2011 travels: August 20

Saturday, August 20, 2011

August 20

Since this Southwest plane has wifi I might as well conclude this journal here, 30,000 feet above Arizona. I'll be back in Oakland in three hours. I spent the last week in the suburbs north of Philadelphia, visiting relatives and friends. Among other things I learned that my cousin, in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, lives amongst bears. Apparently bears have spread from the Appalachians to urban neighborhoods in Pa. I had no idea. So, possibly, after seven weeks in Africa I came closer to wild animals in Pennsylvania than in Botswana. Well, not really, since we nearly ran over that hyena in Chobe National Park, but at least there I had a guide to protect me.
Thanks for reading. Bye.

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Books I read on this trip

I Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City. See my Amazon review.

{Interesting article, page 2 of June 21 New York Post: "It's Quitting Time for CUNY's city hs grads": says one third of NYC public school kids who enrolled in CUNY three years ago have quit; also says one third of kids from prestigious NYC schools like Beacon School are put in remediation at CUNY.}

II Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm, story of a strange trial in New York City. Also reviewed on Amazon.

III The Red Pencil by Theodore Sizer (critique of US education). Reviewed on Amazon.

IV Feel Bad Education by Alfie Kohn. His publisher must have bugged him for a quick survey of his other books on teaching and parenting. Nothing new here. Will file an Amazon review.

V Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Livitsky.

VI A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. Story of the Titanic disaster.

VII The Sin of Colour by Sunetra Gupta. A strange novel of the Indian upper class in the last few decades of the twentieth century. Every character in the book involves himself or herself in obtuse relationships that ruin their lives. A chick book.

VIII The Railway Man by Eric Lomax. Story of a British soldier captured and tortured by the Japanese in Siam in WWII. The things he went through, including waterboarding, sound like exactly what the US is doing to captives at Guantanamo.

IX To Lose A Battle by Alistaire Horne. Story of the Battle for France in the spring of 1940.

X An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul. V.S. is a real curmudgeon. His contempt for the land of his ancestors--India (he was raised in Trinidad)--is remarkable. I didn't finish this as I lost the book on a bus.

XI The Brothers Karamozov. Defeat. I couldn't finish this. Dostoevsky's ruminations on religion were too dull for me.

XII Bend Sinister by V. Nabokov. Defeat again. I'm a failure. How can I call myself a reader when I can't get through a moderately obscure work like this. I'm discouraged.

XIII Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene. A fun read, especially apropos of a trip like mine.

XIV Absent the English Teacher by John Eppel. A Bulawayo writer satirizes Zimbabwean society. Very funny, extraordinarily well-written. I wish I knew half as much as this guy about English literature.

XV Visiting Mrs. Nabokov by Martin Amis. A collection of Amis' essays on people and places. Some hits, some misses.

XVI Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha by Roddy Doyle. I'm a fan of Doyle's but this isn't his best work. He does a terrific job of conveying the thoughts of a ten year old Irish kid but the vignettes get tiring and are not linked by any real narrative.

XVII Postcards by Annie Proulx. The third of her novels I've read in the past year of so.

XVIII Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. An effort to explain how Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two lesbian, American jews survived in Vichy France in WWII; and an investigation into Getrude Stein, the genius or not genius.