• Rated 4 stars

“I enjoyed Ray’s “Ecology of a Childhood Cracker” so much I sought out more of her books. She ends her first book with having left home for college in the Georgia highlands. Now, seventeen years later, Ray returns, moving into her deceased Grandmother’s “heart pine” home, a place that might fall in had not the termites been holding hands (19). She’s a single parent with a young son. She has a Master’s Degree and has lived in Montana and Florida. Through essays, Ray gives us a glimpse of her life as she tries to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong and show that one can come home again. But it’s not an easy trip and at times Ray is ready to throw in the towel and strike out for more promising lands.

This book is multi-faceted. On the one hand, it’s about the role “place” plays in our lives and stories. I love her idea of how we learn place from light (275) and how she describes the passing of time by the shadows and the rising and setting of the sun (160f). Reading this, I recalled winters in the longleaf forest that use to be behind the home where I grew up and how the trees would casts such long shadows. The book is also about relationships and Ray writes honestly about her relationship with her parents, her deceased grandmother, Uncle Percy, her son, and a sister who is estranged from her family but who is reunited with them at Janisse’s wedding. The book is also about longing for relationships as Ray mentions going out with another single woman in search of a man (80f), and how she finally found her “man” reading a book at a folk music festival (287f). Some of the stories are a little sappy for my taste, almost like chick-lit, but I enjoyed them anyway. Throughout the book, one learns of the loss the rural south and what it means for the ecosystem. I hope she keeps writing, we need more voices that understand the interconnectedness between the human race and nature.

One senses grace in Ray’s life. I love her story of judging a pork cooking contest. She had not eaten pork in 20 years, but finally agreed to be a judge. A pot of Brunswick stew took first place. Concluding the essay, she writes:
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From the pork-cooking contest I learned that many things are above dogma. Respect, for example. Love. The requirements of our place in a community may land us in the middle of odd, funny stories we never schemed for ourselves. What we are asked to contribute may lie outside the lines of what we imagine. Some of our participation we can’t design. (273)

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Many of these essays elicit a personal response from me. I felt a tinge of guilt when she laments over those Southerners who love the wild having fled the South (189). I’m one of them (although I’ve been adopted by the intermountain west). Thinking back, I was most involved with the Sierra Club when I lived in the South, at a time when the group wasn’t popular, but it seemed to me that they were the only ones in the late 70s talking about the need to preserve ecosystems. I also became nostalgic reading about wire grass and long leaf pines, two species that played an important role in the worlds in which Ray and I had been “raised up.” She speaks of coming into a longleaf forest that “stood out like the Kingdom of Heaven, suddenly tall and very green, praising the sky” (116). Finally, melancholy swept over me when I learned that she discovers her “soul-mate” while he’s reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve read that book several times, the first being back in the 70s and never found a nature loving woman with a southern drawl that was interested in the book. If one said anything about me reading the book, it was probably about how motorcycles are dangerous or that Zen is some kind of pagan religion.

I've also published my review in my blog.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 13 days ago. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“I wrote this for my blog and am posting it here too.

In the last fifteen days of March (which falls on this particular year at the end of Lent) Raleigh Whittier Hayes watches his life collapse only to experience a resurrection between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The turmoil begins on the Ides of March at a luncheon for Thermopylae’s Civitans Club, held at the Lotus House. All the leading business leaders of this Piedmont town in North Carolina begin to receive bad news in their fortune cookies. Some advise that they’ll be betrayed or will die of cancer. The paper in Raleigh’s fortune cookie reads: “You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month.”

Raleigh is a successful businessman. He owes an insurance company and has a nice home, two oceanfront rentals, two automobiles, and a retirement fund. He’s well thought of by other people in the community as a man who can be trusted and who is honest and does what is right. He’s extremely loyal, moral, and decent, and even though he’s a member of a Baptist Church, he really doesn’t put much stock in God. His lack of faith occurred when he first joined the church. Raleigh thought he’d made an agreement with God, to believe in the Almighty if he was given the strength of Samson. Feeling that God didn’t keep up his end of the bargain, Raleigh assumes God isn’t interested in human affairs.

We learn in the Prologue that “The day came when the members of the court of Heaven took their places in the presence of the Lord.” Like Job of old, Raleigh will be tested. It all starts with him learning that his father has escaped from the hospital with a black teenage girl and is driving a new Cadillac to New Orleans. The older Hayes wants his son to do a few errands for him and then to meet him in the Crescent City. Thus begins Raleigh’s adventure.

Raleigh’s father is the (ex) Reverend Earley Hayes, a former Episcopalian priest who had been removed from his church for extra-martial affairs. Among the things Raleigh is to collect and bring with him to New Orleans is a statue of one of Thermopylae’s leading citizens, a trumpet, an old chest, a bluesman from Charleston, and his half-brother Gates. His father also wants Raleigh to buy for himself a piece of lakefront property. Raleigh is torn, but because of loyalty to the father and fear he’ll be written out of the will, he begins the quest. He buys the property for way less than its value because the man who owns it thinks Raleigh is blackmailing him because of his extra-martial affairs (of which he assumes Raleigh knows about, but he really doesn’t, which makes for perhaps the funniest real estate transaction ever put to print). Raleigh, in a complete out-of-character manner, also breaks into the library to steal the plaster statue residing in the basement. In addition to his father’s request, Raleigh brings along Mingo, his best friend (who has accused Raleigh of having an affair with his wife). Along the way they are rolled by punks, spend time recovering with nuns, encounter Marines when they trespass onto a military base (mistaking the sign for Topsail Beach for Top Soil and driving a dirt road at night onto the Marine’s domain. While Raleigh is having his own adventure, his wife back home is becoming a leader of the “Mothers for Peace” and taking on the local congressman.

This book is filled with characters. Many have ties to the Blues, but then there’s a Jewish thief (whose family leaves out two empty chairs on Passover, one for Elijah, the other for the wayward crook), mobsters, drug runners, Klansman, and a pregnant teenage girl (Mingo helps her deliver the baby). The events take place on a journey to New Orleans, with a detour over to the coast of North Carolina, stopping around Jacksonville and then Kure Beach, on to South Carolina with stops at Myrtle Beach and on to Charleston, and then Atlanta. While in Atlanta, the folks now travelling with Raleigh has it out with a group of mobsters and drug runners at Stone Mountain, in what may be the funniest chase scene ever written. They finally make it to New Orleans, where Raleigh catches up with his Dad on Good Friday. Along the way we learn some interesting family secrets such as the identity of the girl that was in his father’s Cadillac when he escaped from the hospital (if I said anything more, I’d spoil the book and by the time I explained it, this review would be novella). Finally, on Easter Sunday, an enlightened Raleigh is back at Thermopylae in church, sitting with his beloved wife, who is now a candidate for Mayor.

This is a grand book, with many twist and turns. It’s amazing that Malone can tie most everything together.

In an interview, Malone admitted his novel is a modern retelling of the Don Quixote. Malone, in his acknowledgments credits Miguel Cervantes along with Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens. The book is filled with insight into issues of faith as well as family secrets. It deals with Southern issues such as racism, in a humorous way. I recommend it! You’ll have many days of laughter.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | view 1 replies | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I was given a copy of this book when I graduated from high school. I didn't read it for years (and it's been a couple decades since I read it). I read it after learning important role the book played in the Social Gospel movement in the early 20th century... A century before the WWJD (what would Jesus do) movement swept America, Sheldon explores what would happen if a businessman tried to live his life according to Jesus' teachings.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I was lent a copy of this book shortly after it was published. At the time I was living in Western New York. The book tells about the anti-war protests at the University of Buffalo. ”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I wrote this review for my blog and am reposting it here.

I have invited Dave, a retired school administrator, to facilitate an annual staff planning retreat next month. In planning the retreat, Dave asked if I’d read a little book titled Who Moved My Cheese. He suggested he use it in his presentation and dropped me off a copy to review. This is a short book (It’ll probably take me longer to write this post than it did to read the book), but don’t sell the book short. There are some valuable lessons about change on these few pages.

This is the story of two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two littlepeople, Hem and Haw. They live in a maze and spend their days in search of cheese. One day they come upon a great find (Cheese Station C). There is an abundance of cheese and they settle in, growing fat and lazy. Hem and Haw begin to see themselves as “owners” of the cheese. But then, one day, the cheese is gone. Sniff and Scurry put back on their running shoes and begin to explore the maze, looking for new cheese. Hem and Haw feel bitter as they’ve come to think they’re entitled to the cheese. They have become afraid of the maze and sulk around. But one day Haw decides it’s time to go out in search of new cheese. Hem refuses to join his quest. Haw finds his running shoes, laces them up and goes out in search of new cheese. Along the way, he finds morsels of cheese, but nothing that can sustain him for long. He keeps searching as he learns new truths, such as “what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine” (63). He draws graffiti on the maze, pictures of cheese with tidbits of wisdom inside, in case Hem decides to follow him. Examples include:
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“If You Do Not Change, You Become Extinct.” (46)
“What Would You Do If You Were Not Afraid?” (48)
“Movement in a New Direction Helps You Find New Cheese.” (54)
“Old Beliefs Do Not Lead You To New Cheese” (64)

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Along the way, Haw begins to enjoy the journey. He discovers that you “can believe that change will harm you and resist it. Or you can believe that finding new cheese will help you, and embrace the change” (65). He also begins to use his mind to envision himself finding something that is better. He reflects on his mistakes and plans for the future and, in the end, discovers an even more abundant cache of cheese than had existed in Cheese Station C. But as he enjoys all the cheese in this new station, he keeps his running shoes nearby for the time he’ll have to return to the maze in search of cheese.

At the end of his journey, Haw summarizes wisdom learned:
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Change Happens (They keep moving the cheese)
Anticipate Change (Get ready for the cheese to move)
Monitor Change (Smell the cheese often so you know when it’s getting old)
Adapt to Change Quickly (The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you can enjoy new cheese)
Change (Move with the cheese)
Enjoy Change! (Savor the Adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese)
Be Ready to Change Quickly and Enjoy it Again and Again (They keep moving the cheese) (74)
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This is a wonderful parable about change and about the difference between leadership and management. The forward is written by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D., who coauthored with Johnson the One Minute Manager, another little gem that I read back in the mid-80s. I recommend both books.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I've also posted this review in my blog...

We have a choice; we can change or we can experience slow death, according to Robert Quinn, a professor of business at the University of Michigan. In this book, Quinn discusses how individuals and organizations can bring about transformational changes that helps create excellence and alters the culture of organizations. It’s risky business to make “deep changes” as they are sweeping and irreversible. But such changes are also essential for survival. The leader who navigates such changes sails across unpredictable waters and must be somewhat of a maverick. The organization tries to make life predictable and systematic; deep change requires one “to build the bridge as you walk on it.” It’s more of a spiritual process, requiring faith and the commitment to do what one knows is right, even in the face of great opposition. The organization, the status quo, will always resist. Such a leader must be willing to maintain the course and to create a compelling vision to bring others along on the journey.

Quinn’s book has four basic sections. The first deals with the need for change. He then discusses personal change (with a valuable chapter on building integrity), changing the organization and then ending with a section on “Vision, Risk, and the Creation of Excellence.” In each section, he discusses both what is necessary for the organization and for the individual leader to be about if change is to be successful. At the end of each chapter are useful questions for the reader to ask about his or her life and the organizations that the reader belongs. I often spent more time pondering these questions than I spent reading the book as they tended to make the book more applicable to all sorts of settings.

As individuals who join organizations, we go through a transformation. At first, it’s all about what the organization can do for us in exchange for our competence. As our competence grows and we move deeper into the organization (or up a career level), we become managers. Here, our “competence” is still valuable, but one has to begin to also look out for the organization. Anywhere along the line, we might decide that change is too painful and opt for “peace and pay” as we wait to exit (or until retirement). Sometimes our competence even gets into the way of us seeing new ways of doing things (Quinn has a chapter on the Tyranny of Competence). Only a few are able to move on into the final stage and become “internally driven leaders.” These visionary leaders have the will to risk to bring about changes necessary for the long term survival of the company. They have a vision for which they are willing to die (or at least be fired over). Of course, just having a grand vision once isn’t enough. Transformation is a cycle that is repeated over and over in any organization.

I don’t read too many business books, but I found myself doing a lot of personal thinking as I read this book. It’s a valuable book and I recommend it.
”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Friday, July 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“This is a great collection of short stories about Vietnam. I love the title story, where he describes the "stuff" carried by soldiers on their patrols.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Wednesday, June 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“I've enjoyed all of Berry's "Port William books," but Jayber is my favorite. The story of the town's barber, Jayber ends up in Port William after the 1937 flood (quite an event along the Ohio River). It tells the story of his failed attempt at love and his wonderful way of taking care of people. Although a novel, there's a lot of theology in this book.”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Wednesday, June 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“This collection of stories of a seasonal ranger (actually collected over several seasons) shows the beauty and unique world of the Colorado Plateau. Although Abbey is best known for his fiction and essays, I'd consider this book one of his finest and a wonderful example of "creative non-fiction."”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Wednesday, June 18 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“A classic example of creative non-fiction. Williams ties together her mother's battle with cancer and the problems the rising of the Great Salt Lake was having on the bird population around the lake (the lake rose in the 80s, it's been retreating since).”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Monday, June 16 2008. ( reply | permalink )