Thursday, August 24, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
Trees
I like what’s happening in Addison. I’m not sure how long the town has existed or if it has a historic downtown, but they’ve built an urban center called Addison Circle, with shops, cafes, and markets along the street and apartments and condos above. There are plenty of trees and numerous lovely park squares like you might see in London or Portland or another civilized, people-friendly city. You come out at noon and eat your lunch on a bench, in juniper-shady Bosque Park or along the central mall under rows of redbuds, while people walk around and fountains splash.
Even though it was 95-100 degrees during my lunches these past two days, I didn't sweat. I had my hat and the shade of trees. You only start to sweat when you get into your mobile gas-powered greenhouse and sit still in the sun surrounded by blazing concrete.
In a roundabout at the end of Addison Circle there is a vast blue sculpture. It’s shaped like the end of an elephant’s trunk or a snorkel, from a distance. It’s like a giant blue duct flaring out of the ground. You can see it from all around and it draws you towards this urban center. I can’t say I fully appreciate it, but I figure the fact that it’s blue is reason enough for it to be there. How nice that someone allowed someone to build it.
It looks sort of messy, but you work with what you have, I guess, when you are building gigantic tubular artwork. It seems to do quite well at what it does. It is a circle of big thick blue tubes flung upwards and outwards in exuberant curves, and the ends of them support tubular meshes with signs and figures attached to them. One way I thought about it was that they’re pieces of paper held up to the sky, kindergarten artwork held high in pride, the work of our hands presented for the approval of someone really tall.
I dreamed a few nights ago that I was in an old town of rickety buildings and creaky floors and secret entrances. There were giant owls inhabiting the land. When I finally glimpsed a few of their lower legs through a window, I was thrilled. In the dream, the fact that they were clearly giant people dressed up in ill-fitting brown flannel costumes did not compromise their grandeur. My heart leapt at the sight of these baggy stockings and quixotic hanging flaps of felt.
I saw them gathering outside on the sidewalk and waiting with the more ordinary citizens of the town for the king to come outside. He came out of the modest next-door apartment, and I stood in my musty room with its wooden floorboards, looking at the small crowd through the window, pondering the idea of these people’s allegiance to a king. People in my society would not feel comfortable showing reverence and obedience to such a man. But Giant Owls & Co. were clearly delighted to speak face-to-face with this humble-looking gentleman outside his front door.
Then I was in a big musty room with an old schoolmate waiting for the king to come in. We had written out an important declaration to present to him. He came in, and I knew how the neighborhood folks had felt. What a splendid feeling to be in his presence and to have his ear. I was just about to present my paper when I woke up, to my great disappointment.
Even though it was 95-100 degrees during my lunches these past two days, I didn't sweat. I had my hat and the shade of trees. You only start to sweat when you get into your mobile gas-powered greenhouse and sit still in the sun surrounded by blazing concrete.
In a roundabout at the end of Addison Circle there is a vast blue sculpture. It’s shaped like the end of an elephant’s trunk or a snorkel, from a distance. It’s like a giant blue duct flaring out of the ground. You can see it from all around and it draws you towards this urban center. I can’t say I fully appreciate it, but I figure the fact that it’s blue is reason enough for it to be there. How nice that someone allowed someone to build it.
It looks sort of messy, but you work with what you have, I guess, when you are building gigantic tubular artwork. It seems to do quite well at what it does. It is a circle of big thick blue tubes flung upwards and outwards in exuberant curves, and the ends of them support tubular meshes with signs and figures attached to them. One way I thought about it was that they’re pieces of paper held up to the sky, kindergarten artwork held high in pride, the work of our hands presented for the approval of someone really tall.
I dreamed a few nights ago that I was in an old town of rickety buildings and creaky floors and secret entrances. There were giant owls inhabiting the land. When I finally glimpsed a few of their lower legs through a window, I was thrilled. In the dream, the fact that they were clearly giant people dressed up in ill-fitting brown flannel costumes did not compromise their grandeur. My heart leapt at the sight of these baggy stockings and quixotic hanging flaps of felt.
I saw them gathering outside on the sidewalk and waiting with the more ordinary citizens of the town for the king to come outside. He came out of the modest next-door apartment, and I stood in my musty room with its wooden floorboards, looking at the small crowd through the window, pondering the idea of these people’s allegiance to a king. People in my society would not feel comfortable showing reverence and obedience to such a man. But Giant Owls & Co. were clearly delighted to speak face-to-face with this humble-looking gentleman outside his front door.
Then I was in a big musty room with an old schoolmate waiting for the king to come in. We had written out an important declaration to present to him. He came in, and I knew how the neighborhood folks had felt. What a splendid feeling to be in his presence and to have his ear. I was just about to present my paper when I woke up, to my great disappointment.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Cree
Quote from Great Plains by Ian Frazier -
The fact that their culture tended to fragment itself into so many different tribes and bands was probably a disadvantage to the Indians in the long run. But it certainly was a big help to early pioneers trying to come up with colorful place names.
Cree was the name of one of those tribes. Which practically cries out for inclusion in the Crawdad word ladder. Frazier says there were Plains Crees, Woodland Crees, and Swampy Crees. Though there is a Cree tribe still around today, evidently the original tribe didn’t call itself by that name. They used variations of the word Iyiniwok, which means “the people.”
If you want to hear Cree spoken, there's a treasure trove of stories here.
The fact that their culture tended to fragment itself into so many different tribes and bands was probably a disadvantage to the Indians in the long run. But it certainly was a big help to early pioneers trying to come up with colorful place names.
Cree was the name of one of those tribes. Which practically cries out for inclusion in the Crawdad word ladder. Frazier says there were Plains Crees, Woodland Crees, and Swampy Crees. Though there is a Cree tribe still around today, evidently the original tribe didn’t call itself by that name. They used variations of the word Iyiniwok, which means “the people.”
If you want to hear Cree spoken, there's a treasure trove of stories here.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Bree
I wasn’t intentionally doing a word ladder, but if anyone wants to write the next post titled “Free” or “Bred,“ go right ahead.
For some reason Bree is capturing my imagination right now. What was a city like that housed both men and hobbits? Depending on who you were, you rode a horse or a pony, and the inn had rooms specially intended for hobbits, who were generally between two and four feet tall. But The Fellowship of the Ring says nothing about theater seating, or about doorknob height.
What would such an interracial city be like today? We have our short and tall drinking fountains next to each other, so we know a little bit about this. What about public transportation? Would we have different-sized seats on the trolley? How would we position them to make everyone happy? What about the checkout counters at grocery stores? How high would the pictures in lobbies be hung? What other small but important community decisions would have to be made?
For some reason Bree is capturing my imagination right now. What was a city like that housed both men and hobbits? Depending on who you were, you rode a horse or a pony, and the inn had rooms specially intended for hobbits, who were generally between two and four feet tall. But The Fellowship of the Ring says nothing about theater seating, or about doorknob height.
What would such an interracial city be like today? We have our short and tall drinking fountains next to each other, so we know a little bit about this. What about public transportation? Would we have different-sized seats on the trolley? How would we position them to make everyone happy? What about the checkout counters at grocery stores? How high would the pictures in lobbies be hung? What other small but important community decisions would have to be made?
Monday, August 14, 2006
Brel
I have admired Jacques Brel for a long time, but I’ve been afraid that maybe it was a passing crush I would be ashamed of later. He seems like the kind of singer only old women would like. (Why should that stop me, I suppose I should ask?) And he was ugly. The perpetual cigarette may have been charming to his misguided contemporaries, but it doesn’t work on me. And besides, his songs are so melodramatic. But still, I persist in my admiration of this monkey-faced, chain-smoking, philandering dead Belgian. I must try to explain why I am certain he is great. I must confess my love.
“As poetic as Bob Dylan, as introspective as John Lennon, as virile as Bruce Springsteen,” said the program for Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, which I dragged my mom to see with me in Fort Worth a couple years ago. Unfortunately, this musical was a false gospel. The English translations of the songs lose all nuance. “If all you have is love” becomes “All it takes is love.” The change of emphasis in the song shocked my tender, Brel-trusting heart when I heard it. Had I misunderstood the song? Had the fact that French is not my first language made the words seem more mysterious and subtle than they were?
Yes, Brel is dramatic. Most of Jacques Brel’s songs drive me crazy, they’re so frantic. Maybe you know his famous song “Madeleine,” which takes you on a riotous ride from hope to obsession to bitterness to despair. You have to give him points for his energy and enthusiasm. But our era is so fond of understatement that he just seems over the top.
By all means, don’t listen to the cheesy “If you only have love.” It talks about healing all our wounds, rebuilding Jerusalem, making the desert bloom, drinking from the Grail, melting all the guns... none of which is in the French. The original song talks about having no other riches than our love and our belief in each other, about offering love in prayer for the evils of the world, simply, like a troubadour. I suppose you have to have a certain tolerance for cheesiness to like it too. But it is still much more subtle.
Let’s leave the humanist manifestos — soit en anglais, soit en français — aside, and analyze one of Brel’s most subdued songs. I’m not sure how legal this is, but it looks like you can download it here.
“Le plat pays” describes a modest subject, Belgium. Its melody is the same three or four notes repeated in a monotonous pattern. Some kind of hokey flute accompanies dear Jacques as he intones his plotless, characterless description of a landscape. He repeats the same word four times in the first three lines, nearly every line begins with “with,” and the second-to-last stanza makes four statements about the sky and even repeats both attributes it is mentioning twice.
In the last stanza, after line by plodding line of landscape features, he begins to show emotion. The volume builds slightly. There is life in his voice, and, finally, a smile breathed into the word “chanter” — singing.
I tried translating it, but am not fully satisfied with my translation. If I manage to make it acceptable, I will share it. The words are simple. Each word is important. And when Brel sings, each word lives. Listen to it even if you don’t know French.
For a fascinating variation (which you don’t have to download), you can listen to him singing the same song in Flemish.
It takes on a different rhythm and color. His love for the words themselves is evident. I don’t care if he is overdramatic. How could you want him not to do what he does?
“As poetic as Bob Dylan, as introspective as John Lennon, as virile as Bruce Springsteen,” said the program for Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, which I dragged my mom to see with me in Fort Worth a couple years ago. Unfortunately, this musical was a false gospel. The English translations of the songs lose all nuance. “If all you have is love” becomes “All it takes is love.” The change of emphasis in the song shocked my tender, Brel-trusting heart when I heard it. Had I misunderstood the song? Had the fact that French is not my first language made the words seem more mysterious and subtle than they were?
Yes, Brel is dramatic. Most of Jacques Brel’s songs drive me crazy, they’re so frantic. Maybe you know his famous song “Madeleine,” which takes you on a riotous ride from hope to obsession to bitterness to despair. You have to give him points for his energy and enthusiasm. But our era is so fond of understatement that he just seems over the top.
By all means, don’t listen to the cheesy “If you only have love.” It talks about healing all our wounds, rebuilding Jerusalem, making the desert bloom, drinking from the Grail, melting all the guns... none of which is in the French. The original song talks about having no other riches than our love and our belief in each other, about offering love in prayer for the evils of the world, simply, like a troubadour. I suppose you have to have a certain tolerance for cheesiness to like it too. But it is still much more subtle.
Let’s leave the humanist manifestos — soit en anglais, soit en français — aside, and analyze one of Brel’s most subdued songs. I’m not sure how legal this is, but it looks like you can download it here.
“Le plat pays” describes a modest subject, Belgium. Its melody is the same three or four notes repeated in a monotonous pattern. Some kind of hokey flute accompanies dear Jacques as he intones his plotless, characterless description of a landscape. He repeats the same word four times in the first three lines, nearly every line begins with “with,” and the second-to-last stanza makes four statements about the sky and even repeats both attributes it is mentioning twice.
In the last stanza, after line by plodding line of landscape features, he begins to show emotion. The volume builds slightly. There is life in his voice, and, finally, a smile breathed into the word “chanter” — singing.
I tried translating it, but am not fully satisfied with my translation. If I manage to make it acceptable, I will share it. The words are simple. Each word is important. And when Brel sings, each word lives. Listen to it even if you don’t know French.
For a fascinating variation (which you don’t have to download), you can listen to him singing the same song in Flemish.
It takes on a different rhythm and color. His love for the words themselves is evident. I don’t care if he is overdramatic. How could you want him not to do what he does?
Monday, August 07, 2006
Kids & Language
A small group from our church spends Monday nights with a Musketian (I probably spelled that wrong) Turk family (and whoever of their friends happen to be in the apartment at the time) trying, through conversation, to help them learn English. They are ethnic Turks from the former Soviet Union, and they speak Turkish and Russian. The apartment complex is home to several Musketian Turk families, as well as other international people, quite a mini-UN.
At a recent visit, the daughter we know (let's call her S) had a friend over who turned out to be from Egypt (M). I asked M, "What language do you speak?"
"Arabic."
"Does S speak Arabic?"
A shake of the head "Turkish."
"Do you speak Turkish?"
Another head shake "Arabic."
I assume M doesn't speak Russian (maybe I should've asked that too), which means they have no common language, other than a very little English. Yet they're still friends. Kids!
At a recent visit, the daughter we know (let's call her S) had a friend over who turned out to be from Egypt (M). I asked M, "What language do you speak?"
"Arabic."
"Does S speak Arabic?"
A shake of the head "Turkish."
"Do you speak Turkish?"
Another head shake "Arabic."
I assume M doesn't speak Russian (maybe I should've asked that too), which means they have no common language, other than a very little English. Yet they're still friends. Kids!
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Once and Future King
This book didn’t seem as great the second time I read it. It’s depressing when that happens.
First, I don’t enjoy fiction that tries to teach politics and philosophy.
Second, T. H. White is very good at showing complex motivations. Arthur is no stainless monarch. Lancelot and Guenever are both heroic and annoying. And White is more generous to the medieval Church than most revisionist storytellers today would be. So why couldn’t he make Mordred a full character? I don’t understand how an author who clearly has the skills to resist this kind of thing could fail so badly in creating this character, the purely evil badguy.
First, I don’t enjoy fiction that tries to teach politics and philosophy.
Second, T. H. White is very good at showing complex motivations. Arthur is no stainless monarch. Lancelot and Guenever are both heroic and annoying. And White is more generous to the medieval Church than most revisionist storytellers today would be. So why couldn’t he make Mordred a full character? I don’t understand how an author who clearly has the skills to resist this kind of thing could fail so badly in creating this character, the purely evil badguy.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Green leafy vegetables that are preferable to lettuce
I have been accused of running a “literary” blog. It’s true that it has veered that direction recently. But is that all we have to offer? In the spirit of my post on March 14, 2004, I offer a decidedly unliterary addition:
Arugula
Arugula
Don’t ever change
Now I’m thinking those mix-and-match high school yearbook epigrams were wiser than we thought. I recently read Now, Discover Your Strengths and look at my life and my personality differently.
Yes, it’s sort of a cheesy business management book, but it’s very encouraging and freeing. It simply says to concentrate on your strengths and not worry too much about fixing your weaknesses. We seem to go wrong when we dwell on those things, comparing ourselves to others, getting insecure and unhappy. Why not just let everyone admit what they aren’t and be satisfied with what they are?
My signature themes, by the way, are as follows:
Input
Learner
Intellection
Context
Harmony
This confirms that I am the Übergeek, which is sort of liberating. I can’t pretend I am some big social butterfly or motivational speaker or glittering demagogue. It was a strange feeling to read the descriptions and recognize myself. Apparently there are other people like me. Maybe it’s normal and possibly good to be the way I am.
As Elijah said to the Rabbi Jochanan, “Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?”
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Bloomsday device
Nerzhin alerted me to the machinations of a certain Irish professor, which came to naught this year. Here’s to streets running with rashers, kidneys, and sausages next June!
(If you’re confused, read my recent post on Bloomsday and my yet earlier one.)
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Pepys
If you haven’t had time to look at the links over on the right, I encourage you to visit the diary of Samuel Pepys, a blog that has given me much pleasure lately. I fantasize about reading it every day and gradually getting a sense of life in 17th-century London.
I forget how I found it, but for pride’s sake I would like to point out that I was reading it before the Rabbi mentioned it in the May Books & Culture.
It doesn’t take much time, if you don’t try to figure out who all the people are, which I don’t. It’s kind of boring a lot of the time (not understanding much of it doesn’t help) but sometimes there is fun stuff like this:
I forget how I found it, but for pride’s sake I would like to point out that I was reading it before the Rabbi mentioned it in the May Books & Culture.
It doesn’t take much time, if you don’t try to figure out who all the people are, which I don’t. It’s kind of boring a lot of the time (not understanding much of it doesn’t help) but sometimes there is fun stuff like this:
...and so home to supper and bed, my head aching all the day from my last night’s bad rest, and yesterday’s distempering myself with over walking, and to-day knocking my head against a low door in Mr. Castle’s house. This day the Parliament kept a fast for the present unseasonable weather.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Housekeeping
(See a post and interesting comments on another book by Marilynne Robinson here.)
When you read delightful writing by a somewhat neglected and very unconventionally-raised child narrator, you wonder if it’s fair to enjoy it. You can’t help feeling guilty as you laugh at the absurdities.
When you read delightful writing by a somewhat neglected and very unconventionally-raised child narrator, you wonder if it’s fair to enjoy it. You can’t help feeling guilty as you laugh at the absurdities.
There were now many of these cans on the counters and the windowsill, and they would have covered the table long since if Lucille and I had not removed them now and then. We did not object to them, despite the nuisance, because they looked very bright and sound and orderly, especially since Sylvie arranged them open end down, except for the ones she used to store peach pits and the keys from sardine and coffee cans. Frankly we had come to the point where we could hardly object to order in any form, though we hoped that her interest in bottles was a temporary aberration.Ruth is a strange narrator. She usually seems unbelievably detached, but sometimes she seems so hopeful it hurts:
There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin, till time and error and accident were undone, and the world became comprehensible and whole....For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?It’s not exactly a gripping plot, but I found myself reading just to see what she would say next. The book is absolutely beautiful. I would highly recommend it if you can handle such beauty along with some disturbing yuckiness (I don’t mean anything graphic or violent. It’s hard to explain. It’s more of a philosophical uneasiness). But that seems to be the problem with beauty in this world in any case, doesn’t it?
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Curse Texas!
Scarcely six weeks after clasping me into her bosom, Texas has spit me out like a piece of gristle.
I used to be pretty gung-ho about running before dawn when it was “cool,” but several times recently I’ve run in the evenings and survived. I thought I had developed tolerance of the heat.
But clearly there is a difference even between 7 in the evening, when I had performed these recent tolerable runs, and 4:30 in the afternoon. Today I was playing the metaphor game to take my mind off the misery. The best comparison I could come up with for my sensations at the moment was the way it feels when you take your bread out of the oven and the hot air comes whooshing up into your face. Unfortunately the whooshing had only occurred when I was running into the wind; on the way back the only movement was life-giving moisture trickling down my body.
Then I saw a happy sight! Ahead there was shade—not tree shade, but cloud shade! A general cloud was providing shelter from the sun just ahead. I thought benevolently of Elijah and his hand-sized cloud. Mine was even bigger and better, befitting this great state.
Then I remembered I was running in the same direction as the wind. The shade was advancing ahead of me! I would never reach it! Curse this abominable state!
I plotted to transfix idle guests at next week’s wedding with my glittering eye, and force upon them my shocking tale.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Something something something something
and cried, “A sail! A sail!”
Why had I memorized such a boring stanza? I wondered to myself. Yet this was the one that kept coming to me.
There was no one to blame for my misery but Texas, who in her laziness chose this angle to sprawl out on the globe, making the entire day inhospitable for humans wishing to take the slightest advantage of their natural mobility.
She has sent me no more glossy water-snakes. The only notable wildlife I saw today was one of those nasty mutant eyeball-looking acorns. Texas, I renounce you!
I used to be pretty gung-ho about running before dawn when it was “cool,” but several times recently I’ve run in the evenings and survived. I thought I had developed tolerance of the heat.
But clearly there is a difference even between 7 in the evening, when I had performed these recent tolerable runs, and 4:30 in the afternoon. Today I was playing the metaphor game to take my mind off the misery. The best comparison I could come up with for my sensations at the moment was the way it feels when you take your bread out of the oven and the hot air comes whooshing up into your face. Unfortunately the whooshing had only occurred when I was running into the wind; on the way back the only movement was life-giving moisture trickling down my body.
Then I saw a happy sight! Ahead there was shade—not tree shade, but cloud shade! A general cloud was providing shelter from the sun just ahead. I thought benevolently of Elijah and his hand-sized cloud. Mine was even bigger and better, befitting this great state.
Then I remembered I was running in the same direction as the wind. The shade was advancing ahead of me! I would never reach it! Curse this abominable state!
I plotted to transfix idle guests at next week’s wedding with my glittering eye, and force upon them my shocking tale.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Something something something something
and cried, “A sail! A sail!”
Why had I memorized such a boring stanza? I wondered to myself. Yet this was the one that kept coming to me.
There was no one to blame for my misery but Texas, who in her laziness chose this angle to sprawl out on the globe, making the entire day inhospitable for humans wishing to take the slightest advantage of their natural mobility.
She has sent me no more glossy water-snakes. The only notable wildlife I saw today was one of those nasty mutant eyeball-looking acorns. Texas, I renounce you!
Catching up too
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.
I learned about Philip Pullman while the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was in theaters. He is, according to an article I read somewhere, the atheist answer to C.S. Lewis, a writer of children's books for parents who do not want their children polluted by the lies and hypocrisy of religion. The results are quite good and entertaining; I can recommend The Golden Compass (the first in a trilogy called His Dark Materials) even to those who do not want their childred polluted by the lies and hypocrisy of atheism. The story is well-crafted and suspenseful, the characters are thick and believable, and it is a very fun book to read.
Mountains Beyond Mountains is about the life of Dr. Paul Farmer, a doctor and global health advocate who works ridiculously hard to care for those in the world on the wrong side of "the great epidemiological divide." His story is inspiring and more than a little uncomfortable; Farmer's story has the effect of making you feel guilty, indicted by your wealth and privilege. Reading the book you get the feeling that you aren't doing enough, worse, can never do enough, to earn the medical care and public health you enjoy on your side of the great epi divide. Kidder's prose is not ostentatious but still delightful to read; he draws you in to the true story, reveals not just the actions of his protagonist but also his motivations. The focus is always on Farmer, but Kidder gives you just enough of his own experiences and feelings to put the events and feelings into a friendly human perspective.
A small and fairly contrived connection between the two books: In The Golden Compass, the Church is always evil like Mordor is evil in The Lord of the Rings; there is no moral complexity, no admission that maybe some religious people are pretty okay some of the time. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, though Farmer's work is amazing and is rightly the focus of the book, in his story there are others who are important, in particular an Anglican priest in Haiti and a Catholic priest in Peru, who are not just helpful but completely essential to Farmer's success. So in Pullman's fiction, the Church is always hurting and oppressing; in Kidder's nonfiction, the Church is sometimes working very hard to heal and to save.
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.
I learned about Philip Pullman while the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was in theaters. He is, according to an article I read somewhere, the atheist answer to C.S. Lewis, a writer of children's books for parents who do not want their children polluted by the lies and hypocrisy of religion. The results are quite good and entertaining; I can recommend The Golden Compass (the first in a trilogy called His Dark Materials) even to those who do not want their childred polluted by the lies and hypocrisy of atheism. The story is well-crafted and suspenseful, the characters are thick and believable, and it is a very fun book to read.
Mountains Beyond Mountains is about the life of Dr. Paul Farmer, a doctor and global health advocate who works ridiculously hard to care for those in the world on the wrong side of "the great epidemiological divide." His story is inspiring and more than a little uncomfortable; Farmer's story has the effect of making you feel guilty, indicted by your wealth and privilege. Reading the book you get the feeling that you aren't doing enough, worse, can never do enough, to earn the medical care and public health you enjoy on your side of the great epi divide. Kidder's prose is not ostentatious but still delightful to read; he draws you in to the true story, reveals not just the actions of his protagonist but also his motivations. The focus is always on Farmer, but Kidder gives you just enough of his own experiences and feelings to put the events and feelings into a friendly human perspective.
A small and fairly contrived connection between the two books: In The Golden Compass, the Church is always evil like Mordor is evil in The Lord of the Rings; there is no moral complexity, no admission that maybe some religious people are pretty okay some of the time. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, though Farmer's work is amazing and is rightly the focus of the book, in his story there are others who are important, in particular an Anglican priest in Haiti and a Catholic priest in Peru, who are not just helpful but completely essential to Farmer's success. So in Pullman's fiction, the Church is always hurting and oppressing; in Kidder's nonfiction, the Church is sometimes working very hard to heal and to save.
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