Book Review: Richard Russo "Elsewhere"

Soooo... maybe I will read this year.  Or maybe not.  Seems like at best an even money bet if you could get someone to take it.  I have some optimism if I can find books like Richard Russo’s new memoir by one of my favorites Richard Russo.  I love this guy.  I have read everyone of his books and some of them twice.  He has a nice conversational style and his stories never go anywhere which is just...perfect.  Most of his books are set around dying New England towns and largely rely on family to provide the drama and it tends to show that family drama is the most compellingdrama and it is one of the constants in your life.  I also take from his books that heartbreak and regret are a constant of life... if your lucky.

His newest book is a memoir and it largely follows his life but if tracks his life through what is apparently the most important character in it, his mother.  Which seems like it would make for a boring sad story and though there is a somewhat momotonous repetition to the story it is not boring but it is pretty relentlessly sad.  He was raised by a single working mother who took pride in her “independance” from her alcoholic, gambling WWII vet of a husband who was never around and could never be counted on.  She read to Russo (an only child) and made sure he did his home work no matter how tired she was.  They barely made it by and did so as their home town died around them, with the help of her parents who lived downstairs.

it seemed heartening and problematic until he left for college in Arizona and... she came along.  From that point till the end the tables solidly turn.  Somewhere in college he comes to grips with what his father and grandparents had known but could never voice and that is that his mother is mentally ill.  The rest of the book is a catalogue of his (and his wife and daughter) coping with her mental illness as she traveled with them along as his career processed.  It is painful but riveting as you read occasionally and briefly of his long suffering wife and wonder why she tolerated her husbands devotion to this woman with so many problems who despite her proud independance was always a burden.  

You kind of feel that Russo himself he had to write this book.  The cathartic feeling of it resembles a huge toilet bowl full of the dump of his psyche as he recounts the damage caused by his mother and his love of her.  He realizes as a 50 year old that he is a lot like her and that is probably the most painful revelation as he realizes that his wife and family suffer his less acute mental illness just as he has suffered his mothers and just as she was constantly hobbling herself with poor decisions, he was doing it as well, just with different decisions.  

Still, as in his novels there is a beauty here.  The writing style and the semse of pace and timing are always there.  The story reveals a lot about his history and his heart which are fascinating by a fan but interesting for anyone who is a reader because he writes so true.  Over and over again in this book, as in all his books there is an overwhelming love/hate relationship with family and all the baggage that ensues but despite all the pain and disasters there is an appreciation for the loyalties that can only exist in the context of family and it makes for a very good read.  It is relatively short and you can rip through it in a few hours if you are of a mind.  I was blessed with a nice mother who has always kept her problems to herself even now as she makes arrangements for she and my father to move into a retirement facility (so as not to be a burden).  But she likes to read, and she will like this book.  So will you.

Happy New Years! Lucky 13?

Soooooo....January 1, 2013 and the year opens like a book... or perhaps a comic book or perhaps even some kind of shabby pamphlet for a blood thinning drug your doctor prescribed. I am sitting in my chair, in my room watching a “Portlandia” marathon on IFC and it leads to introspection, a little self loathing and of course...abject fear.  We have parties to go to today.  We don’t care.  Sandy is needle pointing something for some child in California’s quilt (why do children in California need quilts?) and hoping to nap.  Our son Jon is in his house apparently watching parades with out of town guests our beautiful grand dog and his bastard cat on telivision.  Our son Pat just left to go back to KU (the shame) after a nice Christmas break.  Laura is driving back from and Arcadia Camp staff at the “apartyment” in Muncie.  What could have possibly gone wrong?

Sooo... January 5th.  What could possibly go wrong I asked?  Work.  Work can go wrong.  I am whine.  A fabulous whiner.  My friends tolerate me but only in small doses which is cool because of my ADD.  I am always complaining about work and I know this makes me sound stupid, ungrateful and lacking basic understanding.  The fact is that good jobs are hard.  I am lucky to have  a difficult job and I am lucky for having to been able to do it for this long.  Good jobs do not stop at 5 and start at 9 with 45 minutes for lunch.  I know this.  I also know that the reason i get paid is because I handle people in crisis very well but this week, the first week of the year they got to me... right away.  I am already behind for 2013.  I have not gotten bills out for November yet.  My “to do” list looks like a small town phone book (remember phone books?).  This week I had a lady meet with me for over 5 hours on various days who is convinced she is being followed, wire tapped, photo’d and burgled by her bank or someone on their behalf.  She in mentally ill and I have to shepherd her through losing her rental property empire.  But his lady broke me.

But now it is Sunday and I am looking to the new week.  It is another short week because I get to go to Hot Springs Arkansas for the opening at Oaklawn and one of my sons is going with the group and it will be fun.  Another short week at work kind of makes my chest constrict slightly but once again it is having a difficult, stressful job which allows me the benefit of being able to do things like this.  I forget that... a lot.  Laura leaves for school today, the ornaments are coming down, my wife’s busy season at work is starting and the holidays are... over.  But it was a good one and perhaps even a great one.  A fire is in the fire place and I look forward to an afternoon of watching football and catching up my time sheets and perhaps making some dinner.  
These can be melancholy times but somewhere, somehow I need to find a way to embrace change.  Especially changes that I don’t chose.  I think this year every blog post will need to have a song or a song lyrics or a song link or maybe all of the above and for today it is “Pick Up The Change” off of Wilco’s brilliant and often maligned first Album/CD (whatever you kids call them now).  Change in life, change in relationships, changes in jobs, friendships, seasons, health... almost all of it seems to suck when it goes down but if we can view it as the constant, and the positive (that it really is) we can set ourselves up for happiness rather than sadness.

"We used to have a lotta things in common,
But you know now we're just the same
“You always had more than I really wanted
Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change

Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV95HBtbGNI


So Jeff Tweedy shares some insight but on the first Sunday of the New Year a little wisdom from Christ probably would not hurt either, from my favorite part of the Bible, the “Sermon on the Mount”.  Matthew 6:25 selected....

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

True Dat.  Lets have a great 2013 and make it a lucky one.

PS.  Currently my NFL Playoff brackets featuring the Bengals and the Seahawks are causing me to wring my hands and worry but... such is life in 2013.  

Book Review: Tom Wolfe, "Back To Blood"

Soooooo....2012 was a shitty year for books... for me.  I do believe that I am getting old and it is just so hard to get any serious reading done.  I get a little done up in Michigan but for the rest of the year I try and read before I go to bed and that dog is no longer hunting.  I read the Post Dispatch every morning (I like to wrap fish in it later), I try and read the Wall Street Journal everyday so I can their reasoned, non agendaized, fair and balanced editorial content (not) and that fucking New Yorker tends to arrive on most weeks and along with what didnt get read earlier from the Journal that day seems to leave me very little time for books.  Which makes me sad.

I love books.  I am prideful of my predigious reading.  I am arrogant and unlikable about it and dismissive of people who don’t read fiction.  I am a bibliophole asshole.  Which is bad, but it is worse now.  This was my first year for a Kindle.  I read “The Hunger Games”, Grishams newest (than it was “The Litigator”, a great book called “The Gun” and the early chapters of an upcoming book by our own David Kowert.  But the Kindle does not satisfy.  The Kindle feels to me like I imagine Methadon feels to a Heroin addict.  It fills a need but it does not satisfy the beast like riding the horse and holding a nice hard back novel in your hands with a dusk jacket and brief author biography.  So i have been buying books again and not reading them because...truth to be told.... I can no longer stay awake.  On the shelf as ladies in waiting I am already dealing with a formidable stack of:
Neil Young: “Waging Heavy Peace”
Will Self:  “Umbrella”
Jonathan Tropper: “One Last Thing Before I go”
Richard Russo: “Elsewhere”
David Foster Wallace: “Both Fless and Not”
David Byrne:  “How Music Works”
And I despair for the future.  I gave up on several books this year including Michael Chabon’s well reviewed “Telegraph Avenue” and this fills me with self loathing (and I don’t need more of that).

Which brings me to Tom Wolfe’s new book.  Wolfe seems like an ass.  His foppish pictures dressed as a white haired dandy make me kind of queasy and the length of his books barks of a self indulgence that we have not seen on display since Clinton’s second term but damn.  The man can write.  This book fits in nicely with his last three, “Binfire of the Vanities”, “A Man In Full” and “I am Charlotte Simmons”.  They are all slices of time and place but honestly the characters never change but they are still fun to read.

His characters are not caricatures, so much as they are caricatures of caricatures.  Every predictable, bigotted, small minded, over generalization about a type of person is drilled down on relentlessly and satisfyingly mercilessly.  Wolfe has a strong eye for our desire as a country to classify, seperate, sterotype and move on.  His characters never surprise, they never shock, they never show much more than a glimmer of self knowledge but they all move their their environments like mindless sharks, reverting to type and devouring and destroying in their way.

The subject this time is Miami and South Beach and from an outsiders perspective he hits it pitch perfect.  A city of immigrants profoundly uncomfortable with itself with every group feeling threatened and victimized now matter how dominant and in control they are.  The stage is set with a Cuban water patrol cop who rescues a guy trying to get a foot on dry land so he can legally emigrate from Cuba.  The recue is heroic and brave and makes him a goat in his community and he becomes immediately ostracized and through most of the novel continues to spin down as fate keeps zeroing in on him again and again.  He loses his beautiful Cuban girlfriend to a sex therapist, social climbing doctor. We get introduced to the Editor of the Miami Herald and Miami Art scene which might or might not have just been mightily swindeled by a Russian oligarch.

What amazes me is how easy it is to read and how fun it is to read.  Lots of heavy handed social commentary but but his narratives and his dialogue keep you turning the page and it just makes for a good read.  Especially in the snow.  So I thank Wolfe for giving me this.  I read a 700 page gook like it was a John Grisham 320 pager and in the end was much more satisfied because unlike Grisham, Wolfe knows how to end a story.  So I recommend this book, and this author, though I think if I met him in a bar I would want to punch him.  read it and get lost for a while.

7 ½ Slingers on the Diner Review 10 Scale.

The Christmas Letter 2012 (As Edited By Family)

Soooo... for those of you who do not appear on my wife's Christmas Card List (this is normally because we don't get a card for you but otherwise is through my omission) we present the edited Christmas card for 2012.  The unedited version was destroyed by progressives who are turning our country into a socialist state.

Well, it has been a good year to be a Becker.  Let’s do it in reverse order.  Mike and Sandy who are enjoying their time as “empty nesters” took Lily and Lola and entered them in the Westchester Kennel Club show.  The dogs did fabulously, with Lily biting several other dogs and Lola, who never stopped her sobbing whine, was given a Blue Ribbon just for leaving.  It was an awesome experience for the dogs and we have high hopes for next year.

Laura is in the midst of her 2nd year at Valparaiso, in what she hopes to be a 4-7 year plan.  She has majored (in no particular order) in Communications, Room Mate Abnormal Psych, Education, Communications, Bread Company Consumption and Business... and Communications... again.  She is currently Facebook official with a nice young man named Jon.  She worked up at Camp Arcadia this summer and worked in the Kitchen and as a server with remarkably little drama.  We are most proud.

Pat GRADUATED! from Truman with a degree in Psych.  It was approximately 117 in Kirksville on the day of the graduation.  The graduation speaker had expertise in human trafficking.  It was a hoot.  After making us very proud Pat decided to think really hard and upset his parents in ways we had not yet imagined and he has proceeded to Lawrence, Kansas to get his masters In Social Work.  A Jayhawk!  Imagine our family shame. He and Kyle have been together for going on 4 years.  Sadly, they both love Lawrence, Kansas.  Maybe it is the liberal politics of Kansas, who knows? Rock Chalk?  You never think it will happen in your family.

JON AND LYDIA GOT MARRIED!  Jon did the nicest thing he could have done for his parents by marrying the beautiful Lydia Schaftenaar and making her Lydia Becker. The setting (Camp Arcadia’s Chapel on the Beach), ceremony,  day and the weekend were all perfect and it was a storybook wedding that even I cannot be cynical or snarky about.  We  are so grateful for the many family and friends who traveled a long way to celebrate with us. Jon and Lydia purchased a house in Shrewsbury and are raising our grandcat, Henry David Thoreau ,and granddog, Schafly.  Henry is evil. Schafly is adorable. The Schaftenaars have graciously allowed us their daughter’s continued presence here and we are hoping they will be frequent visitors.  We couldn’t feel luckier that God brought our families together.

Sadly the first paragraph was a lie and Sandy and I continue in our jobs.  My life has been really tied up in a call committee for a new Pastor at our church (going on two years and people are starting to think that I am the problem) and Sandy really just works a lot during a big chunk of the year.  But is was a great year for us. Perhaps the best ever and as I said at the beginning, a good year to be a Becker. Tragedies touched several families we love this year humbling us and making us ever more grateful for the friends and family who never fail to be there for us and share our sorrows and our joys, but this year a lot more joys.  We go into 2013 feeling blessed with all of you by our sides.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas and 2013!

The Becker family,
Mike, Sandy, Jon,Lydia, Pat and Laura

Any Limits On 2nd Amendment? Not Today

Soooo.... Guns.  Sandyhook, Aurora, Portland, Milwaukee, Jackson.  According to the Nation 88  people died in mass shootings but I cannot tell you how they define that.  http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead#
But so what?  300 million guns in arguably the safest country in the world. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gun_owners_are_there_in_the_United_States_of_America
Were number one!  Once again we are exceptional Americans.  Exceptionally frightened Americans.  I have no answers and no pearls of wisdom.  We cannot put 300 million guns back in the bottle.  We cannot take back the assault weapons (whatever that means) that have already been sold.  We cannot reinstate the mental health funding which is the first thing cut at every budget impasse.  We cannot remove with the stroke of a pen the violence in videos, movies , games and TV that Hollywood enshrines.

But we should think about it.  And we should be ashamed.  Not just for Newtown but for the people killing each other in Chicago without headline or national comment.  I don’t promote any answers but the one thing that has to be clear is that removing funding for mental illness along with dramatically increasing the availability and number of guns makes things like Newtown a natural result.  We reap what we sew.  The chickens do indeed come home to roost.

So, think about it.  Think about the 2nd Amendment that called for well regulated militia. And what had become of it with high powered weapons available for every household.  Are there ANY limits to the 2nd Amendment as currently interpreted?  If so, what are they?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.-2nd Amendment of The United States Constitution

Under our current interpretation of this language, what would it not allow? Below is my idea for a movie, or more likely a Saturday night live skit.  I did it on December 3rd, well in advance of Newtown.  It could be funny... and really, really sad.  

***
Mohammed, Aarif, Abdul and Hamdan are in Tehran working on the Iraqi nuclear bomb project.  They are constantly beset by poor working conditions, unreasonable Mullah’s, and UN Nuclear Inspectors.  They cannot get work done.  They cannot build the bomb for Islam.  They are denied the working materials they need and have constant saboteurs (Israeli and American provocateurs) who are constantly undermining their work.  It is a disaster where they have to work each day and the dream of better labs and equipment and materials.

They have a conversation about where they could go to make the bomb for the Jihad.  They consider Afghanistan and immediately disregard it after disparaging comments regarding camels and thieves.  They consider briefly North Korea and then they make disparaging comments about the food and the little dictator that runs the place.  

They go home and in their cramped apartment are watching Al Jazeera’s coverage of the American Election and see the NRA shouting about the second amendment and the right to bear arms...they see southern Senators talking about standing their ground and every man’s right to defend themselves.  Then they see the Republicans on the floor of the house decrying bans on automatic weapon sales and speaking about it being a violation of rights for Americans not to have their own mortars and tanks and bombs.  An idea is borne.

They move to America and with funding from their government open a new nuclear research program at Millsaps or some other small piece of shit southern college.  They start to build their bomb and they defend it against all objectors as they build the bomb.  When people express concern Wayne La Pierre of the NRA goes on meet the press and suggests that every American ought to have access to nuclear technology.  Boeing announces a partnership with Colt to start research to introduce tactical nukes to “defend” your home.  They are defended as they make their bomb and they and others, state that every American should be entitled to have a nuclear bomb.  Why shouldn’t an American citizen be entitled to a nuclear bomb?  It is right there in the Constitution!  During a press interview Hamdan gets carried away shouting “Alluah Akbar” and then catching himself in the dead silence that ensues screams “I mean DON’T TREAD ON ME” to raucous applause.  Fade out to a mushroom cloud over Birmingham.

I don’t know how it ends.  It might be funny.

***

Think about how you should react to gun violence. With fear?  As a Christian... I ask you to find something in the New Testament or something in what Christ said that justifies shooting another human being... Show me where Jesus tells us to “stand our ground”. There are no easy answers or quick fixes but thoughtful Americans should be thinking about these questions.

Best Becker Music 2012

I cannot necessarily vouch for the excellence of this list. I really loved the top three. The fact is that there is so much music available now that finding a meaningful filter to pick the good stuff is hard. But, here it is and to the extent meaningful, my favorite CD is a local band it rocks rather than twangs. Enjoy or don't. Peace.
1. Sleepy Kitty: Infinity City. new, bold, outstanding, St. Louis.  Great vocals, crunchy guitars, Lou Fest, Cherokee Street, graphic art and prints, clever lyrics, break up songs, life lessons, cover of “She Was Just 17”, St. Louis references, smart, pretty, funky, I like it, looping and tricks, but solid tricks, I listened at least 50 times to every song, Dykula, buy it, NOW! What is next?

2. Mountain Goats: Transcendental Youth.  Cry for Judas, deep introspective, three minute songs, John Darnielle, Smart, sad, dark, joyous, raucous, Harlem Shuffle, some guys are just too talented and tortured, an album like a live Twitter feed... that doesn’t make it right.  “Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.”, I love this music, will buy everything he makes. Tortured, brilliant, sad, tortured, brilliant.

3. Elizabth Cook: Gospel Plow. EP, just as advertised, some Gospel Music, for Christians. or not, listen, cry, br grateful, but don’t mock it, beautiful voice, her husband Tim Carrolls sweet alt guitar, picking her spots and he references and her Gospel, but smile, daughter of lounge singers, she might have a place for Jesus, or not, but you must listen. This is shit that will just make you smile and if your lucky...think and maybe think about God.

4. Counting Crows: Underwater Sunshine.  Adam Durvitz, August and nothing too much thereafter, epic voice, our generations Sinatra, inturpreting other peoples work, brilliant selections, Madonna, Gram Parsons, The Faces, Bob Dylan.  Brilliant and charming and touching and... to quote “Ooh Lah Lah”, “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.” Buy this just to smile, feel a little much needed joy. He can sing and they play so tight.

5. Joe Pug:  The Great Despiser. Religious, but not, seems like he keeps making the same album, but a great album each time, writes like Dylan, mewls like Dylan, does not need my approvel, searching and making me search, asking questions observations with hooks, interested to see if he breaks out of this mold but this might be enough.  Become a fan.

6. Steve Earle: I’ll Never Get Out Of Here Alive. Buy him, just out of respect, heroin addict, recovered, brilliant, political, SIRIUS DJ, New York, Nashville, there and back again, over and over again, plays with the best sideman or at least the coolest, thinks about every word and so should you.

7. Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Psychodelic Pill.  The man, the myth, the legend, with the Horse, raucous again, best since “Ragged Glory”, tapping on 70’s door and can still kick that door down, seems unafraid, familiar territory that rocks, 7 minute songs that do not seem 7 minutes, don’t sppok the horse and you don’t need to be high to rock... but it might help.

8. James Iha: Look To The Sky. Smart Pop, unexpected, Smashing Pumpkins Guitarist, disappeared, etheral, Fountains of Wayne like, the good stuff though, lacking crunchy guitars, painfully tuneful

9. Tame Impala: Lonerism.  Beatleseque, Australian, compter effects noodler, Radiohead, pretty, sometimes raucous, often pleasant, (hate that), sometimes relentlessly pleasant, (intriguing), ultimately I don’t know but...

10. Rhett Miller: The Dreamer.  Old 97s, pretty boy, whips is hair, covered great american songs last year, solo stuff all tend to sound the same, this good, slightly over produced, but he can write, worth it for the line “You were not like the rest, till you left.” from the song “Lost Without You”.  That kind of brilliance deserves to be bought and treasured.  I’m just saying ya’ll.

Everyone Loved Them:
Japandroids
Shins
Fiona Apple
Dirty Projectors
Mumford... again
Lumineers
Beach House
Alabama Shakes

Whiskey In The WInter Review

Sooooo.... I have friends.  Not many friends and not good friends but friends never the less.  These friends are sometimes very nice people.  Sometimes they like to drink... perhaps that is why they are my friends...who knows.  The main thing is that I sometimes like to do things with friends.  So a couple of months ago I am reading that fabulously shabby and only occasionally marginally useful Riverfront Times.  But I read it all the time.  I read it every week.  There are sometimes good reviews and it is a nice place to get concert listings but mainly it is a place to look at adds and see if there are no restaurants opening or advertising that you have not heard of.  Sometimes their are events being publicised and thus it was that i saw an add for “Whiskey In The Winter”.

It led me to the website http://www.whiskeyinthewinter.com/

I forwarded it to my wife expecting her to shoot it down and instead it was met with hearty approval.  I forwarded to my friend and he immediately was in with his lovely wife as well.  So tickets were purchased and on December 1, 2012 we were picked up by our friends and headed to down to The Hyatt (the Old Adams Mark Downtown.

Surprisingly the even was sold out.  There were people all over the place and it was an eclectic mix of folks from middle aged men with their girlfriends and second wives to old couples (like us) to a lot of pretty single people, and some people who are just serious bourbon drinkers.  You walk into the main ballroom on the 2nd or 3rd floor (whatever) and you just see tables set out in rows and at each one is a different distiller or producer and each one has 3,4 or 5 different products which you can sample.  Some serve a swallow, some pour a slug and they will give you as much or as little ice as you require.

So we went to the first table and started.  And then we went to another and sampled, just a little.  Then we went out to the buffet which was ample and somewhat opulent with gumbo, carved meat and potatoes and various sides and a lot a choice to drink some girly fruity bourbon drinks in case you have brought someone with a less serious addiction than you might have.  It was a nice spread and there were a few tables to sit down at if you waited and poached.  They did have some bag pipers which people love... and I hate.

Then we went back.  I could wax poetic about all the bourbons but when you have a few the tatses go pretty numb pretty quick.  There was scotch too (though not as much) and some locally distilled spirits as well (Four Square) but more than anything else there was bourbon.  Rows and rows of bourbon.  Kentucky sour mash and rye and canadian and small batch and big producer.  I got to taste several that I had never heard of and my big discovery of the night was Willet out of Bardstown.

We had a designated driver but we had over served ourselves.  Next year we stay at the hotel and we hope to see you there.