The Girl In The Blue Beret.

You can’t judge a book by it’s cover they say, but I did. It showed a rain slicked city street somewhere in Europe. Possibly Paris, I thought. The cars were 1930's vintage for sure. It was twilight with a slight fog hanging in the air. The street lights were aglow and there were few people about. Still a young woman , wearing a coat and a dark beret was crossing the street. The whole scene was somber, mysterious even a bit frightening. Something about it all made me think of Anne Frank.......
Thus, I was drawn into readomg author Bobbie Ann Mason’s new novel, The Girl In The Blue Beret,
I was so glad I judged that cover...
It is the story of a recently widowed American pilot, Marshal Stone, who is forced into mandatory retirement at the age of sixty and wondering what to do with the rest of his life. He is the same man, who as a young bomber pilot crash landed in 1944, on a mission over German occupied France.
Inspired by the experiences of her father-in-law, Mason tells a tale of war, love and survival in "The Girl in the Blue Beret" that alternates perfectly between World War II and modern Europe.
To the surprise of Marshall’s friends and family, he picks up and moves to Paris, intent on finding the ordinary people who hid him and led him safely out of France during the war after his B-17 crashed. Through his eyes, we meet members of the French Resistance who sacrificed greatly and often risked their lives to help downed airmen. We also learn about a cocksure young man slow to realize the high price of war to those who lived through it.
Mason's writing is exquisite. Not a single word is wasted or out of place, and she never drifts toward sentimentality — even in her descriptions of combat and the wreckage left behind. Her extensive knowledge of aircraft, combat and World War II is readily apparent, but isn't heavy-handed. Perhaps most impressive, though, is her ability to experience the world through a no-longer-middle-aged widower.
Filled with mystery, guilt and self doubt, courage, and romance, this book has it all. It shows people growing and changing, sometimes but not always for the better. How some stood up with courage under terrible circumstances. Not just another book about World War II, it will be the "quest" story you will never forget. I highly recommend it.

Lost In Shangri-La

I love adventure/exploration/ survival stories. Needless to say, the newly published book Lost In Shangri-La fits those criterion exactly. One of the best of this genre I’ve read in a long time. From the New York Times Book Review
Picture of WAC Margaret Hastings & New Guinea Tribesmen
By MICHAEL WASHBURN
Published: June 3, 2011
"Adventure" these days is merely an experience that allows for a modestly elevated number of variables — renting a car without a GPS unit, for instance, or visiting a friend in East Flatbush. Not that the world is denuded of excitement. It’s just that true adventure requires something that defies an itinerary: failure. Failure is the engine of adventure.

Mitchell Zuckoff’s "Lost in Shangri-La" delivers a feast of failures — of planning, of technology, of communication — that are resolved in a truly incredible adventure. Truly incredible? A cliché, yes, but Zuckoff’s tale is something a drunk stitches together from forgotten B movies and daydreams while clutching the bar. Zuckoff is no fabulist, though, and in this brisk book he narrates the tense yet peaceful five weeks during 1945 that three plane crash survivors spent immersed "in a world that time didn’t forget. Time never knew it existed." Even at the level of exposition, the book is breathless.
In the final days of World War II, 24 bored soldiers and members of the Women’s Army Corps embark on an aeronautic joy ride over a newly "discovered" landscape — known today as the Baliem Valley — in the dangerously isolated mountains of New Guinea, mountains populated by thousands of combative "cannibals," where "a lifetime of war was an inheritance every child could count on."
Perhaps owing to a lethal combination of foolishness and inexperience, the plane crashes, eventually killing all aboard but a beautiful Wac and two all-American G.I.’s. They are unreachable except by parachute — or plane crash — and surrounded by startled warrior tribes; a contingent of Filipino-American paratroopers joins the survivors to aid in their rescue. With no place to land an airplane, the mountain air too thin for heli­copters, and the threat of thousands of hostile Japanese soldiers hiding between the injured group and the sea, Army commanders decide on the most reasonable extraction: a cargo plane with a big hook. At this point, you should know if Zuckoff’s book appeals to you.
The pleasures — and values — of this story reside in admiration of fortitude in a vortex of treacherous circumstances. It is the 1940s, though, so primitive sexual politics — Margaret Hastings, the surviving Wac, is repeatedly praised for her unexpected "gumption," and the Army’s first airdrop includes food, blankets and lipstick — abounds, as does the lazy racism of "cockpit anthropoligists even after the New Guineans prove indispensable. Zuckoff doesn’t editorialize, probably because this is an adventure tale; insofar as nobody can confront ingrained gender bias or cultural chauvinism while looking across a clearing at a war-­painted, spear-wielding expeditionary force, the book’s vitality derives from a contagious sympathy with its subjects’ circumstances. But it’s a fine line.
Technicolor chivalry and cultural atavism aside, "Lost in Shangri-La" tells of the first contact between disoriented, combative cultures, one of the final first-contacts in human history. It’s a tale of bravery, loyalty, trust and silly, often frightening miscommunication. For example, white sky gods figure prominently in the local eschatology, and unbeknown to the Americans, tribal leaders greet their arrival as a prophecy fulfilled. While the Americans run swap meets, debates rage over whether to kill the whites to stall the apocalypse.
Ultimately, Zuckoff’s story is heartbreaking. From the moment the New Guineans choose to aid the stranded Americans, their culture is jerked forward into a callous, evangelizing modernity. Each day, the American forces receive an airdrop, often containing weapons and cowrie shells — used as currency — inadvertently introducing two hallmarks of the modern West: firearms and inflation. Today, Zuckoff writes, "elderly native men in penis gourds . . . charge a small fee to pose for photos, inserting boar tusks through passages in their nasal septums to look fierce. More often, they look lost." By the end of Zuckoff’s narrative, it’s clear that the Americans, however painful and anguishing the ordeal, were hardly victims. After all, they experienced the thrills of adventure. The New Guineans, by contrast, inherited a tragedy.

The Silent Man

I’m not a big fan of the "thriller" genre. That’s not to say though that I would never ever pick one up when I’m scanning the new novel shelf of our local public library. Alex Berenson’s thriller The Silent Man caught my eye. I read it.
The radical militants of the Middle East want to get their national, religious and personal revenge against the Americans. Their plot is obtain the elements needed to build a nuclear weapon, smuggle it into America and explode the device in Washington, D.C. How might they bring off such a scheme? How might our government's agents stop them? Alex Berenson's third John Wells thriller pits his CIA superhero against just such a plot Here is where I usually have trouble with thrillers. The super hero part is usually so hokey. On that point this book was to thrillers what reality TV is reality. Popular drivel. I'd already seen James Bond in the movies. I will say this tale is well written though in a descriptive sense. Berenson strings his plot together well and his adjectives do grab ones attention. The really intriguing part is where the author provides a realistic, detailed account of how the terrorists swipe two decommisioned nuclear "gadgets" from a Russian military base and transport them to the United States. There they are taken apart to patch together a nuclear bomb that could work. This is the part that caught my attention. I kept wondering if this kind of information should be available at Barnes and Noble.

We know in the end that superhero John Wells will save the world from a nuclear holocaust. What we don’t know is how plausable is the "science" behind the plot. Can a couple of amateurs build a nuclear weapon with a little luck, the right material and the internet. I think I became more and more convinced as I read this sophisticated account of the nuclear plot that it was not so far fetched as I thought. . Thrillers are supposed to be scary. It was. And that's what made it worth reading. In the real world lets hope our intelligence agencies are more prepared and aware than they were on 9/11.

The Final Storm

"War is hell."

William Tecumseh Sherman

DAMN YANKEES

THREE NUNS WERE ATTENDING A YANKEES BASEBALL GAME. THEY WERE FROM MINNESOTA AND HOPED TO FIND OUT WHY THE YANKEES ALWAYS BEAT THE TWINS IN THE PLAYOFFS. PERHAPS THERE WAS SOMETHING TO THE MOVIE "DAMN YANKES" THAT THE DEVIL SUPPORTED THE NEW YORKERS.GAME.

THREE YANKEES FANS WERE SITTING DIRECTLY BEHIND.... BECAUSE THEIR HABITS WERE PARTIALLY BLOCKING THE VIEW,
THE MEN DECIDEDTO BADGER THE NUNS HOPING THAT THEY'D GET ANNOYED ENOUGH TO MOVE TO ANOTHER AREA..
IN A VERY LOUD VOICE, THE FIRST GUY SAID, "I THINK I'M GOING TO MOVE TO UTAH ...
THERE ARE ONLY 100 NUNS LIVING THERE.." THEN THE SECOND GUY SPOKE UP AND SAID, "I WANT TO GO TO MONTANA ... THERE ARE ONLY 5O NUNS LIVING THERE..
"THE THIRD GUY SAID, "I WANT TO GO TO IDAHO ..
THERE ARE ONLY 25 NUNS LIVING THERE.." ONE OF THE NUNS TURNED AROUND, LOOKED AT THE MEN, AND IN A VERY SWEET AND CALM VOICE SAID,
"WHY DON'T YOU GO TO HELL .. THERE AREN'T ANY NUNS THERE.

Tuttie Frutti

It had been a long hot day at the Minnesota Landscape and Horticultural Garden. We had gone with Mrs. T's cousin Joe and spouse Mary. Afterwards a dinner was in order at a local restaurant.

We all ordered a drink. Mrs. T: "I'll have that Hawaiian Special (or something akin to that)." Troutbirder: Beer, Leinis Honey Weisse, please." And then the song came flooding back in memory. Lil Richard singing...."A-Wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-booTutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam booI got a gal, named Sue, She knows just what to do. .....I've been to the east, I've been to the west, but she's the gal That I love the best.Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,....A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo."
Some days I just can't help myself but on this occasion I didn't hold Mrs. T to her promise to take her turn and drive us home from the Twin Cities. :) That adult beverage must have been at least a quart.

Kids & Grandkids

TEACHER: John , why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without tables.
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water? DONALD: H I J K L M N O TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted it. Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.
TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
TEACHER: Charles, what happens to your body as you age?

CHARLES: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

TEACHER: Sally, how is dew formed?

SALLY: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

TEACHER: Bill, how can you delay milk turning sour?

BILLY: Keep it in the cow.

First Grandchild Ethan - Born Fargo North Dakota

Second Grandchild Tensae - Born

Ethiopia

Third Grandchild Leonard - Born Rwanda

Fourth Grandchild Vanessa - In process of adoption.

Infidel

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, was raised Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992, she came to the Netherlands as a refugee, escaping a forced marriage to a distant cousin she had never met. She learned Dutch and worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelter for battered women. After earning her college degree in political science, she worked for the Labor Party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and now fights for the rights of Muslim women, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West." (From her book Infidel)
From the books introduction: "one November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives.
As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat, Muhammad Bouyeri approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road, then collapsed. Bouyeri followed. Theo begged, "Can’t we talk about this?" but Bouyeri shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo’s throat. With the other knife, he stabbed a five-page letter onto Theo’s chest.
The letter was addressed to me."
I really disliked this book. I disliked what the author had to tell about her childhood and her experiences as a young woman in a Muslim world. And yet........ I’m glad I read it. I’m glad to know some important things about Islam, the culture it creates and its implications for the non Muslim part of the world. I have no idea how typical what is told in this book is of most Islamic cultures. I met an exchange student from Indonesia (the worlds largest Muslim country) and am reasonably sure the horror of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali experienced would not be typical there. It’s all very disturbing.
How well does anyone in the west understand both traditional and radical fundamentalist Islam, and all the things it does to people? Do we really understand female genital mutilation, beaten women, arranged marriages, the compuslive need to hide the feminine, and the complete loss of individual freedom? Americans still don't have a clue. This book makes a very real effort to explain a few things. It is painful, but important reading.

And then there is this. She now works for the American Enterprise Institute. A hotbed of neocon ideologues. There are many aspects to much of what is involved in her story. It might be a reason why it took me weeks to figure out what I wanted to say about this book......

In The Garden Of Beasts

In the Garden of Beasts is quite simply a great read. Written by popular historian Erik Larson it is the true and haunting story of a real American family trapped in a time and place of ultimate horror. It is also a vivid portrait of Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s reign. Chicago history professor William E. Dodd, who in 1933 became America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s regime, and his scandalously carefree daughter, Martha, along with his son and spouse are an odd fit among the extravagance and moral decadence of the Nazi elite. Dodd’s increasing concerns about Hitler’s ambitions are ignored by the State Department. His 24 year old daughter Martha, on the other hand, is hypnotized by the life style of a soon to be changed Berlin’s salon society. The rise of Nazi Germany is a oft told tale in history. For this reason, In the Garden of Beasts is simply amazing because it tells the story in a way that brings it all down to the level of the actions of real people acting in an unfamiliar situation. Each step along the way is such that we say to ourselves "oh my god someone must stop this before it’s too late."
Naive and diplomatically inexperienced, Ambassador Dodge eventually saw the darkness at the end of the road. The Nazi psychopaths had taken over a country, had begun killing people out of hand and the world did nothing.
Dodd mistakingly thought he could exercise a "moderating influence over Hitler and his government."
Martha was newly divorced from her first husband and out for a good time. This included a French diplomat, the head of the Gestapo and a Soviet spy... among others. This all amidst Jews and other "undesirables" being stripped of their livelihoods, property and basic civil rights. In one nightmarish mob scene, Martha and two male traveling companions witnessed the near-lynching of a woman who had a relationship with a Jewish man.
Hitler himself told Dodd that "If they (Jews) continue their activity, we shall make a complete end to all of them in this country." .
The Tiergarten was Berlins Central Park and zoo. The Dodds lived right adjacent to it. They took walks there. They admired the beautiful landscape. And met the animals who terrorized the world.