank, an experimental physicist. The authors describe how Robert detested and avoided experimental physics, an area in which Frank excelled. Unlike Robert, Frank joined the Communist Party and admitted this later on to the government interrogators, getting himself blackballed from teaching and research positions. Frank became a cattle rancher.
For many years he and Frank leased the "Perro Caliente", a ranch in New Mexico, to use as a getaway for themselves and their friends and colleagues. It was here that Robert "adopted" the cantankerous horse, "Crisis", that he rode for days through treacherous mountainous terrain.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, brilliant and creative theoretical physicist, embraced two diametrically opposed sides to his personality, an inner conflict that could have splintered the average person. On the one hand, he was the scientist assigned by the government to direct the development of a combat weapon that would dwarf all others.
The other side of his personality revealed his strong sense of ethics ingrained in him as a youngster at the Ethical Culture School. When the Nazi government persecuted and slaughtered Jews, Robert arranged and paid for his parents' escape to the United States, as well as that for Jewish physicist friends and colleagues. These experiences made him despise fascist governments like Hitler's, compelling him to support left causes, all of which were being hijacked by the American Communist Party. These kinds of involvements would get him into trouble with government interrogators years later.
The physicist's love for and dedication to humankind extended to the literary arts. As a linguist he was fluent in several languages. He was an accomplished writer who immersed himself in such giants as Marcel Proust, Henry James, and Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, eventually quoting it after the birth of his atomic bomb, "Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The authors describe Oppenheimer as naive, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naive in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, so he clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions as long as he could. From that standpoint, he was not in the least naive. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career.
I feel that his work during this tenure halted the government's headlong thrust toward what he considered catastrophic destruction, ultimately helping to protect us from that bomb that I kept waiting for. Over time, even after Oppenheimer was banned from government employment, military officials, and Presidents, began to pay attention.
The authors give each of the many secondary characters a dimension you don't normally see in the minor figures of a story. President Harry Truman "wrote to (Dean) Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a 'cry-baby scientist' who had come to his office 'some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.'"
During the Atomic Energy Commission's hearings on whether or not to renew Oppenheimer's security clearance, its chairmen Lewis Strauss sent President Eisenhower progress reports. "Ike cabled him in a reply from his Augusta, Georgia retreat, thanking him for his 'interim report'. He also informed Strauss that he burned his interim report, apparently not wanting to leave any evidence that he or Strauss was inappropriately monitoring the security hearing."
The authors show a remarkable ability to incorporate facts and dates without interrupting the flow of the narrative, enriching for the general reader as well as the scholar. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking your loss of position and reputation. You never know when you will be forced to make such a choice. Oppenheimer's experience can give you the courage to make the right one.
The author Martin J. Sherwin, who lives in Washington, D.C., began his research of Oppenheimer twenty-five years ago. Sherwin, the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, also wrote A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize.
Co-author Kae Bird, also a resident of Washington, D.C., wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms, and he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Bird is a contributing editor of The Nation.
Website Address: http://www.midwestbookreview.com
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Alfred A. Knopf
www.aaknopf.com
ISBN: 0375412026, $35.00 US $47.00 CAN, 721 pp.
Bonnie Trotter (aka Marian W. Trotter)
Reviewer
In 1951, our elementary school, located in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., conducted air raid drills to prepare us for the possibility of an atomic bomb attack. While our teacher led us single file across the entire campus, I worried that an atomic bomb would certainly not wait for us to reach a safe place. Once the student body assembled in the cafeteria, each of us crawled under a desk, pulled our legs up under us, and covered our eyes by burying them in the crook of an arm.
That bomb never did drop. I kept waiting for it. When I was in high school, my heart still thundered at the sound of any kind of whistling or whining from the skies above. As of now, 2005, it still hasn't dropped. Who and what protected us? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs, the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, ending WWII when Japan surrendered a few days later.
I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans), I learned that the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was successfully used on Japan.
When a riveting and highly-acclaimed biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer reached the shelves, I bought it, read it, and chose to review it because I want to know happened behind the closed doors of government during the era of the gestation and birth of nuclear war technology.
American Prometheus greatly intrigued me by its tale of how Oppenheimer, during the aftermath of its use against Japan, advocated before Presidents and generals its control and containment through coordinated effort by all nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.
Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer, this brilliant man of such stark contradictions? The authors paint a vivid portrait: rail thin, penetrating blue eyes, dark hair. He wore a porkpie hat. After he bummed a cigarette from a friend while a youth, he chained smoked for the rest of his life. To direct the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, even though he failed the phyical because he was 27 pounds underweight.
His strength and stamina, however, showed that he was no weakling. He thrived on long, arduous workdays at Los Alamos, extended horseback rides on a horse named "Crisis" that only Oppenheimer could ride, and reckless sailboat excursions through tempestuous waters.
Surviving a painful, prolonged adolescence, the shy and awkward young man matured to become a captivating lecturer and conversationalist, his verbal generosity warm and sprinkled with dry wit, particularly at social gatherings where friends and colleagues considered him a marvelous entertainer.
At 36 years of age, he married Katherine Peuning Harrison, "Kitty", and they stayed married until the end of his life. Kitty, although plagued by emotional illness and alcoholism, stepped forward to help her husband very effectively through excruciating ordeals, particularly the Atomic Energy Commission's hearing in 1954 to determine whether or not the physicist's top security clearance should be extended. It was not. Her testimony during this hearing was truthful and articulate, while still shedding the best possible light on her husband.
Robert Oppenheimer enjoyed a close relationship with his younger brother Frank, an experimental physicist. The authors describe how Robert detested and avoided experimental physics, an area in which Frank excelled. Unlike Robert, Frank joined the Communist Party and admitted this later on to the government interrogators, getting himself blackballed from teaching and research positions. Frank became a cattle rancher.
For many years he and Frank leased the "Perro Caliente", a ranch in New Mexico, to use as a getaway for themselves and their friends and colleagues. It was here that Robert "adopted" the cantankerous horse, "Crisis", that he rode for days through treacherous mountainous terrain.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, brilliant and creative theoretical physicist, embraced two diametrically opposed sides to his personality, an inner conflict that could have splintered the average person. On the one hand, he was the scientist assigned by the government to direct the development of a combat weapon that would dwarf all others.
The other side of his personality revealed his strong sense of ethics ingrained in him as a youngster at the Ethical Culture School. When the Nazi government persecuted and slaughtered Jews, Robert arranged and paid for his parents' escape to the United States, as well as that for Jewish physicist friends and colleagues. These experiences made him despise fascist governments like Hitler's, compelling him to support left causes, all of which were being hijacked by the American Communist Party. These kinds of involvements would get him into trouble with government interrogators years later.
The physicist's love for and dedication to humankind extended to the literary arts. As a linguist he was fluent in several languages. He was an accomplished writer who immersed himself in such giants as Marcel Proust, Henry James, and Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, eventually quoting it after the birth of his atomic bomb, "Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The authors describe Oppenheimer as naive, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naive in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, so he clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions as long as he could. From that standpoint, he was not in the least naive. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career.
I feel that his work during this tenure halted the government's headlong thrust toward what he considered catastrophic destruction, ultimately helping to protect us from that bomb that I kept waiting for. Over time, even after Oppenheimer was banned from government employment, military officials, and Presidents, began to pay attention.
The authors give each of the many secondary characters a dimension you don't normally see in the minor figures of a story. President Harry Truman "wrote to (Dean) Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a 'cry-baby scientist' who had come to his office 'some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.'"
During the Atomic Energy Commission's hearings on whether or not to renew Oppenheimer's security clearance, its chairmen Lewis Strauss sent President Eisenhower progress reports. "Ike cabled him in a reply from his Augusta, Georgia retreat, thanking him for his 'interim report'. He also informed Strauss that he burned his interim report, apparently not wanting to leave any evidence that he or Strauss was inappropriately monitoring the security hearing."
The authors show a remarkable ability to incorporate facts and dates without interrupting the flow of the narrative, enriching for the general reader as well as the scholar. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking your loss of position and reputation. You never know when you will be forced to make such a choice. Oppenheimer's experience can give you the courage to make the right one.
The author Martin J. Sherwin, who lives in Washington, D.C., began his research of Oppenheimer twenty-five years ago. Sherwin, the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, also wrote A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize.
Co-author Kae Bird, also a resident of Washington, D.C., wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms, and he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Bird is a contributing editor of The Nation.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Daydreams for Cyberspace
An artist and writer of a certain age, I still daydream about creating that perfect business that will enhance peoples’ lives and, at the same time, bring in some money. The ecommerce rage swept me off my feet like a new lover. How simple it would be to sell a product or service on the Internet! I felt like a child let out of school for the summer.
Why not sell friends’ and relatives’ handcrafted items on eBay? Like our universe, eBay is endless. All the books written about this eBay phenomenon fail to encompass it, because with each passing year its technology advances to include an ever-widening range of products and services. My first product was a sofa pillow crocheted by my sister-in-law, an exquisite piece of art, a rendering of a variety of abstract motifs, all details sewn with great care. Dead sure that the pillow would sell for three or four hundred dollars, I took it to an eBay agent who looked up what crocheted pillows were going for. The answer: the average price, eighteen dollars!
The ecommerce world began to overwhelm me. I hired a tech tutor, the only Macintosh expert I could find in the area that encompassed my county and the one north of it. Everybody around here prefers IBM-compatible. Twenty-three years ago, I chose the more art-oriented Mac. To transfer at this stage in my life to the IBM-compatible would throw me back to the Stone Age.
Every other Friday afternoon, in my home office, before my Macintosh PowerBook G4, the young teaches the old. My tutor is thirty. I’m sixty three. In high school I wrote papers and essays long hand. My hi-tech was a manual typewriter. Eventually, my tutor and I progressed to the idea of a website, an online gallery where people could view my art and buy it. In daydreams, I worried that I’d get so many orders I wouldn’t be able to keep up. The site that he designed and launched, lovely and user-friendly, did not get a single hit in over a year. I killed it.
Would my tutor quit, frustrated because I couldn’t seem to get a grip? He is good, and I’m imagining him seeking other clients whose results would be more satisfying for him. He suggested a blog with ads.
I thought I’d launch a blog with photos and illustrations. What would I write about? What would I draw or paint? What would I photograph? Reading my tutor’s favorite blogs, I’m awed by what goes on there: I’m seeing the flush of life, active careers in exploration using a variety of media, and watchdogs analyzing Internet fraud. Products they advertise on their sites are there to augment their interests and what they stand for.
After reading those excellent blogs, I looked at my daily journals, which depict a loner’s navigation through daily life: “Me, the one and only psychiatric anthropologist: It won’t help me one bit to try to examine others’ paths of self-destruction in order to avoid looking at my own.” Who would care about a blog like that? I wouldn’t.
What do I really do with my time? Winters here in Montana are long and unbearably cold. For exercise, I work out in a gym. I read. I watch television documentaries, pay per view movies, and good scripted programs like the Law and Order shows.
Read? My tutor logged us on to Amazon.com to read book reviews. Here I could practice writing in cyberspace, gauge my skill by comparing it to others’, and see what kind of response I get from voters. I wrote several, which garnered an acceptable level of response, but no rocket to the moon. And, how can you profess to run a book blog without buying, reading, and reviewing every book on your site? The costs of the books I reviewed would exceed whatever I could earn selling them.
A blog that is rocket to the moon? When have I ever been a rocket to the moon? So, cyberspace really is no different from feet-on-the-ground life! Even a blog has to be based on a concept no one else has thought of. I surfed for ideas, using Google to cough up results from every search word or phrase I could think of, which suggested other search words or phrases. I spent entire days, like an addict. After hours straight, my exhausted imagination had me suspended in the air, stuff I couldn’t identify clinging to me as if I were a life raft, while back on the ground I chase unrealized dreams unto death.
Why not sell friends’ and relatives’ handcrafted items on eBay? Like our universe, eBay is endless. All the books written about this eBay phenomenon fail to encompass it, because with each passing year its technology advances to include an ever-widening range of products and services. My first product was a sofa pillow crocheted by my sister-in-law, an exquisite piece of art, a rendering of a variety of abstract motifs, all details sewn with great care. Dead sure that the pillow would sell for three or four hundred dollars, I took it to an eBay agent who looked up what crocheted pillows were going for. The answer: the average price, eighteen dollars!
The ecommerce world began to overwhelm me. I hired a tech tutor, the only Macintosh expert I could find in the area that encompassed my county and the one north of it. Everybody around here prefers IBM-compatible. Twenty-three years ago, I chose the more art-oriented Mac. To transfer at this stage in my life to the IBM-compatible would throw me back to the Stone Age.
Every other Friday afternoon, in my home office, before my Macintosh PowerBook G4, the young teaches the old. My tutor is thirty. I’m sixty three. In high school I wrote papers and essays long hand. My hi-tech was a manual typewriter. Eventually, my tutor and I progressed to the idea of a website, an online gallery where people could view my art and buy it. In daydreams, I worried that I’d get so many orders I wouldn’t be able to keep up. The site that he designed and launched, lovely and user-friendly, did not get a single hit in over a year. I killed it.
Would my tutor quit, frustrated because I couldn’t seem to get a grip? He is good, and I’m imagining him seeking other clients whose results would be more satisfying for him. He suggested a blog with ads.
I thought I’d launch a blog with photos and illustrations. What would I write about? What would I draw or paint? What would I photograph? Reading my tutor’s favorite blogs, I’m awed by what goes on there: I’m seeing the flush of life, active careers in exploration using a variety of media, and watchdogs analyzing Internet fraud. Products they advertise on their sites are there to augment their interests and what they stand for.
After reading those excellent blogs, I looked at my daily journals, which depict a loner’s navigation through daily life: “Me, the one and only psychiatric anthropologist: It won’t help me one bit to try to examine others’ paths of self-destruction in order to avoid looking at my own.” Who would care about a blog like that? I wouldn’t.
What do I really do with my time? Winters here in Montana are long and unbearably cold. For exercise, I work out in a gym. I read. I watch television documentaries, pay per view movies, and good scripted programs like the Law and Order shows.
Read? My tutor logged us on to Amazon.com to read book reviews. Here I could practice writing in cyberspace, gauge my skill by comparing it to others’, and see what kind of response I get from voters. I wrote several, which garnered an acceptable level of response, but no rocket to the moon. And, how can you profess to run a book blog without buying, reading, and reviewing every book on your site? The costs of the books I reviewed would exceed whatever I could earn selling them.
A blog that is rocket to the moon? When have I ever been a rocket to the moon? So, cyberspace really is no different from feet-on-the-ground life! Even a blog has to be based on a concept no one else has thought of. I surfed for ideas, using Google to cough up results from every search word or phrase I could think of, which suggested other search words or phrases. I spent entire days, like an addict. After hours straight, my exhausted imagination had me suspended in the air, stuff I couldn’t identify clinging to me as if I were a life raft, while back on the ground I chase unrealized dreams unto death.
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