Reading For Pleasure

 

Do you read for pleasure? For work? For information? 

 

Information, of course, as we all realize, is of many sorts and sought for many reasons. (Egad! Don’t I just sound like that boring sister, Mary, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Forgive me, please!) For example, friend and I were puzzling over the research findings of the newest Nobel Prize winners in quantum physics, that of “entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated," but a sentence my friend read to me from the New York Times over the breakfast table (she is visiting from Ann Arbor for a couple of days) only increased our bafflement: 

Measuring one of a widely separated pair of particles could instantaneously change the results of measuring the other particle, even if it was light-years away. 

 

"So," I asked, "are the changes in the particles or only in the measurements?" We quickly leapt to the uncertainty principle, which I have always liked because it points to limits of human knowledge, and I like the principle for its reminders that human understanding of the universe, however much it expands, will always remain partial, but my question remained unanswered. I can phrase it another way: Are we learning more about particles or more about measurement? 

 

If you follow the link above, you’ll see further links to what we might call (awkwardly, I admit) sub-subjects, and the one that caught my eye asked, “Does colour exist when no one is watching?” Unfortunately, the diagrams that might have answered that question (did they?) were accompanied by text in Swedish. I was reminded, though, of conversations with my beloved husband, the Artist affirming to me more than once that color exists only in the presence of light – as what philosophers call a “secondary quality,” something partly in the object and partly in our own perception. I always asked, though I knew the answer, if I couldn't turn the lights on very fast! and catch color waking up.

 

I will never be a quantum physicist.

 

Physicists and physicians, engineers and programmers need information for their work, but an author writing historical fiction also reads for information related to her work, though the work is very different in kind. She is recreating a whole world, not exploring the world of today. And writers of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, dystopic narratives, etc.) create imaginary worlds, but they also need to be grounded in whatever natural, physical, and social sciences give plausibility to their imagined worlds. Presumably, those scientists and novelists are doing work they live and so find pleasure in the reading they do for information. 

Others of us are just plain curious. I read history and economics not professionally but because I crave understanding. Why are things the way they are? How did they get to be the way they are? My larger point – one of them, at least – is that reading for pleasure does not have to be only easy reading, and by no means does reading pleasure have to be limited to fiction. 

 

Here, for example, is part of a preface to a book on geology:

 

This work attempts to hold a position between textbooks and books of light reading. The formal textbook would not suit the class of readers addressed. The style of light reading would have been unworthy of the theme, and would not have supplied the substantial information here intended….

 

The method of treatment is simple. The reader begins with the familiar objects at his very door. His observations are extended to the field, the lake, the torrent, the valley, and the mountain. They widen over the continent until all the striking phenomena of the surface have been surveyed. Occasionally, trains of reasoning suggested by the facts are followed out until the outlines of geological theories emerge. The course of observation and reasoning then penetrates beneath the surface … striking fossils … nebular theory … retrospect and reflection … a relish may be stimulated ….

 

-      Alexander Winchell, Walks and Talks in the Geological Field (1886)

 

Only a few days before this book came into my hands, a geology student from Grand Rapids had visited my bookstore and found a few useful textbooks on her subject. What I wished I’d had for her, though, were some of the books on geology that, for me, stimulate relish and speak directly to the fascination so many of us find in rocks and landforms:

 

Bass, Rick. Oil Notes (1995)

Leveson, David. A Sense of the Earth (1971)

Pettijohn, F. J. Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist (1987)

 

I’ll add to that –

 

Lopez, Barry. Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape (2006)

 

All these books deal with material all too often presented in dry textbook style for people originally drawn to the subject, drawn outdoors, and drawn to pick up rocks and climb mountains by beauty and mystery, while these books are definitely to be read for and with pleasure.

David Grath in Texas Canyon

Note: This post could be taken as an extension of the previous post on reading subjectively. So, not a critic and not a quantum physicist!

Don’t Wait For Cymbals and Fireworks!

This won’t be about books or travel adventures or horses or dogs, but it’s important information for everyone. 

In the movies, you know a character is having a heart attack when he staggers and clutches his chest. If he’s standing, he falls to the floor; if seated, he slumps forward onto his desk. And I’m saying “he” because I don’t recall ever seeing a female character in a movie have a heart attack, though real women do.

My question is, how do you know when a real person is having a heart attack? The first thing you need to realize is that it might not be at all dramatic. Take a look at this list of symptoms of non-ST segment elevation heart attack:

Chest pain or a feeling of pressure in the chest.

Discomfort in the upper back or in the area between the shoulder blades.

Upper back pain.

Tingling in the hands and arms.

Shortness of breath.

Heartburn or indigestion.

Sudden cold sweats.

Unexplained sweating.

Sudden lightheadedness.

Unexplained feelings of nervousness or anxiety.

Feeling of tiredness, or not feeling well.

The symptoms in boldface are the ones my husband had for two days before we went to the ER. He blamed the altitude here in SE Arizona on the shortness of breath and tiredness, and he thought maybe had strained some muscles (chest and back) somehow, though he couldn’t think how. He never had what he called pain. But the “not feeling well” persisted, and that’s what finally sent us to the hospital. 

At the ER, blood tests showed cardiac enzymes in the blood. “You’re having a heart attack,” the doctor told him, saying also that “because you waited so long to come in,” they couldn’t do more to treat him in Willcox and he would have to be flown by helicopter to Tucson.

Everything is okay. He spent two nights in Tucson Medical Center, was stabilized, and finally released to return home, with new medications and follow-up visits scheduled with various care providers. I’m posting this so everyone who reads it will realize that a heart attack may be very subtle.

No one wants to have a heart attack, any more than anyone wants other life-threatening events or diseases, and it’s tempting to look for ways to explain away the symptoms — “I’m just tired,” “I must have sprained a muscle,” “I’m not used to this altitude,” or whatever applies in your particular case — but if you or someone you know is having these symptoms, pay attention!

“There are so many ways a heart attack can present itself, and only the classic one is stored in people’s minds.” 

That’s what one friend wrote to me in an e-mail when she got the news, and that’s when I decided I needed to share what we have learned with others. “The classic” is not the only presentation. Others are less dramatic, much more subtle. Don’t think “It can’t be a heart attack” just because there’s no sensation of being stabbed in the chest. 

Be well, stay well!

End of lecture.

The New Golden Calf

With all the digital technology and digitized information at our fingertips these days, it’s getting harder and harder to tell who knows what. Is he smart, or is it just his phone? In some cases, both human and phone can be called smart, but you see my point, and perhaps an important distinction is lost when we apply the same word to a person and an appliance – or application – or app.

Early in the European occupation of America, indigenous peoples’ opinions on the value of the written word divided into two camps. To some it was little short of magic, while others, when they understood what was going on with reading and writing, saw the written word as compensation for the white race’s poor memory, a kind of interpersonal and historical crutch. Maybe it is a crutch. After all, no single person can hold in her head all the knowledge, all the science, history, poetry, and drama of the world’s books.

Yet as far as I know, humans have never attributed intelligence to the objects we call books. We see clearly and accurately that the written word is a means of storage and conveyance, dependant on writers and thinkers and researchers and creators at points of origin and on receptive, discerning, comprehending, critical minds at the other end. Without the critical function of intelligence in reading, readers would be nothing but “smart,” preening parrots.

Oh-oh. I see a long road unfurling before me here, the first steps taken in the paragraphs above, but I’m a couple days into a winter cold and not feeling energetic enough for a long journey. No one will mind, I’m sure, if I simply share a couple of anecdotes?

In my first year of graduate study in philosophy, a post-doctoral fellow said of someone she’d been in school with, “At first I thought he was really smart, and then I realized he was just counterexample smart.” Counterexample smart! That phrase captured so much! The counterexample smart student never saw the virtues of another’s position, never contributed to building its strength or complexity, but neither did he ever fault the position in a thoughtful way, and never did he remain a silent listener, leaving the argument to others. No, he always leapt into the fray, and his refutations invariably took the form of coming up with a counterexample, no matter how outlandish or obscure. It was the only arrow he ever had in his quiver. A counterexample can be an important, serious objection to an argument, and strengthening an argument often has to do with making it impervious to counterexamples. But there is so much more to thinking and arguing and philosophy!

My other anecdote concerns a small event that took place in my bookstore, part of a conversation I was having with a very smart, very educated friend, who is also a strong supporter of my bookstore, i.e., he buys books from me on a regular basis. All this I say to make clear that the improvised contest that popped up between us one day had nothing in it but curiosity and good nature.

We were recalling one of Ogden Nash’s silly poems, “Very Like a Whale,” and talking of metaphor and simile in general, when it suddenly became very important to me to remember the name of the poet Nash was lampooning. “The Assyrian... purple and gold.” Who was it?

My friend snapped his fingers. “Just a minute! I can tell you!”

He pulled out his cell phone, telling me that he had recently downloaded a new app that would answer the question. While his fingers repeatedly swiped the tiny screen, I went to the poetry section of my bookstore and pulled an anthology from the shelves. 

The race was on!

The chronology of the first anthology ended too soon. I pulled down a second book, which had an index of first lines. Excellent! But oh, no! Whoever alphabetized the list had included the initial words “A,” “An,” and “The” in the list! My friend’s fingers were still swiping, as mine scrolled, so to speak, down the page, through all first lines beginning with “The.” There it was! With a page number! I flipped to the page, and voilà!

“Lord Byron!” I called out in triumph. Then, joyously, I added, “Book beats app! Book beats app!” 

My best-beloved technology, the printed word bound into books, had been challenged and had met the test. My friend remained good-natured in the face of the book’s victory. If by chance he reads this, I’ll bet he even laughs out loud.

Okay, in general, most of the time, the app (how I hate that word!) would probably be faster – provided, that is, the answer to the questioned posed has somewhere, somehow, by someone, been uploaded to the world-wide web. There’s an awful lot “out there,” but it’s not true that “Everything is out there.” For example, one year I was interviewed by Fine Books and Collections magazine, and the interview appeared in print, but it is nowhere online. There is a lot of genealogy and local history online -- and there’s a lot that isn’t there, too.

More and more I feel like a character in a fantasy novel (an old, eccentric character in an odd, hidden-away corner of the world) as I think of all the “knowledge” stored in “clouds” and wonder what would happen if these clouds were to be dispersed – or censored – or if for any reason clicking and swiping stopped bringing the desired effect. Is that scenario so hard to imagine? Is it apocalyptic thinking? Paranoia?

Then again, on another level, I simply enjoy the search for answers. And in conversation, cooperative thought and figuring things out together with friends can be entertaining as well as informative. “Saving time” with instant answers can be, in fact, a conversational deal-breaker, turning what started out as conversation into a technology-worship session. Have you ever had an experience like this? Instead of the instant answer returning the group to its original conversation, the person with the “smart” phone engages in hijacking: “And look what else it can do! And I can do this! And this....” At that point, unless you’re the one with the phone, your role is reduced to ooh-ing and ah-ing.

After “book beat app” in the incident I’ve described, my friend pocketed his cell phone, I returned my book to the shelf, and we continued our enjoyable, congenial discussion of metaphor and poetry. We were happy to be surrounded by books but felt under no obligation to worship or attribute intelligence to them. 

“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

Writers, story-tellers, song-writers, and artists are among those who are asked this question, and often they have no more clue than anyone else. “What made me think of that?” one might muse. Is the creative mind simply more open, more receptive, to its own emerging phantasms? Where do our dreams come from—and where they go when we wake?

How about more practical ideas—an idea for a new business or even an idea about what would be good or bad legislation for Michigan or the United States?

The deeply held ideas we call our “beliefs”? Where do they come from? From our parents, our education, television, friends, the Internet, newspapers, politicians, “spokespeople,” the air we breathe, our own independent philosophical investigations? What think you?

The best public relations is invisible. While it’s easy to spot advertising—the stuff that blatantly urges you to go buy something—PR subtly convinces you to change the way you think. Advertising urges you to do something now; PR is patient. Advertisers pay for the time and space devoted to their messages. Good PR usually gets free media space because it is presented as unbiased information.
 - Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans (Bloomsbury Press, 2010)

Read that last sentence again, please. Here, I’ll repeat it: “Good PR usually gets free media space because it is presented as unbiased information” [emphasis added]. So what our politicians tell us, what we hear and read in news media, what we pass along to each other, and even our own belief-forming thought—all that is constantly being shaped by well-bankrolled, behind-the-scenes forces. Now please look again at the subtitle: This is more than a book about the health care so-called “debate,” and the author is more than just another pundit urging his opinion on you. Wendell Potter worked for 25 years in public relations.

This book is also a lot more than just another exposé. The author tells of a very personal journey, beginning with his parents’ and his own origin in a poor rural Appalachian mountain community. He also traces from its origins the development of public relations in this country—who first came up with it, where the first college class was taught, what kind of ethics restrained early practitioners, and where PR has come in less than a hundred years. For example, “crisis management” was first developed by Ivy Lee, cofounder of the Parker & Lee agency in New York, who counteracted bad publicity about industrial massacres and strike-breaking with carefully written and distributed press releases. Press releases, he discovered, did reporters’ jobs for them, and reporters were happy to hand in a release rather than investigating a story for themselves.

A contemporary of Lee, Edward Bernays, enterprising son of Jewish parents, Potter tells us, is “generally credited with coining the term ‘public relations counselor.’” It was Bernays who came up with a wildly successful campaign to attract more women to smoking cigarettes, equating smoking with equality and calling cigarettes “torches of freedom.” Why do I mention his Jewish heritage? Because according to a citation Potter’s to Bernays’s autobiography, in 1933 the noted public relations counselor was disturbed to be told by a guest in his home, a guest who had recently been a guest in the home of Joseph Goebbels, that Goebbels had “at least one of Bernays’s books” on his shelves. Hitler’s use of slogans and manipulation to move crowds was well know, also, and Potter says that Bernays “fretted publicly about ethics later in his life.”

Looking back, he said that had he known the dangers of tobacco, he would not have accepted the American Tobacco account. “No reputable public relations organization would today accept a cigarette account since their cancer-causing effects have been proven,” he wrote in 1986. Also late in life, Bernays appealed to the PRSA [Public Relations Society of America] to police its ranks, arguing that circumstances allowed unethical behavior without any sanctions, legal or otherwise. “There are no standards,” he said.

“No standards.” What does that mean? Anything goes. There are, you may object, legal limits, but let’s look closer at that idea, too.

As Americans, we treasure our freedom of speech. At the same time, we hold onto the idea that “what’s good for General Motors,” i.e., more generally, Big Business, is good for us all. Enter a new American entity, the front group. A front group is created by PR people but not identified with an affiliation to any particular corporation or political party. PR people begin with focus groups, private citizen volunteers, and they test phrases with these groups to see what responses are evoked by certain words and phrases. Say that you find, as PR folks did, that the phrase “government takeover” generates a high fear response. A front group is then organized under some intentionally vague name, chosen because the words have positive focus group response. A website is set up, and the “group” begins to issue statements warning about, say, “a government takeover” of health care. The phony group also buys advertising but never in the name of the industry or any particular business or corporation: the point of PR is to make it look like some group of public- and like-minded citizens just got together in a grassroots kind of way.

Here’s a personal backtrack: I remember in the 1970s when my employer, Western Michigan University, announced that we were going to be given a choice between our old, traditional insurance and a new health maintenance organization (HMO). What surprised me was the high correlation of features shared by the HMO alternative and “socialized medicine” as the fear-mongers had presented it. Why, I wondered, were these features (e.g., limited list of approved health care providers) nightmare outrages if part of a government program but reasonable and desirable if offered by a for-profit private company? I have never had a satisfactory answer to the question. Only slogans come back: “government takeover” and “socialized medicine” vs. “the American way.”

The best example of the industry’s secrecy is the medical-loss ratio, which, as I mentioned previously, is the measurement of the share of premium spent on actual health care. The trend since Clinton’s plan failed has been unmistakable. In 1993, the leading insurers used about 95 percent of premium dollars on medical benefits, according to the consulting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The merger wave and the new philosophy about health insurance pushed MLRs down sharply, so that by 2007 the number was 81 percent. By contrast, Medicare has consistently had a ratio greater than 97 percent since 1993.

What Americans pay in and what they get back: that’s what the MLR measures, and there are the numbers. What about increasing health care costs and inflation in general?

If the [insurance] industry had chosen to raise premiums at the exact pace that it increased spending on health care from 2000 to 2008, insurers would still have made substantial profits without pushing millions of people to go without health benefits. But during those years, insurers raised family premiums 2.5 times faster than the rate of medical inflation, 3.3 times faster than that of wages, and 4.6 times faster than that of general inflation.

Insurance was costing more at the same time that those buying it were getting less, and many could not afford to buy it at all.

The picture that emerges in this book is the clear subversion of the democratic process, but Potter’s examination of the insurance industry (“Industry”? What do they make? Why is every business these days called an “industry” and every income-generating plan called a “product”?) is one case study in a much larger economic development. We all recognize that politics is rife with public relations specialists, doing all they can to shape candidates to our fears and desires. The greater truth is that every important issue that comes before those politicians, once they are in office, has also been manipulated in similar ways. What do “the people” really want? Which voices are theirs? Have we all been hoodwinked before we even open our mouths?

For example, one justly deep fear of the American people has always been the invasion of personal privacy by government. Is the parallel to socialized medicine and HMO’s obvious to you? The greatest threats to the privacy of Americans here at the beginning of the 21st century, as far as I can see, come not from our government but from private interests against which the government is able to offer little protection. Again, please look up your own sources on privacy and data mining. Do you view your concerns for privacy and for freedom as contradictory?

In 1963, in his justly famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. warned of “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” in the struggle for human rights, insisting that the present was a time of “fierce urgency.” For Wendell Potter, the present is a time of fierce urgency in the war of independent thinking against public relations. The problem is that the enemy is invisible. We have already been infiltrated. We may even be unknowingly complicit, unpaid soldiers on a side we never chose.

Potter does not tar all PR with the same brush. Like any tool, PR can be and is often used in the service of good. He does, however, end his introduction with these words:

...I believe that unless we do fight back—and with urgency—the twenty-first century will be dominated by the retrenchment of democracy and the unbridled growth of corporate power, enabled by increasingly unchallenged propaganda.

Who were “Citizens United”? Did you unite with them? Isn’t it ironic that putting the government of the United States up for sale was accomplished without any need for a bloody coup, that it was put on the auction block by our own Supreme Court (three dissenting), reasoning on principle?