Author Archives: Morgan Mussell

Thoughts on Maleficent and retelling folktales

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maleficent

Maleficent opens in a world of beauty, threatened by a greedy human king. The visual contrast between human actors and fantasy animation was great enough to take a few minutes for suspension of disbelief to kick in. After that, I was in for the ride, through an ambitiously re-crafted tale of the Disney arch villainess who gave kids of my generation nightmares in Sleeping Beauty (1959). As the poster implies, this movie belongs to Angelina Jolie, whose performance is gripping.

The Sleeping Beauty themes of love and betrayal remain but they manifest very differently in the two Disney versions of the story. Men betray and women love; implicit in Disney’s previous blockbuster, Frozen, the theme is explicit in Maleficent. For now at least, it’s Disney’s key to box office success.

Retelling fairytales with a modern twist is nothing new. Fantasy authors like Nancy Kress, Jane Yolen, Steven Brust, and Roger Zelazny, to say nothing of Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin have been doing this for decades. I’m currently reading a 1994 collection of short retold fairytales, Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by fantasy writers, Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling. There are two different versions of Sleeping Beauty. In both, it is the prince who needs to be rescued.

I take this as an inevitable pendulum swing from earlier Disney movies where princesses mostly sat around singing, “Someday my prince will come.” We have to remember that no Disney movie, then or now, is “real” folklore, nor is any work fantasy fiction. By “real” folklore, I mean stories shaped by the collective imagination of generations of members of a culture, region, or tribe. Strictly speaking, any talk of folktales now must be in the past tense. Nowadays the events that might spawn new fairytales, over a generation or two, become headlines or tweets, “details at 6:00,” to be forgotten in a day or an hour.

Among other things, the old fairytales were full of hints on wise living for those who knew how to listen. Here is one simple list of some of the lessons they taught:

  • Sorrow is real, and so is joy
  • Joy is freely available to all, just as sorrow comes freely to all, whether rich or poor, and without regard to changes in material fortune
  • The world is fraught with danger, including life-threatening danger, but by being clever (always), honest (as a rule, but with common-sense exceptions), courteous (especially to the elderly, no matter their apparent social station), and kind (to anyone who has obvious need), even a child can succeed where those who seem more qualified have failed.

Much as I love them, I don’t find that fantasy movies and novels teach lessons like these in a visceral or unforgettable manner, which leaves us sadly impoverished. Dragons have not gone away – any glance at the headlines makes that clear. What is gone is the wisdom to know how to deal with them.

Terminal Time

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The phrase, “Terminal Time” has a dire sound, but as the photo below should make clear, this post is not about terminal illness. It’s about terminal, as in airports; not the end of life, but the end of patience.

Neon passageway, O'Hare Airport, 2013 by Nicola. CC By 2.0

Neon passageway, O’Hare Airport, 2013 by Nicola. CC By 2.0

The subject comes from the WordPress Daily Prompt for June 10, You’re at the airport, your flight is delayed for more than six hours, and none of your electronic devices are working. How do you pass the time?

Like millions of others, I’ve been there on several occasions. I think I was still in my teens the first time I got snowed in at O’Hare. Since Chicago’s airport has been the scene of my most dramatic delays, let’s imagine what we can do there to pass the time in an unwired kind of way.

1) Buy a paperback. This almost goes without saying, but since most airport bookstores don’t carry Moby Dick, here is a chance to indulge our guilty pleasures, whatever they may be. No one blames you for reading trash when you’re stuck at O’Hare.

2) Walk or ride the escalator through the neon passageways. If you’re with a companion, one of you can say, “Whoa, dude!” and the other can reply, “Psycedelic!”

3) Eat something. O’Hare has a huge variety, from cinnabuns, to Big Macs, to build-your-own-salads. Go to a bar if it suits you, but before you dip into the beer nuts, remember the opening scene of Contagion, with Gwenneth Paltrow doing just that.

4) Work a puzzle. Mary and I spent a happy hour doing that on the ground in Philadelphia last summer. She is crossword fan, with much experience and several dictionaries. I know lots of nerd expressions and assorted trivia, so we compliment each other.

5) People watch #1: Spot an interesting character and work out the plot of your next (or first) novel.

6) People watch #2: Figure which of your fellow travelers are aliens, as in Men In Black extra-terrestrials. Like the woman I saw with a dog in a pink tutu. This is true! She was talking to the dog, who looked absolutely miserable, while everyone tried to look away. I’m sure the dog came from a more intelligent planet than its owner.

7) Walk around. What a concept! You’ll feel better, and if you decide to be brisk, you can even get in some aerobics to work off those pizza slices.

8) Practice meditation. It’s a challenge to stay focused when you’re tired, annoyed and distracted, but that makes it interesting for brief periods of time.

9) Buy a notebook and write your next blog post longhand. Soon enough you’ll get your smartphone recharged.

10) If you’re gregarious, strike up a conversation. I’ve mentioned a few opening line suggestions like,  “Snow sucks, huh?”  Or, “Psychedelic!”  Or, “That poor dog. I hate tutus!”

You get the idea, and I’m sure you can add many more of your own. Maybe this post will help someone during the summer travel season. Now all I have to do is hope the lords of karma are kind, and I won’t have to eat my own cooking anytime soon!

Alternate views of the evil empire

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Here is another take on the Amazon / Hachette controversy by Barry Eisler, a former CIA operative and best-selling author of thrillers. Eisler made headlines in 2011 when he turned his back on traditional publishing (which he calls “legacy publishing”) to publish his work independently on Amazon.

In this June 4 article in The Guardian, Eisler ticks off these pluses for Amazon: it “singlehandedly created a market for digital books, [is] now the greatest source of the legacy publishing industry’s profitability (though of course legacy publishers are sharing little of that newfound wealth with their authors)…built the world’s first viable mass-market self-publishing platform, a platform that has enabled thousands of new authors to make a living from their writing for the first time in their lives. And [it] pays self-published authors something like five times as much in digital royalties as legacy publishers do.”

Eisler makes some interesting arguments while waving a red flag (Amazon-hating authors are the literary “one-percent”). I recommend the article to anyone interested in this current publishing brouhaha. My biggest takeaway was Eisler’s simple observation, in an otherwise complex debate, that individual attitudes are probably based more on personal interest than selfless concern for the future of literature. To blame Jeff Bezos for the loss of bookstores, he says, is like buggy makers blaming Henry Ford for the development of internal combustion. Though some of his analogies may be questionable, they point toward two facts that are not: (1) new technologies never go back into the box, and (2) their ramifications are never known at the outset.

I was halfway through the paragraphs above when the postman brought the June 16 issue of Time, with an essay on the back page by Joel Stein, Hachette author of Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity.

Stein ventured, “with trepidation,” to Amazon “to see what barbarism it had committed on my book’s page – changing my author photo go one of my high school mullet shots, perhaps, or allowing yet more people to start their one-star reviews with ‘No, I haven’t read this book.'”

When he found nothing amiss, Stein sadly reflected that Amazon, with its cutting edge algorithms, had to know how much it would hurt his ego and confidence to be left out of the feud. “I have no idea who will publish my next book,” he says, “though I do know they’ll be sorry they did.”

Diversity and variety are central to the richness of life. I’m old enough to remember and miss various mom and pop stores of all kinds, not just bookstores. A local nursery used to employ master gardeners, who could look at a sick leaf and tell you exactly what to do. Through no fault of their own, the people who work in the Lowe’s garden section can only tell you, “Fertilizers are down aisle one.” As a kid, I learned to make flying airplanes out of balsa wood and tissue paper at a local hobby shop; it was a far more interesting place than any Toys ‘R Us.

Right now, perhaps all we can do in the publishing battle is watch and wait, and opt for diversity and richness in whatever way we can.

D-Day – Normandy Landing Beaches : American Cemetery – Colleville – 50 photos.

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Wonderful pictures of the site of a world changing event that unfolded 70 years ago, June 6, 1944

Ici & La Nature - Pictures of hiking tours in France and Europe's avatarICI & LA NATURE PICTURES

D-Day anniversary 1944 - 2014Normandy american cemetery colleville

D-Day 70th Anniversary 1944-2014

  Located near Colleville-sur-Mer ( Calvados ) in Normandy, the 172.5-acre site contains the graves of 9,387 U.S. military dead and the names of 1,557 of the missing.

NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY

The Normandy Campaign

The massive Allied assault on the Normandy coastline on June 6, 1944, aimed to liberate France and drive into Nazi Germany.

Before dawn on June 6, three airborne divisions landed by para chute and glider behin targeted beaches. Allied naval forces, including the U.S. Coast Guard, conveyed assault forces across the English Channel . Beginning at 06.30 hours, six divisions U.S.,Canadian and British landed on Utah , Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches in history’s greatest amphibious assault.

The U.S. Infantry Divisions battled German resistance over beaches bristling with obstacles. To reach the village of Colleville, troops fought across an open area of up 200 yards, and attacked up steep bluffs . By days’ end, the Americans…

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Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta: a book review

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those who wish me dead

If you could find that and hold it there within yourself, a candle of self-confidence against the darkness, you could accomplish great things. He knew this. He’d been through it.

Fourteen year old Jace Wilson witnesses a murder-for-hire near his home in Indiana. Witness protection will not help, for the system has been compromised. U.S. Marshals appear to be involved. At the suggestion of an executive bodyguard, Jace’s parents send him to the Wyoming-Montana border, to the wilderness survival school for troubled youth that Ethan Serbin, a retired military survival expert teaches. Once he is in the wilderness, away from computers and cell phones, Jace will be safe, right?

Of course not. Even as Jace, who has been fearful all his life, begins to learn about trusting himself, about building confidence as he learns to build a fire with flint and steel, the killers, Jack and Patrick Blackwell, relentless sociopathic brothers, are  close behind. To hide the murder of a local sherif, the Blackwells set a hillside on fire that burns out of control and into the mountains where Ethan and his young charges are camped.

Realizing they’ve found him, Jace slips away by himself. Killers and searchers, Ethan and his injured wife, Jace and Hannah, a guilt-ridden fire lookout whose lover died in a wildfire saving her, struggle to survive mountain thunder storms, each other, and a fire that grows to monster size as it races into the high country.

I’ve reviewed three of Koryta’s books, including So Cold the River (2010), perhaps my all time favorite thriller. This one is just as good; I devoured it in less than two days. In Those Who Wish Me Dead, the author serves up a near perfect blend of sympathetic protagonists, villains who are fascinating in their complexity, and tension that is finely tuned, neither too loose nor too tight. There really aren’t that many books that I literally cannot put down, but Those Who Wish Me Dead was one.

Michael Koryta

Michael Koryta

I’m not dead yet

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My title, a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, came to mind during recent reflections on independent bookstores.

Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris. Wikimedia Commons

Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris. Wikimedia Commons

I used to go to bookstores to make discoveries. The best were quirky, and I loved to be surprised and find something new to read. My all time favorite was a sci-fi/fantasy specialty store in a low rent strip mall. The store was a labor of love for the owner, who made most of his income trading collectables – signed Robert Heinlein first editions and vintage comic books.

I could walk in and say, “I’m looking for urban fantasy that centers on spirit guides,” or, “I’m in the mood for a quest – got anything that’s not a dumb Tolkien ripoff?” Most of the time, I’d find what I was looking for and have an interesting chat on trends in the genre with someone who was steeped in that world. You never know what you’re going to find in a place like that. Sadly, independents are on the ropes, but as the Pythons put it, they’re not dead yet. Here is a link to indiebound.org, which has a tab at the top right to locate independent booksellers.

We don’t even have to abandon ebooks to shop at indies! In February, 2012, I wrote about The Book Seller, a great independent shop in Grass Valley, that encourages ebook fans to order through their website; that way they get a commission on each sale (the format is .epub, the standard all-but-Amazon format, which can be read on a Nook or any laptop, smartphone, or tablet using the free Nook app).

I’m pretty sure that for just about everyone reading this blog, books are a huge and treasured part of our lives. If anything good has come out of the Amazon-Hachette dispute, it’s information like this which can help me rethink the way I buy books.

As Mark Coker put it, the ideal is “a vibrant ecosystem of multiple competing retailers.” It’s good to know what I can do to help secure such a future.

From indiebound.org

From indiebound.org

Footnote, June 3:  Calmgrove, a blogging buddy, noted in a comment that the initials of my title, I’m Not Dead Yet, form a nice acronym, INDY. In addition to independent bookstores, he says it has something to do with fruit fly genetics – feel free to pursue that with him if you wish…

To the barricades! No, the other barricades.

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Printing, ca. 1568. Public domain.

Printing, ca. 1568. Public domain.

“Right now, bookstores, libraries, authors, and books themselves are caught in the cross fire of an economic war. If this is the new American way, then maybe it has to be changed — by law, if necessary — immediately, if not sooner.” – James Patterson

I haven’t blogged about ebooks and independent publishing lately. Over the last few years, it’s become clear they are here to stay. Success breeds acceptance, and the “vanity press” stigma is gone. In olden days (ca. 2011), I found a kind of “blows against the empire” satisfaction in promoting ebooks, writing reviews, and encouraging Indie authors. The evil empire was big publishing. This was the time of the little guy.

I still like Indie authors, though the “righteous cause” fantasy is gone. Now suddenly, at least to a casual observer like me, the situation appears reversed, with Amazon in the role of bully-boy, and those same publishers (perhaps) fighting for their existence, and with them (maybe) hangs the fate of a lot of remaining brick and mortar stores.

I first learned of the Amazon-Hachette duel from Michael Koryta, a favorite action-adventure writer I follow on Facebook. On May 19, Koryta reported serious problems pre-ordering his new book, due out June 3, from Amazon. He said the situation goes far beyond the interests of one author, and provided some of the links posted below.

On May 29, USA Today quoted James Patterson as saying “the future of our literature is in danger.” Patterson says that “Amazon wants to control book buying, book selling and even book publishing,” and laments that federal anti-trust laws no longer have teeth.

Here are several editorials on the situation:

Amazon vs. Hachette: When Does Discouragement Become Misrepresentation? From the NY Times Blog

Amazon said to play hardball in book contract talks with publishing house Hachette The Washington Post

AAR Calls Out Amazon in Hachette Dispute, From a statement sent by Association of Authors Representatives to Amazon.

And if I was only going to read one account of this dispute, I’d chose this one by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords and early champion of ebooks, who believes in the vitality of a diverse writing and publishing world: Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors

I’ve heard Coker speak on several occasions, and he’s a keen observer of a complicated landscape and future. His predictions on publishing tend to be right. In this post, he explains that the conflict centers on “agency pricing,” and who gets what profit margin for ebooks. Amazon is demanding a greater share. Here is what is at stake, says Coker:

“Books represent only one of hundreds of layers of icing on the cake of Amazon. Amazon can lose money on books while still operating a profitable business. Pure-play book retailers – Kobo and Barnes & Noble for example, must earn money from book sales. Unlike Amazon, they don’t have the financial resources to sell books at a loss forever…If Amazon can abolish agency pricing it will have the power to put its largest pure-play book retailing competitors out of business. This will make the publishers even more dependent upon Amazon, which further weakens their power.”

That’s the bad news. The really bad news, according to Coker, is that next they’ll come after Indie authors, just as they have in their audio book division, Audible. Gone are the 70% margins for authors that the agency model protects. Instead, exclusive Audible authors get 40% while the non-exclusive rate is 25%.

Coker winds up with with advice for independent authors, who, he says, are “the future of publishing.” It’s well worth reading the details in his article, but here are his main suggestions:

  1. Choose your partners carefully.
  2. Favor retail partners that support the agency model.
  3. Avoid exclusivity.
  4. Support a vibrant ecosystem of multiple competing retailers.

Remember the vibrant ecosystem of multiple competing book retailers? Though it is on the ropes, it’s not yet extinct. That’s worth thinking about and will be the subject of my next post.

More notes on Buddhism

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Prajnaparamita, Sanskrit for "The perfection of wisdom," is often personified as a goddess of transcendental wisdom in Buddhist iconography, as in this 13th c. stature from Java. Public domain.

Prajnaparamita, Sanskrit for “The perfection of wisdom,” is often personified as a goddess of transcendental wisdom in Buddhist iconography, as in this 13th c. stature from Java. Public domain

If you have not already done so, please read the previous post as an introduction to this one. I’m going to discuss two additional questions that are commonly asked about Buddhism. Then I’ll list some of my favorite references.

Is Buddhism a religion?

For some people it is and for some it’s not. There are Buddhist churches, similar to any other church, though westerners usually focus on the contemplative dimension with its “spiritual but not religious” nature.

The first long Zen retreat I attended was led by a Catholic priest at a Sisters of Mercy Retreat Center. This was not watered down Zen. The priest, who bears the title, Roshi (master) is member of a recognized Japanese lineage, as are other Catholic priests and nuns. The church allows this, holding that Zen is not a religion, but a means for exploring the nature of awareness. I’m not aware of any contemplative Buddhist tradition that requires members to drop their other religious affiliations.

Is Buddhism atheistic?

Buddha never talked about metaphysics. He focused on suffering and the path to enlightenment as the end of suffering. Often when he was asked about ultimate things, he refused to answer. Once a monk asked, and Buddha told “the parable of the arrow.” As Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk explained it:

[Buddha] said, “Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first.” Life is so short. It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth. (the parable of the arrow).

So it’s accurate to say Buddhism is non-theistic, but it isn’t explicitly atheistic either; Buddha never said one way or the other. As Brad Warner, a Zen priest for 30 years, puts it in his book on the subject, There is No God, and He is Always With You, it depends on what you mean by “God.” If we mean some large, powerful being “out there,” who created us at some finite point in time and pulls strings, then no, Buddhists don’t believe that. If we’re speaking of something like Paul Tillich’s “Ground of Being,” then I think it’s implied in much Buddhist writing and by many Buddhist teachers I’ve heard. To quote Anam Thubten as I did in the previous post:

There is Buddha in each of us right now who can never be defeated by the force of inner darkness, the force of greed, hate, attachment, and delusion, and that Buddha has no form, no image. That Buddha, indeed, is residing in all of us as our pure, quintessential being. We must always turn our attention inward whenever we have the desire to seek divinity, or Buddha, God, or Brahma. (The Magic of Awareness)

Japanese brush painting, by Lone Primate, 2007, CC By-NC-SA 2.0

Japanese brush painting, by Lone Primate, 2007, CC By-NC-SA 2.0

Buddhist Resources

The best resource of all is a nearby sangha (group of practitioners) or meditation group in one’s own area, if it’s a good fit. Meanwhile, here are a few books and websites that I find valuable.

Books:

A Path With Heart (1993) by Jack Kornfield.
This is the first book on Buddhism I’d recommend to someone wanting to learn more. Part spiritual autobiography and part introduction to Buddhist thought and practice by an influential teacher of Vipassana (Insight Meditation). Kornfield, a co-founder of Spirit Rock (web link below), gives fine descriptions of some of the difficulties westerners may have when approaching eastern traditions.

No Self No Problem (2009) by Anam Thubten
The most important single work in turning my attention to Buddhism. I found an earlier edition of the book and attended a daylong retreat (the first of many) with Anam Thubten a few weeks later. There’s a link to Anam Thubten’s website below.

An Introduction to Tantra: A Vision of Totality (1987) by Lama Thubten Yeshe
The best introduction I’ve found to Tibetan Buddhism by a renowned 20th century lama and member of the Dalai Lama’s tradition. “Dwelling deep within our heart, and within the hearts of all beings without exception, is an inexhaustible source of love and wisdom. And the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practices, whether they are called Buddhist or not, is to uncover and make contact with this essentially pure nature.”

Awakening Joy (2010) by James Baraz
James is a teacher at Spirit Rock. I bought this book several years ago, when he gave a local daylong retreat here, and just started reading it. It’s the most “ecumenical” of all these books. The author presents 10 themes, with exercises, to increase our wellbeing now, where we are, not at some future time when we are enlightened. The book meshes with an online course he teaches. Website below.

Online Resources:

Spirit Rock. An insight meditation center north of San Francisco that hosts retreats all year long. See especially the “Meditation101 tab” for the basics of insight meditation and dozens of talks by visiting instructors.

Dharmata Foundation. This is Anam Thubten’s home page. Well worth checking the calendar from time to time. From his home center in Point Richmond, CA, this Tibetan master travels extensively. In May he gave retreats in South Korea, Little Rock, AR, and Maine. In June, he will teach in Princeton, NJ, New York, NY, Maui, and Grass Valley, CA. Hearing him is well worth the effort (here is one account I’ve posted of a retreat with him).

James Baraz. Here is James’ website and teaching schedule with a link to his Awakening Joy course (available online).

Tricycle. The pre-eminent Buddhist magazine, with 20+ years of articles from all traditions. Check out a hard copy in a bookstore for a directory of dharma centers by region. There are always online retreats available to subscribers.

Peaceful Sea Sangha. Website for Edward Espe Brown, who I’ve posted about here several times. He also travels and teaches widely, with a trip to Prague, Austria, and Germany scheduled over the next month and a half. His audio teachings are wise and hilarious. I discovered a poem I recently referenced, “10,000 Idiots” by Hafiz, in one of them.

I could go on and on, but this is already long enough. These are only a few suggestions. Feel free to comment or email with any specific questions, observations, or resources of your own.