Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Mr. Isaacson had written biographies of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs wanted him to also write his biography. Typical of this arrogant, amazing man.

"He didn't seek any control over what I wrote or even ask to read it in advance."

The story of Steve Jobs is interesting because the story of Apple Computer is interesting. Today, for instance, Apple stock which had dropped about 50 to 60 points in the last 2 weeks and which closed today at 560, rose with vigor after closing prompting the WSJ to blog:

Alright, Apple believers. You win.

In recent days, the clamor and the selling seemed to be gaining momentum. Would iPhone sales disappoint? Was AAPL’s extraordinary run at an end? The stock fell for 10 of the past 11 days. The company lost about $70 billion in market capitalization. That’s like taking Apple and slicing off a Hewlett-Packard-sized chunk ($48 bill) off of the company, and then hacking another Dell-sized lump ($28 bill) — all in the span of 11 days.

But with yet another crushing earnings beat — Apple topped the earnings consensus estimates by almost 23% — is it time to put those fears to rest?

The stock is up 7.5% in after hours trading at last glance, back up over $600 though not quite enough to totally wipe out the stock’s 12% decline since April 9 — yet.

I have been an Apple believer for a long long time which is why I liked this book. It was the maverick company that made products that were/are elegant and classy and worked intuitively. Almost for certain, without Steve Jobs, there would not have been Apple Computer. That he was often rude and unreasonable is true, but his genius superseded that which this book conveys, and while not stinting in writing about the harsh and sometimes unpleasant side of Steve Jobs,  the author also describes a less public man who could and did at times acknowledge his abrasiveness. He was driven to perfect and control everything. He sought out and coerced people to join Apple who appreciated his vision. There is a wonderful photo of Steve sitting in front of his computer, hands behind his head, looking at a screen photo of his wife and son which softens and humanizes him, or at least it did for me. 
The biographer took his subject and wrote well enough that Steve Jobs became more than a guy in a black turtleneck, more than the legendary one-half of the two guys who started Apple in a garage, more than the intensely private person he was and more than just another rich Silicon Valley billionaire. 

All New People by Annie Lamott

I heard Annie Lamott at Powell's once when I lived in Portland. She had her signature blond dreads. She was funny and generous with her time, and I am certain nearly everyone there already knew her from her stories.

All New People is a story of growing up in the 60s with liberal hippie-ish parents, with her brother Casey, her mother's friend Natalie and her Uncle Ed and Aunt Peg. They lived in Marin County north of San Francisco near the sea. (The title comes from someone telling the main character that "in a hundred years, there will be all new people...." which made me think about transitory nature of our lives, as I am sure it was meant to.)

"Her husband had left her when my father left my mother, but her husband hadn't come back. Husbands were leaving, leaving; every couple of months it seemed another one was gone. Their children would be a the rec center with extra pocket money for snacks. They would have money to burn and would buy us things so that we would hang out wit them. I cultivated friendships with them, like I cultivated friendships with the Catholic children, for tuna-noodle casserole or English muffin pizza on Friday."

Or vintage Annie Lamott:
"My mother spent inordinate amounts of time talking to Jeffrey, and working on politics, stuffing envelopes, taking petitions door-to-door, or setting up tables down on the boardwalk, passing out leaflets, registering Democrats, collecting money for her causes. I still went to church with her every Sunday, although I was no longer sure I believed in God. I just loved the singing. My mother said that maybe I would believe again one day, that she had gone through long periods of disbelief too, and then would again come to feel Jesus hanging around her like a stray cat or dog, and she would finally with exasperation quit resisting, throw up her hands, and tell him he could come in for the night."

Her self-deprecation and humor, intuitive intelligence and humility and her sometimes wild spirit are always present in her work. Her sense of God and faith is refreshing, real and comforting.

She has recently written a new book about Sam, her 19-year-old son who (not according to her plan) becomes a father, making her a grandmother. It happens.

Book: The Berrybender Narratives by Larry McMurtry

I liked this book, although it was lengthy at 910 pages. Still I persevered and got the rhythm about halfway through the book.

The Berrybenders are a wealthy British family whose patriarch, Lord Albany Berrybender, gathers up his family and retinue of servants and comes to the grand prairies of America in the 1830s. He wants to wander about, have adventures, and hunt without discrimination, and he does all of that. He is not a likable man as he is completely self-centered and rather obsessive about satisfying his various appetites. He has several children and much of this lively story concerns his daughter Tasmin, a headstrong, intelligent beauty. She finds and marries a reticent taciturn mountain man, Jim Snow, also known as Raven Brave or The Sin Killer.

 The novel begins on a Missouri River steamer which becomes locked in the ice as cold weather arrives. There is one vivid scene after another: brief encounters with Indians of various tribes, buffalo hunts, historical characters (Kit Carson, Jim Bridger), historical events (the Alamo), river travel, deaths due to disease and fighting and accidents, lusty women, slow travels by ox cart, heartbreak, the vagaries of weather, survival strategies, intrigue... The many characters became flesh and blood in my imagination as this tale progressed, and I felt drawn into their colorful, increasingly hard and often dangerous lives. Copulations happen, babies are born and the Berrybenders keep on moving through most of the four years of this novel. Whether the McMurtry is writing of sweet little boys, or mountain men, or haughty Mexican women, or young Indian braves or of Tasmin and her siblings, he entertains. One is transported to the prairies where the buffalo did roam and the Indians moved freely over endless plains, under never-ending skies. The portrayal of the Native Americans was good, not as exotics or primitives but just as fellow humans surviving in their own ways, living and dying on lands that were soon to be taken from them. I often laughed out loud while reading some passages and occasionally was sobered by the harshness of life, by the quick and unexpected deaths, by the fierceness of fighting and frontier justice.

Book: White Girl Problems by Babe Walker

A book with no merit but wickedly funny at times. Babe is the definition of hedonistic. Do people really live like this? I just googled "Babe Walker" and learned some more stuff about her. So, if you're even a teeny bit interested and are as clueless as I am/was, you can also google "Babe Walker" or even read this book.

The last chapters are about her month in rehab where she went after spending $246,893.50 in Barney's one day. (Is Barney's real?)

I love the cover of the book. And the title.

Book: The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitens

The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy Seal.

Eric grew up an all-American boy in St. Louis, Missouri, eventually went to Duke University, was a Rhodes scholar, a boxing champion and then became a Navy SEAL. He was awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He served in Afghanistan, Irag, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Kenya.

Before his military career, Eric spent time doing humanitarian work in India, Rwanda, Albania, Cambodia, Bolivia, Mexico and Croatia. He truly became an "officer and a gentleman" as he matured and tested himself, excelling in the incredibly rigorous SEAL training (which he describes in some detail) but also refusing to believe that might makes right.

Through his experiences as a soldier and as a single human trying in small ways to help others, he works at understanding and respecting different people and cultures. While at Oxford, he "really began to appreciate all of life's beauty: joy, delight, rest, love, tranquillity, peace.These are things worth fighting for, for others and for ourselves."

While reading his narrative, the necessity of using force at times seems less debatable and a more complex issue than many of us would like. Eric writes from seeing the street children of Bolivia who sniff glue all day, the dying in Varanasi, those displaced after the Rwandan massacres in which close to 1 million were killed in the civil war in that country. One MILLION! Eric notes that "Romeo Dallaire, the UN commander in Rwanda, estimated that with just 5000 well-equipped troops, we could have saved 800,000 people." But we didn't do enough to stop the genocide as Bill Clinton acknowledged four years later.

Are the questions of when and where and how to use our military easy? Of course not. The debate continues every day. Earth is the one planet on which we humans live and we are neighbors. I think Eric knows that fighting is sometimes the only alternative and that we must be strong when war is inevitable. But perhaps the old parable of the sun versus the wind should more often be our modus operandi. He was a proud Navy SEAL, proud of his fellows soldiers but always pushing for peaceful ways, non violent ways to provide "healthy and productive" lives wherever people are suffering, both here and outside of the US.

Of course, this is idealistic, and he does not discuss issues surrounding the glut and dearth of oil in the world's countries and how that engages our military. He does not address America's sense of superiority in the increasingly globalized world of today, or our lack of interest in cultures other than our own, our refusal and reluctance to see ourselves as anything but the top dog. He gently chastises our leaders and policies but works within that system, doing what he can.

Eric founded The Mission Continues, an organization that aids "wounded and disabled warriors to serve their country again as citizen leaders here at home."

Tom Brokaw calls Eric his "hero" reiterating that the "heart and fist are just the combination we need."

There is war and there are the men and women who fight those wars. Would that more of them were like Eric Greitens, good and strong.

Books: John Sandford

I am not certain why John Sandford's writing appeals to me but here are four more titles of his books I've read recently:
1. Heat Lightning - late revenge for atrocities by Americans at the end of the Vietnam War.
2. Buried Prey - an old murder case is revived when bodies of two young girls are found.
3. Secret Prey - the CEO and president of the board of a Minnesota bank is murdered on the opening day of deer season.
4. Naked Prey - kidnappings, murder and drug running are the strange brew in this novel.

(I don't particularly like the titles of the "Prey" novels, but then titles are often tricky, I guess...)

These are all books about cops and thus about testosterone, tough guy posturing, profanity, sex, drugs, bad people, car chases, guns and the politics of police work. But if there wasn't nuanced character development in the men and women in Sandford's novels, and especially in the two main characters (Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport), I wouldn't keep reading his books. (I did think Secret Prey, written in 1998, was less credible than his other novels as it seemed coarser and less complex..but even so, I finished it.)

The good guys work for the BCA or the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota. They are slightly rogue, smart (of course), appeal to woman (of course) and solve murders.

A couple of random excerpts:

"His (Virgil) thoughts all tumbled over each other, and he got nowhere. He cooled out by thinking briefly about God, and considered praying that there wouldn't be another murder and another middle-of-the-night call. He decided that praying wouldn't help, and went to sleep, and dreamed of the fisherwoman with strong brown arms and gold-flecked married eyes."

"Having been disinvited from lunch, Virgil went to an I-94 diner and had a chicken potpie, with roughly a billion calories in chicken fat, which added flavor to the two pounds of salt included with the pie. He cut the salt with three Cokes, and left feeling like the Hindenburg."

"He was back at this apartment in six minutes, and took another thoughtful six minutes to get into a pair of light khaki slacks, a short-sleeve white shirt, and a navy linen sport coat with a wine-colored tie. He hesitated over the short-sleeve shirt, because Esquire magazine despised them, but then, Esquire editors probably didn't have to walk through slum neighborhoods in ninety-degree heat."

There is always just enough non-cop commentary / description / dialogue to make the characters more real and certainly more interesting.

Another reason I like Sandford is that the milieu is usually Minnesota with evocative passages of the northern woods--the cabins and little resorts, small lakes, walleye fishing, long winters, bars in small towns--all a counterpoint to the action in The Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul).

On the Road: Devil's Lake, North Dakota to Ashland, Wisconsin

It was 70 miles to Minnesota, but there is a little NWR 3 miles off US2 just west of Grand Forks, North Dakota which is the last town before Minnesota. The refuge is named Kelly's Slough. Maria and I stopped there one time, and I have returned at least twice since then. It is a watery place in the middle of farm country on a gravel road. Of course I had to check it out although there were very few birds around as the prairie potholes were mostly still frozen in spite of temperatures in the 50 and 60s. I saw only occasional ducks and many pairs of Canada geese who seemed to be patiently waiting for open water as they were usually perched on ice that was soon to disappear

As I neared Kelly's Slough, I saw a man with a spotting scope and binoculars near his car looking out over some actual open water. However, as I got closer, I realized it wasn't a gentleman after all but a woman close to my age. We chatted a bit about what she was seeing (tundra swans, some ducks) and I drove on, turned around and as I passed her (she was now in her car heading towards me) she motioned for me to roll down my window and told me about some more ponds up the road. I told her I "had to get home" and she asked where. When I told her Holland, Michigan, she got a look on her face and said, "You've GOT to be kidding!"

Her son teaches organic chemistry at Hope and her daughter-in-law is a physician in Holland. So it goes on the road. I often met people who either knew Holland directly or some place else in western Michigan.

On into Minnesota with a stop in Grand Rapids at a great coffee shop to get espresso along with an almond praline bar and a piece of feta-fennel quiche which I would eat for supper later (thinking ahead and not wanting vending machine food).

Through Duluth, over a high bridge, and into Wisconsin for 80 miles before the UP. Ashland, Wisconsin is a pleasant town on the shores of Lake Superior with many motels, about 50 miles after Duluth, and is the access point for Chaquamegon Bay and the Apostle Islands. I passed a large lodge-motel on the west end of town and drove on, but pulled into a parking lot to scout out where to stay. I was doing this more and more often: stopping and calling on my iPhone for rates. On a whim I called the lodge and they were very reasonable. I also called a motel in the first town in the UP (Ironwood) and was put on hold and then "the computer froze up" and then, after I patiently waited an hour (just kidding, but it seemed way too long) was told that perhaps the rate would be $85 which was a lot more than the nice lodge right on Lake Superior and which is where I stayed of course. I had a bit of a glitch getting Internet as I needed an Ethernet connection rather than WiFi and finally found out the cable they gas me did not plug into the port on the desk lamp but into the wall instead. A young girl at the desk came up and showed me this.

So I worked 4 hours and ate my feta-fennel quiche after I went back to the desk for a fork.

I actually set up my spotting scope and could easily see the golden "tears" on the swans out on the lake confirming they were Tundras, along with displaying Common goldeneyes. The males would suddenly and repeatedly throw their heads all the way backwards and then jerk them forward again. All to impress the females....

There was the lake to the north and a marsh to the south across the road. Of course, the rates in the summer go up considerably, but what a nice place to stay.