I suppose it's a little strange that I would really like this book given it's spiritual overtones, but Anne Lamott's unique blend of humor, observations on relationships and life in general ("Everyone has been having a hard time with life this year; not with all of it, just the waking hours"), not to mention her caustic comments about Bush even as she struggles to love him because her faith insists on it, should win over just about everyone. She can have you moved to tears as she describes the painful death of a friend to howls of laughter describing bumps in the road raising a teenager.
Lamott is unfailingly honest about herself and others. Predictably, some reviewers have complained about an occasional "vulgarity," but to me that just makes her writing more honest and real. After all Jesus, himself, was nothing if not radical and honest. I suggest that anyone offended by this book has no life and little compassion.
Lamott has all these great lines. We were listening to her read her book (Audible.com download); I would recommend this as she is such a great raconteur, and I was unable to write down all the great lines, but here's a small sample:
"If you insist on having a destination when you enter a library, you're short-changing yourself."
"Someday the lamb is going to lie down with the lion, but the lamb is not going to get any sleep."
"Jesus was soft on crime; he'd never get elected to anything."
"On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life is hopeless, and I would eat myself to death. These are dessert days."
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
Classic Bumper Stickers
Some favorites:
Abstinence is the leading cause of immaculate conception.
God was my copilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Jesus is coming; look busy.
Come the Rapture, we'll have the earth to ourselves.
Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.
Love your neighbor pre-emptively.
What would Jesus bomb?
Peace and Equality are moral values.
Support our troops; bring them home now.
And check out Rep. John Conyers's site for more information on the Downing Street Minutes/Memo.
Abstinence is the leading cause of immaculate conception.
God was my copilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Jesus is coming; look busy.
Come the Rapture, we'll have the earth to ourselves.
Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church.
Love your neighbor pre-emptively.
What would Jesus bomb?
Peace and Equality are moral values.
Support our troops; bring them home now.
And check out Rep. John Conyers's site for more information on the Downing Street Minutes/Memo.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
The Motive
About two-thirds of the way through The Motive by John Lescroart, I thought this book was ripe for abridgment. Here was a storyline that could easily have been dropped; the crime has been solved, the client gotten off, no problem.
But as I continued, the moral ambiguities faced by Abe Glitzky, deputy chief of inspectors for San Francisco, became more interesting. This is the first novel I have read by Lescroart, so I was not aware of the previous connection between Glitzky and Dismas Hardy, former cop, now criminal attorney. In any case, they are friends, and the personal animosity toward them from Sergeant Cuneo, the lead homicide investigator on the case, causes all sorts of problems for both them and their client, Catherine Hanover, who has been charged with the double murder of her father-in-law and his fiance, Missy D'Amiens.
The courtroom scenes are outstanding, and without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the real murderer, as vicious and cruel as he/she (no hints, here) must commit the crime in order to prevent the killing of many other people. If she is caught and charged, those people will die.
It's been a mantra of our society that sacrificing one to save many is a valued ethic. Should Glitzky just drop the chase as high feds advise him to do? Interesting dilemma.
But as I continued, the moral ambiguities faced by Abe Glitzky, deputy chief of inspectors for San Francisco, became more interesting. This is the first novel I have read by Lescroart, so I was not aware of the previous connection between Glitzky and Dismas Hardy, former cop, now criminal attorney. In any case, they are friends, and the personal animosity toward them from Sergeant Cuneo, the lead homicide investigator on the case, causes all sorts of problems for both them and their client, Catherine Hanover, who has been charged with the double murder of her father-in-law and his fiance, Missy D'Amiens.
The courtroom scenes are outstanding, and without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the real murderer, as vicious and cruel as he/she (no hints, here) must commit the crime in order to prevent the killing of many other people. If she is caught and charged, those people will die.
It's been a mantra of our society that sacrificing one to save many is a valued ethic. Should Glitzky just drop the chase as high feds advise him to do? Interesting dilemma.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
The Wedge
The "Wedge" is a technique first proposed by anti-evolutionist Philip Johnson to gradually eliminate the teaching of evolution in schools. A document describing the strategy was leaked to the press by someone. Comments on the Wedge can be read at the links below:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/wedge.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/wedge.html
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Battle for Germany 1944-1945
Max Hastings is one of the premier historians of the Second World War. Unlike Stephen Ambrose, who , while a very readable historian -- even knowing whom to plagarize (link) -- is as much a cheerleader as historian, Hastings presents objective analysis. It's fortuitous that he also happens to be a very good writer.
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 follows his Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944. Hastings succeeds in explaining why the Germans fought so tenaciously even after the war was obviously lost. Within ten weeks after the landings at Normandy, the allies were at the Rhine. The Russians, without whom we could never have defeated Hitler, were pressing hard on the eastern front.
Hastings portrays the Wehrmacht as one of the premier armies of the world -- and also one of the most vicious in its treatment of civilians. We tend to forget the enormous casualties suffered in WW II that make WW I look like a walk in the park. The Russians alone, according to some estimates, suffered some forty million deaths (of course, Stalin was responsible for many of them through vicious resprisals and substantial incompetence.)
Hastings presents a convincing case that poor training of allied troops and less than inspired generalship by Montgomery and Eisenhower prolonged the war, which should have ended, her argues, by the end of 1944. The Red Army, while having more spectacular leadership, suffered from its callous treatment of its own troops. They responded with savagery against the occupied countries. The more democratic countries' armies were substantially more humane -- Americans never saw the Germans as the inhuman barbarians they considered the Japanese to be -- but relied on the advances of the Russians to tie down German SS units on the east which otherwise would have been used against the allies.
Democracies tend to be more cautious in war, having to be concerned with casualties. Hastings notes that the Red Army and Germans had no such concern and could be much more profligate with their armies.
On the other hand, Germans fighting to the bitter end, for whatever reason, be it indoctrination or saving Europe from the asiatic hordes, meant that they had more time to kill Jews. Almost 500,000 Jews were shipped to concentration camps from Hungary in mid-1944.
A fascinating book .
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 follows his Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944. Hastings succeeds in explaining why the Germans fought so tenaciously even after the war was obviously lost. Within ten weeks after the landings at Normandy, the allies were at the Rhine. The Russians, without whom we could never have defeated Hitler, were pressing hard on the eastern front.
Hastings portrays the Wehrmacht as one of the premier armies of the world -- and also one of the most vicious in its treatment of civilians. We tend to forget the enormous casualties suffered in WW II that make WW I look like a walk in the park. The Russians alone, according to some estimates, suffered some forty million deaths (of course, Stalin was responsible for many of them through vicious resprisals and substantial incompetence.)
Hastings presents a convincing case that poor training of allied troops and less than inspired generalship by Montgomery and Eisenhower prolonged the war, which should have ended, her argues, by the end of 1944. The Red Army, while having more spectacular leadership, suffered from its callous treatment of its own troops. They responded with savagery against the occupied countries. The more democratic countries' armies were substantially more humane -- Americans never saw the Germans as the inhuman barbarians they considered the Japanese to be -- but relied on the advances of the Russians to tie down German SS units on the east which otherwise would have been used against the allies.
Democracies tend to be more cautious in war, having to be concerned with casualties. Hastings notes that the Red Army and Germans had no such concern and could be much more profligate with their armies.
On the other hand, Germans fighting to the bitter end, for whatever reason, be it indoctrination or saving Europe from the asiatic hordes, meant that they had more time to kill Jews. Almost 500,000 Jews were shipped to concentration camps from Hungary in mid-1944.
A fascinating book .
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