Books, Chapter 2

Isaac Asimov, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Harper Lee headline part 2 of our exploration of virtual worlds through literature.

Plus, Jim shares the finer points of French Press coffee, with an emergency exit to a Keurig machine in dire circumstances.

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Transcript

MAKING OUR WAY - A McMahon/Cheyne Podcast

Books, Chapter 2 (Season 1; Episode 6) - 12/19/23 

JIM: If I were to use political terminology and I were asked, “What is a progressive?” - a progressive is someone who can see an argument through to its conclusion past the point they were already satisfied with what they had heard. That they can follow an argument farther, thus making progress, opening themselves up to things that may be uncomfortable, may not be convenient, and they find something else beyond that. How many people will listen to an argument and then you can see where they take their exit? As soon as it gets uncomfortable, they've gone beyond what they were ready to accept. Either they're ideologically stuck or they're not ready for that next part of growth.

[Music]

JIM (voice over): Welcome to chapter two of our series on reading, what one might call "Making Our Way Through Virtual Travel” - the sights and sounds and experiences that literature brings. In last week's episode, Jan and Rob told of their harrowing experiences in the Grand Canyon's inner canyon climate. Rob gave us a peek into his secret life as a children's author. And through our Listener Line, we answered questions about our heritage and the travel of our ancestors. This week, we dig deeper into what shapes our preferences in literature with a look at Isaac Asimov, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Harper Lee. We now join the conversation already in progress.

[Music ends]

JAN: One of the great things about having a library - and both you and I have what I call libraries; I'm not leaving Rob out of that; It's just most of it is me - so I have this library at home and you walk into our great room and it really is sort of like walking into the library I worked at. And it is so much more than a collection of books to me. It is actually a story. I mean, I can look at any bookshelf and there's a part of my life that's told through the books that are on that shelf. So it isn't something that I look forward to the day when I have to release. I'm comforted by having my life around me in those books, including a number of books that I've never read. Because I think you are, I mean, in my life, I always want books available that I've not read yet. So, yeah.

JIM: Yeah, they're not, I'm sorry, Rob.

ROB: You’ve made your way through books also.

JIM: There’s a history there. I remember where I was when I read that. One other recommended to me was Graham Greene. So I picked up a book of his called "Monsignor Quixote," which is hilarious. It's a great book. And then I found out that our uncle Paul, mom's oldest brother who had been a Salvation Army officer, he was a DC out in Kansas and that, and a lot of people speak fondly of him. And so he, after he had retired, he's in his 70s, he decides to go back to school and pursue a doctorate of all things at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. And he had as his study Graham Greene. He had all of his books. And at the age of 80, became the oldest doctoral recipient at Ball State. And I think he still holds that record for that. And then when he passed, then I, one of my shelves over there in the big room, a whole shelf is all of Paul's Graham Greene. These are unread by me. So why do I have them? Are they just family heirlooms? Well, they're that. But also that's the future of my reading is that shelf right over there. Because if the rest of his books are anything like "Monsignor Quixote," I'm in for a riotous time of great literature. And after you read that and you read something else, it's just, it pales a little bit for that. When you hear Annie Proulx’s language, which is luscious and Graham Greene's, or you've got Hemingway over there next to him. Should the British ever attack again and burn the Library of Congress again, I think the four of us could be the Thomas Jefferson of our day, donate our things and they'd have a little room off to the side. And this was, this was the planting of our new Library of Congress. [Laughter]

If I were to go to your house and take an inventory of all of the books, what proportion would be fiction, nonfiction, reference, theology, music, poetry, travel, literature, what am I going to find on your shelves?

JAN: Oh my goodness. The thing you would find most of is religion. I'm going to say spirituality, spiritual books, theology, both in... 

ROB: Nonfiction.

JAN: Yeah. I'm going to have more nonfiction than fiction. Definitely. Social justice, history books, those are my main... I have a lot of books on being a vegetarian. Yeah. I don't have as much fiction.

JIM: The vegetarian books are all printed on plant-based materials, right?

JAN: Well, that would be paper, right? Just join that out.

ROB: We’ve got classics.

JAN: Yeah.

ROB: That’s how I started reading. Right now, I'm really into dystopian stuff. I don't know... 

JAN: We live in dystopian stuff. What the heck?

ROB: I know, but I don't know what it is. It's just fascinating. I think it's the ability of the human race to want to survive, even after horrible disaster. That appeals to me. Things like The Hunger Games and Station Eleven, the Silo series, those kinds of things appeal to me.

JIM: So if you're watching movies, are you more on the Mad Max side of things or more on the Star Trek side of things?

ROB: I like Star Trek. I love science fiction. That's one of my favorite genres also. Yeah, Mad Max, that doesn't interest me that much. 

JIM: I’ve thought that science fiction fulfills a role in society that apocalyptic literature does at certain times. That is, in times of distress, you want to know if the future is secure. Apocalyptic literature has a certain sort of resolution depending on who's writing it. And then science fiction has a certain resolution depending on who's writing it. I heard a survey once that up to a fourth of the people who say they have read 1984 have not actually read it. It's one of those things, it's a badge of saying, "Oh yeah, I've read it." Have you ever read it?

ROB: I don't know. I think I have, but I can't be sure we have it. I think I have read it. 

JAN: I think you have too. Yeah. You've read Animal Farm too, right?

ROB: Yes, I've read Animal. I know I've read Animal Farm.

JIM: Brave New World? Aldous Huxley?

ROB: No.

JIM: That’s where every religious phrase we use the word "Lord" in, he uses the word “Ford" as in Henry Ford. And he has the one, soma is the drug that's used there and it's a completely harmless euphoric drug that people take to kind of quell the masses. It's that. But soma is - I'm off on a tangent, I'm sorry - Soma is a poem out of Whittier. Whittier was against the religious fervor of the 19th century. And so he wrote a poem called The Brewing of Soma, which was a drink that certain priests would take, not in a Christian tradition, but other traditions, priests would have this and would put them into a frenzy. And so he was against this kind of religious ecstatic expression in community. And so it was a brewing of - but that gave us a hymn, Dear Lord and Savior of Mankind, forgive our foolish ways. Then he references the demoniac who was restored to his rightful mind. So Soma was used by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. That one I've read a couple of times. 1984? I know what room 101 is. I know what Big Brother is. I don't think I've read it all the way through unless the book was starring John Hurt. Then I've read the book all the way through in cinema form.

JAN: Here’s a question. We read a lot of books and many of them leave our minds, maybe not yours, Jim, but they leave my mind, they leave Rob's mind. Is there one or two? Do you have a book that has actually had a significant impact on you, maybe even changed your life?

JIM: Well, I have a copy of the Bible right here. I think that's cheating the question.

JAN: Kind of. 

JIM: But a book… I'll do this one. This is a little bit odd, but Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the trilogy. I read that in graduate school. It's got to be on a shelf around here somewhere. It is a fantasy thing. It takes you into other worlds and it shows you amazing things. It weaves through a mystery all the way through the series. He gets to his penultimate chapter where everything is going to be revealed. He names that chapter The Answer That's Satisfied. It gives the whole resolution of this trilogy of books and how happy everyone in the story is to reach that resolution of that's what has been going on. That's what happened. There it is, cue the credits. That's the penultimate chapter because the ultimate chapter says The Answer That Was True. The resolution is different. It's deeper. It's truer. And it taught me don't accept things until you're happy with the answer you got. Follow it through to what the answer truly is.

I think if I were to use political terminology and I were asked, “What is a progressive?” - a progressive is someone who can see an argument through to its conclusion past the point they were already satisfied with what they had heard. That they can follow an argument farther, thus making progress, opening themselves up to things that may be uncomfortable, may not be convenient, and they find something else beyond that. And so the Asimov book is one that did that. Here's the answer that satisfies. How many people will listen to an argument and then you can see where they take their exit? As soon as it gets uncomfortable, they've gone beyond what they were ready to accept. Either they're ideologically stuck or they're not ready for that next part of growth. And if they're stuck, I don't know the solution. If they're not ready for growth, then give them time. And ourselves time too. Give yourself time. If someone has presented something that is uncomfortable to you, figure out why. If you find a book on a shelf that offends you, figure out why. And if you've got something that is rubbing that way, then it's time for growth, consideration, maybe, yes, ultimate rejection of it, but you've got an idea that you want to follow through. This is why I would call myself a progressive. I have to find out what's really at the root of what a person is saying. Not just, "Okay, I've got my answer. I've got something for my Corps Cadet sheet to fill out. I'm ready to go. I can get my little pat on the head,” but let's find something a little bit deeper. Which I could circle back to the Bible again, but maybe that for another time. I went on a little long about that one.

So Jan, rescue us. Do you have something that has maybe challenged you? Something that is, "Okay, I'm going to find a book that is not my cozy up book.”

JAN: Well, I think sometimes circumstances take us to different books, and books that can make you uncomfortable. So when George Floyd was killed, that happened at the same time that I was working at The Salvation Army with a number of young black adults. So we had conversations about race, and hugely important in my life were those conversations. I guess I thought about it because we mentioned Adely earlier and he was one of the people always in the room. But at that same time, I picked up a book by an author called Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's called Between the World and Me. I actually got it as a free copy at a library association conference. So it's actually a reader's edition copy with lots of errors as Rob got frustrated with when he read it. Anyway, there are many ways that we can walk in somebody else's shoes, which is an important thing to do in society. And one of them that's been most valuable to me is to read a book by somebody who's had a different life experience than me. And this is a story of Ta-Nehisi Coates. What he's doing is he's writing a letter to his son about what it's like to grow up as a young black man, and the things that happened in his life.

I used to have these same experiences when I would have conversation at the library at DHQ of being just stunned at how different my growing up experience was from some of the people in the room. But my world was opened in a good way when I read this book. There are many books like this where you can, maybe you don't know somebody that's in a certain circumstance. Maybe they're Palestinian, maybe they're, I mean it could be any number of people. But you want to understand their experience and you don't know a person to talk to, but you can find a good book that will help you walk in their shoes. And it's been both one of the most enriching and challenging things, books I've ever read. I go back to it all the time. Anyway, I recommend that.

ROB: Yeah, for me, it's the same thing. I've never experienced racism personally, prejudice, but I can understand it better through a book. And that book for me was To Kill a Mockingbird. And to get to what you were saying earlier, Jim, I got to a very satisfying part of that book where this black man has been accused wrongly. He's being defended by a white lawyer who does a marvelous job of defense. And you think, when the jury goes out to decide, it feels good. This man's done something that's not normal in that time, in that place.

JAN: You mean the attorney.

ROB: The attorney, yeah. And then the jury comes back and they convict him. And then he ends up running away and he's killed. That's not what I wanted to happen, but that's the reality of it. They're not all happy endings. They weren't happy endings in the case of that. It's a great book. I love it. And there's a very emotional part for me in that book where the black pastor and the African Americans that are present in the courtroom watching this defense, they all have to sit up in the balcony and Scout, Atticus Finch's daughter - who’s actually Jean Louise - she’s in the balcony with the pastor, this black pastor, and the group. After everybody files out, Atticus Finch walks out and the pastor says, "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing." And that gets to me every time. I can't say anything more about it. It's one of those moving things that's just become part of me through this literature.

JAN: One of the great things we did in sharing a book was we read that book together out loud to each other while we were traveling. And we haven't done that before and I don't think we've done it since.

ROB: We haven’t.

JAN: But it was a profound experience. And so there's this great quote that Atticus has in that book about empathy. And it is, "First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of people. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." That's what books can do. They can help you look at things from somebody else's point of view. One of the things about To Kill a Mockingbird, again, is that it makes us uncomfortable. In that discomfort, we learn something new and we grow. And I thought about that with this book particularly because To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most banned books in the country because it makes people uncomfortable. But the truths that are gained from that and the growth that occurs in learning and understanding are profound. So I hope that we consider that sometimes it's okay when kids are learning if they're uncomfortable and they read books. I can't. I can’t.

ROB: Read books that make you uncomfortable. Read banned books.

JIM: Okay, we'd like to welcome back to our audience the alt-right members who took an exit after they heard George Floyd. And we want to let them know next week we have Bill O'Reilly on and he will be presenting Killing Genghis Khan, The Life and Loves of a Tyrant. So you'll enjoy that one. There's something for everyone here on Making Our Way.

[music]

JIM: So I use a French press to make our coffee and I think this is more of a technique really than a recipe. But here we go. I like whole bean coffee that I grind myself because it tastes better and it stays fresher longer. So I do that. But if only ground coffee is available or someone's given it to me as a gift, that's fine. I'm grateful and, you know, no problems. By the way, don't store the coffee in the refrigerator, a whole bean or ground. Some people do thinking it preserves freshness, but it's damp in there and the coffee is going to pick up the flavors of the other food. Just reseal it in the bag. If it's used in the next couple of weeks, you'll be fine, especially with the whole bean.

The common method for grinding coffee for French press is to use a very coarse grind, and the idea is that a finer grind would produce a sludge in the coffee. But if you can control the sludge in a different way, I found that a finer grind will produce a fuller flavor. So I prefer a medium coarse grind and I use a burr grinder for coffee because it gives a more consistent grind. The blade grinders are really best for like nuts and spices and things like that. And you don't want to be grinding your coffee where you've been grinding those spices; that flavor will interfere. I measure the ingredients by weight, not by volume. I use a ratio of coffee to water of about one to 13, one to 14, one to 15, something like that. It depends on the coarseness of the grind and how much time you're going to leave the coffee in the water.

The water, by the way, should be clean, filtered water. We live in Florida, which I think is the hard water capital of the galaxy, apparently. It has a very bad flavor to it and that's going to affect your coffee. So it's worth it to filter your water until you like the way it tastes just as water. And then that's going to do the best job for your coffee. So how do we get the water ready? The recommendation is to go at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit for the water. I have a kettle that has different temperature settings for different types of teas and coffees and it says 200 for French press. So that's it. I mean, boiling it's not going to really ruin too much. So you can try it that way. Just take it off the boil, let it cool just a little bit before you pour it.

Now here comes the try it till you get the hang of it part. Put the coffee in the French press and pour the water on top. Now wait, just wait for about four minutes and a crust will form on the top. Then after four minutes, give that crust a stir, just gently, and allow the coffee to settle down to the bottom. And if there's anything left on top, like some sort of a foam or something with some maybe some grounds caught in it, just scoop that off the top and toss it away. Now you want to wait a little bit more. This is a zen-like thing. The rest of the grounds will settle to the bottom. Then after about five minutes of that, then it's ready to be poured. Now it has a plunger on there and it’s - I was originally taught, you just plunge through it and you're supposed to be pushing the sediment out of the way of the water. But if you've let it set like this, the sediment has already settled down to the bottom and you don't want to plunge it and agitate that and get it all stirred up again. So you're going to use the plunger part as more of a filter. And sometimes I'll put even an extra, even with the fine mesh that's in there, I'll put in an extra paper coffee filter just to make sure none of that sediment is going to come through. So the plunger is just sitting on top of the coffee, maybe a little bit down into it, but you really don't want to disturb it much. And so using it as a filter, you just pour out the coffee and you're ready to go.

This may seem a little bit overly precise because you're using purified water, you're setting the coarseness of the grind, you're weighing the ingredients, you've got to get your timings right. But you want to do all those things so you can control the coffee that you get. And then next time you can repeat it if it worked out, or you can adjust things here and there to try and get a little bit better result. But you can't just eyeball these things, you've got to know what you've done so that you can repeat it. And then cleanup can be an issue with French press. And I've learned from experience that coffee grounds are not the best thing to put down the drain and down a garbage disposal. But coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, for instance, which is very good for plants and for compost. So now if this whole process with its measurements, its timing, its cleanup, and all that is a bit much for you, then you can just drop a K-cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee into a Keurig machine and you're good to go. Either way. And so that is how we are making our coffee.

[Music ends]

JIM (voice over): So we'll put a bookmark in our discussion there. And in Chapter 3, we will conclude this extended discussion of books, literature, the importance of reading. And here is a preview of that episode.

ROB: And this is so fundamental to our Republic, to the maintenance and health of our democracy. It's an educated citizenry. I mean, the founders, they said that, we needed an educated citizenry to make wise decisions, decisions based on facts, decisions based on truth. And today, that's so blurred. It's purposely blurred. And so it becomes even more so important for us to be able to read and as you said, discern and to check, you know, what we're reading and what we're learning and what we're hearing with what the facts are.

JIM (voice-over): That and more to come. This has been Jan and Rob, Deanna and me, Jim. And we are making our way. Until next time.

[Music]