In the Wake of the Plague -- The Black Death and the World It Made

Photo: A Bubonic Plague map, from the Wikipedia page The Black Death in England.  This site quotes that up to half of England's population died of the plague in the Middle Ages, and another 20% later--and that doesn't count the last epidemic, the The Great Plague of 1666.


Fascinatingly in-depth, yet quick-to-read, take on everything Black Death.  This includes, but is not limited to:

--the biomedical facts of the Plague.  The memorable kicker here is that scientists have concluded, by digging up bodies of Plague victims in the frozen Arctic, that the Great Pestilence may have made about 10%-15% of today's descendants of Plague survivors immune to HIV, which causes AIDS.  This would've been certain by now, since the completion of the Human Genome Project, as this book was published in 2001.  The other memorable factoid is that anthrax was most likely killing off Europeans--especially the British--as the Plague was doing so as well, making London of the Middle Ages the worst place to be of all-time.  This explains why millions died in the winter--when rats and fleas are not abundant--and why millions died in the Frozen Arctic, where rats and fleas don't go at all.  Turns out, many of those people didn't die from the Plague--they died from anthrax.  And, why didn't many people have the tell-tale buboes and skin and blood lesions that Plague victims got?  And why did some people get struck by the virus one night and die before morning, which was unusual for Plague, which took days or weeks?  Answer, again: anthrax.

--social and economic aftereffects of the Plague.  In short, yeomen and women flourished, economically.  The Church was devastated and hired younger and more undereducated people, as the older but learned leaders died off. Serfdom ended. People questioned the infallibility of their monarchies (who were supposedly God-chosen and God-protected, but who during the Plague were God-forsaken) and of the Church, and of medicine.  After all, if the priests and friars and physicians couldn't save themselves, how could they save (spiritually and medically) anyone else?  And if they couldn't do that, what good were they at all?

--artistic expression.  Commonly thought to have become more morbid and pessimistic after the Plague, Cantor believes that art was going that way anyway, and that Renaissance art was less of a mirror of the Plague than previously thought.  I'm surprised by this, but Cantor is hugely respected, and he quotes many others, so I'll take his word for it.

--world government. The Plague spelled the end for the Plantagenets, which was a long-lasting monarchy and European power that you and I have never heard of. But they would've ruled England and Spain, and maybe, by default, France, at the time, which was a constant thought of every monarch for hundreds of years, but would've actually happened. But English Princess Joan, who was about to marry into the Spanish monarchy, died of the Plague (in France, at 15), and so that never happened. This led to the trials and tribulations of Edward II and III, and of Henry IV-VI, and, well, the rest is history.

--medical and scientific stagnation. These two things were just as much to blame as were the actual Plague and anthrax, as the vacuum of medical and scientific advancement in the Middle Ages (except in the field of optics) made these pandemics worse, and longer-lasting, than they necessarily had to be. Nobody knew or practiced anything that could've combated the Plague, so the main response was to pray, flee and blame--

--the Jews. The Plague wasn't the first time they were scapegoated, but perhaps this was the first European-wide excuse to massacre them, as entire villages, households and neighborhoods of Jews were set aflame and otherwise wiped out because the common man thought they were poisoning the wells, thereby creating and spreading the Plague. The first of many Jewish holocausts over the years.

In short, if you're interested at all in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, or in the Plague, this is necessary reading. An informative, well-written (and often sarcastic) account of the Plague, the people and the time.

New Disasters--The Black Death

Interesting little book--just 111 pages--about the Black Death of the Middle Ages, between 1347-1351.  I saw it in my local library while I was researching plagues and flus for my next novel.  Though I'm focusing more on the Great Plague of the 1660s in England, and not the Black Death of the Middle Ages (for they're not the same thing, and there are a great number of differences), I figured I could learn a little something from this.

It's broken up in sections: its arrival; recent scientific re-assessments (this was published in 2003, so it's still relatively recent); writings about the plague from the time; and the repercussions of the Black Death.

What I learned, in no particular order:

--It seems now rather certain that the Black Death wasn't just the Justinian Plague, carried by fleas on black rats.  Lots of evidence indicates that anthrax (the disease that killed cattle, not the powdery stuff used in germ warfare today) was also going around, either on its own or as a unique anthrax / plague strain.

--Part of the evidence for this was the unbelievable number of animals dying before the people started to die.  Also, the deaths did not abate much in the winter--odd for a plague dependent on fleas and rats to spread it.  (Neither survive or move around much in the winter.)  And people died with extreme rapidity from a third strain of the plague; it was said that they could go to bed feeling fine and be dead by morning.  (This does not seem to be an exaggeration.)

--The plague was said to come from vapors within the Earth, released during earthquakes.  It was believed that breathing man-made yuckiness--like from latrines--was beneficial, and would fight off the nastiness from within the Earth.  Planet alignments and other astrological things were also blamed.

--People died faster than they could be buried.  Putrefying bodies of people and animals would lie in the streets, and the stink was said to be incredible.

--Gravediggers, doctors and clergy died fastest, as they attended to the dead and dying.  Since nobody was left alive to bury the dead--and since those left alive didn't want to touch the dead or dying for fear of getting sick from their "humours" and "vapors"--a lot of money was paid to people who called themselves becchini.  These people would take the dead from their homes, from the streets, etc. and bury them.  But after awhile, nobody wanted to touch or associate themselves with these people, either, so the becchini became disgruntled and homeless, and often turned to crime.

--Those who couldn't afford to be cared for or buried simply weren't, and died alone in horrible conditions, and their bodies left to rot wherever they died.

--The Black Death may have some DNA in common with the HIV / AIDS virus.  Recent evidence suggests that 12%-15% of those with European descent--and an ancestor who contracted the plague and survived it--may be immune to the HIV / AIDS virus as well as the Black Death.

--The same plague from the Middle Ages is alive and well in a few spots, including the Midwestern U.S.  Some cases have cropped up in Colorado recently.

--A strain of the Plague--as well as strains of other viruses--are immune to today's strongest antibiotics.  A cocktail of super-antibiotics is used to fight these resistant viruses now.  Once the viruses become immune to these cocktails--which is very soon--there won't be anything left to stop them.

--God, then like today, was thought to be punishing the bad people.  [See: AIDS in the 80s.]  But then everyone, of every stripe, class, age and religion, started dying, so that theory was dashed by everyone--except the living, of course, whose every breath proved their moral superiority.

--A common "cure" was to bleed and purge the victim.  This led to an even more rapid death due to blood loss, exhaustion, dehydration, and a weakened immune system.  Those who came in contact with the blood or feces of the victim could contract the illness as well, so that the "cure" killed them, too.

--Mercury was often recommended, which made plague victims die of the plague and of mercury poisoning.  Several learned people complained that their doctors were killing them quicker than the pestilence was.  (BTW, the plague was never called the plague at the time.  It was called a "pestilence" or "the Great Pestilence.")

--The most common thing doctors did for the victim?  Study their urine.

--In some towns, when one member of a family got sick, the entire family was sealed inside the home, so that everyone--the healthy and the sick--died.

--Before everyone died of the plague, those blamed for it the most were the Jews and the undesirables of society.  [See: World War II.]  It was commonly believed that Jews were poisoning the wells, and tens of thousands of Jews across Europe were hunted down because of this belief, including entire communities.

Anyway, a little book that, in these virus-ravaged days, makes for some eye-opening, if not chilling, reading.  With the Earth long overdue for a pandemic like the 1918 super-flu, and with our current attitudes about change and blame, this book made for some quick, interesting and thought-provoking reading.

The more things change, it seems, the more things stay the same.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph (and Pantera)

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

Despite the title, the beginning of this blog is about the book The Lost Testament, by James Becker.

A really really really badly written book I read because of the premise and because I'm researching bestselling thriller authors.  But this was truly bad:

"Excellent," the emperor purred.  "Now summon help." (5)

"This is a private matter," he said.  "Kindly leave us."  (2)

That's Emperor Constantine, perhaps from the 60s Batman show.  But that dialogue is terrible.

Characters are always "suddenly realizing" things.  And I love this one:

"Instantly both figures froze into immobility beside the wall." (7)

If you freeze, of course you're also immobile.  And when a reader sees "instantly," he expects to see some kind of action, not a lack of action.

(And, yes, I realize I've quoted from just the first seven pages.  I did read the whole thing, and I'm tired and lazy, and it's 1:07 a.m.)

The lost testament of the title is shown only a few times in the book, and for some reason nobody seems in a hurry to translate it.  People associated with it are dying all over the place, and the flaps tell us the real document it's based on, yet we're not told what the document in the book says until the very last few pages.  I'll ruin it for you: It says what the flaps say the real thing says.  Ugh.

There's an ex-husband and ex-wife team, but they don't seem excited or scared about anything, and neither's smart enough to be another Robert Langdon.  Chris Bronson (not Charles Bronson) is an ex-cop, but he doesn't seem to know the laws of anything.  It's unclear if he's on vacation, on sabbatical, or on suspension.  He doesn't seem to know where he is much of the time.  Angela Lewis is a historian, but she hates dating things, especially old jars, and she doesn't seem terribly interested in the document, which could blow the lid off the Church and make blowhard politicians in the American South rather unhappy.  (This is actually hinted at in the book.)  The author and characters seem to be British, but you only know that because British towns are frequently mentioned, and words like "tram" and "lift" are used.  Yawn.

Though most of this book takes place in and near Vatican City and Cairo, none of that is described.  The Vatican isn't described.  Neither is Rome, or any city in Egypt, or the document itself.  Later the book takes place in Portugal and Spain, but you only know that because the characters say so.  Bleh.

The document in question, for real, is much more interesting than this book ever hopes to be. It's a document of a trial, supposedly written by a lawyer-ish guy. The trial is of a Roman soldier, a certain Panthera (or Pantera) who has raped a local woman, and impregnated her.  Raping your captives during times of military occupation or war was a crime then like it is now (though it happens all the time now, and I'm sure it also did then.)  Anyway, Panthera is on trial for this rape, and the document insinuates that he's clearly guilty, and witnesses are produced to prove it.  This would often lead to the rapist's death, as the military, then and now, wants to show it's in charge of its own soldiers. However, then as now, such things are hushed up.  In this case, he was found not guilty.

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

All of this refers to the Pantera Rape, which if you don't know, [if you're a severely religious Christian, you might want to bow out here] is the story that Mary was not impregnated by the Almighty, but (as alleged by a man named Jerod of Cana) by a Roman guard named Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera (or Panthera), who rapes her.  (Or it's consensual, as was the belief at the time, for those who believed this to begin with.  Scholars have complained for years how the many Marys of the Bible seem to be confused with each other--not good, if one is the mother and the other a reformed prostitute.)  At any rate, a Yusef bar Heli (Joseph) of around Tzippori (a town in Israel attacked by the Romans in 4 BCE; notice the similarity to Moses's wife, Zipporah) is upset with her (and not the Roman archer, per se) because she's pregnant, (and no longer a virgin, nor a woman first taken by her husband). And so, as she's now considered defiled, he turns her out, and she gives birth to Jesus in the middle of nowhere.  She would've been barely in her teens at this point, perhaps 11 or 12.

This is actually not a new story, as this book and my research point out.  It may even pre-date many of the Gospels.  An ancient writer / philosopher, named Celsus, was the first to fully write of this, but a great many others did soon thereafter.  Celsus and the others say this story was widely known during their day, and during the days of the Disciples.  Celsus's work, titled The True Word [or Account, Doctrine or Discourse] is lost, but much of it is quoted by Origen, about a hundred years later, so he can refute it in a book of his own, which is called Against Celsus [Contra Celsum].

Whether you accept this or not, this is already more interesting than a book written by a guy who's watched too many bad 50s beefcake gladiator epics and bad 90s cop shows, right?

A few points:

--Celsus (who was clearly biased and anti-Christian), in about 177 A.D. (when the Christians were being persecuted in Rome, and long after Jesus and Paul and the others had died), said, in defense of his belief, that the original Christians were maybe a little confused. He gave examples:

--If Jesus is born as an infinite God, why would an angel warn Joseph and Mary and Jesus to hit the road before Herod kills Him?  Furthermore, wouldn't God, His Father, be able to protect Him from Herod, a finite human?

--How can an immortal man die, on the cross or otherwise?  If you're resurrected, you've died first, by definition. Literally, not figuratively. Like how Lazarus had to die first, by definition.

--It's said that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters.  But Jesus is also said to have taught at a synagogue.  Would the Jewish leaders let a carpenter from a tiny backwater teach at the synagogue?

--If not, then the word in this document attributed to Jesus and Joseph being carpenters (vulgar Latin "naggar") could mean its other connotation: "craftsman." As in, a "craftsman of words," perhaps.  Like I would be a wordsmith, but not a blacksmith, today.  But, either way, a "craftsman."

--Why didn't His disciples fear Him as a God?  Instead, one betrays Him, one doubts Him, and another perjures Him.

--And why didn't they cease these actions, if they thought of Him as a God?

--And if they didn't think of Him as an infinite God, who else ever would?

--Celsus mentioned it was commonly known in his own time (and that of the previous 80-100 years of the NT) that the Bible had been "corrupted from its original integrity" and "remodeled" to try to explain discrepancies or paradoxes in the text.  I'll provide an example from the OT: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and "Thou shalt not kill."  Can't be both, right?

--If Jesus is descended "from the first man, and from the kings of the Jews" then why are Joseph, Mary and Jesus seemingly unaware of their "illustrious descent?"  If I'm descended from Adam or from King David, I'm always going to know it, and I'm going to let it be known.  Several times.

--"After so long a period of time, then, did God now bethink himself of making men live righteous lives, but neglect to do so before?"  I've pointed this out before: Since the first man walked, why would just one Savior appear only at that one time in human history?  Why not also at any other time thousands of years before--or about 2000 years since?  The OT is at least 3,000 years old, and the NT is about 2,000 years old.  A novel-in-progress of mine now is about a small group of people who attempt to write their own Bible.  "It's overdue," one of them says.  "It's time," says another.

--Celsus is amongst the first to point out that the Bible uses the word "day" before the heavens, the sun and the Earth are fully created.  Without all three in existence already, there is no "day."

--As I've also mentioned: Why does God need to rest?  "After this...He is weary...who stands in need of rest to refresh himself..."

Lastly, one of my preferred beliefs: "One ought to first follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without first testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived."

Indeed--How strong is an untested belief?

Anyway, whether you're with him or not, it's more interesting to research the Pantera / Mary document than it is to read this book.  So read the Bible, and read Celsus, and Origen, and ponder all this stuff, and don't waste your time reading Becker's book.

In fact, the book didn't make me want to know more about this stuff. Dan Brown's books (not masterpieces, either) do make me want to know more about the Vatican, or the Louvre, or D.C., or Da Vinci or Michelangelo and The Last Supper, and---Yeah, I had to supply the interest with this one.

The only kudos here to Becker is that he brings up the document to begin with.

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

Photo: The book's hardcover edition, from its Wikipedia page.

A gripping continuation of the saga, and--if possible--a bit more  gritty and ghoulish than its predecessors.  (The title refers to the incredible number of mutilated and rotting bodies laying and hanging and floating all over the land.)  But it still envelops you in its web of world-building.
 
Martin continues to embed us in this world, and does so here by focusing more on some of the more minor characters of the other books, as well as a couple of new ones, while also furthering the paths of Cersei, Jaime, Sam, Sansa and Arya.  Brienne of Tarth gets a larger stage than ever before, as does Sandor Clegane, who she killed in the show, but not yet (if at all) in the books.  He reappears with a woman (maybe) under a grey cloak, who may, or may not, be a character somehow brought back from the dead.  You'll have to decide, but I have my doubts--though, in truth, I don't really know what I'm doubting.

Sansa and Arya hide under assumed names--names that they take to heart a bit too much for me at first, to the extent that the chapters are entitled with their adopted names, to the amazement and confusion of all.  The girls even call themselves these fake names in their thoughts, which got to be a little creepy.  You get used to it, but they became just a smidge too Sybil for me.  And it was a little jarring, and a tiny bit confusing, what with all the names already for the reader to deal with.  But I stayed the course.

Gone from the narrative are Tyrien, Jon Snow, and Stannis.  They're around, just not in the book.  The same cannot be said for the Onion Knight, Stannis's Hand (or, for that matter, for Jaime's hand; sorry), who apparently gets killed off-, off-, off-stage.  Just a quick quip from one of the characters--easy to miss in these 900+ pages.  But characters have the tendency to not die, and not just like Beric Dondarrion, who has died, and not, six times now.  But characters also tend to just re-appear, not dead, though other characters, and sometimes the reader, thought they were.  So, again, I have my doubts.

Speaking of Beric Dondarrion, I had to look up his last name to finish one of the sentences above.  I don't mind telling you, there's a large city of names being thrown at you by now in this series, so if you find yourself pausing for a moment after reading about a character, and thinking, "Wait.  Who the hell is this again?", don't feel bad.  What can you expect with literally dozens of names, and two newly fake names, and a handful of new characters, all being thrown at you at the same time?  Don't stop reading because you forgot, for example, Beric's last name.  Keep with it.

The reader will be rewarded at the end, if the reader, like me, was wondering how one of the characters could get away with so much for so long.  Maybe the tide has turned on that.  Speaking of the tides, there's a new group of people to deal with who pray to the god of the sea, a religion founded on the baptismal drowning of its believers.  Sort of.  Anyway, they need a new king, and they get one, kind of.  This takes a long time to happen, and is a bit interesting, and a bit not, at the same time.  This is perhaps my only complaint here.

But the 900+ pages whisked by--no small feat, that.  The book is good enough to throw all this at you, which would be annoying from most books and book series, but is not here.  It has now become addicting, to the extent that I find myself occasionally thinking and speaking like its characters.  I don't look forward to seeing something now, for example.  Now I yearn to set my eyes upon it.  It's become such an addiction that I was dismayed to find that I do not have the fifth in the series, A Dance with Dragons.  I'll have to pick it up soon, once the temps warm up enough outside so that I don't have to worry about my breathe immediately freezing and falling like dead weight upon my foot.  (It's one degree out right now, with a -20 wind chill.  It's so cold I'm losing a fortune in heating, but I'm so glad to be comfy and warm that I don't care.)

Perfect weather for this book, as it's often cold and wet and miserable for all its characters, internally and externally.  Makes me want to drink some warm or hot wine, or maybe some dreamwine, and build a fire until the wind and cold subside.  See?  You get engrossed in that world.  Or, maybe I've read too much and not slept enough.

Revival by Stephen King

Photo: The book's cover art, from its Wikipedia page

Another compulsively-readable book by Stephen King, Revival is one of his recent best.  A mish-mash of Frankenstein (thematically) and Lovecraft (in plot, Otherness, and The Angry Ones, as well as some fairly fearsome Gods) and Hieronymus Bosch, it reads like a first-person confessional (which is a well King has tapped for some time now) and it ends with one of the more horrifying things that King--or anyone I've read--has ever written.
 
Especially if it's true, if that's really what's waiting for us Afterwards.  If you've ever seen Bosch's Seven Deadly Sins or his Garden of Earthly Delights, you'll know what I mean.  Nasty, disturbing and memorable stuff.  This book's ending--and the potential ending for us all, good or bad--are just that: nasty, disturbing and memorable.  Frightening, because the "good" or "bad" doesn't matter.  The ending depicted here isn't the ending of the bad.  It's the ending of all of us.

In recent interviews, King has said that the views expressed by the narrator are not necessarily his--a fact that any reader is well aware, in anyone's writing.  But he has also said recently that he thinks about Death and God a lot (which King fans have always known), and that he does believe in God.  Sometimes he says that there has to be a God, because otherwise he would not have survived his accident or his addictions.  (This begs the question: Since others have not survived being hit by a car, or concurrent alcohol and coke addictions, does that mean there isn't a God?  Or does God simply not want them to live?)  Lately, King's been using Pascal's Wager to express his views.
 
(Pascal's Wager has always seemed like a cop-out to me, but it's really not meant to be.  And as I get older, and I contemplate that slab of stone more and more, Pascal's Wager sounds infinitely more rational.  Though I don't know how one can live a life as if one believes in God, which is what the Wager advises, if one truly does not believe.  But I suppose an agnostic like myself could pull it off.)

This is actually not much of a digression, as a belief in Something is very much at the core of this novel.  Picture an agnostic who grew up with devout, religious parents, and throw in some family tragedies, a wasted life of coke and booze, and some Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, with Bosch's view of a potential eternity in Hell and a Frankenstein theme, and some hellish chaos on Earth at the very un-Stephen King-like end (after all the Frankenstein / Lovecraft / Bosch stuff), and you've just about got the narrator and his story.

There are some other horrors until then as well, neatly tucked into this novel.  There's a car accident you won't soon forget, and a dream about dead family members that those of us with dead family members will all relate to--and not happily.  And his ending after the ending (a writing style I've pointed out in my last ten or so reviews of King's work) is even more unforgettable.  It's debatable, in fact, if the first or second ending is more horrible.  Since I don't believe in the existence of the first, and since I very much believe in the existence of the evil--or of, worse, the tragic inexplicable--portrayed in the second, I'm going with the latter.  You watch the news, you see this.

The writing is as compulsively-readable as always, but--finally!!!--here are some horrors, terrors and chills, too.  If forced to rate out of five stars, I'd say this is a four--only if compared to his truly great stuff, like IT and The Shining.  But compared to his most recent stuff--some of it quite terrible, and sometimes, at best, rather pedestrian--Revival would get five.  Though the title refers to the revival of the narrator and a few of its almost-dead characters, it could well refer to King's horror writing as well.

Read it, regardless.  And then Wikipedia Pascal's Wager, if you have to, and tell me whether it makes more pragmatic, rational sense than it may have in your youth.

The Road Less Traveled and Tough Choices

 Photo: It's got a long address, and I'm lazy, so I'll link it here.

Despite the high rating I'd give to this book, it's time to let it go.  By this, I mean it's off to the box for my yard sale, or the box to my used bookstore for credit, or yet to the box for donations to my local Salvation Army.  Probably in that order.

Why am I letting it go after all these years?  Why, if I'd rate it so highly?

Well, first, why I like(d) it.

It's got one of the all-time great opening lines for any self-help book: Life is difficult.

It is, indeed.  I also believe that life is often (though not always) supposed to be hard.  To not accept or expect this is to live a life of frustration and an inability to adapt.  That's me saying that, by the way, not Peck.  But he'd agree with me.

Peck was amongst the first of the popular self-help guys to really preach self-responsibility.  Or, at least to the point that he did so with popularity.

This is huge for me, philosophically and psychologically.  I've tired of the nature vs. nurture debate because it seems that many are trying to explain away self-responsibility.  It's not my fault, I have ADHD.  It's not my fault, I was raised that way.  It's not my fault, that's what I was taught to believe in.

He was the first to say that, no, everything was actually your responsibility after all.  Especially after a certain age.

I'm all for that.  I embrace that.  I live it and breathe it.  Nobody's more hyper and hyperactive than I am.  Yet I focus, accomplish much, balance my finances, control my emotions and treat others with respect.

But...

Here's why I don't really like it anymore.  It's not just because Peck turned out to be an addict, a sex addict, and a very frequent cheater on his wife.  But keep those things in mind as we continue--and remember the phrase "traditional values" in his title.

I didn't realize before, when I read this in my teens, how actually preachy it is.  I don't mind, now, that it's religious.  But I do mind that a trained psychiatrist would use religion and God as self-help.  Is that belief, or is that maybe a little too self-serving?  Dubya bought into this sort of self-help religion, as many recovering addicts do.  Which is fine and good, but...for a psychiatrist to preach this so heavily in a self-help book?  That's blasphemy, in my opinion, but blasphemy for practicing psychiatrists and self-help professionals and religious leaders alike.

Is religion supposed to be so self-serving?  Can one get better psychologically if one doesn't believe in the Christian God? According to Peck, in this book...Well, no.  Kind of.

And don't even get me started on the phrase "traditional values" in his title.  A psychiatrist should really, really know better.

What if you, and your problems, aren't traditional?  Can you still benefit from psychotherapy?  Well, yes, but according to this book?  No...kind of.

He hedges a lot when it comes to this kind of thing, like his psychiatrist self and his televangelist self were warring for control.  When his psychiatrist self wins, this book is almost ingenious. When he writes about accepting responsibility, delaying self-gratification, the difference between neurotics and personality-disordered people, and overall personal self-responsibility, this book is a winner and deserving of the 10+ million copies it's sold, and its place for a number of years on the best-seller list.

Ultimately, for me it's time for it to go.  I have literally hundreds of books, and it's time to make some tough choices.  This is actually a tough decision for me, but many books simply must go, so...

In terms of a book review, I reiterate that I do recommend this book because of its heavy reliance on self-responsibility.  It made a huge impression on me when I was a teenager, and this book was partially responsible for my decision to also major in Philosophy, and to focus on Existentialism, if I could.  I could and I did.

So this was an important book for me, and it may also be for you.  Read it and learn from it, if you wish.  But don't feel badly if you don't keep it in your bookshelf.

Same Parents, Second Faith Healing Death

 
Photo: Herbert and Catherine Schiable

The entire (very short) article, by MaryClaire Dale, reporting for the Associated Press, at this website:

A Pennsylvania couple who believe in faith-healing face 20 years or more in prison in the death of a second child who died without seeing a doctor.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible are being sentenced Wednesday in the death last year of their 8-month-old son, Brandon. At the time, they were under court orders to seek medical care for their children after their 2-year-old son, Kent, died of untreated pneumonia in 2009.

The Schaibles are third-generation members of a small Pentecostal community, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

A lawyer for Catherine Schaible, 44, plans to explore their religious beliefs at the sentencing. Her 45-year-old husband's lawyer argues that no malice was involved.

The Schaibles have pleaded no contest to third-degree murder in Brandon's death. They have seven surviving children.

"We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power," Herbert Schaible said in a 2013 police statement. Medicine, he said, "is against our religious beliefs."

A jury had convicted both parents of involuntary manslaughter in Kent's death, and they were put on 10 years of probation that included orders to seek medical care if any other child got sick.

After Brandon's death, an irate judge found they had violated parole.

Prosecutors have described the boys' symptoms as "eerily similar," and said they included labored breathing and a refusal to eat. Catherine Schaible's lawyer, though, said her client tried to feed Brandon during his illness and applied baby powder to keep him comfortable.

Their pastor, Nelson Clark, has said the Schaibles lost their sons because of a "spiritual lack" in their lives and insisted they would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death.
 __________

Now, just a few things from me:

--While the lawyer for Catherine Schiable can investigate whether she has the right to believe as she does, someone has to tell these two that the important person in this whole case isn't one of the parents, and so therefore their religious beliefs, while obviously important, isn't the #1 thing to take into consideration.  The most important person is the dead 8-month old son, Brandon.  So how about someone spend a little time investigating his rights, starting with his right to stay alive?

--Am I reading this right?  Did the courts give the Schiables 10 years' probation after they were convicted of manslaughter for the death of their first son?  They've done this before.  And we're shocked that such people would do it again?  Did the first judge really think that such people would change their religious beliefs simply because a judge told them to?

--Note to the Pennsylvania courts: They have seven surviving children.  Key word there is "surviving."  Which in this case translates to: "Their parents haven't killed them yet."  They've done this twice now.  They will do it again, even if you tell them not to.

--No one from the courts was going to the house to check on the eight remaining kids until Brandon died?  Someone will say that there isn't enough people to check on everyone, but I'll bet someone was checking on the kids of the parents who were poor, or amongst a minority--but who hadn't already been convicted of killing one of their kids.

--Yet another example of the continued battle between scientific facts and religious beliefs in this country: pneumonia isn't the Devil.  It's an infection caused by a virus or by bacteria.  You can believe that Jesus can win a battle with the Devil.  That's fine.  But antibiotics can win a battle with pneumonia.

--Beliefs are not facts.  If they were, they'd be called "facts" and not "beliefs."  You can believe whatever you want.  When it crosses the line in your psyche into "fact" land, you'd better have what scientists call "proof" or "provable evidence."  If you don't, you have to understand that when you say something is against your beliefs, than it's just that--a belief.  Not a fact.

--Note to faith-healing believers: If They exist, God and Jesus want you to save your kids.  They really do.

--Did you see at the bottom of the article that their pastor says they'll do this again?  Don't you think that the pastor--or even one of the Schiables--said the same thing after Kent died?

--Speaking of this pastor, can the PA law go after him now?  Now that the parents themselves are in jail, how about charging this guy with being an accessory?  He is wielding a gun, an obvious weapon, except it's verbal and not physical.  I know it's a touchy thing because now we're talking about religious beliefs again, but--legally speaking--if Person X tells Person Y to jump off the bridge because Jesus wants him to, and then Person Y jumps off the bridge, isn't Person X culpable at all?  Religion is being used like a drug here, like Ecstasy (the literalism is intentional).  It is against the law to control someone using an actual drug, and then have them commit crimes for you.  I mean, didn't Charles Manson do exactly that?  Like this pastor, he never lifted a finger to do any of the killings himself.  And I have to think that the Schiables told their pastor they were taking a wait-and-see approach with their son's pneumonia, so isn't he also culpable for that reason? So why not charge the pastor?  Can someone with legal training please explain this to me?

--There's a twisted version of Munchausen Syndrome going on here.  I mean this literally.  Notice that the parents very clearly believe that this case is about their religious beliefs, and not really about Brandon at all.  It's like this is their way of having all of the attention, of preaching about their religion.  Their their their.  In interviews, they keep saying "my," or "our," as in: "Medicine is against our religious beliefs."  It's narcissism.  Once parents like this are convicted of killing one of their kids because of their beliefs--whatever they are--can't we then at least put them in a mental health facility?  Narcissism and Munchausen's can be very dangerous personality disorders--as we see here--so if there are legal issues because of religion, can we not go this route?  Again, someone with legal training needs to explain this to me.

--If these parents were to say that the family dog told them to withhold medicine for Kent, wouldn't they have been in a jail or in a facility after that?  I don't mean to offend by comparing Jesus to the family dog--that's not what I'm doing--but if these parents were to have said that anything else at all (the family pet, the Devil, their dishwasher, whatever) told them to withhold medicine for their children, wouldn't they already have been whisked away?  Haven't scores of people done exactly this, and been carted away?  Why then is this any different, from a legal perspective?  These people are hearing voices just like all of the others who've said "The dog told me to..." or "The Devil told me to..." and yet they're less culpable because they say that it's Jesus speaking to them?  Yet again, someone with legal training, please comment or send me an email.

Because none of this makes any sense to me at all.

Casablanca, Hamlet and AHS: Coven, Episode 2

Photo: Kathy Bates and Jessica Lange, at ew.com.  Go to this link to read the interesting interview with Ryan Murphy, referenced below.


What follows is an example of what you can find on my new blog about American Horror Story: Coven.

A little late with this entry.  Not good for a blog about a tv show.  Who wouldn't want to read about a show two days after it aired?  Finally had time to see the DVRed show.  Had to watch the Sox in the ALCS, of course, on Wednesday.  Horrible game, too.  Oh, well.  Had I world enough, and time. 

Here are some quick thoughts about this episode:

--It begins with Lily Rabe's character Misty Day (great character name, BTW) killing two gator poachers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Very realistic-looking second alligator pulling the guy into the water.  I'm guessing a radio-controlled gator, or thing in a real gator's mouth.  I'll have to wait for the DVD, I guess.

--Almost the entire episode was shot with ocean wave-like camera movements.  Distracting, after awhile.  This has always been a very director-focused show, and there's always been that attention to directorial style, but this one almost made me seasick.  Well, that's an exaggeration, but it was bothersome enough for me to comment on.

--Anyone catch the commercials for Stephen King's Dr. Sleep, followed by the third movie version of his Carrie?  I guess he knows which show his fans are watching--besides the terrible Under the Dome, that is.

--I hope I look as good at her age as Jessica Lange does now.

--Ditto for Angela Bassett.

--Emma Roberts is arguably prettier at her age than her famous aunt, Julia Roberts, was--but here's to hoping that she turns out more like her aunt than she does her addict father, Eric Roberts.  Time will tell.

--This episode was titled "Boy Parts," but it could've been called "Franken-boyfriend."

--Part of the spell, towards the end, to reanimate Kyle had the phrase "this mortal coil."  Which came first in this show's universe: That spell, or Shakespeare's Hamlet, where that phrase originated?  Well, I can tell you that Hamlet first said his famous "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy in 1600-1601, if that means anything.

--I enjoy seeing the many homages in this show's history to other famous movies and shows of the same genre.  But I have newfound respect for it if it's going to pay homage Hamlet, as well.  Unless it sees Hamlet as another example of its genre, which Shakespeare's play may very well be.  Ghosts, incest, brother murdering brother, insinuated incest between mother and son, insanity, spying and intrigue, a possible devil in disguise (notice the devil's appearance yet again in this series, during this episode), and four murders / deaths in about thirty seconds at the end?  Yup--Hamlet sounds quite a bit like American Horror Story to me.

--Listening to the dialogue between Jessica Lange and Angela Bassett in the hair salon was a little disconcerting.  I wonder what the actresses thought about having to say all that hocus-pocus stuff.

--Then again, Jessica Lange has said worse dialogue in a movie.  I'm very vividly remembering her pounding on King Kong's fist in 1976 and, after calling him a "male chauvinist ape," screaming two words that didn't sound at all like the movie-makers were intending.  See it here on YouTube.

--If you saw the clip, you'd have to agree--Now that's some bad dialogue.

--Rabe's Misty Day character is amusing.  Not only does she look great for someone burned at the stake, but she thinks Stevie Nicks is a prophet.

--I wonder how much, if anything, Stevie Nicks got paid for allowing them to use her name like that.  And the music, too.

--Whoa, just found out the answers at ew.com, here.  Interesting interview with the series co-creator, Ryan Murphy.

--I have to listen to the lyrics to that song now, just to know what the hell Misty Day was talking about.

--Lots of witches doing unwise things, all of which violated Frankenstein's Law: Don't play God.

--Overall, a very entertaining episode, especially Lange's character acclimating Kathy Bates's character about cellphones, and the danger of crossing the street without first looking for cars.  They walked down the center of the street like Bogie and Claude Rains at the end of Casablanca.  Except I don't think it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship for the ladies.  If you don't know the reference--and shame on you if you don't--you can watch the famous clip here.  (And notice the "usual suspects" line, as well.)

See you next week.

Thank Yous and Odds and Ends

 
Photo: Rick, with a customer, from Pawn Stars, on History.com.

--Just read a poem by a Goodreads friend.  At the end of the poem, the bomb-diffuser unfortunately sets off the bomb, and the poem ends with a thrice-repeated "silence."  (It's a good poem, so read it here.)  Anyway, the question I raised was: Would the bomb expert even hear the explosion before he died, since he's leaning right over the thing?  My comment was this:

"Only caveat is the blast at the end, followed by the silence. Since I'm expecting the blast--cuz my glass is always half empty, and damn that glass anyway--I'm not as surprised when it comes. (Of course there'd be silence, both existential and literal, afterwards.) I'd have been more surprised if the blast had not come, and there'd been just the thrice-repeated silence. In fact, that repetitive silence would be open for even more interpretation. After all, would the bomb-diffuser with the pliers even hear the explosion if there was one, as he'd die immediately since he's leaning right over it? Seems to me that he'd get all silence, either way."

I suppose this is a tree falling in the forest question, but I'm still interested in my readers' responses to this.  Read the poem and comment here, should the feeling strike you.

--Thanks, everyone, for giving this blog over 12,000 pageviews in about a year and a half.  For a blog with just one picture and some text, that's not bad at all.  Quite a mystery, in fact.  Even more mysterious is how my Redroom blog (link in the header) has had over 25,000 pageviews in just under a year, with pretty much the same material.  That one's been getting about 200 pageviews a day lately.  So I thank you all for making this writer feel like he's being read.

--Hello, The Monica.  And my 29 other Followers.  I appreciate you all stopping by.

--Speaking of glasses being half-empty, I recently explained the definition of the word "morbid" like this: "You know how negative people think the glass is always half-empty?  Well, a morbid person has a dark, negative attitude about the existence of the glass itself."  This was met with nods of understanding.

--The new book in the Jesse Stone series, Fool Me Twice, is a good, quick read, as I read it in just a few hours.  Having said that, I can't say much more positive about it, since the plot is a rehash of Parker's Looking for Rachel Wallace (with somewhat the same result for the characters), and the dialogue is almost stolen from Parker's style cabinet, but without the wit and flair.  I read it like I put on last year's professional wardrobe.  Quickly, without effort, appreciating the comfort, but still wondering why I'm still wearing it.

--What do I have at Fenway that the Red Sox don't?  A winning record for this season.

--I've never eagerly anticipated a manager's dismissal before this year.

--It's been getting cooler and the leaves are turning red, for those of you in New England who haven't noticed.  I'm closing the pool this weekend.

--And you have to order Octoberfest instead of Summer Ale around here.  Every year, this is the real change of the seasons for me.  And I don't remember a turnover as soon as this.  Usually they wait until the 20th or so of September.  Not this year.  When the Sox suck, it's not summer anymore, so the vendors say bye-bye to the Summer Ale.  This is an actual philosophy of mine.  Had the Sox made the playoffs, I'd still be seeing Summer Ale around here.  I swear.

--Since recovering from an illness that had nothing to do with my sinuses, I'm breathing better and sleeping like a normal person.  Odd.

--My hammock and I have become good friends.  Brand new.  Tightly-woven rope.  Yard sale, twenty bucks.

--Fall is Brandi Carlile weather.  Hearing her voice is like seeing rock walls and falling leaves.  Listening to her now.  Her latest CD is nowhere near as good as her previous stuff, but it's growing on me.  I don't care if listening to a female folk singer makes me sound like a wussy man.

--I've been in the habit lately of leaving my clothes in the dryer so long that they get very wrinkly, and so I have to throw them back in and put it on wrinkle guard.  And then I let it all sit again.  You get tired.

--Recently I've wondered: If Jesus is God, Eternal and Omniscient, how could Judas have betrayed him?  How can an all-knowing being be betrayed, by definition?  I learned recently that the original text uses a word that probably means "brought to" or "turned over" instead of "betrayed."  I'm just sayin'.  Consider.  I wish I could read Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.  It's not that I don't trust anyone or anything--it's just that I don't trust anyone, or anything.

--A friend of mine watches Hoarders because she says it makes her feel better about her life.  I can kind of see this, but whenever I watch it, I want to sob openly, or vomit.  These people aren't slobs or clutterbugs--they're mentally ill.  I have papers all over my office, but I'm not pooping and peeing on my stereo speakers.

--Not that I'm so old or uncool that I even have stereo speakers.

--Almost time again for Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead.  A friend of mine had a great point about the latter: Whenever a character has to go, bring on a deus ex machina zombie.

--Watching Pawn Stars is like watching American Pickers, except that you see even more awesome historical stuff on Pawn Stars.  But they're both sad, in a way.  People in Pickers are often old, and/or dying, or sad, lonely guys who amass a ton of garbage because they're without female companionship (a chicken and egg question there).  People in Pawn Stars have to pawn off awesome things because they're so broke, they have no choice.  Rick pays great prices to people we see on camera, but you know he's severely underpaying many others.  The whole point of a pawnshop is that you're so desperate for cash that you know you're going to get fleeced--and you don't care because you need the money that badly.  They're wisely editing out the gambling addicts, who need to sell off anything at all so they can gamble away their mortgage payments and kids' college tuitions (they're on the Vegas Strip, after all); they're also wise to edit out the junkies who come in to pawn off their mother's jewelry or their kids for their next quick fix.

--(Kind of a glass is half empty sort of day, apparently.)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne--Don't Be Instructed by the Uninstructed

Photo: (Top) Title page of the First Edition, 1850, from the book's Wikipedia page.
Photo: First Editions, from flavorwire.com.

I have a lot of little things to say about this--about its plot, themes, images, metaphors and writing--so let's just bullet them:

--There was a stretch of fifteen pages (in my book, pages 66-81) of straight narration, with no dialogue at all.  And there were many other shorter stretches of straight narration as well.  This simply wouldn't happen in a book today, unless it was by a magic realist like Salman Rushdie, or someone working within an arcane specialty.  Certainly not by a popular novelist, which Hawthorne was in his day.  Literary agents and publishers would insist, perhaps correctly, that it simply wouldn't hold the reader's attention.

--Considering this, the book is remarkably well-written.  Though it did take me quite awhile to read it because of this fireplace-narration style, it was still well done.  Just hard to get through.  Some of the sentences are brilliant, such as: "...the children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins..."

--Hawthorne was not a lover of Puritans, or of their children.  It comes across as an amusing bias in the book.  You get such straight-laced and sincere narration with such an author-reading voice, then he springs a sentence like the last one on you.  Tolkein did the same, but in more sleep-inducing ways.

--His descriptions and details are ingenious.  I missed them in a glazed stupor because of the blocks of narration, but then one hit me as I read it, and then I went back to see what else I'd missed in my reading doze.  Often, it was a lot.  Describing Pearl's clothing as a purposeful, fiery, living representation of the scarlet letter was a strong idea: "So much strength of coloring...was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth."  That's good writing.

--The narration as it unfolds is more or less a series of vignettes starring Hester Prynne.  As such, this would make a good Tarantino film, with a few flourishes, of course.  And you'd have to give her an Uzi.

--Arthur Dimmesdale>Hester Prynne>Pearl = Thomas Jefferson>Sally Hemmings>their descendants, if you follow the drift of the hypocrisy (though, in fairness, Jefferson--as far as I know--didn't give long racist rants).  You could go there with today's conservative, gay-bashing Republicans and their male lovers as well.  The Scarlet Letter is a political novel, too, because the religious leaders of the day were also the political leaders of the day.  That's one of the points of the book: separation of Church and State, after all.

--Art imitates life.  Read the last two sentences above again, and then consider the reasons politicians say they oppose gay marriage, or any number of other societal things.  Anytime you invoke God to pass, or to not pass, legislation, you're violating the most simple and most powerful tenet of this, or of any other, democracy: Separation of Church and State.

--Emma Stone as a child would've made a perfect, intelligent, sassy and fiery Pearl, just as she did as a quasi-Hester Prynne in Easy A.

--Hawthorne went out of his way to pile on the hypocrisy.  The real Governor Bellingham, for example, served in office for just one year before his Puritan constituents threw him out.  His crime?  He married a woman who had been betrothed to a friend of his.  (Notice that the woman's preference mattered little.)

--There's a remarkable benefit of having to wear the scarlet letter.  Since everyone will think badly of you anyway, why not behave as boldly as you wish, all the time?  The need to impress others won't exist.

--And no one will not tell you to behave this way, since you're too sinful to be spoken to anyway.

--Hawthorne had no love for the clergy, of any time.  When Hester visits the Governor, he's in a meeting with a few ministers, and the servant (an enslaved and bonded freeman, but that's another point) says to her: "Yea, his honorable worship is within.  But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech."  The leech turns out to be her worthy husband, Roger Chillingworth.  Dimmesdale is representative of Hawthorne's attitude towards the clergy--when he was in a positive mood.

--Speaking of Dimmesdale, his speech imploring Hester to reveal the name of the father, in front of the populace in the beginning of the book, is an ingenious scene of dichotomy.  Forced by his superior to pull the name from her, he's 100% hoping she will say it, and, of course, 100% hoping she won't, at the same time.

--Her husband was indeed chilling, and her lover was, in fact, a bit dim: "Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior..." (107).  I wrote that observation long before I read that quote; good to know I don't just pull this stuff out of the air.

--"On the wall hung a row of portraits...All were characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men."  There are dozens of great passages like this.  Genius.

--The image of the armor acting like a funhouse mirror and making the A of gigantic proportion on her, as if "...she seemed hidden behind it" was another great touch in a book filled with such written flourishes.

--The home that the two men shared with the old woman was adorned with tapestry depicting the story of David and Bathsheba.  Again going out of his way to pile on the metaphors and symbols of guilt and hypocrisy, Hawthorne gives us the famous biblical story of the great man who slept with a minor man's wife, hanging in the house of the man who did the same.

--"When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived" (105).  Indeed.  For everyone who fervently believe that most (or, any) of the 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq, or that Obama isn't an American citizen, or that he is Islamic, or a socialist, pay heed.  Don't be instructed by the uninstructed.

--Birthers.  Please.

--Speaking of that, when Romney blurted something Birther recently, it told me he knew he was a rat on a sinking ship.  McCain, for all his faults, was a good, moral man who refused (unlike his pretty but empty VP) to run a campaign based on purposeful misinformation and outright lies.  He even told an audience that Obama was a good, kind man, and not a terrorist.  Mitt should pay heed.  The blind leading the blind, there.

--Mitt.  Please.  At least Clinton didn't actually ask to be called Bubba.  Even a reference to baseball can't save this guy in my eyes.

More to come.  A truly great novel, worth the effort.