education and deconstruction.com – Page 82

My Extraordinary Ordinary Life

The Book of the Week is “My Extraordinary Ordinary Life” by Sissy Spacek with Maryanne Vollers, published in 2012. This is the ebook autobiography of an actor and filmmaker who grew up in a small town in Texas.

Everyone knew everyone else. They were church-going folk, farmers and merchants, Methodists and Baptists. The mayor of the town was also its fire chief, owner of the local insurance company and funeral home. His brother was an undertaker, hardware store owner and co-owner of a motel. The brother’s wife was room attendant at the motel and a chinchilla breeder.

Spacek’s immediate family included her parents and two much older brothers, and many pets through the years, including horses. She writes, “I learned to drive a car when I was still a little kid, seven or eight years old.” At thirteen, she was driving with a thirteen-and-a-half year old passenger who had an official driver’s license. This is because in rural areas, people learn to drive farm equipment at an early age.

In high school, Spacek took up baton twirling as a majorette with a marching band that performed at halftime at high school football games– one of three major values in Texas; the others being family and Christianity.

In 1971, the author acted in her first movie, Prime Cut, with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, that required her to do a scene in the nude. She is probably best known for playing Carrie in the eponymous movie.

Read the book to learn about her adventures as a young adult in 1960’s New York City, and as an actor, wife and mother in various states in later decades.

Sometimes the Magic Works – Bonus Post

“Sometimes the Magic Works” by Terry Brooks, published in 2003 is an ebook skimmed by this blogger, that provides tips and life lessons for fiction writers who aspire to get published.

In the mid-1970’s, the author got lucky in a unique way with his manuscript whose topic was fantasy; up until then, fantasy was thought to be a poorly-selling fiction category.

Brooks writes that imagination is required for change to happen. “Progress occurs… because we hunger for what might be… looking beyond the possible to the impossible– because what seems impossible to us today becomes commonplace tomorrow.”

Brooks remarks that writers write because they enjoy the creative process and entertaining readers is fulfilling; they do it neither for the money nor the fame. Very few fiction authors become rich and famous nowadays, anyway.

Brooks says the readers are the ones who choose which writers to read, which in turn, determine book sales. In this way, the publishing industry is a democracy. This blogger believes that the American book publishing industry is becoming more democratic every day, due to major cultural changes in the last three decades.

There has been a proliferation of entertainment choices, which for many, has meant reduced time spent reading. Since time is perceived to be so short, people are choosing their books more carefully than previously.

Book distribution channels have expanded from retail outlets, libraries, pass-along value and mail-order to audio tapes, CDs and electronic downloading. Self-publishing– a relatively recent, vast improvement over “vanity publishing,” has increased competition for readers’ attention spans, which are getting shorter by the minute. Enough said.

Sum It Up

The Book of the Week is “Sum It Up” by Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a long-time coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Tennessee; Olympian, Olympic coach, daughter, wife, mother, etc., etc.

Summitt’s childhood consisted of doing hard labor on her family’s Tennessee farm, drag racing and playing aggressive basketball with her three older brothers. Her father was a gruff, hard worker who refrained completely from showing affection toward his family. Nevertheless, he had a passion for basketball. Therefore, in the mid 1960’s, he had the family move to a fixer-upper residence so that his daughter could play high school basketball on a very good team.

Unfortunately, the team was part of a pathetic interscholastic program that existed for girls at the time. There were many inequalities between male and female sports programs in Summitt’s generation. For one, she had to pay full college tuition, because “…athletic scholarships for women simply didn’t exist in 1970.”

At 22 years old in 1974, even when she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at her alma mater, she was given a budget that was a fraction of the men’s team’s budget. Also, unlike a male coach, she had to play many roles in addition to coaching, such as serving as driver, laundress, ankle-taper, gym-floor cleaner, and bench assembler. Her office was at the top of five flights of stairs in a hot attic with no elevator and no air conditioning. At the same time, she was taking four master’s degree classes and was required to teach undergraduate classes.

Finally, in 1975, Title IX– which was supposed to “even the playing field” for male and female athletes– was signed into law by President Gerald Ford (according to the book). Summitt started to benefit from progress, but even in the late 1970’s, the men’s sports teams still had bigger marketing budgets and staffs than the women’s teams; plus the men traveled by airplane while the women had to drive hours and hours.

Summitt also discusses basketball as a metaphor for other aspects of life. She writes, “The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership… they only follow you if they find you consistently credible… If there is a single ingredient in leadership, it’s emotional maturity.”

Read the book to learn about the coaching-career teams, victories, setbacks, comebacks and defeats; and family, health and retirement issues in the life of this overachiever.

My Guy Barbaro – Bonus Post

In honor of the Kentucky Derby, this blogger would like to report on “My Guy Barbaro” by Edgar Prado with John Eisenberg, published in 2008. This ebook tells the story of a horse named Barbaro, ridden by the author, a jockey.

Prado grew up in Lima, Peru in a poor household with seven brothers, three sisters, his mother, and a father who was a horse groomer. Two of his older brothers became jockeys. He had a natural rapport with horses, and became a licensed jockey at fifteen and a half. He graduated high school, and at eighteen, moved to Miami, Florida in 1986 for more challenging racing.

Prado rides on different horses in various states in races throughout the year. The Triple Crown is a trio of races very difficult to win. It consists of the Belmont Stakes on Long Island in New York State, the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and the Preakness Stakes in Maryland. Up until 2008, race tracks in that third state suffered financially in the past decade, unlike those in Delaware and West Virginia, as it declined to allow cash-cow slot machines at its race tracks.

In the 2006 Kentucky Derby, Prado had the privilege of riding Barbaro, a horse that was a racing prodigy, owned by the late pop star Michael Jackson. Read the book to learn of Barbaro’s fate.

The Other Side of Me

The Book of the Week is “The Other Side of Me” by Sidney Sheldon, published in 2005. This ebook is Sheldon’s autobiography.

Born Sidney Schechtel in 1917, Sheldon showed a talent for writing at an early age. However, during the Depression, he was forced to work day and night at a series of dead-end, soul-killing jobs, such as courier in a gear factory and coat-check clerk at a hotel. Sheldon was unafraid to approach strangers, and at that time, low-skilled jobs could be obtained in a simple five-minute conversation.

One day, he went to a Chicago radio station to inquire about an amateur talent contest sponsored by a band leader, and by chance, was asked to be the show’s announcer. It was then that he changed his last name to Sheldon, thinking it sounded more show business-y. His excessive talking caused the show to go fifteen seconds overtime, so he was not asked back, but from that experience, he thought he wanted to become a radio announcer.

On another day, he wrote a song with the help of his family’s spinet piano. He went to a hotel to try to sell the song. “In that year, 1936, the major hotels in the country had orchestras in their ballrooms that broadcast [on radio] coast to coast.” He was introduced to a manager at a big-name music publisher who directed him to another hotel with a better-known band leader. Perhaps naively, he never signed a written contract. His song was played and aired, but was never published. He therefore never received a penny in royalties.

Sheldon encountered many more episodes similar to the above, in which he was at the mercy of powerful people who made arbitrary decisions on the use of his creative works– Broadway musicals, screenplays and TV scripts and novels. Read the book to learn more about his bipolar disorder that had a hand in his self-doubt and despair, baseless optimism and persistence, missed opportunities, failures and successes.

A Champion’s Mind – Bonus Post

Besides Andre Agassi’s ebook, there is Pete Sampras’: “A Champion’s Mind,” published in 2008. This ebook’s author tends to be a bit narcissistic, as is evident from the title, and the fact that the passages describing the matches he won, outnumber those he lost, by a few.

Nevertheless, Sampras racked up bragging rights through becoming the number one ranked tennis player in the world for six years. He won fourteen Grand Slams. He overcame various problems, including the stress from unfortunate occurrences concerning a fellow pro tennis player and two of his coaches (deaths and crime), his illnesses and injuries, plus meeting the psychological challenges of playing many finals matches in major tournaments against Andre Agassi, a formidable rival, beating him more often than not.

Read the book to learn the details.

Open

The Book of the Week is “Open” by Andre Agassi published in 2009. This engaging ebook tells the life story (up until his mid-thirties) of a famous American tennis player.

The author’s traumatic childhood invites the reader’s sympathy and the entertaining writing keeps the reader enthralled. Although this is a first-person account and the book is all about him, he does not come off as narcissistic. He has bragging rights as a world-class tennis player, and has done some serious introspection– he shares with the reader his emotional states while recounting his life lessons.

Agassi’s childhood was tennis-obsessed, as his father ordained that he was going to grow up to be a professional tennis player. As a powerless child, he could not argue. Besides, he told himself that he loved his father, wanted his approval, didn’t want to make him mad. His father became even more tyrannical than usual when angry. So his tennis career became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, during his journey to the top, Agassi met friends, mentors, lovers and even opponents, who helped him to become a better athlete and a better person. When he got his first taste of celebrity, Agassi writes, “Wimbledon has legitimized me, broadened and deepened my appeal, at least according to the agents and managers and marketing experts with whom I now regularly meet.”

Grateful for his fame and fortune, the author decided to give back. He wanted to create “… something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me… but isn’t about me.” He co-founded a charter school called Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, located in Nevada.

Agassi proudly describes the school; a few aspects with which this blogger takes issue. He claims that pouring money into the school would make it a better school. He says Nevada is a state that spends less money per student on education than most other states. At least one study has shown that spending is not a factor in improving education quality.

Agassi also supplied the 26,000 square foot education complex with “everything the kids could want”– the very best entertainment and computer centers, athletic facilities, etc. On any given day, a famous politician, athlete or musician might drop by to teach the kids.

The author boasts, “Our educators are the best, plain and simple.” Yet, he goes on to write, because the school “… has a longer school day and a longer school year than other schools, our staff might earn less per hour than staffs elsewhere. But they have more resources at their fingertips and so they enjoy greater freedom to excel and make a difference in children’s lives.”

In other words, Agassi’s take on education is misguided in various ways. It seems he thinks kids will get a better education with quantity over quality when it comes to money and time. True, passionate teachers do not work solely for the money, but they value student enlightenment and recognition more than sparkling new classrooms. Admittedly, the author is a man of contradictions. Read the book to learn more about them.

Between Two Worlds

The Book of the Week is “Between Two Worlds” by Zainab Salbi and Laurie Becklund, published in 2005. This ebook tells Salbi’s life story, whose themes include women, war, family and religion. During her childhood in 1970’s Iraq, her mother was a teacher and her father, an airline pilot. In the early 1980’s, since they were government workers, her parents were forced to join Saddam Hussein’s Baath political party.

Iraq had a liberal, Westernized culture because it had previously had close ties with the United States. Nevertheless, Hussein and his followers committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against the populace. Life was unbearably scary and stressful, even for the upper classes; especially those who were sucked into “friendship” with Hussein, as was Salbi’s family. Hussein derived power from his political party, army, the war with Iran, and oil but “he found time to keep meticulous accounts of our emotional peonage.”

Hussein initiated a witchhunt in order to deport people who were deemed to be of “Iranian origin” as indicated by their citizenship papers, to Iran. His military then looted their homes. He incited hostility between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims, and encouraged male dominance through raping of females of all ages an act whose perpetrators went unpunished.

The Iraqi people were powerless to protest when they found themselves living under a brutal dictatorship. “Boys and girls joined the Vanguards, the tala’a, and wore… uniforms… as they practiced marching and singing at school…” Teenagers were pressured to enter endless poetry, art and marching contests to exhibit their love for Hussein. His birthday was a national holiday. He built new palaces every few months. You get the picture.

Read the book to learn more about the emotional traumas Salbi experienced that led her to find her life’s work.

How the Mighty Fall – Bonus Post

A short ebook, “How the Mighty Fall” by Jim Collins, published in 2010, presents an analysis of big, public, reputable American companies that have gone out of business, or made a major fumble but recovered.

The author and his colleague conducted extensive, comprehensive research on the reasons, across a range of dimensions. Collins writes, “We learn more by examining why a great company fell into mediocrity” than the opposite.

So as to avoid bias in how he viewed a company after its failure or recovery, Collins pored over documents in chronological order (thus remaining unaware of how a company ultimately fared until he reached the information in due time), starting well before the crisis.

Companies do need continual creative re-invention. However, “companies that change constantly but without any consistent rationale will collapse just as surely as those that change not at all.”

Collins developed a theory that there are five stages companies go through when heading for bankruptcy. The author provides examples in the histories of real-life businesses when they were being led by particular CEOs.

The difference between Wal-Mart and Ames (a competing department store chain that disappeared in 2002) is that in the late 1980’s, the former had a humble CEO who was always eager to learn. Unlike his narrow-minded peers, he met with Brazilian investors to find out about their retail culture. “Wal-Mart does not exist for the aggrandizement of its leaders.”

Collins’ data indicated a counterintuitive notion: many companies that fell were actually not resting on their laurels. They fell not because they failed to take bold action, but because they exceeded the limits of their resources in doing so. This blogger remembers Woolworth as one of those.

Another point the author conveys is that businesses that delivered cumulative returns to investors in the long term as opposed to focusing on unsustainable short-term growth to put on a show for Wall Street, became great businesses.

The author contends that another element of success is staffing a company with “the right people who accept responsibility” rather than building a bureaucratic hierarchy whose bureaucracy breeds more bureaucracy. The former bestows individual credit and blame.

Read the book to learn:

the stages of decline;
warning signs;
different ways management reacts to them;
why IBM was able to right itself by the late 1990’s from its low in 1993, while HP’s pain, starting in the late 1990’s, persisted much longer;
why Texas Instruments got its mojo back but Motorola did not; and
much more.

Bloody Confused!

The Book of the Week is “Bloody Confused!” by Chuck Culpepper, published in 2007. An American smartass sportswriter wrote this ebook after becoming jaded by covering baseball, football, basketball, etc. for a couple of decades in his own country. He decided to acquaint himself with the cultural quirks of professional English soccer.

In 2006, Culpepper moved to England in order to wholeheartedly throw himself into the lifestyle of a “supporter,” which involved a gluttony for spending time (on transportation) and money (on transportation, tickets, drinks and food) before, during and after the matches, not to mention choosing an underdog team to root for, so as to invite emotional trauma.

While conducting research before attending his first Premiership, the author learned of the concepts “promotion” and “relegation.” Unlike a United States baseball or football league, each season, an English soccer league determines team-places based on a point system, which allows upward mobility of teams and consequently, downgrading of its worst three clubs that will play in a lower-tier system the following season.

On more than one occasion, Culpepper was prohibited from purchasing a ticket to a match because he had never purchased a ticket before, to see a particular team. He had to watch the match in a pub instead. One time, he got lucky and bought a ticket from a supporter whose father was unable to go to the game.

Once the author started attending games, he noticed the beefed-up security at the stadiums– separate seating for fans of say, two teams with a history of hatred toward the other. This, due to deaths and serious injuries from stampedes of people (!) in recent decades. America has its team rivalries too, but rarely does the belligerent, drunk behavior of fans get more serious than trash-talking.

If an English soccer player scores a goal, which might happen only three or four times during ninety minutes of play, unlike in America– fans engage in hugging each other, though they are strangers. On the other hand, American spectators who are strangers will chat with each other throughout an entire professional sports game; the English, instead of gabbing, will sing the same one or two lines of parodies of well-known tunes, repeatedly. Possibly with gratuitous expletives. English parents explain to their children that raunchy language is okay at a soccer game, but hardly anywhere else.

Another cultural difference the author noted is that all aspects of American professional sports are profit-driven. Culpepper was surprised that English soccer action is not paused every other minute for commercial purposes. He was appalled by the English teams’ shabby locker rooms and disgusting stadium food. Yet, the beer served at American stadiums is less than refined. Also, Culpepper writes that in America, “…people play for one title. They give trophies and junk for conference titles and division titles, sure, but there’s only one champion.” In England, “Premiership clubs play for up to three championships.” There are “cups” to compete for, galore.

Read the book to learn about Culpepper’s encounters with a blue bear, his other observations of English soccer fandom, whether English athletes stack up to their American counterparts in terms of behavior off the field, their salaries, their mobility between teams, and team diversity.