June 30 2020

Abigail (1970) by Magda Szabo
Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix (2020)

Written 50 years ago, and only now translated into English, Abigail is a war story unlike any I've read before. Gina Vitay, the 14-year-old heroine, is the beloved only child of a prominent widowed military leader in World War II Hungary.  Educated at home by a French tutor and accustomed to concerts and other cultural events in her native Budapest, Gina is naturally upset when in the fall of 1943, her father brings her to a strict religious boarding school far from home.  Initially furious with her father, she alienates her fellow students and runs away.  Fortunately, she is caught by one of the teachers and returned to the school.  Eventually, she learns that her father is in some danger and the only way to keep Gina safe is to hide her whereabouts.  Eventually she endears herself to the other girls, after much soul searching, but she constantly fears for her father's safety, and she inadvertently compromises her own safety more than once.  She learns about the mysterious Abigail, a garden statue who helps the girls when they're in need, and wonders who is behind Abigail's notes and help?

This is a suspenseful story on many levels, but as a coming-of-age story has many humorous and endearing moments involving the girls' camaraderie, first love, and their relationships with the teachers.  Gina is a feisty, likely heroine.  Magda Szabo, who was herself a teacher in Hungary during the Germany and Russian occupations (1944-45), writes compassionately and very well.   Len Rix has produced an excellent translation that neither feels like reading through a foggy lens nor in simplistic language, as is the case with many translated works, but feels fresh and immediate.  I could hardly put this book down!

June 12 2020

The Seine: The River that Made Paris (2019)
By Elaine Sciolino

NY Times foreign correspondent Elaine Sciolino writes about the Seine in a book that is part history and part tribute to this famous river.  She offers a couple of chapters on the source of the Seine, both geographically in Burgundy and historically around the origin of the name (from the Roman goddess Sequanna).

Each of the chapters on the Seine's relationship to Paris covers a specific phase of river life: Paris by night, art, the river brigade, the river and song, etc. I especially enjoyed the chapter on bridges - all 37 of them!  Each bridge has a connection to a historical figure or event, from the Pont Neuf built by Henry IV to the modern pedestrian span named for the 20th century feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

The chapter on river barges notes that only a thousand of the 15000 bargemen of 1950 operate barges today, replaced mostly by truckers.  These barges have a huge capacity, actually carrying many truckloads worth of grain, sand or whatever product they are bringing downriver.  Sciolino interviews several bargemen and women to give a picture of their hard life.   She also interviews a cruise ship captain, a 4th generation bargeman who has given up the hard life for a more cushy existence as a cruise ship captain (just like the young man I met on a Viking Seine cruise a few years ago).   I was also fascinated by the chapter on bouquinistes, the booksellers whose shops line two miles of Seine riverfront; they have plied their trade for a couple of centuries.  Their business is highly regulated, and their inventory often includes historic treasures.

Sciolino moves north to Rouen, the international shipping port that is also the site of Ste Jean d'Arc's martyrdom.  She concludes with an afterward describing the Seine's importance as a water supply to fight the April 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral fire.

June 6 2020

A Summer in Sonoma (2010)
By Robyn Carr

Sometimes chick-lit is just the antidote for hard times.

This delightful novel follows four women, now in their early 30s, but friends since high school.  Julie is happily married to her high school sweetheart, Billy; they have three kids and Billy works two jobs to help cope with their massive debt, including college loans.  Marty is married to Joe; they have a young son and both have good jobs, but the flame has gone out of their marriage and they don't communication well.  Beth is a physician who was jilted by her fiance when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  And Cassie has been through dozens of boyfriends looking for Mr Right and now mainly wants to concentrate on her job as an ER nurse.  As the story opens, Cassie is dating a new guy; he seems nice but, when Cassie rebuffs his advances in his car, her screams bring rescue in the form of Walt, a big burly biker guy.  Through he's totally not Cassie's type, the two develop a friendship, enjoying picnics and motorcycle rides, opening up a new world of fun and trust for Cassie.

While this novel is about the relationships, it is even more about the love and commitment the four friends share, the support and encouragement through thick and thin that is the story's strength.  Even the men help one another with advice and mechanical know-how.  These are the kinds of friends we all need!

June 5 2020

Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right (2019)
By Anne Nelson

Veteran journalist Nelson delves into how the evangelical movement became aligned with big oil, the NRA and gun rights, and the war against civil rights and the planet.  In part, it's a deal made among those who need access to the media (developed by the fundamentalists through radio stations in local areas abandoned by newspapers), those who need funding (provided by big oil, who in turn want EPA rollbacks to protect the fossil fuel industry, as do wealthy neo-cons like the Devos and Prince families, who also endorse a radical fundamentalism), and those who need organizing/technical skills (Republican tacticians like Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, who create strategy groups with pro-democracy sounding names like Center for National Policy [CNP] and Citizens for Community Values).  As to the NRA, it's all of the above - appealing to the rural/mostly "evangelical vote" and well-organized and well-funded.

The Southern Baptist church began in 1845, as a reaction to slave-holders being barred from missionary service.  They were confined mostly to the confederate states, but grew in power, assuming the concept of church control to extend to school and state.  By 1967, wealthy Paul Pressler III had teamed up with pastor Paige Patterson to foment a fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Church. The would soon employ tactics to elect far right conservative congressmen, using their tax exempt church as a power base.  Initially enthusiastic over Jimmy Carter, the fundamentalists abandoned him for supporting the ERA and civil rights.  By 1988 the religious right and the political right had formally wed, per Nelson.  The new organization, People for the American Way, endorsed corporal punishment and said gays were deserving of death, a theme that became a lynchpin of conservatism.

Paul Weyrich, Republic "pawnbroker" and TX fundamentalist, was invited to a pastors' meeting by Jerry Falwell Sr, a southern Baptist preacher who endorsed Pressler and Patterson's movement.  He would become a founder of the powerful CNP, which would recruit and train fundamentalist activists,  use political technology and dispense with "the need to be right".  One of their early activities was to raise funds to support the Contras fighting against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, garnering huge amounts through their church network (because the federal would not fund the effort) and leading to the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor.

Just as the CNP was seeking a platform to promote their far-right tactics Christian broadcasters had started to move into the news vacuum created by the retreat of local newspapers in the midwest and southern states.  Salem Christian Broadcasting, in particular, whose media star was James Dobson (of Focus on the Family), teamed with Weyrich, giving the far right and CNP a mouthpiece that would grow in number of outlets and power.  The Christian broadcasters and organizers worked with financiers, many from big oil, particularly the Koch family (but also including the criminal Cullen Davis).  THE NRA became another financial partner, thus uniting fundamentalism, climate change deniers who wanted no restrictions on the fossil fuel industry, and gun rights advocates.  The platform sought to fight abortion, LBGT rights, gun control and any efforts to save the planet.  Their women's group, Concerned Women for America, even opposed the Violence Against Women Act of 2012, saying that it created "protections for homosexuals".

Grooming Ted Cruz as their ideal candidate in 2016, the CNP instead ended up with Donald Trump.  Offering their support for his compliance on issues such as appointing conservative judges and rolling back climate controls, Trump's campaign notably greed to every element in the CNP's platform.

* * *

"And here we are," as foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill once famously said.  It seems to me that the very same goals that Christians are - or should be - pursuing, like good health care for families, gun control, racial equality, and better living standards for marginalized populations - are the very things that the CNP/fundamentalists are fighting against.  While there have been Christians who rejected the fundamentalist position, like Jimmy Carter and Billy Graham, their message of loving God and loving others was eventually squelched by the fundamentalist position.  I don't get it.  No wonder some people think we Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.