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.

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  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 +.

 

                                        

 

 

The Last Witch in Edinburgh

 I decided to read a fantasy for a change, but books that are historical are my preference.  This book opens in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1824 where they were having a witchcraft hysteria, and hanging women accused of being witches.  It's The Last Witch in Edinburgh.   

                                 

                   

 The author Marielle Thompson is aware that this is alternate history.  According to a Wikipedia article on Witch Persecution in Scotland, the last executions of women for witchcraft happened in  1706 and the last trial of a woman for witchcraft happened in 1727.  I'm not exactly sure why Thompson wanted to situate such events nearly a century later.

Much later in the narrative, an important character is raped while she was a college student, but it didn't go to trial.  This happened in the 21st century.  I learned from A paper published by the government of Scotland that the conviction rate for rape in Scotland is lower than for any other crime.  This is probably why the rape that happened in this novel was never reported to the police.

I was intrigued by a reference to a Clootie Well in this book.  This is a holy well with a tree growing beside it.  Strips of cloth or ribbons are tied to the tree to memorialize a deceased person. The memorial tree established for a murder victim in The Last Witch of Edinburgh seemed similar but there was more investment in it.  There was a portrait of the murder victim and numerous other portraits of deceased people significant to the college students who gathered at the memorial tree.  The tree seemed to become a metaphor for all the grief in that community.  It was very special to them.

I was touched by The Last Witch of Edinburgh, but I tend to want more from a book on an intellectual level. So I considered it very good, but not excellent.

                                         

 

Home By Nightfall: My Musings on a Mystery Taking Place in the Victorian Period

I wanted to have read a mystery in February for the mystery book club that I attend,  so I picked out a mystery from the top of a book pile.   It was Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch.  This is the first book I've read by this author.

                                  

 

The novel takes place during the Victorian period which is one of my least favorite historical contexts. Not only does it contain  the aristocracy of earlier periods, but hypocrisy is rampant.  There is nothing that I find attractive about this era.  So why did I actually read the entire book?  

Maybe it was the fact that Muller, the missing man, was a pianist.  I think I was hoping for some musical content. Alas, there wasn't any. Muller being missing was the pretext for the book.  There wasn't much focus on him as a character or on his professional activities.  

There were moments in Home By Nightfall that amused me.  Charles Lenox , the dectective, had said that his brother Edmund was wasting his time by teaching women how to read.  I enjoyed Edmund's cutting response.  He asked Charles if the time of Molly, Edmund's deceased wife, had been valueless.  He also told Charles, "I shall teach the horses to read if it pleases me."

I learned the origin of the phrase "reading them the Riot Act" from Home By Nightfall.  I already knew that King George I, the first Hanovrian King of England, was afraid that the Jacobite supporters of the previous dynasty would overthrow him.  I first read about Jacobites in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson when I was child.  Stevenson caused me to have a sentimental attachment to Jacobites. Far more recently, I wrote about Jacobites in a review of  a Steve Moretti novel on this blog here.

 I have to say that if Home By Nightfall had been about Jacobites, I would have been more receptive when I read it. Victorian characters put me in a sour mood. I gave it a C grade which I consider the equivalent of two stars.  Fans of the Victorian era may want to disregard my perspective and substitute their own.  

 

                                                                      

 

                                    

 

 

  

Hidden Libraries

 With a degree in library science, no one will be astonished to learn that I love libraries.  Through Hidden Libraries by D. C. Helmuth, I discovered libraries whose existence was totally unknown to me.

                                    

I knew about Little Free Libraries which are small collections on the street.  I didn't know that the first Little Free Library was begun in 2009, and that there are now 75,000 of them in 88 countries.  

I also picked up a book from a Little Free Library for the first time recently.

It was mentioned in Hidden Libraries that two librarians stocked a cart with books that local homeless people said they wanted to read.  I thought that was a wonderful idea.  

I very much disliked the woman who requested The Lord of the Flies "to teach a friend what the world was really like".  When I read The Lord of the Flies, I remembered thinking that it was what the world would be like if it were populated solely by adolescent boys, or people who had the mentality of adolescent boys. 

I discovered that there were cards in the front of library books because you were supposed to sign the card and leave it with library staff.  No one did that anymore.  I think I did it with books I borrowed from my university's library, but never with books from public libraries.  It wasn't expected from users at public libraries.

I was disgusted to learn that in Bogota, Columbia  the wealthy threw books they purchased in the trash after they were finished reading them.  This happened every day!  A man found these books that had been thrown in the trash and established a library with them.  I could never throw a book away myself.  Even if I disliked it, someone else might love it.

This book stated that deaf children were isolated unless they were taught sign language.  This gives the impression that there is a single deaf sign language that is used all over the world.  There are different deaf sign languages in various countries, or even local deaf sign languages.  I even read about two deaf children who created a language to communicate with each other. 

I thought that The Think Differently Book Exchange was an amazing idea.  This collection existed in New Zealand.  It was in a catering refrigerator which was full of books that individuals donated because the books caused them to think differently.  I personally would want to keep books that caused me to think differently.  I would have to buy a second copy of such books to donate.

There were numerous types of libraries mentioned that I haven't discussed here.  This was absolutely fascinating. I considered this a book about alternative libraries and graded it A.