Autobio – Originally From America – Page 7 – education and deconstruction.com

The Way Around

The Book of the Week is “The Way Around, Finding My Mother and Myself Among the Yanomami” by David Good, with Daniel Paisner, published in 2015.

The Yanomami is an indigenous, Amazon-rain-forest dwelling tribe in southern Venezuela near Brazil, who developed a reputation for hostility. The author dispelled that myth, while describing his unique experience, as a genetic member of the tribe.

Good’s father, an American from New Jersey, did anthropological fieldwork as a graduate student for about a decade, starting in 1975. Due to the loosely defined concept of marriage in the Yanomami culture, he had to decide whether or not to completely adopt the tribe’s lifestyle in order to continue to study them. He took the plunge. He ended up having three children, including the author, with his Yanomami wife.

However, the tribe’s ways are in an alternate universe, when compared with Americans’. Their lack of clothing alone would be considered primitive, never mind their low-tech, spare existence. The author wrote, “The women were all topless. Their faces were variously decorated with tribal markings; their noses, pierced with hii-hi sticks. The child was completely naked.”

The author’s father thought he would be able to move his immediate family away from his wife’s family in Venezuela in the late 1980’s, as he had a stronger desire to live in the United States. This created a cultural clash that led to a rather extreme consequence and psychological damage for all involved.

Read the book to learn how the author was affected by this adverse turn of events, and how he got through it.

I Love Capitalism – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “I Love Capitalism, An American Story” by Ken Langone, Cofounder of the Home Depot, published in 2018. This is the bragfest of a Wall Streeter, who appears to have bragging rights.

Born in September 1935 in Roslyn Heights, in New York State (on Long Island), Langone caught the entrepreneurial bug early in life. By college, he was selling stationery and neckties.

In the single-digit 2000’s, Langone helped recruit a CEO for Home Depot. In the short term, the CEO greatly improved the numbers that serve as indicators of a company’s financial success. However, the dollar value of the company actually decreased after a few years. His philosophy damaged the corporate culture by violating the company’s philosophical values.

For, the CEO failed to understand that in a customer service business like Home Depot, corporate culture drives the numbers. Employee satisfaction gets the same score as customer service. His replacement “… dressed like a plumber, and he looked like a nerd… [but] he became a rock star to the employees…”

Langone admitted up front that he had mentors and helpers left and right throughout his life. “Some guys who get to be wealthy like to brag about being self-made men. I can’t imagine they’re not leaving somebody out of that equation.” [likely, their daddy.]

Read the book to learn about who assisted Langone in his adventures in capitalism.

Counselor

The Book of the Week is “Counselor, Life At the Edge of History” by Ted Sorensen, published in 2008. This was the autobiography of a political consultant best known for most closely advising JFK for eleven years.

Born in May 1928 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Sorensen considered himself a Danish Russian Jewish Unitarian. His father, appointed Attorney General beginning in 1929, was the oldest of ten surviving children. He helped pass a law that created one nonpartisan legislative body in the Nebraska statehouse. That way, there were no fights, delays or blaming.

Sorensen himself was one of five children. He grew up in an agricultural community with a harsh climate in Nebraska, not unlike that of George McGovern’s South Dakota. There were: droughts, floods, hailstorms, blizzards and grasshoppers.

In summer of 1951, after graduating from a special five-year university law program, Sorensen sought a job by personally walking into law firms to speak with the hirers. He began his career at the Federal Security Administration, which has come to be known as the Department of Health and Human Services. He became depressed when he started to wise up and witness more of the culture of Washington, D.C.: “… more hypocrites than heroes, more sinners than saints.”

At the suggestion of the joint committee staff director, Sorensen lied about his age– put down 25 instead of 24 on his resume because men of 25 were viewed as better job candidates, having more experience. In 1952, he became a speechwriter, advisor and personal assistant to then-Senator John F. Kennedy, his opposite. Sorensen was a plain ol’ country boy, rather than a Northeastern elitist. He didn’t run with JFK’s crowd.

Sorensen claimed that JFK himself actually did the writing of the book “Profiles in Courage” despite rumors that others did. He and others helped with the research. Sorensen mentioned various of the book’s rumored ghostwriters but failed to mention the most commonly named one– Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Upon becoming president, “John F. Kennedy’s speeches stood out because they revived idealism, eloquence, and progressivism, after a decade of Eisenhower’s bland, dry approach and Joe McCarthy’s evil tirades.”

Unfortunately, JFK was afraid of being criticized for being “soft on Communism”– a common fear in those days among politicians who wanted to get reelected. So JFK continued Eisenhower’s actions; by late 1963, he had sent sixteen thousand American military advisors to South Vietnam. In 1968, Sorensen became a campaign advisor to Robert F. Kennedy in his presidential bid; sadly, not for long. Then he practiced law.

Read the book to learn of Sorenson’s adventures with the famed senator and president; his views on what would have happened had JFK not been assassinated; his other endeavors; the toll taken on his health by years of severe sleep deprivation and nonstop (no downtime) international business travel; and much more.

Reporter

The Book of the Week is “Reporter, a Memoir” by Seymour M. Hersh, published in 2018.

Born in 1937 in Chicago, Hersh took over his family’s dry-cleaning business for his mother when his father died in 1954. For, his twin brother was busy at college and his older twin sisters were elsewhere. Upon attending junior college, he met a professor who changed his life; who told him that the University of Chicago was a better place to develop his talent in writing.

When Hersh worked as a copyboy for City News in Chicago, “The cops were on the take and the mob ran the city… The guys [reporters] on the street who did not get their facts straight or were consistently being out-reported did not last long.” Apparently, times have changed. In 1959, Hersh became a full-fledged reporter.

In 1966, after having acquired experience in various places, Hersh began earning his reputation for exposing ugly truths, at once depressing and infuriating, mostly about the U.S. government. No lie about the Vietnam War was too extreme to cover up the Johnson administration’s embarrassing, unethical goings-on. He and I.F. Stone were two of the few journalists who ferreted out the truth, but, since they were against the war, were smeared as pinko at best, and couldn’t be believed.

In late 1967, Hersh sold out and became press secretary for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. He lasted three months, for various reasons; after which, he returned to informing the public via New York Times articles, and books, about controversial, big, dirty secrets that led to serious harm to animals and humans, being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

For instance, hundreds of thousands of animals were killed by anthrax and Q fever germs (among other toxins and biological substances) in experiments around the world, in research funded by the United States.

Dugway Proving Ground in Nevada was NOT an isolated incident. “It was the same old story: A local community financially dependent on the military had kept its collective mouth shut” in connection with the deaths of six thousand sheep due to a nerve gas mishap.

Nixon tried to do an end-run around pesky Geneva Convention provisions in connection with “legalizing” defoliants and herbicides in South Vietnam. As is well known, his presidency revolved around the war. Not fun and profit.

After the war, Hersh continued churning out books and articles on Watergate, and other scandals of which the public wouldn’t have been informed but for him. Two New Yorker magazine articles ran to 25 pages each. They “… were fact-checked line by line, by two experienced young women who essentially moved to Washington for weeks.” Again, apparently, times have changed.

Hersh was subjected to harsh criticism from people who admitted they hadn’t even read his (admittedly long) book on Kissinger. Some things never change.

Read this book to learn of Hersh’s investigations into: the My Lai Massacre (whose details were revealed thanks to him), the evil activities in which Nixon, Kissinger, Robert McNamara, CIA members and others engaged, Osama bin Laden’s murder, and much more.

Lazy B – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Lazy B, Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest” by Sandra Day O’Connor and H. Alan Day, published in 2002.

The author’s family owned a beef cattle ranch. Her grandfather laid claim to the property in 1880, prior to statehood of Arizona in 1912, and the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. The federal government allowed anyone who dug a water-well to graze their animals on the land. The cattle were branded with the family’s ranch logo, a capital B. The Mexican cattle that lay down helped name the ranch– “Lazy B.”

Lazy B consisted of 160,000 acres (about 250 square miles) mostly in Greene County, Arizona; 8,650 of ranch corporation, 30,000 leased from New Mexico, and all else federal land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Income-producing animals included cows, calves, bulls, horses and egg-laying chickens. Hindrances to their operations included antelopes and prairie dogs. Vehicles included a Chevy pickup truck and jeep. When the author was old enough to see over the dashboard, she learned to drive.

The author’s father practiced extreme frugality– helpful in 1933, when he began his career. He was a do-it-yourselfer. The family led a simple life, having no electricity (just kerosene lanterns) and no running water (but outhouses). There was always plenty of work to do– feeding, shoeing, and breaking in the horses; oiling saddles; observing births of animals; branding, vaccinating and castrating or milking the cattle; and maintaining the property’s wells, windmills and troughs, etc.

Born in March 1930, the oldest of three children, the author attended school in El Paso, Texas, during which time she lived with her grandmother.

Read the book to learn a wealth of details on the difficulties of the running of a cattle ranch well into the twentieth century, and Lazy B’s hard-working people and their adventures.

John Glenn, A Memoir

The Book of the Week is “John Glenn, A Memoir” by John Glenn With Nick Taylor, published in 1999.

Glenn was born in 1921 in a small town in eastern Ohio. At fifteen years old, he earned a driver’s license after taking the written and practical tests, as required by state law for anyone under eighteen. At that time, no tests were required for those over eighteen.

In spring 1941, Glenn availed himself of aviation lessons free of charge at his college, Muskingum in Ohio, where he majored in chemistry. Related academic subjects were mandatory too, such as physics. Wild about flying, he got his pilot’s license in less than three months. However, WWII interrupted his education. He joined the Navy in autumn 1942, then switched to the Marines because he thought he’d be flying the cutting-edge planes of the day.

In April 1943, Glenn married his high school sweetheart in a Presbyterian church. He drove his new bride to his next military assignment in a used black 1934 Chevy coupe. “…it seemed as if we had a flat [tire] about every ten miles. Gas was rationed, and to conserve it, we joined the other speedsters on the road, clipping along at forty miles per hour.”

Glenn became a war hero, executing numerous bombing runs in the South Pacific. After the war, due to his military career, he relocated frequently– to California, China, Guam. He was assigned various administrative and aviation positions, but was happiest when his job was piloting aircraft. He did some spying and taught flying instructors how to teach flight training.

Prop planes in the war had traveled at 300 miles per hour but in the 1950’s, jets in Corpus Christi, Texas were going double that. Glenn got a “green card” unrelated to immigration. It made pilots eligible to fly in the most severe weather conditions. Glenn’s ego and expertise in aviation prompted him to apply for the job of astronaut. He was one of seven lucky pilots chosen. The others were from the Air Force and the Navy.

In the late 1950’s, space exploration was in its infancy. There were infinite unknowns about what could happen in a rocket ship. The guinea pigs who were to occupy the capsule were therefore subjected to simulations– like letting their bodies be manipulated by the three axes of pitch, roll and yaw at thirty revolutions per minute– to practice regaining control of the ship if it was attacked by aliens. Or simply malfunctioned. Such an ordeal necessitated about a half hour of recovery from vertigo.

In February 1962, Glenn finally got his chance to circle the earth three times and collect scads of data. Unexpectedly, the heat shield in the capsule melted away in an orange fireball, and at the point of the shock wave, four feet from his back lurked heat of 9,500 degrees Fahrenheit, a little less scorching than the surface of the sun.

Contrary to popular myth, he was unhurt immediately after his famous flight. It was when he ran for the office of U.S. Senator from Ohio in 1964, that he hit his head on the edge of the bathtub while trying to repair the medicine cabinet in his bathroom.

Read the book to discover the fun subjects and skills Glenn had to learn in the rigorous training for the feat that made him famous; his other feats, and much more.

The Good Fight – BONUS POST

“The Good Fight, Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington” by Harry Reid, published in 2008 is an autobiography that describes the life of a man who suffered many hardships in his early years and has overcome much adversity.

Born in December 1939, Reid grew up in a limited environment in a small mining town– Searchlight– in Nevada. The area’s economy was based on mining and prostitution, not unlike Washington, D.C.

Reid’s father gravitated toward a career (gold mining) suitable for his personality–introverted loner. The author became a lawyer and U.S. senator. One issue that stuck in Reid’s craw was America’s continued involvement in President George W. Bush’s Iraq war which Bush started in 2003. Years later, when Reid was Senate Minority Leader, he visited Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld to try to convince him that the United States should withdraw troops from Iraq. Rumsfeld blew Reid off and treated the war like a joke.

When Reid and other politicians visited Iraq personally, they realized that the emperor really did have no clothes. General David Petraeus put on a show for them, exhibiting soldiers who were training Iraqis to fight on their own, similar to the way the late President Richard Nixon tried to implement “Vietnamization.”

In early 2006, the author and his fellow Democrats defeated an attempt by Bush to privatize Social Security. “We knew we had won when the White House simply stopped talking about it.”

Read the book to learn of Reid’s adventures as chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission starting in 1977, a few of his interesting law cases, and much more.

boys in the trees – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “boys in the trees (sic), A Memoir” by Carly Simon, published in 2015.

Born in 1945 in Manhattan, Simon grew up in a wealthy, dysfunctional family of four children. Her father was the co-founder of Simon and Schuster, the publishing giant. When Simon was eight years old, her 42 year-old mother acquired a boyfriend, in the guise of a 19 year-old babysitter for Simon’s younger brother. The family moved to Riverdale (the northwesternmost section of the Bronx in New York City) and summered on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The family hung out with the literary, political and musical celebrity crowd in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Simon found that music soothed her troubled soul. She became a stutterer at an early age, due to prepubescent sexual encounters with an older boy. Her uncle became a second father to her, as her biological father chose the younger of her two older sisters, as his favorite.

Simon was to have “… many difficult experiences with men in the music business.” When she was in her late teens, one or both of the men who helped her record her first song professionally, “… deliberately sabotaged the track; cutting it in the wrong key as payback for me not responding to their sexual advances.”

Nevertheless, Simon bragged about having sex with various big names; Jack Nicholson, Cat Stevens, Warren Beatty and Michael Crichton among them. She claimed that her song, “You’re So Vain” does not represent any one person. The original lyrics do say, “clouds in my coffee” and not “grounds in my coffee.”

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know about Simon’s relationship with James Taylor, plus other information about her family and emotional states, through the time she had to cancel her concert series due to mental illness, in the early 1980’s. The book did not cover her career comeback.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

The Book of the Week is “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate” by Al Franken, published in 2017.

Born in 1951, Al Franken grew up in Minnesota. His career as a comedy writer for the TV show Saturday Night Live spanned about fifteen non-consecutive years, starting with its first season in 1975. He also entertained American servicemen in the Middle East in the single-digit 2000’s.

Franken wrote that Norm Coleman put his own life and other American lives in danger because he failed to make sure that Americans stationed in Iraq in 2003 were provided with adequate protective gear. Coleman’s job was to oversee war contracting of equipment and hold hearings when he witnessed fraud, waste or abuse. He held zero hearings; Harry S Truman, who held a similar position during the United State’s WWII preparations, held 432 hearings.

Then, after decades in show business, Franken really sold out and entered politics. He eventually ran against Norm Coleman for the office of U.S. senator from Minnesota. Coleman, petty and litigious, contested the election results to the maximum– a recipe for sky-high legal bills and time-consuming nonsense; eight months to be exact… wait for it… Franken won.

Franken’s political opponents were masters at using misleading statistics. Fortunately, his sensitivity to liars was on high-alert. He pointed out that by 2016, the Republican landscape was littered with broken promises. They had failed to prove that Kenya was Obama’s birthplace, were unable to bankrupt Planned Parenthood by stripping it of subsidies, and failed to overhaul the new national healthcare system. Franken expressed his skepticism about replacing that last item. Ever.

Read the book to learn what it’s like to be a senator, what Franken was still seeking to accomplish politically at the book’s writing, and the (funny!) jokes he couldn’t tell in public (uncensored!).

A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin” by Kathy Griffin, published in 2009.

This memoir described the comedian whose shtick consisted of telling humorous, embarrassing stories about members of the entertainment industry. Or, as she characterized herself: “… someone who gets fired, stirs up trouble, and gets debated about on CNN for saying bad things on award shows.” Kudos to her for being an honest, amusing attention whore. She must have brought in sufficient profits for the entertainment industry to tolerate her behavior.

Born in November 1960 in Forest Park, Illinois, the youngest of five children, Griffin grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. At eighteen years old, she moved to Santa Monica, California to be an actress. She apparently had the talent, drive and creativity to get famous.

In the early 2000’s, Griffin performed sufficiently well at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles to double the length of her show to two hours. This allowed the cocktail waitresses to make sufficient money to pay their rent, “Plus they loved serving the gays, because they were well-dressed, respectful and tipped well.”

Griffin didn’t talk about Anna Nicole Smith right after she died out of respect. As Greg Giraldo would have said, “Too soon, too soon.” Griffin revealed deeply personal information– both of her parents were functional alcoholics, and her oldest brother was a pedophile and substance abuser.

Griffin tried to raise the alarm about her brother, but, as she joked– her parents thought “denial” was a river in Egypt. She admitted to two major errors in her life– poor judgment in both her marriage and in having liposuction. Read the book to learn the details of this and other episodes.

SERIOUS ENDNOTE: Griffin had no qualms about making political statements unrelated to the awards shows she attended. It is therefore not inappropriate to make a political statement unrelated to Griffin’s book, below.

This nation seems to be in denial about the amount of debt load currently carried by not only individuals and businesses, but by the federal government and local governments. It appears that bankruptcies of government entities is the next financial crisis in the offing; the reason why, will be explained shortly.

Within the last thirty or so years alone, the United States has seen greed fests and then busts with regard to junk bonds, savings and loan associations, derivatives, tech stocks, and subprime mortgages, just to name a few. Mortgage-backed securities used to be one of the lowest-risk investments around. Tax-free municipal bonds are presumably still one of the lowest-risk investments around.

BUT one small bond brokerage (and possibly others, too) whose website says it “specialize[s] in tax-free municipal bonds. That’s all we do.” recently changed the language on its customers’ monthly statements. It is forcing them to accept the words, “trading & speculation” (!) for their “Investment objective/Risk tolerance” or else they won’t be able to purchase bonds. It makes itself sound like a penny-stock broker-dealer of the 1980’s that churns accounts. Or a currency broker.

The brokerage is so phobic about covering itself legally that there must be bond issuers who are going to go belly up AFTER THE CURRENT PRESIDENT HAS BEEN REELECTED or has left office, whenever that is. (It might be recalled that Detroit took the plunge in July 2013, after Obama was reelected.) Or its brokers are getting greedy and unscrupulous. Or both. Good luck with that, all.