BUMP!! What is happening to me? Why can’t I spread my wings? Why can’t I fly away? What predator is this that is untangling me from the threads that bind me? Is he preparing to eat me?
He took those threads off that imprisoned me, but even though I try to flap my wings, I can’t fly.
Oh no! Now I’m in a different kind of prison. There are no threads holding me, but it’s dark like night in here. I can flap my wings, but I can’t fly away.
Those same bony fingers that took me out of the net and put me in a bag are now reaching in for me again. I can see this ugly predator now. He is so huge and is looking at me more curiously than hungrily. What does he want of me?
I try to flap my wings, but one strong finger encircling my neck and other fingers holding my legs keep me still against my will. Now he is spreading one wing, but not to let me fly. He uses a tool to measure it. Why doesn’t he just eat me and get it over with?
Now he’s holding one of my skinny legs and putting something around it. I don’t want anything on my leg. I kick as hard as I can, but it won’t come off. When is he going to kill me?
He’s turning me on my back. What a strange feeling. I’ve never been on my back before. I certainly can’t fly away this way. I want to bite him, but my beak has no power against him. Oh, he’s blowing on my underside with a gentle wind. Can’t he tell I’m a mother with babies waiting for me without uncovering my underside? This is terrible.
But it’s getting worse. He’s putting me upside down in a dark tube with my head against metal and my feet sticking up in the air. Why does he care how much I weigh?
He hasn’t really hurt me yet, but I’m frightened to death by all the strange positions and prisons he’s put me into.
Ah! I can feel the warm sun as he carries me into the sun. He puts me on my back on other open hands. But he’s still holding my legs.
I don’t feel any pressure on my legs now. Perhaps I can escape. Hooray! I’m flying again. I’m free. But why can’t I get this stupid band off my leg? What was this all about?
Birds may not be human, but they are sentient bird beings in the same world that humans inhabit. Attributing thinking and feeling to birds in human terms is risky.
But I couldn’t help imagining the bird’s perspective on being captured, recorded, and banded as we watched. Conservationists and even the U.S. government are extensively studying the birds for their own protection. Does this short term torture for the pretty songbirds lead to their long term protection?
Are we humans saving the birds? Will saving the birds save us?
I go away from home because it shakes up everything — my daily schedule, what I eat, what I do, who I talk to, and what I think about.
At home, I indulge my biological rhythm’s preference for sleeping. On my week at a Road Scholar wild lands restoration trip, I struggle to find sleep on a schedule set by others.
At home, I exercise daily doing mundane aerobics, yoga, weight lifting, and cardio on a machine that goes nowhere. Here, for my week at the Tetons Science School in Wyoming, I pull invasive weeds from around a captive swan pond, and hike around the pond recording bird houses and their occupants. Soon I will help researchers capture wild birds in mist nets and band them. I will also build bird perches along bike trails, and even untangle and remove old barbed wire fences so the wild animals can move freely.
Included in the activities are searching for wild great-horned owls, American pronghorn, bison, beaver, wolves, bears, and elk. Hikes in magnificent Grand Teton National Park and canoeing also fit into this week.
While every day and every activity is a learning experience, the evenings have lectures on the geology of Yellowstone, and bears and wolves. My learning curve is steep.
While my body heaves and sighs with the exertion of physical activities, my mind also works hard to grasp and keep up with the scope of what I’m experiencing.
The dedicated staff of the Teton Science Schools, a non-profit conservation and education facility in Jackson, Wyoming, bring a variety of interests and expertise in conservation. Their knowledge, lifestyles, personalities, and ages are part of what draws me here.
For example, B. can name just about any bird and mimic their dialects. He knows wild flowers, plants, and trees like the long time friends they are. He can calculate distances, compass directions, elevation, which sprays will kill certain weeds without killing nearby trees, and can hear the cries of two-day old wild baby mice whose nest has been disturbed. He searched on the ground until he found the four baby mice and tenderly replaced them where mom could find them. Yet, he is also an avid hunter who eats what he kills.
While my eyes see, his eyes observe so much more. While I have a vague sense of loving nature, B. truly loves, knows, and understands nature very personally. My love of nature is deep, but passive. I admire B.’s active relationship with the natural world.
I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. I had to get to the airport at the crack of dawn. Since the airport I was traveling from is closed during the night, I was surrounded by all the other passengers starting off their day’s journeys.
This was the first time I ever had to pay a fee to check a bag — and I didn’t appreciate it. I had carefully measured and weighed that bag to make sure it was neither “oversized” nor “overweight.” One family of 3 hadn’t done that and they were trying without success to re-distribute their belongings. At least my uncomfortably hefty one bag went through.
I tried a new airline that definitely felt like Sardine Airlines. I swear that I saw a crowded can of sardines as I surveyed the passengers squashed 6 to a row with less than a seat’s width as the aisle. Since this was a plane to their hub in Denver, it was fully stuffed.
But at least I had a seat. The flight attendants looked far more awake than I. But I was disappointed at their appearances. Airlines used to pride themselves on their slim, pretty stewardesses. Their uniforms were fashionable, and their hair stylish. And that’s still true of the airlines out of Asia. While not exactly slovenly, the ones on this airline looked unkempt, unfashionable, old,and yes, even chunky.
When the plane started moving, there was an unusual sound and the air being pumped through my nostrils had a strange smell. I warily scanned the other passengers and my seatmates for sniffles and coughs. As always, there were whiny children and one crying baby most of the way. I rather envy crying children on a plane because they are able to express their discomfort at being so uncomfortably imprisoned on a plane.
Sardine Airlines seems to be surviving financially because it overbooks, dresses their staff in cheap uniforms, and charges for just about everything. Want to check a bag? Want a snack? Want anything to drink other than the run of the mill? Want more legroom? Yep, you can have it, but at a price.
Usually I’m just grateful if a plane gets me where I want to go safely and reasonably on time. My standards have dropped very low. But not as low as their own staff’s lack of confidence. When I asked the lady at the desk when my already delayed connecting flight was scheduled for boarding, she replied with a sigh, “We never can be sure when the plane will come in.”
My connecting flight also had 6 seats across, but was thankfully less crowded. What a feeling of spaciousness when no one occupies the middle seat! Having started the day after only a few hours sleep, I solidly fell asleep.
It was a swift hour to my destination of Jackson, Wyoming, when the captain’s voice awakened me. I gasped at the sight glimpsed around the head of the person seated at the window. We were passing very close to those truly grand snow-topped Grand Tetons. When I was younger, I always took a window seat in a plane. But now I’ve switched to the aisle seat. That has certain benefits, but it was a mistake on the flight into Jackson that actually lands right in the National Park.
So, on this uncomfortable flying day, I have two strong memories. One is “almost” seeing those Grand Tetons while the plane was flying at the altitude of the mountains. The other was watching total joy as can only exist in a crawling baby who was delighted that the moving sidewalk in the airport kept moving even when he stopped crawling.
This week doing wild land restoration promises to be interesting and unusual — and a challenge. Since I should be sleeping instead of writing at this hour, I know tomorrow will be a sleepy one again for this dogged night owl.
It isn’t easy leaving Pleasantville. Where I live in southern California isn’t actually called Pleasantville, but may as well be. It’s such an easy place to live in the summer. The climate is not too hot or too cold. The evenings always cool down so one never has to stick to the sheets as I remember from my childhood in humid Massachusetts. There are no mosquitoes and black flies, and no rain.
But I am now packing to go on my way to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. With other seniors on a Road Scholar (formerly known as Elderhostel) trip, we will do a service project of wild lands restoration. Most of the above — cold, rain, many mosquitoes and black flies — are not only possible, but probable. I’m taking insect repellent and sunscreen, but I don’t know whether the insect repellent goes over the sunscreen, or vice versa.
How do you pack? For days prior to a trip, I use my second bedroom as a place to throw things on the bed that I think I need to take. Lists start appearing around the house as thoughts of what I should take or do pop into my head. It all starts out rather messy and then begins to take shape.
Although I’ve amazed myself by my packing prowess since I usually use just about everything I take, I have long admired those intrepid travelers who slip a simple carry-on over their shoulder and travel indefinitely. I’ve never been able to do that. As a Chinese friend commented looking upon the luggage I’d brought to China, “Chinese people adjust to the environment. Americans adjust the environment to suit them.”
Even though I’m more comfortable taking two smaller bags because I can handle the size more easily, this is the first time I’m taking an airlines that requires a baggage fee for every piece of luggage other than a carry-on. So, I bought a larger suitcase to combine in one what I usually put in two.
There are other requirements the airlines have decreed — the largest size for a suitcase before it is considered “oversized,” and a 50 pound limit on one bag before it’s considered “overweight” — both very pricey penalties. I’m not comfortable with one huge suitcase. It rolls, but is too heavy for me to pick up easily. And, since it can hold so much, there’s a danger of exceeding the 50 pound limit. For these among many other reasons, flying has become an ordeal to be endured.
No matter how many times I’ve traveled, each trip is a new packing challenge. But there’s another challenge whenever I leave Pleasantville. Depending upon how you look at it, I’m either an extreme night owl or half a vampire. After many years of insomnia and trial and error, I found that the sleeping time most compatible with my body rhythm is 4 a.m. ’til noon. At home in Pleasantville, my neighbors are all aware of this and respect it. I’ve scheduled my days to begin at noon. That doesn’t work anyplace else in the world, especially when I’m part of a group activity. Away from home, I just have to be out of synch with my body.
Although there’s no place like home, sometimes itchy feet win out. And leaving makes the coming home more sweet.
Most of my world travels have been as a deaf mute. For many years I was mostly in situations where I could neither understand nor speak the language. While many travelers find this uncomfortable, I became used to it. Otherwise, I would have drastically limited the dimensions of my experiences. And it happened the other day without leaving my neighborhood.
As a member of our local community’s India Club, I received a notice about Spiritual Awareness Seminars. I was curious, so I went to one. Although I was physically entering one of our Clubhouse rooms, I was actually entering a little piece of India in America. What the notice had neglected to tell me was that the seminars would be in Hindi. So, I pretended that I was in India. I became an observer.
Many shoes were piled up along the walls. The ordinary room had been transformed by large blankets on the floor in front of two armchairs with some material thrown over them. There were small tables with a couple of pictures on it that each had a flower necklace around it. Candles and flowers were near the impromptu shrine.
Many East Indians sat effortlessly on the blankets in that cross-legged position I work so hard to do in yoga class. Behind them, others sat in chairs. Men and women sat separately. The display of saris was dazzling — so many styles and beautiful fabrics.
A seated man, who I assumed to be a priest of some kind, was leading in chants and songs. Then, when another man entered the room, all stood up, faced him, chanted while lightly clapping in unison and bowed as the man made his way to the front. His eyes flickered in surprise when he passed by me, the only non-Indian in the room. He said in English, “How do you do?”
All ages had gathered to hear him, so it was obviously not just our retirement community’s India Club. In fact, I saw no one I knew. I never did find out what group was sponsoring the series of seminars, but I believe they had invited wise men, perhaps gurus, from India to come speak to them.
The elderly man had a kind face wreathed in smiles. He sat comfortably in the other covered armchair, with one pillow at his back and one under his feet. From what I could determine, the seminar was a discussion rather than a lecture. People, usually the men, asked questions and the wise man answered. Sometimes after he said something, the whole audience responded in unison. More often, the people in the audience nodded their heads in agreement with what he was saying. It was obvious that what he was saying was important, but he said it with many smiles and laughter. The audience laughed often.
Like all bi-lingual cultures, a word or two would come out in English, sandwiched between Hindi. The English words I heard were “responsibility,” “liberation,” and “Variety is the spice of life.” Since I’m an English as a Second Language teacher, I listened to the Hindi and tried to put it together with the characteristic rolling of the words that makes their English so hard for us to understand.
I thought back to my almost 3 years living in Macau where there was a Bahai International School with some teaching staff from Goa, India, at that time. They were nice ladies, but almost impossible for the rest of us to understand. We felt very sorry for the Chinese students who had to learn English from the Indian English teachers.
In all my circles around the world, I never did go to India. I heard about its wonders and always listened enthusiastically to those who had traveled to India. I got a sense of the spirituality I had heard India offered from the time I spent in Bali, Indonesia.
Unlike most of Indonesia, the Balinese are Hindu rather than Moslem. There are connections between the Hindu religions of India and Bali. I have been to several religious ceremonies in Bali which are unique to that culture. The Balinese don’t understand the language used by the Balinese priests, so they just listen as the priest performs the rituals.
At the seminar, when the wise man wanted to emphasize a point, he would say something and have the audience repeat after him, then continue the sentence and have the audience repeat that. After more than 2 hours of the audience sitting very still, including those who had sat cross-legged the whole time, some people came forward to perform their parting ritual for the wise man. Some kneeled before him, and he patted their heads, their backs, and sometimes playfully slapped their faces.
Necklaces were also a part of the ending ritual as they put necklaces on him, and he then took off the same necklace and put it back on the one who had put it on him. The great respect of the audience for this man was obvious. People then clapped in rhythm as he walked among them saying something to everyone he passed on his way toward tables bearing absolutely the largest pots of food I have ever seen.
Of course, the seminar would have been far more interesting had I understood the language, but I felt a familiar feeling of having traveled somewhere new and fresh in those two hours. Becoming a part of another culture, even briefly, and even as a deaf mute, can be satisfying.
Dogs have a sense of smell that has been measured at 10,000 to 100,000 times better than a human’s. I must only imagine what they can smell that I can’t, but I can’t even smell what a normal human can. For some mysterious reason, I lost my sense of smell about a year ago when I fell. How do I know?
I distinctly remember smelling a certain flower on a walk in Washington and commenting to the friend I was walking with that we had the same flower where I lived in California. Soon afterward, I tripped and fell. I didn’t hit my head, but I did break my right knee. A few weeks later, I bought a nice potpourri to put around my home, but felt cheated because it had no smell. I blamed the potpourri. Later, I baked brownies with my granddaughter. She went on and on about how great they smelled. I smelled nothing.
When I went to Laguna Beach with some friends, I loved the blue of the sky and the blue-green of the ocean. But the salty smell was missing. Sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, I mentioned to my friends that I couldn’t smell anything anymore. Everyone was perplexed as to how this could be a side effect of falling. “It could be a brain tumor,” a lady who also happened to be waiting for the bus offered. However, the precise timing of when I lost my sense of smell didn’t lead me in the direction of a brain tumor. So, I went to an acupuncturist.
She was sure she could bring back my sense of smell, so I dutifully went for five sessions of strategically placed needles. After the first session, I could smell something she put under my nose. But the sense of smell didn’t last. I saw a gorgeous rose and instinctively went up to smell it. Putting my nose in deeply, I got one magnificent whiff of that rose — and then it faded away.
I made it a habit to bring strong smells like alcohol, Vick’s VapoRub, and Tiger Balm up to my nose and smell deeply — but mostly nothing came through. I didn’t miss smelling all the time, but every now and then I wondered if I’d ever be able to smell again.
A couple of months ago, I went to our Sculpture class. Many peoples’ noses started scrunching up and they said there was a strong burning smell in the air. I didn’t smell anything, but we later went out to an area near the kiln doing a special kind of firing and I suddenly smelled a real stench of burning. It was like a nasal attack that stayed strong long after I had left the area. Would I be able to smell only ugly smells? Would I ever be able to smell lovely smells again?
There are a few compensations for not being able to smell. On my recent trip to China, my friend looked uncomfortable when we were eating at a restaurant and said we should leave because the man smoking cigarettes near us was ruining his appetite. In the many times I had been in Asia, having cigarette smoke wafting around me had always been an ordeal. After all the time I spent lobbying for non-smoking areas in the U.S. and we finally were mostly a smoke-free nation, why did I choose to be in countries where cigarette smoke still invaded everywhere? On this visit, I could see the smoke, but for the first time, couldn’t smell it.
After one year, I think I smell small signs that my sense of smell is slowly returning. I yearn to smell the sea, the flowers, the coffee once again. If my sense of smell continues to return, it will indeed be a happy reunion with smells I love. If not, I’ll have to be content with the senses I still have left, plus only memories of how things smelled.
For those following the publishing world, it’s clear that hand held books that we’ve cherished, stored, lugged from home to home, and wondered where to put them all are going the way of the Dodo bird. A world without books is unimaginable to many of us alive today. But there are many, mostly younger people who welcome the change to lightweight, highly transportable varieties of e-readers that are easy on the eyes and the bank account. Those trees that are still left today have reason to breathe a big sigh of relief.
Young people today hang out at malls. I remember spending hours at the Brattle Street Bookshop in Boston, Massachusetts, where used books piled high made narrow corridors even narrower when the bookcases ran out of shelf space. There was no convenient place to sit and thumb through the books, but we squatted where we could and scanned many books with our fingers and eyes.
I was sorry when that famous Boston bookstore closed. But I later lived in New Orleans where used bookstores were easy to find in the French Quarter. My friend bought used books from big library sales, estate sales, and Goodwill stores, lugged them in suitcases on buses and sold them in French Quarter used bookstores. It was a meager living, but a gentle form of re-cycling he felt happy doing.
He once financed a long trip by selling his supply of used books stored in his apartment. I watched a book dealer come to his apartment where they both lugged books from apartment to car for what seemed like an hour until the big car actually sagged with the weight. The book dealer drove off slowly and my friend took his trip.
I once accompanied him to a wholesalers’ book sale where he bought a huge mass of books at a low price. Before leaving, he went through every book in the pile he bought, kept the ones he thought he could sell, and threw away the rest.
Used book dealers know what to look for. They gain an uncanny sense of what will sell. I recently took five grocery bags of my books to a local used bookstore after cleaning out my bookcases. The book dealer sat on a cushion on the floor and quickly went through the books. When I pointed out some “old” books from the 1950s, she said, “An old book starts at 100 years old.”
She wanted my copy of “Walden” even though I had highlighted sentences in it. “High school kids love to buy books for school that already have been highlighted, ” she informed me. Some of my books that had been gifts and had personal notations on the front pages were worthless to her. And I learned that the author’s signature without any other writing made the book more valuable, unless the author was autographing it to another famous person.
She put about 8 books to the side, offered me $10 cash or a $20 credit in her bookstore, and went on to the next person waiting in line to sell books. I took the cash and brought the rest to donate to our Goodwill store’s rather large selection. I wished them well and hoped they’d find appreciative readers. They were, after all, my old friends.
My nomadic years living in many countries where I didn’t know the language made it challenging to find enough good books to read in English. I’ve been an avid reader ever since I could read. On a visit back to the U.S. after years away, I was astonished to walk into a large Barnes and Noble bookstore that was clean and neat, and best of all — had comfy chairs scattered around that welcomed you to sit and thumb through the books. What was even more amazing to me was that these were not used books. I loved the new bookstores, and visited them whenever I came back to the U.S.
Many bookstores and elegant libraries with shelves and shelves of books still exist. But they’re on their way out. Digital books will make hand held books obsolete. Even the book I wrote and published in 2006, “Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird,” is available as an e-book and for Kindle and Sony e-readers. There are solid practical reasons why this is good. Books are heavy and cumbersome to carry and store. They’re more expensive, and they require paper to be written on and bookcases to sit in.
I’m at an age where old-fashioned books will most likely outlive me before they reach antique status. I’ll still be able to thumb through them to select which ones catch my eye. I’ll be able to bring them to my favorite reading room — my patio. There, protected from any rain or hot sun, I will continue to travel to the variety of worlds that books take us to as my fingers turn the pages.
What do Gary Faulkner, Osama Bin Laden, Raphaella Segal, Mother Teresa, Beethoven, Van Gogh, and Hitler have in common? They are (were) passionate about what they care(d) about. For better or worse, they have (had) unswerving determination to accomplish what they feel (felt) they need(ed) to do.
Recent news talks of Gary Faulkner, an American who went to Pakistan armed with a sword, knife, and Christian reading material to find Osama Bin Laden. This is his 6th trip there on his mission. His brother, a medical doctor, strongly declares that his brother is passionate, not crazy.
I heard Raphaella Segal speak the other night at a local Jewish temple. She was surprisingly thin and energetic for a mother of nine, grandmother of 27, who holds one job as Assistant Mayor of a Jewish Settlement in the West Bank and another job as an optometrist. She was one of the original people 35 years ago who went to the West Bank to set up what has become the thriving community of Kedumim. She believed she was right 35 years ago, and still passionately believes she is exactly where she needs to be for the future of Israel.
Even my e-mail is screaming, “Discover your passion in life” at me with “Your Personal Passion Test Profile” to help me pinpoint my passion in case I’m not sure what I’m passionate about. And, of course, they offer me books and videos to help me develop my passion “successfully.” They insist life is better with passion and success elusive without it.
I began to wonder what the difference is between “passion,” and “obsession.” My dictionary says, “passion usually implies a strong emotion that has an overpowering or compelling effect.” In contrast, to be obsessed with an idea, desire, or emotion is “to haunt or trouble the mind.” So, there is, it seems, a very fine line between passion, which is “good,” and obsession, which is “bad.” Referring to the list of passionate people at the top, some accomplished good, and some accomplished bad, but they all possessed extreme enthusiasm for the tasks they set themselves.
There was a time when I admired obsessed people. Their single-mindedness was rather frightening, but extraordinary because they were so steadfast. Eventually, I saw that obsessed people were tortured souls made miserable by their obsessions. However, it is people with passions who are definitely the movers and shakers of our society. And no matter how they, or their deeds, are perceived by others, their passion brings them a sense of deep personal fulfillment.
But they can be very hard to live with on one little planet.
Many men claim to have felt sympathy pains when their wives are in child labor. But there are some fathers who actually feel those labor pains because they’re the ones having them.
I first fell in love with seahorses when I saw them in the wonderful Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California, which is known worldwide for its seahorse breeding program. One type of seahorse especially seemed to come straight from the imagination rather than the sea. The leafy seadragon is described by Helen Scales in her recent book, “Poseidon’s Steed,” as a “flouncy fish…naturally festooned in elaborate outfits of green ribbons and streamers, outgrowths of skin that create the near-perfect illusion of a tangle of seaweed.”
Adding to the allure of the seahorse, and my respect for them, is the fact that the males are the ones with the pouches that hold the developing babies for three weeks. They are the ones who are alone when they go into labor contractions that can sometimes last for two or three days before the 300 or so precious
offspring are on their own in the sea. Since seahorses are monogamous creatures who do not stray too far from wherever might be home, the female returns to mate again almost immediately after the births. Whew! Fortunately, the little ones are self-sufficient and do not require further parenting after being expelled.
Seahorses have been loved to death by collectors who want some of their very own in their home aquariums. And, alas, like other creatures of the sea, their ocean is polluted, their delicate habitats destroyed by fishermen trawling the sea floor for edible seafood, and they are captured to be ground up and ingested in Asian medical concoctions.
The large variety of seahorses have a long history as both mythical creatures and inhabitants of many parts of the world. They are diminutive, secretive, gentle creatures with remarkably regal faces, and tails that can hold on tightly to plants, or to each other.
In the words of Helen Scales, “There is something that remains intangible yet intoxicating about the idea of seahorses. For a living creature to look so strange and yet so perfectly pleasing at the same time, we might assume it must be a magnificent feat of deliberate design, a fairy tale made real.”
Happy Father’s Day to all the male seahorses in the seas!
Having been born during the Holocaust, I collected many books by Holocaust survivors to see what I hadn’t had to face. The only one that was almost a joy to read was “The Oasis: A Memoir of Love and Survival in a Concentration Camp” by Petru Popescu. I heard him speak and saw the couple who had been the main characters in the book — his in-laws. Their budding teenage love in the midst of the hatred of a concentration camp was true inspiration.
And then there were my social work books where the world of the child was explored and explained. Bruno Bettelheim’s “The Use of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” intrigued me, as did the author himself. A Holocaust survivor, at the age of 83, he said, “Enough is enough” and committed suicide. Selma Fraiberg’s “The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood” examined what some in retrospect remember as the happiest time of their life, or the saddest. Whichever they were, they were also the formative years that predicted the future adult.
There were what could be called “the hopeful” books — “Guide to High-Performance Investing,” and diet books by Pritikin, Atkins, and how to enter “The Zone,” next to books like “H.E.L.P. – Home Emergency Ladies’ Pal” to get through all those household maintenance necessities that girls in my time weren’t allowed to study in high school. While the boys took “shop,” we girls learned to sew and cook.
My interest in photography, which led to a few years of actually developing my prints in a dark room, as well as my passion for travel showed up in my book collection. There were Sierra Club books that combined love of nature with poetry and facts. David Attenborough’s highly readable, “Life on Earth” intensified that love to a deeper dimension within me.
Mirroring my life, the largest number of books in my collection were on the topic of China. From Mao’s little Red book, to 1944′s, “China to Me” by Emily Hahn, to “China: The Roots of Madness” by Theodore H. White, on to Fox Butterfield’s 1982 “China: Alive in the Bitter Sea,” and on from there to Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn’s 1994 take on “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power” moved through the fast-paced recent history of China, some of which I personally witnessed.
On the literary side of understanding China, the famous Lin Yutang’s “My Country and My People” and “With Love and Irony” helped unravel the inscrutable Chinese. I remember evenings in Macau nodding my head in agreement and laughing my way through Austin Coates’ “Myself a Mandarin” and when recognizing Chinese people I was getting to know in my early years in Hangzhou, China, in “Chinese Profiles,” by Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye.
I’m not particularly the philosophical type, but three books I’ve kept all these years because I aspired to understand what they were saying were Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” R. D. Laing’s very clever “Knots,” and Hugh Prather’s “Notes to Myself.”
My trip through Nostalgialand was a worthwhile journey to take even though it netted me only $10 cash from a used book store and required a trip to the local Good Will to donate the rest. My bookshelves are not empty, but can breathe better. And books don’t die. They acquire a life of their own in one of the nicest forms of recycling that exists on our planet.