authoress – Page 25 – education and deconstruction.com

Out of the Gobi

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The Book of the Week is “Out of the Gobi, My Story of China and America” by Weijian Shan, published in 2019. This volume richly detailed the hardships faced by ordinary Chinese people from the 1950’s onward.

Born in 1953, the author spent most of his childhood in Beijing. As is well known, the Communist dictator Mao Tse-tung finally achieved nationwide dominance over the Nationalist (allegedly democratic, but still horribly corrupt) Chiang Kai-shek at the dawn of the 1950’s. (For additional info on how Communism is different from Socialism and Capitalism, see the bottom portion of this blog’s post, “The Last Idealist”). Mao proceeded to do grave damage to his country, causing the deaths of millions from starvation and financial disaster (among other causes).

Beginning in 1965, Mao declared there would be a new world order in his country, in the form of a Cultural Revolution. One of many goings-on during this period was burning, destruction or confiscation of all books except for those by the authors Marx (Karl, not Groucho), Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

The evil West’s bourgeois lifestyle was violently stamped out by Mao’s private police force, the Red Guard (which consisted of mostly young, armed and dangerous radical hooligans– sociopathic sadists), which brainwashed schoolkids of all ages, up to university level, to make Revolution. They destroyed the statue of the Venus de Milo, and denounced the Russian classical novels. A couple of years later, chaos reigned, but Mao was still in control.

In autumn 1966, at thirteen years old, the author was brainwashed by the youth movement to go on a fact-finding mission in the countryside. The government did away with entrance examinations, and in fact, all formal schooling. For about three weeks, the author and his peers traveled around by trains, buses and on foot to personally witness the Revolution. At one point, they went on a hike in the mountains, retracing the steps of the Red Army. Their travel expenses were paid for, but the conditions were quite primitive.

Into 1967, upon orders handed down by Mao, the youths protested against Capitalism in a way roughly equivalent to “Occupy Wall Street” but they got bored. They were neither studying nor working. For, a few years prior, the dictator had successfully thrown the country into disarray, forcing the closure of not only all schools, but bookstores, libraries, parks, movie theaters and houses of worship.

Thousands of people disappeared, were abducted from their homes– to be jailed, tortured, killed, for so much as speaking, writing or acting in the least way, critical of the government. In the environment of fear and force, they were under pressure to tattle on others before they themselves were punished.

Schools in the author’s area finally did reopen in autumn 1968, but education was still lacking. The author’s “Worker-Peasant-Soldier Middle School” (grades nine and ten– after what would be American grammar school) had no textbooks but students were drilled only on Mao’s propaganda.

In the summer of 1969, Mao realized it was time to change tack by sending young people to the countryside, as they had been making trouble in the cities long enough. He kept them busy by inspiring them to do hard manual labor, and study revolutionary thought. The kids truly tried their hardest– they were blindly obedient to the cause of defending their motherland against Soviet aggression. In autumn 1969, the whole nation went crazy constructing air-raid shelters and tunnels.

The author was sent to the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia. Again, conditions were extremely primitive. He and his fellows got military training. However, due to a weapons shortage, another platoon was chosen to receive (outdated, Soviet-made) submachine guns. None of the company leaders had any experience in battle, but they inspired passion in their subordinates, anyway. Under the blazing summer sun, there were vicious mosquitoes. It was freezing in winter.

The author described his physical and psychological suffering of the next several years, as his group strove to complete a series of months or years-long agricultural and infrastructure projects that actually produced a net negative effect on food production and quality of life.

In 1979, the United States resumed formal diplomatic relations with China. People in China queued up for hours and hours for all kinds of consumer goods. The author, by then a recent university graduate, reveled in his new lap of luxury– he had time to read for hours and hours, had enough to eat, and got a hot shower once a week.

Read the book to learn a wealth of additional information on: the author’s experiences in China from the 1950’s into the 1980’s (which involved a slew of health hazards) including but was far from limited to:

all his hard manual labor and psychological trauma;

his short stint as a medical “doctor” in 1971;

how he enjoyed the benefits of a student exchange program in the 1980’s; and

his troubles with the INS (hint– “… a mistake in the new letter: the date by which we had to leave the country was left blank… the INS had somehow lost our file…”).

This substantial volume reveals why, politically, economically, culturally and socially, and in quality of life– overall, China is still many decades behind America (never mind the propagandists who claim that China is allegedly becoming an economic powerhouse and will someday overtake the U.S.).

IS THAT A SHAME?

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IS THAT A SHAME?

sung to the tune of “Ain’t That A Shame” with apologies to: the estate of Fats Domino; and Joe Biden– shame on those who are blaming him for everything.

InFRA-structure, was passed, in a blur.

Is that a shame?
You’re winning the game.
Is that a shame?
Joe’s the one to blame.

Did COVID, re-LIEF, cause you, any grief?

Is that a shame?
You’re winning the game.
Is that a shame?
Joe’s the one to blame.

Oh well, jobs grew. And wa-ges, too.

Is that a shame?
You’re winning the game.
Is that a shame?
Joe’s the one to blame.

InFRA-structure, was passed, in a blur.

Is that a shame?
You’re winning the game.
Is that a shame?
Joe’s the one to blame.

Oh well, jobs grew. And wa-ges, too.

Is that a shame?
You’re winning the game.
Is that a shame?
Joe’s the one to blame.

Irena’s Children

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The Book of the Week is “Irena’s Children, The Extraordinary Woman Who Saved Thousands of Children From the Warsaw Ghetto” by Tilar J. Mazzeo, adapted by Mary Cronk Farrell, published in 2016.

At the start of WWII, Irena worked as a senior administrator in a Warsaw social welfare office that oversaw soup kitchens. A socialist, she was politically active. Less than two weeks after invading Poland in the first week of September of 1939, the Germans surrounded Warsaw. Nazis imposed martial law and abducted professionals they feared might influence Poles to fight back– teachers, priests, landowners, politicians, etc.

Irena became a member of the Polish Resistance, a secret social network who helped save the lives of Jews. She and her staff fabricated statistics, interviews and compiled lists of (fictional) non-Jewish names of social-program recipients in order to funnel necessities to the Jews.

In autumn 1940, Hitler assembled a committee of Jews to impose anti-Semitic laws to strip Jews of their assets and dignity. Eventually, the victims were banned from, or had draconian restrictions placed on them at work, school, in the streets and practically everywhere else, and the German authorities brainwashed all non-Jews into socially ostracizing Jews.

In October 1940, Nazis herded Jews into a ghetto– forced Jews to move into and live in a small geographic sector of Warsaw. The sector was sealed off via a wall. Germans claimed they were segregating the Jews to stem the spread of typhus. Profiteers had a field day, via the usual price-gouging, bribery, protection-money, etc. Profiteers included but were hardly limited to landlords, government officials, sellers of work-permits, and food smugglers. The ghettoizing didn’t make sense, of course, because the crowded conditions increased the spread of disease! In November 1940, a smear campaign sealed the deal that the Jews spread diseases.

These days, propaganda campaigns reach the masses at the speed of light, and whoever can spread their messages more convincingly and prolifically, wins the game. More specifically in the United States, politicians do this through their own communications, and through the media, driven by money. They give stuff away for free (via their donors) only insofar as they think doing so will benefit them in the long-term. For the last few decades, the American government has brainwashed the people into socially ostracizing each other for their political views. It is better for the majority of the population to be divided (as long as violence does not reach the point of civil war), than for it to devolve into the chaos of a cult of personality under a Hitler or Stalin.

Anyway, Irena, a Catholic, risked her life (!) to save the lives of as many Jewish children as she could. She sewed vials of typhus vaccine, toys and money into her clothing to hide them from the Nazis when she entered the ghetto with fake papers saying she was a disease-control worker.

Garbage, vermin and sewage began to accumulate in the yards of the ghetto, as the neighborhoods lacked indoor plumbing and modern sanitation services. “Each morning, the dead lined the streets, piled naked and covered with old newsprint and stones.” People stole the clothing of, and rats gnawed at, the corpses. Luckily, the Nazis were germophobes, so they usually allowed Irena to pass through their checkpoints with minimal harassment.

All identity papers stated one’s religion, and food-ration cards allotted the Jews 184 calories a day. Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were forced to wear a blue star (rather than a yellow one) on their clothing. Winter 1941 was especially freezing. To add injury to injury, bombs rained down on Warsaw, bringing more deaths and destruction.

In January 1942, after a few Gestapo officers died of disease, a senior official ordered the roundup of street urchins who were, or were perceived to be Jewish (those not checked for circumcision were judged only on facial features– like the victims of genocide in Rwanda). Many urchins were orphans. Irena and others smuggled necessities to them, and helped them sneak out of or into the ghetto (whatever the circumstances dictated), when they couldn’t be placed in orphanages via fake papers.

Read the book to learn of the ways the Polish Resistance creatively outsmarted the Nazis’ control and dominance over the Polish people, and a wealth of details about Irena’s selfless, clever activities to save lives (hint: one of her friends remarked, “The Germans… were such an orderly, rule-following people, that they couldn’t imagine anyone would do something so outrageously brazen as have fifty Jewish people coming and going in front of them.”), and learn the population estimates of Jews and non-Jews before and after the war.

North By Northwest / My Old Man and the Sea

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The first Book of the Week is “North By Northwest, A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaska Waters” by Captain Sig Hansen and Mark Sundeen, published in 2010.

Born in the Seattle area in 1966, Hansen was of Norwegian ancestry. He was mentored in fishing for a living by his grandfather, father, and the Norwegian fishing community. His older male relatives had been sourcing seafood for decades. The community had been growing in the upper Midwest in the United States since the early 1800’s. It was a lucrative, male-dominated career– a subculture bearing a resemblance to military life in certain ways:

Teamwork was required of five or six men who lived in close quarters, doing rigorous physical work under life-threatening conditions at all times at sea;

There were numerous ways to: become seriously injured, and / or suffer serious financial losses rather than reap huge financial gains from selling expensive seafood;

The crew consisted of a hierarchy whose entry involved initiation rites in the form of practical jokes that were not always harmless; and

Even during the off-season, the men’s drinking fostered male bonding that allowed them to mitigate the emotional stress of their work, and maintain their relationships in the old-boy network.

After high school, Hansen apprenticed as a deckhand on his father’s boat. The men were away at sea from nine to eleven months of the year, using “pots” (large, unwieldy cages that trap the seafood) to catch: red crab in the Bering Sea and near Nome in Alaska and near Adak, blue crab at St. Matthew, and opilio crab at Dutch Harbor.

In the 1980’s, the fishermen were allowed to carry boxes of live crabs in the plane cabin on Reeve Aleutian Airways. When starting their winter fishing season, if they were extremely lucky, they could complete their flight from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor in Alaska on an icy twin-prop plane. They booked it months in advance, arrived at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, and prayed that the weather would cooperate.

Read the book to learn a little history about seafaring in general, including the context of the following quote:

“That winter he was killed by Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay, his body torn apart and burned.”

and much more about Hansen’s life and times in his community. By the way, he appeared on the reality TV show, “Deadliest Catch.”

The second Book of the Week is “My Old Man and the Sea, A Father and Son Sail Around Cape Horn” by David Hays and Daniel Hays, published in 1995. Father and son alternately described, beginning in the new year of 1985, their adventures at sea– sailing (with no motor) on a tiny yacht for fun from New London, Connecticut southward thousands of miles, and eventually, around the tip of South America from west to east (the less dangerous route). They began testing their boat in fall 1984, sailing through the Panama Canal, and the Caribbean Sea.

As they well knew, all kinds of discomforts and life-threatening dangers awaited them. That was the challenge of it. Even with all of their experience in purchasing the boat, making it seaworthy (over the course of two years), maintaining their (then-primitive) communications and navigation equipment (which required them to pack thousands of items for every possible scenario they might encounter), they still suffered injuries, seasickness, hangovers, etc. When sailing along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, the chart warned them to watch out for “… unexploded mines, rocket casings and torpedoes, and chemical warfare dumpings.”

On their voyages, they met with visiting family or friends to celebrate Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur. They attended a service at a synagogue on the island of Jamaica. The ark and dais were at opposite ends of the sanctuary, on a floor comprised of sand (representative of a desert).

Much later, when they arrived at a port in the Galapagos Islands, local law allowed them to pollute the water there for only three days; then they had to ship out. The authors described the area thusly: “In the name of white rice and virginity, Western man spent a good two hundred years raping, robbing, and leaving neat diseases here.” It was rumored to be a gateway to Atlantis, and the approximate population was three thousand.

The onshore entertainment consisted of the American movie “Blade Runner” whose soundtrack was poor quality, and whose reels were screened out of order, but the native people in the theater were undemanding.

The authors related that it is easily conceivable that about a hundred men could have made the sculptures on Easter Island over the course of a few decades, thus blowing speculations of alien-artists out of the water.

Read the book to: learn additional info about the authors’ adventures at sea (including their crazy pets), about previous trips made by them and others, see sample pages of their log, a diagram of their boat, and much more.

An Ambassador in Paris

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The Book of the Week is “An Ambassador in Paris, The Reagan Years” by Evan Galbraith, published in 1987. The author was unrelated to John Kenneth Galbraith. This personal account described the job of an ambassador who represented the United States, stationed in a UN-member, industrialized country– France. He revealed the ignorance, misconceptions and prejudices even political insiders can have– his own (probably without meaning to.)

The author began his four-year stint in November 1987. He had been a lawyer and banker for 25 years prior. He possessed extensive international business experience and had lived in Paris and London for years and years. But– communication skills, tact, foreign-language fluency and knowledge of other cultures turned out to be almost useless anyway, because the ambassador had so little power. The job requires a social-butterfly personality– attending official lunches, dinners, receptions and cocktail parties several times a week, and then generating reports on gossip and interesting factoids. He wrote that knowledge of economics was helpful for the job, yet his writing reflected embarrassing lack of it.

At that time, the author spent hours and hours reading an overwhelming number of daily cables sent to him, consisting of reports generated by embassy personnel, of communications between foreign countries and the U.S. government (which the French were allowed to see), and the CIA’s (alleged “top secret”) interactions.

In spring 1986, the author lunched with French leader Jacques Chirac. They both truly believed that president Ronald Reagan’s pet project “Star Wars” (involving extremely expensive but state-of-the-art weapons launched from outer space) was actually going to be completed and implemented (!) If the Soviets attacked with their missiles, it would be in the best interests of the U.S. to defend Europe with its high-tech weaponry.

Anyway, also in the 1980’s, about two thirds of France’s energy needs were met by nuclear power plants. It was predicted that by the 1990’s, that proportion would be nine tenths. The French believed that a nuclear arms race served as a deterrent to Soviet aggression. It might be recalled the French often conducted nuclear tests, to the consternation of many.

France’s government was a patchwork of political parties. In the early 1980’s, the Socialist party held the majority of power but there were too few voters who would elect the Socialists unless they allied with Communist representatives. So they did.

The author thought that multi-country summits were a waste of time. He suggested that two world leaders meet without a formal agenda, for one day. He rocked the boat when he complained that American officials were visiting the French embassy too often just for fun (or– for those who planning on running for higher office– to be able to say they acquired foreign policy experience). Because they were wined, dined and perhaps received luxury accommodations, they were wasting American taxpayer dollars.

Read the book to learn a lot more about the author’s cluelessness on the fact that the Soviet Union was on the way out, about France’s foreign and security policies, French history, and U.S. foreign policy.

The Nation Got Run Over – BONUS POST

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THE NATION GOT RUN OVER BY A PLAGUE HERE

sung to the tune of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” with apologies to Randy Brooks, Elmo (and Patsy) Trigg, and whichever other rights holders this may concern.

The nation got run over by a plague here
from years of White House gyrations election eve.
You can say political donors play Santa
and voters have no CLUE what to believe.

Some are drinking too much Kool-Aid
and others abuse their power so.
Still others scream for medication.
The hostility of some has reached a new low.

When they confined us in 2020,
they began a dangerous age.
We resented the intrusion,
and our State is such
we have yet to turn the page.

The nation got run over by a plague here
from years of White House gyrations election eve.
You can say political donors play Santa
and voters have no CLUE what to believe.

It’s less than A year until midterms.
Our leaders’ messaging’s a joke.
See no masks on players of football
while tests and shots are FORCED on powerless folk.

It’s not nice to fool the people.
All the nation’s mad as hell,
and we just can’t help but wonder,
how much more must we endure before we’re well?

The nation got run over by a plague here
from years of White House gyrations election eve.
You can say political donors play Santa
and voters have no CLUE what to believe.

Soon the voters get to DEcide
whose heads are going to roll.
All those blue and red state mandates
are going to change pursuant to every political poll.

I urge all my fellow Americans:
you need to follow politics and vote.
The government has taken license
to curb our freedoms
and make their enemies the scapegoat.

The nation got run over by a plague here
from years of White House gyrations election eve.
You can say political donors play Santa
and voters have no CLUE what to believe.

Every Town is a Sports Town

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“Its demise was caused by low attendance, conflicting agendas among the owners, and a number of very poor business decisions.”

MLB? Possibly, but definitely the USFL by 1985.

Regardless, the Book of the Week is “Every Town is a Sports Town; Business Leadership at ESPN, from the Mailroom to the Boardroom” by George Bodenheimer with Donald T. Phillips, published in 2015.

In September 1979, the Bristol, Connecticut-based cable-TV channel ESPN began televising sports-related shows, by means of deals with: RCA (regarding a space-satellite), the NCAA (regarding covering basketball games), and Anheuser-Busch (regarding sponsoring the programs). The initial concept of the then-shoestring operation was to dispense information on sports 24/7, to serve fans. ESPN won contracts to show March Madness games and the NFL draft to start.

The workplace was team-oriented with a family-feel, so everyone was a jack-of-all-trades. In 1981, the author, a recent college graduate, worked as a mailroom guy and chauffeur of sorts, for executives of ESPN. He was later promoted to videotape librarian. He was willing to relocate when the company opened new branch offices, including Denver.

Anyway, ESPN could not survive financially on ad revenue alone, as the company was paying cable operators to carry its channel. It saw a loss of $25 million annually until it negotiated in 1982 to have cable operators pay the company a certain number of cents for each household receiving its channel, and that figure could rise up to a certain maximum percentage during the term of a multi-year contract.

Due to the ultimate takeover by Capital Cities Communications, and a favorable change in media law– ESPN grew by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, it added professional tennis, golf, NASCAR, World Cup soccer, the America’s Cup yacht race, and Sunday Night Football (for which ESPN had to pay the NFL) to its lineup in the mid-1980’s.

Globalization, recording devices, the Internet and mobile devices have made the negotiations over intellectual-property rights and sports programming between and among ESPN and other stakeholders, infinitely more complicated. In 1985, ESPN could be watched in about 30 million viewer-households in America; in 1999– in about 80 million in America and about 100 million elsewhere worldwide.

Read the book to learn: of how the author achieved a high position at ESPN, and how he boosted the morale, energy and innovative thinking of his fellow employees; what the company did when it saw its ratings plummet; what his executive team did to resolve the controversy that arose when ESPN made a movie in which the “F” word was uttered approximately thirty times; about the author’s business philosophy; and much more about the history of ESPN.

ENDNOTE: The author’s photo appears on the book’s cover with his head very slightly tilted. This flex is pleasing to the human brain, projecting the impression that he is a people-person. His boyish good looks probably served him well, too. [Total lack of head-flex, projects an unfriendly vibe.]

We’re Trigger-Happy – BONUS POST

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WE’RE TRIGGER-HAPPY

This is what the “Let’s Go Brandon” crowd ought to sing if they’re honest with themselves– sung to the tune of the partridge family (sic) theme song (Come On Get Happy) with apologies to the estate of Wes Farrell, Danny Janssen and whichever other rights holders this may concern.

SHOOting our mouths off;
JOIN in our zinging.
WE’RE trigger-happy.
A whole lot of anger is what we’ll be bringing.
WE’RE trigger-happy.
WE’RE being mean, and we stick together,
and spread a little hatin’;
no IMpulse conTROL.
We engage in profanity
instead of conflict res-o-lution.
We spread a crude feeling
wherever we GO.
Playin’ along with our hate-speech phrasing.
WE’RE trigger-happy.
A whole lot of anger is what we’ll be bringing.
WE’RE trigger-happy.
WE’RE trigger-happy.
WE’RE trigger-happ-y-y-y-y.

Beyond Hitler’s Grasp – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Beyond Hitler’s Grasp, The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews” by Michael Bar-Zohar, published in 1998.

Bulgaria lost a large amount of territory in WWI, and became a Constitutional monarchy after 1919. Its prime minister and other ministers served at the pleasure of its king, Boris III. Other sources of the nation’s power lay in its Army, the Communists and Macedonian terrorists.

In the 1930’s, roughly half of Bulgaria’s fifty thousand Jews lived in the capital of Sofia. They were productive members of society, and were treated just like people of any other religious group. There were only isolated incidents of anti-Semitism because most of the Jews were merchants, craftsmen or poor laborers, and so were not the victims of class envy.

When WWII began, Germany was able to help Bulgaria regain some of the land it had lost in the Great War. Germany was trading with and supplying weapons to Bulgaria, but the Bulgarians had more of a Soviet cultural and Soviet social mindset. So the king sought to keep his country out of the war.

Alexander Belev, an opportunist with hubris syndrome was the Bulgarian Commissar for Jewish Questions. In summer 1942, he collaborated with the Nazis in changing the definition of “Jew” based on ancestry rather than religion. This is one source of the notion that people can be “born Jewish”– have genetic traits that Jews share (For an additional source, see this blog’s post “In Search of Memory”).

Anyway, beginning in autumn 1940, laws went into effect that oppressed Bulgaria’s Jews by taking away their assets and sullying their reputations through hate-spewing and other actions of greedy, local bureaucrats who were taking orders from Hitler.

Read the book to learn how the common people, Christian churches, and circumstances determined the fates of Jews living in Macedonia, Thrace and Bulgaria (complete with romantic subplot, of course; hint: “The deep hatred for the Jews infected only the lunatic fringe of the wartime society, the Ratniks, Branniks, and Legionnaires and some sadistic police and army officers and KEV officials”), and of the mythmaking– historical revisionism of various incidents and events.

Vincent Price

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The Book of the Week is “Vincent Price, His Movies, His Plays, His Life” by Vincent Price, published in 1978.

Born in May 1911 in Saint Louis, Price was the youngest of four children. He broke into the movies in the 1930’s, when Hollywood made three to four hundred movies annually. In 1956, he appeared, along with Charlton Heston in the most expensive movie ever made at that time: The Ten Commandments. Filming it took eight years; some of it on-location in Egypt, where the Red Sea was parted with then-state-of-the art special effects.

The author claimed that there was fierce competition for roles in the horror genre of the 1950’s, but he had acted in more than a hundred films by 1971. He worked with Boris Karloff, who was able to portray a sympathetic, human-like, but at the same time, scary character. When Karloff played Frankenstein’s monster– who committed evil acts– he wore an excessive quantity of makeup, and screws in his neck, but with a lisp in his speech. There must be villains as well as heroes in entertainment stories, in order to drive the plot.

In many films, Price had to put up with absurdity: “So here we both were, co-starring with a talking fly, and trying to speak our lines while staring at a spider’s web” in The Fly in 1958. By the 1960’s, he was guest-starring on TV as the villain “Egghead” in Batman; in the Brady Bunch, Muppet Show and Hollywood Squares.

In 1961, Price, for no pay, served on the White House Fine Arts Committee to help redecorate the U.S. president’s residence. Beginning in September 1962, upon amassing a valuable art collection, he also became an art consultant to Sears Roebuck & Co. Its stores sold works of truly famous artists (Rembrandt, Goya, Van Gogh, Whistler, and Andrew Wyeth) for the payment plan of $5 down and $10 a month thereafter. Price wrote cookbooks, too.

Read the book to learn additional information about Price’s life and times.