Eyes Right: Confessions of a Woman Marine

Oh I had big plans this month. I had three memoirs on my stack about life in the military.  August was going to be the month of the soldier.  The plan sounded great, the books looked fabulous, but life got a bit nuts this month.  Sleep took priority over reading.  Just putting one foot in front of the other took priority over reading.

Last night though I finally finished this slim little volume, confessions of a woman marine.  Tracy Crow waited the right amount of time to tell her story of life in the 70's and 80's as a member of the largely male marine corps.  She became a member of the public affairs office and spent her 10 year career snapping photos and writing stories of war and the preparations for war during the Reagan era.  Some of what she put herself through was truly harrowing.  She has a journalists sensibility for telling the stories of how she came to enlist, marine corps training, and how she broke into certain places to get her story (cause she was a woman and wouldn't normally be allowed in).  The narrative was lean and spare (just the facts m'am.)

The framing device was the story of how she was fired and almost court-martialed because of an affair she had with a colonel.  The affair was short and happened during a separation with her husband and the colonel himself was single, but the Marines considered her indiscretions conduct unbecoming an officer.  So on the same day she was promoted, she was also fired and had to pack her bags and move out on a distinguished 10 year career.

I was impressed by the order in which she told her story and the focus she gave the actual affair.  After alluding to it, dancing around the edges of it, telling us how she initially met the colonel, about packing her desk and her harrowing interview with the attorney where she refused to confirm or deny the allegations (what, you can do that?), she told the story of the affair in a few short paragraphs at the very end.  The sad tale of a very short time with a man she clearly loved and said good-bye to. She never saw him again.  He died 11 years later.

I can't get over how skillfully she ended the story and did not need to dwell on the actual affair.  It was the story but still it wasn't.  What the story was about was that she had a glorious career and it ended because of this affair.  She managed a little poker trick to avoid court martial and further avoid the colonel from being court-martialed.  Did he know what she did and how she saved them?

I think some readers might be dismayed not to get more of the salacious details of love, but truly she pitched it perfectly with respect to the man he was and what they may have shared for a short time.  Her telling of the tale felt unique and spot on. It will give me something to think about when choosing how to unveil a personal story. Available at the library.

So what did you prioritize this month?

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up in heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong.  You do.  --Cheryl Strayed

I have always been an avid reader of advice columns.  I came of age reading Dear Abby and Ann Landers, loved the dry wit of Miss Manners, found special wisdom in consumer help columns and most recently, fell in love with the modern practical humor and wisdom of Dear Prudence.

I read them religiously, pose my own questions (in my head) frequently, and curiously wait to see what their responses will be. What will mine be?  What set of moral values do they set their standards by and do they follow them?  Advice columns are an endless source of story and inspiration.

As you may recall, a few months back, I read a great travel memoir by a new writer named Cheryl Strayed.  Her voice was clear and compelling as she told her story of backpacking on the Pacific Coast Trail, and I looked forward to her next writing.  I stumbled upon it this week in the bookstore and bought it without question.  (This is how much I like her writing.  I knew I would want to own it and keep it.)

Cheryl Strayed writes an on-line advice column under the name Dear Sugar.  Dear Sugar writes clear compelling advice to her readers (in response to letters of course) but also writes her own memoirs and tiny stories as a way of illustrating life lessons.  Nothing here is boring.  All her responses feel spot on and you sense her empathy and conviction through the power of her words.  I loved every letter and every response.  She eclipses any other advice columnist in beauty and compelling argument.  I am going to buy these by the bundle and give them as gifts for all occasions.  Marriage, baby, job crisis, death in the family, middle age crazies...it is all right here. Look no further. These are real letters from real writers and her responses are her own: a collection of columns that is both help, self help and memoir.  Look no further for a great summer read.

This is the best book I have read this summer, and I put Ms. Strayed on my list of writers to see if I am ever able. She is so honest and forthright about her own failings and grief that you cannot help but love her.  The epigraph at the top of the page--written in second person--is her own story.

 You can borrow this from me but if you wait long enough, I might buy it for you.

All I ever wanted to learn about competitive birding

I met my first birders on a trip around the world by ship.  Many of them haunted the top decks of the ship watching for sea birds with their 20x binoculars. I learned about petrels and boobies and shearwaters and gulls...always the gulls.  In particular, there was a young man, a teenager, who was particularly smitten with birds.  Seeing a gull or a masked boobie, produced a look on this young man's face that lit up the ship. I have never known anyone quite like him, and though I never got into birding myself, he produced in me a lifelong affinity for birders. 

This book appeared on the shelves at Borders a few years ago, and I admired it and considered buying it, but opted not to.  I forgot about it until last week when I accidentally happened upon a movie of the same name starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson.

The Big Year is about competitive bird watching (I know--seems like an oxymoron).  People compete to see who can see the most birds in the US in a single calendar year. The book features three men who vie for the title and shows what hardships, deprivation, discomfort and money they will spend in order to catch a rare species and beat the competition.  The book was a journalistic account--written after the year was over and based on extensive interviews with the top three birders.

The movie, written by the journalist who wrote the book, Mark Obmascik, changed some basic details to make the storylines more compelling, but followed the general arc of the competition that was presented in the book.  Believe it or not you do cheer for a winner, you do become intersted in birding, and how to find the rarest of the rare species.  I don't think either book or movie really delved into what makes these people do what they do. Is it the thrill of the chase? The beauty of the birds?  The love of nature? I was never really sure, but it all made for lively story telling.

I think now of my old friend on the ship.  He'd be in his late thirties by now. I assume that once you are a birder you are always a birder, and I hope he read this book and continues with his life list. Perhaps he has even completed a big year. 

It is hard to choose which is better, the book or the movie, especially since the movie has Steve Martin and who doesn't love Steve Martin?  I'd check them both out and then grab your binoculars. 

Poetic Cookbook or Poetry about Food

Tamar Adler has written this wonderfully poetic book about cooking and food. There are a few recipes but more importantly she philosophizes on how to cook with what you have in the kitchen, how to make something grand out of simple ingredients, and really, how to live.

She uses and advocates for copious amounts of olive oil and salt, has finally helped me to understand how and why to use all that extra parsley, and she teaches how to cook things ahead of time so that you can enjoy roasted vegetables and egg all week without having to fuss every night.  I understand the importance of tasting all the time so that you can begin to understand how cooking works.  She includes no times for how long food cooks because every cook and every kitchen and every time is different.

She makes cooking and kitchen work and feeding friends and family seem like an act of the divine.  I am having momentary images of clearing out my refrigerator of all processed foods and filling it with see through containers of salsa verde and roasted eggplant and chopped cilantro, and I think I have to get rid of the microwave to make room for the 55 gallon drum of olive oil I will need to buy.

I don't mean to make fun at all; An Everlasting Meal is a lovely book and I want to own it and refer to it often (this one is a library book) so I can create food easily and effortlessly and also, understand how to use all the parts of food--stems and peels and bones. Alas, cleaning out my refrigerator and spending all day Sunday roasting vegetables might have to wait for another lifetime.  It sounds like a grand adventure from the comfort of my living room chair.

Better yet, perhaps Tamar would be my friend and invite me to her table once in awhile.  Thanks to her for this lovely book on food and cooking.

Imagine

Suddenly this summer, this book appeared on all the bookstore shelves. It seemed to be everywhere I rested my gaze. I resisted it for awhile then, of course, placed it on my library list.  Imagine: How Creativity Works reminded me a lot of the works of Malcolm Gladwell.  Jonah Lehrer takes an idea, in this case, how the creative mind works, and delves into the exploration of that idea through a wide variety of stories and anecdotes.  He backs up his stories with current brain science and social science that helps us to understand why humans can create and how they create.

The book is divided into two parts.  Part I is the story of how individuals create: the origin of those eureka moments, why we need to become more like children in order to be more creative, the necessity of getting away from a problem to solve it.  Part II is how teams become creative.  Lehrer delves into the fascinating story of Pixar Studios, the importance of a seasoned team (with a few newcomers) in creating top entertainment, and why cities make us more creative.

I read it quickly, talked about it at the dinner table and will use a few of its lessons and quotes in my writing workshops.  I highly recommend this great 2012 read.  Library or bookstore, I think you can find it everywhere.

Ghost Written

Once again, I picked up a tell all, behind the scenes, pseudo-celebrity tale, The End of Normal by Stephanie Madoff Mack.  This was the story behind the great Ponzi schemer and notorious crook, Bernie Madoff.  More specifically, Bernie's daughter-in-law, wife of his son Mark, has written her tale, proclaiming her husband's innocence and the great tragedy that befell her and her family when Bernie came tumbling down.

Ms Mack has a sad story to tell and like many memoirs of late, it really needs more time before it can be properly told.  The writer's wrath and anger and vitriol at her horrible misfortune is too fresh.  I would love to read the book she would write in 20 years.  The book is way too angry, and I found myself actually feeling sorry for Ruth Madoff, who she paints as a horrible human being for no other reason than refusing to divorce her husband.

So, if you are interested in this chapter in American financial history, and a version of the story as told by a family member, it is worth reading. It is quite sorrowful (Ms Mack's husband cannot handle the pressure and commits suicide while he is home alone with their baby son.) and could easily be a primer on how to mourn and, again, as always, a testament to the healing powers of telling your story.

But more than anything it made me wonder about the profession of ghost writing.  I noticed after I was almost finished with the book, that there was a second author, a ghost writer, whose name was on the cover page inside.  I wondered what that would be like, to sit by someone who had a front row seat to history, and to talk with her and then piece together her story in a meaningful way: one that suited the teller of the tale, made sense, and was told with drama.  Anyone know how I can get a ghost writing gig? Or better yet, hire me to write your story? I would love to listen.

Ahh Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the rock star of the poetry world.  I was at a live performance/taping of A Prairie Home Companion once and Garrison Keillor's guest star was none other than poet Billy Collins. If Prairie Home Companion Fans swoon, then swoon they did over this short balding man.  Will you sign my arm Mr Collins?

Billy Collins made it cool to write poems that you could access easily, read in one sitting, and walk away feeling like you had read something profound.  He also makes you know, without a doubt, that you could be a poet too.

This is the first book of poetry I have ever purchased, and I felt proud to know and love this collection.  I have read it twice now, and I enjoyed every one.  Mr. Collins turns an ordinary activity into a profound revelation.  Pick up any of his books, google his name, find him on poetr.com.  He is always magnificent.  Go ahead, you can be a poet too. Swoon.