Unfamiliar Fishes

I wanted to learn more about the history of Hawaii.  So I checked out Unfamiliar Fishes  by Sarah Vowell from the library and found out a great deal about Hawaii and history--some of which is more general.  Below is the book's cover. 

                                                 

 

An example of the more general kind of knowledge is where Teddy Roosevelt was when he heard the news that Hawaii was annexed.  If you're curious he was on Cuba.

Getting back to Hawaii-centered information, I discovered an article on Wikipedia dealing with some of the earliest Hawaiian newspapers.  I also found an article about the Iolani Palace which author Sarah Vowell tells us is the only palace in the United States.  It's a national historic landmark and Hawaii is fortunate to have it.  Below is the original Iolani Palace.

                                                     

                                                    Iolani Palace Public Domain                                                                                             Hawaii State Archives--U.S. National Archives 

 One of my favorite Sarah Vowell quotes from Unfamiliar Fishes is "Who was bigger than the biggest kahuna? That would be the King who decided there wouldn't be kahunas anymore." Unfortunately, when I looked up "kahuna", I discovered that Hawaiian is a very complex language.  I suggest that readers who want to know more about the term kahuna should read this definition from an online Hawaiian dictionary.

I also thought the Hawaiian word vog should be mentioned in this review. The Wikipedia article defines it as a form of air pollution caused by volcanic gases.

Apparently, the author Herman Melville was a deserter when he was in the Navy.  When he deserted, he found employment in a bowling alley in Honolulu. He wrote his first book, Typee, when he became a customs inspector.  Typee  was controversial because Melville  exaggerated  how long he stayed in the South Pacific.

I thought it was interesting that the word for wealth in Hawaiian was the word for water spoken twice.  Potable water is probably of tremendous value in Hawaii.  The islands are surrounded by sea water that is not potable.

Hawaii's first fully written constitution in 1840 established a judiciary, but Sarah Vowell tells us that there weren't any lawyers there until 1846 when the first two lawyers arrived.  The first one became the only justice of Hawaii's Supreme Court and the second became Hawaii's attorney general. 

 Sarah Vowell discusses what Queen Liliuokalani wrote in her book , Hawaii's Story: By Hawaii's Queen, about the U.S. annexation of Hawaii. Vowell tells us that Liliuokalani wanted U.S. assistance, not a coup d'etat. 

 Henry Cabot Lodge was a prominent politician of the era in which Hawaii was annexed.  I don't know very much about Lodge, but Vowell's account of his role in the annexation didn't persuade me to find out more about him.  Lodge argued against "the consent of the governed".  It seemed to me that Lodge was not an advocate for democracy.

Vowell ends her book with "every time two Hawaiians really say hello, touching noses, breathing each other in", that's where Hawaii can truly be found.  I found that a touching moment of authenticity.  That's how I was influenced to give this book a B+ which means I thought it was very good. 

                                                      

                                                    

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

  

                                                                    
   

                                                       

 

 

 

                                                   

 

                                               

 

 

 

                                                  

  

                                                  

 

East Jerusalem Noir: Not Very Suspenseful Stories of East Jerusalem

 So I read East Jerusalem Noir edited by Rawya Jarjara Burbara, an anthology of stories taking place in East Jerusalem.  All the stories were written in Arabic and translated into English.  I was expecting them to be mysteries, but they didn't seem very mysterious or suspenseful.  They averaged to a B grade for the anthology.  That means that I thought the anthology was good, but not very good and certainly not excellent.

                                                 

 

The story that stood out was "Fleeing From The Assyrian Soldiers" by Ziad Khadash.  It totally revolutionized my view of the Biblical period.  

The King Melchizedek is said to be the ruler of Salem which was how Jerusalem was referred to before it was conquered by David, the King of the Kingdom of Judah.  In Hebrew Salem could be Shaleym which means complete, or it could be Shalom which means peace.  Melchizedek could be translated as "my king is just" which is a justificatory name.  

Since Y's often become J's , and the "Sh" sound often becomes an S in transliteration, Jerusalem could originally have been Yerusha L'am in Hebrew which would mean the inheritance of the nation. This is educated speculation on my part.   Of course, King David conquered Jerusalem.  It wasn't an inheritance. 

The original inhabitants of Jerusalem were a Canaanite tribe called Jebusites. The city was called Jebus.  Yebus means "trampled place" according to Ziad Khadash.  I'd imagine that the city was trampled when King David's army invaded.  Khadash depicts the Jebusites as continuing to live in Jebus during the reign of King David.  Bathsheba, who was the mother of Solomon, David's successor, is alleged to be a Jebusite in Khadash's tale. This would mean that the royal house of the Kings of Judah was part Jebusite.  From the Biblical perspective, that's quite extraordinary.   

I also found a story called "An Astronaut in Jerusalem" by Iyad Shamasnah memorable. In this tale,  a boy who wanted to be an astronaut drew galaxies and constellations.  The boy's father died while he was attending al-Quds University.  When he returned home after graduation, he sat on his father's grave and wept. As a result of his father's death, he had inherited the family home.  The Israeli settlement commander gave him a large check in return for giving up the house.  He refused the payment.  He actually ripped up the check.  He probably could have gone anywhere in the world with that money, but his family's home meant more to him. Would I have ripped up the check? Probably not, but I understood the protagonist's perspective and could feel empathy for him,

 

                                                  

 

                                        

                                                       

                                                

                          

                                           

The Fallen: A History About The Women of the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland

 

The Fallen:The Lost Girls of Ireland's Magdalene's Legacy of Silence is a historical volume by Louise Brangan.  It's taken me 11 days to read  a book this time.  That's a good deal less than the book I reviewed last on this blog.  I'm not as speedy as I once was, but I'm picking up the pace.

                                                   

  

Brangan, the author of this study, is Irish. There is a tremendous emphasis on Irish events and associations.   The organization Justice For Magdalenes is mentioned a number of times.  There is also a very thorough Wikipedia article on the Magdalene Laundries, which is the main focus of The Fallen.    

Yet who are the Magdalenes in the context of Irish history and culture?   They are women and girls who were rejected by their families and sent away to live in total separation from everyone they knew.  You would think this meant that the Irish are a people who value conformity, but then why were there so many of these Laundries throughout Ireland?  The women and girls who were sent to the Laundries are portrayed as unconventional in The Fallen.

When I read about ancient Celtic Ireland in Peter Tremayne's Fidelma mysteries, it seemed to me that the Irish of that period were creative, rebellious and unpredictable.  I apparently never blogged about Fidelma and I never reviewed any of the books on Goodreads.  This means that I read them pre-Goodreads.  So I can't draw on material from Goodreads for this review.  Fortunately, I have notes in my journal.   

I thought the mass exodus of Irish people to the United States in the 1840's was due to poverty and starvation.  Since it happened during the Great Famine, this was true but it wasn't the entire truth. Brangan tells us that Protestants, intellectuals and women left due to increasing Catholic  religious intensity.  This is another dimension of Irish history.

 Brangan brought The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien to her readers' attention.  It was banned.  Brangan thought it was banned because it took the perspective of the women and girls who'd been sent away to the Laundries.  I recall reading it some time ago and not understanding why it was significant.  Brangan made me realize why this book was so controversial in Ireland.  According to Brangan, Edna O'Brien found a copy of The Country Girls in her family's outhouse.  Her mother had put it there.

As I read in this book about a commission in Ireland to investigate the industrial schools and how the government had to redress what happened to the women and girls who'd been sent to the Magdalene Laundries, I was continually shaking my head because it felt totally wrong headed that the Irish state was being held entirely responsible.  Brangan did eventually bring this up and chalked it up to the separation of church and state.

The Fallen educated me about the Irish health system too.  It's apparently a combined system. Although most health care is paid through taxes, there are some things that taxpayers need to pay for themselves.

Some survivors have said that the Magdalene Laundries were "Ireland's Auschwitz".  It's more than a bit much to call it that.  This wasn't a genocide.  I'm willing to call genocides what they were.  The Jewish Holocaust wasn't the only one.   The consignment of women and girls who didn't fit in to society to the system of Magdalene Laundries was certainly a tragedy and it was Ireland's tragedy.   

 

                            

                                                                               

                                                    

                                            

 

                                                          

The Tenth in The Bangalore Detectives Club Series

 This is the first book of August for me.  It took me twenty days to read.

When protagonist Kaveri came to the conclusion that all the murder victims were killed by the same person because they were stabbed in the chest, I thought that was very odd. I would have thought an investigator with Kaveri's experience would have been more insightful. Isn't stabbing people in the chest a fairly common means of killing people?  I certainly see it a great deal in mysteries.   If she'd examined the crime scenes and come to conclusions about attributes of the killer or killers, I'd have been impressed.

                                                  

I learned that in this novel that the Education Board couldn't come to a conclusion about whether women should be allowed to study science.  I studied science in college myself.  I took several courses going beyond the science requirement.  I hadn't expected to become fascinated with the more advanced science classes.  So if I were living in India during that era, I would have voted for women studying science.

I read about the history of a character named Suman.  His mother was an acrobat who had been a circus star.  She even trained her dog to do somersaults.  This made him the world's only somersaulting dog.  His parents eloped because they were an inter-caste marriage which is still legally, socially and religiously problematic in 21st century India.  I found a website with examples of inter-caste marriages at ten real stories. 

  We learn that some circus performers were justifying stealing from wealthy audience members on the grounds that they weren't being paid enough.  This is a frequent justification for employee theft. I would think that forming a labor union would be a more constructive response to poor pay and conditions.  Some did do that during the 1920's which was the period in which this book largely took place.  

Toward the end of the book, Kaveri eventually realized that she was pregnant and called it "the best gift of all".

The Historical Note that was appended after the end of  the novel's text contained some rather odd facts.  For example, pencil sharpeners weren't in general use in India until the 1970's. Most Indians used a razor blade to keep their pencils sharp.

I gave this book a B+ for the well realized historical context. 

                                   

                                       

                                                

 

 

 

For America's Birthday 2026

 I began reading this book that the author subtitles A Biography of the First Amendment on the 4th of July which is indeed America's birthday. I purchased Freedom For The Thought That We Hate by Anthony Lewis at a public library's bookstore for one dollar.  George Washington's portrait appears on every one dollar bill.  By that measure, a dollar could be considered an appropriately patriotic price.

 

  Representative John Allen of Connecticut said in the John Adams administration's House of Representatives that newspapers in Philadelphia were attempting to "raise an insurrection", but they were actually urging people to vote for Democratic Republicans.  This was the opposition party.  The Federalists were in power. 

 So leaping to the 20th century,  I was reading internet articles about criticizing the U.S. President and discovered what happened during Wilson's Presidency.  Woodrow Wilson prosecuted about  4,000 Americans under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.  Hundreds were deported even though they weren't illegal immigrants or even convicted of any crime.   See an article about The Palmer Raids. I had no idea that this sort of thing had happened historically. I was flabbergasted.  The Palmer Raids were not taught in school when I was of high school age. 

The most famous person arrested during The Palmer Raids was Emma Goldman.  The link is to her Wikipedia article.  Below is a public domain photo of Emma Goldman from her Wikipedia article.

                                                       

   It's mentioned in the Emma Goldman Wikipedia article that she was interviewed by feminist reporter, Nellie Bly.  I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that interview.  I recommend a novel dealing with Nellie Bly called The Girl Puzzle by Kate Braithwaite that I reviewed here .                                                    

 When the U.S. entered WWI, a mob in Lewiston, Montana went into the high school and burned all the textbooks for a class on studying the German language.  I suppose that the Americans who would be spying on the Germans would already have mastered their language.  A pardon petition for the German textbook burners was circulated among law students at the University of Montana in Missoula.  Yet it wasn't until 2006 that Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer pardoned 78 dead Montanans convicted of sedition in 1918. 

I admit that I have resisted the idea that FDR was responsible for Japanese American internment, but author Anthony Lewis is absolutely certain of it.  I think that FDR would have privately considered Japanese American internment barbaric.  Even if he thought it was necessary, surely Eleanor Roosevelt would have been opposed to it.

The alternative to internment for Japanese Americans during WWII was enlisting in the military.  No Japanese American who fought in WWII was ever charged with disloyalty.  A number of them were honored as heroes by the U.S. military, and by French civilians that some of them rescued.

 In a discussion of the definition of obscenity in this book, Justice Brennan was quoted as saying that it wasn't obscene if there was something that redeemed it or had "social importance".  Now I know where the phrase in Tom Lehrer's song "Smut" came from --"To be smut it must be utterly without redeem or social importance."

Author Lewis discussed politicians wanting to ban "a film like The Miracle."  I'd never heard of it, so I had to look it up.  It was the focus of Burstyn v. Wilson (1952)  dealing with a movie about a girl who thought the man who seduced her was St. Joseph and that the baby she gives birth to as a result of the seduction was Jesus.  There were Catholic protests demanding that the film be banned.  The Supreme Court said that banning it because it was religiously objectional was a violation of the First Amendment. 

  Professor Paul A. Freund of Harvard Law School is quoted as saying "They say money talks.  I thought that was the problem, not the solution."  In 2007 the Supreme Court decided that restrictions on campaign spending violated the First Amendment.  If that is how our political system is going to be run, we will have a country we don't recognize eventually.

                                               

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                       

                                                

 

                                                     

                                                        

Memoir Dealing With Gender Issues

 Journalist Susan Faludi's father had a realization about his gender identity.  Although she was born biologically male, they were psychologically female.  S/he had sex reassignment surgery and wanted to become known as Stephanie. This was an important aspect of Susan Faludi's own life story.  I purchased this memoir from the used section of an independent bookstore.

                                               

As a photographer, Stephanie Faludi made a career out of altering images.  I'd like to comment that image alteration has become much more prevalent with the recent usage of artificial intelligence. 

 I would also like to observe that Stephanie Faludi's photographic career was about deception.  Another deceptive practice that Stephanie enjoyed was switching price tags on items at stores, and called this "getting away with things".  In contrast, my own father was a tremendous rule follower.  He never tried to get away with things.  He thought that was wrong, and taught me to be a follower of rules.  If people don't follow basic rules, society descends into chaos.

During Susan's childhood, Stephanie had been violent toward Susan's mother who had reported Stephanie's aggression to the police.  The police eventually told Stephanie to leave the family home.  This was after twenty years of marriage.

Susan Faludi was related to the Grunberger family.  Leopold Grunberger owned a large lumber company in Hungary.  He served in World War I in the Austro- Hungarian Army which was an ally of Germany.  He was also a Hungarian Jew who was opposed to Zionism.

In this context, we need to understand the Hungarian Jewish community during this period.  Hungary was making a special effort to preserve Hungarian.  Jews were encouraged to speak Hungarian, assimilate and become citizens.  Jews were called "Hungarians of the Mosaic persuasion".   Yet the "blood libel" about Christian blood being an ingredient in Passover matzot was part of Hungarian culture until the late 19th century.  I guess non-Jewish Hungarians never saw matzot.  There is no red tinge on them.

 I learned from Faludi that the nephew of Zionist leader Theodore Hertzel was briefly the Mayor of Budapest.  

 Attila Petschauer was a Jewish Hungarian who competed on behalf of Hungary in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam and won the silver medal in the individual saber competition.  Hungarians lionized him as the "Magyar Musketeer".  In the 1932 Olympics he also participated, but did not win an individual medal.  In 1943, Petschauer was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp in Davidovka, Ukraine where he died. 

I discovered this blog review unfinished about a month later and decided to finish it, but my focus has been on the Jewish connection rather than the gender identity of  Faludi's father. I originally became interested in Faludi's memoir because Faludi's father transitioned to female.  Yet my attention scattered due to difficulties in my personal life. Mea culpa!  Still, now I can say that my readers now have another completed review.

                                 

                                                    

                                                       

 

 

 

  

 

                                         

A Women's History of the Ancient World

I acquired The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World by Daisy Dunn from a public library.  I hoped that I would learn from this book, though I also expected that there would be a great deal of content that I already knew.  When I got around to reading it, it took me ten days. 

                                               

    

Women were allowed to run in footraces  at the Olympics every four years in honor of the Goddess Hera.  The women ran on a slightly shorter track than the men.  In high school, I ran the mile on my school's track because my father had done it.  It wasn't an official event.  I ran before school, so that the boys wouldn't be using the track.  I was caught because I stayed later once than I should have.  The coach clocked me and said it was a shame that I couldn't compete.  There was no girl's track team.  In gym class, the girls ran the quarter of a mile.  I was, of course, the fastest.  When I went to college, there wasn't any women's track team there either.  This was in the early 1970's. 

    In  ancient Rome, women weren't allowed to wear colorful garments.  The married women engaged in a protest. They blocked the streets leading to the Forum.  The women then picketed the home of the Brutus family.  I never heard of these protests by Roman women.  I identify with these women as someone who has been a protestor beginning when I was teenager protesting the War in Vietnam.

This is a short review because I knew most of the content in this book, but what I did include felt significant to me.  I'm going to give this four stars on Goodreads.