Review: The Teachers
The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Diane Ravitch called this book “deeply informed about the nobility, rewards, and struggles of the teaching profession” and I enthusiastically agree. I have known teaching from the inside as a 40-year veteran and as a mentor for journalism teachers. Since retiring in 2011, I have heard horror stories from those still in the field about the growing challenges faced by today’s teachers. This book documents that, and offers much more.
By following several individual teachers, informed by extensive first-hand observation and in-depth interviewing, this book tells the story of a single school year. The author is not only an excellent reporter, but she also served as a long-term substitute teacher. Although the book is not based on her own experiences, working as a teacher gives her real credibility and context.
The struggle of the teachers at the heart of this story is nothing short of heroic. Facing uncaring administrators, demanding and often uncooperative parents, over-crowded and under-resourced classrooms, they endure and prevail.
Teachers don’t need to read this book – they know what its like to serve – but all the rest of us do. This is real evidence that refutes the current false political narrative of failing schools and uncaring educators.
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More Less
Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interesting things happen to Arthur Less. He is the lovable central character of this follow-up novel to the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Less (2017). Can we call him a protagonist? I’m not sure as he seems to be carried along with the action in this novel rather than initiating it, but it’s a fun trip either way.
The story is both a journey and a love story, using a most interesting narration by a character (Freddy Pelu) who stands mostly outside the novel’s action. There is also a promise here that we haven’t seen the last of either Arthur Less or Freddy, and I’ll eagerly be waiting for the next book to see where they take me next.
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Heavy book a great read
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There are so many reasons to recommend this book. First there are the two compelling story lines. The first takes place in the present time, as two historians discover a trove of historical documents in a seventeenth century London home under renovation. The second is the story of the creation of those documents in the late 1600s. This backstory features a refugee Jewish population who escaped persecution in Portugal under the inquisition. These are also the plague years in London, and this adds interest and a connection to our own pandemic.
The author alternates between two sets of characters in the chapters of this big book letting us learn about them before the plot lines unfold and eventually merge in the most interesting ways.
The skillful handling of these two narratives, beautiful writing, historical insight and philosophical thinking are richly deserving of my rating of five stars.
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Braiding Sweetgrass
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an amazing book. It’s title and subtitle describe it well. It is so well written that it easily earns my five-star rating. The Pulitzer Prize winning Overstory introduced me to scientific findings that establish the abilities of trees to communicate with each other, and this book takes that a step further.
This book teaches us much about the world view of indigenous cultures in North America and how the earth and its plants are equal citizens along with us in the world. Fundamental to this world view is being grateful to the earth and its plants and animals for the food, shelter and medicine that we need to survive. Another fundamental concept it that the key to long-term survival is to take what the earth readily offers us rather than greedily exploiting it for financial gain that mostly benefits a few and is destructive to both the earth and its citizens.
The book is arranged in sections that develop concepts systematically, and each chapter is a gem of an essay that is both beautiful and profound. The author often roots her essays in a personal experience: “I can see my face reflected in a dangling drop. The fish-eye lens gives me a giant forehead and tiny ears. I suppose that’s the way humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop. The drop swells on the tip of a cedar and I catch it on my tongue like a blessing.” P.290
Many of the book’s teachings step from indigenous language. The author observes, “When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is a dwelling place for ideas that do not exist anywhere else.” P251
Other essays are rooted in the her culture’s mythology: “His gratitude for their abilities grew and he came to understand that to carry a gift is also to carry a responsibility. The Creator gave Wood Thrush the gift of a beautiful song, with the duty to sing the forest a good-night. Late at night he was grateful that the stars were sparkling to guide his way. Breathing under water, flying to the ends of the earth and back, digging earthen gardens, making medicines. He [Nanabozho] considered his own empty hands. He had only to rely on the world to take care of him.” P. 204
Most of the chapters can be read in 20 -30 minute sessions making this book is a perfect fit for those who like to start or end their day with a great read.
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Review of Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As the novel begins Virginia Miller (Vinnie) is flying to London to begin some academic research for a new book. Already there is a Fred Turner, a fellow faculty member at their American university, who is there to conduct his own literary research. The two are acquaintances, not friends, and I assumed that the novel would bring them together, in the way suggested by the title, Foreign Affairs
The resulting plot that unfolds holds many surprises, skillfully foreshadowed. It also leads to great insight into the contrasting characters of the visiting Americans and the native Londoners. In the first chapters, I became impatient with the characters who were less than likable. Additionally, there is much discussion and dialog of social interaction that seemed pointless, although later developments showed otherwise.
The author was a faculty member at Cornell University, and she clearly knows her subject matter.
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Review of Prodigal Summer
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is everything I look for in great literature: compelling characters, beautifully written prose, and insight into the human heart. This book tells the story of four protagonists, each attempting to live an authentic life, and each seeking her ecological niche. The reader will learn a lot of science in the pages of this book but it never lectures. It is story telling at its finest and the book and it will stay in your head long after you finish the final pages.
Sig Olson’s Masterwork
Open Horizons by Sigurd F. Olson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have read all of Sigurd Olson’s books, and am now rereading them in order of publication. This, I believe is his masterwork. The publisher calls this Olson’s “autobiography-in-nature” a term I have not encountered elsewhere, but it fits the book perfectly.
In each chapter the author explores an aspect of his life and the role nature played in developing his character. In the first chapter “The Pipes of Pan” he illustrates how as a child he began to hear as music the call of nature to his young soul, calling him to adventure. In “The Winds Will” he told how the hard physical toil on the family farm in northern Wisconsin shaped his maturing body, hardening it for the life of outdoor living he would later experience. Each successive chapter continues to develop aspects of his life and character that were shaped by his immersion in nature.
These chapters alone would have earned the book five stars for my review, but he goes on in a final chapter to extend the discussion beyond his own character development to that of our human species in general. In this essay, he showed how the human species has developed throughout the millennia profoundly influenced by our interaction and interdependence with nature. He concludes by showing how we continue to need the natural world to feed our character, and warns us of the peril we face if we cut off our contact with nature and fail to protect her. Written as the book was in 1969, I found this prophetic.
Revisiting , The Lonely Land
The Lonely Land by Sigurd F. Olson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am rereading all of Sigurd Olson’s books in their order of publication. He has long been my favorite author, and this is the third or fourth time I’ve read this book.
Sigurd’s previous two books were topical explorations of nature. This book is a narrative based on a 500-mile canoe trip he made with five companions. In addition to the experiences that group had, the book also contains the quotes from the writing of some early explorers, voyageurs, and other travelers over those same routes dating back to the 1700s. My reading contained one more layer, a canoe trip I took with five great companions in 1989 following the first 250 miles of Sigurd’s path. As I read the book again, images from that trip filled my head, and I am not sure if these resulted from Sigurd’s great description or from my own memories of the same scene. We too experienced the seemingly weightless joy of surfing big waves with gale-force tail winds, the struggle to make headway when those winds were in our face, the thrill of running whitewater rapids, and feeling the bite of pack straps and getting close to the land on numerous portages.
Sigurd’s writing always moves gracefully from the specific incidents and places to touch the abstractness of their significance. In that way the story of this trip is the story of every extended wilderness canoe trip: great companions facing challenges head on with profound results. One of Sigurd’s companions, said about the trip, “I went along to iron out the wrinkles in my soul.”
Like Sigurd, my group selected me as the Bourgeois, what the voyageurs called their leader. A trip like this has inherent dangers and many critical decisions, and requires someone to make the final decision. My copy of the book was given to me from my companions after that 1989 trip, each of them having signed it. Mel, Gershan, Goldie, Michael and Chris: thank you for that. The copy of the book and the memories it holds are two of my most prized possessions.
Review of Listening Point, by Sigurd F. Olson
Listening Point by Sigurd F. Olson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
After many years of wilderness travel and advanced study in geology, biology and ecology, Sigurd F. Olson longed for a place near his home in Ely, Minnesota that he could go to regularly to be close to the nature he loved. He found this on the shores of a nearby lake, “a composite picture of all the places in the north that I had known and loved” as he wrote in the first chapter of this book. He named this place Listening Point, and he eventually built a small cabin there. The contents of this book are essays in which he explores the many discoveries he made in this place.
Many writers I have read in books I classify as “spiritual formation” have emphasized the importance of listening. “Listen and you will hear the voice of God,” is the message of many of these. Sigurd takes this further, as these essays explore the discoveries he made not only by listening and careful sensory observation, but also by applying his vast knowledge of geology, history, and evolutionary science. The result is that the reader learns not only about natural things but their significance as well.
In the opening pages of the book Sigurd introduces us to this idea by quoting William Blake, “To see the world in a grain of sand, / And heaven in a flower; / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour.”
As an example, in his chapter on the wild iris known as Fleur-de-lis, he tells about the plant’s origination in France, how it was brought to the border country by French colonists and spread to the interior by the voyagers. It becomes a lesson in botany, ecology and history, all in one.
Sigurd’s writing contains description that I have found unmatched in literature. In his essay “Cock of the Woods” he describes the pileated woodpecker; “Then off it went, it’s wicker-wicker wicker shattering the silence of the point. I watched its undulating flight through the trees until it disappeared over a ridge and then I heard the loud staccato once more, this time from a dead pine, like a pneumatic drill reverberating against its brittle harness.”
This is Sigurd’s second book, published in 1980. I have read it many times, and cherish it. Sigurd inscribed my copy on one of my visits with the words, “For Gary: I hope some day you will find a Listening Point that means as much to you as mine does to me. Warmest regards, Sigurd F. Olson.”
I am still looking for my listening point, but I am so grateful that Sigurd has taught me how to look.
An early Pulitzer winner
Now in November by Josephine W. Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is the latest step in my quest to read all of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for novel or fiction. This book is the first novel for Josephine W. Johnson, published in 1933 when she was just 24 years old. The novel tells the story of a family struggling to keep their small dairy farm alive during the dust bowl year of the Great Depression.
The book is told from the point of view of Marget, the middle child of three sisters in this farm family, and through her voice readers see her thoughts only. This narrative voice is remarkably restrained emotionally as the family struggles against the brutal weather, the burden of debt, economic conditions, social isolation and each other. As the book progresses, Marget’s philosophy emerges. She sees her family through clear eyes without any rosy optimism. She recognizes both the heroic struggle of her father as she is fully aware of his faults and emotional distance. She seems most aware of her father’s disappointment in fathering only girls rather than a son who he would consider a suitable work partner. This narrator’s voice may be the reasons this book is considered feminist literature.
The book is an interesting read in this plague year. We may be heading into another Great Depression (the first unemployment figures compare) but so far we have only had to deal with the social isolation. Hopefully, Mother Nature will not turn on us as it did those in 1932. These characters endured though really tough times and this can provide us some valuable perspective.
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