It was natural when I began working in Vietnam to read all I could about the country, its people, its culture, and its history. For three years I read almost nothing else. In the process I read fiction by writers like Robert Olen Butler (A Strange Scent from a Distant Mountain), Nelson DeMille (Up Country), Anthony Grey (Saigon), the war books of James Webb, Phillip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and Karl Marlantes as well as the North Vietnamese novel The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh. Along the way I was introduced to the writing of Vietnamese immigrants and the children of those immigrants – writers like Andrew Lam and Angie Chau. The immigrant voices and their stories of exile and adjustment are deeply affecting.
Archive for Uncategorized – Page 74
In 1954 the United States Supreme Court literally opened the door for people of color to attend the same public schools as their white peers. In 1964 Congress further acted against discrimination by opening doors to the workplace, public accommodation, and voter registration. In 1965 it followed up by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the fourth volume of his biography of LBJ, (The Passage of Power) Robert Caro describes in detail how Johnson, following the assassination of JFK, moved an ossified, entrenched Congress dominated by segregationist Southern Democrats to pass his Great Society package, reform the tax code, and, most significantly, push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
How can you personalize and internalize an experience – especially an art experience? How can you give it legs and make it more than an entertaining night out? How can you share the experience with others in a meaningful way?
Publishing houses answered those questions years ago when they realized that personal contact between author and reader created buzz and sold books. The book tour is now a sophisticated marketing tool designed to introduce the author, create a following and provide feedback. It isn’t just a way to sell books to the devoted junkies that attend the readings. Local radio and TV interviews expand and draw the audience to the author’s work and expand his or her reach beyond the range of the NY Times Book Review. Lately publishers have seen gold in book clubs and added reading group discussion guides as addenda to the paperback versions. Museums, symphony orchestras and stage companies have jumped on the bandwagon and are personalizing the audience experience by having the curators, directors, actors, and artists meet with their audiences following a performance to discuss their work.
When I started to blog about it I figured that living in Seattle required a survival mentality. I grew up here and was carrying a lot of baggage left over from when the town was in the clutches of a handful of families who fancied themselves as aristocrats and acted as if the town was their personal fiefdom. I was wrong. Things are different now. Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, and dozens of biotech firms have changed the demographic and sucked some of the swell out of those heads. In the 1950’s Sir Thomas Beecham called Seattle the “cultural dustbin of the world.” In February 2013 Seattle was named the 2nd most literate city in America (close behind Washington, DC). Nice change.
Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s
And drinks his green label each day
Writing his memoirs, losin’ his hearin’
But he don’t care what most people sayThrough eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you he’ll smile and he’ll say
Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way
The last verse of Jimmy Buffett’s He Went to Paris
I love the lyric. It captures my feeling about the “magic and tragic” that is the essence of our lives.
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