Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?

Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America? Five Kids Meet their Country
© 1990 John Siegel Boettner
with excerpts from the journals of Heather Deutsch, Joy Fulton, Jimmy West, Carl Fagerlin, and Ethan Turpin.
439 pages

The United States isn't a nation that makes touring it by bike easy: those who wish to do it must tackle mountain ranges,  broad deserts, a cornucopia of potential natural disasters -- and that's not even including American drivers. Imagine trying to do it while simultaneously watching over five teenagers --  five kids, really, a group of three boys and two girls, all eleven between eleven and thirteen years old. That's what John Siegel Boettner, a middle-school teacher in California, did in the year of 1986. Beginning at the start of summer break, he and his wife toured with the kids from Washington, D.C. across the continent to Oregon, then down California to their home, a journey of nearly five thousand miles -- braving tornadoes, heat waves, snowstorms, and a string of mechanical problems, all in an effort to teach the kids about their country.

John Siegel Boettner isn't your usual teacher: the fact that's he willing to take care of five of his kids for four months across the nation and through a variety of disasters might already indicate that.  An avid cyclist, as soon as he began teaching he organized a bicycle club and began taking his kids on extended trips called "Educational Safaris": in one, he and his wards biked through the northeast,  exploring the sites of the American Revolution. Not only did the bike trips give the kids an opportunity to learn about themselves, of what they could achieve through their effort alone, but it made their history, their culture, come more alive...and such was their teacher's intention here, as after Mississippi they follow the Oregon Trail to the west coast.  By day, John is their leader, captain, mechanic, and coach, helping them to organize and keep moving, and calling the shots when things get hairy...as they did, often.  Unlike David Lamb's Over the Hills,  Hey Mom is peppered with near-disasters, usually near the mountains. By night, he's a teacher, reading to them from the journals of an Oregon Trail pioneer whose path they follow and whose experiences are an eerie mirror of their own.  The trip extends a month past summer vacation, but John feels no guilt about keeping the kids about of school. In his view, the experiences they are gaining on the road are worth far more than a month of memorization and regurgitation. This is the trip of a lifetime, the intimate details of which John accounts in the book, and when it was finished I felt sad, as though I'd been part of the experience and it was now over.

Before leaving on the trip, John read to his kids from Peter Jenkins' A Walk Across America;  Jenkins, too, transversed the nation in an effort to learn about it, to spend time with its people. Like Jenkins before them, John, his wife, and the kids gain much from the kindness of strangers...and strangers across the continent are very kind indeed to a band of kids doing what most think impossible even for adults, crossing a land of three thousand miles by bicycle.   Although this is the story of a journey, it's more about the people -- both the kids involved, like young Ethan who could barely ride a bike when the tale began, and the people who they meet, like the Amish folk in Tennessee.  I find accounts of people walking or cycling the entire country to be fascinating by themselves, but Hey Mom is extraordinary for featuring kids, whose energy, idealism, and joy and make a work to revel in reading.

Very much recommended. 

Related:

• The author giving a TEDx talk called "The Joy of Looking", in which he shares how one of his cycling students taught him the lesson of The Dead Poets' Society: gather rosebuds while ye may.. It's beautiful.
• A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins

A Walk Across America

A Walk Across America
© 1979 Peter Jenkins
288 pages

We walked straight west. I had everything I needed in the world resting comfortably on my shoulders, and the entire country waiting to be discovered.  (p.55)

In the late spring of 1973, Peter Jenkins decided to go for a walk. The increasingly jaded college graduate, still recovering from a divorce, was willing to quit America all together. War and government corruption rendered him a cynic about the country's worth and promise, and a growing sense of wanderlust urged him to drop off the grid altogether. Urged by family members to see first-hand the country he was willing to leave on foot, Jenkins and his Alaskan Malamute Cooper set off on a journey to meet the land and people. The whole of the journey is not contained within this book, for he stops in New Orleans to chronicle the first great part of the story. Beginning in Connecticut, Jenkins hikes to D.C, then through the Carolinas and Virginia, across part of Tennessee, down through Alabama, and then west across the Gulf Coast until he stops to rest in New Orleans.

The road between Connecticut and Louisiana connects Jenkins' story with the lives of others -- an old mountain man with a reputation for shooting intruders,  grizzled lumberyard workers, ranchers, hippies, evangelists,  the Alabamian governor, paranoid drunks, and murderous lawmen. He meets friends and foes as he hikes through the mountains and down to the Gulf Coast, braving the Appalachian winter and the Deep South's humid, scorching summers. Although few photographs depict the surroundings, their beauty is made clear through Jenkins' descriptions, and the stories he tells about the characters he meets are almost too hard to believe -- particularly one in which he was literally run out of town by a lynch mob, keen on doing him in for looking like a hippie. Jenkin's stories are set in a different time: when he walks through Selma, Alabama, for instance, the massacre at the town's bridge during the Civil Rights movement is only a few years in the past. Segregationist George Wallace still reigns supreme in Montgomery, and in Tennessee, Stephen Gaskin's "Farm" is growing in size.  Jenkins spends the better part of a year navigating from Connecticut to Orleans, occasionally stopping to work in order to save up money for another leg of the journey. He spends a few weeks at The Farm, noting that its emphasis on simplicity seems contrived next to the simplicity of life he's found on the road: he moves on when the cultish atmosphere spooks him.

Jenkins is an enjoyable writer, communicating the humor, terror, despondency, and hope that his walk stirs in him. I identified with him immediately, being a restless college graduate who also wants to retreat from modern society. His tone made it clear that between starting the journey and writing the novel, he's converted to something: he introduces his Connecticut self in the same way Bill O'Reilly might introduce a guest he despises.  That tone makes him hard to take seriously, but once he hits the road his experiences take first priority. Although many of the stories are hilarious in themselves, he often sets up jokes. In the final section, for instance, he writes that he looked forward to staying at the seminary in New Orleans for a while: there would be no girls, there, no distractions. Naturally he meets his second wife. Sections are headed off by illustrations that overlay scenes from his travels across a map of his route: I particularly enjoyed these illustrations.

A sectional illustration, depicting a revival scene in Mobile (where Jenkins was "saved", one of Mobile's great trees (which he fawned over), a farmhouse he stayed at for a week or so, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a Civil Rights monument. 

A Walk Across America will remain one of the more interesting books I've read, I think. Although I enjoyed reading a book about life on the road -- something I've been looking for for a while now -- Jenkins' story resonated with me not only because of our similar stations in life when he started this walk, but for the places he walked through. While Americans -- and particularly those who live along the eastern and southeastern coasts of America -- will enjoy this most, I would recommend it to  general audiences for the stories alone. Jenkins has written other books, which I will be reading.

Related:

• Into the Wild

Into the Wild

Into the Wild
© 1997 Jon Krakauer
207 pages



Well over a year ago, perhaps closer to two, a friend of mine asked me if I had heard the story of Christopher McCandless, a young man who left society to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, perishing in the course of finding whatever it was that pulled him out there. At first his story had no interest for me, but a year later -- after reading Walden -- I was very much interested in reading the accounts of people who lived lives free from society, either on the road or in the wild. Into the Wild and Jake Kerouac's On the Road are the only books I know of (presently) that are themed in such a way.

Krakauer presents McCandless' story well, not only going into Christopher's background but recounting the lives of people who have perished in similar ways. Krakauer attempts to find their motivations, drawing from accounts of the lives of these men and others like himself who felt a similar call but survived. McCandles himself seems to be possessed by a need to throw himself into the wildness of life and prove that he is worthy of it.  He views taking on the wilderness - as he does for many months before hitch-hiking into Alaska --  as a spiritual challenge.  Krakauer lavishly describes the natural background McCandless and others journeyed through and and died in.  He relates strongly to McCandless, seeing him as a kindred spirit - and for him, to understand McCandless' life and death is to better understand himself. He thus treats his subject sympathetically, but is quick to reproach him for being unprepared.

 Into the Wild proved to be a stirring read. While I have no interest in "living off the land", I'm sympathteic to his desire to be immersed in the glorious beauty of nature. His story gripped me, and the effect he had on the lives he encountered often shocked me. Whatever your opinion of his life and death, this is a story worth contemplating at the very least.

The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius

The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius
© 2000 Mark Forstater
288 pages

I first encountered Marcus Aurelius in November 2007, reading his Meditations during Thanksgiving. Although I did not mention it any detail here, the Meditations have stuck with me ever since, often providing me with a source of strength during troubled times. Aurelius' words provoked an interest in Stoicism, an interest that would lead me to visit sites such as the Humanist Contemplative and Humainism, two blogs/essay repositories focused on the intersection of Humanism, Stoicism, and Buddhism. DT Strain of the Humanist Contemplative has a "suggested reading" list, some titles of which I've read already and others I intend to track down. The first new book I read from this list is The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius, functioning as a partial translation of the Meditations with preceding commentary.

After author Mark Forstater became interested in Stoicism, he decided to visit the Meditations in their most conservative translation, one promised to be as close to the literal meaning of the Greek as possible. He then began updating the language for easier reading while maintaining the original meanings of the word and Marcus Aurelius' tones. I was able to compare Spiritual Teachings' passages with my copy of the conservative translation I read two years ago and can say with reasonable authority that Forstater succeeded in his goal: while these passages read easily, they have abandoned the first text. I say this not because I believe conservative translations are better, but because while some readers are interested in the general message, others might be more interested in the way Aurelius expressed that message. This is the difference between those who love Sharon Lebell's modern interpretation of Epictetus in The Art of Living and those who loathe it. For stater has produced more of an edited translation than an interpretation.

Spiritual Teachings is not the meditations in whole: Forstater focused on specific passages and groups them into themes ("Cultivation of the Self" and "Death" are two), sometimes repeating passages or portions of passages when they address multiple ideas. The passages constitute the bulk of the book, being preceded by commentary from Forstater in the beginning. I would recommend the book to those who have heard of the Meditations but who don't want to dive head-first into the Roman emperor's biography and more esoteric references, or to those who have read the Meditations and are interested in a pocket-sized book containing their favorite passages.

Love and Death

Love and Death: My Journey Through the Vally of the Shadow
© F. Forrester Church 2008
145 pages



"Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are." - author's personal motto

When typing my comments for Our Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism, I visited the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations website and saw that one of the book's co-authors, F. Forrester Church, had recently died from cancer. I learned from his obituary that before his death he penned a book on death and dying called Love and Death. I was immediately interested in what a dying man had to say about the subject and decided to read it as my way of paying respects.

The theme of love and death was a common one for Church, having sermonized about it many times. He wrote in this book that when he was diagnosed with cancer, he became strangely anticipatory, describing himself as a student who had long studied for the examination of dying and wanted to see if he would prove worthy. Church believes that death is an essential part of the human experience, one that defines us and gives rise to religion -- which he defines as the human response to the twin truths of both being alive and having to die. After introducing the book, he delves into his history of death, reflecting on the deaths of friends and family that have marked his personal life and his service as a minister. He does this to establish why he views death with the grace he does, and once it is established he begins to speak as a minister -- offering meditations and advice.

The book appears to be written for those who are or who have loved ones who are dying, as well as to those who have recently lost loved ones. Neither of these categories apply to me, at least not to my knowledge, but still I was able to receive a great deal from his message. The book is very personal: it's not something one should read on the subway. The book isn't just read, it's experienced. I don't think I'll soon forget my own time spent reading it, and as a result of it I intend to read more of Church as I am able and recommend Love and Death to you.

The Consolations of Philosophy

The Consolations of Philosophy

© 2000 Alain de Botton

278 pages

A number of months ago, I stumbled by chance upon a fascinating television series called Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. Host Alain de Botton addressed the everyday concerns of six famous philosophers in the show’s six episodes, demonstrating on video his and others’ attempts to take the advice of thinkers past to heart. I’ve mentioned here and other places innumerable times, so taken was I with the idea -- and when I found out that the shows were based on one of de Botton’s works, I knew I would someday read it.

Like the show that it spawned, The Consolations of Philosophy is divided into six sections focusing on the works of Socrates, Epicures, Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The focus of the book chapters tends to be more broad than the television episodes on them, and present philosophy as a salve to eliminate our distress at being stressed, angry, unpopular, or heartbroken -- just for starters. De Botton integrates pictures directly into the text: while they sometimes serve as garnish for the text, more often than not they are directly used in the course of de Botton’s discussion. Consolations is Epictetus’ kind of philosophy: it’s street wisdom, to be employed anyone. Our author writes plainly and candidly, with the kind of self-revelation he finds so endearing in reading de Montaigne’s Essays.

The book's contents, in brief:

• Socrates' Consolation for Unpopularity, or his view of self-esteem, is that people should draw their self-image not from what others think about them or their opinions, but from the assurance that their beliefs and actions are guided by Reason. The section includes an explanation of the Socratic method, and it is this de Botton believes to be the basis for Socrates' grace in accepting his imposed death sentence.
• Epicurus' Consolation for Not Having Enough Money is realizing that happiness is the ends and money is not necessarily the means. He advocates a life filled with simple pleasures, and believes we buy things in a misguided attempt to find fulfillment. True fulfillment, Epicures says, lies in freedom, friends, and self-reflection. Epicures is a personality who comes to mind whenever I read about simple living, the slow movement, and anti-consumerism.
• Seneca's Consolation for Frustration is Stoicism, and de Botton focuses on Stoicism's treatment of anger as well as addressing questions of theodicy. de Botton places more emphasis on what we cannot control than what we can.
• Michel de Montaigne's Consolation for Inadequacy is twice as long as any of the other sections and is difficult to summarize, but it may suffice to say that Montaigne believes we humans live far too much in our heads: we are embarrassed by our "animal" functions of sex and defecation and arrogant about our opinions not because our opinions are great and truthful and our estimation of ourselves is deserving, but because we are deluding ourselves. Thoughtful humility seems to be in order.
• Similarly, Schopenhauer’s Consolation for a Broken Heart is that we’re animals, driven to procreate, and this business of falling in love is our genes’ way of screwing with us. It’s not our fault we fall in and out of love and find ourselves stuck in hopeless relationships: forces within our bodies impel us to seek out viable genetic mates, and they do not care if those mates are compatible with us in the long term.
• Nietzsche brings up the rear by offering a Consolation for Hardship: it’s the struggle up the mountain that leads to fulfillment. Life is hard, and we must persevere if we are to make anything of it.

Although de Botton’s emphasis is on the everyday applicability of these ideas, he does establish background as necessary to understand where these men are coming from. He doesn’t go into a system of thought like Stoicism in a great deal of detail, for instance --- but does so enough that we understand Seneca’s basis for saying what he says. This is the kind of thinking that Epictetus thought needed to be “rescued” from the high-tower academics and brought down to everyday life. I’ve found the television series and the book to be ever helpful. This is what philosophy, the love of wisdom, should be going for: making sense of life. I imagine this is one I shall return to for future reads, and it is of course a recommendation to you.

Related:

• The Art of Living, a modern interpretation of Epictetus.
• Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, hosted by Alain de Botton, based on this book, and is presented in six episodes.
• Michel de Montaigne's Essays.

Taming the Mind

Taming the Mind

© 2004 Thubten Chodron

217 pages

I judged a book by its cover when I read this one. Oh, I looked it up on Amazon to see what readers were saying about it -- my substitute for thumbing through the book, which I cannot do when requesting books through an online library catalogue -- but really, I checked this book out because I liked the cover. The scene looks simple, natural, and tranquil -- and that's the neighborhood I like my mind to live in. The book is apparently written as a sequel to a beginner's guide to Buddhism, although I'm not sure why -- as this book seems to cover the basics. Chodron gives a history of Buddhism, comparing its schools of thought to one another, explains the essential teachings, and then applies them to parenting or employment.

Chodron takes Buddhism very seriously -- judging from their works that I have read, more seriously than the Dalai Lama. What I like about the Buddhist tradition is its emphasis on rationality and skepticism, and parts of this book made me uncomfortable in their apparent failure to live up to that standard. Siddhartha is viewed as less a wise teacher and more a demigod, and Chodron's advice to practicing Buddhists to avoid people who don't take the teachings carries a whiff of isolating fundamentalism. The book doesn't seem to mesh together very well, aside from being about Buddhism in general. There are chapters on Buddhist history, Buddhist culture, and other assorted topics that don't seem to go with "Taming the Mind". That book is in here -- some of the introduction, and the two beginning sections of "Our Relationship with Others" and on habits -- but there's a lot of information that distracts from that and absorbs space that perhaps should have gone to expanding the aforementioned sections.

Parts of the book are better than others, but I can't say I would recommend it. And I'm sorry to say that, because I never like reading a book and not being able to get anything out of it.* I'm going to try the author again, though.

* Save this, from "Dhammapada 165":

By ourselves is evil done;

By ourselves we pain endure.

By ourselves we cease from ill;

By ourselves become we pure.

No one can save us but ourselves;

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path,

Buddhas only point the way

Walden

Walden

© 1854 Henry David Thoreau

I remember staring up at Walden on my high school library's bookshelf, wondering if I should check it out. I knew it was famous: it was one of those books I'd heard of in the light of being a classic. I didn't check it out, but some years later I decided to try Thoreau out based on his WikiQuote page and found him to be enjoyable and exceedingly thought-provoking. Having read his essay on civil disobedience and portions of his journals, I decided this past week to read the work for which he may be best-known: Walden.

Walden is Thoreau's account of his first year spent living at Walden Pond, just outside of Concord. From what I've read, Thoreau seemed ill at ease living in society -- which to him is unnatural, with people obsessing over trivial matters and ignoring the more important ones, like the cultivation of the inner spirit. In order to think about things and to pursue a life of simple living -- in which he was able to live off of six weeks' labor -- he travelled into the woods and began making a home for himself. Although I had expected social criticism, philosophical musings, and a journalistic account, I was not expecting the latter to dominate the former. The bulk of his criticism is contained within the opening chapters, in which he explains why he left. Although musings (mostly related to transcendentalism) are woven throughout, the book is mostly a straightforward account of his life spent in the woods. He writes about building his home, seeing the seasons changes, and working in his bean-field. A friend warned me that Thoreau spent a lot of time writing about the details of his life -- details like the width between lines of his bean crop -- but I didn't expect quite so much. Then again, based on such a warning I might have focused more on the details when they occurred.

Thoreau is poetic at times, and quotes often from the Hindu scriptures as well as from his own tradition's text of the bible. The book is littered with 19th century references (helpfully explained by my book's editor), giving the impression that Thoreau is a very well-read man. This might be emblematic of the print culture that Neil Postman and Susan Jacoby are so enamored of, or it may point to the fact that Thoreau delighted in gleaning wisdom and inspiration from the products of the human spirit. He saw philosophy as using wisdom to live one's life well. His style has the vague formality you might expect of 19th-century work.

I suspect the book may have been spoiled for me by his journals: first-time readers to Thoreau may find it more enjoyable than I did. I didn't dislike reading it, but it didn't grip me the way I expected Thoreau to. He has a droll wit about him: at times he seems like a man who could fascinate you with his ramblings at the same time he annoys you by constantly complaining. Although I didn't expect it -- but should have -- is that this book offers a look into a different time -- a time in which people come to Walden Pond to cut blocks out of ice to use in icehouses. (The first three or four times Thoreau mentioned ice-cutters, I thought they were cutting holes in the ice to fish. Only later did it occur to me that this is the mid-19th century and people use icehouses for refrigeration.)

Although the details could get wearisome at times, I am glad I read it and would like to discuss it further with people who have likewise read it.

Finding Your Religion

Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up with Has Lost its Meaning

© 1999 Scotty McLennan

242 pages

I didn't go into the library to find this book -- I pulled it off the shelf on a whim, and gained a little interest after seeing that it seemed to be a general guide to "spiritual paths". The clincher was the Doonesbury character on the cover of the novel promising an introduction from Gary Trudeau. I don't actually read Doonesbury, but I know its reputation. Author Scotty McLennan is a Christian Unitarian Universalist, although he may put emphasis on the first third of that description, and he has written this book in an attempt to help people with no religion or those who have been burned by their childhood religion find a spiritual path or to resume their journey. Why look for a spiritual path? This is never deliberately explained, but in the telling of his and other's stories, the general purpose seems to be to find meaning, purpose, and direction in life.

McLennan's story certainly is an interesting one: he sees his legal training as an asset to be used for spiritual purposes in helping people, establishing a "legal ministry" that defies the convention that spiritual matters and "secular" matters cannot mix -- as well as potentially giving lawyers a good name. It is clear that McLennan's view of spirituality -- which he practices and which he advocates -- is part of life, not just cultural identity. He begins the book by establishing what he believes to be the six "stages" of religion, beginning with a child's belief in magic and culminating in the "Unity" experienced only by mystics and men like Gandhi. The stages in between -- "Reality", "Dependence", "Independence", and "Interdependence" cover everything else, from cults to the standard religions.

One of his initial pieces of advice -- which I found surprising, since he is Unitarian Universalist -- was for those "seeking" a path to simply pick one and go with it. His analogy is that of paths leading up a mountain: those who choose to go it alone may tire of hacking away at the brush or may fall down the abyss of a cult. I thought it strange that he wanted readers to simply pick a religion arbitrarily and try to make it fit, but once I made my way further into the book I saw his purpose: the point is for people to get started. In "Crossings", he makes it clear that no one need be limited by their religion: the book is full of stories of people who have started in one tradition and grown into another one. McLennan believes in the universality of human religions/spiritual paths -- that they share the same essential goal of human growth and that they each incorporate similar practices. Many of the stories from the book come from his spiritual journey across the world, where he tries to drink in as much human experience as possible with an emphasis on spiritual matters. In one, he goes to a Hindu sage who admonishes him to be the best Christian he can be: Christianity is in the culture he knows, so he will fare the best there. McLennan reminds me of Marcus Borg (who also believes in the universality of human religions) in choosing this.

This book seems to me to reflect his and other's attempt to find a living spirituality: a sense of it that grows with them as it helps them to grow: a sense of spirituality that facilitates, not limits, human flourishing. He's a lovely guide and a readable author. Although I am not seeking a religion, I enjoyed connecting with McLennan's stories and the stories he betrayed. This is a recommendation for those interested in this kind of growth.

The Faith Club

The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew -- Three Women Search for Understanding

© 2006 Ranya Indliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner

396 pages, including discussion guide and resources for starting similar groups.

The book begins on September 11. When Ranya Indilby -- a Palestinian-American who remains sensitive about her minority position -- hears of the attacks, she prays and asks that it not be Muslims who are behind them. In the post-9/11 world, she grows increasingly sensitive about her identidy, but finds solace in a story about Muhammed that seems to identify Islam as a religion that embraces other traditions. Inspired by this and prompted by her children's questions about their culture, she decides to write a children's book on the similarities between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. A Christian friend of hers -- Suzanne Oliver -- quickly jumps on board, and the two call a local Jewish children's author (Priscella) to ask if she's interested in the project.

They join together and begin to discussion their traditions' common beginning with Abraham and begin the work of selecting stories from their texts to compile together, but quickly run into trouble when Suzanne and Priscella disagree on the meaning of Jesus' execution. Suzanne sees it as crucial to understanding Jesus' resurrection -- which she sees as a vitally important part of her worldview. Tensions begin to rise, and the three women realize that a different approach is needed -- so they begin talking about what their faiths mean to them. They work through a number of issues (Israel, stereotypes, prayer, and so on) through a number of years. The book is a (self-described) memoir written by three people in the voice of the first person. While their meetings are initially structured around writing the children's book, it becomes more of a retreat for the three women, and the book itself becomes less about the relationship between three religions and more about the developing friendship between the three women -- and the relationships they have with their respective senses of spirituality. Each of their faiths undergoes a transformation in the three or so years that the memoir covers.

I had expected to grow weary of what I expected to be the book's limited focus (the Abrahamic religions), but the book quickly became more about their personal quests to find meaning -- actively reinterpreting their beliefs and making them fit to their lives. The book ends with the chapter "Awakening", in which the three describe coming to peace with their paths. After the last bits of the memoir, there is added material: an interview with the authors and information helpful to starting a "faith club", including a list of things to keep in mind -- that everyone will bring stereotypes, that secrets corrupt, that everyone can be a peacemaker, that sort of thing. It ends with information about the three Abrahamic religions. Helpfully, all of this information -- from the interview to the religious information -- is rendered in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Turning the page to see Hebrew and then Arabic script was surprising, but interesting.

The book was surprisingly...enjoyable. It reminded me a bit of Spong's Here I Stand, and the theme -- humans standing up to amd owning religion rather than being dominated by them -- is one I like.

The Book that Changed my Life

The Book that Changed My Life
© 2006 editors Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen
197 pages

Last week while ending a walk about town, I stopped in my university library to refill my water bottle and investigate On the Road to see if it was worth reading. While strolling through, I happened to see The Book that Changed my Life on display. Its title amused me to the point of picking it up, and I settled down to read it at various intervals throughout the week. The book consists of seventy-one essays by authors on the book (or sometimes, "books") that changed their life in some way. Most of the essays are short -- a page and a half seems to be average -- and all were fairly easy reading. The books covered are mostly literature, with some exceptions -- The Guns of August, for instance, which inspired Doris Kearns Goodwin to become a historian even though it was a field -- was and still is, perhaps -- dominated by men. Some essayists shared books in common -- J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby were both mentioned multiple times. The essayists' motivation for choosing one book or another varied. For some, it introduced them to reading for pleasure: for others, their books gave them new insights. One person wrote on the effect that the Sears Catalouge had on him as a child. Of the essayists, I only recognized two -- Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain. (One of Lieberman's picks was "The Bible", but he gives it little more than lip service, as would be expected.) The book was an enjoyable read, and will be of interest to "readers": I was able to find a few suggestions for further reading.

Just a few of the titles I wrote down:

• Out of my Life and Thought, Albert Schweitzer
• Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke
• The Snake Has All the Lines, Jean Kerr
• The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker (this was mentioned twice)
• The Reason Why, Cecil Woodham-Smith
• An Introduction to Contemporary History, Geoffry Barraclough

It seems appropriate, after reading this book, to consider the question of the book or books that have changed my life. There are many that have changed my thinking -- Neil Postman immediately comes to mind -- and some that have entertained me beyond measure (John Grisham's The Rainmaker), but when I turn my mind to the question but don't think about it, Paul Zindel's The Pigman* comes to mind. Zindel was the first author I ever read who wrote about "strange" things, and his The Pigman was the first book about serious issues I ever read. As a child, the book seemed to be very "adult", and I remembering it being perhaps the first book to move me to tears, to have a memorable response other than basic enjoyment. This is a book that lingers in my memory. Because of it I read everything my high school library had by Zindel, including The Pigman's Legacy and The Pigman and Me.


* Ordinarily I'd link you to the Wikipedia page, but the page in this instance is abysmally done and I won't be responsible for whatever impression it gives about the book.

Here If You Need Me

Here If You Need Me: A True Story
© 2001 Kate Braestrup
211 pages

Here If You Need Me is the story of Kate Braestrup, a Unitarian Universalist minister and game warden chaplain who went into that service after the death of her husband, a Maine State Trooper who had planned on a double career as a Unitarian minister. In a sense, I suppose she converted her pain into a way to honor her husband and help others -- and in so doing, helped herself. Reverend Braustrup mixes stories of her current service with stories from her past. Some of the stories are happy and some tragic, but they all have a point to them -- or Braeustrup has found meaning in them. She shares the meaning of those stories with the reader, all the while reflecting on ideas of life, compassion, and God. I found the book to be very enjoyable as well as intensely moving. I definitely reccommend it.

I to Myself

I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
© 2007 editor Jeffrey Cramer
429 pages

I've known the name Henry David Thoreau since high school, when I gazed up at Walden. I did not read from him, however, until this past summer when I read On Civil Disobedience, which I found to be thought-provoking. I decided to read a little more of Thoreau this week and went with annotated selections from his journal. The actual collection of journals spans fourteen volumes, according to the editor of this book, which is quite impressive. Although Thoreau begins the book as a twenty year old, his thoughts are much different from the thoughts I wrote in my own journals at that age. His thoughts and how he expresses them are deeper and more eloquent than any others I have read or can imagine reading. I imagine this is a result of a more literary society.

The selections from his journal are organized by year, and comments by the editor on every page explain allusions Thoreau is making or add more detail. The editor was thorough enough to include reproductions of drawings Thoreau made in his journals. The character who rises from these pages is interesting: the editor comments that he is a man of contradictions. He writes to himself that the value of our thought-life is more valuable than the value of our emotional life, as emotional states are transitory -- yet he exults reason and scoffs at science. His distaste for science especially emerges in his forties. Thoreau is often a man alone: he seems to spend the majority of his time outside in the woods, walking and contemplating life. He cares little for company on this walks, although he does seem to admit it in small amounts once he returns. Money seems to be of secondary importance: every so often he will reference doing building work for someone, or surveying land, but the Thoreau in this book is a man of the wilderness. I can see him in my mind's eye, his hands clasped behind his back, strolling through the woods with a funny gait and a curious expression on his face. Here is a man who spends a lot of time in thought, but who doesn't hesitate to fold his arms into a shape resembling that of a chicken's so that he may more properly imitate a bird call when he is vocalizing.

Through Thoreau's life, we can see life changing. Railroads intrude into the woodlands: men wielding axes approach Walden Pond, his sanctuary. The great tide of immigration from Europe will sweep through Concord: he often mentions Irish immigrants. Although these things trouble him, he seems to rise above them, taking heart in thoughts of greater truths. "There is nowhere any apology for despondency," he comments, "[As] always there is life which rightfully lived implies a divine satisfaction." Religion, like society, is of little concern to him. Although he seems to see religious philosophy of all kinds as divinely inspired, he heaps contempt among preachers and organized religion. At a younger point than that, he comments that "I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance with make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man's faith or form of faith and another's. [...] I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher, all sects, all nations, are alike."

The book was quite a read. Thoreau is an interesting character to contemplate, and I do believe this annotated selection helped me to get a better feel for who he was -- as well as providing me with a few quotations. I will end this entry with a prayer Thoreau wrote down.

"May I go to my slumbers as if expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I actually enjoy. May I treat myself as tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly-discovered self. Let me never go in search of myself; never for a moment think I have found myself; be a stranger to myself; never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still."