Reflection on The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (also Christopher Tolkien) and Illustrated by Ted Naismith

              The Silmarillion is a tough but worthwhile read for a fan of Tolkien’s other works, in my case The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The book has five sections: the Ainuindale and the Valaquenta cover the beginning and creation of the world, the Quenta Silmarillion covers the Silmarils, the Akallabeth covers the rise and fall of Numenor, and the section “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” gives background story about The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The problem is that the Quenta Silmarillion, by far the longest section of the book, is also the most difficult by far to get through. Tolkien uses endless names and places that are difficult to decipher and the text does not read like his other novels. That was definitely a negative in reading this. That said, it’s really a must-read book for any serious Tolkien fan.

Reflection on Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by Donovan Campbell

              This was a great book to read before going to OCS. It’s all about a Marine infantry platoon in Iraq in 2004 and the story is told by their Lieutenant who authored the book. It explains really well all the basics of military organization and life and for that it was very useful to me. A lot of life lessons are universally applicable, like this one: “Marines could accept even the harshest punishment with equanimity provided that 1) they understood the rules well in advance of the infringement, 2) they felt that the mandated sentence was appropriate for the misdeed, and 3) they were confident that you, as the punishment's administrator, would have doled out the same penalty to anyone else in their situation.” It seems like a fair and smart way to lead in any capacity. The book, like any book about the war in Iraq, reveals the futility of that war. It quickly became a matter of just getting all of his men out alive, which meant that the mission was no longer the primary focus. No one was prepared to fight as hard as the Iraqi insurgents and the presence of Americans only served to draw in more fighting and violence. It is incredibly sad that America sacrificed its best to a doomed war. Their bravery is inspiring and they were truly determined to serve their country even though we put them in a terrible situation.

Reflection on Boys and Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity by Peggy Orenstein

              I read Peggy Orenstein’s book Girls and Sex several years ago (2017 I think) and I was very impressed. She went around the United States interviewing girls about taboo sexual subject, how they felt about hookup culture, and all sorts of things that affect young women in that context. At the time I thought that I would really enjoy reading a version of that book for boys. Well that version finally came out and it is an excellent companion to the first. I would highly recommend reading both books to people interested in the effects of hookup culture, especially young people like myself from high school to a post-college age.

              One of the really good improvements Orenstein makes in this book is broadening her focus outside of cis-gendered, heterosexual relationships. I found it interesting that one of the reasons that there are often huge age gaps in relationships between gay teenagers and adult men is because gay teenagers can’t find each other as easily and resort to seeing older men. I also learned that there is more openness in gay culture because, as author Dan Savage writes (quoted in the book), gay men tend to use the “four magic words,” which are “what are you into?” Because not all gay men want to be penetrated or penetrate, they will generally communicate this to each other. This sort of thing would definitely be very good for heterosexual relationships and it gives people an opportunity to connect more deeply with someone and understand better each others’ likes and dislikes before sex. Orenstein also covers transgender boys and men, who have experience on both sides of gender, which gives them a unique perspective. On my kindle, this book was barely over 200 pages and is a quick and interesting read. Five stars.


Miscellaneous Facts:

• Orenstein writes that for men, the overlap between blood flow to the genitals and “turned-on” feelings is only 50 percent, yet for women it is only 10 percent.

Reflection on Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Minds and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

The author of this book is a retired Navy SEAL named David Goggins who has also run ultramarathons, triathlons, and lots of other crazy shit, pushing his mind and body to the absolute limits that they can reach. To be honest, he’s insane, and that can be a little discouraging because I don’t think I really want to be where he is mentally. He really doesn’t talk much about his relationships with women and he is obsessed with masculinity in a way that swerves into unhealthy territory. On the other hand, Goggins also has excellent perspective. I think the best passage of the book comes when he talks about what to do when you become triumphant and a master of your own body and mind:

“You can push yourself to a place that is beyond the current capability of temporal mindset of the people you work with, and that’s okay. Just know that your supposed superiority is a figment of your own ego. So don’t lord it over them, because it won’t help you advance as a team or as an individual in your field. Instead of getting angry that your colleagues can’t keep up, help pick your colleagues up and bring them with you!”

What is most incredible about Goggins is that he fails constantly, over and over again in pursuit of his goals. His determination is extremely unusual and something any person should emulate.

Reflection on The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s by Andy Greene

              I loved this book! It is the coolest oral history of The Office I’ve ever read though it is also the only one I’ve ever read. I think that is because it is the only thing of its kind in existence. I would also recommend (the much much shorter) Conference Room, Five Minutes by Shea Serrano, but that’s just essays inspired by The Office. If you really want to know all the best trivia and info about how the show was made, Andy Greene is your guy. I think he interviewed 86 people among the cast, crew, and writers who made it all happen. The biggest strength of the book is in how Greene lets the people involved do the talking. The oral history format works really, really well.

              One of the most interesting things I learned (among many interesting things) was that Steve Carrell ended up leaving the show feeling disrespected by the producers and NBC. Apparently he let slip in an interview that he was thinking about leaving and then got no response from anyone. No one ever checked in with him about that and it rubbed him the wrong way. NBC apparently was very bad at talent management in those years and it’s still kind of unclear who’s responsibility it was. The only sure thing is that it really hurt the show. It’s worth noting though that showrunner Greg Daniels had already left after season five to focus on Parks and Recreation and didn’t return until season nine. The thought I had when I read this was that David Wallace should have become the replacement for Michael. They struggled a lot with who to bring in but also didn’t want to change the dynamic of the show by promoting someone from within. I think David Wallace would have been a good compromise.



Miscellaneous Facts:

• Rainn Wilson auditioned for both Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute
• They wanted to cast Peter Dinklage as “a dwarf or midget” named Anton, which I think would not have been tastefully done in 2003.
• Jenna Fischer was married to James Gunn, who went on to direct the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
• Phyllis Smith (who played Phyllis) was a casting assistant to Allison Jones, the director of casting, who put her in the show.
• Originally, Chili’s was upset about the script for the Season 2 opener, in which Pam was gonna vomit all over the bar. Instead, they had her fall off her stool and get kicked out for sneaking drinks from other tables. That change was Steve Carrell’s idea and stopped Chili’s from pulling out of the episode.
• Jim was originally the only talking head with a window behind him while the others faced the bullpen. That symbolized that he had a future. Pam eventually joined him on that side.
• Michael Scott’s condo is at 7303 Bonnie Place in Reseda, California.
• Jen Celotta, a major showrunner thought about having an episode with Phyllis going through menopause. I think that would’ve been a good idea and it’s a shame they didn’t do it. The fact that they didn’t reminds me of the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez that I just read.
• The very famous scene when Dwight simulates a fire in the office was made for premiere after the Super Bowl, to draw in viewers. What a good idea.
• Jenna Fisher said that when she got to say goodbye as Pam to Michael and the mics cut out, she “told him all the ways I was going to miss him when he left our show. Those were real tears and a real goodbye.”
• An idea was pitched to replace Michael that Queen Latifah be brought in as the boss and that she would slowly fire and replace everyone with black comedians and it would become the black office. I think that idea is super funny but it was not favored in the writers’ room.
• Originally it was thought that they were going to use the new cast from later seasons to reboot the show but that idea was abandoned in season nine when Greg Daniels and NBC decided to end it. The end of the show was announced when Bryan Cranston was on set directing the “Work Bus” episode.

Reflection on Invisible Women, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

              In this excellent book, the author convincingly proves that the world is largely designed for men. So much of the way we think and live is with men as the default and it has negative effects on women in basically every single aspect of life, from labor laws to medical care and from bus routes to toilet stalls. For example, is it really fair to dedicate equal space to men’s and women’s bathrooms? We have all seen situations with women waiting in long lines for the bathroom while men go in and out with ease. Women have more to do if they are changing pads/tampons, taking care of children, or are elderly and disabled (the majority of elderly and disabled are women). As a result of these many factors, women take up to 2.3 times as long to use the bathroom. These are sorts of indirect discrimination or “gender neutral discrimination) that make life more difficult for women than men. Another example is seat belts, which are not designed for women! Federal regulations only require that car companies test their cars’ safety with the average male height and weight crash test dummies, and women are significantly more likely to be injured in car crashes. It’s even worse if they’re pregnant. That’s probably an example of a lack on women in leadership to step in and point out the problem to the males who are making and enforcing regulations like these. I would definitely recommend this book, it’s very complete and convincing.

Reflection on Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck

              Suburban Nation is a fantastic book and I am turning into a really big fan of Jeff Speck. IT is incredible to me how the smallest choices made in planning regulations can have such big impacts on the way we live. Speck, Plater-Zyberk, and Duany make excellent points in this book about how to stop suburban sprawl and recreate traditional neighborhoods. They are extremely credible and they put their money where there mouth is, designing many different towns and additions to towns up to 2003, when the book was published.

              Sprawl has caused a lot of problems for our country, significantly damaging our public spaces. Before 1950, new roads increased investment and property values nearby, but since 1950, the opposite occurs. The causes are many, but the biggest culprit seems to be the separation of land uses. Building a place with one area for residences, another for commerce, another for schools, and another for some other use is incredibly inefficient for living. It is, however, very efficient for a lazy designer. The result is all of the traffic taking place on a few collector roads and everyone being stranded without a car.

              One of the biggest obstacles in the way of better urban planning is that almost all planning occurs at the municipal level and therefore cannot take regional, state, or federal concerns into account. A loud group of privileged residents can often block development near them and push it into an area of less powerful people. Luckily for South Florida, we have a regional planning authority, the South Florida Water Management District. We should probably put it to work and give it the power to do more planning in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade.

              Another major solution that the authors propose is the total overhaul of planning regulations. Regulations should have diagrams and pictures and an overall vision for what cities and neighborhoods should look like, whereas they currently just list pages and pages of rules prohibiting certain things that are perceived (often incorrectly) to be ugly or unsafe. An additional benefit is that this would do “pre-planning,” allowing developers to know exactly what they can build and where they can build it, which would save would-be investors tons of time. This sort of thing is already in place in Providence, Rhode Island and West Palm Beach, Florida.

              I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in public life at all. I feel like it would be incredibly interesting to any American because we are all affected by the suburban style of living, even if we live in urban or rural areas. The writing is great and every chapter has some new, revelatory passage. The authors end with a simple call for more neighborhoods, defined as cohesive, mixed-use, walkable areas, saying:

              No more housing subdivisions!
              No more shopping centers!
              No more office parks!
              No more highways!
              Neighborhoods or nothing!

• Miscellaneous Facts:
• Spending on transit creates twice as many jobs as highway spending.
• Houston provides 30 asphalt parking spaces per resident.
• New “anchor” businesses, like sports stadiums, should be build with parking at least a block away so that other businesses can locate themselves nearby and benefit from the anchor.
• A structured, multi-tier parking lot costs $12,000 per place versus $1,500 in a surface lot.

Reflection on The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Do white and black Americans live apart for reasons of personal preference or because of the actions of the government? This important question is the point in dispute between Chief Justice John Roberts, who argues the first and author Richard Rothstein, who argues the latter. Rothstein convincingly shows how the government has intervened time and time again in favor of segregation, which implies that to right this wrong, the government should intervene in favor of integration now, something the Chief Justice has argued is unnecessary because the government was not responsible for housing segregation in the first place.

A major source of federal support for segregation was the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA offered cheap loans to Americans that made it possible for all to own a home… except for black Americans, who were not served by the FHA. This locked black people in America out of one of the biggest wealth-building policies in American history, setting the entire race back by generations. Those homes gathered massive passive income and wealth for the families who had them and many are still in the same families as the original owners. The FHA even judges it too risky to insure racially mixed neighborhoods, forcing whites away from blacks. The US Commission on Civil Rights concluded in 1973 that the, “housing industry, aided and abetted by Government, must bear the primary responsibility for the legacy of segregated housing… Government and private industry came together to create a system of residential segregation.”

In the last 50 years, it has not been possible for most places to discriminate explicitly based on race, yet the standard necessary to prove that someone is doing so is extremely high and difficult to meet. Lawyers are usually unable to prove discrimination unless they can more or less record the defendant saying that they discriminated based on race. Rothstein illustrates this though a story of two communities, one black and one white, in the 1990s. When Warren County attempted to build a waste disposal facility in a white area, the residents protested and kept it out. But when they tried to build in a black area that already had three waste disposal facilities, they overruled protests by black residents. A federal judge ruled this legal because there was no explicit discrimination.

Chapter nine of this book is particularly atrocious in the behavior of whites described. It talks about the mobs that formed to eject black people from white neighborhoods they moved into, and those mobs were violent. They used dynamite, cross burnings, and drive-by shootings to terrorize their black neighbors. Worse, the police who arrived at these horrible scenes did not stop them or do anything to inhibit the violence present, instead organizing the mobs and otherwise protecting the violent whites, not the poor black families who just wanted to live.

I just want to quote a few pages from the epilogue of the book here, since they’re excellent in summarizing the point of the book:

“If government had declined to build racially separate public housing in cities where segregation hadn’t previously taken root, and instead had scattered integrated developments throughout the community, those cities might have developed in a less racially toxic fashion, with fewer desperate ghettos and more diverse suburbs.

If the federal government had not urged suburbs to adopt exclusionary zoning laws, white flight would have been minimized because there would have been fewer racially exclusive suburbs to which frightened homeowners could flee.

If the government had told developers that they could have FHA guarantees only if the homes they built were open to all, integrated working-class suburbs would likely have matured with both African Americans and whites sharing the benefits.

If state courts had not blessed private discrimination by ordering the eviction of African American homeowners in neighborhoods where association rules and restrictive covenants barred their residence, middle-class African Americans would have been able gradually to integrate previously white communities as they developed the financial means to do so.

If churches, universities, and hospitals had faced loss of tax-exempt status for their promotion of restrictive covenants, they most likely would have refrained from such activity.

If police had arrested, rather than encouraged, leaders of mob violence when African Americans moved into previously white neighborhoods, racial transitions would have been smoother.

If state real estate commissions had denied licenses to brokers who claimed an “ethical” obligation to impose segregation, those brokers might have guided the evolution of interracial neighborhoods.

If school boards had not placed schools and drawn attendance boundaries to ensure the separation of black and white pupils, families might not have had to relocate to have access to education for their children.

If federal and state highway planners had not used urban interstates to demolish African American neighborhoods and force their residents deeper into urban ghettos, black impoverishment would have lessened, and some displaced families might have accumulated the resources to improve their housing and its location.

If government had given African Americans the same labor-market rights that other citizens enjoyed, African American working-class families would not have been trapped in lower-income minority communities, from lack of funds to live elsewhere.

If the federal government had not exploited the racial boundaries it had created in metropolitan areas, by spending billions on tax breaks for single-family suburban homeowners, while failing to spend adequate funds on transportation networks that could bring African Americans to job opportunities, the inequality on which segregation feeds would have diminished.

If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities.”

• Miscellaneous Facts:
• Housing discrimination on the explicit basis of race was illegal starting in 1866 though it was without any method of enforcement and continued unabated until 1968.
• Until the New Deal, home ownership often required 50% down and full repayment after 5-7 years.
• In 1976, the IRS denied the tax exemption of Bob Jones University because the university prohibited interracial dating. The case went before the Supreme Court and Reagan’s administration REFUSED TO EVEN PRESENT THE CASE! The Supreme Court had to APPOINT AN OUSTIDE LAWYER to present the case, and that lawyer won. Incredibly fucked up.
• In 2015, NYC’s sheet metal workers union paid out 13 million dollars for racial discrimination in job assignments.

Reflection on Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft

              Lundy Bancroft is an author and a counselor specializing in relationships of abuse, generally when a male partner is abusive of a female partner. I didn’t realize until I finished a book and researched the author that Lundy is a man. Bancroft has decades of experience working with abusive men and their victims, writing books, and giving speeches across the country. He is definitely a major expert in his field, and he dispels tons of myths in this book. I love that he includes and references tons more resources in his book that are written by others. He is clearly out here to help survivors of abuse any way he can. One crucial point that Bancroft makes early on is that abuse is not always or even mostly physical. Abuse can take spoken form in emotional manipulation and the men that use their words to hurt their partners are still abusive even if they never lay a hand on them.

              Bancroft spends a lot of time analyzing the mind of the abuser. He tells us that abusers want to be a mystery. An abuser seeks to make others think that his behavior makes no sense and have them focus on his feelings rather than his thoughts. An abuser would prefer that his partner think of him as having “anger issues” or a mental illness rather than having his partner understand how he thinks about his actions. An abuser wants his partner to focus on his feelings when it is his thoughts (in which he justifies his manipulation) that are the problem. Bancroft states it very well when he says that, “Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.”

              I think that you could criticize Bancroft a little bit for focusing so much on male-on-female abuse and not covering female-on-male abuse. He does address gay and lesbian relationships. However, I am pretty convinced by his points about female-on-male abuse being extremely uncommon. While it makes sense as a reader to hear so much about one and immediately think about abuse going the other way, the fact is that abuse is not divided evenly on gender and that men commit a disproportionate amount of abuse while women receive a disproportionate amount of abuse. For this reason, Bancroft says that “A genuine male victim tends to feel sympathy for abused women and support their cause. The Victim (referring to a male abuser who likes to play the victim), on the other hand, often says that women exaggerate or fabricate their claims of abuse or insists that men are abused just as much as women are.”

              In another interesting passage, the author points out that, “Many of my clients are skilled spin doctors…” and that they use their abilities to manipulate the entire family to get the children on their side. Bancroft puts forward a hypothetical argument in which the children are present but don’t understand the issue at stake. They just see their parents yelling at each other. Bancroft says that in his experience, “An abuser can naturally snap out of the bad effects of an abusive incident much more quickly than the abused woman can.” What tends to happen is that the mother spends the rest of the day distant and depressed while the father disappears for two hours and returns in a good mood, joking and laughing with the children. First of all, this reveals that the mother is probably the victim here since she was obviously impacted more by what happened. Second, who do you think the children want to be with afterwards? Probably not their mother, who’s in a bad mood. This is a classic manipulative tactic that abusive husbands use to bring children onto their side and further isolate their partners.

              Bancroft closes the book by reflecting on how to know if an abuser is really changing. This is incredibly difficult and he points out that his abused partner is the person in the best position to analyze his behavior, not a psychologist or anyone else. This is because abusers tend to be expert manipulators, especially in couples’ therapy, which tends to focus on how both partners can improve their behavior. As such, couples’ therapy does not work in a situation where one partner is causing the problems. In those cases, it can make things worse as it teaches the abuser new vocabulary to use for manipulation and can make him feel even more justified in his actions. Truly repentant abusers will not focus on their partner’s behavior and will express empathy towards their partner. A truly repentant abuser will not feel the need to control their partner’s emotions and will understand their partner’s justified anger towards them for what they had done. Non-repentant abusers will say things like “I can only change if you change too,” and “you need to help me,” or “you don’t realize how much I’ve changed.”

              Bancroft says that the answer is not therapy for the abuser, because therapy “focuses on the man’s feelings and gives him empathy and support.” The answer is an abuser program like Bancroft’s, which can impose rules and consequences on abusers and which is in contact with his victims to get a better understanding of how he acts outside of the program. Bancroft tells countless stories in the book of men who appeared excellent in the program but whose wives and girlfriends told a very different story over the phone. Ultimately, writes the author, “The first test of the quality of an abuser program is whether the main goal of the staff members appears to be helping you or helping him. In a responsible program the abused woman is considered the primary client. The only “assistance” they should be offering to the man is to educate and challenge him about his abusive attitudes and behaviors.”

              I would highly recommend this book because many of us experience abuse or manipulation in our lives even if we don’t want to categorize the person who does it as an “abuser.” Bancroft cautions the reader that the answer is not always cutting contact with that person. He writes that, “One of the biggest mistakes made by people who wish to help an abused woman is to measure success by whether or not she leaves her abusive partner. If the woman feels unable or unready to end her relationship, or if she goes back to him, people who have attempted to help tend to feel that their effort failed and often channel this frustration into blaming the abused woman. A better measure of success for the person helping is how well you have respected the woman’s right to run her own life—which an abusive man does not do—and how well you have helped her to think of strategies to increase her safety. If you stay focused on these goals you will feel less frustrated as a helper and will be a more valuable resource for the woman.” This is an important book and has had a huge impact on the way I view a lot of relationships. I can’t recommend it enough.