Saturday, January 6, 2024

Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney -- a book review


    This is a very hard review to write. Not because the book is not well-written. It is. It is very well-written. The language is direct and clear. The content is presented in a coherent, easy to follow way. Despite the great quantity of information presented, it is actually a pretty quick read. 
    And not because I think the book is unimportant. It is. In fact, it is so important for people in this country to read and read right now that I do not want to do anything that might cause  anyone NOT to read it.
    Today, as I write this, it is the 6th day of the year 2024. An election year. A year that very well may determine if my country, if this democracy, if this "government of the people, by the people, for the people," as Abraham Lincoln prayed "shall not perish from the earth."
    Let me say, right here. There are few policies that Cheney and I agree on. 
    Wikipedia quotes Lawrence R. Jacobs as saying "Cheney is an arch-conservative. She's a hard-edged, small government, lower taxes figure and a leading voice on national defense." And Jake Bernstein, "Liz Cheney is a true conservative in every sense of the word and she's only a moderate in relation to the radicalism that has seized the Republican party."
    Both Cheney and her husband, Philip Richard Perry, are attorneys with extensive experience in the government, which stood them in good stead for their work with the The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. They have five children, ages 17 down to 7. Which I think I can safely infer has given them some insight on time management. (Also there is one thing I can say that she and I have in common, we each have a daughter named Grace.)
     By accepting the position of Vice Chair of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Cheney put her life, the lives of her family, and of her staff in jeopardy.

     Cheney begins her book with the opening paragraph: "This is the story of the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution."

    The first part of the book is about the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol while Congress was meeting in joint session in the House Chamber to officially count the Electoral votes as certified by the states. Cheney gives details about what she was seeing inside the Capitol while it was happening. Of course she couldn't know what was going on outside, but they all knew they were in serious danger.

This was the view of the United States Capitol 
                    on January 6th, 2021.
And this.


                                                                                    And this.                                         
    I watched this in real time on television. On our PBS channel. Keeping in mind that I am a regular watcher of PBS's News Hour and feel like I know personally, which, of course I do not, the news people who were on the ground at the Capitol that day. It was terrifying. The crowd was so angry and violent, I truly feared for all the reporters there.

     I also watched the January 6th Congressional Hearings on TV. They presented information through video and testimony that I had not previously seen and heard. On the part of the panel, it was presented dispassionately, not as personal experience.

    But this book gives us, from Cheney's point of view, what Senators and Representatives and their staffs were experiencing without the emotional distance of the hearings.

    And after the Capitol was cleared of the mob, she describes walking through Statuary Hall,
     "the original chamber of the House of Representatives ... a room full of the
     history of our republic. Brass plaques on the floor mark the locations of the
     desks of presidents who served in the House, including Abraham Lincoln and
     John Quincy Adams. Statues of prominent Americans line the outer walls
     of the room. ...law enforcement officers in tactical gear were seated on the floor,
     leaning up against every statue and all around the walls of the room, exhausted
     from the battle they had fought to defend the Capitol. I walked around the room
     thanking them for what they had done.

     "One said to me, "Ma'am, I fought in Iraq and I have never encountered the
     violence I did out there today."

     Describing the actual assault is the hardest part of the book to read -- not because the words are big or fancy but because it hurts to realize this was perpetrated by Americans. 

     It was not the first time I experienced the danger to our democracy that can come from within.

     President John F. Kennedy was murdered on November 22, 1963, my 16th birthday.The assassin was an American. 

     The Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, including employees of my credit union where I had gone with
my 5-year-old daughter the week before to take care of some business. We could
easily have been there when Americans bombed it.

     Most of the rest of the book is about the Congressional investigation and hearings. It has the benefit of Cheney's law background and her determination to Honor and Defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

     She does name names. 

     Cheney ends her book with this warning:
     "In the era of Trump, certain members of Congress and other Trump enablers
      -- 
many of whom carry the Constitution in their pocket but seem
     
to have never read it -- have attempted to hijack this phrase [we the
     people] 
to claim it gives them authority to subvert the rule of law or
     overturn the 
results of elections. They have preyed on the patriotism
     of millions of Americans. 
They are working to return to office the man
     responsible for January 6."

     Cheney exhorts us all:
     "We the people must stop them. We are the only thing that
     can stop them. This is more important than partisan politics. Every
     one of us -- Republicans, Democrates, Independents -- must work
     to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled,
     and collaborated with him are defeated.

     "This is the cause of our times."



 

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon -- A Movie Review

 

 
     So do these two pictures look like they're of the same guy to you? I mean, I know the hairstyles are different and one has a mustache and the other doesn't. But really?! 
     Truth be told, the first photo is of Leonardo diCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon, and the other is of Matt Damon in Oppenheimer. So, okay, I don't go to the movies often, and I don't follow Hollywood news about which actor is feuding or sleeping with whom or who is now, will be, or once was married to whom. So I got confused. I actually watched all of Killers of the Flower Moon thinking I was seeing Matt Damon as the male lead and thinking he was doing such a good job. Actually I thought he did a good job in Oppenheimer, too. Which he did, but it was diCaprio who did a good job in Killers of the Flower Moon.
    
     This fall I was so excited about Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon that I could hardly wait for them to come out. 
     Both films are about real people and real events. Oppenheimer, of course, hit the theaters first and I hated it. I'm not a fan of comic-book-superhero-movies. I don't go to see them. I had no idea who Christopher Nolan is, but now I certainly do. Had I known back then, I probably would have understood the 4th of July fireworks and sex and flashback sex not to mention, the chaotic visuals and noise that were suposed to be going on in the scientist's mind. It was a fantasy/adventure story for juvenile males instead of a serious film about one of the two most life-on-Earth-altering developments of World War II.

     I had been waiting for Killers of the Flower Moon since the book came out in 2017. (Read my book review of it here.) But after seeing Oppenheimer, I decided not to see Killers of the Flower Moon in the theater. I would wait until it went to streaming, then if Hollywood screwed it up to the point that I needed to rant and rave and throw things, I could. Without legal ramifications.
     Last week a family member sent me a link to a Rolling Stone (October 18, 2023) article about a 2019 meeting between Scorcese with members of his production team and leaders of the Osage Nation held in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Then I checked to see who the screen writers were. Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese, and David Grann. Yes, David Grann who wrote the book in the first place. And an excellent book it is.
    So when the movie opened Friday, I went to my local theater -- ALONE. Just in case I needed to leave before it was over. 
     It was the 4:25 showing and the theater was fuller than I expected. Mostly older people. They were a noisy group before the film started and I dreaded being in the theater with a bunch of people in party mode for what I considered (and hoped) would be a serious film about a time in our country's history when corrupt people in high places spread terror and death among the Osage people in my native state of Oklahoma. By the end of the movie, the theater was quiet.
     
     Rather than taking on the whole Osage Nation's story of terror and death at the hands of certain rich and powerful white men as Grann's book does, and its focus on the FBI's investigation, Scorsese focused on one family -- Mollie and Ernest Burkhart, her three sisters Anna, Minnie, and Rita, and their mother Lizzie Q. They were full-blood Osage with headrights. The Osage were already rich from leasing their grazing lands, then oil was discovered. The Osage, as a nation, became the wealthiest people in the world.

      Some background to explain Osage headrights, from Osage Nation Lands and Minerals Fact Sheet:  "Because the Osage had purchased their own reservation land, they were exempt from the individual allotments under the Dawes Act. Under the wise leadership of Chief James Bigheart, the Osage insisted on the following unique provisions in their Osage Allotment Act of 1906:
(1) Instead of allotting just 160 acres to each person and selling the rest, as other tribes had been forced to do, the Osage allotted all their reservation land to their people. This gave 657 acres each to the 2,229 registered Osage (Grann 52). 
(2) Reserved Communal Mineral rights:
(a) They “reserved” - held back from allotment - their mineral rights: the right to mine or produce oil and gas, rocks, and minerals from under the ground was not allotted, and so was
never lost.
(b) They retained communal ownership of these reserved mineral rights, so all subsurface
minerals belonged to the entire tribe instead of individuals. Instead of leaving to chance who
might get rich later from oil and gas being found on their particular allotment, all tribespeople share equally in any mineral wealth (Wilson 62).
Each received a “headright” - right to a share of the whole mineral interest (oil) income - which could be passed on from generation to generation."

     The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) continues to be responsible for collection and dispersal of the income from Osage lands. From 1906 to 1978 the BIA allowed non-Osage to inherit headrights and to receive the income that goes along with them. 
     Add to that: "On March 3, 1921, Congress passed a law requiring the Osage to pass a measure of competency proving they could manage their funds responsibly. If they couldn’t, they would be appointed a guardian until a legal age. This immediately opened the door for con artists, unscrupulous businessmen, and corrupt lawyers and bankers to siphon off funds from annual royalties. Several Osage people were swindled out of their individual headrights without knowing the full value of their contracts. Many Whites even married their way into rich Osage families to exert their legal rights as spouses and obtain guardianship that way.
     ".... As with any appointed guardianship, if the ward died before the legal age of competency, the guardian could petition to inherit their estate." [From the National Archives]

     And that, friends and neighbors, was the impetus for the Reign of Terror against the Osage Nation which was the basis for Grann's book and Scorsese's film Killers of the Flower Moon.

     These are the real people on whom Scorsese focused his film:
 
           The sisters Rita, Anna, Mollie, and Minnie               Their mother, Lizzie Q


      Ernest Burkhart              William King Hale             FBI Agent Tom White

Rita and her husband Bill Smith's home after it was blown up.

     The movie starts off with a scene of the rolling grasslands of Osage County. It is still, to this day, beautiful country, where you can see as far as you can look. 

     The film treats Mollie and her family like people, not stereotypes. Lily Gladstone as Mollie and Tanttoo Cardinal are excellent. Leonardo diCaprio portrays Ernest Burkhart with a depth of emotion appropriate to a man who knows the difference between right and wrong. And Robert DeNiro plays William King Hale from Hunt County, Texas, without ever betraying his own personal history as a New Yorker and an ethical man.

Some of the dialog is actually in Osage. Keeping in mind these events happened in the  Roaring 20's when every Osage County town was a boomtown, so the costumes, forms of transportation, and rowdiness are representative of the times.

(Just a couple of side notes: oil doesn't come spouting out of the ground. It may pool or puddle. And if a well is being drilled it may be a blow-out. But a spindly little geyser? No. I guess Hollywood just had to have its kitsch. Just pretend you don't see that. Same with the weird inclusion of a radio play with Scorsese's cameo at the end. A radio play? Well, actually, yes. Grann explains in his book -- the radio play not Scorsese, he's not THAT old -- actually happened. "In 1932, the FBI began working with radio program “The Lucky Strike Hour” to dramatize its cases. One of the first episodes was based on the Osage Nation murders.")

It's a good movie. I definitely recommend it with the caveat that it is a serious movie about real people and real events. A terrible time on our history that we must not allow to happen again.
 
  
                                    






  





     






Wednesday, October 18, 2023

The Wheels of Justice

 

Artist's rendering of a Protective Order hearing
before Judge Chutkan in Trump’s D.C. case, 
from CNN

     Jay Kuo, in his Status Kuo Substack, reminds me to patience. He explains the steps in the process toward justice. Steps toward justice, the wheels of which I’ve heard many times in my long life, turn slowly. 
     Too many times this process seems not only slow, but like a maze. A maze whose every turn I fear will be a dead end.
     Kuo’s step by step explanations remind me that we are a nation of laws. Laws that our Constitution requires protect all of us, including a criminal defendant. 
     I know that’s not how it always works. I’m old, not devoid of common sense. And I’m certainly not immune to the fear that the rich and powerful among us can and, too often do, get away with all kinds of stuff and the ex-President might, too. 
     I know, I know. In Trump’s case, rich may be much less rich than we’ve been led to believe and powerful may be more about those with actual money and power who support him.
     Kuo reminds me that the slow legal process leading to justice must be meticulous and methodical. He reminds me that the steps being taken in this particular case are and must be “by the book.”
     Because these trials involve an ex-President, they can be seen to be without precedent. Which doesn’t seem right to me, just because an ex-President is the defendant. He should somehow be better than an “ordinary” person? Nonetheless, it is on the bases of precedents, that the judicial system moves. And, it appears that the courts are going to have to rule that the extant precedents do apply to the Trump cases. Those slow wheels. Those slow wheels.
     In that same long life, I’ve lived, I seem not to have learned the lesson of patience. So, Jay, keep reminding me and maybe I’ll live long enough to see justice served. 

             If you would like to read Kuo’s article, go to
         https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/taming-the-online-terrorist


        If you would like to read Kuo’s article, go to https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/taming-the-online-terrorist
 

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Plastic? PLASTIC!

 

        From Jokes and Pokes on FB

Plastic! Our polyester clothes, water jugs and jugs of kitty litter. Drinking straws and stir sticks at our favorite coffee shop. Even 'paper' cups are, more often than not, plastic coated. Parchment paper and butcher paper? Yep, plastic coated. Hey, though, Cut-Rite wax paper is NOT. Plastic coated, that is.

In Colorado we pay 10 cents for what they call single-use plastic bags to carry whatever we buy home in. (I know. I ended that sentence with a preposition.) But I do reuse those bags when I clean the kitty box. (I’ve been saving them since before Daddy died, because he knew they’d eventually be outlawed or restricted somehow, so I have a lifetime supply in that little skinny closet at the end of the counter in the kitchen. And what’ll I do after that runs out, well it’ll be cheaper to buy a box of single-use trash-can liners than to pay 10 cents apiece at a store for one.)

I actually like people bringing their own bags. It’s more interesting while you stand in the check-out line, because you can check out other people’s bags. Some of them are pretty or odd, great big or little bitty. Of my bags, my personal favorites are the one from Lucile’s Creole Café in Littleton, CO. It was for carry-out food during the old CoVid days, so it’s a nice big size. Yes, the food was in plastic or aluminum trays with plastic lids. And the smaller bag from Pops convenience store/gas station/diner/motorcycle rider destination in Arcadia, OK. It had a couple of souvenir t-shirts in it. They launder nicely so it’s safe to say, they’re polyester/cotton blend.

I’m getting better about remembering to put my bags back in the car after the stuff is put away. And when I forget them in the car and have to walk back to get them. Well, that’s just extra steps and that’s good for me, right?!

I’m not sure what the solution will be to reduce our dependency on plastics, but I have every faith that someone will solve the problem and someone else will find a cure for at least some of the cancers, and several someone elses will broker lasting peace in the Middle East and in Ukraine and in the U.S. Congress.

photo from Discover Magazine



Saturday, December 10, 2022

David Copperfield --- A Book Review


The Kindle Cover

After reading Barbara Kingsolver's 2022 novel Demon Copperhead, a retelling of Dickens' David Copperfield, my addiction to reading Dickens took over.

I say "addiction" because that's the best way I can describe my love/hate relationship with that venerable author. Periodically I get this uncontrollable urge to read him. Then about three-quarters of the way through I vow NEVER to read him again.

I did better this time. According to my eReader, I got to 83 percent complete before I hit the red line. 

I think Dickens himself understood my situation.
     
“Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books,
     what work it was to write them.” Copperfield's aunt said.

     “It’s work enough to read them, sometimes." he responded. 

These quotes from David and his aunt come in Chapter 62 (Yes, I said 62, How many books these days even have a Chapter 62?! According to Google, most modern novels have 10 to 12 Chapters.)

This is the original illustration
from the publication of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield in serialized form
beginning in May of 1849 and running through November 1850. 
It was published as a 624 page book in 1850.

Of course this was then, its publication date, five years before the Flying Cloud, a clipper ship, set the world's sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco, 89 days 8 hours. That was by sailing around the Horn, Cape Horn, the southern most tip of South America. Because that was more than a half-century before the completion of the Panama Canal.

It was also well before radio, television, the internet, and streaming sight-and-sound entertainment into our homes. Most of Dickens' novels, including David Copperfield, were originally published in weekly or monthly installments in journals, which Dickens himself edited. Each month, subscribers would get a few chapters wrapped up in printed wrappers with illustrations, by the same illustrator who did the book. Someone in the household, would read to the rest while they listened and did what they did -- darning socks, tatting, shelling peas, mending harness, or perhaps sitting comfortably in their favorite chair enjoying a manly cigarette and sipping sherry or dipping a lady-like strip of toast in their tea. 

For the price of a half-penny, those who did not have subscriptions and probably could not read, could have the latest installment read to them.

Hence, the wonderfully descriptive Dickens passages like these describing Copperfield's childhood home before his widowed mother remarried. When you read these sentences, listen to what you are reading as the people back then would have done. Maybe even read them aloud.

     "On the ground floor is Peggoty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house
     on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without
     any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing
     and ferocious manner." 

And then several more sentences, equally long, and equally descriptive about the geese kept at the house Copperfield was born into. Keeping in mind that they lived in town not on a farm. In Victorian times, those well-enough-off to own their home, commonly kept food animals and had servants. David's mother had one, Peggoty.

Dickens describes the interior of the home quite completely including the store room one had to pass to get from the kitchen to the front door:

     "...a place to be run past at night; for I don't know what may be among those tubs and jars 
     and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a
     mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper,
     candles, and coffee, all at one whiff."

And from the bedroom window the young Copperfield could see "the quiet churchyard with the dead [including the father he never knew] all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon."
     
     "There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard;
     nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early
     in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother's room to look out at it; and
     I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, 'Is the sun-dial glad,
     I wonder, that it can tell the time again?'"

Those readers and listeners, back then, knew this world. For them, these complete descriptions put them into the story just like we would be brought into the story today, if we were watching it on a screen.

Today's readers read much more quickly and do not want so much description. Plus the repetition in Dickens books necessary to recap what was previously read in last week's or last month's edition make reading Dickens today a slog as we read on and on in the equivalent of binge-watching. So our patience is tested, and, in my case, too often found wanting. And I complain. Out loud to my husband.

But his stories! Oh, my his stories! They are wonderful. Because the world! He lived in the world he wrote about. He paid attention to the people around him and he wrote their characters realistically.

I also, probably too often, read the gorgeously descriptive passages to my husband. I suppose it's no wonder my husband is always relieved when I finish a Dickens book.

For example: Dickens understood about the character Mr. Micawber, the kind and eternally optimistic would-be gentleman who continually lived beyond his means and ended up in debtor's prison. Along with his wife and ever increasing family. Dickens' own father spent time in debtor's prison, along with his wife and the younger Dickens children. 

It was at that point that twelve-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to board with various family friends and work long hours in a blacking factory at very low wages, which had to be used to help pay for his care and the needs of his family in prison. He and his older sister spent their Sundays with their family in prison.

And the Dickens villains -- In David Copperfield we have the very attractive Steerforth. Of course we would have fallen under his spell, too. And the disgusting Uriah Heep! It was to the point where if he showed up again I wanted to rip that page out and hurl it across the world! And his mother with him.

But, of course, I was reading on my eReader....

Can I recommend you read David Copperfield? Of course I can. But I think listening to an audio version would be a good choice.

And I understand that the audio version of Demon Copperhead is well-done and would also be a good choice.
   

 

Friday, November 18, 2022

Something I Learned from Dickens


This is a photo of Charles Dickens from The Guardian, a British daily newspaper. To me, he looks like a kindly man looking at me, with sincere concern. 

I couldn't find an image of him smiling. I looked. Although he was an international literary celebrity, famous for his humor, satire, and cutting observations of people and society, he did live and work during the Victorian Era and smiling for photos was "simply not done."

Those of you who know me, know I am addicted to many things, one of which is Charles Dickens' novels. And as such, I periodically MUST read Dickens. Then about three-quarters of the way through, I swear I will NEVER read Dickens again.

Well, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (See my review here) and could not resist revisiting Dickens' David Copperfield.

Now I am of a region of the country and of a generation that falls easily and thoughtlessly into "old sayings." I say "thoughtlessly" lightly, but it is absolutely the correct adverb to use. 

About a quarter of the way through David Copperfield, I came to a statement by an as yet unimportant character named Malden. He said "I don't want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do...." 

I do know what that means, or thought I did. Don't question good fortune, like it's bad luck or something. Not being of pre-automobile times, I never thought about what it literally means.

I have known for a very long time that horse traders are infamous for their sharp dealings when selling a horse, especially to an unwary buyer. The buyer should watch the horse move to be assured that it is sound on its legs.

 And the buyer should also check the horse's teeth, because you can tell its age and its general history of care from their condition.


So...when someone does you a favor or hands you a gift, of course it would be rude to look for a nefarious motivation or an otherwise flawed gift.

Who knew?!

And now that I look at that Dickens photo, I'm reminded of Fidel Castro. Oh, well.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

I Voted Today

 


I'm up later than usual this morning. The traditional polling places open at seven in the morning, the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. So if  I were going to the polls, I would not be first in line. 

                            This is my polling place!                                But first breakfast.

Since we live in Colorado, we can vote anytime after we receive our ballots in the mail. We got ours a couple of weeks ago. And about a week before that we received our Ballot Information Booklets -- One from the State for elective offices and statewide questions and issues and one from our county for questions and issues pertaining just to our county.
  
 
These booklets give the titles and text of the questions we are voting on plus a summary and analysis of those questions including arguments for and against and the fiscal impact of the question. 

For example: Amendment E to the state constitution, Extend Homestead Exemption to Gold Star Spouses "reduce property taxes for the surviving spouses of both United States Armed Forces service members who died in the line of duty and veterans who died as a result of a service-related injury or disease." Plus arguments for and against this amendment and the Fiscal Impact "Amendment E will increase state spending by $288,000 in state budget year 2023-24 to cover the reimbursements [to the counties who normally benefit from property taxes] authorized in the measure."

The State booklet also gives information about the judges being considered for retention. In Colorado, judges for the State Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals and the District Courts are selected through assisted appointment -- the governor selects a nominee from a list provided by a nominating commission. Those judges then come up for Retention votes two years after their initial appointment, then after 10-year-terms for the Supreme Court Justices, 8-year-terms for Appellate Court judges, and 6-year-terms for District Court judges. We vote yes or no on each judge up for retention.

An independent research firm conducts judicial performance surveys on judges. Commissions made up of attorney and non-attorney volunteers evaluate the information collected and makes recommendations of "meets performance standards" or "does not meet performance standards" which we voters can use to decide our vote. Good information for those of us who do not have courtroom experience with our judges, thank goodness.

When it comes to candidates running for the various and sundry offices, we voters are on our own.

 
                          Time to mark my ballot.                          Sign it and seal it in its special envelop.

Then pop it in a drop box. In this case outside the rec center where I have exercise class.
Civic duty done.