The Things They Carried ~ Tim O'Brien

I have been drawn to stories of the Vietnam War, ever since I was a girl just entering adolescence. When I was in 7th or 8th grade I won a writing contest sponsored by the Detroit Free Press with a story I wrote entitled "I Died and Lived To Tell About It", which if I remember correctly, revolved around a man who watched his entire platoon be killed, but somehow managed to survived. I know right around that time, I also wrote a chronological- based fiction work entitled "Watershed Tears" based on the main character living through the events of 1968. While the rest of the seventh and eighth grade girls were swooning over pop stars and actors, I was reading about the tunnels in Cu Chi and couldn't wait for the opening of Platoon. I remember thinking at the time if perhaps if re-incarnation was real, that I had died there- just one of those thoughts seeking out greater understanding of the connections I felt to that time and place and those people.

Eventually, my reading expanded and that fiction consumed more of my attention. There were all of the distractions of growing up, especially those I had created leaving home on and off starting when I was 15. My attentions turned towards boys, and music, and poetry; fading away from Southeast Asia.

The year before last, I read Dispatches by Michael Herr and If I Die In A Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien. Along with the World War II novel, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, those books began to push and nudge awake this piece of me, which had been such an integral part of my growing up. I had planned since then to read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which I honestly thought I had read before, but seems to have come out when I was in high school which would make it unlikely that I had read it heretofore.

Words seem so inadequate to talk about The Things They Carried. Reading it is like a first love affair. Speaking about it out loud, seems to do disservice to it's sacredness. It is all consuming. It makes you greedy for more as you read. Even it's destruction, and some of the stories do destroy you, is alluring the way young passion makes us unable to turn away.

For me, the experience was especially full of emotion, for though I am firmly routed in my Catholic beliefs, the familiarity and sense of some other life overshadowing my own current life lingered just over my shoulder, just out of view. The whispers of ghosts, just beyond hearing. The connection which was so powerful when I was a girl, nearly knocked me over. The tears flowed freely.

The Things They Carried is beyond a book. It is a piece of all who ever ever fought war. All who ever lived with those who have returned from war. I cannot recommend it enough--even though it appears now on lots of required reading lists., which sometimes make people feel as though are boring or too difficult to read. If you are not unchanged after reading it, I would be beyond surprised.

For any who have read it- what are your thoughts? For those who have not, are there any times or places toward which you feel particularly drawn??

Putting Women and Their Babies Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Health & Science

Study: Early Repeat C-Sections Puts Babies At Risk

Listen to the Story

All Things Considered, January 8, 2009 · A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that elective, repeat C-sections performed earlier than the recommended 39 weeks increases the risk of complications for newborns. Dr. Catherine Spong, co-author of the study, says babies born under these conditions see double the risk of "adverse outcomes" such as nenonatal death.

This whole thing just angers me. I mean sneering-at-my-computer sort of angry. We as American women have been led to believe that birthing babies with a doctor in the hospital is a scientific event, supported by scientific truths, elicited from scientific studies. We have been led to believe that all interventions have been proven to be good for the mother and good for the baby, or at least not bad. We have been led to believe that questioning routine hospital policies is something reserved for the crunchy, anti-establishment, patchouli moms.

The reality is that we still do not understand fully the mechanisms by which labor begins. We do not fully understand the intricate interplay of the mother and baby and placenta which signals labor to begin and to be sustained. We do not know the effects of replacing naturally produced hormones, with their synthetic counterparts. We do not know how the deprivation of certain hormones (like oxytocin and dopamine) effects mother and child, their relationship, their bonding, or their long term development. The reality is that in a medical culture governed by litigiousness, that the illusion of firm knowledge has replaced a humble admittance of risk, and unknowing.

The article and interview above tells us that for women who have had previous c-sections, that elective c-sections before 39 weeks puts babies at risk. The doctor interviewed seemed to really stress that these c-sections had no medical purpose. Well that's all fine and good--but it is growing extremely difficult to find a birth practitioner and hospital who will allow a woman to attempt a VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean). The fear-mongering culture has stressed how dangerous VBACs can be, except that the evidence is skewed through interventions, such as inductions, which put increased stress on the mother's uterus. What is a mother to do? She is told attempting a vaginal birth is a no-no, and told that a repeat c-section is also a no-no.

The top priority for the majority of the medical birth professionals is to manage a woman's labor, to try to eliminate the unknown. The main end is to create an illusion of control and safety. The blame for this is wide-spread--it's doctors and women and their families and insurance companies and hospitals-as-money -generating-businesses. Like The Emperor's New Clothes, we have been collectively pretending that we both have full understanding of the mechanisms and systems involved in birth, and that we can take away all the inherent risks of birth.

Please don't misunderstand. I feel very, very blessed to live in a time and a place where the technology exists to improve outcomes for mothers and babies who would otherwise die or be very adversely affected through birth. It is a true privilege and gift. However, in my opinion, we have erred on the side of over-using technology. We have come to view technology not as a help when things have gone awry, but rather as a superior mechanism than the natural processes of birth. Furthermore, we have come to that viewpoint, without understanding the intricacies of the consequences of technological and pharmaceutical interventions. Obstetrics has a history of of using technology first, until it is proven to be detrimental; rather than demonstrating safety and outweighed benefit/risk ratio first. If you question that, think of scopolamine, DES, and the complete lack of long-term studies of the effects of sonography in utero.

It is so frustrating when information such as this new study comes out, and flies in the face of routine procedures adopted by hospitals and doctors. It is true that the ACOG has set their guidelines to reflect the 39 week marker as the determining factor in timing for elective repeat c-sections. However it is also true that finding excuses, or creating reasons to ignore this guideline is commonplace. If I am not mistaken, there was also a recent article about the detrimental effects of induction before 39 weeks floating around recently, though I cannot now remember from which source I had read it.

When, when are we as women-as a nation-going to stop cowering in fear--accept that birth has inherent risks, and start demanding that our bodies are honored!!? The process of birth isn't something which goes wrong most of the time. Our bodies aren't defective or incompetent as a rule. We have got to find some way to collectively muster up the courage to refuse non-essential technology at our births. We have to find a way to collectively demand that ALL routine procedures and medications given during birth are demonstrated to be beneficial both short and long-term. We need to insist that our birth practitioners tell us that they don't know, when they in fact don't know-for example the long term effects of sonography exposure, or the long term effects on mother and baby of replacing oxytocin with pitocin, or the effects on mother and baby of anything more than a brief separation in the days and weeks early post-partum, or the risks for their baby if they have elective repeat c-sections.

Is America Beyond Hope? And What's Wrong With Us?

The Anchoress writes:

I wonder if we are finally moving past the adolescent angst, and the numbness, and - per Ebert’s column, simply waking up to the fact that a bunch of loud, exploitative so-called “friends” crashed the house, called it a party, drank all the liquor, cracked Mom’s prize crystal egg and then decided to have a tug-of-war donnybrook on the front lawn before toilet papering the trees, puking and passing out. The press? Some “friends.” Congress? Some “statesmen.”

Hungover, we’re stumbling around, and realizing that if we do not start demanding adult behavior, adult leadership, less spin and a little honesty, not only from our leadership and our “elites” but from each other, we’re not going to be around to demand much of anything, of anyone.

Our friends on the left have put their faith and hope in President-elect Barack Obama. Those of us still on the fence about him hope that he is at least half as great as they say. That is more than the Bush-haters ever offered Bush, so perhaps it is a place to start.

And those of us with faith know that prayer is essential. Essential.

Your thoughts?

My Thoughts: I think it is more a matter of taking the adolescent wounds we bear post Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and Watergate- and learning how to confront those wounds and heal. But as with many people who are wounded by their families in their adolescence, it takes time to confront those demons, especially when their families remain essentially unchanged. We've had Iran/Contra, and Monica Lewinsky, and the WMD debacle--it's all just more of the same. Some people never bring their dark places to the light, and because the behaviour just repeats and repeats again, they use apathy as an excuse for living defined always by their brokenness. Add to that the dysfunctionality of their extended family preying on their wounds, and capitalizing on their deepest fears --which is precisely what the press and political pundits do in order to sell their news--and you get a people who are locked into living perpetually their wounded adolescence. And so, as with all those who are products of a co-dependent, whacked-out upbringing--we need to get to the point of accepting that we cannot change other people. We can only change ourselves. We can only change our behaviour. We can learn to set boundaries and enforce them. We can seek personal healing and try to enact change in our own lives. We can refuse to live in the fear and terror created to keep us enslaved.

Will that happen in some large scale way? I doubt it. People grow comfortable with their demons, it becomes easier and easier over time to live with what we've always known (even though what we've known has sucked). Complacency doesn't require as much effort or personal sacrifice as does healing. The changes required to heal, almost always are conjoined with loss. That loss terrifies so many of us into just maintaining the status quo and passing on our dysfunction to the next generation.

What are your thoughts? End times? Perpetual adolescence? Beyond hope?

The Shannon Book Club- The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Shannon Book Club is so named, because I am pretty much the only one who ever reads this stuff. LOL!

This month the selection is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder. It's a very short (150 pages) novel. The basic plot is as follows:

On July 20, 1714, "the finest bridge in all Peru" collapses and five people die. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan missionary, happens to witness the tragedy, and as a result, he asks the central question of the novel: "Why did this happen to those five?" He sets out to explore the lives of the five victims, and to understand why they died. Ironically, his quest will lead to his own death.


The last book, Mr. Ives' Christmas, turned out to be in the top 20 best books I've ever read. I still need to write up a review for it. Let me know if you are up for reading and discussing The Bridge of San Luis Rey!!!

Edited to add my Review:
I think my reading was a little skewed because of the book which I read just before this one---which was just so, so intense. However, I will still try to give my thoughts.

The writing itself, is quite lovely. Not in an ornate way like Fitzgerald or James, and not in a total tightness and precision like Hemingway or even Steinbeck...but the language is unassuming and unobtrusive, nearly formal, but not enough so to make it difficult to read.

The book winds through the lives of the five people who were killed when the Bridge of San Luis Rey collapsed. We are reading with the aim of trying to piece together why these five were killed at that specific time. Though the look into each of their lives is brief, their lives all intertwine loosely with one another, and the reader gains a satisfying enough glimpse to feel as though the reader truly knows at least the three adults who died. We get fewer insights into the lives of the two children involved- so much less, in fact, that one doesn't quite know until the last pages of the book that the two children are the other two who comprise the five who died. That lack of information, in my opinion, is the one main shortcoming of the book.

In the case of the adults, each one of them was seen as dying to avoid either maligning a new start or conviction, or to avoid great harm, or to preserve their last good action. We are given a sense of the unseen lives on either side of the tragedy in question, lives which are made up of much vice and many shortcomings. However, before their death, fir each of the adults their is a small act of redemption. In the lives of the children, we are left to wonder if they were possibly preserved from a life of dissipation or of faltering into sins which hadn't yet overtaken them.

I found the framing of the story involving Brother Junipero's book rather awkward and somewhat artificial--almost like Wilder didn't quite know how to begin and end. However, we do gain some insight into the the disposition of Mr. Wilder, I believe, which is one of hope.

If you are looking for a very solid, worthwhile read, but do not have much time to commit to reading I heartily recommend this book. It is a firm reminder that the events of our lives and the lives of those around us are interconnected. It is a firm reminder that though we on the outside might never know, that there are unseen depths in the lives of those around us. It is a firm reminder that in the face of inexplicable tragedy to maintain hope that there is purpose.

from a discussion- "Why Are We Tempted If God is Omnipotnet?"

"It is true that we will be tempted until the moment that we die. Life is just one big test. "

Life isn't a big test, I am sorry. I don't agree with that at all. We don't believe that all life is suffering. God isn't up there with his clipboard and checklist. Everything that happens to us is in God's permissive will- everything is for our providence--even temptations and sins. Those ongoing temptations and sins are a huge blessing, because they pinpoint areas of our brokenness and indicate where we need healing-as well as help break down our pride, which is an impediment to selfless love of one another and of God.

Life is just one big love affair--and our mission is to learn to give love and be loved (this is what Bl. Mother Teresa referred to as our universal vocation), which we cannot do fully when we operate out of our wounds and brokennesses. The sins and temptations which God allows us are gifts to us that we might heal and in time serve others more fully. We sin, so what...I personally think we put far too much emphasis on that--what does that sin matter. What really matters is that after falling- we cast our eyes to Jesus, ask Him to take our hand and help us back up, and we try to be open to what it is we are supposed to learn through that fall. Sometimes those lessons take a long time, sometimes the lessons are difficult to apply to our lives. The fall is so unimportant, the whole of eternity lies in the importance of what we do afterwards. __________________

Pushing Daisies

I am completely out of touch with what's on television, except through overhearing snippets of other people's conversations. We don't have cable or satellite, and only get PBS if the wind is blowing just right. Most of our television show viewing is done through borrowing seasons of shows from other people's collections. Many of them are borrowed from my husband's boss, who is an avid fan of televisions shows, but who works far too many hours to get to watch them while they are current. For Christmas his boss gave us the first season of the show Pushing Daises. I wasn't all that excited to watch it, being underwhelmed by the last show we borrowed.

Having now watched the entire first season, (in two nights!) I have to say that I have absolutely no idea how Pushing Daisies has made it to prime time. The only guess I have is that the success of the narrator-driven Desperate Housewives is somehow responsible. I never watched more than about 30 minutes of Desperate Housewives, but for a time it really saturated our culture enough that I gained some familiarity with it. It was not my cup of tea; marital intrigue and infidelity being way up there on my list of least favorite topics with which to fill up my free time.

Pushing Daisies, however, made me feel like it would be remiss of me to be using my free time to be doing anything else. The show is very heavily influenced by magic realism, with rather fantastic elements being presented as though they are fixed reality. The basic premise of the show is that the main character, the pie-making Ned, has the gift to touch dead things and bring them back to life. The caveat? If Ned touches that that thing again, it dies for good and if a creature he brought back to life lives for more than one minute, another randomly selected animal or person dies instead.

Where Pushing Daisies takes that premise yields to a show which is part fairy tale, part science fiction, part crime drama, part comic book. In print, that likely sounds like a nearly unwatchable result. But rather than being a confusing hodge-podge, the end result is a show which grabs the viewers' attention from the very beginning of the episode, a show which draws the viewer into active viewing, rather than complacency. The colors, lighting, characters, dialogue, plots and sub-plots draw a viewer in, and holds his or her interest, attention and curiosity throughout the hour. (Or in my case throughout the many hours).

Even for those who normally would balk at a non-traditional television show, I think Pushing Daisies would appeal, if they watched just a few episodes. It isn't confusing, dark or muddling as say Twin Peaks or Push, Nevada. Pushing Daisies is full of stories of love, which grow the heart of the viewer for suffering through the impediments which keep the characters from expressing the fullness of their love for one another. It is full of an innate goodness and hope. Yet at the same time, contains enough darkness that the shadows keep the show from being flat.

If you haven't watched or even heard of this show, you can go to ABC online in order to watch whole episodes, gather more information, or read plot summaries of episodes. I know I will be there to watch episodes from the current season, as I am sure that I cannot wait until Season Two comes out on DVD !

(For those wondering about age appropriateness- I would say tweeners on up, with parental involvement in watching. The word "ass" is used, but no other language which parents might find objectionable. There is some stylized violence, nothing graphic and most often the violence is farcical in nature. Olive wears some skimpy things, and there is a view of Chuck (female) in a towel. Personally, I wouldn't object to this show being on while my children were up- the older two (ages 8 and 11)would likely find it intersting and the younger ones would most likely ignore it, as the plot would be too complex for them to follow.)

Edited to add: GRRRrrrrr--as has happened with every. single. television show, except Frontline, which I have been devoted to in the past 8 years--apparently after the finished episodes of Pushing Daisies air- the show will be no longer. What's wrong with the stupid TV execs!!!!!

Quelf

Do you want to have some serious fun? Do you want to laugh like you haven't laughed for years? Then the game, Quelf, is for you! Looking at the game board for the first time you'll likely think to yourself, "I only have to go from start to finish? That doesn't seem like it will be that hard, or even take very long." And, oh, how wrong you will be.

The first indication that this game is not quite like all other games comes when you pick up the sheet of directions read: "OBJECT OF THE GAME- To have fun! Duh! Why else would you play a board game?" You garner further hints of what's to come as you choose a game piece. You will choose one of the following: The Platypus, Mr. Lugnut, Super Ninja Monkey, The Dude, The Biscuit Farmer, Queen Spatula (my-well endowed favorite), Batbileg Chinzorig or "BC" as he likes to be called, or Mrs. Pickle Feather. If needed, you can steal pieces from other games to add more players. They might wonder about this strange land they've wandered into, but really after you've hung around Queen Frostine, Grandma Nut, and Plumpy the Troll is there really much left that will shock you?

The game begins as do most games, with players rolling the die to see who will go first. It seems mundane enough. However once the player with the highest roll takes his or her turn, it becomes clear that this is not your average board game. On her first turn, a friend of ours who had never played before, found herself making an "X" with her body until her next turn. She grew weary and tried to make a lower case "x".

The colors on the board correspond with different color cards, which have players doing different things. Here is an example from each category:

Green (Trivia): "How many fingers does a one-armed thumbless woman have? Extra Credit- How many fingers and toes combined do four one-legged weathermen and three blind, armless retired submarine captains have?" (No pressure, but my 11 year old got the extra credit question)

Yellow (Stuntz): "Show your opponents your belly button. Pretend your belly button has a mouth, and talk with it in a scary old voice. Make your belly button say, 'I've seen a lot of strange things in my day, but this just beats all.' "

Purple (Showbiz): " You might not be wearing a tutu, but we'd still like to see your ballet moves. Set the timer and gracefully dance like a ballerina until the timer runs out. If you can actually find and wear a tutu for your dance, advance 2 spaces."

Red (Scatterbrainz): Players pick between two choices and then go around the table until a player repeats an answer already given, or can't come up with an answer. Example: " 'U.S. Presidents' or 'Things typically found floating in the bathtub'. You choose the topic".

Blue (Roolz): Some rules apply to everyone playing, some just to individual players. Example of an individual rule: "While it is not your turn, whenever another player speaks to you, you must play 'peekaboo' with them." Example of a rule for everyone: "When it is not your turn, you must end each sentence you speak with 'izzle'. Good luckizzle."

The game is labelled as being for ages 12 and up, but we have played with younger children who just get assistance from mom or dad if needed. There are a few more "mature" questions and challenges, but nothing that is overtly inappropriate-nothing where I have thought to myself "Wow...I sure wish my kids didn't just hear that!" There are some Scatterbrainz categories which younger children might not know, like "Heavy Metal bands"--but players can always just pick a new card. My three oldest kids (ages 11, 8, and nearly 6) have loved playing it, I think mostly because they get to see the grown-ups in their life acting like loons. The Epiphany is coming up, Valentine's Day is just around the corner...and I heartily recommend that you add this game to your collection. You might be humiliated and ridiculed- but you will not have had so much fun in a long time!

For more information go here. To buy the game go here.