The Grand Jury Wants You

The Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury will be holding five Q&A sessions in March at various Libraries across the County.

These one-hour discussions may be of interest to:
n  Prospective jurors: next year’s Civil Grand Jury
n  Citizens wondering, what is the Civil Grand Jury
n  Citizens with complaints about local government

We will have applications for the 2016-2017 Jury.
We will have information pamphlets available.
We will have complaint forms as well.


 
The five scheduled meetings are:

n  Wednesday, March 9^th  Guerneville Regional Library

                                           5:30 – 6:30       14107 Armstrong Woods Rd.
                                                                           Guerneville, CA 95446.
                                                                           (707) 869-9004
  n  Friday, March 11^th  Rohnert Park Cotati Regional Library
                                                                         3:30 – 4:30        6250 Lynne Condé Way
                                                                         Rohnert Park, CA 94928
                                                                                   (707) 584-9121
 n   Saturday,  March 12^th    Petaluma Regional Library
                                                         11am – noon    100 Fairgrounds Drive
                                                                                        Petaluma, CA 94952.
                                                                                        (707) 763-9801
 n  Tuesday, March 15^th  Sonoma Valley Regional Library
                                                2 – 3 pm           755 West Napa Street
                                                       Sonoma, CA 95476
                                                              (707) 996-5217
  n  Wednesday, March 16^th  Sebastopol Regional Library
                                                      4 – 5 pm           7140 Bodega Avenue
                                                                                  Sebastopol, CA 95472.
                                                                                      (707) 823-7691
Application Deadline for the 2016-2017 Jury is April 6^th, 2016.

Someone by Alice mcDermitt

Trite – banal – boring. That about sums it up.

I certainly thought I recognized the author’s name when the book was passed out for out Library Book Club.  When I went to the “Also By” page in front, however, I didn’t know any of the titles.  She’s had a book published every five years since the nineties.  I’ve kept track of most everything I’ve read since about then and not a wisp of her.

Probably like most readers, for each one I finish, there are three others where I either browse a few lines here and there, or take out (or buy) and then stop after a chapter or two.  I think Alice McDermott falls in the latter category.  I’d bet there’s one of her books on my bookshelf with a dog-ear, 40 pages in.

For me, this was a bad retro rewrite attempt at Betty Smith’s, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”    There was nothing new in “Someone”.    No sparkle   –   I wanted Gene Kelly and Frankie out “On The Town”. 

No hopes, no dreams – a funeral parlor?   I get that this was sort of her idea, just someone, nobody special.  But there’s a reason successful authors write about special people  --  it’s interesting ! ! ! or at least entertaining.  This book was neither.

The writing was sophomoronic – she used all the [see my opening line] gimmicks taught in memoirs IA.  This works if the author can balance achieving disbelief (in her remembering all these “growing up” images) with the sorts of things a child remembers (p.47 – “There was a tall brown dresser against one wall, Mr. Hanson’s doorman’s cap on top of it and, between two windows, a dressing table with perfume bottles and jars of cream and a silver-backed brush still threaded with Mrs. Hanson’s black hair.”) age 9.

Quite often I am known to suggest that an author had a great short story, but then the publisher made them expand it into a novel for commercial reasons.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  In McDermott’s case, I fear she wrote an epic novel to start with and the publisher kindly chopped the middle of it out.  What’s left is a two-part book – both parts short stories – fictionalized memoirs.  Well, maybe not so fictionalized.  McDermott is at that age where one has to start dealing with the aging and death of parents. 

That’s probably where all these themes in this current book are coming from. 

Maybe it’s not fiction at all.

The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman

This book was a collection of lectures on cosmology.  I thought I’d make the gist of my comments about further readings, sometimes podcasts, that each “chapter” of his brought to mind for me.

This was a new format for me to use in writing about a book.  So I asked my muse (ex-wife Gisela, if it would work).  She wrote:
All the links work if you pay attention and use Ctrl Click. It will ask you to do that..  For the Scientific American podcast it will ask you to subscribe to Apple iTunes RSS, but it works without it.  For YouTube it opens the webpages, but if you don't pay attention you don't see them, because they open behind the browser page, This might be idiosyncratic to my computer, but then, maybe not.  What I am trying to say is: every link works if you take your time and pay attention. None of them work with just a mouse click.  GISELA

1. The Accidental Universe
The lead-off lecture is on the mind-bending theory of the Multiverse.  I’ve picked up on the article, 5 Reasons We May Live in a Multiverse[1] (click below), written by Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com December 07, 2012.
But there was also the introduction of the idea of Dark things: matter & energy.
I liked the current National Geographic issue, February 2016 article, “Hidden Cosmos”.
I got to it through, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/hidden-cosmos/ferris-text but I don’t think that’s going to work from my Word document.

2. The Temporary Universe

A conversation between Steve Minsky and George Musser on Sept 21^st, 2010 titled, “Could Time End[2] - Scientific American”.  I still remember this article blowing my Sci-Fi mind, as it describes time winding down.
I found it at http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/could-time-end-10-09-21/#

3. The Spiritual Universe
I can think of nothing more on point about science and religion than the movie “Contact” two decades ago.  That was clearly the theme of the book and the movie, from start to finish.  I’ll try and include a URL from uTube to remind us all about the movie version.
But first read Roger Ebert’s 2011 reprise of his thoughts on Contact.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-contact-1997
Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRoj3jK37Vc
Sorry about the 10-second advertisement.

4. The Symmetrical Universe

  Alan waxes poetic about symmetry in art and nature, but the scientific symmetry he talks about is at the Quantum level.  I thought I’d introduce http://smc-quantum-physics.com/blog.php a current Canadian blog.  If you go to this, click on the navigational tab, “Theses”.  I though the one labelled “Time asymmetric extensions of general relativity” was a perfect way to take a reality check from all the “layman’s articles” we’re reading. All the guys like Alan Lightman and Carl Sagan are real physicists that can read this stuff like we read poetry.  They think in mathematics.
I’ve added this one for Padma & Robin:
 http://www.rroij.com/open-access/finding-bilateral-symmetry-of-the-human-brain-from-mri-33-37.pdf

5. The Gargantuan Universe – I will be passing out 8 X 10 glossy prints of parts of our infinitely large universe as party favors, courtesy of NASA’s Hubble Deep Space telescope.  [It’s our annual Valentine’s Day party].

6. The Lawful Universe – The reason I loved Science Fiction so much growing up was that it flaunted the known laws of nature.  People traveled at “warp” speed, had time machines, had robots smarter than humans, met alien cultures.  I guess these books didn’t flaunt the Laws as much as they discovered ways around the Laws of Nature.  Here’s a list of books that should go to that little 10-12 year old grandchild or cousin with an inquisitive mind.  We readers always like series, so Foundation, Lensman, Dune, and Gateway are great starters.  http://flavorwire.com/347374/awesome-infographic-the-best-selling-sci-fi-books-of-all-time

7. The Disembodied Universe --   I was just ten year’s old when my family moved to San Jose after World War II.  I was discovering libraries and book stores at that age.  Someone -- teacher, Cub Scout leader, church leader – took me/us to the Rosicrucian Museum and I became hooked on Astronomy and later Cosmology.  The planetarium show had the birth of the universe and of our solar system and all the stars in the sky. Awesome.  They’re still doing it.  Take someone.

http://egyptianmuseumscribe.blogspot.com/2009/02/dream-of-stars-brief-look-at-historic.html

 

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[1] 5 Reasons

[2] Sci Amer 2010 Sept 21

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Bloome 2016

This is a great fictional memoir: lots of little vignettes and remembrances, woven into short stories

It’s a large book ? 500 pages).  I didn’t have time to finish it before it was called back in.  I’ve been swamped of late and did maybe 15-20 pages a day, which wasn’t enough.

The writing style was pleasant, lightweight, which was good for me at this time.  The time period was the early 50’s which was very comfortable for me.  Many people don’t like to admit they were even alive at that time.

This was a new book and a best seller.  The library has multiple copies, but I’m sure each copy will be gobbled up quickly. 

 

Life Without Parole by Clare O'Donohue 2012

So, the author did some research on prisoners on “Death Row”.  The protagonist is many talented so she has wrangled a short term TV gig as the Director/Reporter for a show on the inside scoop of Life on Death Row.  Interviews and filming are spread over a six weeks, so she has time for accepting another TV gig on remodeling and opening a new restaurant.

Then one of the restaurateurs gets murdered.  And by this time she has bonded favorably with one and unfavorably with another murderer on Death Row. 

So of course she enlists the Death Row guys as expert “consultants” to help her solve the murder.  In the end the Death penalty is cancelled, at least for a while.

This was a Central library book club read that I thought I’d attend, but didn’t.  It was decent enough writing but the plot stories were thinly developed.

The Rosie Project Jan 2016

A Valentine’s Day Selection. 

This should have been our selection for February 2016 at the Brown Bag Book Club.[1] 

As you can see from the citations below, this won an “unpublished” book award in Australia (?).  The author sold the movie rights {but no movie}.  He did get an Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting in 2013, and when he wrote the sequel, he got, in 2014, a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing; both from the University of Melborne. [This was not his undergraduate, but his graduate school.]

We all love Canadian R/C novels, but Australian ???  Even Crocodile Dundee wasn’t what I would call romantic.  I can’t recall what prompted me to originally order this book – I actually bought it for a friend.  This is another entry into the genre-world of O/C behavior comedies.  The protagonist is off the charts of “normal” and the reader is encouraged to feel sympathetic as one might to a child with learning disabilities.  Robin or Padma could comment on what variations are being portrayed.  The plot line is a basic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl  --  a romantic comedy.  It’s funny – it’s romantic – but it’s stupid, and not well developed..

Like Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old narrator of Mark Haddon's 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, he's appealing not just despite his eccentricities but because of them.  We read that book in June 2005 (see next page for what I wrote then).

The O/C behavior just spices up an otherwise standard R/C plotline that has been done for as long as I can remember: movies like “It Happened One Night”, or anything with Tracy and Hepburn; stage plays like with Burton and Taylor.  Even the author tries to spice things up with mentions of Billy Crystal and Gregory Peck.  This is the basic essence of writing for social communication – Conflict – Yin and Yang – Opposites Attract – Salt and Pepper.

The predictability of the storyline is only matched by our, the reader’s, capacity to insatiably digest an infinite set of variations on this popular theme.  It’s a fun read.  But the unbelievable plotlines appeared to be even too stupid for Hollywood’s mega$$stars. 

Well, while “Oh, gee,” loveable and sweet, this wouldn’t have made it beyond three episodes as a sit-com.  It appears that there are saccharine limits to even Jen Lawrence’s agent’s taste[2].

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[1] Simsion won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project. Text Publishing has sold the rights to the book internationally for over $1.8m. The Rosie Project was published in Australia in January 2014, and has since sold more than a million copies in over forty countries around the world. The screenplay has been optioned to Sony Pictures Entertainment. A sequel to The Rosie Project, titled The Rosie Effect, was published on 24 September 2014 by Text Publishing.

 

[2] Richard Linklater Follows Jennifer Lawrence Off Sony's 'Rosie Project’ by Borys Kit 10/14/2015 10:57am PDT

Sources say Linklater left when Lawrence left on the heels of Jennifer Lawrence dropping out of Tri-Star’s The Rosie Project, The Hollywood Reporter has learned the romantic dramedy's director Richard Linklater has also departed.

Sources say both actress and director left the project Monday.  Lawrence’s departure had to do with scheduling, according to several sources. The actress has been jumping from one movie to another — she went from X-Men: Apocalypse in the spring and summer to currently shooting Passengers— and the studio was hoping to shoot Rosie in the winter. Instead, the Oscar-winner needed a break.  Rosie was developed as a Lawrence vehicle, and Linklater, then making his first move since nabbing six Oscar nominations for his film Boyhood, came on board for a chance to work with the actress.

The studio considers the project a priority and will look for a new filmmaker and star immediately.

 

 

 

Revolt in 2100 by Robert Heinlein

Recently, I downloaded the ebook, "Revolt in 2100 (note the blurb: "the second American Revolution has begun") by Robert Heinlein. Mostly, it includes the "If This Goes On" novella, in which America is taken over by Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet, who establishes a tyrannical theocracy. But I was reading the last piece in the book, "Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript."

Heinlein writes,

"...the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.”

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up,or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is communism or holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.”

"Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country -- Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva's Zion, Smith's Nauvoo, a few others. ...”

"Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not -- but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday's efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck. Throw in a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on Earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of "anti-Furriners" in general and anti-intellectual here at home and the results might be something quite frightening... The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed."

He wrote this while living in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1953.