I thought that some of you would find this story interesting!!

Maggie

Same Old Story: Best-Books Lists Snub Women Writers — Politics Daily.

This 365-year-old book has been a part of my life since my Dad was reading it to me when I was a small boy. I read through it a couple of times on my own as a young teenager, but it had been about ten years since then when a few weeks ago I decided it was time to revisit Miyamoto Musashi. I know that most people are familiar with Musashi and his book (I understand it’s used as a text book for many business people), but I figured I’d offer a brief rundown.

Musashi wrote this book circa 1645, and his reason for doing it was to explain the philosophy he lived out that allowed him to become the greatest swordsman in Japan. He divides the content into five books: earth, water, fire, wind and emptiness ( “void” in other translations). Each book deals with a subject that Musashi feels is critical to success. What’s so interesting about this book is Musashi’s advice to “learn 10,000 things from one”. So, it turns out that you’re not just reading a book about samurai life only, you’re actually reading a book that is applicable to any endeavor in life. It’s about the backbreaking work it takes to achieve greatness, remain undefeated, and to face battles as if you are already dead. If someone walks away from this book unchallenged or feeling as if they’ve already “arrived” then they didn’t read it. The Book of Five Rings offers a wonderful and disciplined perspective for anyone who takes the time to not only read it but to start living it. I would recommend it especially to artists who feel that they are “stuck”; it’ll definitely get you unstuck.

I wanted to blog about this book not only because of its personal interest to me, but also because the copy that I got from Lemuria was a translation of it that I had never read before. This translation varies from my previous experiences with The Book of Five Rings in that includes an excellent introduction to Zen, Bushido and Heiho as well as a commentary before each book that gives historical context and defines unfamiliar terms. The translation work was done by Nihon Services Corporation; I had a better sense of understanding the context with this version.

-Hunter

Gene Dattel will be signing his new book, Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, today, November 4, at 5 pm.

Dattel grew up in the cotton country of the Mississippi Delta and studied history at Yale and law at Vanderbilt.  He then embarked on a twenty-year career in financial capital markets as a managing director at Salomon Brothers and at Morgan Stanley.  Mr. Dattel is now an independent scholar who lectures widely.  He lives in New York City.

For more than 130 years, from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, cotton was the leading export crop of the United States.  And the connection between cotton and the African-American experience became central to the history of the republic.  American’s most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown.  Both before and after the Civil War, and well into the twentieth century, blacks were relegated to work the cotton fields.  Their social and economic situation was aggravated by a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion that caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South.

Gene Dattel’s pioneering study explores the historical roots of these central social issues.  In telling detail, Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly unappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America’s rise to economic power.  Cotton production became a driving force in U.S territorial expansion and sectional economic integration and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States.  Without slave-produced cotton, the South could have never initiated the Civil War.  Cotton continued to exert a powerful influence on both the American economy and race relations in the years after the Civil War.

This story has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of international finance.

A few reviews:

“This is a book not just for those who grew up in the cotton fields of Mississippi as I did, but a challenging and compelling account of the complex role that cotton has played in the economic, racial, and political history of our nation.”–William F. Winter, former governor of Mississippi
“Two themes, one explicit, one implicit, compete in this exploration of the link between the development of American capitalism and the devastation of the African-American community. The price of cotton as the determinant of America’s destiny, influencing and even overcoming individual will and ethical behavior’ is the fully explicit one . . . The secondary and competing theme is Northern complicity in the slave trade, the cotton economy, segregation, racism and the development of the `black underclass in the North and South, with its destructive behavioral characteristics.” –Publishers Weekly

“Gene Dattel has written a very important and necessary book, by locating the expansion of cotton production as a driving force not only in the antebellum South, but in the economy at large. He exposes slave-produced cotton’s central role in causing the Civil War and as the global economic engine that prolonged slavery. Cotton was coveted by New York merchants and the textile barons of England and New England. He shows that after the Civil War cotton and race remained linked until technology finally displaced black labor. He devastatingly critiques the complicit role of the racist North in containing African Americans in the cotton fields. The legacy of this vital crop was economic growth and the social tragedy of slavery and segregation. No examination of American heritage is complete without an understanding of the force that cotton wrought upon its economic and social landscape. America’s racial dilemma cannot be sequestered to one part of the country.” –Roger Wilkins, Clarence J. Robinson Professor Emeritus, George Mason University

I was lucky enough to spend some days in the mountains with nothing to do but hike and read. I arrived with a whole bag of books but here is what I read.

I finished reading Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. Loved it. See my previous blog.

I also read Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. She published a memoir a few years ago entitled The Glass Castle, and it is about her growing up with her parents . . . who today still choose to be homeless in New York City. I chose to read Half Broke Horses first because it is about Jeannette’s grandmother and gives a lot of insight as to why Jeannette’s mom chose such an odd lifestyle. I highly recommend Half Broke Horses and look forward to reading The Glass Castle in the next week or so. See Norma’s review of Half Broke Horses and The Glass Castle.

Out of all the books I read on vacation, I have to say that Love in the Time of Cholera is the dearest to my heart. I had tried a couple of years ago to read One Hundred Years of Solitude but never made it past 40 pages after three attempts. I cannot wait to give it another try now. Marquez is rewarding to say the least. It seems to me that Love in the Time of Cholera might be a good place to start if you have trouble with One Hundred Years. There is also a new bio of Marquez by Gerald Martin. But I think I am going to put Living to Tell the Tale first on my list as it is Marquez’s life in his own words.

And finally, I have to add that I enjoyed hearing about The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. (My man read it and parts to me.) Unreason is an engaging, hard look at what she calls a “storm of anti-rationalism” in the United States. Jacoby’s work is striking in that she gives equal treatment to those on the left and the right.

Happy Reading!

Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

Edited by Patricia Donegan

Shambhala (2008)

I enjoy reading good haiku very much.  Sometimes I’m astonished by how much can be said with so few words.  Good haiku is a direct result of understanding complex reality and stating it precisely, correctly and beautifully.  Haiku can open windows to the reader’s present.  With simple imagery, fine haiku presents crystalline moments of heightened awareness.  A reminder to pause.

Patricia Donegan teaches creative writing in Toyko and is currently the poetry editor for the Kyoto Journal.  Haiku Mind is not just an anthology of haiku poems, but rather spiritual reflections about what is behind the poem, i.e. meditations for the contemplation of the themes.

Each carefully chosen haiku and its reflection is followed by a brief author explanation.  The included authors range from the expected classic poets to modern surprises.

This fine little book is a great gift and a jewel for a guest room bedside table.

poem 99.

Now

“Your shadow

on the page

the poem.”

-Cid Corman

(1924-2004)

American Minimalist Poet