Band Review: Jana Mashonee

I first became aware of Jana Mashonee through her appearance in For The Generations. They did not play enough of her music to really get a sense of her as an artist, but I had thought it might be more dance-oriented.

That aspect is there. Her new single "Rocket Launch" could be played in dance clubs. Generally speaking, though, many of the songs off of her 2010 album, New Moon Born, could fit better into adult contemporary, and show strong Gospel roots.

Her 2015 songs may show a different direction, but her slower songs are beautiful. I was especially taken with "Solid Ground".

There are funkier tracks on New Moon Born as well - "Miracle" is a good example of that - and her take on Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" merits listening. Thinking about the songs separately they don't seem to go together, but listening to the album together works.

The 2015 tracks have videos up as well, so it seems reasonable to assume there is more content coming. It is worthwhile to review her past songs first, and I enjoyed them.

http://www.janamashonee.com/

https://www.facebook.com/jana.mashonee.1

https://soundcloud.com/jana-mashonee

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwPnEN2MQzVV7fpExoRkpgQ

https://twitter.com/janamashonee

Band Review: Louy Fierce

While it would be easy to categorize Louy Fierce as rap/hip hop, his sound is not exclusively that. Many songs give attention to melody and musical elements, though there is usually at least one rap segment.

The bio information indicates that Fierce started playing multiple instruments early, and that is easily believable, with a solid delivery of musical elements.

That makes it more frustrating that the lyrics are so often irritating. Frequent references to weed and his own sense of greatness are common rap elements, but grating. (I find them grating in other artists too, but obviously there is an audience for it.)

With the musical skill and talent shown, it feels like the lyrics are worth working on. A period of focus on great writers, perhaps even some attempts to set poetry to music, might be a valuable growth experience.

http://www.louyfierce.com/

https://soundcloud.com/Louyfierce

https://www.facebook.com/LouyFierce/timeline?ref=page_internal

https://twitter.com/LouyFierce

Things we know wrong

I just finished a book on dreams, reminding me of a different book on dreams, especially with the references to Freud.

One of the interesting things from The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss is that Freud was largely influenced (especially regarding the Oedipal complex) by another book. I cannot remember its title, but the important thing about it is that one of the chapters had not been translated into a language Freud could read. If he had read it, he would have learned that some things were actually pretty common, and that could have changed his thinking.

That anecdote seems more timely because I recently saw this (though it's a few years old):

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-evidence-slaves-didnt-build-pyramids/

One thing I learned from this article is that the tradition of believing the laborers were slaves comes from the Greek historian Herodotus. He did travel, but he also recorded things that others told him. This includes a reference to a large furry ant living in the desert that was probably a marmot, caused by confusing the old Persian word for "marmot" with the word for "mountain ant". It could very easily be an understandable confusion on his part.

That in turn reminded me of something else I had seen recently:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/vikings-were-not-sex-mad-marauders-5358931

Apparently there had already been some people noticing that accounts of rape started about a hundred years after Viking raids had stopped, and the absence of Viking DNA among the descendants of those raided seems to confirm that raping does not always have to go with pillaging.

It's pretty sketchy when people refer back to history to justify or defend something immoral, because it's always been that way, but also, sometimes no, it wasn't that way. We only think it's that way because someone was confused, or lied, or assumed, and we kept it up unexamined.

Just some food for thought.

Post-Halloween wrap-up, 2015

I went to the doctor today.

All of my medical stuff happens in NW Portland. I really like those neighborhoods, so unless I am running late or maybe if it is raining, I will get off at MAX at PGE Park and walk to Good Sam's, then on the way back walk down to 11th where the streetcar turns. (Yes, I could catch the streetcar right by the hospital, but that's less walking).

Today's walk featured blue sky and falling yellow leaves. It felt pretty good, and I am feeling pretty good about things, even though my plans are ridiculously ambitious. Maybe I shook some sadness off yesterday.

I did not do a lot for Halloween. I wore no costume, I completed no crafts, and although I have requested one of those Halloween movies from the library, I won't actually get it until tomorrow.

I had thought it would be a cool thing to do Halloween-themed blog posts or to write a different scary story each week, focusing on different themes, but that didn't happen.

That reminds me of another thing. I got a reminder of my Goodreads goal this week, and I am pretty behind. Last year I read 100 books, including graphic novels and children's books, and part of that number is that on December 31st I saw that I was at 98 and so grabbed two books from Maria's children's collection to round things out.

When prompted to set a goal for 2015, I wanted to be kind of ambitious but not ridiculous. I chose 63, and I am fifteen away. I could grab the next batch of Caldecott medal winners and make it that way, but I probably won't, and it would still be less than last year.

I can't feel terrible about that though, because the main reason I have read less this year is that I've written more. Last year at this time I had published one book, but that was the one I wrote back in the 90's, Cara. Since then Family Blood, Family Ghosts, and Morgan are out, and Family Reunion will be out soon. Writers need to read, but they need to write too, and I am .

Also, Family Reunion is reasonable Halloween material. It's set in summer, but still, it does have a lot of vampires.

So let me tell you the other thing about Halloween - I only carved one pumpkin, there was no theme, and I did not get it carved until Halloween night. I actually went out to carve it and came back in because I saw people going next door and thought trick-or-treaters were coming and that I should not be on the porch with a knife, unless that had been the plan all along. They were not trick-or-treating, so after waiting for a knock and giving up I went back out and had it carved with a lit candle inside before the first actual trick-or-treaters came. I think the downpour helped with that by delaying them.

That's not how I like things to go, but this year I grew three pumpkins. Last year I couldn't grow a single one. They were too small to carve, because I chose the Spirit variety, and actually one is still green, but still, it feels cool. Next year I want the whole yard to be pumpkins - maybe with sunflowers and some corn. We want to redo the lawn anyway so I might as well have an in between stage.

What I am feeling now is that there is time. I will work out my costume issues some year. I have had lots of writing ideas that it took me a while to get to. Maybe I will do a rash of spine-chilling stories next year, but there were good things happening this year, and there will be other years.

It was a happy Halloween.

Get-togethers and grief

A week ago I went to a memorial service.

I do not believe this will be a well-organized post at all, but there are things that I want to write about it, so I'm going to listen to "Kids in the Street" and "Fake Your Death" and let it be messy.

One thought is that it reminded me a lot of Josh. Both Andy and Josh did a lot of dramatic work. Andy did more sketch comedy and Josh did more plays, so I don't know that they overlapped much after high school. I don't remember any specific people that were at both, but there's also been a seven-year gap. Maybe they had mutual friends at Hollywood Lighting or something.

Still, both services were in theaters. Both were gone too soon, and were well-loved, so both leave holes. I hadn't seen either of them for a long time.

I never spent a lot of time with Andy. I knew and liked him, but our paths didn't cross much. I knew people spent time with him. My sister worked with him at 7-11, though and I hadn't known before Monday. I knew a lot of people who really loved him, so I went not just to remember Andy, but also as support for those he left behind.

That was hard. You can hug people and ask how they're doing, but they still hurt. I watched one person speak, and he did great but did break down a little. I felt for him, but then he came and sat down and his wife hugged and kissed him, and I remembered he has support. Then a little later she broke down, listening to someone else, and that's just how it goes. Grief is real.

And honestly, one of the best things about me is that I do not try to fix grief. No matter how much I know that you do get better at bearing it, and as sure as I am that I will see every departed person again, it still hurts and you have to let people feel that hurt. Often when people try and be comforting they step on that grief and try and quiet it, and people need to feel it and deal with it. But as much as I know that, and have been thanked for acknowledging that, I still totally want to fix it and I can't and it's hard.

I periodically organize gatherings. Last time I did this (in August), I remember trying to locate different people and fervently hoping that I wouldn't find out that we had lost someone else since the last time. I started thinking that maybe I should have blood pressure testing there, or provide information on quitting smoking, because we are at ages now where lifestyle changes can still make a difference, but need to be made soon. (Then I didn't because it felt like it would be hypocritical, or a turn-off, or something.)

I always stress out a lot over these. I especially worry that I don't get enough people to make it worth the while of the people who do come, so that I'm letting them down. Because of the stress, I always think that I am not going to do this again; there are other people who are better at getting people together and they should do it instead.

After Monday, seeing people from school, I suspect I will keep doing. It's nice that sometimes the last time we saw each other it was for karaoke, or '80s night, or nachos. And people do get together for death, but then there are divorces and job problems and things where we don't get together, but we still need the support. Maybe I really will try and organize a cruise for our 2025.

Those are the thoughts I have been having, minus two that I have been holding back. There was a memory book there, and people were sharing memories on Facebook as well. I didn't feel like I had anything to contribute, but there are two things that I do keep remembering. They were both watching Andy, not interacting with him, which is why they didn't feel like worthy contributions, but they keep coming back, so here goes.

One was homecoming. I didn't go to a lot of football games in high school, because the teams I managed gave me a lot of sporting events already, but I went to this one. I'm not even sure that I realized that the marching band had two leaders before, but we did: Andy and Ian (I think). I really am not even positive that it was tuxedos over their marching band uniforms or vice versa, but I'm pretty sure it was tuxedos on top. Anyway, they ran out onto the field, stripped off their outer layers, high fived each other, and then led the halftime. All the things I am unsure of sound like I don't remember it at all, I know, but what I remember is the cleverness and the cheek and the joy of it. They had fun, and the people watching had fun. The show would have been fine without it, but it made the night, at least for me.

The other was a commercial for the Portland Tribune when it was going to start being available in the suburbs. I wish I could find a clip. There is a handful of men sitting around talking slowly, rather like the beer drinkers in "King of the Hill", but instead of drinking beer in the alley they are sitting in the driveway of a row home. One of them is Andy. Most of them don't have much to say, but suddenly Andy rattles off a whole bunch of different relevant things; I just remember it ended with "And what's the deal with all the finger pointing in city hall?" (This is clever, because it sounds specific but can apply to multiple time frames.) Then he kind of takes a breath and nods, and is kind of back into somnolence like the others, only his eyes are kind of caffeinated. The point was that if you read the Tribune you will know what is going on and have things to say.

I thought Andy's portrayal was so perfect - with this burst of energy flaring up that you wouldn't have noticed before, but there was always that potential for something to just happen. Maybe it would be something more fun than you would think of, or something seemingly absurd but really pretty clever. It might be oddly subversive.

Now I will add to that the stories from the service, and the videos, and especially the video footage of him portraying a dog, which he really nailed with the sweetness and the enthusiasm and the vulnerability there.

It's good that we get together to grieve. It is also hard.

Band Review: Bongley Dead

I don't have a lot of information about Bongley Dead. I found them not through the usual process of being followed on Twitter - I don't think they are on Twitter - but by a sound file left in a comment on a blog post. Well, I don't mind unconventional approaches.

I have only found one web page at all affiliated with them, and even for that page the browsing could be a bit more convenient. It is still the source of a generous amount of good music.

There is a demo from 2012, Album 1 from 2013, and Album 2 with no date, for twenty-five tracks in all that are solid listening.

The band name and the descriptions of the band members' jobs make it seem like the music should be more geared toward horror. Marcello is responsible for evil, as well as vox and guitars, and that makes the "solver" by drummer Simone's name, and even "secretary" by bass player Federico, seem more ominous. However, the music is more traditionally rock than you might expect.

There is a kind of '90s alternative feel. The recording quality is more crisp than muddy, with more of a focus on guitars. At times I was reminded of Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, and even a little bit of the BoDeans on "The Edo Song". Bongley Dead establishes good grooves.

To really get an idea of their guitar skills, the best tracks to listen to are probably "Is It My Feet" and "Wasteland". Good tracks in general include "Wild Black Comedy", "Chained Monkeys", "The Way U Love Me" (not at all like the Paula Abdul song, which is fine), "Little Shine", and "A Better Daybreak".

I wouldn't mind seeing a stronger web presence for the band, helping them reach fans more effectively, but they have put good music out onto the internet, and I can't complain about that.

http://www.bongleydead.com/

Band Review: Requiem for the Dead

I don’t know what I’m doing this week.

With Halloween approaching, I wanted to see if I could review some bands that were a little more seasonally appropriate. I ended up choosing two bands with “Dead” in their name (but not with “Grateful).

I had Requiem for the Dead down as a band recommended by various members of Farewell, My Love, and I started listening to them this week. I really liked them. Their music was both energizing and emotional. This could be a band for Cure fans who want something livelier, or Psychedelic Furs fans who want something more rock, or people who won’t have any idea what those last two things mean but like good music.

Then, when I was looking for links to include with the review, it appeared that I was listening to the wrong band. The band that I had meant to check out seemed to be going by just Requiem, and had a much harsher sound.

Normally I would consider that to be serendipity; I had one found one band I liked by accident and could always check out the other one later. Then it looked like the band that I liked was done, with no new web activity since early 2014. I have reviewed bands post-breakup before, but if I like the band it’s disappointing.

Then there were other things that added to the confusion. There was a guitarist for Requiem for the Dead whose link went to a page not found, and their Facebook link from Reverb Nation was also broken. However, the Reverb Nation page also mentioned a new release coming that matched Requiem. Spotify has them as two separate bands with separate albums.

At this point I am assuming that the band did a major retooling and did not fully clean up the internet. This is not that unusual, but it can still be frustrating. Or perhaps I am just irritated because I liked them better the old way.

So this is what I can say. The 2013 Memories EP by Requiem for the Dead is really good, as are some of their other songs on Reverb Nation. If you listen to The Unexplainable Truth by Requiem, I can hear traces of the previous sound, but it is a lot more hard-core and less melodic. Something happened, but I don’t really know what.

Spooky.

And also that a lot of the links aren’t that informative, but I’m putting them up anyway.

https://www.reverbnation.com/requiemforthedead

http://www.requiemofficial.com/

https://soundcloud.com/requiem_official

https://twitter.com/requiem_music

Where they went wrong

Fortunately, before I read Grossman and Pinker I already had some experience in being disappointed by authors.

As part of my long reading list I read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, and I really liked it. Then he let me down.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jacquishine/its-a-shame#.ukaL9bM5Vy

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equivalencies.html

I read multiple articles on it. The Buzzfeed link is more about Ronson and the book, but the Shakesville link is really important for context, and for Ronson's duplicity in dealing with Adria Richards, which I find interesting in light of his sympathy for the quote manufacturer that is mentioned in the Buzzfeed article. I just have no trust for Ronson anymore.

Let me go back to On Killing. What I thought at the time was that Grossman was so entrenched in the military mindset that it limited his outer view. There were some things it helped him to understand better, but other things it made him miss.

It is completely normal for your lived experience to affect how you view the world. I know a lot of people get their hackles raised when you bring up "privilege", but it is true that there are things that you don't have to know. That doesn't apply to Grossman as much, but I totally believe it applies to Ronson and Pinker.

I don't have to think about what being black is like; I do have to know what being a woman is like. There are things I am aware of because of my economic status, and because of being educated, and because of being fat, but I don't have to know about being queer or not having good educational opportunities available, and I wouldn't if I didn't make a point of listening and reading.

if your circumstances place you at the top of the hierarchy (straight white male), then it is easy to only know that experience. These particular writers missing important things is not surprising.

Therefore it is easy for Ronson to compare job loss to rape. It is easy for him to sympathize more with the person who lost one job (where he already had a file) and still has a fair amount of privacy than the person who has had death threats and online harassment and had much worse employment problems. That is not changed by the fact that the man was violating the conference's policy, and the woman was following it.

It is easy for Pinker to decry rape culture as a thing when he is not the one devalued by it. Honestly, we might not have the right name for it. Right now I am finishing up Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance. Black women were raped and sexually molested by white men frequently, and there were rarely any repercussions. At the same time, accusations of the rape of white women got black men killed pretty regularly and the fear of it was used to keep white people afraid of integration.

That is about maintaining a social structure, so it is political. That doesn't mean there is nothing personal there, or that the sexual aspects are meaningless, but that's not all it is. It can be perfectly reasonable then to see in how we as a society respond to rape that there is something more there.

I don't want to prove rape culture or resolve online harassment in this post, but there are two things that I notice. One is that privilege comes through. Adria Richards, as a black woman, gets abuse that the person she reported got to skip. That's not a coincidence. You can find lots and lots of examples of that happening. So white guys missing things is one thing, but when the people at the top of the heap won't see the problems of those lower down, that's a structural problem and it needs addressing if we are going to pretend to care about fairness and justice and democracy.

The other thing I notice is that since you do have to actively seek out other viewpoints to get the full picture, it is fascinating and discouraging how strongly some people resist the inclusion of other voices. I read recently that diversity has become a word that people use to avoid talking about race, but that's unfortunate. Truly seeking out diversity means that you can get better information and better ideas.

That's why you need to hear from other writers, even though publishing is mostly white. You need to have racial diversity in film crews, and not just the cast. You need to be hearing from different people on the opinion pages. Unless we just don't care, but we should care.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/26/diversity_is_for_white_people_the_big_lie_behind_a_well_intended_word/

http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/project-greenlight-effie-brown-matt-damon-diversity-1201625939/

They have greatly disappointed me

It is possible that one purpose of the (for lack of a better categorization) self-actualization reading list was to learn that people can be wrong about some things and right about others, or not to completely discount someone for their shortcomings. If that was the case, it may not have worked.

I have no problems with Alexander, Maslow, or Erdman for that matter, but before I got to reading the books I started having some problems with Pinker and Grossman.

I did not change my plans for reading the books, though that has happened with other authors. (I learned how to delete books from my Goodreads reading list because of Malcolm Gladwell.)

I think I am going to go over the basics today, and then try and make a point tomorrow.

There were actually two things with Grossman. In the original interview along with mentioning how the changes in training - and specifically shooting practice - increased the kill rate, he did mention video games then as damaging. I heard it but it wasn't my focus.

Later when I was reading Killing Monsters: Our Children's Need for Fantasy, Heroism and Make-Believe Violence by Gerard Jones, Jones made a much better case for the safety of video games and the role they play. Jones' work made me more skeptical of Grossman, but not nearly as much as someone attributing the sheepdog analogy to Grossman.

The idea is that there are wolves, which are dangerous to the sheep, and sheepdogs are scary because they look like wolves and sometimes act like wolves, but they are needed to protect the sheep. I have referred to it before. At the time some police were passing it around as kind of a justification for some police brutality that happened.

Grossman referred to it in On Killing, but as an analogy he had heard from an old soldier, and that he didn't strongly endorse. It felt to me that he was telling it more as an interesting viewpoint. It also goes against pretty much everything else he had written, because a lot of people tell the story as if the sheep couldn't do what the sheepdogs do. Grossman's point is that we train them to be killers for a specific purpose, and then we need to have a means of bringing them out of that mode through ritual or a readjustment time. (Therefore, anyone can become a sheepdog and we need to be careful not to leave them in sheepdog mode.)

That is more practical to do with soldiers than with law enforcement, which may be just one more reason to completely rethink law enforcement. Grossman does not get there at all. After making this very strong case for all that their training does to make soldiers and police killers, suddenly violence in society is due to video games and soldier's adjustment problems are because people were not welcoming to Vietnam vets. The book was first published in 1995, so he wouldn't have had a chance to observe a lot of post-Gulf War issues, back when "Support Our Troops" was everywhere. Still, it was such a sudden and mystifying shift. I guess it was less of a let-down because I'd had reasons to suspect that he would let me down before I got there.

I still think Grossman's intentions are good, and probably 70% of the book is really good. That may sound tepid, but it is absolutely glowing compared to my thoughts on Steven Pinker.

Pinker attacked rape culture. No, he's not attacking that there is a culture where women are devalued, and the common response to any report of rape is to wonder how the person was asking for it, and that it should be dismantled. He attacked the idea that this is a thing.

To some extent I could see where he was coming from. Since Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape came out in 1975, there has been a growing understanding that rape is about power. Movies and television shows will often have it as a throwaway line, "Rape's not about sex; it's about power." That is routine now, but it took a while. The first time I remember hearing it was in the ads for Disclosure, a 1994 movie.

Pinker says rape is about sex.

I won't deny that Against Our Will has it's shortcomings, and there are a lot of contemporary issues that it doesn't cover. At forty years old, that's not surprising. For the time it was groundbreaking, but as soon as you figure some things out that gives you new things to figure out.

I have no objection to someone re-examining rape culture, or what roles sex and power play in rape, but just dismissing something for which there is so much evidence, and which causes so much damage, and which I can't help but know is unlikely to happen to Pinker himself does make him seem like kind of an arrogant ass.

And his book was greatly disappointing too. He had some great writing samples from other people, and I am glad I read those, but there was so much that just dragged in between. Furthermore, if the whole point of this style guide is that it was written by a cognitive scientist instead of one more writer or editor, why did it read so much like all the other style guides by writers and editors?

So perhaps one way of analyzing this is that some people may be good at collecting data or examples, but not at interpreting them, and these two writers happened to be good collectors. I think there is something else going on though (which I hinted at in the third paragraph), and we will get to that tomorrow.

My self-actualization reading list

I am pretty much done with another set of books that I had grouped together.

The title is questionable. Even when I knew that I would bunch them together, I was thinking of them more visually, as the spot in the spreadsheet where I had listed them. Then I could think, "Yeah, those." I knew what I meant.

It is partially that they served different purposes too, with the connection between them being somewhat random, except in that they are part of my desire to fix the world. (I'm not sure if it's obvious, but that is my general goal.)

Things did not work out quite the way I thought they would, which I will get into more in a different post, but this will be about what books I decided to read and why I thought they would be helpful.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st century, by Steven Pinker

When I read about this it was described as a style guide written by a cognitive scientist instead of a English scholar, which seemed promising. I wanted to read it because in addition to seeing how important writing and other forms of self-expression are, I have also seen that many people seen unable to describe the most basic things. Someone will be falling apart, and want to talk, but then when you ask them what is going on, or why they feel that way, they don't seem to have the tools to describe it. That is not just an impediment to communication, but also to self-comprehension. I hoped this book might give some helpful hints for getting past that, but it didn't. To be fair, that's not the book it was trying to be.

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Dave Grossman

I saw an interview with Grossman while looking for something else, and thought it was fascinating so wanted to read one of his books. I chose this one largely because the library had it, but it is his most frequently cited so that worked out well.

In the interview he was talking about how the military and police have gotten around our natural aversion to killing other people by adapting their training, demonstrating that historically the majority of soldiers did not kill. With adjustments to training that has changed, rising upward noticeably in Korea and then more sharply for Vietnam and beyond, but we have not taken into account the cost of breaking down that resistance. Given my concerns about police brutality and mental health in general, and how we treat each other, this fit in well with the reading.

Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the War on Drugs by Bruce K Alexander

I'd been wanting to read something of Alexander's ever since reading about the Rat Park experiment, but old Canadian academic writing can be difficult to find. I finally got this one, and it was great. It is very academic - to bring people around who don't want all the fine details, Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari is a better option - but I like having more information, and some new things about addiction clicked for me while reading this. Obviously this is about fixing the world too.

I will say that when you read this, some of your stereotypes about how nice Canadians are get damaged. Of course, they may have learned that from us.

"A Theory of Human Motivation" by A. H. Maslow

I think deciding to include this is where I eventually started thinking of it as being about self-actualization, though it's really not. Anyway, I had certainly seen Maslow's hierarchy of needs referred to many times, and wanted to refer to the original. This was a pamphlet of a 1943 paper for Psychological Review. He refers to prior work though, so there is probably something more definitive out there. This is what I could find.

I'm not sure there were any real breakthroughs with it, but what he wrote made sense, and this is finally something by Maslow himself and not someone referring to Maslow.

Mission creep is a constant with me. There were a couple of books that I read that I did not specifically intend to be part of this list, but happened to go well with it. Those include The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard G. Wilkindon and Kate E. Pickett, and The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, by David J. Morris.

Also, there was one that I felt did need to be included.

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village by Sarah Erdman

I wasn't sure why it felt so important, but having recently finished it, perhaps there are some important lessons there. It is a Peace Corps memoir. Her time in the village starts with good intentions but without being sure what to do and how to help. There is an early focus on AIDS that gets no traction, but it comes back after she has done other things. Still, things do get done, and it takes patience. Then, as it closes and she returns home, civil war presents a threat of undermining. So perhaps the lessons are patience, hope, and a reminder that some things are beyond your control, though not a reason not to try.

On a final note, I just want to point out that I would not be done with these books yet if I had not taken some vacation last month. Some of the things that we saw on that vacation may influence some of my thoughts as well.