Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Reading Still Does a Body Good

Problem:

At 11:50pm, last Friday night, I strolled into my local bookstore to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the latest and last book in J.K. Rowling’s brilliant series of fantasy novels. My experience was shorter than most; in neighboring towns there was a wait exceeding an hour long, with bookstore events that started early in the afternoon.

While the crowd was primarily in the mid-teens to adult range, most had been hooked on reading by this series as children, staring with the first book in 1997. During a time in a child’s life when reading = homework and is often considered as “cool” as chess club, they began to beg their parents to wait for hours in a line in order to start reading a book at the earliest moment possible. It has been, in a word, “magical.”

Of course, these books are intended for older children and young adults (especially the latest ones), but you don’t want to wait for your child to reach double digits in age before getting them “book-hooked.” And we want the values and morals of those books to mirror our own. Even if you don’t have kids of your own, as progressives, we want the next generation to be intelligent, articulate, and tolerant children. We want a generation in which every child wants and has a book in their hands.

Make Progress:

To take some action this Wednesday is simple, really. It’s simple as A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four….

• Buy (or Borrow) & Read
• Find & Tell
• Recycle
• Give

Buy (or Borrow) & Read:

We’ve compiled a brief list of books (sixteen to be exact) we’d recommend reading to your future progressives. If you’re interested in picking up a copy of any of these tomes for your very own, we recommend going through a small, privately-owned Western New York business, The Book Corner. These guys make finding odd or out-print-books look like making instant pudding. (Mmm… pudding.) Of course, you can always hunt down most of these titles through your local library or library system (we did).

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I Live on a Farm by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Kehoe’s book uses photos instead of illustrations, and teaches children about items and actions unique to farm, such as storage silos, bales of hay, barns, tractors, harvesting, and irrigating. The book also has a discreet anti-pesticide message. We believe this book will help kids who live on farms have more pride about where they live, and will help suburban and city kids better understand life in rural America. Empathy is the most progressive of emotions.

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Spiders by Ann Heinrichs

Spiders is a children’s science book that discusses the benefits of spiders (which are referred to as “nature’s friends”) to both the environment and humans. With Heinrichs’ book, kids can learn key science terms, scientific history, cultural myths, and facts about reproduction. The text also addresses the common fear of spiders: “Spiders are afraid of you. To a spider, you look like a giant.” To further ease fears, Spiders emphasizes that very few arachnids are dangerous to humans. Kids also encouraged to be in awe of both spiders’ silk and webs. We’ll take appropriate awe over fear any day.

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At Daddy’s on Saturdays by Linda Walvoord Girard

This 32-page picture-book helps kids understand the true causes of divorce (read: it’s not the child’s fault). Little readers also learn that both parents, despite separation, still love their children, that sadness is an understandable reaction, and that a child can feel at home with both their mother and father. We highly recommend At Daddy’s on Saturday’s, as well as the other books by Girard, who’s not afraid to tackle emotionally charged topics like AIDS, adoption, and sexual abuse.

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Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport

This beautifully designed book won Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2001 from the New York Times Book Review, and deserved it. The book shares the biography of Dr. King along side breathtaking drawings and pithy, inspiring quotations drawn from Dr. King. The heart of the book is that courage, love, learning, and human rights shall win the day. Rappaport doesn’t gloss over Dr. King’s death, and she reminds kids that good work and good words on earth live on after you do. Both are, in fact, a way to make progress.

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Conservation by Richard Gates

While seeming somewhat dated (it was published in 1988), Gate’s book is desperately relevant today. Fantastic photographs grace each page depicting, first, the way forests and the great plains used to be, then the way humans damaged the land, and therefore the animals, to suit their needs and desires. Toward the end, the book takes a turn as it describes the need to save nature, “guarding what we have, and not wasting it” which children can do in “[their] own backyard[s].” As a kind of conclusion, Gates depicts jobs in conservation and explains practical ways to protect animals and plants: “They are important in more ways than we know.” We think this is the kind of children’s book that would help remind adults of our moral obligation to the earth.

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Every Day is Earth Day by Kathy Ross

While Every Day is Earth Day shares a world-view with Conversation, it focuses its energy on the annual Earth Day (April 22) and its purposes. The bulk of Ross’s book describes and depicts activities kids can do to help promote a healthy earth. Our favorites include: a seedling necklace (which encourages kids to plant flowers); a wind sock (which shows kids that they can make crafts by recycling other materials); and a bird’s nest supply box (which is an empty milk carton filled with little things like dryer lint, hair, and bits of string).

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Jackson Pollock by Mike Venezia

This is one in a series of books about artists which also includes folks like Mary Cassatt, Salvator Dali, Georgia O’Keefe, and the requisite Pablo Picasso. Jackson Pollock includes both a biography with cartoon illustrations and photos of his work before he began action-paintings and of the more famous drip-paintings, too. The book doesn’t back away from lessons in art history, and explains abstract expressionism in ways kids can comprehend. Venezia ends up showing the power of imagination because it can lead one to success, and encourages kids to go to museums: “It’s a good idea to see Jackson Pollock’s paintings in person. The special feeling you get of being in an explosion of color and energy has a lot to do with their large size.” We’re willing to wager the other books in this series carry similarly progressive lessons and suggestions.

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Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

In this 1940 children’s book, an elephant battles through rain, snow, taunting, hunters, and sea-sickness in order to hatch a bird’s egg. While the plot can be reduced to a sentence, the variety of morals cannot. Geisel teaches: the problems can grow with laziness; good parenting involves carrying for your young; helping others is virtuous; one should be faithful to promises; there are creative solutions to unusual problems; animals are not designed for the amusement of humans; and when you dedicate yourself to creating something, part of you enters into it. It’s simple story mixed with its litany of responsible morals, making this one of our faves.

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The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

This Seuss book is told mainly in the past tense, and tells the story of a beautiful environment destroyed by greed, big business, and an apathy toward those warning about the destruction of the sky, the water, the land, the plants, and the animals. The crux of the problem is the clear cutting of “Truffula Trees” into extinction. In the end, the person responsible for the destruction gives one last seed to Truffula Trees to a child, and it’s up to him to solve the problem and protect the environment. While this book is a condemnation of big business gone out of control and a proponent of conservationism, the story also teaches children that they can be heroes.

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Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella Hathoff, Craig Hathoff, and Paula Kahumba

This children’s book tells a true story with photographs of the actual characters. The plot goes a little something like this: a baby hippopotamus, Owen, is abandoned in the wild, saved by fishermen, placed in an animal sanctuary with other animals, and befriends a tortoise, Mzee, who teaches Owen how to eat. We learn that science can’t totally explain their relationship, which includes eating, swimming, drinking, sleeping together, as well as demonstrations of affection. Kids end up learning about hippos, tortoises, African countries, and on a larger level, they learn that odd friendships are okay, and that even if two people appear different on the outside they can still get along.

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The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss

This story, one of Geisel’s last, tells the story of Zooks and Yooks, two groups of people who live on opposite sides of an enormous wall, and who despise one another because one eats bread and butter with the butter up and the other with the butter-side down. The two sides fight over the wall with very basic weapons like slingshots, but this quickly escalates, with each side developing larger and wilder weaponry. Eventually the weapons grow so powerful that the two sides don’t actually attack and rather threaten the other side with attack. Both sides end up developing a tiny yet incredibly power bomb, and the citizens are forced into bomb shelters. The book closes unresolved, with both sides threatening to drop this destruction on the other. While clearly a book about the Cold War, this book also teaches children that hatred (which can be ridiculous in its origins) and violence lead to more intense levels of hatred and violence. The moral seems to be, in a word, peace.

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Pet Show by Ezra Jack Keats

Archie, an African-American boy, is the protagonist of this book, in which a pet show occurs in an urban neighborhood where kids can show off their pets. Archie can’t find his cat, and hustles around trying to find his pet so that it can be judged. In the end, Archie brings a glass jar and says that he has brought a pet germ. He wins a blue ribbon for quietest pet. For our money this book teaches two things: first, that creativity and imagination can be used for problem-solving; and second, that a black child can (and should) be the focus of a story that does not overtly deal with race.

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Adoption is for Always by Linda Walvoord Girard

Adoption strikes us one of the ultimate progressive acts. The story in Girard’s picture-book explains adoption and birthmothers and birthfathers alongside realistic black and white illustrations. Because the main character goes through a series of emotions while coming to understand her adoption (loneliness, self-doubt, anger, sadness, and fear), Girard helps adopted children by validating their feelings and at the same time comforting them. For adopted children, this seems like a must-read.

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Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats

This Keats’ book, like his Pet Show, has an African-American little boy as the main character. Peter is the brother to a new baby sister in the house, and he notices that all his old things are being converted to fit his sibling. So Peter takes his old chair away, and thinks about running away from home with his pet dachshund. After realizing that he doesn’t fit in the old chair any more, Peter sits in a “grown up chair” and agrees to help his father paint the old chair for his sister. This book, while subtly battling against racism, teaches children about growing up and caring for one’s siblings despite initially resenting the attention the new child gets.

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Haiku: the mood of the earth by Ann Atword

Before we describe anything else, we need to point out that the photos in this collection of poetry are absolutely gorgeous, and for that reason alone we urge you to check it out for your kids. Haiku is a good form of poetry to teach children because each piece is brief, encourages attention to syllables (when written in the English-language tradition of 5-7-5), and gets kids to pay closer attention to details and the natural world. Teaching conservation, it seems to us, is aided by teaching children to appreciate the environment, something haiku is, essentially, designed to do.

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Seven Brave Women by Betsy Hewne

For our money, the opening of Seven Brave Women sets a fantastic tone: “In the old days, history books marking time by the wars that men fought, but there are other ways to tell time.” The book tells the story of seven generations of women in one little girl’s family. Each lived through a different war, but didn’t fight (“My mother does not believe that wars should be fought at all.” ). The women make art, care for the sick, write books, and care for animals, amongst other positive acts. Hewne’s book ends with the little girl who narrates explaining that she will make her own history like her ancestors did, because “there are a million ways to be brave.” Besides providing positive role models for girls, the book also promotes peace over violence, and bravery outside the bounds of wars.

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You might also check out Dora Goes to School, All Families Are Special, and Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon.

Find & Tell:

If you’d like a method for discovering additional famous and not-so-famous progressive easy-readers, you can ask librarians online 24/7. Allow us to point you to Read This Now, a service provided by the public libraries in Ohio. To increase the odds you get a like-minded librarian assisting you online, we recommend entering the zip codes for either Columbus (43210) or Cleveland (44101), two of the more progressive cities in the Buckeye State.

When you find other suggestions, we’d dig hearing them — just contact us and we’ll pass them along to our readers. Also, you can start a List or a Guide of recommended children’s books on Amazon.com. Here’s the thing, just label it “Great Children’s Books” or something like that. There’s no need to label them as progressive. They’re just great books, so call them that.

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Recycle:

There are kids out there who don’t own books. While they might have access to a library, some, because of a lack of transportation, might not be able to make it to a library. Even if kids in poverty can get to a library, there’s something special about owning books. There’s sense of pride and confidence that comes with owning a book, and there’s a treasuring, a lasting memory. I still remember the first book I could read: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. And I remember my favorite picture book as a kid: The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone. Besides, all children deserve a chance to feed their minds, both for their sakes as well as the culture’s.

There are some very easy (maybe obvious to some) ways to donate used children’s books: hospitals, your local Salvation Army or Goodwill, poor school districts, libraries, and shelters.

For whatever reason, if you’re interested in other options, here are five organizations through which you can pass along the gift of language to kids truly in need of your kindness:

Gently Used Books:

• Reach Out and Read
• Book Aid International
• The Book Man

Brand-Spanking New Books:

• Project Night Night
• Libri Foundation

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Give:

We recently learned about therapy dogs being used by elementary school children as a way to improve their reading skills. The children read aloud to the dog, and often feel more comfortable doing this because the dog sits calmly nearby, apparently listening, and giving no criticisms.

So there’s three things you could do:

1. Learn more about therapy dogs here and here.
2. Contact Therapy Dogs International (here’s their homepage) and see if your dog could qualify for the reading program.
3. Donate a small amount of money to this fantastic organization.

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Photo care of this dog lover.

Anne Lamott live, sort of.

Since it’s Sunday, I thought I’d write my first spirituality related post, sort of. Typically I’m pretty much against the big-wigs of the book-selling industry. As we mentioned a few Wednesdays ago, we do our damnedest to support The Book Corner, the largest independently owned bookstore in Western New York. (To learn more about it, just click this sentence.)

But, and this is an African-Bush-Elephant-sized capital-B “But,” Borders recently hosted a reading by the phenomenal, progressive, wise, and welcoming Christian writer, Anne Lamott (you can read more about her here), and the bookstore has posted video of this complete reading on their website. The video is broken into five short segments so you can watch the sucker over several days or weeks or months if you’d like. However, I’m willing to wager that most of you, regardless of your spiritual beliefs, will find her engaging and moving. She’s hardly a Bible thumper, and she writes openly and honestly about parenthood, alcoholism, politics, and the process of writing.

You can watch the video by clicking this sentence.

If you watch closely during the question and answer period, you’ll catch our very own Carey Mack (author of our appropriately named “What’s in Carey Mack’s Pocket?” column) asking the first question. Do you and your heart a favor and check it, yo.

Like that.

For my money, Tim Seibles is one of the greatest living American poets. I’ve just recently cracked into his latest book, Buffalo Head Solos, and I wish I’d started it sooner. It’s one of those books that you realize you didn’t realize you were waiting for. Also, it must be said that his book Hurdy-Gurdy is absolutely masterful. If you’re looking for accessible, heart-aching and heart-lifting art, well, that book doesn’t make a misstep. (Just as an FYI, I’ll be reviewing Buffalo Head Solos in the not-so-distant future.)

I came across a poem of his the other day that just needed to be shared, that I think folks will be able to relate to quite easily, that jacked up the endorphins going to my head, or heart, or head-heart, whatever it is that makes us love anything in this world. And frankly, this poem is so kick-me-in-the-keister good, I wanted an excuse to type it. I hope you dig. Reading it is three minutes well spent.

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FIRST KISS

Her mouth

fell into my mouth

like a summer snow, like a

5th season, like a fresh Eden,

like Eden when Eve made God

whimper with the liquid

tilt of her hips –

her kiss   hurt like that –

I mean, it was as if she'd mixed

the sweat of an angel

with the taste of a tangerine,

I swear. My mouth

had been a helmet forever

greased with secrets, my mouth

a dead-end street a little bit

lit by teeth — my heart, a clam

slammed shut at the bottom of a dark,

but her mouth pulled up

like a baby-blue Cadillac

packed with canaries driven

by a toucan — I swear

those lips said bright

wings when we kissed, wild

and precise — as if she were

teaching a seahorse to speak –

her mouth    so careful, chumming

the first vowel from my throat

until my brain was a piano

banged loud, hammered like that –

it was like, I swear   her tongue

was Saturn's 7th moon –

hot like that, hot

and cold and circling,

circling, turning me

into a glad planet –

sun on one side, night pouring

her slow hand over the other: one first

flying like the kite of another.

Her kiss, I swear — if the Great

Mother   rushed open the moon

like a gift and you were there

to feel your shadow finally

unhooked from your wrist.

That'd be it, but even sweeter –

like a riot of peg legged priests

on pogo-sticks, up and up,

this way and this, not

falling but on and on

like that, badly behaved

but holy — I swear! That

kiss, both lips utterly committed

to the world    like a Peace Corps,

like a free story, forever and always

a new city — no locks, no walls, just

doors — like that, I swear,

like that.

How to Read Nonfiction Progressively

Problem:

There are hundreds (probably thousands) of strong progressive books published each year, and you might not know where to begin. Or you might know where to begin, but not where to end. Or you might know where the middle is but…. Nevermind. You get the idea.

So please consider this just a humble snippet of what’s available and a primer for where you might shop.

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Make Literate Progress:

Let’s cut right to the French-Connection chase — here are four great reads we adore, each of which encouraged us to make progress happen:

1. Fast Food Nation, the New York Times best-seller by Atlantic Monthly reporter Eric Schlosser, dissects the fast-food industry, and reveals an ugly, hidden interior. Schlosser writers with objective passion, honesty, superb support defending his claims, and first-hand narrative. I’m awed by the depths to with fast food has altered our country, almost under our noses. How we missed the stink is beyond me after reading this tome. The book starts at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station in Colorado and ends with simple solutions for ending the power of fast food. In between, he tackles the origins of the business, advertising to children, the fast-food workforce, franchising, produce farms, flavoring, cattle ranches, poultry farms, meatpacking, food poisoning, and globalization. We dare you (no, we double-dog dare you) to eat at McDonalds after reading Schlosser’s account.

2. As the parent of a daughter, Eric was blown away by Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, a keen analysis of the “raunch culture” and its impact on, in particular, girls and women. Her narratives depicting Girls Gone Wild and the adult industry will peel back your eyelids a bit. In short, Levy argues that, to a certain degree, some women have essentially injured American women in general by participating and celebrating objectification. It’s witty, shocking, well-researched, and enlightening.

3. The heartfelt story-telling and research in Ordinary Resurrections, a book written by Jonathan Kozol, quite literally, overhauled Matt’s attitudes about education, poverty, racism, contemporary segregation, prison, and children. Kozol spends a great deal of time with elementary students in the Bronx, and his narrative deftly demonstrates the impact of under-funded schools on the lives of innocent kids. It’s a tough read at times (the stories vary between horrifying and glorifying), but worth it every your-time-is-money moment of it. Kozol’s not just out to change the way you feel; he wants you to take action, and his solution arcs through the entire book.

4. Okay, this last one might not be overtly progressive in that it’s a somewhat sardonic read, but Fran Lebowitz’s first two books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, pretty much make us cry with laughter. We’d like to recommend The Fran Lebowitz Reader, which collects her first two books together. Here’s how this book strikes us as progressive: in America, women are actively and tacitly discouraged to be this kind of funny. Lebowitz clearly cares less about social norms; in fact, she tends to criticize the norm throughout her erudite, wise and wry writings. (For more of her humor, you can read an interview here.)

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Some Ways and Means:

1. Soft Skull Press is the place progressives ought to start their search for books that will fit right in their wheelhouses. Soft Skull prints books of fiction, poetry, and art which all rock, but for right now we’ll focus on the nonfiction stuff we’re thankful that they crank out. These days, we’re in the middle of two of their fantastic reads: Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground and The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman. We’ll pop out reviews of each in a week or so, but let’s just say these books have us nodding our heads with each page. Soft Skull a press that requires any true progressive’s attention, and you can check out their catalog by clicking right over here.

2. Chelsea Green is suddenly one of our favorite presses: a small but vibrant independent publishing house, featuring nonfiction “focused on the politics and practice of sustainable living.” What does sustainable living mean to Chelsea Green? It means books about protecting small farms, the reinvention of cities, eco-friendly homes, and solar energy. They also have books about progressive linguistics, and, most importantly, solutions for folks who love our country and our planet. You might want to start by ordering or downloading a free catalog.

3. Do check out The New Press, a not-for-profit book publisher in the vein of PBS and NPR, doling out “ideas and viewpoints under-represented in the mass media.” These folks are all about getting progressive texts into the hands of as many folks as they can, and money the press earns is funneled directly back into publishing the work of others. You can find inspiring work like Alice Walker’s (yes, that Alice Walker) We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For and Studs Terkel’s Giants of Jazz, along side more overtly political books such as Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy by Stephen Duncombe. (We’re also very interested in getting around to reading Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music by Chris Willman.) The body of work they’ve published demonstrates a concern for conservationism, fair trade, and the development of new pharmaceuticals. Their catalog (which includes fiction and children’s books, amongst other kinds of writing) won’t disappoint.

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And As Always…

You also have these resources available to you to help find progressive nonfiction in general, or on specific topics you’re concerned about:

• Ask us. We’re here for ya.
• Ask the folks on progressive message-boards and blogs like Daily Kos.
• Ask a librarian online, 24/7. You can type in 44114 as your zip code (that’s a Cleveland, Ohio zip).

Photo clicked by this literature lover.

A Book Does a Body Good: Buy (or Borrow) & Read

Buy (or Borrow) & Read:

We've compiled a brief list of books (sixteen to be exact) we'd recommend reading to your future progressives. If you're interested in picking up a copy of any of these tomes for your very own, we recommend going through a small, privately-owned Western New York business, The Book Corner. These guys make finding odd or out-print-books look like making instant pudding. (Mmm– ¦ pudding.) Of course, you can always hunt down most of these titles through your local library or library system (we did).

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I Live on a Farm by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Kehoe's book uses photos instead of illustrations, and teaches children about items and actions unique to farm, such as storage silos, bales of hay, barns, tractors, harvesting, and irrigating. The book also has a discreet anti-pesticide message. We believe this book will help kids who live on farms have more pride about where they live, and will help suburban and city kids better understand life in rural America. Empathy is the most progressive of emotions.

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Spiders by Ann Heinrichs

Spiders is a children's science book that discusses the benefits of spiders (which are referred to as “nature's friends– ) to both the environment and humans. With Heinrichs' book, kids can learn key science terms, scientific history, cultural myths, and facts about reproduction. The text also addresses the common fear of spiders: “Spiders are afraid of you. To a spider, you look like a giant.– To further ease fears, Spiders emphasizes that very few arachnids are dangerous to humans. Kids also encouraged to be in awe of both spiders' silk and webs. We'll take appropriate awe over fear any day.

*

At Daddy's on Saturdays by Linda Walvoord Girard

This 32-page picture-book helps kids understand the true causes of divorce (read: it's not the child's fault). Little readers also learn that both parents, despite separation, still love their children, that sadness is an understandable reaction, and that a child can feel at home with both their mother and father. We highly recommend At Daddy's on Saturday's, as well as the other books by Girard, who's not afraid to tackle emotionally charged topics like AIDS, adoption, and sexual abuse.

*

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport

This beautifully designed book won Best Illustrated Children's Book of 2001 from the New York Times Book Review, and deserved it. The book shares the biography of Dr. King along side breathtaking drawings and pithy, inspiring quotations drawn from Dr. King. The heart of the book is that courage, love, learning, and human rights shall win the day. Rappaport doesn't gloss over Dr. King's death, and she reminds kids that good work and good words on earth live on after you do. Both are, in fact, a way to make progress.

Continue reading ‘A Book Does a Body Good: Buy (or Borrow) & Read’

National Poetry Month: “Won’t You Celebrate With Me”

I came to know the poetry of Lucille Clifton when I first started writing during high school. I came to truly appreciate the poetry of Lucille Clifton only recently.

Why? I don’t know for sure, but I think Clifton’s work benefits from a reader who has a better understanding of suffering, which is also to say, a reader who has a better understanding of joy. When I was in high school, I thought suffering was not getting to play street hockey, and I thought joy was, well, was getting to play street hockey.

Then, I thought, Why doesn’t she capitalize? And now I like to think of Clifton’s poems as little mirrors reflecting our own complex lives and, at the same time, as little windows into the congruent lives of others. And now I realize Clifton’s gift: she manages to teach without preaching; she illuminates.

And if it’s a resume you want, well, a resume she’s got: umpteen books of poetry and nonfiction, as well as 16 books for children; two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; two Pulitzer Prize nominations; and (get this) an Emmy.

But these accolades don’t do justice to Clifton’s work, work grounded so deeply in real experience that we can’t help but nod as we let her words whirl around in our heads.

Enjoy.

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WON’T YOU CELEBRATE WITH ME

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won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

In Memoriam: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. I felt I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least give him a mention on this site, because he did, unbeknownst to him, three powerful things for me:

1. He taught me that writing can meld humor and humanism.
2. He filled my coffee cup to the brim with a desire to write.
3. He further convinced me that, while we’re an ugly species at times, we have the capacity for goodness.

Mr. Vonnegut was the author of 14 novels, most notably Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and the mild-melting and heart-opening Slaughterhouse-Five. The latter was a fictionalization of his experience as a POW army infantryman who managed to survive the fire-bombing of Dresden. I say fictionalization because, on top of the depictions of WWII, this thing is chock-full of aliens, time-warping, and humans on display as zoo animals (for the aforementioned extraterrestrials). The book is hilarious and horrifying and humanizing. It’s utterly brilliant. And it’s one of the treasures of American literature. If you haven’t read it, please do. Given the current state of war in the world, it seems like a timely novel because, as his writings suggest, all wars are part of the same war.

If you have read Slaughterhouse-Five, let me recommend my second favorite Vonnegut book, the rather under-the-radar novel, Slapstick. It’s weird as all hell, and in my opinion, it’s weird in all the right ways.

To see one of the last interviews of Mr. Vonnegut, just click this sentence to witness his appearance on The Daily Show.

I’ll leave you, and my discussion of him, with some of my favorite Vonnegut quotations:

• “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
• “If you really want to disappoint your parents, and don’t have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts.”
• “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ “
• “I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can’t help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what He or She is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”
• From Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons: “A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.”
• From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies – ” – ˜[Damn] it, you've got to be kind.' –