Three weeks in the life of......

     After a busy 24 days, I went back, went into the Great Circle Mapper, and mapped out my last 3 weeks of flying.

    Being based in Miami, I usually get more South and Central America flying, as well as more island flying, but I had a gap in my schedule, and I just could not pass up a Honolulu trip; Love all of my island flying!

    So this started on April 26th, and goes until May 19th. Yes, I did have a few days off in there...  But a total of (Great Circle Route distances-- ) 46,012 miles, all in 17 actual calendar day of work. 

    I love my job, love the plane that they pay me to fly, and love seeing the world.

    Adding Peru was a nice bonus... as that is the 41st country that I have been to! Miraflores, Lima, is a beautiful area; parts of Lima are really quite poor, and Peru itself is materially a poor country, but the people were really nice and the food was excellent. And everyone who knows me knows that I am all about the food. 

    Back to work in a few more days!

Quick Review - Book #21 - "1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project" - by Peter Wood

 Peter Wood is the president of the National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology, and college provost. This is his answer to the 1619 Project.

    This is a critique of the 1619 Project, as published in the NYT Magazine and promoted by the founder and lead author.

    I'll quote from the book to give a flavor of it....

    "If the 1619 Project were a term paper, any knowledgeable, fair-minded teacher would give it an F and be done with it. It demonstrates not only incompetence in handling basic facts, but also a total disregard for the importance of using reliable sources."

   The 1619 Project opens with this, stated as the project's aim:

"The goal of The 1619 Project... is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation's birth year...."    

    Wood places his markers down early on where he falls with this concept"

"...Reframing the country's history is an extraordinary ambitious goal, and not something that one would ordinarily expect to come from a newspaper... The 1619 Project is, in other words, an all-out effort to replace traditional conceptions of American history with a history refracted through the lens of black identity politics."  

"... Their claims include the idea that American began with the arrival of slaves in Virginia in August 1619; that the primary purpose of the colonists who declared independence from Britain in 1776 was to preserve American slavery from the danger of Britain outlawing it; that the Southern plantation system of growing cotton with slave labor is the foundation of modern American capitalism; and that Lincoln was a racist who had no interest in conferring real citizenship on those who were enslaved."

    Wood spends 13+ chapters on the project, comparing the authors of the 1619 project, who are composed mostly of journalists and activists of various types, to the work and words of historians and the actual known facts. 

    He has a great quote describing History ... 

    "History is more than telling a story. It requires scrupulous attention to the facts, to the uncertainties, and to the genuine conflicts of interpretation among experts. The Times, a news organization that assigned journalists rather than historians to write history, failed on all of these criteria."

Definitely worth a read as an antidote to the attempted rewrite of history using a political lens, instead of letting history and the time speak for itself. 

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Next up!! A re-read!! Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos." I read this when it first came out, but with "Beyond Order: 12 more Rues For Life" published, I am giving it a quick re-read as a diving board for book #2. 

Cheers!!

     

        

 

 

Quick Review - Book #20 - "Go Set A Watchman" - by Harper Lee

 Go Set A Watchman is the follow-up to Harper Lee's classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," with the characters brought forward in time 20 years.

    TKaM is one of those books that has ignited a fire in pre- and adolescent readers to get them to read. I know a number of people who have said that the book started their passion to read.

    Which for sure made me want to like the book even more!!!

   And then..... and then.....

    There is an interesting controversy surrounding Go Set A Watchman. The book was the original manuscript that Lee took to publish, and then after 2 years of re-writing, she changed the title and published it as To Kill a Mockingbird.

     This reads like a first draft. I wanted to like it... I wanted to love it. But wow, really, it should never have been published.

    Part of the problem is that it was published 2 months after Lee's sister (and basically, guardian) passed away. Harper Lee was 89 years old, and had said since the 1950s that she would never publish another book. It feels like the publishing house waited until she couldn't stage a good protest, and then capitalized on her name.

    Everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird. It is one of the top 20 novels written by an American. It is fulfilling and wonderful and worth every minute to read. Honest-- skip Watchman.

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Quick Review - Book #19 - "Beneath a Scarlet Sky" - by Mark Sullivan

 Beneath a Scarlet Sky tells the story of Pino Lella, a 17 year old boy in Milan who get swept up in WWII after Mussolini capitulates and the Nazis start to take over the city, even as the Allies work their way up from the southern coast.

    Pino is an unsung hero in a much neglected segment of WWII; Northern Italy at the end of the war. The Allies are working their way north, and the Axis is on the run.

    This book reads great... fast.. the pace generally stays moving with a rapid speed, although there are moments spent in exposition that would have been far better spent on character depth and development. It seems like all the other characters are extraneous to Pino, even though a number of them are working towards the same goal.

    Very interesting moments on how the Partisans destroyed their own with nearly no hesitation. Just a simple accusation is enough to bring someone before a firing squad.

    The issue I do have, and this is in a number of reviews that I have now read... Some of his stories are just a little too... 'on the nose.' It isn't likely that they didn't happen, and much as it seems like a stretch. Pino basically becomes Forrest Gump in Italy during the war. The problem with that, is then you get a break to think about everything that goes before one particular incident... and... it just doesn't seem real.

    No doubt he did most of what the book gives a fictionalized account of... however... it all seems just a little bit much.

    Pino is a hero, for sure... he undoubtedly saved many Jews from being shipped away, and he was awarded the order of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem, which is for those who risked their lives and helped save Jews during the Holocaust. 

    A remarkable story about an amazing young man. 

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Nest up---  Go Set A Watchman - by Harper Lee

Quick Review - Book #18 - "Princess: More Tears to Cry" - by Jean Sasson

 This is book 4 of 6 of Sasson's "Princess" series. 

    I had not read the first 3 books, so I was not sure what I was in store for....

    Honestly, We know royalty has money, but the money they have is insane. 

    Sultana is a mother and grandmother.... and a princess of the Saudi Royal family (of which there are many many princes and princesses.) This is a series of vignettes about her life now that she is established and older. The earlier books set the stage; she is young and headstrong, and is one of the leaders in the women's movement.

    This book continues with her daughters and grandchildren, and family politics. It gives a window into a world that we'll never fully understand.. incredibly modern, and wildly backwards at many many points. 

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Next up.... Beneath a Scarlet Sky - by Mark Sullivan