Sagecoveredhills

• Rated 5 stars

“Good review of the last decades of tenant farming in the North Carolina tobacco fields”

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

• Rated 4 stars

“I’ve known the name R. C. Fowler nearly all my life, but to the best of my knowledge, never met him. He was a well-known businessman and real estate agent in Wilmington and when I was visiting my parents last summer, I came across his book, a memoir of growing up during the depression and World War II in a used book store. It sounded interesting so I picked it and have enjoyed reading it.

Fowler was born in 1927, in a cotton mill village in Wilmington, North Carolina. His early years were spent around Eastern North Carolina, with time in Columbus County and later in Fayetteville. In the heat of the Depression, his family moved back to where he was born, to Mill Hill, a community around the Spofford Cotton Mills, just off Wrightsville Avenue. It was a company town and his father and grandfather and many uncles worked in the mills. As a young child, he tells about staying with his grandmother and recalls memories of the candy counter in the store across the street. He learns about cockfighting as well as the way to “pay respects” for those who have died. He attends Sunday School at the Presbyterian Church, and his aunt longs for the day the Baptist can afford to build a church.

In 1937, when he was nine, Fowler’s family moved to a tobacco farm in Pender County, twenty-five miles north of Wilmington, on land that his mother had inherited. There, he’s taken “coon hunting” with his dad and learns the hard work of farming. Slowly the family prospered as they raised tobacco for cash and other crops to for food. They had a cow for milk and chickens and a mule to plow the fields. Fowler learned to plow as well as to cut wood for the stove and the for the tobacco barn. Still a boy, he was staying with the barns over night, keeping the fire going and the heat up, as his daddy drove into town to work in the mills and later, as the country went to war, in the shipyard and at Camp Davis. In time, the family acquired more land and another mule, electricity was extended to the home and they no longer had to huddle around two kerosene lamps.

Still a boy, Fowler learned about hard work, especially when his daddy became ill and wasn’t able to work a period of time. He helped set out the tobacco and the other crops, cut word, plow and chop down weeds, and even dug a shallow well to use as a cooler for milk and other perishables. Digging the well, he learned the meaning of the phrase, “as cold as a well-digger’s ass.” As he approached the age of twelve, he was filled with guilt as he’d been told this was the age of accountability (I can remember thinking about this when I turned 12). His aunts pushed him to get right with God and once, at a holiness service, he confessed his sins. When the holiness preacher wanted to hold services at his home, his father allowed it but decided that even though it was night, he needed to go into the woods to “cut stove wood.”

The book ends in the fall of 1945. Fowler is in the Merchant Marines, on a ship out of Norfolk, sailing off the Carolina Coast. After he graduated from high school, his parents ask him to stay on till the end of the summer, offering him the profits from an acre of tobacco. With money in his pockets, he heads back to Wilmington and takes a position within the office of the Atlantic Coastline Railway. Being inside doesn’t set well for a young man who’d spent most of his life outdoors, doing hard work, and he soon leaves high seas.

Fowler frequently uses dialogue to tell his story, which gives the book a down-home feel. He sprinkles his writings with sayings, many of which I haven’t heard since I was a child. This book gives us an insight into the world of my grandparents and it was a pleasure to read. Another book that I’d recommend as an insight into this time (one that combines a sociological study with personal memories) is Linda Flowers, Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina. All though both families were poor on the farm, Fowlers on the land and that made a big difference in what he experienced compared to the Flowers family who were sharecroppers.”

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

• Rated 3 stars

“I read this in college. From what I remember, it provided a good introduction into dialectial materialsm and then in the second half of the book, negated everything said about the subject as the author (probably not Stalin) tried to explain the philosophy in light of Soviet system.”

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

• Rated 3 stars

“In Through Painted Deserts, two young wannabe hippies, 30 years after Woodstock, take off from Houston, Texas in a VW bus. Heading to Oregon, they also long for the experience of the road. Along the way, they crash with friends and hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and find ways to over mechanical troubles for which the old buses were infamous. When things look desperate, someone always seems to offer a hand. There’s the mechanic that stops when they’re beside the road in the desert and an owner of a diner who gives them free meals. Once in Oregon, they take a summer job working at a ranch. Both Don (the author) and his friend Paul are Christians. Don seems intrigued with Paul’s laid back way, the manner in which he finds people more important than ideas. During their travels, they discuss their faith, their hopes in a spouse and family, what is important in life, and how to break out of the material trap of the modern world. In many ways, these two Evangelical Protestant young men rebel against both a faith and a society they had in Houston, one that appears to lift up abundance. Truly, I think they really set out in the hope that "abundant life" means something more than just a larger salary with a nice home, a car and consumer debt.

This was Don Miller’s first book, even though it was only published in this form after he had published several others. It's the second of his books that I’ve read. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it was as good or as mature in outlook as the first book of his I read, Blue Like Jazz.
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Sagecoveredhills wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Our current management practices grew out of the rapid industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th century. In their time, they were very efficient at dividing up labor and responsibilities and creating hierarchies along with rules and regulations. These practices have raised productivity and increased our standard of living. Unfortunately, as the pace of change accelerated over the past few decades, those organizations holding tight to past practices have found themselves left behind. In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel calls for new management innovations to meet the new challenges of the business world where old corporate oligopolies now finding themselves competing with fast start-up companies; a world where the internet and the digitalization of media have shifted power from the producer to the consumer and threatened intellectual property rights; and a world where decrease costs for communication and the increase globalization now means every industry is faced with ultra-low priced competition. In this new landscape, those who hold on to the past will fail. Yet, change is hard because we have so much invested in the former ways of doing things. Change requires organizations to alter their corporate DNA.

In the past, no one expected managers to be innovators. Their task was to take ideas from other people and figure out a way to make a profit. (35) In the new organization Hamel foresees, the work of innovation will be everyone’s job and one of the task of those in management will be to create a company where everyone gives their best. We need to tap into the brain power of all members of an organization. One of the problems facing all companies and organizations is that only 14% of the employees (in a worldwide study) were seen as highly engaged in their work. With the changes we’re experiencing in the world today, passion, creativity and initiative are far more important than intellect, diligence and obedience. An organization with too much hierarchy and too little freedom will have a hard time navigating the continual changes that are now required. Organizations need to learn how they can broaden employee freedom without sacrificing focus, discipline and order, how they can enhance the community to bind people together (as opposed to the bureaucracy binds people together), and how to instill in everyone a sense of mission that calls them to do the extraordinary.

Hamel provides three case studies of companies who’s management practices are innovative. Whole Food Markets is a supermarket that takes on the challenge of reversing the industrialization of the world’s food supply and to give people better things to eat. The second group is a private company, W. L. Gore, started by a former Dupont Engineer, that attempts to do away with the traditional hierarchy of corporations and that encourages all employees to work on new ideas. The third organization is Google, who has a 70-20-10 rule. Seventy percent of one’s work time is on core business, twenty percent on new products that can extend the core and ten percent devoted to fringe ideas. Working at Google is often described as feeling like graduate school. All these companies strive to get the most of their employees by allowing them all freedom to be innovators. Unlike traditional companies that has a special department to develop new ideas, one that’s often kept at a distance from the rest of the organization, these companies see involve everyone in developing new ideas and products.

Of course, making such a change is not easy (Hamel describes it as escaping the shackles). Hamel uses life, markets, democracy, faith and cities as metaphors in describing how to generate new ideas. Hamel identifies six challenges to existing organizations:
Creating a democracy of ideas
Amplifying human imagination
Dynamically reallocating resources
Aggregating collective wisdom
Minimizing the drag of old mental models
Giving everyone an opportunity to opt in

In the final chapter, Hamel describes the attempts by three organization to re-invent their management-- IBM, GE and Best Buy--as he makes the case that management is not at the end, but it needs an update (like a new release of a computer program)..

Although reading business books isn’t exciting, there is much in this book that should cause us to look at our particular organizations and ask the questions that Hamel raises as we look to the future.”

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

• Rated 4 stars

“Pilgrims have been heading to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain for more than a millennium. The site, believed to be the burial of the Apostle James, was one of three most popular pilgrimages during the Middle Ages, the other two being Rome and Jerusalem. I first heard of the pilgrimage when hiking the Appalachian Trail and it’s always been lodged in the back of my mind as something I would like to do someday. So, with that in mind, I recently decided to read up on the journey and selected this book as my starting point. Kevin Codd is an American, a Catholic Priest who spent seven years running a seminary in Belgium. During this time he made a 35 day, 500 mile pilgrimage,. His journey began in the French border town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and from there he headed across the border and northern Spain, joining up with other pilgrims as they head east.

The pilgrim’s route is well marked and heavily traveled. Along the way, there are refugios (hostels) where for a few Euros, the pilgrims can spend the night. There are many towns and villages along the way, allowing the traveler to travel lighter and to carry only snacks. Codd quickly settles into a routine, leaving early in the morning in order to avoid the afternoon heat, stopping for coffee and a snack in the midmorning, often arriving at his destination by noon, allowing him time during the hot afternoons to nap, find a shady place to read, write, swim or drink beer and to wash clothes. In recalling the trip, we learn of his problems with blisters (he has this problem the entire time, possibly because he daily lathers his feet in Vaseline). He talks of being hot and dirty, the stiffness of muscles and the challenge of snorers in the hostels. Along the way, he has conversations with some mountain goats and a snail and, at the end, with Santiago. The mountain goats give him the best advice, “Remain humble on this road or the road will humble you.” (15) Santiago refused to answer if he was the one who saved him and his companions from a thunderstorm that split into two cells and missed them, telling Codd that he’d know the answer when he gets to heaven. (267)

Friendships become an important aspect of the journey and Codd tells about the many friends he makes as well as those who get on his nerves (including a number of fellow priest he meets along the way). His writing in introspective and he often begins to question his own feelings such as judging a priest harshly for a lifeless mass and then wondering what was going on in the priest‘s life or in his own to cause him to feel that way. In time, Codd settles into a group of pilgrims. As a group, they often eat their meals together (sometimes even preparing them, but most often eating in bars and restaurants along the way. They make fun of the “super walkers” who try to cover as much mileage as possible as well as those who make the journey with a car carrying their gear or who just do short sections of the walk. As pilgrims, they live by a creed, turistas manden; peregrinos agradeced (tourist demand, pilgrims thank, 145). Slowly, as they get closer to the end, they feel the draw of Santiago. There is also the problem of an increase in the number of pilgrims along the way and they have a harder time finding lodging, which necessitates them arriving at the cathedral at the end a day before they’d planned.

I love the title of the book, which is based on a Latin interpretation of “Compostela (Compo means field and stella means stars). However, I was sadden that Codd always spend nights inside and never got to experience the stars at night. He does tells of one pilgrim who decides to climb and camp next to an old castle just to watch the stars and I felt a certain kinship with that chap. As one who’d served Mexican missions, Cadd’s Spanish is good enough that few people realize he’s an American, which allows him to learn more about what other people in the world think about Americans (and it’s not always nice or pleasant).

Having done longer hikes, I related to a lot of Codd’s experiences along the way and enjoyed the book. As I’ve been working through my journals of my Appalachian Trail hikes, I realize that I was not nearly as detailed as Codd, who recorded thoughts and kept detail accounts of what his body was experiencing. For those who like to do long hikes, I recommend this book.
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Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Saturday, November 7 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“A short book that can easily be read in one sitting and is inspired by a little known nativity story in Revelation 12”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Saturday, November 7 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I listened to this book and enjoyed it. I'll never forget Green Boots. ”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Wednesday, November 4 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“I like a lot of what Bell has to say, but it's nothing new. I think his title probably helped his book sell. ”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Wednesday, November 4 2009. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“What do you get when a computer geek steeped in Calvinist thought spends his evenings listening to oldies on the radio and his wife screaming about the buckling linoleum in the kitchen while reading the Left Behind series? One possibility would be a novel like Mercury Falls.
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This book is a hoot. I was immediately caught up in Christine’s world (as opposed to Andrew Wythe’s Christina’s World). Christine, a reporter for a Christian news magazine, travels around the country checking out doomsday prophets who always seem to miss the mark. In the opening chapter, she’s covering the supposedly end of the world in the desert outside of Elko, Nevada (it may not be the end of the world, but you can see it from there). It turns out that the Church of the Bridegroom wasn‘t able to produce the ten necessary virgins with the lamp oil. This time, unlike the parable in scripture, there‘s enough oil to go around, just not enough virgins. When the sunrises and Jesus fails to show, the supposedly virgin bridesmaids begin to point fingers, blaming each other and allowing the prophet‘s embarrassment to be replaced with righteous indignation (even though he‘s part of the reason the church lacks virgins). Christine hates her job.
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While Christine is reporting on the failure of yet another apocalypse, a demon slips into her Los Angeles apartment and just about burns it down while fixing a toasted cheese sandwich. When she finally gets back in the office, after getting a lucky deal for new linoleum for her destroyed kitchen, she informs her boss that she’s done with reporting on two-bit prophets and their predictions. So Harry, her boss, sends her to Israel to cover the beginning of a new war, one which might be the beginning of something big, like Armageddon. There, while interviewing an Israeli general, she is nearly killed. The general wasn’t so lucky; he is killed. Also, in the chaos, she’s given a briefcase to deliver to a guy named Mercury in Berkeley, California. It turns out Mercury is an angel, a rather lazy angel who loves Rice Krispy treats and playing ping-pong. She and Mercury then meet Karl, the Anti-Christ, another real slacker, a 37 year old lover of Katie Midford’s fantasies and greasy food. The Anti-Christ lives with his mother in Lodi (a town featured in a Creedence Clearwater Revival hit).
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For the next three hundred pages, we follow Mercury and Christine and a host of other angels and demons on various planes within the universe. Although the apocalypse is an iron clad doctrine (worked out between the attorneys of Satan and God), Satan is looking for a way out. After all, as Christine points out, who’d want to play by the rules when in the end you get locked up in a fiery furnace? Satan’s plan includes using a wimp as an Anti-Christ, and instead of meeting up with God’s army at Megiddo, invading the earth through Christine’s kitchen, launching a surprise attack on Michael’s forces. Complicating matters are a host of other characters, some who are also intent on trying to gain the glory for themselves. It’s all very complicated, so I won't tell you anymore. Besides, I don't want to spoil the ending. but I assure you, they'll be a lot of laughs as you get there.
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For a work of fiction, Kroese provides a rather accurate and humorous account of the history of predictions on the end times. A few details, like an angel saving William Miller at the Battle of Plattsburgh in the War of 1812, are conjectures, but it does explain why Miller felt he was God’s chosen voice to announce (unsuccessfully) the end of the world a couple of times in the 1840s. This book is also helpful in explaining the demonic ties of many linoleum installers along with Satan’s role in the designated hitter rule in the American League. However, Satan is not to be blamed for the proliferation of family restaurants.
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This book is funny and it gives the reader a lot to ponder, especially about the nature of free-will. As a warning, don’t take the book too seriously or literally. I’d take this book about as serious as I would take a book on the apocalypse written by a tugboat captain (i.e., Hal Lindsey‘s, The Late Great Planet Earth). For me, I’m just hoping that heaven (and hell) isn’t a bureaucratic as Kroese describes. If so, eternity will be a long time…”

Sagecoveredhills wrote this review Sunday, October 25 2009. ( reply | permalink )