On Father’s Day, Sunday, June 21, 2009, we took Dad (my father-in-law) out to dinner at The Yard House in L.A. Live.  In the recent “Best of” issue of the L.A. Downtown News, the Yard House was voted best L.A. Live restaurant and best American food.  It’s actually a national chain with most locations in Socal.  There’s one at Victoria Gardens shopping destination in Rancho Cucamonga, another at the Shoppes at Chino Hills, and another in Pasadena.  I believe that the first one was in Long Beach.  The one at L.A. Live is in the building at the north end of the plaza.  It’s in the northwest corner of the building.  To get there we passed the Wolfgang Puck on the southwest end that didn’t look like it was open yet.  We walked by the tall Ritz Carlton and Marriott that were under construction.  There was a sign directing us to the Yard House, Trader Vic’s, and Rosa Moreno, the New York-based Mexican restaurant chain.  At last, we found it just past the Starbucks.

The Yard House at L.A. Live has lots of patio seating.  I believe I saw in an issue of the L.A. Downtown News that it is either largest or the second largest restaurant in Downtown L.A. by number of seats.  We heard a little about it and had done some research online.  My cousin had been to the one at Victoria Gardens.  He said they had many choices for drinks, including ones that come in the half-yard size glasses that give the place its name, but that the food was overpriced and not very good.  Online we learned that the Yard House has between 100-250 different beers on tap depending on the location.  They had a list of all the beers including Alaskan Amber, Red Hook, and Miller Genuine Draft.  They seemed to lean towards draft beer.  San Miguel beer wasn’t on the list.  Their website also listed the type of music they played that mostly consisted of classic rock.  There were at least two Bad Company songs listed.  Also online we found nutritional information for all the items on their large menu that helped us and Mom (my mother-in-law) pick our orders.

We entered the restaurant and they gave us a choice between indoor and outdoor seating.  We chose indoor since the cool June weather was continuing.  The place didn’t seem very crowded both inside and outside.  They had us sit at a long table between two long and comfortable benches.  Inside it was a bit dark and there were many flat screen TVs hanging from the corners of the walls and from the ceiling.  They showed either the Dodgers-Angels game or the WNBA L.A. Sparks-Sacramento Monarchs game.  Our booth was slightly elevated and from it we could see the long bar wrapped around an island in the middle of the indoor space.  Behind the bar were the beer tap faucets for all the different beers.  Pipes went from the bar across the ceiling to another room full of kegs.  Above the faucets hung the namesake half-yard glasses.  Also near the entrance was a room with many bottles of wine in racks.

The music sounded just like they described on the Yard House website: classic and mellow rock.  They also played some Country music.  I didn’t hear any Bad Company but I did hear some Credence Clearwater Revival and “Man on the Moon” by REM.

Our server brought us menus that had many categories such as appetizers, soups/salads, burgers, sandwiches, house specialties, steaks, and seafood.  There were also pages with all the beers on tap and another page with other beverages including wines.  We ordered and passed the menus back to the server.  They first brought the bottle of Blackstone Merlot that Dad ordered.  He had wanted another less expensive Merlot but they only had that by the glass.  After he had ordered the wine the server asked to see my brother- and sister-in-law’s ID’s.  Dad asked how come they didn’t want to see his ID.  Those that drank it said the Blackstone Merlot was good.  Next they brought the lobster dip appetizer that was made with four cheeses.  I took the others’ word for it that it was good.  They finished it, scraping it out of the bowl.  Next they brought us our entrees.  I had originally planned to get the chicken rice bowl because it was one of the few without cheese.  But data analysis revealed that it had a lot of sodium and the website also said that they work to meet their patron’s dietary needs.  So I ordered the avocado-Swiss burger without the Swiss cheese.

My burger tasted pretty good.  It was cooked well done but not overcooked and only a little bit greasy.  The fries were thin and crispy and weren’t an excessive amount.  The burger was fairly large and I finished it because I had had a fairly light lunch earlier in the day.  However, it may have been too much food because I suffered some digestive irritation for a few days afterward.  It may also have had dairy in it.  My brother-in-law thought it looked like they had put butter on the bun.  I thought it was just oil but he may have been right.  The others enjoyed their entrees especially Mom with her angel hair pasta and my wife with her surf and turf burger, a burger that came with lobster.  

After we finished and left the Yard House we walked around the north building of L.A. Live a bit.  The building houses many restaurants.  In addition to the Yard House, Starbucks, Wolfgang Puck, Trader Vic’s, and Rosa Moreno, there’s also Kutsaya, Rock & Fish, The Farm of Beverly Hills, the Conga Room with its associated restaurant, Boca, and Lucky Strike Lanes.  The Conga Room is a salsa dance club that used to be just down the street from my Miracle Mile apartment many years ago.  We visited Lucky Strike Lanes, an upscale bowling alley.  It’s clean and stylish but I felt that the lighting seemed a bit dim for bowling.  My sister-in-law said they charged $25 per hour (per person?) plus $4 for sock rental and $6 for shoe rental.  I didn’t know that bowling alleys charged for sock rental.  Lucky Strike Lanes is a far cry from Channel Bowl in Juneau, Alaska.  Despite it being Father’s Day most places at L.A. Live didn’t seem very crowded.

As for the Yard House, my cousin’s assessment was more or less correct.  The food wasn’t that bad or overpriced but it wasn’t one of the better places we’ve tried.  I’d probably think differently if I still drank beer.

As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, Michael Connelly is my favorite writer of mysteries that take place in the Los Angeles area.  I’ve read others such as Walter Mosley whose Easy Rawlins mysteries take place in the L.A. of past eras and Robert Crais whose main character I found to be a bit unbelievable and egotistical.  I think I first heard of Connelly from reading the old L.A. Times books reviews between 2001 and 2006 when I used to get the paper.  He’s been writing mysteries since the early 1990’s and before that he was a crime reporter for the Times and other papers.  Most of his mysteries have detective Harry (short for Hieronymus) Bosch as the main character.  Other Connelly mysteries have different main characters and one of these, Blood Work, was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood in the early 2000’s.  I had read the first two books in the Bosch series: The Black Echo and The Black Ice from the early 1990’s and I enjoyed them.  They both take place during the time they were written.  The cases usually include elements that are personal to Bosch.  There’s also always an interesting twist or two making for an unexpected resolution.

Echo Park is a later installment in the Bosch series having been written and taking place in 2005-2006.  Bosch now uses a cell phone regularly but he still relies on his younger colleagues for use of computers.  By this point he must be in his 50’s.  He is a Vietnam Veteran and a longtime LAPD detective who has even tried retirement.  He now works in the open/unsolved unit.  He was named after the painter of the same name.  His mother, a prostitute who had to give him up to the state, felt like life in L.A. was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.  I remember studying these paintings in my art history class in college.  They contained many small people committing various acts of debauchery.  I think one of his works is called “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. His paintings contrasted with those of Alberecht Durer, who painted large, divine-like images of people.  To continue with the art history digression, the Edward Hopper painting “Night Hawks” is featured prominently in The Black Echo.  We saw that painting at the Tate Modern Art Museum in London back in 2004.

Not all the Harry Bosch books have the words Black or Echo in the title.  I think the third in the series is called The Concrete Blond.  The namesake L.A. neighborhood in Echo Park contains important elements of the story.  Connelly is familiar with the Echo Park of 2006.  It’s a neighborhood to the northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and he writes about it: “These days Echo Park was a favored destination of another class of newcomer – the young and hip.  The cool.  Artists, musicians and writers were moving in.  Cafés and vintage clothing shops were squeezing in next to the bodegas and mariscos stands.  A wave of gentrification was washing across the flats and up the hillsides below the baseball stadium.  It meant the character of the place was changing.  It meant real estate prices were going up, pushing out the working class and the gangs.” (Connelly, p. 57-58)  That’s the Echo Park I remember from when we used to leave in nearby Downtown L.A.  Connelly captures it well in his description of the old houses and hilly streets.  He describes how Figueroa Street branches off into the hilly, shorter street, Figueroa Terrace and finally Figueroa Lane.  A look at my Thomas Guide doesn’t exactly confirm this.  Figueroa Street actually extends all the way into Eagle Rock and to the 134.  It’s supposedly one of the longest streets in the U.S.

The reason I picked the book Echo Park, even though I usually try to read mysteries in sequence, is that my wife recently went to a restaurant called Bird’s in Hollywood for a girls’ night out.  She had the meat loaf and didn’t think it was anything special.  When researching the restaurant before going there she learned that it was mentioned in the book Echo Park by Michael Connelly.   It turns out that the accused murderer in the book liked to go to Bird’s when he lived on Franklin in Hollywood.  He enjoyed their roast chicken.  Bird’s isn’t the only restaurant mentioned that sounded familiar to me.  Bosch and his sometime ladyfriend eat out at the Water Grill in Downtown.  Later she brings him meat loaf from Just Another Restaurant or JAR in Santa Monica.  I haven’t been to those places because, respectively, they are out of my price range and geographic range.

Echo Park isn’t the only part of L.A. featured in the book.  Bosch spends some time in downtown L.A. because he works at Parker Center, the main LAPD station, since replaced.  The DWP building is also featured.  Much of the action also takes place in Hollywood, the surrounding hills, and Griffith Park.  The book begins with a flashback to 1993 when Bosch and his then partner check out an apartment connected to the case.  It’s in a (fictional?) complex called the Hightower that’s built along the side of a hill.  Though the apartment has an excellent view of the city, it’s only 400 square feet.  The rent in 1993 is $1,000 per month most likely due to the view.

I enjoy reading Connelly because he knows L.A. and he knows police work.  He describes how detectives must assemble “murder books” for each homicide case that contain everything connected to the case.  This includes a record of all events and things done in the investigation.  When a police officer fires his weapon, Connelly describes the process of the Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) investigation.  He knows all the acronyms, proceedings, and resources such as Autotrack, the computer database that “could provide an individual’s address history through utility and cable hookups, DMV records, and other sources.  It was tremendously useful in tracing people back through time.” (p. 55)

I also like that Bosch is an imperfect protagonist.  He has theories that turn out to be false and he has a tendency for recklessness and bending the rules when he feels lives are on the line.  But he’s also very smart, thorough, and willing to approach questions from different angles.  I like how Connelly takes us through his thought processes.  He also gives us much insight into Bosch as a person: his past as an orphan ward of the state and later a Vietnam vet, even his past acquaintances and relationships that I’m guessing were explored in earlier books in the series.  Bosch is a big fan of jazz and in one scene plays a CD of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk live at Carnegie Hall recorded in 1957.  The tape had sat in an unmarked box in the national archives for 50 years before a “Library of Congress guy was going through all the boxes and performance taps and just recognizes what they had there . . . It’s a miracle to think it was there all the time.  It took the right person to find it.  To recognize it.” (p. 147)  Bosch uses this as a model for his detective work.

The plot and twists of Echo Park aren’t quite as compelling as The Black Echo and The Black Ice but it’s still very good.  There are many characters with different motives, both political and personal, and some are more than they initially seem.  I didn’t find it hard to follow the seemingly complicated plot.  Everything isn’t resolved until the end and, even then, not everything is explained.  But enough is to satisfy Bosch and the reader.  Each book is its own story, yet in total the series tells the continuing story of Bosch and some of the other recurring characters.

We had lunch at Afghan Palace on Friday, June 5 to celebrate my safe return from Baltimore the evening before.  I had Friday off work as a travel day.  My wife heard about the restaurant from Restaurants.com when they had their offer to buy gift certificates for restaurants all over.  Afghan Palace is within a 10-20 mile radius of us, though only $10 gift certificates were available.  Still, it looked interesting and I had heard about Afghan food while looking up Baltimore restaurants in the Fodor’s guidebook.  We figured why not just try a local Afghan restaurant.

To get there we drove east on the 210 and exited south on Carnelian Road.  We drove a ways down to Baseline Road, the cross street near Afghan Palace.  We were looking for a shopping center on the left side where my wife planned to take an exam in August.  We ended up passing it, doubling back and then finding it back near Baseline Road.  Afghan Palace is in a shopping center on the southwest corner and across Carnelian from where she would take the exam.  We parked in some angle parking on a bit of a slope and entered the restaurant.  It was a small place in a storefront with slightly dim lighting inside.  On the window was a poster for dancers that looked like belly dancers.  Inside there were many tables and Middle Eastern décor.  A map covered much of one wall.  On it were the words “British Army in Bolan Pass near Khyber Pass (1839).”  The Khyber Pass sounded familiar.  It may have been mentioned in the book Three Cups of Tea that I read late in late 2008.  The subject and coauthor of the book, Greg Mortensen, named his son Khyber.  Also on the wall was a relief sculpture of that famous photo of an Afghan girl that appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in the 1980’s.  There were some shiny white mobiles hanging from the ceiling and in the back it looked like there was a stage and curtain for performers, though it was dark at that time.  When I went to the back to find the restrooms later I noticed there was a kind of lounge with Persian rugs and Middle eastern-looking chairs.

The hostess/waitress allowed us to sit anywhere.  There was no one else there though a couple of other parties would show up while we ate.  We sat down at a table towards the back that was covered with burlap and clear plastic.  The menus were contained in what seemed like burlap-covered photos albums.  They had several pages and different sections for appetizers, kabobs (more Persian than Afghan food; the place actually serves both Persian and Afghan), vegetarian entrees, sandwiches, soups, salads, side orders, desserts, and beverages.  Beverages included tea with Afghan spices (no surprise since I’ve read Three Cups of Tea) and one of the desserts was homemade Afghan ice cream (silky road).  As stated, the kabobs and sandwiches seemed more like Persian or Mediterranean food so we stuck with the Afghan-seeming appetizers, vegetarian entrees, and side orders.  All the Afghan items seemed to be vegetarian but that was OK because it made them less expensive.  We placed our orders and waited.

Over the speakers they played rhythmic Middle Eastern-sounding music that was fast and had a lot of drumming.  I think we heard the one song with vocals at least four times.  The first thing the servers brought was a basket of slightly crunchy pita bread with a small bowl of green sauce.  It wasn’t something we ordered but I guess they bring it for everyone.  It was good!  Next they brought my order of Kachaloo Gulpi that came in a medium-sized glass bowl.  It’s made with chunks of cauliflower and potatoes cooked in a spicy ginger and curry sauce, and it was very delicious.  It wasn’t too spicy, bland, or too anything, but flavored perfectly.  It was filling and actually more food than it seemed but that was OK.  I couldn’t get enough of it.  It tasted like it had a bit of crunch in it, too, making it even better.

They brought our appetizer order next: Bollanee, or grilled turnover filled with cooked leek and spices.  It was shiny with oil and looked like a quesadilla.  It came with its own green and white sauce and was also very good.  For entrée my wife ordered the vegetarian platter that came with lots of basmati rice and four small portions of vegetable dishes.  They included eggplant, kachaloo, cooked spinach, hummus, and a tomato sauce on another kind of rice.  She enjoyed it and gave me some of the hummus to have with the pita bread.  She couldn’t finish everything, though, and took some home.  She also didn’t have room for the Afghani ice cream that she had wanted to try.  This gives us an excuse to return.

We paid our check and made sure to leave before they played that song a fifth time.  On the way out we saw a photo on the wall of the chef and/or owner with Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  Wow, celebrities come all the way out to Rancho.  Maybe the photo is related to the 2008 film Charlie Wilson’s War in which both of them starred and was about a congressman who works to aid the Afghans in the late 70’s and early 80’s against the Soviet invasion of their country.  Well, I’m glad we can easily get a delicious taste of the country.

On Wednesday, June 3, 2009, I was in Baltimore, Maryland to attend a conference for work.  In the late afternoon/early evening after the meetings for that day had ended, the conference organizers sponsored a cash bar in the ground floor café of the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel.  This got out around 6:30 pm.  I noticed some of my coworkers leaving and they had earlier suggested I should have dinner with them.  The four of us were joined by colleagues from other companies: four from Indiana, two from Tennessee, and one from North Dakota making our total eleven.  I followed them outside not knowing where we were going.  We walked east on Pratt Street into the Little Italy section of Baltimore and then turned right (south) down a narrow street.  Ciao Bella was on the right side of this street.  It was across from another Italian restaurant, Chippareli’s, that I believe was mentioned in the Fodor’s guidebook of Maryland that I had borrowed from the Covina library.

Inside the restaurant it was dark and seemed small but there were actually several rooms branching off from the first room with the bar.  While in this first room one of my colleagues noticed my glow-in-the-dark cellphone charm that another coworker had given to me as a gift a few weeks before.  The hostess seated us at a long table or possibly several tables pushed together in one of the rooms with a view of the street.  There were other tables in the room but they were never used while we were there.  The staff directed other patrons to other rooms including some other colleagues from the North Dakota company.  The room in which we sat wasn’t as dark as the first room but still dim.  The tablecloths were white and on the walls they had these pictures of kids wearing old-fashion clothes.  The kids’ outfits and the backgrounds of the pictures looked like paintings but their faces looked like photographs making them seem somewhat creepy.

The waiter brought us menus that were several pages long and included separate sections for appetizers, soups and salads, meat, chicken, seafood, and pasta entrees.  The waiter also mentioned some specials including a chicken breast stuffed with crab.   Everything was rather expensive with most entrees ranging between $20 and $30.  Many of us had a tough time deciding what to order.  The meat section had several veal options including Veal Chesapeake.  I wanted to have crab since that’s what’s good in Baltimore.  They had some crab options such as a crab appetizer, special, and crab-stuffed shrimp entrée in the seafood section.  I ordered the latter: Shrimp di Stephano and requested that it be altered to be non-diary.  Some of the others ordered appetizers such as brushetta that I was surprised to see had cheese on it.  There was also bread and plates of olive oil with balsamic vinegar, all very good.  Later a different waiter (or possibly a chef) came by and said they could make my entrée without dairy but the crab would still have egg in it.  I said that was fine and he said they would replace the cream sauce on the fettuccine with a white wine sauce and capers, all fine with me.

All of the entrees came at once except one colleague from Tennessee whose red snapper special was late.  She went around trying everyone else’s food at our table.  One colleague from Indiana ordered some meatballs in marinara sauce (or “gravy” as his coworker called it, I guess they call sauce “gravy” in Indiana).  He shared the meatballs and I tried half of one.  It was very good, meaty and juicy with very little added flavor because it wasn’t needed.  My Shrimp di Stephano was also very good.  I could taste the crab flavor and, again, no added flavor was in it or needed.  The shrimp were large and thick, though they kept the tail shells on.  The pasta with a white wine sauce had a sweet taste that was a little strong but still good.  The others’ entrees also looked impressive.  My coworker’s eggplant puttanesca was very large.  He called it a burrito.  One of the others from Indiana had the same entrée as I only with the cream sauce.  He said it was “solid”.  Many people shared each others’ entrees.

We were there for several hours.  They offered dessert but only had cannoli, tiramisu and a third item I don’t remember.  No one ordered dessert but several ordered coffee.  Outside it would pour down rain, stop, and then rain some more at different intervals.  By the time we left it was raining again and we heard loud thunder.  One of our group impressively whistled for a cab that picked up four of us.  We waved down another cab that picked up another four.  I was part of the last group and we had to wait a while as cabs picked up people from Chippareli’s across the street.  Finally, one came for us and we rode the short distance back to the hotel.  Ciao Bella was good but expensive.  It seems that Baltimore either had either cheap food that’s just adequate or expensive food that’s very good.  There isn’t much in between.  I’m glad I had the Maryland crab but I was ready to get back to the “in-between” restaurants at home.

I later learned that there’s a restaurant called “Ciao Bella” in Riverside.

(Spoiler alert)

As I probably mentioned in my review of The Blessing Way last year, Tony Hillerman was my favorite mystery writer and one of my favorite authors.  I believe I mentioned in that review how he wrote the Navajo Tribal Police (NTP) mysteries with main characters Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.  I recently learned that Hillerman died late last year.  That’s too bad because it means I’ll eventually run out of his books to read.  I think I currently have 4 more NTP novels and possibly 3-4 more of this other books to go.  As is often the case I needed an audiobook to get some cleaning chores done and, as usual, the audiobook choices at the Covina Public Library were limited.  I had listened to all the Hillerman mysteries on tape and CD that they had, but I noticed that they had Hillerman’s memoir, Seldom Disappointed, on CD.  It was recorded by the author himself.  I read some good reviews on amazon.com so I decided to give it a try.

Hillerman speaks with a slow, folksy Oklahoman accent.  He’s not as good a reader as George Guidall, the reader of his mysteries on audiobook, but his personal commentary is better for the memoir.  It was like he was actually talking to me, telling me his story.  His life actually went through many stages before he even began his writing career.  He did not grow up in New Mexico, Arizona, or Navajo country but in rural Oklahoma, home of the Patawatami Indians.  He fought in World War II, studied journalism, worked in the newspaper business, worked in academia, and then started seriously writing novels in his 40s.  He had quite a life and he wrote his memoir in 2001 so he still had seven more years and four more NTP novels after writing it.

For some reason I found the part about his childhood and youth the least interesting.  That’s probably because he goes through so many changes (as we all do when we’re young) that it’s hard to follow.  There isn’t much focus.  It was interesting to learn that, when his parents married, his mother was 35 and his father was 47 and he was born five years later.  So people had children at so-called “later” ages back in the 1920’s.  There are some interesting anecdotes about games he played as a boy such as a game where they would run across a field.  One boy would try to tackle the others and whoever he tackled would join him in the effort.  The last boy left running won the game.  He also describes “war” games with rubber band guns.  He spends most of this time period in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma.

Hillerman’s account of his service in World War II is more interesting.  He operates a mortar and also describes how he shoots a German soldier with a Colt pistol.  His experience has some similarities to that of Captain Nathaniel Fick as described in One Bullet Away (see earlier review).  Private Hillerman’s Charlie Company is always on the move, sleeping in foxholes, and enduring cold snow and rain.  Higher command has its usual snafus and misinformation.  Unlike Captain Fick in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hillerman and the other U.S. Army troops in France and Germany don’t get MREs for meals.  They get three tiers of military rations.  C-rations are the best, followed by the dreaded K-rations.  The lowest are the D-bars: protein and meal bars that have to be boiled before they can be bitten and chewed properly.  Going to the Army hospital yields the best treatment: hot food, clean cloths, etc.  When Hillerman has a fever he is told by the medic that his temperature is only 102 and needs to be 103 to be sent to the hospital.  The medic has him chain-smoke to bring his temperature up to the threshold.

There’s a humorous account of Hillerman’s stay in the Army hospital after he is badly wounded.  He is maimed by a mine in a raid that is all but anticipated by the Germans.  He nearly loses sight in both eyes and his foot and leg are damaged.  He has many surgeries and gets to know many of his fellow wounded.  They have this ritual before any of them has surgery where they conduct a mock wake for the patient to be operated on.  They discussed the incompetence of army surgeons, claim dibs on the patient’s possessions, and compose a letter to his family describing his shortcomings.  Sounds a bit morbid but I guess the humorous sarcasm helped maintain sanity.

It is the letters that Hillerman sends home from the war that lead to his career.  His mother passes them along to a newspaper reporter in Oklahoma City who embellishes them and turns him into a local hero.  When he returns home the reporter tells him that his letters show promise and he should consider writing as a career.  Following her advice he goes to journalism school at Oklahoma State, graduates, and works for several newspapers in Oklahoma and later in New Mexico.  It is during this time, I believe that he really learns how to write.  He works as a crime reported for much of this time and that helps him later in writing mysteries.  He also reports on politics.  He describes how a common typographical error at the time was to have letters in a different font from the others.  He works in a building with an art deco statue of an Indian outside whose name has this error.  Therefore they call him Chief WrongFont and the building the WrongFont building.  During this time he meets his future wife, also a student at OK State and they get married.  They have one biological daughter and over time adopt five more children.  Around that time the Pill wasn’t in wide use yet so there was a surplus of children for adoption.  One of his adopted sons has an intolerance for both dairy (like me) and wheat.  While in Santa Fe in the 1950’s he and his wife purchase a home for $9,100 and they are nervous about how much debt they had gotten into.

In the 1960’s Hillerman goes back to school at University of New Mexico (UNM) to get a masters in journalism.  He describes how, “I was now a student.  In 1963 neither the Civil Rights laws nor Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation covered that bottom of the barrel category of citizenship.”  His masters thesis consists of stories from New Mexico’s history and is eventually published as The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other Stories.  While at UNM, Keen (sp?) Rafferty, the dean and founder of the school of journalism wants to make Hillerman his successor.  To do so, Hillerman must get a doctorate, but he also must make a living so he’s hired as a special assistant to the UNM president.  One task he’s given is to go down to Quito, Ecuador where UNM has an exchange program and bail some students out of jail.  I’ve also been to Ecuador as an exchange student, though I never needed to be bailed out of jail.  While there Hillerman visits a casino where he notices that the casino workers look the same as those at Binion’s in Las Vegas and the Mulan (sp?) in Manila.

Hillerman also mentions the Philippines in the large latter section of his memoir about his writing career.  He does research for his book Finding Moon, another Non-NTP, novel by going to the Philippines.  He flies there on Philippine Air Lines (PAL).  He spends time at Palawan Prison, an island prison where the escapees always return because it’s an island.  They can either try to make it in the jungle or return.  Swimming is out of the question.  I think Finding Moon actually takes place in Vietnam.  His mentioning Finding Moon and his other non-NTP novels such as The Great Taos Bank Robbery and The Fly on the Wall makes me want to check them out sometime.  The latter book is about a newspaper reporter and is a bit autobiographical.  In the first edition of it he accidently has the main character go shoeless through the last few chapters.

It takes him several years to finish his first novel, The Blessing Way, in the late 1960’s.  He writes most of it on a Radio Shack TR-81 computer.  I didn’t know they had personal computers in the late 1960’s.  In guess they weren’t very good because his nickname for it is the “Trash-81”.  His writing career develops slowly.  He gets interesting in Navajo culture when he’s much younger and just back from World War II.  He sees two Navajos on their way to an Enemy Way.  He gets interested and is allowed to attend so long as he “doesn’t get drunk or make a fool of himself”.  Later he has many Navajo friends since he lives in Albuquerque and he’s always picking their brains.  The Navajos find his books to be respectful of their culture.  In the mid 1980’s he is given an award as a “Special Friend of the Dinaee (sp?)”  The Dinaee is how the Navajos refer to themselves.  Some reservation schools include his books in their required reading.

Hillerman is even included on a committee to decide what Indians will call themselves.  They don’t like to be called Native Americans because they didn’t evolve from animals on the American continent.  They came over from Asia, most likely over the “Land Bridge” between Eastern Russia and Alaska.  Thus, they are immigrants just like every else in the American continent.  They prefer to be called by their tribe name, but if you don’t know that, it’s fine to refer to them as “Indians”.  One council member said he was glad Columbus wasn’t looking for Turkey when he discovered America.

Hillerman describes how his books have evolved over the years.  Lt. Joe Leaphorn is originally only supposed to be a minor character in the first book but an editor suggests developing him further.  He creates Sgt. Jim Chee because he wants a main character that is younger, less sophisticated, and more traditional than Leaphorn.  When a fan at a book signing can’t tell the difference between Leaphorn and Chee, Hillerman includes both of them in his next book, Skinwalkers.  His “breakout” book is A Thief of Time that’s also the first book I read by him.  As I’ve mentioned, it was a Christmas gift from my brother at the recommendation of my grandfather.  Hillerman describes how some of his books such as A Fly on the Wall and Hunting Badger are partially based on true events.  He enjoys interacting with fans and has no plans to give up writing.  His last novel, The Shape Shifter, came out in 2006, two years before his death.

Hillerman had quite a life that was much more than simply that of a mystery novelist.  His recall of past memories is incredible, though he does admit some things he doesn’t remember such as names and exact sequences of events.  I like how he put some of his books in context and talked about his non-NTP novels.  I have four NTP novels left to read: People of Darkness (1980), The Ghostway (1980’s), The Fallen Man (1990’s) and The Shape Shifter (2006).  Now I also have his non-NTP books: The Great Taos Bank Robbery, The Fly on the Wall, and Finding Moon.  Hilerman mentions how he was lucky to have the life he had.  When he was young his mother told him not to expect too much in life and you will seldom be disappointed.  So far, none of his books have disappointed me.

We took Mom and Dad (my in-laws) out to dinner to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday May 10, 2009.  We went to Bottega Louie, a new restaurant and gourmet market in the redeveloped Brockman building on the corner of Seventh Street and Grand Avenue in Downtown L.A.  We first read about it in the Downtown News and heard that it was rated as one of the top 10 new restaurants in Downtown L.A. by the L.A. Times.  Later, the L.A. Downtown News “Best of Downtown” issue rated it as the best new upscale restaurant.  The restaurant gets its name from Bottega being Italian for market and Louie being a catchy name.  It was actually the first tenant at the Brockman building that was a highly anticipated adaptive reuse development.  I remember hearing about it at the Downtown Living Weekend in early 2005.  It has since been renovated but cost overruns have forced the developer into bankruptcy.  Originally planned as condos for sale, they have since announced that they’ll go the apartment rental route.  Now that they’re in bankruptcy, everything is in limbo except, luckily, the restaurant on the ground floor, Bottega Louie, that opened in April and will remain open.

We walked to the restaurant, mostly north up Grand Avenue from our sister- and brother-in-law’s loft in South Park.  We passed the Stillwell Hotel with the Indian Restaurant Gill’s and a new diner called Mother Road.  There was a stand for valet parking right near the corner of Seventh and Grand.  The restaurant entrance is right there on the ground floor and most of its walls are glass windows looking out onto the street.  We actually entered into the section that’s the gourmet market.  There’s a counter with freshly baked items behind a the glass such as many colorful macaroons and some cannele pastries that my wife later tried.  Shelves against the floor contained house brand and gourmet brand pastas, pasta sauces, jams and preserves, and other non-perishables.  The place was crowded, probably due to Mother’s Day, but when we gave our name to the hostess at the desk in the middle of the restaurant she said the wait was only five minutes.  We looked around in the market and they came and got us very soon.

To get to our table we passed a large open kitchen, some elegant glassware stacked on trays, and a separate kitchen station where they made the pizzas.  There are many tables in the eastern half of the restaurant.  It has high ceilings and slightly dark lighting, white tables, chairs, ceilings, pillars, and walls (at least those walls that aren’t windows).  The floors are shiny gray stone and some counters and walls have elegant dark wood paneling with gold-colored trim.  They put the six of us at a long combination of 2-3 tables near the northeast corner.  Along the window near us were some shiny silver-colored Champagne buckets on stands.  The table cloth was white to match the rest of the color scheme.

They brought us menus.  Most of their choices are Italian but there’s such a wide variety.  They have salads, pizzas, pastas, soups (including a pasta fagiole similar to a recipe we made recently only that was made with Italian sausage and Bottega Louie made theirs with prosciutto), entrees, over 30 small plates ranging in price from $6-$8, poultry, meat, and fish.  The prices were fairly reasonable such as $12 for the meat and seafood pastas, $6 for soups, $12 for sandwiches, $14 for entrees, $23 for fish, and $33 for steak.  After seeing the Fettuccine Belmondo under pastas my brother-in-law mentioned that Belmondo was also the name of a famous actor in Europe.

For drinks, our sister- and brother-in-law brought a bottle of wine that the wait staff poured without charging a corkage fee.  The servers also brought us drinking water in elegant clear glass bottles with long necks.  The water came flat or sparkling.  Mom mentioned that in the Philippines they call this kind of sparkling water “soda” and what we call sodas they call soft drinks.   I should also mention that the salt shakers on our table contained pink colored salt.  The servers brought us small loaves of sliced crusty bread wrapped in white paper.  It wasn’t exactly French or Italian bread and reminded me of Ecuadorean bread.

After some deliberation we placed our orders.  First, they brought out an elevated rack for pizza and served that first: the clam pizza that also had roasted yellow and red pepper, mozzarella, and pecorino Romano cheese.  The peppers made it a very colorful pizza and my wife said it was very good, especially with the clams cooked just right.  Next they brought our entrees.  My sister- and brother-in-law had wanted to order the Arrancini Arrabbiata but the waiter said they were out of that so they ordered the Fettuccine Belmondo instead.  I enjoyed my three Kurobuta pork chops.  The many grill marks corresponded to excellent smoky grilled flavor.  They were fully cooked, juicy and not chewy at all.  Even better was the house-made applesauce that came with the pork chops in its own metal serving boat.   The applesauce tasted freshly made with little chunks of apple and no added sweetener.  It didn’t need any and went well with the chops.  In all it was a lot of food, but very good.

As a table we got a wide variety of food.  My wife ordered the Trenne pasta that she said was pretty good but she felt the rib eye in it taste more like stew meat than rib eye.  My mother- and father-in-law ordered the mussels and clams steamed in white wine broth.  They shared some with us and they were good.  We also enjoyed some of the Portobello fries that my sister-in-law ordered.  For drink, my wife enjoyed her blueberry lemonade that had a purple color and contained many large blueberries.

They brought out a dessert menu that listed some interesting choices such as Bulgarini Sorbet and Peanut Butter terrine.  There were also cheese and dessert wines.  We didn’t have dessert because we planned to get ice cream from New Zealand Natural at L.A. Live.  On the way out we shopped at the gourmet market.  We got some Bottega Louie-brand ragu sauce that came in a large jar and a jar of Bonne ____________, strawberry preserves from France.  The cashier said the preserves were very good.  We tried it later and found it was sweet enough to be a dessert or a fruit spread.  Dad brought my wife a cannele pastry that’s a chewy chocolate pastry with a chewy custard interior.  It’s shaped like a little Bundt cake.  She enjoyed it.  They also sell canneles at Trader Joes in the frozen section.

Eating at Bottega Louie was quite a culinary experience.  After leaving we walked to New Zealand Natural where I had the lime sorbet and my wife had the Hokey Pokey ice cream.

(Spoiler Alert)

I first read about the book One Bullet Away: The making of a Marine Officer in an issue of U.S. News.  The issue had several articles about future leaders and one of them was about young junior military officers.  It described how they were getting lots of valuable combat experience from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It mentioned Nathaniel Fick and his book One Bullet Away as an example of the type of valuable experience they were getting.  I researched further and the premise of the book seemed interesting: a Dartmouth student studying Classics decides to become a Marine in order to have a real adventure.  Most of his classmates are going to law school, medical school, or other graduate school, joining the Peace Corps or Teach for America, or getting a high paying job.  They all think he’s crazy.  The book goes on to describe his experiences in Officer Candidate School (OCS), the Basic School (TBS), his time in Afghanistan, more training for the Recon division, and then the real meat of the book: his time in Iraq.

Fick’s career as an officer begins at OCS, a kind of boot camp for officers that takes place in the summer between his junior and senior years at Dartmouth.  It takes place at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia.  He learns very quickly that the Marines, like all branches of the armed forces, have their own nomenclature, acronyms, and traditions.  When thirsty, Marines don’t “drink water”, they “hydrate.”  Flashlights are called moonbeams and running shoes are called go-fasters.  As I read I sometimes got confused by all the acronyms used such as TBS (The Basic School), MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit?), and MOS (Military Occupational Specialty).  One acronym I do remember is an unofficial one: CDI for Chicks Dig It.  As Fick’s former Platoon Sergeant describes, “Football team: high CDI.  Chess club: low CDI.  Platoon Sergeant: High CDI.  Weapons section Sergeant: Low CDI.”

The purpose of OCS is to weed out the candidates unfit for command.  After OCS and his senior year at Dartmouth Fick attends The Basic School (TBS) to really learn how to be an officer.  TBS consisted of classes along with field training and during written tests the instructors cranked Metallica at full volume, hurled tennis balls at officer’s heads, and squirted them with water pistols.  “The lesson was focus: ignore the distractions.” (Fick p. 37)  Something else he does at TBS is select his preferred military occupational specialty (MOS).  Desiring the most adventure he selects infantry, though only 10% of Marine officers go to infantry.  The rest “go to other combat arms such as artillery, amphibious assault vehicles, and tanks—or to support jobs such as supply, administration, and even financial management.” (p. 33)  I didn’t know that financial management was an MOS.  That would be my first choice.  Later while on a ship preparing to go to Afghanistan he describes how logisticians brought up ammunition from the ship’s magazine.  That’s another MOS that would interest me though I don’t think I’d enjoy OCS very much.

After finishing TBS Fick is assigned to a battalion based in San Diego.  Each battalion consists of three companies (Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie) and each company consists of three platoons.  He is placed in charge of a weapons platoon of around 20 Marines.  I was surprised he didn’t say much about his Marines other than his platoon sergeant, Keith Marine (his real name).  He writes much more about his Recon platoon in Iraq.  They train together and they are assigned to a ship.  The Marines are the troops that reside in ships to be immediately dispatched when needed on shore.  This differs from the much larger Army who are primarily a land force, the Navy who remain at sea, and the Air Force who patrol the skies.  There’s a lot of gray area between the branches, though, such as the Navy also has fighter pilots, and the Army and Marines both use helicopters.  Fick is at sea when 9/11 occurs and his expectation of an easy peacetime service is eliminated.  He and his platoon are sent to Afghanistan to conduct recovery and support missions.  On the way there, traveling through Pakistan, a Pakistani army officer offers him tea.  He has one cup, drinking it quickly so he can get back to mission.  Just one cup of tea makes him a stranger according to the rules set forth in the book Three Cups of Tea.

After his time in Afghanistan, Fick joins the Recon company of his battalion that gets assigned more dangerous missions than regular companies.  His new platoon consists of more experienced Marines included some with combat experience from places like Samolia or from working as a repo man in L.A.  One of his team leaders, Sergeant Larry Shawn Patrick is called “Pappy” by the others because of his grandfatherly 30 years of age.  Later in the book another Sergeant refers to Patrick as “The old man”.  Soon, the rumors of and preparations for the war in Iraq begin.  Fick and his roommate have dinner at Jay’s, their favorite restaurant in San Diego before he his deployed to Kuwait with his platoon.  In Iraq, Fick experiences lots of combat action: firefights, ambushes, the taking of prisoners, and lots of destruction inflicted by both sides.  He’s on or near the front lines during the major pre-insurgency fighting.  He and his platoon undertake a long journey by Humvee from Kuwait to Bagdad, fighting in towns, securing bridges, supporting other combat units, and securing different areas.  War is a big effort of coordination.  Troops have to do a lot of waiting for orders to move out and get ready.  They move around a lot, sleeping in holes where ever they happen to be at the time.  Combat actions occur quickly and often the troops don’t see the full results of their damage.  During these early days of the Iraq war they fight the Iraqi army and the Republican guard rather than the insurgency of later years.  Roadside bombs and IED’s are not yet common.  But, as a sergeant says, “If the people don’t want for themselves what we want for them then this will be (another) Vietnam.” (p. 318)

Something Fick often mentions are the standard military rations, Meals-Ready-to-Eat or MREs.  We can relate to them because one of my wife’s former instructors is in the Army reserve and he shared some official military MREs with her class.  She saw how the built-in mechanisms cooked the MRE when one of her classmates opened his and shared it.  She could even hear it sizzling.  We can get more “civilian MRE’s” at the store Major Survival.  My wife had been told that one MRE was enough food for one day.  However, Fick seems to disagree when he writes, “We had been eating only one MRE a day because the truck carrying the extra food had been blown up by fedayeen near Qalat Sukkar (in Iraq) . . . I was too hungry to sleep.” (p. 260)  MREs also provide the in-flight meals in the C5 air transport from the Air Force base in Riverside to Moro’n, Spain and eventually to Kuwait.  That flight also has no in-flight movie or any window seats for the passengers.  Fick describes how MRE’s are not designed for hungry refugees.   For them they have humanitarian rations or “humrats” that come in bright yellow packages, don’t require any cooking mechanisms, and consist of unobjectionable foods (e.g. no meat) such as crackers, rice, beans, and candy.  On Christmas Day in Afghanistan Fick’s platoon prunes tumbleweeds into triangular shapes and decorates them with candy and mini Tabasco bottles from the MREs.  During the previous week they had squirreled away packets of cheese or pound cake—MRE delicacies—as presents for their buddies. (p. 137)  My wife learned that MREs last five years or longer.  While in Afghanistan in 2002 Fick is cooking an omelet from his MRE using the MRE heater.  He opens the packet of M&M’s also from the MRE and notices an ad to win tickets to the Olympics: the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona meaning that the MRE is 10 years old.  His officer buddy tells him, “Enjoy the omelet, bro.”

I’m glad Fick wrote One Bullet Away.  It’s an excellent account of the Iraq war and the experiences of a junior officer.  He writes well and really captures of the camaraderie with his men, the boredom of waiting contrasted with the rapid-fire excitement of combat, the occasional frustration with upper command’s lack of coordination, and the split second decisions required.  He seems like he was an excellent officer, treating his men well.   When I was reading this book on the train a guy sitting next to me asked whether it was written by a soldier.  He said he prefers books about war written by soldiers even if they may not be as well written as books written by historians and journalists.  I’ve read some good books about war by historians, journalists and authors such as Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides, In Harm’s Way by Doug Stanton, and Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden.  I’d say the writing quality of One Bullet Away is comparable to those other books.  That it’s written by a participating Marine gives it a whole extra level of credibility.  The title comes from a lesson that Fick learns about the roles of the platoon commander versus the platoon sergeant.  Too often, platoon commanders focus on the mission while platoon sergeants focus on troop welfare.  The instructor tells him, “You have to do both.  What’s the difference between you and your platoon sergeant?  One bullet.” (p. 23)

In early April my wife purchased and downloaded the CD “Now That’s What I Call Classic Power Ballads”.  There have been many “Now That’s What I Call Music” collections put out during the past 25 years or so such as “Now That’s what I Call Christmas”.  I have been a fan of 80’s music since it was current and a fan of Hair Metal bands.  A staple of both these general and specific genres was the power ballad.  This collection contains 18 power ballads and a very wide variety of them.  They’re not by all hair bands and not all from the 80’s either.

The collection begins with a staple power ballad: “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”.  Poison was ranked the number one hair band on a show on VH1 many years ago.  They’re known for songs about partying and excess and “Every Rose” reveals a softer, more soulful side.  The next track is “Faithfully” by Journey, a band from the 70’s and 80’s, though not a hair band.  When VH1 did its own ranking of power ballads, Journey’s “Open Arms” was ranked number one.  But I’m glad the “Now” collection includes the relatively less popular and less cheesy “Faithfully” instead.  It’s deeper, seems to tell a story, and is equally powerful.  The next song is from the late 90’s by a perennially popular band: “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith from the movie Armageddon. I remember that the song wasn’t written by Aerosmith but by Diane Warren and it was also nominated for an Academy Award.  Perennially popular bands continue with the Kiss song “Forever”.  I believe this is from their non-makeup hair band and possibly Day-Glo phase.

The next song indicates that the power ballad and hair band are not exclusively American phenomena (though Journey does have non-American members).  It’s a song that asks the appropriate power ballad question: “Is This Love” by Whitesnake.  This English band is actually one of the hair band forerunners.  The next song breaks another stereotype: that all power ballads are sung by men.  “Never” by the Seattle band Heart is a fun-sounding power ballad.  One of the top placers of the lip-sync contest at my middle school performed “Never”.  The next track is a slower, emotional song from a group known for faster, more fun songs.  It’s “The Flame” by Cheap Trick and a bit of a change from their songs “I Want You to Want Me” and “Surrender”.  Unlike the latter, “The Flame” does not mention The Philippines.  Bad English recorded the next song, the romantic “When I See You Smile”.  I believe they could be classified as a “supergroup” with John Waite on vocals and at least one member or former member of Journey.  I used to own their debut album that had classics such as “Possession”, “Forget Me Not”, and “Heaven is a Four Letter Word” but my tape died.

It’s back to power ballad staples with the next song, the powerful but overplayed (in its time) “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger.  The song isn’t exactly a love song, nor is it Christian rock.  In fact I never really knew what it was about until I saw the 80’s music musical “Rock of Ages”.  Right before the female lead, Sherry Christian, moves from her small hometown to L.A. her parents sing “Sister Christian”.  Later in the musical her boyfriend sings “Oh Sherry” to win her back, though this song isn’t in the “Now” power ballad collection.  The next song is a soulful track from a group known for their soundtrack songs.  “The Search is Over” by Survivor is a celebratory power ballad.  Most of their big songs such as “Eye of the Tiger” area about triumph over adversity and “Seach” has that feel, though it’s more about triumph over naivete (my interpretation).  I believe the next song was a one-hit-wonder but what a hit it was.  “When I’m with You” by Sheriff is a powerful, grandiose song about “being with you”.  It contains one of the longest sustained singing notes in a rock song.

The next song is another foreign act, this time from the European continent.  It’s the edgy, rockin’ power ballad “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions from Germany.  It’s back to American hair metal for the next song: the wailing “Fly to the Angels” by Slaughter.  The next song was one of two early 90’s hits from the band “Extreme”, the slower, soulful, and acoustic “More then Words”.  The “Now” CD has the regular version of the song and not one of the extended remixes.  I remember there were at least two performances of this song at my high school talent show my senior year.  What follows is the only song on the CD by a band named for a place.  Known more for their rockin’ and thoroughly produced loud music, Boston mellowed a bit for the mid-eighties hit “Amanda”.  It’s also the only song on the “Now” CD with someone’s name in the title.  I hadn’t heard of the next song before, though I had heard of the band.  I was “Lovesong” by Tesla, the only song on the “Now” CD by a band named for a physicist and a unit of measurement in physics.  Another hair band follows.  “Heaven” by Warrant was also one of the songs in the musical “Rock of Ages”.  The last song was unexpected but still a true classic power ballad.  When I was in high school Queensryche’s popularity was rising as the hair bands were fading.  But that doesn’t make the slow reflective “Silent Lucidity” any less of a power ballad.  This song was also performed at my high school talent show, though, more appropriately, only once.

Who knew there were so many and such a wide variety of classic power ballads.  About the only commonality other than their cathartic power is that they were all recorded by groups.  No track is credited to an individual person’s name for a recording.  I can’t think of many others that they could have included.  For me the CD wasn’t just a trip of cathartic power but a trip down memory lane.

At the puzzle party in March, the host showed us a shelf of books written by her late husband, Dr. Lawrence A. Cremin, Ph.D.  He was an education historian, professor, and past president of Teachers’ College at Columbia in New York City.  Among his books is a three-volume history of education in the U.S. from colonial times to 1980.  The second volume in this series, American Education: The National Experience 1783-1876 won a Pulitzer Prize in historical writing.  In all he has written at least ten books and co-authored several others.  One of his books, The Republic and the School was referenced in a book I had to read for school, American Education by Joel Spring.  I thought I would try reading at least one of his books both to sample our friend’s late husband’s work and because education is a topic that interests me.  The Cal State L.A. library has several of his books in its collection.  For my first try I picked the most recent and one of the shorter ones, Popular Education and Its Discontents.  I figured if I liked it I could try one of the longer ones later, and if I didn’t it was just a short read at 134 pages.  Since it was the most recent, I figured it would probably be most relevant to the current state of education in America.

Popular Education and Its Discontents is the expanded book form of the Inglis and Burton Lectures given by Dr. Cremin at Harvard University in March 1989.  In the preface he describes the book as “coda” to his American Education trilogy.  The book consists of three essays that I’m guessing correspond to the three lectures given.  The first is about the popularization of education: the progressive attempt to make education available to all and adapted to society’s diversity and the obstacles in accomplishing that.  The second is appropriately called “The Cacophony of Teaching” and it describes how education actually consists of school, family, and the media, mainly TV at the time.  I liked this essay best because its points are even more relevant today.  In addition to TV, students now have the Internet, cell phones, texting, and many other additions to the “cacophony”.  The third essay is about using education to enact public policy and social change.

Dr. Cremin presents the ideas of many other education scholars and studies such as John Dewey and the early 1980’s report “A Nation at Risk”.  He also presents his own thoughts and opinions that I found equally interesting and insightful such as the idea that the crisis isn’t the mediocrity of American education but “balancing the tremendous variety of demands Americans have made on their schools.” (Cremin p. 43)  He seems to have slightly more optimistic yet also more realistic views than the experts he references.  In the first essay he mentions that he was on Richard Heffner’s TV program The Open Mind to discuss whether the ideal of popular education was an impossible ideal or not.  I’ve never heard of that program and I wonder if the footage is still around somewhere.  In the “Cacophony” essay, Dr. Cremin has nothing but praise for the Children’s Television Workshop programs such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Square One TV, and 3-2-1 Contact.  I used to watch the latter three, though my peers would’ve made fun of me if they knew.  It’s nice to get some validation, albeit belated.

Though the book is insightful, readable and interesting, I wouldn’t categorize it with the relaxing escapist reading I normally do.  I’m glad Dr. Cremin didn’t use many fancy elitist academic words that I’ve seen in many journals and texts on education.  Probably the only word he used that I couldn’t figure out was “vitiation”.  My random house dictionary defines vitiate as 1) to impair the quality of, and 2) to make legally invalid.  He uses more “academic” forms of words such popularization and multitudeness.  But their meaning is clear and he often defines the words when first using them.  Some passages can be difficult to follow because he spends many pages explaining a long list of points.  (E.g. “First (long paragraph) . . . Second (another long paragraph).”  Sometimes he’ll switch between multiple points and I’m not sure where one stops and another starts.  When describing a crisis over progressive education in Pasadena, I wish he would have mentioned one of the points of contention in detail rather than only saying that the issues were “philosophical, social, and financial—they ranged from skepticism over the core curriculum to school rezoning.” (Cremin p. 88)  I wonder, what where they skeptical about in the core curriculum?  Still the book was much more readable than other books I’ve read by choice such as The Dictionary of English Literature.

Dr. Cremin presents many interesting ideas, both his own and those of other experts.  Many are historical such as how, through desegregation of schools, government sought to model the integrated idea would in the schools so it would eventually become the norm in society.  The expert referenced, Hannah Arendt did believe the plan would work because “the children would eventually return to a pre-existing world of adults who had been incapable of solving racial discrimination in the first place.” (Cremin p. 94)  Some ideas presented are counter-intuitive.  Christopher Jenks argued that education would not be effective against poverty and that only redistribution of income would be effective.  Dr. Cremin goes on to describe how education can help fight poverty, though it requires expensive and long-term support.  He also concludes that education alone cannot solve problems of international competitiveness.  To believe it could is to divert efforts away from those who can do something about it (p. 103).  Some ideas just make sense.  In “Cacophony” he states that schools cannot and should not be expected to satisfy all educational needs of students.  He begins “Cacophony” with a quote stating that students used to learn their highest knowledge in the classroom but now school seems to distract them from learning the higher knowledge outside of class.

Though it is nearly twenty years old, the book rarely seems dated.  It does refer to the now defunct Cold War when describing how the schools in the USSR are stratified by subject while the schools in the U.S. are stratified by quality.  Dr. Cremin mentions the emerging trend of standardization in education that has now reached a whole new level with the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  He also predicts correctly that computers, communications media, and other technology will be used to an increasing extent in education.  He never mentions the Internet, but that was still some years away.  He also presents some ideas that are still not widely used in education.  There’s the sensible concept of teaching (motivating?) students to seek out educational opportunities on their own.  Even more radical is having the class as a whole be responsible for the performance of all its members rather than everyone getting individual grades.  I’m not sure about that one, though I have studied forms of group learning.  The early pages of the first essay contain an anecdote about a 1988 survey by the National Geographic Society measuring how many adults could name 13 countries on a map.  The president of the Society made a big show of presenting the results.  He said, “Have you heard of the lost generation? We have found them.”  But when this president was asked to name the U.S. states contiguous with Texas, he was unable to do so.  The story illustrates the likely common phenomenon of standards set for the young by adults that have been unable to unwilling to meet the standards themselves.  (p. 11)

Popular Education and its Discontents presents a thorough and multilayered picture of education in the U.S. that remains current to this day.  Unlike most academic texts it is readable and relevant, yet it’s also very insightful and contains some lesser known and complex ideas.  Dr. Cremin touches nearly all aspects of education: its history, competing forces, teaching techniques, goals, and the odds of meeting those goals.  I’ve learned as much or more from this text as I have from any other text on education.  I would have liked to have attended the lectures he gave twenty years ago.  It would be great if they had been recorded or filmed.  Every educator, future educator, and policymaker should read this book.  I’m sure it or some of his other books have been used in education courses.  I plan to try to read one of his other books, one of the trilogy.  I’m glad we have this personal connection.

(Spoiler alert)

I’ve know of Sherman Alexie for years and last year I read his collection of short stories called Ten Little Indians.  I enjoyed the stories and his writing.  He is very humorous.  My only complaints were that many stories made me feel nostalgic for Seattle and there were a few gratuitous R-rated passages.  I figured The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian wouldn’t have those drawbacks because 1) it is classified as a “young adult” novel and therefore less likely to have R-rated passages and 2) it takes place in an Indian Reservation that the characters call the “Rez” in eastern Washington State near Spokane and nowhere near Seattle.  I figured correctly on both counts and the book turned out to be much more than just devoid of those drawbacks.

As advertised the book does seem geared towards young adults and teenagers.  The protagonist telling the story in the first person is around 13-14 years old.  He uses short words and sentences, short paragraphs, and there’s a lot of dialogue.  The book is easy to read and it reads very quickly.  In addition to the words the book uses cartoons “drawn” by the main character to tell the story, though they were actually drawn by illustrator Ellen Forney.  They’re usually very humorous or profound and they aren’t always explained or referred to in the text.  They stand on their own as a substitute for the text and supplement to the story.  Each chapter is a vignette though there is a clear progression as the main character goes through his first year of high school.  He doesn’t always focus on the same topic.  It’s more like he’s talking to the reader in conversation.

The book had to pass the rule of 50 twice for me.  I initially checked out a copy from the Cal State L.A. library that was the large print or “blind” edition.  That passed the rule of 50 but then that copy was recalled by the library because someone had placed a hold on it.  I got another copy from the Covina Public Library that was the regular size print.  Page 50 of the blind edition corresponds to page 30-something of the regular edition.  That book also passed the rule of 50.

The title of the book is not an entirely true statement.  The book is fiction, though it’s partially based on the author’s life.  It takes place during current times, however.  I know this because the main character lists Dwayne Wade, Shane Battier, and Adam Morrison among his favorite basketball players.  Some of the dramatic events in the book really did occur in Alexie’s life.  Others are clearly sensationalism though they reveal some important lessons.  At that age, everything seems sensational.  The highs are higher and happier but the lows seem sadder, more dramatic, and darker.  There’s a lot about being an Indian in a Caucasian world, the differences between life on and off the “Rez”, friendships lost and found, family, tragedies, fun times, adjustment, and “fish out of water”.  But it’s all told so personally from the main character’s point of view.

The book imparts some lessons that were new to me.  The main character learns from another student that you’re supposed to read a book three times to truly understand it.  First you read it for the plot.  Then you read it for its history and its knowledge of history.  Then “You think about the meaning of each word and where the word came from.”  Other lessons weren’t new to me but reinforced.  The four “hugest” words that an adult can say to a kid are “You can do it.”  That sounds cheesy but it’s true.  The third lesson is in the following passage:

“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,” I said. “By black and white.  By Indian and white.  But now I know that isn’t true.  The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.” (Alexie, p. 176)

Overall, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is not entirely true, nor entirely realistic.  But it’s still an excellent story that is, at times, funny, sad, inspiring, and insightful.  It’s accessible enough for teenagers and subtly sophisticated enough for adults.  All teens and adults would enjoy it.