Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After

The author brings Rebecca, Henry, and George together. The characters find love and keep friends despite this alienated world of ours and the presence of almost a fourth character: Cruel Fate.   

"If F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marguerite Dumas had had a son, he would be Simon Van Booy," writes reviewer Andre Dubus III.

This novel is a real page turner.

Rachel Carson

William Souder, the author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, has written a graceful biography of one of the most important women of the twentieth century. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, started the environmental movement. 

Carson wrote about how the overuse of pesticides threatened all life on earth. She was writing at a time when many atomic tests were taking place in the atmosphere and the public was already alert to the concept of contamination of the environment. 

These two threats, atomic radiation and pesticides, have never gone away. The situation at Fukushima in Japan is unresolved as of this writing. Radioactive water from the nuclear disaster is still poisoning the sea. Secondly, many believe that the mass die-offs of bees all around the world are a result of their poisoning by insecticides.

It may come as a surprise to some that Carson was already familiar with the problem of global warming and the rising level of the sea. Scientists had already noticed the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect, and the consequent melting of the polar ice caps.

Souder's book came out for the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring. The climate change deniers still don't think there is anything to worry about. They believe the environmentalists are deluded left wingers. In other words, what should be matters of fact have become politicized. I have to wonder where humanity, at this slow rate of progress, will be 50 years from now.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan

I guess we know by now that the typical Western diet causes obesity and many chronic diseases, all of which could be prevented if we ate more vegetables. Eat mostly plants, says Michael Pollan. From "cook" to "try not to eat alone," this book is full of good reminders, in plain language, of things we all need to hear more frequently.

The book is very easy to read and should not take more than two or three hours to finish. Putting it into practice will be the difficult part for most of us.

Food Rules, which was originally published in 2009, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Tinkers by Paul Harding

This book was a New York Times bestseller and it won the Pulitzer Prize. I think the reason it has been acclaimed so highly is that the main character is a dying man, and death is a popular subject these days.

Tinkers is the story of a father and son. Often I did not know which of these men was speaking and I had to watch for clues. Occasionally a grandfather, too, gets into the action. The writing is nonspecific and lyrical, like reading poetry.

At times the writing style begins to flow nicely and this happens in short patches in which a brief story-within-a-story is being told. The harsh climate of New England is described very well.

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

In the odd Fang family, the two children, Annie and Buster, are called "Child A" and "Child B" by their parents. The children are used in scenarios the parents dream up to create strangeness and bring chaos to people around them -- and they are in the habit of calling this "performance art." They actually receive art grants to think up how to disrupt people's lives, using their own children as props. I was not going to finish reading this book, but about half way through it turned into a sort of detective thriller, and I was hooked.

The important question the author explores is whether or not art is more important than children and families. Does art exist in a world of its own, with its own rules, and is art more important than anything else? 

This book made it to the New York Times bestsellers list.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

I enjoyed this book more than anything else I've read in the last two or three years. The story spans 40 years in the life of an Englishman named Tony, who is also our narrator. Now living in retirement, he tells us much about himself. Then there is what others reveal about Tony, the shocking character he used to be when he was in his twenties. 

This book portrays first sexual experiences with great sensitivity and insight. It explores how our memories edit and even erase the complicated twists and turns of our lives. 

The Sense of an Ending has won many awards, including the Man Booker Prize in England.

Why You Cannot Understand English

Say this whenever you do not understand English: ‘Please repeat that, using different words.’ Say using different words so they will not repeat the same sentence you did not understand.

The six usual reasons you cannot understand English are:

(1) English is always changing. We use idiomatic expressions most of the time. Nobody knows them all, not even native speakers of English. 

(2) Confusion. Confusion is a hook to catch your attention. Advertisers use confusion to make you stop and look—and buy something. For this reason we see a steady stream of meaningless abbreviations and misspellings coming from merchants.

(3) Slang. Another reason we see incomprehensible messages is because people are trying to be cool, to use a slang word. If you don’t know what cool means, type ‘What does cool mean?’ into your search engine.

Money Saving Tip: Never waste your money taking a class in idioms or slang expressions. By the time you have memorized a list of words and phrases, nobody will be using them anymore. They will be out of date.

(4) Accents. If he has a Spanish accent and you are Korean, it will be difficult for you to understand his English. Accents may cause his vowels to sound different. You simply may not be able to understand one sentence he is saying. Even native speakers of English have a hard time understanding people with heavy accents. For this reason, students of English may want to work with accent reduction tutors.

(5) You Cannot See the Person. Experts in communication say that 70 percent of the message comes from seeing the other person, the visual part. We understand each other best when we can see each other’s facial expressions, body, and hand gestures.  Making eye contact is also important to good communication.

(6) The Other Person Does Not Want to Be Understood. Communication is a two-way street. If you cannot understand somebody, maybe he does not want to be understood. If someone is speaking in a vague or incomprehensible manner, just try to understand the basic or essential part.

 Copyright © 2013 Barbara A. English         All rights reserved.

Rescuing the Hijacked Brain

When your boss calls you an idiot, you will react as if he had put a gun to your head. Brain-wise, social threats are as powerful as physical threats. You will go limbic. The limbic system is the part of the brain related to our emotional life.

What You Can Do:
(01)   Name what happened and the emotion you are feeling—in a couple of words. For example: ‘My boss said I was incompetent. I can’t believe he insulted me this way after all my years of loyal service.’ Try to boil it down to just a few words. Never make a story out of it!

(02)   Make a list of your options. Avoid complaining about how horrible the other person is.

(03)   If you were scared by what happened, find a less frightening way of looking at it.

(04)   Tell yourself, ‘My reaction is average. If he talked to me like that, then he must talk to everybody like that.’

(05)   What is the most important thing you want to do today? Go DO that instead of thinking about how bad your situation is.

(06)   Take a different point of view. For example, if you are apprehensive about giving a speech in front of a group of people, visualize yourself as seated in the audience instead.

(07)   Do any activity that involves counting or measuring, like knitting, sewing, bookkeeping, carpentry, or counting the leaves on a tree. This kind of unemotional activity can serve as the re-set button for your brain. This is also a tried-and-true method for ending a panic!

(08)   Sit still or lie down for awhile. Take a class in how to meditate. In other words, learn how to stop your brain from thinking.

(09)  Try to remember if you said or did anything that might have contributed. Realize that events usually do not happen in isolation.

(10)  In going limbic, we are thinking that we are right and the other person is wrong. The funny thing is that every person on earth feels that he is right!—and that another person is wrong! Can you see the truth beyond right and wrong?

(11)  The latest brain science reveals that the brain is hardwired, as if it were a machine. Nobody changes easily. The realist says: ‘It is what it is’ and does not expect people to change more to his liking.

After going limbic, our only job is to calm down. Calming down is the way we rescue the brain.

Some Questions for Discussion:

• When was the last time someone insulted you? Brain-wise, social threats are as powerful as physical threats. Did your face become red? Did you say something back? How long did it take you to calm down after that?
• Have you ever been fired with no notice? How did you react? Did you plot ways to take revenge on your boss? Did you feel helpless and hopeless?
• Successful athletes and soldiers develop mental toughness, and this involves not paying attention to insults and put downs. Is mental toughness a kind of deafness? What do you think?
• Some people say they ‘roll with the punches’ when they are not appreciated. Other people say they let insults roll off them ‘like water off a duck’s back.’ They keep an imaginary protective barrier around them. Do you think you can imagine you have a layer around you protecting you from harm?
• When someone hurts your feelings, do you tell other people about it, write it down, and try to remember it for a long time? If so, do you think it is humanly possible to overlook  hurtful words instead of recording them? What do you think is the very best way to cope with hurt feelings?
• Maybe a family member said something critical of you, and you ‘took it to heart.’  Words can be like arrows that pierce to our hearts and other inner organs, damaging us very badly. Primitive, tribal peoples have been observed to die after an authority figure pointed at them with disapproval. Do you know someone who uses harsh words?
• Parents sometimes get angry and curse their children. They say things like, ‘You’ll never make any money’ or ‘You could never survive on your own’ or ‘Who would marry a girl like you?’ Children often take their parents and authority figures too seriously. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘The truth is that I am okay in my own eyes and can decide for myself how to live my life.’
• Maybe the worst form of abuse is neglect– being abandoned or left alone. Children are often left alone these days because their parents are at work all day. Elderly people often live alone after their spouse dies. How do you think isolation affects the human brain?
• It is said to be a good idea to do a person a kindness or give them a gift, after they have hurt you. Why do you suppose that would be a good thing to do? Have you ever tried this? What was the result?

This report on the latest brain science is based on the  lecture, Taming the Animal Brain, given in 2010 by Paul McGinniss and sponsored by the International Coach Federation, New York City Chapter. Paul is a workplace and business coach with www.response-ableconsulting.com. Other concepts in this article were inspired by the work of Dr. Abraham A. Low (1891-1954) , a neurologist, psychiatrist, and pioneer in the field of cognitive therapy.   

Copyright © 2013        Barbara A. English        All rights reserved.

Bread Man Dead In Apartment 13

His name was Angelo. Angelo climbed the stairs backwards on his buttocks every day after work to get to his apartment on the third floor. He was in pain and there’s no elevator in this building. He worked for the bakery downstairs.

Angelo was born in this building. His mother had immigrated here  from Italy.
If you walked past Angelo’s door any time of the day or night, you’d hear him crying out because of his arthritis. That’s what they said he was suffering from. A neighbor told me that Angelo could have gone for medical treatments for his arthritis, if that’s what it was, but he didn’t trust anyone trying to help him.

I saw Angelo on an ambulance stretcher in the hallway one day, after the bakery had been closed for a couple of years. I wondered what Angelo had been doing inside his apartment alone all those years, since his mother had died a long time ago. The policewoman and emergency workers said nothing to me, so I said nothing, too. If I had known Angelo at all, I think I would have asked, “Where are you taking him?” I would have asked because, as far as I know, Angelo had no family in New York.

The police department stuck a bright green notice across the door of his apartment in the summer of 2009, when Angelo died. The green paper sealed that door tighter than any lock or steel latch.

A neighbor confirmed that Angelo was dead. Months later another neighbor said he doubted that there had been any memorial service for Angelo.

Today there was a bucket of soapy water and a long-handled mop outside of Angelo’s apartment. The handle of the mop was lodged diagonally in the doorway, barring all intruders. Some workmen had disposed of the contents of the apartment into huge, black garbage bags. About a dozen of these were stacked on the first floor for pickup by the sanitation department.
Two work orders were taped to the glass door near the entrance to the building. They said that the Greenwich Village Historic District had authorized construction work on the third floor of the building. The landlord was apparently ready to renovate apartment 13.

The apartments are pleasantly rectangular in that line. I mention this because in our building the apartments are usually oddly shaped. This row of buildings was built to house the influx of workingmen arriving from Italy in the early 1900s. The best guess of a neighborhood historian was that this building was built around 1911. The original architect’s floor plans were lost long ago.

When the crew is finished renovating apartment 13,  it will have new blond wood flooring. It will have a tiled bathroom. Each of these apartments originally came equipped with only a john and no place to bathe. A john is a small room with one toilet, but no sink for washing the hands and no tub for taking a bath. Maybe there were bathhouses in the neighborhood then. I don’t know.

The renovated apartment will have in addition a beautiful kitchen area with a sink, stove, refrigerator, counter space, and wooden cabinetry. The horribly cracked plaster walls will be removed, and the new sheet rock walls will be painted bright white.

They’ll probably make it into a one-bedroom apartment with a separate living room and even some built-in closets. These rooms originally had no closets, just three broad rough-hewn shelves above the kitchen sink. The renovated apartment will have air conditioning outlets in both the bedroom and the living room, and many other sockets in the kitchen for appliances. When Angelo’s mother first rented the apartment, this building was dark, not electrified.

When I moved here in 1971, the majority of the apartments were occupied by elderly Italian women wearing black dresses, stockings, and shoes. They were widows, born in the old country, afraid of the landlord and calling him “The Boss.” I was just a young woman then, 22 years of age, a recent college graduate. I passed them on my way upstairs, and never once did any woman in black turn to welcome me or talk with me. In their view, I should be married, not working. The Italian immigrants thought women who lived alone were up to no good.

This whole area, so trendy and upscale now, was in those days a poor section of Little Italy. The community was clannish in nature. They clung together and excluded all others.

They rejected Angelo as well, even though he was Italian. I heard from a neighbor that when he was a boy, everybody liked to pick on Angelo. He was yelled at by his irascible mother, a Mammy Yokum type (a cartoon character from the old L’il Abner series, which was published in the newspapers in those days). Angelo was bullied at school. The people at the bakery never gave him any peace when he grew up, either. He never married.

In the meantime, the whole world changed and this neighborhood was certainly no exception. The Village is now one of the most desirable sections of the city in which to live. Most of the young people in this building are paying very high rents.

The tenants usually do not speak with me in the hallways when I see them, even if I say hello to them in passing.  They walk down the stairs with wires plugged into their ears. My neighbors are transients, and they probably see me as a throwback to a bygone era, just as toothless Angelo always was to me …

Divisions between people come in so many different varieties …

I want to say that I don’t know the dead man any better than you know him. I shouldn’t even be writing this, because I am not in possession of all the salient facts. Since the Village is an historic district, however, I thought I would tell you a little history, all that I know about Angelo, who lived in this neighborhood his whole life.

I used to see Angelo every day pushing down the street a cart filled with bread for Zito’s Bakery. Zito’s Bakery has been closed for many years now.
I never once said hello to Angelo, and he never once turned his head to look at me, even though Angelo and I lived in the same building for 38 years.
As soon as Angelo’s apartment is renovated, it will most likely go on the market for over $3,000 per month rent. I do not exactly wish to put it this way, but as I’m sure you know from reading the above, the dead man himself was worth nothing.

Angelo is survived only by his apartment, located in the heart of quaint, old,  Greenwich Village.

You may be wondering why I started talking about Angelo and ended by talking about Angelo’s apartment. It is a peculiarity of human nature that apartments are often seen as more interesting and valuable than the people who live in them. 

 Copyright © 2013      Barbara A. English       All rights reserved.

Seniors and Medications

Did you know that the average person over the age of 65 in America takes seven different medications every day -- four prescribed and three bought at the pharmacy without a prescription. One-third of these people will suffer some adverse medication event that requires a hospital visit. Ten to 15 percent of all emergency room visits are related to medication reactions in seniors. "There has never been a controlled study on a human being involving more than three drugs circulating in the body at the same time... For reasons I've never understood," says Dr. Williams in his newsletter, Alternatives, "most doctors don't seem to have a problem prescribing multiple medications. When questioned, they typically will say the drugs they recommend are safe and have minimal, if any, side effects."

Information from Alternatives by Dr. David Williams, volume 16. number 1, page 3.