#FridayReads, March 14–Jan Wong’s Memoir of Depression, “Out of the Blue”

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Out of the Blue


Triggered by a death threat targeting her for a story she wrote, Wong–a career reporter–does a superb job investigating and striving to understand her own illness.

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Toboggan Days with Noah

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The above picture with my dog Noah patiently waiting for me as I prepared to slide down a hill was taken during an outing for students of the School on Magnolia, the alternative high school I attended in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1970s. In those days, my hair was sort of like that of NBA star Anderson Varejao, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Anderson VarejaoThe second picture here was taken by my late brother Joel, in the living room of the home we grew up in, in the suburb of Shaker Heights, a few years after the wintry picture.  Noah

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Judith Butler, Once More a Target of Critics Who Would Silence Her

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Readers here may recall I’ve written and shared about literary scholar and contemporary philosopher Judith Butler, a frequent target of criticism by right-wing conservative Jewish commentators, owing to positions of hers such as support for the boycott/divest/sanction (BDS) movement with regard to Israel. Some people in this debate–like Peter Beinart in his book The Crisis of Zionism–support boycotting only those goods that come from the Occupied Territories, not all of Israel. That’s my position, too. I’m not certain where Butler lands on that point–but regardless, unlike her opponents, I fully support her right to freely express herself and be heard, in all realms–political, critical and aesthetic.

All this comes up again because of a new instance of the Jewish establishment trying to banish her voice from the communal conversation. In the current episode, Philip Weiss writes in a blog post headed, “Jewish community commits intellectual suicide before our eyes,” that Butler had been asked to participate in a March 6 discussion of Franz Kafka at NYC’s Jewish Museum, but the invitation was withdrawn, owing to what Weiss believes was ‘pressure from donors.’ Weiss writes, “One critic said, ‘The hosting of [BDS] advocate Judith Butler by The Jewish Museum is a slap in the face to every Jew,’ Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, told JNS.org.” This, all about a discussion of Kafka, with no direct relevance to Israel.

In the same vein of craven submission to angry types, the museum also recently canceled a panel that was to discuss John Judis’s important new book Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict. Many Jews on the right are nowadays inflamed by discussions like these, and many organizations, whether or not they share the same conservative ideology, succumb to threats and pressure.

This is all kind of personal to me. Judith Butler and I grew up in the same Jewish community in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where her father, known to all his patients as “Danny,” was a friendly family dentist. He looked after the teeth of all five Turners. He resembled Jack Paar, but nicer looking. Judith’s sister Diane was in my same year in school, where we knew each other. She moved to NY at around the same time I did, as part of a modern dance company, and we continued to see each other in the city from time to time. I occasionally heard from Diane about her sister, Judith, already then a professor, and a rising star in academia. She is an honorable person and a serious scholar. She should not be castigated or exiled for what I know to be an honest expression of belief, arrived at through careful deliberation and the weighing of difficult moral choices. As an example of her thoughtfulness, I submit this transcript of a talk she gave last February at Brooklyn College. It is well worth reading, and all in her own words.

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Clumsy Mansplaining Strikes the Republicans Yet Again

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Chinese finger trapClumsy mansplaining about the Clintons by Rand Paul & other Republicans shows, I suppose, that they want to try and shame Hillary out of the public square, and weary her of the race before it starts, before she can even declare in our out for 2016. But I don’t think it’ll will have that effect, not on her decision, nor on many key voting groups. In fact, it’s more likely to just lock in natural and growing Democratic advantages among key demographic groups nationally.

First, younger voters, many of whom weren’t even alive in the ’90s, will wonder why the enormous bother about illicit sex of a sort that surveys show is more and more common among that cohort. Women voters over forty will loathe the badgering of another woman, one whom history has shown they empathize with, especially when this issue is continually forced into the media by Republicans. In short, this is just the sort of innuendo campaign that drives negative inferences about the opposition up to the stratosphere. Over the past 2-3 decades, the Republican party has become an increasingly unsupportable proposition. I’m reminded of the Chinese finger trap, the toy you stick your fingers in at opposite ends where the harder you pull, the greater is its grip. That is the effect of Republican positions on their standing with voters—the more they cling to them pandering to their narrower and narrower base, the deeper they fall in to their toxic grip, making themselves less and less acceptable to large chunks of the electorate for national and federal offices in states that are not deep red politically.

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A Congressman’s Profile in Contempt

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This congressman from Oklahoma dishonored his office by listening to constituents at a recent town hall urge violence against Pres Obama w/out denouncing them and never saying “stop” to them. This link is to a local story with the 4-minute videotape. They urged something I don’t even want to type a second time. He laughs with them throughout. Now it’s this federal officeholder who should be denounced. The phone number at his Tulsa office is 918-935-3222; in Washington it’s 202-225-2211.

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Toxic Chemical Spills, as American as Cherry Pie

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Monday Feb 10 Update: The same AP reporter whose story I’d linked to below has a new article on the toxic coal ash spill along the Dan River in North Carolina. Michael Biesecker reports that NC state officials have twice interceded in lawsuits that environmental quality groups had filed against Duke Energy, the company responsible for the horrible spill last week. Ludicrously, the state imposed a scant penalty of $99,000 against the utility, which made no admission of wrongdoing. Rachel Maddow reported on this article and the spill tonight, adding a couple telling nuggets: 1) Duke Energy is a company with annual turnover in the billions of dollars, and 2) NC Governor Pat McCroy took office in 2012, after 28 years with Duke Energy.
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Coal ash spill Dan RiverOn the heels of the chemical spill in to West Virginia’s Elk River, a second horrible toxic incident is fouling a river that runs through two other southern states, with tons of coal ash leaking from a 27-acre pond through a busted pipe that is flowing in to the Dan River near Danville, VA. AP reporter Michael Biesecker, downriver in North Carolina, reports seeing “gray sludge several inches deep, coating the riverbank for more than 2 miles,” as seen in the photo above by Gerry Broome. Biesecker also writes,

“Since the leak was first discovered by a security guard Sunday afternoon, Duke Energy estimates up to 82,000 tons of ash mixed with 27 million gallons of contaminated water has spilled into the river. Officials at the nation’s largest electricity provider say they cannot provide a timetable for when the leak will be fully contained, though the flow has lessened significantly as the pond has emptied….Environmental regulators in North Carolina say they are still awaiting test results to determine if there is any hazard to people or wildlife. Coal ash is known to contain a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals, including lead, arsenic, mercury and radioactive uranium….Municipal officials in Danville say they are successfully filtering out contaminates in the drinking water for the city of about 43,000 people….Environmentalists and government regulators have been warning for years that the 31 ash ponds at Duke’s power plants in North Carolina had the potential for calamity, especially after a similar pond in Kingston, TN, burst open in 2008.”

  • Water undrinkable or at risk–a situation that more than 300,000 residents of West Virginia have endured since early January.

  • Duke Energy has thirty-one other ponds like the one that just ruptured?

In the best of worlds, chemical companies and energy providers like Freedom International and Duke Energy would be better stewards of the land, but that is clearly too much to hope for. Failing that, I’m disappointed the federal EPA is unable to do a better job preventing hazardous incidents, but I hold states largely responsible for the failure. A lecturer in environmental health at George Washington University said, “West Virginia has a pattern of resisting federal oversight and what they consider EPA interference, and that really puts workers and the population at risk.” The EPA can’t succeed without buy-in to the process from state officials.
This is sick. When will we ever learn?

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CBO Report on Obamacare Points to More Economic Justice Over Next Decade

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Republicans have seized on news reports of the new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast about ObamaCare’s impact on the country over the next decade. The righties instantly and loudly pointed to what they claim is a finding that more than 2,000,000 jobs will be lost between now and 2024. Unfortunately, so far the media is playing along with their false reading of the study.  On his Plum Line blog Greg Sargent has a corrective commentary with an actual quote from the report, followed by a summation of his own:

“‘The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking, but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).’

The CBO report actually says that the impact of the ACA will be ‘almost entirely’ due to a decline in labor that ‘workers choose to supply.’ It says explicitly that the ACA’s impact will not be felt as an ‘increase in unemployment’ or ‘underemployment.’”

Useful and necessary as Sargent’s correction is, I’ll  add an interpretation of mine, based on my own experience working in the freelance economy since 2009. That’s when a corporate publishing layoff cost me a full-time job, and my family what had been our employer-based health insurance. For five years–until this month, when we could finally get affordable coverage under the new law–the cost of private health insurance premiums has been an onerous burden on our household economy.

I interpret the CBO forecast as pointing to the likelihood that in future there will be fewer Americans working full-time jobs at major corporations with health insurance attached, as was our national norm in the 20th century. This was an American anomaly, not an historical inevitability, one of those times when our vaunted “exceptionalism” didn’t serve the national interest. This benefit offered people security, but only if you had a full-time job. It also shackled people to jobs they might not have otherwise continued working at. I anticipate that with health insurance reform, many more people will be able to be self-employed while finally enjoying reliable and affordable coverage. The CBO report suggests my hope could become reality.

Since President Obama’s election in 2008, when health insurance reform came back on the national agenda for the first time since the Clinton years, I’ve hoped that reform might unleash many enterprising solo and small shop operators. No longer tethered to corporate jobs, people would be able to take reasonable risk to start a business on their own or with a couple partners, confident that even if their new idea fails, they won’t have to spend down their security to keep themselves from being exposed to the truly terrible risk of illness without insurance. With many more people working for their dreams, we could become to a greater extent, a nation of entrepreneurs, business-builders, and job creators. This is something that pro-market conservatives always tout, so they ought to cheer for health reform that unleashes a new era of entrepreneurial energy.

I miss certain aspects of big-company employment, and continue to apply for full-time jobs as appropriate, and might be glad to take one, but my larger preference is that the economy just begin to grow again with many millions of flowers blooming.  I will add that if the country had not been forced to endure unwarranted austerity through Republican obstructionism the past five years, the editorial & publishing services consultancy I started in 2009 would’ve grown much faster. As to the CBO’s point that people will choose to work fewer hours, I see nothing wrong with people spending more time with their families, traveling, and enjoying new recreational pursuits. With so many of us having suffered financial pain since 2008 it would be economic justice indeed if by 2024 we’re all doing so well that people can work less while enjoying it more.

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#FridayReads, Jan 24–Barry Lancet’s Gripping Thriller “Japantown”

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From 1992-97, when I worked for Kodansha America, the US division of the major Japanese publisher, I had many interesting and talented colleagues, some of whom worked in New York, and others at the home office in Tokyo. My colleagues included both Westerners and Japanese. I didn’t often meet the ones who worked in Japan, but would occasionally see their names on inter-office memos and catalog materials. Among this group was Les Pockell, a lithe and witty fellow who after many years with the company in Tokyo came back to New York, working for Warner Books, later called Grand Central. He was also an anthologist of poetry and story collections. Sadly, Les died in 2010 at age 68. A Japanese colleague working in New York those years was my boss, Minato Asakawa, whose idea it was to publish Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, the autobiography of two African-American sisters, Sadie and Elizabeth Delany, then both more than 100 years old. It became a huge bestseller in hardcover and paperback, and was adapted into a Broadway play. Under Asakawa, I had the opportunity to acquire and publish many terrific books, such as A Diary of the Century: Tales from American’s Greatest Diarist by Edward Robb Ellis, and his one-volume hsitory, The Epic of New York City. Together, Asakawa and I published the Kodansha Globe series, which in many ways anticipated the fine list published nowadays by the New York Review of Books Classics imprint. Kodansha Globe combined titles in cross-cultural studies, anthropology, natural history, adventure, narrative travel and belle lettres. By the time I left Kodansha in 1997 we had published more than ninety Globe titles, including the first paperback edition of Barack Obama’s first book Dreams From My Father.

Another Westerner in the Tokyo contingent, though one I never met face-to-face was editor Barry Lancet. Last year, I read in PublishersMarketplace.com that Barry was going to debut as an author, publishing his first novel, a thriller. I made a mental note of that good news, and before I could get in touch with Barry to renew our old acquaintanceship, a mutual friend in the book business, publicity professional Jeff Rutherford, put Barry in touch with me. We exchanged personal and professional news and I congratulated him on publication of his first book. I was pleased then when in December I got a copy of Japantown from his editor at Simon & Schuster. After working through a lot of reading that piled up during the holidays, I started Japantown this week, and am totally engrossed by it. Here’s a rundown with no plot points you wouldn’t pick up in the first quarter of the novel.

The book is at first set in San Francisco where protagonist Jim Brodie works as a dealer in Asian antiquities** at the same time maintaining connection with the private detective agency his late father founded and ran in Tokyo, with many local employees. In the wake of the death of the younger Brodie’s wife Mieko in a mysterious and unsolved fire, Brodie’s a single dad living with his grade school age daughter, Jenny. Combining his two areas of expertise, Brodie is the new go-to-guy when the San Francisco Police Department find itself investigating a grisly mass murder with Japanese victims and characteristics: A Japanese family of five has been gunned down after dark in a public park. At the scene, Brodie finds only one clue, a paper artifact emblazoned with the same written character (kanji in Japanese) as was found at the scene of his wife’s death. Brodie doesn’t realize, though the reader knows, that even as he surveys the scene of the brutal killing he and Renna are being surveilled with lenses and cameras by unknown agents. Though not knowing the extent of the surveillance he’s under, he senses someone’s watching him, at his gallery and even at home with Jenny. With the obscure kanji in hand, Brodie undertakes an investigative trip to Japan, first putting Jenny in to the protective embrace of a police safe house. Once in Japan, the malign forces behind the killings begin taking aim at Brodie and one of his most trusted colleagues, Noda.

All the past work week I was looking for more time to read Japantown, and I’m glad it’s now the weekend, with some uninterrupted time for reading. Lancet’s writing is vivid and economical and the plotting assured. If you want to learn more about Lancet and his background, including some very good advice for aspiring writers, I suggest you visit his website or follow him on twitter @BarryLancet. I’ll post more about his book later, but for now I want to say I recommend it highly.
WEDNESDAY JAN 29 UPDATE I finished Japantown the other day and it was great to the last page! A totally gripping international thriller. I’ll post more about it later. Best thing is, I believe Barry Lancet’s already working on Book II.

** Antiquities dealer is a profession I’m partial to in mysteries, like the POT THIEF series for which I’m the agent, with J. Michael Orenduff’s six books which went on sale this week from Open Road. In the POT THIEF books, set in an Albuquerque, main character Hubie Schuze is a dealer in Native American ceramics, and a capable ceramicist himself. The books are memorably titled:  The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras,The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy,The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein,The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier,The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence, and The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid. As the titles suggest, Hubie’s reading and appreciation of classic texts by, and the venerable lives of scientists, writers, a chef and an outlaw, make for enjoyable mystery fiction.

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