by Richard Subber | Aug 6, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Language
language is social cement…
Book review:
Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language
by Robin Dunbar (b1947)
British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist
London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996
Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language is a fascinating, comprehensive account of how human beings got language and what it’s good for.
Hint: our ape-like ancestors figured out that grooming wasn’t enough to maintain their social relationships in their reproductive groups, and language made it possible to increase group size (for safety) by substituting for the physical contact of grooming.
Dunbar offers detailed and persuasive guidance on how we manage our social and political (organizational) relationships, and shows that groups that are larger than 150 individuals are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to thrive in and manage. If your work group comprises more than 150 persons, roughly speaking, your boss can’t manage the group and team work isn’t feasible.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle…
Colin Woodard makes it easier to understand…(book review)
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 1, 2022 | Democracy, Politics, Power and inequality, Tidbits
Bite off as much as you can chew…
“Pick battles big enough to matter,
small enough to win.”
The wisdom of Jonathan Kozol (b1936)
Public education activist, keen thinker
This quote from Jonathan Kozol is a strategic, actionable version of similar quotations from historic writers:
Voltaire: “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Confucius: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
This is wisdom indeed for those of us who strive to make things better in the political arena that threatens us today.
I’m convinced that it’s worse than foolish to support or vote for a fringe or “outsider” candidate who has sparkling, pure principles and no chance in hell of winning. If you have to, hold your nose in the primary election and vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice who can actually win the election.
Voting for a more or less surefire loser as a matter of principle—except in the general election—is just like throwing your vote away, and letting everyone else choose the winner.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 22, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature
toil and trouble….and craziness
Book review:
The Witches: Salem, 1692
by Stacy Schiff (b1961)
Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2015
498 pages
It may be that Stacy Schiff has neglected to include some fact or sentiment about the Salem witch trials, but I can’t imagine what it might be. The Witches is an expansive compendium of the whos and whats and whys and wherefores of this compelling—yet essentially impenetrable—story about a community gone crazy.
Maybe you had to be there to understand it.
It’s too easy to suggest that the McCarthy Communism hunting in 1954 is a modern analogy, but it won’t work. The whole dreadful McCarthy thing was a political football, approaching a sideshow even though it attracted the nominal attention of the nation and destroyed many lives.
The Salem witch trials (and the witch hunting that went on in neighboring towns) consumed the waking hours of all the townsfolk, who were deeply convinced that witches exist and that they were in league with satanic forces.
For my taste, Schiff tells too much of the story. I would have been content with a less detailed account. There is repetition that is dispensable.
For my taste, she struck a good balance between telling the story as it happened, and inviting the reader to suspect that the teenage girls were fooling all along, and that too many accusers had a personal reason to “get” the accused, and that too many religious and civic leaders who struggled unsuccessfully with their religious faith and the opposing impulses of their arguably decent selves had quickly figured out that the witch craze was a very nasty game.
You don’t need to read the whole book to figure out that there was some very destructive bogus stuff going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692.
Maybe you don’t need to read the whole book to be convinced that some folks aren’t continuously motivated by a decent streak of good will and a desire to support communal well-being.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Cleopatra: A Life
…don’t even think
about Gordon Gekko…
by Stacy Schiff
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 4, 2022 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews, Tidbits
…ready to pop…
Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey
Director: Emile Ardolino
100 minutes
Oscar for Best Music, Original Song: “The Time Of My Life”
I want to go deeper than the “ugly duckling/Prince Charming/red hot final dance” story—for me, highlights of the film are Baby’s naiveté, and her ingenuous embrace of the very hot Johnny, and her eager awareness of her rising woman’s heat…
Some context: in 1987 many Dirty Dancing viewers would have been more than slightly discomfited by the matter-of-fact abortion episode, and perhaps nonplussed by Baby’s casual deception to come up with the $250 to pay for it. Wowee. It’s great to help out a friend of a friend and all, but that seems like a baffling stretch for a timorous young girl of Baby’s obvious unworldliness.
On the other hand, Baby’s hormones are ready to pop.
You know, you really can say “dirty dancing” in a nice way.
Alone with Johnny, in the prelude to intimacy scene, Baby suddenly opens up: “I’m scared of everything…I’m scared of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”
That’s a heartbeat. You felt it, too.
Here’s hoping that you’ve had a moment, an embrace, a volcanic new feeling of desire that you feared you would never feel the rest of your whole life.
I have.
And now I know I didn’t have to be afraid.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
the summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 1, 2021 | Democracy, Politics, Tidbits
“…a dope pusher’s argument.”
“Is news what the public is interested in
or what’s in the public interest?…
This business of giving people what they want
is a dope pusher’s argument.
News is something people don’t know they’re interested in
until they hear about it.
The job of a journalist is to take what’s important
and make it interesting.”
from -30- The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper
Charles M. Madigan, ed.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007
p. 121
Too much of the media is focused on making money by entertaining everyone—
it’s not about journalism any more.
Mostly, if you want news, you have to search for it.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
A quote from General Custer
Hint: something to do with Indians…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 23, 2021 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry
…the big yellow bus…
The new sneakers looked big for her—it’s too easy to forget that she was still growing every day.
Maybe she won’t remember that first day. Mom and Dad will do the remembering.
The bus full of little kids was a big new noisy world.
She left most of her fears behind, in Mom’s heart.
She didn’t wave, but she must have looked back, at least once…
Moment
It wasn’t obviously a step-by-step process.
It seemed like it took years. It really was years.
A continuum of nights and days
and firsts and talking
and repeated joys
and the desperate acceptance of sickness
and the universe of smiles
and the glad warmth of wanton hugs
and bodies that can touch everywhere, and do…
She grew, yet she’s still so far from grown up,
still so completely the child you love,
but not a yearling,
not a yearling.
Last night she murmured “I’m a little shy”
and you smiled a little, reassured her,
and crumbled a little, in your heart,
it’s one more fear you cannot fix…
Now she stands at your side,
calmly shouldering the backpack,
the totem of kindergarten.
You whisper, once, again, again,
and she listens, she holds your hand.
Now she leans toward the big yellow bus,
the doors open wide—those steps are so high!—
and you kiss the back of her ear
as she leaves you standing alone,
and takes the next step in her life.
September 19, 2016
My poem “Moment” was published in my first collection of 59 new free verse and haiku poems, Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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