Book Review – A Spy in the Sky

A Spy in the Sky

Johnson, Kenneth B.

Pen and Sword Books, Yorkshire, 2019

How could I not pick up a book with a PRU blue Spitfire on the cover and subtitled “A Photographic Reconnaissance Spitfire Pilot in WWII”?  I did, and am glad of it.

The book is a fairly late edition to the WWII memoirs genre, and I’m very glad that it was written.  Many years ago in my early teens I read a novel which revolved around a photo reconnaissance pilot being shot down, and ever since then I have been fascinated by that highly specialized role carried out by young pilots in planes stripped of weapons and armor in the belief that by flying just that little bit faster or higher they would be able to get in and escape on their long, unescorted missions to get that crucial bit of visual data.  This fascination was deepened when a friend and colleague invited me to meet him at a hangar in East Midlands airport and introduced me to one of the few remaining airworthy PRU spitfires.

Within that fascination, though, were very few actual voices.  These were not the lauded heroes of the dogfights which caught the public’s imagination nor the masses of bombers visibly taking destruction to the enemy – these were the background acts, the single planes which launched in darkness and maintained radio silence from departure to arrival in hopes of capturing the perfect photo of a heavily defended shipyard or building or troop concentration in the desired light condition.  In the age before satellite and internet, this was the only way to get near real time information crucial to operational success, and day after day, night after night they launched, a comparative handful of solitary airplanes.  It wasn’t the stuff that made headlines or sold books, and gradually the voices left became harder to hear.

This book fills that void.  Starting at his 18’th birthday during the war when he decided to enlist in the RAF rather than wait to be conscripted into the Army, the author takes us through a convoluted set of twists of fate which take him from an enlisted aircraftman basically expecting to spend the war sweeping out hangars and polishing windows into flight training and then into the cockpit of a Spitfire and several other airplanes beyond that before the recollections of the missions and the people and places involved take center stage. 

What really makes this book stand out is the way the author takes pains to be relatable. By the time he is done with primary training you feel as if you’ve been sitting at the bar next to him and developed an easy comradeship. There is detail, drama, and a bit of humor all mixed together against the backdrop of being in a situation where the odds are so heavily stacked against you that every new day is something to wonder at.

Occupy This Body

Occupy This Body, A Buddhist Memoir

Suh, Sharon

Sumeru Press, 2019

The author’s story is fascinating from several angles. For one, it’s a glimpse into what it means to be a second generation immigrant living between cultures.  Another is what it takes to go from a faint inclination of something which might be of interest and develop it into a fulfilled dream.  Another is the evolving view of what it means to be a woman of color over the last few decades. All of these angles, however, come together in the extended theme of the book: Taking an almost unspeakably traumatic childhood and gradually identifying and addressing how to move forward and beyond that trauma.

Born as the second child to parents determined to succeed in their new country yet with a strong cultural preference for the first born son, her childhood is spent not only not being the favored child, but actively physically and mentally abused by her mother during periods when her father is not at home.  From at least toddlerhood she has learned that speaking out only results in repercussions, so she remains the dutiful daughter even as her mother’s actions and the likely ability to turn a blind eye by family and friends destroys her self esteem.

An inexplicable decision by her parents to send her off for several weeks to a summer camp geared toward competitive swimmers at 13 gives her the first taste of life without her mother’s negative influence.  Although not a competitive swimmer herself, she soon realizes things her body is capable of which she hadn’t even considered possible before and making friends with a variety of generally highly motivated kids from across the world opens her eyes a bit. Having experienced weeks of not being under her mother’s control, she identifies what could be.  The next year at camp she finds out about the concept of boarding schools from one of her friends and realizes that is the perfect solution for her to escape her mother.  She calls her dad from camp and suggests the idea, and he agrees.

Soon enough she finds herself checking into her new boarding school at the start of her sophomore year and relishes the freedom from her mother that it offers, but also runs face first into a culture she never anticipated.  While there are some other students who also don’t quite fit the mold, she finds her New England boarding school is only a couple of hours drive away from Long Island but might as well be a world apart. This is the domain of old money WASP culture and privileged scions of leading families, and for a Korean American from Long Island there is a constant pressure to prove herself.  The route she takes is to push herself to excel academically.  One day in history class during a discussion on Buddhism the lecturer makes a comment which resonates with her past and lights a fuse in her, and she determines that studying Buddhism from a philosophical perspective is the direction she wants to take. 

After graduating, she goes to college and while taking classes in Buddhism encounters a professor who inspires her to consider becoming a professor herself; a decision which sees her continuing on to earn her Ph.D. in a period of her life which also included the death of her mother, a serious illness of her father, marriage and moving across the country to her spouse’s location, another move a few years later, and having her first child.  All the while, she is gradually able to start getting footholds in to address the trauma she had not previously been able to. 

Running, Yoga, Teaching, Writing, Parenting, Professional Advancement, Diet and Lifestyle changes – all of these activities brought her something, yet there was still something elusive.  Until, while attending a silent meditation retreat, one of the leaders surprises her with a comment which she had never encountered in her multi-decade focus and it comes to her – that elusive keystone enabling her to approach the issues she hadn’t been able to otherwise.

Book Review: The Rider on the White Horse

The Rider on the White Horse

Storm, Theodor

New York Review Books, 2008 edition of 1964 translation by James Wright of works spanning 1848 – 1888

This book, though titled as one of the works, is a collection of 8 stories by Storm.  All are very reflective of his upper class Friesland background and of the period he wrote.  They are, in general, deep , intergenerational stories without happy endings. Without doing justice to the stories, here are brief overviews:

In the Great Hall – At the christening of a child, a family gathers and the grandmother reminisces.

Immensee – A young man leaves his sweetheart behind when he goes to study, but loses her to one of his friends who stayed home.

A Green Leaf – A soldier reminisces about a peasant girl he met while traveling to the war.

In the Sunlight – The daughter of a well-to-do merchant falls in love with an officer, against the wishes of her anti-military father. 

Veronika – The young wife of an older man spends lots of time in the company of his younger cousin, who falls in love with her. 

In St. Jurgen – A young man happens to meet the old man who was in love as a young man with an old woman who the young man had spent much time with as he grew up.

Aquis Submersus – A painting of a dead child with a mysterious signature hanging in a church becomes impressed on the mind of a boy; as a young man he stumbles across another painting of the same boy while alive, and uncovers the story behind it.

The Rider on the White Horse – A traveler sees a spectral white horse and rider pass by him in a storm, and when he mentions this at the inn he stops at later it is seen as an important and well-known omen, and he is told the story behind it.

Random Food of the Day

The best part of the Southwest – you’re never very far away from an excellent burrito.

Seattle Soundings: Tea Blending with Friday

Back in the time before COVID……    There was an ad in a shop window for the 2019 Northwest Tea Festival.  I like tea, and I’m not opposed to festivals, and I’d never heard of a tea festival before, so on the appropriate weekend I found my way to the location and proceeded to try and drink my way through the offerings.  There were lots of good teas, some really great teas, some fun seminars, and yet more tea.  I was starting to get a touch overwhelmed when I turned the corner of a row of vendors and was offered an intriguingly dark and full bodied, yet sprightly and nuanced, beverage the likes of which I hadn’t come across before. There was something about it, and then I realized – the combinations in this beverage reminded me on an overall sensory level of walking in a moist Pacific Northwest forest as it was drying out after a soaking rain.

And so I was introduced to the somewhat atypical tea blends by Friday Afternoon teas in Wallingford.  Guided by the owner’s lexical-gustatory synesthesia – an ability to essentially experience words and ideas as tastes – they create tea and tisane blends along a range of themes.  The blend which pulled me in, for example, was based on the taste perception of the Direwolves in “Game of Thrones” and includes components such as sage and elderflowers in addition to actual tea. Enthralled as I was at the time of the festival, I bought several different varieties and found that my appreciation of them didn’t fade as time went on.  When COVID hit and I found myself sheltering in place in a more distant location for several months, once they re-opened I ordered a selection to keep me company in my absence.

While shopping on their webpage, I came across the information that the owner offers custom blending services.  That sounded interesting to me, so I tucked it away in the back of my head.  A few weeks ago we had the first autumnal day of the year, and I found myself unable to decide on what tea I wanted to enjoy the upcoming season with – and thought about doing a custom blend.  I set up an appointment and tried to anticipate what the heck I was getting myself into. As part of the appointment setup, there is a field to provide anything you think might be useful for them to know prior to the actual session. Not having a clue what I was about to do, I put some words together in a stream-of-consciousness format and hit send.

A few days later I arrived at the tea shop and met Friday, the shop’s owner and blender.  They had set up an area for appropriately socially distanced interaction, and after talking for a few minutes about what I was looking for she developed an initial flavor profile and set about talking me through what she was coming up with and getting my input on what direction I wanted to take. Once we had a basic plan in place she headed over to the raw material storage area and created a blend, then brought a sample infusion over for us to try, and then take our combined feedback and tweak things and repeat the process.  It was a fascinating and educational experience to both see and taste how small changes in ratios among several components could alter the end product.  With a few minor directional changes and some refinements we eventually hit on a “production version” which incorporated some components I would have never come up with alongside some old favorites, which I was quite frankly surprised made their appearance as I hadn’t mentioned anything about them.

All told it was a very fun way to spend an hour learning more about various teas and herbal ingredients as well as a bit of the art of blending, and included just a smidge of tea magic – that thing that happens when you taste something unlike anything else you’ve ever encountered but it talks to you in just the right way.

Random Food of the Day

Savory sesame pancakes with chili oil – just the thing to get a day started!

Book Review: Red Rosa

Red Rosa

A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg

Evans, Kate

Verso, London, 2015

 

This book is the first graphic biography I have ever read, and I went in having pretty significant doubts as to how effective the medium would be. I have to say that I was amazed – the format managed to grab hold and pull me in in a way that no other biography I have ever read was able to do.

I first came to know about Rosa Luxemburg while attending a play in the fall of 1994 in Berlin.  I was a very technical university student and taking a crash course in German arts and culture prior to embarking on a year of Liberal Arts studies at the University of Hamburg.  For the last week of the course we traveled to Berlin and attempted to gorge ourselves on all the cultural offerings that city offered – one of which was a play at the Volksbuehne – conveniently enough located at “Rosa Luxemburg Platz” entitled “”Rosa Luxemburg – Rote Rosen für Dich.” What I recall most from that play, which was my introduction to modern German theater, was a rather discombobulating cacophony of sights and sounds, including a woman flopping on the stage like a dying fish beside a pig carcass slowly roasting in the heat of the stage lighting. What it did do, however, was cement Rosa Luxemburg firmly in mind as someone I needed to learn more about.

When I found myself standing in City Lights looking at an image of trench warfare in a woman’s hair on the cover, and then the title, I knew I needed to read this book.  I was not disappointed.  Yes, it hits the key points of a biography – there is a childhood, a survey of the factors that helped her develop into someone of interest, some personal information, some details of what she is best known for, …  Where the graphic format shines, however, is being able to add supporting information that otherwise would have fallen off.  There are facial expressions, background images, shading and perspectives, all aligned to add depth and character beyond what is written in word.

Rosa Luxemburg can be a tricky person to cover in a biography – born in Poland in the early 1870’s, she excelled at findings ways around the societal restrictions limiting Jewish women’s perspectives.  With a mind quick to grasp the details of economics, she found her way around Europe, eventually earning her doctorate and becoming a passionate and powerful force in the rising socialist movement.   Targeted by repressive governments, arrested and jailed multiple times, she still was able to inspire and guide polices at the highest levels and was poised to continue her advance into power when the movement hesitated and split following the end of the first world war; Rosa remained on the more ideological and revolutionary side while others moved into a more moderate and “acceptable” posture and allowed a price to be set upon her head, as well as of other revolutionary leaders, in order to be rid of them.  When the end came it was ugly and brutal.

What makes this book extraordinary, however, is how the author created a work published in 2015 that so clearly calls out the societal issues making headlines today.  As I read the last pages and saw images of people being abducted by government agents, of beatings and torture, of extra-judicial killings and state-sponsored terrorism on the streets of Berlin in January 1919,  I turned the final page and was met with images of more recent vintage – of umbrella holding protesters in Hong Kong surrounded by riot police and waves of tear gas – of women’s right activists marching, of a line of defiant grandmothers linking arms and singing, and a lone individual holding up Rosa’s memory as a shield against a faceless man clad completely in black riot armor with no identification with a raised baton.  I closed the book, reflected on what I had read, and then opened my web browser to lighten my mood – and watched as federal agents in Portland wearing no individual identification abducted protestors into unmarked vehicles; a line of mothers stood against teargas, and a lone protestor who went with the intent to reason with the police was attacked and beaten by a group of riot armor wearing thugs.

Book Review: Justice on the Grass

Temple-Raston, Dina

2005

A study of the “media trial” during the Rwanda war crimes tribunal. The background of the case was that a radio station and several newspapers played significant roles in inciting the racial hatred that led to the genocide, and, once it had started, facilitated communication which furthered the genocide.  The station owner and news director were charged with war crimes but pleaded they were journalists and were just reporting what they saw.

The book gives several views of the buildup and the genocide, then focuses on the trial and the ultimate verdict.

Book Review: Dreams of my Russian Summers

Dreams of my Russian Summers

Makine, Andrei; translated from French by Geoffrey Strachan

1998

A novel of finding one’s identity across several cultures.  The narrator grows up in a mixed Russian-French household; his grandmother was French and in Russia when WWII broke out and was unable to leave.  Spending summers with her and hearing her stories of France entranced him as a child, and he spent his youth focusing on being French rather than Russian.  As he aged the novelty of being different wore off, and he dove fully into being Russian.  Only then did he come to realize the struggles his grandmother had been through.

Book Review: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

Fuller, Alexandra

Random House, 2001

An interesting mix of autobiography, history, travel narrative and social commentary wrapped into one neat little package.  Put simply, it’s the story of a white family in southern Africa during the societal changes of the 1970’s and on.  The author was born in Derbyshire after her parents left Africa, but they soon returned.  Her childhood and teens were spent in the civil war in Rhodesia, when a crackly radio link between the white farmers formed the backbone of their security system based on militias, convoys, and everyone in the family knowing to shoot to kill. It’s a pointed view of racial and cultural inequity, set against what is basically a rural lovestory of the land and the pain that goes with it being taken away.  It is also the story of a family trying to find a way through constantly changing situations.

The description above doesn’t do the book justice.  It’s an oddly indescribable book, but one well worth reading.