Blog Headline of the Week

Doing as I said, not as I did, my youngest daughter, Tracy, was named a 21st Century Scholar at UMass-Amherst last week. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but… [...]]]> I was largely incommunicado the last week or so because I’ve been wrapped up with (and worn out by) a family get-together and celebration in Massachusetts.

Doing as I said, not as I did, my youngest daughter, Tracy, was named a 21st Century Scholar at UMass-Amherst last week. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but… She was one of 11 to receive the prize, given to the University’s “most talented and accomplished graduating seniors” — out of a class of 5,500. Aside from a young woman from South Africa, she was the only non-Massachusetts resident to be selected. She was also the only winner from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

It was a somewhat wearing number of days. My wife and I flew out last week and the other two daughters flew in separately from their respective locations (the first and perhaps only time all of us are together this year). We actually attended four celebrations from Thursday through Saturday. One was for the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department (one of her majors); another was for the Commonwealth Honors College (where she designed her other major in using media to assist in public health for persons with disabilities); there was the general commencement in the football stadium (it took 47 minutes for the commencement march, even with students entering from four different places), where she was on the platform throughout; and the HFA ceremony (where we stood for more than two hours). We also attended the Chancellor’s commencement dinner, where Tracy formally received her award.

She wasn’t the only one who had something to celebrate. Our middle daughter, Andrea, received her master’s degree in community and regional planning from the University of Nebraska the week before. At the same time, she gained full-time employment at the Nebraska Rural Futures Institute, where she worked as a graduate assistant.

We spent some enjoyable dinners with the faculty member who became Tracy’s mentor and close friend. One get-together included other faculty and staff, including her undergrad advisor and the School of Public Health faculty member woman who supervised Tracy’s honors thesis. Then we went to Boston as neither of the oldest two daughters had been there. That, of course, required a Red Sox game and general touring. (The trick to driving in Boston? Drive there, park near a T station and use the T until you leave.) And, of course, I returned home with six more books than I left with, supporting independent bookstores in Amherst, Northampton and Boston

Everyone flew home this week, except Tracy. Wednesday, she left for New York City, where she will spend the summer interning at the Clinton Global Initiative before returning to Amherst to pursue a master’s degree in public policy. All I know is my wife and I were both worn out. It’s hard to keep up with the young ‘uns.

As has become evident by how well each of them has done (and how proud I am of each), they’re lucky their mother did such a good job.

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

Abandoned:

I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story, Ingrid Croce and Jimmy Rock — Perhaps I’m too much off a stickler when it comes to nonfiction. Recreating conversations between people is somewhat acceptable in my view but when the only participants are dead, [...]]]> Nonfiction works constituted both the good and the abandoned this month.

Abandoned:

I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story, Ingrid Croce and Jimmy Rock — Perhaps I’m too much off a stickler when it comes to nonfiction. Recreating conversations between people is somewhat acceptable in my view but when the only participants are dead, it strikes me as invention. It makes me wonder how much else of what I’m reading is “recreated.” Certainly, a story can be told without trying to directly quote conversations or tell us what a deceased person was thinking at a particular time but more than a third of the way through this biography I reached my limit of these devices.

Something entirely different led me to abandon Georges Bataille’s The Trial of Gilles de Rais. The book purports to tell the story of this 13th century serial killer of children through the documents of the trial. Before we ever get to that source material, however, Bataille spends far too much time discussing and evaluating his subject in terms of his family and the “archaic” thought prevalent among the aristocracy of the time. The problem is significant parts talk about occurrences or actions we don’t know anything about yet. Throw in a timeline that seems frequently juggled and it was just too much.

Loved it:

I seriously considered reviewing Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck, A back cover blurb, though, clearly identified my problem. “Very, very rarely one comes across a book so remarkable and so unexpectedly convincing that it deserves more to be quoted than to be reviewed,” Frederic Raphael wrote in his Sunday Times review of the book. Reck’s diary of what happens in Nazi Germany from May 1936 through October 1944 is revelatory and prescient. He condemns the European powers for not standing up to Hitler and warns as early as September 1937 of a “coming Second World War.” Although a conservative monarchist, His assessment of Germany’s political situation and where it is headed hit the mark. Equally impressive is Reck’s refusal to censor his thoughts, including his unbridled hatred of the Nazis, when putting them on paper in a totalitarian society. He hides his papers in “the forest” each night and fortunately they survive to this day. The diary takes us inside the thoughts, frustrations and perceptions of those who opposed Hitler but for whom a united and actual resistance was essentially unachievable.

Friedrich Reck, Diary of a Man in Despair

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