The Bible Said It First

I believe William Shakespeare paraphrased this passage from the Bible in his play "The Merchant of Venice" and I ran across it in Charles and Mary Lamb's  Tales from Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice".

"...mercy has a double blessing, it blessed him that gave, and him that received it"

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

"Hennie made life come alive - bein with her was like bein with fun."

It's surprising that out of this entire book, which tells the story behind the first human cells to be grown in a culture (and are still being grown today), that was the quote which struck me. It paints such a picture in my mind. Maybe that's why I liked this book so much. The entire book was so well written.

I had no plans to read this book, in spite of all the accolades it received. I just didn't think it would interest me. Then my friend picked it for the book club that I had recently been invited to and I really wanted to be able to participate. As it turned out I really enjoyed this book.

Skloot does an excellent job of telling a human story interwoven with science facts. I felt the heart and soul of the Lacks family while I was reading the book and I learned some science along the way. I highly recommend this book.

Mary Lamb

The Devil Kissed Her: The Story of Mary Lamb by Kathy Watson covers a lot of territory. Not only do you learn about Mary Lamb, co-author of Tales from Shakespeare, but also about how mental illness in the late 1700's to early 1800's was dealt with.

When I was reading this book I also read an article in the Wall Street Journal by Nassir Ghaemi a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the director of the Mood Disorders program at Tufts Medical Center. Ghaemi's article discusses why, in times of crisis, those who are mentally ill may become the greatest leaders. He sites two traits of the mentally ill that may be the reason for this. Mental illnesses, such as depression, have been shown to "encourage traits of both realism and empathy".

In spite of the fact that she murdered her mother, that is exactly what struck me about Mary Lamb. Both empathy and gentleness show in her writing. This was not typical of children's stories during that period of time. In Mary's group of stories titled Mrs. Leicester's School, she has a story titled "The Sailor Uncle" from which this quote is taken:

"let it be a lesson to you to be as kind as possible to those you love; remember, when they are gone from you, you will never think you had been kind enough."

Mary also demonstrated her ability to see the world more realistically. Watson points out that Mary probably wouldn't have considered herself a feminist, but she saw the need for girls to be trained for jobs in which they could support themselves if they did not marry. Mary wrote:

 "The parents of female children, who were known to be destined from their birth to maintain themselves through the whole course of their lives with like certainty as their sons are, would feel it a duty incumbent on themselves to strengthen the minds, and even the bodily constitutions of their girls...by an education which...might enable them to follow some occupation..."

As a young woman, Mary was actually trained to sew the mantua, but she was not well suited to this business. It paid low wages, had long hours and tended to ruin a woman's eyesight. It also appears that Mary was much to intelligent to settle for this. Mary was lucky in that she was able to earn some money through her writing and her brother Charles was devoted to caring for her. As Watson points out:

"What moves us in the lives of Mary and Charles Lamb is the hard work they both put into not being defeated by the painful circumstances of their lives."

Isn't this a good lesson for us all?

Sophie and the Rising Sun

This book was so poignant and poetic and Augusta Trobaugh did an excellent job of capturing the different voices represented in the characters. Here are my picks:

"Because the sky that's over where the river and the ocean come together is very beautiful - very different - in a special way. And I just can't seem to get it right on the paper."
     Mr. Otto wiped his brush and put it away before he responded. "Perhaps," he ventured, "that's why it is so beautiful - because it is beyond capturing."

     Somehow, it was all becoming more than she could think about, so that she felt as if she were dividing into two - like an amoeba - one cell of her wanting nothing more than to be with him forever, the other crying for solitude so that she could taste this most delicious reality. Every wonderful drop of it. Feel every feeling. Taste every joy.

     High above them, the endless heavens, the multitude of stars, some of them so far away that they could only guess their glitterings, and here they stood on the sandy bottom of eternity, and at the last, it was only his firm hand that kept her from soaring like an everlasting meteor into the heavens.    

     "We've all got funny things about us. Places inside us that's specially tender - little sore spots, you might say."

Shakespeare's Spy by Gary Blackwood

While I read all three of Gary Blackwood's Shakespeare Stealer books and thought the first was the best, it was in the third book, Shakespeare's Spy, that I found this passage. It made me think about teaching children, how fragile their psyches are and how teachers need to be supportive and encouraging in their teaching methods.

" I had grown accustomed to being criticized by them-for my acting, for my singing, for my dancing, for my scriming. But those were all external things, mere skills to be mastered. The play was personal, a product not of my muscles or my vocal cords but of my mind. If they found flaws in it, the flaws were mine; if they judged it foolish, I would be the fool."

Don't we all have a little of that fear when we open our thoughts and hearts to others?

The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

I read this book after reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in which Ali says that we should not always blindly accept different cultures and we should do more to change them. Of course she was talking about an oppressive culture, but in The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman the opposite thought came to my mind. What makes our western ways the "right" way? This book specifically refers to western medicine. I had so much marked in this book (thank you again, Kindle) I have just written my thoughts here with only a few passages actually quoted.

There are so many things to consider when dealing with a person who has been picked up and set down in a completely different culture, often without any preparation: the way time is kept, the cultural practices of using a person's name, if the names can be pronounced easily,
being uprooted from their own culture, language, foods, and put into a place where nothing really belongs to them. 

Looks can be deceiving. Just because the people of a different culture may look like us, particularly if they have immigrated to our country and have started adopting our look, doesn't mean that they have the same practices. Sometimes we need to ask, before just resorting to our own ways. We should acknowledge all kinds of intelligence. Perhaps cultural intelligences are similar to the multiple intelligences that we recognize in education and these different cultural intelligences should be acknowledged and worked with.

Do we (Americans) coerce people of other cultures to do things our way, thinking it is the only way? (medicine) Do we in our western culture feel we should have control of everything or should we except that "things happen... not everything is in our control, and not everything is in your control." Or perhaps we do this out of our own ignorance, not realizing there are other ways and beliefs.

Fadiman's story illustrates that dealing with a culture so different from our own may put us in a dilemma in which all the choices are discriminatory. What if there is a treatment that can help a patient but the family is unable to comply, through lack of understanding or ability? Do you then tailor the treatment so the family can and will comply, knowing that it is not the optimal treatment?

We should not be afraid to ask questions in order to clarify a situation. We should ask for help in understanding another culture and learn as much as possible so prejudices don't get in the way of our treatment of another person.

"If you can't see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else's culture?"

The Pioneer Woman Blog

I was listening to an interview with Ree Drummond of the Pioneer Woman Blog and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, when I was struck by this comment:

"You can make all the plans you want in life and then you need to sit back and enjoy the ride."