Spell Freedom: Voting Rights and the Civil Rights Movement

When I bought Spell Freedom by Elaine Wells, I didn't realize how important it would turn out to be.  The focus of the book is on voting registration and election participation in the Deep South.

                                                         

                                                                                                                 

I learned about the origins of the song "We Shall Overcome".  It was originally a church hymn with different lyrics.  I first learned this song in Hebrew in which the title is "Ahnachnu Nitgaber"

 Myles Horton  founded a school to teach Black citizens what they needed to know in order to vote.  During the era of McCarthyism , the Horton school was considered to be communist.  The school didn't teach communism.  It taught literacy and basic knowledge about citizenship. 

I was impressed to learn that Eleanor Roosevelt had her own newspaper column.  No other First Lady had a newspaper column either before or since.

The lynching of Emmett Till was mentioned. I had previously written about Emmett Till on this blog in a review of  Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes.

The Horton school survived and continued to be a resource for Black voters in the South.   At one point Nelson Rockefeller provided the Horton school with funds.

 

                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

Renters Unite!

I'm happy that I'm still able to read two books a month.  I did finish this book, Renters Unite by Jacob Stringer, in May.  So it's the second book I read in May.  Yet in the context of this blog, it counts as a June post.   

I received Renters Unite, which deals with tenant organizing, from the publisher. I then prioritized it because I'm interested in the issue.

                                                   

While doing research on Renters Unite for this review, I learned that single room occupancy residency hotels (SROs) don't exist anymore.  I did live in one briefly some time ago.  The lack of SROs has probably increased homelessness in the United States.  I would think that tenant advocates would want to keep such an option available.  People who live in hotels have different payment arrangements than tenants who live in an apartment or a room in a privately owned home. They pay the manager by the week rather than by the month, and probably have no clue who the hotel owner might be. I would think it's unsustainable to actually live in a hotel on a permanent basis.                                                     

The author, Jacob Stringer, is British.  This is why I am bringing up his use of the term "neoliberal". The American term "liberal" and the British "neoliberal" could be considered opposites in terms of the American political spectrum.  The American liberal is on the left side of that spectrum, and the British "neoliberal" is on the right side of the American spectrum.   In fact , it seems to me that British neoliberalism is the equivalent of the laissez-faire capitalism of the author Ayn Rand. ( The last time I dealt with Ayn Rand on this blog, it was in a post dealing with a collection of essays on Joss Whedon TV series here.)

I discovered that the UK has a Libertarian Party which would have been neoliberal.  According to the Wikipedia article dealing with this party, in 2008 Libertarian Party UK sent all the members of Parliament  a copy of George Orwell's 1984 with the note "This book was a warning, not a blueprint." 

There was a tenant union in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I know something about many of the Jews who resided in Crown Heights.  The Hasidim (a type of Jewish sects that emphasized religious zeal rather than scholarship) who lived in Crown Heights wouldn't have been involved in tenant unions.  Their leaders, known as Rebbes rather than Rabbis, would not have approved of such a secular activity. 

One of the ten demands of the Sindicat de Llogators, a tenant organization in Spain, was that empty properties must become public housing.  I expect that most, if not all, empty properties would be in poor condition.  They would require a great deal of work to become habitable.  So they would either continue to sit empty, or the government would sell them to private parties who would build expensive housing with high rents.

Another of the ten demands is ending property speculation "by legislating its tools out of existence".  The most important tool of property speculation in this era is the internet.  I don't think it would be a good idea to legislate the internet out of existence.  So long as the internet continues to exist, doing away with websites where property speculation takes place would be a game of whack a mole.  For every property speculation website that is made illegal, a hundred or a thousand more would pop up.  

Then there's the demand that private landlords must charge the same rent as the government charges for public housing to poor families in danger of eviction.  The landlords would claim that they'd go bankrupt.  They won't have enough funds for property taxes or making repairs if they charged the same rent as is charged for public housing.  They would sell their properties to the government, and move to a country where they could charge as much they wanted.  That country would probably be the United States.  

                                                   

                                                "Rent is both the result of inequality

                                                     and a multiplier of inequality!"                                                                                                          

                                                                 Jacob Stringer 

 

Later in this book I read about MST, Brazil's Landless Workers Movement.   They believe that land occupations improve people's lives.  They're converting jungle that is owned by no one into privately owned plantations where they can grow crops for export.

There is no consideration for the multiplicity of species that have lived in that jungle for countless millennia, and the impact on indigenous peoples who have also lived in that jungle.  The destruction of the jungle also has a huge impact on climate change for our entire planet.  We actually needed that jungle. So what seems like a wealth multiplier for Brazil has devastating impact on all of us. 

 

                                                       

     

                                                                        

 

  

Spirit Crossing

I've previously read two books by William Kent Krueger. They are This Tender Land which I reviewed here and The River We Remember which I reviewed on this blog here .   I obtained my copies of both books from the facilitator of the formerly F2F book club that I now attend online. 

 Apparently, Blogger has decided to make important formatting options less available since the last time I wrote a review here on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer.  It's just an inconvenience, but I wish they hadn't done that.

 Spirit Crossing is my third Krueger novel which I just finished. It's #20 in the Cork O'Conner thriller series, but I hadn't read any of the previous books in the series. I am not the sort of person who reads in order.  Reading out of order has never been a problem for me.  

I learned that Spirit Crossing, the title of this novel, is a sacred place on the Jiibay River in Minnesota.  Jiibay means ghost in the language of the local indigenous people.   There are protests over an oil pipeline in this area. 

Cork O'Connor, the series protagonist, is a former sheriff in Aurora, Minnesota.  He is part Irish and part Anishinaabe.  The Wikipedia article about this native people can be found at Anishinaabe, but Ojibwe is frequently used as this people's name throughout Spirit Crossing. 

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow confused matters with his narrative poem Hiawatha.  Hiawatha is supposed to have been an Ojibwe warrior, but Longfellow's poem was about the formation of the League of the Iroquois in what is now New York.  I'm not sure why a Midwestern Ojibwe would have been a central character in such a narrative.  

But let's get back to the book I'm discussing. This is going to be my complete review of Spirit Crossing. I will be posting a briefer version on Goodreads.

                                                       

 

Cork O'Connor's grandson, whose legal name is Aaron Smalldog O'Connor, is nicknamed Waaboo which means little rabbit in Ojibwe.  Waaboo is only seven years old, yet he is a pivotal character in Spirit Crossing.  He is known by his nickname throughout the novel.  Waaboo is believed to be paranormally gifted.

There was a young woman from a wealthy family named Olivia Hamilton who had disappeared.  The FBI was involved in the search for her because it was thought that she might have been taken to another state.  Olivia's family was offering $50K for information leading to the finding of Olivia.  

When a grave was found in a wooded area, Waaboo said that the woman buried there was lost and that she looked like an Ojibwe.  If this was true, this meant that she couldn't be Olivia Hamilton.  The FBI lost interest.  Waaboo's father, Daniel, took Waaboo home while Cork O'Connor stayed at the grave site.

I learned the identity of the woman who was buried in that grave on page 140.  In most crime novels the victim or victims would be mentioned during the first chapter.  To have it take more than a hundred pages is highly unusual. This woman had been missing, and no one cared enough to report it to the authorities.  Daniel thought no one reported her missing because she was Native American.

Tragedy played a central role in this novel.  I tend to think that there is enough sadness in real life to want to see very much of it in fiction.

 

                                                         

  

 

 

 

 

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu Tell Us How To Be Happy

  I have read a book with the Dalai Lama's name on the cover before.  It was A Call For Revolution which was co-written with Sophia Stril-Rever.  I reviewed it on this blog here.    

                                     

The Dalai Lama has what seems to be a precursor book called The Art of Happiness written with the psychiatrist Dr. Howard C. Cutler.  I have not read The Art of Happiness, however.  So I can't be sure how comparable it is to The Book of Joy. Both books do have similar themes. 

The context of the coming together of the authors of The Book of Joy was that Archbishop Tutu joined the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala because the South African government wouldn't give the Dalai Lama a visa. The Archbishop also met exiled Tibetans in Dharamsala.  He wanted to assure them that they could take back Tibet just as Black South Africans had managed to reclaim South Africa from those who had imposed apartheid on them.  

In addition to the Tibetan Buddhist and Christian aspects, The Book of Joy addresses the scientific study of meditation.  The Dalai Lama said that he found the scientific approach to meditation inspiring.  

We learn from The Book of Joy that the Archbishop Tutu's daughter, Mpho, is a lesbian who sought to become an Anglican minister. Unfortunately, she was forced to choose between her marriage to a woman and her church.  The Anglican Church officially does not allow its clergy to have same sex marriages. Yet the Episcopalian Church of the United States, which was originally derived from the Anglican Church, does allow its clergy to marry members of the same sex.  This is why Archbishop Tutu's daughter, Mpho Tutu Van Furth chose to become an Episcopalian priest.  The Archbishop supported his daughter's choices.

I had previously read about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was mentioned in this book. I had first encountered it in the novel How The Water Falls by K.P. Kollenborn which I reviewed here, and in the novel He Does Not Die A Death of Shame by Jack Hoffmann which I reviewed here.  This commission dealt with testimony from witnesses and with applications for amnesty from those who violated the rights of individuals during the struggle against apartheid. 

The commission was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.   I believe that Archbishop Tutu would have played his role in chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with integrity. When I started this book, I knew nothing about Desmond Tutu other than his name.  Now I respect him. I know now that he received the Nobel Peace Prize.  I am also aware that he is deceased.  This is public information.  I don't believe that the concept of spoilers applies to non-fiction books especially when the facts involved are well known.

You should read this book for the synergy between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu.   I am convinced that together they sparked insights that might not exist otherwise. 

I was amused by the Dalai Lama's agile riposte to the Chinese Communist Party's insistence that they want to find the 15th Dalai Lama.  He said let them recognize the reincarnations of their own deceased Communist leaders before they become involved with finding the next Dalai Lama.  He mentions recently dead Chinese leaders.  I'd love to know about the reincarnation of Chairman Mao myself.  

This book is intended for general readers, not academic scholars. There are no footnotes or endnotes.  I also searched in vain for an index or a bibliography.  If the readers of this blog do want academic scholarship on the Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu, they might search the websites of local college libraries for such content.  If they have no borrowing privileges there, they may still actually go to the library.  They will probably be able to be view it there.  I have gone to the libraries of universities that I don't attend and examined books on the premises.  Academic librarians have no problems with courteous users who respect the rules of the library.

                                  

Resurrection Walk: A Complex Legal Thriller

I wanted to have a mystery or thriller to start off April.  I had recently purchased Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly from the public library's bookstore, and it seemed to fill the bill. I've never read Connelly before.  Goodreads informs me that this is #7 in the Lincoln Lawyer series and the 38th book in which Harry Bosch appears. Those who are RIO types (Read in Order) would probably tell me to start with the first Harry Bosch book, The Black Echo, but I'm an UOOOR (Unrepentant Out Of Order Reader).  These are abbreviations used on the Mystery/Thriller Group on Goodreads.  Those who have been reading this blog for some time may have noticed that reading in order is unimportant to me, and that I don't choose my books on that basis. 

I looked up The Black Echo on Goodreads and discovered that there is backstory on Harry Bosch that may be significant.  So I thought I really should read The Black Echo and placed a hold on it at my public library.

                                   

Since I have an interest in deaf issues, I took note that Harry Bosch is partially deaf.  It apparently isn't central to the character.  His hearing loss is only brought up one time.  I was surprised to read that it was due to his cancer treatment.  Bosch has leukemia .  I ran a search on hearing impairment and cancer treatment. I discovered an article on the subject from Harvard Medical School  here.   I welcome being educated by my review process.  Hearing impairment came up because Harry Bosch can't hear pings from his phone.  So he relies on vibration for incoming calls. 

Harry Bosch investigates for lawyer Mickey Haller who has the billboard slogan "Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee."  A character wonders how Haller gets away with that slogan.  I realized that it implies possible unethical behavior--manufacturing reasonable doubt in a case that's really cut and dried.  Haller and Bosch are half-brothers.

Harry Bosch's daughter asked him to stop working for Mickey Haller, and focus on his recovery from cancer. Bosch is participating in a clinical trial that Haller discovered.  Other side effects of his experimental cancer treatment included mild nausea and vertigo. Bosch told his daughter that working for Haller made him feel better emotionally.  When he isn't doing any work for Haller, Bosch feels useless and depressed.

The murder victim in this case, Roberto Sanz, had a shootout with gang members before his death.  Yet Roberto's ex-wife, Lucinda, had been charged.  Lucinda had pleaded nolo contendere which means no contest.  The case wouldn't be brought to trial with that plea, and Lucinda went to prison.  Bosch didn't think Lucinda Sanz was guilty. It seemed to me that Lucinda wouldn't even have been aware of the option of pleading nolo contendere unless she'd been instructed to do it. 

 The case was brought to trial after Lucinda had served more than five years of her sentence. At that point, there was considerable doubt that Lucinda had killed her ex-husband, Roberto.

The verdict in this case would be a huge spoiler.  So I definitely won't include it in this review.  I was never certain of the result of the trial until the verdict was announced.  There were a number of plot twists  that made Resurrection Walk a superior legal thriller.

 

                                      

 

 

 

 

Miracles and Wonder

 I do occasionally read Christian theology, particularly if a woman wrote it.  I don't recall when I read author Elaine Pagels previously because it was a pre-computer read.  I'm pretty sure that it was The Gnostic Gospels, and that I was impressed with it.  Since I have no record of reading it, I don't have any further remarks.

 I recently finished reading Pagels' book Miracles and Wonder.  I received a copy from Net Galley for review.  So I'm reviewing it here and will post an excerpted version of the review on Goodreads as I am in the habit of doing. 

                                     

                                           

Each chapter addresses a theological question based on the gospels.  Pagels thinks that Jesus' followers were "papering over inconvenient facts".  One problem was Jesus being regarded as "illegitimate". So the early Christians decided that his mother was made pregnant by God.  Other problems  were Jesus being tossed into a common grave and his rising from the dead.  He also shouldn't be seen as a failed Jewish messiah who never established a kingdom in Israel, as the Jewish messiah is expected to do.  Yet Pagels' Jesus really needs no actual kingdom because he lives within us.

She tells us that when she quotes Greek translations of the Christian Gospels, they are her own translations.  They literally are Greek to me.  I know no Greek, and would therefore have no way of checking or confirming Pagels' translations.

This author believes that people are continually being attracted to Jesus because his stories are revised to respond to whatever the current issues are in each era.

One of my issues is egalitarianism.  In this book, there are numerous quotes from Psalms that focus on egalitarianism and justice.  Though I do have to say that Psalms is attributed to a King.  Monarchy is not an egalitarian institution, nor a particularly just one.

Pagels points out that if Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph, he can't be the son of God.  I actually don't care about Jesus' parentage myself.

Pagels thinks that Jesus called himself "the Son of Man" in order to avoid calling himself either the son of God or a messiah.  Pagels says that "Son of Man" is a cover for his true identity, like Clark Kent was for Superman.

It piqued my interest when Pagels said that the Kingdom of God might be "an earthly kingdom with divine values".   To me, this description points right at Tibet.   I'm a fan of novels that take place in Tibet--most notably by Eliot Pattison.  I'd like to call my readers' attention to a review of Pattison's Bones of the Earth that I posted to this blog here.

But let's get back to Jesus.  Some of Jesus' miracles can be explained.  Pagels tells us about an instance from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus brought back a girl from the dead. Yet she may have been in a coma.  Coma comes from the Greek word meaning "to sleep".  Jesus tells her in Aramaic "Little girl, get up."  She rises immediately and begins to walk.  

 Jesus would often tell people, "Your faith has healed you." Pagels wonders if these healings happened as a result of the placebo effect.  That seems likely to me. 

Sometimes Pagels makes statements that I know to be inaccurate or confused. For example, she says that the Romans re-named Israel as Judea.   

After the reign of King Solomon, the Jews had two kingdoms.  They were the Kingdom of Judea and the Kingdom of Israel.  They were two different territories geographically.  The Kingdom of  Judea's capital was Jerusalem, and the Kingdom of Israel's capital was Samaria. This comes from the biblical Books of Prophets. 

 Later, when the people of the Kingdom of Judea went into exile in Babylon, the people of the Kingdom of Israel stayed in Palestine. The practices of the Judeans evolved in Babylon by becoming much more codified.  The practices of the Kingdom of Israel became more polytheistic, and therefore no longer recognizable as Jewish.  The Kingdom of Israel was eventually conquered by the Assyrians.  Its people became thoroughly assimilated by their conquerors.                                                                   
When the Persians conquered Babylon, the Jews living in Babylon were encouraged to return to where they had lived in Judea.  Many of them did so, though a great many remained in Babylon. 

The four paragraphs above this one are the historical background that Pagels either didn't know or chose not to include.

I am bemused by Pagels' statement that stories of Jesus feeding people "strips the gospel narratives of meaning".  Generosity may not be a miracle, but it is significant.  Can't Jesus be both a messiah and generous?  It doesn't invalidate the claim of being a messiah, and in fact makes him even more worthy of that title.  

Pagels wonders what is left of the Jesus story when the legends and myths are stripped away.  Well, that's easy.  There have been some really great men who have benefited humanity since Jesus.  Some of them were certainly inspired by Jesus.  The Reverend Martin Luther King comes to mind for both me and Pagels.  His stature needs no miracle stories to assure him a place in history.  I think the same can be said of Jesus.  

I discovered from this book that the artist Marc Chagall painted crucifixions .  Previously,  I'd only seen Jewish identified Chagall paintings.   Pagels specifically mentions The White Crucifixion.  The link provided is from marcchagall.net.

I also learned from Pagels that the majority of the Dalits of India are Christians.  This isn't surprising since they were vilified as Untouchables in Hinduism for so many centuries.   

I found out from this book that there is a South African movie called The Son of Man.  It interprets the story of Jesus in terms of the struggle against apartheid.  That's a fascinating approach, but Pagels reveals that it depicts Mary Magdalene negatively.  She also discusses a British film called Mary Magdalene but comments I saw online dissuaded me from seeing it.

A book on the bibliography called The Cross and the Lynching Tree drew my interest.  I intend to read it, but I'm not certain when I can get to it. 

I thought that Miracles and Wonder was conceptually interesting, but I was surprised by what Pagels didn't seem to know. So I'm giving it four stars on Goodreads.

 

                                 

 

 

 

 

                                  

 

 

Red Flag Warning: California Wildfires, Evacuations and Climate Change

  I received a review copy of the essay anthology Red Flag Warning from Edelweiss, a website that distributes books to reviewers in advance of publication.                                  
                                     

 Red Flag Warning deals with the ongoing tragedy of California wildfires.  People losing their homes to the fires and having to evacuate is the most important news story for Californians.  Everyone is wondering if their area will be the next to burn.

Some local firefighters watched their own homes burn. 

To learn more about the background of the area described in this book, I looked up Taylorsville which is officially a part of Plumas County, California with a population of 150.  Red Flag Warning mentions that the local tavern displayed a mural of the flag of the proposed state of Jefferson. This implies that at least some of the residents would like to secede from California. 

Below is an image of the Jefferson state flag:

                              

Dan Kearns was regarded as the leader of those in Taylorsville who refused to evacuate in the face of the Dixie Fire and the much smaller  Fly Fire advancing toward the town. It seemed to me that Dan Kearns was being romanticized as a "frontiersman"  from the Wild West, but Kearns didn't make such claims about himself.  He said he was "just a guy" who was a local fire volunteer.  

When I read that those in the evacuation camps were getting sick from smoke inhalation, it seemed to me that the camps were too close to the fires. Admittedly, the Dixie Fire was the largest single source fire in California history.  Yet I really think the camps should have been further away.     

The author of that particular essay thinks that people watch news about their disaster for entertainment.  I watch and am reading about your disaster wondering when I'll have to evacuate myself.  I don't think my area is immune to disaster. I also don't think I'm the only one who has that fear.

I was particularly interested in reading about incarcerated firefighters. Incarcerated firefighters are one third of California's firefighting force.  They earn $2-$5 per day which becomes $1-$2 per hour while they are fighting an active fire.

 I found the interview with formerly incarcerated firefighter Brandon Smith illuminating.  He was from gang territory in Los Angeles County.   Smith was trained to fight fires in prison and became employed as a firefighter after he was released. He was the first formerly incarcerated firefighter to become a professional firefighter.  Brandon Smith initially refused to be a firefighter, but he liked the idea of serving the public when he'd been called a "public nuisance".

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3/5/2025 Important Note

I have learned since reading this book that Brandon Smith lost his home in Altadena to the  Eaton Fire.  I think this man is a genuine hero and that he deserves support.  I generally don't put financial solicitations on this blog but I thought that those who are inclined to contribute should be aware that there is a  Go Fund Me Page for Brandon Smith.

                     **********************

  Smith told interviewer Dani Burlison that many localities require that firefighters be certified as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs).  You can't become an EMT if you have two felony convictions and if you have one felony conviction, you may not be eligible for EMT training until 5-10 years after your sentence is served.

Since there is a shortage of firefighters in California, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that formerly incarcerated firefighters "without any issues" could apply to have their felony convictions expunged.  I would assume that no issues means that the formerly incarcerated firefighter hadn't committed any crimes, or been charged with any since being released from prison.

As fire swept through Southern California, Margaret Elysia Garcia, the author of that particular essay,  said that she was thinking of  deceased science fiction author Octavia Butler, who grew up in Pasadena and is buried in Altadena which was partly burned.  Her novel Parable of the Sower deals with the impact of climate change, and predicts a similar political situation to the one we have now.  There is a scene in Parable of the Sower in which the protagonist was walking on Highway 20 through Lake County, and both sides of the highway are burning. Garcia was re-reading that scene on the first day of the Valley Fire.  I can imagine the horror that Garcia would have been feeling as fiction was fast becoming fact.                                        

I found a chart of  The Top 20 Most Destructive California Wildfires.  I note that the Eaton and Palisades wildfires,which are listed as the second and third most destructive, were 2025 wildfires.  They are 100% contained, but their causes are still under investigation.

This book is very significant and had a powerful impact on me.  I'm giving it a grade of A +.