Still Life With Woodpecker-26

This book was a nice break from all the serious, historical, non-fiction stuff I've been reading as of late. It didn't give me a lot of inspiration for a blog post, but it was enjoyable.

The story itself was rather simple, almost cliched. A princess falling in love with a ruffian and the subsequent complications of such a relationship. It's nothing special when you break it down to that level. The main focus of the book was the philosophical outlooks on life that the ruffian, and eventually the princess, posses. In my opinion the "outlaw" philosophy of the "woodpecker" was somewhat insane. However, in saying that I actually give some credibility to it. Bernard (the "ruffian" mentioned earlier) chooses to be an outlaw in order to shake things up in society, and because he places himself outside of society he is viewed as insane. So by saying his philosophy is insane I have now justified that part of it.

I think that the only topic that can be discussed in length is the question posed at various parts of the book. The question is "how does one make love stay?" Obviously not many people know the answer, the divorce rate is so high it makes one wonder why people bother getting married in the first place.

I'll be perfectly honest, I don't have a clue as to what the answer might be. I don't really understand emotions all that well, especially ones as complicated as love. I would say that if there is chemistry between two people, neither one mistreats the other, and nothing stops them from being together, then there would be no reason for divorce. Obviously there has to be more to it than that.

An important part of solving this riddle is defining what exactly is meant by the word "love." Too often in today's society "love" and "lust" are interchangeable terms. However, the two words have different meanings, and should be treated as such.

When I think about it, love is a word that can mean different things to everyone. It may be something that can't be defined, in which case the question of how to make love stay can't be answered.

For the sake of continuing this blog post, I'll try to define love based on what it means to me. To care for someone above all other things, including yourself. To be willing to sacrifice anything and everything for that person, be it money or your very life. To want to shield that person from harm simply because seeing them hurt is painful to you. To be happy just because that person is with you. That is what the word love means to me. It sounds almost poetic now that I think about it.

With that definition in hand, then comes the question of how to make that emotion stay. In a world where such idealist notions are so rare I'm not sure how to get the love to come in the first place. Assuming that kind of love was shared between two people, could anything actually make love go away? My thoughts are going in circles now, I keep having to go back the the definition of love. Is my definition even possible in anything outside of anime, fantasy novels, and manga? Maybe the definition of love in real life is different?

Now that I've gotten started trying to figure out the answer to this question it's driving me nuts. I guess it serves me right for trying to find the solution by systematically analyzing something like love.

I forget exactly what the book said the answer was, it had something to do with keeping the mystery alive in the relationship. I guess that might be part of it, but the relationship in the book seems to be mainly sexual, rather than emotional. I guess there's emotion involved as well, but it didn't seem like it was predominant to me.

I'm getting nowhere with this, I guess this question simply can't be answered. Love will come when it comes, and go when it goes, and all this discussion about how to make it stay is pointless. Perhaps the divorce rate is so high because people don't have the right definition of love when they marry, perhaps it's something else that causes it. Whatever it is that causes the problem, and whatever the solution is, is beyond my ability to make out.

Since I've run dry of my own ideas, I'll end things here and wait for a comment to get me rolling again. So goodbye, and good luck in your love-lives.

Thanks To My Mother-27

The Holocaust story is one we've all heard more times than we can count. "Thanks To My Mother" is another Holocaust story, but with a few things that aren't included in most other survivor stories. Most Holocaust stories are practically identical at the middle, and very similar at the beginning, and the endings are only somewhat different. Therefore I'm going to focus on the things that I had not encountered in these stories before and let you fill in the blanks about what else happened.

The major difference I encountered was that this story was told by a girl, previous stories had led me to believe that all the women, especially the children of elderly, were killed upon arrival at concentration camps. This apparently was not the case here, this girl and her mother must have went to a camp that used women for labor as well as men, provided they were strong enough. Through the ingenuity of her mother the storyteller was able to pass for a healthy adult and avoid the gas chambers.

The next new thing was the sea trip to a different camp. The death marches were nothing new to me, but this was the first time I encountered one of those marches involving being shipped over sea back to Germany. The conditions on the boat were, as to be expected from things of the Holocaust, terrible.

Aside from those things the story was just another retelling of the horrors of the Holocaust, a topic of which nothing can be said that hasn't been said a million times before by historians.

I'm not sure what else I can say about this book, so I'll wrap things up now and hopefully a comment will provide some inspiration.

The Band That Played On-28

When the Titanic sunk, the musicians of the ship decided to play music until the very end, making them heroes in the eyes of the survivors. This book details the investigation on who those people might have been, since only one body was recovered and identified the identities of the famous musicians were never discovered.

Even after the investigation I noted that the book was still very uncertain about many, if not most, of the details about the musicians that it said were probably the ones playing on the Titanic when it sunk. So the accuracy of the information is uncertain at best.

Rather than focus on the questionable accuracy of the entire book, I think this blog post should address the thing that made those musicians famous enough for a book to be written on them. While the ship they were on sank, these musicians played on rather than do anything to preserve their lives.

I'm torn between calling that action brave or calling it stupid. Certainly I wouldn't expect them to force their way onto a lifeboat at the expense of others, but I also can't help but feel there might have been some course of action that wouldn't end in death. If nothing else, the musicians should have played for a while and then got clear of the ship so as to avoid getting sucked underwater by the suction. It wasn't as if they were able to play their music when the ship went vertical and started sinking straight down. They might as well have left the ship at that point and tried to survive the cold water until rescue arrived, the odds of surviving at that point were slim, but still much better than staying on the ship.

Apart from that, since the floorboards of the deck were probably wooden, the musicians could probably have worked together and made a makeshift raft, thus keeping themselves out of the cold water and almost guaranteeing survival. A few boards tied together with strings from one of their instruments would have worked, and depending on their instruments they might have been able to play some music from their raft. 

Other things could have been used as flotation devices, such as their hollow instrument cases. Or empty boxes and barrels of food or drink. Perhaps a bed mattress might have floated, add some rigid boards of wood and the need for string might have been eliminated from the raft creation plan.

I could go on thinking of ideas to survive, but the point is simple. In half an hour I came up with several ways to increase the musicians chances of surviving by myself. If they had put their heads together over the several hours it took for the Titanic to sink they could have certainly come up with these same ideas and more. One of my ideas even left the option of surviving AND also playing music to comfort others open. So I think in the end I have to dub their course of action as stupid rather than brave.

I think my point is made, and I have to be ready to go somewhere in about 5 minutes, so farewell until next time.

The Blind Side-29

I was very skeptical about this one being on the list, a book about football doesn't exactly seem like it should be placed in the curriculum of an English course. Thankfully the book wasn't really about football, it just so happens that the people it was actually about were heavily involved in football.

The book seemed to be split into two topics, and switched between them seemingly at random, which was rather confusing. Sometimes it was about Lawrence Taylor, a football player who was so deadly he revolutionized the NFL's view of offensive linemen and their value to the teams the played for.

The other topic was about Michael Oher, a kid who pretty much embodies the "poor black kid" stereotype. He was one of god only knows how many children, and he lived a nomadic existence, living at a different person's house each night.

The dominant topic was unclear at first, but eventually it is revealed to be Micheal Oher. He was adopted by a rich family, and they turned his life around. It was a real task, Micheal had to go to high-school, but his education would have made a third grader seem like a college graduate in comparison. He also had a learning disability and didn't seem to know how to learn in a classroom setting. It didn't help that his school had only grudgingly accepted him and intended to just let him fail.

The two topics, a football revolution and a black boy becoming an educated member of the rich-white society would seem to be completely unrelated topics, and in most cases they would be. However, Michael Oher weighed over 300 pounds, over 6 feet tall, and he was still as fast as someone half his size. In other words, a born offensive lineman, the position undergoing massive reevaluation in the NFL and college football.

Michael's incredible physique made him a target for pretty much every college offering football scholarships, which enabled him to go to college for free, as well as get other benefits the colleges offered in desperate attempts to influence his decision on which school he would attend. All of the attention probably also earned him a pro football career, though I forget if the book actually ever said he joined the NFL. This is what makes the whole football thing relevant to the main theme of the book.

This book touches on a social issue that's been largely ignored for a long time, we've freed black slaves and given them equality, but it still takes a lot more work for a black person to become successful. All the time spent in oppression has left a lot of blacks in a situation where they have no education, are poor, live in poor neighborhoods, and overall have lifestyles that aren't helping to change any of these things. Some blacks rise above this and become huge successes (Barack Obama is a good example), but many, if not most, blacks simply take the most straightforward path available to them. They join gangs and wind up dead or in jail.

It's not their fault, they live in a situation where that's all they know, public schools are simply white organizations filled with police officers and other things that someone from this background would hate and distrust. It's no wonder that the "gangster" stereotype is practically identical to the "black" stereotype.

There are exceptions to this rule of course, as many people that I meet that fall into the black stereotype, there are some people I have met who are studious, hardworking, intelligent, and black. However, these examples, at least in my experience, have represented a minority. Perhaps a growing minority, but a minority nonetheless.

As for what can be done about this problem, to be perfectly honest I have no clue. I'm a white kid growing up in a pretty good neighborhood. I have parents who stress the value of education, and my family is financially secure enough that I can most certainly get into a college, the prestige of which is dependent on my performance. So anything I could suggest would be practically valueless, since I am incapable of viewing things from the perspective of the ones I would be trying to help.

The only thing I can think of to do is to aid those few blacks who are an exception to the stereotype in every way possible. If they grow up and become successful, then their kids will be on the same level as white kids are now. Those kids can then grow up to be successful as well, and so the cycle would continue, and the minority of successful blacks could become the majority through society's very own natural selection process.

The only other thing to do is to somehow dispel the illusion that every black kid seems to have. That they are, as black kids, so naturally talented at sports that a professional sport career is guaranteed. It may seem ridiculous that this would be a universal view among black kids, since simple logic disproves it. However, from my encounters with black kids and their dreams of being in the NFL or NBA or some other professional sport, it's going to take a lot more than simple logic to get them to accept reality and look at more feasible career options. My high-school football team is awful, they lose every game by large margins, and yet every person on the team is convinced that they are future NFL stars. So apparently we need more than logic and a harsh slap in the face from reality to change this stance, exactly what we need is a mystery to me.

I think that here is a good place to stop, I would just like to provide a disclaimer of sorts before I end. If anyone reading this post is offended by the views presented about blacks, please accept my sincere apologies, I can only draw conclusions from what I have seen, even if what I have seen might not reflect the reality of the rest of the world. I do not in any way intend for views of this post to be racist, and will be happy to be proven wrong at any time by the black community. If you feel that my conclusions are incorrect feel free to say so in comment form, provided you do so in the same academic manner as I have posted the views themselves and provide reasons for your disagreement.

With that done, I bid you all farewell.