1 comments about When Things Get Back to Normal.

1. I picked this off a bookstore shelf a couple of weeks ago, and I'm VERY glad I did. "When Things Get Back to Normal" is a small-sized paperback, consisting of the journal the author kept for a year following her husband's unexpected death. It's not a book *about* death and grieving; it's a book (a striking, beautiful, gut-level one) that expresses how one person was *hit* by it, and how things looked through her eyes as she came to grips with what happened and eventually began to pick up her life again.

   I (age 29) lost my mom (age 55) equally suddenly, thee months ago, and I've had a hard time finding a book that spoke to me on the level I needed. The grief "handbooks" weren't doing it for me; I was put off by eminently qualified counselors and academics softly reassuring me about the "normal" steps of grieving. I headed into my mourning with an open mind, receptive to whatever my heart and head wanted to give me, so their reassurances rang hollow. Nor were flowery and poetic books giving me what I needed. I just wanted to read something, in a person's real voice, that resonated with the way I felt -- cheated, desperate, wounded. I found it in this little gem.

   This book is private, sometimes raw and painful, and other times intimate and adoring, even funny. The journal-entry format makes it perfect for bite-size reading (and if you've just lost a loved one you may only be able to handle one of these perfect, painful little bites at a time). It is clearly written not by a counselor, but by a wife longing for her husband, in real-time and in her own voice. Anyone who has lost an intimate relative will recognize the adoration and longing she feels for him, and probably the occasional anger and resentment too. I know I saw my relationship with my mom in dozens of places in this book. She misses his little quirks, re-lives their old times and re-visits their future plans, left meaningless without him to share them. She records the everyday shocks and little losses, the downs of personal torment and the gradual little ups of healing, the larger meanings and philosophical questions of life after losing a loved one.

   In the Afterword, Dohaney, a writer by profession, explains that that notebook she wrote these pages in was a gift from a friend just after her husband's death. She started keeping the journal just for herself, and only several years later did friends in the business convince her to publish it. Probably *because* it wasn't written with the eventual book in mind, her writing is the best of the first-person accounts I've seen.

   I've finished the book now, but I think I've only progressed in my own mourning about as far as her half-way point. I have a sense I'll be re-reading this again and again as I go, feeling familiarity with more and more of it each time. I don't yet identify with the end of the book, where she starts to feel ready to live the rest of her life without her husband. I'm still stuck on the pain of the loss (recent mourners can relate, I'm sure) and somehow it makes me nervous/uneasy to think I'll ever be "over" the loss to that degree. But I'm willing to go along for the ride because everything she's said so far has resonated so deeply for me.

   From my perspective, this book should be on the reading list of anyone who has lost a lover, spouse, or close loved one.

1 comments about The Discipline of Hope: Learning from a Lifetime of Teaching.

1. Above all, Herbert Kohn, teacher extraordinary, says we must listen to children so we can discover how to teach them. Then, he lays a heavy one on us: ALL children can learn. And he takes us with him so we can watch him do it. In schoolrooms, homes, churches, public areas, from East coast to West coast and back again -- wherever the learners are. He lets us see why top-down public education policy is not the best way. We haven't asked the teachers who know -- and can figure out if they are allowed to do so -- how to do this thing called teaching. And never does he separate teaching and learning. They work together. Readers get to see some of the special projects Kohl has worked on and hear some of the students who have learned with him. He has done some amazing work but tells about it in such a way that it seems possible to the rest of us, whether teachers, learners, parents, or taxpayers.

5 comments about Teaching on Poverty Rock .

1. I just read this funny little book. What a hoot. I grew up on MI went to some public school there until my parents had enough and transfered me to the Seattle Hebrew Academy. The whiners in the other reviews on Amazon must be feeling the finger pointed back at themselves! Apparently, the author and a major motion picture company are in talks to write a screen play and make this a feature film. I wonder who they would get to play that snatch of a mother that features prominently in the book. Can't WAIT for the movie and the Oscar nomination that will surely follow.



2. I have to wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who wrote "Long on venom, short on content." Having recently gone through the island's entire educational system myself, and also being self-admittedly bitter about many of my experiences living on the island, I had hoped that McGowan would bring to light many of the more absurd aspects of life on MI.
   
   While I enjoyed reading the book - a speedy read, with bits of humor here and there - I was left disappointed and even disgusted with McGowan's childish attitude, overbearing bitterness, and the often deragatory remarks attributed toward individuals with whom he interacted. His poor writing skills and glaring grammatical errors only compounded the distaste I felt while reading this. Yes, I was amused with the ridiculous experiences the author described, and boy, could I relate to knowing of such parents in my schooling years, but overall, I found reading "Teaching on Poverty Rock" to be more like reading one man's long-winded complaint more than anything else.
   
   I would still recommend reading this book for insight into one teacher's life, as it is a very quick read. I do wish, however, that the author had written something more substantial and less hateful.
   
   I am also amazed that "Long on venom, short on content"'s review was deemed unhelpful by so many people; I can only surmise that people are not basing their judgement upon whether or not the review was helpful, but moreso in regards to whether it was in favor of the book or not.



3. I have to wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who wrote "Long on venom, short on content." Having recently gone through the island's entire educational system myself, and also being self-admittedly bitter about many of my experiences living on the island, I had hoped that McGowan would bring to light many of the more absurd aspects of life on MI.
   
   While I enjoyed reading the book - a speedy read, with bits of humor here and there - I was left disappointed and even disgusted with McGowan's childish attitude, overbearing bitterness, and the often deragatory remarks attributed toward individuals with whom he interacted. His poor writing skills and glaring grammatical errors only compounded the distaste I felt while reading this. Yes, I was amused with the ridiculous experiences the author described, and boy, could I relate to knowing of such parents in my schooling years, but overall, I found reading "Teaching on Poverty Rock" to be more like reading one man's long-winded complaint more than anything else.
   
   I would still recommend reading this book for insight into one teacher's life, as it is a very quick read. I do wish, however, that the author had written something more substantial and less hateful.
   
   I am also amazed that "Long on venom, short on content"'s review was deemed unhelpful by so many people; I can only surmise that people are not basing their judgement upon whether or not the review was helpful, but moreso in regards to whether it was in favor of the book or not.



4. I have to wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who wrote "Long on venom, short on content." Having recently gone through the island's entire educational system myself, and also being self-admittedly bitter about many of my experiences living on the island, I had hoped that McGowan would bring to light many of the more absurd aspects of life on MI.
   
   While I enjoyed reading the book - a speedy read, with bits of humor here and there - I was left disappointed and even disgusted with McGowan's childish attitude, overbearing bitterness, and the often deragatory remarks attributed toward individuals with whom he interacted. His poor writing skills and glaring grammatical errors only compounded the distaste I felt while reading this. Yes, I was amused with the ridiculous experiences the author described, and boy, could I relate to knowing of such parents in my schooling years, but overall, I found reading "Teaching on Poverty Rock" to be more like reading one man's long-winded complaint more than anything else.
   
   I would still recommend reading this book for insight into one teacher's life, as it is a very quick read. I do wish, however, that the author had written something more substantial and less hateful.
   
   I am also amazed that "Long on venom, short on content"'s review was deemed unhelpful by so many people; I can only surmise that people are not basing their judgement upon whether or not the review was helpful, but moreso in regards to whether it was in favor of the book or not.



5. McGowan has successfully said what I have thought again and again. Although I teach in Seattle, not Mercer Island, much of it rings true with my experiences with those crazy parents with an overdeveloped attitude of entitlement. You'll enjoy this quick read!

4 comments about Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir.

1. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the young Forrest McDonald for demolishing the once popular, but basically unresearched, notions of Charles Beard in McDonald's We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (1958). (In Recovering the Past, we learn that McDonald's monumental research for that book was, in part, made possible by his capacity for living simply and sleeping hardly at all.)
   
   Although McDonald has written a number of important books since the 1950s, the most important contribution of this brief and fast-paced memoir is the author's summary of twentieth-century American historiography from a conservative point of view. McDonald spends one of his seven chapters describing the "New History"-"The World as I Entered It"-and then harrumphs his way through the remainder of the century, concluding with some well-deserved tongue clucking at the malfeasance of Michael Bellesiles.
   
   Unlike most memoirs, McDonald passes quickly over his earliest years, either because he's not the introspective sort or so that he can spend more time glorying in his early academic successes. His self-praise (though often deserved) will probably strike many readers as amusing. Many historians have probably thought, but few have written, "I did a smashing job; the book reads like a novel." (94)
   
   Nevertheless, this is a fine memoir, easy to read and digest. You don't even have to like McDonald or his professional score-settling to admire his literary craftsmanship.



2. Recovering the Past. It's a great title, isn't it? And who better to speak about such than an accomplished historian. ..."[W]hen we think historically," Forrest MacDonald writes, "we try to understand past events and circumstances as the participants did." Unfortunately, all others in his field are not similarly inclined. The problem lies with subjectivism-relativism-presentism; the idea that some within each generation simply have (to paraphase the author) the right to perceive the past in accordance with the changing preoccupations of changing times. We see this now in the news all the time. As elites become more secular, for instance, the past is increasingly re-interpreted within a framework that is hostile to religious beliefs. But what of the facts? What of the spiritual groundings of America's Founding Fathers? What of the fact that America was populated by those seeking religious freedom? Such "details" don't concern New Left "historians." Such are not historians at all, actually; but agenda promoters who seek to "arrange the facts of history as to influence the present or future in the direction that [they] consider socially desirable." Hence we have historians (the likes of Mr. MacDonald, David McCullough, Richard Pipes---who also has a memoir out, incidentally) and we have anti-capitalist substantiators (think Eric Hobsbawn, Charles Beard, Howard Zinn, et al.). Some of these, of course, are less anti-capitalist than just economically illiterate; seeing in their "utterly unsophisticated conception of economic activity...the exploitation by the wealthy of the poor, laborers, farmers, and small businesmen"; rather than "entrepreneurship, ingenuity, luck and hard work" as the creators of wealth. It's ironic, isn't it, that so many of such folks who see exploitation as the driving force of economics are usually those most removed from the business world and/or have the least entrepreneural instincts themselves. (Successful European-born business folks such as George Soros et al. are in another category all together.) McDonald quotes Thomas Jefferson: "Those who labor in the earth are God's chosen people." The only inconsistancy is that Jefferson never worked land himself. How McDonald got the commission to write Jefferson's story in The University of Kansas' Presidential Histories series is instructive herein: He got it because all university Jefferson scholars, being Jeffersonians, "did not wish to touch the presidency because Jefferson was by no means a Jeffersonian president." So much for intellectual honesty. Such experiences of Professor McDonald make up much of the second half of this memoir; the first half being devoted to how he came to realize the above points---that all historians are not equel to the title. It's a short read (166 main pages), particularly the latter half. My only complaint is that I wish he would have carried forth his far more densely argued first half of this memoir to a greater level, as opposed to getting rather chatty later on. Hence my rating as indicated above. (P.S. Forrest McDonald appeared on C-SPAN's "In depth" show; a 3 hour give-and-take discussion on his career/scholarship in 2004. It's available (& free) for watching on your computer, I believe. Explore BOOKTV.ORG for it.) (05Mar) Cheers!



3. Recovering the Past, a historian's memoir
   Forrest McDonald
   
   
   Recovering the Past, a historian's memoir is written for "that elusive critter called the general reader, or, more precisely, for the vast number of people who genuinely love history for its own sake--which, as will become evident, I regard as eliminating a sizable majority of professional historians."
   At the outset of the book it becomes clear that McDonald, who has lived and breathed the study of history for half a century, does not march in lock-step with most of his brethren in academia, an often mirthless, self-righteous breed with axes to grind. With a gift for coupling scholarship and insight with intelligent (and frequently irreverent) humor, McDonald deftly unravels tales of history gone awry, mishandled history, and misguided historians.
   The book opens with a history of the writing of history. The nearly exponential increase of research materials available to historians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to a simultaneous explosion of theories regarding both the craft and the responsibility of the historian. This is a clear and fascinating introduction to the story that follows.
   Chapter two is a whirlwind history of America and the presidency. Some presidents are dispatched with a sentence, for example: "Fortunately for President Warren G. Harding, he died." "Taft was enormously fat and had the personality of a dead halibut." We get the backdrop against which American historiographers of the twentieth century will be set, and tune into the style and rhythm of trenchant wit that punctuates the book throughout.
   Into this narrative enters young Forrest McDonald, a kid from east Texas growing up during the depression. He entered the University of Texas in the late 1940s. It was there that he realized that history was not a series of irrefutable, chronological "facts." Through back to back history courses he encountered renditions of the same events that were completely at odds with each other and professors who were openly hostile towards one another and the differing interpretations each favored.
   McDonald introduces us to a world of history and historians that is such a battle ground that one wonders at the success of efforts to transform history into the stultifying, eyeball-glazing assemblage of dehumanized non-stories that fill our history textbooks.
   The memoir of his life unfolds concurrently with the story of the revisionism that has dominated history in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is a story you will understand fully by the end of the book. As an indictment of revisionist history, McDonald makes his case.
   McDonald's personal story is peopled with villainous swine, arrogant "new historians," a mentor who goes off the deep end, pompous, cowardly academicians, and numerous diligent historians with whom he has shared ideas and collaborated. Clearly, the most important person in his life is his wife, Ellen, of whom he says, "There may be no such thing as an indispensable man, but there is an indispensable woman."
   The appendix alone is worth the price of the book. It is a reprint from Requiem, Variations on Eighteenth Century Themes, co-authored with his wife. The title, The Intellectual World of the Founding Fathers, speaks for itself. One cannot help but draw a parallel between McDonald and the founders whom he has spent so much of his life studying.
   McDonald wades into controversy confidently and armed to the teeth. It is evident that the high ethical standards by which he gauges members of his profession are applied rigorously to his own work. It is exceptional to find work so painstaking scholarly (neither specifics nor generalizations are allowed to float around unsubstantiated) that is also delightful, sometimes gripping, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny reading.
   
   Kathy Austell
   November, 2004



4. Forrest McDonald's most recent book, "Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir," is an important work for aficionados of history. Often personally revealing, "Recovering the Past" details the major movements of professional historians through the last century and argues for the supremacy of objective, scientific, research-based history. In the first chapters the reader learns of the influence of "New History" on the course of politics and education of the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. While providing an overview of his beginnings within the profession, Professor McDonald continues with a firsthand account of the resurrection of objective, research-oriented historians and how his own work helped reshape the then-prevalent thoughts on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. The last portion of McDonald's memoirs follows the upward course of his career and looks at the latter decades of the history profession, noting the trend toward creation of history or history for the sake of agenda and the stalwart handfuls of historians who continue to strive for excellence. Finally, Professor McDonald concludes with an explanation of his personal philosophy of life in general-"I am a miracle, and so, dear reader, are you." ["Memoir", 166] For those who desire an insightful account of the world of historical research and writing, "Recovering the Past" is a must read.

1 comments about I Dwell in Possibility: A Memoir (The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series).

1. Now in a newly revised and expanded second edition, I Dwell In Possibility: A Memoir by retired educator Toni McNaron is the personal history and testimony of a woman who grew up witness to southern apartheid in Alabama and who endured a long internal battle in search of her artistic and sexual identity. The thoughts, life history, and spiritually evolutionary experiences of an award-winning writer and educator make for a riveting, inspirational, and thoroughly absorbing read. I Dwell In Possibility is especially recommended for Women's Studies reading lists and academic reference collections.

2 comments about Street Soldier.

1. Thank you Dr Marshall for writing the story of the Omega Boys Club. I think you have outlined here, very well, how anyone with knowledge, dedication and insight can touch the hearts of our youth!
   
   The Black man is becoming extinct and we, as a nation, are allowing it to happen. Thank you for not tolerating it!



2. Marshall has succeeded where others before him have failed. Street Soldiers offers all the "urban reality" stories to get you out of your comfortable chair, but doesn't simply stop there. Outlining a clear and concise approach for dealing with youth violence, Marshall has put forth the solution for tackling one of our nations hidden epidemics. Whether your a frontline worker with youth or not, you will find this a must read book to find out how you can best help stem this incidious disease impacting all of us.

No comments about Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School,1970 (Sightline Books).

No comments about Pilgrimage into Pentecost: The Pneumatological Legacy of Howard M. Ervin.

3 comments about My Path Leads to Tibet: The Inspiring Story of How One Young Blind Woman Brought Hope to the Blind Children of Tibet.

1. Sabriye Tenbergen is a young blind woman who has accomplished a great deal. Almost single-handedly, she developed a Braille script for Tibetan, then went to Tibet, where she traveled on horseback, looking for blind children to teach. Before then, blind children were hidden away or abandoned as cursed, with no future, but Sabriye was determined to give them one. So she founded a school where she taught blind children to read, as well as other life skills such as cane travel. She herself got around by cane by using landmarks in the city.

   This account is just one more example of how the best humanitarian work is often founded by determined individuals with a dream. Conversely, Sabriye was opposed at almost every turn by incompetent and apathetic bureaucrats in organizations both in her native Germany and in Tibet.

   She clearly loves the land and people, but is not "blind" to the reality either. The country is frightfully cold in winter as well as being prone to floods. And she noted many of the superstitions that harm the wellbeing of the people. But she noted the strengths as well, e.g. Tibetans designed houses to cope well with the cold, while the Chinese made concrete boxes that are hopeless. [Reminds me of the opposite in sub-tropical to tropical Queensland. The early settlers designed open-structured "Queenslanders" that caught the breezes very well, but later architects in New South Wales and Victoria designed houses that became convection ovens in Queensland]

   Sabriye has a way of writing that seems very visual, so sometimes it's easy to forget she's blind.




2. This book tells the story of a young woman with an impossible dream, and how she set about accomplishing it. Tenberken was born with vision problems that led to complete blindness by the time she was a teenager. Once while she was in middle school, she and her class visited a special museum exhibit about Tibet. From that point on, she was fascinated with Tibet, and when she started university, she decided to major in Asian languages with the goal of going to Tibet. Pursuing a major in Asian languages is quite difficult for any Westerner, but even more so for a blind Westerner, since Braille materials and computer software for language study in these languages are limited, if they exist at all. Indeed, Tenberken ended up creating her own Braille system for writing Tibetan script (which proved so useful in her studies that she was even able to use her class notes to tutor sighted students in her classes). Upon graduation from university, she set off for Tibet by herself to found a school for blind children and teach them how to read and write using her Tibetan Braille alphabet with the goal of allowing them to be integrated into regular schools once they became literate. The very thought of just picking up and moving to a country that happens to be occupied by a communist government and establishing an independent school for unschooled children, especially when you yourself do not have teaching experience, sounds positively ludicrous. Fortunately for the blind children of Tibet, Tenberken doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase "you can't do that"- -perhaps a result of her upbringing, since her parents obviously supported her endeavors, or perhaps a simple character trait that drives her.

   In a few places in the book, Tenberken's style is a bit stilted, or she seems to gloss over details that beg to be explained. She carefully avoids any mention whatsoever of the political situation in Tibet, since any hint of criticism would no doubt result in the immediate closure of her school and the undoing of all of her efforts. In any case, she taught her students Tibetan language from the start, rather than only sticking to Chinese. The book is quite interesting for its story of how one determined person can have a tremendous impact on the lives of many, many others.




3. Sabriye Tenberken is a young woman from Germany who happens to be blind. She has written one of the most amazing and uplifting books I have read in years. MY PATH LEADS TO TIBET is an account, in her own words (translated from the original German), of how Sabriye fulfilled her dream of helping the blind children of Tibet achieve independence and attain a sense of dignity. She has done this by establishing a school for blind children in Lhasa against incredible odds -- all alone and before she reached her 30th birthday.

   There could be no better introduction than her own words: "Strange as it may seem, whenever I'm about to take a leap into the unknown, I always have the same dream. I'm standing at the top of a sand dune, looking down at the sea. The sky is clear and blue, the sea flat and dark. The sun is bright, the beach is filled with people. Then all of a sudden, on the horizon a huge towering wall of water is moving slowly toward us in total silence. Everyone is running in my direction. The wall of water, growing ever more menacing by the second, blots out most of the sky. Instead of running away, I walk toward it. And the wall of water crashes over me. To my surprise, however, instead of being crushed by its mass, I am in my dream left feeling tremendously light, filled with new energy. And I know that from now on nothing will be impossible." (pp.11-12)

   Sabriye was diagnosed with a serious eye disease in childhood and became completely blind at age 12. She uses a white cane when she walks and travels around the world without assistance. In a place where she has never been before, she relies on strangers to help her and trusts that they will. She is rarely disappointed. The faith she has in herself and in the best of human nature is extraordinary --- and extraordinarily rare to read about at a time when, more often than not, we are being bombarded with words of worldwide deceit and destruction.

   The book is written in a flowing, straightforward and easy-reading manner in first person, much like a journal. Yet Sabriye never forgets that we who are reading her book have never had the experience of being blind. She takes us into her world and shares with us her experiences in such a way that we gradually begin to realize what an extraordinary teacher she will be, when and if she is able to get her school started.

   On a previous trip to Nepal with her mother, Sabriye spent a brief time in Tibet and learned that blind people are viewed as having been cursed at birth and are treated very much like lepers, or worse. She developed a burning desire to teach Tibet's blind children that they can have full lives, that they do not need to be ashamed or handicapped and that they can live as Sabriye herself lives --- to the fullest.

   Tibet, now a part of the People's Republic of China, is famous for its exotic isolation. Yet she set off with only a few pieces of luggage, her white cane and a promise of a small amount of financial backing from sources in her native Germany. She had to apply for permission to the Chinese government and faced bureaucratic obstacles that must have seemed as insurmountable as the mountains themselves. She doesn't give up. She makes friends. She buys a horse that knows its way through the mountain passes.

   Not only does Sabriye have to get permission to build a school, she must also go out among the people --- some of who are nomadic tribes --- and find the blind children who will become her pupils. Because their parents are ashamed of them, these children are often hidden away. Thus she travels on horseback and tells us of her travels, the hardships, the joys and the people she meets along the way. Even though you know she will achieve what she has set out to do, the fact that she was able to do it is so remarkable that you will read with your heart in your throat much of the time.

   The publisher has included a selection of color photographs that, for us sighted folks, add much to the book.

   Reading MY PATH LEADS TO TIBET is an unforgettable experience. Sabriye Tenberken has done us all a kindness by taking us with her on her incredible mission.

   --- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day

No comments about The Story of My Life.