9/24/12
LOVE IS THE CURE : ELTON JOHN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
LOVE IS THE CURE
On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS
C Elton John AIDS Foundation
Publisher : Little Brown and Company
The writing was smooooth; Strunk and White would be proud!
Elton John kept the focus on AIDS, so while some personal information is woven in, it's not the focus, and the focus feels relentless.
The information Elton John has to deliver is appalling. Most utterly appalling is the frequency - normalcy - of RAPE OF WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, where Blacks have extremely high rates of AIDS.
I cannot help but apply my own values; it's horrific and disgusting. Apartheid ended but insane sexism and homophobia has not. South African leader Nelson Mandela appears in ads but maybe these people DON'T WANT LIFE! This is not about Whites oppressing Blacks in South Africa. This is about Blacks doing themselves in. Elton John is too kind to say so.
There are other examples, other countries. In South Africa the women are raped and it's strangly frequent enough to be implied acceptable and yet they are afraid to admit it which means it is not acceptable, so people go without medical treatment until they are about to die, hiding the secret of their rape... and the children... they become orphans... they die too.
Yes, there are other countries where AIDS is taking lives because of ignorance, other examples in the book. Elton's not picking on South Africa.
So, after getting over my fury about South Africa, I took a moment to ask myself the question that that was part of the "prime directive" on the old Star Trek series.
(If you don't remember, on Star Trek the crew beams down to various planets surfaces where they are, by their very presence, going to influence the culture, while trying not to. They are supposed to attend to their business for going there, take care of a problem, and leave.) Can we take our values and try to make another culture conform to them because we think or know that these people would be better off with our values or can we avoid doing that?
How can we as outsiders address RAPE CULTURE in another country on another continent when we still have a rape culture here, though not as horrible as in South Africa? Or does change have to come from the inside, from people there admitting the truth about what's going on and how they are ruining their own lives and the lives of others and stop behaving that way?
Hard question. Left unanswered.
Celibacy still has its charm
C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS
C Elton John AIDS Foundation
Publisher : Little Brown and Company
The writing was smooooth; Strunk and White would be proud!
Elton John kept the focus on AIDS, so while some personal information is woven in, it's not the focus, and the focus feels relentless.
The information Elton John has to deliver is appalling. Most utterly appalling is the frequency - normalcy - of RAPE OF WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, where Blacks have extremely high rates of AIDS.
I cannot help but apply my own values; it's horrific and disgusting. Apartheid ended but insane sexism and homophobia has not. South African leader Nelson Mandela appears in ads but maybe these people DON'T WANT LIFE! This is not about Whites oppressing Blacks in South Africa. This is about Blacks doing themselves in. Elton John is too kind to say so.
There are other examples, other countries. In South Africa the women are raped and it's strangly frequent enough to be implied acceptable and yet they are afraid to admit it which means it is not acceptable, so people go without medical treatment until they are about to die, hiding the secret of their rape... and the children... they become orphans... they die too.
Yes, there are other countries where AIDS is taking lives because of ignorance, other examples in the book. Elton's not picking on South Africa.
So, after getting over my fury about South Africa, I took a moment to ask myself the question that that was part of the "prime directive" on the old Star Trek series.
(If you don't remember, on Star Trek the crew beams down to various planets surfaces where they are, by their very presence, going to influence the culture, while trying not to. They are supposed to attend to their business for going there, take care of a problem, and leave.) Can we take our values and try to make another culture conform to them because we think or know that these people would be better off with our values or can we avoid doing that?
How can we as outsiders address RAPE CULTURE in another country on another continent when we still have a rape culture here, though not as horrible as in South Africa? Or does change have to come from the inside, from people there admitting the truth about what's going on and how they are ruining their own lives and the lives of others and stop behaving that way?
Hard question. Left unanswered.
Celibacy still has its charm
C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
9/20/12
IRVING STONE Quotation
There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” Irving Stone (from Clarence Darrow for the Defense)
DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE
DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE as seen stitched on a pillow in the book "A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of a Misspent Life" by Mary Randolph Carter.
9/17/12
OLD SCHOOL? GOODBYE YOUTUBE STATION?
Musing today.
I've been meaning to delete my personal YOUTUBE station for a while now. One of these days I'm gonna do it. I opened it with a not g-mail account. Now to get into it, I have to open a new g-mail account. How dare they block me from using my old acount just because it's their competitor Yahoo? Is there no GRANDFATHER CLAUSE?
So my station has been sort of, song by song, becoming defunct for a while now and I don't even want it to show on the net. It's been a while since I personally listened to it while I wrote, though it's a lot of songs that that came to mind while simply living life and a few discoveries. The station was mostly for my personal pleasure.
I guess I have to admit that my musical choices are generally OLD SCHOOL. I have a huge inventory of songs remembered. A lot of these songs are "oldies" that I probably first heard on "oldies" radio stations. I did a lot of listening to the radio and was very influenced by friends who actually had the money to buy albums and turned me on to their favorite music when I was in my youth.
I used to collect lyrics as poetry, as story, and that's how I got to be a pre-teen who knew that Jimmy Webb wrote a lot of songs I loved.
I took a song writing class once and was not a natural. Since I love music this was unhappy for me. The teacher had written songs for Elvis and Barry Manilow and well, I thought he was a bit pompous and under impressed with my efforts. Most of the guys in the class were taking it to get laid.
In fact, I have only bad memories of that class, the teacher, and the people in it. It was the first I had a headache that lasted.
I love a good beat, love to hear drummers, and I can appreciate a rhyme as well as a rhythm but the rap phenomena leaped over me the way a fire leaps over the freeway.
Sometimes CDs sound tinny to me. I miss the old stereo with all the knobs to adjust things, the warmth of the plastic, even if it was popping.
Worse, at some point in music history, when there were too many love songs, song writers were striving to write about anything but love, but the songs with heart and emotion, those are the survivors. Maybe that's why I reach back past rap, to the singer-songwriters like the Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin, to Carole King, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Linda Ronstadt (to name a few).
A generation of Guitar Gods are moving into elderhood, and these people are all my elders, so I'm not of their generation really, but their music is mine.
I've been meaning to delete my personal YOUTUBE station for a while now. One of these days I'm gonna do it. I opened it with a not g-mail account. Now to get into it, I have to open a new g-mail account. How dare they block me from using my old acount just because it's their competitor Yahoo? Is there no GRANDFATHER CLAUSE?
So my station has been sort of, song by song, becoming defunct for a while now and I don't even want it to show on the net. It's been a while since I personally listened to it while I wrote, though it's a lot of songs that that came to mind while simply living life and a few discoveries. The station was mostly for my personal pleasure.
I guess I have to admit that my musical choices are generally OLD SCHOOL. I have a huge inventory of songs remembered. A lot of these songs are "oldies" that I probably first heard on "oldies" radio stations. I did a lot of listening to the radio and was very influenced by friends who actually had the money to buy albums and turned me on to their favorite music when I was in my youth.
I used to collect lyrics as poetry, as story, and that's how I got to be a pre-teen who knew that Jimmy Webb wrote a lot of songs I loved.
I took a song writing class once and was not a natural. Since I love music this was unhappy for me. The teacher had written songs for Elvis and Barry Manilow and well, I thought he was a bit pompous and under impressed with my efforts. Most of the guys in the class were taking it to get laid.
In fact, I have only bad memories of that class, the teacher, and the people in it. It was the first I had a headache that lasted.
I love a good beat, love to hear drummers, and I can appreciate a rhyme as well as a rhythm but the rap phenomena leaped over me the way a fire leaps over the freeway.
Sometimes CDs sound tinny to me. I miss the old stereo with all the knobs to adjust things, the warmth of the plastic, even if it was popping.
Worse, at some point in music history, when there were too many love songs, song writers were striving to write about anything but love, but the songs with heart and emotion, those are the survivors. Maybe that's why I reach back past rap, to the singer-songwriters like the Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin, to Carole King, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Linda Ronstadt (to name a few).
A generation of Guitar Gods are moving into elderhood, and these people are all my elders, so I'm not of their generation really, but their music is mine.
9/13/12
JOHNNY RIVERS : POOR SIDE OF TOWN
One of my favorite songs since I was yet to be a teenager. First heard it on a scratched up 45rpm that was handed down. That record got played over and over again on a plastic kid record player - mono - the worn needle scratching deeper.
9/9/12
DOGS IN LITERATURE : WOLF IN THE EARTH CHILDREN'S SERIES : CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR
I'm a fan of Jean M. Auel, the prolific author of the Earth's Children series that begins with the book Clan of the Cave Bear. The books follow the life of Ayla, who is separated from her parents and tribe as a child, is adopted by a Clan ( "the flat heads") that is not of her own people, and is eventually shunned by them for being so different.
Driven to survive on her own, she spends a winter surviving by holing up in a cave in a valley, only going out into the cold to hunt with a sling shot and surviving by foraging plants in summer weather. Eventually, she finds a wolf cub that is also alone to be a companion and through observation and training, turns him into a prehistoric pet wolf - dog who comes when she whistles, to the amazement of every person she encounters from then on. This then is Jean M. Auel's way of introducing the relationship that humans and dogs have had for thousands of years.
When all the breeding dogs into small and even incompetent animals began, who really knows? I once watched a video about what the world would be like if there were no humans. Dogs would quickly resume their traditional lives of hunting in packs, and most of the flat faced ones would be so bad at hunting that they probably wouldn't survive.
Driven to survive on her own, she spends a winter surviving by holing up in a cave in a valley, only going out into the cold to hunt with a sling shot and surviving by foraging plants in summer weather. Eventually, she finds a wolf cub that is also alone to be a companion and through observation and training, turns him into a prehistoric pet wolf - dog who comes when she whistles, to the amazement of every person she encounters from then on. This then is Jean M. Auel's way of introducing the relationship that humans and dogs have had for thousands of years.
When all the breeding dogs into small and even incompetent animals began, who really knows? I once watched a video about what the world would be like if there were no humans. Dogs would quickly resume their traditional lives of hunting in packs, and most of the flat faced ones would be so bad at hunting that they probably wouldn't survive.
9/6/12
DOGS IN LITERATURE : TAISHA ABELAR'S MANFRED
Speaking of Taisha Abelar's new book (see past posts) that still hasn't come out (I just checked a popular book selling site on the net) one of my favorite characters in her first and only published book is the "dog" Manfred.
Come on - we know he is a sorcerer trapped in a dog body! But how that happened?
In this book Taisha encounters Manfred in the mysterious house in Mexico where she is in a spiritual apprenticeship. Manfred likes to lay on her, taking as much of her energy as he can. Manfred is a sensitive beast, who overreacts when anyone says he looks like a toad. So of course the word must be spelled out around him. T O A D! He calms down when you say that someone else looks like a toad or that he does not look like a toad!
Carlos Castaneda said that Taisha wrote this book while in dreaming. I wonder if Taisha ever had a dog or dogs in real life. I wonder if Manfred will make a reappearance in the long awaited new book?
In this book Taisha encounters Manfred in the mysterious house in Mexico where she is in a spiritual apprenticeship. Manfred likes to lay on her, taking as much of her energy as he can. Manfred is a sensitive beast, who overreacts when anyone says he looks like a toad. So of course the word must be spelled out around him. T O A D! He calms down when you say that someone else looks like a toad or that he does not look like a toad!
Carlos Castaneda said that Taisha wrote this book while in dreaming. I wonder if Taisha ever had a dog or dogs in real life. I wonder if Manfred will make a reappearance in the long awaited new book?
9/3/12
AMY MY DAUGHTER : MITCH WINEHOUSE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW
AMY MY DAUGHTER
Mitch Winehouse C 2012 (Amy's father)
itbooks - an imprint of HarperCollins is the publisher
There are words Mitch Winehouse does not use about his daughter, the singer Amy Winehouse who died a couple years back at the age of 27.
Let me use some of them. Amy Winehouse was a mess - long before she was famous - and she was mentally ill - she cut herself. She was into this seriously mentally ill behavior before she became addicted to... of all substances, her man - husband and ex-husband - Blake.Amy, who's artistry I admire, is on the cover of the book in a photograph that reveals a huge tattoo going down her arm that reads "Daddy's Girl." Maybe that's why, though Mitch was married to Amy's mother, and then her stepmother, the involvement of these women in Amy's life is not part of the big story - his story of being the protective but anxious father of a superstar.
I did want to know how her upbringing effected what seems to be Amy's long standing lack of self-discipline, but as it reads Mitch in his capacity as father, and as a man somehow involved in her management of finances and career, was the one she kept making the promises to - to quit - and the one who was there for her, offering love and advice as best he could even when she couldn't or wouldn't.
To hear Mitch tell it, Amy was brought down by Blake and could have been saved by marrying and having children with her next serious boyfriend.
The ups and downs of her medical history and her on and off again attempts to beat drugs and then alcohol might be typical of any addict. What wasn't typical was Amy's talent. Mitch never says that talent was a burden to her, or that she kept medicating herself with these substances because being famous and keeping a career going like that are damn difficult.
Amy was in very poor health and she had pretty much done herself in with substances. I came to feel that bad boy Blake was another symptom.
Those of you who know me know that I think, have long thought, the whole Psychiatry/Psychology profession is way too powerful. I believe this self propagating profession is hand in hand with pharmaceutical companies and that it is now true that everyone is diagnosable and therefore medicateble. I'll never be a Scientologist but on this they have it right.
I couldn't help but wonder though if Amy Winehouse would still be with us here and now if, earlier in her life, someone had recognized her cutting of herself as serious mental illness. Would psychotropics have killed the creativity and spirit in her? Or would be the best substitute for all those street drugs, all that booze? Mitch doesn't say it. I do.
Towards the end, Mitch mentions that there's a possibility that he got spiritual signs that he thinks were about Amy - butterflies - and a bird and a butterfly flying together. He has used these symbols for AMY'S FOUNDATION, which will address the problems of addiction, ill health, and homelessness among youth.
Mitch Winehouse C 2012 (Amy's father)
itbooks - an imprint of HarperCollins is the publisher
There are words Mitch Winehouse does not use about his daughter, the singer Amy Winehouse who died a couple years back at the age of 27.
Let me use some of them. Amy Winehouse was a mess - long before she was famous - and she was mentally ill - she cut herself. She was into this seriously mentally ill behavior before she became addicted to... of all substances, her man - husband and ex-husband - Blake.Amy, who's artistry I admire, is on the cover of the book in a photograph that reveals a huge tattoo going down her arm that reads "Daddy's Girl." Maybe that's why, though Mitch was married to Amy's mother, and then her stepmother, the involvement of these women in Amy's life is not part of the big story - his story of being the protective but anxious father of a superstar.
I did want to know how her upbringing effected what seems to be Amy's long standing lack of self-discipline, but as it reads Mitch in his capacity as father, and as a man somehow involved in her management of finances and career, was the one she kept making the promises to - to quit - and the one who was there for her, offering love and advice as best he could even when she couldn't or wouldn't.
To hear Mitch tell it, Amy was brought down by Blake and could have been saved by marrying and having children with her next serious boyfriend.
The ups and downs of her medical history and her on and off again attempts to beat drugs and then alcohol might be typical of any addict. What wasn't typical was Amy's talent. Mitch never says that talent was a burden to her, or that she kept medicating herself with these substances because being famous and keeping a career going like that are damn difficult.
Amy was in very poor health and she had pretty much done herself in with substances. I came to feel that bad boy Blake was another symptom.
Those of you who know me know that I think, have long thought, the whole Psychiatry/Psychology profession is way too powerful. I believe this self propagating profession is hand in hand with pharmaceutical companies and that it is now true that everyone is diagnosable and therefore medicateble. I'll never be a Scientologist but on this they have it right.
I couldn't help but wonder though if Amy Winehouse would still be with us here and now if, earlier in her life, someone had recognized her cutting of herself as serious mental illness. Would psychotropics have killed the creativity and spirit in her? Or would be the best substitute for all those street drugs, all that booze? Mitch doesn't say it. I do.
Towards the end, Mitch mentions that there's a possibility that he got spiritual signs that he thinks were about Amy - butterflies - and a bird and a butterfly flying together. He has used these symbols for AMY'S FOUNDATION, which will address the problems of addiction, ill health, and homelessness among youth.
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